Let me recognize that my problems have been solved.
Lesson 80 of A Course in Miracles is so entangled with Lesson 79 it feels wrong somehow to take them separately. Yet without the clarity of the prior lesson, this one would lose some of its power. In practice, they merge together in a way that few other ACIM lessons do.
Lesson 79 teaches us that we must recognize the problem as it is in order for it to be solved. Lesson 80 gently extends the teaching: our problems are already solved. This is because we do not have multiple problems but rather a single problem – separation – and that problem has been solved. It was solved before it began.
Your one central problem has been answered, and you have no other. Therefore, you must be at peace. Salvation thus depends on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that i has been solved (W-pI.80.1:2-4).
We are saved if we can accept as fact that we are not separate from God and therefore each and every problem that we appear to have is an illusion that requires no effort, intention or application from us.
Can we do this?
You are entitled to peace today. A problem that has been resolved cannot trouble you. Only be certain you do not forget that all problems are the same (W-pI.80.3:1-3).
This, then, is essential: our willingness to see all the problems the world presents to us as symptoms of the only problem we have. War, famine, flat tires, head colds, arguments at work, knotted shoe laces, undercooked fish . . .
Ego suggests that these are separate problems requiring separate solutions. It seems so rational! The solution to undercooked fish – cooking it longer – won’t help our tangled shoelaces. And at least we know how to untangle our shoelaces – we can’t say the same for ending war and famine.
Spirit gently insists that these are merely appearances, each reflecting the only problem we actually have. Mind believes it is fractured into parts, briefly at home in bodies, and constantly under siege. In fact, we remain as God created us: perfectly abstract, perfectly living, and forever free from sacrifice, suffering and death.
To give attention to Spirit is the lesson’s mandate. We need to open our minds to the truth of its teaching.
You have laid deception aside, and seen the light of truth. You have accepted salvation for yourself by bringing the problem to the answer. And you can recognize the answer because the problem has been identified (W-pI.80.2:4-6).
To see that all our problems arise out of the fundamental problem of separation, is to understand which problem needs to be solved. If we can hold the problem clearly in mind, then at the level of mind, we will be given the answer: we remain where – and as – God created us.
Salvation is a gentle shift in thought and nothing more. We take responsibility for how we think, and so our thoughts align with Spirit, who steers them gently back to love, patience, forgiveness, gentleness, wisdom and comfort. We think we are separate, and we suffer accordingly. We are not separated; love is our inheritance; joy and peace are our due, and we gain them by giving them unconditionally to all our brothers and sisters.
I gotta relate to you how you were intertwined with being my problem and “my problem(s) being solved”, lol. It is integral to my use of this lesson, that there’s ever a present creative story “from” now, that doesn’t need to see the premise of problem; and probably more “pragmatically”, that includes the ability to story how problems are un-problemed, in the “moving” now.
I was waiting for my spouse in the car while he went into a store, as I wanted to listen to your YouTube of today’s lesson. That required wifi for the iPad and so for the car to be on, but I assumed Gregg had the key. So as I’m walking to get it, I muse about how Life had the story of me enjoying the saunter across the parking lot in the leftover coolness of winter but the warmer-ness of the sun on the first day of Spring. Mike’s initial story was Gregg had absconded with the key, and the walk was a fix for his interrupted but fixable plan (how cunning of Life to manipulate Mike using his goals!). The frame of mind from the lesson left it humorous to recognize (but seem to initiate) re-storytelling – on the fly! Very humorous, as at the store entrance I didn’t have my mask!, and phoning Gregg I could see him inside but not picking up the phone! The old story was still overlapping, as the pressure to continue my lesson was operative in frustration, now calling out to Gregg to come to the entrance. He got included in the befuddlement as he checked his pockets; but he quickly reminded us that I had the key, all along! How funny was that, my layers of story telling, when none of it might have happened if knew from the start I could have turned the car back on ! But the appreciation of the independence of the moment did make it all more toward the fun, more forgiving of the sheepish problem-maker and blame-thrower, it now being more a foil in the stories, than their author.(but included!).
So I wanted to make you conscious, over there, of your part in problem-making, lol (making a lesson which caused objects of projection for Mike to stumble over), SO that I could have an illustration of how problems are always dissolving. How did you know to include that as part of your lesson material?! Or, like I said, you probably don’t remember, so I hope you like how I related the story(ies). you didn’t even have to be conscious that your problem was solved, because you weren’t even concsious of “the problem” until I told you!
That, my friend, was brilliant. What would I do without you?