In this video recording of a class (given for the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise), we review section 15 of the Manual For Teachers: “Is Each One to Be Judged in the End?” (ACIM, M-15). Short Answer: Yes, God already has judged everyone and everything as eternally innocent, so our task (with Holy Spirit’s help) is to do the same!
A few quotes to prepare for this exploration into the reality of sinlessness:
“You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment.” (ACIM, T-3.VI.3:1)
“O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to meet Him where His altar is.” (ACIM, C-4.8:1)
“When you are afraid, be still and know that God is real, and you are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.” (ACIM, T-4.I.8:6)
In response to these quotes, Tim Wise reminded us that there is an excellent related program by Kenneth Wapnick entitled “Jesus’ Promise: “If You But Knew…” available from the Foundation for A Course In Miracles store with inspiring selections from ACIM.
As an opening meditation, we read Workbook Lesson 38 (the chronological (calendar daily) lesson for that day) but replaced the word “holiness” with an equivalent word – from the Course’s pure non-dual perspective – “sinlessness” and took turns reading aloud.
Here is the first paragraph with that replacement:
“Your sinlessness reverses all the laws of the world. ²It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind. ³Your sinlessness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator.” (ACIM, W-38.1:1-3)
Here are a few words (of many) that might be helpful to think of as equivalent when reading ACIM, and can sometimes bring new insights when one has entrenched associations with a particular word:
holiness = sinlessness = innocence = benevolence = kindness = trust = honesty = tolerance = gentleness = joy = defenselessness = generosity = patience = faithfulness = open-mindedness = forgiveness …
(For each of the links above, tap the link, then tap the “Search!” button to see all the results available for exploration of occurrences of that word in ACIM.)
Here are the three paragraphs of this short section from the Manual for Teachers:
“1. Indeed, yes! ²No one can escape God’s Final Judgment. ³Who could flee forever from the truth? ⁴But the Final Judgment will not come until it is no longer associated with fear. ⁵One day each one will welcome it, and on that very day it will be given him. ⁶He will hear his sinlessness proclaimed around and around the world, setting it free as God’s Final Judgment on him is received. ⁷This is the Judgment in which salvation lies. ⁸This is the Judgment that will set him free. ⁹This is the Judgment in which all things are freed with him. ¹⁰Time pauses as eternity comes near, and silence lies across the world that everyone may hear this Judgment of the Son of God:
¹¹Holy are you, eternal, free and whole, at peace forever in the Heart of God. ¹²Where is the world, and where is sorrow now?
2. Is this your judgment on yourself, teacher of God? ²Do you believe that this is wholly true? ³No; not yet, not yet. ⁴But this is still your goal; why you are here. ⁵It is your function to prepare yourself to hear this Judgment and to recognize that it is true. ⁶One instant of complete belief in this, and you will go beyond belief to Certainty. ⁷One instant out of time can bring time’s end. ⁸Judge not, for you but judge yourself, and thus delay this Final Judgment. ⁹What is your judgment of the world, teacher of God? ¹⁰Have you yet learned to stand aside and hear the Voice of Judgment in yourself? ¹¹Or do you still attempt to take His role from Him? ¹²Learn to be quiet, for His Voice is heard in stillness. ¹³And His Judgment comes to all who stand aside in quiet listening, and wait for Him.
3. You who are sometimes sad and sometimes angry; who sometimes feel your just due is not given you, and your best efforts meet with lack of appreciation and even contempt; give up these foolish thoughts! ²They are too small and meaningless to occupy your holy mind an instant longer. ³God’s Judgment waits for you to set you free. ⁴What can the world hold out to you, regardless of your judgments on its gifts, that you would rather have? ⁵You will be judged, and judged in fairness and in honesty. ⁶There is no deceit in God. ⁷His promises are sure. ⁸Only remember that. ⁹His promises have guaranteed His Judgment, and His alone, will be accepted in the end. ¹⁰It is your function to make that end be soon. ¹¹It is your function to hold it to your heart, and offer it to all the world to keep it safe.”
As usual, we (as egos) have everything bass-ackwards, upside-down, and inside out. We think that (ego’s) god is going to judge us unfairly (or just as bad, with the same end result – fairly if we think we’re miserable sinners) and we’re terrified of that condemnation. Of course, the only one doing any condemnation is our dualistic dreaming minds, and fortunately – the happy ending that thwarts and aborts ego’s dystopian film noir ending – we will all ultimately decide against our own condemnation, seeing no value in that approach. We’ll see it is just silly, ineffective, and easily dismissed … at the end (the top of the ladder, so to speak).
Meanwhile, we need to look at our day-to-day condemnations in a gazillion tiny little “paper cut” condemnations from the most trivial irritations to our “sacred cow” big deal grievances that in no way we’re going to let go of. Ego won’t let go of victimhood and martyrdom until we pry those thoughts from its cold, dead (non-existent) mind. It maintains those Self-condemning and Self-deprecating thoughts by projecting them onto any convenient target, 24/7/365 until WE decide we’ve had enough of this silliness!
Looking for related words to this topic in ACIM, we find:
- 235 instances of the word “judge”
- 154 instances of the word “condemn”
- 160 instances of the word “sinlessness”
As we work with Holy Sprit’s gentle guidance and learn to uncomplicate our minds from ego’s persistent drive to divide, differentiate and obfuscate, we begin to see how many ego ideas that seem to masquerade as different problems are really just one solvable – and in Truth already solved – problem: the belief in separation, or phrased another way, wanting to be a separate self-made (guilty) self instead of the intrinsically innocent God-created Self we all are and share.
“Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken.” (ACIM, T-10.V.6:1)
Holy Spirit (HS) is our “Get out of jail free” card; we never were in jail, and God’s courtroom is eternally empty (since no guilt is possible in eternity). HS’s job is easy from his perspective, but impossible from ours! The ego always lobbies and argues for guilt and usually (by default) for projecting the guilt we find intolerable onto everyone and everything else, without ever actually getting rid of it from our mind. Holy Spirit helps us see that guilt is not outside our minds as Lesson 5 (ACIM, W-5) reminds us, and also that it is a correctable (via Atonement) error as Lesson 34 (ACIM, W-34) reminds us, that merely requires our looking at what we made with Holy Spirit’s vision. Here’s another related post that goes into the practice of true forgiveness in more detail.
Here are some related references about Judgment from FACIM’s Glossary-Index for “A Course in Miracles” (highly recommended):
judgment:knowledge: strictly speaking God does not judge, since what He creates is perfect and at one with Him; the Course’s references to God’s Judgment reflect His recognition of His Son as His Son, forever loved and one with Him.perception (wrong mind): condemnation, whereby people are separated into those to be hated and those to be “loved,” a judgment always based on the past.perception (right mind): vision, whereby people are seen either as expressing love or calling for it, a judgment inspired by the Holy Spirit and always based upon the present.
Last (Final) Judgment:knowledge: contrasted with the traditional Christian view of judgment and punishment to reflect God’s loving relationship with all His Sons: His Final Judgment.true perception: contrasted with the traditional Christian view of judgment and punishment and equated with the end of the Atonement when, following the Second Coming, the final distinction is made between truth and illusion, all guilt is undone, and awareness is restored to us as Christ – the Son of the living God.
God’s Final Judgment is all about complete and total, eternal and unchanging sinlessness. Of course, the ego wants nothing to do with that idea, since sinlessness means it’s undoing! So Holy Spirit’s “task” is to allow us (by showing us the contrast between ego’s insanity and HS’s sanity) to choose to see our siblings and therefore ourselves as sinless – seeing the eternally shared rather than the special interests of fleeting and conflicting goals of trying to make ourselves happy with unfulfilling dreams that ultimately always disappoint us. We decide, at our own pace, when we’re good and ready to end the hellacious suffering and misery of ego’s condemning assessment of everything and everyone, including ourselves. We choose – when we want Salvation, Atonement, complete forgiveness – the correction which undoes our mistaken identification with separate selves and a wandering state of mind consisting of uncertainty, loneliness, and constant fear.
“Deny me not the little gift I ask, when in exchange I lay before your feet the peace of God, and power to bring this peace to everyone who wanders in the world uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear. ²For it is given you to join with him, and through the Christ in you unveil his eyes, and let him look upon the Christ in him.” (ACIM, T-31.VIII.7:1-2)
“Peace is impossible to those who look on war.²Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace.³How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped!⁴It is not the world that makes peace seem impossible.⁵It is the world you see that is impossible.⁶Yet has God’s Judgment on this distorted world redeemed it and made it fit to welcome peace.⁷And peace descends on it in joyous answer.⁸Peace now belongs here, because a Thought of God has entered.⁹What else but a Thought of God turns hell to Heaven merely by being what it is?¹⁰The earth bows down before its gracious Presence, and it leans down in answer, to raise it up again.¹¹Now is the question different.¹²It is no longer, “Can peace be possible in this world?” but instead, “Is it not impossible that peace be absent here?” (ACIM, M-11.4:1-12)
A related section that addresses sinlessness in more detail (which we didn’t cover in the video) is “The Consistency of Means and End” (ACIM, T-20.VII).
A key “take-home lesson” from this section in Chapter 20 is the idea that our salvation (peace of mind) is completely dependent on our willingness to adopt Holy Spirit’s vision of sinlessness in everyone we see, undoing ego’s insane and ineffective projections:
“Your question should not be, “How can I see my brother without the body?” ²Ask only, “Do I really wish to see him sinless?” (ACIM, T-20.VII.9:1-2)
We closed with this meditation:
Lesson 318
“In me salvation’s means and end are one.
1. In me, God’s holy Son, are reconciled all parts of Heaven’s plan to save the world. ²What could conflict, when all the parts have but one purpose and one aim? ³How could there be a single part that stands alone, or one of more or less importance than the rest? ⁴I am the means by which God’s Son is saved, because salvation’s purpose is to find the sinlessness that God has placed in me. ⁵I was created as the thing I seek. ⁶I am the goal the world is searching for. ⁷I am God’s Son, His one eternal Love. ⁸I am salvation’s means and end as well.
2. Let me today, my Father, take the role You offer me in Your request that I accept Atonement for myself. ²For thus does what is thereby reconciled in me become as surely reconciled to You.” (ACIM, W-318.1:1–2:2)
This video was recorded on February 7, 2022.
(I highly recommend Lyn and Tim’s almost daily SFACIM zoom classes!)