Finding Unified Perception

If you think about the last time you got upset about something someone did, it’s good to remember that it is never their action that has the power to take your peace but how you reacted to what they did or said. Facts don’t cause us upset; only interpretation of facts cause us upset. It may sound like a no brainer to understand this, but if we fully understood it was true, we would focus solely on our reaction and thereby solve the problem of lost peace.

Your relationship with the person who you feel offended you and how you perceive them to feel about you, your mood that day, your need for control or fear of the lack of control, your ability to have empathy that moment, all of these are the factors that caused your loss of peace. And all of these are up to your perception...your choice of which part of your mind you will view this event from; the Holy Spirit or your ego.

In chapter nine of ACIM is a section dedicated to the correction of error in our brother. I’ve picked out a few lines and put it in the context of our every day lives.

“If you point out the errors of your brother’s ego you must be seeing through yours, because the Holy Spirit does not perceive his errors. This must be true, since there is no communication between the ego and the Holy Spirit.” ACIM

Sane Perception Vs. Fragmented Perception

If you observe your brother’s errors, you are doing so from the ego. The reason this is so, is because the Holy Spirit can only see with Universal or undivided perception, being the shared Mind of all of us, given by God equally the moment Life began. What is shared by all of us is therefore unified. Sanity is the condition in which we think and act with this unified mindset. Individual perception is fragmented perception and is therefore not at all a ‘sane’ perception.

“When a brother behaves insanely, you can heal him only by perceiving the sanity in him. If you perceive his errors and accept them, you are accepting yours. If you want to give yours over to the Holy Spirit, you must do this with his.” ACIM

“You can heal him only by perceiving the sanity in him.” What is the sanity in him? The part of him who is Whole and complete. If you are willing to see this ‘sane’ part of him, despite his behavior at the moment or in the past, you will see the Holy Spirit in both of you. This is possible because all that we see in another, is a witness to what is true in our self. This is evident even from a purely scientific view because the brain is not capable of perceiving what it does not already have stored as some form of ‘data.’ In other words, you cannot see in another, what you have not understood, thought about or seen in yourself.

When we perceive error anywhere in anyone, we must just remember it means we understand the error. All we can do is give the error up to the One who knows what to do with it rather than attempt to correct it alone. We’d be sure to make more errors on top of theirs, adding to the pile of misgivings, miscommunications, and misunderstandings.

“It is not up to you to change your brother, but merely to accept him as he is. His errors do not come from the truth that is in him, and only this truth is yours. His errors cannot change this, and can have no effect at all on the truth in you.” ACIM

The Course is not telling us to deny a world full of seeming errors. It is saying that it is in your judgment of perception of error where the error is made real and sin and punishment, justified.

All the punishing, justifying, retaliation, defense, war, hatred, fear and anger that we give back to those whom we have judged as our enemy only joins error with error and multiplies its effects to make them real. Even unreal effects, if believed, affect what we believe to be our reality. As a good example of this phenomenon, the effects of a placebo drug when used in place of the actual drug is often ‘believed’ by the patient to affect them just the same as the drug. If your mind is ‘unified’ in its belief...regardless of what it is, it is your reality. If you have joined with another’s belief in error, you have unified in that belief with your brother and that will be your reality. If your brother strikes you in anger and you strike back in defense, you have joined in anger and made both of your ‘realities’ ones of fear.

Therefore your reaction is ALL THAT MATTERS, ever. Ask yourself, “Am I joining with his error or the truth?” If you react to the error in your brother as though it can threaten your reality, you enter his reality which is believing in error. Instead of entering it, unify your thoughts in your mind to think how you forgive, how you accept, how you let go and you will see that there is nothing to do for him or to him but to find Peace in doing nothing but forgiving. This is all Jesus meant by ‘turning the other cheek.’

Murder....Forgiven?
Imagine a child or a loved one was murdered. Imagine your self being able to say to the murderer, “I believe only in the wholeness in you, no matter what your reality seems to be. I join in our shared purpose which is to forgive the world of errors that we see and find only Love. You took a life because you had none inside you. Now she/he is free and you are still without life. My forgiveness will set you free.”

To be able to do this, under such horrific sadness seems impossible. The only way I can imagine how it is done is that it must be like anything else in that we must first experience the feeling of forgiveness within ourselves in the small, every day things, to eventually find this unshakable Peace in horrific things. The traffic jam, the grocery store, the family fight, the neighborhood gossip; all present small opportunities to change the way we ‘feel’ not just the way we act, with Spirit as our Guide. One who finds Spirit within will undoubtedly tell you that the murderer is equal in every way and is God’s Innocent child in need of Love, and nothing else. This is what Jesus would do...and nothing else.

For more on this subject, click here to read my newsletter about the Amish and how they reacted in 2008 when their little girls were shot in their own community grade school.

“To perceive errors in anyone, and to react to them as if they were real, is to make them real to you. You will not escape paying the price for this, not because you are being punished for it, but because you are following the wrong guide and will therefore lose your way.” Acim

No Apology Needed? Not Quite!

If the goal is to look past error and bypass correction, this does not mean that if you offend someone, you don’t apologize to him because you tell yourself, ‘it’s not real.’ If he believes he was offended, your role is to tell him he is right. Until both agree that we cannot truly hurt one another if we are God’s son in reality, we must reach out to each other and ask to be forgiven in the reality of the ego. Although we don’t need to ask for God’s forgiveness, Who knows only Love and Its extension, we must learn how to forgive our brother to be part of this Love and its extension and relinquish belief in ego.

“Any attempt you make to correct a brother means that you believe correction by you is possible, and this can only be the arrogance of the ego. Correction is of God, Who does not know of arrogance.” ACIM

Here’s where people are apt to complain that this Course is unrealistic. For instance, how could correcting your brother or your child when they are in need of help ever be wrong?

Just as it is never the actions of the other person which actually makes us unhappy, but instead it is our reaction to it wherein unhappiness and condemnation lives, it is also true that it is not what we say or do to help our brother or our child in need that actually helps them; it is with what mind we say or do it wherein healing is made possible or impossible.

We always choose to perceive with ego or Spirit Mind. If we asked Spirit to lend us a thought before speaking to another, every single time, there would be no war, no anger, no sadness in mankind….at all, ever. This is because one thing is absolutely true; there is no malice in Spirit ~ there is only Love and Its extension to others. The same is true about helpful correction in our children and loved ones; if it comes from Spirit it will never cause us guilt, anxiety or sadness. No matter what.

If Spirit was called upon, all who hear or read the words including your self, will benefit in some way, even if unaware or defending against it. Why is this true? Because when Spirit is Present, all is forgiven and forgiveness, no matter to whom it is extended or received, always leads to healing for both.

“The Holy Spirit forgives everything because God created everything. Do not undertake His function, or you will forget yours. Accept only the function of healing in time, because that is what time is for.” ACIM, T-9.III.8

Namaste ~
Diane L. Perretto