Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan for salvation.
1. Although we have recognized that the ego’s plan for salvation is the opposite of God’s, we have not yet emphasized that it is also a direct attack on His plan, and a deliberate attempt to destroy it.
²In this attack, God is given the attributes of the ego, while the ego is viewed as having the qualities of God. I
2. The ego’s fundamental wish is to replace God.
²In fact, the ego is the embodiment of that wish in physical form.
³For it is this wish that makes the mind appear to be enclosed within a body, kept isolated and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body that was made to imprison it. II
⁴To impose limits on communication cannot be the best means of extending it.
⁵Yet the ego would have you believe that it is.
3. While it is clear that this is an attempt to maintain the limitations the body must impose, it may not yet be as obvious why holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan for salvation.
²But consider the kinds of things that lead you to hold grievances.
³Are they not always associated with something a body does?
⁴Someone says something you do not like, or does something that displeases you.
⁵In either case, it is always the body’s behavior that you see as proving the person’s guilt.
4. It is not what the person is that concerns you.
²Instead, you are preoccupied with what the person does with the body.
³In doing so, you not only fail to help that person escape the body’s limitations,
⁴you actively reinforce those limitations by identifying the person with the body. III
⁵This is an attack on God, for if His Son is only a body, then so must God be.
⁶And it is inconceivable that a Creator could be entirely unlike what He creates.
5. If God were a body, what would His plan for salvation be?
²What could it be but death?
³And in presenting Himself as the Author of Life and not of death, He would have to be a liar and a deceiver, full of empty promises—one who offers illusions in place of truth.
⁴The apparent reality of the body makes this view of God seem quite convincing.
⁵Indeed, if the body were real, it would be difficult to avoid drawing this conclusion.
⁶And every grievance you hold insists that the body is real.
⁷Your grievances cause you to overlook entirely what your brother is.
⁸They reinforce your belief that he is a body and condemn him for being one.
⁹They declare that his salvation must be death, and in doing so project this attack onto God, blaming Him for it.
6. To this carefully constructed nightmare—where angry beasts hunt their prey and mercy cannot enter—the ego comes as your savior.
²God made you a body.
³Very well, let us accept that and rejoice.
⁴Since you are a body, do not deprive yourself of anything the body can offer.
⁵Take what little you can get.
⁶God gave you nothing.
⁷The body is your only savior.
⁸It is the death of God and your salvation.
⁹This is the universal belief of the world you see.
7. Some hate the body and seek to harm and debase it.
²Others idolize it and try to glorify and exalt it.
³But as long as the body remains the center of your self-concept, you are attacking God’s plan for salvation and holding grievances against Him and His Creations, in order not to hear the Voice of Truth or welcome It as your Friend.
⁴The savior you have chosen has taken His place.
⁵That savior is your friend, and God your enemy.
8. Today we will try to end these senseless attacks on salvation. IV
²Instead, we will try to welcome it.
³Your upside-down perception has devastated your peace of mind.
⁴You have seen yourself within a body, and the truth outside you—blocked from your awareness by the body’s limitations.
⁵Now we will try to see this differently.
9. The light of truth is in us, where God placed it.
²The body is outside us and does not concern us.
³To be without a body is to be in our natural state.
⁴To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves as we are.
⁵To see our Self as something apart from the body is to end the attack on God’s plan for salvation, and to accept it instead.
⁶And wherever His plan is accepted, it has already been accomplished.
10. Our goal in today’s longer practice periods is to become aware that God’s plan for salvation has already been fulfilled in us.
²To achieve this goal, we must replace attack with acceptance.
³As long as we continue to attack, we cannot understand what God’s plan for us is.
⁴Thus, we are attacking what we do not understand.
⁵Now we will try to lay judgment aside and ask what God’s plan is for us:
⁶What is salvation, Father?
⁷I do not know.
⁸Tell me, that I may understand.
⁹Then wait in silence for His answer.
11. We have attacked God’s plan for salvation without waiting to hear what it is.
²We have shouted our grievances so loudly that we have not listened to His Voice.
³We have used our grievances to blind our eyes and close our ears.
⁴Now we want to see, to hear, and to learn.
⁵What is salvation, Father?
⁶Ask, and you will be answered.
⁷Seek, and you will find. V
12. We no longer ask the ego what salvation is, or where to find it.
²We ask the Truth.
³Be confident, then, that the answer will be true—because of the One to Whom you have asked.
⁴Whenever your confidence falters, and your hope of success begins to dim and die, repeat the question and your request, remembering Whom you are asking: the infinite Creator of the infinite, Who created you like Himself:
⁵What is salvation, Father?
⁶I do not know.
⁷Tell me, that I may understand.
⁸He will answer you.
⁹You need only be willing to listen.
13. Today, one or perhaps two brief practice periods per hour will suffice, since they will be somewhat longer than usual.
²Each exercise period should begin like this:
³Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan for salvation.
⁴Instead of attacking it, I will accept it.
⁵What is salvation, Father?
⁶Then wait quietly for about a minute, preferably with your eyes closed, and listen for His answer.
I To the ego, embodied in a body, are assigned the aspects of being—the attributes of God: to create, to love, and to know. God manifests them in a perfectly abstract and unlimited way; He creates His Son as an extension of His Love and knows Him, for His Son is Himself.
Bodies “create” other bodies through what is called “making love,” and they “know” one another through the senses of their bodies. The ego is not creative but merely a clumsy counterfeit of Being—an inept imitation.
II There is a fundamental, generic question that, at some point, crosses every human mind, consciously or not. While most people ignore it and forget it, for some it becomes a source of constant concern. The question is: What is all this about?
This question can be approached from many angles and can take more specific forms. It can be phrased in philosophical terms—What is reality?—in scientific terms—What is matter?—or in psychological terms—Who am I? In any case, such questioning reveals an unease, a restlessness that seeks to be appeased in some way, or else must be forgotten altogether.
Basically, there are two paradigms that address this question, and they are perfectly antithetical—each is a mirror image of the other; the statements of one are the inversion of those of the other. Thus, one says: “I am real, and the idea of God is a sublimation of my desires.” The other—the paradigm of this Course—states that God is the only reality, and the ego—symbolized in the body—is the embodiment of the idea of being God.
Both paradigms are perfectly consistent within themselves, yet they lead to different conclusions and experiences of being. It is also important to recognize that the mind cannot operate under both paradigms simultaneously, nor can it alternate between them, for doing so stresses and depresses it.
For the mind to function efficiently and achieve any kind of result, it must choose one of these two descriptions of what is real and adhere to it consistently.
This Lesson describes the world’s paradigm as seen from the perspective of the Course. Perhaps the most relevant point here is to become aware of the consequences of believing in the ego’s proposal for salvation. It must be understood that Jesus’ description of what the ego asserts is absolutely accurate, and it is something every human being knows perfectly well, for in one way or another, each has subscribed to it throughout personal life.
Jesus now offers a very different proposal, one that will obviously lead to a very different experience. He understands that His proposal cannot be lightly accepted as true; He merely asks that we give it a chance and verify its truth for ourselves.
III To stop harboring resentments is an unavoidable requirement for transcending identification with the body. The practice of this teaching—forgiving our resentments—is essential to embrace the premise of Workbook Lesson 97: I am spirit.
IV Jesus’ reasoning for demonstrating that harboring resentments is an attack on God’s plan for salvation exposes the unconscious mechanism that governs your mind, which is essentially as follows:
PREMISES:
• Your resentments are caused by the behavior of others toward you.
• Behavior belongs to bodies.
• Harboring resentments reinforces in your mind the idea that bodies are your only reality and that of others.
• If you are a body, your Creator must be one too. This idea is unconscious but fully operative in your mind.
• To be saved from something means to cease being that something; therefore, the body’s salvation is death.
• God lies; He says He creates life, yet the life He creates always ends in death.
• Your brother’s salvation and your own is death, for that is what that lying God has established.
• In this world of death, everyone kills to go on living, and everyone ends up dying.
• Your body is all you have—your only comfort and the place where you experience pleasure by satisfying your perceived needs.
CONCLUSION:
Identifying with your body and seeking your salvation in it sabotages God’s plan for salvation as this Course teaches it. Every time you harbor a resentment, you reinforce in your mind this bleak view of yourself and of everything.
V This version of the Gospel quotation is repeated throughout the Course on many occasions. Jesus constantly urges you to pray sincerely and wholeheartedly, assuring you that all your desires will be fulfilled. This is not because, in some lofty realm or hypothetical Heaven, there exists a being who watches you, listens to your petitions, and then capriciously decides whether to grant them or not.
God has created His Son perfect, and so it shall remain forever. He is real and unchangeable.
The mechanism by which your prayers seem to manifest within the illusory dream of bodily life is, in truth, quite different. That illusory dream is of your own making—a projection of your fears and desires. It is the mind of the Son of God, confused because it believes itself to be a body in time and space. That mind, infinitely powerful, converses with itself through the characters with which it identifies in that illusory realm, for it has become fragmented by believing in the impossible idea of separation, which in itself is fragmenting.
Thus, it conceives a dream of sin and guilt, which, through forgiveness and prayer, it transforms into redemption and salvation.
The mind of the Son of God—which is the Mind of God—grants itself all that it asks for from the heart: the good and the bad, illusions as well as salvation. Such is its power to create, for such is its power to believe.
Matthew 7:7: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”