Ask: Is "the script is written" literal?


“Is the Course saying that the script is written and our only choice is to see everything with the ego or the Holy Spirit? Or is it saying that in every situation where we make a decision the script switches to a different script?” – BM

A Course in Miracles is saying everything that happens is already set and your choice is in how you see it.
Although you feel that your desires, motivations, choices, and actions are your own, really you are a part of a whole, and that whole lives through you, showing up as your desires, motivations, choices and actions. While your will feels free, it is really part of a greater will living through you.
To understand this, you must understand the nature of what you perceive as reality, or the world you live in. It is actually an instant of undoing unfolding as time. That instant is the idea of not-God (not-Truth) arising and being undone in the Mind of God (Truth). God, being All, must contain the idea of Its Own opposite. But being All, God cannot have an opposite. God’s all-encompassing nature undoes the idea of not-God the instant it arises. It is as though God thought, “What’s my opposite? Oh, yeah, I can’t have an opposite.” And the idea was done.
But within the idea of not-God—but not in God—it seems as though the opposite of God occurred. God is Formless, Timeless, and Infinite. So not-God is time bound, limited form. Time is the illusion on which all other illusions rest. Within the idea of not-God it seems as though the idea of not-God arose long ago and will be undone in some indefinite future.
Since God is All, God is Reality. What you experience as a world in time is really a pseudo-reality. It is just a story of the Undoing (the Atonement in ACIM) of the idea of not-God. So the outcome is inevitable and everything that happens, no matter how it appears at any given moment, is part of the Undoing, and everyone is playing their part perfectly.

“The time is set already. It appears to be quite arbitrary. Yet there is no step along the road that anyone takes but by chance. It has already been taken by him, although he has not yet embarked on it. For time but seems to go in one direction. We but undertake a journey that is over. Yet it seems to have a future still unknown to us.
Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appearances that does not change. The script is written. When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by.” (W-158.3-4) (my bold)

What you “review” is the undoing itself, not the details unfolding in time. In time, there is cause and effect, with some effects being also causes. But it all leads to an inevitable end, just as when you watch a movie the ending is already set. So when you get caught up in what is appearing at any given moment, you can remember that there is a happy ending, no matter all the drama that gets the story there!

>>>> 
Do you want support and guidance as you on your path? Email me at Liz@acimmentor.com to set up an appointment for mentoring. Learn more at www.acimmentor.com.

Comments

will said…
The catch 22: There will be a happy ending, you (the person reading this) just won't be there to see it.
5:22 AM
ACIM Mentor said…
But Will, you can see it in the Holy Instant any time!
10:07 AM
will said…
Inevitable end = Happy ending
The catch 22.
3:31 PM
will said…
The "Inevitable end" and the "Happy Ending" is not for us reading the blog. That's the catch.
3:44 PM
ACIM Mentor said…
Only if you don't want it to be, Will...
4:30 PM
a fellow dreamer said…
Today's calendar workbook lesson:

"What limits can I lay upon God's Son?" -or- "It is impossible to limit God's Creation".

All limiting thoughts (catch-22's are an example) are mistaken ideas that arise in my mind. They are opportunities to choose again, to return to Present Awareness and forgive the illusion of limitation (guilt) and a separate identity. Then to bless and join in the Holy Instant. It is a choice I make and is my function as a student of the course.

Today I release all limiting illusions as they appear, in gratitude for today's lesson.
6:27 AM
Marisa C said…
The script remains the same, it only “adjusts” as we choose the Holy Spirit and perceive it differently, therefore we may “experience” something differently than it would have been. The form is the same, but the content – which is all there really is — changes as we make the better choice.
7:56 AM
Marisa C said…
No the script is not “literal“. It is a story, that meets us where we are, so we can understand the predicament we are in. Otherwise there would be no way out, no way to climb the ladder home without Jesus’ stories to make it understandable to us from “the condition in which we are”.
7:58 AM
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