Readings of an Adapted ACIM, by Frances Allan

It is my greatest gift and joy to be sharing the inspiration to revise ACIM for clarity, readability and understanding. It began with facilitating a study group in my apartment in Austin, Texas, and has grown over the years into a most wonderful influence in my life.

This community has provided the space to join with others for help, making the audio/text freely available on the Internet using  Spreaker, Facebook, and now this blog on the community web site. It is truly an honor and blessing to be extending the words of Jesus.

Love and gratitude to the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God, who guides me in everything, when I am willing to be still and listen.  This work absorbs me completely, as it is done through me.  It always seems fresh and new, and is remembered as a lesson.  I cannot express in words the heartfelt gratitude I feel that this is happening.

Love, Peace, Joy!
Frances Allan

OrEd-T-16.1-Introduction-Empathy

1. To empathize does not mean to join in suffering, for that is what I must refuse to understand. Joining in suffering is the ego’s interpretation of empathy. That interpretation is always used to form a special relationship in which the suffering is shared. Delusional attempts to enter into pain, and lighten the pain by sharing the delusion, is not the Holy Spirit’s way of healing. The capacity to empathize is very useful to the Holy Spirit, provided I allow Him to use it in His way. The Holy Spirit doesn’t understand suffering, and he would have me teach that suffering is not understandable. The Holy Spirit does not join in pain, for He knows healing is not accomplished this way. When the Holy Spirit relates through me, He does not relate through my ego to another ego.

2. The clearest proof that empathy as the ego uses it is destructive, is in the fact that empathy is applied only to certain types of problems and in certain people. The ego selects these people and problems and joins with them only to strengthen itself. Having identified with what it thinks it understands, it would increase itself by sharing what is like itself. The ego empathizes only to weaken, which is always attack. Let me make no mistake about this. I do not know what empathizing means. Yet, if I sit quietly by, and let the Holy Spirit relate through me, I will empathize with His strength, and both of us will gain in strength. Of this I may be sure!

3. My part is to remember only this: I do not want anything I value to come of the relationship. I will neither to hurt nor to heal it in my own way, because I do not know what healing is. All I have learned of empathy is from the past, and there is nothing from the past that I would share, for there is nothing there that I would keep. I will not use empathy to perpetuate the past and make it real. I will gently step aside, and let the healing be done for me. However tempted I may be to judge any situation, and determine my response by judging the situation, I will keep one thought in mind and not lose sight of it, focusing my mind on this:

4. I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest. I have invited Him, and He is here. I need do nothing except – not to interfere.