ACIM - Orders of Reality

Orders of Reality

 

ACIM (Original Edition) uses the phrase "order(s) of reality" ten times. 

Summary:

• Orders of reality are not symbolic.
• An order of reality is a system of thought
• The two basic orders of reality are (1) In time, and (2) In eternity
• Orders of reality intersect where time and eternity meet in the present instant.
• Healing the mind and physical healing are two different orders of reality.
• Thought alone cannot make physical reality, but thought combined with belief can.
• Opposing orders of reality make reality meaningless.
• Different orders of reality is a perspective without understanding.
• Reserving one idea apart from truth is to establish an order of reality which must imprison you.
• There are no orders of reality. There is no order of difficulty of miracles.
• Time awareness is an order of reality.

ACIM Quotes - from the Original Edition 

The separation is not symbolic. It is an ORDER OF REALITY or a system of thought that is real enough in time, though not in eternity. All beliefs are real to the believer.

Those who speak of “a miracle of healing” are combining two ORDERS OF REALITY inappropriately. Healing is not a miracle. The Atonement or the final miracle is a remedy, while any type of healing is a result. The kind of error to which Atonement is applied is irrelevant.

Remember that the Bible says, “The Word (or thought) was made flesh.” Strictly speaking this is impossible, since it seems to involve the translation of one ORDER OF REALITY into another. Different ORDERS OF REALITY merely appear to exist, just as different orders of miracles do. Thought cannot be made into flesh except by belief, since thought is not physical.

As long as you believe that fear is possible, you will not create. Opposing ORDERS OF REALITY make reality meaningless, and reality is meaning.

ORDERS OF REALITY is a perspective without understanding, a frame of reference for reality to which it cannot really be compared at all.

Think you that you can bring truth to fantasy and learn what truth means from the perspective of illusions? Truth has no meaning in illusion. The frame of reference for its meaning must be itself. When you try to bring truth to illusions, you are trying to make illusions real and keep them by justifying your belief in them. But to give illusions to truth is to enable truth to teach that the illusions are unreal and thus enable you to escape from them. Reserve not one idea aside from truth, or you establish ORDERS OF REALITY which must imprison you. There is no order in reality because everything there is true.  Be willing, then, to give all you have held outside the truth to Him who knows the truth and in Whom all is brought to truth.

There is no barrier between God and His Son, nor can His Son be separated from himself except in illusions. This is not his reality, though he believes it is. Yet this could only be if God were wrong. God would have had to create differently and to have separated Himself from His Son to make this possible. He would have had to create different things and to establish different ORDERS OF REALITY, only some of which were love. Yet love must be forever like itself, changeless forever and forever without alternative. And so it is. You cannot put a barrier around yourself because God placed none between Himself and you.

All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, to be defended though unrecognized, is faith in specialness. This takes many forms but always clashes with the reality of God’s creation and with the grandeur which He gave His Son. What else could justify attack? For who could hate someone whose Self is his and whom He knows? Only the special could have enemies, for they are different and not the same. And difference of any kind imposes ORDERS OF REALITY and a need to judge that cannot be escaped. 6 What God created cannot be attacked, for there is nothing in the universe unlike itself.

The biblical injunction, “Be of one mind” is the statement for revelation readiness. My own injunction, “Do this in remembrance of me” is the request for cooperation from miracle workers. It should be noted that the two statements are not in the same ORDER OF REALITY. The latter involves a time awareness since to remember implies recalling the past in the present. Time is under my direction, but Timelessness belongs to God alone. In time we exist for and with each other. In Timelessness we coexist with God.

-  oOo   -

Tom Fox
Somerset, Kentucky