ACIM Workbook Lesson 258 – for Thursday, September 15, 2011
Affirmation: “Let me remember that my goal is God.”
“All that is needful is to train our minds to overlook all little senseless aims, and to remember that our goal is God. His memory is hidden in our minds, obscured but by our pointless little goals which offer nothing, and do not exist.
“Our goal is but to follow in the way that leads to You. We have no goal but this. What could we want but to remember You? What could we seek but our Identity? (WB423)”
Reflections:
The ego would send us on imaginary journeys away from God to satisfy all manner of “senseless aims.” But all of our needs are met when we are at home in God. He is actually Who we have been searching, in vain, when we have sought substitutes in this world that our egos tempted us to own. We have followed meandering routes away from God, believing that we have separated from Him. We have, it is true, not been communicating with Him, and this, according to the Text, is a “most unnatural habit.” We would change all of that nonsense as we seek to be at home in Him. He will give us the real aims of our hearts. He will give us his “felt presence” (a favorite phrase of Eckhart Tolle).
These goals that we have sought have actually been illusory nonsense. We have never found anything that the ego prompted without paying for it with tears (a Text tenet). Why continue along this pathway any longer? Why not let go today?
Perhaps we are not sure that God is the only gift that we really want. Perhaps we would try additional pathways, but to do so is to follow the ego’s mistaken bent. God does not lead us down these illusory pathways; we do this to ourselves. One of the most seminal tenets of ACIM is that we are doing this unto ourselves. And much that we experience as a result is “distress based on error” (from the Text).
The great preoccupation of this world is to try to determine our identity, who we are. We often think that we do not know ourselves. This is actually the beginning of wisdom, as cited in the Text. There is a lovely sequence of thoughts in the Text that ends with the desire of God that we say to Him that we do not know what we are. We are then ready to open our minds to His revelation. And revelation will occasionally reveal the end to us (we are told in the Text). These glimpses of Awakening are evidence indeed that we are seeking the goal that God would have us seek, however often we are tempted to follow the errant pathways to the world’s goals. The world has nothing to offer that we really want, and the sooner we recognize that, the sooner we will drop our defense of the ego. This does not mean that we cannot be happy in this world. ACIM would have us happy; indeed, repeatedly, happiness is seen as our function, and, as such, it is synonymous with forgiveness (also said to be our function). These are goals in line with ACIM, and then we can know the Heaven on earth that we would all desire, if we were not so deluded as to fail to know how to find just that.
Prayer:
Dear Father/Mother,
I would not follow senseless aims and try for pointless goals today. Much that we seek in this world is pointless, and I sometimes seek the pointless just because it is so meaningless. This is insanity of the ego, and I would leave that behind today.
I have spent years of my life bolstering the ego, all to no avail. I know now that the ego is constantly being undone, that this is the way of the world. The ego must be undone if we are to find a way that actually makes sense. We need You today, as always–perhaps, today, more than usual. When the ego calls to me, then I must be sure that I turn aside and seek Your presence instead. Help me to seek Your presence in today’s chaotic world.
Amen.
MIRACLES EACH DAY 