In My Insanity I Thought I Made Myself

ACIM Workbook Lesson 260 – for Saturday, September 17, 2011

Affirmation:  “Let me remember God created me.”

“Father, I did not make myself, although in my insanity I thought I did.  Yet, as Your Thought, I have not left my Source, remaining part of Who created me.  Your Son, my Father, calls on You today.  Let me remember You created me.  Let me remember my Identity.  And let my sinlessness arise again before Christ’s vision, through which I would look upon my brothers and myself today.  (WB424)”

Reflections:

This prayer is a summation of much that the Workbook for Students would have us understand.  It has a calming effect that is reminiscent of the emotion that will be evoked in many prayers in this part of the Workbook.  We are here led to understand that we did not create ourselves.  God did.  We tend not to understand this, because ACIM also alludes to idea that we made the illusory world (“made,” not “created”).  But we are the only real Essence in this world, and by this we see ourselves as a part of the God Who resides within.  We project the illusory world, but God is the Whole.  If you should find this interpretation of the theology of ACIM hard to believe, then do not feel required to subscribe to it.  I would not say anything that is dividing.  We need, as ACIM says, to have a universal experience, because a universal theology is impossible.  And it is the practical with which ACIM is most concerned (a Text tenet).

We would see with the eyes of Christ; we would see sinlessness in ourselves as well as in our brothers and sisters.  This definition of Christ includes the Self that we all are; it is not limited to Jesus, our elder brother.  Jesus has walked the whole pathway back to God, and now he stands at the end, to resolve the mistakes that we are not able to correct.  According to A Course of Love, his was the “example life,” but we are not led to be crucified as was he.  We do not have to experience his experiences.  We do have to find our way back to God; this is a necessity, and sooner or later all of us will know that there is “another way,” a better way to walk this world.  We will seek it, and as we seek, we will find (from the New Testament).  Our lives do not have to be bleak and humorless.  We can learn how to live well regardless of outward circumstances in this world.

This section of the Workbook encourages silent communing with God.  This communion is not called “meditation,” but many ACIM students/teachers do see these lessons as examples of meditation.  It does not matter what we call it.  It only matters that we do it.  We need daily time, morning and evening, and time in between, in which we turn to God and let the raucous noises of this world be stilled in our minds and spirits.  May we do so often today.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I would spend time today, much time, in communion with You.  And I would speak to Jesus, remembering that he said that he takes us by the hand and leads us through this world.  May I find myself by finding You in my brothers and sisters.  May this knowledge lead me Home.

Thank You for the words that Jesus has given in A Course in Miracles.  Thank You especially for the more comforting passages, the ones to which I return over and over.  May I never let any theology delay me, but may I seek the practical application of what Jesus says.  Be with me today, as always I ask.

Amen.