I Am Not Apart from God

ACIM Workbook Lesson 223 – for Thursday, August 11, 2011

Affirmation:  “God is my life.  I have no life but His.”

“I was mistaken when I thought I lived apart from God, a separate entity that moved in isolation, unattached, and housed within a body.  Now I know my life is God’s, I have no other home, and I do not exist apart from Him.  He has no Thoughts that are not part of me, and I have none but those which are of Him.

“Our Father, let us see the face of Christ instead of our mistakes.  For we who are Your holy Son are sinless.  We would look upon our sinlessness, for guilt proclaims that we are not Your Son.  And we would not forget You longer.  We are lonely here, and long for Heaven, where we are at home.  Today we would return.  Our Name is Yours, and we acknowledge that we are Your Son.  (WB403)”

Reflections:

Guilt is hell (an ACIM tenet).  And all too often we feel guilt when we have failed, in our own sight, to measure up.  That we do not have to “measure up” on a constant basis is something that we overlook, especially when we have been on the spiritual path for a long time.  We need to be ever ready to turn our mistakes over to God for rectification.  He will erase them.  We need only to ask.  And we need to realize that we do not want to categorize these mistakes as “sins,” because sins, perversely, have an attracting aspect (a Text tenet).  When we categorize our misthoughts or misdeeds as mistakes, we will automatically want to change.  We will want to leave the mistakes behind, making amends to others (and ourselves) when it is possible to do so.

When we see the face of Christ in all of our brothers and sisters, we will know that we are home.  Jesus did see this face in other people, and he is our example.  We do not have to relive his life, we do not have to be crucified–but we do need to let him be our leader in all things.  In ACIM, he is our elder brother; in A Course of Love, he is our companion, our teacher no longer.  He has completed his task, in A Course of Love, and it is now up to us to complete ours.  ACOL says that this does not involve learning again, over and over.  We have learned all that we need to know.  We need only accept the unity and relationship that is the purview of the elevated Self of form.  We are united as One with our brothers and sisters, and our relationships are pure.  Even our own Self is consistent within; it is honest (a Manual tenet).

We are indeed often lonely in this world.  But it need not be so.  We can enjoy Heaven on earth, even in the midst of troubles.  We can rise above the conflict that troubles us by turning, over and over, to the God within (and without).  This constant turning to God is the only way to live that will sustain us permanently (an interpretation, not stated in ACIM).

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I rest in surety that Your Word is true, that You live within me and that I have no need ever to feel lonely–believing that I am a solitary being.  Be with me today as I seek to find the companionship that I can find only in You.  Help me to remember to pray, to commune, on as nearly a constant basis as my frail self can sustain.

Help me to know that my Self is strong.  There is nothing in this world that will ever come between us.  That is enough for me to know.  That will keep me serene in Your presence always.

Amen.

The Embrace

“[This treatise] will continue the view from within the embrace, an embrace and a view that is inclusive of all.  (The Treatises of A Course of Love:  A Treatise on the New, 1.1)”

Affirmation:  “Jesus’s embrace includes all”

Reflections:

The passage immediately above refers to one of the most beautiful (and beautifully written) passages in the first volume of A Course of Love.  The “embrace” in that first volume was an invitation from Jesus to come into his arms, and to be at peace and at rest.  He recognized then that many (maybe all) of us are tired from seeking, and that the ways of this world have taken their toll on us.  He would have to rest awhile in the embrace, to feel his loving presence, to know that all is well.

The embrace in ACOL is essentially an assertion that Jesus is there for us when times are tough.

A Course in Miracles is to the mind what A Course of Love is to the heart.  We are bade elsewhere to live in “wholeheartedness,” a combining of the mind and heart in Jesus’s loving embrace.  He never leaves us comfortless.  In Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, we too see this quality in Jesus.  His reassurances are comforting in the extreme.

Note that the passage from ACOL emphasizes that all are included in the embrace.  Jesus will soon say that “all are chosen.”  This is a reemphasis of the statement in A Course in Miracles, a statement that became book titles for Kenneth Wapnick, a scholar and student/teacher of A Course in Miracles.  Ken wrote books entitled, All Are Chosen, and Few Choose to Listen, quoting ACIM.  I think that Jesus is saying in A Course of Love that all are chosen, and not only that, but perhaps we might imagine that those of us who are reading his words in A Course of Love do “choose to listen.”  May we choose to listen aright, no longer letting the ego rule our lives.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I rest awhile in the warmth of Jesus’s embrace.  May I know that this embrace is always there for me, to give me comfort and solace.  This world bears heavily on us, sometimes, despite our best efforts.  Thank You for the words of Jesus that what he offers is the rest and safety that we all need.

Thank You for being there for us.  May I never forget that prayers to You give my day a greater benefit not only to myself, but to my brothers and sisters also.  May I be alert to the guidance that is there for the taking.  May I listen for the unheard, but felt, whispers of the heart–of the wholeheartedness–that tell me what to say or do next.

Amen.

ACIM Workbook Lesson for Day 142:

My mind holds only what I think with God:

I thank my Father for His gifts to me.

Let me remember I am one with God.

Day Forty: Who You Are to Me

“When you turn the last page, will you cry tears of sadness that our dialogue is complete, that you will hear my voice no more.  Or will you brave your own relationship with me?  Will you turn to your brother and hear my voice in him?  Will you be my voice as you turn to your sister?  Will you carry the fullness of our relationship within you?  Will you be one with me, and in being one with me never feel alone again?  Will you let the emptiness of separation leave you once and for all?  (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 247)”

Affirmation:  “May I brave my own relationship to Jesus, and may I know real companionship with him as well as with all my brothers and sisters.”

Reflections:

We are an extension of I Am in form.  Through that extension, we become who we are to Jesus, instead of who he has been to us.  There is creative tension in this relationship, and that is good.  This will allow the power that is needed as we return to level ground.

As separate beings, our existence was circumscribed by fear.  As beings living in unity and relationship, love is our hallmark, our extension.  Christ-consciousness is the awareness of existence in relationship.

We are one Self, love’s extension, one to another in unity and relationship.  This one Self the Christ Self.  We must let the emptiness of separation leave us, and we must join with Jesus in all his fullness.  We must not cry tears of sadness that we are no longer on the mountain top with him.  He will go with us to level ground.  We carry the fullness of our relationship to him with us.  And we must share this relationship with all in our world.  We join together with our brothers and sisters, and Jesus is our companion.  We are never alone.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May love be my hallmark in the new reality in which I find myself as I descend to level ground.  May I recognize that, with my brothers and sisters, I am one Self.  I am also one Self with God.  Help me to understand this blessing, this knowledge that has never before been made so clear to me.

Help me in my daily walk on level ground.  Thank you for the blessing of the Forty Days and Forty Nights.  Thank You, Jesus, for your channeling to us in A Course of Love.

Amen.

ACIM Workbook Lesson for Day 133:

I will not value what is valueless.

Day Thirty Seven: A New Idea of God

“You realize that the man, the God, the historical figure who has been called Jesus Christ was not only Jesus but Christ.  Not only Christ but Jesus.  Not separated but individuated.  You realize that the call for the second coming of Christ has sounded and that it is a call to the difference you have always desired while not requiring you to remain separate!  (A Course of Love: Dialogues, p. 230)”

Affirmation:  “Lead me to understand, finally, the Second Coming of Christ.”

Reflections:

The previous day, Day Thirty Six, replaced an old idea of God with a new:  a God in which we all share.  Day Thirty Seven elaborates upon this conception.  We have previously seen ourselves as different from each other, and different from God.  But, in unity, we are all the same, the same in relationship to each other.  We are differentiations of God, creators even as He is.  Our previous work has often been “made,” rather than created (a tenet of A Course in Miracles), but now we would accept how to be creators of reality, not illusion.

We have seen ourselves as separate beings, encased in a human body that was made (rather than created) by the ego.  Now we recognize the falsity of this conception, and we move to see ourselves as one with God.  We accept this reality when we move into Christ-consciousness.  We then know, as opposed to perceiving.

We are told that the divineness of our being is most revealed in relationship.  This is because we are one with our brothers and sisters.  When we separate ourselves from them, we separate ourselves from God.  He would have us all join together.  We have seen glimpses of this new state, but soon this new state will become permanent within ourselves.  Then we will truly live in a new reality.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I do not want separation anymore; I want union.  Help me to incorporate this new reality in my understanding of the human being that I am.  May I also recognize the fact that the divine is part of my nature.  I have not always understood this, but I ask to understand divinity today.

Thank You for this new and exciting truths.  May I understand honestly and in depth.  May I recognize that Your truth is something that, with grace, I can come to understand.

Amen.

ACIM Workbook Lesson for Day 130:

It is impossible to see two worlds.

Day One from the “Dialogues” of “A Course of Love”: Accept Me

“This has been spoken of as the second coming of Christ because my story goes unfulfilled without your fulfillment.  It is only in your fulfillment of the continuing story of creation that my story reaches completion.  (A Course of Love:  Dialogues, p. 90)”

Affirmation:  “May I know my fulfillment.”

Reflections:

This “Day One” represents the first of 40 days and nights on a “mountain top” with Jesus as our guide.  In this chapter of the Dialogues, Jesus makes a comparison of these 40 days and nights with his own 40 days and nights in the desert, prior to the beginning of his mission on earth 2,000 years ago.  We are to become what he became.

Jesus stresses that it matters not what we call “God,” because God knows who He is.  But acceptance of Jesus as our guide is necessary; it explains that this is just the way it is in salvation.  This tenet of A Course of Love, the Dialogues, will be difficult for some of us to accept, perhaps, but if we realize that in A Course in Miracles we have already accepted Jesus as our guide, we will be less resistant.

We are meant to become all that Jesus was.  His was the example life.  We do not have to go through what he experienced, because that was for him alone.  But we do have to accept him as our guide.  Then we will be well on our way to recognizing that indeed this is the time of the second coming of Christ.  We are meant to embody that second coming as we elevate our self of form to the elevated Self.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I wholeheartedly accept Jesus as my guide.  May I drop any resistance that I have ever had around this idea.  On this Easter morning, may I choose the best for my future, and may I realize that Jesus is a part of my personal future.

Thank You, dear God, for leading me to love better.  As I go to the mountain top with Jesus over the next 40 days, may I know a resurrection that only You can bring to me.

Amen.

A Course in Miracles:  Workbook Lesson for Day 94:

I am as God created me.

revised