[acimlessons_list] LESSON 22--August 10

Allen Watson allen at circleofa.com
Mon Aug 9 17:43:31 EDT 2004 

    COMMENTARIES ON LESSONS FROM THE WORKBOOK OF A COURSE IN MIRACLES
    by Allen Watson, with Practice Summaries by Robert Perry
    The Circle of Atonement--Visit our website at <http://www.circleofa.com>

LESSON 222

August 10

"God is with me. I live and move in Him."

PRACTICE SUMMARY

Part II

Purpose: To take the last few steps to God. To wait for Him to take the
final step.

Morning/Evening Quiet Time: as long as needed.

o Read the written lesson.

o Use idea and prayer to introduce time of quiet. Do not depend on the
words. Use them as a simple invitation to God to come to you.

o Sit silently and wait for God. Wait in quiet expectancy for Him to reveal
Himself to you. Seek only direct, deep, wordless experience of Him. Be
certain of His coming, and unafraid. For He has promised that when you
invite Him, He will come. You ask only that He keep His ancient promise,
which He wills to keep. These times are your gift to Him.

Hourly Remembrance: Do not forget.

Give thanks to God that He has remained with you and will always be there to
answer your call to Him.

Frequent Reminder: As often as possible, even every minute.

Remember the idea. Dwell with God, let Him shine on you.

Response To Temptation: When you are tempted to forget your goal.

Use idea as a call to God and all temptation will disappear.

Reading: preceding one of the day's moments of practice.

o Slowly read "What is...?" section.

o Think about it a while.

Overall Remarks: Now, in this final part of the year that you and Jesus have
spent together, you begin to reach the goal of practicing and of the course.
Jesus is so close that you cannot fail. You have come far along the road. Do
not look back. Fix you eyes on the journey's end. You could not have come
this far without realizing that you want to know God. And this is all He
requires to come to you.

COMMENTARY

Again we are brought to the Presence of God, without words, in quiet. Our
only awareness is of God, His Name upon our lips.

What does it mean to "live and move" in God? This is the message that the
Apostle Paul brought to the Athenians, speaking of the "unknown God," and
saying that "in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:16-28).
The lesson speaks of the omnipresence of God-that God is everywhere and
everywhen. In beautiful imagery, the lesson turns our thoughts to the
all-pervading Presence, never apart from us, "nearer than hands and feet,"
as the Bible says.

This is imagery and not (in my opinion) literal. If the world is illusion,
as the Course has so often said, He is not literally "the water which renews
and cleanses me" (1:3). It speaks of our spiritual reality, where we
<really> are. God is the reality of all things in which we look to the world
for sustenance, the true Source of our life. We think we live in the world,
but we live in God. We think our body contains our life, but He is our life.
We think we breathe air, but we breathe Him. God is our true food and our
true drink, our true home. We do not live and move in the world; we live and
move in God.

Reading this lesson aloud is an excellent exercise. Or turning the first
part into a prayer: "You are the Source of my life...You are my home...."
Use these words at the start of your practice period to set your mind into a
consciousness of being immersed in and filled with God, kept in His loving
care. Then, be still, and let yourself sink into that Presence, to rest with
Him in peace a while.

What is Forgiveness? (Part 2)

"Forgiveness," it says, "does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees
there was no sin" (W-pII.1.1:2-3). This is the whole distinction between
true and false forgiveness, which the Song of Prayer calls
"forgiveness-to-destroy." There is such a difference between seeing sin in
someone and struggling to overlook it or to refrain from the desire to
punish, and seeing not sin but a mistake, a call for help from a confused
child of God, and naturally responding with love. When the Holy Spirit
enables us to see the "sin" of another in this way, suddenly we can see our
own "sins" in that same very different light. Instead of trying to justify
our own errors, we can admit they are mistakes and simply let them go,
without guilt.

Sin is simply "a false idea about God's Son" (1:5). It is a false
self-appraisal projected onto everyone around us. It is the belief that we
are truly separate, attackers of God's Love in our separation; it sees
attackers everywhere.

Forgiveness is seen here (1:6-7) in three steps. <First>, we see the falsity
of the idea of sin. We recognize that no sin has occurred; the Son of God
(in the other or ourselves) is still the Son of God, and not a devil. He has
been mistaken, but he has not sinned. <Second>, closely following on the
first step and a natural consequence of it, we let the idea of sin go. We
drop it. We relinquish our grievances, abandon our thoughts of attack. Only
the first step depends on our choice; the second step follows as its
inevitable result. When we no longer see attack, what reason is there to
punish with counter-attack?

The <third> step is God's part. Something comes to take sin's place; the
Will of God is freed to flow through us unhindered by our illusions, and
Love follows its natural course. In this we experience our true Self, the
extension of God's own Love.

All we need do, then, if it can be called doing, is to be willing to see
something other than attack, something other than sin. We need only to be
willing to admit that our perception of sin is false. When we do, the Holy
Spirit will share His perception with us. He knows how to forgive; we do
not. Our part is merely to ask to be taught by Him. He does the rest, and
everything flows out of that simple willingness.


    COMMENTARIES ON LESSONS FROM THE WORKBOOK OF A COURSE IN MIRACLES
    by Allen Watson, with Practice Summaries by Robert Perry
    The Circle of Atonement--Visit our website at <http://www.circleofa.com>

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Portions from Clarification of Terms (c) Copyright 1975, Psychotherapy:
Purpose, Process and Practice, (c) 1976, The Song of Prayer, (c) 1978, are
used by permission of the copyright holder, The Foundation for "A Course in
Miracles," 41397 Buecking Drive, Temecula, CA 92590.


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