[acimlessons_list] Review VI, Lesson 207 - July 36

[Susan Carrier]

Review VI, Lesson 207 - July 26

"I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."

"I bless the world because I bless myself."

"I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."

PRACTICE SUMMARY

REVIEW VI

PURPOSE: To carefully review the last 20 lessons, each of which contains the
whole curriculum and is therefore sufficient for salvation, if understood,
practiced, accepted and applied without exception.

MORNING/EVENING QUIET TIME: 15 minutes--at least

* Repeat: "I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."

* Close eyes and relinquish all that clutters the mind; forget all you
thought you knew. Give the time to the Holy Spirit, your Teacher. If you
notice an idle thought, immediately deny its hold, assuring your mind that
you do not want it. Then let it be given up and replaced with today's idea.
Say: "This thought I do not want. I choose instead (today's idea)."

REMARKS: We are attempting to go beyond special forms of practice because we
are attempting a quicker pace and shorter path to our goal.

HOURLY REMEMBRANCE: Repeat: "I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as
God created me."

FREQUENT REMINDER: as often as possible, as often as you can. Repeat: "I am
not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."

RESPONSE TO TEMPTATION: permit no idle thought to go unchallenged.

If you are tempted by an idle thought, immediately deny its hold, assuring
your mind that you do not want it. Then let it be given up and replaced with
today's idea. Say: "This thought I do not want. I choose instead (today's
idea)."

COMMENTARY

All that I need is already within me. It is released for me when I release
it to others, because in reality, there are no "others," there is only one.
We get caught up in questions such as, "Do I forgive myself first, and thus
release myself to forgive others? Or do I forgive my brother, and thus find
forgiveness for myself?" and "Must I love myself before I can love others,
or vice versa?" When we ask such questions we are trying to figure out a
unified reality on the basis of duality; we can't get a clear answer because
the question is framed in the wrong terms.

To "accept His boundless Love for me" (1:3) and to accept that love for
others is the same thing, because all of us are merely fragments of the one
mind we all share. There is no such thing as loving myself to the exclusion
of loving others; that is not love at all. Nor is it love to "love" someone
else and sacrifice myself on their behalf.

"I bless the world because I bless myself." This doesn't mean that meeting
the demands of my ego benefits everyone else. Many people, in the wake of
what ACIM teachers Hugh and Gayle Prather call "separation psychology" (see
their book, "I Will Never Leave You"), think that loving yourself means such
things as looking out for your own happiness at the expense of marriage
partners and children. This is not what the Course is teaching here. The
pendulum has swung from sacrificing yourself for the family or your partner
(in the 40's and 50's) to sacrificing the family and partner for yourself
(in the 80's and 90's). Both are mistaken approaches based on dualism.

"I bless the world because I bless myself" could be reversed, with equal
truth, to read, "I bless myself because I bless the world." Giving and
receiving are the same thing; this is one of the major lessons of the
Course, and, by its own admission, one of the hardest for us to learn.

"God's blessing shines upon me from within my heart, where He abides." The
radiant and all-embracing Love of God is within me. When I turn to It, It
engulfs me and instantly spills over to embrace everyone through me.
Discovering that is what the Course is all about. "I am still as God created
me." I am still that Love. How can I know that I am Love without expressing
it? Love, by Its nature, extends to others and includes them in Its heart.
The marvellous discovery of my own nature as Love cannot be made without the
extension of that Love to my brother. To bless myself and to bless the world
is a single event. It is when I bless the world that I learn to love myself;
and likewise, when I truly love myself, I become a blessing to the world
around me. I need my brothers, not to give me what I do not have, but to be
the recipients and sharers of What I am.

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