[acimlessons_list] LESSON 280 - October 7

[Susan Carrier]

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+ COMMENTARIES ON LESSONS FROM THE WORKBOOK OF A COURSE IN MIRACLES
+ by Allen Watson, with Practice Summaries by Robert Perry, 
+ of The Circle of Atonement
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LESSON 280 - October 7

"What limits can I lay upon God's Son?"

PRACTICE SUMMARY

(See also Part II Introduction)

COMMENTARY

The Course is calling on me to not deny to anyone--my brothers or
myself--the limitless freedom in which God created us. I find in myself what
seems like a natural tendancy to compare myself to others, and to find
myself, in some way, superior to them. I am more intelligent. My opinions
are more correct. Or my relationships are superior. Or I am more ethical,
more compassionate, more understanding, more honest with myself. I have
greater integrity. All of these are ways in which I have, at times, felt
superior to others. Others have other standards of comparison. But in
general, I think, we all have this tendency to feel somehow superior to most
of the rest of the human race.

This is what the Course calls specialness. It is a way of seeing others with
limits that, we believe, do not exist for ourselves. The Course's call to
see our brothers as equally free as ourselves contradicts this pattern of
thinking we have taught ourselves. The lesson says, "I can invent
imprisonment for him [he whom God created free], but only in illusions, not
in truth" (1:2). We are all equal Thoughts of God; none of us has left the
Father's mind; none of us is limited at all--except in illusions.

We are called--we students of ACIM--to "give honor" (2:1) to the Son of God
wherever we meet Him. We are called to recognize the Christ in every one who
is sent to meet us. Let me recognize today that the limits I see are my own
illusions; they are, in fact, my own belief in my own limits, dressed up,
disguised, perhaps, in another form, and projected onto my brother. I find
my own freedom by honoring it in others. Let me remind myself today, "This
is the holy Son of God, my brother, a part of my Self." Only in so doing
will I find my Self, and recognize the Christ as God created Him.

At one point the Course makes a very strong statement. It says that if I
really recognized who my brother or sister is, I could "scarce refrain from
kneeling at his feet" (W-pI.161.9:3). Yet, it goes on to say, I will take
his hand instead, because in the kind of sight that sees my brother or
sister in this way, I am equally glorious. We are the Christ. Who we are is
magnificent, so far beyond our normal conception of ourselves that on seeing
it our inclination would be to worship, except that in that same instant we
recognize that same magnificence in ourselves. May God grant us all such
vision!


What is the Christ? (Part 10)

W-pII.6.5:3

This sentence speaks of the vision of God's Son, the awareness of the
"glory" of what we truly are. In seeking and seeing Christ's face in one
another, we find that same glory in ourselves. In the recognition of our
true nature as God's creation, all need of "learning or perception or of
time" ceases. The removal of the veils of guilt, accomplished by
forgiveness, reveals the Christ to us, and there is no longer need of
anything "except the holy Self, the Christ Who God created as His Son."

We already are what we are looking for. Only our dreams of guilt have hidden
it from our sight. What is the Christ? You are. I am. Learning to undo the
blocks to this sight is our only purpose in time. When that has been
accomplished, there is nothing left to do except to be what we always have
been.
 
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+ Commentary by Allen Watson
+ Practice Summary: Robert Perry
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+ of Atonement (Vol. 1 reprint due by end of 2004, write us for info)
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