[acimlessons_list] Lesson 299 - October 26

Mon Oct 25 07:33:44 EDT 2004

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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
+ Visit our website at <http://www.circleofa.com <http://www.circleofa.com/>
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LESSON 299 - October 26

"Eternal holiness abides in me."

PRACTICE SUMMARY

(See also Part II Introduction)

COMMENTARY

This is the sort of lesson that always brings awareness of my split mind to
me. One part is sighing, blissfully, "Ah! How wonderful to know that God's
creation rests intact in me." The other part is looking around and over my
shoulder while saying, "You talkin' to me?"

Sometimes, Father, I can accept the idea that there is holiness in me. I
want to accept it more often, and more deeply. I want to know that holiness
is all that I am. I can relate to the first line, that "My holiness is far
beyond my own ability to understand or know" (1:1). At least the "beyond my
ability" part. Yet there is some part of me that knows the holiness is
there; perhaps unknown, perhaps not yet understood, but still...there.

When I am aware of my union with God; when I allow that realization to leak
through into my consicousness; then, together with Him, I know that it is
so, that holiness abides in me.

The Course belabors this point, repeating it so frequently that I have to
realize that there is enormous resistance in me to getting it: "My
holiness...is not mine to be destroyed by sin. It is not mine to suffer from
attack. Illusions can obscure it, but can not put out its radiance, nor dim
its light" (2:1-4). I can alter my behavior, I can hallucinate and believe I
have changed my essential nature, but I cannot in reality change what I am,
I cannot change what God created as me. My attack on myself didn't work, and
never will. I remain as God created me: the holy Son of God Himself.
Anything which seems to say otherwise is an illusion, a fabrication of my
mind, desperately striving to hold on to its ego identification. Guilt is
such a fabrication. No one who is holy could be guilty; therefore, if I am
guilty I must not be holy. This is how the ego mind tries to prove its
reality to me.

This day, I affirm that my holiness is not of me (2:1). I'm not responsible
for creating it, nor can anything I do, think or say affect it. God wills
that I know it and so it will be known. I lay my cynicism aside. I allow the
thought to lodge in my mind: "Eternal holiness abides in me."

What is the Real World? (Part 9)

W-pII.8.5:1-2

Once time has served the purpose of the Holy Spirit, He has no more need for
it. But it is up to us whose purpose time serves. Two sections in the Text
discuss the two uses of time: Chapter 13, Section IV, "The Function of
Time," and Chapter 15, Section I, "The Two Uses of Time." These sections
tell us, in sum, that we can use time for the ego or for the Holy Spirit.
The ego uses time to perpetuate itself through seeking our death. It sees
the purpose of time as destruction. The Holy Spirit sees time's purpose as
healing.

"The ego, like the Holy Spirit, uses time to convince you of the
inevitability of the goal and end of teaching. To the ego the end is death,
which is its end. But to the Holy Spirit the goal is life, which has no end"
(T-15.I.3:7-9).

We are asked to, "Begin to practice the Holy Spirit's use of time as a
teaching aid to happiness and peace" (T-15.I.9:4), and we do this by
practicing the holy instant. "Time is your friend, if you leave it to the
Holy Spirit to use" (T-15.I.15:1). There is a need for time while we are
still learning to use it only for His purposes, to take the present moment,
letting past and future go, and seek peace within the holy instant.

"Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of time is to enable
you to learn how to use time constructively. It is thus a teaching device
and a means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in
facilitating learning" (T-1.I.15).

Sentence 2 starts with the word "Now." That "now" refers to the point at
which time has served its purpose. There is nothing more to be done, nothing
for Him to teach us, nothing for us to learn or to do, except to wait "for
God to take His final step." Time continues briefly, allowing us a short
while to appreciate the real world, and then time and perception disappear.
This "last step" is something referred to quite often in the Course; the
phrase "last step" or "final step" occurs 29 times. (See, for instance, Text
Chapter 6.V.C.5, and Chapter 7, the first section.) It represents the
transition out of perception (duality) and into knowledge (unity), out of
the world and into Heaven, out of body and into spirit. Every time it is
very clear that this is something accomplished by God alone; we have nothing
to do with it. Our only part is preparing ourselves for it, cleaning up our
perception until all of it is "true perception," free from fear. Or as it
was put in the longer quotation above, "Each day should be devoted to
miracles." That is all that time is for. 

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+ Commentary by Allen Watson
+ Practice Summary: Robert Perry
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