[acimlessons_list] Lesson 227--August 15

Allen Watson allen at circleofa.org
Sun Aug 14 05:55:05 EDT 2005 

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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.org/index.php>
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Lesson 227 * August 15

"This is my holy instant of release."

Practice instructions

See complete instructions in separate document. A short summary:

* Read the commentary paragraph slowly and personally.

* Pray the prayer, perhaps several times.

* Morning and evening: Repeat the idea and then spend time in Open
Mind Meditation.

* Hourly remembrance: Repeat the idea and then spend a quiet moment
in meditation.

* Frequent reminders: Repeat the idea often within each hour.

* Response to temptation: Repeat the idea whenever upset, to restore
peace.

* Read the "What Is" section slowly and thoughtfully once during the
day.

Practice suggestion: To expand on the prayer, you may want to use the
following visualization.

You see yourself walking through mist toward a giant pair of feet,
the feet of truth.

Visualize these feet however you like. Maybe they are made of stone.
Maybe they are luminous and semitransparent.

You are carrying a bundle in your hands which you are planning to lay
at these feet as an act of tribute to the truth.

It would be traditional to assume that this bundle is your sins, and
that you will be laying them before the truth in an act of giving
them up for the <sake> of truth.

Yet the bundle is not your sins; it is your <belief> in your
sinfulness, your belief that you are defined by your separate will
that does not will with God.

Visualize the bundle however you want, but let its appearance and
weight reflect the fact that this is your belief that you are sinful,
your belief that you possess a wayward, destructive will that has
corrupted your innocence.

You reach the feet of truth. See yourself kneel before the feet and
humbly lay before them this bundle. Let it be a genuine act of
tribute to the truth.

Laying this belief before the feet of truth is your act of giving it
up, in tribute to the truth and in acknowledgment of the falsity of
this belief.

As you look at the bundle there on the ground, it is shined away in
light, and is gone.

Your belief in your sinfulness has been removed forever from your
mind.

Feel yourself freed of the heavy burden of feeling like a selfish
sinner.

Feel the release as you are lifted into a holy instant.

Feel your right mind restored to you, as if, after a long bout of
insanity, you are finally sane again.

You look down at yourself and see that you are clad in robes of
holiness; your purity has remained untouched.

You arise, free now to come home, to walk through the door of your
Father's house.

Commentary

Today's lesson is another reminder that these practice times are
meant to be holy instants for us. Not every one will be a dramatic
experience of wordless bliss, of course. Remember that simply being
willing to turn your mind to God can be considered a holy instant,
whether or not you consciously experience anything special. The
seminal holy instant, from which the Course sprang, was simply a time
when Bill Thetford said, "There must be another way," and Helen
replied that she would help him find it. The mental shift into
alignment with God's purpose is what really counts. If we faithfully
practice, the direct experience of truth spoken of in the Workbook
will come, not by our efforts, but by God's grace, when we are ready
to receive it.

Consider the effect it has on our mind to focus on today's idea,
"This is my holy instant of release," and then to sit in quiet
stillness, open and receptive to whatever is given to us. We should
enter each such time expectantly, waiting to hear what God's Voice
will speak.

I am already free; now, today. My thought of separation had no effect
on my reality, so the imprisonment I have imagined never happened.
"Nothing that I thought apart from You exists" (1:3). How wonderful
to know that the thoughts I believed were apart from God don't exist!
How healing it is to give them up, lay them down at the feet of truth,
and to have them "removed forever from my mind" (1:5). This is the
healing process of the Course: to take each thought that seems to
express a will separate from God's, and bring it into this Presence
to be removed from my mind, with God's own assurance that it has
affected nothing. I am still His Son.

This is how my mind is restored to me. This is how my awareness of my
Identity is returned to my awareness.

WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

Part 7: W-pII.1.4:1-3

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing"
(4:1). If we can understand these first few sentences we will have a
clear grasp of what forgiveness really is. The words "on the other
hand" refer to the preceding two paragraphs which described an
unforgiving thought, especially in 3:1, "An unforgiving thought does
many things." Forgiveness, on the other hand, does nothing.
Unforgiveness is highly active, anxiously trying to make things fit
into its picture of reality; forgiveness does nothing. It does not
rush to interpret or to attempt to understand. It lets things be as
they are.

Notice once again the heavy emphasis on stillness and quiet. The
practice of the holy instant, as the practice of forgiveness, is
practice at being still, being quiet, doing nothing. Our usual state
of mind is the product of the ego's training--habitually active,
constantly working. We need <practice> at being still and doing
nothing. It takes a lot of practice to break the habit of frantic
activity and form a new habit of being still and quiet.

One trick of the ego I notice, frequently, is that it will try to
make me guilty about being still and quiet! When I try to take ten
minutes to sit in stillness, my ego floods my mind with thoughts of
what I ought to be doing instead.

The mental state in which forgiveness occurs is one in which we
simply allow all of reality to be as it is, without judging anything.
"It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances
it likes" (4:2). The appearance my ego usually likes is some form of
"I am right and they are wrong." Or "I am good and they are bad." Or
simply "I am better than he/she is." Even more simply, "I am not like
him/her." All of these thoughts share one theme: I am different from
others, and therefore separate from them. Any such thought is
twisting reality, because the reality is that we are the same, we are
equal, we are one. Forgiveness stills such thoughts and abandons all
efforts to mash reality into a "more desirable" shape.

"It merely looks, and waits, and judges not" (4:3). It does not deny
what it sees, but it puts no interpretation on it. It waits to be
told the meaning by the Holy Spirit. "My mate is having an affair."
Forgiveness looks, and waits, and judges not. "My child is sick."
Forgiveness looks, and waits, and judges not. "My boss just fired
me." Forgiveness looks, and waits, and judges not. We are so quick to
think we know what things mean! And we are wrong. We do not know. We
leap to an understanding based on separation, and such understandings
understand nothing.

The most salutary thing we can do when any such upsetting event
occurs in our lives is--nothing. Simply to let our minds become still
and quiet, and to open ourselves to the healing light of the Holy
Spirit. To seek a holy instant. Let this become the ingrained habit
of our lives, and we will see the world in an entirely different way,
and Love will flow through us to bring healing instead of hurt to
every situation.




    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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+ Commentary by Allen Watson
+ Practice Summary: Robert Perry
+ Available in book format from The Circle
+ of Atonement (Vol. 1 reprint due soon, write us for info)
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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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