[acimlessons_list] Lesson 328 - November 24

[Sue Roth]

LESSON 328 - NOVEMBER 24

"I choose the second place to gain the first."

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: Ask for guidance about some situation facing you today.
Listen with a quiet, receptive, open mind. You may find that what you hear
feels different from your will, from what you want in this situation. If so,
try to consider that perhaps what you heard is your will. Consider that this
is your true will, which you have lost touch with, coming to you in a
particular form.

COMMENTARY

The lesson is saying that when we consider choosing to join our will to
God's Will (1:5), it seems like some kind of loss, a submission to something
outside of ourselves. It seems like taking "second place." It seems
subservient, or submissive. And in our mistaken identity as egos, we feel
that the only way to have autonomy is to make ourselves independent from God
and from the rest of His creation.

We are seeing things upside down (1:1). All that we find by asserting our
independence is "sickness, suffering and loss and death" (1:3). We are like
a branch trying to become independent of the vine. If we are cut off from
the vine, we die. Our identity is not lost by joining with the vine; it is
found, because we are not something separate. We are part of God and part of
His creation, and only in joining with that willingly can we discover our
true Identity. "Our will is His" (1:6).

We choose to "submit" to God's Will (which seems like taking second place)
because, in joining with Him, we arrive in first place: one with the Will of
the Creator of all things.

WHAT IS CREATION?

Part 8: W-pII.4:4-6

Love created us like Itself. As parts, each of which contains the Whole, we
are Thoughts of Love. And "Love remains with all Its Thoughts, Its sureness
being theirs" (4:4). The certainty of God is our certainty. It was given us
in creation and is still there within us; it has never left us, although we
have obscured it. God's memory is in our minds (4:5). Although we seem to be
separate parts we are not; we are parts, but not separate, like droplets of
water in the ocean. So we still contain all that was in the original
creation. What belongs to the ocean belongs to each drop. Each of us still
retains our oneness and our unity with our Creator (4:5).

	Let our function be only to let this memory return,
	only to let God's Will be done on earth, only to be
	restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us.	(4:6)

Our whole purpose in life is to be nothing but this, nothing but the
restoration to our awareness of our Wholeness, and our
partness-in-Wholeness. This is why we are here. This is the purpose behind
every direction taken by the Holy Spirit's guidance in our lives. We are not
here to bolster our partness, to meet goals belonging only to the part. We
are here to let the memory of God return to our conscious minds, and to
fulfill our purpose as the extensions of the Will of Love.