[acimlessons_list] Lesson 39 - February 8

[Sue Roth]

Lesson 39 - February 8

"My holiness is my salvation"

Practice Summary

Purpose: to get you in touch with your holiness, which is your salvation
from the hell of guilt.

Longer: 4 times (more are encouraged), for 5 full minutes (longer is
encouraged)
* Repeat the idea.
* Close your eyes and slowly search your mind for unloving thoughts,
thoughts with any kind of negative feeling attached to them. This includes
specific situations, events or personalities associated with angry, worried,
or depressed thoughts. Make no exceptions and try to treat each one the same
 With each say, "My unloving thoughts about______are keeping me in hell. My
holiness is my salvation." Your unloving thoughts keep you in hell by
producing guilt. Your holiness saves you by showing you that your true
nature nature is untouched by sin and guilt, and it proves this blessing
everything it sees.
* Because sustained concentration is hard for you at this stage, you may
want to intersperse this practice with several periods of just repeating the
the idea slowly, or relaxing and not thinking of anything. You can also
introduce variety, which seems to mean varying the wording of the idea. Make
sure, however, that you retain its central meaning, that your holiness is
your salvation. 
* Conclude by repeating the idea and asking yourself: "If guilt is hell,
what is its opposite?" (For the answer, see 4:2).

Frequent reminders: at least 3 or 4 per hour 
 Ask yourself, "If guilt is hell, what is its opposite?" Or repeat the idea.
Preferably both.

Response to temptation: whenever you are tempted to give in to unloving
thoughts
 Apply the idea specifically: "My holiness is my salvation from this."


COMMENTARY

The opposite of hell is salvation; the opposite of guilt is holiness. If
guilt is hell, then holiness must be salvation. The question is: Do I
believe that guilt is hell? Or do I, perhaps, feel that guilt serves a
useful function in my life?

The Course teaches that guilt is at the root of all our problems, and yet at
the beginning we don't even suspect guilt as the cause. We lay the problems
at the feet of many different things, but rarely at the feet of guilt. "Of
one thing you were sure: Of all the many causes you perceived as bringing
pain and suffering to you, your guilt was not among them" (T-27.VII.7:4).
Guilt <is> hell. This is part of what the Course is trying to teach us--a
large part.

"As long as you believe that guilt is justified in any way, in anyone,
whatever he may do, you will not look within, where you would always find
Atonement. The end of guilt will never come as long as you believe there is
a reason for it. For you must learn that guilt is always totally insane, and
has no reason" (T-13.X.6:1-3).

"All salvation is excape from guilt" (T-14.III.13:4). "Guilt is interference
 not salvation, and serves no useful function at all" (T-14.III.1:4).
Perhaps we may object. Perhaps it seems that guilt is necessary to keep us
from wrong-doing; but that presumes something within us inherently evil and
perverse that will always do wrong unless it is kept caged, or punished when
it misbehaves. Guilt serves no useful function; guilt is hell. Guilt is what
we need to escape from. Guilt does not keep us from wrong-doing; it keeps us
locked into it. It is guilt that has driven us insane.

As this lesson says, if we wholly believed that guilt is hell, we would
immediately understand the entire Text and have no need of a Workbook. We
would have salvation, full and complete, for salvation <is> escape from
guilt. This is not a part of the Course's message; it is the whole of it.
This is why my holiness is my salvation; holiness is freedom from guilt.

Notice the emphasis in practice on "unloving thoughts." Unloving thoughts
are guilty thoughts; they both stem from guilt and produce more of it.
Holiness is lovingness. If my thoughts are unloving, I will be fearful and
guilty; my holiness is my salvation from guilt. As we realize that our
unloving thoughts are keeping us in hell, we will let them go.

Today's practice instructions are fiercely demanding: a minimum of four sessions of five full minutes each, with "longer and more frequent practice sessions...encouraged." Shorter applications "which should be made some three or four times an hour and more if possible." Plus response to temptations. Today's idea must be very important! It must be very hard for our minds to absorb, so that we need to frequently immerse our minds in this thought.