[acimlessons_list] Lesson 246 - September 3

[Sue Roth]

Lesson 246 - September 3

"To love my Father is to love His Son."

PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS

See complete Part II practice instructions. 
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: I suggest applying this idea specifically to people in
your life throughout the day. Say, <"To love my Father is to love His Son,
[name]."> You might want to add, <"Let me not think that I can attack the
Son and still know the Father.">

COMMENTARY

We can't love God without loving what He created. The Apostle John, in his
epistles, said very much the same thing as today's lesson:

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that
loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath
not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love
his brother also. (1 John 4:20-21)

The "Son of God" in the Course refers not simply to Jesus, nor just to all
our brothers and sisters; it also includes ourselves. The measure of the
quality of relationship we have with God is the relationships we have with
those around us, and with ourselves. Our love for our brothers and sisters
reflects the love we have for God. "Let me not think that I can find the way
to God, if I have hatred in my heart" (1:1). If in some way I am wishing
harm to my brother, I cannot know God, nor can I even know my Self (1:2).
And if I am, in my mind, diminishing <myself>, I who am God's own Son, I
will be unable to truly know God's Love for me, or mine for Him (1:3).

The ego is a thought of attack; it believes it has attacked God and
succeeded. And yet it sees that battle reflected in everyone around us, and
projects its fear and its attack onto everything, often in subtle disguises,
some even bearing the name of "love."

Let me be open to discovering the "little" bits of hatred that still lie in
my heart--especially those directed at myself. There are far more than I
would like to believe. The Text teaches me that uncovering the hatred within
myself is "crucial" (T-13.III.1:1). It tells me, "You must realize that your
hatred is in your mind and not outside it before you can get rid of it"
(T-12.III.7:10). The scraps of hatred I clutch to me must be seen for what
they are, and chosen against. With a deliberate act of will I need to say,
"I choose to love Your Son" (2:4). The choice for love is the choice for God
and the choice for my Self.

What Is the World?

PART 6: W-PII.3.3:3-5

The "mechanisms of illusion" are what make this world seem so real. They
include even our eyes and ears, and all our physical senses:

The body's eyes see only form. They cannot see beyond what they were made to
see. And they were made to look on error and not see past it.
(T-22.III.5:3-5)

When we view things with the ego's perception, illusions seem solid; the
separation of the ego seems to be nothing but the truth (3:4). To see with
the vision of Christ, to see the oneness instead of the separation, we need
to be willing to discount what our eyes are showing us, because "they were
made to look on error." "Everything that they report is but illusion which
is kept apart from truth" (3:5). The miracle enables us to see what eyes see
not; it lifts our perception into the realm of the spiritual, away from the
physical (see T-1.I.22 and T-1.I.32).

We need to be willing to question what our senses seem to make real, and to
be willing to perceive, with a different kind of vision, something else
entirely. We have been victims of a very clever and very successful
propaganda campaign, conducted by the master of disinformation--the ego. We
need to realize that nothing we have believed to be true and counted upon as
solid reality can be trusted; everything must be called to question. We have
been surrounded by a conspiracy of lies, emanating from within our own mind.
We have misdirected our senses until we became unconscious of what we were
doing, but we can, today, redirect them. We can choose to look for evidence
of love, instead of hate; for peace instead of attack. We can say:

Above all else I want to see things differently. (W-pI.28.Heading)