[acimlessons_list] Lesson 225 - August 13

[Sue Roth]

Lesson 225 - August 13

"GOD IS MY FATHER, AND HIS SON LOVES HIM."

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 suggestions: Here are some suggestions for praying this lesson's
lovely prayer:

*< blazing in my mind:> Just imagine God's Love for you blazing in your
mind.

*< and keeping it [my mind] within its [God's Love's] kindly light:> Imagine
your mind kept, held, embraced within the kindly light of God's Love.

*< inviolate:> Held in this kindly light, your mind would be totally
<inviolate>--free from violation, injury, and desecration, its sanctity
untouched.

*< beloved:> Is there a better feeling in the world than to feel truly,
totally beloved?

*< with fear behind:> Imagine feeling so loved that you felt like literally
all fear was behind you.

*< and only peace ahead:> Imagine feeling so loved that all you could see
ahead of you was <peace>.

* <How still the way Your loving Son is led along to You!> This final
sentence speaks of how we will journey home when we love God (when we are
His "loving Son") and so receive His Love for us. We will be led home in
stillness, with all fear behind us and only peace ahead. Try to imagine
this--journeying through life with your heart full of love for God and your
mind shining with His Love for you, walking toward Him in pure stillness and
peace. This is the end result of loving God--a life at peace because it is
infused with the "full awareness" of His Love for you.

COMMENTARY

Love is reciprocal. We receive God's Love for us by returning it to Him;
there is no other way to receive it, for "giving and receiving are the same"
(1:1). This <exact> phrase occurs six times in the Course, and there are
many others very much like it. We may think we understand what it means, but
the Course assures us that no concept it teaches is more difficult for us to
truly learn.

The way to know God's Love blazing in our minds is to return It to Him. If
in our times of quiet yesterday we focused on feeling His Love of us, let us
today focus on our awareness of our love for Him. Donna Cary has a beautiful
song I was listening to on tape just a day or two ago, which says, "I'll be
forever in love with You." I wish I could send you all this song; it
expresses so beautifully what I feel this lesson is saying. "I'll dance in
the light of Your Love, forever in love with You."

What would it be like to have the Love of God "mine in full awareness,
blazing in my mind and keeping it within its kindly light" (1:2)? Is this
not what, in our heart of hearts, we all want? Let us cultivate this sense
of love in our hearts today. Let simply this be our focus. Nothing complex,
nothing even conceptual, just letting our hearts sing with love for God,
basking in His Love for us. As the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament put
it, "I am my Beloved's, and He is mine" (Song 6:3). To know God as the
Beloved is one of the highest of spiritual expressions.

Have you ever sat in stillness with one you deeply love, simply gazing into
his or her eyes, without words? That stillness of love is what this lesson
is leading us to, a silent communion of love given and received,
acknowledged and returned, flowing in an endless current that energizes and
transforms our minds and hearts.

WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

PART 5: W-PII.1.3:1-2

In contrast to the stillness today's lesson speaks of, an unforgiving
thought is frantically active. It has to be. It must be frantic because it
flies in the face of truth, and attempts to make real an illusion. Frenetic
activity is often the sign of unrecognized unforgiveness. Things that seem
to oppose what we want to be the truth keep popping up, like gophers in the
silly kids' game of "bang the gopher," and we have to keep bashing them down
to maintain our version of reality.

Stilling our mind and becoming quiet, in and of itself, is often enough to
begin dissolving our unforgiveness. Unforgiveness cannot exist in quiet. You
cannot be peaceful and unforgiving at the same time. "Peace to my mind. Let
all my thoughts be still" (W-pII.221.Heading). One thing that can foster
this peace and stillness is focusing on the very exchange of love that is
the center of today's lesson. The power of our affection for God, and His
for us, can quell the stormy thoughts and bring, even if only briefly, a
moment of quiet peace, in which unforgiveness simply dissipates.