[acimlessons_list] Lesson 299 - October 26

[Sue Roth]

LESSON 299 - OCTOBER 26

"Eternal holiness abides in me."

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: This is another favorite prayer of mine. I recommend
praying it very slowly and intentionally, making it a genuine communication
from you to God. Expect Him to hear you. Let the prayer draw you into a
state of rest and quiet, in which you relax in the happy awareness that
nothing you can do can change your original holiness. Let it draw you into a
deep meditation, which will be far richer for having been introduced by this
lovely prayer.

COMMENTARY

This is the sort of lesson that always brings awareness of my split mind to
me. One part is sighing, blissfully, "Ah! How wonderful to know that God's
creation rests intact in me." The other part is looking around and over my
shoulder while saying, "You talkin' to me?"

Sometimes, Father, I can accept the idea that there is holiness in me. I
want to accept it more often, and more deeply. I want to know that holiness
is all that I am. I can relate to the first line, that "my holiness is far
beyond my own ability to understand or know" (1:1). At least the "beyond my
ability" part. Yet there is some part of me that knows the holiness is
there; perhaps unknown, perhaps not yet understood, but still...there.

When I am aware of my union with God; when I allow that realization to leak
through into my consciousness; then, together with Him, I know that it is
so, that holiness abides in me.

The Course belabors this point, repeating it so frequently that I have to
realize that there is enormous resistance in me to getting it: 

      My holiness...is not mine to be destroyed by sin. It is not mine to
suffer from attack. 
      Illusions can obscure it, but can not put out its radiance, nor dim
its light.	(2:1-4)

I can alter my behavior, I can hallucinate and believe I have changed my
essential nature, but I cannot in reality change what I am, I cannot change
what God created as me. My attack on myself didn't work, and never will. I
remain as God created me: the holy Son of God Himself. Anything which seems
to say otherwise is an illusion, a fabrication of my mind, desperately
striving to hold on to its ego identification. Guilt is such a fabrication.
No one who is holy could be guilty; therefore, if I am guilty I must not be
holy. This is how the ego mind tries to prove its reality to me.

This day, I affirm that my holiness is not of me (2:1). I'm not responsible
for creating it, nor can anything I do, think, or say affect it. God wills
that I know it and so it will be known. I lay my cynicism aside. I allow the
thought to lodge in my mind: 

       Eternal holiness abides in me.

WHAT IS THE REAL WORLD?

Part 9: W-pII.8.5:1-2

Once time has served the purpose of the Holy Spirit, He has no more need for
it. But it is up to us whose purpose time serves. Two sections in the Text
discuss the two uses of time: Chapter 13, section IV, "The Function of
Time," and Chapter 15, section I, "The Two Uses of Time." These sections
tell us, in sum, that we can use time for the ego or for the Holy Spirit.
The ego uses time to perpetuate itself through seeking our death. It sees
the purpose of time as destruction. The Holy Spirit sees time's purpose as
healing.

      The ego, like the Holy Spirit, uses time to convince you of the
inevitability of 
      the goal and end of teaching. To the ego the end is death, which is
its end. 
      But to the Holy Spirit the goal is life, which <has> no end.
(T-15.I.2:7-9)

We are asked to "begin to practice the Holy Spirit's use of time as a
teaching aid to happiness and peace" (T-15.I.9:4), and we do this by
practicing the holy instant. "Time is your friend, if you leave it to the
Holy Spirit to use" (T-15.I.15:1). There is a need for time while we are
still learning to use it only for His purposes, to take the present moment,
letting past and future go, and seek peace within the holy instant.

Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of time is to enable you
to learn how to use time constructively. It is thus a teaching device and a
means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating
learning.	(T-1.I.15:1-4)

Sentence 2 starts with the word "now." That "now" refers to the point at
which time has served its purpose. There is nothing more to be done, nothing
for Him to teach us, nothing for us to learn or to do, except to wait "for
God to take His final step." Time continues briefly, allowing us a short
while to appreciate the real world, and then time and perception disappear.
This "last step" is something referred to quite often in the Course; the
phrase "last step" or "final step" occurs twenty-nine times (see, for
instance, T-6.V(C).5 and T-7.I). It represents the transition out of
perception (duality) and into knowledge (unity), out of the world and into
Heaven, out of the body and into spirit. Every time it is very clear that
this is something accomplished by God alone; we have nothing to do with it.
Our only part is preparing ourselves for it, cleaning up our perception
until all of it is "true perception," free from fear. Or as it was put in
the longer quotation above, "Each day should be devoted to miracles." That
is all that time is for.