[acimlessons_list] Lesson 67 - March 8

[Sue Carrier Roth]

Lesson 67 - March 8

"Love created me like Itself."

PRACTICE SUMMARY

Purpose: To experience the blazing light of your changeless reality,
if only for a moment. To redefine God as Love and realize you are
included in His definition of Himself.

Longer: 1 time, for 10-15 minutes

*	Repeat the idea.

*	Then spend a few minutes adding related thoughts, along the
following lines: "Holiness created me holy.
Helpfulness created me helpful." Use only attributes that fit the
Course's teachings about God.

*	For a brief interval, try to let go of all thoughts.

*	The remainder is a meditation exercise, using the method you were
taught in the 40's:

1.	Reach past the thick cloud of all your self-images to the light of
your true Self. Sink past illusions about you and reach down to the
truth in you.

2.	When you get distracted, repeat the idea. If this is not enough,
add more related thoughts, as in the earlier phase.

3.	Hold in mind the confidence that the light of your true Self is
there and can be reached, and that even if you don't reach it now, you
will succeed in bringing that experience closer.

Frequent reminders: 4 or 5 per hour, maybe more

Repeat the idea. As you do, be aware that this is not your tiny voice
telling you this, but the Voice of truth telling you Who you really
are. I recommend repeating it once in this fashion now, so you can see
the effect it has.

Remarks: The comment in 5:2 is very important. The 60's and 70's
really focus on frequency, and this sentence explains why that is so
crucial. You need to frequently practice the truth because you so
frequently practice illusion. Specifically, "your mind is so
preoccupied with false self-images" (5:2). Contained in each normal
thought is a false self-image. That is why you need to inject as many
thoughts as you can that contain the truth about you.

COMMENTARY

The Course spends a disproportionate amount of space telling us what
we are, how we were created like God, Who created us, and how that
reality is "unchanged and unchageable" (2:1). Lesson 229 virtually
duplicates today's thought: "Love, Which created me, is what I am."
Review V has us repeat the thought, "God is but Love, and therefore so
am I," every day for ten days. And then there are all the lessons on
the theme, "I am as God created me;" three lessons with that direct
topic (the only lesson given more than once in the same words, in 94,
110, and 162), several others in which the idea is repeated (132, 139,
237, and 260), and twenty review lessons (201 to 220) in which we
repeat the words, "I am still as God created me," daily. Evidently the
Course thinks this idea is worth repeating!

In fact, today's lesson tells us exactly why this thought is so
important, and why repetition of it is so necessary:

"It will be particularly helpful today to practice the idea for the
day as often as you can. You need to hear the truth about yourself as
frequently as possible, because your mind is so preoccupied with false
self-images. Four or five times an hour, and perhaps even more, it
would be most beneficial to remind yourself that Love created you like
Itself. Hear the truth about yourself in this." (Paragraph 5)

We need to hear the truth about ourselves as often as we can because
we have taught ourselves a false self-image, and we have taught
ourselves very, very well. "Teach only love, for that is what you are"
(T-6.I.13:2) is one of the most famous sayings in the Course, and
emphasizes the same thing: What we are is Love, because Love created
us like Itself.

How many of us, if asked "What are you?" would find the word "love"
springing immediately to our minds? For most of us, to think of
ourselves as being love and only love is, to be kind, a stretch. We
may think we have <some> love in us, but to think that Love is what we
are? Not hardly. That's why we need to hear it as often as possible,
why we need to repeat the idea today four or five times an hour or
more (5:3) during the day. That's something like eighty times today,
if we are awake sixteen hours.

Love is what I am. That is why I am the light of the world. That is
why I am the world's savior, and why the Christ in everyone looks to
me for salvation--because what I am <is> the salvation of the world.
(1:2-5) How differently would I live today if I knew this about
myself?

Notice that the lesson does not expect us to "get" this idea all at
once. If we were expected to grasp it right away, we wouldn't have to
repeat it eighty times. All we are looking for is to "realize fully,
<if only for a moment,> that it is the truth" (1:6) Love is in us as
our true Self, and we and attempting to get in touch with the Love
within ourselves (3:2,3). We may not contact It directly today, but
even the effort is worth it, although we may not feel we have
succeeded: "Be confident that you will do much today to bring that
awareness nearer, whether you feel you have succeeded or not" (4:4).

Some day, though, some time, we will succeed; perhaps even today. It's
inevitable because we cannot hide forever from what we are, we cannot
escape from what is within us. At some point it will happen: "You will
succeed in going...through the interval of thoughtlessness to the
awareness of a blazing light in which you recognize yourself as Love
created you" (4:3).

"You were created by Love like Itself." (6:4)