[acimlessons_list] LESSON 124 - MAY 4

[Sue Roth]

LESSON 124 - MAY 4

"Let me remember I am one with God."

PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS

Purpose: To practice and experience the idea that you are one with God, and
to thereby lay hold of your own peace and also free the world. Today is a
turning point in the Workbook, your first half hour practice time, and also
your first longer practice in which you are given no instructions and are
left to fly on your own-a preview of things to come. The practice is
deepening-getting longer as well as less structured.

Longer: One-whenever it seems best, for thirty minutes.

There are no specific words or guidelines for this meditation. You are
simply meant to devote the practice period to today's idea, to abiding in
oneness with God, to trying to experience that oneness, and to letting His
Voice direct your practicing. Jesus is clearly trusting that you have
learned enough from the lessons thus far to spend this quiet time
profitably, without getting hopelessly lost in mind wandering. You therefore
should draw upon all the training you have received up until now, and should
also be open to the Holy Spirit's promptings during this time.

Encouragement to practice: Paragraphs 9-11 are there to provide incentives
to really do the practice and to appreciate how important it is. They teach
us to see this half hour as a mirror, surrounded by a golden frame, set with
thirty diamonds, one for each minute. During this half hour we will look
into this mirror and see our face transfigured into holy the face of
Christ-our true Self, Who is at one with God. In this mirror, we will
recognize ourselves as Who we really are. 

Even if nothing of the kind seems to happen during this time, we can be
confident that sometime, "perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow" (10:1, 11:1, 3),
this experience will come to us as a result of this half hour.

Frequent reminders: Hourly.

Repeat, "Let me remember I am one with God, at one with all my brothers and
my Self, in everlasting holiness and peace." Doing so will add yet more
diamonds to the frame around the mirror in which you see your true Self. I
suggest either memorizing this sentence (which is composed of three lines of
iambic pentameter) or writing it down on a note card. I also recommend that,
while repeating it, you try to feel each kind of oneness individually-first
oneness with God, then oneness with your brothers, then oneness with your
true Self.

COMMENTARY

This lesson holds forth a very high view; it comes from an elevated state of
mind. Basically, in the first part of the lesson it seems to assume we are
enlightened already. And, of course, from the perspective of this state of
mind, we are. 

"Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all" (W-pI.188.1:4). If
it is not a change, then enlightenment must mean recognizing what is always
so. This lesson, then, is simply stating the truth about us, the truth that
we have been hiding from ourselves.

To pray, to give thanks for the truth as God sees it, the truth about us as
He sees us, can be a very profitable exercise. 

Try taking a paragraph of this lesson (or the whole lesson) and turning it
into thanksgiving, verbalizing your thanks as you read. For example, from
the second paragraph, I might say:

Thank You for the holiness of our minds! Thank You that everything I see
reflects the holiness of my mind, which is at one with You, and at one with
itself. Thank You for being my Companion as I walk this world; for the
privilege of leaving behind shining footprints that point the way to truth
for those who follow me.

This indeed is our calling; it is why we are here. Perhaps most of the time
we don't remember our Identity in God. All the more reason to set aside a
day given to remembering, for reminding ourselves. We could understand this
lesson as a portrait of an advanced teacher of God. Everywhere she walks,
light is left behind to illuminate the way for others. The teacher walks in
constant awareness of God's Presence. She feels God within. God's thoughts
fill her mind, and she perceives only the loving and the lovable. This
teacher of God heals people in the past, the present, and the future, at any
distance.

Slip into that mindset for a while today, my heart. Be the Christ; let all
the obstacles to it that your mind throws up be brushed aside. Practice
awareness of oneness with God.

In the latter part of the lesson it is clear that the author hasn't flipped
out and isn't living in a dream world. He knows very well that we might sit
for our half hour and get up thinking that nothing happened. He knows that,
for most of us, what he is talking about is so far from our conscious
awareness that we might devote thirty minutes to trying to recognize it and
not find a glimmer of it. He doesn't care. He doesn't care because, from
where he sits and how he sees, he knows with total certainty that what he is
saying about us is the truth. And he tells us not to let it bother us: 

You may not be ready to accept the gain today. Yet sometime, somewhere, it
will come to you, nor will you fail to recognize it when it dawns with
certainty upon your mind.	(9:2-3) 

Even though we experience nothing, he tells us that "no time was ever better
spent" (10:3).

The practice for today of a single half hour given to remembering oneness is
unusual in the Workbook. The routine goes back to two fifteen-minute
periods, or three ten-minute periods, in the coming days. But what is more
significant, actually, is the lack of "rules [and] special words to guide
your meditation" (8:4). He's leaving us on our own today. If we have been
doing the exercises all along, we should have a pretty good idea of some of
the "techniques" we might want to use, and we can use any of them, or
anything that comes to us. Actually he isn't leaving us "on our own"; he's
leaving us in the hands of "God's Voice," our inner Guide. Ask how to spend
this half hour of meditation, and listen to what comes to you. 

Abide with Him this half an hour. He will do the rest.	(8:6-7)

You can be sure someday, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will
understand and comprehend and see.	(11:3)