[acimlessons_list] Lesson 67 - March 8

[Sue 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)