[acimlessons_list] LESSON 290 - OCTOBER 17

[Sue Roth]

LESSON 290 - OCTOBER 17

"My present happiness is all I see."

PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS 

See complete Part II practice 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.

COMMENTARY

"Unless I look upon what is not there, my present happiness is all I see"
(1:1). That is the real key: not looking at what isn't here. So often we are
looking at the past, or as I was doing as I lay in bed this morning, the
future. Neither past nor future is here. By definition they are "not now."
What Jesus is saying here is that if we can stop for a moment looking at
past or future, what we will see is present happiness. As one guru says,
"You are always already happy."

What does this have to do with the leading lesson on the Holy Spirit? "What
I perceive without God's Own Correction [the Holy Spirit] for the sight I
made is frightening and painful to behold" (1:4). The future is frightening;
the past is painful. I need the corrective spectacles of the Holy Spirit to
see the truth.

The world I see is painful because the ego made it to support itself. If I
just go on looking at it through the eyes the ego made, I am going to see
witnesses to evil, sin, danger, and guilt. I need to see it a different way.

I'm not being asked to blind myself, to bury my head in the sand and pretend
the world is not there. I'm being asked to willingly put on corrective
lenses and see the world differently, as a witness to love, joy, and peace.
First of all, in this lesson, I am being asked to look within and notice
that without reference to the past or the future, I am naturally happy. I am
being asked to stop looking at what isn't there. Seeing what <is> there in a
different way is the next stage, and there will be little effort to it
because I will start from a place of happiness.

If I am already happy, nothing in the present can change that because I
don't approach it from a sense of lack. I don't approach it at all, I am
already in it.

This is a great technique for meditation: as thoughts arise, if they concern
the past in any way, just let them float by. If they concern the future in
any way, just let them float by. If you can do that, what you will discover,
always, is your present happiness. You don't have to manufacture it because
it always exists.

WHAT IS THE HOLY SPIRIT?

Part 10: W-pII.7.5:3-4

          The Holy Spirit is His gift, by which the quietness of 
          Heaven is restored to God's beloved Son.	(5:3) 

I am so grateful today for this gift, without which the quietness of Heaven
would be forever beyond my reach. If I were to try to summarize this page's
answer to the question it poses, "What is the Holy Spirit?" I would put it
something like this:

The Holy Spirit is God's gift to us to restore our minds, caught in
illusion, back to peace and sanity. He is a changeless link between our
minds and God's. Through His awareness of both the eternal truth of God and
our insanity, He is able to utilize the very illusions we have made to lead
us back to reality. We bring our illusions to Him. He translates our
illusions from witnesses to fear into witnesses to love, giving us a
completely new perception of everything we see. This new perception is so
aligned with truth that it enables the end of perception, and the final
transfer of our minds to their original state of knowledge.

          Would you refuse to take the function of completing God, 
          when all He wills is that you be complete?	(5:4)

Once again the Course appeals to us to actively take our part in this
process, and to accept our function as given by God: to complete Him. That
is a startling phrase, isn't it? Elsewhere the Course tells us that whenever
we question our own value, we should say, "God Himself is incomplete without
me" (T-9.VII.8:2). A little later it explains, "God is incomplete without
you because His grandeur is total, and you cannot be missing from it"
(T-9.VIII.9:8). It tells us, "Without you there would be a lack in God, a
Heaven incomplete, a son without a Father" (T-24.VI.2:1).

Of course it is impossible that God should be incomplete: "God is not
incomplete, and He is not childless" (T-11.I.5:6). The point is that if we
are part of God, then God would be incomplete if we were not forever united
with Him. We cannot be missing from God; therefore, let us take the part in
Him given to us, and end our <refusal> to do so. Our part in completing God
is to be complete: "All that He wills is that you be complete" (5:4). We
<are> being asked only to bring our illusions of incompletion to the Holy
Spirit, that He can dispel them and restore to us the awareness of our
eternal completion.

The process of bringing our illusions to the Holy Spirit often seems fearful
because, from our perspective, it seems to entail loss. We are being asked
to give up something. But the something we are asked to give up is only our
illusion of separation, our illusion of incompletion. We give up our lack,
and remember our wholeness. This is, as Lesson 98 puts it, a bargain in
which we cannot lose:
You are being asked for nothing in return for everything. Here is a bargain
that you cannot lose. And what you gain is limitless indeed! (W-pI.98.6:3-5)