[acimlessons_list] LESSON 306 - NOVEMBER 2

[Sue Roth]

LESSON 306 - NOVEMBER 2

"The gift of Christ is all I seek today."

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: Try to read the first paragraph of this lesson as if it
were a diary entry of your own, as if it were a series of your own
spontaneous thoughts. See if that doesn't change your experience of this
paragraph.
For an additional exercise, think of a series of situations in your life
right now. With each one, note the main thing(s) you are currently seeking
in that situation. Then say to yourself:

      The gift of Christ is all I seek in this situation.
      The goal of [specify the goal you are currently seeking] 
	is either secondary or irrelevant.

Commentary

Often these closing lessons of the Workbook tell me that I can enter the
real world today. 
      Today I can forget the world I made. Today I can go past all fear, and
be 
      restored to love and holiness and peace.	(1:2-3) 

And it is true. If the "world so like to Heaven" (1:1) is truly real, then
it exists now, and can be entered at any instant I am willing to do so.

Yet these lessons, to me and to many others, seem to be speaking from a
vantage point that is beyond our current reach. Most of the time, I don't
feel that I am on the verge of reaching the end of the journey; do you? I
may think that I would like to go past all fear, but that hasn't been my
general experience to date. Only, perhaps, in a few holy instants. So the
lessons, perhaps, seem a little above my head. But really, they aren't.

The lesson for today itself implies a less than exalted state; it says that
the gift of Christ is all I "seek" today. If I am seeking it, I don't
possess it yet in full awareness. Strongly, then, the lesson reminds me that
today I can forget the world; today I can go past all fear and be restored
to love. It reminds me that, in the core of my being, this is what I want.
Aware I am not there, I need to be reminded that the goal I seek is truly
possible and not simply an idle dream.

More than that, though. One of the means for our salvation the Course
propounds is the holy instant. The holy instant is, in simple terms, a brief
interval in which I allow my mind to enter the real world, to reach to
another state of mind (see T-27.IV.2:1-4) which is, in fact, my natural
condition as God created me. I may still have too much fear to let go
entirely, but I can come for a few minutes at least and, just for now,
forget the world and go past my fear to experience a taste of Heaven's
peace, a glimpse of Heaven's light. I can do this repeatedly during the day.
Today, then, I really can forget the world and go past fear, even if just
for a second or two.

I may not be able to sustain that state of mind. Yet I can taste it. I can
bring back the vision of what I see there. The Course says that only in rare
cases can this state be maintained; even Jesus, early in the Course, says
that listening only to the Voice for God was the last lesson he learned, and
that only with "effort and great willingness" (T-5.II.3:9-11). We need not
despair at this, and should not. The brief instants are all we need to
guarantee that eventually, when we are fully prepared, we will make that
final decision and choose at last not to draw back from Love. That end is
sure. For now we can be content with the fact that we are healing, we are
learning, we are nurturing our attraction to God, and that eventually it
will carry us all the way home.

WHAT IS THE SECOND COMING?

Part 6: W-pII.9.3:2

The Second Coming is the time in which all minds are given to the hands of
Christ, to be returned to spirit in the name of true creation and the Will
of God.

<We are continuing from Part 4 the list of descriptions of the Second
Coming:>

6. The Second Coming is the giving of all minds to Christ (3:2)

The Second Coming is a corporate event, in which every mind participates.
One by one, in an accelerating profusion, minds enter the realm of true
perception and perceive the real world, shown by forgiveness. Each newly
restored mind draws all those around it to join in the circle of Atonement
until every last fragment of mind has been rejoined to the whole (or more
correctly, each fragment recognizes its place as part of the whole). 

"Salvation.restores to your awareness the wholeness of the fragments you
perceive as broken off and separate" (M-19.4:1-2). The Second Coming is the
culmination of this process.