[acimlessons_list] Lesson 228 - August 16

[Sue Roth]

Lesson 228 - August 16

"God has condemned me not. No more do I."

PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS

See complete Part II practice instructions. 
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 comments: While repeating today's idea, realize it is a subtle
reference to the story of the woman caught in adultery. As the crowd is
about to stone her for her sin, Jesus utters the famous line, "Let him who
is without sin cast the first stone." The crowd, of course, leaves one by
one, and then Jesus says (to paraphrase), "They have condemned you not. No
more do I." In other words, since literally no one condemns her, she is
truly forgiven. Now, in this lesson, <you> are the woman caught in adultery.
You unconsciously see yourself ringed about by God's vengeance, in the form
of all those hands poised to chuck rocks at you. You see the death penalty
staring at you--the payment for your sins. Yet that is all your own
projection. God has condemned you not. And now you, your fiercest critic,
decide to stop condemning yourself. No one condemns you, and so you are
truly free. While repeating the idea today, you might want to think of all
this, maybe even picturing yourself as the woman caught in adultery. Try to
feel the sense of unexpected liberation that she must have felt.

In the commentary paragraph, try to sincerely ask yourself the series of
questions that make up the bulk of that paragraph. Such questions can be
powerful tools of mind change.

With the prayer, notice how it builds to a statement of intention in the
last two sentences. There, you state your intention to let go of your
mistaken idea that you are sinful and then stand ready to receive from God
the awareness of Who you really are. Try to really mean these closing
sentences. And realize that "I stand ready" means "I wait in silent
expectancy." This prayer, then, is meant to introduce your period of Open
Mind Meditation.

COMMENTARY

It takes great courage to let go of our self-condemnation. We are so afraid
that if we stop condemning ourselves we will go berserk, the evil in us will
be unchecked and will break out in some terrible disaster. But what if there
is no evil in us? What if God is right? Is it so very likely that He is
wrong and we are right? What God knows, the lesson says, makes sin in us
impossible. "Shall I deny His knowledge?" (1:2).

The lesson is asking us, quite simply, to "take His Word for what I am"
(1:4). Who knows what something or someone is better than its Creator? And
what does God know about me? "My Father knows my holiness" (1:1). Every time
I read such statements I watch my mind struggle to oppose the idea, cringing
in a pseudo-humility that cries out, "Oh, no, I can't accept that about
myself." If I dare to ask myself, "Why not?" my mind immediately comes up
with a whole list of reasons: my flaws, my lack of total dedication to the
truth, my addiction to this or that pleasure of the world. Yet every one of
those things, brought into the light of the Holy Spirit, can be seen as
nothing more than a misdirected prayer, a cry for help, a veiled longing for
God and for Home.

"I was mistaken in myself" (2:1). That is all that has happened. I forgot my
Source, and what I must be, coming from that Source. My Source is God, and
not my dark illusions. My mistake about myself is not a sin to be judged but
a mistake to be corrected; it needs not <condemnation>, but the healing of
love. "My mistakes about myself are dreams" (2:4), that is all, and I can
let these dreams go. I am not the dream; I am the dreamer, still holy, still
a part of God.

Today, as I still my mind in God's Presence, I open myself to receive His
Word concerning what I am. I brush aside the dreams, I recognize them for
what they are, and let them go. I open my heart to Love.

WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?

PART 8: W-PII.1.4:4-5

In the last two sentences of this paragraph, notice that a contrast is made
between judging and welcoming the truth exactly as it is. The opposite of
judgment is the truth. Judgment, then, must always be a distortion of the
truth. This section has already pointed out that unforgiveness has
distortion as its purpose. If I do not want to forgive, I must distort the
truth; I must judge. Judgment here clearly carries the meaning of
condemnation, of seeing sin, of making something wrong. Forgiveness does not
do that; forgiveness makes right instead of wrong, because "right" is the
truth about all of us.

None of us is guilty. That is the truth. God does not condemn us. If I do
so, I am distorting the truth. Judgment is always a distortion of the truth
of our innocence before God. When I judge another, I do so because I am
trying to justify my unwillingness to forgive. I have gotten very good at
it. I always seem to find some reason that justifies my unforgiveness. But
what I do not realize is that every such judgment twists the truth, hides
it, obscures it. It "makes real" something that is not real.

Furthermore, in obscuring the truth about my brother or sister, I am hiding
the truth about myself. I am substantiating the basis of my own
self-condemnation. That is why the last sentence of the paragraph switches
from my unforgiveness of another to the forgiveness of myself: "He who would
forgive himself" (4:5). If I want to learn to forgive myself, I must abandon
my judging of others. If their sin is real, so is mine. Instead I must learn
to "welcome truth exactly as it is" (4:5). Only if I welcome the truth about
my brother or sister can I see it for myself. We stand or fall together. "In
him you will find yourself or lose yourself" (T-8.III.4:5).

To a mind habituated to seeing itself as a separate ego, abandoning all
judgment is frightening. It feels like the rug is being swept out from under
our feet; we don't know where to stand. How can we live in the world without
it? We literally do not know how. Judgment is how we have ordered our lives;
without it, we fear chaos. The Course assures us this will not happen:

You are afraid of this because you believe that without the ego, all would
be chaos. Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love.
(T-15.V.1:6-7)

When we let go of judgment, when we are willing to welcome the truth exactly
as it is, love rushes in to fill the vacuum left by the absence of judgment.
It has been there all along, but we have blocked it. We don't know how this
happens, but it happens because love is the reality, love is the truth we
are welcoming. Love will show us exactly what to do when our judgment is
gone.