April 24
"I
am spirit."
"I
will accept my part in God's plan for salvation."
PRACTICE
SUMMARY
REVIEW IIIPurpose: A second chance at the last 20 lessons, a chance to face how little you have learned and learn greatly by applying idea to everything in your life. You will gain such large advances that you will continue more firmly and solidly.
Overall Remarks: Please follow this format as closely as you can. If you miss a practice period because it was impossible to do at the appointed time, learning is not hindered. You need not make these practice periods up. If instead you missed because of unwillingness to give the time, learning will be hindered, and those practice periods should be made up. Be very honest with yourself. Do not camouflage your unwillingness with situations seemingly beyond your control. Learn to discern between this kind of situation and situations that are truly unsuited to practicing. Your unwillingness comes from choosing other goals over salvation. As soon as you choose salvation again, do your make-up practice periods as a replacement for your devotion to other goals.
Longer: 2--in morning and in last hour before sleep (ideally first and last 5 minutes of your waking day) 5 minutes (longer if you prefer)
* Read over the day's ideas and comments.
* Then lean back in faith and let your mind use them as it chooses. Let it think about them and relate them to your needs, problems and concerns. Trust your mind to do this wisely and to be guided by the Holy Spirit, for He has chosen your mind as His means for saving you. He has given these ideas to you in perfect faith you will use them well. Give them to your mind in the same perfect faith.
Shorter: at the beginning of every half hour for a moment
* Repeat applicable idea (on the hour, the first idea; on the half hour, the second idea).
* Allow your mind to rest in silence and peace for a moment.
Remarks: These shorter practice periods are at least as important as the longer. Do not forget them. You have tended to skip these and not apply the idea to all that you encounter. Your learning has thus been limited and its gifts weak.
Shorter/Response To Temptation: in between the half hour marks
Do not lay the idea down after the half hour reviews. Take it with you into your affairs and apply it to them, making them holy. If you forget or your peace is shaken, think of it again.
Remarks: The practice periods are meant to teach you the habit of applying idea to everything you do. The idea is meant to serve you with unlimited usefulness at all times and places and whenever you need any kind of help.
COMMENTARY
"No body can contain my spirit" (1:3) or limit it. So often, even when we connect with spiritual reality in some way, we think of ourselves (as someone has said) as human beings having a spiritual experience; it would be more accurate to conceive our ourselves as spiritual beings having a human experience. The first way of looking at it makes our humanness the basic reality, with the spiritual something that comes and goes within that reality. The second way of looking at it realizes that the spiritual is our basic reality, and the "human" experience is something that comes and goes within that reality. "I am spirit." That is what I am. The experience of being a human being in a body is a temporary, passing thing. It does not alter what I am, and it cannot limit what I truly am, although it seems to do so because I believe in limitation.The value of such things as psychic or paranormal experiences lies in the degree to which they help us realize that the limits under which we habitually operate are not firm and fixed. Minds really are joined; space and time are not absolute limits; and so on. We all have many abilities of which we are not aware (M-25.1:3), because we are not bodies but spirit. The transcendence of these limits, while appearing "supernatural" from the bodily perspective, is really completely natural; it is the limits that are unnatural (M-25.2:7,8). Anything that breaks our illusion of being limited to the body and makes that illusion less solid in our perception is useful, to the degree that we use these experiences or powers under the direction of the Holy Spirit. The experiences and powers are not ends in themselves.
Our primary purpose is not to develop paranormal abilities, but to fulfill our part in God's plan for salvation, which is simply to accept His Word about "what I am and will forever be" (2:2).In other words, spirit, complete and holy and everlasting. Notice that; my function, my part in the plan, is to accept the truth about what I am. It may seem as though that has nothing to do with anyone else, but it has everything to do with everyone else, because what I am is a part of everyone and everyone is a part of me. My illusion is that I am separate; the truth is that we all are one. To accept the truth about myself is to accept you as part of me, and us together as part of God. That involves forgiving you, forgiving the world, and forgiving God. To accept the Atonement for myself means to extend the Atonement to everyone around me; I cannot find my Self if I exclude you. To accept the fullness of my Self and my own creative power, I must cease to see myself as the victim of anyone or anything--because that is not the truth about what I am. To accept my unsullied integrity of being, I must cease to blame you for anything and realize that I am affected only by my own thoughts.
Today, I will relax and let go of bodily limits. I will look at the limits I believe in and remind myself they are unreal. I will cease to "value what is valueless" and let go of my investment in my body. I will care for it as I would any useful possession, but I will try to undo, at least a little, my attachment to it and my feeling of identity with it. It will die. It will cease to be, but I will not, for I am spirit. I will accept this reality about myself because this is my part in God's plan for salvation.
Copyright © 1996, The Circle of Atonement, Sedona,
Arizona, USA.
All rights reserved.