April 29
"Truth
will correct all errors in my mind."
"To
give and to receive are one in truth."
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
The first idea speaks of the correction of all error. The two explanatory sentences that follow speak on a very high level, defining "error" as any thought that we can be hurt. What I am is spirit. Spirit is eternal and unchanging, created by God like Himself. By the Course's definition, what can be hurt or damaged is not real. That includes our bodies, our woundable psyches, everything we see in the physical universe; all of it has an end. "Nothing real can be threatened," says the Introduction to the Text. What I am learning is the invulnerability of my being, the eternal safety of my Self, at rest in the Mind of God.We are undergoing a very gradual and gentle weaning away from our identification with the ephemeral. What we are, in truth, does not die. We have dreamed a dream, and foolishly have come to believe the dream is us. We are not the dream; we are the dreamer. (The Text speaks at length of this in Chapter 27, Sections VII and VIII.) The Holy Spirit eases us through a transitional phase, changing our terrifying dream into a happy one, so that we will waken softly and joyfully, no longer gripped by terrors of the night.
How are we to shift our dream? It is too great a leap to go from a state where pain and hurt and death are bitter realities to us, into an awareness of our eternal nature. So the second idea for today speaks of the means by which we can begin, gently, to shift into the happy dream: forgiveness. We come to recognize our sinlessness, and thus our Self, by forgiving all things around us. We have to learn to accept the truth in ourselves, and we do so by learning to see past the error in others, until with a start of recognition, we realize that what is beneath the errors of others is Something we share with them. We find ourselves in our brothers and sisters, through forgiveness. What we have learned to give to others has, all the time, been given to ourselves. We awaken by awaking others. We teach peace to learn it. In kindness and mercy towards others, we ourselves fall into the kind and merciful heart of God.
Copyright © 1996, The Circle of Atonement, Sedona,
Arizona, USA.
All rights reserved.