May 4
"Let
me remember I am one with God."
PRACTICE
SUMMARY
Purpose: To secure your peace by practicing your oneness with God. The
first attempt at an extended practice period with no special rules or
guidelines.Longer: 1--whenever it seems best, for 30 minutes.
Devote the exercise to the thought that you are one with God. There is no other guideline. Abide with God, trust His Voice to speak, be certain He will do the rest.
Remarks: This holy half hour is a mirror framed in gold. Each minute is a diamond set around the mirror. You will look in the mirror and see in it your transfiguration, your perfect sinlessness. Even if you think nothing happens, the benefit will be the same. And sometime, somewhere, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, when you are ready, you will accept this benefit. You will recognize it when it comes and realize that no time was ever better spent. This half hour is your gift to God. His return will be a sense of love and joy too deep to comprehend. And yet sometime soon you will comprehend it.
Shorter: hourly
Repeat: "Let me remember I am one with God, at one with all my brothers and my Self, in everlasting holiness and peace."
COMMENTARY
This lesson holds forth a very high view; it comes from an elevated state of mind. Basically, in the first part of the lesson it seems to assume we are enlightened already. And, of course, from the perspective of this state of mind, we are. "Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all" (W-pI.188.1:4). If it is not a change, then enlightenment must mean recognizing what is always so. This lesson, then, is simply stating the truth about us, the truth that we have been hiding from ourselves.To pray, to give thanks for the truth as God sees it, the truth about us as He sees us, can be a very profitable exercise. Try taking a paragraph of this lesson (or the whole lesson) and turning it into thanksgiving, verbalizing your thanks as you read. For example, from the second paragraph, I might say:
"Thank You for the holiness of our minds! Thank You that everything I see reflects the holiness of my mind, which is at one with You, and at one with itself. Thank You for being my Companion as I walk this world; for the privilege of leaving behind shining footprints that point the way to truth for those who follow me."
This indeed is our calling; it is why we are here. Perhaps most of the time we don't remember our Identity in God. All the more reason to set aside a day given to remembering, for reminding ourselves. We could understand this lesson as a portrait of an advanced teacher of God. Everywhere he or she walks, light is left behind to illuminate the way for others. The teacher walks in constant awareness of God's Presence. S/he feels God within. God's thoughts fill her mind, and only the loving and the lovable is perceived by God's teacher. This teacher of God heals people in the past, the present and the future, at any distance.
Slip into that mind-set for a while today, my heart. Be the Christ; let all the obstacles to it that your mind throws up be brushed aside. Practice awareness of oneness with God.
In the latter part of the lesson it is clear that the author hasn't flipped out and isn't living in a dream world. He knows very well that we might sit for our half hour and get up thinking that nothing happened. He knows that, for most of us, what he is talking about is so far from our conscious awareness that we might devote thirty minutes to trying to recognize it and not find a glimmer of it. He doesn't care. He doesn't care because, from where he sits and how he sees, he knows with total certainty that what he is saying about us is the truth. And he tells us not to let it bother us: "You may not be ready to accept the gain today. Yet sometime, somewhere, it will come to you, nor will you fail to recognize it when it dawns with certainty upon your mind" (9:2,3). Even though we experience nothing, he tells us that "no time was ever better spent" (10:3).
The practice for today of a single half hour given to remembering oneness is unusual in the Workbook. The routine goes back to two fifteen minute periods, or three ten minute periods, in the coming days. But what is more significant, actually, is the lack of "rules [and] special words to guide your meditation" (8:4). He's leaving us on our own today. If we have been doing the exercises all along, we should have a pretty good idea of some of the "techniques" we might want to use, and we can use any of them, or anything that comes to us. Actually he isn't leaving us "on our own;" he's leaving us in the hands of "God's Voice," our inner Guide. Ask how to spend this half hour of meditation, and listen to what comes to you. "Abide with Him this half hour. He will do the rest" (8:6-7).
"You can be sure someday, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will understand and comprehend and see" (11:3).
Copyright © 1996, The Circle of Atonement, Sedona,
Arizona, USA.
All rights reserved.