May 11
"No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."
PRACTICE
SUMMARY
Longer: 3 times for 10 minutes* Ask to see the real world rise in place of your foolish images, true ideas rise in place of your meaningless thoughts. Say: "I ask to see a different world, and think a different kind of thought from those I made. The world I seek I did not make alone, the thoughts I want to think are not my own."
* Close eyes and for several minutes watch your mind. Review the senseless world you think is real. Also review the thoughts which fit this world and which you believe.
* Then let these go. Sink below them. Beneath them lies a door which you have used to hide the holy place in your mind, but which you could not lock. Seek this door and find it.
* Before opening it repeat today's idea. Seeking the truth is now your only request, your only goal, the only thing you want.
* With this one intent, put out your hand and see how easily the door opens. Angels light your way. Darkness disappears as you stand in a light whose shining brilliance makes everything clear and understandable. You may at first be surprised, but then you will recall that the real world you now see reflects the truth you knew before the world.
Remarks: You cannot fail. The Holy Spirit has walked with you so He could help you pass this door some day. The goal of all your searching is that you would pass this door some day. Today is that day. Today God's keeps His promises to you and you to Him.
Shorter: often
Remember that this day is one of special gladness, a time of grace for you and the world. Refrain from sadness and despair, for salvation has come.
Response To Temptation: If you forget gladness and fall into dismal thoughts and meaningless laments, say: "Today I seek and find all that I want. My single purpose offers it to me. No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."
COMMENTARY
At times it seems to nearly everyone that the search for truth is one that will never succeed. It seems that we seek, and seek, and seek some more, and never arrive at certainty. Today's lesson comes as a welcome reassurance that the search for truth is the only search that will inevitably succeed."Searching is inevitable here" (3:1). It's the nature of the world, the nature of the predicament we've put ourselves into. Searching is why we came here, and so "you will surely do the thing you came for" (3:2). If we're going to search, then, we may as well search for something worth finding: "a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought...an echo of a heritage forgot" (3:4). What we are searching for is Heaven, "a heritage forgot." What we are searching for is the home we left behind and almost put out of our minds, although to do so entirely is impossible. That's why we are driven to search. "Behind the search for every idol lies the yearning for completion" (T-30.III.3:1).
What we are seeking for is what we are; that is why finding it is inevitable. "No one can fail to want this goal and reach it in the end" (4:3).
Sometimes it may seem as though truth has deserted you. I think some experience of that is almost inescapable for all of us, a last-ditch effort of the ego to dissuade us from the search when we are getting too close. I know it has happened to me, and all I can tell you is, "Hang in there." Your search cannot fail, even though you may think it has already failed. I know I came through that dark period of my life. I don't know how I did because I didn't seem to have anything to do with it, which is part of what convinces me that my "coming out of it" is real and lasting. I still dip into despair from time to time, but I will never again live there. "No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."
What we are looking for, and perhaps can find today, is something that is beneath all the thoughts in our minds that are compatible with this senseless world--"a door beneath them in your mind" (11:8). A door in our minds! Past that door is "a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see" (13:2). Today's exercise is wonderful for visualization, actually picturing that door, seeing ourselves standing before it, and with one intent, pushing it open to pass through, out of this world and into another, like the wardrobe doorway into Narnia in C. S. Lewis's fantasy books. These exercises are like rehersals, and as we repeat them, they grow more and more real to us, engaging our minds and entraining them in a pattern that leads to real discovery of the real door, within our minds, to Heaven.
Copyright © 1996, The Circle of Atonement, Sedona,
Arizona, USA.
All rights reserved.