LESSON 182
July 1
"I will be still an instant and go home."
PRACTICE SUMMARY
Purpose: To go past your special blocks and defenses. To go home for an instant with the Child Who is your Self. This experience will intensify your motivation and strengthen your commitment.
Morning/Evening Quiet Time: 5 minutes - at least; 10 - better; 15 even better; 30 or more - best
Be still. Let the world recede from you. Let valueless ideas no longer have value in your mind. Let the Child Who is your Self take you home. Stay with Him there, beyond all words, in perfect, silent peace, certain you are at home.
Hourly Remembrance: as the hour strikes more than 1 minute (reduce if circumstances do not permit)
(Suggestion) Be still an instant and go home with the Christ Child.
Frequent Reminder: (Suggestion) Repeat idea.
Response To Temptation: When tempted to take up your shield and sword to defend yourself, remember that this Child is your defenselessness and strength.
COMMENTARY
Another lesson about the holy instant. Notice how the thread about "instants," "moments," and "intervals" of stillness, quiet, withdrawal from the world, begun in the Introduction to this series of lessons and in Lesson 181, carries through nearly every lesson up to Lesson 200, the end of this series. It wasn't until my third or fourth time through these lessons that I realized they were all instructions in consciously setting aside short periods every day and attempting to enter the holy instant. The themes seem to differ, but all the difference lies in which block to our awareness of love's presence is being considered. The aim is always the same: a short suspension of that block, and the experience of a new awareness that comes when the block is momentarily removed.
The block being considered today is simply the temptation to find satisfaction, or to feel at home, in this world. We spend most of our lives in an attempt to adjust to the world, or to adjust the world to ourselves. It seems quite natural to us to try to be comfortable here, and we expend a great deal of effort trying to do so. This lesson appeals to us to set that effort aside, just for a brief while, and to recognize the childlike voice within us that is crying to go home - home to Heaven. We need to acknowledge that, "This world you seem to live in is not home to you" (1:1). And, recognizing this is so, to take time each day to allow this Child within us to "rest a while" (5:3) and, for "just a few instants of respite...[to] return to breathe again the holy air that fills His Father's house" (5:4).
This lesson is perhaps the most poetically beautiful lesson in the entire Workbook. Some of you have heard, perhaps, the poignant reading of most of this lesson by Beverly Hutchinson on the tape, "The Forgotten Song." It is hard for me to listen without tears, and I don't bother trying. Tears are fine, but not enough; we need to hear the appeal and to act upon it: "Rest with Him frequently today" (9:1). "Go home with Him from time to time today" (10:3). "Be still an instant and go home with Him, and be at peace a while" (12:9).
The thought of this lesson has had a powerful effect in my life. Sometimes when I am feeling my lowest - dry, dull, and discouraged - just quietly closing my eyes and saying, "I want to go home," is enough to break the spell and allow the peace of God into my mind.
Another passage, towards the end of the lesson, has had an equally powerful effect on me. "You have not lost your innocence. It is for this you yearn. This is your heart's desire. This is the voice you hear, and this the call which cannot be denied" (12:1-4). When I remember these words, I seem to be always surprised at the soothing effect they have. I had not realized, until I repeat them, how deeply I was feeling that I had lost my innocence, how much the source of my depression was a hidden belief in my own loss of innocence. I suddenly realize that, yes, this is what I am yearning for; this is my heart's desire.
If you can, right now as you read this, stop, and be still and instant, and go home with me. It is so easy to do. Why delay an instant longer?
Copyright © 1996, The Circle of Atonement, Sedona,
Arizona, USA.
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