LESSON 211
July 30
"I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."
"I am the holy Son of God Himself."
"I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."
PRACTICE SUMMARY
Review VI
Purpose: To carefully review the last 20 lessons, each of which contains the whole curriculum and is therefore sufficient for salvation, if understood, practiced, accepted and applied without exception.
Morning/Evening Quiet Time: 15 minutes - at least
Repeat: "I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."
Close eyes and relinquish all that clutters the mind; forget all you thought you knew. Give the time to the Holy Spirit, your Teacher. If you notice an idle thought, immediately deny its hold, assuring your mind that you do not want it. Then let it be given up and replaced with today's idea. Say: "This thought I do not want. I choose instead (today's idea)."
Remarks: We are attempting to go beyond special forms of practice because we are attempting a quicker pace and shorter path to our goal.
Hourly Remembrance: Repeat: "I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."
Frequent Reminder: as often as possible, as often as you can. Repeat: "I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."
Response To Temptation: permit no idle thought to go unchallenged.
If you are tempted by an idle thought, immediately deny its hold, assuring your mind that you do not want it. Then let it be given up and replaced with today's idea. Say: "This thought I do not want. I choose instead (today's idea)."
COMMENTARY
To seek the glory of God in my Self - that sounds a little pretentious. Yet the lesson says we seek this glory "in true humility." Naturally, the Course is speaking of the Self, and not my self. "This does not refer, however, to the self of which the world speaks" (M-4.VII.2:2). When someone says, "The glory of God is in me," or "I am the Son of God Himself," it makes a very big difference what "me" is being spoken of. If it is the self that we believe exists separate from the billions of other selves in this world, we are not speaking the truth. We are being pretentious. If it refers to the Self that is shared by all those billions, the Self of which my little consciousness is just one fragment, it is the Truth that sets us free.
The glory of God does not reside in the little self, but it does reside in the Self. And beholding that glory "in the Son whom He created as my Self" does not lead to delusions of grandeur, but to true grandeur, a grandeur that is instantly perceived as shared with all living things. There can be no setting of myself above any others, for the glory in them is my own.
These final review lessons, before Part II of the Workbook, refer a lot to things like silence, and beholding the glory of God. In these times of practice, let us seek to open ourselves to that kind of experience, to a seeing that is not of the eyes, to an awareness of the reality of our Self, God's Son. Let my little thoughts be silent, and let me hear the Voice for God speaking within me, speaking to my self of my Self, wooing me back into harmony with that vastness of Being to which I belong, gathering together the seeming fragments of the Sonship into one harmonious Whole. I am, indeed, still as God created me. Not just a body, not bound by the body, not characterized by the body, but "free of all limits, safe and healed and whole" (W-pI.97.7:2). I am that which God created, the holy Son of God Himself.
Copyright © 1996, The Circle of Atonement, Sedona,
Arizona, USA.
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