LESSON 213
August 1
"I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."
"All things are lessons God would have me learn."
"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
Every circumstance of life offers me the choice between a miracle and my own ego thoughts, which will hurt me. Or as the Text puts it, "the choice is miracles instead of murder" (T-23.IV.5:6).That is the lesson that all things have to teach me, today and every day. Which voice, ego or Holy Spirit, will I listen to in this moment, and the next, and the next? It's always one or the other, never neither, never both. "You will not make decisions by yourself whatever you decide. For they are made with idols or with God. And you ask help of anti-Christ or Christ, and which you choose will join with you and tell you what to do" (T-30.I.14:7-9).
In each situation I face today, this is what is going on. The ego offers its interpretation, and the Holy Spirit offers His; I choose which to listen to. I can choose the miracle, or murder. My choice determines my perception and my experience of the situation. Which will I choose today?
"When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind darkened and murderous, remember you can see the battle from above. Even in forms you do not recognize, the signs you know. There is a stab of pain, a twinge of guilt, and above all, a loss of peace. This you know well. When they occur leave not your place on high, but quickly choose a miracle instead of murder" (T-23.IV.6:1-5).
This choice is what sets me free. The Holy Spirit is always with me to help me make this choice. In each instant I can choose to learn the lessons God wants me to learn, and forget what I have been teaching myself. Let me not evaluate anything without His help.
If we could grasp just this one lesson, this habit of referring everything to the Holy Spirit, rather than trying to figure it out by ourselves (which always means with the ego's help ), everything else would simply fall into place. This alone is enough to set us free.
One thing the Holy Spirit sees differently from the ego is my body. "The Holy Spirit does not see the body as you do, because He knows the only reality of anything is the service it renders God on behalf of the function He gives it" (T-8.VII.3:6). When I choose to protect the body, to make it the center of what I am doing, mistaking the body for myself, I am choosing murder. I am not a body. I do not exist for my body's sake; its purpose is to render service to God as I carry out the function He has given me in the world, and that is all. If I listen to the Holy Spirit, I have to be willing to see the body as meaningless in itself (W-pI.96.3:7), and useful only as a communication device with which to reach my brothers. Let me remind myself that I am not a body, as in each moment I seek to hear the Voice for God.
Copyright © 1996, The Circle of Atonement, Sedona,
Arizona, USA.
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