LESSON 227
August 15
"This is my holy instant of release."
PRACTICE SUMMARY
(See Part II Practice Summary, and also Part II Introduction)
COMMENTARY
Today's lesson is another reminder that these practice times are meant to be holy instants for us. Not every one will be a dramatic experience of wordless bliss, of course. Remember that simply being willing to turn your mind to God can be considered a holy instant, whether or not you consciously experience anything special. The seminal holy instant, from which the Course sprang, was simply a time when Bill Thetford said, "There must be another way," and Helen replied, "I'll help you find it." The mental shift into alignment with God's purpose is what really counts. If we faithfully practice, the direct experience of truth spoken of in the Workbook will come, not by our efforts, but by God's grace, when we are ready to receive it.
Consider the effect it has on our mind to focus on today's idea, "This is my holy instant of release," and then to sit in quiet stillness, open and receptive to whatever is given to us. We should enter each such time expectantly, waiting to hear what God's Voice will speak.
I am already free; now, today. My thought of separation had no effect on my reality, so the imprisonment I have imagined never happened. "Nothing I thought apart from You exists" (1:3). How wonderful to know that the thoughts I believed were apart from God don't exist! How healing it is to give them up, lay them down at the feet of truth, and to have them "removed forever from my mind" (1:5). This is the healing process of the Course: to take each thought that seems to express a will separate from God's, and bring it into this Presence to be removed from my mind, with God's own assurance that it has affected nothing. I am still His Son.
This is how my mind is restored to me. This is how my awareness of my Identity is returned to my awareness.
Copyright © 1996, The Circle of Atonement, Sedona,
Arizona, USA.
All rights reserved.