LESSON 280
October 7
"What limits can I lay upon God's Son?"
PRACTICE SUMMARY
(See Part II Practice Summary, and also Part II Introduction)
COMMENTARY
The Course is calling on me to not deny to anyone--my brothers or myself--the limitless freedom in which God created us. I find in myself what seems like a natural tendency to compare myself to others, and to find myself, in some way, superior to them. I am more intelligent. My opinions are more correct. Or my relationships are superior. Or I am more ethical, more compassionate, more understanding, more honest with myself. I have greater integrity. All of these are ways in which I have, at times, felt superior to others. Others have other standards of comparison. But in general, I think, we all have this tendency to feel somehow superior to most of the rest of the human race.
This is what the Course calls specialness. It is a way of seeing others with limits that, we believe, do not exist for ourselves. The Course's call to see our brothers as equally free as ourselves contradicts this pattern of thinking we have taught ourselves. The lesson says, "I can invent imprisonment for him [he whom God created free], but only in illusions, not in truth" (1:2). We are all equal Thoughts of God; none of us has left the Father's mind; none of us is limited at all--except in illusions.
We are called--we students of ACIM--to "give honor" (2:1) to the Son of God wherever we meet Him. We are called to recognize the Christ in every one who is sent to meet us. Let me recognize today that the limits I see are my own illusions; they are, in fact, my own belief in my own limits, dressed up, disguised, perhaps, in another form, and projected onto my brother. I find my own freedom by honoring it in others. Let me remind myself today, "This is the holy Son of God, my brother, a part of my Self." Only in so doing will I find my Self, and recognize the Christ as God created Him.
At one point the Course makes a very strong statement. It says that if I really recognized who my brother (or sister) is, I could "scarce refrain from kneeling at his feet" (W-pI.161.9:3). Yet, it goes on to say, I will take his hand instead, because in the kind of sight that sees my brother or sister in this way, I am equally glorious. We are the Christ. Who we are is magnificent, so far beyond our normal conception of ourselves that on seeing it our inclination would be to worship, except that in that same instant we recognize that same magnificence in ourselves. May God grant us all such vision!
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Arizona, USA.
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