April 2
"Miracles
are seen in light, and light and strength are one."
PRACTICE
SUMMARY
Longer: 2 times, morning and evening; 20 minutesClose your eyes and let truth lead you to the meeting place in you where your self meets your Self, where light joins with strength. Try to find this place and rest in its peace. Your Self's strength will give you light to see in.
SHORTER: as often as you can
Repeat idea, recognizing you are being led away from the darkness of the body's sight to the light of true sight, in which miracles are seen.
Remarks: Throughout the day use the shorter applications to prepare for the evening practice period.
COMMENTARY
The goal of this lesson seems to me to be finding "the meeting place of self and Self," as it is put in 10:4. "It is God's strength in you that is the light in which you see" (3:1). There is Something in me that is as far beyond what I think I am as the sun is beyond a match. There is an unimaginable vastness in me that, by these lessons, I am being led to discover. In the two twenty-minute practice periods today--the morning and evening "meetings" as they are referred to (11:2)--I am attempting to bring self to Self, to bring the match to the sun. I am trying to open the door to infinity within myself.This strength within me is mighty beyond the telling of it. It is "constant, sure as love, forever glad to give itself away" (8:1). Within me, my Self "stands ready to embrace [me] as Its Own" (9:2). I am a Triple-A battery standing next to a nuclear power plant, about to plug in to endless power that ever renews itself. No; that image is too cold, it lacks the "embrace" spoken of. I am a tiny, fearful child, about to be swept up in the arms of the universal, endlessly compassionate and omnipotent Father/Mother/God.
I think that perhaps the way a very young child sees its parents--huge, vast, all-knowing, totally worthy of trust, able to do anything--is perhaps a reflection of the truth of our relationship to God, and even our relationship to our own true Self.
I find this lesson enormously encouraging. It tells me strength is the truth about me (4:7). Those are words worth many repetitions! Truth gives its strength to everyone who asks, in limitless supply (5:4). This light, this strength, "does not change and flicker and go out" (7:5). "No one can ask in vain to share its sight" (8:2). As a later lesson tells us, "No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth" (Lesson 131). It does not matter how often I have tried and failed, or how long it has been since I have had a flicker of light in my mind, or how weak and puny seem the efforts of my heart; I cannot fail. I have the strength of God in me, and it will lead me to where I want to go.
I come to the practice periods today with trust in that strength. God's strength. My strength. I come to allow, just for this brief period, my self to meet my Self. I come to leave the darkness behind and let true vision, in the light, dawn upon my mind. I care not that it may not seem to last. I care not that my mind might seem dark before and dark after; for this instant, let me open to the light, and let It begin Its work of leading me home. I bring my doubts, my fears, my open disbelief and expose them to this light, and in the light they disappear, and my heart floods with joy. I am being "led away from darkness to the light where only miracles can be perceived" (11:3).
Copyright © 1996, The Circle of Atonement, Sedona,
Arizona, USA.
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