Commentary on ACIM Lesson 131

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

 

No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.

 

 

What is 'the straight and narrow' way?  It is the way of no (as in zero) self-deception.  For (paraphrasing Zen) a single such deception will set heaven and earth infinitely apart. 

 

It is a moment to moment thing, the true faith walk.  Everyone who walks it knows this.  There is no 'break room' to go to to get a breath of 'true illusions' from either, for all illusions remain illusions to anyone 'walking their talk'.

 

It is a very naked walk, and therefore requires becoming comfortable with 'nakedness'.  I recently had a conversation with a woman who had lived with her husband in a nudist colony for a time.  Her main point was that it was 'so wonderful to live without physical pretenses'.   
 

An 'enlightened man containing an unknown but visible amount of alcohol' asked me tonight 'Hey 'Rev. Dave', who do you see right now, when you look at me?'  I did not answer immediately.  So he gave me the correct one. 'The answer is 'myself', he said.  We laughed together, both knowing he was right.  Such is the way this universe nakedly loves me.  

 

Namaste, 

 

David

 

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Edited First Person lesson

 

Lesson 131

No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.

Failure is 'all about me' while I seek for goals that cannot be achieved....., wherever I look for permanence in the impermanent, for love where there is none, for safety in the midst of danger, or for immortality within the darkness of the dream of death. How could I ever 'succeed', where contradiction is the setting of my searching, and the place to which I come to find 'stability'?

Goals that are meaningless are not attained. There is no way to reach them, for the means by which I strive for them are as meaningless as they are. Who can use such senseless means, and hope through them to gain in anything? Where can they lead? And what could they achieve that offers any hope of being real? Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while I am 'seeking for life' I am 'asking for death'. I look everywhere for safety and security, while in my heart I pray for danger and protection (for the little dream I made).

Yet searching is inevitable, here in this world. For this journey I came, and I will surely do the thing I came for. But the world can not dictate the goal for which I search, unless I give it power to do so. If I keep my own choice, I am still free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one that comes to me from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything I actually cherish.

Be me then glad that search I must. Be me then glad as well to learn I search for Heaven, and must inevitably find the goal I really cherish. No one can search for this goal and not reach it, in the end. God's Son can not 'seek vainly', although I may try to force delay, deceive myself and think that it is hell I seek. When I am wrong, I find correction. When I wander off, I am led back to my appointed task.

No one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. I will find Heaven. Everything I seekbut this will fall away. Yet not because it has been taken from me. It will go because I do not want it. I will reach the goal I really search for as certainly as God created me in sinlessness.

Why wait for Heaven? It is here today. Time is the great illusion it is past or in the future. Yet this cannot be, if it is where God wills His Son to be. How could the Will of God be in the past, or yet to happen? What He wills is now, without a past and wholly futureless. It is as far removed from time as is a tiny candle from a distant star, or what I 'settle for' is from what I truly treasure.

Heaven remains my one alternative to this strange world I made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made none of these contradictions. Whatever 'denies its own existence and attacks itself' is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.

God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two. How could it be that I His Son could be in hell, when God Himself established me in Heaven? How could I lose what the Eternal Will has given me to be my home forever? Let me not try longer to impose an alien will upon God's single purpose. He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now, beyond the reach of time.

Today I will not choose a paradox in place of truth. How could the Son of God make time to take away the Will of God? I thus deny myself, and that contradicts what has no opposite. I end up thinking I have made a hell opposing Heaven, and believing that I abide in what does not really exist, while Heaven is the place I cannot find.

I will leave foolish thoughts like these behind today, and turn my mind to true ideas instead. No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth, and it is truth I seek to reach today. I will devote ten minutes to this goal three times today, and I will ask my Holiness to help me see the rising of the real world replace the foolish images that I have (in the past) held dear, with true ideas arising in the place of thoughts that have no meaning, no effect, and neither source nor substance in the truth.

This I will acknowledge as I start upon my practice periods, beginning with this:

Divine Godness that surrounds and sustains me, I ask your Grace to see a different world, and to think a different kind of thought from those I have made. The world I seek I did not make alone, and the thoughts I would choose to think are not my own.

For several minutes let me be alert, and watching my mind. I see, although my eyes are closed, the senseless world I think is real. Reviewing my thoughts as well, I can see which are compatible with such a world, and which I think are true. Let me then let them go, and let me sink below them to the holy place in me where they can enter not. There is a doorway within me beneath them in my mind (which I could not completely lock to hide what lies beyond).

I shall seek for that door and find it. But before I try to open it, I will remind myself this: that no one can fail who seeks to reach the truth. And it is this request I make today. Nothing but this has any meaning to me now; no other goal is being valued now nor sought, there is nothing before this door I really want, and only what lies past it do I seek.

Putting out my hand, I see how easily the door swings open with my one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes, and I am standing in a light so bright and clear that I can understand all things I see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make me pause before I realize the world I see before me in the light reflects the truth I have always known (and did not quite forget, even by wandering away into my dreams).

My Godness tells me I cannot fail today. There walks with me the Spirit that Heaven has sent to me, that I might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it, to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for I come to the appointed time and place where I will find the goal of all my searching here, and all the seeking of the world, which end together as I pass beyond the door.

I will remember this often, and today shall be a time of special gladness. I will refrain today from dismal thoughts and meaningless laments. Salvation's time has come. Today is set by Heaven itself to be a time of grace for me and for the world. If I should momentarily forget this happy fact, I will remind myself of the truth with this thought:

Today I seek and find all that I my heart has yearned for. My single purpose offers Heaven to me. No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth. This is the promise of  God.