Commentary on ACIM Lesson 150

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

 

 

Reviewing:

 

My mind holds only what I think with God.

(139) I will accept Atonement for myself. 
(140) Only salvation can be said to cure.

 

 

 

As far as learning humility is concerned, simply accepting the Atonement (at-one-ment with God) is the obvious cure for all egotism, mine included.  For it is egotism that thinks it is a something separate from the whole (i.e., God), with power to choose and create whatever it desires from the smorgasbord of life.  Egotism thinks 'free will' is license to feast.  It isn't, that's a child playing with matches view.  Free will is rightly viewed as a humbling responsibility, and as the opportunity for mature partnership with our personal spirit/soul and with the God/Source.  

 

What cures this egotism?  Same thing as with the child.... under watchful supervision, the child is allowed to burn himself.  That one experience will install forever vast wisdom about fire.  

 

With us and our adult egos though, well, we are often pretty stiff-necked and determined.  A lot of the people that wake up the most radically almost got themselves killed before they did.  Some actually did die for a few minutes, but then got sent back with 'the message'.  So what is wisdom?  It is NOT having to learn by way of our OWN personal egoic experience.  It is recognizing another's experience as 'worthy of respect', and absorbing from their testimony enough to grow out of the 'egoic danger zone'.  (This is actually what the whole 'faith' thing is about.  It is trusting the word of your brother.) 

 

True surrender always leads directly to the Atonement.... how could it not?  True surrender is simply entering 'the partnership', 'the oneness', 'the whole'.... with no personal agenda as a superior commitment.  (Yes, we are still allowed our personal preferences, but if you watch enlightened people, they will drop such preferences in a heartbeat whenever the Godwill requires it.) (FYI, my take on myself these days is: I usually make the 'right choice', but 'sometimes' [I smile at myself] it takes a bit longer than a heartbeat.  And sometimes I still 'make mistakes', which are really 'practice sessions in cleaning up personal integrity).  Anyway, by the time we ripen enough to be willing to surrender authentically, we do know FOR SURE that the God/Source has a better view of our life than we do. (This is obvious because you are no way going to actually surrender if you don't get that...) From the testimony I have heard through the years what happens 'after surrender' is you are usually assigned the jobs your ego always wanted to do.  Only it (our ego) wanted those jobs to inflate itself.  However, as the truly surrendered ego is not inflatable or deflatable (because no separated ego is 'at home' anymore), the experience of 'at-one-ment' remains undisturbed.  

 

We are then free to enjoy without attachment the life that God gives us Now, and Now, and Now.  This is the way that God calls us to serve.  Whatever the form, by exemplifying authentic surrender exactly where we are we each meet our true destiny.

 

Namaste, 

 

David

 

 

Lesson 150

My mind holds only what I think with God.

(139) I will accept Atonement for myself. 
(140) Only salvation can be said to cure.