Commentary on ACIM Lesson 151

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

 

 

All things are echos of the Voice for God. 

 

As often happens after I am finished creating the 'first person version', I am without much more to say right now.  It empties me, which is one of the reasons I am attracted to the practice of doing them (the first person versions).  

 

However, for the benefit of several new subscribers who have never received an email with a 'first person version', allow me to explain that for a good while now, excepting the review periods, I have been converting the text of the lesson from third person into first person, plus on occasion adding clarifications.  From my point of view, there is a value in experiencing the teachings as speaking from within my being (as from my Godself), rather than from outside my being.  I invite you to try them out.  If you prefer the original text, it is available just below the edited version for your use and/or comparison. 

 

I think that is it for today. Except my dad says he is very happy I am back home.  Me too.   

 

Namaste, 

 

David

 

__________________________

 

My 'first person' edited version

 

 

Lesson 151

All things are echoes of the Voice for God.

I can see I can judge no one on partial evidence, for that is not judgment. It is merely my opinion, and my opinion is very often based on my ignorance and doubt. My seeming certainty is but a cloak for my uncertainty, which my ego/I would conceal. My uncertainty needs such an irrational defense because it is irrational. And if my defenses seem strong, convincing, and without a doubt, it is because of all my doubting underneath.

I know I do not seem to doubt the world I see. But I habitually do not really question what is shown me through my body's eyes. Nor do I usually ask why I believe them, even though I learned a long while ago that my senses do deceive me. That I believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger, especially when I pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! Why would I trust them so implicitly? Why, but because of an underlying doubt (which I would hide with show of certainty)?

How can I judge anything then? My judgments all rest upon the witnesses that my senses offer me. Yet what witness was ever falser than this? But how else do I judge the world I see? I place pathetic faith in what my eyes and ears report. I think my fingers touch reality, and close upon the truth. This is awareness that I 'understand', and think more real than what is witnessed to by the eternal Voice for God Himself.

How can this be true judgment? I have often been urged to refrain from judging, but not because it is 'a right' to be withheld from me. I have been urged to refrain because I cannot judge. I can merely believe my ego/I's judgments, all of which are false. It tries to guide my senses carefully, to prove to me how weak I am; how helpless and afraid I am, how apprehensive I am of  a 'just punishment', how black with sin and  how wretched in my guilt I am.

This egoic thing it speaks of, and would yet defend, it tells me is myself. And I have believed that this is so with stubborn certainty. Yet underneath its convincing remains the hidden doubt that what it shows me as reality with such conviction it does not itself believe.Underneath, it is itself alone that it condemns. It is within itself it sees the guilt. And it is its own despair it 'sees' in me.

Today, let me not hear its false voice. The witnesses it sends to prove to me its evil is my own are false, and they speak with a certainty of what they do not know. My faith in them has been blind. And I would not share the doubts their 'lord' can not completely vanquish. But I have too often believed 'to doubt his vassals' is 'to doubt myself'.

Yet this I choose to learn today: 'To doubt their evidence' will clear the way to recognize myself, and I shall then let the Voice for Godalone be Judge of what is worthy of my own belief. For God's Voice will not tell me that my brother should be judged by what my eyes behold in him, nor what his body's mouth says to my ears, nor what my fingers' touch reports of him. He passes by such idle empty witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God's Son. He recognizes only what God loves, and in the holy light of what He sees do all the ego/I's dreams of what I am vanish before the splendor He beholds.

Today I will let Him be Judge of what I am, for He has a certainty in which there is no doubt, because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its face. Christ cannot doubt Himself. The Voice for God can only honor Him, rejoicing in His perfect, everlasting sinlessness. Whomever He has judged as holy can only laugh at guilt, be unwilling now to play with toys of sin; and equally unheeding of the body's witnesses before the rapture of Christ's holy face.

And thusly He judges me. I will accept His Word for what I am, for He was there. And thus He bears witness to my beautiful creation, and the Mind Whose Thought created my reality. What can the body mean to Him Who knows the glory of the Father and the Son? What whispers of the ego can He hear? What could convince Him that my 'sins' are real? I will let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to me in this world. And His lessons.... they will enable me to bridge the gap between the world's illusions and the truth.

How blessed I am.  He will remove all faith that I have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. He gives me vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can instead behold the gentle face of Christ in all of them. I will no longer doubt that only good can come to me (I who am beloved of God), for He will judge all happenings, and teach me the single lesson that they all contain.

He will select the elements in them which represent the truth, and disregard those aspects which reflect only idle dreams. And He will reinterpret all I see, and all occurrences, each circumstance, and every happening that seems to touch on me in any way from His one frame of reference, which is wholly unified and sure. And I will see the love beyond the hate, the constancy in change, the pure in sin, and only Heaven's blessing on the world.

Such is my resurrection, for my life is not a part of anything I see. It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness.... it stands within the Holy, holy as Itself. In everyone and everything His Voice would speak to me of nothing but my Self and my Creator, Who is One with Him. So will I see the holy face of Christ in everything, and I will hear in everything no sound except the echo of God's Voice.

I will practice wordlessly today, except at the beginning of the time I spend with God. I will introduce these times with but a single, slow repeating of the thought with which the day begins. And then as I watch my thoughts, I will appeal silently to Him Who sees the elements of truth in them. Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to my mind, let Him remove the elements of dreams, and let Him give them back again as clean ideas that do not contradict the Will of God.

Let me give Him my thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son, as proof of His eternal Love. And as each thought in me is thus transformed, may it take on true healing power from the Mind which saw the truth in it, and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. Let all the threads of fantasy be gone. And let what remains be unified into a perfect Thought that offers its perfection everywhere.

Today, let me spend fifteen minutes thus when I awake, and let me gladly give another fifteen more before I go to sleep. My ministry begins as all my thoughts are purified. So am I taught to teach the Son of God in everyone the holy lesson of his sanctity. No one can fail to listen, when I hear the Voice for God give honor to God's Son. And everyone will share the thoughts with me which He has retranslated in my mind.

Such is my Eastertide. And so I lay the gift of snow-white lilies on the world, letting it replace all witnesses to sin and death. Through my transfiguration is the world redeemed, and joyfully released from guilt. Now do I lift my resurrected mind in gladness and in gratitude to Him Who has restored my sanity to me.

And I will hourly remember Him Who is my salvation and deliverance. As I give Him thanks, the world unites with me and happily accepts my holy thoughts, which Heaven has corrected and made pure. Now has my ministry begun at last, to carry round the world the joyous news that truth has no illusions, and the peace of God, through me, belongs to everyone.

Amen.