Commentary on ACIM Lesson 152

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

 

The power of decision is my own.

 

 

Contextually inside the writings I have shared previously about my mother, I recognized today that one of the gifts I have received from her is my love of gardening.....

 

Because Yuma in the summer is often the hottest place in the continental United States, I arose before sunrise to beat the high temperatures of full day, and tackled cutting back the mass of heat withering 'spring expansion' of everything that can grow here (which were gorgeous not long ago, full of now departed desert blooms.)  My compost required attention too, and since I had not added anything fresh during the weeks just in New Mexico, now was a perfect time to turn it. That became my main labor.  

 

Maybe labor quieted my mind, maybe it was something else, but I was suddenly self-aware of the pleasure I was receiving from this sweaty dirty somewhat odiferous activity.  I noticed myself reviewing backwards my gardens (historically).... appreciating each one for the the vision that inspired them, and the way that growing a garden seems to so naturally bring people together.  Then I arrived back at my childhood, and there was my mom out in our garden, with all of us kids as her crew.   Ahhh.... Mom.  I learned this love from my mom!  And to love food preparation too!  (Our garden was the way she fed the eight of us kids.... it was always at least a full acre in size, and mom 'grew everything' in the rich black Michigan soil of my youth...  Then during harvest, we were a family factory (for real), canning about 5 thousand quarts of fresh fruits and vegetables to feed us through the next year... ) What an amazing accomplishment Mom!  

 

As I write this, I am remembering today's lesson too.... about how our Voice for God will reinterpret our ego's stories, deleting the false, and leaving intact the parts that align with how God sees things.  Stepping forward, I see I have been way under-appreciating my first female love (because of some adolescence  breakdown events that happened that I wrote about earlier).   Thanks God, for the hint...., I'm onto it.  :-).  You keep doing your thing here with me, and I 'just might' turn out.  :-)

 

Enough.  Time to create my 'first person edition'.  (See, if I write first, THEN write the 'first person', both happen....:-)

 

Namaste, 

 

David

 

_______________________________

 

First Person Version

 

 

Lesson 152

The power of decision is my own.

No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think himself sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. In other words, nothing occurs but that it represents my own wish, and nothing is omitted that I choose. Here is my world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for me. And it is only here that salvation is.

I may be tempted to believe that this position is 'extreme, and too inclusive' to be true. Yet, can truth ever have exceptions? If I truly have the gift of everything, can any 'loss' be real? Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? Can fear and sickness enter into a mind where love and perfect holiness abide? Truth must be all-inclusive, if it be the truth at all. Today, I shall accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely.

Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true. This I have heard before, but I may not yet accept both parts of it. Yet without the first, the second has no meaning. But, without the second, the first is no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This can not be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false. And truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false.

This is the simplest of distinctions, yet the most obscure. But not because it is a difficult distinction to perceive. It is concealed behind a vast array of choices that do not appear to be entirely my own. And thus the truth appears to have some aspects that belie consistency, but which do not seem to be contradictions introduced by me.

As God created me, I must remain unchangeable, with transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind; in all awareness and in all response. This is the all-inclusiveness which sets the truth apart from falsehood, and the false kept separate from the truth, as what it is.

Is it not strange that I believe that to think I made the world I see is arrogance? God made it not. Of this I can be sure. What can He know of the ephemeral, the sinful and the guilty, the afraid, the suffering and lonely, and the mind that lives within a body that must die? I but accuse Him of insanity, to think He made a world where such things seem to have reality. He is not mad. Yet only madness makes a world like this.

To think that God made chaos, that He contradicts His Own Will, that He invented opposites to truth, and that He suffers death to triumph over life; all this is arrogance. Humility would see at once these things are not of Him. And can I see what God created not? To think I can is merely to believe I can perceive what God willed not to be. And what could be more arrogant than this?

Let me today be truly humble, and accept what I have made as what it is. The power of decision is my own. Decide but to accept my rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all I think I made will disappear. What rises to awareness then will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now. And it will take the place of self-deceptions made only to usurp the altar to the Father and the Son.

Today I practice true humility, abandoning the false pretense by which my ego seeks to prove humility is arrogant. Only the ego can be arrogant. But truth is humble in acknowledging its mightiness, its changelessness and its eternal wholeness, all-encompassing, God's perfect gift to His beloved Son. I lay aside the arrogance which says that I am a sinner, guilty and afraid, ashamed of what I am; and lift my heart in true humility instead to Him Who has created me immaculate, like to Himself in power and in love.

The power of this decision is my own. And I accept of Him that which I am, and humbly recognize the Son of God. To recognize God's Son implies as well that all self-concepts have been laid aside, and recognized as false. Their arrogance has been perceived. And in humility the radiance of God's Son, his gentleness, his perfect sinlessness, his Father's Love, his right to Heaven and release from hell, are joyously accepted as my own.

Now do I join in glad acknowledgment that lies are false, and only truth is true. I think of truth alone as I arise, and spend five minutes practicing its ways, encouraging my frightened mind with this:

The power of decision is my own. 
This day I will accept myself as what 
my Father's Will created me to be.

Then will I wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions, as I humbly ask my Self that He reveal Himself to me. And He Who never left will come again to my awareness, grateful to restore His home to God, as it was meant to be.

In patience I will wait for Him throughout the day, and hourly invite Him with the words with which the day began, concluding it with this same invitation to my Self. God's Voice will answer, for He speaks for me and for my Father. He will substitute the peace of God for all my frantic thoughts, the truth of God for my self-deceptions, and God's Son for my illusions of myself.