Commentary on ACIM Lesson 161

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

 

Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.

 

 

As I hung up the phone call to Customer Support, I had a brief sense of accomplishment (as my intention had been achieved), but a taste of untrueness lingered. After a few minutes, I was willing to look at it.  It's then that I saw I had failed....

 

In the past, I have often read things that spoke the message:  You don't absolutely know what your real successes are, or what your real failures are either.  Many things you think of as a success are actually failures, and visa versa.

 

My phone call was like that.  It was a call for help with a piece of software installation, and that I accomplished.  What I didn't accomplish was to remember the gentleman at the other end of the line was my brother, or to see his holiness.  What I did instead was manipulate him by being resistant to bureaucratic protocol and being a 'strong demand' for the information I needed, without supplying him with the information he was requesting.  It kind of goes with the territory of being a rebel, and I have seen it doesn't really work, but I haven't gotten the reprogramming peacefully completed yet.  I guess that is ok, I know I am still hooked on God's line, and in time, I will get all my past traumas, beliefs, attitudes, and incompletions cleaned up.  Seeing that I had failed is a step in that direction.  

 

I found myself wondering (since I had caught myself this time) how often I missed like this, and then didn't catch it.  God said back, "You don't want to know."  We both laughed.  God knows I have an ego.  I know I have an ego.  What is cool is that now my ego knows it is an ego too (and we both know it is NOT me).  So there is a bit of rewiring going on, and my ego is as gracefully as possible allowing it (given it's not being given a choice...).

 

Turns out that todays lesson is kind of in line with all this....  how kool.  :-)  

 

Namaste, 

 

David  

 

__________________________________

My personal version, in first person.

 

Lesson 161

Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.

Today I will practice differently, and take a stand regarding my angers, that my fears may disappear and offer room for Love to Be. Here my salvation is found in the simple words with which I practice today's idea. Here, in this idea, is the answer to temptation which can never fail.  It will welcome in the Christ wherever fear and anger had prevailed before. Here is my Atonement made complete, the world is passed safely by and Heaven is now restored. Here is the answer of the Voice for God.

Complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind, being unlimited. But part of my mind is now 'unnatural'. That part does not look on everything as one. That part sees instead only fragments of the whole, for only thus could it invent the partial world I habitually see. The purpose of all seeing is to show me what I wish to see. Just like all hearing only brings to my mind the sounds my mind desires to hear.

Thus are 'specifics' made. And now, it is such specifics I must use in practicing. I give them to the Holy Spirit, that He may employ them for a purpose which is different from the one I gave to them. Yet He can use what I made, to teach me from a different point of view, so I that can see a different use in everything.

Holy Spirit teaches me thus: Any one brother is all brothers. And every mind contains all minds, for every mind is also one. Such is the truth of the Holy. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to me? What can they seem to me to be but empty sounds; pretty, perhaps, correct in sentiment, yet to ego/me, fundamentally not understood nor understandable. For the mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all-encompassing. I need to see this a little, that I may learn a lot.

It seems to be this body that I feel I am in limits my freedom, makes me suffer, and then at last puts out my life. Yet my body is only a symbol for a concrete form of fear. Fear without such concrete symbols calls for no response, for symbols can (and do) stand for 'the meaningless'. Love needs no symbols, being true. But fear attaches to specifics, being false.  All Fear is false.

Bodies, being separate, can attack, but minds, being one, do not. (I need to see and understand this completely.  This I will meditate on.) This thought is surely reminiscent of this text, where it is often emphasized. This is the reason bodies easily become fear's symbols. I have many times been urged to look beyond the body, for its sight presents the symbol of love's "enemy", an enemy that Christ's vision does not see. The body is the target for attack, for no one thinks he hates a mind. Yet what but my mind directs the body to attack? What else could be the seat of fear except what thinks of the fear?

All hate is specific. There must be a thing to be hated, attacked. An 'enemy' must be perceived in such a form he can be touched and seen and heard, and ultimately killed. When hatred rests upon such a thing, it calls for its death just as surely as God's Voice proclaims there is no death. Fear is insatiable, consuming everything its eyes behold, seeing itself in everything, even compelled to turn upon itself and to destroy.

Whosoever sees a brother as a body sees him 'as fear's symbol'. When/if I do that, I will attack, because what I behold is my own fear external to myself, poised to attack, and howling 'to unite' with my brother again. Let me mistake not the intensity of rage that falsely projected fear must spawn. It shrieks in wrath, and claws the air in frantic hope it can reach to its 'maker' and devour him.

This insanity is what the body's eyes behold in each one whom Heaven cherishes, each one whom the angels love and God created perfect. This perfection IS their true reality. And in Christ's vision my brothers loveliness is reflected in a form so holy and so beautiful that I could scarce refrain from kneeling at his feet. Yet, instead of worship, I will take his hand in respect instead, for I am like him in the holy sight of God that sees my brother thus. Attacking any brother is thus 'an enemy' to me, for if I do I will not perceive that in his hands is my own salvation. Therefore I will ask him only for this (my own salvation), and I am promised he will give it to me. I ask him not to symbolize my fear. For would I request that love destroy itself? Or would I have it be revealed to me and set me free?

Today I will practice in a form I have attempted earlier. My readiness is closer now, and I will come today nearer Christ's vision. If I am intent on reaching it, I will succeed today. And once I have succeeded, I will no longer be willing to accept the witnesses my body's eyes call forth. What I will see will sing to me of ancient melodies I will then remember. I am not forgotten in Heaven. Why would I then, not choose to remember it?

Today I will select one brother as symbol of all the rest, and I will ask for salvation of him. I will see him first as clearly as I can, in that same form to which I am accustomed. I will see his face, his hands and feet, his clothing. I will watch him smile, and see the familiar gestures which he makes so frequently. Then I will think of this: What I am seeing now conceals from me the sight of one who can forgive me all my sins; whose sacred hands can take away the nails which pierce my own, and lift the crown of thorns which I have placed upon my bleeding head. I will ask this of him, that he may set me free:

Give me your blessing, holy Son of God. 
I would behold you with the eyes of Christ, 
and see my perfect sinlessness in you.

And He Whom I called upon will answer. For He will hear the Voice for God in me, and answer me in my own. I would behold him thus now, whom I have seen before as merely flesh and bone, and recognize that in him Christ has come to me. Today's idea is my safe escape from anger and from fear. I will use it instantly, should I be tempted to attack a brother and perceive in him the symbol of my fear. And I will see then him suddenly transformed from enemy into savior; from the devil into Christ.