Commentary on ACIM Lesson 217

©2010 Rev. David Seacord

It can be but my gratitude that I earn.

I think I am getting a little crack of insight into this.... and that there are times when love is not love.

There are several situations in my life that provide me with material to learn this. Some are in the lives of other people, and the dramas they are in, and some are from my own dramas. Always, all dramas exist only between our ears, but (obviously) that is what is hard to see, and that is what makes it 'a drama'.

Yet, I am seeing what the Course is saying about being grateful to myself because I can see I do have a choice about how to express my love towards others. Making clear, wholeness based choices leaves me happy... that is what I am grateful to be learning deeper and deeper. How it is now is that sometimes I will seem to be exhibiting mastery and appropriateness, other times I have to call a coach and say 'help', I am on thin ice. It is, I think, an unavoidable curriculum.... and true graduation, I think, will consist of somehow awakening and finding the temptations of the personal ego-mind have been put behind me.

Not however, as a 'sacrifice', and definitely not as a 'suppression', but rather from a deep clarity of purpose arising within me.... about the difference between all the forms of attraction that have us spending our lives jumping into the myriad of available frying pans, versus(contrasted to) the holy tai chi of non-entanglement coupled with profound compassion, that I believe will guide the one 'purified of personal desires' in ways that only serve the One within each of us that is the Same, the Godness we all are.

My true happiness is to be so used. My greatest sadnesses are when I fail, and 'touch it', what ever the desire is. Of course, the Way to not touch, not grasp, is to Know that 'under all circumstances and conditions, all my true needs are met'. Then there is no temptation, no neediness, no grasping. Then there is only completeness. That remembrance requires daily strengthening, which is what prayer and sadhana is. And which is what doing the Course is all about too.

God promises us is that as we remember our Wholeness, we will become unwavering, ever brighter, lights of Love in this world. As we willingly take the training, the way we know we are 'getting it' is to see that 'our love of ourself' and 'our love of others' ceases to be different.

Namaste,

David

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Lesson 217

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.

(197) It can be but my gratitude I earn.

Who should give thanks for my salvation but myself?
And how but through salvation can I find the Self to
Whom my thanks are due?

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.