[Please note: ACIM passages quoted in this article reference the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) Edition.]
After my meditation and Text reading time this morning, I had an insight related to “Here I am, Lord.” In the Text, I was reading, “The State of Grace” (T-7.XI). I particularly like this section, and the idea that my true state is one of grace. In that place, I know that I am one with God; that with Him is the only place for me to be. It’s my natural environment, the only place where I will ever feel that I belong and am at home. Only there am I happy.
Here’s where I saw the connection with “Here I am, Lord,” and the recent sense I have been having about where I am and what I am: No matter what I think I am or where I think I am, what I really am is a holy Son of God (Lesson 191 just happens to be my lesson today!), and where I really am is with God in a state of grace. That is the “here” where I am. So, when I say, “Here I am, Lord,” I am saying that right now and always, I am here with You in a state of grace. I can be no place but with You.
On top of it all, I also had this thought: “God is; therefore, I am.” I can’t tell you the effect this had on me. I felt slightly uncomfortable and perhaps a bit sacrilegious, but, at the same time, I felt so joyous and full. It reminded me of what we had just read in the Text Reading Program: “You do not know your joy because you do not know your own Self-fullness…. The full appreciation of the mind’s Self-fullness makes selfishness impossible and extension inevitable” (T-7.IX.4:3,6). I wouldn’t presume to say that I did “know” my Self-fullness or have a “full appreciation: of it, but I did have a sense of it and what it meant.
I have just reread what I wrote about “God is; therefore, I am,” and my eyes have filled with tears. I feel as if the clouds have started to part, and I am beginning to see something I have never seen before. There is a fullness and warmth in my heart that is not taking my breath away, but filling it with a great sense of love, joy, expansiveness…
This feels like such a significant experience, and I just had to share it with you.
Love,
Mary Anne
