[Please note: ACIM passages quoted in this article reference the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) Edition.]
Today I’m doing one of my favorite lessons as a way to practice my 3 circles idea from the other day. The lesson is an expansion of Lesson 109 from the review of it (in Lesson 120). It goes like this:
I rest in God today, and let Him work
in me and through me, while I rest in Him
in quiet and in perfect certainty.
Being a lazy person at heart, I love this lesson, because it means I am spending the day resting, while someone else does all the work! I’m just kicking back, resting with Him, and then all the work that has to get done—both in me and through me—gets done by Him. I kick back on the hammock while He mows the lawn.
If you read my 3 circles post, you will probably see how this fits in. At the center of my day, I’m resting with God. That’s the center circle. And then, from that center, He works through me—meaning, He guides my behavior. And then we just need to divide my behavior between the more important miracle-working behavior and the more trivial minutiae-wrangling behavior, and we have the outer two circles.
It’s very much like what I practiced yesterday: “And you will be more aware of this quiet center of the storm than all its raging activity.” That’s from “I Need Do Nothing” (T-18.VII) and describes really the exact same idea. I am resting in the quiet center, where I do nothing. I am in the eye of the hurricane, where there is only stillness. But from that center, I am directed in how to take part in the storm out there (well, that’s a line later in the same paragraph).
I’ve really enjoyed practicing both ideas. Today I’ve been noticing myself get tense over little things, and then I’ve tried to remind myself that that’s not what I’m doing today. Today I’m mainly resting. I’ve tried to keep that state of rest, as best I can, even while moving through a lot of duties.
This is really a way of reorienting my priorities. Do you remember the old “I am third” idea? God is first, others are second, and I am third? This is a bit different: Resting with God on the inside is first. Letting Him extend miracles through me to others is second. And taking care of the minutiae is third.
