Lesson 178 • June 27

 

Read on the ACIM CE App: https://acimce.app/:W-178

Lesson 178

Review 5: God is but love, and therefore so am I.

Practice Instructions

See Practice Instructions Review 5

Commentary

Paragraph 10 of the review introduction:

The practice of the Workbook is meant to induce not just new thoughts and new permutations of thoughts, but an experience: “a new experience for you, yet one as old as time and older still” (10:1). How can an experience be older than time? How but in being part of eternity? “The holy instant reaches to eternity, and to the Mind of God” (T-15.V.11:7). “The holy instant is a miniature of eternity” (T-17.IV.11:4). These times spent in quiet with God are occasions when we step out of time and into timelessness; what we experience here is older than time, incredibly ancient and yet immediately present, always present.

We are experiencing our Self. “Hallowed your name. Your glory undefiled forever” (10:2-3). These are words that sound to us (if our background is Christian, at any rate) as if they should be spoken of God. Yet here they are spoken of you and of me. What is it like to experience such a thing? What is it like to know yourself as one of whom these words can be spoken, one who is entrusted with the gifts of God? I do not think words can convey it, although many have attempted to do so. What is required is an experience; then, words become unnecessary and even unwanted.

“There is a kind of experience that is so different from anything the ego can offer that you will never recover.” (T-4.V.11:1). That is what we are seeking in these quiet times. Not desperately or anxiously, not with concern or fear that it will not come to us, but peacefully, quietly, trustingly. We cannot force it to happen, we can only “let” it happen. We do not seek to add anything to ourselves, we simply seek to stop denying the Thought of God, which is the whole truth about us.

In this moment we can experience our “wholeness now complete, as God established it” (10:4). Once you have known your own wholeness, why would you ever again want to cover or hide it? Only the lie that what you are is something you do not want to know could have ever persuaded you to hide it. Outside the holy instant our Self is surrounded by a ring of fear; we shy away from approaching the Self because we have been tricked into believing that what we will find is fearful.

The time it seems to take to find the holy instant is not because it is mysterious and inaccessible; the time is only the measure of our fear of our Self. It takes this time to gently still our fears, until we are ready to find the Self that lies outside of time, older than time itself, whole and complete as God created It. This Self is the Thought of God. Our unawareness of it is only our denial of this Thought. Our experience of it is only the ending of our denial. The Self does not change, nor come and go. It is.

In this Self we are “completing His extension in [our] own” (10:5). The creative extension of God is made complete as we, in turn, extend ourselves. The Love that made us flows through us to enliven others. We are practicing what we have always known; we knew it before the ancient truth seemed to disappear into illusion, and we will know it again. In the holy instant we know it now. And what we know is this: We are entrusted with the gifts of God. Our giving of them completes His giving. “We remind the world that it is free of all illusion every time we say: God is but love, and therefore so am I” (10:7-8).