Read on the ACIM CE App: https://acimce.app/:W-276
Lesson 276
The Word of God is given me to speak.
Practice Instructions
See complete instructions in a separate document. A short summary:
- Read the commentary paragraph slowly and personally.
- Pray the prayer, perhaps several times.
- Morning and evening: Repeat the idea and then spend time in Open Mind Meditation.
- Hourly remembrance: Repeat the idea and then spend time in Open Mind Meditation.
- Frequent reminders: Repeat the idea and then spend a quiet moment in meditation.
- Response to temptation: Repeat the idea whenever upset, to restore peace.
- Read the “What Is” section slowly and thoughtfully once during the day.
Practice suggestion: The following is a visualization inspired by this lesson.
Imagine that you have traveled to the Middle East, far out into the desert.
You have come all this way to visit an ancient temple, which contains a holy relic.
See yourself standing before it. Perhaps it is one of those temples carved from the rock of a cliff.
You walk through the entrance and into a massive room, with lofty ceilings and shafts of sunlight shining through high apertures.
You walk down the central aisle and reach a flight of stairs on the other side of this room.
As you walk up the stairs you are filled with anticipation for what you are about to see, the artifact you have journeyed all this way to look upon.
At the top of the stairs is a corridor. You walk down this and reach a heavy, ancient curtain, on the other side of which is the inner sanctum of this temple, the holy of holies.
You pause, thinking about what lies on the other side of the curtain, in this room.
For in this room is the very stone tablet on which God wrote His Word in the time of Moses.
What artifact could be holier?
You walk through the curtain and there, in the middle of a room filled with candles, is the stone tablet.
Hardly breathing, you walk up to it and read the words carved into it so long ago by the Hand of God.
It says, “My Son, known as…” and here, to your astonishment, you see your own name, “is pure and holy as Myself.”
Your eyes are rooted. You can scarce believe what you read. What can it mean that this was God’s Word to humanity, that this was God’s message for the ages?
While you are looking at the tablet and seeing its words—”My Son, known as [name], is pure and holy as Myself”—try to take it in. Try to let the magnitude of this truth sink all the way in. Let it wash over you like a wave of realization.
Now look around and see that the perimeter of the room is lined with other stone tablets.
As you walk over to these you see that they have the same line carved on them, only with a different name on each one. Each one has the name of someone you know.
Spend a minute or two now, going around the room, looking at each tablet and seeing there the name of a different person in your life: “My Son, known as [name], is pure and holy as Myself.”
After you have spent time looking at each tablet, and have had one last sacred look at the one in the middle with your name on it, you are ready to leave the room.
Being here and seeing what you’ve seen has been a holy experience, one that will leave you forever changed.
You realize now, as you stand before the curtain, ready to exit, that your life has changed. Your job now is to bring this message to the world, not just by talking about the truth you’ve discovered, but mainly by conveying this stupendous truth with the way you behave towards people.
Say, “The Word of God is given me to speak, with my lips, my hands, my eyes, my deeds, my life, my love.”
Commentary
The phrase “the Word of God” in A Course in Miracles is defined here as “My Son is pure, and holy as Myself” (1:2). In another place it is said to be “I am as God created me” (W-110.9:3). We were created by this Word; as in the Bible, He spoke, and it was so. “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gn 1:3). Even so, God spoke, “My Son is pure, and holy as Myself,” and the Son, pure and holy as God, came into being. God’s Thought of us was His creative act of Fatherhood; it stands unaltered and unalterable. I cannot make my Self other than God created me.
Let us accept His fatherhood, and all is given us. (1:5)
Hearing His Word is accepting His Fatherhood, accepting that we were created in His Love and can be no other than what He created us to be. It is to accept the Atonement (see M-22.1:5-7), the unassailable fact that I—that is, my true Self and not my ego image of myself—am as pure and as holy as God Himself.
And it is this that I would speak to all my brothers, who are given me to cherish as my own. (2:2)
What I want to communicate to my brothers and sisters is that they all share this innocence with me. My grievances, my judgments, or my criticisms communicate guilt. My forgiveness communicates their innocence. Father, show me how to communicate the Atonement today; show me how, in word and deed, to speak the Word of God: “You are as pure and holy as God.”
This clearly relates to the lead-in page on the Christ:
Christ is God’s Son as He created Him. He is the Self we share. (W-WI.6.1:1-2)
This is the only part of you that has reality in truth. The rest is dreams. (W-WI.6.3:2-3)