Read on the ACIM CE App: https://acimce.app/:W-298
Lesson 298
I love You, Father, and I love Your Son.
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.
Commentary
“My gratitude permits my love to be accepted without fear” (1:1). It is speaking here of my love for the Father and His Son. As the Course often points out, in my wrong mind I am afraid of my own love for God and His Son, because it seems that if I give in to it, I will lose myself in the infinity of God. I will lose my “little self” in Him, but not my true Identity. It is the false identity I am afraid of losing, and clinging to it, attempting to preserve ego identification, makes me terrified of my own love of God.
“Gratitude” is what “permits my love to be accepted without fear.” Gratitude is simply the acceptance of and thankfulness for God’s gifts: “I accept instead what God establishes as mine” (1:3). When I let go of what I think I made—the ego identity—and accept instead God’s gift of my true Self, with thanks, suddenly my love for God and for His Son is no longer terrifying. All that makes it seem frightening are my vain attempts to make real what never was real and to hold on to my separateness.
Deep in my heart, I love You, Father. I let go, even if only for an instant, of what I have been trying to protect. I liberate my love, freeing it to flow unhindered. I allow myself to feel its depth. So often it seems to me that I do not love You; now, it is refreshing and cleansing to simply allow that love free course, to acknowledge its presence within me. I have the gift of my secure Identity in You; there is no need to protect a nonexistent “something else.”
Deep in my heart, Father, I also love Your Son, the Christ Who is my true Self, and the shared Self of every living thing. I accept the Son as my Self, and I accept my sisters and brothers as parts, with me, of that one Self. Your Son is Your gift to me, and is me. So often it seems to me that I do not love some aspects of the Son, some of those who seem to differ from me, or who seem antagonistic to me. Now, in this moment, I acknowledge them all with gratitude as parts of my Self. I am no longer, for this instant at least, protecting this little fenced-off aspect I have known as “me.” I embrace them all with love.
I am so glad You describe the journey as going “through fear to meet my Love” (1:3). Because there is fear. I feel frightened to let go of me. Who will I be? What will be left? How wonderful to know that what I fear to lose is not lost at all; it is expanded and uplifted into something far greater than I have ever believed possible. When I have gone through fear, what I meet is my Love. This, truly, is no sacrifice!
I am grateful for…escape from everything that would obscure my love for God my Father and His holy Son. (2:4)