Lesson 306

The gift of Christ is all I seek today.

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: Try to read the first paragraph of this lesson as if it were a diary entry of your own, as if it were a series of your own spontaneous thoughts. See if that doesn’t change your experience of this paragraph.

For an additional exercise, think of a series of situations in your life right now. With each one, note the main thing(s) you are currently seeking in that situation. Then say to yourself:

The gift of Christ is all I seek in this situation.
The goal of [specify the goal you are currently seeking] is either secondary or irrelevant.

Commentary

Often these closing lessons of the Workbook tell me that I can enter the real world today.

Today I can forget the world I made. Today I can go past all fear and be restored to love and holiness and peace. (1:2-3)

And it is true. If the “world so like to Heaven” (1:1) is truly real, then it exists now, and can be entered at any instant I am willing to do so.

Yet these lessons, to me and to many others, seem to be speaking from a vantage point that is beyond our current reach. Most of the time, I don’t feel that I am on the verge of reaching the end of the journey; do you? I may think that I would like to go past all fear, but that hasn’t been my general experience to date. Only, perhaps, in a few holy instants. So the lessons, perhaps, seem a little above my head. But really, they aren’t.

The lesson for today itself implies a less than exalted state; it says that the gift of Christ is all I “seek” today. If I am seeking it, I don’t possess it yet in full awareness. Strongly, then, the lesson reminds me that today I can forget the world; today I can go past all fear and be restored to love. It reminds me that, in the core of my being, this is what I want. Aware I am not there, I need to be reminded that the goal I seek is truly possible and not simply an idle dream.

More than that, though. One of the means for our salvation the Course propounds is the holy instant. The holy instant is, in simple terms, a brief interval in which I allow my mind to enter the real world, to reach to another state of mind (see T-27.V.2:3-4) which is, in fact, my natural condition as God created me. I may still have too much fear to let go entirely, but I can come for a few minutes at least and, just for now, forget the world and go past my fear to experience a taste of Heaven’s peace, a glimpse of Heaven’s light. I can do this repeatedly during the day. Today, then, I really can forget the world and go past fear, even if just for a second or two.

I may not be able to sustain that state of mind. Yet I can taste it. I can bring back the vision of what I see there. The Course says that only in rare cases can this state be maintained; even Jesus, early in the Course, says that listening only to the Voice for God was the last lesson he learned, and that only with “effort and great willingness” (T-5.II.12:1-3). We need not despair at this, and should not. The brief instants are all we need to guarantee that eventually, when we are fully prepared, we will make that final decision and choose at last not to draw back from Love. That end is sure. For now we can be content with the fact that we are healing, we are learning, we are nurturing our attraction to God, and that eventually it will carry us all the way home.