Read on the ACIM CE App: https://acimce.app/:W-355
Lesson 355
There is no end to all the peace and joy,
and all the miracles that I will give,
when I accept God’s Word. Why not 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.
Commentary
“God’s Word,” to me, is speaking here of what Jesus, in the Course, is telling me about my own Identity. It is the truth about what I am.
It is You I choose, and my identity along with You. Your Son would be himself, and know You as his Father and Creator and his love. (1:7-8)
A Christian lecturer who inspired me years ago, Major Ian Thomas, used to say that man’s purpose, my purpose as an individual, is to be “the human vehicle of the divine content.” That is what I am here for. Christ wants to be Himself in me, in the form of me. I have no other reason for being here, although the ego thinks I am here to forget God.
The Course teaches that the ego made the world and the body as an attack against God. It wants to use the world to forget God. The Holy Spirit wants to use it as a vehicle to remember God. There is no real purpose to anything except one of those two.
I am here, today as always, to reflect God’s Love. I am here to see innocence. I am here to “look on everyone as brother, and perceive all things as kindly and as good.” (W-WI.14.3:4). I am here to bless my brothers and to ask them to share my peace and joy.
“Why not today?” Why should I wait? These are the questions the lesson asks.
I am sure my treasure waits for me, and I need but reach out my hand to find it. Even now my fingers touch it. It is very close. I need not wait an instant more to be at peace forever. (1:3-6)
There is no answer to why we wait, because there are no reasons to wait. Nor has there ever been a reason. All there is to do in response is to let the constriction in our hearts unknot, to quell the resistance to the flow of love, and to open our hearts fully to every living thing. To let ourselves be love; to let love be us. To desist from the belief that we are anything else but love.
The resistance that feels so great, like a stone wall, is nothing more than a cloud, unable to stop a feather. Only my belief in its impenetrability makes it a barrier, like an elephant staked to a tiny peg in the ground, believing it cannot move because it has been trained to think it is chained to a tree. We think we are without love; we believe we are unloving. We think the ego stands like a granite battlement between us and God, keeping Him out.
The ego is a cloud. It could not stop a ping-pong ball. It is totally without strength to resist the Love of God, and it cannot and will not resist. God’s Love stands at the end of time, having already won. Oh, my heart! Open to that Love today! Receive it; give it. Receive it by giving it, and give it by receiving it. See it everywhere for it is everywhere, in everyone.