Lesson 183 – I call upon God’s Name and on my own.

Commentary (full lesson beneath commentary)

99 + 9 = 108 … the Sufis chant the 99 names of God … God has no name … a name is a symbol … a symbol can be used to undo my belief in symbols … the Name is Abstract Loving Oneness — God’s and mine … His Name is the opposite of names which separate and define.  His Name is Thine … and Mine … God Is and We Are His Creation, co-creating … the wavy spreading “feeling” fills me and extends through me … and it is clear that “me” is just a concept within “God Is.”

LESSON 183

I call upon God’s Name and on my own.

God’s Name is holy, but no holier than yours. To call upon His Name is but to call upon your own. A father gives his son his name, and thus identifies the son with him. His brothers share his name, and thus are they united in a bond to which they turn for their identity. Your Father’s Name reminds you who you are, even within a world that does not know; even though you have not remembered it.

God’s Name can not be heard without response, nor said without an echo in the mind that calls you to remember. Say His Name, and you invite the angels to surround the ground on which you stand, and sing to you as they spread out their wings to keep you safe, and shelter you from every worldly thought that would intrude upon your holiness.

Repeat God’s Name, and all the world responds by laying down illusions. Every dream the world holds dear has suddenly gone by, and where it seemed to stand you find a star; a miracle of grace. The sick arise, healed of their sickly thoughts. The blind can see; the deaf can hear. The sorrowful cast off their mourning, and the tears of pain are dried as happy laughter comes to bless the world.

Repeat the Name of God, and little names have lost their meaning. No temptation but becomes a nameless and unwanted thing before God’s Name. Repeat His Name, and see how easily you will forget the names of all the gods you valued. They have lost the name of god you gave them. They become anonymous and valueless to you, although before you let the Name of God replace their little names, you stood before them worshipfully, naming them as gods.

Repeat the Name of God, and call upon your Self, Whose Name is His. Repeat His Name, and all the tiny, nameless things on earth slip into right perspective. Those who call upon the Name of God can not mistake the nameless for the Name, nor sin for grace, nor bodies for the holy Son of God. And should you join a brother as you sit with him in silence, and repeat God’s Name along with him within your quiet mind, you have established there an altar which reaches to God Himself and to His Son.

Practice but this today; repeat God’s Name slowly again and still again. Become oblivious to every name but His. Hear nothing else. Let all your thoughts become anchored on this. No other word we use except at the beginning, when we say today’s idea but once. And then God’s Name becomes our only thought, our only word, the only thing that occupies our minds, the only wish we have, the only sound with any meaning, and the only Name of everything that we desire to see; of everything that we would call our own.

Thus do we give an invitation which can never be refused. And God will come, and answer it Himself. Think not He hears the little prayers of those who call on Him with names of idols cherished by the world. They cannot reach Him thus. He cannot hear requests that He be not Himself, or that His Son receive another name than His.

Repeat God’s Name, and you acknowledge Him as sole Creator of reality. And you acknowledge also that His Son is part of Him, creating in His Name. Sit silently, and let His Name become the all-encompassing idea that holds your mind completely. Let all thoughts be still except this one. And to all other thoughts respond with this, and see God’s Name replace the thousand little names you gave your thoughts, not realizing that there is one Name for all there is, and all that there will be.

Today you can achieve a state in which you will experience the gift of grace. You can escape all bondage of the world, and give the world the same release you found. You can remember what the world forgot, and offer it your own remembering. You can accept today the part you play in its salvation, and your own as well. And both can be accomplished perfectly.

Turn to the Name of God for your release, and it is given you. No prayer but this is necessary, for it holds them all within it. Words are insignificant, and all requests unneeded when God’s Son calls on his Father’s Name. His Father’s Thoughts become his own. He makes his claim to all his Father gave, is giving still, and will forever give. He calls on Him to let all things he thought he made be nameless now, and in their place the holy Name of God becomes his judgment of their worthlessness.

All little things are silent. Little sounds are soundless now. The little things of earth have disappeared. The universe consists of nothing but the Son of God, who calls upon his Father. And his Father’s Voice gives answer in his Father’s holy Name. In this eternal, still relationship, in which communication far transcends all words, and yet exceeds in depth and height whatever words could possibly convey, is peace eternal. In our Father’s Name, we would experience this peace today. And in His Name, it shall be given us.

Let’s practice together!  Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube.  Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice. 

Lesson 182 – I will be still an instant and go home.

Commentary (full lesson beneath commentary)

The world recedes … I shift my attention to the Light within me and my organs seem to disappear, my insides are nothing but Glowing Light, and my skin is thin as a threadbare sock.  I am still and the world recedes … the Light brightens and my perception shifts.  Home is “where” the Heart Is and it turns out the Heart is not within the chest.  Neti, neti. Not this, not that … leads Home.  Home is within God’s Heart — the Heart of Unborn Creation.

LESSON 182

I will be still an instant and go home.

This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called you to return, although you do not recognize the voice, nor what it is the voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again.

No one but knows whereof we speak. Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to occupy their time, and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but a dream. Yet who, in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self-deception, would deny he understands the words we speak?

We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home. He goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind. He does not understand he builds in vain. The home he seeks can not be made by him. There is no substitute for Heaven. All he ever made was hell.

Perhaps you think it is your childhood home that you would find again. The childhood of your body, and its place of shelter, are a memory now so distorted that you merely hold a picture of a past that never happened. Yet there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father’s house, and knows that He is alien here. This childhood is eternal, with an innocence that will endure forever. Where this Child shall go is holy ground. It is His Holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one.

It is this Child in you your Father knows as His Own Son. It is this Child Who knows His Father. He desires to go home so deeply, so unceasingly, His voice cries unto you to let Him rest a while. He does not ask for more than just a few instants of respite; just an interval in which He can return to breathe again the holy air that fills His Father’s house. You are His home as well. He will return. But give Him just a little time to be Himself, within the peace that is His home, resting in silence and in peace and love.

This Child needs your protection. He is far from home. He is so little that He seems so easily shut out, His tiny voice so readily obscured, His call for help almost unheard amid the grating sounds and harsh and rasping noises of the world. Yet does He know that in you still abides His sure protection. You will fail Him not. He will go home, and you along with Him.

This Child is your defenselessness; your strength. He trusts in you. He came because He knew you would not fail. He whispers of His home unceasingly to you. For He would bring you back with Him, that He Himself might stay, and not return again where He does not belong, and where He lives an outcast in a world of alien thoughts. His patience has no limits. He will wait until you hear His gentle Voice within you, calling you to let Him go in peace, along with you, to where He is at home and you with Him.

When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice. So poignantly He calls to you that you will not resist Him longer. In that instant He will take you to His home, and you will stay with Him in perfect stillness, silent and at peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt, sublimely certain that you are at home.

Rest with Him frequently today. For He was willing to become a little Child that you might learn of Him how strong is he who comes without defenses, offering only love’s messages to those who think he is their enemy. He holds the might of Heaven in His hand and calls them friend, and gives His strength to them, that they may see He would be Friend to them. He asks that they protect Him, for His home is far away, and He will not return to it alone.

Christ is reborn as but a little Child each time a wanderer would leave his home. For he must learn that what he would protect is but this Child, Who comes defenseless and Who is protected by defenselessness. Go home with Him from time to time today. You are as much an alien here as He.

Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing, and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence. Christ has called you friend and brother. He has even come to ask your help in letting Him go home today, completed and completely. He has come as does a little child, who must beseech his father for protection and for love. He rules the universe, and yet He asks unceasingly that you return with Him, and take illusions as your gods no more.

You have not lost your innocence. It is for this you yearn. This is your heart’s desire. This is the voice you hear, and this the call which cannot be denied. The holy Child remains with you. His home is yours. Today He gives you His defenselessness, and you accept it in exchange for all the toys of battle you have made. And now the way is open, and the journey has an end in sight at last. Be still an instant and go home with Him, and be at peace a while.

Let’s practice together!  Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube.  Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice. 

Lesson 181 – I trust my brothers, who are one with me.

Commentary (full lesson beneath commentary)

Innocence Now.  Peace Now.  Unity Now.  This instant. Now.

LESSON 181

I trust my brothers, who are one with me.

Trusting your brothers is essential to establishing and holding up your faith in your ability to transcend doubt and lack of sure conviction in yourself. When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by what you have perceived in him. You do not look beyond his errors. Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to your awareness of the Self that lies beyond your own mistakes, and past his seeming sins as well as yours.

Perception has a focus. It is this that gives consistency to what you see. Change but this focus, and what you behold will change accordingly. Your vision now will shift, to give support to the intent which has replaced the one you held before. Remove your focus on your brother’s sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in you. And you will not transcend their sight and see the sinlessness that lies beyond.

Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such little focuses give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent. We instruct our minds that it is this we seek, and only this, for just a little while. We do not care about our future goals. And what we saw an instant previous has no concern for us within this interval of time wherein we practice changing our intent. We seek for innocence and nothing else. We seek for it with no concern but now.

A major hazard to success has been involvement with your past and future goals. You have been quite preoccupied with how extremely different the goals this course is advocating are from those you held before. And you have also been dismayed by the depressing and restricting thought that, even if you should succeed, you will inevitably lose your way again.

How could this matter? For the past is gone; the future but imagined.  These concerns are but defenses against present change of focus in perception. Nothing more. We lay these pointless limitations by a little while. We do not look to past beliefs, and what we will believe will not intrude upon us now. We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within.

We recognize that we have lost this goal if anger blocks our way in any form. And if a brother’s sins occur to us, our narrowed focus will restrict our sight, and turn our eyes upon our own mistakes, which we will magnify and call our “sins.” So, for a little while, without regard to past or future, should such blocks arise we will transcend them with instructions to our minds to change their focus, as we say:

It is not this that I would look upon.
I trust my brothers, who are one with me.

And we will also use this thought to keep us safe throughout the day. We do not seek for long-range goals. As each obstruction seems to block the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an instant from the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and uncorrected will remain.

Nor do we ask for fantasies. For what we seek to look upon is really there. And as our focus goes beyond mistakes, we will behold a wholly sinless world. When seeing this is all we want to see, when this is all we seek for in the name of true perception, are the eyes of Christ inevitably ours. And the Love He feels for us becomes our own as well. This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves.

The world which once proclaimed our sins becomes the proof that we are sinless. And our love for everyone we look upon attests to our remembrance of the holy Self which knows no sin, and never could conceive of anything without Its sinlessness. We seek for this remembrance as we turn our minds to practicing today. We look neither ahead nor backwards. We look straight into the present. And we give our trust to the experience we ask for now. Our sinlessness is but the Will of God. This instant is our willing one with His.

Let’s practice together!  Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube.  Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice. 

Lesson 180 – God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Commentary (full lesson beneath commentary)

Grace is kindness.  Kindness is grace.

A fountain of well-being gently sprays good will all around.

Circle of Love, simple and true … words stop right here.

LESSON 180

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(169)   By grace I live.  By grace I am released.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(170)   There is no cruelty in God and none in me.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Let’s practice together!  Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube.  Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice. 

Lesson 179 – God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Commentary (full lesson beneath commentary)

Your grace is given me … my heart starts filling with love like a helium balloon … in no time, I am with the Heart and it is Full … full with One Life, full with One Love, full with Unified All expanding forever in directionless everywhere … it’s like I’ve popped out of myself and into Everything Else which is ever-extending Well-Beingness … the Truth is True.

LESSON 179

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(167)   There is one life, and that I share with God.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(168)   Your grace is given me.  I claim it now.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Let’s practice together!  Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube.  Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice. 

Lesson 178 – God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Commentary (full lesson beneath commentary)

If I let not my mind deny the Thought of God, then I will become aware of the gifts of God with which I am entrusted.  Say not “no” to God.  Stop saying “no” to God.  Yes, we have no bananas.  No, we have the Big Banana!  Always have, always will.  Willingness is the key — being willing to plug my will into His Will and zzzzz the dream flatlines and Reality Shines.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I 🙂

LESSON 178

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(163)   Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(164)   I am entrusted with the gifts of God.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Let’s practice together!  Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube.  Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice. 

Lesson 177 – God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Commentary (full lesson beneath commentary)

Death is just an imagined black sheet over Light.  We tossed it around a thought of ourselves to fence God in to individual lots (separate bodies).  And we gave this black sheet properties of heaviness and hardness so the darkness seems impenetrable and factual. But in the eternal Now we are the Light we’ve always been.  Changing the mind is like emerging from under the black sheet of brick and mortar and discovering the coverings were fantasy–our own dark fantasy.

LESSON 177

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(163)   There is no death.  The Son of God is free.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(164)   Now are we one with Him Who is our Source.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Let’s practice together!  Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube.  Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice. 

Lesson 176 – God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Commentary (full lesson beneath commentary)

There is an internal rush which leads to an eternal stillness.  There is a rainbow-arc bridge elevating the formless me, the thought of me, upward.  There is the breath and me as wave-form, a vaporous and then invisible rolling wave from toe to crown … a Cuban-motion-bodyless body-rolling-mermaid-in-the-sky … then–a great sense of pleasure, a spiritual orgasm, anandamaya kosha, an opening, a letting go, a no-more-me-All-of-We.  But, as Frank Sinatra sang, “The best is yet to come” 🙂  …  I am as God created me … God Is.

LESSON 176

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(161)  Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(162)  I am as God created me.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Let’s practice together!  Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube.  Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice. 

Lesson 175 – God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Commentary (full lesson beneath commentary)

Love is a circle. I give the miracles I have received, and I receive the miracles that I give — if I am willing to accept Love.  Yes, I very much am willing to accept Love.  At first, accepting Love/receiving miracles felt uncomfortable and undeserved.  That is all the past; receptivity feels natural now.

Home is Love and Love is Home.  When I seem to leave Home by dreaming I have separated from God, I feel fear.  Feelings are not facts, therefore fear is not real.  Nothing unreal exists, nothing Real can be threatened.  Herein lies the peace of God.  God is but Love, and therefore so am I 🙂

LESSON 175

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(159) I give the miracles I have received.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(160) I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Let’s practice together!  Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube.  Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice. 

Lesson 174 – God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Commentary (full lesson beneath commentary)

As I disregard the personalities, and concentrate on the Light within the cloak of individuality, the Sameness is obvious.  Each seemingly separate Light expands until we all intermingle and there is only All of Us.  Giving and receiving become the very same thing — loving/extending/expanding.  And entering into His Presence is something that happens so naturally that it’s more of an un-happening of the busy doingness of the ego mind.  What seemed hard is easy.  What seemed painful is peaceful.  What seemed like many is One.

LESSON 174

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(157)   Into His Presence would I enter now.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

(158)   Today I learn to give as I receive.

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Let’s practice together!  Watch and hear Amy reading each ACIM Lesson on Youtube.  Also, check out Workin’ the Workbook, Amy’s online class which supports the ACIM Workbook practice.