When I accept that my treasure house is full, I am willing to recognize the Light in myself and others. Then “self” becomes Self and “others” become brothers. How simple, pure and True. If I give my brothers the gift of Light and Truth, I recognize we All are Light and Truth.
LESSON 316
All gifts I give my brothers are my own.
As every gift my brothers give is mine, so every gift I give belongs to me. Each one allows a past mistake to go, and leave no shadow on the holy mind my Father loves. His grace is given me in every gift a brother has received throughout all time, and past all time as well. My treasure house is full, and angels watch its open doors that not one gift is lost, and only more are added. Let me come to where my treasures are, and enter in where I am truly welcome and at home, among the gifts that God has given me.
Father, I would accept Your gifts today. I do not recognize them. Yet I trust that You Who gave them will provide the means by which I can behold them, see their worth, and cherish only them as what I want.
Although I am a naturally appreciative person, practicing today’s lesson for many years before I ever read it, the idea of “thanks” and “gratitude” has been problematic for me. To be told to be “thankful,” felt like a scolding, as if I had been complaining and should feel guilty about my ungrateful nature. I feel good turning my misunderstandings and guilty feelings over to Jesus, laying them at His feet as gifts on His altar. He would never have me feel guilty, scolded, criticized, obligated or ashamed. And He welcomes me disposing of these miscreated “thoughts” and opening my heart and mind to receive all that is already Ours. All gifts my brothers give belong to me and my heart is full with Gladness.
LESSON 315
All gifts my brothers give belong to me.
Each day a thousand treasures come to me with every passing moment. I am blessed with gifts throughout the day, in value far beyond all things of which I can conceive. A brother smiles upon another, and my heart is gladdened. Someone speaks a word of gratitude or mercy, and my mind receives this gift and takes it as its own. And everyone who finds the way to God becomes my savior, pointing out the way to me, and giving me his certainty that what he learned is surely mine as well.
I thank you, Father, for the many gifts that come to me today and every day from every Son of God. My brothers are unlimited in all their gifts to me. Now may I offer them my thankfulness, that gratitude to them may lead me on to my Creator and His memory.
Being in the present extends a new future of Ever-present Love … which leads to an Eternal Present in which a future is unnecessary. Seeking a future different from the past is simply the willingness to ask for a better way, to accept that we know nothing, to suspend all judgment. And, voila!, the Timeless Present is revealed.
LESSON 314
I seek a future different from the past.
From new perception of the world there comes a future very different from the past. The future now is recognized as but extension of the present. Past mistakes can cast no shadows on it, so that fear has lost its idols and its images, and being formless, it has no effects. Death will not claim the future now, for life is now its goal, and all the needed means are happily provided. Who can grieve or suffer when the present has been freed, extending its security and peace into a quiet future filled with joy?
Father, we were mistaken in the past, and choose to use the present to be free. Now do we leave the future in Your Hands, leaving behind our past mistakes, and sure that You will keep Your present promises, and guide the future in their holy light.
We are nothing but Light. We really are Light. We are Light. A new perception, true perception, uses perception to perceive Light rather than darkness, Unity rather than separateness. Now let a new perception come to me … with great willingness I ask and with great willingness I allow a new perception of all worldly things to be translated through Love. The happy dream and the real world of the Holy Spirit filter through what I have perceived to clarify my Identity. Let us join in this clear awakening to Truth.
LESSON 313
Now let a new perception come to me.
Father, there is a vision which beholds all things as sinless, so that fear has gone, and where it was is love invited in. And love will come wherever it is asked. This vision is Your gift. The eyes of Christ look on a world forgiven. In His sight are all its sins forgiven, for He sees no sin in anything He looks upon. Now let His true perception come to me, that I may waken from the dream of sin and look within upon my sinlessness, which You have kept completely undefiled upon the altar to Your holy Son, the Self with which I would identify.
Let us today behold each other in the sight of Christ. How beautiful we are! How holy and how loving! Brother, come and join with me today. We save the world when we have joined. For in our vision it becomes as holy as the light in us.
When “I” first chose to be “me,” a curtain rose before Vision and split into “seeing.” At first, I saw nothing other than something else. This “something else” had no name, no designation, no title, no identity other than not-One. Right then I could have brushed the curtain aside and known the One Vision that is God and God’s One Child. I did not. And so I dream that I see otherness. Today, I see all things as I would have them be with the Holy Spirit’s guidance and my memory of God as my Self arises naturally.
LESSON 312
I see all things as I would have them be.
Perception follows judgment. Having judged, we therefore see what we would look upon. For sight can merely serve to offer us what we would have. It is impossible to overlook what we would see, and fail to see what we have chosen to behold. How surely, therefore, must the real world come to greet the holy sight of anyone who takes the Holy Spirit’s purpose as his goal for seeing. And he cannot fail to look upon what Christ would have him see and share Christ’s Love for what he looks upon.
I have no purpose for today except to look upon a liberated world, set free from all the judgments I have made. Father, this is Your Will for me today, and therefore it must be my goal as well.
When I give my lack of understanding to the Holy Spirit as a gift, He relieves me of the agony of self-judgment which is always critical and punishing (whether I use it against me or you) and gives me peace of mind in return.
I have always loved an open mind, a non-arguing mind, an exploring, curious, non-judgmental mind. For many years I judged myself as weird, too accepting, and even perverse, simply because I found it difficult to judge others.
Eventually this led to people confiding in me, and I earned my living as a listener. A true listener is non-judgmental; a true listener is a receiver, an accepter, an acknowledger, and, ultimately, a reflector of Love and Light, a representative of Him Who sent me and I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal. And I will discover there is no me, only One We.
LESSON 311
I judge all things as I would have them be.
Judgment was made to be a weapon used against the truth. It separates what it is being used against, and sets it off as if it were a thing apart. And then it makes of it what you would have it be. It judges what it cannot understand, because it cannot see totality and therefore judges falsely. Let us not use it today, but make a gift of it to Him Who has a different use for it. He will relieve us of the agony of all the judgments we have made against ourselves, and re-establish peace of mind by giving us God’s Judgment of His Son.
Father, we wait with open mind today, to hear Your Judgment of the Son You love. We do not know him, and we cannot judge. And so we let Your Love decide what he whom You created as Your Son must be.
In Part II of the Workbook, every 10 lessons we are given an instruction. It comes in the form of a question. There are 14 of these questions all together, and each one of them corresponds to a set of 10 lessons, and is to be read every day for the next 10 days along with our lesson for the day. “What Is the Last Judgment?” is the tenth instruction and goes with Lessons 311 – 320.
10. What Is the Last Judgment?
Christ’s Second Coming gives the Son of God this gift: to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgment in which perception ends. At first you see a world that has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.
The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ’s sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless.
You who believed that God’s Last Judgment would condemn the world to hell along with you, accept this holy truth: God’s Judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God’s saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering, return to peace, security and happiness, and union with your own Identity.
God’s Final Judgment is as merciful as every step in His appointed plan to bless His Son, and call him to return to the eternal peace He shares with him. Be not afraid of love. For it alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dream of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks you give it welcome. And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free.
This is God’s Final Judgment: “You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am your Father and you are My Son.”
Remember, in Part II of the Workbook, every 10 lessons we are given an instruction. It comes in the form of a question. There are 14 of these questions all together, and each one of them corresponds to a set of 10 lessons, and is to be read every day for the next 10 days along with our lesson for the day. “What Is the Last Judgment?” is the tenth instruction and goes with Lessons 311 – 320.
Stop everything. If I am to be penetrated by this lesson, I must, for just a moment, stop everything. Stop the forward motion of my mental list. Stop the chronic tension in my muscles which binds me to form. Stop “me-ing” and allow Being.
Let go of everything I think I understand … and surrender fear to Fearlessness, fear to Love. If this is done for but one instant, it is Done! For there is no greater motivation to choose Peace than Peace. No greater motivation to choose Love than Love.
Father, I accept Your sweet reminder to remember You and be free of me, to love my brothers and my Self, and to sweetly know that “I” know nothing for I am No Thing. Amen.
LESSON 310
In fearlessness and love I spend today.
This day, my Father, would I spend with You, as You have chosen all my days should be. And what I will experience is not of time at all. The joy that comes to me is not of days nor hours, for it comes from Heaven to Your Son. This day will be Your sweet reminder to remember You, Your gracious calling to Your holy Son, the sign Your grace has come to me, and that it is Your Will I be set free today.
We spend this day together, you and I. And all the world joins with us in our song of thankfulness and joy to Him Who gave salvation to us, and Who set us free. We are restored to peace and holiness. There is no room in us for fear today, for we have welcomed love into our hearts.
To truly look within, not at myself, but at my Self, is liberation. The Truth sets us free of all delusional states of mind that say I am a “me” when, truly, Reality remains eternally “We.” Innocence is a most beautiful state, and it arises naturally with joining every brother — Innocence is Unity. The ego fears to look within because it knows that will be its end. But it doesn’t let itself know that the end is not scary because there is nothing to end but a dream which never really happened.
LESSON 309
I will not fear to look within today.
Within me is eternal innocence, because it is God’s Will that it be there forever and forever. I, His Son, whose will is limitless as is His Own, can will no change in this. For to deny my Father’s Will is to deny my own. To look within is but to find my will as God created it, and as it is. I fear to look within because I think I made another will that is not true, and made it real. Yet it has no effects. Within me is the Holiness of God. Within me is the memory of Him.
The step I take today, my Father, is my sure release from idle dreams of sin. Your altar stands serene and undefiled. It is the holy altar to my Self, and there I find my true Identity.
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.
The only interval in which I can be saved from time is now. I made up the idea of time and use it to link the past and the future, thereby skipping the present. But there is my mistake: God is in the ever-present now. “Now” is where Love lives. Now is now 🙂 “This instant is the only time there is” does make a worthy mantra. “This instant is the only time there is” repeated over and over sincerely erases the past, which reveals the future as meaningless, and undoes the need for a future at all. This instant is the only time there is. Now. This instant is the only time there is. Now. This instant is the only time there is. Now!
LESSON 308
This instant is the only time there is.
I have conceived of time in such a way that I defeat my aim. If I elect to reach past time to timelessness, I must change my perception of what time is for. Time’s purpose cannot be to keep the past and future one. The only interval in which I can be saved from time is now. For in this instant has forgiveness come to set me free. The birth of Christ is now, without a past or future. He has come to give His present blessing to the world, restoring it to timelessness and love. And love is ever-present, here and now.
Thanks for this instant, Father. It is now I am released. This instant is the time You have appointed for Your Son’s release, and for salvation of the world in him.
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.
