The “little me” was right to feel so alone, imagining my self as separate, different, misunderstood. But I have been wrong in assuming I am that separate self, a body, vulnerable, apart, afraid. Hallelujah at being wrong! Now it is known that Life is God’s, I have no other home, and I do not exist apart from Him. Ego “thoughts” turn into Thoughts of Stillness, Peace, Innocence, and Quiet, spreading Joy as I sit with Spirit and listen … Guidance follows naturally on the heels of listening, and so my conviction is strengthened. God has no Thoughts that are not part of me, and I have none but those which are of Him.
LESSON 223
God is my life. I have no life but His.
I was mistaken when I thought I lived apart from God, a separate entity that moved in isolation, unattached, and housed within a body. Now I know my life is God’s, I have no other home, and I do not exist apart from Him. He has no Thoughts that are not part of me, and I have none but those which are of Him.
Our Father, let us see the face of Christ instead of our mistakes. For we who are Your holy Son are sinless. We would look upon our sinlessness, for guilt proclaims that we are not Your Son. And we would not forget You longer. We are lonely here, and long for Heaven, where we are at home. Today we would return. Our Name is Yours, and we acknowledge that we are Your Son.
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.
I am born of God, I live in God, God is my terrain. God is the air I breathe, God is the food which sustains me, God is the water I drink, God soothes my thirst and cleanses me. God is Home, and I am at Home in God. Everywhere I go, God is with me. Every word I speak, action I take, is Him moving through me. I am safe. I am free. I am timeless. I am Love Itself. God is with me, because I am in Him. Together, or not at all.
LESSON 222
God is with me. I live and move in Him.
God is with me. He is my Source of life, the life within, the air I breathe, the food by which I am sustained, the water which renews and cleanses me. He is my home, wherein I live and move; the Spirit which directs my actions, offers me Its Thoughts, and guarantees my safety from all pain. He covers me with kindness and with care, and holds in love the Son He shines upon, who also shines on Him. How still is he who knows the truth of what He speaks today!
Father, we have no words except Your Name upon our lips and in our minds, as we come quietly into Your Presence now, and ask to rest with You in 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.
Delicate pink-violet sunrise suffuses my mind as I let my thoughts be still. Sweet ecstasy expands through my chest and tingles move up and down my spine, along my arms and legs. This Quiet is sure. This Quiet is the place-less everywhere that removes the “me” and experiences from one Eye until experience abates.
LESSON 221
Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still.
Father, I come to You today to seek the peace that You alone can give. I come in silence. In the quiet of my heart, the deep recesses of my mind, I wait and listen for Your Voice. My Father, speak to me today. I come to hear Your Voice in silence and in certainty and love, sure You will hear my call and answer me.
Now do we wait in quiet. God is here, because we wait together. I am sure that He will speak to you, and you will hear. Accept my confidence, for it is yours. Our minds are joined. We wait with one intent; to hear our Father’s answer to our call, to let our thoughts be still and find His peace, to hear Him speak to us of what we are, and to reveal Himself unto His Son.
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.
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 Forgiveness?” is the first instruction and goes with Lessons 221 – 230.
1. WHAT IS FORGIVENESS?
Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in that view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin, except a false idea about God’s Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God.
An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. The mind is closed, and will not be released. The thought protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal?
An unforgiving thought does many things. In frantic action it pursues its goal, twisting and overturning what it sees as interfering with its chosen path. Distortion is its purpose, and the means by which it would accomplish it as well. It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality, without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view.
Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.
Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show you what to do, through Him Who is your Guide, your Savior and Protector, strong in hope, and certain of your ultimate success. He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God.
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 Forgiveness?” is the first instruction and goes with Lessons 221 – 230.
Words will mean little now. We use them but as guides on which we do not now depend. For now we seek direct experience of truth alone. The lessons that remain are merely introductions to the times in which we leave the world of pain, and go to enter peace. Now we begin to reach the goal this course has set, and find the end toward which our practicing was always geared.
Now we attempt to let the exercise be merely a beginning. For we wait in quiet expectation for our God and Father. He has promised He will take the final step Himself. And we are sure His promises are kept. We have come far along the road, and now we wait for Him. We will continue spending time with Him each morning and at night, as long as makes us happy. We will not consider time a matter of duration now. We use as much as we will need for the result that we desire. Nor will we forget our hourly remembrance in between, calling to God when we have need of Him as we are tempted to forget our goal.
We will continue with a central thought for all the days to come, and we will use that thought to introduce our times of rest, and calm our minds at need. Yet we will not content ourselves with simple practicing in the remaining holy instants which conclude the year that we have given God. We say some simple words of welcome, and expect our Father to reveal Himself, as He has promised. We have called on Him, and He has promised that His Son will not remain unanswered when he calls His Name.
Now do we come to Him with but His Word upon our minds and hearts, and wait for Him to take the step to us that He has told us, through His Voice, He would not fail to take when we invited Him. He has not left His Son in all his madness, nor betrayed his trust in Him. Has not His faithfulness earned Him the invitation that He seeks to make us happy? We will offer it, and it will be accepted. So our times with Him will now be spent. We say the words of invitation that His Voice suggests, and then we wait for Him to come to us.
Now is the time of prophecy fulfilled. Now are all ancient promises upheld and fully kept. No step remains for time to separate from its accomplishment. For now we cannot fail. Sit silently and wait upon your Father. He has willed to come to you when you have recognized it is your will He do so. And you could have never come this far unless you saw, however dimly, that it is your will.
I am so close to you we cannot fail. Father, we give these holy times to You, in gratitude to Him Who taught us how to leave the world of sorrow in exchange for its replacement, given us by You. We look not backward now. We look ahead, and fix our eyes upon the journey’s end. Accept these little gifts of thanks from us, as through Christ’s vision we behold a world beyond the one we made, and take that world to be the full replacement of our own.
And now we wait in silence, unafraid and certain of Your coming. We have sought to find our way by following the Guide You sent to us. We did not know the way, but You did not forget us. And we know that You will not forget us now. We ask but that Your ancient promises be kept which are Your Will to keep. We will with You in asking this. The Father and the Son, Whose holy Will created all that is, can fail in nothing. In this certainty, we undertake these last few steps to You, and rest in confidence upon Your Love, which will not fail the Son who calls to You.
And so we start upon the final part of this one holy year, which we have spent together in the search for truth and God, Who is its one Creator. We have found the way He chose for us, and made the choice to follow it as He would have us go. His Hand has held us up. His Thoughts have lit the darkness of our minds. His Love has called to us unceasingly since time began.
We had a wish that God would fail to have the Son whom He created for Himself. We wanted God to change Himself, and be what we would make of Him. And we believed that our insane desires were the truth. Now we are glad that this is all undone, and we no longer think illusions true. The memory of God is shimmering across the wide horizons of our minds. A moment more, and it will rise again. A moment more, and we who are God’s Sons are safely home, where He would have us be.
Now is the need for practice almost done. For in this final section, we will come to understand that we need only call to God, and all temptations disappear. Instead of words, we need but feel His Love. Instead of prayers, we need but call His Name. Instead of judging, we need but be still and let all things be healed. We will accept the way God’s plan will end, as we received the way it started. Now it is complete. This year has brought us to eternity.
One further use for words we still retain. From time to time, instructions on a theme of special relevance will intersperse our daily lessons and the periods of wordless, deep experience which should come afterwards. These special thoughts should be reviewed each day, each one of them to be continued till the next is given you. They should be slowly read and thought about a little while, preceding one of the holy and blessed instants in the day. We give the first of these instructions now.
To see the entire Workbook for Students, get a copy of the book, A Course in Miracles, or visit the original publisher, Foundation for Inner Peace, online at http://acim.org/Lessons/index.html. To have the lesson delivered daily to your email box for free, sign up with http://www.acimdailylesson.com/category/daily-lessons-from-a-course-in-miracles. An excellent line-by-line analysis called Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles is offered by Kenneth Wapnick through the bookstore at http://www.facim.org.
Let me follow Him Who leads me home, and peace is certain as the Love of God. Contemplating this review lesson, all grows Quiet … and I am Still. In the Stillness, there is no time. Returning to earth, the clock tells me just a few minutes have elapsed. Holy Instants are eternal and fleeting while we still think we are here … but it is very comforting to know that we have never left Here.
LESSON 220
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
(200) There is no peace except the peace of God.
Let me not wander from the way of peace, for I am lost on other roads than this. But let me follow Him Who leads me home, and peace is certain as the Love of God.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
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.
God’s Son is a smooth, undulating outward-spreading Pleasure. Not water, not wind … not fire, not earth, but All-Directional. Quiet, Still, yet dynamic, forceful! Be still, and be God’s Child … Evenly dispersed power surge of Needless Joyful Grace.
LESSON 219
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
(199) I am not a body. I am free.
I am God’s Son. Be still, my mind, and think a moment upon this. And then return to earth, without confusion as to what my Father loves forever as His Son.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
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.
I cannot condemn if I do not judge. And why should I judge when I don’t know anything? Judgment has not given me happiness nor made me feel safe. Give up judgment and experience freedom. Skeletons have sightless eyes, but lit from within Vision glows without reproach. I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me. Form fades as Vision illuminates the Formless Truth within.
LESSON 218
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
(198) Only my condemnation injures me.
My condemnation keeps my vision dark, and through my sightless eyes I cannot see the vision of my glory. Yet today I can behold this glory and be glad.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
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.
I am the one who is happy and relieved when I am saved. Being saved is waking up. Waking up is being undone. Undoing naturally leads to Being. Being smiles kindly on delusions of fear and separation. Salvation is a salve on the soul, soothing away the sense of individuality, which reveals what seems to be many streams from one dynamic consciousness.
LESSON 217
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
(197) It can be but my gratitude I earn.
Who should give thanks for my salvation but myself? And how but through salvation can I find the Self to Whom my thanks are due?
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
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.
How I see myself is how I see my brother. How I see myself is how I see life. As my belief in the body lessens and my faith in God increases, I am able to “see” the essence of myself and everyone around me, symbolized by Light. In this classroom, with the Holy Spirit as my teacher, more and more my experience is enlightened and my mood is light-hearted. Crucified or resurrected? Crucified or ascended? Crucified or Holy Blended? I choose God’s Teacher, the memory of my Self, the Unity of Innocent Eternal Love.
LESSON 216
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
(196) It can be but myself I crucify.
All that I do I do unto myself. If I attack, I suffer. But if I forgive, salvation will be given me.
I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.
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.
