Part 1 Undoing the Way We See Things Now
REVIEW V God is Love, and therefore so am I.
LESSON 174
- (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.[1]
Daily Prayer for Review:
Steady our feet, our Father. Let our doubts be quiet and our holy minds be still and speak to us. We have no words to give to You. We would but listen to Your Word and make it ours. Lead our practicing as does a father lead a child along a way he does not understand. Yet does he follow, sure that he is safe because his father leads the way for him.
So do we bring our practicing to You. And if we stumble, You will raise us up. If we forget the way, we count upon Your sure remembering. We wander off, but You will not forget to call us back. Quicken our footsteps now, that we may walk more certainly and quickly unto You. And we accept the Word You offer us to unify our practicing, as we review the thoughts that You have given us. In Jesus name. Amen.
Personal Notes and Application: Today we teach this lesson to learn this lesson. Lesson 157 reminds us that it is in quietness and trust that we experience the light of Heaven and hear the echoes of eternity. In the clamor and glamour of the world our mind is beset by celebrations that end in death, but it is the joy of life we learn to feel in our silent practice, our sacred devotion, our love, and desire for God.
Lesson 157 reminds us to clear the inner altar of our mind of all the cluttered thoughts and distractions that the world fills it with. Our minds become a place of serenity and peace as we sweep its altar clear of the world’s senseless distractions. Its junky trinkets and false charms no longer hold any meaning to our quiet, holy minds and Christ’s presence becomes real to us; His face smiles upon us and does not fade away from our vision. He reveals to us, here in the world of form and fiction, that which transcends and goes beyond all words and vision. These foretastes of Heaven cannot be shared – they were not taught to us, for they are our memories of the place from which we came before our earthly exile. There we have no questions about who and what we are because we know our Maker. We have no question of where we came from for we are home where we belong, no longer sifting through the shifting sands of human striving and conniving. There the theme of Review V is a given: God is Love and therefore so am I!
In review of Lesson 158, we learn to give as we receive. When we receive God’s love, we give God’s love. No longer are we who we thought we were, a blighted, bloated ego, an overripe fruit rotting on the vine, twisted with pain and sorrow, spite and vengeance. We are the Sons of God, united with Christ. We are as God created us, our humanity is but a spell, an illusion of splintered brotherhood, unholy sonship at war with one another and ourselves. When we recognize our true identity, we can no longer look to humanity for our answer, for the cure, to make right of all its wrongs. We can no longer hold ourselves or others accountable for what we have done and what we continue to do in darkness – for we are groping about doing the best we can to survive another day in a world designed to grind our bones to make its bread. With this understanding of the world forgiveness comes naturally and graciously. We can say with certainty, “It is forgiven. It never happened. It never was,” because what happens in a dream stays in a dream and does not affect reality one iota.
When we remember who we are and what we are, we remind others of who they are and what they are. When we wake up; others wake up. We do not have to shake them awake. We have no need to scream in their ear, preach endless sermons, quote scriptures, or get down on our knees and grovel before God for their salvation. Our salvation is a given; God never abandons His Creations, or He would not be Love. Our only choice in the matter is how long we choose to spend spinning our wheels in time, trying to find another way than Love’s way.
We give as we receive, with grace and love and forbearance. God is love, and therefore so are we.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Workbook for Students. Lesson 174. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
Audio credit: http://www.eckiefriar.com
the friar patch 