ACIM Daily Lesson 162 Let me perceive no differences today.1. Father, You have one Son. ²And it is he that I would look upon today.
Let me perceive no differences today.
Lesson 262
Let me perceive no differences today.
1. Father, You have one Son. ²And it is he that I would look upon today. ³He is Your one creation. ⁴Why should I perceive a thousand forms in what remains as one? ⁵Why should I give this one a thousand names, when only one suffices? ⁶For Your Son must bear Your Name, for You created him. ⁷Let me not see him as a stranger to his Father, nor as stranger to myself. ⁸For he is part of me and I of him, and we are part of You Who are our Source, eternally united in Your Love; eternally the holy Son of God.
2. We who are one would recognize this day the truth about ourselves. ²We would come home, and rest in unity. ³For there is peace, and nowhere else can peace be sought and found.
Do I See a Body or Do I See God’s Son?
When I look at another or even think of another, I see a body, or I see God’s Son. It is not the form, behaviors, or words that decide what I see. I decide what I see according to my beliefs. When I experience joy at seeing a part of me and a part of our Father, I know I have chosen from my right mind. If not, I ask the Holy Spirit to purify my thoughts and show me what we are and what we are to each other and to God.
Yes, in the world, it seems that we are many and we are different. Everything we experience through the body’s senses seems to prove this. But the world is not reality; the body is just part of the world, so it is not reality. I may need to call each image I see by a different name, but my heart can know us as one. This takes practice and patience. I often remind myself in different ways, such as asking what I am. I may ask the Holy Spirit who it is that stands before me checking out my groceries. Or I may ask who it is that seems to be angry with me.
My prayer is that I not see in another a stranger.
Whatever seems to be happening and whoever seems to be with me or in my mind, I remember that this is God’s Son and bears His name. That remembrance changes how I see him and how I interact with him. Of course, it does! How could it not? It changes the way I see myself as well. What I see in another I will see in me. It is well worth the little effort this practice requires. After all, how much time and energy does it take to ask the Holy Spirit to show me the truth about this one? Or to repeat this simple prayer to myself: ⁷Let me not see him as a stranger to his Father, nor as stranger to myself.
How does this feel?
If I fully recognize our oneness, I will love each one I meet without regard to their seeming differences. The form the love takes will be different depending on the relationship, but the love will be the same and will apply to all. How could that not be true if I know each person as part of a whole?
I would treat each one with honor and respect, knowing who they are as part of God. Because of ego differences, I may not invite each one to my home or become best friends with each one. Some, I may not be able to be with at all. But the heart knows the being beneath the temporary outer ego façade and loves that one. Regardless of the relationship that is possible in this illusion, I would recognize this being, know this being and love this being.
This is not true for me all the time, yet.
Sometimes I am distracted by the ego in me looking at the ego in them. Sometimes I am just distracted by my ego and forget my purpose temporarily. But I have changed. I have learned to see with my heart rather than my head, and one of these days, this vision will be so natural that I will wonder why it took me so long to notice.
This is a contemplation of my one Self from a past journal.
It can be disheartening to realize how I use my brothers as a dumping ground for what I don’t want to acknowledge in myself. On the other hand, I am so grateful that I am now willing to see that this is what I do. I cannot let it go if I don’t let myself know I am doing it. That brother I see as guilty is just another aspect of the one Son. He is me. That is why I find it so helpful to remind myself, “That’s me over there.”
That “me” is having an experience, living a story, and within that story, she is trying to remember how to be happy. That other “me” is doing the same thing. So am I. We are all the same Son, dreaming of so many stories of being separate and having separation experiences and separation feelings. We are all dreaming of ways to be in those stories, ways that are not so painful. We are all of us trying to find our way back home, even if in the particular story the mind is experiencing, we seem not to know this.
I know this, but as the day goes on, I get caught up in Myron’s story.
Then I forget that we all are one. I start to look at my brothers and sisters as if they were not me. I see them as someone else when competition, blame, fear, and anger seem justified. But forgetfulness is a choice, and as I realize what I am doing, I make a different choice as I ask Holy Spirit to choose for God for me. Just the simple words, “Choose for me,” can snap me out of my confusion.
Another thing that helps is to slow down just a little. I bought something at a convenience store yesterday, and suddenly I remembered that the clerk was a holy child of God. I looked her in the eye, smiled, and thanked her for her help. She smiled back. We had a holy moment of recognition there. As I begin to absorb the truth that Jesus tells us throughout the Course, my sense of wonder is growing. I am surrounded by His Creation, by my Self, and I feel so grateful.
Practicing this awareness when the one before me is confrontational can still be challenging.
But that doesn’t change anything. I am just hearing my own fears coming from the mouth of that one. It seems like anger, and it seems that I am being judged by someone, but there is not someone. There is only me in another form. And there is no anger and guilt, there is only love and fear. That simplifies things to the point that I am clear about what it is I really want. I am now more interested in knowing my selves as my Self than I am in defending against those selves.
This is a conversation I had with the Holy Spirit when I was just learning to see differently.
Me: Holy Spirit, what do you have to say to me this morning about today’s lesson? How can I move past what my eyes show me, that is, a world of differences, and see a world of one?
Holy Spirit: Precious one, the eyes show you only what the mind wants to see. Look upon the world, and you will see your wishes played out before you. Then it is a matter of changing your mind about what you want, and as you change your mind about what you want to see, your perception changes.
Me: And so the raging monster becomes the frightened child acting out his fear?
Holy Spirit: Yes, that is so. And what seemed to be a disaster, with acceptance and love, becomes your next step home.
Me: Holy Spirit, yesterday I noticed separation thoughts in the form of judgment. These two people keep coming back into my life, and each time I find myself in judgment of them. Why is it so hard to let go of this feeling of separation in their cases? They have not done something really horrible. I don’t understand my resistance.
Holy Spirit: What have you failed to forgive within yourself that you have projected upon these holy children of God.
All hatred is self-hatred. Do not search your mind but simply rest in God a moment and allow the answer to rise gently to the surface of your awareness. Your resistance to knowing what needs to be forgiven is your resistance to seeing it and knowing it has made a home in your mind.
I assure you that you are not condemned because you have carried an ego belief. It seems to you yet that some ego beliefs are worse than others, and therefore you are afraid to look within that you might find the one unforgivable thought. But I tell you that all ego thoughts are one ego thought. Any thought that is not love is simply a thought that is not love. The many forms these ego thoughts take distract from this fact but do not change it.
Me: Holy Spirit, the word that keeps coming into my mind is value.
Holy Spirit: Yes, if you value the ego thought, you will keep it.
One of the ways to keep a thought that is not true is to justify it. You look upon the actions of a brother and see wrongdoing rather than error; in this way, you justify your failure to forgive. Another way you keep a thought is to “turn a blind eye” to it, that is, to refuse to understand what is happening. If you have a thought in your mind, you know very well it is there.
Me: You caught me! I am guilty of doing just that. I said yesterday that I did not know why I cannot forgive these people.
Holy Spirit: No child, you are not guilty; you are merely placing a value on keeping a certain thought. This is not a sin, only an error. You have given value to what has no value. Are you willing to know you are wrong about being guilty?
Me: Thank you, Holy Spirit. I don’t know how to express my gratitude that you remain within me, unchanged and ever ready to take me to the truth.
The following are tips from Regina and my thoughts about them.
These tips may be very new to you; they were to me when I first heard them. It can be helpful to contemplate them even if the mind wants to reject them. Or just open the mind to something new without judging, instead simply asking the Holy Spirit how this might be helpful.
Regina’s Tips on What Is the Body?
Death is not a thought that most humans cherish. Most people believe they would prefer not to die. Yet, our special theme says the opposite. It says that we see death as “double safety.” Is that true?
Let’s test it. Which of these ideas do you find most comforting?
- Your body will die, but your personality-mind will continue in a spiritual afterlife where you will rejoin with your loved ones who have passed over.
- Your body-personality will die, but you will be reincarnated as another body-personality.
- Your body-personality-mind will die, but life continues beyond your body-personality-mind in all living humans, animals, insects, sea life, plants, etcetera.
Most people will pick #1 or #2 as most comforting. To most people, #3 seems like ‘I no longer exist’ even though life continues as other things.
If we believe that we can cease to exist while other things live, we believe we are separate from those other things. The ‘fence’ seems to work.
Contemplate this today.
Do you believe that your body-personality-mind must survive death in some way in order for you to survive? Or, can the body-personality-mind die while you continue as the life that permeates all living things?
If this contemplation scares you, remember that ego is terrified of no sense of individuality. Let the fear be as it is. Don’t try to change it. Simply remember that this fear comes from ego, and continue the contemplation.
These were my thoughts when I first read this.
I don’t think I continue as Myron, that Myron has to exist for me to exist. I had not thought any further than that or considered the implications. I figured that we continue to evolve individually until we reach a certain point. Then we would know ourselves as part of the whole, like Jesus is now part of the Holy Spirit even though he appears for us in a more familiar way.
But to be honest, I still see separation in some form as normal until God takes that final step and we are all in Him again. The idea that I am Life appearing as Myron and that I exist as life with or without an individual state, that as long as there is life, I exist, is an odd thought. Evidently, I am more attached to individuality than I thought.
These are Regina’s tips on the lesson.
One name that could suffice for the whole is life-awareness.
A human is life-awareness. A cat is life-awareness. A lizard is life-awareness. A beetle is life-awareness. A fish is life-awareness. A tree is life-awareness. You are life-awareness.
It is one life-awareness. Life-awareness is one.
These are my thoughts.
I understand this. The Course gives us the name “the Sonship.” Regina is using the name “life-awareness.” Either way, every living thing is equally an expression of the Sonship or life-awareness. I am (as life-awareness) the body next to me, the mouse I can’t catch in my house, the bug under the rock in my garden, the dog across the street. Or, rather more accurately, I am the life-awareness that appears in these separate forms.
So, when the Myron form dies, nothing has really happened.
I am, as life awareness, no more affected by the death of that form than Myron will be when she finally kills that mouse. I have touched upon this level of understanding but have never seen it with so much clarity. It was odd at first but is growing on me.
How does this affect the idea that when I die as Myron, I will have an experience as an individual in another dimension? I don’t think it does because the other dimensions are part of the same illusion that I am experiencing here. But maybe, I will have evolved enough to know what I really am, and so will work on that level to help others remember.
If not this time, I assume this will happen eventually. The idea of an individual spiritual evolution will also naturally end when the illusion ends. In the meantime, I will continue to contemplate the idea given here because I think it will help me give up the idea of individuality.
Contemplation 2025
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