A Course in Miracles Workbook Daily Lesson 282, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 282 I will not be afraid of love today. 1. If I could realize but this today, salvation would be reached for all the world.

Lesson 282

I will not be afraid of love today.

1. If I could realize but this today, salvation would be reached for all the world. ²This the decision not to be insane, and to accept myself as God Himself, my Father and my Source, created me. ³This the determination not to be asleep in dreams of death, while truth remains forever living in the joy of love. ⁴And this the choice to recognize the Self Whom God created as the Son He loves, and Who remains my one Identity.

2. Father, Your Name is Love and so is mine. ²Such is the truth. ³And can the truth be changed by merely giving it another name? ⁴The name of fear is simply a mistake. ⁵Let me not be afraid of truth today.

I will not be afraid of who I am.

To say that I will not be afraid of love today means that I will not be afraid of my Self today. I will not be afraid to wake up and know that this is a dream and not reality. I will not be afraid to accept that I really am as God created me, an extension of God, pure love, spirit, and not a body. Today, I will not be afraid to let go of the separate, personal self I assumed in the tiny mad idea. I pray today not to be afraid of the truth.

In the past, I looked at some tips from Regina Dawn Akers on this lesson.

I revisited them today to see how I felt about them now. Here is what she said.

The ego will not tell you that it is afraid of your truth. It will not separate itself from your truth in that way because then you will see that the ego isn’t your truth. In that seeing, you are set free.

Instead, the ego will provide everyday objections to identifying with awareness. For example, it might say:

• People will think you are weird.
• People will think you are egotistical, pretending to be something you aren’t.
• You aren’t ready. You need to learn more first, or you need to have mystical experiences first.
• You won’t be able to take care of everyday responsibilities. You will be out of touch with everyday life.
• It’s simply not true. That’s not who you are. This is who you are. Spiritual teachings are mere fantasy.
• You don’t have time for this. There are important things that require your attention.

All of these objections, and other objections similar to them, are expressions of the ego’s fear of love.

I have looked at Regina’s list of objections carefully and honestly.

I am no longer worried about appearing weird, even in front of my children. True, I still notice the occasional fear of being considered egotistical, but I don’t let that stop me. You aren’t ready is one that I still notice sometimes, but Jesus has told me that this isn’t true, that I don’t need to learn more or have any mystical experiences first.

I am starting to see that this idea of needing to do more to prepare for each step is just an ego decision not to accept what I am. If I already am what God created, what do I need to learn? Clinging to those few ego beliefs is a way of pretending that I can’t do this yet. The rest of the objections she suggests are simply not true, and I know this.

I know several people who are awakened and have been for years, and they cope just fine with life. They are happy and peaceful and the most loving people I know. When I experienced the first shift a couple of years ago, I didn’t experience any difficulty adjusting to it. In fact, life became easier to navigate, and I reached a level of happiness and peace of mind that I had never experienced before.

Fully Accepting My Self

To fully accept my Self as God created me, I must let go of the self I made to take its place. There is nothing else for me to learn or to do to take this step other than to truly desire it. I watch my mind for further objections, and I watch closely because the ego part of the mind doesn’t want to find these objections.

One day I was watching a show on TV, and I loved the story. I had a fleeting thought that I caught. It was that to awaken fully would mean that I could never experience another story like this one. Ok, there was an objection, the fear of giving up the stories altogether. The belief that maybe there is a story in my long, long existence that I have not experienced.

I gave that thought to the Holy Spirit in gratitude that He would remove it from my mind. This is the kind of thing I am looking for now, hidden objections, fears that I can release. Jesus tells us this: ⁴The name of fear is simply a mistake. ⁵Let me not be afraid of truth today. Sometimes I listen to the ego telling me there is something to fear in being what I am, but I am also being told that fear itself is a mistake and I don’t have to believe in it. There is only truth, not truth and fear.

I used to be afraid of love.

It began to change about three years ago. A significant change occurred when I released the guilt I felt for things done in the past. I think that this guilt was blocking love and was somehow the cause of the fear of love. I am not going to try to take it apart and understand it. Understanding is helpful to get to a place, but once you are there, who cares about understanding the process? I am just in deep gratitude for the change.

What Jesus is talking about here is going even deeper into love because it is the decision to accept myself as love. Love goes from being a verb, I love someone, I am greatly loved, to being a noun. I am love. I can feel that. And I know it. Then I fall back into being a human being in my own mind, but I retain the memory of having felt real for a while. The truth is not an absolute consistent state for me yet, but eventually, I will settle on the truth. How could I not?

I am going to share some entries from earlier journals with you.

My first thought on reading this is, who in their right mind would be afraid of love, and who would choose fear over love? Well, me. It seems odd when I think of it like that, but each time during the day when I have an unloving thought and I do not ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind, it can only be because I am more comfortable with suffering than I am with love.

As I was in my favorite listening place, the shower, I found my mind wandering over my worry list. Suddenly, it was as if I woke up and noticed what I was doing. The thought that woke me up was, “Why are you choosing these thoughts?” (That thought is the Holy Spirit sneaking a word in edgewise between ego thoughts. Isn’t that thrilling?!) Why, indeed. The ego began to argue for the worry list, but it was too late; I was ready for something different. I was being shown that changing my mind is not really hard, no matter what I tell myself. I was willing to do so, and there, it is done.

Changing my mind about the worry list is choosing love.

It is trading fear for love. There are no other choices. If it is not fear, then it is love. I used to walk around in a dark cloud for days at a time, unwilling to give up fear. Why would I do that? Fear says it will protect me, and there was a time when I believed that.

Fear says that I need my worry list. If I don’t look at it, some of these worries will sneak up on me, and then it will be too late. I will be unprotected. This is a lie, of course. I don’t need to defend myself if I remember who I am. The Holy Spirit in my mind will remind me of my invulnerability. I give up my attachment to thinking about the problems and trying to work them out with the ego-thinking mind, and I ask for truth to be given to me.

Even amid the ego storms, I never lost sight of my purpose. I knew that this, too, would pass, and in the meantime, I could use it to help me return my mind to God. That did not stop me from feeling all that comes with the ego storm, but it gave me a certain detachment as if I were watching myself go through it—what a strange way to be.

Holy Spirit, thank you for helping me to see clearly, and thank you for being with me when I had these experiences. It always feels like I emerge from a dark cave into the sunlight.

2011

Holy Spirit, as I was reading today’s lesson, I was thinking that I am confident that I want love, and while I have work left to do, my purpose is firmly set in my mind. Then out of the corner of my mind’s eye, I saw a thought flit by. The thought was so quick that I barely caught it. It was something like a reluctance to give up the story. It was like I saw myself sitting in this chair at the computer, and I was very comfortable there.

I cannot find the exact words to describe it, and it has disappeared into a dark corner and will not be enticed out again. Still, it has shown me that there is still in my mind the belief that there is some value in holding onto the illusion. This is a real surprise to me and a little scary.

Holy Spirit: Awakening from the dream of separation and returning to your true home is your Heart’s desire, and you have not lost sight of that desire. Do not be disturbed that you see there is still some desire to remain lost in dreams. That desire caught you by surprise, but it is no different than all other thoughts and beliefs that you have brought to me for correction. Notice that your immediate response was to look at it with me and release it. That quick reaction is the result of knowing your true desire.

Do not allow fear and guilt to enter into our work together. This would only make you reluctant to look at the thoughts in your mind and cause you to push them down where they could not scare you. This would also put them out of reach of healing.

I hear you.

Me: I hear your words, but it feels like they are coming from a great depth or from behind a wall and are muffled and unclear. I notice a cold fear in the pit of my stomach. I see that I have made this dark thought seem bigger and more frightening than others.

Holy Spirit: Yes, and that is why I seemed to recede from you. But let me assure you that nothing has happened. Nothing has changed. The idea that you are comfortable in your illusion and willing to stay is still just a tiny thought in your holy mind. I am still in your mind, and I am not tiny. Do not give power to this fear thought. You have the power to choose. Simply choose love, dear one.

Me: Yes, of course.

2015

It was interesting reading these past entries in my journal. So much has shifted over the year. I am more certain than ever that I want to wake up. I am not afraid it will never happen, and I am not concerned that it has not happened yet. Nor do I have ego beliefs that seem precious to me, and I am not afraid of the idea that I am still holding onto some of them—surprised, maybe, but not concerned. Years of doing this work have proven to me that the ego mind is stubborn, but the desire to awaken is powerful.

I was laughing to myself just now as I thought how differently I see the ego than I used to. It is like the ego comes to me with an array of temptations, setting them before me one at a time to see what attracts my attention. In my mind’s eye, I see them being offered on silver platters, each one tempting me to choose it.

I see a thought of anger toward a co-worker, and I shake my head no. Another offering quickly follows this one, worry about my child, but I am not interested in this either. Then I am offered a thought of fear that I am endangered, and when I show no interest, the sly servant brings forth a larger platter with fear of heights on it and reminds me of driving on the narrow road yesterday and looking down into the water below. I feel my stomach clench and realize I had reached out for that one. Fear of heights is absolutely irresistible to me, and the ego mind delights that it lives for another day. Good grief!

What I know to do with this is to turn right around and offer it to the Holy Spirit.

The fear of heights is symbolic for me of fear itself, and there is nothing the separated will can do about this. The ego has no solutions to offer. Surrender is the only choice left to me, and so this is what I do. I don’t think about what it might look like, how it will unfold, or how long it will take. These are thoughts of not surrendering fear. I just let it go in trust. This is what my practice looks like for me. It is amazing how many forms of the same beliefs show up. It is reassuring how seldom I find myself drawn to them.

Thank you, God. I love you, God.

2016

I have been flying high lately, almost touching the sky. Knowing that I am loved and that I am love. When I feel like this, perfect strangers react to me differently. Store clerks and random people I see on the street look me in the eyes and smile. Everyone responds to love. It isn’t Myron that does this, it is my true Self, and I watch it happen as if it is to Myron, and I know what this means.

Then yesterday, things happened that I chose to see as upsetting. One after another, they piled up, and their combined weight seemed to pull me down to the earth. This has happened before, but here is the difference. Now I know that this is unconscious guilt projected outward trying to “save” me from love. It is meaningless, and today I gladly let it go to God. Also, I don’t feel even a teensy bit guilty for it, and I know in the past, I would have. I am waking up. Yay!!!

Contemplation 2025