ACIM Daily Lesson 286 The hush of Heaven holds my heart today. 1. Father, how still today! ²How quietly do all things fall in place!
The hush of Heaven holds my heart today.
Lesson 286
The hush of Heaven holds my heart today.
1. Father, how still today! ²How quietly do all things fall in place! ³This is the day that has been chosen as the time in which I come to understand the lesson that there is no need that I do anything. ⁴In You is every choice already made. ⁵In You has every conflict been resolved. ⁶In You is everything I hope to find already given me. ⁷Your peace is mine. ⁸My heart is quiet, and my mind at rest. ⁹Your Love is Heaven, and Your Love is mine.
2. The stillness of today will give us hope that we have found the way, and traveled far along it to a wholly certain goal. ²Today we will not doubt the end which God Himself has promised us. ³We trust in Him, and in our Self, Who still is one with Him.
Jesus is encouraging us to have the day we can have every day.
We can let today be one in which we allow ourselves to be carried, showing us that we can always do this. We do not need to make decisions with the ego-mind. Planning on our own what to do and when isn’t necessary. We can be told because all choices have already been made. The Holy Spirit has corrected all errors. Our part is to simply accept the correction through forgiveness and thus to quiet the ego-mind and be at peace.
Interestingly enough, I woke up this morning from a frustrating and upsetting dream. When I read the lesson, I was calmed. But at the same time, there was an insistent thought that today was not a good day for stillness. I felt pulled toward that thought which seemed truer at the moment. But I now know that the mind is my servant, not my master. I choose what to believe, and I believe that today I can experience the hush of Heaven. I can turn from the raucous noise of the split mind and focus my awareness on God’s peace. And so, I can let my mind be at rest. And if I can do that today, I can do it every day.
What do I need to do to awaken to my Self?
Nothing, evidently. I think the only thing I can do to affect that moment is to slow it down by clinging to the world, but I cannot stop it from coming, and I cannot make it come before its time. All ego stories have been corrected by the Holy Spirit, so my part is simply to accept the correction.
So, what do I do with my time here? I just do what I am guided to do. I do what is put in front of me to do. The life of Myron continues to unfold, and I am just along for the ride, so I relax into it. I watch the movie, so to speak. What I am guided to do is notice the ego thoughts and beliefs and decide if I want to keep believing them.
Choosing God rather than ego consistently will clear my mind of the darkness, and in that light, I will see my way to awakening. So, mostly, I have learned to discern what thoughts are slowing me down so that I can stop giving them my attention. I have learned to be very aware of the ego in my mind, and I have learned that I can stop following those thoughts and follow the Holy Spirit instead.
Just this morning was an example of choosing right-mindedness.
As I slowly emerged from the night dream into the day dream, I became aware of thoughts of past unpleasant moments replaying in my mind. I looked at them with the Holy Spirit. There didn’t seem to be any animosity attached to them, but l was willing to release all judgment. Looking with the Holy Spirit with a desire for healing is how that is done.
As I got dressed for the day, I noticed that my mind continued to recycle past events. As I watched this happen, I wondered why I did this as it seems to serve little purpose. There was nothing to heal. It was just mind chatter. I suppose it is entertainment of a sort, but if so, it is poor entertainment. I felt a strong desire to turn my awareness from this waste of time. When I sat down to the lesson, the hush of Heaven was a wonderful alternative to the chaos of the chattering mind.
I have also learned that I cannot enter the Kingdom without my brother.
So I have developed a strong desire to know him as I want to be known. I do my part in the awakening by being helpful to my brothers in every way I can. When I notice that there is a desire to separate myself from someone, I look at this with the Holy Spirit. When I feel impatient with someone, I look at that with the Holy Spirit. Any judgment of my brother is healed as I look with the Holy Spirit for that purpose.
I want to know my Self and to live from that Self, so I ask for that and do what I am guided to do. So, it seems like I am doing a lot, but what I do isn’t changing who I am; it is only revealing who I am. Always, I am only accepting the correction that is there in my mind alongside the error. Over time, what has naturally evolved is a deep longing for Home and for God. I think that means I am doing what I came to do.
Regina’s Tips
Doubt is part of the ego thought system. It does not exist in consciousness. However, spiritual intuition has a positive use for doubt. Doubt can be used to doubt our thoughts. We can doubt them enough to bring them to inquiry, or we can doubt them enough to disregard them altogether.
When we doubt our thoughts, we are open to guidance that comes from intuition.
When we live in the world with a quiet detached mind, we see the miracle of unfolding. We discover that we do not need to think about everything and figure everything out. The miracle of unfolding takes care of everything. Or, as our lesson says, “In [God] is every choice already made.”
Today we doubt our thoughts, but we do not doubt the path we are on, our intuition or “the end which God Himself has promised us. We trust in Him, and in our Self, Who still is One with Him.”
My Thoughts
I never doubt my path, and I never doubt the end, even though I often do not understand what seems to be happening. Doubt dissolves as I trust in Him and in myself. I am still walking that path and doing what shows up for me to do according to spiritual inspiration, and I know everything is unfolding just as it must.
Going back over my past journals, I see the progression toward awakening.
In 2011, I wrote this.
I still notice judgment, and I still ask for healing. Yesterday I noticed judgment several times, and I noticed how I used that judgment to write stories, and that is how the script continues to be written and the illusion built upon. As soon as I realized this, I stopped because it is not what I want. The years of being vigilant for my thoughts have helped to remove a lot of blocks and the ones left are light and transparent and more easily shifted.
As I read this entry, I was surprised that by 2011, I was already noticing a shift in my practice. I have a tendency to see my errors in a glaring light, so I don’t always give the same degree of credit to my progress. I also see that I was thinking of the script as something that is being continually written. Now I think of it as done, and my job is to choose the corrected script.
The following is a conversation I had with the Holy Spirit on the same day.
Holy Spirit, it seems there is a great deal of work to be done. Could you talk about this with me?
Holy Spirit: You need do nothing to know God, to know perfect peace and perfect love because this is in you. It is you; perfect love is the stuff of which you were made. You need do nothing to know perfect love because you are perfect love. This has always been true and will always be true. The work you do is simply removing what it is you have placed over it. Your work consists only of realizing that everything in your mind that is not God was placed there by yourself and will be removed only by your desire to have it gone. It seems like work, and a lot of it, because you do not entirely want peace.
Fear is the serpent in your garden, dear one, and it whispers lies into your mind, telling you that God would strip you of your armor and destroy you. The serpent reminds you of all your mistakes and hints at sins so awful it cannot put words to them. You have come to believe your only hope is to keep God away.
God will rise up in you at the slightest invitation, but you must make that invitation, and to do so requires that you put aside all that would block Him from your mind. You do this work every day, and as you wake up, the entire consciousness wakes up. Think of this work as housekeeping. Every untrue thought you toss out leaves a clean empty space which is an invitation for your Lord to occupy you.
Me: Holy Spirit, I re-read what I have written in this lesson.
I was very impressed with how much my writing has improved, and I was proud. Then I realized that this is a block though I was not sure how. I felt ashamed of this thought and tried to push it away.
Holy Spirit: Yes, it is a block because, in this thought, you have separated yourself from Me. There are the words you write and the words you scribe, and they are different in your mind. If you allow yourself to follow this thought, you realize that behind it is the belief that giving up your authorship to God would diminish you. This is because you do not understand that you and God are inseparable. There is no you that is separate from God. God does not take but only gives. Creation only moves in one direction.
Another way this thought is a block is the belief that there is the writing you do, and the writing someone else does, and you judge yourself based on this comparison. This thought makes separation feel more real in the mind, not less real. This is why it is a block. It adds to the belief in separation. These thoughts are not sins, and there is no cause for shame. A thought is simply true or not true.
Do you see how quickly you caught this thought that was blocking the light in your mind and how willing you were, despite your fear, to look at it with me? This is how you wake up. This is how the whole of you wakes up. It is the only work required of you.
This next entry is interesting to me.
It was interesting because of the repeated reference to the ego as the serpent. Another reason I like it is that despite my continuing self-doubt, my faith in myself and trust in my certain success were clearly stronger. I’m not sure what year this was written, but probably 2012, which was a year that showed a lot of positive change.
This morning I woke up with a question: Who am I? The answer came quickly. I am Christ. I am moving up and through this vehicle, slowly displacing the ego as light displaces darkness with its very presence. But I move slowly so as not to startle, but I move inevitably, for I am being made welcome. I do not force my way into conscious thought but come quietly and gently at the invitation.
Is it arrogance to think of myself as Christ? Or is it simple truth and only recognition of what has been known deep within all along? Is it only foolishness to pretend to be small and unlike my Creator just because I am playing at making a world that could never exist? The ego feels very sly today, truly the serpent in the garden slithering slowly into my awareness, whispering fearful warnings of overstepping my bounds, of drawing attention to my errors. “What will people think? I don’t act like a Christ. Who do I think I am?”
Could I turn my attention from the ego mind and let it hiss at dead air?
Could I do this just for today and allow myself the respite of utter peace, the hush of heaven, as promised me? If I feel any guilt or fear today, I will set it aside and experience my Self as God created me. I get shivers at the thought.
Yesterday was so productive. There were many moments when I was judging and was completely willing to see differently. I was more than willing; I was determined and excited to see differently. Often I reminded myself that my Father and I are one, and I began to include the one I had judged. I and my Father and David are one. Once, the group got rather large. Well, the more, the merrier. All I could think about was how much light I was allowing into my mind every time I chose forgiveness.
To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 286 click here.
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