ACIM Daily Lesson 310 In fearlessness and love I spend today. 1. This day, my Father, would I spend with You, as You have chosen all my days should be.
In fearlessness and love I spend today.
Lesson 310
In fearlessness and love I spend today.
1. This day, my Father, would I spend with You, as You have chosen all my days should be. ²And what I will experience is not of time at all. ³The joy that comes to me is not of days nor hours, for it comes from Heaven to Your Son. ⁴This day will be Your sweet reminder to remember You, Your gracious calling to Your holy Son, the sign Your grace has come to me, and that it is Your Will I be set free today.
2. We spend this day together, you and I. ²And all the world joins with us in our song of thankfulness and joy to Him Who gave salvation to us, and Who set us free. ³We are restored to peace and holiness. ⁴There is no room in us for fear today, for we have welcomed love into our hearts.
Yesterday, I looked at the belief in “not enough sleep.”
The night before last, I didn’t sleep, so it occurred to me the next morning that I may not be on top of my game. But the Holy Spirit has been teaching me that I don’t know what is in my best interests and that He does know. So, I let that belief in ‘not enough sleep’ go. I forgave it, and it disappeared from my mind. As a result, the effects of that belief disappeared as well. Yesterday was a lovely day.
The only thing I need to do to experience a wonderful day is to turn my attention from the split mind and toward God. As a consequence of that choice, I begin to perceive everything from the part of the mind in which the Holy Spirit abides. This must be so since there are just these two options from which to choose. In making this choice, the Holy Spirit interprets everyone and all events for me. His interpretation is always in favor of our Self rather than our self. It is always an expression of Love.
From Lesson 34
Do you remember Lesson 34? It says that I could see peace instead of this. ²Peace of mind is clearly an internal matter. ³It must begin with your own thoughts, and then extend outward. ⁴It is from your peace of mind that a peaceful perception of the world arises. (ACIM, W-34.1:2-4)
This is why I could so easily turn my day around. I know that a peaceful day is a reflection of a peaceful mind. When I thought that I didn’t get enough sleep, I felt concerned, and so was not peaceful. I then remembered that there is another way of looking at that idea. I decided I could replace this feeling of worry over lost sleep with peace. So, I made that choice.
How could just deciding that peace was all that matters undo my belief in not enough sleep? There is great power in decision. As Jesus tells us, ⁵The power of his decision offers it to him as he requests. ⁶Herein lie hell and Heaven. ⁷The sleeping Son of God has but this power left to him. ⁸It is enough. (ACIM, M-21.3:5-8) It is these simple reminders and different choices that guarantee I spend the day with my Father. I invite you to do the same.
This morning while making breakfast, I noticed how my mind was busy making plans.
I stopped a moment and remembered that I want to be fully surrendered from now on. So, I surrender my day to Spirit to be used according to His purposes. I love that I opened today’s lesson and find this perfect prayer for the day I want. As soon as I decided for peace, my mind slowed down. These days, I still get thoughts about what should happen next but not so much as before.
It is interesting to me to notice the things I start to do and then stop because I don’t feel like they are for me to do now, and maybe not ever. It feels simple and peaceful to live like this. The challenge will be remembering my decision when the day becomes more active. I look forward to meeting that challenge. I am spending the day with Jesus, he, and I. The Holy Spirit has set us free, and I am so grateful. I welcome love into my heart.
Regina’s Tips
Today’s lesson says, “This day, my Father, would I spend with You, as You have chosen all my days should be.”
Nisargadatta Maharaj once said, “If you desire to be free, do not neglect the nearest step to freedom.”
Let’s spend this day with our Father by paying attention to our individual “nearest step to freedom.”
Ask this question:
What is my nearest step to freedom?
What do I need to know and do?
My Thoughts
This morning my nearest step to freedom was to surrender the idea that I know what I need to do next. This is a step that is always before me. Yes, in 10 minutes, I have a class to facilitate, and that is what I will do, but in these 10 minutes, I am doing what I was guided to do. I am contemplating and writing in my journal. What I know is that if I stay open and receptive, I will always know what to do next. Will I do it as guided? That is entirely up to me. I am in control. The only question I ask myself before I decide which part of the mind I will follow is this; do I want to be peaceful, joyful, and free? I know how to do that.
Jesus asks us to be fearless today.
This is much easier for me to do now. When fear thoughts show up, I know what to do to return to love. But that wasn’t always the case. Here is an entry from an earlier journal when I was just learning to see differently.
Fear had been so pervasive in my life that I had fallen into the habit of thinking it was normal, and sometimes, even now, I do not even notice it or recognize it for fear. I see that I need to remind myself that if it is not love, then it is fear. I give it many names and so think it is not fear. In fact, I am beginning to notice how much trouble I take to distance myself from the simple truth.
For instance, if I think that I have said something to hurt my son’s feelings, I have already removed this thought from the truth. “I hurt his feelings” really means “I am guilty,” and that really means “I am afraid.” To further distance myself from the truth, I start wondering how to make him feel better. What I really mean is that I am uncomfortable with my guilt, so I will make it his fault. He is the reason I feel this discomfort. So now it is just a matter of thinking of some way to fix him, and he will no longer make me feel bad. Maybe I could buy him a gift or send him a card. Maybe I could say something kind to make up for the thoughtless remark I made.
In choosing this path, I am now pretty deeply into the ego.
Now it is no longer easy to see how I got there or how to get out of it. In this convoluted ego thinking, I am now saying that I am the victim of the world I see. I am saying that my son is vulnerable and weak and needs my help just to survive a thoughtless remark. I am saying that this has nothing to do with me, it is the world that is the problem, and so the only way to fix it is to change the world. The error compounds over and over. I am running through the jungle of my thoughts and getting more lost by the moment.
At one time in my life, I would have given up trying to fix this and just given into depression. I would have gone to bed and pulled up the covers or tried to hide from my confused mind through self-medication or the distraction of a party. Later in my life, when I had decided these coping mechanisms were too destructive, I would simply lie to myself and decide it didn’t matter; he would get over it; it was his problem. Or the final choice; I would bury the problem in the deepest part of my mind. There, it is fixed. Of course, it wasn’t, and what gets buried deeply must eventually come up, and it would.
Now I bury my head in the sand sometimes, but I don’t keep it there.
I am very sensitive to the discomfort of denial and repression. Pretty quickly, I pull my head out of the sand and ask the Holy Spirit to look at this with me. If I have spent too much time with the ego, I can find it hard to see the obvious. It is as if I have been stunned into incomprehension by too many lies. But if I will rest my chattering mind for just a moment, the Holy Spirit will get a message to me. He uses those very brief pauses in my thinking to give me a thought that will help me.
I have noticed a helpful way this happens for me. First, I will offer the thinking mind to the service of the Holy Spirit. It will seem that my mind is just wandering as I remember some past moment. Suddenly I understand that this memory is the answer to my problem! Another method is to sit down and just begin writing, and pretty soon, the answer is there before me in the words on my page.
The most miraculous of all is when it does not involve the thinking mind at all.
I look with the Holy Spirit, become truly willing to see differently and surrender all my beliefs and expectations to be corrected. The fear is no longer there; it has been replaced by love. Later if it would be helpful to say or do something, I simply know what that is and do it.
The easiest of all is to notice quickly when fearful thoughts have entered my mind. If I notice right away and do not choose denial or repression, it is easy to choose differently. There is only one other choice, and if I choose love, the fear is simply gone. I cannot have both love and fear in the same instant. If I have trouble choosing love, I know that this is my decision; it is not being done to me. I will just stay with it, resting my mind as often as I can so that the Holy Spirit can get a word in.
I used to stay in the chaos of ego thinking for hours and then wake up to what I am doing and rest in the Mind of God for only moments before I am drawn back into thinking, but every time I remembered to rest my mind, I made the desire stronger. The intervals of rest became longer. My awareness became sharper. My desire for peace became predominant.
Contemplation 2025
To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 310 click here.
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