A Course in Miracles Workbook Daily Lesson 364, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 364 This holy instant would I give to You. Be You in charge. For I would follow You, certain that Your direction gives me peace.

Lesson 364

This holy instant would I give to You. Be You in charge. For I would follow You, certain that Your direction gives me peace.

1. And if I need a word to help me, He will give it to me. ²If I need a thought, that will He also give. ³And if I need but stillness and a tranquil, open mind, these are the gifts I will receive of Him. ⁴He is in charge by my request. ⁵And He will hear and answer me, because He speaks for God my Father and His holy Son.

He is in charge by my request.

I can’t believe how long it has taken me to make this request. I would ask the Holy Spirit to be in charge once I was in trouble. However, when things calmed down, I would be right back to making decisions on my own. Then I would repeat the same process. Eventually, though, I saw my pattern and realized that I needed to put the Holy Spirit in charge and not change my mind about that. Life is much happier now.

And He will hear and answer me, because He speaks for God my Father and His holy Son.

When I put the Holy Spirit in charge, I am putting God in charge. I am putting my true Self in charge. What could be better than that? I have proven to myself over and over that the ego is not a good advisor. When I leave the Holy Spirit in charge, the advice I receive keeps me on a narrow and straight path leading Home. The ego part of my mind is not necessarily pleased with this choice.

The directions the Holy Spirit gives me can sometimes feel temporarily uncomfortable. For instance, He had me focusing on acceptance of whatever is happening. In order for acceptance to be helpful, it needs to be complete, and it needs to occur in every situation. So, what arises are the situations I tend to dislike. The ego insists that I can’t just accept certain things and argues against this. For a while, I was in conflict, but as I continue my practice, the situation is resolved, and I see the value in acceptance.

Here Is an Example

I have had an ongoing weight problem all my adult life. I gain weight and then lose it, and immediately, I gain it back. Now I realize that I am self-sabotaging but have not been willing to see why I am doing this. The Holy Spirit has led me to acceptance, and so I am practicing that in regard to my weight. The idea of simply accepting the situation as it is, feels counterproductive and scary to me. It feels like giving up.

But I am sticking with the Holy Spirit because I am convinced that He is bringing me Home, and that’s more important to me. After a few days of practicing acceptance, I began to realize that I have been at war with myself for the last 50 years. It’s exhausting just to think about it. Accepting that I have this ongoing issue and that, on some level, I chose it wasn’t giving up. It was choosing to be at peace with the problem.

Seeing it Differently

Now that I am no longer trying to project the problem onto my metabolism or any other handy target, I can start seeing it differently. The first thing I did after that decision was to forgive myself for my past choices. I don’t know why I made them, and if I do need to know that, I am sure that clarity will come. Through self-forgiveness, I am no longer in conflict. All my energy is going toward listening to guidance.

If this is the only lesson I learned from asking the Holy Spirit for His guidance, it would be well worth it. However, there is more good coming from my choice for God. Because I forgave my past choices, I am no longer making myself guilty, and guilt is what holds the ego together. Being free of guilt is like turning on a bright light in a dark room, making vision possible.

I’m seeing this problem differently now. Instead of it being a weight problem, it is an opportunity to heal my mind. Instead of feeling weak and vulnerable, I feel the strength of God in me. I feel my trust in Him grows stronger every day. After all these years, gratitude is taking the place of failure and guilt. Instead of being disappointed in myself, I feel love for myself. This is as far as I have gotten, but I am very pleased. I am certain that His direction will always give me peace, and the peace of God is my only goal.

4 He is in charge by my request.

Something I read in the Course is that the Holy Spirit must be asked for help. He will not interfere without permission. He cannot interfere because we are equals. This is why I always ask Him to heal my mind, correct my thinking, guide me, and even comfort me. I ask Him to be in charge not because he is above me or over me but because He temporarily knows what I don’t know and, therefore, can make better decisions than I can. I am grateful for Him.

Regina’s Tips

Love is a matter for the heart, not the mind. The inner teacher knows how to love. The mind and our prior conditioning does not. That means that whenever we face a challenging personality, we must rely heavily on inner intuition and not rely on the mind at all.

Our thinking is the ego. Its purpose for any challenging personality that we come across is to keep us securely locked within our own false personality.

Also:

Know that every challenging personality you meet is a chance to enhance the ego or deflate it, and then turn carefully, quietly, and consistently to inner guidance regarding how you are to be with this one.

My Thoughts

Everyone meets some people with challenging personalities. The ego has plenty to say about this, and if I judge anyone, I will be inflating the ego in my mind. On the other hand, if I ask the Holy Spirit for another way to see this one, I will remain in peace and will extend love. I used to have a whole subset of people who were friends that got on my nerves sometimes and another of people I avoided, like the plague.

Through the use of judgment I thought I could justify this. I don’t do that anymore, but sometimes I have judgmental thoughts about a personality, and when that happens, I immediately ask the Holy Spirit to show me what it is in me that just got triggered so that I can release it. Once my mind is clear, I ask for another way to see the one that triggered me… if I still need that.

Some Past Entries

Things did not go as planned today. I went to sleep much later than planned, got up later than I intended, and then my daughter called to ask that I watch my granddaughter for a while. This is not what I planned for my day. I am trying to get my manuscript ready for the publisher because I thought that was what I was supposed to do.

I noticed how anxious I was beginning to feel. Time was slipping through my fingers, and I felt powerless to stop it. I remembered yesterday’s practice, so I paused for a moment and allowed my mind to go quiet. I remembered a prayer I have taped to my mirror. It begins with these lines.

I have all the time I need. The present moment stretches before me like an endless, timeless carpet of light.

I made friends with time today.

Thank you, Holy Spirit.

2015

I woke up this morning at 2:00 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep. I tossed and turned for a while. And I worried about not sleeping for a while. Finally, I surrendered the idea that I need to be sleeping. I asked the Holy Spirit what He would have me do instead. I spent some time answering a question from a student. And I worked on the two study groups I am forming. I started my quiet time with Spirit. Now I am doing my lesson as part of that time.

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I am not the least bit concerned about not sleeping. Once I surrendered the idea, I knew what it meant and what I was supposed to do about it, I did not pick it back up again. I might take a nap after posting this morning. Or I might not. I won’t know until that moment comes. I gave Him this holy instant, and He is in charge by my request. And He will hear and answer me.

2016

I do really well putting Him in charge, but then I get hooked by something in my story, and I take back my decision to surrender. Then I start planning and making decisions on my own, trying to fix things and defend myself from upset, sorrow or grief. I know because this was happening to me just now. After experiencing the effects of returning to my ego mind for a little while, I decided to give myself a break and return my mind to God. I used this moment here at my computer, this blessed time of sitting in stillness and waiting for words to come to bring me back to peace.

This time with Spirit as I do the lessons with Him is the most important in my day, so it makes sense that this is where I would come when I am upset. I feel much better now. I have put Him back in charge, and He will hear and answer me. Most importantly, I will listen, and I will follow.

2017

It is really amazing what a year of practice can accomplish. I don’t have those fears about not getting enough sleep. I don’t worry about time very much, and when anxiety about getting something done arises, I let it go. If I am supposed to get it done, then that is what will happen. Surrender is so sweet that I almost never resist it. Silence comes without thought or effort and fills me with gratitude. I still have a few persistent fear thoughts, but I am in the process of letting them go, and they are going. The peace of God is everything I want is my mantra and my guiding thought through this life.

Contemplation 2025

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 364 click here.

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