ACIM Workbook Daily Lesson 223, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 223. God is my life. I have no life but His.

Lesson 223

God is my life. I have no life but His.

1. I was mistaken when I thought I lived apart from God, a separate entity that moved in isolation, unattached, and housed within a body. ²Now I know my life is God’s, I have no other home, and I do not exist apart from Him. ³He has no Thoughts that are not part of me, and I have none but those which are of Him. 

2. Our Father, let us see the face of Christ instead of our mistakes. ²For we who are Your holy Son are sinless. ³We would look upon our sinlessness, for guilt proclaims that we are not Your Son. ⁴And we would not forget You longer. ⁵We are lonely here, and long for Heaven, where we are at home. ⁶Today we would return. ⁷Our Name is Yours, and we acknowledge that we are Your Son. 

Because we used the power of creation to make the world, it is very convincing and that is why lessons like this are so important. I need to remind myself often of the truth. I did this and I must undo it so that I will remember what we are. The only place this is happening is in my mind so it is my mind that must change.

I was mistaken when I thought I lived apart from God, a separate entity that moved in isolation, unattached, and housed within a body.

It is this idea that I am a self separate from all other selves, that I am life that is different from all other life that we are learning to release. It is this idea that I can bottle up life in this container that I think of as my body that is the error. Jesus says that we are not the body and not in the body. We are life itself, and life is not discrete in various forms, other bodies, plants, animals.  

All around us is life and we are that. All these different forms and happenings pass through us but are not eternal and thus not life. They are imagination coming from the mind which is not us either, but is a useful tool for experiencing being human. In the Course Jesus distinguishes between the mind and the Mind, using the capitalized version of Mind to indicate an expression of the Divine.  

The thing I want to remember is that I am nothing like the body.

Now I mostly think of myself as conscious awareness or spirit. I am part of God and exactly like God. I cannot know what that is exactly. But I know it cannot be like a body and it cannot be separate in any way from my brothers. My Self is not discreet from other Selves. The oneness is what makes it Self rather than self. 

He has no Thoughts that are not part of me, and I have none but those which are of Him. Now that I am waking up, I am remembering that this is not my home and that this time, I came here for the purpose of forgiving it. It is wonderful to have these reminders. I especially appreciate the ones that remind me that I am in God and part of God and that I love God and He loves me. 

Our Father, let us see the face of Christ instead of our mistakes.

This sentence defines my personal focus at this time.  My mistake was in thinking that the body in front of me was real. My mistake was thinking that my brothers were their bodies and their personalities as exhibited here in the world. And my mistake was believing their behavior defined them and that they are guilty of their behavior.

A further mistake was that I thought the guilt I saw in them was a reflection of them and not of me. The mistake that is the source of all other mistakes, is that I can and did separate from God and my brothers. I am correcting these mistakes as they show up in my mind. I correct them as I rest in God and allow my mind to be healed.

I don’t believe these mistakes are true anymore.

However, I have times when I fall into that error again. Generally, one of two things causes this slip. Either it is careless thinking, old thoughts popping up for my consideration. If I am not staying vigilant, I will find myself focusing on them. Those are easy to correct because I have practiced this for so long. The other times I fall into the error of seeing guilt projected onto others happens less often but can be more difficult to release because they are fear-driven. 

When my son was sick, when my girls when they got Covid, the hurricanes and their aftermath. These are some of the times when I experienced fear and I had resentment or anger thoughts. I am able to see this in myself and release the thoughts, but for a while, the fear caused them to return. No matter. I know the truth and I know that I cannot allow grievances in my mind and so I chose again.

Whatever shows up in my life is an opportunity to forgive.

The number of cases of monkey pox in my state is increasing. The ego wants to think about this. Another disease that they don’t really know much about. The ego wants to think about what could happen and what this would mean to me and those I love. I am not interested in doing that. So, I forgive these thoughts and the root cause of the them, the belief that I am not safe. I remember that peace is my only goal. Worrying about the future and trying to control the effects of my thoughts does not bring me peace so I am not interested.

From What Is Forgiveness? 

An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. 

Over and over again, I looked with the Holy Spirit at my judgments around the virus and how people chose to deal with it. Each time I did this, I thought I had forgiven the situation only to have it show up again in the form of resentment or anger. It was frustrating to have this happen, and I knew it was important that I dealt with it as it cost me my peace of mind.  

I finally became aware that I had been holding onto the judgment even as I said I wanted to be free. I was making a judgment I would not raise to doubt although it was not true. Then I was quickly forgetting that this was what I was doing. Fear caused me to believe that I needed to be right. As a result, I held on even while I was going through the process of letting go. Good grief! But I finally let it go when I became willing to see what I was doing. Once the error was seen clearly, it was simple to forgive the judgment.

Contemplation 2025

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 223 click here.

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