ACIM Daily Lesson 225. God is my Father, and His Son loves Him.
God is my Father, and His Son loves Him.
Lesson 225
God is my Father, and His Son loves Him.
1. Father, I must return Your Love for me, for giving and receiving are the same, and You have given all Your Love to me. ²I must return it, for I want it mine in full awareness, blazing in my mind and keeping it within its kindly light, inviolate, beloved, with fear behind and only peace ahead. ³How still the way Your loving Son is led along to You!
2. Brother, we find that stillness now. ²The way is open. ³Now we follow it in peace together. ⁴You have reached your hand to me, and I will never leave you. ⁵We are one, and it is but this oneness that we seek, as we accomplish these few final steps which end a journey that was not begun.
How I Return God’s Love for Me
The way I return His Love for me is to awaken from this dream that we are separate. I let go of the thoughts that prevent joining with God. It’s that simple, really, and feels hard only when I don’t wholly desire healing when there is something else that I want. But I do want this Love of God blazing in my mind! I’m watching my mind for what else I think I want instead.
Do I Want the Peace of God?
I have been surprised to find a number of things, careless wishes that block the awareness of Love’s presence. When I find these senseless ideas in my mind, I ask myself what it is I want. Do I want the contractor to show up? Or do I want the peace of God? I can’t want something and be at peace. Do I want my website upgrade to go smoothly, or do I want the peace of God? As soon as I want something, I have lost my peace because there is the belief in lack, which is not peaceful.
How Do I Know the Love of God?
I cannot know the Love of God if I do not love what He loves. If I am angry with or resentful of anyone, I have lost the awareness of God’s all-encompassing Love even though it is all around and all through me.
I cannot know the Love of God if I don’t accept it. Are there things I still want more than His Love? Do I want the illusion of control? Do I want to control my life or someone else’s life? I used to think that my desire to help my kids be safe and happy was love. But I see now that it was just the need to control so that I would feel safe and happy. I am learning the beauty and restful nature of surrender. I surrender life knowing that I have no control from the perspective of self as a body, and I allow life to flow. It will anyway.
⁴You have reached your hand to me, and I will never leave you.
My dearest Brother, I love you. My gratitude for you has no end. I will walk with you wherever you would have us go. Thank you for your patience and your dedication to me as I stumble along. You have brought me so far, so much farther than I could ever have guessed I could go. I am devoted to your path and determined to complete the journey with you.
This is a story from my working days.
One night when I was still working, I was at a town council meeting to do a presentation. As I looked around the room at these “strangers,” I remembered my purpose. Originally, I came there to speak about their water quality. And ultimately, to bind them to my company, so they didn’t buy from someone else. In remembering my true purpose, everything changed.
I didn’t know anyone, but I felt a kinship with them, and so I asked the Holy Spirit to show me the light that they are. I thought of them as God in various interesting disguises. There was one person in the crowd who had been expressing disapproval in little ways. Her negativity was obvious, but when I spoke, this all changed. The change had nothing to do with my words. I felt like we were joined in a common purpose.
I looked directly at the unhappy woman, and she became calm and attentive.
My presentation didn’t change; I was still talking to them about their water quality. But even though I did not stand there telling everyone how holy they are, they were affected by my vision. Everything happens at the level of mind. The actions that follow are just projections of those thoughts.
I realized that the room was filled with God. This vision projected outward in a way that meets the requirements of the time/space story we were experiencing together. That is why it appeared before us as me talking to them about their water. But in actuality, it was a joke we were playing on ourselves. Because actually, we were just love interacting with love, and the reflection of that showed itself in the changed attitude of the room. Change your mind, and you change the world. Can you imagine the world when millions of us are happily joining with each other?
INSIGHTS FROM HOLY SPIRIT
In 2007, I was learning that there is nothing to fear from God and that God is Love. But there was still fear of God in my mind and fear of loss when I thought about giving up self. Here is a message from Spirit I received while still struggling with my fear.
Me: Holy Spirit, how can I best release what is keeping me from fully experiencing my love for God?
Holy Spirit: Your life is filled with symbols that will be useful for this. Each body in your world is a symbol of the separation you want to exist between you and God. Each body seems to be separate from the other body and in that gap, you place the fear of wholeness to keep the bodies apart. Even in your closest relationships, you are careful to keep a separation. As your children have grown up, you have placed in the gap between you the fear that they will take their bodies away from you and that you will not have them anymore, and so you begin to distance yourself mentally and emotionally.
As they choose mates you see your status as a special person threatened.
It seems your fear is confirmed, so you push harder, and the gap becomes larger. This gap you have created to prove your separate existence; this gap you imagine exists between yourself, and every other body is symbolic of the gap you imagine exists between you and your Father.
As you become willing to heal, you will use the body symbols to do this work. Be willing to close the gaps you imagine exist within the Sonship. The opportunities will be made available to you. Your part will be to stay mindful to recognize the opportunity when it is presented and be willing to see differently.
Notice that when you feel the need to widen the gap. You often step away from or move your body to a different place.
Me: Holy Spirit, the thought that comes to my mind is when I divorced my first husband and life seemed to get so crazy, I literally moved my body to a different state. Later I learned that I had taken the problems with me and had to deal with them after all, but I do see that I was attempting to protect myself from the pain of loss by moving my body away from what seemed to be the source of that loss. I was trying to prove that I was fully separate from that person and so fully separate from the pain. I stuffed fear of intimacy into the gap between myself and everyone else to prevent that kind of pain from repeating itself.
Let Me close the gaps for you.
Holy Spirit: As you notice these attempts to protect yourself through separation, let Me help you close the gap. Healing on the level of your special relationships will translate into healing at a higher level. You will heal the only real relationship you have, and that is the one with your Creator. So, continue your good work. Allow whatever is in your life at the moment to be your path Home. Choose love over separation, and you will notice that more often, you will feel less like a separate autonomous person and more like an aspect of the Whole.
As you experience feeling one with your other selves, you will experience less fear and more love. This change in your relationships will be mirrored in your relationship with God, and you will begin to experience less fear and more love when you think of Him. You will begin to experience the gap between you and God closing. It was never there to begin with, but it does seem to you to be there and so you must choose to see it as closing.
Thank you, Holy Spirit, for helping me to become clear on this.
Forgiveness is the way home. Sometimes the agitation of unforgiveness attracts my attention enough that I must use a process to release it, but this is rare. I cannot imagine not forgiving. I know I used to spend hours, days, and weeks in unforgiveness. Before that, I spent years holding onto grievances. I suffered so much from unforgiveness that, looking back on it, I am amazed that I ever chose to hang onto it like that. I am so very grateful to A Course in Miracles for the help I have received through this discipline. I am beyond grateful to Jesus for his loving help. I look forward to the time when there is nothing in my mind to forgive.
To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 225 click here.
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