Let me not see myself as limited.
ACIM Lesson 250 Let me not see myself as limited.
Lesson 250
Let me not see myself as limited.
1. Let me behold the Son of God today, and witness to his glory. ²Let me not try to obscure the holy light in him, and see his strength diminished and reduced to frailty; nor perceive the lacks in him with which I would attack his sovereignty.
2. He is Your Son, my Father. ²And today I would behold his gentleness instead of my illusions. ³He is what I am, and as I see him so I see myself. ⁴Today I would see truly, that this day I may at last identify with him.
How is it that I not see myself as limited?
Jesus is being very clear here that as I see another, I see myself. I accept my true identity as I accept everyone’s true identity. I don’t look at the bodies and believe that is reality, and I don’t look at the personalities and think that is who they are. Nor do I look in the mirror and think of the reflection there as me. And any temptation to respond to these images as reality, I give to the Atonement for healing.
I am reminded of what we read in Lesson 153.
³We would not let our happiness slip by because a fragment of a senseless dream happened to cross our minds, and we mistook the figures in it for the Son of God; its tiny instant for eternity. (ACIM, W-153.8:3)
Here are the things I watch for. If I feel impatient with someone, if I feel resentment toward someone, or if I think someone is guilty for something said or done, I know that I have mistaken who they are. If I don’t know who they are, I won’t know who I am because we are one with each other. Of course, we are not one as these bodies that are illusion. But in Spirit which is our true Self, we are one. I can’t afford to judge anyone. The cost is too high. After all, We are creation; we the Sons of God. (ACIM, W-pII.11.4:1)
The more closely I identify with my true Self, the more I understand and accept that how I see my brother is how I will see myself.
This is because I now accept more fully that we are One. I don’t really know what that is like because I have no memory of it, but I know in some way it is true. However, I don’t have to know that or accept it to see that what I believe about another, I will believe about myself. I know this is true because I witness it all the time.
Here is an example from my life. When I was working, I had a difficult relationship with a co-worker. Everything this man did made me angry. I thought he was arrogant and unappreciative. At some point, I could no longer live with this grievance, so I decided to release it. I gave the situation and my thoughts about it to the Holy Spirit. I decided to love this man. Our relationship completely changed, and changed, literally, overnight, and we are still friends.
Everything I thought about him was wrong.
He was not arrogant, and he was not unappreciative. From the perspective of love, I saw his actions differently. I didn’t love him because I saw him differently. I saw him differently after I decided to love him. The point of this story is that everything I thought I knew about him came from my own mind. From this healed perspective, I saw that it was me that was arrogant and unappreciative of him.
My decision for love transformed the relationship because it transformed me. Then, instead of pushing away an enemy, I began joining with him. I didn’t see someone different from me and in competition with me, but someone I could love and enjoy because I felt our oneness. This relationship was very important to me because the lesson was clear and the transformation was immediate and lasting.
Regina’s Tips
Today is a day to let go of any doubt that we find in our thinking.
Remember, doubt is an ego preservation strategy. If we believe doubt, we are less likely to apply ourselves to the spiritual practice that ends the ego and leads to Self-realization. Therefore, taking time to let go of doubt is extremely useful.
My Thoughts
One morning, I woke up hours before I should have, and I was wide awake so there was no more going back to sleep. I tried anyway, but it didn’t work. I kept having dark thoughts trying to establish themselves in my mind. So, I thought this would be a good time to do a meditation, but the thoughts kept popping up and distracting me.
I usually don’t have much trouble re-directing my mind when the ego starts chattering, but this time it was hard. Doubt was the theme, and even though I knew what was happening, it was just ego grasping at straws, and even though I didn’t really believe what I was thinking, it was still disturbing and difficult to shift. Finally, I decided just to get up and get busy, and the decision to move forward broke the spell.
I seldom have doubts anymore, and I never entertain them.
I agree with Regina that this is an ego-preservation strategy, and I am not interested. If I had believed the ego thoughts in my mind that morning, I would have probably stayed in bed and pulled the covers over my head. If I had let my mind dwell there, I would have become depressed, maybe even suicidal. The ego wants to kill us before we can wake up.
I know where the ego wants to go with this kind of thinking because I spent more than half my life battling this kind of depression, so I know that Regina is right that doubt keeps us from our goals. I don’t know why my mind took that turn that morning, but I know why I refused to let my attention linger there.
Here is a post from 2006.
I had never really understood the terms “looking with innocent eyes” and “gentle witnessing” until I asked the Holy Spirit for the meaning. The thought He gave me was that I was to look without judgment. If I do not judge, everyone will appear to me completely innocent, their true state.
Sometimes this can be hard because I am blinded by my projections. I was reading an article about the Lacrosse team that has been in the news for so long. The young men were falsely accused of rape and railroaded into a nightmare by the politically ambitious DA. The more I read the article, the angrier I felt about the whole thing; the dishonest DA, the media that hyped the story without looking at the facts, the school faculty that judged them and kicked them out. I felt so badly for the boys whose lives were turned upside down and the parents who must have felt such helplessness. This is the ego version of life. And it is hard to ignore it.
As I was reading and these thoughts began to come up, I recognized that this was an opportunity to practice looking with innocent eyes.
I asked the Holy Spirit to help me see this differently. He showed me that I was forgetting to ask what it was for. This situation was only a forgiveness opportunity. It was an opportunity for many, many people to do just what I was doing at that moment – a chance to ask for another way to see it.
It looked like a nightmare to me because I was projecting my fears of being misjudged and unfairly treated. I projected my feelings of helplessness onto the “victims” involved and my fear of authority onto the police and DA. But I realized that I could forgive myself for my projections, and I could forgive myself for holding those fears. I could also forgive everyone involved in the situation, knowing their behaviors reflected their fears. Like me, they are trying to learn to live in the world but don’t know how. Instead of feeling anger and a desire to attack, I began to feel compassion. I also began to see them as innocent.
The ego hated this.
It began to make a lot of noise about how obviously wrong some of these people were – even vicious. The ego always sees the world divided between the victims and the victimizers. Neither does it care who plays which part. When the news articles first emerged, the ego looked at the Lacrosse players and declared them victimizers. With equal zeal, it now looked on the DA as the victimizer. But once I saw the innocence of all involved, I could not buy into the ego version of the story.
Every story in my life is an opportunity to go Home, or I can use it as another chance to run in place. Each person in my life is a messenger from God. The DA is a messenger from God. He played his part by offering me a chance to see the Christ in him if I so desired. All I had to do was to withdraw my fearful projections. In so doing, I was reminded that he is not his actions. He is the Son of God. All of the stuff going on in the world is just crazy “what if separation were possible” thoughts.
Now I felt silly for buying into the ego story.
Suddenly instead of seeing a little war going on, I was seeing aspects of the Son working together to present the perfect growth opportunities for each other and thousands of others. How very loving of them. How very grateful I am that they gave me the chance to see the perfect harmony that exists behind the conflict the ego shows me daily. Holy Spirit, I am willing to practice this often until I know it is the truth. How different the world will appear when I look with forgiveness on everything.
Contemplation 2025
To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 250 click here.
If you found this content helpful, please share on social media so more people can read and learn.