ACIM Lesson 35 My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy.

Lesson 35

My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy.

1. Today’s idea does not describe the way you see yourself now. ²It does, however, describe what vision will show you. ³It is difficult for anyone who thinks he is in this world to believe this of himself. ⁴Yet the reason he thinks he is in this world is because he does not believe it.

First, let me say this. The holiness lessons! Oh boy! I love these lessons. That was not always the case. A part of me felt a thrill at the idea that someday I would be holy. But mostly, I didn’t believe in my holiness just as Jesus says we won’t. I am intrigued by sentences three and four. That I am in this world makes it hard to believe I am holy. Yet the reason I am in this world is that I don’t believe I am holy.

The Image of Yourself

2. You will believe that you are part of where you think you are. ²That is because you surround yourself with the environment you want. ³And you want it to protect the image of yourself that you have made. ⁴The image is part of this environment. ⁵What you see while you believe you are in it is seen through the eyes of the image. ⁶This is not vision. ⁷Images cannot see.

This body is part of the environment I have surrounded myself with. It is what I want to believe about myself. It is an image of myself and everything else around me reflects what I think of myself. From within this image, I “see” what I want to exist and because I see it, I believe it. But the joke is on me because images cannot see.

Establish Your Source, Establish Your Identity

3. The idea for today presents a very different view of yourself. ²By establishing your Source it establishes your Identity, and it describes you as you must really be in truth. ³We will use a somewhat different kind of application for today’s idea because the emphasis for today is on the perceiver, rather than on what he perceives.

The reason I love the holiness lessons is that they are teaching me to see myself differently. In declaring that my mind is part of God’s, I am establishing my Source and thus establishing my Identity. Did you notice that I capitalized Identity this time? My mind is part of God’s and so I must be Divine as is He. This is very different than what I have believed about myself in the past. It is very different than what I thought I was.

Ego Based Attributes

4. For each of the three five-minute practice periods today, begin by repeating today’s idea to yourself, and then close your eyes and search your mind for the various kinds of descriptive terms in which you see yourself. ²Include all the ego-based attributes which you ascribe to yourself, positive or negative, desirable or undesirable, grandiose or debased. ³All of them are equally unreal, because you do not look upon yourself through the eyes of holiness.

5. In the earlier part of the mind-searching period, you will probably emphasize what you consider to be the more negative aspects of your perception of yourself. ²Toward the latter part of the exercise period, however, more self-inflating descriptive terms may well cross your mind. ³Try to recognize that the direction of your fantasies about yourself does not matter. ⁴Illusions have no direction in reality. ⁵They are merely not true.

6. A suitable unselected list for applying the idea for today might be as follows:

²I see myself as imposed on.
³I see myself as depressed.
⁴I see myself as failing.
⁵I see myself as endangered.
⁶I see myself as helpless.
⁷I see myself as victorious.
⁸I see myself as losing out.
⁹I see myself as charitable.
¹⁰I see myself as virtuous.

No matter what you believe you are, it cannot come close to your true Self. There are no words to describe you as you were created and you are still as you were created. So if I think I am pretty darn cool, it still false short of the truth. My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy.

Neither Force Nor Discrimination

7. You should not think of these terms in an abstract way. ²They will occur to you as various situations, personalities and events in which you figure cross your mind. ³Pick up any specific situation that occurs to you, identify the descriptive term or terms you feel are applicable to your reactions to that situation, and use them in applying today’s idea. ⁴After you have named each one, add:

⁵But my mind is part of God’s. ⁶I am very holy.

8. During the longer exercise periods, there will probably be intervals in which nothing specific occurs to you. ²Do not strain to think up specific things to fill the interval, but merely relax and repeat today’s idea slowly until something occurs to you. ³Although nothing that does occur should be omitted from the exercises, nothing should be “dug out” with effort. ⁴Neither force nor discrimination should be used.

9. As often as possible during the day, pick up a specific attribute or attributes you are ascribing to yourself at the time and apply the idea for today to them, adding the idea in the form stated above to each of them. ²If nothing particular occurs to you, merely repeat the idea to yourself, with closed eyes.

Jesus is telling us not to strain to find an attribute, but don’t deliberately leave anything out. He is also encouraging us to again use these ideas often during the day.

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 35 click here.

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