Lesson 203
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
1. (183) I call upon God’s Name and on my own.
²The Name of God is my deliverance from every thought of evil and of sin, because it is my own as well as His.
³I am not a body. ⁴I am free.
⁵For I am still as God created me.
It is notable that when we call upon God’s Name, we call upon our own. Lost here in our dreams this seems unlikely, but it is the truth. We are all in God therefore we all are God. Then why is it that we must call upon God’s Name? It is because we have forgotten who we are and calling on His Name is how we eventually remember who we are.
Right now, if you have a problem in the world, you may be more interested in getting the problem solved than in remembering who you are. But through the consistent practice of A Course in Miracles, we will all climb the ladder of prayer and eventually reach the higher rungs. From that elevated understanding, we will see it differently.
I had one of those lower rung moments myself recently. Perhaps you have had a charley horse, that painful tightening of a muscle in your calf. If so, you will relate to what happened to me. Instead of being in my calf, it was in my toes. It was excruciatingly painful. Nothing I did to relieve the pain helped. So, I called on the Holy Spirit. I said that I had no idea what to do and asked Him to help me. Immediately I had a thought to apply heat. I did this and it immediately relaxed and the pain subsided.
In that case, I asked for direct help because I was in too much pain to do anything else. I was getting a little desperate and though I do not yet always have enough faith in myself as part of God, I do have faith that I will be answered when I ask for help. And turning to God consistently will build my faith and my willingness to see differently.
One day, I will notice that when in trouble, I simply call on God’s Name and my own because they are the same. In other words, instead of asking for outside help for a specific problem, I will be calling on the memory of who I am. It will be as if I am saying, “This problem cannot be real because of Who I Am.” In lesson 190, Jesus tells us this. ⁵There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. ⁶But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. (ACIM, W-190.5:5-6).
If I had remembered who I was, I would have had the power to dominate the illusion of pain. This is what I would have done if I had called on God’s Name and on my own. It’s OK that I didn’t in that moment, choose to meet my problem in that way. I did remind myself that pain is not real, that it is a thought in my mind projected onto this body. The pain overcame my desire to see it differently, and that is why I called on the Holy Spirit and why He gave me a solution that I could at that moment accept.
Perhaps next time, I will skip that step and go straight to the truth and the truth will be so strong in my mind that I will accept immediate healing of the mind simply because I know who I am. Then the body will, of course, follow suit.