Lesson 364
This holy instant would I give to You.
Be You in charge. For I would follow You,
Certain that Your direction gives me peace.
And if I need a word to help me, He will give it to me. If I need a thought, that will He also give. And if I need but stillness and a tranquil, open mind, these are the gifts I will receive of Him. He is in charge by my request. And He will hear and answer me, because He speaks for God my Father and His holy Son.
Journal
4 He is in charge by my request.
Something I read in the Course is that the Holy Spirit must be asked for help. He will not interfere without permission. He cannot interfere because we are equals. This is why I always ask Him to heal my mind, to correct my thinking, to guide me, even to comfort me. I ask Him to be in charge not because he is above me or over me, but because He temporarily knows what I don’t know and therefore can make better decisions than I can. I am grateful for Him.
Regina’s Tips
Love is a matter for the heart, not the mind. The inner teacher knows how to love. The mind and our prior conditioning does not. That means that whenever we face a challenging personality, we must rely heavily on inner intuition and not rely on the mind at all.
Our thinking is the ego. It’s purpose for any challenging personality that we come across is to keep us securely locked within our own false personality.
Also:
Know that every challenging personality you meet is a chance to enhance the ego or deflate it, and then turn carefully, quietly and consistently to inner guidance regarding how you are to be with this one.
My Thoughts
Everyone meets some people with challenging personalities. The ego has plenty to say about this and if I judge anyone, I will be inflating the ego in my mind. On the other hand, if I ask the Holy Spirit for another way to see this one, I will remain in peace and will extend love. I used to have a whole subset of people who were friends that got on my nerves sometimes and another of people I avoided like the plague.
I justified this with more judgment. I don’t do that anymore, but sometimes I have judgmental thoughts about a personality and when that happens I immediately ask the Holy Spirit to show me what it is in me that just got triggered so that I can release it. Once my mind is clear, I ask for another way to see the one that triggered me… if I still need that.
Past Entries
Things did not go as planned today. I went to sleep much later than planned, got up later than I intended, and then my daughter called to ask that I watch my granddaughter for a while. This is not what I planned for my day. I am trying to get my manuscript ready for the publisher. I thought that was what I was supposed to do.
I noticed how anxious I was beginning to feel. Time was slipping through my fingers and I felt powerless to stop it. I remembered yesterday’s practice and so I paused for a moment and allowed my mind to go quiet. I remembered a prayer I have taped to my mirror. It begins with these lines.
I have all the time I need. The present moment stretches before me like an endless, timeless carpet of light.
I made friends with time today.
Thank you, Holy Spirit.
2017
It is really amazing what a year of practice can accomplish. I don’t have those fears about not getting enough sleep. I don’t worry about time very much and when anxiety about getting something done arises, I let it go. If I am supposed to get it done, then that is what will happen. Surrender is so sweet that I almost never resist it. Silence comes without thought or effort and fills me with gratitude. I still have a few persistent fear thoughts, but I am in the process of letting them go, and they are going. The peace of God is everything I want is my mantra and my guiding thought through this life.
2016
I do really well putting Him in charge, then I get hooked by something in my story and I take back my decision to surrender. I start planning and making decisions on my own, trying to fix things and defend myself from upset, sorrow or grief. I know, because this was happening to me just now. After experiencing the effects of returning to ego mind for a little while, I decided to give myself a break and return my mind to God. I used this moment here at my computer, this blessed time of sitting in stillness and waiting for words to come, to bring me back to peace.
This time with Spirit as I do the lessons with Him is the most important in my day, so it makes sense that this is where I would come when I am upset. I feel much better now. I have put Him back in charge and He will hear and answer me. Most importantly, I will listen and I will follow.
2015
I woke up this morning at 2:00 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep. I tossed and turned for a while. I worried about not sleeping for a while. Finally, I surrendered the idea that I need to be sleeping. I asked the Holy Spirit what He would have me do instead. I spent some time answering a question from a student. I worked on the two study groups I am forming. I started my quiet time with Spirit. Now I am doing my lesson as part of that time.
I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I am not the least bit concerned about not sleeping. Once I surrendered the idea I knew what it meant and what I was supposed to do about it, I did not pick it back up again. I might take a nap after posting this morning. I might not. I won’t know until that moment comes. I gave Him this holy instant, and He is in charge by my request. And He will hear and answer me.
2011
I’ve been on vacation for this week. It was a perfect opportunity for me to put the finishing touches on my book. I also caught up on a lot of paperwork for The Way Home. The best part was the quiet and slow pace of time when there are few intrusions on my peace. What a blessing it has been.
I plan to join Regina Dawn Akers in her year of silence. My first feeling when I heard about this was one of attraction, but then I thought… and that’s always where I get in trouble. I thought. Haha. Well, the thought was that I could not do this. I can’t work in silence. I have obligations that require a lot of verbal and written communication. I felt disappointment. But I still felt drawn to the idea, so instead of telling the Holy Spirit why this wouldn’t work, I asked Holy Spirit how it could work.
He helped me to see that, like everything else He has been teaching me, this is not about what I do, but how I do it. So this week I have been trying it out. All day long I listen for prompts and He has helped me to see how I can be silent even when talking. For instance, I was talking to a friend and I was prompted to do nothing but listen when she spoke, and so it was very silent in my mind except for her words.
Another time, I had been listening to a CD while driving and when it ended, I was going to put the next one in, but I received the prompt to be in silence now. I did that for a while and enjoyed the time before I put in another CD.
When I became concerned or anxious about something, I would get the prompt to be still, and in that stillness, I would allow the Holy Spirit to comfort me and Guide me. So this is how the week has gone and I am so grateful to have had this time of relative quiet, without many obligations or distractions so that I could see clearly how the Holy Spirit would have me live this next year.
Yesterday, life as I usually know it began to intrude on my vacation in little ways. I got two phone calls from customers with little problems. I had a couple of communications from the office about changes in policies for the coming year. Probably because these instances were familiar to the way I have experienced life up until now, my reaction was automatic and not peaceful. The contrast was so stark, that I was able to see how much I need to spend a year in silence. I didn’t get really upset, but I was jerked so abruptly from the stillness I have been experiencing that in comparison it felt upsetting.
So I see that this is going to be a series of opportunities to learn to be in silence no matter what is going on around me and no matter what I am doing. I will miss my vacation time when everything was slower, but I know that I will have plenty of help from the Holy Spirit when I get back to work and to being more involved with the world.