Lesson 64

Lesson 64

Let me not forget my function.

Today’s idea is merely another way of saying “Let me not wander into temptation.” The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. It is the temptation to abandon God and His Son by taking on a physical appearance. It is this the body’s eyes look upon.

Nothing the body’s eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself. Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception, the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recognition of salvation.

To review our last few lessons, your function here is to be the light of the world, a function given you by God. It is only the arrogance of the ego that leads you to question this, and only the fear of the ego that induces you to regard yourself as unworthy of the task assigned to you by God Himself. The world’s salvation awaits your forgiveness, because through it does the Son of God escape from all illusions, and thus from all temptation. The Son of God is you.

Only by fulfilling the function given you by God will you be happy. That is because your function is to be happy by using the means by which happiness becomes inevitable. There is no other way. Therefore, every time you choose whether or not to fulfill your function, you are really choosing whether or not to be happy.

Let us remember this today. Let us remind ourselves of it in the morning and again at night, and all through the day as well. Prepare yourself in advance for all the decisions you will make today by remembering they are all really very simple. Each one will lead to happiness or unhappiness. Can such a simple decision really be difficult to make? Let not the form of the decision deceive you. Complexity of form does not imply complexity of content. It is impossible that any decision on earth can have a content different from just this one simple choice. That is the only choice the Holy Spirit sees. Therefore it is the only choice there is.

Today, then, let us practice with these thoughts:

Let me not forget my function.
Let me not try to substitute mine for God’s.
Let me forgive and be happy.

At least once devote ten or fifteen minutes today to reflecting on this with closed eyes. Related thoughts will come to help you, if you remember the crucial importance of your function to you and to the world.

In the frequent applications of today’s idea throughout the day, devote several minutes to reviewing these thoughts, and then thinking about them and about nothing else. This will be difficult, at first particularly, since you are not proficient in the mind discipline that it requires. You may need to repeat “Let me not forget my function” quite often to help you concentrate.

Two forms of shorter practice periods are required. At times, do the exercises with your eyes closed, trying to concentrate on the thoughts you are using. At other times, keep your eyes open after reviewing the thoughts, and then look slowly and unselectively around you, telling yourself:

This is the world it is my function to save.

 

Journal

Today’s idea is merely another way of saying “Let me not wander into temptation.”

“The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it.”

“…every time you choose whether or not to fulfil your function, you are really choosing whether or not to be happy.”

Seriously, my function is to save the world through forgiveness. I was given a vision of myself as a light being that stood in place as the world of time passed by me. When I would become aware of a false thought, or an image that represented untrue beliefs, I would through the power of God in me undo that error. It didn’t matter where I saw it, in myself or in another, in a person or a situation, if it was false, it was my responsibility to forgive it.  It was a simple and joyful occupation of my time here and absolutely necessary.

I understand my function and I accept it. I also am aware of the temptations that pull me away from it. Sometimes those temptations are the belief in guilt, sometimes it is the desire to ruminate about the past or speculate on the future. Other times it is the temptation to occupy myself with mindless entertainment. But I make a conscious decision to stop or at least limit that kind of thing. The more attention I give my function as the light of the world, the happier I am and so the more I want to complete my function.

Regina’s Tip for this lesson.

“Let not the form of the decision deceive you. Complexity of form does not imply complexity of content.” Every decision is one of fear or freedom. To let the mind seek for a solution is to choose the perception of fear. To watch and see how spontaneity unfolds is freedom. Fear hides being. Freedom reveals it.

My thoughts

Regina had several helpful tips but this is the one that attracted me. Sometimes the story grabs my attention and I get caught up in its apparent complexities and overlook the only thing that matters which is the belief behind the story, the content over form. An example might be the recent Kavenaugh story.

There was a lot of complexity in this issue and many people were deciding what was true and what it meant if it was true. The ego mind likes to have an opinion about everything and thinks its opinion is valuable, and that is a form of ego distraction. I read some of the articles and I noticed how it brought up a lot of distress for some women.

I had a few thoughts about it pass through my mind, but in this case, I saw the underlying content, which was fear. Fear showed up as rage and disgust and conflict. I felt compassion for everyone involved. At the same time, I saw the situation as an opportunity for healing for everyone involved, so I did not see it as a bad thing. I saw my part as weakening those thoughts by not giving them my attention or my belief. That is a form of forgiveness.

 

Past Entries
Here is what used to happen. I would want to be happy so I would spend the day in forgiveness. Then the ego would pull my attention to some drama or another in my life and I would choose to stay with the drama instead of forgiving it. So I didn’t want to be happy. This is the way my life had been, first choosing happiness through forgiveness, then choosing to be deceived by the world. This has changed though.

For a while now I have been spending my days in peace, and then recently something happened with a dear one. I experienced my happiness dissolve under the oppressive ego thoughts of what might happen, what this could mean to me. But I also watched myself do this, and I remembered that whether or not any of this happened, I could still forgive and be happy. It would mean deliberately letting the concern go.

The ego mind complained bitterly that I would just ignore this possible upset, and brought me all sorts of justifications for concern, but I really don’t have to go there. It is just a habit for me to fall back into worry, to listen to the ego’s pronouncement of doom. I felt the tug toward that because the ego’s warnings sounded reasonable. This could happen and that could occur. I could envision these bad things happening. But I decided to forgive it instead. By this time I had let fear gain a toehold and letting go was not easy.

I remembered that I dedicate all thoughts to union and let that truth anchor me. Fear is an effect of separation thinking. Doom and gloom are effects of separation. These are things I would experience only if I were separated from God. I chose to forgive (undo) these illusions and return my awareness to truth instead. It felt difficult because I was completely involved in the story by now, but as my desire for happiness became stronger than my desire for drama, the situation was forgiven and I returned to peace and happiness.

Fear, however, is very compelling and I found myself returning to the story over and over, and each time remembering my function and releasing it. There were some processes I used to help me do this. I used the rules for decision process of joining with the Holy Spirit to see it differently. I used the three-step process of watching my mind vigilantly for fear thoughts and giving them to the Holy Spirit for purification. I used Byron Katie’s Work to turn my thinking around.

My friend, Ray, helped me to look at my motivations for keeping the story alive in my mind, and for the rest of the day, the Holy Spirit helped me to see those motivations. I looked at each one and felt the emotions that went with them. That was painful in itself, but until I detached from the story of my friend’s problem and how it affected me, I could not be released. I had to see the situation as a classroom in which the Son of God is awakened. Once I did that, I asked the Holy Spirit for true thoughts to pull me out of the fear and was reminded that the peace of God is everything I want. Oh yes! I felt the fear melting away.

Through my holiness, the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do. My holiness, then, can remove all pain, can end all sorrow and can solve all problems. It can do so in connection with myself and anyone else. It can do so for this person in his story of fear and suffering, and for me in my story that I must suffer with him. There. It’s done!