REVIEW VI
Introduction
For this review we take but one idea each day, and practice it as often as is possible. Besides the time you give morning and evening, which should not be less than fifteen minutes, and the hourly remembrances you make throughout the day, use the idea as often as you can between them. Each of these ideas alone would be sufficient for salvation, if it were learned truly. Each would be enough to give release to you and to the world from every form of bondage, and invite the memory of God to come again.
With this in mind we start our practicing, in which we carefully review the thoughts the Holy Spirit has bestowed on us in our last twenty lessons. Each contains the whole curriculum if understood, practiced, accepted, and applied to all the seeming happenings throughout the day. One is enough. But from that one, there must be no exceptions made. And so we need to use them all and let them blend as one, as each contributes to the whole we learn.
These practice sessions, like our last review, are centered round a central theme with which we start and end each lesson. It is this:
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
The day begins and ends with this. And we repeat it every time the hour strikes, or we remember, in between, we have a function that transcends the world we see. Beyond this, and a repetition of the special thought we practice for the day, no form of exercise is urged, except a deep relinquishment of everything that clutters up the mind, and makes it deaf to reason, sanity and simple truth.
We will attempt to get beyond all words and special forms of practicing for this review. For we attempt, this time, to reach a quickened pace along a shorter path to the serenity and peace of God. We merely close our eyes, and then forget all that we thought we knew and understood. For thus is freedom given us from all we did not know and failed to understand.
There is but one exception to this lack of structuring. Permit no idle thought to go unchallenged. If you notice one, deny its hold and hasten to assure your mind that this is not what it would have. Then gently let the thought which you denied be given up, in sure and quick exchange for the idea we practice for the day.
When you are tempted, hasten to proclaim your freedom from temptation, as you say:
This thought I do not want. I choose instead _____.
And then repeat the idea for the day, and let it take the place of what you thought. Beyond such special applications of each day's idea, we will add but a few formal expressions or specific thoughts to aid in practicing. Instead, we give these times of quiet to the Teacher Who instructs in quiet, speaks of peace, and gives our thoughts whatever meaning they may have.
To Him I offer this review for you. I place you in His charge, and let Him teach you what to do and say and think, each time you turn to Him. He will not fail to be available to you, each time you call to Him to help you. Let us offer Him the whole review we now begin, and let us also not forget to Whom it has been given, as we practice day by day, advancing toward the goal He set for us; allowing Him to teach us how to go, and trusting Him completely for the way each practice period can best become a loving gift of freedom to the world.
Lesson 201
I am not a body.
For I am still as God created me.
(181) I trust my brothers, who are one with me.
No one but is my brother. I am blessed with oneness with
the universe and God, my Father, one Creator of the whole
that is my Self, forever One with me.
I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
The Following is Forwarded from Pathwaysoflight.org
-Lesson 201
Review: "I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me."
"I trust my brothers, who are one with me."
To the Holy Spirit, what is true about one brother is true about every brother. There are no differences. There is no specialness in Holy Spirit's sight.
Today my practice is to see every brother as the Holy Spirit sees him. That is how I return Home. That is how I remember the truth in myself. My brother is not his or her body. Everyone is free. Everyone is still as God created them. No one is their mask. No one is an individual 'self.'
My lesson today is to trust the truth in my brother. I am learning to practice seeing past the false identity today and every day. This is my pathway Home to freedom. This is my pathway to happiness and everlasting peace. The truth of one united Mind is true and nothing else is true. I have another day before me to practice again remembering this truth.
In this world it seems impossible to really trust anyone. It seems that there is always the possibility that their interests will conflict with mine in some way and a friend becomes an adversary. That is exactly why this lesson is needed. The reason we feel we cannot trust is because the trust is misplaced. Of course we cannot trust an illusion. Illusions can shift and change with the slightest whim. The body is an illusion. In this world, when we speak of trusting someone, it is usually in terms of what that person does with their body because we identify them with their bodies.
As I practice remembering that I am not a body, I am free, I am still as God created me, I must also remember the same is true about my brother. Then the most natural thing in the world is to trust my brother because I see him as one mind -- the same mind as I am.
When I accept and know that I am as God created me, I know that I am absolutely trustworthy. What God creates is Love and nothing else. So I must be Love and nothing else. Love is forever Itself, unchanging, forever giving, eternally one. That is What I am.
Trust in Love is fully justified. And because What I am is What my brother is as well, trust in the truth about him is fully justified. If I am tempted to see him as anything other than Love, to identify him with his body, then it is time for me to declare, "This thought I do not want. I choose instead to trust my brother, who is one with me." When I can do this without reservation of any kind, my heart will be filled with the joy and peace of God, for I will have remembered Him in my brother. Together we return Home.
The few sentences of this review lesson have the power to lead me Home. I need only accept them wholly, believe them to be true, and I will know my freedom. I will know my Identity as an extension of Love.
I was asking Holy Spirit for a way that I could visualize being one with my brother. The phrase that came to me was "wearing my body loosely." I thought of easily shrugging off my body as one would a cloak, but then what I saw was a body shaped mass of light. I am so attached to my body and to the idea of me as a body, I am having trouble releasing this idea.
I thought about myself as light. I saw a light switched on in a dark room. The light has no shape, it diffuses until stopped by something, like the wall. I turn on another light. I don't see two separate rays of light. The light blends seamlessly. I can't tell what light comes from which lamp. It is just light.
So I visualized myself shrugging off the body and appearing as formless light that just goes on and on. Other lights join me; my ex-husband, my daughter, my manicurist. As light, there were no personalities, no alcoholics, no Vietnamese; there was just light. Not my light and their light, just light.
When I first started learning this concept, it didn't mean much to me. I read it and said, "OK, I believe this," but I didn't really know what it meant. As time went on, and I practiced it, it became more meaningful. Now, I feel like I am so close. I almost know; which means I almost accept because in reality, I have always known. I think I have resisted that knowledge because of body identification; because of specialness and because I wanted to hold onto the idea I am unique. I've been wearing my body tightly, like a woman in a girdle, uncomfortable but afraid of losing my shape if I remove it.
I am going to practice my lessons faithfully and trust that the Holy Spirit will support my efforts and that I will succeed.
©2003, Pathways of Light, Inc. http://pathwaysoflight.org You may freely share copies of this page with your friends, provided all copies include this notice.
-
-
