ARCIM

Daily Lesson 124 ~
May 4

Let me remember I am One with the Divine.

Today we will again give thanks for our Identity in the Divine. Our Home is safe, Protection is guaranteed in all we do, and Power and Strength are available to us in all our undertakings. We are certain to succeed in everything. Everything we touch takes on a shining Light that blesses and that heals. At One with the Divine and with Its Creation, we go our way rejoicing, with the Thought that the Divine Itself goes everywhere with us.

How holy are our minds! And everything we see reflects the Holiness within the mind at One with the Divine and with itself. How easily do errors disappear, and death give place to everlasting Life. Our shining footprints point the Way to Truth, for the Divine is our Companion as we walk the world a little while. And those who come to follow us will recognize the Way because the Light we carry stays behind, yet still remains with us as we walk on.

What we receive is our eternal Gift to those who follow after, and to those who went before or stayed with us a while. And the Divine, Who loves us with the equal Love in which we were created, smiles on us and offers us the Happiness we gave.

Today we will not doubt Its Love for us, nor question Its Protection and Its Care. No meaningless anxieties can come between our faith and our awareness of Its Presence. We are One with It today in recognition and remembrance. We feel our Creator and Its Love in our hearts. Our minds contain Its Thoughts; our eyes behold Its Loveliness in all we perceive. Today we perceive only the Loving and the Loveable. We see These in appearances of pain, and pain gives way to Peace. We see These in the frantic, in the sad and the distressed, the lonely and afraid, who are restored to the Tranquility and Peace of Mind in which they were created. And we see These in the dying and the dead as well, restoring them to Life. All this we see because we saw the Divine first within ourselves.

Every miracle will be given to those who know that they are One with the Divine. Every Thought of theirs has the Power to heal all forms of suffering in anyone, in times gone by and times as yet to come, as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now. Their Thoughts are timeless, and apart from distance as apart from time.

We join in this awareness as we say that we are One with the Divine. For in these words we say as well that we are awakened and healed, and that we can awaken and heal accordingly. We have accepted and we now would give, for we would keep the Gifts our Creator gives to us. Today we would experience ourselves at One with the Divine, so that the world may share our Recognition of Reality. In our experience the world is freed. As we allow separation from our Creator to be healed, the world is healed along with us.

Peace be to you today. Secure your Peace by practicing the awareness that you are One with your Creator, as your Creator is with you. Sometime today, whenever it seems best, devote a half an hour to the Thought that you are One with the Divine. This is our first attempt at an extended period for which we give no rules or special words to guide your meditation. We will trust the Divine’s Voice to speak as It sees fit today, certain It will be there. Abide with Spirit this half an hour. It will do the rest.

Your benefit will not be less if you believe that nothing happened. You may not be ready to accept the gain today. Yet sometime, somewhere, it will come to you, and you will recognize it when it dawns with certainty upon your mind. This half an hour will be framed in gold, with every minute like a diamond set around the mirror that this exercise will offer you. And you will see the Face of Divine Essence upon it, in Reflection of your own.

Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will see your own transfiguration in the glass that this holy half an hour will hold out to you, to behold your holy Self. When you are ready you will find your transfiguration there, within your mind and waiting to be found. You will remember then the Thought to which you gave this half an hour, thankfully aware no time was ever better spent.

Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will see into this glass, and understand that the perfect Light you see there belongs to you; the Loveliness you behold is your own.

Count this half hour as your gift to the Divine, with certainty that its return will bring a sense of Peace beyond understanding, a Joy too deep to comprehend, a Vision too holy for the body’s eyes to perceive. And yet you can be sure that some day, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will understand and comprehend and see.

Add further jewels to the golden frame that holds the mirror offered you today by hourly repeating to yourself:

“Let me remember I am One with the Divine,

at One with all my sisters and brothers and my Self,

in everlasting Holiness and Peace.”

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 9: The Plan of Atonement

 

8. Completing the Divine

Your awakening is the Divine’s Will. Would It not have given you the Means to find it? If the Divine wills you to have awakening, It must have made it possible, and very easy to obtain. Your sisters and brothers are everywhere. You do not have to seek far for awakening. Every minute and every second gives you an opportunity to accept awakening for yourself. Do not lose these opportunities, not because they will not return, but because delay of Joy is needless. The Divine wills you perfect Peace and Happiness now. Is it possible that this is not also your will? And is it possible that this is not also the will of your sisters and brothers?

Consider, then, that in this joint Will we are all united, and in this only. There may be disagreement about anything else while you are still awakening, but not in this. This, then, is where Peace abides. And you abide in Peace when you so decide. But you cannot abide in Peace unless you accept Atonement, because the Atonement is the Way to Peace. The reason is very simple, and so obvious that it is often unnoticed, because the ego is afraid of the obvious, since obviousness is the essential characteristic of Reality. You cannot miss It unless you are looking to overlook It. It is perfectly obvious that if the Holy Spirit embraces with Love all It sees, then It embraces you with Love. Its Evaluation of you is based on Its Knowledge of what you are, and so It evaluates you truly. And this Evaluation must be in your mind, because Spirit is.

The ego is also currently in your mind, because you have split your mind and accepted the ego in the split part. The ego’s judgment of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit’s Evaluation, because the ego aspect of your mind does not love you, as it was not created in Love, and therefore was not created at all. It is unaware of what you are, and entirely mistrustful of everything it looks upon, because its own perceptions are so shifting and unstable. The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best, and viciousness at worst. That is its full range. It cannot exceed this range because of its uncertainty. And it can never go beyond it, because it can never be certain.

You, then, have two conflicting valuations of yourself in your mind, and they cannot both be true. You do not yet realize how completely different these valuations are because you do not yet understand how lofty the Holy Spirit’s Perception of you really is. Spirit is not deceived by anything you do, because It never forgets what you are. The ego is deceived by everything you do, especially when you respond to the Holy Spirit, because at such times the ego’s confusion increases. The ego is, therefore, particularly likely to attack you when you respond lovingly, because it has judged you as being unloving, and when you are loving you are going against its judgment.

The ego will begin to attack your motives as soon as they become clearly out of accord with its perception of you. This is when it will shift abruptly from suspiciousness to viciousness, because its uncertainty has been increased. But it is surely pointless to attack in return. What can counterattack mean except that you agree with the ego’s judgment of what you are?

If you are willing to go along with perceiving yourself as unloving, then you will not be happy. You will be condemning yourself, and will therefore have to regard yourself as inadequate. Would you turn to the ego to help you escape from a sense of inadequacy it has produced and that it must maintain for its own existence? Can you escape from its judgment of you by using its methods for keeping this picture intact?

You cannot assess an insane belief system from within it. Its own range precludes this. You can only go beyond it, see it from a point where sanity exists, and experience the contrast. Only by this contrast can insanity be assessed as insane.

Though the eternal Grandeur of the Divine is in you, you have temporarily chosen to be little and then to lament your littleness. Within the system that dictated this choice, the lament is inevitable. Your littleness is taken for granted there, and you do not ask who or what brought it about. The question is meaningless within the ego’s thought system, because the question opens its entire thought system to question.

This Course said before that the ego does not know what a real question is. Lack of Knowledge of any kind is always associated with an unwillingness to know, and produces a total lack of Knowledge, simply because Knowledge is total. Not to question your littleness is, therefore, to deny all Knowledge, and to keep the ego’s entire thought system intact.

You cannot retain only part of a thought system, because it can be questioned only at its foundation, and if its foundation is discarded, the entire thought system is discarded as well. But this foundation must be questioned from beyond it, because within it its foundation does and will stand. The Holy Spirit evaluates against the reality of the ego’s thought system because It knows its foundation is not true. Therefore, nothing that arises from the foundation means anything, nor does the thought system in its entirety.

The Holy Spirit evaluates every belief you hold in terms of where it comes from. If it comes from the Divine, then Spirit knows it to be true. If it does not, Spirit knows it is meaningless.

Whenever you question your value, remind yourself:

“My Self completes the Divine Itself.”

Remember this whenever the ego speaks, and you will not hear the ego.

The Truth about you is so lofty that nothing that is unworthy of the Divine is worthy of you. Choose, then, what you want in these terms, and accept nothing that you would not offer to the Divine as wholly fitting for It, for you do not want anything else. Return your Part of the Divine to the Divine, and It will give you All of Itself, in exchange for your return of what belongs to It, and that renders It complete.