Please take time this morning to read, “What is Salvation,” to contemplate Lesson 232, and to spend time in meditation. If you have 30-minutes for meditation and would like a gentle audio to guide you, I recommend this meditation by Michael Langford and Karen Worth:
Be in my mind, my Father, through the day.
Throughout this section of A Course in Miracles Workbooks for Students, we are using this process:
1 – Each day read and contemplate the “special theme” that we are currently working with. Currently that theme is, “What is Salvation?”
2 – Contemplate the day’s workbook lesson.
3 – Spend time in meditation.
4 – Recall the day’s workbook lesson hourly.
5 – Spend at least a brief time with the workbook lesson and/or meditation before going to bed at night.
Maybe you’ve remembered to follow all five steps in this current process, maybe you’ve forgotten part of it, or maybe you decided to skip part of the process because you thought it wasn’t important for you. Today is an opportunity to recommit to the entire process that is requested in this section of the workbook.
Today’s lesson begins with a prayer and then exhorts us to “practice the end of fear. Have faith in Him Who is your Father. Trust all things to Him. Let Him reveal all things to you, and be you undismayed because you are His Son.”
What does it mean to practice the end of fear?
Both parts of this lesson say essentially the same thing—give the same directive—rest. Rest the desire and the need to know. Rest the imagining and the railing against things as they are. Rest the movement and the motion and the objections—rest and be that which you are, which is the essence of All That Is—which is God.
Marianne Williamson famously paraphrased the Course to say, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” Why should this be so? It is this power, this creative ability, which holds the key to our release. This is why salvation is a promise premised upon resting “the mind that still was one, but failed to recognize its oneness.” We rest the mind that “did not know itself, and thought its own Identity was lost.”
The mere (but absolute) recognition of the Truth of Being is the final thread in the story that has captivated us for far too long. It is the equivalent of a mother’s call at the end of a long, full day of play: “come home.” It is but this we resist and protest against by insisting that the play continue, by insisting upon our ignorance and powerlessness.
You are that. That Which Was and Is and Will Always Ever Be. To recognize this Fact is to recognize the Alpha and Omega and to rest in Being in All that Is. This is Salvation.
So as regards motivation, ponder the truth of what you know. See how you deny it. It matters not why; the whys of which you are aware are in themselves meaningless. What matters is that you see their ephemeral nature – the wispy mists of nothingness that would keep you from your God–and simply brush them away to swim in remembrance.
Forgive yourself by believing your self no longer. Listen not to the tales told by the confused mind. See illusion for what it is and turn within by resting in heart, free from thought and want and time. This is where salvation lies, laid bare by your desire to find her.
Today, let’s practice the end of fear by remembering our desire for salvation and recommitting to practicing the workbook lessons in the way the workbook asks us to.
