LESSON 39. My holiness is my salvation.
Yay!!!!! Here we go!
If this was an aerobics class, lessons 1-38 were the aerobic warmup; we were increasing intensity to get our heart rate up into the aerobic zone. Now our heart rate is up there, and it’s time to throw ourselves whole-heartedly into this activity.
Of course, we aren’t here to burn off fat or calories. We are here to burn off ego.
As you begin exercise 39, My holiness is my salvation, start by remembering how important healing/awakening is to you. Find your motivation. Realize your excitement about giving yourself fully to today’s workbook lesson. Feel your inner motivation. (That will come from the heart, not the mind.)
Once you are aware of how valuable this goal and its means (the workbook lesson) are to you, create a plan for accomplishing the longer practice periods. Set a stretch goal … aim to do more than the minimum … but stay with wisdom and do not set a goal that is beyond what is reasonable for you (and therefore possibly self-defeating.)
Also, take advantage of the flexibility in the instructions for today’s longer practice periods to rest with the lesson, allow related thoughts into the mind and to sit quietly paying attention to awareness. At our next Gentle Healing meeting, we will read the awareness-watching-awareness instructions from Michael Langford’s book, The Direct Means to Eternal Bliss. In a nutshell, Michael Langford describes it as: “My present awareness watching my present awareness. Awareness watching awareness. Not some unknown awareness labeled the Infinite Self. This awareness, my awareness, here and now watching itself, while ignoring thought, the body, the world, etc.”
Let’s begin putting at least a little awareness-watching-awareness into each practice session, either starting today or next week after we read the instructions. When the instructions for the ACIM lesson allow flexibility, like today, it can be interspersed anywhere during the practice session. If the instructions are more specific, you can linger a little longer after the practice session for a bit of awareness-watching-awareness. If you decide to include it in today’s practice, a few seconds to 2 minutes of awareness-watching-awareness is enough. Longer is also okay if awareness-watching-awareness is comfortable for you.
Regina coined the term, “divine greediness.” Be divinely greedy by being excited to practice the day’s lesson. Be excited to say it to yourself 4 or more times per hour today, like someone was handing you a gold coin 4 times per hour and all you had to do was remember to stick your hand out to receive it. The longer practice periods are worth a one ounce bar of gold!!
Be divinely greedy and love today’s lesson. We only have this lesson for today, and then it is gone. Eat it up while it is here!!!
