In this video recording of a class given as part of the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum led by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise, Bruce Rawles reads and discusses A Course In Miracles Workbook Lesson 124: “Let me remember I am one with God.” – W-pI.124.
Here are the first three paragraphs from his lesson:
“Today we will again give thanks for our Identity in God. Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. We can fail in nothing. Everything we touch takes on a shining light that blesses and that heals. At one with God and with the universe we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us.
How holy are our minds! And everything we see reflects the holiness within the mind at one with God and with itself. How easily do errors disappear, and death give place to everlasting life. Our shining footprints point the way to truth, for God 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 God, Who loves us with the equal love in which we were created, smiles on us and offers us the happiness we gave.” – W.pI.124.1-3
Here are some reflections on a few of the words in the lesson’s title sentence about how two thought systems align … or fight with this quote:
Let = allow, permit, authorize, enable, grant, encourage – Holy Spirit (HS) is asking us to let Him do the heavy lifting … which is really nothing in truth since Perfect Oneness doesn’t need any updates, changes, or modifications, we just need to “throw the switch” on the decision-maker control panel dashboard in our mind from ego to HS and LET HS do the rest… easy!
… Ego’s opposition to Letting is prevention, prohibition, resistance, sabotage, and it musters enormous propaganda (2 shields of oblivion) to keep us from seeing the unconscious, unfounded guilt which is really nuthin’ … but we need HS’s help to look at it first before skipping over those crucial steps (Lessons 5 and 34).
me = back to the decision-maker in my mind, always choosing between only one of two thought systems, HS or ego. The “who” self (lower case s) = me = the identity that needs undoing via HS’s replacement therapy is the cause of my projections, so I can and must use all of them – with HS’s help – to get back to the mind (the DM) to change the ticker-tape scrolling across the mental movie from condemnation to forgiveness, from separate to shared interests, from oblivion to awakening to the “What” Self (upper case S) Identity we all share eternally.
remember = recollect, recall, think back to, restore, re-integrate, resurrect, reinvigorate
ego: forget, deny, overlook, ignore, isolate, imprison, mothball, suspend, oppose, contradict, challenge, retract, repudiate, repulse, decline, veto, dismiss
one with God (pure non-dual Identity that isn’t in ego’s vocabulary at all! … ego doesn’t even the slightest conception of what this means so it zones out when this phrase appears.
one with all my brothers: another meaningless idea to the ego, only partial alliances are tolerated, and only in the context of special hate/special love bargains; this (as Ken Wapnick reminds) is one of the most challenging ideas in ACIM, since we want to leave out part of the Sonship to maintain specialness and therefore not threaten our special, separate “who” identity. If we include everyone and everything in our definition of Self, then there’s no room for ego and it gets panicky.
one with my Self: ego is terrified of the idea of our DM choosing against it. The ego doesn’t want us to go anywhere near the decision-maker in our mind – not 6 feet or 6 light-years! – since it doesn’t want to have its insanity erased and its universal unkindness vaporized.
“You cursed brat! Look what you’ve done! I’m melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?” – The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz
Another related quote from the course about remembering we – none of us – ever left our Source in Perfect Oneness … except in mad dreams:
“The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is still. ²It reaches gently from that quiet time, and from the mind it healed in quiet then, to other minds to share its quietness. ³And they will join in doing nothing to prevent its radiant extension back into the Mind which caused all minds to be. ⁴Born out of sharing, there can be no pause in time to cause the miracle delay in hastening to all unquiet minds, and bringing them an instant’s stillness, when the memory of God returns to them. ⁵Their own remembering is quiet now, and what has come to take its place will not be wholly unremembered afterwards.
He to Whom time is given offers thanks for every quiet instant given Him. ²For in that instant is God’s memory allowed to offer all its treasures to the Son of God, for whom they have been kept. ³How gladly does He offer them unto the one for whom He has been given them! ⁴And His Creator shares His thanks, because He would not be deprived of His Effects. ⁵The instant’s silence that His Son accepts gives welcome to eternity and Him, and lets Them enter where They would abide. ⁶For in that instant does the Son of God do nothing that would make himself afraid.
How instantly the memory of God arises in the mind that has no fear to keep the memory away! ²Its own remembering has gone. ³There is no past to keep its fearful image in the way of glad awakening to present peace. ⁴The trumpets of eternity resound throughout the stillness, yet disturb it not. ⁵And what is now remembered is not fear, but rather is the Cause that fear was made to render unremembered and undone. ⁶The stillness speaks in gentle sounds of love the Son of God remembers from before his own remembering came in between the present and the past, to shut them out.” – T-28.I.11–13; text, (page 591, English print edition)
More related quotes:
… we … give thanks for our Identity in God.” Gratitude is the appropriate response to God, all our siblings, and HS which is the identity Jesus’ curriculum is leading us back to inexorably. Gratitude is like the tractor beam pulling us home and forgiveness the rocket that denies the ego’s power to do or be anything in Truth.
Our home is safe: our Identity as All-encompassing Spirit hasn’t been compromised, and never will be; Perfect Oneness doesn’t have anything outside Itself to challenge, attack, or oppose It. Anything less than that is not only unsafe, it doesn’t exist, except through hypnotic holograms, magical monster movies, and dangerous, depressing dreams.
Protection is guaranteed in all we do; the “royal we” that HS is using applies when together, having chosen sanity, we have the light that dispels the darkness of specialness, isolation, separation, and substitution. Our mind is protected from the fantasy of uncertainty, vulnerability, and the foibles of we/they silliness. We (with HS guiding us) need DO nothing once our identity is re-established in our mind; we might “do” things in the dream, but these don’t have any impact on our real world, our real identity. The perfect “feedback system” of the world assures us that any lack of peace merely requires a correction (atonement or attunement) to the forgotten song of HS’s call to all.
Power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. We can learn to generalize our choice to consistently forgive – to increasingly identify with HS’s universal curriculum which applies to all situations, conditions, and specifics in the dream of space, time, and individuality. The power of HS is the power of total inclusion and complete reunion, and we benefit from HS’s strength when we choose to drop the ego’s sword of condemnation. Ego’s pathetic adversarial attempts at “power over alleged others” fade when we experience the gentle power and strength of HS’s all-inclusive innocence, lifting our minds above the battlefield of otherness.
Aligned in our minds with HS we can fail in nothing; maligned by ego, we succeed in nothing. Ego may appear fool-proof in its dark dream, but it’s not God-proof and our (dream of) prodigal return is guaranteed since we’ve never left!“
Everything we touch takes on a shining light that blesses and that heals.” As we generalize HS’s lessons, there is nothing in the world that our HS-aligned mind doesn’t bless, since we see the 3-part mind consisting of Decision-maker, Holy Spirit and ego in everyone, realizing we’re all in the same boat, everyone equal children of God merely dreaming we left home, worthy of our infinite patience and gentle compassion, including our silly, seemingly separate selves. Forgiveness applies to everyone and everything all the time without exception.“
At one with God and with the universe we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us.” Holy Spirit (HS) – contrary to insanity and arrogance – recognizes that our Total Inclusive Identity can’t go anywhere, any more than our right mind could. The toxic, scary, divisive dream will merely cease to seem to be and then our imagined travels will be over, having returned home.
The second paragraph begins with: “How holy are our minds!” … a perfect example of an exercise HS gives us in cognitive dissonance when we protest loudly that we don’t feel one bit holy (when we’re honest) when we judge the world and blast it with our blame-thrower; an exhausting and exasperating exercise! Jesus and HS here are appealing to that awareness of what we TRULY are, knowing full well that the song for peace is inevitably stronger than the ego’s dirges, laments, and whiny, tiring tantrums.… Sameness (equality) is the gateway to Oneness. Since the Course uses an indirect approach to restoring mindfulness, we don’t go directly to God via contemplating Oneness so much as we undo our obsession with differences and the sameness becomes more and more self-evident. The light that was always there becomes apparent.
“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 God, Who loves us with the equal love in which we were created, smiles on us and offers us the happiness we gave.”
There are 150 instances of the word equal in ACIM!
equal synonyms: identical, uniform, alike, one and the same, equivalent, indistinguishable, matching, twin, comparable, similar, peer, fellow, coequal, make, counterpart, match, parallel … dualistic words, but they hint at our completely shared identity that transcends the confusion and ambiguity of words.
Ego’s insistence on specialness masks the underlying equality of everyone and everything.
“The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you: Whenever your thoughts wander to a special (unequal) relationship which still attracts you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there let Him release you. He needs only your willingness to share His (equal) perspective to give it to you completely. And your willingness need not be complete because His is perfect. It is His task to atone for your unwillingness by His perfect faith, and it is His faith you share with Him there. Out of your recognition of your unwillingness for your release, His perfect willingness is given you. Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His Call. And let Him call on Heaven for you.” (ACIM, T-16.VI.12:1-7, page 347)
We need HS’s help to see the sameness which is a real cornerstone of forgiveness.
“You respond to what you perceive, and as you perceive so shall you behave. ²The Golden Rule asks you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. ³This means that the perception of both must be accurate. ⁴The Golden Rule is the rule for appropriate behavior. ⁵You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive correctly. ⁶Since you and your neighbor are equal members of one family, as you perceive both so you will do to both. ⁷You should look out from the perception of your own holiness to the holiness of others.” (ACIM, T-1.III.6:1-7)text, p. 10:
“What happens to perceptions if there are no judgments and nothing but perfect equality? Perception becomes impossible. Truth can only be known. All of it is equally true, and knowing any part of it is to know all of it. Only perception involves partial awareness. Knowledge transcends the laws governing perception, because partial knowledge is impossible. It is all one and has no separate parts. You who are really one with it need but know yourself and your knowledge is complete. To know God’s miracle is to know Him.” (ACIM, T-3.V.8:1-9, page 45)
The lesson concludes with this inspiring sentence:
“Let me remember I am one with God, at one with all my brothers and my Self, in everlasting holiness and peace.” –
(This video recording was made November 15, 2020.)