Lesson 223 • August-11
God is my life. I have no life but His.
Practice Instructions
See complete instructions in separate document. A short summary:
- Read the commentary paragraph slowly and personally.
- Pray the prayer, perhaps several times.
- Morning and evening: Repeat the idea and then spend time in Open Mind Meditation.
- Hourly remembrance: Repeat the idea and then spend time in Open Mind Meditation.
- Frequent reminders: Repeat the idea and then spend a quiet moment in meditation.
- Response to temptation: Repeat the idea whenever upset, to restore peace.
- Read the "What Is" section slowly and thoughtfully once during the day.
Practice comments: In praying this particular prayer, I find it helpful to convert it to first person singular: "My Father, let me see the face of Christ instead of my mistakes," etc.
Commentary
Our only mistake is thinking that we have some sort of life apart from God. We do not. God is Life. He is Being. He is Existence. He created all that there is, and there is nothing apart from Him. "Nothing can be apart from Him and live" (W-pI.156.2:9). "I do not exist apart from Him" (1:2).
Most of my time here on earth I have spent thinking of myself as someone or something apart from God. Most of my spiritual seeking has been a striving to "get back to God," as if He were unimaginably distant from me. He is not distant. He is not Something separate from my Self. "I have no life but His." There is a blessing often used in Unity churches which ends with the words "Wherever I am, God is." Yes. My life is God's Life. My thoughts are God's Thoughts. There is nowhere to go. There is nothing to do to find Him; He is here. He is with me. He is my life. If I live, I am participating in God.
There is a blessed relief that washes over us when we realize our unity with God. All the bitter struggle, all the fruitless longing, all the aching sense of being on the outside looking in—all of it ends. A thought of pure joy fills our minds. At times it bubbles over into laughter, a certain compassionate amusement at the ludicrous idea we have tormented ourselves with, that we could ever, in any remote or tiny way, be separated from Him. Can the sunbeam be separate from the sun? Can an idea be separate from the mind that thinks it?
And so we turn again to the quiet place within, where all this is already known. We ask to "see the face of Christ instead of our mistakes" (2:1). We affirm that we no longer want to be lost in forgetfulness. We state clearly that we want to leave our loneliness and find ourselves, as we have always been, at home. And in the quiet, God speaks to us, and tells us we are His Son.
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