Lesson 262 • September-19
Let me perceive no differences today.
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 suggestion: Throughout the day, when you have a spare moment, pick someone and silently say to him or her:
You are not that one form. You are the Mind behind all forms.
Your name is not [name], for you are not separate. Your name is "Father," for you are part of Him.
You are not a stranger to your Father. You are His beloved Son.
You are not a stranger to me. You are my ancient friend.
Commentary
In order to move toward perceiving no differences, I must begin to let go of identification with the body, both in identifying myself with a body, and in identifying my brothers and sisters as bodies. The body, says the reading for the week, is a fence (W-pII.5.1:1). It establishes difference; it fairly screams, "I am different." Why is it that every body has different fingerprints, different retinal prints, different DNA patterns? How can it be that in all the billions of bodies, no fingerprint is ever duplicated? Our bodies are saying, "I am different. I am unique. I am completely unlike all of you."
Love sings softly, "We are the same. We are one. We share one life, and that with God." It is the one Son that we would look upon today (1:1-2). The "thousand forms" (1:4) are different; the life we share is one. We need not denigrate the body to do this. The body can become a means to heal the separation of our minds. We use the body to express our unity. We touch, we embrace, we care for one another, we assist one another. We use the illusion to transcend the illusion.
In each body that comes before us, we see the one Son. "Let me not see him as a stranger to his Father, nor as stranger to myself" (1:7). Each one I see today is part of me, and I of him, and together we are part of God our Source (1:8). Seeing this is what seeing no differences means. Of course, I will still see male and female, tall and short, fat and thin, poor and rich, black and white and brown and yellow and red. But I choose to look beyond these differences today, and to see the sameness, the one Son in whom we are the same, not different.
Separation means differences, and differences breed judgment and attack. The vision of our sameness and our unity brings peace, "and nowhere else can peace be sought and found" (2:3). We choose not to let our sight stop at the differences, but to go beyond them to the oneness. We look and we say, "This is my brother (sister) whom I love, part of me, loved by God and part of God with me. Together we are the holy Son of God."
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