Lesson 267 • September-24
My heart is beating in the peace of God.
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.
Commentary
This is a short Workbook lesson, but very powerful. It is one of those very positive lessons that say wonderful things about us. If most of you are like me-and I am certain you all are to some degree-often when you read a lesson like this, there is a kind of mental filtering going on. The lesson says, "Now is my mind healed" (1:4), and you instantly edit it. "Well, partly." "My mind will be healed some day." "My mind is in the process of being healed." We dilute the meaning. When it says, "Peace fills my heart, and floods my body with the purpose of forgiveness" (1:3), we are tempted to deny that it is so and to think, "Peace is not flooding my heart." The ego is constantly trying to negate the truth about ourselves.
What the Course is saying about us often does not fit the picture of ourselves we have in our mind. The very low opinion of ourselves that we constantly maintain is one of our major problems. When we do a Workbook meditation, we need to practice letting go of that poor self-image for a while. The Course is constantly saying that we actively block from our awareness a true picture of who and what we really are. The Workbook meditations are part of our training in letting go of our self-made picture, and accepting God's picture instead. Somewhere within each of us there is a dim flicker of recognition that this paragraph is about us, and not about some impossibly distant saint. It is that little spark, as the Course calls it, that the Holy Spirit wants to fan into a flame.
That is the whole point of the Course. We are underestimating ourselves, undervaluing ourselves. "I am a messenger of God" (1:6). I really am. I may feel like something much less than that, but I am always that messenger. I always have all I need to save the world.
As you read this lesson today, attempt not to edit the lesson in your mind. When it says, "Now is my mind healed," just let that be true for you right now. Don't worry about how you were all day yesterday. Don't worry about how your mind will be after the meditation is over. Just for that moment, let it be so. Agree with the way the vision of Christ sees you, and say in response, "Yes, now is my mind healed."
Read slowly, to give yourself time to absorb each phrase. We need time, mostly to spot the negative responses that the ego mind will be throwing up and to, quite simply, ignore them. Don't fight or argue with the ego. Just decide, for these few minutes, not to listen. Just decide, for these few minutes, to listen to the Voice for God.
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