Lesson 337 • December-3
My sinlessness protects me from all harm.
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: Think of your day yesterday, and in relation to each thing you did, ask yourself, "Was there an element of 'If I do this thing right, I'll redeem myself'?"
Then, with each "yes" you get, ask yourself, "What was I trying to redeem myself for?"
Then focus on simply accepting the awareness from God that you are sinless, that you need do nothing to be redeemed, because "God has already done all things that need be done" (1:5).
Commentary
This is a lesson about simply accepting the Atonement and nothing more. It states that there are really only two steps to the full knowledge of complete happiness (1:4-6):
1. Realize that I need do nothing of myself.
2. Accept what God has already done.
All of the turmoil and discomfort we experience as we begin a spiritual path comes from thinking that we lack something (which is not seeing step 2) and therefore we have to do something to get it (which is not seeing step 1).
We feel unhappy, and therefore we think we lack happiness and set out to seek it. Unhappiness is not a condition of lack. It is a condition of denial. We are actively negating happiness, which is our natural state. We are blocking out the awareness of love's presence. We are covering over the joy of our created nature, of simply being, with a filthy patina of unfulfillment. We think the solution is to do something; actually the solution is to stop doing something, to put an end to the activity that is obscuring our happiness.
That is one of the values of meditation. When we deliberately bring a stop to our mental activity we often suddenly feel happy. That is because we are always happy, but we are constantly generating unhappiness by our thoughts. Stop the thoughts and the happiness shines through. Clear away the clouds and the sun is always there.
We have taught ourselves that we are this constant mental activity. Letting go of that activity is an extreme threat to the ego. If we let it go nothing is left, or so we fear; so the ego tells us. The ego lies!
All we need to do is to stop doing. What we are, without any activity at all, is enough to support perfect, constant happiness.
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