Read on the ACIM CE App: https://acimce.app/:W-260
Lesson 260
Let me remember God created me.
Practice Instructions
See complete instructions in a 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 something you wish you hadn’t done, or wish you had done better. Try to get in touch with how doing that thing seemed to make you into something undesirable. Perhaps it seemed to make you stupid, or selfish, or inconsiderate, or petty. Then repeat these lines:
In my eyes, that action made me ___________.
Let me remember God created me.
I cannot make me [the attribute you used in first line], because God created me [choose an attribute that contrasts with the one you assigned yourself].
Commentary
In the Course’s reasoning there is an intimate, unbreakable connection between acknowledging our true Source (“I am as God created me”) and knowing our true Identity. Once we acknowledge God and only God as our Source, all questions about our identity disappear, because we are whatever God created us to be. “Now is our Source remembered, and therein we find our true identity at last” (2:1). If our goal is to remember who we truly are, the only way to that goal involves accepting God as our Author. All our false self-concepts derive from the idea that, somehow, we made ourselves, or at least have played a prominent role in shaping ourselves.
In our “insanity,” we thought we made ourselves (1:1). Perhaps we grudgingly acknowledge God as the original creator, and yet we all believe that, since that time, we have been the primary factor in shaping our own lives and destiny. We must believe that, if we believe in sin. Would God create sin? Yet if He did not, and sin exists—who made it? So whether or not we consciously admit it, we do believe that we made ourselves, if we believe we are anything other than totally innocent and perfect. In sum, we think that “God created us; we screwed things up.”
And yet, the Course would argue, we have not left our Source. God is all there is, and everything that is, is in Him. We are still part of Him. Therefore we cannot be what we think we are. We cannot separate ourselves from Him as we think we have. Separation not only never happened; it cannot happen.
If we simply remember God created us, we will simultaneously remember our Identity (1:4-5). Just as the nature of a sunbeam is defined by the nature of the sun, so we are defined by our Source. This is what Christ’s vision shows us as we look upon our brothers and ourselves. We are sinless and holy “because our Source can know no sin” (2:2). We are, therefore, “like each other and alike to Him” (2:3).
Let me remember, today, that God created me. My Source defines what I am. I am not defined by my past, by my upbringing, by my unkind words or deeds. Nor are my brothers defined by theirs. We are, all of us, defined by God. And what we are is His perfect Son.