Read on the ACIM CE App: https://acimce.app/:W-300
Lesson 300
Only an instant does this world endure.
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: As an additional exercise, think of some inner pattern of yours which you wish was gone, or some outer difficulty which you would like to see vanish. Imagine the thing you choose appearing as a cloud in the sky. Note how the cloud looks, what its shape, size, and color are. Then repeat:
Only an instant does this _______ endure.
Let me see beyond that tiny instant to eternity.
Then imagine the cloud vanishing.
Commentary
What a great lesson with which to end a series of ten days in which we have been thinking on the section “What Is the Real World?” The thought here is the flip side of the holy instant. This world is nothing but the unholy instant. Only two instants exist, and we are in one or the other all the time.
The idea for today could be taken negatively, with a focus on the transitory nature of life, “a brief candle,” as Shakespeare called it, where our “joys are gone before they are possessed” (1:1). On the other hand, the brevity of this world’s existence can be a very encouraging thought! “Yet this is also an idea that lets no false perception keep you in its hold nor represent more than a passing cloud upon a sky eternally serene” (1:2).
The hallucination that is this world is nothing more than a passing cloud that is crossing the serenity of our right mind. Our false perceptions will endure no more than an instant, and then they will be gone. Like a child on a long automobile trip, “soon” can seem to us to be forever, but our Father knows the end is certain. The clouds of false perception will dissipate, the sun will come out again, having been hidden only for an instant. Our minds will recognize their own serenity once more.
And it is this serenity we seek—unclouded, obvious, and sure—today. (1:3)
Let me, then, seek that serenity. Let me seek it now, and every time today I can remember to do so. Let me open myself to that holy instant, and remember that beyond the clouds that seem to darken my mind, the sun shines uninterrupted. Let me be glad and grateful that “the world endures but for an instant” (2:4). Let me “go beyond that tiny instant to eternity” (2:5). Let me do so now. Let me reach to that other state of mind often today.