Read on the ACIM CE App: https://acimce.app/:W-320
Lesson 320
My Father gives all power unto 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: Take a few moments and reflect on the following three questions, one at a time, using the questions beneath each one to guide your reflection. You may even want to write down your reflections:
Can His Will do all things in me?
If not, doesn’t that mean that I am not His creation?
If I am not His creation, where did I come from? Did I spring out of nowhere?
Can His Will reach through me to all the world?
If not, doesn’t that mean there are some places He cannot go?
Does that make sense?
Is there any limit on His Will?
Could God’s Will possibly be limited?
Just one more limited will among many?
Reflecting on these questions has prepared you to fully accept today’s idea. Now repeat that idea in a special way: Imagine that you are the risen Jesus speaking those words. As Allen points out in his commentary today, today’s idea is an allusion to Jesus’ statement in the final scene of Matthew. There, Jesus appears to his disciples to send them out to “teach all nations,” and declares to them, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Mt 28:18). So, as you repeat today’s idea, imagine that you are the risen Christ. Feel the exaltation. Feel the power you possess to illumine the entire world.
Commentary
Those of us who have not studied the Bible, or the Gospels in particular, may not recognize these words as a paraphrase of words spoken by Jesus shortly after the resurrection: “All power is given unto me” (Mt 28:18). I find it significant that the Course puts these words into our mouths. It is an indication of the equal plane on which the Course places us, with Jesus. He was not anything we are not; all of us, along with him, are equal sons of God. He’s just a little further along in time (or perhaps out of time), but with the same raw material. We are all the Son of God, together, as God created us.
This lesson expands on the idea of the limitlessness of the Son of God that is mentioned in “What Is the Last Judgment?” There, God says, “You are still My holy Son…as limitless as your Creator” (W-WI.10.5:1). Here we are told we (as the Son of God) are “limitless” (1:1); without limit on any of our attributes, whether strength, peace, joy, or whatever. Limitless strength, limitless peace, limitless joy. To be honest, I can’t even conceive of what joy without limits is like, and yet this lesson says it is mine. I know joy. I know a great deal of joy. Sometimes, I am so joyful I can scarcely contain it. But joy with no limit at all? What must that be like?
I think we all put mental limits on our strength, our peace, and our joy. And our happiness, for that matter. Haven’t you ever had the feeling that it is somehow dangerous to get too happy? (What a strange juxtaposition of words is that phrase, “too happy!”) “Watch out!” we think. “We don’t want to become ‘bliss ninnies.'” Yet the characteristic of the Son of God is limitless joy. How will we ever come to know that as our own while we place limits on our joy? Our egos act like governors on the inner engine of happiness and joy; we can get just so happy, and then the power seems to cut out. We need to cut loose from the governor.
Do I really believe that what I will with my Creator “must be done” (1:3)? Do I believe that my holy will cannot be denied (1:4)? There are those who catch a glimpse of this, and they are those who seem to accomplish so much in their lives, refusing to believe that what they envision cannot come to pass. Instead they realize it must come to pass.
Of course, we are not speaking here in earthly terms alone. This isn’t the message of mastery of will, of the dominance of our environment by sheer force of will. This speaks of our “holy” will, joined with God’s Will, which is expressed in the extension of His Being. Here, we have unlimited power. In this, “Your will can do all things in me, and then extend to all the world as well through me” (2:1). Each of us can be an unlimited force for good and for God in this world if we transcend our beliefs in limitations. The power of love, for instance, is without limit, because there is nothing real to oppose it.
Let me examine my thoughts today, my Father, for the beliefs in limits that hold back Your power working in me and through me. Let me recognize them as false, and open myself to Your great power, working through me, to extend into all the world.