Lesson 95 "I am one Self, united with my Creator."
1. "Today's idea accurately describes you as God created you. You are one
within yourself, and one with Him. Yours is the unity of all creation. Your
perfect unity makes change in you impossible. You do not accept this, and you
fail to realize it must be so, only because you believe that you have changed
yourself already."
2. "You see yourself as a ridiculous parody on God's creation; weak, vicious,
ugly and sinful, miserable and beset with pain. Such is your version of
yourself; a self divided into many warring parts, separate from God, and
tenuously held together by its erratic and capricious maker, to which you pray.
It does not hear your prayers, for it is deaf. It does not see the oneness in
you, for it is blind. It does not understand you are the Son of God, for it is
senseless and understands nothing."
3. "We will attempt today to be aware only of what can hear and see, and what
makes perfect sense. We will again direct our exercises towards reaching your
one Self, which is united with Its Creator. In patience and in hope we try again
today."
4. "The use of the first five minutes of every waking hour for practicing the
idea for the day has special advantages at the stage of learning in which you
are at present. It is difficult at this point not to allow your mind to wander,
if it undertakes extended practice. You have surely realized this by now. You
have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline, and of your need for
mind training. It is necessary that you be aware of this, for it is indeed a
hindrance to your advance."
5. "Frequent but shorter practice periods have other advantages for you at this
time. In addition to recognizing your difficulties with sustained attention, you
must also have noticed that, unless you are reminded of your purpose frequently,
you tend to forget about it for long periods of time. You often fail to remember
the short applications of the idea for the day, and you have not yet formed the
habit of using the idea as an automatic response to temptation."
6. "Structure, then, is necessary for you at this time, planned to include
frequent reminders of your goal and regular attempts to reach it. Regularity in
terms of time is not the ideal requirement for the most beneficial form of
practice in salvation. It is advantageous, however, for those whose motivation
is inconsistent, and who remain heavily defended against learning."
7. "We will, therefore, keep to the five-minutes-an-hour practice periods for a
while, and urge you to omit as few as possible. Using the first five minutes of
the hour will be particularly helpful, since it imposes firmer structure. Do
not, however, use your lapses from this schedule as an excuse not to return to
it again as soon as you can. There may well be a temptation to regard the day as
lost because you have already failed to do what is required. This should,
however, merely be recognized as what it is; a refusal to let your mistake be
corrected, and an unwillingness to try again."
8. "The Holy Spirit is not delayed in His teaching by your mistakes. He can be
held back only by your unwillingness to let them go. Let us therefore be
determined, particularly for the next week or so, to be willing to forgive
ourselves for our lapses in diligence, and our failures to follow the
instructions for practicing the day's idea. This tolerance for weakness will
enable us to overlook it, rather than give it power to delay our learning. If we
give it power to do this, we are regarding it as strength, and are confusing
strength with weakness."
9. "When you fail to comply with the requirements of this course, you have
merely made a mistake. This calls for correction, and for nothing else. To allow
a mistake to continue is to make additional mistakes, based on the first and
reinforcing it. It is this process that must be laid aside, for it is but
another way in which you would defend illusions against the truth."
10. "Let all these errors go by recognizing them for what they are. They are
attempts to keep you unaware you are one Self, united with your Creator, at one
with every aspect of creation, and limitless in power and in peace. This is the
truth, and nothing else is true. Today we will affirm this truth again, and try
to reach the place in you in which there is no doubt that only this is true."
11. "Begin the practice periods today with this assurance, offered to your mind
with all the certainty that you can give:"
<"I am one Self, united with my Creator,
at one with every aspect of creation,
and limitless in power and in peace.">
"Then close your eyes and tell yourself again, slowly and thoughtfully,
attempting to allow the meaning of the words to sink into your mind, replacing
false ideas:"
<"I am one Self.">
"Repeat this several times, and then attempt to feel the meaning that the
words convey."
12. "You are one Self, united and secure in light and joy and peace. You are
God's Son, one Self, with one Creator and one goal; to bring awareness of this
oneness to all minds, that true creation may extend the allness and the unity of
God. You are one Self, complete and healed and whole, with power to lift the
veil of darkness from the world, and let the light in you come through to teach
the world the truth about yourself."
13. "You are one Self, in perfect harmony with all there is, and all that there
will be. You are one Self, the holy Son of God, united with your brothers in
that Self; united with your Father in His Will. Feel this one Self in you, and
let It shine away all your illusions and your doubts. This is your Self, the Son
of God Himself, sinless as Its Creator, with His strength within you and His
Love forever yours. You are one Self, and it is given you to feel this Self
within you, and to cast all your illusions out of the one Mind that is this
Self, the holy truth in you."
14. You are one Self, the holy Son of God, united with your brothers in that
Self; united with your Father in His Will. Feel this one Self in you, and let It
shine away all your illusions and your doubts. This is your Self, the Son of God
Himself, sinless as Its Creator, with His strength within you and His Love
forever yours. You are one Self, and it is given you to feel this Self within
you, and to cast all your illusions out of the one Mind that is this Self, the
holy truth in you.
15. "Your own acknowledgment you are one Self, united with your Father, is a
call to all the world to be at one with you. To everyone you meet today, be sure
to give the promise of today's idea and tell him this:"
<"You are one Self with me, united with our Creator in this Self."
I honor you because of What I am, and What He is,
Who loves us both as one.">
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The commentary on this lesson is an excerpt from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of
books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can
be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesson 95. I am one Self, united with my Creator.
**This is a unique lesson, being the only one where, midway through, Jesus drops
his discussion of the thought for the day and addresses us specifically about
what to do when we do not do what is asked: i.e., forget to do the day's
exercises. It is a remarkable discussion, and we will spend considerable time on
it. The first three paragraphs deal with the lesson's theme, a continuation of
the discussion of our true Self. As I mentioned earlier, this series of twenty
lessons -- 91 through 110 -- contrasts our true Self as Christ with the
separated self of the ego. We are reminded again, in this lesson, of the essence
of our true Identity: <oneness>. The Son of God is not divided into
multitudinous fragments, but is one, and His Oneness is at one with His
Source.**
(7:1-2)"We will, therefore, keep to the five-minutes-an-hour practice periods
for a while, and urge you to omit as few as possible. Using the first five
minutes of the hour will be particularly helpful, since it imposes firmer
structure."
**We can again observe Jesus telling us that despite being aware of our lack of
discipline, he is proceeding with "firmer structure," since that is our need if
we are to be disciplined. ... We now come to the heart of the discussion:**
(7:3-5) "Do not, however, use your lapses from this schedule as an excuse not to
return to it again as soon as you can. There may well be a temptation to regard
the day as lost because you have already failed to do what is required. This
should, however, merely be recognized as what it is; a refusal to let your
mistake be corrected, and an unwillingness to try again."
**Jesus does not use the word <guilt> here, but that is his subject. Guilt
prevents the Holy Spirit from correcting our mistakes, by screaming: "I have
committed sins that are beyond correction and forgiveness, I am thus a terrible
person and a failure as a student of A Course in Miracles." The text's
discussion on sin versus error is relevant here, for it points to guilt's
critical role in the ego's defensive thought system of protecting its separate
existence:
"It is essential that error be not confused with sin, and it is this distinction
that makes salvation possible. ... Sin calls for punishment as error for
correction, and the belief that punishment is correction is clearly insane."
"Sin is not an error, for sin entails an arrogance which the idea of error
lacks. To sin would be to violate reality, and to succeed. Sin is the
proclamation that attack is real and guilt is justified. It assumes the Son of
God is guilty, and has thus succeeded in losing his innocence and making himself
what God created not. ... the ego brings sin to fear, demanding punishment. Yet
punishment is but another form of guilt's protection, for what is deserving
punishment must have been really done. Punishment is always the great preserver
of sin, treating it with respect and honoring its enormity. What must be
punished, must be true." (T.19.T.19.II.1.1,6;2.1-4.T.19.III.2.2-5).
Thus do we see that our individuality is preserved once it is called <sin>,
protected by the experience of <guilt>, which demands the punishment that we
<fear>. Moreover, the instant we feel guilt it will be driven underground, or
repressed in our minds, because the feeling is intolerable. Projection is
inevitable, and our experience of sin and guilt metamorphoses into: It is
someone else's fault. The mind's guilt is now safely buried, with no hope of it
ever being undone, for the belief in another's sin covers the cherished belief
it is ours.**
(8:1) "The Holy Spirit is not delayed in His teaching by your mistakes."
**In other words, it does not matter how often you forget Who you are; the
timeless truth of your Self is unaffected. Needless to say, this goes beyond the
daily workbook lesson. Whenever you are tempted to see yourself unfairly treated
or not given the love and attention you specialness demands, go as quickly as
possible within to say to Jesus: "I must be wrong, please help me." His role in
helping us forgive ourselves, learning not to take the tiny, mad idea seriously,
constitutes the essence of our relationship with him. Again, Jesus is not
delayed by our mistakes, but the experience of our happiness most definitely
is.**
(8:2) "He can be held back only by your unwillingness to let them go."
**That is guilt's purpose: to express our unwillingness to let mistakes go by
labeling them as sins that demand punishment. Fear of this punishment is so
overwhelming we have to project the sin and believe we are not the guilty,
sinful ones. That makes us paranoid, because we now look around with our beady,
little eyes, seeking sin others and terrified they will attack us. Yet all we
see are our own attack thoughts projected outward. The problem, however, does
not lie in this, but in feeling guilty about it.
Jesus, therefore, urges us to come to him as soon as we remember what we have
done or failed to remember. Again, even though <guilt> does not appear here, it
underlies everything that is being said. It is the unwillingness to let sin go,
for it is the irrevocable truth that deserves punishment.**
(8:3-4) "Let us therefore be determined, particularly for the next week or so,
to be willing to forgive ourselves for our lapses in diligence, and our failures
to follow the instructions for practicing the day's idea. This tolerance for
weakness will enable us to overlook it, rather than give it power to delay our
learning."
**If we find our weakness intolerable, we are giving it -- now called sin
--tremendous power, not only to delay our learning, but to destroy it and make
forgiveness impossible. To repeat, the problem is never our failure to remember,
nor our specialness or anger. It is our holding on to the perceived failure
through guilt.
Remember, the ego always wants to prove that our individuality is true, which is
accomplished by the belief in sin, which in turn is established by guilt. The
ego, thus, wastes no time in trying to prove, over and over, how guilty we are.
When you make a mistake, therefore, realize it came from fear, not from some
inherent evil, wickedness, or sinfulness in you. Then say to Jesus: "I was
afraid of your love, for I was afraid of losing my individuality and
specialness. Thus I had to protect myself by pushing you away, and that is why I
forgot." If you have such a conversation with Jesus there will be no guilt, and
without guilt there will be no problem. Feeling guilty, however, ensures the
forgetting will recur. That is why Jesus underscores the meaning of our daily
practice of the workbook exercises.
To make this point one more time: the way we overlook something is not by <not>
seeing it, but by actually looking at it. When we do, with Jesus' love beside
us, we look through it. Thus, as we have seen, overlooking really means looking
beyond.**
(8:5) "If we give it power to do this, we are regarding it as strength, and are
confusing strength with weakness."
**If we allow ourselves to feel guilty over the "weakness" of forgetting the
lesson, we reflect the underlying thought that the ego has destroyed God, rather
than seeing the ego's inherent weakness because it can do nothing. To quote the
text:
"It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means
there is no time." (T.27.VIII.6.5)
This means there is no ego as well. The Atonement principle alone is strength.**
(9:1-2) "When you fail to comply with the requirements of this course, you have
merely made a mistake. This calls for correction, and for nothing else."
**In other words, "failure" is not a sin, for Jesus gives us permission to "fail
to comply with the requirements." He is not expecting us to be model students in
terms of form. As I have stated, the best way to do the workbook and learn from
it is to do it imperfectly, <and then forgive yourself.> Thus you learn to
forgive yourself for forgetting God in the beginning. Learning to forgive your
mistake is what turns you into a true model student.**
(9:3-4) "To allow a mistake to continue is to make additional mistakes, based on
the first and reinforcing it. It is this process that must be laid aside, for it
is but another way in which you would defend illusions against the truth."
**This is telling us again that the way we stop making mistakes is by not
feeling guilty. We avoid guilt by inviting Jesus in so he can look with us at
our mistakes. He will then explain how we made them out of fear, not sin; and
without sin, the guilt disappears. If, however, guilt remains, it is certain we
will repeat the error. With guilt in our minds, repression must occur, leading
to projection in the form of the mistake of attack and sickness. Thus, when the
belief is undone, healing is accomplished for projection is impossible.
Jesus now bridges the gap between his discussion of the individual workbook
lesson and the real lesson:**
10:1-2) "Let all these errors go by recognizing them for what they are. They are
attempts to keep you unaware you are one Self, united with your Creator, at one
with every aspect of creation, and limitless in power and in peace."
**My awareness that I am one Self undoes my belief that I am separated. My
errors -- such as forgetting to do the workbook lesson every hour, or forgetting
to ask Jesus for help when I am upset -- is nothing more than the defense
against losing my individual self, which I certainly do if I remembered the
day's lesson.
Jesus continues by returning to the theme of the lesson, after having discussed
how we will defend against it. "I am one Self, united with my Creator" means
that everything I ever thought about myself is wrong, without exception.
Forgetting the lesson, therefore, is my ego's way of protecting itself from
remembering the truth, which would lead me to forget the illusion I am a special
self, separate from all others, and certainly separate from my Creator and
Source:**
(10:3-4) "This is the truth, and nothing else is true. Today we will affirm this
truth again, and try to reach the place in you in which there is no doubt that
only this is true."
**We are returned to our task -- remembering the truth -- by bringing to it the
illusions of our self. Thus our minds are cleansed of the ego's silliness, and
we have reached the inner place of truth.
In the remaining five paragraphs of the lesson Jesus affirms this truth -- we
are one Self, at one with God and everyone else -- and does so over and over and
over again:**
(13)"You are one Self, in perfect harmony with all there is, and all that there
will be. You are one Self, the holy Son of God, united with your brothers in
that Self; united with your Father in His Will. Feel this one Self in you, and
let It shine away all your illusions and your doubts. This is your Self, the Son
of God Himself, sinless as Its Creator, with His strength within you and His
Love forever yours. You are one Self, and it is given you to feel this Self
within you, and to cast all your illusions out of the one Mind that is this
Self, the holy truth in you."
**Our only function within the dream of separation is to undo the illusions of
separate interests that hide the memory of our true Self. Jesus thus sets the
stage for later lessons that will focus more specifically on forgiveness: the
means taught by A Course in Miracles to remember our Identity and the Creator's
Love.**
(15)"Your own acknowledgment you are one Self, united with your Father, is a
call to all the world to be at one with you. To everyone you meet today, be sure
to give the promise of today's idea and tell him this:
You are one Self with me,
united with our Creator in this Self.
I honor you because of What I am,
and What He is, Who loves us both as one."
**It must be so, since, "everyone you meet" is your self. Thus as the text has
reminded us:
"When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him you will
see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. As you think of him you
will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or
lose yourself. Whenever two Sons of God meet, they are given another chance at
salvation. Do not leave anyone without giving salvation to him and receiving it
yourself. For I am always there with you, in remembrance of you."
(T.8.III.4.1-7)
Thus we end this important lesson by remembering to see each situation as
another opportunity to correct the ego's misperceptions of separation and
specialness. We pledge ourselves, as we begin the day, to bring Jesus with us so
we can remember we are one in the ego and one in spirit. Thus this day, and all
that follow, will be joyously filled with the promise of forgiveness as we
return home together to the Oneness we never truly left, and which never left
us.**
