Lesson 97. I am spirit.

Lesson 97. I am spirit.

(1) Today's idea identifies you with your one Self. It accepts no split
identity, nor tries to weave opposing factors into unity. It simply
states the truth. Practice this truth today as often as you can, for it
will bring your mind from conflict to the quiet fields of peace. No
chill of fear can enter, for your mind has been absolved from madness,
letting go illusions of a split identity.

(2) We state again the truth about your Self, the holy Son of God Who
rests in you; whose mind has been restored to sanity. You are the spirit
lovingly endowed with all your Father's Love and peace and joy. You are
the spirit which completes Himself, and shares His function as Creator.
He is with you always, as you are with Him.

(3) Today we try to bring reality still closer to your mind. Each time
you practice, awareness is brought a little nearer at least; sometimes a
thousand years or more are saved. The minutes which you give are
multiplied over and over, for the miracle makes use of time, but is not
ruled by it. Salvation is a miracle, the first and last; the first that
is the last, for it is one.

(4) You are the spirit in whose mind abides the miracle in which all
time stands still; the miracle in which a minute spent in using these
ideas becomes a time that has no limit and that has no end. Give, then,
these minutes willingly, and count on Him Who promised to lay
timelessness beside them. He will offer all His strength to every little
effort that you make. Give Him the minutes which He needs today, to help
you understand with Him you are the spirit that abides in Him, and that
calls through His Voice to every living thing; offers His sight to
everyone who asks; replaces error with the simple truth.

(5) The Holy Spirit will be glad to take five minutes of each hour from
your hands, and carry them around this aching world where pain and
misery appear to rule. He will not overlook one open mind that will
accept the healing gifts they bring, and He will lay them everywhere He
knows they will be welcome. And they will increase in healing power each
time someone accepts them as his thoughts, and uses them to heal.

(6) Thus will each gift to Him be multiplied a thousandfold and tens of
thousands more. And when it is returned to you, it will surpass in might
the
little gift you gave as much as does the radiance of the sun outshine
the tiny gleam a firefly makes an uncertain moment and goes out. The
steady brilliance of this light remains and leads you out of darkness,
nor will you be able to forget the way again.

(7) Begin these happy exercises with the words the Holy Spirit speaks to
you, and let them echo round the world through Him:

Spirit am I, a holy Son of God, free of all limits, safe and healed and
whole, free to forgive, and free to save the world.

Expressed through you, the Holy Spirit will accept this gift that you
received of Him, increase its power and give it back to you."

(8) Offer each practice period today gladly to Him. And He will speak to
you, reminding you that you are spirit, one with Him and God, your
brothers and your Self. Listen for His assurance every time you speak
the words He offers you today, and let Him tell your mind that they are
true. Use them against temptation, and escape its sorry consequences if
you yield to the belief that you are something else. The Holy Spirit
gives you peace today. Receive His words, and offer them to Him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 97. I am spirit.

*This lesson continues the theme of our true Self or Identity, which we
explored in earlier lessons. Here, our true Self is specifically
identified with spirit.*

(1:1-2) "Today's idea identifies you with your one Self. It accepts no
split identity, nor tries to weave opposing factors into unity."

*I spoke earlier about the trend, especially in holistic medicine, to
unify spirit, mind, and body. This lesson again makes it clear that it
is impossible to weave into a unity two states that are mutually
irreconcilable: spirit and the split mind; spirit and body. Thus we are
asked to choose between truth and illusion. This important theme will
also be expressed as the lesson continues.*

(2) "We state again the truth about your Self, the holy Son of God Who
rests in you; whose mind has been restored to sanity. You are the spirit
lovingly endowed with all your Father's Love and peace and joy. You are
the spirit which completes Himself, and shares His function as Creator.
He is with you always, as you are with Him."

*Asking the Holy Spirit to teach us to forgive restores us to the sanity
that corrects the ego's illusions. Fear has been brought to love, which
gently dissolves it in the truth. As we fulfill our function of
forgiveness here, our function of creation in Heaven returns to our
awareness as spirit, and we remember the Oneness that created us as one
with It.*

(3) "Today we try to bring reality still closer to your mind. Each time
you practice, awareness is brought a little nearer at least; sometimes a
thousand years or more are saved. The minutes which you give are
multiplied over and over, for the miracle makes use of time, but is not
ruled by it. Salvation is a miracle, the first and last; the first that
is the last, for it is one."

*This passage makes the same point seen in the early pages of the text
where Jesus discusses the miracle's role in our salvation. Its purpose
is to collapse time, saving us even a thousand years. Without going in
depth into A Course in Miracles' metaphysics of time, we can simply say
that since time is not linear, all of it occurred in one instant, Jesus
teaches that when we choose a miracle, we choose to undo huge sections
of our thought system that we believe exist in time. Thus he says:

"The miracle minimizes the need for time.... [ It ] has the unique
property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval
of time it spans unnecessary. There is no relationship between the time
a miracle takes and the time it covers. The miracle substitutes for
learning that might have taken thousands of years.... [ It ] shortens
time by collapsing it, thus eliminating certain intervals within it. It
does this, however, within the larger temporal sequence."
(T-1.II.6:1,5-7,9-10).

As an example, consider yourself as one who has experienced much
abandonment in you life. This script, of course, covers the entire
hologram of time and space, and therefore this theme has no doubt been
relived again and again over many lifetimes. For the sake of this
discussion, let us just think of ten lifetimes, each spanning a hundred
years. When you forgive the abandoning figures in your current life, the
result is like a domino effect, erasing the remaining nine non-linear
lifetimes along with the current one. In that sense, then, you have
saved "a thousand years." To shift metaphors, think of a computer in
which you have a file called <Abandonment> containing the many times you
have been abandoned. Incidentally, understanding the dynamic of
projection helps us understand that behind our accusations is the
self-accusation of having abandoned love first. When the holy instant
comes in which we forgive, the entire file of <Abandonment> --
grievances held against others, guilt held against ourselves -- is
deleted.

It should also be obvious that Jesus does not literally mean a thousand,
because there is no time. The content behind the numeric symbol is
Jesus' teaching that A Course in Miracles, will save you time. When you
forgive one of your special partners, behind that one stands thousands
of other objects of your projected hate:

"Your brother first among them will be seen, but thousands stand behind
him, and beyond each one of them there are a thousand more."
(T-27.V.10:4).

This, then, is what Jesus means by the miracle. Mistakenly, we believe
each time we think of God throughout the day we are thinking of God just
for a single moment. In truth, however, we <un>doing a long series of
mistakes in which we have forgotten God and chosen the ego instead.
Through this undoing we are saved from our mad illusions of separation,
guilt, and specialness. The same are one, since there is but one
mistake. Thus the miracle undoes them all, since there is only one
problem from which we need to be saved.*

(4) "You are the spirit in whose mind abides the miracle in which all
time stands still; the miracle in which a minute spent in using these
ideas becomes a time that has no limit and that has no end. Give, then,
these minutes willingly, and count on Him Who promised to lay
timelessness beside them. He will offer all His strength to every little
effort that you make. Give Him the minutes which He needs today, to help
you understand with Him you are the spirit that abides in Him, and that
calls through His Voice to every living thing; offers His sight to
everyone who asks; replaces error with the simple truth."

*The miracle is outside of time, and so "all time stands still" within
it. It represents our right minds, to which we go when we want to
recognize we have been wrong and the Holy Spirit correct. Choosing the
miracle thus means letting the ego's hand go and taking the Holy
Spirit's in its stead. The decision making part of our minds is outside
of time and space, and in that sense is timeless. We experience the
effect of this change within the world of time, which is why Jesus
speaks of time -- thousands of years. In reality, however, we have
simply returned to our timeless minds and chosen again.

The underlying theme here is that the Holy Spirit cannot help us unless
we allow Him to. In other words, our part is to give "these minutes ...
[and] every little effort" to the Holy Spirit. Rather than expend them
on denying truth, we are asked to apply that same effort to correct our
mistake. This reflects the central theme of a little willingness:

"Your part is only to offer Him a little willingness to let Him remove
all fear and hatred, and then to be forgiven." (T-18.V.2:5).

Note as well the theme of all-inclusiveness, an integral part of the
fabric of Jesus' teaching. Our true Self -- spirit -- calls to everyone,
without exception. God's Son is one, and to offer vision's correction to
some and not all ensures the correction will never be. This idea is
found throughout A Course in Miracles, and the following passage is
representative:

"To everyone has God entrusted all, because a partial savior would be
one who is but partly saved. The holy ones whom God has given you to
save are but everyone you meet or look upon, not knowing who they are;
all those you saw an instant and forgot, and those you knew a long while
since, and those you will yet meet; the unremembered and the not yet
born. For God has given you His Son to save from every concept that he
ever held." (T-31.VII.10:4-6).

By learning to forgive <all> the Sonship, we come to know that inner
Voice we have followed is truly God's.*

(5:1)"The Holy Spirit will be glad to take five minutes of each hour
from your hands, and carry them around this aching world where pain and
misery appear to rule."

*Note that Jesus does not say the Holy Spirit will carry them around
this happy and joyful world. He wants us to understand this is a world
of pain, misery, and suffering. You may recall a similar sentiment
expressed in the manual for teachers:

"Yet it is time alone that winds on wearily, and the world is very tired
now. It is old and worn and without hope." (M-1.4:4-5).

If we fail to understand the world's pain, there would be no motivation
to choose a different thought, and without such choice a different
thought, and without such choice our misery cannot be undone.

The manual closes with a lovely prose poem, expressing Heaven's
gratitude for our decision to accept and extend the message of hope the
tired world yearns to hear. It begins:

"And now in all your doings be you blessed. God turns to you for help to
save the world. Teacher of God, His thanks He offers you,
And all the world stands silent in the grace You bring from Him."
(M-29.8:1-3). *

(6:1) "Thus will each gift to Him be multiplied a thousandfold and tens
of thousands more."

*This is so because in the holy instant, again, the Sonship is healed,
not just my mind alone. There can be no thought of fragmentation when
the mind is healed. The importance of this theme of total inclusion is
apparent by its recurrence throughout the Course. It forms the basis of
forgiveness and the undoing of the ego's thought system of separation.*

(7) "Begin these happy exercises with the words the Holy Spirit speaks
to you, and let them echo round the world through Him:

Spirit am I, a holy Son of God, free of all limits, safe and healed and

whole, free to forgive, and free to save the world.<

Expressed through you, the Holy Spirit will accept this gift that you
received of Him, increase its power and give it back to you."

*These exercises are happy because their goal is to make us happy. We
have already commented on the section "The Happy Learner" (T-14.II),
which reflects this happy thought. Accepting the truth about ourselves
undoes all pain and suffering, releasing the mind to the happiness the
Holy Spirit holds for us and the Sonship, joined <with> us and <as> us.*

(8:1-2) "Offer each practice period today gladly to Him. And He will
speak to you, reminding you that you are spirit, one with Him and God,
your brothers and your Self."

*This lesson also enunciates the theme of oneness: We are one with God,
the Holy Spirit, and the Sonship. The word "reminding" is important
because it is a crucial description of the Holy Spirit's function. He
does not do things on our behalf, nor tell us things. His Presence is
the simple reminder of the truth. Recall this already familiar passage:

"The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because it is incapable
of arrogance. It does not demand, because It does not seek control. It
does not overcome, because It does not attack. It merely reminds. It is
compelling only because of what it reminds you of. It brings to your
mind the other way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you
may make." (T.5.II.7.1)

It remains for us to accept His remembrance. Such is the purpose of
these lessons, to speed along acceptance of "the other way." *

Love and Blessings,

Lyn Johnson

719-369-1822

#93097

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Lesson 97. I am spirit.