September 15th 2014 Lesson 181
I trust my brothers, who are one with me.
- Intention: To change the focus of our perceptions from sin to sinlessness. It is the focus of perception that gives consistency to what we see. Change the focus, and what we behold will change accordingly.
- Practice: We will remove our focus from the errors of our brothers by looking past them to the Self that lies beyond and experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in us, and it is this that prevents us from seeing what lies beyond.
Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such focuses give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent. We instruct our minds that it is this we seek, and only this, for just a little while. We do not care about past beliefs or future goals, we seek for innocence and nothing else. We seek for it with no concern but now. We practice with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within.
- Application: For a little while, without regard to past or future, we will transcend the blocks in the various forms of anger or the awareness of "sin" in anyone, by giving our minds the following instructions to change their focus as we say:
It is not this that I would look upon.
I trust my brothers, who are one with me.
And we will also use this thought to keep us safe throughout the day. We do not seek for long-range goals. As each obstruction seems to block the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an instant from the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and uncorrected will remain.
Nor do we ask for fantasies. For what we seek to look upon is really there and as our focus goes beyond mistakes, we will behold a wholly sinless world. When seeing this is all we want to see, when this is all we seek for in the name of true perception, are the eyes of Christ inevitably ours. And the Love He feels for us becomes our own as well. This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves. We look neither ahead nor backwards. We look straight into the present. And we give our trust to the experience we ask for now. Our sinlessness is but the Will of God. This instant is our willing one with His.
Insights/comments:
- It is often said that: "seeing is believing," but deeper than this is the truth that "believing is seeing." If we see mistakes, errors, and sin, our belief in these grow stronger and distort our perception so that we see little else. We have been trained to look for errors, mistakes, and sins, and so this is what we believe and this is mostly what we perceive. Even when we are perceiving something beautiful or pleasing, we are simultaneously looking for the faults, the exceptions to perfection. The practice of today's lesson is the undoing of our previous training. Here and now, just for a moment, let us look past what we perceive as errors in our brothers and in ourselves, and look upon the Self we know we truly are as God in His perfection created us to be, likened onto Himself.
- Another handy tool to apply whenever we become aware that we are angry at someone or ourselves, is to remember as many of the positive things that we or the person we are angry with has done in the past. This positive remembrance will balance the negative feelings we have about ourselves or the other person.
I and my Creator are One.
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