Monday, December 28, 2015
Lesson 362: Final Lessons: “This holy instant would I give to You. Be You in charge. For I would follow You, certain that Your direction gives me peace.”
This lesson says, “And if I need but stillness and a tranquil, open mind, these are gifts that I receive of Him.” The Course teaches the manner in which we use the vehicle of our minds and our connection to God to give us certainty and peace. And in this certainty we find also our great fulfilling joy. The Course says that God is the means to gift us with such gifts that give our hearts reason to sing. However, one of the most important things we tend to miss when our ego speaks so loudly in our ears that we overlook the ever important step.
God says that we need an open mind to be peaceful and live in the experience of being fulfilled of purpose. What we must do is be prepared to sit still so God can reach us. Sometimes we get so busy in our habitual behavior we forget to stop and check into God’s purpose. What we need to do is allow for the opening of our minds. When we are trying to live fully in God mind what we must absolutely have is the openness in our minds. If we forget about this factor, we can disconnect with God’s will and purpose.
The problem often is that we forget to show up with an open mind. We often forget too how to get this. What we need to do if we get stuck and can’t figure out how to come forth with our open mind is that we need to ask God to do this for us.
It also helps if we pay attention to our own inner blocks. Sometimes what we need to do is spend some time paying attention to our minds and ways that our ego fills our heads with all kinds of fantasies about the past and future, and a huge outpouring of criticisms of it all. What helps is if we sit with ourselves and have compassion for our insanity because it is a simple mistake. However, we also want to be clearly focused on undoing whatever willingness we seem to contribute to keeping the problem from our own hand. We need to lovingly and firmly be vigilant about letting go of the part of the insanity that we perpetuate. We must firmly assert in our minds that we can and will change our willingness to let our minds slip into faulty thinking.
Therefore the open mind is a gift from God for sure. But along with such a blessed blessing, we also can do our own task to keep our minds focused on the principles of love and forgiveness that the Course teaches us as the only real thing.