¹The idea for today reaffirms your commitment to salvation. It also reminds you that you have no function other than this. Both of these thoughts are obviously necessary for a total commitment. Salvation cannot be the only purpose you hold while you still cherish others. The full acceptance of salvation as your only function necessarily entails two phases; the recognition of salvation as your function, and the relinquishment of all the other goals you have invented for yourself. This is the only way in which you can take your rightful place among the saviors of the world. This is the only way in which you can say and mean, "My only function is the one God gave me." This is the only way in which you can find peace of mind. 

 

²Today and for a number of days to follow, set aside ten to 15 minutes for a more sustained practice period in which you try to understand and accept what today's idea really means. It offers you escape from all your perceived difficulties. It places the key to the door of peace, which you have closed upon yourself, in your own hands. It gives you the answer to all the searching you have done since time began. 

 

³Try, if possible, to undertake the daily extended practice periods at approximately the same time each day. Try, also, to determine this time today in advance and then adhere to it as closely as possible. 

 

⁴The purpose of this is to arrange your day so that you have set apart the time for God, as well as for all the trivial purposes and goals you will pursue. This is part of the long range disciplinary training which your mind needs, so that the Holy Spirit can use it consistently for the purpose He shares with you. 

 

⁵For this longer practice period, begin by reviewing the idea for today. Then close your eyes, repeat the idea to yourself once again, and watch your mind carefully to catch whatever thoughts cross it. 

 

⁶At first, make no attempt to concentrate only on thoughts related to the idea for today. Rather, try to uncover each thought that arises to interfere with it. Note each one as it comes to you with as little involvement or concern as possible, dismissing each one by telling yourself: 

 

 from accepting my only function.

 

⁸After a while, interfering thoughts will become harder to find. Try, however, to continue a minute or so longer, attempting to catch a few of the idle thoughts which escaped your attention before, but do not strain or make undue effort in doing this. Then tell yourself: 

 

⁹On this clean slate, let my true function be written for me. 

 

¹⁰You need not use these exact words, but try to get a sense of being willing to have your illusions of purpose be replaced by truth. 

 

¹¹Finally, repeat the idea for today once more and devote the rest of the practice period to trying to focus on its importance to you, the relief its acceptance will bring you by resolving your conflicts once and for all, and the extent to which you really want salvation in spite of your own foolish ideas to the contrary. 

 

¹²In the shorter practice periods, which should be undertaken at least once an hour, use this form in applying today's idea: 

 

I want no other and I have no other.

 

¹⁴Sometimes close your eyes as you practice, and sometimes keep them open and look about you. It is what you see now that will be totally changed when you accept today's idea completely.   

 

This lesson brings to our awareness the many self appointed goals that we have, the many plans that we make for our perceived safety and comfort, the many ways that we try to manage this unmanageable world, the fantasies we hold about our needs and requirements and the fantasies we have about what we think others need and how we can help them. We have no idea about any of this. It is all just ego grandiosity. We try to impress ourselves with what will make us happy when we have no idea because we do not know our best interests. How could I know my best interests when Jesus tells me that I don't know what I am?

 So many of our goals are made to address something that we think is lacking in us. In other words we are planning our own salvation-meaning that we are making plans for things in the world that we think will bring us happiness, comfort and peace. But they never do-at least not for long. Why? Because the ego's mantra is seek but do not find so that we will stay invested in this illusion and maintain our individual selves. And so our lives become a whirlwind with a myriad of "to do's" with lots of functions and activities to keep us distracted. And now it seems  that we have one more thing to do which is to focus on our salvation. But no, this lesson says it is not about adding one more activity but recognizing that my only function is the one God gave me. So everything else I have determined to be my function is just a vehicle for what is really my only function. Everything else in the world can serve as a backdrop to that function. Nothing else but our salvation (healing)  is important at all. This requires total commitment to waking up from this dream, which we probably can't say that we totally have now. But even though we may not have total commitment, we need to be gentle with ourselves. There is nothing helpful about making ourselves even more guilty than we already feel. We are doing these lessons because there is a certain degree of willingness even if that commitment is not yet total. Yet we are heading in the right direction for our happiness.

That is the reason that Jesus asks us to set aside structured time for doing the lesson. He tells us to "try, if possible, to undertake the daily extended practice periods at approximately the same time each day.  Try, also, to determine this time in advance, and then adhere to it as closely as possible.   The purpose of this is to arrange your day so that you have set apart the time for God, as well as for all the trivial purposes and goals you will pursue. This is part of the long-range disciplinary training your mind needs, so that the Holy Spirit can use it consistently for the purpose He shares with you."  (4.1-4)  The idea here is not that this be a permanent arrangement, but it is in recognition that right now we need external discipline before we can internalize what he is teaching, at which point we will hold the right-minded mindset virtually all the time. He is certainly not telling us to give up the trivial things we attend to the rest of the day. He reminds us that what is important is not what we do, but what our mindset is as we do it. "This quiet centre, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent." (T.18.VII.8.3) It is not about sacrifice by giving up what we think we want and need for ourselves. Jesus is just asking us for a little bit of our time during the day, organized in advance, so that we can bring this quiet center to our day. Initially structure is very important when we take time for these lessons but later the structure becomes less when our minds become more disciplined. It is clearly a process.

We may wonder why we can't just be spontaneous and allow what comes to come? What is the purpose of all of these requirements? The answer lies in dedication, willingness and commitment. To think you don't need this structure is arrogance of the ego that always thinks it knows better. Clearly we are resisting authority and want to be authors of our own lives. We call this freedom but essentially it is bondage to the conditioned ego program.

When we commit to setting time aside during the day to do the longer practice of ten to fifteen minutes, we are affirming commitment to our spiritual goal.  We are arranging our day for what we say is important to us.  It is a hard one for me because I resist structure. My process tends to be more fluid. Yet every day there are certain things I commit to that I consider important. So Jesus asks us to do the same thing with this practice. I see the benefit of setting aside a particular time during the day for this practice and thus establishing a habit and sticking with it.  And when I don't spend the time on the lesson, despite my commitment,  it helps me to see how resistant I still am to awakening from this dream. But in all of this, Jesus cautions us not to make our lessons about form but content. In other words this course is not about ritual but about meaning and application of the teachings to our day to day issues and problems.

He assures us that we can find peace of mind in no other way than to accept the function God has given us and thus to "take our rightful place among the saviors of the world." (2.1) Only when we finally relinquish all other goals and are fully committed will we really be able to say and mean that our only function is the one God gave us. So if this isn't true for us now and we don't have peace of mind as a result, how do we get there? How can this be achieved? Do we have to sacrifice those functions in which we are currently involved? Should we feel guilty if we are still pursuing them? He gives us careful instructions in answer to these questions.

Before I get into them, however, note how he says we have closed the door to peace ourselves with our own hands. If we don't have peace, it is because we have chosen to close this door although we don't think we have done this to ourselves. We think we are the victims of  situations and circumstances in the world which rob us of our peace. But now we have been given a way to escape from all of our perceived difficulties and the answer that we have been seeking, since time began, (3.4) is given us in this practice. We now have the key in our hands to open this door to peace that we have locked and we can indeed escape all of our perceived difficulties. What is that answer? Is it really in this idea? How do we make it real for ourselves?

Jesus knows that we are not ready to give up our own goals. That is why he says that the full acceptance of our salvation entails two phases. Notice that he does not say two steps. He understands that we are going through a process of change starting with the first phase as the "recognition of salvation as our only function;" (1.4) and the second phase being "the relinquishment of all the other goals we have invented for ourselves." (1.4) Each phase can clearly take a long, long time. Each lesson in the course, each reading of the text, each application of the lesson, helps in the accomplishment of each phase. We are not asked to go faster in our healing process than our fear will allow. We are not asked to sacrifice that which we still value. We are not being coerced to do anything we are not ready to do. We need to be patient with ourselves as Jesus is with us.

We are asked to watch our minds carefully in our meditation time and to try to uncover each thought that interferes with the thought for today. Uncovering our thoughts and bringing them to awareness is the only way to healing our minds. "It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of misthought can result in healing." (T. 2.VI.3:1) What this means is that if our focus is on trying to behave in a more loving way than we feel, we are trying to control the outcome of misthought. In other words we think that if we behaved better that that is all that is needed and that what is going on in our minds doesn't matter. If this were true then the appearance of loving behavior toward someone would override our judgment of this person. This is what happens when we cover up our thoughts while behaving in a seemingly nice and acceptable manner. We are giving mixed messages as our 'loving' behavior does not match our unloving thoughts. Healing requires that we change the cause, which is to change our minds. And this means we have to see what is in our minds in the first place. We have to bring awareness to our unloving thoughts and bring them to the truth.

The solution is not to keep a lid on our ego, keeping it caged, but to expose it with every thought that crosses our minds. Otherwise its tentacles manage to reach out beyond the cage. Our smiles cannot cover unloving thoughts. Even if we stuff down our feelings, stuff down our guilt and our fear, our anger and hatred will leak out.  "You cannot escape from the ego by humbling it or controlling it or punishing it."  (T.4.VI.3.8) The only answer is to release it as this lesson advises.

We must not underestimate our fear. Our desire to control reality (meaning events in the world) comes directly from our fear.   "For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remember, and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality. You who cannot even control yourself should hardly aspire to control the universe. But look upon what you have made of it and rejoice that it is not so." (T.12 VIII.5:3-5) So our experiences of the world and of our lives are outside of our own control. Yet we do try to control them with our plans and strategies, with our confident self image which we try to inflate, with our life skills and empowerment workshops; with our attempts at affirmations and manifestations, and with setting rules and requirements.

What we are asked instead of all of this, is to look at our thoughts calmly and give them over to the Holy Spirit until our function can get written on a clean slate. Remind yourself as you look at your thoughts that "this thought reflects a goal that is preventing me from accepting my only function." (5.5) We keep looking until interfering thoughts become harder to find. So our job is to clear our minds so that "on this clean slate let my true function be written for me." (6.4) Pay attention to your ego thoughts. They are what interferes with remembering and identifying with the idea for today. Realize that you have chosen these thoughts to keep salvation away. It is our way of keeping the truth away and staying invested in our specialness. We want to protect our self image, our identity, our story which justifies our existence as a unique, special and separate individual. Thus we prefer to identify with fear (the ego)  rather than to choose love.

And remember in the lesson yesterday Jesus reminded us that the entire world exists in order to obscure our function of forgiveness. What then is it that causes us to forget this lesson? Well the world exists as a defense against the truth of who we are. The world was made by the ego, not God, precisely to obscure our reality and it does seem to do that very well. There are ample distractions to keep us occupied with the world as long as we choose! As Jesus pleads with us, "How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin?" (W.PII.Q4.5.1) It is up to each of us to decide this question for ourselves. There is no need for guilt in our decision. We are the commander of our own process. Jesus is our model and the Holy Spirit is our Guide.

In our practice he says that sometimes we close our eyes as we practice and sometimes keep them open and look about. (7.4) This is consistent with many of the practices in the workbook and reinforce the idea that "ideas leave not their source" meaning that everything is in our thoughts which we access with eyes closed. And when our eyes are open we still are only seeing our own thoughts projected out. So when our thoughts are changed, what we see will be changed as well. "It is what you see now that will be totally changed when you accept today's idea completely." (7.5)

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