To gain the most from A Course in Miracles Lesson Insights, we recommend
that you read the corresponding lesson in the Workbook of the Second or
Third Edition of A Course in Miracles published by the Foundation for Inner Peace.
“I will not hurt myself again today.”
I attack myself when I refuse to accept my true Identity. I attack myself when I refuse to accept that God’s Will for me is my will. When I cut myself off from my Source in order to have the impression that I am separate and alone, I am attacking myself. I would not hurt myself again today.
Today I would take one more step toward letting go of the false ideas of limitation and lack. Refusing to accept my own Identity is painful. It creates anxiety and the feeling of lack and loss. Forgiveness is my function here. Today I would practice choosing forgiveness, or letting go of false perceptions, every time I am tempted to teach myself the ego’s lessons in limitation and lack.
Holy Spirit, today I would practice opening my mind to You all through the day. Today I would practice following Your lead. I have followed the wrong teacher and have been sorely mistaken. I have lost the awareness of my true Identity and I now know that You will help me return to the truth that I have never left. Today I am willing to practice accepting God’s gifts. Today I am willing to practice opening my mind to Your healing perceptions. “I will not hurt myself again today.”
My natural state, the only real state, is oneness with Love, my Creator. To not experience that unity and all the gifts that come with it, I must actively choose against it. I would only choose against it if I believed that this choice would give me something of greater value.
The ego is the idea that it is possible to have something of greater value than all of God’s Love, all of His peace and all of His joy, eternally. Only insanity would believe this and thus this world is an insane world. Insanity means being unaware of reality. To believe in this world we must be unaware of reality. The ego offers us specialness, telling us that specialness — uniqueness and independence — is worth more than all of God’s Love.
Every time we choose specialness over God’s Love we are hurting ourselves. We are choosing to be cut off from our source of strength and power and peace and joy. It is not our Creator that cuts us off. It is our own denial of our Source and our Self that gives us the experience of being separate and alone. The ego teaches us that this is a good thing. It teaches us that this gives us autonomy, independence and control. It does not tell us that this control is control of nothing and that to be independent we must give up our strength, our safety and our peace.
Gratefully because we cannot change Reality, we have the freedom in every moment to stop choosing against Reality and accept our Self as Love created It. The decision to choose insanity is not irreversible. The moment we made that choice, God placed in our minds His Answer to lead us back to our Home in Him. God (Love) knows us as Its own, changeless and unchangeable. He has left the light on for us to welcome us Home. And even more: He has given us a Guide to show us the way back to the Light.
Today I will practice remembering that I remain as God created me. I am not a body. I am free to Love without limit and accept Love without limit. Thus will I open my heart and my mind to the experience of my wholeness in Love. “I will not hurt myself again today.”
I hurt myself when I forget who I am. If I perceive myself as suffering, I have made a choice to do so. It is within me to choose again, to draw from His power and His love and remember that He shares that power and love with me and therefore cannot suffer. I also have to be patient with myself and remember that this is a process. This is very important because, too often, I get frustrated and it is only in fear that I begin to question the process. But today I can let the process flow and step back, ask for guidance, and say to myself over and over, “I will not hurt myself again today.” Thank you, Father, thank you Holy Spirit.
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