IV. Practicing the Holy Instant, P 2
2 Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to let all littleness go. The instant in which magnitude dawns upon you is but as far away as your desire for it. As long as you desire it not and cherish littleness instead, by so much is it far from you. By so much as you want it will you bring it nearer. Think not that you can find salvation in your own way and have it. Give over every plan you have made for your salvation in exchange for God’s. His will content you, and nothing else can bring you peace. For peace is of God, and no one beside Him.
Journal
There is only the peace of God. I cannot find peace on my own. I have tried many times to bring peace to my mind on my own and none have worked. I have tried to manipulate the world and accommodate to the world, but no lasting peace has come from that effort. I have tried every form of distraction from what robbed me of peace and that gave me only a brief respite. Every attempt I made eventually fell through and left me feeling small and insignificant in the face of my suffering.
Now, Jesus is telling me that I must let go of the littleness that plagues me, that I can let it go, and that I only need desire magnitude to dawn on my mind and it is done. After all the failed attempts to save myself, it seems unlikely the answer could be so simple. After teaching myself false humility or equally false arrogance, the simple fact of magnitude seems an impossibility. But Jesus says otherwise and I am willing to believe him.
Here is something I have noticed. When I am immersed in my study or in my teaching, or when I am fully surrendered to God, and when I am in gratitude, I feel the magnitude that Jesus is talking about. It doesn’t make me feel arrogant as I first thought it would. In fact, I feel humbled by it. When I let my story draw my attention away from God, I become confused and I feel little again.
At first, I didn’t really put this together as cause and effect, but studying this part of the Course made it obvious. The ego argues that this elevated feeling cannot possibly last. One cannot go around thinking about God and love all the time. One cannot be a channel for God all the time. Life requires attention and decisions and plans. But I don’t think so.
I think that I can do all that the story demands of me and still know that I am in God and of God. I think that I can spend this life extending God rather than writing more ego script. I am willing for that. Father, I am willing to do what You would have me do and willing not to do what You would have me not do. I think this is a real expression of magnitude. I accept my magnitude as simply that which I am as a creation of God. I welcome the peace of God that is a natural consequence of that acceptance.
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