This past Christmas during my daily meditation and prayer time I was led to Lesson 182 in A Course in Miracles- I will be still an instant and go home.
My eyes were drawn to the last section of this lesson:
You have not lost your innocence. It is for this you yearn. This is your heart’s desire. This is the voice you hear and this is the call which cannot be denied.
The idea of our core innocence is central to A Course in Miracles. It is also echoed in the philosophy from my parents’ Indian spiritual tradition of forgiveness: we open our minds daily to behold the Pure Soul within us and within each person in our lives. It is not a coincidence that this passage came to me on the day of Christmas when many of us celebrate the birth of a child who offers a path of universal love, hope and forgiveness. But the birth of the Christ-consciousness need not be limited to a certain child born in a particular culture or specific time. This consciousness can also be referred to by other terms- like Divine Love, the Buddha-mind, Allah or Krishna consciousness. The experience is universal- a deep desire to know that we are not
alone and that we are worthy of complete love, protection and safety wherever we are.
The Course teaches me that I need do nothing to ‘earn’ this innocence. There is nothing to prove and no need to redeem myself in any way. And nothing of this world can ever give me this innocence nor take it away. This innocence is an experience that awaits me deep within my mind.
As I let myself sink deeper, some different images came to my mind:
The very first snowfall covering a pathway without a trace of any footsteps.
A blank canvas with no outlines, no forms, no shapes, no color.
A hush of silence. No words or song. Just quiet stillness.
As we settle into 2014, I invite you to join me “to be still one instant and go home”
– to that place within our minds that waits in stillness to offer us the Love and Light of which we are so very worthy. That instant is the holy instant- where we come with empty hands and an open mind so we may transcend this time-bound world and step into the eternal. And then when we do return to the world of goings and coming, doings and happenings, we return with a fresh perspective. Where we found resistance, we find ease. Where we thought ourselves alone, we are met with helpers ready to assist. And where we struggled with grievance against ourselves and others, we instead reclaim the holiness and innocence that is our sacred birthright.
My prayer of the heart is that may each of our meetings in the New Year be holy encounters with the Pure Soul within us all!
