Ask: How can I be more diligent with the lessons?


Every year I go gung ho and start off doing a lesson each day using index cards to write the day's lesson down and in a couple of months I falter and stop completely. Why is that?  How can I make myself more diligent so that I do at least one lesson per day? – DH

            If you have been unable to complete the lessons in the Workbook then you need to ask yourself what form of resistance is coming up around the time that you falter and stop. Some students think that they have to do the lessons perfectly each day and when they don’t they give up, feeling like a failure. Others bump into ideas that they find hard to accept and give up. When you find yourself resistant go back and read the introduction to the Workbook. It gives you instructions for doing the lessons and it makes it quite clear that you do not have to accept the ideas in them. Simply do not actively resist them. Each day just do the best that you can with that day’s lesson, then move on to the next lesson the next day. Only do one lesson per day.
            You can find the lessons on cards at www.acim.org so that you do not have to write them down to carry with you each day.
            If you have completed the lessons once then you do not have to do them again. As it says in the introduction to the Workbook, the mind training period the lessons cover is one year. After that you may want to read and study the Workbook as you would the Text and the Manual for Teachers, but you do not need to put the lessons into practice again. In fact, doing so will hold you back. At the end of the Workbook you are left with the Holy Spirit, Who guides your mind training from then on.

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Learn about the books The ACIM Mentor Articles, The Plain Language A Course in Miracles, and 4 Habits for Inner Peace at www.acimmentor.com.

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Comments

jacomina said…
I did the daily lessons so quickly and with very little attention and yet it took almost three years to get it all done. Now I am in the first 10 days of redoing it and it seems I must've skipped so much. Now I'm enjoying it whereas before I thought I had to get to the end to "get it". So you think best I do not redo the lessons even though I did them so poorly? Just read the workbook instead? I wish I had slowed down and focused more.
9:50 AM
ACIM Mentor said…
I have yet to come across a student who feels they did the lessons well. And yet when I ask them to look back they always say they changed a great deal in that year. So something sinks in. It's the ego that thinks you have to do them perfectly. The year of "mind training" is one year. But you can revisit the ideas by reading the Workbook as you would the Text. They do not have to be practiced to sink in. They only have to be accepted.
12:18 PM
jacomina said…
got it. And boy, are they sinking in. THank you
10:26 AM
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