DAILY LESSON

 

L e s s o n  23   

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¹The idea for today contains the only way out of fear that will ever succeed. Nothing else will work; everything else is meaningless. But this way cannot fail. Every thought you have makes up some segment of the world you see. It is with your thoughts, then, that we must work if your perception of the world is to be changed. 

²If the cause of the world you see is attack thoughts, you must learn that it is these thoughts which you do not want. There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effects will change automatically. 

³The world you see is a vengeful world, and everything in it is a symbol of vengeance. Each of your perceptions of "external reality" is a pictorial representation of your own attack thoughts. One can well ask if this can be called seeing. Is not fantasy a better word for such a process and hallucination a more appropriate term for the result? 

⁴You see the world which you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image-maker. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause. This is what salvation means, for where is the world you see when its cause is gone? Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can light your images and so transform them that you will love them even though they were made of hate. For you will not be making them alone. 

⁵The idea for today introduces the thought that you are not trapped in the world you see, because its cause can be changed. This change requires, first, that the cause be identified and then let go, so that it can be replaced. The first two steps in this process require your cooperation. The final one does not. Your images have already been replaced. By taking the first two steps, you will see that this is so. 

⁶Besides using it throughout the day as the need arises, five practice periods are required in applying today's idea. As you look about you, repeat the idea slowly to yourself and then close your eyes and devote about a minute to searching your mind for as many attack thoughts as occur to you. As each one crosses your mind say: 

attack thoughts about _____.

⁸Hold each attack thought in mind as you say this, and then dismiss that thought and go on to the next. 

⁹In the practice periods, be sure to include both your thoughts of attacking and of being attacked. Their effects are exactly the same because they are exactly the same. You do not yet recognize this, and you are asked at this time only to treat them as the same in today's practice periods. We are still at the stage of identifying the cause of the world you see. When you finally realize that thoughts of attack and of being attacked are not different, you will be ready to let the cause go. 

ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections 

 LESSON 23

Jesus kicks off this lesson with a truly powerful statement that says that the idea of giving up attack thoughts is "the only way out of fear that will ever succeed. Nothing else will work; everything else is meaningless." (1.1-2)   Everything else that we do to try to diminish or mitigate our fears is totally meaningless. Now that certainly gets my attention! What have you tried to do to reduce your fear? I have tried to build my confidence and self esteem; develop good management skills; become an effective strategist; build up my material resources; have a close circle of friends; become effective in managing the challenges of my life; finding ways to distract from them; in addition to avoiding, repressing and denying my fears. But Jesus says that we will never overcome our fear by changing anything that we try to do in the world. None of our strategies will work because the fear is still in the mind. This keeps us living in a state of anxiety. Only by changing the cause of the fear which comes from our own attack thoughts, will we be free of it.  Everything that we try to do with all of our plans and strategies is to attempt to diminish fear but it is always there.   The only way out of fear is thus to give up our attack thoughts. And he says that "this way cannot fail." (1.3)   

 The choice for healing is the decision to look at these attack thoughts. To deny them is to decide to keep them. It is also valuable to remember that attack thoughts are not what they may seem.    Attack thoughts reflect our need to be right about the way we see things. For us this justifies our attacks and counterattacks in the name of our defense. Attack thoughts show up in many different forms which may look like hate, pride, shame,  frustration, anxiety, irritation and murder, if not in form then in our thoughts of vengeance. But our attack thoughts can also be concealed under thoughts of caring, worry, concern and sympathy. When we have these thoughts we are joining in someone's pain and forgetting who they are and who we are. We are identifying with their weakness. We are seeing them as vulnerable which is not the truth of who they are.  

Our belief is that if we can somehow better manage the externals in our lives that we can then live a better, happier life. But this just keeps us in the cycle of the ego where we try to manage effects rather than look to the cause which is the thought system of sin, guilt and fear that is in our wrong minds. Jesus is showing us that there is a way out, not by doing anything in the world but by changing the way that we see the world. When we look at the world we see destruction, violence, sickness, pain and suffering. Oh yes, there is also beauty, pleasure and happiness in our perception of the world but it does not last. It is only temporary and ultimately for all of us it all ends the same way....in death. In our efforts to manage things in the world, some of what we do does succeed for a time, but it does not last. It can't last if the cause is in the mind. More and more problems emerge and we become disillusioned. Until then we continue to think that if we can get other people to do or not to do things that anger us; if we can manage to look good; if we can get the kids to behave; if the car doesn't break down; if the landlord doesn't raise the rent; if we can make more money; if we can control our tempers; if we can win the argument;  if we can enhance our self esteem; if we can find the right partner; if we can learn better coping mechanisms; then life will be good and we will be happy.  

 We are constantly working to fix things in the world by controlling, manipulating, managing, or trying to make our lives better through a variety of strategies. But this is like addressing a symptom while the underlying problem still remains unchanged. And thus the problems and the anxiety we feel, will simply arise again in another form. Why would that be? Because the thought system in our mind, based on the separation and resulting in our belief in sin, guilt and fear, is reflected on the screen of this world. If the world is just crystallized images of the thoughts in our minds, reflected back at us, then to try to change the world changes nothing. Our minds are the cause and the world is the effect. It is our own attack thoughts that make up the world we see.  

We lament so much about the world. We work hard to try to change things in the world. Doesn't it feel like a losing battle? Well, this lesson would tell us that indeed it is! If the world is just the effect of our thoughts, and our thoughts are the cause, then to try to change the effect is like trying to change the image on a movie screen instead of changing that which is projecting the image. It is an exercise in futility. If we change the cause (our minds), the effect changes automatically. (2.7)  What we have a hard time with, is that we are the movie maker. We are seeing only our own thoughts projected onto the world. In other words, we are just hallucinating and not seeing at all. What we call reality is just a projection. But we are so convinced that it is reality, that until we are willing to bring awareness to our attack thoughts, we will not believe in the power of our minds. In fact the world offers us a way to diminish the power of our minds and make us believe that we are, in fact, a victim of what we see and experience, rather than the maker of it.  

"You see the world that you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image maker. 2 You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause.  This is what salvation means, for where is the world you see when its cause is gone?" (4.1-3)So what we are saved from is the belief system of the ego that says that we deserve punishment for what we believe we have done in stealing our identity from God and separating from Him. This belief is projected out resulting in a body and a world that are not real. Yes, we now seem to have our own separate identity, our own separate existence, our self that is unique and seemingly housed in a body but at the expense of knowing who we really are. The ego says we have committed a terrible crime and we have sinned. With it comes guilt which is too much for the mind so it is projected out onto this world of bodies. And if this is real then God is not. He must then just be an illusion. Either we are real or God is. Both can't be true. It is either Oneness that is true or the world of duality. Jesus assures us that our experience here is not real. He tells us that there is no external reality outside of our minds.   And if this is so, then we truly are hallucinating. But when we start to recognize our mind as cause of what we experience, then we have the power to change our minds as to how we see the world. When we increasingly recognize that the world is a reflection of our inward condition then the purpose of everything that we experience becomes one of healing.

But that does not suggest that we do nothing in the world or that we ignore our responsibilities here. But Jesus is not saying that. He recognizes that we believe in this reality as long as we do, we need to look after our bodies and take care of our living in responsible ways. He does not ask us to deny what we believe in, only to look at changing our thoughts from attack to forgiveness until the reality of this world diminishes in our minds. We do want to take care of our bodies in the meantime as they are our key learning devices for the time being. Further, the world can become a wonderful classroom for undoing our ego thought system. Thus the body and the world now serve another purpose. It all becomes a means for undoing the guilt that is in our minds.  

Our role in this process is essential. We think we can turn to Jesus or the Holy Spirit and ask that they take away our fear. But Jesus says that that is not helpful because we are the ones that made it in the first place. If the fear is to be undone, then we are the ones that have to bring attention to it. We have kept it mostly hidden from our awareness. We have been in denial about the origin of this fear which is the choice to separate from Love. But now, with our willingness to look at our fear thoughts, we can start the process of bringing them to the light. There is no other way to our spiritual awakening except to look at our attack and fear thoughts. There is no spiritual bypass to the truth without going through the undoing process. But we are not alone in this. We have mighty help in our own minds.  

Very early on in the Text in Chapter 2 Jesus says "The correction of fear is your responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask instead for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. These conditions always entail a willingness to be separate." (2.VI.4).  And later in this section he says, "You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful. I have already indicated to you that you cannot ask me to release you from fear. I know it does not exist but you do not. If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is. I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking." (2.VII.1)

So to give up our attack thoughts mean that we first look at them. Mind watching is such an important part of the process of healing in this world. This requires that we first have to see our minds as the cause of what we see. The second is that we have to let go of the cause by determining that we no longer want these attack thoughts.  It is not a matter of willpower but a matter of willingness. Now we must give the Holy Spirit permission to replace the images we have made. But He tells us that they have already been replaced!! If we are willing to look at the blocks in our own minds then we will no longer see a world of vengeance because the thoughts of love and peace are already in our minds. It is who we really are as we were created but hidden from us by the ego which is made of fear. So we need to cooperate in this process in the first part only. We need to be very honest with ourselves, take responsibility for our thoughts and agree that they no longer serve us.  

We hang onto our grievances so tenaciously though. The ego does not want to let go of them. You will notice how stubbornly we will resist letting go of our attack thoughts. How we nourish our concerns, our anxieties, our stories. That is what Jesus is talking about when he talks of fantasies. (3.4)  We all feel victimized by something or someone. So the story behind the world I experience is all about attack thoughts. It is not what the world is because the world is nothing. It is just a reflection of our attack thoughts projected out. "Each of your perceptions of "external reality" is a pictorial representation of your own attack thoughts." (3.2)The mind is the cause, and it is just an effect. There is no external world. The world is just a reflection of our own minds. As Jesus reminds us"the world is an outside picture of an inward condition." (T.21.I)That is a concept that is obviously difficult for us but it is important because it is the key to our healing. Otherwise we put all of our attention on the externals hoping that if they can be changed then we will be happy. Jesus is making it clear that this is an impossible goal.

The ego is invested in holding onto grievances. It is because of this investment in being right about the way we see things, that it takes a lot of determination just to keep doing this work. It takes even more determination when we see that we are to include "both your thoughts of attacking and of being attacked. Their effects are exactly the same because they are exactly the same." (7.1-2)  This is not readily recognized, as Jesus acknowledges, but we don't have to understand this in order to do the practice as prescribed here. We just need to cooperate in this process of taking responsibility for our fear thoughts in order to escape from this world that we see. It is based on the fact that minds are joined as we learned earlier. So it makes no difference whether we see ourselves as a victim or victimizer, attack is attack. Victims are always pointing their finger at someone who is guilty. That is the basis for the story of what others have done to us. We want them to be guilty and suffer the punishment for their sins. But, we will always be the ones that suffer until we give up our victim stance.

Now we are given a way to "escape" into peace; into confidence; into our invulnerability; into feeling the safety of our Being in His Hands; into a deep sense of knowing that we are One. Our perfection is guaranteed. The truth is, is that there is no separation. Under our fears, grievances, anger, frustration, is the truth of who we are as beautiful, sparkling clear lights. We don't experience this as the truth about ourselves as a constant in our lives, because we listen to the voice of the ego that tells us that we are attackers, guilty, victimizers and victims. So we clearly have healing work to do in undoing the fear thoughts which block the truth about ourselves. And if we see ourselves here in this body and in this seeming world of pain, suffering and death with intermittent periods of happiness and pleasure, we are not alone.  It is the same thing for all of us.  

Being willing to look at our dark thoughts which block the awareness of the Self that we are, is our responsibility. No one will do it for us. Jesus said that he cannot do it because we are the ones who made the choice to separate and we are the ones that give power to our thoughts. And now we can make the choice for truth. The Power of the Holy Spirit is always available to shine away the darkness once we bring our thoughts forward for healing. He waits patiently for us to do our part. He waits patiently for us to identify our defenses that we hold like armor against the truth. We see these defenses as our protection but in fact they are our fear thoughts held like a shield against the light. So our part is to bring our own guilt, that we have projected on others, back into our own minds, look at it honestly and bring it to the light of Truth where it is healed.  

The process we are talking about here is summarized in paragraph 5 where Jesus tells us that "The idea for today introduces the thought that you are not trapped in the world you see, because its cause can be changed. This change requires, first, that the cause be identified and then let go, so that it can be replaced.  The first two steps in this process require your cooperation.  The final one does not.   Your images have already been replaced.   By taking the first two steps, you will see that this is so." (5.1-6)   

 Today throughout the day whenever we are feeling out of peace, we remember that  "I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts." Then for 5 practice periods in the day, look about you, repeat the idea slowly to yourself  first, and then close your eyes and devote about a minute to searching your mind for your attack thoughts (meaning fear, worry, sadness, anger, anxiety, depression, grievances, concerns, frustrations, expectations etc) Mind searching is required because we defend against our own attack thoughts and thus we are not aware of what we are keeping hidden from ourselves. Hold each attack thought in mind as you say "I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about_____________. Then dismiss that thought and go on to the next."  

Remember to include both your thoughts of attacking and of being attacked. They are the same. We think that we are angry because someone caused us pain. But just as the lesson yesterday affirmed, everything coming at us from outside of us is just a counterattack for our own attack thoughts. We may feel like a victim in someone's attack, but, in fact, the victim makes a powerful victimizer. I experienced that in a demonstration where I was asked to be a victim by lying on the floor and having someone responsible for getting me back on my feet. Of course I made it impossible for anyone to successfully help me and thus my 'helpers' were soon victimized by me in their defeat. And thus the victim became the victimizer. This is very much like what is being illustrated here where the victim is holding all the power.

Love and blessings, Sarah 

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Quotes in this article are from Foundation for Inner Peace edition; To locate the same quotes in the 'Original Edition', use this link:  http://www.jcim.net/acim_us/Acim.php    

A Course in Miracles   
TEXT 

Chapter Two

The Illusion of Separation

V. The Correction for Lack of Love 

continued

⁹² You who constantly complain about fear still persist in creating it. I told you before that you cannot ask me to release you from fear because I know it does not exist, but you do not. If I merely intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect, the most fundamental law there is in this world. I would hardly help if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully except for a small part of the day and somewhat inconsistently even then. You may feel at this point that it would take a miracle to enable you to do this, which is perfectly true.

⁹³ Men are not used to miraculous thinking, but they can be trained to think that way. All miracle workers need that kind of training. I cannot let them leave their minds unguarded, or they will not be able to help me. Miracle working entails a full realization of the power of thought and real avoidance of miscreation. Otherwise, a miracle will be necessary to set the mind itself straight, a circular process which would hardly foster the time collapse for which the miracle was intended. Nor would it induce the healthy respect for true cause and effect which every miracle worker must have.

⁹⁴ Both miracles and fear come from thoughts, and if you were not free to choose one, you would also not be free to choose the other. By choosing the miracle, you have rejected fear. You have been afraid of God, of me, of yourselves, and of practically everyone you know at one time or another. This is because you have misperceived or miscreated us and believe in what you have made. You would never have done this if you were not afraid of your own thoughts. The vulnerable are essentially miscreators because they misperceive creation.

⁹⁵ You persist in believing that when you do not consciously watch your mind, it is unmindful. It is time, however, to consider the whole world of the unconscious or "unwatched" mind. This may well frighten you because it is the source of fear. The unwatched mind is responsible for the whole content of the unconscious which lies above the miracle level. All psychoanalytic theorists have made some contribution in this connection, but none of them has seen it in its true entirety. They have all made one common error in that they attempted to uncover unconscious content. You cannot understand unconscious activity in these terms because "content" is applicable only to the more superficial unconscious levels, to which the individual himself contributes. This is the level at which he can readily introduce fear and usually does.

⁹⁶ When man miscreates he is in pain. The cause and effect principle here is temporarily a real expediter. Actually, "Cause" is a term properly belonging to God, and "Effect," which should also be capitalized, is His Son. This entails a set of Cause and Effect relationships which are totally different from those which man introduced into his own miscreations. The fundamental opponents in the real basic conflict are creation and miscreation. All fear is implicit in the second, just as all love is inherent in the first. Because of this difference, the basic conflict is one between love and fear.

⁹⁷ It has already been said that man believes he cannot control fear because he himself created it. His belief in it seems to render it out of his control by definition. Yet any attempt to resolve the basic conflict through the concept of mastery of fear is meaningless. In fact it asserts the power of fear by the simple assumption that it need be mastered. The essential resolution rests entirely on the mastery of love. In the interim, the sense of conflict is inevitable since man has placed himself in a strangely illogical position. He believes in the power of what does not exist.

⁹⁸ Two concepts which cannot coexist are "nothing" and "everything." To whatever extent one is believed in, the other has been denied. In the conflict fear is really nothing, and love is everything. This is because whenever light enters darkness, the darkness is abolished. What man believes is true for him. In this sense the separation has occurred, and to deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of defenses. The true corrective procedure is to recognize error temporarily but only as an indication that immediate correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay.

⁹⁹ It should be emphasized, however, that ultimately there is no compromise possible between everything and nothing. Time is essentially a device by which all compromise in this respect can be given up. It seems to be abolished by degrees because time itself involves a concept of intervals which do not really exist. The faulty use of creation made this necessary as a corrective device. "And God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life" needs only one slight correction to be entirely meaningful in this context. It should read, "He gave it to His only begotten Son."

¹⁰⁰ It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all the Souls God created are His Sons, then every Soul must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too much trouble in understanding this.

¹⁰¹ The Sonship in its oneness does transcend the sum of its parts. However, this is obscured as long as any of its parts are missing. That is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all the parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then can the meaning of wholeness, in the true sense, be fully understood.

¹⁰² Any part of the Sonship can believe in error or incompleteness if he so elects. However, if he does so, he is believing in the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the Atonement. We have already briefly spoken about readiness, but there are some additional points which might be helpful here. Readiness is nothing more than the prerequisite for accomplishment. The two should not be confused. As soon as a state of readiness occurs, there is usually some will to accomplish, but this is by no means necessarily undivided. The state does not imply more than a potential for a shift of will.

¹⁰³ Confidence cannot develop fully until mastery has been accomplished. We have already attempted to correct the fundamental error that fear can be mastered and have emphasized that only love can be mastered. You have attested only to your readiness. Mastery of love involves a much more complete confidence than either of you has attained. However, the readiness at least is an indication that you believe this is possible. That is only the beginning of confidence. In case this be misunderstood to imply that an enormous amount of time will be necessary between readiness and mastery, let me remind you that time and space are under my control.

¹⁰⁴ One of the chief ways in which man can correct his magic-miracle confusion is to remember that he did not create himself. He is apt to forget this when he becomes egocentric, and this places him in a position where the belief in magic in some form is virtually inevitable. His will to create was given him by his own Creator, Who was expressing the same will in His creation. Since creative ability rests in the mind, everything that man creates is necessarily a matter of will. It also follows that whatever he creates is real in his own sight but not necessarily in the sight of God. This basic distinction leads us directly into the real meaning of the Last Judgment.

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