We are very invested in the way we see things. We trust in our observations and believe in what our eyes tell us. We believe there is a world that we came to when we were born and it is all as we think it to be. In other words, we think the world was always in place, but the lesson says that this is not so, that the world is a picture of what is in our own minds. "
The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning."
(W.132.4.1-2) This lesson is very clear in its statement that there is no world! Indeed, it is startling to hear this said over and over in this Lesson and throughout the Course. Our minds have a hard time accepting it, so Jesus makes a case for why this must be so. We may want to push this thought away. "
Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth."
(W.132.6.4) If we don't get it this time, there may be a later time, or maybe another lifetime, when we will return to learn it.
In this Lesson, we are acknowledging that our thoughts about the world are the only things that make it real for us. Since the world we see is just the effect of our thoughts, Jesus gives us the analogy of a madman hallucinating. What we call seeing is not seeing at all. It is more like making images as a result of thoughts in our mind. Yet we are told that it is fruitless for us to directly question the reality of the world. That is like trying to convince a madman that his hallucinations are not real. Instead, we are encouraged to question the thoughts that produce the hallucinations of the world. The ideas in our minds become the picture of the external world. These ideas do not leave our minds. "
Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly."
(W.132.5.2) It is about willingness to look at our thoughts and to question them. Everything we think is wrong. We have had evidence of this in our own lives as our perspectives and judgments have changed over time.
Jesus says, "
But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is."
(W.132.6.1) In other words, we argue that we are simply victims of this world and have nothing to do with it and certainly not with the making of it! We refuse to take this kind of responsibility. Of course, this is in our unconscious minds. Yet that is precisely what we are asked to do in this Lesson. It is to take responsibility for what seems to be happening and to recognize the power of our thoughts. It is to recognize that the experience of being victimized by the people and events of this world does not come from the world at all, but from our beliefs, which alone give the world its power. "
What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs?"
(W.132.1.1) They are false beliefs, and they originate with the ego. We can choose to dismiss them, recognizing that they have no power except the power we choose to give them. They keep us invested in the illusion when we choose to listen to them.
What we need to do is to take responsibility for our thoughts and recognize that our thoughts are powerful. "
Belief is powerful indeed."
(W.132.1.3) Just looking at our thoughts and doing the forgiveness practice, by seeing that we are responsible for the meaning that we give to everything that shows up, will start the process of shifting our perspective on the world. "
Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly."
(W.132.5.2) That is why Jesus also says, "
Yet is salvation is easily achieved,
for anyone is free to change his mind, and all this thoughts change with it."
(W.132.2.1) As our thought system shifts from sin, guilt, fear, suffering and death to forgiveness, peace, and healing, everything changes. Thus, there is no power in the world to change anything. The power is in our own minds. Our minds are where the source of our freedom lies. That is the good news!
Don asked me to follow him to the body shop. As we were driving, he chose to run a yellow light, leaving me to sit at the red light. My immediate thoughts were of anger that he had not stopped to wait for me. The ego voice went on about how inconsiderate he was. Now what was I going to do? How would I find my way there? And on and on. I then asked myself, "Will what I am thinking and feeling impede my path or enhance it? Will it solidify my ego's dream or help me awaken from it? Do I really want to hold onto a thought that is hurting me? Help!" Then it all went away and I kept going forward in peace. As I was driving, I spotted his card up ahead with several cars in front of me which prevented me from catching up with him. I smiled as I thought about how it was my dream and therefore completely malleable. As this thought came, the cars all moved away to the side and there I was right behind him. Our part is to make space in our minds for the shift to take place from murder to miracles.
We have been seeking for what we "
do not want to find,"
(W.132.2.4) and once we recognize that, we will be motivated to find what we do want. Clearly, what we don't want is to suffer. The idea is to close the gap between the time spent in holding onto grievances and that of forgiveness. Jesus reminds us that we are not stuck with the way things are. We are free to change our minds, and recognize that when we change our minds, we change the source of our beliefs. What does that mean? It means that the source of our thoughts has shifted, from the ego mind of the self we think we are, to the true Source of our Being: Love, God, the field. And when that shift is made through miracles, healing flows through us. This takes willingness and determination, not to buy into how things appear based on our senses, but to question our perspectives and ask for help of our inner Teacher. It brings us to the present moment, which is the only time there is. Here we are set free.
(W.132.3.1-2) When we are willing to undertake the healing of our own minds, healing extends to the world through us, as there is only one mind. "
For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world."
(W.132.3.3)
"
You have enslaved the world with all your fears, your doubts and miseries, your pain and tears; and all your sorrows press on it, and keep the world a prisoner to your beliefs."
(W.132.3.4) It seems that he is also telling us that our belief in death is the reason that "
Death strikes it everywhere because you hold the bitter thoughts of death within your mind."
(W.132.3.5) Our belief is that our pain and tears are our own personal experience, yet he begs to differ, claiming that our pain bodies, as Eckhart Tolle calls them, bring pain to the world. We enslave the world with our thoughts and beliefs and force death on it. Thus, we hold the world in bondage to the ego thought system. It is held in place by the illusion of time, with the beginning and end of this thought system being death, since our individuality began with the belief that we took our life at God's expense, which meant His death so we could live.
What is our source? Where did we come from? Jesus says, "
Now the source of thought has shifted, for to change your mind means you have changed the source of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think."
(W.132.2.2) Isn't it interesting to contemplate our source? How did we get here? The collision of egg and sperm is said to be the beginning of us. "
Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came."
(W.132.4.4-5) Don't we all have the experience of wondering what we are doing here? We may, as children, have said to our parents, "I didn't ask to be born." I certainly challenged my parents with this thought! I clearly believed that it was not my choice to be born, and I had thoughts of being a victim of my circumstances, thinking that I had been placed in the wrong home. The fact is that we did choose to come and chose all the circumstances of our lives. It is our dream. We are the dreamer and we wrote the script for the dream we chose to experience. A veil of amnesia fell across our minds when we arrived here. We wanted a home for our individuality and specialness and got the experience we wanted, which was a world that would prove we are innocent victims of circumstances beyond us.
"
There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind."
(W.132.5.1-5) What an important paragraph! Our release lies in recognizing that the world is a projection of our minds. We read here and in the text, "
Ideas leave not their source."
(W.132.5.3) It is our thoughts of guilt that take form and seem to become external realities. The world seems to exist independent of our minds, and now we think that the cause of our problems comes from the world, which is acting upon us. While we believe that our release comes from within the world, in actual fact it comes from our own thoughts. Those thoughts can be changed by choosing against the ego thought system. This requires looking at it with great honesty, taking responsibility for everything that seems to happen to us, seeing that it all started with our own thoughts, and being willing to bring them to the truth. It is the recognition that the world is nothing but "
the outside picture of an inward condition."
(T.21.IN.1.5)(ACIM OE T.21.I.1) All it does is mirror to us what is unhealed within. Therefore, it is very helpful to our healing. It is the only way we can see what is unhealed within us.
We don't have power over what seems to be done to us, but we do have power over our thoughts. "
The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. You can decide to see it right."
(T.12.VII.9.1-2) (ACIM OE T.11.VIII.70) When we experience the world attacking us, we have an opportunity to look within at our own self-attack, our unworthiness, our anger and our guilt. When our mind is healed and our perception is one of guiltlessness, then we will see a benign world where there is no blame, attack or pain. It is not about anything changing in our external world, although likely there will be changes in some respects as the mind is healed. But it is about how we will see that everything, that seems to happen to us, will change. Everything is now seen as either love or a call for love. We can't see a guilty world without having guilt in the mind, but there is no world. The world we see is only a projection of the world we made real inside. Jesus is clear that we are not all ready to accept the thought that the world does not exist outside of our own minds, but we will go as far as we can in each seeming incarnation. The more we can accept this Lesson, Jesus tells us, the more we receive the benefits of healing.
This requires humility. Jesus tells us that arrogance is the belief that there is a world outside, and if that were the case, God would have to be wrong. If the world were real, it would have to be God who were responsible for the problems of the world. We think it is humble to proclaim that we could not have made the world. We think only God has that power, but Jesus says it is humility to acknowledge that we made the world. It is arrogant to think there is a world outside of our minds that says that we are right about what reality is and He is wrong. How can there be a separate world, if there is nothing outside of the Mind of God, just as there is nothing outside of our own minds? Ideas leave not their source! If the world that we projected from our own thoughts were real, then we would have the power to destroy the truth. While Jesus assures us we are powerful indeed, we don't have the power to change who we are as eternal beings, and we can be truly thankful to God for that!
The world of form comes from nothing. It is only our thoughts that give it form. Form is the projection of our thoughts of guilt that come with the separation. What we thought the world was is not it at all. We come from the formless, and as we loosen our thoughts from all we thought the world of form is, we become a channel of energy from the invisible field of love, which is truly our Source. We are all God's thoughts, individualized by our belief in separation from our Source. The only reason that we don't live from this place of oneness is because of our belief in separation. It is our belief and investment in our own thoughts. Now we are called to question those beliefs and recognize that we don't know anything and, as little children, are willing to learn what is true. We are not what we have, what we do, what others think of us, separated from everyone else, and separated from God. We are a part of our Source. God is not apart from our minds.
Our real nature does not fit this world, yet it is our thoughts that made this world. They can't be our real thoughts because we are told, "
Yet if you are as God created you, you cannot think apart from Him, nor make what does not share His timelessness and Love."
(W.132.11.1) Our real thoughts could not have made this world because the world is unlike God. There is no time and space in God's reality and we are as God created us. Our reality is outside of time and space as well. Therefore, we do not even inhabit this world nor this body. The only thing that is required to know this is to "
change your mind about yourself."
(W.132.10.3)
Our healing depends on getting this. When we are ready, the Lesson will be given us "
in some form which they can understand and recognize."
(W.132.7.2) Some have come to this understanding through near-death experiences, some have had experiences of a mystical nature, "
And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today."
(W.132.8.1) As we discover who we truly are by allowing love to move through us, we realize, increasingly, that the world of illusion is incompatible with the truth of who we are. Loosing the world is all about freeing ourselves from guilt through the Holy Spirit and extending healing. As our thoughts are transformed, we transform the world. The world is simply the effect of our thoughts. "
I loose the world from all I thought it was, and choose my own reality instead."
(W.132.17.2) The one that chooses is the one that this Course is aimed at. It is the part of our mind that can turn from the ego and ask for help from Jesus to be taught.
It is up to us to choose whether we will resign as our own authority, believing our own thoughts and opinions, and instead, turn to the Holy Spirit. This means we must stay vigilant of our thoughts and ask to be shown another way of seeing. This is what forgiveness is all about. It is about watching our thoughts and taking responsibility for our projections. Every grievance, every expectation, every wish, every plan, every worry, anxiety, frustration, and anxiety, when seen, can be released. We can let our minds be changed, quietly, when we are ready, and it does not matter where and when this happens. We might be on our deathbed, in prison, in a holiday resort, at our workplace, or in our homes, but we do not have to try to escape our current situation. The setting is irrelevant. It is the decision that is important. When we bring our illusions to the truth, our thoughts are healed. When we let go of our grievances, peace and joy prevail.
Loosing the world is to loose our thoughts by seeing that every value and belief we hold in this world is wrong. The world of time, of past, present and future does not exist. It is the present that "
now remains the only time"
(W.132.3.1) where the healing takes place. "
Here in the present is the world set free. For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world."
(W.132.3.2-3)
Applying this lesson is the only way to experience the truth of its teaching. These experiences convince us of our source and we recognize, increasingly, that we did not create ourselves. We are not our own source. Remember that the focus today is not on denying the reality of the world or simply dismissing it as illusion, but looking at our defenses.
What do we want to believe about ourselves today? What is real? The ego? The body? Or our Identity as God created us? We get constant affirmation from the world of who we are as separate individuals, but this is a false self that thinks thoughts that are not real thoughts. Our being is not what the world has told us it is. What we have come to believe about ourselves, as a result, is completely false. Isn't that a liberating idea? But it is also an idea that brings up fear and resistance, which we need to be aware of and also bring up for healing. Remember, honesty is needed in looking at all of our false perceptions. As we do this healing work today, "
healing comes to many brothers across the world, as well as to the ones you see nearby, as you send out these thoughts to bless the world."
(W.132.16.1) The mind that we are is still in God. It is not an easy concept to get, yet Jesus says that when we get it, we will know our own reality. Whenever we have the experience today of feeling victimized by something or someone outside of ourselves, or we feel distress of any kind, it is a trigger for us that we are looking outside of ourselves to feel better.
"
I who remain as God created me would loose the world from all I thought it was. For I am real because the world is not, and I would know my own reality."
(W.132.15.2-3) "
Then merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let your mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed along with you."
(W.132.15.4) This requires stopping, looking, and bringing our thoughts to the light of truth.
Love and blessings, Sarah
