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    
Sarah's Commentary:

Today the lesson reminds us that we are mistaken if we think we can be hurt in any way. We all believe that we can be hurt. Our feelings can get hurt; our bodies can be hurt; we believe we can die; we can lose loved ones. We grieve, we suffer and yet here we are being invited to consider the truth of this statement, which is that we can't be hurt. The error in my mind is that my reality is a body and thus I can be hurt. This is because I have forgotten the truth of who I am as God's Son. I think I am this body and this vulnerable self living in the world. The ego has made it all seem very convincing. The illusion seems very real to us. The body and the world seem very real to us.

So who is this me that can't be hurt? It is certainly not the me that I identify as Sarah, the body, the personality. The Course says that the 'me' that can't be hurt is who I really am in Truth. In other words, this body that I think I am, this personality that I think I am, this image that I have created of myself, is not me at all! When I identify myself with it, I feel lacking, limited and very vulnerable. In truth, I am Spirit, part of the One mind that we all are. Our individual selves are the dream figures in the dream of separation that we are dreaming. We are now awakening to the truth through a process of undoing the misperceptions in the mind. It is the conditioned, deceived mind that has misled us into thinking that we are these dream figures.

It is not a simple matter of reminding ourselves that we are not this body and that we are indeed free now. The undoing process requires that we really look honestly at the way that we defend against the truth. It is our defenses that are attacking our reality. We are continually working to protect our definition of ourselves because we believe that suffering, sin, sickness and death are real. We are defending against "an enemy within, an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps, which seem wholly irreconcilable." (170.3.2) While we think we are protecting ourselves from external threats, we are actually protecting ourselves from love. To us, love is treacherous because at the unconscious level of the mind, we see it associated with sacrifice and loss. This is why we need to turn to the Holy Spirit for His interpretation of our wrong-minded perspective. We made fear and now we think it is real and inescapable because we are constantly defending against it. When we are willing to bring awareness to our defenses and bring them to the light, we can know the invulnerability of the Self that we are. We say we believe in God's love, yet we also believe in pain, loss, sickness, suffering and death. The message of the Course is totally uncompromising. It can only be one or the other. These are mutually exclusive states of mind. We are either choosing Heaven or hell in each moment.

As the introduction to the Course says, "Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God." So anything that is not eternal is not real and that includes our bodies. That is what the crucifixion was meant to teach us, that truth cannot be destroyed, that although Jesus was crucified as the world saw it, he already knew that he was not a body. Through his resurrection, he demonstrated that who he is, and who we are as well, is eternal. We are not these vulnerable beings that we have come to identify with. We are eternally safe.

To us, the illusion seems so very real and solid. How do we withdraw our investment in it? We undertake the disciplined work of watching our thoughts and doing the forgiveness practice as described in the Course. It is to take responsibility for our projections and recognize that the world is nothing but a reflection of our thoughts. They are thoughts we don't want to acknowledge in ourselves so we would rather see them in others and thus see our guilt in them. Healing requires that we take responsibility for these thoughts without judging ourselves for them. Thus our lives and the world can become a perfect classroom for undoing our misperceptions. It does take willingness because it seems to go against everything that we have been taught and that we have taught ourselves.

Pain, suffering, sickness, aging and death are part of the so-called reality of this worldly experience. While we hold these beliefs, it is not helpful to deny them. To know the truth of who we are as eternal beings is not an intellectual exercise. We must apply the lessons to our daily upsets. The teaching comes alive for us only with our willingness to apply these lessons daily to whatever shows up. As we learn to walk in trust, relying on the Holy Spirit as our Guide and Jesus as our mentor, we increasingly learn that we are perfectly safe and constantly in the arms of love.

The words of the Course are not intended to make us feel good while we are reading them and then set them aside. Nor are they intended to make us into meta-physicians where we can speak with eloquence about the teaching of the Course. No, this will not help us. What helps is when we apply the daily lesson to the temptations of the day that seem to pull us out of our peace. We must recognize that when these issues show up, it is because our guilt has invited betrayal and attack. We want to see others as guilty so we can identify ourselves as victims of a cruel world. Why? Because that is just another way we defend a god that we unconsciously believe will punish us for our sins. This is the god that we are afraid to awaken to so we continue the game of sin and guilt until we see what we are doing and what we are defending against.

To accept the truth about ourselves we have to be willing to see past the errors of others. Regardless of what things look like and how we justify our anger, we share the same eternal Self. It requires that we bring our misperceptions to the Holy Spirit. Thus vision is restored, where we see beyond what seems to be apparent to our eyes, and really see our brother as ourselves, as an eternal being. Thus we learn to remember who we are.

Jesus tells us that the ego reasons this way: "You are the cause of what I do. Your presence justifies my wrath, and you exist and think apart from me. While you attack I must be innocent. What I suffer from is your attack." (T. 27.VII.3) So it does look as if the world is hurting us. If indeed what we see out there is just a projection of the errors in our own minds, then what we suffer from is our own self attack. If our minds are indeed the cause of everything we see, then by allowing correction of the errors in our minds we can instead "dream softly of our sinless brother, who unites with us in holy innocence."

So instead of seeing the beam in our brother's eye, we remove our own. In other words, our job is to "mind our own mind." The ego thrives on judgment. We interpret what we see and label the behavior as a "sin." If we convince ourselves that our interpretation is a fact, then we will act accordingly. Or as Jesus says "to perceive errors in anyone and to react to them as if they were real, is to make them real to you." (T. 9 III.6) Isn't this the reason for all of our distress in the world? We are looking at everyone through the lens of our own past issues, heartbreaks and shadow figures. Now forgiveness is impossible because we are convinced of their sins. We can't forgive what we have made real. Jesus reminds us that once we have made error real, it makes forgiveness impossible. "The ego's plan is to have you see error clearly first, and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have made real?" (T. 9.IV.4)

So what this lesson is helping us to do is to change our perception so that it is possible to overlook the error. We are recognizing that there is another way of seeing someone that appears to be causing us pain. We need a miracle for such a drastic change in perception and that is what the Holy Spirit offers. We can't do this by ourselves. We can't pretend that we don't feel hurt, angry or distressed. Trying to change our perception or trying to figure out the situation by analyzing it won't work, and feeling guilty for our interpretations will just make us feel worse. The miracle is the correction in our minds, which shows us that any attack is just a call for love and it is actually our own call. We do need the Holy Spirit. It is not about our own doing. So let's today ask the Holy Spirit for His help to undo our wrong perception of our brother. Let us remember that the hatred is in our own minds that we see "out there" and that it is just another block to love to be brought to the truth.

We can decide today to stop accepting our own interpretations as the truth and instead ask the Holy Spirit to look on everything for us recognizing that we just don't know anything. As little children we are asking to be taught. We need to be willing to surrender our understanding.

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