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46
God Himself is incomplete without me.
47 Remember this when the ego speaks, and you will not hear it. The truth about you is so lofty that nothing unworthy of God is worthy of you. Choose, then, what you want in these terms and accept nothing that you would not offer to God as wholly fitting for Him, for you do not
want anything else. Return your part of Him, and He will give you all of Himself in exchange for your return of what belongs to Him and renders Him complete.
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Workbook for Students
Lesson 107
Truth will correct all errors in my mind.
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1 What can correct illusions but the truth? And what are errors but illusions that remain unrecognized for what they are? Where truth has entered, errors disappear. They merely vanish, leaving not a trace by which to be remembered. They are gone because without belief they have no life, and so they disappear to nothingness, returning whence they came. From dust to dust they come and go, for only truth remains.
2 Can you imagine what a state of mind without illusions is? How it would feel? Try to remember when there was a time—perhaps a minute, maybe even less—when nothing came to interrupt your peace; when you were certain you were loved and safe. Then try to picture what it would be like to have that moment be extended to the end of time and to eternity.
3 Then let the sense of quiet that you felt be multiplied a hundred times and then be multiplied another hundred more. And now you have a hint, not more than just the faintest intimation of the state your mind will rest in when the truth has come.
4 Without illusions there could be no fear, no doubt, and no attack. When truth has come, all pain is over, for there is no room for transitory thoughts and dead ideas to linger in your mind. Truth occupies your mind completely, liberating you from all beliefs in the ephemeral. They have no place because the truth has come, and they are nowhere. They cannot be found, for truth is everywhere forever now.
5 When truth has come, it does not stay a while to disappear or change to something else. It does not shift and alter in its form, nor come and go and go and come again. It stays exactly as it always was, to be depended on in every need and trusted with a perfect trust in all the seeming difficulties and the doubts that the appearances the world presents engender. They will merely flow away when truth corrects the errors in your mind.
6 When truth has come, it harbours in its wings the gift of perfect constancy and love which does not falter in the face of pain but looks beyond it, steadily and sure. Here is the gift of healing, for the truth needs no defense, and therefore no attack is possible. Illusions can be brought to truth to be corrected. But the truth stands far beyond illusions and cannot be brought to them to turn them into truth.
7 Truth does not come and go nor shift nor change, in this appearance now and then in that, evading capture and escaping grasp. It does not hide. It stands in open light, in obvious accessibility. It is impossible that anyone could seek it truly and would not succeed.
8 Today belongs to truth. Give truth its due, and it will give you yours. You were not meant to suffer and to die. Your Father wills these dreams be gone. Let truth correct them all. We do not ask for what we do not have. We merely ask for what belongs to us, that we may recognize it as our own.
9 Today we practice on the happy note of certainty that has been born of truth. The shaky and unsteady footsteps of illusion is not our approach today. We are as certain of success as we are sure we live and hope and breathe and think. We do not doubt we walk with truth today and count on it to enter into all the exercises that we do this day.
10 Begin by asking Him Who goes with you upon this undertaking that He be in your awareness as you go with Him. You are not made of flesh and blood and bone but were created by the self-same Thought which gave the gift of life to Him as well. He is your Brother and so like to you your Father knows that you are both the same. It is your Self you ask to go with you, and how could He be absent where you are?
11 Truth will correct all errors in your mind which tell you you could be apart from Him. You speak to Him today and make your pledge to let His function be fulfilled through you. To share His function is to share His joy. His confidence is with you, as you say:
12
Truth will correct all errors in my mind, and I will rest in Him Who is my Self.
13 Then let Him lead you gently to the truth which will envelop you and give you peace so deep and tranquil that you will return to the familiar world reluctantly.
14 And yet you will be glad to look again upon this world. For you will bring with you the promise of the changes which the truth that goes with you will carry to the world. They will increase with every gift you give of five small minutes, and the errors that surround the world will be corrected as you let them be corrected in your mind.
15 Do not forget your function for today. Each time you tell yourself with confidence, "Truth will correct all errors in my mind," you speak for all the world and Him Who would release the world as He would set you free.
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Course in Miracles
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Text
Chapter 9
The Correction of Error
VI. Salvation and God's Will
par 38-47
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38 God's Will is your salvation. Would He not have given you the means to find it? If He wills you to
have it, He must have made it possible and very easy to obtain it. Your brothers are everywhere. You do not have to seek far for salvation. Every minute and every second gives you a chance to save
yourself. Do not lose these chances, not because they will not return, but because delay of joy is needless. God wills you perfect happiness
now. Is it possible that this is not also
your will? And is it possible that this is not
also the will of your brothers?
39 Consider, then, that in this joint will you
are all united, and in this
only. There will be disagreement on anything else, but
not on this. This, then, is where peace
abides. And
you abide in peace when you so decide. Yet you cannot abide in peace unless you accept the Atonement, because the Atonement
is the way to peace. The reason is very simple and so obvious that it is often overlooked. That is because the ego is
afraid of the obvious since obviousness is the essential characteristic of reality. Yet
you cannot overlook it unless you are
not looking.
40 It is
perfectly obvious that if the Holy Spirit looks with love on
all He perceives, He looks with love on
you. His evaluation of you is based on His knowledge of what you are, and so He evaluates you truly. And this evaluation
must be in your mind because
He is. The ego is also in your mind because you have
accepted it there.
Its evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit's because the ego does
not love you. It is unaware of what you are and wholly mistrustful of
everything it perceives because its own perceptions are so shifting. The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst. That is its range. It cannot exceed it because of its uncertainty. And it can never go
beyond it because it can never
be certain.
41 You, then, have two
conflicting evaluations of yourself in your minds, and they
cannot both be true. You do not yet realize how
completely different these evaluations are because you do not understand how lofty the Holy Spirit's perception of you really is. He is not deceived by anything you do because He never forgets what you
are. The ego is deceived by everything you do, even when you respond to the Holy Spirit, because at such times its confusion
increases. The ego is, therefore, particularly likely to attack you when you react lovingly because it has evaluated you as
unloving, and you are going
against its judgment.
42 The ego will begin to
attack your motives as soon as they become clearly out of accord with its perception of you. This is when it will shift abruptly from suspiciousness to viciousness, since its uncertainty is increased. Yet it is surely pointless to attack in return. What can this mean except that you are
agreeing with the ego's evaluation of what you are? If you are willing to see yourself as unloving, you will
not be happy. You are condemning yourself and
must therefore regard yourself as inadequate. Would you look to the ego to help you escape from a sense of inadequacy it has
produced and must
maintain for its existence? Can you
escape from its evaluation of you by using its methods for keeping this picture
intact?
43 You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from
within it. Its own range precludes this. You can only go
beyond it, look back from a point where
sanity exists,
and see the contrast. Only
by this contrast can insanity be judged as insane. With the grandeur of God in you, you have chosen to be little and to lament your littleness.
Within the system which dictated this choice, the lament
is inevitable. Your littleness is taken for granted there, and you do
not ask, "Who granted it?" The question is meaningless within the ego's thought system because it opens the
whole thought system to question.
44 We said before that the ego does not know what a real question is. Lack of knowledge of any kind is always associated with
unwillingness to know and produces a total lack of knowledge simply because knowledge
is total.
Not to question your littleness, therefore, is to deny
all knowledge and keep the ego's
whole thought system intact. You cannot retain
part of a thought system because it can be questioned
only at its foundation. And this must be questioned from beyond it because,
within it, its foundation
does stand. The Holy Spirit judges against the reality of the ego's thought system merely because He knows its
foundation is not true. Therefore, nothing that arises from it means anything. The Holy Spirit judges every belief you hold in terms of where it comes from. If it comes from God, He knows it to be true. If it does not, He knows that it is meaningless.
45 Whenever you question your value, say:
46
God Himself is incomplete without me.
47 Remember this when the ego speaks, and you will not hear it. The truth about you is so lofty that nothing unworthy of God is worthy of you. Choose, then, what you want in these terms and accept nothing that you would not offer to God as wholly fitting for Him, for you do not
want anything else. Return your part of Him, and He will give you all of Himself in exchange for your return of what belongs to Him and renders Him complete.
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Sarah's Reflections
Lesson 107
Truth will correct all errors in my mind.
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This Lesson contrasts truth and illusion and makes it clear that we cannot really know truth in this world, but we can experience its reflection. The Lesson provides clarification on how living in this state of reflection of truth would feel compared to staying invested in the world of illusion. We are provided with a very clear perspective on the ego thought system, which is designed to keep us from seeing the guilt in our minds. The guilt in the mind shields us from the truth, and the world shields us from looking at the guilt. The world becomes a screen onto which we project our guilt. Yet with courage to really look at our thoughts and take responsibility for them, they can be exposed and given over to be healed.
Jesus encourages us to see that the errors in our minds are not sins. They are simply mistakes to be corrected. Nothing we believe about ourselves can change the fact that truth is still in our minds, simply blocked by our resistance to its acceptance. It means that if we want to heal, we must look at how we misperceive everything. Our misperceptions keep us from experiencing the truth of our being as a Child of Love. Our focus is kept on the body and the world, thus distracting us from looking within where truth resides.
Jesus tells us that when we withdraw belief from the error, from the illusion, and from this dream,
"They are gone because
,
without belief, they
h
ave no life
.
"
(W.107.1.5) It is like turning on the light in a dark room. The darkness immediately disappears. The only power the illusion has is our belief in it.
We are making the decision in each moment for the crucifixion or the resurrection; for the ego’s thought system or the truth. There is nothing that is too small or insignificant in the mind to pay attention to. We must be attentive to the slightest nuance of a suffering self, for what we think is what we experience, and it is literally a choice for life or for death. We will experience pain, anxiety, and depression, or joy, happiness, and peace accordingly.
We are not meant to suffer. The way out of suffering is to bring all our misperceptions to the truth. Remember that the errors in our minds are not flaws. They are simply errors to be corrected. It requires vigilance on our part to look at our false beliefs. We see them when we take back our projections of the guilt that we put onto others. We believe that we are bodies, that we can be hurt, that we can be lonely, disconnected, unhappy, suffer and die, and that others are responsible for how we feel. This is not the truth. The truth is that we are eternal beings of light and love.
No matter how real and solid anything appears to be in the illusion, it is all nothing and will all disappear.
"From dust to dust they come and go, for only truth remains
,
"
(W.107.1.7) which means that when all illusions go, the only thing real that remains is the truth of who we are.
"Where truth has entered errors disappear
.
"
(W.107.1.3) Everything we currently see and believe is then gone, and only the light remains.
We are asked to look at what this state without illusions would look like. We can perhaps,
"Try to remember when there was a time,---perhaps a minute, maybe even less---when nothing came to interrupt your peace; when you were certain you were loved and safe
.
"
(W.107.2.3) It may have been a time when you were a child, perhaps with someone you really loved, a time in deep meditation, or in nature. Whatever the moment is for you, try to picture it. Then take some time to go back to the feelings you were experiencing at the time and try to imagine what it would be like to have this moment extend to the end of time. But wait, he tells us it goes far beyond what we can imagine, with the feeling multiplied a hundred times and then a hundred more. Any memory we hold of such a state of peace is only a minute glimmer of what Jesus is talking about here. It is a state impossible to describe but must be experienced. Our Lessons are taking us to this kind of experience. These glimmers of peace give us a foretaste of what is to come. It is an experience of our true state. It is what the holy instant offers us. It is what Heaven is, and when we experience it, we will
". . . return to the familiar world reluctantly
.
"
(W.107.9.6) It is to be in the world, yet not of it. It is to be in the world while knowing our reality is not here.
"And yet you will be glad to look again upon this world
.
"
(W.107.10.1) We are glad because we bring the gifts we have received in the holy instant back to the world. Our function is to give what we have received. Thus, our practice periods are not merely for ourselves alone because we are one with our brothers. When our misery and suffering are given over to be healed by the Holy Spirit, we become a demonstration of His love. Thus, we bring this changed perception to the world and receive the gifts we give. We demonstrate that peace and joy are ours, and the same choice can be made by everyone.
We all have times in our lives when we feel totally assaulted by the world. We feel like victims of people and situations that seem to be assaulting us, and our thoughts about these people and events rob us of peace. These are precisely the thoughts we need to bring forward for correction. They are not the truth, yet we respond to them as if they were. When I feel lonely, I believe what I am feeling, and I try to find ways to alleviate it. However, the thought, "I am lonely," is an illusion. I am responding to something that is not true. If we observe all our thoughts and emotions from outside this dream, we can see none of them are true. The observer is the one witnessing the dream figure that we think we are.
We need not judge any of our experiences, only recognize their lack of reality. All the thoughts and emotions come from one belief, which is the belief in separation. Now we have started to recognize that we have been wrong about ourselves and the world and with it comes a willingness to be taught.
It is clear, Jesus is not talking about having no needs as long as we are here. We will still experience problems, challenges, and pain that are all part of our experience in the world; but we are now being reminded that as we bring our needs, our problems, and our issues to the truth, the miracle is available to us. In other words, we are shown another way to see everything. We may still need to address the issues and problems of the world by taking some kind of action, but we can approach the situation with peace and trust that all will be resolved. Through these situations, we are given an opportunity to learn that the cause of our pain is never external. It is simply a decision that we have made to listen to the wrong teacher in our minds. When we bring our pain to the light of truth, healing becomes available. It is the only way to heal from the difficulties we experience here.
We are asking Jesus/the Holy Spirit today to help to shift our identification with the vulnerable self we think we are. It requires that we bring our weakness, helplessness, emptiness, anger, frustration, and fear to Him so we can experience His healing light. In other words, we experience the miracle. We lean on Him for support and trust that He is always there to remove the illusory demons that seem very real to us because we have given them reality. Yes, it does take effort to withdraw the belief in the illusion, but we have Mighty Help available to us. We just need to open to this Help with confidence and certainty that the only problem we have is the decision to forget who we really are.
This is about confidence. Jesus tells us that we can depend on his help in every need and trust that he is always there for us.
"It
[truth]
stays exactly as it always was, to be depended on in every need, and trusted with a perfect trust in all the seeming difficulties and the doubts that the appearances the world presents engender
.
"
(W.107.4.3) All your doubts and difficulties
". . . will merely blow away, when truth corrects the errors in your mind."
(W.107.4.4) The truth of his loving presence wants to reach us in our despair and sadness.
"When truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect constancy, and love which does not falter in the face of pain, but looks beyond it, steadily and sure
.
"
(W.107.5.1) We can be confident, trusting the truth. It is here that our safety lies, where there is no need for defense because no attack is possible. When the guilt and fear are gone from our minds, we come to know we are invulnerable. Now there is nothing to protect and nothing to defend against.
Truth already belongs to us. There is nothing to ask for. It is within our minds and thus always accessible. Jesus says if we truly and sincerely seek it, we will find it. It is not elusive. God is not hiding from us. He is in plain sight. We just need to be confident and trust this is so.
"Truth does not come and go nor shift nor change, in this appearance now and then in that, evading capture and escaping grasp. It does not hide. It stands in open light, in obvious accessibility. It is impossible anyone could seek it truly, and would not succeed
.
"
(W.107.6.1-4) If we think we have truly and sincerely sought the truth and not found it, we must look at how we are deceiving ourselves. Sometimes, we are more enamored by the steps we take in the journey than we are with the destination. Given a choice of a journey to God or the destination itself, we may still be happier to choose the journey. This is because we still want the experience of living in this world, and we still choose to invest in the self we are attached to, which is this illusory self. We made it, and we like what it offers. This is what our resistance to the truth is all about.
I am aware of the resistance in my mind and how much I find distractions to occupy my time. I see my resistance when I forget to do the Lessons. We can't say we want truth more than anything, yet not do what is asked of us in order to reach it. This is all about readiness and willingness to do this practice because discipline is essential. All we need to do is to notice the resistance, rather than fight ourselves and feel guilty. When we find resistance strong, we can always ask for help to know,
"The shaky and unsteady footsteps of illusion are not our approach today
.
"
(W.107.7.4) We can decide that we want to be taken farther down this path to truth today and know with confidence that we cannot fail because what we are seeking we already have. With motivation and confidence, we can make great strides today. When we ask
"Him Who goes with you upon this undertaking
,
"
(W.107.8.1) we are asking for our Guide to go with us into the day. We set the goal and decide on the kind of day we want and recognize that the practice of the Lesson will support our goal.
When we call on the Holy Spirit, we are really connecting to the Christ Self, which is our true reality and totally unalterable. All my moods, my excitement, my boredom, my anger, my impatience, and my total identity as a body, as Sarah, as a woman, offer nothing but vulnerability, changeability, uncertainty, and ultimately death. When I think of my imperfection, it shows me I am thinking of myself in illusory terms. I am identifying with the ego. The ego is not who I am. This false identity is what needs to be brought to the truth. The presence of the Holy Spirit is in my mind.
The way to peace is so simple it is bound to be overlooked when we experience suffering. All we need to do is make the decision to keep practicing what Jesus is teaching; it is not difficult or ambiguous unless we want it to be so. Step back and let Him lead the way in each moment, with each thought and action, and when we do, happiness and peace of mind are assured.
When we merge with Self, it is indeed difficult to return to the world. A part of us will be reluctant because the experience of truth is so deep and powerful. By contrast, being in the world of limitation feels very constricted. Yet we are told that we do have an important function in the world because we bring the promise of this unchangeable truth back with us. We bring back certainty and safety, knowing, as Jesus did, the certainty of resurrection. Ultimately, he is not telling us not to function in the world, but only to bring him with us in our awareness. We are integrating the truth in our minds with our functioning in the world.
We are asked to recognize our lives were really not happy before we undertook this spiritual journey. This was the motivation to start on this spiritual journey in the first place. We felt like victims of the world. Now we are undergoing a change. We look to this teaching and witness more peace and contentment in our lives as we apply the Lessons to the events of the day. Thus, we demonstrate that we are not the victims of external events and the things of the world no longer disrupt us to the same extent. We become examples of peace and happiness in this world, with our external lives reflecting the internal changes.
Love and blessings, Sarah
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