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Mind Extends Itself
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All mind is whole, and the belief that part of it is physical, or
not mind, is a fragmented (or sick) interpretation. Mind
cannot be made physical, but it
can be made manifest through the physical if it uses the body to go
beyond itself. By reaching
out, the mind extends itself. It does not
stop at the body, for if it does, it is blocked in its purpose.
Par 62
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ACIM OE TEXT
CH 8 THE JOURNEY BACK
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Workbook for Students
Part I
Lesson 95
I am One Self,
united with my Creator.
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1 Today's idea accurately describes you as God created you. You are one within yourself and one with Him. Yours is the unity of all creation. Your perfect unity makes change in you impossible. You do not accept this and you fail to realize it must be so, only because you believe that you have changed yourself already. You see yourself as a ridiculous parody on God's creation—weak, vicious, ugly and sinful, miserable and beset with pain.
2 Such is your version of yourself—a self divided into many warring parts, separate from God, and tenuously held together by its erratic and capricious maker, to which you pray. It does not hear your prayers, for it is deaf. It does not see the oneness in you, for it is blind. It does not understand you are the Son of God, for it is senseless and understands nothing.
3 We will attempt today to be aware of only what can hear and see and what makes perfect sense. We will again direct our exercises towards reaching your One Self, which is united with its Creator. In patience and in hope we try again today.
4 The use of the first five minutes of every waking hour for practicing the idea for the day has special advantages at the stage of learning in which you are at present. It is difficult at this point not to allow your mind to wander if it undertakes extended attempts. You have surely realized this by now. You have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline and of your need for mind training. It is necessary that you be aware of this, for it is indeed a hindrance to your advance.
5 Frequent but shorter practice periods have other advantages for you at this time. In addition to recognizing your difficulties with sustained attention, you must also have noticed that, unless you are reminded of your purpose frequently, you tend to forget about it for long periods of time. You often fail to remember the short applications of the idea for the day, and you have not yet formed the habit of using it as an automatic response to temptation.
6 Structure, then, is necessary for you at this time, planned to include frequent reminders of your goal and regular attempts to reach it. Regularity in terms of time is not the ideal requirement for the most beneficial form of practice in salvation. It is advantageous, however, for those whose motivation is inconsistent and who remain heavily defended against learning.
7 We will therefore keep to the five minutes an hour practice periods for a while and urge you to omit as few as possible. Using the first five minutes of the hour will be particularly helpful since it imposes firmer structure. Do not, however, use your lapses from this schedule as an excuse not to return to it again as soon as you can.
8 There may well be a temptation to regard the day as lost because you have already failed to do what is required. This should, however, merely be recognized as what it is—a refusal to let your mistakes be corrected and an unwillingness to try again.
9 The Holy Spirit is not delayed in His teaching by your mistakes. He can be held back only by your unwillingness to let them go. Let us therefore be determined, particularly for the next week or so, to be willing to forgive ourselves for our lapses in diligence and our failures to follow the instructions for practicing the day's idea.
10 This tolerance for weakness will enable us to overlook it, rather than give it power to delay our learning. If we give it power to do this, we are regarding it as strength and are confusing strength with weakness. When you fail to comply with the requirements of this course, you have merely made a mistake. This calls for correction and for nothing else.
11 To allow a mistake to continue is to make additional mistakes based on the first and reinforcing it. It is this process that must be laid aside, for it is but another way in which you would defend illusions against the truth. Let all these errors go by recognizing them for what they are. They are attempts to keep you unaware you are One Self, united with your Creator, at one with every aspect of creation, and limitless in power and in peace.
12 This is the truth, and nothing else is true. Today we will affirm this truth again and try to reach the place in you in which there is no doubt that only this is true. Begin the practice periods today with this assurance, given to your mind with all the certainty that you can give:
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I am One Self, united with my Creator,
At one with every aspect of creation,
And limitless in power and in peace.
14 Then close your eyes and tell yourself again, slowly and thoughtfully, attempting to allow the meaning of the words to sink into your mind, replacing false ideas:
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I am One Self.
16 Repeat this several times, and then attempt to feel the meaning which the words convey. You are One Self, united and secure in light and joy and peace. You are God's Son, One Self with one Creator and one goal—to bring awareness of this oneness to all minds, that true creation may extend the Allness and the Unity of God.
17 You are One Self, complete and healed and whole, with power to lift the veil of darkness from the world and let the light in you come through to teach the world the truth about itself. You are One Self, in perfect harmony with all there is and all that there will be. You are One Self, the holy Son of God, united with your brothers in this Self, united with your Father in His Will.
18 Feel this One Self in you, and let it shine away all your illusions and your doubts. This is your Self, the Son of God Himself, sinless as its Creator, with His strength within you and His Love forever yours. You are One Self, and it is given you to feel this Self within you and to cast all your illusions out of the one Mind which is this Self, the holy truth in you.
19 Do not forget today. We need your help, your little part in bringing happiness to all the world. And Heaven looks to you in confidence that you will try today. Share, then, its surety, for it is yours. Be vigilant. Do not forget today.
20 Throughout the day do not forget your goal. Repeat today's idea as frequently as possible and understand each time you do so, someone hears the voice of hope, the stirring of the truth within his mind, the gentle rustling of the wings of peace. Your own acknowledgment you are One Self, united with your Father, is a call to all the world to be at one with you. To everyone you meet today be sure to give the promise of today's idea and tell him this:
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You are One Self with me,
United with our Creator in this Self.
I honor you because of what I am,
And what He is, Who loves us both as one.
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Lesson ARCHIVE
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Course in Miracles
Original Edition
TEXT
Chapter 8
The Journey Back
VII. Communication
and the Ego-Body Equation
par 53-68
[READING PAUSED FOR WEEKEND]
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53 Attack is
always physical. When attack in any form enters your mind, you are
equating yourself with a body. This is the ego's
interpretation of the body. You do not have to attack physically to accept this interpretation. You are accepting it simply by the belief that attack can
get you something you want. If you did not believe this, the idea of attack would have no appeal for you. When you equate yourself with a body, you will
always experience depression. When a Child of God thinks of himself in this way, he is belittling himself and seeing his brothers as similarly belittled. Since he can find himself
only in them, he has cut himself off from salvation.
54 Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body only as a means of communication. Being the communication link between God and His separated Sons, the Holy Spirit interprets everything
you have made in the light of what
He is. The ego
separates through the body. The Holy Spirit
reaches through it to others. You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do not interpret their bodies and yours solely as a means of joining their
minds and uniting them with yours and mine. This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has
none.
55 If you use the body for attack, it
is harmful to you. If you use it only to reach the minds of those who believe they are bodies and teach them
through the body that this is not so, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you. If you use the body for this and
only for this, you
cannot use it for attack. In the service of uniting, it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion
is. This is God's way of making unlimited what you have limited. The Holy Spirit does not see the body as you do because He knows the
only reality anything can have is the service it can render God on behalf of the function He has given it.
56 Communication
ends separation. Attack
promotes it. The body is beautiful or ugly, holy or savage, helpful or harmful, according to the use to which it is put. And in the body of another you will see the use to which you have put yours. If the body becomes for you a means which you give to the Holy Spirit to use on behalf of union of the Sonship, you will not see anything physical except as what it is. Use it for truth, and you will see it truly.
Misuse it, and you
will misunderstand it because you have already done so
by misusing it. Interpret
anything apart from the Holy Spirit, and you will mistrust it. This will lead you to hatred and attack
and loss of peace.
57 Yet all loss comes only from your own misunderstanding. Loss of
any kind is impossible. When you look upon a brother as a physical entity,
his power and glory are lost
to you, and so are
yours. You
have attacked him, but you
must have attacked yourself first. Do not see him this way for your
own salvation, which must bring him
his. Do not allow him to belittle himself in
your mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness and thus escape from
yours. As part of you,
he is holy. As part of me,
you are. To communicate with part of God Himself is to reach beyond the Kingdom to its Creator through His Voice, which He has established as part of
you.
58 Rejoice, then, that of yourselves you can do nothing. You are not
of yourselves. He of Whom you
are has willed your power and glory
for you, with which you can perfectly accomplish His holy Will for you when you so will it yourself. He has not withdrawn His gifts from you, but
you have withdrawn them from Him. Let no Son of God remain hidden for His Name's sake because His Name is
yours.
59 Remember that the Bible says, "The Word (or thought) was made flesh." Strictly speaking this is impossible, since it seems to involve the translation of one order of reality into another. Different orders of reality merely
appear to exist, just as different orders of miracles do. Thought cannot be made into flesh except by belief, since thought is
not physical. Yet thought
is communication, for which the body
can be used. This is the only
natural use to which it
can be put. To use the body unnaturally is to lose sight of the Holy Spirit's purpose and thus to confuse the goal of His curriculum.
60 There is nothing so frustrating to a learner as to be placed in a curriculum which he cannot learn. His sense of adequacy suffers, and he
must become depressed. Being faced with an impossible learning situation, regardless of why it is impossible, is the most depressing thing in the world. In fact, it is ultimately
why the world is depressing. The Holy Spirit's curriculum is
never depressing because it is a curriculum of joy. Whenever the reaction to learning is depression, it is only because the goal of the curriculum has been lost sight of.
61 In the world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions which bear little or no relationship to each other, so that it appears to be ruled by chaos. Guided by the ego, it
is. Guided by the Holy Spirit, it is
not. It becomes only a means by which the part of the mind you have separated from your Soul can reach beyond its distortions and
return to the Soul. The ego's temple thus becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, where devotion to Him replaces devotion to the ego. In this sense, the body
does become a temple to God because His Voice abides in it by directing the use to which it is put.
62 Healing is the result of using the body
solely for communication. Since this is natural, it heals by making whole, which is
also natural. All mind is whole, and the belief that part of it is physical, or
not mind, is a fragmented (or sick) interpretation. Mind
cannot be made physical, but it
can be made manifest through the physical if it uses the body to go
beyond itself. By reaching
out, the mind extends itself. It does not
stop at the body, for if it does, it is blocked in its purpose. A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack because it has
turned against itself.
63 The removal of the blocks, then, is the
only way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working
through the body but not
in it. If the mind believes the body is its
goal, it
will distort its perception of the body and, by blocking its own extension beyond it, will induce illness by fostering
separation. Perceiving the body as a
separate entity cannot
but foster illness because it is not true. A medium of communication will
lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else. To use a medium of communication as a medium of
attack is an obvious confusion in purpose.
64 To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously with the
same thing and
not suffer? Perception of the body can be unified only by
one purpose. This releases the mind from the temptation to see the body in many lights and gives it over
entirely to the One Light in Which it can be really understood at all. To confuse a learning device with a curriculum
goal is a fundamental confusion. Learning can hardly be arrested at its own aids with hope of understanding either the aids
or the learning's real purpose. Learning must lead
beyond the body to the reestablishment of the power of the mind in it. This can be accomplished
only if the mind extends to other minds and does not
arrest itself in its extension.
65 The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of
all illness because only extension is the mind's function. The opposite of joy is depression. When your learning promotes depression instead of joy, you cannot be listening to God's joyous Teacher, and you must be learning amiss. To see a body as anything except a means of pure extension is to limit your mind and
hurt yourself. Health is therefore nothing more than united purpose. If the body is brought under the purpose of the mind, the body becomes whole because the
mind's purpose
is one. Attack can only be an
assumed purpose of the body because
apart from the mind the body
has no purpose at all.
66 You are
not limited by the body, and thought
cannot be made flesh. Yet mind can be manifested through the body if it goes beyond it and
does not interpret it as limitation. Whenever you see another as limited
to or
by the body, you are imposing this limit
on yourself. Are you willing to
accept this, when your whole purpose for learning should be to
escape from limitations? To conceive of the body as a means of attack of any kind and to entertain even the possibility that joy could
possibly result is a clear-cut indication of a poor learner. He has accepted a learning goal in obvious contradiction to the unified purpose of the curriculum and is interfering with his ability to accept its purpose as his
own.
67 Joy is unified purpose, and unified purpose is
only God's. When yours is unified, it
is His. Interfere with His purpose, and you
need salvation. You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is
not of God. Therefore, it is not true. No more are any of the
results of your condemnation. When you see a brother as a body, you are condemning him
because you have condemned yourself. Yet if all condemnation is unreal, and it
must be unreal since it is a form of attack, then it can
have no results.
68 Do not allow yourselves to suffer from the results of what is not true. Free your minds from the belief that this is
possible. In its complete impossibility and your full awareness
of its complete impossibility lie your only hope for release. But what other hope would you want? Freedom from illusions lies only in not
believing them. There
is no attack, but there
is unlimited communication and therefore unlimited power and wholeness. The power of wholeness is extension. Do not arrest your thought in this world, and you will open your mind to creation in God.
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Sarah's Reflections
Lesson 95
I am One Self,
united with my Creator.
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Sarah's Commentary:
In the Lesson yesterday, the practice consisted of five minutes of every hour, preferably on the hour. Jesus starts off discussing this practice and tells us that there are distinct advantages to holding to this discipline
". . . at the stage of learning in which you are at present."
(W.95.4.1) You will need to determine at what stage of learning you are, but for many of us, it is clear that our mind training or mind discipline is still not such that this thought system is a habit as yet. If it were a habit at this stage, the first response to every difficult situation in our lives would be to apply the Lesson. For most of us, I suspect, the habitual response is a grievance or judgment and only later do we reflect on the forgiveness opportunity. In order to make the Lessons habitual in responding to the temptation to get upset, Jesus offers us a disciplined approach as part of our mind training. He had previously introduced longer meditations, which helped us to see for ourselves how much our mind wanders in our meditation practice. He acknowledges that he understands this perfectly by saying,
"You have surely realized this
[your mind wandering]
by now. You have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline, and of your need for mind training."
(W.95.4.3-4) Yes, it is clear this is the case for most of us.
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Love and blessings, Sarah
Please send gifts of gratitude for these Reflections via PayPal to
huemmert@shaw.ca
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Allen Watson's
Workbook Commentaries
Allen Watson
joined Robert Perry in forming the Circle of Atonement in 1993 in Sedona, Arizona where Allen led retreats and workshops and authored many books based on “A Course in Miracles.” One of his most popular books is:
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