[acimlessons_list] Lesson 347 - December 13

[Susan Carrier]

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+ COMMENTARIES ON LESSONS FROM THE WORKBOOK OF A COURSE IN MIRACLES
+ by Allen Watson, with Practice Summaries by Robert Perry, 
+ of The Circle of Atonement
+ Visit our website at <http://www.circleofa.com <http://www.circleofa.com/>
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Lesson 347 - December 13


"Anger must come from judgment. Judgment is 
The weapon I would use against myself, 
To keep the miracle away from me."

PRACTICE SUMMARY

(See Part II Practice Summary and also Part II Introduction)

COMMENTARY

>From the sublime heights of yesterday's lesson ("I would forget all things
except Your Love") we return to the level of our split mind, in which we
attack ourselves, keeping away the miracle with judgment and attack. The
previous lesson was miracle-mindedness; here we see why we do not always
experience that state of mind: We actively keep it away from ourselves with
judgment and attack. The process of the Course involves learning complete
honesty with ourselves. We learn to recognize and admit the duplicity of our
own minds:

"Father, I want what goes against my will, and do not want what is my will
to have" (1:1).

"My will" is my right-mindedness, forgetting everything except God's Love.
And yet we seem to want something else, and to actively resist having the
Love of God flooding our minds.

I love this next couple of lines:

"Straighten my mind, my Father. It is sick" (1:2-3).

I love those lines because of their stark simplicity, and because of the
contrast they offer to the frothy denial of our inner darkness that is
prevalent in so many circles. The Course does not pull any punches. It does
not "throw pink paint" over our problems, as Marianne Williamson so
colorfully puts it (pun intended!). There are times when no other assessment
fits: Our minds are sick! It is sick to want what goes against my true will,
and to actively resist my own well-being. Self-destruction is always
pathological. When we look honestly at the fact that we are literally
pushing away our own peace of mind, by active choices we make, it ought to
be repugnant. When we see what we have been doing, our saner self will say,
"This is sick!"

And so we ask the Father to "straighten my mind." That always reminds me of
a science fiction book by Zenna Henderson, called "The People" (or perhaps
the title was "No Different Flesh"). In it there were certain persons who
could telepathically enter into another person's mind and "sort" their
thoughts, soothing their inner turmoil and pain. The idea appealed to me so
much that I used to pray, "Sort me, Father," when I felt my thoughts in
chaos and confusion. And it seemed to work! I was pleasantly surprised to
see this similar phrase here, validating my experience. "Straighten my
mind."

We enable the straightening of our minds by giving all our judgment to the
Holy Spirit and asking Him to judge for us (1:5). He sees what we see, "and
yet He knows the truth" (1:6). He is looking at the same evidence I am
looking at, but He knows the pain is not real; the evidence means something
entirely different to Him. To me, the evidence of my eyes seems to prove
that separation, pain, loss and death are real. When I bring all this to Him
and ask Him to straighten my mind, He will show me that what I see does not
mean what I think it means; He will use what I thought proved my guilt to
reveal my innocence.

"He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness" (1:8).

"Listen today. Be very still, and hear the gentle Voice for God assuring you
that He has judged you as the Son He loves" (2:1-2).


WHAT IS A MIRACLE? (Part 7)

W-pII.13.4:1

"The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind
has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not
understand."

Faith. Yes, <A Course in Miracles> asks for faith, at least at the
beginning. "The miracle is taken <first> on faith." This is a fairly
traditional meaning for the word "faith." The American Heritage Dictionary
defines faith as, "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material
evidence." And that is what is being asked of us. We are being asked to
receive the miracle (the change of perception, the vision of our brother's
innocence) without any "proof or material evidence." We are being asked to
look on devastation (such as sickness, or the harm done by someone's
unloving actions) and to believe that what we see is false--without
"material evidence."

This is not an easy thing to do, to believe in something we cannot see. And
yet, if our false perception has blinded us to reality, and we are now
perceiving the projections of our own minds in place of truth, then
obviously the truth is now something we do not see. And since what our mind
chooses to see is what we see, the mind <must> change before we can perceive
truly. We have to choose to change our mind <before we see the evidence>,
because, in order for the miracle to manifest, our minds must first be "made
ready to conceive of what [they] cannot see and [do] not understand." In
other words, we must make a choice on faith; we must decide that we desire
to see something we cannot now see and something we do not understand.

This reminds me very much of those very early lessons in the Workbook,
Lessons 27 and 28: "Above all else I want to see" and "Above all else I want
to see things differently." That choice has to be made before we can see
anything. We must <want> to see in order to see. That is the faith being
talked about here. It is a choice, a decision we must make. We must <want>
to see our brother innocent. We must <want> only love. We must be willing to
see things differently. Only then will we see miracles. 
 
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+ Commentary by Allen Watson
+ Practice Summary: Robert Perry
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