[acimlessons_list] LESSON 263 - September 20

[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 263 - September 20

"My holy vision sees all things as pure."

PRACTICE SUMMARY

(See also Part II Introduction)

COMMENTARY

This lesson is about seeing all things as God created them: without sin,
innocent and pure. His Mind created all that is, His Spirit entered into it,
and His Love gave life to it (1:1). To see things in this way, at first, has
to be a conscious choice, because we have trained our minds to see
otherwise. We have learned to judge. We will categorize, evaluate on a scale
of 1 to 10, attempting to determine whether this is something or someone we
want to draw closer to us or to push away. We've trained our minds to do so
since birth, and probably in many previous lifetimes. Thus, there has to be
a conscious choice to say, "No. I choose to see this as pure." We downgrade
our reflexive evaluations and choose instead to accept the Holy Spirit's
judgment.

Eventually--a long eventually--our minds will become retrained. The choice
to see purity will become more and more automatic. The judgmental thoughts
will probably always be there, slowly receding into the background, until we
leave this world completely, but the choice to see purity will become, more
and more, not a conscious choice but a habit of thought. Frequent and
persistent repetition will speed the process.


What is the Body? (Part 3)

W-pII.5.2:1-4

The body, of course, is transient. It will not last (2:1). The Old Testament
compared man's life to a spark that flies up from a fire, floating off into
the air and quickly disappearing. Last night in a restaurant, someone came
in and greeted the host with, "How's life?" The host's reply tells how near
to the surface our transient nature is in every mind. "Too short," he
replied.

You might think that the shortness of physical life would instantly alert us
to the fallacy of the ego's attempt to have us find safety in the body, but
the ego quickly twists the very shortness into a proof of its case. The ego
wants to prove separation. And what is more separating than physical death?
So the short life of the body "proves" that the fence works; we really are
separate from one another and from God (2:3). We made the body to manifest
separation, and lo! It does. One body can attack another and kill it. If we
were really one, so the ego's logic goes, this would be impossible (2:4).
The ego is a master of sophistry.

There is a masterful counter-argument in Chapter 13 of the Text. There, it
says:

"For you believe that attack is your reality, and that your destruction is
the final proof that you were right.

"Under the circumstances, would it not be more desirable to have been wrong,
even apart from the fact that you were wrong? While it could perhaps be
argued that death suggests there was life, no one would claim that it proves
there is life. Even the past life that death might indicate, could only have
been futile if it must come to this, and needs this to prove that it was at
all" (T-13.IV.2:5-3:3).

If you have to die in order to prove you were right (separation does exist),
wouldn't you rather be wrong--and live? "Even though you know not Heaven,
might it not be more desirable than death?" (T-13.IV.3:6). Much of our fear
of letting go of our identification with the body lies right here; we're
afraid of being proved wrong. If we are wrong in this one thing, so much
else of our lives has been wasted effort. We've been pouring our very souls
into something that, in a very short time, will be only dust. The Course is
asking us to realize the futility of all this, and to look around us and
ask, "Is there perhaps something else more deserving of all this effort?"
And there is. 
 
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+ Commentary by Allen Watson
+ Practice Summary: Robert Perry
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