[acimlessons_list] Lesson 289 - October 16

[Sue Roth]

LESSON 289 - OCTOBER 16

"The past is over. It can touch me not."

PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS 

See complete Part II practice instructions in separate document.  
A short summary:

* Read the commentary paragraph slowly and personally.

* Pray the prayer, perhaps several times.

* Morning and evening: Repeat the idea and then spend time in Open Mind
Meditation.

* Hourly remembrance: Repeat the idea and then spend a quiet moment in
meditation.

* Frequent reminders: Repeat the idea often within each hour.

* Response to temptation: Repeat the idea whenever upset, to restore peace.

* Read the "What Is" section slowly and thoughtfully once during the day.

COMMENTARY

We are learning in the Course that mind is the cause of the world we see.
Say I find myself angry at someone. Instead of assuming, as I have done all
my life, that what I have seen is real, I recognize that it is an illusion
of some kind. I don't try to figure it out, I just give it to the Holy
Spirit. I recognize that my angry thoughts are not caused by what I see, but
rather, my thoughts of anger caused my perception of what I see.

My thoughts are prior to any sight and sound. Many people see this in what
to me is a partial way. They see that our present feelings are not caused by
what is presently happening, but they assume that there must be something in
the past that caused these feelings. "Can you recall another time you felt
like this?" is their key question. The idea is that you can remember some
past event that aroused this feeling, and by realizing that the feeling is
an unresolved feeling from the earlier event, you can detach the feeling
from the present one. "I'm not really angry at you; I am angry because you
represent my mother to me." That sort of thing. The Course does talk about
this kind of "shadow figure" from the past, but it points out that such
shadow figures "are not real, and have no hold over you unless you bring
them with you" (T-13.IV.6:2). (Sections IV through VI in Chapter 13 all deal
with releasing the past.) In other words, our present distress or anger is
not caused by the past, but by a present decision to bring its pain into the
present. A decision being made in the present can be undone in the present.

The past "can touch me not." Past events are not the cause of my feelings,
either. The mistake in that kind of connecting of present emotions to past
events, which certainly can be useful to a limited degree, is that it still
makes the false connection of some event or person as the cause of my
feeling, with my feeling as the effect. The key the Course gives is that
"the past is over." If I am seeing the past I am "seeing but what is not
there" (1:2). The one true thought that can be had about the past, says the
Course, is that it is not here (W-pI.8.2:1). It does not (any longer) exist.
All that exists is a thought in my mind which I call a memory, and that
memory is imperfect, slanted to my perceptions and with no awareness of the
inner reality of other people who were also present. All I remember is what
I saw, what I heard, what I thought, what I felt. So my picture of the past
is totally inadequate and cannot be the basis for any kind of rational
judgment.

When I do recognize that my present feeling is caused by viewing present
events through the filter of a memory of the past, that is good because it
can serve to help me detach my feelings from the things happening in the
now. But I need to go one step further. I need to see that my feelings are
not caused by the past, either. The past has no power over me. The past
doesn't exist. The past I remember is my own thoughts about the past.

If my feelings are not caused by the present and not caused by the past,
then what are they caused by? Certainly not by the future, which has not
happened yet. Then what?

"I am affected only by my thoughts" (W-pII.338.Heading). Only by my
thoughts. That is the bottom line. The Course says that eventually we must
learn that there is nothing outside of our mind to affect us; thought is all
there is. Everything else is the effect of thought, not the cause of
anything (T-26.VII.4:9; T-10.In.1:1). 

There is nothing outside you. That is what you must ultimately learn.
(T-18.VI.1:1-2)

Why do we have thoughts that cause bad feelings? It all goes back to the
original thought of separation. We think we have stolen our being from God,
we think we succeeded in creating a separate self, and we think that God
must be angry. We believe in the wrath of God. In less theological terms, we
are guilty because we see ourselves existing in a world that demands
selfishness for survival. We are guilty because (we think that) we are
separate and it is our own fault.

We have this profound sense of guilt, so profound it terrifies us. We cannot
even bear to look at it. We are afraid of oblivion, afraid of death, more
afraid of hell. Fear transmutes into many forms: anger, depression,
jealousy, apathy. We open our eyes and immediately we are looking for a
scapegoat, something we can blame as the cause of these terrible feelings.
Inevitably we find a culprit. "You! You are the one who has stolen away my
peace!" We made the world to serve this purpose.

The Holy Spirit comes into our lives to "employ the means you made for exile
to restore your mind to where it truly is at home" (W-pII.7.3:3). We look on
each event as a possible scapegoat for our awful feelings. The <Holy Spirit>
looks on each event as a possible means of showing us love. We learn to see
everything as either love or a call for love. To the ego, everything
witnesses to separation and guilt. To the Spirit, everything witnesses to
the reality of love.

To perceive the world forgiveness offers we must be willing to let the past
go, to see that it cannot touch us <now>. The forgiven world can only be
seen <now>. We have to choose to stop looking at "a past that is not there"
(2:1).

WHAT IS THE HOLY SPIRIT?

Part 9: W-pII.7.5:1-2

The Holy Spirit is the "Father's gift-a call from Love to Love, that It be
but Itself" (5:1-2). That is what the calling within us is all about. It is
Love calling to Itself to be Itself. Whenever I start feeling as though God
is calling me to some kind of "surrender" that makes it appear as though I
am submitting my will to another, superior will, I recall that what is
happening is simply that I am surrendering to Love. I am surrendering to
<myself>, to what I am in truth. God is not calling me to give up myself and
become something I do not want to be; God is calling me to <be my Self>. To
be what I was created to be and still am.

I have confused myself and convinced myself that I am something else, and
now, in hearing the call to return to myself, to "return to love," as
Marianne Williamson puts it, I feel fear. It seems as though I am being
asked to give up myself, to "surrender" to God at the expense of my own
being. Exactly the opposite is true. I am being called to surrender only to
what I am in truth. I am called to be Love, because Love is what I am.