[acimlessons_list] LESSON 293 - OCTOBER 20

[Sue Roth]

LESSON 293 - OCTOBER 20

"All fear is past and only love is here."

PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS 

See complete Pat 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.

Practice suggestion: The following exercise is based on this lesson's
teaching that your fear is caused by your past mistakes. Their presence in
your memory tells you that punishment is on the way, that you better be
afraid because you've got it coming to you. But these past mistakes are
gone. If you could open your eyes and see the present, you would see that
only love is really here.

Now for the exercise. Look ahead into your day and identify anything you are
afraid of, any event that's causing you worry or anxiety, or that you would
simply like to avoid. Try to identify several such fears. With each one you
find, say: 

     This fear is past
     because my past mistakes are gone.
     And only love is here,
     Because God is here.

COMMENTARY

I think of fear as related to the future, yet here it says "all fear is
past." This means more, I think, than that my experiences of fear are all
over. Understood that way it is almost wishful thinking. What it seems to
actually mean is that fear itself is in the past. Fear comes from the past,
it exists in the past only. When the past is real to me, with "all my past
mistakes oppressing it" (1:3), then I have fear (and only then). What I fear
is that the past determines the future. If my past is filled with mistakes
and things of guilt, and I consider it to be real, this generates my present
fear of the future.

The source of fear is making the past real in the present.

The Course teaches us that "the past that you remember never was"
(T-14.IX.1:10). At first it seems difficult to say to myself, "The things I
think happened in the past did not ever happen; they are not real." Perhaps
it is easier to say, "The past never existed in the way I think it did."
That seems more conceivable, more acceptable. To say that is only a step
toward the truth, but I think it can be a helpful step. We begin by
admitting that our memories of the past are, to say the least, distorted.
Each one peoples his world with figures from his individual past, and it is
because of this that private worlds do differ. Yet the figures that he sees
were never real, for they are made up only of his reactions to his brothers,
and do not include their reactions to him.	(T-13.V.2:1-2)

More than that, the past we imagine we know is filled with reasons for guilt
and attack. We remember wrongs done to us, and wrongs we have done. That
perception must shift. If we accept the judgment of the Holy Spirit, the
perception of guilt must go. Forgiveness is a kind of selective remembering.
We can begin to see the past and everything in it as either the expression
of love or a call for help.
This is a kind of intermediate position. In a way we are still believing
that the past is (or was) real, but we are deciding to see it differently.
The ultimate truth is that time itself does not exist, the world does not
exist, bodies do not exist. They are nothing but the play of thoughts in our
mind.

A physical analogy helps me. Does an ocean wave exist? Is a wave real? In
one sense, yes; in another, no. There is no such thing as a wave apart from
the ocean. What we call a wave is no more than the play of physical energy
on water. The water, the ocean, is (in this physical plan) what is real; the
wave is here one moment, gone the next; in this moment comprised of one set
of water molecules, in the next comprised of a wholly different set of
molecules. A wave does not exist <in itself>, independent of all else.

The entire physical universe is nothing more than a wave in Eternal Mind.
Mind is all that is real.
In this sense, then, nothing of the past is real. All of the past of a wave
no longer exists. The past wave is totally and completely gone. Where it
passed now lies placid and calm, unaffected by the wave. Waves do not change
the ocean.

Some may be able to see it this way, to understand at least in concept that
the past simply does not 
exist. Some of us may need the simpler form, "It never happened the way I
think it did. Guilt was never real." The simpler form will eventually lead
to the fuller form, so it simply doesn't matter.
When I experience fear, then, one thing to look for is the belief in the
past that is behind it, perhaps hidden, but surely there. Only the past
makes me fearful of the future. That is why young children are so often
lacking in fear: they have no memory of past disasters to give rise to the
fear. When I feel fear, let me remember that it depends on my perception of
the past, and affirm: "What I remember never happened as I think it did.
There is nothing to fear."

When I deliberately choose to exclude the past from my consideration of the
present, "in the present love is obvious, and its effects apparent" (1:4).
The constant burden of the past, dredging up remembered horrors, totally
blocks this awareness of love's presence from my perception. All our
<learning> is nothing but an accumulation of ideas about the past. Therefore
all of it is nothing. We begin to <unlearn>, to deliberately forget what we
think the past has taught us, and in that we find true perception and
eventually true knowledge.

The world that we see, when we see without the fear carried over from the
past, is the real world. This is the world we are asking to see today in
this lesson. Underneath all the sounds of fear, the world is singing "hymns
of gratitude" (2:2). The perception of the Holy Spirit is able to penetrate
through the veneer of fear we have placed over reality. When we share His
perception, we realize the past is gone, and we see and hear what is here
<now>, when "love is obvious." Let me, then, join in the prayer: "I would
see only this world before my eyes today" (2:4).

WHAT IS THE REAL WORLD?

Part 3: W-pII.8.2:1-2

"The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in
your world; a sure correction for the sights of fear and sounds of battle
which your world contains" (2:1). If the real world contains counterparts
for each unhappy thought, then it must consist of happy thoughts. The
difference is in the thoughts about what is seen, and not in the objects of
perception. In this sentence it seems almost as though the real world is
like a library of videos, each consisting of a different interpretation of
some person or event in our lives. We can choose to watch the videos of the
Holy Spirit or those of the ego. Same scenes, but different Director, with a
different meaning given to everything.

"The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with
a mind at peace" (2:2). The difference lies in the peacefulness of the mind
doing the perceiving. This is the first of three references to the state of
the mind that is doing the seeing. Others are "the mind that has forgiven
itself" (2:6) and "a mind at peace within itself" (3:4).

We all assume that our perceptions of the world are telling us something
real about the world. In fact, they are telling us something about our own
state of mind. The sights of fear and sounds of battle we perceive are only
reflections of the fear and battle within our own minds. When our minds have
been brought to peace, the world takes on a different appearance because our
minds are projecting their own state upon the world. Let me, then, seek the
healing of my own mind, and the healing of the world will take care of
itself.