[acimlessons_list] Lesson 15 - January 15

[Sue Roth]

Lesson 15 - January 15

"My thoughts are images that I have made."

PRACTICE SUMMARY

Purpose: to introduce you to the process of image making, by which your
inner thoughts appear as outer images.

Exercise: 3 times (4 if comfortable), for 1 minute (less if you feel uneasy)
	*	Repeat the idea to yourself.
	*	Then look about and apply it randomly to whatever you see,
saying quite slowly, "This [name of object] is an image that I have made."
Let your eyes rest on the object the whole time you are repeating this.

Response to temptation: optional-whenever you are upset
You may want to use this form: "This [name of situation] is an image that I
have made." This will remind you that the "upsetting" situation you are
seeing is not objectively real, but is just your own thoughts appearing in
image form.

COMMENTARY

Our perception is composed of images made from our thoughts. Because the
thoughts appear as images, we do not recognize the thoughts as nothing.
Physical sight is nothing more than this, and this is the purpose of
physical sight. We gave our body's eyes the function of seeing these thought
images, in order to validate the thoughts we think we are thinking. "It is
not seeing. It is image making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing
vision with illusions."

The Course is quite consistent in its view of our physical sight. It says,
for instance, "Everything the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in
perception, a distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the
whole would give" (T-22.III.4:3). And, "The body's eyes see only form. They
cannot see beyond what they were made to see. And they were made to look on
error and not see past it" (T-22.III.5:3-5). What our eyes show us is a
mistake. What our eyes show us is an image we have made, and does not
portray the truth. They were "made to look on error and not see past it."
Part of what we must begin to learn is to look past the bodily level, to
begin to realize that what our eyes are showing us is not necessarily the
truth. Our eyes are showing us only the errors of our own minds.

There is something <beyond> the physical that vision can show us. That is
the meaning of the "edges of light" the lesson refers to. In a workshop I
attended, Ken Wapnick mentioned that this mention of "light episodes" was
included in part as an answer to a friend of Helen's who was seeing light
around people and wondering if there was something wrong. The lesson
explains that such experiences "merely symbolize true perception." The
lesson is not trying to say that everyone should have such experiences;
merely that, if such experiences do occur, we should not be disconcerted by
them; they are a sign of progress. It is not the symbol of true perception
we seek, however, but true perception itself. The meaning of "edges of
light" is simply that there is something there to be seen that is beyond the
physical. It is to this realization that the lesson is leading us.