Lesson 23: I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.

Jan 23 in Feed

🧩 ISSUES ARE FOUND IN OUR THOUGHTS, NOT IN THE WORLD

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📘 "The idea for today contains the only way out of fear that will ever succeed. ²Nothing else will work; everything else is meaningless. ³But this way cannot fail." (ACIM, W-23.1:1-3)

🌟 That's promising! Indeed, this is another bombshell of a lesson, please buckle up... Here Kenneth reformulates the spirit of this lesson in a few lines:

🔎 “You do not deal with fear by overcoming it directly, or by changing anything of the world or the body. You can escape from fear only by changing its cause, which is the decision to be separate.” Excerpt from Journey through the Workbook of "A Course in Miracles", Kenneth Wapnick, Vol. 1, p 69.

🌟 Our choice for separation is at the root of our misery. At the same time, it's what we are running from because our choice for separation engenders a tremendous fear... Here is an interesting passage from the Course, pointed out by Kenneth as an answer from Jesus to Helen when she asked him to remove the fear she felt:

🔎 “The correction of fear is your responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. These conditions always entail a willingness to be separate.… You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful.… If I intervened between your thoughts [cause] and their results [effect], I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is. I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully enough (T-2.VI.4:1-4; VII.1:1,4-7)” Excerpt from Journey through the Workbook of "A Course in Miracles", Kenneth Wapnick, Vol. 1, p 69.

🌟 This is another way to say "I can't prevent you from harming yourself, but I can show you how and when you do so that you can correct it by your own free will". The lesson continues as follows:

📘 "Every thought you have makes up some segment of the world you see. ⁵It is with your thoughts, then, that we must work, if your perception of the world is to be changed." (ACIM, W-23.1:4-5)

🌟 Bang! Another powerful statement. This lesson is full of them... Outside of time and space, from our mind, we are conjuring a world made of our thoughts. All of them are based on the false idea of separation. They therefore engender a world to their likeness, a world meaningless. There isn't a mind within a body or a brain. There is a seeming body, within a mind... If we want to perceive differently, we will have to think differently.

🧩 MONITORING THE CAUSE = MONITORING THE THOUGHTS

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📘 "If the cause of the world you see is attack thoughts, you must learn that it is these thoughts which you do not want. ²There is no point in lamenting the world. ³There is no point in trying to change the world. ⁴It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. ⁵But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. ⁶Here you are changing the cause. ⁷The effect will change automatically." (ACIM, W-23.2:1-7)

🌟 Bang! We are expected to change from the inside out, not from the outside in. Here, when Jesus states that the effect will change automatically, we shouldn't expect that our ego's wishes will come true, but that the truth will set us free. Our minds will be at peace regardless of what is happening out there. This takes us to the next point.

🧩 SYMBOL OF VENGEANCE VS SYMBOL OF FORGIVENESS

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📘 "The world you see is a vengeful world, and everything in it is a symbol of vengeance. ²Each of your perceptions of “external reality” is a pictorial representation of your own attack thoughts. ³One can well ask if this can be called seeing. ⁴Is not fantasy a better word for such a process, and hallucination a more appropriate term for the result?" (ACIM, W-23.3:1-4)

🌟 Let us appreciate in passing how Jesus doesn't hold back or mince his words about the ego's pretty vengeful world: pictorial representation, fantasy, hallucination... More importantly, once the changes are made at the level of the mind by giving up our thoughts of attack, what is happening out there will still be ultimately unreal. But it will be a symbol of forgiveness instead of a symbol of vengeance. In our brother, we will see a friend to love and forgive, not a victimizer to fear, blame, hate, and punish. This will change our whole experience of the dream. As this beautiful passage of the Course explains, it will be a happy one instead of a nightmarish one:

📘 "You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. ²No other cause it has, nor ever will. ³Nothing more fearful than an idle dream has terrified God’s Son, and made him think that he has lost his innocence, denied his Father, and made war upon himself. ⁴So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear, unless a gentler dream preceded his awaking, and allowed his calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice that calls with love to waken him; a gentler dream, in which his suffering was healed and where his brother was his friend. ⁵God willed he waken gently and with joy, and gave him means to waken without fear." (ACIM, T-27.VII.13:1-5)

🌟 This makes sense if truth goes hand in hand with love. As we open up, we start to become more conscious dreamers. But this will be a gradual awakening because the aspect of our Self that resides out of this illusion will never give us more than what we can cope with in terms of revelation. That's why we can trust our relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Do you remember lesson 14?

📘 "The early steps in this exchange, which can truly be called salvation, can be quite difficult and even quite painful. ³Some of them will lead you directly into fear. ⁴You will not be left there. ⁵You will go far beyond it. ⁶Our direction is toward perfect safety and perfect peace." (ACIM, W-14.3:2-6)

🧩 FROM IMAGE MAKING TO VISION

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📘 "You see the world that you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image maker. ²You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause. ³This is what salvation means, for where is the world you see when its cause is gone? ⁴Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. ⁵Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them, even though they were made of hate. ⁶For you will not be making them alone." (ACIM, W-23.4:1-6)

🌟 The purpose of perceiving with the body's eyes is to keep our separate selves away from Source. To do so, we make up images that are designed to serve as evidence of our guilt. The purpose of seeing with the Holy Spirit (true vision) is to deploy the Atonement (at-one-ment) principle that corrects the idea of separation: "you will not be making them alone"... We can not See apart from Spirit, seeing without Him is not seeing at all.

🧩 THE 3 STEPS PROCESS FOR REPLACING PERCEPTION WITH VISION

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📘 This change requires, first, that the cause be identified (1) and then let go (2), so that it can be replaced (3). ³The first two steps in this process require your cooperation. ⁴The final one does not. ⁵Your images have already been replaced. ⁶By taking the first two steps, you will see that this is so. (ACIM, W-23.5:2-6)

🌟 (1) & (2) - Identifying the problem and letting go: This is what we are doing if we are following Jesus's instructions. We are learning to recognize the thoughts at the source of our misperceptions and we are (are we? 😊) choosing to let them go.

🌟 (3) - Surrendering to the Holy Spirit: This is when we step into grace, when we shake off the mantel of "doer-ship" that is affecting our ego-minds and allows the undoing of all our illusions. The images "have already been replaced", Jesus says, because the separation never occurred and because the truth will never be kept away from us. We are the ones in our own way. We merely have to step out, remove the blocs, and see the light that never ceased to shine.

🎯 ITEM OF ATTENTION

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🌟 Let's be specific and inclusive!

📘 "In the practice periods, be sure to include both your thoughts of attacking and of being attacked. ²Their effects are exactly the same because they are exactly the same." (ACIM, W-23.7:1-2)

🌟 This is interesting because we are getting closer now to understanding that regardless of whether it's directed toward others or ourselves, an attack is an attack, just like an illusion is an illusion. Being a victim or a victimizer is the same. Feeling guilty is an attack turned on oneself. All on behalf of an original sin that never happened, engendering a vengeance that needed not to be exacted, but that we are running away from, because we see it everywhere, even if there is nothing to see... Speaking of insanity... LOL!!!

💙🪄 I know that this is a lot... But we will have revision time at some point! 🤪 Lots of Love and Light your way! 🪄💙

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* My comment on this lesson follows my studying of the in-depth comment of the same lesson by Kenneth Wapnick in his published work, Journey through the Workbook of "A Course in Miracles". While it may sometimes contain my thoughts on it, it is essentially my humble take and summary of the masterful work of Kenneth. I share them here in the hope that someone might find them helpful.

** I also share, in these ACIM posts, the wallpaper images that I use on my phone and change every day to help me commit to my lesson, in the hope that some might enjoy them as well. Here is the link to a Dropbox folder where you can download the lessons's wallpaper for mobile I have uploaded so far.

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