Lesson 47: God is the strength in which I trust.

Feb 23 in Feed

🌈 Hello, dears! It's been a few days... It feels like a long time to me. While I needed a break to leverage the pressure of all the things I do besides these lessons and felt a sense of release by doing less, my resistance to the lessons also revealed a lack of purpose that was haunting me when I didn't work with the lessons. I'm not going to lie and display an artificial cheerful face to you, even if it's a virtual one. The truth is that at this stage, I'm feeling a bit lost. The world holds very little appeal to me. I feel empty. I guess it's a good sign even if it doesn't yet feel very good 🙂 The next step would be to see love in everything or call for love, but I can't hast the healing of my mind and I'm not quite there yet. Like it usually does, this lesson feels perfect!

💡 This lesson is about all the things we invest our trust in to give ourselves a sense of strength. Our ego uses many props to fake this sense of strength. It constantly attempts to inflate itself through self-importance, special relationships, glorification of our body, of someone else's body, a social position, professional accomplishment, material possession, and whatnot. Let's see what Jesus says about our ego's strategy.

🧩 OUCH!

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📘 "If you are trusting in your own strength, you have every reason to be apprehensive, anxious and fearful." (ACIM, W-47.1:1)

💡 Ouch! Yep... We have every reason to be worried if our strength comes from the ego thought system because its purpose is to keep us locked in guilt and fear. So it only presents us with carrots held by a string to a stick to keep us moving but never reaching. We always hope that "something" or "someone" will give us what we are so yearning for. Sometimes we get it, but the moment of temporary relief is soon replaced by more emptiness. Nothing feels steady, sure and permanent in this world.

📘 "What can you predict or control? What is there in you that can be counted on?" (ACIM, W-47.1:3)

💡 These questions ask us to honestly assess the severity of the controlling issue we all have and most importantly, understand where it comes from. Here is what Kenneth says about it:

🔎 “We figure a hell of a lot! We are sure that if we do not save ourselves, we are doomed. I mentioned earlier that we have constructed our lives in such a way that we were convinced from the outset that no one could be trusted; no one is dependable, and therefore the only one who could save us is ourselves. Again, we are absolutely certain we are right. However, we are not “aware of the underlying thought that supports this defense: I have written my life’s script so that it will prove I am all alone in the universe, and therefore I had better take care of me because no one else will! Recall that all-important line from the text: "The secret of salvation is but this: That you are doing this unto yourself" (T-27.VIII.10:1). We want to be all alone, since that justifies our living all alone—trusting no one—and thus we reinforce our origin of being all alone, totally apart from our Creator and Source.” Excerpt from Journey through the Workbook of "A Course in Miracles", Kenneth Wapnick, Vol. 1, p. 153.

💡 So, we are not aware of it, but we have written our lives in such a way that we can never trust anyone, even ourselves... Nothing and no one is reliable in the ego's hell!

📘 "What would give you the ability to be aware of all the facets of any problem, and to resolve them in such a way that only good can come of it? ⁵What is there in you that gives you the recognition of the right solution, and the guarantee that it will be accomplished?" (ACIM, W-47.1:4-5)

💡 Well, the answer is nothing! Not if we play by the ego's rules. We hide it from ourselves, and project it to the world, making it bear the responsibility for our uncertainty and insecurity. We don't believe we can be safe. But because the ego doesn't make sense, we still search for solutions and quick fixes, overlooking the fact that none of them are likely to solve our problems because they deal with effects instead of their common source. Think about the endless videos, books and articles with their catchy titles promising us happiness, wellness and abundance in 5 easy steps, 10 minutes a day or a simple method. At least, Jesus is honest with us: "In one year, maybe less, but maybe more, I can take you to a place of blissful peace. It's going to cost you everything you think you know and want. Oh, and yes, in the beginning, it will feel like dying."

📘 "Of yourself you can do none of these things. ²To believe that you can is to put your trust where trust is unwarranted, and to justify fear, anxiety, depression, anger and sorrow. ³Who can put his faith in weakness and feel safe? ⁴Yet who can put his faith in strength and feel weak?" (ACIM, W-47.2:1-4)

💡 As Kenneth points out, these negative feelings are universal and unavoidable in a dualistic world:

🔎 “This is what everyone’s life is all about. We are frightened, anxious, depressed, angry, and sad. If not, we are not paying attention to our life’s situation, which proves we are right in believing the world is a hostile, threatening, and lonely place, replete with those we cannot trust. We feel justified in thinking this is why we feel as terrible as we do, unaware that the source of these thoughts and feelings is our decision to trust the teacher of weakness, rather than the One of strength.” Excerpt from Journey through the Workbook of "A Course in Miracles", Kenneth Wapnick, Vol. 1, p. 154.

🧩 LISTENING TO THE RIGHT VOICE

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💡 But Jesus's point isn't to leave us stuck in a pit of despair. When he states the obvious in the ego's misery, he also points us to an alternative, another way. The last sentence of this second paragraph should give us hope: "Yet who can put his faith in strength and feel weak?" Which begs the question, where can we find true strength?

📘 "God is your safety in every circumstance. ²His Voice speaks for Him in all situations and in every aspect of all situations, telling you exactly what to do to call upon His strength and His protection. ³There are no exceptions because God has no exceptions. ⁴And the Voice which speaks for Him thinks as He does." (ACIM, W-47.3:1-4)

💡 'The Voice' Jesus is capitalising is the voice of the Holy Spirit. It is in us and can guide us through our human experience in a meaningful way because its purpose is our salvation. Kenneth is warning us, however, of the temptation to remain on the level of forms. It's not so much about knowing "what to do" as it is about choosing "how to think", "with whom", and "to what purpose":

🔎 “Passages like these, and there are many of them in the workbook, make it sound as if the Holy Spirit is with you to tell you exactly what to do. In one sense this is true, but the focus is never really on what you do, because that is unimportant. Rather, Jesus is emphasizing how you think about what you do. This is where the Holy Spirit enters the picture. If you would join with His Love—meaning you have let go of the barriers that would keep you separate from Him—everything you do and say will come from love. That is what it means to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Not that He tells you specifically what to do or not to do. When your mind is aligned with His, everything coming from that mind must be His since our bodies are nothing more than a projection or extension of what is in our minds. When these are joined with the Holy Spirit, again, everything we do will be an expression of love. Our experience might be that Jesus told us this or the Holy Spirit told us that. In reality, we have simply joined with[…]” Excerpt from Journey through the Workbook of "A Course in Miracles", Kenneth Wapnick, Vol. 1, p. 151.

🧩 FROM INADEQUACY TO SUCCESS THROUGH MINDFULNESS

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📘 "Today we will try to reach past your own weakness to the Source of real strength. ²Four five-minute practice periods are necessary today, and longer and more frequent ones are urged. ³Close your eyes and begin, as usual, by repeating the idea for the day. ⁴Then spend a minute or two in searching for situations in your life which you have invested with fear, dismissing each one by telling yourself:

⁵God is the strength in which I trust.

Now try to slip past all concerns related to your own sense of inadequacy. ²It is obvious that any situation that causes you concern is associated with feelings of inadequacy, for otherwise you would believe that you could deal with the situation successfully. ³It is not by trusting yourself that you will gain confidence. ⁴But the strength of God in you is successful in all things." (ACIM, W-47.4:1–5:4)

💡 Once again, Jesus is asking us to be aware of our thoughts and to practice a bit of mind-searching so that we can unroot the source our our fears and inadequacy in our minds. How indeed can we heal if we do not acknowledge our feelings and own them?

🧩 BUILDING UP CONFIDENCE

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📘 "The recognition of your own frailty is a necessary step in the correction of your errors, but it is hardly a sufficient one in giving you the confidence which you need, and to which you are entitled. ²You must also gain an awareness that confidence in your real strength is fully justified in every respect and in all circumstances." (ACIM, W-47.6:1-2)

💡 There's a gentle encouragement to cultivate an awareness that confidence is justified because we are not walking alone anymore when we choose Jesus and the Holy Spirit as our guides 🙂

📘 "In the latter phase of the practice period, try to reach down into your mind to a place of real safety. ²You will recognize that you have reached it if you feel a sense of deep peace, however briefly. ³Let go all the trivial things that churn and bubble on the surface of your mind, and reach down and below them to the Kingdom of Heaven. ⁴There is a place in you where there is perfect peace. ⁵There is a place in you where nothing is impossible. ⁶There is a place in you where the strength of God abides." (ACIM, W-47.7:1-6)

💡 This passage and the instructions that follow are nudging us to experience peace by reaching toward it, by finding it where it lays, in ourselves, waiting for us. The false beliefs and negative emotions that are upsetting us are but clouds. Beyond them is Home, a place of perfect peace...

💙🪄 With Love and Light 🪄💙

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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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