A Course in Miracles Lesson 29

God is in everything I see

The basis for vision – which is the spiritual replacement of the body’s seeing – is that God is in everything that we see. God’s indwelling presence in all that we see is what gives everything its function and saves it from separation.

That this is confusing to us at this stage of our learning is a given, but we are not required to understand or even to believe. We merely have to be willing to see differently.

Certainly God is not in a table, for example, as you see it. Yet we emphasized yesterday that a table shares the purpose of the universe. And what shares the purpose of the universe shares the purpose of its Creator (W-pI.29.2:3-5).

Can we see this? What does it look like? What can we do to make this “vision” our experience and reality?

Try then, today, to look on all things with love, appreciation and open-mindedness. you do not see them now. Would you know what is in them? (W-pI.29.3:1-3)

If we would know what is in them, then we must look with “love, appreciation and open-mindedness.” And what we will discover is . . . love, appreciation and open-mindedness.

Nothing is at it appears to you. Its holy purpose stands beyond your little range (W-pI.29.3:4-5).

A table is not many pieces of wood, cut just so and assembled in a form that you recognize as “table.” A table is the function it serves (to write at, eat at, share tea at), and the love that brought the form forth (the labor, the care), and the universe that brought forth the wood (the sun, the earth, the rain, the trees).

And reflect too on what brought forth the meal you share at this table? The friend with whom you share it? What about the tools that built the table? The skill that went into the crafting?

What brought forth the sun, the rain and the soil?

If you look at a table carefully, the entire cosmos opens up from it. Everything is connected to everything else, and nothing has any meaning or function apart from this connectedness.

And yet, even this connectedness dissolves in the light in which it is itself brought forth.

When vision has shown you the holiness that lights up the world, you will understand today’s idea perfectly. And you will not understand how you could ever have found it difficult (W-pI.29.3:6-7).

It is vision that reveals relationship, creativity, connection and life-breath. The body’s eyes perceive a table but vision reveals the way in which God indwells – not in the object but in the one who perceives.

This is why earlier I pointed out that when we look with “love, appreciation and open-mindeness” we will perceive them in turn. The heart of Lesson 29 – and the essence of its powerful healing capacity – is that God dwells in us. Vision is simply the unshakable recognition of this fact.

←Lesson 28
Lesson 30→