A Course in Miracles Lesson 130

It is impossible to see two worlds.

A Course in Miracles is simple because it offers us only two choices: reality or unreality, love or fear, innocence or guilt. It is hard – sometimes brutally so – because choosing the reality of our innocence manifest in our inheritance of love means the end of suffering.

And we are very very interested in – very very committed to – suffering. We like to be victims, especially innocent victims. We like the world to be cruel, indifferent and unfair. If it were easy to choose peace, we would have done so a long time ago. We would not need A Course in Miracles, nor any other help.

Today’s lesson helps us see more clearly the totality of the choice we make with respect to the world we see. We can only see one world, and when we see it, the other is disappeared entirely. There is no such thing as a little bit of reality, or a little bit of fear. It is all or nothing.

As a simple example, you could look around you right now and notice the space you are in. I am in the hayloft/office writing and reading. While I am here doing this, I am not throwing a frisbee at the beach with my kids. I am not drinking tea with Chrisoula in the kitchen.

Just as our body can only be in one place at one time, our mind can only choose to see one world – the world made by fear and ego or the world interpreted by love and the Holy Spirit. The one I choose renders the other invisible.

You and I do not want to suffer anymore. Nor do we want the world to suffer. Our desire for the end of suffering is still weak, but it cannot be denied. Our goal, then, is to strengthen our willingness to accept Christ’s Vision, in which we perceive only what is shared and thus serves the function of “loving in a loveless place” (T-14.IV.4:10).

In doing this, we actively refuse to see the ego’s world of differences, competition, sacrifice and loss. Critically, in doing this, we learn that we are not actually choosing between reality and unreality because what is not real does not exist.

Fear has made everything you think you see. All separation, all distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world. They are not there. Love’s enemy has made them up. Yet love can have no enemy, and so they have no cause, no being and no consequence (W-pI.130.4:1-5).

We are liberated when we realize there is nothing to choose between; there is only the Love of God endlessly creating, and taking joy in what is created.

The power of mind is such that it can make the impossible appear very real. Indeed, lifetimes can pass in dreams of suffering and pain. When we choose suffering, the world we see produces suffering. The external world always reflects our thinking (W-pI.130.1:2) and our thinking always reflects “our choice of what we want to see” (W-pI.130.1:3).

Accepting this, our work today involves regular attempts to see not the illusion of a world constructed of fear and suffering but rather a world lit up with God’s grace, which is the Vision of Christ.

You will not doubt what you look upon, for though it is perception, it is not the kind of seeing that your eyes alone have ever seen before. And you will know God’s strength upheld you as made this choice (W-pI.130.9:4-5).

Our faithfulness to the daily lesson matters more than what we think of it. It seems too fantastic or supernatural, it violates common sense, it’s too hard or too abstract. The decision to practice reflects the underlying decision to refuse illusion in favor of truth. At that level, we cannot make a mistake.

Without expectation, without a lot of drama, simply understand that a mind which chooses fear cannot simultaneously choose love and then choose love. If you cannot do this, don’t worry about it. The fact that you tried means that you are ready to succeed. Dreams of pain cannot long survive in a mind which does not want them. We are nearer than we know to unending peace and joy.

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A Course in Miracles Lesson 129

Beyond this world there is a world I want.

Lesson 129 saves us from the nihilism that can arise from rejecting the world. It makes clear that our learning process does not involve just the negative, but also a positive. This world holds nothing we want; but there is a world beyond it that we do want.

You cannot stop with the idea the world is worthless, for unless you see that there is something else to hope for, you will only be depressed. Our emphasis is not on giving up the world, but on exchanging it for what is far more satisfying, filled with joy, and capable of offering you peace (W-pI.129.1:2-3).

Exhange is the critical idea here. We are not giving up something of little value for nothing; rather, we are exchanging something of literally no value for that which is beyond value. The Holy Spirit facilitates this transaction, which is effectively with God. We are trading fear for love. We are giving up meaninglessness for actual knowledge.

Communication, unambiguous and plain as day, remains unlimited for all eternity. And God Himself speaks to His Son, as His Son speaks to Him . . . Their knowledge is direct and wholly shared and wholly one (W-pI.129.4:1-2, 4).

So Lesson 129 is not about a transaction in the literal sense – like trading a winter coat that does not fit for one that does. Rather, it is about remembering – by placing no conditions on – that God speaks to us constantly, Whose Voice is our voice, speaking a message of love that we created.

Only be still and listen. You will hear the Word in which the Will of God the Son joins in His Father’s Will, at one with it, with no llusions interposed between the wholly indivisible and true (W-pI.125.9:3-4).

What do we want? Do we want to hear only God’s Voice or do we want the trinkets and conflicts and sorrows of the world? For what we want we will get. The choice is wholly our own. And if we are honest, are the grounds for our choosing not perfectly clear?

What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed . . . It waits but for your choosing it, to take the place of all the things you seek but do not want (W-pI.129.6:2-3, 5).

So for today, we close our eyes and seek not what the world offers, but that which rests beyond the world. We are not given today to the body’s concerns – to the ups and down of the world. We raise our spiritual sight beyond appearances to see “lights that are not of this world light one by one, until where one begins another ends loses all meaning as they blend into one’ (W-pI.129.7:5).

This is symbolic language – because words cannot describe our communication with God (e.g., W-pI.129.4:3). Yet what it describes is what experience when we seek the world that appears beyond this one. Our eyes and their function are set aside; our minds fill with joyful understanding.

We give up the world and we lose nothing and gain everything.

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A Course in Miracles Lesson 128

The world I see holds nothing that I want.

Today’s lesson is not a statement about the world. Rather, it is a statement about what we are in truth. It is an invitation to remember our true self, and in doing so, to let go of the small self whose investment is not in truth but in the deceptive fictions of the world made by the ego.

This is a decision that we make. It is an active choice from which effects naturally follow. Reality wants to be seen, but we have to want to see it.

Each thing you value here is but a chain that binds you to the world, and it will serve no other end but this. For everything must serve the purpose you have given it, until you see a different purpose there (W-pI.128.2:1-2).

So, perhaps I value my home – its gardens and little orchards, its quiet spaces for meditation, its lovely view to the east, et cetera. Most people won’t begrudge me this; most people say “nice place you’ve got there.” But A Course in Miracles suggests that the value I set on this place is effectively a “bar across the door that leads to true awareness of your Self” (W-pI.128.3:3).

In part, this is because the things of this world are temporary. They change and shift. They bear many meanings and values, some of which conflict. They can be stolen or destroyed. In truth, the things of the world attest to nothing permanent or real but rather to what is impermanent. They are not a rock on which to remember our Creator and Creation but rather the shifting sands in which ego’s empty promises seem useful and thus function to hide our Creator and Creation.

But also, more problematic, these external objects – be they houses or lovers or landscapes or family heirlooms – by virtue of their impermanence, are symbols of the body’s impermanence. They teach us that since the body too is shift and impermanent, capable of bearing conflicting meanings and values, it too is an unworthy home of truth. And this we cannot bear, for it flies right in the face of ego’s assertion that the body is our only home, which we believe and to which belief we cling.

Yet even this can be undone.

The ego regards the body as its home, and tries to satisfy itself through the body. But the idea that this is possible is a decision of the mind, which has become completely confused about what is really possible (T-4.II.7:8-9).

Lesson 128 is an opportunity to shift our focus – away from the world and, by extension, from the body – in order to remember what we are in truth. This shift in focus is a decision, which means that it is an active step we take. We become still and quiet and resolve to withdraw all our investment in the world – its objects, its ideas, its patterns, its messages and then see what happens.

. . . release your mind from chains and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home. It will be grateful to be free a while. It knows where it belongs. But free its wings and it will fly in sureness and in joy to join its holy purpose (W-pI.128.6:1-4).

This freedom – this experience of freedom – does not occur at the level of the body, but at the level of the mind. It is critical for us to discern between the two. We are not trying to make the world a better place today, nor find for our embodied self a better fit in it. We are seeking the abstract creative perfection of mind and resting there. We are choosing this. We are declaring that this is what we really want. And God, who is reality, responds accordingly.

The suggestion is that when we do this, even briefly, we will not return to the world unchanged. Our perspective on the external world of appearances will have shifted (W-pI.128.7:3), because we will better understand that it is our construction. We are doing this to ourselves (T-27.VIII.10:1). And we can choose another – a happier and more peaceful – way.

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A Course in Miracles Lesson 127

There is no love but God’s.

Slightly more a than a third of the way through the ACIM workbook, we reach a lesson that declares itself “the largest single step this course requests in your advance towards its established goal” (W-pI.127.6:5)

This step has to do with recognizing the full breadth and meaning of “there is no love but God’s” (W-pI.127.3:5).

Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds them both forever the same (W-pI.127.4:7-8).

Love does not recognize differences (W-pI.127.1:4), and it does not change (W-pI.127.2:1). It cannot be given to one person and withheld from another (W-pI.127.2:4). Love does not judge (W-pI.127.3:1). Wherever it appears, it appears perfect and complete, never once adapting itself to circumstances (W-pI.127.1:5).

Thus, love does not obey the laws of the world. Indeed, the world – and the laws by which it appears to operate – exist to obscure love, to “hide love’s meaning, and to keep it dark and secret” (W-pI.127.5:2).

Lesson 127 is an invitation to go beyond the limits established by perception, to free our mind from “all the laws you think you must obey; of all the limits under which you live, and all the changes that you think are part of human destiny” (W-pI.127.6:4).

Here, the course gently shows us a way out of suffering that is not temporary and not conditional. It points to a love that does not come and go and is therefore not subject to perception. Our eyes do not see it; our hands cannot feel it; our thoughts cannot think it.

How, then, do we know this love?

Call to your Father, certain that His Voice will answer. He Himself has promised this. And He Himself will place a spark of truth within your mind . . . He will shine through your idle thoughts today, and help you understand the truth of love (W-pI.127.9:1-4).

Is it clear? We call. That is what we do. We ask God to remind us that He abides with us forever, and that’s the end of our role. We ask and then we wait, confident that our cry will be answered.

Come to this lesson then in radical trust. Tell yourself that no matter what the course has been like so far – the progress you’ve made, the confusion you’ve felt, the ground you’ve lost – that today you will reach all the way to God. Today you will hear God’s Voice reminding you that you are not separate, not from God and not from your brothers and sisters.

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A Course in Miracles Lesson 126

All that I give is given to myself.

The fundamental idea this lesson teaches appears over and over in A Course in Miracles, because it reflects a law (giving and receiving are the same) that – once understood and brought into application – ends the separation and all the suffering that goes along with it.

If you believed this statement, there would be no problem in complete forgiveness, certainty of goal, and sure direction. You would understand the means by which salvation comes to you, and would not hesitate to use it now (W-pI.126.1:2-3).

In a nutshell, what we offer to another, we offer to our own self, because we are not actually separate from our brothers and sisters (broadly defined to include starfish, birch trees and asteroids). If we offer conditional love – which is simply fear – then that is what we get in return. If we offer love, then that is what we will recieve.

This giving and recieving does not occur at the level of the body, though it is experienced there in various forms. Giving and recieving – and the spirit in which they are brought forth – are interior and abstract, occurring at the level of thought.

Thus, the notion that to give and receive are the same is alien to the ego, for whom the body is both temple and war zone. The ego, which reflects the body’s appetites, its drive to get, sees others as mainly as competitors and sometimes as temporary allies. It is incapable of creation, and knows nothing of love.

A Course in Miracles relates this to its evolved frame of forgiveness. On the world’s view, which is the ego’s view, forgiveness is a form of “charitable tolerance” designed to prove that we are better than our brother or sister (e.g., W-pI.126.3:2, 3). We give it or we don’t – it’s up to us. And we only give it if we think there is a benefit to us.

The course reminds us that this is not how God views forgiveness, and thus it is unrelated to salvation. It is not what A ourse in Miracles teaches. Forgiveness does not rest on the whims of those who do not remember that they are united in Creation with all Life. There is a better way, which involves recognizing our inability to forgive and connecting it to our need for forgiveness.

Not having given Him the gift He asks of you, you cannot recognize His gifts, and think He has not given them to you. Yet would He ask you for a gift unless it was for you? Could He be satisfied with empty gestures, and evaluate such petty gifts as worth of His Son? Salvation is a better than this (W-pI.126.7:1-4).

And so this is the promise A Course in Miracles makes: we are alien unto love and on our own incapable of finding our way home but help is at hand in a literal way. The idea behind this lesson occurrs over and over in ACIM, but its repetition would be meaningless if it were not for the calm conviction that the specific help we need to understand and practice this idea is already given to us.

Therefore, when we are ready to learn, we will learn. And we cannot fail.

Thus, today’s lesson is an invitation to set aside our limited ideas about forgiveness and life and love and just make a space in which God’s Voice can speak to us. Yesterday we practiced making that space; today we get a better sense of what might happen in that space.

Repeat today’s idea, and ask for help in understanding what it really means. Be willing to be taught. Be glad to hear the Voice of truth and healing speak to you and you will understand the words He speaks, and recognize He speaks your words to you (W-pI.126.10:2-4).

No more than this willingness to learn is asked of us. When we give it, we give the gift of remembering our home in Creation. And having given it, we receive it.

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A Course in Miracles Lesson 125

In quiet I receive God’s word today.

Today our practice opens up to direct contact with God. In quiet and stillness, with neither insistence on certain outcomes nor resistance to others, we wait on God’s Voice to call from within our mind, which is where God abides (W-pI.125.1:3).

Today, we refuse to judge and we refuse to accept the judgment of the world. We lay it all down – our “petty thoughts” and “personal desires” (W-pI.125.3:1) – and instead gather at “the throne of God,” which is a “quiet place within the mind,” and patiently wait for God’s healing Word. Nor will we wait in vain.

He has not waited until you return your mind to Him to give His Word to you. He has not hid Himself from you, while you have wandered off a little while from Him (W-pI.125.5:1-2).

Our confusion about our identity is what obscures remembrance of God’s Presence in us as our real Self. Our confusion arises because we hold a mistaken belief – that we are bodies and that the world of perception is the real world – as if it were gospel.

This error is not a sin for which we can never be forgiven. But it does lock us into a mind which is closed to miracles, and thus brings forth only illusions. The solution is to come to stillness. To be still is to stop projecting, and to give attention to the whole of experience, without rejecting or pushing back on any of it.

This state is a prerequisite to direct contact with God.

His Voice awaits your silence, for His Word can not be heard until your mind is quiet for a while, and meaningless desires have been stilled. Await His Word in quiet. There is peace within you to be called upon today, to help make ready your most holy mind to hear the Voice for its Creator speak (W-pI.125.6:2-4).

We are not called to high drama nor supernatural experiences today. For when we hear God’s Voice, we hear our own voice (W-pI.125.8:1). It is our word that God speaks (W-pI.125.8:2).

It is the Word of freedom and of peace, of unity of will and purpose, with no separation nor division in teh single Mind of Father and Son. In quiet listen to your Self today, and let Him tell you God has never left His Son, and you have never left your Self (W-pI.125.8:3-4).

This is the message that we receive, for there is no other message God could give. We will hear “the Word in which the Will of God the Son joins in His Father’s Will, at one with it, with no illusions interposed between the wholly indivisible and true” (W-pI.125.9:4).

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