Sean Reagan

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.

←Lesson 128
Lesson 130→

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.

←Lesson 127
Lesson 129→

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.

←Lesson 126
Lesson 128→

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.

←Lesson 125
Lesson 127→

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).

←Lesson 124
Lesson 126→

Let me remember I am one with God.

If our problem is that we are confused about what we are, and therefore suffer a spiritual identity crisis, then this lesson neatly ends it by inviting us to “give thanks for our identity in God” (W-pI.124.1:1).

Note that it is not our identity “as” God but rather “in” God. Our oneness is not a merging in which both entities dissolve, but rather one in which our own self-construction disappears because it cannot be maintained before the light in which we are created both infinite and eternal. Concerns about world and body are undone in the simple truth of our God-lit identity.

Everything we touch takes on a shining light that blesses and that heals. At one with God and with the universe we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us (W-pI.124.1:4-5).

This does not describe a supernatural occurrence. There is nothing unduly mystical about it. It merely recognizes what we are in truth. It is effectively a correction for the error that we are bodies trapped in non-zero-sum competition with our brothers and sisters. It is a new way of seeing our self that is characterized by not insisting that we understand what we see. It is a form of nonresistance. We open up to Creation on terms that we do not set and for which we will not advocate.

To the ego, for whom the body is a home and the world an environment, this passivity makes no sense. Indeed, it is an actual threat, because if it works it makes clear that ego is not only not necessary, it’s not even real.

We will trust God’s Voice to speak as He see fit toay, certain He will not fail. Abide with Him this half an hour. He will do the rest (W-pI.124.8:5-7).

This is an alien posture to the ego, yet we need to remember that it is our learning that has brought us to this juncture. We do not face this half hour by accident but by divine design in which our God-created Self has joyfully participated. If we are ready to say yes, our liberation is at hand.

And yet, critically, our judgment of the exercise’s success is not the point. It doesn’t matter what we think is going to happen or what we think has happened. A Course in Miracles never deviates: we are not the judge of our spiritual progress. In fact, regardless of our judgment – it worked, it didn’t work – the truth is that it has already worked.

You may not be ready to accept the gain today. Yet sometime, somewhere, it will come to you, nor will you fail to recognize it when it dawns with certainly upon your mind. This half an hour will be framed in gold, with every minute like a diamond set around the mirror this exercise will offer you. And you will see Christ’s face upon it, in reflection of your own (W-pI.124.9:3-5).

That is our identity, when all is said and done. That is what we remember when we remember what we are: we remember that we are Christ and that Christ is us. This remembrance transcends the limited identity of the body – whether it is a twenty-first century body tending a garden in New England or a first century body writhing on a cross while bored Roman guards toss dice.

The world – which includes our body, for they are brought forth together – is a reflection of our mind, and our mind is holy. When we remember this, then the world loses its ability to cause us either grief or ecstasy. We become calm and still, the center of a vast storm that will pass whenever we tell it to. What is not real cannot have effects.

Therefore, come to the half hour today happily. Let it be what it is – deep, profound, annoying, distracting, uncomfortable, boring. Whatever it is, let that be your gift to God. All that matters today is showing up. Showing up is willingness. Showing up is the gift God asks of us. In time – perhaps today, perhaps ten years from now, perhaps in another life for all we know – God will show up to us. And His appearance will remind us that He never disappeared from us, nor we from Him.

We are one with God. For this we give thanks, over and over and over.

←Lesson 123
Lesson 125→