Sean Reagan

Truth will correct all errors in my mind.

Errors and illusions are synonymous in A Course in Miracles. To perceive illusions is to mistake what one perceives – to be in error with respect to what it is and what it is for. Errors and illusions happen at the level of mind; the world of form – bodies, buildings, landscapes et cetera – merely reflect the error.

Thus, errors are psychological deviations from truth; when they are brought to truth, they are ended because of what truth is. Truth is the light that shines away our confusion and aligns our mind with love.

Importantly, we do not need to seek truth. We do not need to establish truth. We merely need to consent to the conditions that allow us to see truth without hindrance. This requires a willingness to look at whatever it is that obstructs truth.

We have to be willing to look at both the content of our minds and the processes of our minds that obscure what is true, real and creative.

This willingness to look at error arises in the context of a relationship with our brothers and sisters that is guided by our shared relationship with the Holy Spirit, who is the Voice for God and thus the Voice for truth. The journey to correction, and to the peace correction entails, is not a solo venture. It is cooperative. We need each other. When we accept this need, and allow it to guide our decision-making, the relationships brought forth are holy.

Begin by asking Him Who goes with you upon this undertaking that He be in your awareness as you go with Him. You are not made of flesh and blood and bone, but were created by the selfsame Thought which gave the gift of life to Him as well. He is your Brother and so like to you your Father knows that You are both the same (W-pI.107.8:1-3).

The suggestion here is twofold: our brothers and sisters share our desire for peace and healing, and the Holy Spirit both reminds us of this fact and enables us – with our brothers and sisters – to manifest this healing in the world, in whatever form is most helpful to the world.

This is both abstract and concrete. It is abstract in the sense that we are tuning into the Holy Spirit, seeking its clear calm guidance beyond the static of ego. It is concrete in that whatever the circumstances of our living – at work, with our kids, getting an oil change, cooking dinner, checking for texts – we will be told exactly what to do and say.

Being told “exactly what to do and say” will always reflect ACIM’s general mandate that we are only here – in this body in this world – to be “truly helpful” (T-2.V.A.18:2).

Thus, what we learn when we live this way, is that it is our own self we are inviting to go with us and the invitation is the realization we cannot be apart from our own self (W-pI.107.8:4).

Truth will correct all errors in your mind which tell you you could be apart from Him. You speak to Him today, and make your pledge to let His function be fulfilled through you (W-pI.107.9:1-2).

Thus, in our practice of this lesson, we can glimpse – and perhaps begin to experience in a felt way – our oneness with each other, through the gentle sharing of the Holy Spirit in our mind. It is this relationship, at once both intimate and public, in which we open in ways which allow God to take “the last step” (e.g., T-7.I.7:8).

Today, let us be as happy as God intends, which intention is made clear in our mind, and which we share with all the world.

←Lesson 106
Lesson 108→

I am spirit (Lesson 97)
I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation (Lesson 98)

In many ways, A Course in Miracles is a correction to a fundamental spiritual identity crisis. We have forgotten what we are, and therefore have forgotten our function, and therefore have become deeply confused about reality.

A Course in Miracles offers clear – sometimes so painfully clear we resist seeing them – answers to those questions.

We have forgotten what we are. We think we are bodies, and are thus limited to the body’s vulnerabilities. We are subject to time – are ravaged by it until we die, and in its interims suffer all kinds of sicknesses and injuries, both physical and psychological.

So we become scared and defensive. We plot and plan, always trying to make better a dream which shifts and changes on its surface but never surrenders its commitment to death.

But we are not bodies! We are spirit, Thoughts in the Mind of God, forever extending in and through creation as creation.

And when we see this clearly – when we begin to accept it as our reality, no matter how persistent the dream of bodies appears – then we also remember our function. We are here to accept God’s plan for salvation.

People say: but I don’t know what the plan is. That’s okay! The plan is not ours, because our planning is always tainted with ego’s agenda for its own welfare, which always involves getting rather giving, and forcing others to suffer. Ego cannot touch God’s plan; only spirit can align itself with what is salvational.

All we have to do in order to accept God’s plan, is to be as helpful as possible. Cooperate with others rather than compete with them. Don’t hurt people. If you do hurt them, apologize and resolve to do better.

In very ordinary ways, be the kindest and gentlest person you can be. Simply give attention to this – make this the essence of your behavioral practice, the way that you live in a body in the world – and let the rest of it all settle in whatever way it chooses.

In this way, our misunderstanding of reality is gently and speedily corrected. It is not a thing we do, but rather a thing which is done through us. We are more like witnesses to healing, like minds observing their own cloudiness slowly dissolving into a radiant light.

We don’t have to hustle for this grace. We don’t have to do anything other than be willing to get out of our own way, which we accomplish by making ourselves of service to our brothers and sisters (who includes dogs, horses, lobsters and birch trees).

In our practice today – in the attention we give these ideas – let us be willing to see the world healed, not as a personal accomplishment of our own, but rather as a grace-filled surrender to Love. In truth, there is nothing else we want.

←Lesson 113
Lesson 115→

Let me be still and listen to the truth.

Lesson 106 holds a dual message: it teaches us how to hear truth, and it reminds us what that truth is. If you study the lesson carefully, it is urging you not only to listen but teaching you what to listen for.

The “how” part is relatively straightforward. We create a space in our living in which we can become still. A space where we can sit or kneel or lie in silence, hang a do not disturb sign, and give attention only for the Voice of the Holy Spirit.

In order to listen for the Holy Spirit, we have to avoid listening to ego, whose fractious voice speaks only for the concerns of the world and body. People have to be nicer to me! I have to be more beautiful! I like chocolate better than prayer. And so on.

So each time those thoughts arise we let them pass, giving attention instead to the silence of the heart, where mind’s mental acrobatics are useless.

That’s a highly poetic way of saying “notice how awareness is not verbal or even formal.”

This is a form of contemplative prayer as Thomas Merton envisioned it – “a ‘return to the heart,’ finding one’s deepest center, awakening the profound depths of our being in the presence of God.”

. . . the true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the word that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and when he is “answered,” it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God (Contemplative Prayer).

So we do nothing; hold nothing; privilege nothing. We simply rest in the deepest, most sustainable silence with which we can make contact and trust it is sufficient.

Our trust makes the silence sufficient. And so the silence becomes the Word given by the Voice for which we wait.

Thus, the second part of Lesson 106 tells us what we are listening for: “hear your Father speak to you through his appointed Voice, which silences the thunder of the meaningless, and shows the way to peace to those who cannot see (W-pI.106.2:1).

That voice has one message: you are entitled to miracles (W-pI.106.4:8) and “the holy Word of God is kept through you receiving it to give away, so you can teach the world what giving means by listening and learning it of Him” (W-pI.106.10:1).

Thus does salvation start and thus it ends; when everything is yours and everything is given away, it will remain with you forever. And the lesson has been learned (W-pI.106:7:1-2).

The giving contemplated by this lesson is not the giving the world recognizes. It is not the slice of pie you give to your brother. It is not even noticing that your sister is hungry and would benefit from a piece of your pie.

Rather, it is the recognition that your brothers and sisters are guiltless – perfect creations of God – each a light shining in the darkness of confusion and fear. They are the brave and devoted responders to our call for love.

When we see someone in this way – as the bringer of salvation – it means that we are no longer projecting fear and hate onto them. That is the gift we give to them, and that is the gift they give us.

Lesson 106 calls us to become nonviolent activists for a Love which does not recognize differences. All we have to do is give ourselves wholly to the lesson. When we sit in silence, no matter how hard we wrestle with ego, a thousand other minds awaken, each joining their little light to our own (W-pI.106.9:2).

These brothers and sisters are us, a unity we become ready to learn when we no longer equate giving with losing. We only have one brother; we only have one sister. Lesson 106 invites us to remember this, and in remembering it, remember that it symbolizes that God’s Creation is One.

←Lesson 105
Lesson 107→

God’s peace and joy are mine.

Fundamental to the thought system A Course in Miracles teaches is the idea that by giving we gain. As the world sees it, to give is to lose while the receiver gains. A Course in Miracles insists that everyone gains.

If we buy into the world’s understanding of gifts, then we will think that God’s peace and joy are commodities that we can own and that while we own them, others can’t. We might share them; we might lend them out. But they do belong to us.

By asking us to focus on this aspect of gift-giving, the course gently invites us to realize again that we are not bodies, and that our identity is yoked to the extension of love in communion with all. It is only when we accept this love that we know what we are in truth; it is only when we accept this love that we have anything meaningful to share.

Today’s accept God’s peace and joy as yours. Let Him complete Himself as He defines completion . . . He cannot give through loss. No more can you (W-pI.105.5:1-2, 4-5).

In other words, that which completes God – which makes God, God – is also that which complete’s God’s Creation (W-pI.105.5:3). It is only as we remember that we are not apart from God, that God is made whole and radiates love, joy and peace for all life.

Thus, we do not have enemies. We cannot have them. To hold a brother or sister apart from salvation is to deny salvation’s existence, because salvation is accepting our brother and sister as our very own self.

God’s Will for us is joy and peace. When we accept that God is made whole by our acceptance, and that those gifts can only be extended as a condition of what God is, then we will remember our own holiness, our own truth.

When we give to our brothers and sisters, we are given in return a blessing, and we are gifted by our brothers and sisters, then we give them a blessing. This is the way of love; this is the way we remember our Self.

←Lesson 104
Lesson 106→

I seek but what belongs to me in truth.

When we ask for joy and peace, we are asking to be reminded of what we are in truth. More than that, we are asking to be what we are in truth. We want the felt experience beyond the intellectual understanding.

Lesson 104 promises that we will have it.

We come in confidence today, aware that what belongs to us in truth is what God gives. And we would wish for nothing else, for nothing else belongs to us in truth (W-pI.104.4:3-4).

And what God gives are “peace and joy” (W-pI.104.4:2).

By acknowledging our right to receive these gifts, we both accept the gifts and bear witness in faith to the Creator from whom the gifts flow. We see this not as a future promise, conditional in any way, but as already accomplished. God’s Will is done.

Joy and peace are not “idle dreams” (W-pI.104.1:1). They are not spiritual fantasies, nor are they just words. They accurately reflect our reality. When they are absent, we are confused, and our confusion asks to be undone and brought to clarity.

It is our right to seek clarity – as it is our right to seek joy and peace – because we are created in clarity as joy and peace. Over and over it bears repeating: our study and practice of A Course in Miracles merely aims to restore to Mind the remembrance of Love as our identity in truth.

We ask only for what was already given; we seek a gift bestowed on us in Creation. Our asking and seeking is guaranteed to end in happiness, because the one who asks and the one who answers are not separate.

←Lesson 103
Lesson 105→

If I defend myself I am attacked.

Perhaps nowhere does A Course in Miracles make so clear the power of mind to choose peace over conflict, happiness over sorrow and healing over sickness than it does in this lesson. Any one lesson can awaken us from the dream of separation; this is the clarity of A Course in Miracles for those for whom it is the way.

I receive this lesson as a gift, not a burden. It is a joy, not an obligation. And it is very very hard to understand and practice.

It seems reasonable that when we are attacked we should defend ourself. Yet Lesson 135 upends this logic, reversing the world’s idea of cause and effect: it is only when we defend ourselves that we are attack. Defense precedes attack. How can this be?

Ideas of attack and defense arise in a mind that has chosen to identify itself with a body that is vulnerable in a world that is vicious, cruel and unpredictable. This is an error; we are not bodies (W-pI.199.8:7-8). Therefore, every defense we make reinforce the original mistaken belief, effectively attacking the mind that has forgotten what it is in truth.

Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source (W-pI.135.9:1-4).

The body is an instrument (W-pI.135.8:2) the mind uses to communicate with other minds (T-6.V.A.5:5), all in service of God’s Plan for Salvation, which is simply remembrance of the peace and justice inherent in oneness (W-pI.135.18:1). In and of itself it is neutral; only the mind establishes its value and its function.

Thus, the question becomes: to whom does the mind turn for guidance?

The suggestion is that when we allow our minds to be still and we stop insisting on their assocation with bodies, that we will remember their abstract nature, and see clearly the futility of minds *being embodied. Communicating through bodies, for a time? Yes. But actually being bodies, subject to the entropy and eventual death of bodies? No.

Lesson 135 challenges us to bring these ideas into application by looking at our habit of planning. “A healed mind does not plan” (W-pI.135.11:1), but you and I plan a *lot. Can we look at this? Can we consider another way?

Plans are always a form of defense, and thus an attack on our integrity as creations of God, who is Love. They represent the ego’s insistence that we are vulnerable and in charge of our own protection. We must build walls, store provisions, forge alliances, declare enemies and forever be on the lookout.

The course suggests that when we plan, we are essentially admitting that we are weak, alone and unsafe. To admit this is to deny God as our creator and to assert that God’s creation can be dangerous and chaotic.

Can you be at peace with such a concept of your home? Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus except your own belief? It is your mind which the body all the functions that you see in it, and set its value far beyond a little pile of dust and water (W-pI.135.6:2-4).

As always, we are doing this to ourself (T-27.VIII.10:1).

If we can see the connection between the mind’s decision to identify as a body and our fearfulness, then we can ask for help in choosing a new identity. This is really another way of saying, we are asking for help in discerning between what is true and what is false.

Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. Their aim is to select what you approve, and disregard what you consider imcompatible with your beliefs of your reality. Yet what remains is meaningless indeed (W-pI.135.17:1-3).

It is meaningless because reality exists apart from our judgment of it. Our ideas about reality are not reality. Our interpretation of those ideas are not reality either. Therefore, our plans – which are defenses against an unknown future, using the past as a guide – can only hurt us by obscuring, dissembling and crucifying our reality which is incapable of threat (W-pI.135.17:4).

Thus, the invitation is to rest without plans and allow the Plan of God – which is Truth, Reality and Love – to be revealed to us. Indeed, the revelation is of more than just a divine plan – it is our identity as Christ, which is God’s Creation, creating like its Creator.

Without defenses, you become a light which Heaven gratefully acknowledges to be its own. And it will lead you on in ways appointed for yur happiness according to the ancient plan, begun when time was born (W-pI.135.20:1-2).

Let us let go – for five minutes, an hour, a day, a life even – of our plans for our happiness, benefit and abundance. Let us empty ourselves of all our goals and agendas and come empty-handed unto our God who has not forgotten us (W-pI.135.25:1). Let us remember God together today, joining our little lights, so that we might make plain our identity in love.

←Lesson 134
Lesson 136→