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 is a more specific application of Lesson 27. It is an opportunity to explore our commitment to learning – to seeing differently – in the context of bodies in the world. This is okay – it is more than okay – because as the lesson observes, “we are still at the beginning” (W-pI.28.1:5).
Our perception of the self and world is body-centered and body-oriented. That means we perceive distinctions; that means that separation is the foundation of experience. The tea cup is different from the hand which picks it up and both are different from the chickadee outside the window.
A Course in Miracles insists that this form of seeing – so natural to bodies, so essential to bodies – is not actually seeing at all (e.g., W-pI.28.2:5) and that there is a better way.
You either see or not. When you have seen one thing differently, you will see all things differently. The light you will see in any one of them is the same light you will see in them all (W-pI.28.2:6-8).
All this means is that when we gaze at a table or a teacup or a sunset, we are withdrawing our preconceived ideas about and thus allowing another meaning and purpose to be given it. We don’t know what anything is for (e.g., T-17.VI.2:1-3); this lesson begins deepens our commitment to actually leaning into our ignorance in order to see the real world.
Indeed, the lesson promises that if we can entirely release our own ideas about what an object is, and what it is for, then we will gain vision itself. This is because gazing at anything with an open mind allows us to see with the mind, rather than merely the body’s eyes. What is seen – a table, a tea cup, a sunset – is thus transformed.
It has something to show you; something beautiful and clean and of infinite value, full happiness and hope. Hidden under all your ideas about it is its real purpose, the purpose it shares with all the universe (W-pI.28.5:2-3).
Thus, when we gaze at anything which appears as a separate object – distinguished from and set apart from everything else – we are really gazing at the cosmos and asking what its purpose and function are.
Just as there are no degrees of difficulty in miracles, there is no meaningful distinction between the so-called objects that we see. Anyone of them can wake us up.
Tara Singh said that if one could really see an orange – free of all our ideas about oranges, our opinions about oranges and free, too, of our inclination to gather data and spew it all out – then we would be enlightened. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but still. His point was well-taken, and he may well have had Lesson 28 in mind when he made it.
There is another aspect to this lesson that requires our attention. All we are actually doing is seeing all that we are doing and resolving to do less of it. We are basically getting out of our own way in order to allow what is given to be more clearly and radiantly itself. For each object we are letting its purpose be revealed to us, rather than forcing it to conform to our own judgment.
This is an act of letting go; this is an exercise in humility; this is a way of seeing that what is given includes rather than excludes us; and it is a way of tasting the sameness – the radical equality – that will briefly be our experience of love in this world before God takes us home at last.
The early lessons of A Course in Miracles invite us to question both how we see and what we see. Our natural human reliance is on the physical eyes. In general, we accept without question the world our sight provides. This leads to a curious belief, though: that what can’t be perceived with the eyes does not actually exist. The course aims to reverse this thinking.
Our lives are built around desire. We want to eat and drink, make love and make happy, be sheltered and entertained, and we want to live forever. Among these many desires, A Course in Miracles gently teaches us to prioritize vision in order that we might “see” what the eyes insist does not exist.
You cannot lay aside the obstacles to real vision without looking upon them, for to lay aside means to judge against. If you will look, the Holy Spirit will judge, and He will judge truly. Yet He cannot shine away what you keep hidden, for you have not offered it to Him and He cannot take it away from you (T-12.II.9:6-8).
Lesson 27 – under the guise of a declaration of enthusiastic commitment – is really a quiet declaration of our evolving intention to be healed through our practice of A Course in Miracles.
There are two interesting facets to this lesson that can help deepen both our practice of ACIM and our experience of the Holy Spirit’s vision.
The first is that there is no judgment with respect to the depth of our sincerity. We are not more or less worthy of salvation based on the intensity and integrity with which we declare our desire to see above all else.
This does not matter. The purpose of today’s exercises is to bring the time when the idea will be wholly true a little nearer (W-pI.27.1:4-5).
Ego judges; it finds us to be good students or bad students. It compares us to other learners and always finds us wanting. The workbook – both here and in other instances – makes unconditionally clear that this judgment is false (both when it finds us to be poor students and when it finds us exceptional).
Our presence – our little willingness – is literally all that matters.
The second aspect is the suggestion that to wield the vision of the Holy Spirit involves sacrifice. We don’t want to give up gazing at Cezanne paintings, or watching football games, or baking chocolate cakes, or holding our children’s hands, or being sexually intimate.
It feels as if to become holy as the course seems to define it – we are not bodies (W-pI.199.h) and there is no world (W-pI.132.6:2) – then we are going to have to give up a lot.
Not so, suggests this lesson. “Vision has no cost to anyone” (W-pI.27.2:3). Moreover, it “can only bless” (W-pI.27.2:5).
It is not incumbent on us to understand this; it is simply important to see the way in which we are scared and to allow that there is another way. This is a form of humility and open-mindedness that facilitates the Holy Spirit’s capacity for healing.
Lesson 27 invites us to structure our day around its core affirmation, and leaves to us the determination of which structure works best. And, to the extent that this becomes a distraction (should I do fifteen minutes? Thirty?), we are reminded that the real question is not the form we select but how often we remember to utter the declaration and how badly we want it to be true (W-pI.27.4:1-2).
Critically – reinforcing the underlying theme of being non-judgmental – the lesson states clearly that we cannot actually fail.
You will probably miss several applications and perhaps quite a few. Do not be disturbed by this . . . If only once during the day you feel that you were perfectly sincere while you were repeating today’s idea, you can be sure that you have saved yourself many years of effort (W-pI.27.4:4-6).
Such patient and gentle instruction is itself a powerful motivation. Here, in this lesson, we begin to sense that we are not alone, and that our Guide is greater in love than our capacity to imagine.
My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability.
What we are in truth is invulnerable and cannot be attacked. And yet, we fear attack. We can get sick, we can get injured, we can become depressed or manic, we can lose jobs and relationships, we are bound to die . . . Isn’t it natural that we protect ourselves? Isn’t it natural that we are so vigilant on our behalf?
A Course in Miracles asserts that we are confused about what we are, and it is this confusion which makes attack thoughts appear useful and necessary. Nor is the course ultimately concerned with the content of each individual attack. Rather, it aims to undo our confusion where the confusion is: in mind.
Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God (In.2:2-4).
Lesson 26 (extending the previous lesson’s emphasis on our “best interests”) invites us to become aware of the fact that in order to attack anyone or anything else we must first attack ourselves. And it is that first attack that ruins our inner peace and happiness.
If attack thoughts must entail the belief that you are vulnerable, their effect is to weaken you in your own eyes. Thus they have attacked your perception of yourself. And because you believe in them, you can no longer believe in yourself. A false image of yourself has come to take the place of what you are (W-pI.26.3:2-5).
We attack because we believe we can be attacked. Thus, by definition, attack thoughts include – are grounded in – the belief that what we are is vulnerable. And we believe this. Every time we project we effectively adopt a view of our own self sanctioned by attack thoughts – that we are vulnerable, weak, threatened, endangered, at risk.
This reflects a law that will become our salvation when we learn how to use it correctly: ” . . . what would have effects through you must have effects on you” (W-pI.W-26.1:4).
Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so (W-pI.26.4:2-4).
Thus, today we go deeply into circumstances in our lives which cause us fear in any of its forms (depression, worry, anger, et cetera). Reflecting on our concern, we review – we specifically name – the many possible outcomes that we are frightened will occur. And to each we say firmly “That thought is an attack upon myself” (W-pI.26.9:2).
Our focus here is on depth and specificity. We want to begin to see with clarity the way in which fear permeates all our thinking. Only this clarity will allow us to let go of our insistence that we know what we’re doing. It takes humility to open up to the gift we have already been given in Creation.
So Lesson 26 deepens our commitment to discerning between attack thoughts, which reflect ego’s plan for survival, and loving thoughts, which reflect the Holy Spirit’s plan for atonement. Our work is to continuously see the way in which our thinking makes us unhappy and remember that there is another way.
Lesson 25 of A Course in Miracles concretizes Lesson 24. It takes the abstraction of not knowing how to perceive our best interests and applies to the people, places and objects that make our lives in the world. We may know what a farm, a friend or a Flexible Flyer is but we do not know what it is for.
And, since “purpose is meaning” (W-pI.25.1:1), we remain separated from God, our joy and peace fractured and incomplete.
Yet the lesson pulls no punches in sharing what is a core concept of our healing: everything is for our healing. Everything is for our happiness.
Everything is for your best interests. That is what it is for; that is its purpose; that is what it means. It is in recognizing this that what you see is given meaning (W-pI.25.1:5-7).
In a sense, then, what we are learning is that the ego has goals and we do not share those goals. Ego’s goal is not our happiness but its survival. The two are not compatible in any way because what weare not ego (W-pI.25.2:2).
Another way of describing the goals you now perceive is to say that they are all concerned with “personal” interests. Since you have no personal interests, your goals are really concerned with nothing. In cherishing them, therefore, you have no goals at all (W-pI.25.3:1-3).
The suggestion that we have no personal interests often comes as a shock to us, because we are conditioned to take everything personally. This is true for everything from sex to A Course in Miracles to whether we like our eggs scrambled or over easy.
Awakening is impersonal; what we are in truth does not have personal interests, interests that can be opposed to anything else.
Thus we can ask: what lies beyond the range of personal experience? What am I if not . . . this person I seem so intensely to be?
Lesson 25 helps us answer that question by gently orienting us with a concrete example. We know that a telephone is designed to help us communicate with someone who is not in the room. What we don’t know is what we want to reach that someone for.
In other words, the means by which we communicate are nothing compared to the goal of our communication. The course will teach us to ask of everything that makes up the world in which we live: what is it for?
In any situation in which you are uncertain, the first thing to consider, very simply, is “What do I want to come of this? What is this for? The clarification of the goal belongs at the beginning, for it is this which will determine the outcome (T-17.VI.2:1-3).
And we will learn that everything serves either the ego’s goal of survival or our goal of happiness. And the only way we can learn this is by surrendering entirely our goals for literally everything.
Thus, lesson twenty-five – like the one preceding – continues to emphasize our humility. We don’t know what this farm is for, what this friend is for, what this flexible flyer is for.
Our goal is to undo our deeply-rooted insistence that we know the function of everything. As we become humble in this regard, we are let go of the false and chaotic meaning *we write on the world and open up to the meaning that the Holy Spirit writes there on God’s behalf.
When I do this lesson there are basically two voices in my head. The first diligently does just what the lesson asks me to do. “I do not know what this farm is for, what this friend is for, what this Flexible Flyer is for.”
The second tells the first voice it’s an idiot. It sounds a bit like this:
Voice one: I do not know what this mug is for.
Voice two: Actually you do. It’s to hold tea. See? It’s actually got tea in it right now.
Voice one: I do not know what this fish tank is for.
Voice two: Seriously? You don’t think it’s to hold fish?
Voice one: I don’t know what this shoe is for.
Voice two: Wow. Look who Jesus put in the slow class.
I’d get lost in that sterile back-and-forth there if it wasn’t for the telephone example, which neatly exemplifies the following:
Before you can make any sense out of the exercises for today, one more thought is necessary. At the most superficial levels you do recognize purpose. Yet purpose cannot be understood at those levels (W-pI.25.4:1-3).
Again, at a basic level, the telephone makes phone calls. But what we don’t understand (because we aren’t used to thinking this way) – and what really matters – is why I want to communicate.
This clarity neatly exposes the ego’s pathetic attempts to undermine us. The ego, of course, is Voice Two in our dialogue. At first glance, its digs seem reasonable, wise cracks from somebody who’s not going to get suckered by silly question. But ego – so insistent when we want to know what a thing is grows quieter when asked what it’s for.
Voice one: I don’t know what this shoe is for.
Voice two: Wow. Look who Jesus put in the slow class. How about – wild guess here – it’s to put on your foot?
Voice one: Yeah, I get that. But why put it on my foot? I think because it enables me to go out into the world – I can teach today, take my parents to lunch, go work with the horses with my daughters. And, in addition to being able to do those things safely, I’m not going to be focused on my freezing feet so I can give more attention to my students, my parents, and my kids. But why do I want to focus on my students, my parents, my daughter?
And to that question, Voice two is silent. The ego doesn’t know why I should love and be kind to my brothers and sisters. When the ego shuts up, I come back to the lesson and learn this simple fact: my job isn’t to figure out what’s good or bad in the world but rather to see it all as meaningless. Why? Because then I can perceive the meaning that God has written on it. That is a goal worthy of creation.
Learning occurs when the need for learning is recognized. If we think we already know something, then we aren’t going to seek a teacher. If we’re sure that we’re doing something correctly, then we aren’t going be open to the possibility that there is another, better way.
This is the foundation of Lesson 24, which aims to restore to our minds a sense of humility. We think we know what’s in our best interest, but we do not. And because we do not, we cannot open our minds to a teacher who can teach us what is in our best interest.
Our happiness is contingent on this open-mindedness and – because we are presently alien to it – it asks of us more honest than we are accustomed to using. In this lesson we are not skimming, but going more deeply.
This prepares us for the long-term learning that is asked of us, and the commitment that will see us through to its end.
This lesson asks us to review situations which are as yet unresolved – relationships with which we are entangled, next week’s business meeting, this or that election outcome – and, with as much honestly and specificity as possible, list the goals that are part of the situation.
What do we want to happen? The course suggests that if we are honest about this then we . . .
. . . will quickly realize that you are making a large number of demands of the situation which have nothing to do with it. You will also recognize that many of your goals are contradictory, that you have no unified outcome in mind, and that you must experience disappointment in connection with some of your goals however the situation turns out (W-pI.24.6:1-2).
This is because “in no situation which arises do you realize the outcome that would make you happy” (W-pI.24.1:1).
There is no equivocation in that judgment! It does not say that we sometimes know what’s best for us or even that once in a rare while we know what’s best for us. It is unconditional: we don’t know at all. Full stop.
Thus, this lesson aims simply at restoring us to humility which is the necessary foundation for an effective learning process. It is perhaps a good example of a lesson that can be done over a period of days, given its importance in the learning process, although this is not required.
It is also helpful to remember that our personal sense of progress – especially with respect to A Course in Miracles – is rarely accurate, or even noticeable. Sometimes when we’re most “stuck,” we’re actually making progress that can stand in for centuries of learning (e.g., T-1.II.6:7, T-18.V.1:6). Thus, even if challenging lessons appear to produce no results, dramatic or otherwise, we need to refrain from judging. Our job is to show up and do the work. Healing is in better hands than ours.
Finally, note that this lesson increases the number of minutes for each practice period from one to two. While that’s not a big chunk of time per se, it does double our commitment and speaks to the gentle way in which we are being asked to intensify our ACIM practice.
