Sean Reagan

I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.

It cannot be said enough that our thoughts are causes and the world we see and perceive (which includes our body) is their effect. Repetition can breed acceptance – or at least the willingness to accept. Even after we have intellectually grasped that A Course in Miracles reverses traditional notions of cause and effect (i.e., that external influences cause internal affects), we are still likely to struggle to bring it into application. This is the real goal of the A Course in Miracles – a radical transformation of how our minds work. For most of us, this doesn’t happen because we want it to. It happens with practice. That’s what it means to bring an idea into application – to hold it in mind and work with it in the world.

In Lesson 22 we explore the vengeance inherent in what we see and we conclude that it is not the world that we want to see. Thus, the stage is set for Lesson 23 which is a deeply practical – indeed, radical to the point of appearing impossible – way of changing the world that we see. Our default state of mind obligates us to try and change the world. We are actors and the world is a stage on which we hack out the terms and conditions of our existence, desperately trying to strike some balance between the world’s cruelty and our desire for comfort and peace. It won’t work, of course, but most of us never stop trying. And really, that’s the ego’s game plan in a nutshell. As long we believe there is something that we can do, then why turn to God? Why reach out to Jesus except as a ritualistic formality?

But the truth is that the world – as vengeance, as cruelty, as injustice, as scarcity – is made by and thus is unmade by our thinking. Change the thought and you change the world. Literally. Because our thoughts “attack thoughts” – because they are the very stuff that we fear and hate – that becomes the world we perceive. Our thoughts are both why and how the world is the way it is. But if we can let these thoughts go, then the world will be naturally and instantly transformed.

Thus, to heal, our focus belongs on our thinking, not on what we perceive. It’s the thought itself – not what we think about – that counts. This ACIM rule never changes. It is the only way to peace.

As each [attack thought] crosses your mind say: I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about _____. Hold each attack thought in mind as you say this, and then dismiss that thought and go on to the next (W-pI.23.6:3-5).

The hinge on which this lessons turns is in this phrase: “then dismiss the thought and go on. . . “

In other words, we are not just watching a parade of nasty thoughts and ideas. We are not indulging the ego its grim slideshow. Rather, we are very specifically looking at a thought, identifying it as an attack thought, and letting it go. Be clear about this: nothing supernatural or mystical is going on. We are doing the noticing and we are deciding whether we want to keep what causes us pain or whether we want to let it go. 

We are in charge of our thoughts. We are the world-maker.

That’s the essence of this lesson – and very much at the heart of what makes A Course in Miracles tick. It is our job to think differently – to make a conscious choice to use our creative minds differently. We can do this best by actively dismissing those thoughts that fuel a world of vengeance. This lesson will eventually become a necessary habit, a way of refusing to allow the ego any inroads into our being.

We are not victims of the world. We are creative agents of a wholly loving God who have chosen passivity, who have deceived ourselves about our true power and strength. This lesson provides a handy way of undoing that deception and taking up again our loving and creative potential.

←Lesson 22
Lesson 24→

What I see is a form of vengeance.

This lesson introduces the critical idea that what we see is a “form of vengenance.” Accepting this – which means becoming responsible for our thinking – represents a major undoing of what blocks love. We encounter this idea in numerous forms throughout the workbook and text. Here it appears to that might reaffirm our commitment to seeing differently.

Lesson 22 is a preview of a more dramatic statement that appears in part II of the workbook.

The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear but love’s absence? (W-pII.3.2:1-3)

That is powerful language – “an attack on God.” Most of us resist it. But it is a core concept in the reformation of our thought process that A Course in Miracles offers as healing. 

We project because we cannot bear what we see inside. We believe we are separated from God. We feel guilt at having turned from him and fear his retribution. Rather than look at that guilt and fear we either a) deny it or – when it resists denial – b) project it. The world is the projection of our guilt and fear. It is our attempt to obscure the fact of the separation. It is the feeble “making” by which we try and usurp God’s creative abilities.

The world is – finally and fully – a vicious place. It is an attack. And – as its makers who know full well its capacity for attack – we fear it and seek always to “defend” against it. This is indeed as the lesson observes a “vicious circle,” from which there is no escape.

If you project anger and hate, then you will perceive anger and hate. Projection is a form of attack that always doubles back on us. Lesson Twenty-Two describes how a typical course student experiences this bind. 

Having projected his anger onto the world, he sees vengeance about to strike at him. His own attack is thus perceived as self-defense. This becomes an increasingly vicious circle until he is willing to change how he sees (W-pI.22.1:2-4).

Peace of mind is what occurs when we stop projecting and thus stop perceiving external attacks that require defense.

How does this cycle occur in practice – in the world in which we live?

Say that you are frustrated with a political party. Its members are not motivated by the common good but by partisan ideals. They don’t want to solve problems so much as destroy their opposition. They are driven by fear, not love.

A Course in Miracles – following a psychological tradition grounded in Freud – teaches that we have projected onto this political party our habit of being partisan rather than cooperative, our inclination to destroy rather than compromise, and our willingness to be led by fear instead of love.

Having projected it onto the other, we then perceive it as an attack. They are out to get us and so we have to oppose them, resist them, defeat them once and forever.

This is the vicious cycle. We project our hate and fear and then, denying it is in fact our hate and fear, we go to war with it.

There is, suggests the course (for this is always what ACIM suggests), another way.

It is from this savage fantasy that you want to escape. Is it not joyous news to learn that it is not real? Is it not a happy discovery to find that you can escape? (W-pI.22.2:1-3).

Tara Singh would sometimes point out in his writing that when A Course in Miracles asks us a question, it is worth pausing and seriously considering it. Really go into it and find the answer.

The penultimate question posed by this lesson is whether the world you want to see – which is finite, perishable, unreal and mean – is the world you actually want to see. Are you not interested in finding a way to see it differently?

The lesson suggests the answer is obvious (W-pI.22.9:1), and it probably is, but still: it’s worth asking and actually answering. Doing so is a way of committing yourself to the practice of learning to see differently, in order to become responsible for your own mind and how it functions.

You made what you would destroy; everything that you hate and would attack and kill. All that you fear does not exist (W-pI.22.2:4-5).

Here we realize that there is a better way, and that discovering it and partaking of its joy and peace, obligate us to become responsible for our practice. Let this be the lesson in which you pledge to take seriously your healing, and to bring to it the full force of your desire for love and peace.

One last thought. I still remember the first time I did this lesson. I was into it; it was flowing. I looked over the snow, the barns, the manure pile, the bare trees. Yeah, that’s perishable, that’s not real, that’s vengeance. Then, suddenly, a blue jay settled right before me on a fence post and it was so clear and bright and beautiful that the lesson just sailed right out of my mind. And when it came back – oh right, I’m supposed to be practicing A Course in Miracles – I didn’t want to include the blue jay. How can such beauty be vengeful?

The answer is that the scraps of beauty the world allows are just bread crumbs dropped by the ego in an effort to buy our allegiance a little while longer. If I buy into the lovely winter scene, then the separation is real because the world is real. So I can’t make exceptions.

Exclude nothing that your eyes fall upon, no matter how beautiful or alluring. Let nothing distract you from learning that the world is not real. 

I note this to show that perfection is not part of the process. There are always going to be blue jays or best friends or chocolate cakes that draw our attention. We can’t let these symbols of love – for they are that – stand in our way. See them, take note of them – forgive them – and continue on your way.

←Lesson 21
Lesson 23→

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I am determined to see things differently.

Lesson 21 of A Course in Miracles extends the previous lesson in two particular ways. First, it focuses on anger. Second, it emphasizes specificity.

Somewhat less obviously, it reinforces the underlying concept enshrined in the first miracle principle: miracles do not acknowledge and are not subject to orders of difficulty.

Anger is a defense mechanism deployed by the separated self. Under the guise of protection, it actually is a form of attack on our brothers and sisters and our self.

It is an attack on our self because it depends for its existence on the illusion that a separate self exists and can actually be attacked.

And it is an attack on our brothers and sisters because it projects responsibility for attack onto them, thus reinforcing their separate existence. Projection extends separation.

Thus, anger is one of the primary ways in which separation is sustained. Its undoing is a primary focus of atonement.

Lesson Twenty-One does not explain anger. Nor does it go into detail about how anger is undone. It simply asks us to take very specific notice of it – to place it in the context of our lives in the world – and then declare that we are determined to hold a different view of it.

This matters! The course is emphasizing here the power of our will. Without explicitly saying so, it is suggesting that when our will aligns with Love – which does not recognize differences but rather sees all things as the same – healing is the inevitable result. We don’t have to understand anything. Remember that “nothing that you believe in this connection means anything” (W-pI.21.3:2).

In a critical sense, all our “problems” arise from the singular confusion that we are something we are not. One problem means one solution. But it takes time for us to see this clearly, and in the interim, engaging with the specific forms that problem takes is how we learn that there is only one error that needs to be corrected.

We are called to give attention to our lives, and not to ignore them or minimize them because they are illusory. Healing occurs where the problem appears to be.

Finally, this lesson reminds us that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. A “little” anger is no different than a fire hose of rage. Thus, our application of this lesson need not depend on finding the hottest rage or the relationship in which anger appears most consistently.

We are not called to judge the examples we use; only to be as specific as possible with respect to them. The degree of healing we attain is unrelated to the degree of the so-called symptom of anger because *it’s all the same problem.

Sometimes the abstraction inherent in A Course in Miracles can be too much. What are we supposed to, you now, do? If Lesson 20 is the essence – we are determined to see – this lesson provides the specificity that undoes abstraction. It does not take a spiritual genius to see that we can also vow to see differently situations that make us sad. Or fearful. Or guilty. Or lonely. Or happy. Whatever our struggles are in these bodies in this world, we can see past them – past the form in which they appear – the underlying problem of separation that they are made to sustain.

Lesson 21 is another way of insisting on waking up, on bringing Jesus into our lives every minute of the day until we fully and utterly recall our identity in, with and of God and there is no longer any need for either teachers or lessons or bodies or worlds at all.

Healing begins where we are. It begins at the bottom and works its way up. We give attention to the messiness and complexity of our living and resolve not to change the forms this messiness and complexity but rather to change our minds about it. We want to see it differently; it doesn’t actually matter what “it” is or what “it” looks like. To be healed is to see differently. And this “seeing differently” begins with our intention – however feebly set, however inconsistently maintained – to see differently now.

←Lesson 20
Lesson 22→

I am determined to see.

There are at least two aspects of Lesson 20 of A Course in Miracles that bear reflection. The first is its commentary on structure and effort. The second is its explicit emphasis on our willingness to see conjoined with the implicit emphasis that we do not, presently, see.

The first is practical. The early lessons of A Course in Miracles are not difficult; they ask little of us in terms of time or energy. As the workbook points out, this is not an accident.

. . . you will not see if you regard yourself as being coerced, and if you give in to resentment and opposition (W-pI.20.1:6).

Still, the “little effort” we are asked to give does yield significant results.

Can the salvation of the world be a trivial purpose? And can the world be saved if you are not? God has one Son, and he is the resurrection and the life. His will is done because all power is given him in Heaven and on earth. In your determination to see is vision given you (W-pI.20.3:4-7).

This “little effort” – which today consists in twice-hourly repetitions of the lesson’s fundamental idea – segues neatly into the lesson’s goal, which is not merely to ever so slightly increase our willingness to actively participate in salvation.

To “see,” as the course defines it here, is to effectively discern between “joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, love and fear” (W-pI.20.2:6). It is not seeing akin to what our physical eyes do; it is closer to the way in which your mind recognizes and chooses between the emotions that it wants.

You want salvation. You want to be happy. You want peace. You do not have them now because your mind is totally undisciplined . . . (W-pI.20.2:3-6).

So lesson 20 is a juncture in our learning (there will be others) whereby we begin to see the value of learning discipline as it applies to the level of mind, and become willing to actually work for it.

Recognizing that we do not currently see this way can feel discouraging, but in fact it is the opposite. Coming to terms with what we cannot yet do is the first step in a) deciding that we do, in fact, want it and b) becoming willing to what is necessary to achieve it.

Thus, Lesson 20 also evokes the cycle of lessons (ten through fifteen) that consider meaninglessness, with a particular focus on the metaphor of “writing” our thoughts on the world. Perception can be of the thoughts we have written – always authored by ego – or of the real thoughts that the Holy Spirit writes for us. Only one set of thoughts is real, though we can postpone seeing it this way for a very long time.

We live in the world of perception largely under the influence of the loveless ego. It – meaning the ego – is perfectly happy to give us shreds of enlightenment – illusory feelings of progress, symbols of “love” that are actually hate wearing a mask. To accept these is to accept substitutes for the actual work, the real work of salvation, which is simple but not necessarily easy. 

Thus, a frequent and positive affirmation – I am determined to see! – is not out of place. It functions as a critical reminder of how far we must go and how determined we must be. But more than that, it does so in a hopeful way, a positive way.  We are striving to make contact with our true desire for awakening rather than the myriad forms of it proposed by the ego.  When we do make that contact, Heaven is the sure result because what we desire, we see (W-pI.20.5:5). This is real law of cause and effect, by which salvation is assured. 

←Lesson 19
Lesson 21→

I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.

This is one of those ACIM lessons that you just knew was coming. Just as our vision links us, so do our thoughts. Again, we are asked to take note of our fundamental unity as thoughts in the mind of God. Not me and you but only one.

Two things stand out for me in this lesson. First, Jesus points out for us that resistance is likely to take two forms: first, the fact that minds are joined and that we are influencing one another all the time can entail a sense of responsibility that might not be desired. And second, we might object to a so-called “invasion of privacy.”

The responsibility piece is important. As I noted yesterday, the course is very careful to emphasize our union with one another. There is a shared obligation in our identity that we cannot avoid and still know peace. This is not a foreign idea to Christianity, as witnessed in Luke’s gospel.

And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?

And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.

We shall love our neighbor as we love ourselves – that’s the key to life. And although A Course in Miracles tweaks this considerably – largely by suggesting that it’s not our behavior towards our neighbors but our thoughts that matters most – we are still called to a love that is not self-directed. The effects of this love are felt everywhere, without exception. This is a great responsibility. There’s no doubt about that.

But considering it as a sort of two-way street can be helpful. Often, when I contemplate this idea, I start putting pressure on myself to be super loving in my thoughts. But that ignores the truth of the lesson: yes, my thoughts matter. But so do yours. When I remember that, I realize that my ego likes to subtly inject itself into the equation – it’s my thoughts that count. It’s my thoughts that shape your world. This isn’t what Jesus is talking about.

In fact it is our shared thoughts – and, to take it a step further – it is the thoughts that we share with God. These thoughts, as the Course has already pointed out to us, are not readily observable. They are beneath – shadowed by – what we currently consider our real thoughts.

This lesson is an invitation to continue to deepen our meditations, to make contact with our thoughts in a way that divests the self we believe we are in favor of the identity that we share – one and all – with God.

The other issues that pops up in this lesson – more complicated for me anyway – is the idea that there are no private thoughts (W-p1.19.2:3). It calls to mind this point from The Escape from Darkness:

When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be willing to enter into communion but will also understand peace and love (T-1.IV. 1:5).

In a sense, we have no private thoughts because – as there is only mind – there is no body or thing or intelligence from which to hide a thought. But in a very practical way, we are also being asked to allow whatever is in our minds to be brought up into the light. Recall Lesson 14, which invited us to hold all our fearful thoughts in mind in order to learn that God did not create them and so they are not real. We have a tendency to hide our “personal repertory of horrors” (W-pI.14.6:1), to push it deep down to where we hope it will have no effect. To the extent we can’t keep it buried in the recesses of our minds, then we project it outwards. I’m not violent – terrorists are violent. I’m not misusing the teachings of Jesus to advance my interests – wealthy preachers with their megachurches are.

But we cannot be at peace so long as we insist on hiding these thoughts. This much is clear even after just nineteen lessons. Jesus wants us to raise all of what we think we are – good, bad, ugly, terrifying – into the light where we can look at it calmly with him and allow it to be undone.

Thus, this lesson is both metaphysically true – we are being led to an awareness that we are one in truth and that no separated selves exist in reality – but we are also being given some deeply practical tools to help lead us to this reality. Having no private thoughts – excluding nothing from our practice of forgiveness – is the surest way to learn that only the thoughts we think with God are of any consequence (W-p1.4.2:3-4). The way to awakening seems dark indeed, but we have within us the capacity to light the way. This is the miracle – the right mind that sees its miscreations and knows them as false. If we are willing only to try it, we will learn that it is so.

←Lesson 18
Lesson 20→