Sean Reagan

In a sense, Atonement – which is the correction for the mad idea of separation – includes an appreciation of the power of our mind. If thought can create a world in which we suffer and die, can it not also set that world aside in order to behold the origin and truth of its own creative ability?

Can it not create – through extension, not projection – only the perfect, the good and the true?

. . . life is thought. Let me look on the world I see as the representation of my own state of mind. I know that my state of mind can change. And so I also know the world I see can change as well (W-pI.54.2:3-6).

Life is inclusive, rather than divisive. There is Life, not many lives. God creates in a continuous flow, rather than by bits and pieces. Thus, there is no such thing as a private thought. Since all mind is one, “every mind contains all minds” (W-pI.161.4:2). Our power to create is shared; it comes forth in unity with our brothers and sisters.

As my thoughts of separation call to the separation thoughts of others, so my real thoughts awaken the real thoughts in them. And the world my real thoughts show me will dawn on their sight as well as mine (W-pI.54.3:6-7).

Critically, Lesson 18 describes a mutual experience. As we awaken others, others awaken us. It is impossible for a Child of God to be alone or to create in isolation. Love does not reinforce separation – the illusion of the personal self with private thoughts and separate interests. It undoes separation by demonstrating that the power to change every mind about what it is, is in us because it is in God.

And only what God created is real, and nothing God did not create exists. This is the source of unending peace (T-in.2:2-4).

The workbook lessons teach us that the world has already been changed, and in doing so, reminds us that what we are in truth is beyond the reach of illusions. It can’t suffer; it can only heal and be healed.

I would behold the proof that what has been done through me has enabled love to replace fear, laughter to replace tears, and abundance to replace loss. I would look upon the real world, and let it teach me that my will and the Will of God are one (W-pI.54.2:4-5).

The answer – and all the happiness it can offer us – has been given. Are we ready now to accept it and – through our active acceptance – extend it to a world in need of salvation?

←Lesson 53
Lesson 55→

The world is a series of images made by that which is incapable of accurately perceiving reality. It is impossible for us to be happy in the world because the world is not real but also because the mind which made it is unhealed. It has no idea what is actually going on.

The fact that I see a world in which there is suffering and loss and death shows me that I am seeing only the representation of my insane thoughts, and am not allowing my real thoughts to cast their beneficent light on what I see. Yet God’s way is sure (W-pI.53.5:4-5).

Because we have forgotten what we are in truth, we have forgotten how to use the creative power of our shared mind. It’s like we’re a single leaf trying to pretend it’s the whole tree. It can’t work because it’s not true.

What is producing this world is insane, and so is what is produces. Reality is not insane, and I have real thoughts as well as insane ones (W-pI.53.1:3-4).

The promise A Course in Miracles makes is that despite the mistaken identity and fearful world, and despite the intensity of the suffering that attends it, we have not lost our actual identity. Reality remains unchanged and unaffected by our confusion. A single leaf can say and do whatever it likes in its vain attempts to “be” a tree but it cannot destroy the tree of which it is a part.

So there is a way out of madness. We need not despair. We have made the world and the self and we believe they are real because we made them. Yet we can always make another choice, one that arises in love and reaffirms love as our source.

. . . I place my trust in reality. In choosing this, I will escape all the effects of the world of fear, because I am acknowledging that it does not exist (W-pI.53.3:7-8).

This shift is not like throwing a light switch (though technically it can be). It’s more like a gentle evolution unfolding in time. We see a little light, step towards it and . . . turn back to the darkness of guilt and fear.

And then start again.

This is the path that we follow as ACIM students. It’s not a crisis. The lessons are gentle reminders that our work is simply to our best to remember – moment by moment – that God did not create a meaningless world and so our suffering is entirely optional.

This is good news! The more so because it actually works when brought into application. Our journey through the workbook is a journey from darkness to light, from guilt to grace, and from fear to love. We want no other journey and no other journey becomes us. No other journey leads us home because this journey is our home.

←Lesson 52
Lesson 54→

Sometimes the question is: how shall we live in these bodies? How shall we live in this world? We grasp the idea that we aren’t bodies and the world isn’t real but . . . That’s not how it feels. It’s not how it seems.

A Course in Miracles acknowledges this confusion, and gently corrects it by asking us to give attention to how we perceive our self, other selves, and the world.

Reality brings only perfect peace. When I am upset, it is always because I have replaced reality with illusions I made up (W-pI.52.1:4-5).

This is reminiscent of the ACIM insight that the “secret to salvation” is to realize that our suffering is of our own making. We are doing this to our own self (T-27.VIII.10:1).

The “self” in question is not the embodied self with its past and its future, struggling for survival on a blue marble floating through an indifferent cosmos. It is God’s creation, currently confused about its origins and thus its identity but perfectly capable of remembering truth.

Thus, the only problem the course is actually solving – the only error it is actually correcting – is the one where we have forgotten what we are.

When I have forgiven myself and remember Who I am, I will bless everyone and everything I see. There will be no past, and therefore no enemies. And I will look with love on all that I failed to see before (W-pI.52.2:5-7).

Forgiveness, as the course uses it here, is a form of “right” seeing or “right” thinking. It is a way of focusing on neither past nor future, but on the living present (e.g., W-pI.52.3:4). We think that we are able to select between past and future; we think that the present is a choice as well. But in fact, the decision is simply whether or not we will see at all.

In essence, we are choosing between spiritual blindness and the Vision of Christ.

What I have chosen to see has cost me vision. Now I would choose again, that I may see (W-pI.52.4:5-6).

Critically, as lesson ten points out, this new vision has nothing to do with the body’s eyes. Rather, it is a form of thought and – more than that – of relating to and through thought with our brothers and sisters.

This is why the course teaches that what we are in truth has “no private thoughts” (W-pI.52.5:2). Instead . . . 

. . . my mind is part of creation and part of its Creator. Would I not rather join the thinking of the universe than to obscure all that is really mine with my pitiful and meaningless “private” thoughts (W-pI.52.5:6-7)?

When we say “yes,” we are committing to retraining our mind to remember its underlying connection to God and to wholeness. We are affirming our intention to remembering our own holiness, and perceiving the world and our brothers and sisters through it.

Step by step – lesson by lesson – we are being gently guided through the tangled mess we have made of thought and reclaiming the purity and perfection that is our true home and identity.

←Lesson 51
Lesson 53→

The premise of A Course in Miracles is that we are confused about what we are in truth. We identify with ego, rather than spirit. This mis-idenfication has allowed a world of illusions to replace reality. This is painful!

Fortunately, as Bill Thetford and Helen Schucman learned together, there is another way: we can be taught how to remember what we are in truth.

The review periods are opportunities to reinforce key ideas in the workbook, and thus extend our understanding and practice beyond the familiar, beyond our comfort zone.

The early lessons ask us to give attention to how the world appears. Our physical senses gather data – light, sound, shape, color, smells. We organize this material, give the organization a name (“tree,” “apple pie,” “friend”) judge it all according to what it does for the body (the ego’s chosen home) and then . . .

. . . suffer.

We don’t suffer because we made the world wrong, or because the world is real and capable of causing hurt. We suffer because it isn’t real and thus has no meaning. Faced with meaninglessness, we rush to fill the apparent blanks. But since we’re confused to begin with, our efforts only increase our guilt and fear and anger.

Thus the importance of accepting that “my judgments have hurt me, and I do not want to see accordingly to them” (W-pI.51.2:6).

The work we do is the work of “letting go.” We are not trying to make a better world, or replace one defective judgment with another. We are simply seeing the false as false and opening to the possibility of another way.

I do not understand what I see because it is not understandable. There is no sense in trying to understand it. But there is every reason to let it go, and make room for what can be seen and understood and loved (W-pI.51.3:4-6).

Only willingness to be healed is required in order that we be healed. As we let go of egoic thoughts, our real thoughts begin to reveal themselves, and we remember that “all creation lies in the thoughts” that we think “with God” (W-pI.51.4:8).

Are we willing to end our suffering? And, in ending it, to end the suffering of the world and all those who mistakenly believe they live there?

A Course in Miracles is “the other way” that Bill Thetford longed for all those many years ago. In time, its lessons remind us that we are not bodies and the world is not real. The question is: are we ready to be as happy as our Creator would have us be?

←Lesson 50
Lesson 52→

I am sustained by the Love of God.

Here in Lesson 50 is the truth: here is the one fact that will save us. Here is the cause of joy and peace. Here we are brought home in perfect stillness and equanimity. Here we remember what we are in truth.

Lesson 50 is penultimate – one of several times over the course of the workbook in which we are given the so-called bottom line and invited to use it to bring to an end all our wandering and confusion. If you want to know what the endgame of A Course in Miracles is, look no further.

Only the Love of God will protect you in all circumstances. It will life you out of every trial, and raise you high above all perceived dangers of this world into a climate of perfect peace and safety. It will transport you into a state of mind that nothing can threaten, nothing can disturb, and where nothing can intrude upon the eternal calm of the Son of God (W-pI.50.3:1-3).

And yet this is not our experience. Why?

The answer is simple: our attention is given not to the Love of God but rather to idols which are intended to obscure that Love. The whole world and the whole long sordid story of our life in the world is a vast orgy of idolization the functions as a dense cover over the clear and helpful light of God’s Will for us (e.g., W-pI.49.4:3).

All these things are your replacements for the Love of God. All these things are cherished to ensure a body identification. They are songs of praise to the ego (W-pI.50.2:1-3).

We need to resolve to “see things differently” (W-pI.21), and to become responsible for the way in which our minds function. It has to be a sincere desire to remember our Creator, and to bring forth only what our Creator wills that we bring forth.

We must be determined to remember that awareness of love’s presence is our “natural inheritance” (T-in.1:7) and resolve that nothing will stop us from coming to this awareness and resting in it. This is possible not as a function of the body in the world, but as the self which God created like unto love (e.g., W-pI.42.1:3-4).

Put not your faith in illusions. They will fail you. Put all your faith in the Love of God within you; eternal, changeless and forever unfailing (W-pI.50.4:1-3).

Thus, when we notice that we are invested in our lives in the world – how much money we are making, what we look like, who we are sleeping with, how often we are comparing ourselves to our brothers and sisters – we simply laugh and remember that we have mistakenly replace the Love of God with a cheap and unhelpful idol.

And then we give our attention to the Love of God, which is our inheritance as creations of God, and never removed from us.

. . . allow peace to flow over you like a blanket of protection and surety. Let no idle and foolish thoughts enter to disturb the holy mind of the Son of God. Such is the Kingdom of Heaven (W-pI.50.5:2-4).

This is the practice that ends our need for practice. This is the truth that undoes all illusions. This is the strength that dissolves our reliance on idols. This is the peace which surpasses understanding.

←Lesson 49
Lesson 51→

God’s Voice speaks to me through all the day.

A Course in Miracles suggests that our mind is effectively divided. One part – the only part that is actually real and functional – thinks with God in the perfect stillness of creation. The other is given to ego and its divisive raucous chatter.

Lesson 49 is an invitation to beyond ego to the peace of God, in order to remember what we are in truth.

Be very still and open your mind. Go past all the raucous shrieks and sick imaginings that cover your real thoughts and obscure your eternal link with God. Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sights and sounds of this insane world (W-pI.49.4:2-4).

It is helpful to notice that our role in this process is simply to be open to remembering the part of our mind that thinks with God. That part is already there; we don’t have to invent it or refine it or polish it or anything like that.

We simply have to be ready, willing and able to accept the gift that God wills to give us – and does give us, continually – in creation.

Lesson 49 is a form of contemplative prayer. In deep interior stillness we listen for the Voice of God which is always there speaking. When we hear this voice, we remember what we are. We remember the home we never left and from which we cannot be parted.

We are trying to reach your real home. We are trying to reach the place where you are truly welcome. We are trying to reach God (W-pI.49.4:6-8).

This lesson is evocative of Distortions of Miracle Impulses in the first chapter of A Course in Miracles, which acknowledges that our “distorted perceptions produce a dense cover” that obscures the healing potential of the miracle (T-1.VII.1:1), and reminds us that “healing is of God in the end” (T-1.VII.5:9).

Child of God, you were created to create to the good, the beautiful and the holy. Do not forget this (T-1.VII.2:1-2).

Lesson 49 is an early practical application of this reminder. It blesses us by allowing our day to fill with the calm certainty that we remain as God created us, and nothing to the contrary prevails against us.

←Lesson 48
Lesson 50→