Sean Reagan

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→

There is nothing to fear.

To the ego, the statement “there is nothing to fear” makes no sense. Indeed, it borders on offensive – of course there is something to fear. Have you read the news? Looked at the world?

To the ego – and to its home, the body – fear is natural and rational. But we are not bodies (W-pI.199.8:7), and the world is not real (W-pI.132.6:2).

Therefore, there is another way.

In truth there is nothing to fear. It is very easy to recognize this. But it is very difficult to recognize it for those who want illusions to be true (W-pI.48.1:3-5).

So the issue is not what is true or not true, but rather our insistence on remaining in illusion. We want the illusion and not truth. Lesson 48 is a deep dive into the source of separation which is simply our determination that it be true.

When you make something to fill a perceived lack, you are tacitly implying that you believe in separation. The ego has invented many ingenious thought systems for this purpose (T-3.V.2:4-5).

What is whole and integrated cannot fear for there is nothing to attack and thus nothing to defend against. It is only when lack or loss enters our thinking, that fear appears as a reasonable reminder to call upon attack and defense for protection and gain.

But if this worked, would we be here? A Course in Miracles is not given because we are at perfect peace, in full remembrance of love, and thus totally happy in the Kingdom of Heaven.

When we are faced with fear, it is because we have chosen our strength over God’s. And there is another way.

The awareness that there is nothing to fear shows that somewhere in your mind, though not necessarily in a place you recognize as yet, you have remembered God, and let His strength take the place of your weakness. The instant you are willing to do this there is nothing to fear (W-pI.48.3:1-2).

The other way is to simply state that “there is nothing to fear” and be willing to believe it is true. We do not have to make it true; we do not have to force it to reveal it’s truthfulness.

We merely have to be open to receive it as the truth. And we can do this because it is a condition of what we are as creations of a perfectly loving God.

Thus, lesson 48 is effectively an opportunity to directly encounter both our fear and that which reveals our fear to be illusory. We reach the grounds of separation – the supposed birthplace of ego – and we go beyond it – through the “churn and bubble on the surface” (W-pI.47.7:2) of our minds – to the impersonal stillness that is God’s grace, and our true home and being.

This is joy; this is peace.

←Lesson 47
Lesson 49→

God is the strength in which I trust.

In order to survive as bodies in the world, we need strength of various kinds. We need physical strength to move furniture, plant gardens, carry kids and knead bread. We need moral strength to call out evil. We need psychological strength to overcome internal bias and deception.

The body – which includes both a brain and a complex self-narrative – is bound up in its need to be strong and its inevitable failure to be strong enough. Joy and peace in the world are always temporary, always conditional, always unreliable.

This failure – from which we can gain only brief respite – is the ground on which Lesson 47’s promise of salvation is premised.

If you are trusting in your own strength, you have every reason to be apprehensive, anxious and fearful. What can you predict or control? What is there in you that can be counted on (W-pI.47.1:1-3)?

That is a harsh judgment!

But we only need survey our lives – the sorrow, the loss, the fear, the guilt, the hatred, the unpredictability – to see that it is a judgement with merit.

Critically, the lesson is a reminder that we do not have a grip on the so-called big picture. By definition, the body is a limit, and so it is impossible for us to truly know the best outcome in any circumstance – for us or for anyone else. We can’t intuit the best outcome and, even if we could, we certainly can’t bring it forward in the world.

What would give you the ability to be aware of all the facets of any problem, and to resolve in such a way that only good can come of it? What is there in you that gives you the recognition of the right solution, and the guarantee that it will be accomplished (W-pI.47.1:4-5)?

In a sense, ego is simply the body’s insistence (through brain and self-narrative) that it can be aware in this way, and it can resolve any and all problems.

A Course in Miracles suggests we can experience the peace and joy that goes with “only good,” but that is in not our strength but God’s which accomplishes this.

God is your safety in every circumstance. His Voice speaks for Him in all situations and in every aspect of all situations, telling you exactly what to do to call upon His strength and His protection. There are no exceptions because God has no exceptions. And the Voice which speaks for Him think as he does (W-pI.47.3:1-4).

Thus, Lesson 47 becomes an exercise in allowing ourselves to remember this strength and avail ourselves of it. Indeed, it includes a call to go beyond the embodied self and its limitation altogether in order to reach the Kingdom of Heaven itself.

There is a place in you where there is perfect peace. There is is a place in you where nothing is impossible. There is a place in you where the strength of God abides (W-pI.47.7:4-6).

That is a beautiful promise!

And so the lesson is – as so many ACIM lessons are – both a cause for hope and joy and the means by which we remember, here and now, the peace that surpasses understanding.

←Lesson 46
Lesson 48→