051_060

51 Nothing I see means anything.
I have given what I see all the meaning it has for me.
I do not understand anything I see.
These thoughts do not mean anything.
I am never upset for the reason I think.

MT: What great undoing you offer, JC! I am open to the possibility of a new seeing, a new meaning, a new understanding. Today, fill my mind with the Thought of God. I pledge to relinquish upsets, resentment and attack.
JC: The stars look down from the firmament to shimmer on you. Wherever you walk is the ground made holy by your forgiveness. The peace of God surrounds you wherever you go, whatever you do. You are the holy Son of God.

Review of Lessons 1 to 5

Nothing I see means anything.
I have given what I see all the meaning it has for me.
I do not understand anything I see.
These thoughts do not mean anything.
I am never upset for the reason I think.

I sought to be the giver of meaning, and that's how I ran out of Paradise. It wasn't the apple, and it wasn't sex . . . my own guilt chased me out!

With Lesson 5, we take a 90-degree turn, or so it seems. I am never upset for the reason I think. Why am I sad, angry, bereaved, jolted by emotions seemingly out of my control? I am upset because I made up a world outside of me, specifically to upset me. All things are echoes of the Voice for God, but I lost sight of this and put together a world apart from God, apart from the Self, a world that I do not control because it controls me. In agreement with others who seem to have nothing to do with me, we made up sickness and death, we shed rivers of blood, we made hell where Heaven was. Thank God that a Voice for sanity is finally heard!

52 I am upset because I see what is not there.
I see only the past.
My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
I see nothing as it is now.
My thoughts do not mean anything.

MT: Don't know what to say. I think I know these lessons. The world is illusion and does not exist, so when I get all worked up about any situation, I'm really doing nothing.
JC: You are misusing the mind, which should be free to dart like a hummingbird. Instead you chain it to your imaginary prison walls.
MT: I'm beginning to realize how much effort it takes to maintain the world, just as at one point I realized how much effort is involved in maintaining bad posture.
JC: Yet people have given their lives for this.
MT: I am waiting for you to tell me, "Go and sin no more."
JC: Go and soar, free as an eagle in the rising sun of a new day.

52 I am upset because I see what is not there.
I see only the past.
My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
I see nothing as it is now.
My thoughts do not mean anything.

MT: I was seeing something that wasn't there last night, JC, and I let it rob me of sleep. The victim stance cropped up yet again! But this morning, I decided to ask for what I wanted (or thought I wanted) instead of seeing myself as deprived. To my surprise, the world generously offered, "you can have it, and it will cost you nothing." So much for my upset! I'll have fun going shopping with my grandson.

Now, I want to see things as they are now. I want the eternal now, not the past and not a projected future. I pray to be released from my attachment to a timeline. I pray to be released from the self I made with my meaningless thoughts. Let me now be with God in paradise.

Review of Lessons 6 to 10.

I am upset because I see what is not there.
I see only the past.
My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
I see nothing as it is now.
My thoughts do not mean anything.

Radical surgery! These lessons undo everything we valued, including our thoughts. Thoughts that we clutched to our chest and swore to hide from the curious and the evil, the Enemy out there.

Yet I love the quiet certainty, the authority with which the Course introduces the undoing of our castles. It does not preach. It does not tell me that I should believe this or that to save myself from eternal damnation. Because Jesus is on my side. He represents everything that my parents might have been, had they known better. So I can accept guidance. Thank God I can accept guidance.

53 Review Lessons 11-15

11 My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.

MT: Ouch. You really tell it like it is. No word mincing.

JC: I will not be polite when it is not in your best interests.

12. I am upset because I see a meaningless world.

MT: How often I forget, and become hopelessly wrapped up in the dramas of this plane. You are telling me, no wonder I get upset and lose my peace of mind!

13. A meaningless world engenders fear.

MT: That's the basis of my fear, not something real, but something imagined. I made it up, so I can unmake it.

14. God did not create a meaningless world.

MT: I feel a wave of relief when you say that, JC. That's amazing, after all these years of study. I knew it was coming, but I still took a long breath. Which is to say, I was holding my breath at the thought of being upset!

15. My thoughts are images that I have made.

MT: Oh yes. I make up all these dialogues (I process information with words rather than images, it seems) and all they do is to preserve a world that's engendering fear. I want to let go of the words. Actually, let me tell you what's happening: words are becoming difficult to utter. I forget words, and not only do I forget, but there's a curious lameness in my speech at times. I fear I'm coming down with Alzheimers. Tell me it ain't so!

JC: You figured it out yourself, didn't you? Words WILL become difficult to come by (at least for a while) if you're trying to let go of them! But the Alzheimers thought, that's a pure and simple fear thought, and you can let go of it right now.

MT: Should I get tested? I don't quite trust what you're saying. I could be losing my good mind.

JC: You are only losing what you don't want. The ego's purpose is to busy you with problems that it makes up so you can walk the world like an ant at the end of a burning log. The Holy Spirit within you will tell you when, if ever, to seek medical help.

MT: Thanks. You are such a good friend. Absolutely peerless.

Review of Lessons 11 to 15.

My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.
I am upset because I see a meaningless world.
A meaningless world engenders fear.
God did not create a meaningless world.
My thoughts are images that I have made.

The thing I cannot name: that is a source of abject terror. A wiggling white form on the ground. Ah, what relief--it's just discarded Kleenex. An explanation, a name, and then we can dismiss it and move on. But in doing so, we shut out the wonder of infinite possibility.

Who is the giver of meaning? I want to impose my meaning on things, but then I see the world "through a glass darkly." So today I recognize the wondrous mystery all around me. Today I see that there is so much more than my limited vision. Today I open myself to God's world.

54 Review Lessons 16-20

16 I have no neutral thoughts.

OK, JC, I think I've got it. Thoughts make things. Thoughts force my brother (if he's willing
to cooperate) into my image of him.

17 I see no neutral things.
I think I know this one. Well, I think things are more neutral than people. But you're telling
me here, I've made up everything I see with the thoughts in my mind. So I've made up the
people too! Yeccch! Not only Mother Teresa but also Charles Manson and Wayne Gacy? I've
really got to see them differently! My seeing someone as evil puts a huge burden on him, if
he should wish to change. To change, he needs to swim against a mighty current. Our
collective thoughts of evil force those who are inclined in that direction to stay that way.
They become our scapegoats—whew, I’m glad he’s got the electric chair at last, now the
world is better and safer. Right.

18 I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.

Others tend to see the way I see, unless they are enlightened and have spent a lifetime up
on the mountain, meditating. But the idea that I have no private thoughts, that's pretty
scary. Less so than 20 years ago, but still scary. I can't hide! I can't think one thing and say
another, so I'd better do some spring cleaning!

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

All right, all right. If I indulge in attack thoughts, they have an effect, primarily on me, but
also on the world at large. Actually, "primarily" is the wrong word here, because the effect
on me and on others is the same, if we're all One Son.

20 I am determined to see.

If I can see truly, I'll change the world. But it's important to know that there are no private
thoughts, and that when I think with God, there's no need for private thoughts anyway. The
thoughts I think with God are, by their nature, shareable.

54 I have no neutral thoughts. My thoughts can attract sickness and death, fear and loathing, or attract God's world of forgiveness and joy. I am making a choice moment by moment, and what I think I will receive.

I see no neutral things. With the ego, I see ideas out there, the ideas of my fevered and restless mind. With God, the resplendent beauty of Creation opens up to me.

I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing. By seeing with God, I help others see with God. My mission becomes to reawaken the memory of God in myself and my companions on the journey.

I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts. There is no selfish joy! There seem to be selfish pleasures, but joy is One.

I am determined to see. Today I see perfect beauty in the workings of the Universe. I see that there are no accidents on the journey. I see that You walk with me in perfect holiness.

Review Lessons 16 – 20

I have no neutral thoughts.
I see no neutral things.
I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.
I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.
I am determined to see.

JC: All right, now you have formatted the email exactly as you want it. Notice how you pay attention to form and ignore content. What do you make of that?
MT: My ego at work. It doesn't want to focus, not on my breath, not on ideas, not on God. It wants to sleep. Manipulating form, now, that's busywork and it keeps the ego content if not happy. I don't think the ego is ever really happy.
JC: Now that we've gotten that out of the way, are you determined to see?
MT: It would be nice, but . . . it's too much work.
JC: And the alternative is . . . ?
MT: To glow dimly and then to die. Perhaps a new incarnation will suit me better.
JC: And this one, which was made specifically for you, it doesn't suit very well.
MT: Aw, JC, don't push me.
JC: I am your friend. I do not push. I show you what's true, and then you can choose. Just behold what you are doing.
MT: To wait for death to release me, that's insanity.
JC: You have the Eternal Now, the gift of gifts.
MT: Now. NOW. This is the moment, not any other moment that I might judge more suitable.
JC: This is the moment, your gift from God.

55 Review Lessons 21-25

21 I am determined to see things differently.

So, JC, I want to see differently because the way I see things now makes me
unhappy. Well, that's not totally true, because you've done quite a bit of
housecleaning in my head! But, in any case, that's the lesson. I am
determined to see things differently.

22 What I see is a form of vengeance.

All these shapes around me, a form of vengeance? I've given up the innocence
of my birth, and what I learned from the humans who raised me was
perception, seeing with the body's eyes, confining the resplendence of the
world into forms and shapes, all separate from each other, all drab and
lifeless. We gave everything names, and we called it seeing.

23 I can escape from this world by giving up attack thoughts.

I see that giving up attack thoughts is a way to peace. But to escape from
this world? Maybe I want to stay here for a while still!

24 I do not perceive my own best interests.

Ah, my attachment to this world is not in my best interests, is that what
you're saying?

JC: Everything wants to live. The purpose of life is to live. But how you
see the world has to go for you to be truly happy.

25 I do not know what anything is for.

So what are things for? This lesson always puzzles me. I do not know what
anything is for. What IS it for?

JC: You make up these lifeless things around you to "prove" that you are
separate from God, a wretched sinner deserving of death. That is not so. You
are the Holy Son of God. Wake up to this truth today.

55 I am determined to see things differently. Especially myself! Enough of this terminal uniqueness! I will see myself as the logical extension of God, along with those I thought were better or worse, richer or poorer, ugly or beautiful. We are One.

What I see is a form of vengeance. Striking, JC, to place "vengeance" next to "seeing". So when I give substance to the energies around me and make them into things, I am making them into my enemy. I am making up germs and cancer cells and Jack the Rippers.

I can escape from this world by giving up attack thoughts. I want to SEE. Today I use my mind as God would, and I see a world healed and whole.

I do not perceive my own best interests. Talk about humility! I stubbornly hold onto what I think are my best interests, and now you're telling me I'm out to lunch. I can see in others that they sabotage themselves and create havoc in their lives, but me? I am still convinced that I know what's best for me. Help me to true humility, where I accept God's guidance every step of the way.

I do not know what anything is for. So I fight the world I see through a glass darkly, not knowing that everything is for my own best interests. I demand that the world change to suit me, and I enlist others to help me change the world so I'll be happy at last. But I do not know what anything means. Today I ask to see what things are for, and I open my ears to hear the truth.

Review of Lessons 21 to 25.

>I am determined to see things differently.

Help me to a better way of seeing. I am willing.

>What I see is a form of vengeance.

This introduction to the Course's metaphysical thinking was a strange idea at first. Vengeance? What in the world does vengeance have to do with seeing?

>I can escape from this world by giving up attack thoughts.

Ah, the bittersweet appeal of anger and guilt--gone! The excitement of drama--gone! My suffering, passion, and crucifixion--gone!

>I do not perceive my own best interests.

A sudden shift, this cool academic statement after the emotion of Lesson 23.

>I do not know what anything is for.

Here is the ego dismissed in a short, simple sentence. And I so loved my pompous certainty! But the clear authority keeps me going. The Author must know what he's talking about, even if he dismantles the worldview I lived by. Or, let me say it, I welcome the wrecking ball. My old ways weren't working and I knew it.

56 My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability. Here's how I attack myself, like a cancer in the body. I make up a hostile world which then attacks me, so at least I am right! I get to sit in my small chair in my small house, muttering curses on the whole world.

Above all else I want to see. This way of living in the world doesn't work. But instead of fighting evil thoughts in me, I will focus on searching for a better way. I will be part of the solution, even when this better way is obscured by clouds.

Above all else I want to see differently. The ego world seems locked up, with no way out. This is where prayer and surrender comes in. I throw in the towel and say, God, ball's in your court! The next shot is yours!

God is in everything I see. Instead of evil men and evil deeds, I get to see the boundless, beneficent energy of the Universe. I see God, the God that we so badly misused. We played with sharp-edged children's toys, but now we are grown. It is time for a change.

God is in everything I see because God is in my mind. Here's the next step: to accept that God is Life, and my mind is made of Life. Without God --which is an impossibility-- I would cease to exist. I thought I was a separate little egg of consciousness at the mercy of forces outside of its control, a small battered canoe in an endless roiling ocean. Let me now surrender to this new way of seeing that will change forever that which I thought I was.

57 I am not the victim of the world I see. As a kid, I made up a phrase for the world-as-enemy: "the tyranny of inanimate objects." I would go into a rage over a stuck piano key. The anger was almost unbearable, such that I wanted to break something. How good to know now that this was, still is, insane behavior.

I have invented the world I see. Not only is the world and everybody in it completely neutral, it is entirely of my making! You are suggesting that I step out of perception entirely. Scary thought. What would I hold onto?

There is another way of looking at the world. There is no fortress to defend. My Self is ruler of the universe. If I made up threats and wars and diseases, I can also make peace. I can decide for God from this moment on.

I could see peace instead of this. What a wonderful feeling these words wash over me! I am the source of peace wherever I go, whatever I do.

My mind is part of God's. I am very holy. God is a vast pie of consciousness, and I a part of it. I think with God, I am with God, I am God walking the Earth.

Review of Lessons 31 to 35

>I am not the victim of the world I see.

Nobody done it to me. Why? Because:

>I have invented the world I see.

The world I see represents only one operating system of my infinitely powerful mind computer. I downloaded it from my parents, my schoolteachers, from the media and society at large.

>There is another way of looking at the world.

We were sure the earth was flat, until it wasn't. It was gospel that the universe centered on the earth, until it didn't. Man cannot fly, we said--until man did. Let's open ourselves to the massive change that a new operating system will bring. Its time has come.

>I could see peace instead of this.

Now we get down to actionable intelligence, what's doable, here, this moment. Enough of abstraction. I have a choice. I could see peace instead of this.

>My mind is part of God's. I am very holy.

When I am willing to let flowers bloom on the bloodied earth, I join in God's vision. I return to my Origin: the holiest of holies.

58 My holiness envelops everything I see. My holiness goes forth and wraps around the objects and people around me. When I allow the Light of God in, I have the Light of God to give out.

My holiness blesses the world. Including those I deemed undeserving, those who reject the spiritual path I'm on, them that I imagined hurt me, judged me, asked me to be different than I was so they would be pleased. Yes, all of them. There is no selfish enlightenment.

There is nothing my holiness cannot do. It can say "thank you God for this day" or it can move a mountain, heal the sick, and raise the dead.

My holiness is my salvation -- not sacrifice. The "need" for sacrifice is over. I give with joy and I accept without guilt.

I am blessed as a Son of God. The decades of orphanhood are over. I sit at the table the Father prepared for me and drink from the cup of holiness. How great is that?

Review of Lessons 36 to 40

>My holiness envelops everything I see.

The new seeing: we gaze upon the world with the eyes of God.

>My holiness blesses the world.

When I recognize myself as part of God, my holiness covers the planet!

>There is nothing my holiness cannot do.

And when I regain my original state, even if only for a moment, that's when miracles have a chance. That's the crack in the cosmic egg.

>My holiness is my salvation.

I need not look to priests, gurus, or politicians. My holiness lies within.

>I am blessed as a Son of God.

Here's our true inheritance: the name of God, whose Son we are.

59 God goes with me wherever I go. God is a verb, not a noun. God is motion, aliveness, change, continuation, reproduction, evolution. When I think, that is God. When I eat, that is God. I cannot escape God, and why would I hallucinate doing so? Only utter insanity would say: God has left me. The Life in which those words exist is God.

God is my strength. Vision is His gift. This day I will understand eternity, and be One with Him who is my Source.

God is my Source. I cannot see apart from Him. How did I ever dream I was separate, alone in a hostile universe? How could a drop of seawater think itself attacked by the ocean?

God is the light in which I see. God-light became the illusion of darkness in this crazy world of mine. Now I claim for myself the lifting of the veil, that I may see.

God is the mind with which I think. When thinking is happening, there God is. When walking is happening, there God is. When anger is happening, there God is. When sadness is happening, there God is. So how do I want to manifest God in my life today?

Review Lessons 41-45

>God goes with me wherever I go.

God is Life, and wherever I go, Life goes with me. No matter how much I seek to misuse it, Life is still within.

>God is my strength. Vision is His gift.

I thought to make myself smaller, but the Son of God won't be squeezed into the tiny mold I made and called a body.

>God is my Source.

As the stream pours down the mountain, it is still one with its source. As I am an effect of God, I am still one with my Source.

>God is the light in which I see.

God is light, as light is life. Without light nothing exists. Without light I would cease to exist.

>God is the Mind with which I think.

What awesome words. They echo through the millennia: God Is.

60 God is the love in which I forgive. God does not blame, any more than the sun blames him who hides in a cave.

God is the strength in which I trust. Should I trust the body, I am trusting in that which is fleeting and temporary, and anxiety is sure to follow--what happens when the body is gone? On the other hand, Martin Luther, a humble monk, could stand against the apparent might of the Catholic Church, because he knew well that "A mighty fortress is our God."

There is nothing to fear. I forgive, not because I was wronged, but because forgiveness is my ticket out of fear. I forgive out of selfishness!

God's voice speaks to me all through the day. Guidance is a constant, a thread that runs through every action of mine, every move I consider. I can turn a deaf ear, but guidance is there whenever I am willing to listen.

I am sustained by the love of God. Let me remember this today. I thought I was sustained by praise from others. I thought I was sustained by a fat bank account. I thought I was sustained by pretty things and expensive travel and a slick new car. But I am sustained by the love of God, the Giver of life.

Review of Lessons 46 to 50

God is the Love in which I forgive.

God is the love that envelops my brother and me.

God is the strength in which I trust.

No more do I rely on my own puny strength. Now God's on my team.

There is nothing to fear.

Because I have nothing to lose, not even my body, which is not who I am.

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

My constant companion, my Friend, my Beloved.

I am sustained by the Love of God.

God the Source, I the Effect.

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