CIM Lessons 180-186 and Miracles Principle #27

Miracles Principle #27: “A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive.” This is the first time that the person of Jesus appears in CIM. As our elder brother, and one who has mastered miracle-mindedness, Jesus serves as our Way Shower. Jesus says in CIM that our sleep is so profound that without his help, we could never wake ourselves from the illusion. (Remember, if this irks your ego, that Jesus is simply an aspect of your Self—of the One that we all are.) 

The miracle has its source in God. Jesus, being the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, brings the Love of God through us to the Sonship, bridging the imagined gulf between ourselves and God. As we forgive, we learn to accept our own innocence. It’s a circular process. It’s important to remember that Spirit does the miracles, not us. On the physical level, our job is only to clear our minds of what would interfere so that Spirit can extend God’s love through us.

Lesson 180: This is a review lesson and so will not be commented on.

Note: We’re now almost half finished with the Workbook. The overall goal of the lessons that follow is to strengthen our commitment. The immediate goal of our practicing is the experience of peace. The method of making such experience available is a focus on removing the remaining blocks to peace, even if just briefly from time to time. Jesus realizes that as yet our willingness is probably still a bit wobbly and our commitment less than complete. Thus he reminds us, “You are not asked for total dedication all the time as yet.” But each experience of peace, however brief, strengthens our motivation to press on.

Lesson 181: “I trust my brothers, who are one with me.” This lesson isn’t encouraging naïve blindness to people’s mistakes. It isn’t saying we should unlock our houses and cars, trusting no one will steal from us. It’s speaking of being aware of a person’s mistakes and taking them into practical account, while at the same time looking past them to their holiness. It’s encouraging us not to see the mistakes as sins to be punished. 

The block this lesson is helping us to lift, however briefly, is our focus on the sins of our brothers. It’s telling us not to look for what’s wrong in people but what’s right. When we focus on the sins of others, we block their true Self from our sight and, thereby, block the Self within us from our sight as well. The ego will tell us, “This isn’t working,” because we forgave our brother five minutes ago and spent the rest of the day dreaming up ways to make him suffer. But something is happening, and the ego tries to make us feel guilty because it knows this is so. Those five minutes when we lay our judgment aside bring us an experience of inner peace that we have never known before and thus our motivation to forgive begins to grow.

Lesson 182: “I will be still an instant and go home.” Notice how the thread about “instants,” “moments,” and “intervals” of stillness run through these lessons. They are all instructions in consciously setting aside short periods every day and attempting to enter the holy instant. The themes seem to differ, but the aim is always the same: a short suspension of whichever block to our awareness of love is being considered. The block being considered here is the temptation to find satisfaction in this world. We spend most of our lives trying to adjust to the world or to adjust the world to ourselves—to escape the pain of feeling like an alien—like ET—far, far from home. This lesson appeals to us to set that effort aside, if just for a brief moment, and to recognize the childlike voice within us that is crying to go Home.

Lesson 183: “I call upon God’s name and on my own.” God’s name symbolizes His Identity and our identity in Him. God’s name isn’t Jehovah or Krishna or Allah, though any of these symbols can be used to represent Him. The actual word we use doesn’t matter. It’s the concept of His Identity that is to be foremost in our minds. The practice outlined here is similar to practices in Eastern religions of repeating the Name of God over and over. The only difference is that the repetitions are to be silent and done “within your quiet mind” rather than aloud. The primary idea of the practice is that the thought of God replaces every other idea in our minds, and if other ideas enter, we can dispel them with God’s name. Instead of praying for any particular thing or person, we repeat the name of God, which includes them all. “No prayer but this is necessary, for it holds them all within it.” 

By focusing on God’s Identity, we loosen the hold that all lesser names/idols/concerns have on our minds. Although this kind of practice isn’t a major emphasis of CIM, it’s one means offered for helping us experience the holy instant. The lesson also encourages doing this practice with someone else, sitting together and repeating God’s name silently. This seems to have particular merit, for by it, we are told, we establish “an altar which reaches to God Himself.”

Lesson 184: “The Name of God is my inheritance.” Names are symbols designed to promote the illusion of separation. This is in contrast to our spiritual reality. The Name of God stands for the wholeness that we are. As CIM students, however, after we have begun to “go beyond all symbols of the world,” there is still reason for us to continue to use them because they aid us in our teaching function. We still continue, for instance, to call people by their names, to treat them as individuals with individual needs, but at the same time, we are “not deceived” by these apparent differences. The names and symbols of the world “become but means by which you can communicate in ways the world can understand, but which you recognize is not the unity where true communication can be found.” We then use the symbols of the world to communicate the fact of wholeness; we use symbols to undo symbols. Practicing the Name of God enables us to let go of “all foolish separations . . . which keep us blind” so that we may hold the vision of truth and wholeness for ourselves and for our brothers.

There is a potentially puzzling statement in this lesson: “Think not you made the world. Illusions, yes! But what is true in earth and Heaven is beyond your naming.” CIM has already told us numerous times that we made the world we see. So what does this mean? It means that the world that God created is still shimmering all “around” us in all its glorious perfection. The greatest grandeur on earth pales by comparison. The world we perceive is a mirage, a guilt-driven distortion of God’s world. And each brother we see is a bodiless, boundless spiritual Self who ultimately is the Christ Himself. Only this “brother” is real.

Lesson 185: “I want the peace of God.” This lesson teaches, seemingly, two opposing things. First that we don’t yet really mean it when we say, “I want the peace of God” because if we did, we’d have it. Second, that in spite of our obvious dedication to things other than peace, at heart we really do want peace. Everyone does, even those who seem to seek havoc and conflict. They may not be aware it’s the peace of God they’re seeking, but it’s true, nevertheless. Our opportunity in interacting with others is to remember this universal longing, even when they are totally unaware of it themselves. 

A primary point made in this lesson is that we cannot have peace alone. The temptation is to think, “I want peace; but so-and so is keeping me from it.” No one can disturb our peace unless we allow it. What we must recognize is that each person’s desire for peace is the same as our own. Our “job” is to see past the conflicting desires in the other person and in ourselves to the universal reality that lies underneath. By our faith in the other person’s intent, however hidden it may appear, we draw it out of them and give them the opportunity to recognize it within themselves. Herein lies the miracle.

Lesson 186: “Salvation of the world depends on me.” Wow, this one really seems to place an unreasonable burden on me. Yet CIM is uncompromising in this truth. If we want to experience our own wholeness, our own Self, we must accept that salvation of the world depends on us. Why? Because the nature of Who we are demands it. If I’m an extension of God, and if Love, which created me, is what I am, then how can I possibly accept that fact and not accept that my function is to give love to the world. Giving love is what Love does! The self-image we make is weak and helpless. It seems humble, but it is mountainous arrogance masquerading as humility because that image denies what God created us to be.  To experience my Self, I must let go of my plans for my self and surrender to the plan I did not make, trusting that everything I need to fulfill that plan has already been given me; trusting that I am worthy to be counted among the saviors of the world.

Assignment: Miracles Principle #28 (Text, Chapter One, page 5); Lessons 187-193. Read Text, Chapter 13, Section VIII, “From Perception to Knowledge,” pages 258-260. (The section begins with the words, “All healing is release from the past.”)

Practical Application: In quiet time, review in your mind all those who disturb your peace. They can be people you know personally or people you simply know of—political figures, criminals, celebrities, etc. As you bring each one to mind, affirm the truth of these lessons: “This brother/sister is still the holy innocence God created. He/she shares my longing for the peace of God.” If these words don’t work for you, ask Spirit to guide you in formulating your own.

Miracles Principle # 26 and Lessons 173-179

Miracles Principle #26: “Miracles represent freedom from fear. “Atoning” means “undoing.” The undoing of fear is an essential part of the Atonement value of miracles.” To look with the ego’s eyes is to look through the eyes of fear. We would never attack others if we were not afraid of them. Atoning is another word for correction. When we atone for “sin,” we undo the belief in it. We don’t make it real then try to undo it, which is the way the world (theological, psychological, etc.) generally reacts. CIM teaches that sins are punished; errors are corrected. This doesn’t mean we deny what we perceive as “wrong” or “unjust.” We don’t deny what we read in the newspapers or what people have done. Rather, we allow Spirit to shift our interpretation of people or events. Sins are punished by the ego. Mistakes are corrected by Spirit and thus undone.

Lessons 173-179 are all review lessons.

The purpose of these lessons is to prepare for Part II of the Workbook, which encourages us to give more time and effort to practicing in order to pick up our pace on our “journey without distance” to God.

You may choose to use the prayer in par. 2 and 3 to dedicate this review to God.

The central thought in this review is: “God is but Love, and therefore so am I.” The purpose of this review is to bring us to a place where we truly accept and experience the truth of this idea. I am simply an extension of God. He is Love. So am I. As you meditate on this idea, your whole focus is to wait in “silent expectancy” (W-pI.94.4:1). Your whole awareness is waiting for the dawn of realization. Hold this focus wordlessly as often as you can. When your mind wanders, as it will, gently keep bringing it back and repeating the central idea. There is a difference in simply reading the lesson and in affirming these ideas in faith—that even if we forget, stumble, or wander off, God will remember for us, raise us up, and call us back.

Assignment: Read Miracles Principle #27 and practice Workbook Lessons 180-186. Teacher’s Manual (last section of book), pages 38-39, “Is Each One To Be Judged in the End?”

Practical Application: Let’s make yet another attempt to release ourselves from guilt. Pick a time you feel you won’t be interrupted. Turn off your TV, your radio, your phone.

As a rule, we don’t encourage trips down memory lane, trips to the past. The only reason to revisit the past is to release it. That’s what we’ll attempt to do today.

Relax. Take a few deep breaths and center yourself in the sacred altar within you. Sit quietly and first repeat several times the central thought for this review section: “God is but love and therefore so am I.”

Recognize that, to date, you have been unable to see yourself as pure love, unable to release yourself from the guilt of your past “sins.” Acknowledge that, as a human ego, you will never be able to do so. With a genuine sense of releasing and turning this burden over to Spirit, bring to mind your first remembrance of “committing a sin.” You may have perceived your action or thought as a “sin” before you did it—or you may not have perceived it as a “sin” until someone chastised you. Now, ask Spirit to help you see this occurrence in a different way. Try to be open and willing to receive Spirit’s vision of the occurrence. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back. Briefly review the “sin” in your mind and ask Spirit to help you see it in a different way. The ego will fight you on this, heckle and attempt to distract you. With gentle equanimity, thank the ego for its input and tell it firmly that you’d like to see this in a different way. Stay with it until you feel a sense of peace bloom deep inside. When you feel that peace, bring to mind another dark “sin” that you continue to hold yourself accountable for and repeat the process. Continue this pattern of going through your list of “sins,” requesting to see them in a different way and waiting for a sense of peace.

CIM tells us that it’s keeping things in the dark that prevents our healing. Does this mean we need to confess our “sins” to our priest or our counselor or our spouse? Not necessarily. In fact, “confessions” to other “egos” may more often than not exacerbate guilt and turmoil. Meaningful and restorative “confessions” need only be made to Spirit because Spirit is the only One capable of true “judgment.” This is the judgment that will set us free. This is the judgment that we are the unalterable innocence and love of God.

CIM Lessons 166-172 and Miracles Principle #25

Miracles Principle #25: “Miracles are a part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. Atonement works all the time and in all the dimensions of time.” The word At-one-ment is a synonym for correction—the correction of our false sense of separation and the recognition of our Oneness with All That Is. God placed the Holy Spirit in our mind to restore our awareness of our unity with Him. CIM says our only responsibility is to accept the Atonement for ourselves. 

Through choosing the miracle, we are choosing to forgive. As we give, or for-give, we receive the knowledge of God’s forgiveness, or more accurately, God’s unconditional love in that God never judged us in the first place. The Circle of Atonement (Text, Ch. 14, Section V) is an ever-widening circle; we draw more and more people into it through our forgiveness. The phrase “all the dimensions of time” reflects the idea of the hologram. In forgiving you, I’m also forgiving all other people in my life, or in other lives, who have represented the same problem—the belief in separation and attack.

Lesson 166—“I am entrusted with the gifts of God.” This lesson encourages us to move forward, past the illusion of ourselves to the Truth of us. I trust God’s trust in me. What I fear is that trust in God is treachery. I’m attached to this world I’ve made. To be  told my actions, my “sins,” are without effect is demeaning to my ego. There’s a part of each of us that wants to be a “tragic” figure. “Behold how nobly I withstand the slings and arrows of my brother.” (Poor thing, so weary and worn.)

Jesus’ response to this image is: “(Christ) would make you laugh at this perception of yourself.” Jesus wants me to see the humor of my position, pleading tragedy when I’ve deliberately chosen to be what I appear to be. When we learn to laugh at this sorry figure, it just disappears. Who has more chance of being right, you or God? Perhaps His gifts to us are real. What have we got to lose to find out? “God’s will does not oppose. It just is.” You’re not fighting with God, nor is He fighting with you.  What we are fighting is reality itself. Thinking you’re separate from God is about as rational as a drop of water deciding it’s not in the ocean any more. It’s like a lion deciding it wants to be a mouse.

The thrust of CIM is basically threefold: accepting 1) the nature of the true Self; 2) the knowledge of God’s uninterrupted companionship; and and 3)that the nature we’ve realized/accepted is that of Giver, Lover. To know we have this gift, we must give it. We must teach by showing “the happiness that comes to those who feel the touch of Christ.” Our mission is just that: to be happy! To accept our gifts!

Lesson 167: “ There is one life, and that I share with God.” God is eternal Life. As a part of God, we are, too. To cease living would be to separate from God, to become His opposite. Since God has no opposite, there is no death. That “Ideas leave not their source” is central to CIM. Ideas don’t exude out from the mind and take on an independent existence. The idea that thoughts “manifest” in physical form is, ultimately, not true since there is no physical form. Death is an idea—an erroneous idea that we can choose to let go of. I am an idea in God’s Mind. I cannot depart from God’s Mind, live independently of Him. I can only imagine I’m doing it.

What is death? Any feeling that is not supremely happy. To be less than perfectly happy is to assert there is something other than God, something other than Love. CIM isn’t suggesting we start walking around like a “bliss idiot”—living in denial of the pain and suffering of our lives and those around us. Rather, it’s encouraging the opposite. It’s encouraging us to start noticing just how much the idea of death influences us. It’s inviting us to notice those little sighs of weariness, those twinges of anxiety, and recognize that the idea of death underlies them all. They express the idea that separation from God is real, that something other than God exists, opposing and nullifying His Will. It’s only when we recognize we’re responsible for those death thoughts that we can truly understand they have no reality except in our own mind.

Seeing beyond the illusion can only happen as a result of taking responsibility for the illusion. Christ is there, in every person, and we are capable of seeing Him there. You are quite capable, when you choose to do so, of tearing down the barriers that block your sight. The way to spiritual sight, the way to see Christ in a brother, is to become aware of all the screens you are throwing up, all the illusions you’re projecting from your own mind that block true vision. Paradoxically, you don’t see the Christ within your brother by squinting and trying to pretend he’s a loving being. You see the Christ in him by looking at your own mind, your own thoughts, which are the barrier to vision. With the help of Spirit, you will see that the picture you hold of your brother originated entirely in your own mind. It’s the sum total of your own judgments solidified into an opinion. And that is all. 

The process of seeing the Christ within is similar to tuning out static in a radio with electronic filters. There’s a signal you want to hear, but too much static prevents its being hear. You identify the static, isolate it, electronically “instruct” your equipment to ignore it, and the clear signal comes through. You are looking at the ego and its thoughts of death, identifying them, and deciding to ignore them because they come from an undependable source.

Lesson 168—“Your grace is given me. I claim it now.” What is grace? Grace is a gift, always available, awaiting only my acknowledgment. It’s the movement of love that woos us back to our Source. It’s the reminder of God’s unspeakable and endless Love, assuaging our guilt and calling us gently Home.  Grace is everything we need to bring us Home, in whatever form that may take.

Lesson 169—“By grace I live. By grace I am released.” CIM says grace is “an aspect of the Love of God which is most like the state prevailing in the unity of truth.” It’s learning to live with full conscious awareness of Love’s Presence while in the physical world. It’s learning to see through the illusion to the Truth. Learning doesn’t give us grace but rather prepares us to receive it. Grace is always there, ready to pour in. We don’t have to do anything to bring it, but we do have to progress through (un)learning to remove our unwillingness to receive it. CIM, which is really unlearning, prepares us to receive grace by loosening the grip of ego on our minds. We don’t realize the extent to which our minds have been “shut tight against God’s Voice.” That is what we must learn. “Forgiveness, taught and learned brings with it” the experience of grace.

Trying to understand how “what is to come” (enlightenment, awakening, which is in our future as we perceive it) “is already past” can be fascinating but also confusing and overwhelming. We’re still in time, so we need to be practical. It’s good to think about this a little, but to do so is not our main task. Our main task is forgiveness. Here’s where many CIM students like to bring up the quote from Course, “I need do nothing.” How do these two things jive? I need do nothing means I only need to offer the “little willingness” for Spirit to do the work through me.

Experiences of grace come and go. We experience being outside of time “but for a little while.” These experiences, which come in moments of true forgiveness, are all we need for now. The holy instants, the “little while” of each forgiveness experience, opens us to miracles. It’s the way miracles flow into our lives, “to be returned by you from instants you receive, through grace in your experience, to all who see the light that lingers in your face.” The face of Christ is your face. It’s my face. It’s the light we bring back into the world from holy instants. That is our function in the world: to bring a clear reflection of Heaven’s unity back from the holy instant to bless the world.

Our brothers around us in the world, “unknowing, unawakened,” are our own thoughts in form. They are “a part of you” which “remains outside.” The holy instant is a moment in which we’re aware of the Oneness. We “come back” to bring the gifts of grace to that part of our self that is still not awake. To want Heaven for myself while leaving my brother behind is the “unaskable.” It flies in the face of what Heaven is: the awareness of Oneness. Some react as if the mass of humanity is holding them back. Such a thought is based on a consciousness of separation and is totally alien to Heaven and to grace. The world you see is not a force separate from you. It’s a reflection of your own resistance that has yet to be unlearned.

The world is not outside your mind but in it. Your salvation is the world’s salvation. They are not two separate things. You save the world by changing your own mind because that is where the world is, in your mind. And there is only one mind, only one of us here. When you’re at a movie, if there’s a problem on the screen, you don’t run to the screen to fix it; you find the projector and fix that. Those “unenlightened people” you see out there are parts of your own mind that you haven’t recognized as part of you. You don’t bring them around, so to speak, by trying to fix them. You do it by working with the projector, your own mind. This can be perceived as a reason to feel overpowering guilt, which is what the ego wills, or it can be perceived as the gift of inalienable freedom, which is God’s will. The choice is ours.

Lesson 170—“There is no cruelty in God and none in me.” Our attempts at defending ourselves are what make external attack seem real. We fear because we believe, somewhere deep in our hearts, that we have attacked and deserve retaliation for our attack. We believe that “to hurt another brings (us) freedom.” This belief lies beneath every attack we see as self-defense. But no matter how hard we try to justify our attacks, something in us knows that our intent is to hurt the other person because we believe that hurting them will somehow free us from something. In a nutshell, we believe we’re inherently cruel.

We project this unacceptable belief onto someone or something external. We see the attack as coming form outside ourselves, outside our own minds. In reality, there’s nothing outside our minds. Taken to the extreme, this “worship” of fear and cruelty ends up being projected onto God Himself; we see Him as a vengeful God, poised to punish us for our own cruelty. CIM says to lay down our own defenses is the only way to discover that the threat isn’t real. We have no reason to fear. We are not cruel; we cannot be because God Who created us has no cruelty in Him.

The “god” of fear has no life. It cannot save us. To realize our trusted method of securing safety is worthless can be a terrifying moment. The missile silos in which we’ve placed all our trust are pointed at our own hearts.

Lessons 171 and 172 are reviews.

Assignment: Miracles Principle #26 and Lessons 173-179. Read Text, Chapter 21, Section II, The Responsibility for Sight. (The section begins “We have repeated how little is asked of you to learn this course.)

Practical Application: Pick one brother whom you’ve not entirely forgiven. His or her name will jump immediately to your mind. Determine to do daily “work” with Spirit regarding this brother. Ask daily, genuinely, to have Spirit have you see this “disowned” part of your self in a different way. 

CIM Lessons 159-165 and Miracles Principle #24

Miracles Principle #24: “Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both. You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator. Everything else is your own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the creations of light are real.” We made the body and the body’s laws—aging, genetics, nutritional requirements, etc.—and we can unmake them by withdrawing our investment or belief in them. Spirit does not heal because Spirit did not make the body sick. We get sick by projecting the guilt in our minds onto our bodies, and forgiveness brings us back to health. What Spirit does is heal the guilt in our minds that made the body sick. This is an important distinction so we don’t fall into the trap of asking Spirit’s help for things in the material world. All that does is make the world of illusion “real.” The only meaningful prayer, therefore, is a prayer of thanksgiving for who and what we are. We are capable of creating in the likeness of God, which is on the level of spirit. Nothing else exists. Everything else is nothing but a dream.

The goal of CIM is not to awaken from the dream. The goal is to change the nightmare into a happy dream. In the Happy Dream, we still live within this world of illusions, but no longer project any guilt onto it. That is living in this world with what is called “true perception.” This is what the Course calls living in the “real world.” When we attain the Happy Dream, CIM says God takes the last step Himself, and that is what finally awakens us from the dream.

Lesson 159—“I give the miracles I have received.” We enter frequently into a holy instant. There, we experience a little taste of Heaven. While we can’t carry this experience back into the physical world, we can carry back what that experience is like, translated into perception. This is called “the vision of Christ,” which is manifested in forgiveness. We accept God’s mercy, experienced in the holy instant, and in turn extend that mercy to our brothers. We cannot become fully aware of what we have received in a holy instant until we give it away. The extension of Christ’s vision is an integral part of salvation (aka happiness). It’s what brings us to certainty. It’s similar to the principle taught by AA, that you stay sober by helping someone else stay sober.

Lesson 160—“I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.” “Fear” is virtually synonymous with “ego.” The picture in this lesson is that we’ve invited fear, personified as a stranger, into our house, and the stranger has taken over and declared that he is us. The insane part is that we’ve gone along with the stranger, accepted that the stranger is really us. Having habituated ourselves to fear, we believe our thoughts and feelings of anger or loneliness or helplessness are us. Yet these manifestations of fear are an interloper, not a genuine part of us at all. When we make this distinction, we can begin to relate to our fear rather than from it. When I relate from fear, I’m in its grips; the fear is me. When I relate to my fear, I can look on it with dispassionate mercy. I can say, “I’m having thoughts of fear” or “I am experiencing fear.” I am the thinker who’s thinking the thoughts, but I’m not the thoughts. When we can separate ourselves from the fear we feel, we can identify with our true Self. This new vision of ourselves, however, of necessity, includes everyone. It’s as if God has given us a pair of glasses and said, “Here, put these on, and you will see your true Self.” But when we discover that, in putting them on, we see not only ourselves in a new light but everyone, we rebel. We want to see ourselves as innocent, but we are unwilling to see everyone that way. If we refuse to see those around us as innocent, we’ll put down the glasses, refuse the vision of Christ, and will not be able to recognize our Self. “You will not remember Him until you look on all as He does.”

Lesson 161—“Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.” When my brother or a circumstance causes me anger, instead of listening to the ego and agreeing that the brother or circumstance is the cause of my anger, let me see that the brother is giving me a blessing by revealing to me that I‘ve forgotten who I am. If I’m seeing something that makes me angry or upset, it’s because I wish to see it. My mind has separated from the Love of God, or thinks it has. Thereby, it splinters reality, sees specific forms that seem to justify my upset. It sees fragments rather than the whole picture, as God does. If I ask, however, Spirit will take the specific circumstances I’ve made and use them to teach me a different point of view. What I see when I see a brother as a body attacking me is my own fear external to myself, poised to attack. If I allow Spirit to show me my brother as he is, instead of how my fear made him, what I see will be so awesome I’ll want to kneel at his feet in adoration.

Lesson 162—“I am as God created me.” For the third time we encounter as the main thought of a lesson what may be the single most repeated thought in the Course. Why is this idea so important? “This single thought, held firmly in mind, would save the world.” We are not what we made of ourselves. Our mistakes have not changed the truth about us. Our entire spiritual journey is characterized in terms of this idea: “You but emerge from an illusion of what you are to the acceptance of yourself as God created you.” (T-24.II.14:5). To acknowledge “I am as God created me” is to recognize the Son of God. It is to be free of guilt. It is to know the innocence of every living thing.

Lesson 163—“The is no death. The Son of God is free.” When Course says there is no death, it’s not talking about death of the body. How could what never lived live forever? CIM says that to accept the idea of death is to proclaim God’s impotence. Each apparent instance of death is a witness that God is dead. It says He Who wills life could not stop this death, so He must be dead. We may respond by saying we don’t want to believe God is dead. We don’t want to die. But CIM says anger is a death thought—a wish that something or someone “go away” or “not be.” So we try to compromise. We want to hold certain death thoughts but not others. The lesson says if death exists at all, it totally contradicts life and cannot be true unless life is proven false. If we say death is real in any form, we’re saying the God, Who wills only life, is dead. Here we find an echo of the words from the Introduction: ‘Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.” Life cannot be threatened. Death does not exist. If we truly saw that worry about physical death, sadness, anger, etc. are all just forms of the idea that God is dead, we would laugh at them.

At the same time, CIM does not advocate pretending death is not real in the illusion. Denying grief is simply not healthy. Rather, as Course so often suggests, I can simply look at what I’m feeling and recognize that, however real my loss feels, it’s based on a denial of truth. I can remind myself that I’m believing God is dead and that’s just a foolish notion. This pain, which I’m indeed feeling, is therefore not real. I’m okay, and God is still alive. You might call this lucid dreaming. Although the experience you’re going through feels terribly real, there’s part of you that is aware you’re dreaming.  All CIM asks is that we recognize our mistaken thoughts, that they are proclaiming an untruth—that God is dead. If we do that, Spirit will do the rest.

Lesson 164—“Now we are one with Him Who is our Source.” Recent lessons are reaching for some new kind of level. There’s consistent emphasis on the holy instant. We’re being asked to listen to “the song of Heaven,” the call of our hearts to God and His to ours—a call that is continually beckoning beyond all the sounds of this world. We practice setting aside the sights and sounds of the world that constantly witness to us the ego’s message of fear. We quiet ourselves and try to get in touch with the “silence into which the world cannot intrude.” Such practicing puts our minds in a state of peace and joy, a place of assurance that despite all seeming evidence to the contrary, all is well. It may be difficult at this juncture to fully understand how such practicing can “save the world.” Yet it is so because all minds are joined.  The effect on the world proceeds whether or not we are aware of it.

Lesson 165—“Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.” Current lessons are a strong encouragement to move forward—past the point of hesitation and into a firm commitment. We need to become disillusioned with the ego to the point that we begin to see through its games. We don’t see the real world because we don’t want to. Because we still believe the ego has something of value to offer us. Jesus appeals to us to deny not Heaven. He says it is ours but for the asking. Now the ego is carping in our ears something like, “You don’t know what you’re getting into here. How do you know you’ll like it? You’d better be sure before you make a move, buster.” Course says we don’t have to be sure before asking because “conviction lies within it.” In other words, we don’t find the conviction, the certainty, until we experience Heaven, and we can’t experience Heaven till we ask. Certainty is not something we can generate for ourselves. “We count on God, and not upon ourselves, to give us certainty.” But for that to happen, we have to be willing to “die” to the experience of life we know now and to ask for something more. We need to be willing to ask that “the Thought of God” enter our minds and displace the distortions.

Assignment: Read Miracles Principle #25. Practice Lessons 166-172. In the Text, read pages 380-388 (“The Little Willingness,” which begins with “The holy instant is the result of your determination, etc.; ”The Happy Dream;” and “Beyond the Body.”)

Also, please remember to bring to class passages from CIM that have been especially meaningful or especially puzzling or challenging for you.