Good morning!
I think I will write to all of you twice today, once to share what Ken Wapnick has to say about this lesson and, secondly, my own difficulty in practicing it.
OK, here we go, note I am sharing excerpts from his take in his book, Journey through the Workbook of ACIM:
“Jesus is now helping us realize that before we can say “I am determined to see differently,” we have to understand our thoughts, which is why he asks us to get in touch with them. In other words, vision can come only by undoing our thoughts of anger, or correcting our mistaken decision for the ego. Saying no to the ego is the way of learning to see.”
“We think that what arouses anger in us is what people do or fail to do, but what truly arouses our anger is the need to project responsibility for the separation. When I see it out there (anger in any form)-because I put it there-I believe I am justified in getting angry; a neat trick, at which we all are pretty expert. It matters not whether I am enraged or only mildly annoyed. Either way I am saying that my well being depends on something or someone external. In the absence of that special object I will be upset, and it will not be my fault.”
The following is Ken’s response to the sentence in the lesson where Jesus states, “It is merely an example of the belief that some forms of attack are more justified than others.”
“For the first time we see a specific example of the principle that there is no hierarchy of illusions. Jesus uses anger as the example because it is so central to the ego’s thought system. Everyone walks around angry, because everyone walks around guilty over the separation and not wanting to accept responsibility for it. Thus again, before we can be determined to see things differently, we have to recognize and understand the interference to seeing things differently; there is something out there-whether in our own body or another’s- that causes us pain that is not of our doing. In other words, our thoughts have no power, and thus cannot cause us distress. Someone else has brought this upset about, or some disease or circumstance. We are innocent, the helpless victim of forces beyond our control.”
Finally:
Jesus states, “Try to be as specific as possible” at the lesson’s end. Ken writes:
The above sentence “is the key here. Our temptation will often be to gloss over the specific forms of upset of our life, unconsciously trying to deny them as the means of denying their source. Thus our ego would get us twice: first by teaching us to deny our guilt, and then to deny its specific defense of anger.”
I hope this helps you, when I read it this morning as I was drying my hair, I found it immeasurably so and now that I have actually inputted it, I am doubly blessed.
With much, much love for all of you,
Gayle
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