Hi there,
50 mph winds are doing their thing outside, my goodness, our poor little doggie, almost swept away by their ferocity as we let her out to do her business. I was kidding, but these seemingly dangerous conditions are not unlike the ego thought system in its intensity to meet its goal by rendering us always mindless, oblivious to the power of decision to choose differently.
As Ken Wapnick speaks to review of Lesson 21:
“…if we think we are looking on a world of light, peace, and joy, we will believe we understand God, Jesus, and, unfortunately, his course. Acknowledging that what we see “are the signs of disease, disaster and death” is the beginning of the humility that reaches to Wisdom. We begin by denying the ego’s thought system of denial, and gradually, step by step, we are led by Jesus to understand that spirit and ego are mutually exclusive states, and so are love and hate, life and death, joy and pain. To make one real is to deny the other.”
“Once having learned to tell the difference between form and content, we call upon our new Teacher to help us see truly, the vision of Christ that reminds us who we are – along with our brothers – as God’s one Son.”
His thoughts on Lesson 22:
“If we think we see a loving world, we will believe there are only loving thoughts within and so we will not look at the unloving ones. By not looking, the unloving thoughts remain buried in our minds, and whatever is buried has the terrible habit of finding its way out – the dynamic of projection – and attacking everyone else. That is why it is important to see the world for what it is and recognize its source. Only when we look with Jesus at the unloving thoughts in our minds and forgive them, will we realize that underneath the unloving thoughts and concealed by them are the loving ones we always had.”
“The problem is the perception. It is not the world. Disease, disaster, and death do not exist out there, because there is no out there. They exist in a mind that is filled with guilt, hatred and terror. Therefore it is the perception that has to be changed, not the world…”.
“Our perception is changed by first bringing it back from its projected form to its source, the mind. Only then, as we have already seen, can we exercise the mind’s power of decision and choose the loving thought of the Atonement instead of the unloving thought of separation.”
Lesson 23:
To the first five sentences in this review, he writes, “One could not ask for a more explicit statement of salvation. We are not saved from the world or from some abstract sense of sin, but from our own thoughts. Joined with his gentle laughter at the silliness of the ego’s thought system of attack, we watch its thoughts slowly dissolve into their own nothingness. Looking out, we perceive only “peace and safety and joy,” the world of forgiveness given form.”
Lesson 24:
When mired in ego, Ken writes, “What we think is best is always some glorification, gratification, or anything that will preserve our illusory identity as an individual “I”.
“Humility says, “I do not know, I do not understand, but thank God there is Someone in me who does, and thank God He is right and I am wrong.”
Lesson 25:
“I have used the world to fulfill my purpose of proving I am right, i.e., that the illusion about my individuality is the truth. This means I killed God so I could exist. However, in my right mind I understand how I have used the world to fulfill the purpose of making attack real and justified. If I am to exist, everyone has to be sacrificed to my selfish desire. If I am trying to do it to you – since everyone out there is part of the dream I made up – I know you are trying to do the same thing to me. This inevitably produces a world of fear, not safety, for our guilt can only cause a world of perceived punishment and death. But now I gladly choose otherwise.”
“In other words, again, we have to say (and mean!) that we were wrong. Only then can we recognize the world’s true purpose of forgiveness, the pathway that leads us home through the power of our mind to decide for God instead of against Him.”
I find Ken’s comments to be most helpful and it is evident in everything I have ever read that he has written or on his videos that we have to look at the darkness, without analyzing it, dissecting it, aggrandizing it, etc., just look at it with the Holy Spirit or Jesus, desire to see whatever it is differently and ask for help in releasing and forgiving it.
Lesson 23 speaks to this. The three step process. It is that simple.
When I have time today, I will share a practical application example from my own life from yesterday.
Love to all,
Gayle
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