A Course in Miracles Workbook Daily Lesson 268, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 268 Let all things be exactly as they are. 1. Let me not be Your critic, Lord, today, and judge against You.

Lesson 268

Let all things be exactly as they are.

1. Let me not be Your critic, Lord, today, and judge against You. ²Let me not attempt to interfere with Your creation, and distort it into sickly forms. ³Let me be willing to withdraw my wishes from its unity, and thus to let it be as You created it. ⁴For thus will I be able, too, to recognize my Self as You created me. ⁵In love was I created, and in love will I remain forever. ⁶What can frighten me, when I let all things be exactly as they are?

2. Let not our sight be blasphemous today, nor let our ears attend to lying tongues. ²Only reality is free of pain. ³Only reality is free of loss. ⁴Only reality is wholly safe. ⁵And it is only this we seek today.

I will not let my personal wishes interfere with creation.

Here is one way I practice letting things be exactly as they are. I recognize that what I see reflects the thoughts and beliefs in my mind. I remember that Jesus says this.

 It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing. ²You think you think them, and so you think you see them. ³This is how your “seeing” was made. ⁴This is the function you have given your body’s eyes. ⁵It is not seeing. ⁶It is image making. ⁷It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions. (ACIM, W-15.1:1-7)

And he also says this.

¹³There are no idle thoughts. ¹⁴All thinking produces form at some level. (ACIM, T-2.VI.9:13-14)

These ideas, as well as others along the same line that Jesus shares with us in the Course explain that my thoughts matter very much. The thoughts that are not true can make a whole world. So, even though they make nothing real, what they make is real to the maker, so they are not without power. This is why I want to be careful about the thoughts I think I think. I want to be careful of the form that they are producing.

Here is an example of thoughts taking form.

⁴The thought of sacrifice gives rise to all the forms that suffering appears to take. (ACIM, W-187.7:4)

This is an example of a thought that I don’t want to take form in my life. So, for instance, today, I am going to my daughter’s house to give her a break from my granddaughter. I’m happy to spend time with my granddaughter and happy to help my daughter, but I have some things I could be doing instead. This can lead to a feeling of sacrifice so that instead of feeling good about the visit, I start to resent it.

The effect will be that I don’t enjoy myself. The form will symbolize the belief in victimhood and that I am unfairly treated. It will also be that I have strengthened my belief in sacrifice and will produce more experiences of sacrifice in my life.

Or, I can let things be as they are.

When I notice these kinds of thoughts, I choose again. Very quickly, I instruct my mind that I am not interested in sacrifice and suffering. I decide instead that I am looking forward to this visit, and I smile and let the truth of that wash over me. I relax about the other things I could be doing and what I thought I should be doing, and trust that everything will get done in perfect timing.

In making this choice, I am letting all things be as they are. I am letting God’s Will that I be happy and peaceful be done. I am not fighting Him about this, insisting that sacrifice is real and unavoidable, that somehow the feeling of sacrifice is forced on me by others and thus others can decide if I am happy or not. In so doing, I am relaxing the personal will and letting it fall away in exchange for my true will, which is one with the Will of God. I can do this with all negative thoughts that I notice. It’s easy, and it’s worth the small effort it takes, both for me and the Sonship.

We are encouraged to place our attention on only what is true.

One time, I was anemic from blood loss that happened after a procedure. While the symptoms were still apparent, I had the opportunity to notice my reactions. The following is the entry in my journal about this.

For a while, I was unconcerned. I understood the problem, and I chose to make the best of it. I used the time to rest and practice meditation and contemplation. When I seemed to be taking excessive time to recover, I began to worry that something else was wrong. At that point, my attention had gone to the body, and I no longer felt safe.

Again, I decided to use the situation as an opportunity to look at that tendency in myself and to let it go. So, then my mind was focused on the truth again. While worried about the body, I felt like the body; that is, I identified with the body, and therefore I was prone to fear.

When I changed my mind, I remembered that I am not the body and that what I am cannot be endangered. As long as my mind was focused on the truth, I just let the body be, and I was fine. When I worried about the body, I was not letting things be as they were, and, in my worry, I suffered.

The following are ways that I learned not to interfere with God.

These are entries from my Daily Lesson Journals. This one was in 2015.

It is good to read this lesson today as I needed to see exactly what I have been doing. I have an issue at work that keeps popping up even though I thought I had allowed healing. I see that I have been thinking of the people involved as being separate from each other, with each having their own separate interests. Once I do that, I lose sight of our shared interest, which is awakening.

Yesterday I was with one of the people involved, and everything went smoothly and lovingly. A few hours later, I was driving alone and suddenly realized that the ego was trying to make a case for going back into fear, and this was despite the success of the meeting. The part of my mind that wants to hold onto separation keeps my attention with stories of millions of separate beings, each moving in different directions, always motivated by lack and competition. I am grateful to learn to disengage from that identity by being vigilant for ego thinking and asking for correction.

Holy Spirit is helping me.

He helps me to remember that this shattered picture is a cosmic joke I have played upon myself. He helps me to see that Mind is whole, and I am that Mind, not this little sliver of self I have claimed to be me. I am Mind stepping into this Myron identity for a moment to see what “less than” looks like.

When I meet another of my identities, it is to interact with my Self. It is Christ meeting Christ while playing at being human. It is one Mind considering many angles of the same impossibility. And It makes me laugh to think of it. I know I will slip back into my role as Myron and probably lose sight of what is really happening, but I will never forget it completely.

Holy Spirit, I am willing to let creation be as it is. I need Your help because I don’t have a lot of practice doing this, and I keep reverting back to the ego, thinking that it should be different. I give you the situation at work and ask that You help me to see within it what You see. And I will continue to be vigilant for thoughts that indicate I am trying to take over again. My way does not work. I am willing to see that and to choose differently.

This one happened in 2016.

I am happy to say that the situation at work has been resolved. Of course, some other relationship issues have arisen. I suppose that will keep happening until I decide to let God be God and stop trying to interfere with reality. My problem has been that I have recently looked at the world I made and believed what I saw was reality. That can’t be true. First of all, I see what I think, so what I see is not reality but the effect of separation thoughts. With my mind, I made images to represent the fear and guilt in my mind and then projected these images as situations in my life. I use the body to experience them.

It is possible to make different images because I have different thoughts.

Yes, the ego thoughts of separation are in my mind, but my real thoughts are there as well. I have the thoughts I think with God. This is the Holy Spirit’s corrected version, and I could choose those images as easily as I make the images of fear and guilt. So why don’t I do that instead? Why don’t I choose images that represent happiness and freedom? Of course, I do sometimes, and my life seems very good, indeed. But then I tend to fall back into ego thinking and image making.

Here is what I am doing to stop this insanity.

I notice fear thoughts like I have when I think of my son, whose life has been filled with drama lately. And I notice how afraid I am for him. So, I watch what happens. I feel sad and weepy. I feel like I want desperately to fix him. It seems I need him to be happy so I can be happy. I want to shake him and make him be somewhere different in his journey, a happier place. I become angry with him and then feel guilty and worse than ever. Seeing these reactions, I know that I have interfered with creation. There is no way that God would create something so dark and twisted.

Knowing this, I remind myself that I have light in my mind, and so I ask the Holy Spirit to help me. I ask that he remove the dark thoughts from my mind so that I can become aware of the joyful, loving thoughts. It feels like a real battle going on in my mind at times. It feels impossible at times. And yet, I know this can’t be true.

We are not weak and helpless.

It is through the power of God that was given me in my creation that we could make this alternate universe, and this same power can undo what we did. Just at this moment, this one little thought of discouragement can be undone. I see it, and I see how it makes me feel. I can decide I want to be happy instead, and I allow the miracle to occur.

This is how it is done, each one of us looking at the effects of wrong-minded thinking and making new decisions, and allowing the miracle to transform our world. This is the way we can stop interfering with creation. We choose the true thoughts instead of the ego thoughts. Simple as that. When it feels hard, we realize that we have been distracted by the story and by the fear and that this changes nothing in reality. True thoughts remain true and available to us. It is just a matter of vigilance and practice.

And now it is different.

Over time, I have learned not to interfere with God. And when I become tempted to do so, I notice and choose again. Just yesterday, I had that opportunity. My son is staying with me for a while, and mostly it is a joy to have this time with him. But, again, his life is filled with drama. Here is how it is different for me, though. Yesterday things didn’t go as expected for him, and he felt dejected. I thought that I hoped he would get settled somewhere else so I could return to my normal peaceful existence.

Of course, right away, I saw the fallacy of this. Would God have created a world where I was the victim of my son’s moodiness? I laughed at this silly idea and let it go. I am happy because I decide on happiness, not because my son is happy. And he cannot be the cause of my unhappiness. I will not act as if someone outside me can affect how I feel. The uncomfortable feelings fell away after forgiving the idea that this could be true. And peace was restored in my mind just as God intended.

Contemplation 2025