A Course in Miracles Workbook Daily Lesson 272, Year 2022

ACIM Daily Lesson 272 How can illusions satisfy God’s Son? 1. Father, the truth belongs to me. ²My home is set in Heaven by Your Will and mine.

Lesson 272

How can illusions satisfy God’s Son?

1. Father, the truth belongs to me. ²My home is set in Heaven by Your Will and mine. ³Can dreams content me? ⁴Can illusions bring me happiness? ⁵What but Your memory can satisfy Your Son? ⁶I will accept no less than You have given me. ⁷I am surrounded by Your Love, forever still, forever gentle and forever safe. ⁸God’s Son must be as You created him.

2. Today we pass illusions by. ²And if we hear temptation call to us to stay and linger in a dream, we turn aside and ask ourselves if we, the Sons of God, could be content with dreams, when Heaven can be chosen just as easily as hell, and love will happily replace all fear.

Let us not linger in dreams.

Jesus is asking us to consider if we want to be content with dreams or if we want to remember who we are. He also assures us that we are forever safe and surrounded by Love, however it might appear. He then instructs us to pass illusions by and tells us what to do if temptation calls to us to linger in a dream. All that we need to choose Heaven is right here in this lesson if we want to use it.

I cannot be content with dreams anymore. I know that the world is a dream, as is this story it seems that I am living. Therefore, I cannot be really living it. That is good news, indeed! I know how to awaken from this dream and how to stay awake. I have lots of simple processes to use to help me out of a dream story that has caught my attention, and I use them. Now that I have more peace than chaos in my life, I find I cannot tolerate drama anymore. So I gladly release it to the Holy Spirit.

I Will Not Yield to a False Belief

Here is one thing I am doing today. I have a problem with my foot that sometimes causes me pain. When that happens, I might get pulled into the story of pain and suffering, but I don’t stay there. I notice the thoughts in my mind and the feelings I have when this happens, and I look at it with the Holy Spirit so it can be undone. Then I replace those thoughts with something truer. Sometimes, the issue is simple for me and requires only a quick thought. But sometimes, it seems to be stickier, so I must instruct my mind more fully.

Here is how this was done recently.

In response to my reaction to pain, I said there is but one power, the power of God. Pain is not real, and I will not yield to the belief that it is. Through the power of God within me, I declare this body is healthy and pain-free.

I use a simple one when I am in pain or sick. “Myron, your sins are forgiven.” Here is another forgiveness process I use. Someone I love very much is suffering from depression and anxiety. When I looked at this with the Holy Spirit and asked for correction, I had a new thought about the situation. I forgive the way I see this man. God did not create him depressed and anxious. He is forever as God created him.

It is important that I be conscious of my thoughts because all thought produces form. And as Lesson 15 tells us, my thoughts are images that I have made. I want only to make images that reflect God, so I pay attention, and I choose those. Healing, whether mental, emotional, or physical, is always about correcting our thoughts, and I intend to correct mine each time I notice I am making images that lie about who we are.

I wrote the following at the end of May in 2019.

So much has changed, but I will get to that in the postscript.

I think that I don’t need to be convinced that I cannot be satisfied with illusions, nor do I need to be convinced I could experience Heaven instead. But if that is so, why am I still here? Why do I linger in the dream? What does it have to offer me that I would trade eternity for time and divinity for humanity? It doesn’t seem reasonable or even sane.

When I reflect on the day, I see that it is the most mundane things that keep my attention. I seem to think this battle with my body for size, shape, and health needs to be won. Could it possibly be that I still want to win, that I want to be right, and that this desire is stronger than my desire to be happy? My belief that fear is real and can be ignored only at my peril is another anchor to the illusion.

These are the kinds of things I watch for in my mind.

I watch for them so that I can understand what is holding me bound to this illusion and so that I can then make a different decision and release these ideas. The beliefs themselves cause suffering, and that keeps me interested in the illusions. If I stop being interested in them, they will not show up for me, and my experience will change.

Even who I think I am in this body is a matter of thought. I have had brief moments in time in which I stopped thinking and, in those moments, I, as I know myself, ceased to be. I always start thinking again, and when I do, the I that I know as Myron reinstates itself. Another way of saying this is that I think myself into existence. Who am I when I am not thinking Myron? Could I be life itself? Or, as expressed in the Course, could I be the Self, which God created?

I was reading something like this in a Gina Lake book, All Grace, and here is how it is phrased there: But because the experience of the Truth is often uncomfortable since it is unfamiliar, most people quickly return to creating themselves through thought. This is fascinating how you do this! You create yourself by thinking about yourself! But the self you create lives only in your imagination and in other people’s imaginations (although differently), as they also share in the great illusion.

Is this any different than what Jesus tells us in the Course?

The world, including our bodies, are an illusion. Lesson 325 tells us this:

All things I think I see reflect ideas.

1. This is salvation’s keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. 2 From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. 3 These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own.

It tells us that we can make a different world, a kindly world where we can rest a while. We do this with different thoughts, forgiving thoughts.

So whatever it is that we have presently made of ourselves, we can make something different. We can forgive these ego ideas that have made this world and this self, and with a healed mind, we will make a healed self. We will still be thinking ourselves into existence, but we will be thinking a better, truer version of ourselves until we are done with the illusion altogether. Another way to envision this is to realize that as the mind heals, the Self will take the place of the self we made in its place.

PS: Now, just a short time later, everything changed.

There was still stuff to undo, but it became simple and easy to do so. Like this morning, I had slept restlessly, and on awakening, my thoughts were restless. I had a lot to do and so I lay there in bed making plans and feeling anxious. Suddenly, I realized what had happened, and I told the Holy Spirit that I am choosing again, this time for Him. I surrendered my day to him and asked Him to let me know how he wanted to use this day. Immediately, peace returned to my mind, and my day was just lovely.

Regina’s Tips on What Is Christ?

Temporary appearances are made of consciousness. They are an extension of consciousness just as consciousness is an extension of source. Yet on the surface, they appear to be something other than consciousness. They appear to be thousands upon thousands, actually billions of different names and forms. The temporary things they appear to be are “not true.” They are “illusion,” because each of these things is actually more than it appears to be. Each thing is not its temporary appearance, but the eternal essence of its source.

To become clear on what is true and what is illusion, we will continue to focus on awareness in ourselves and on life in the living things that we encounter throughout the day.

Regina’s Tips on the lesson

Temporary appearances occupy the mind. Temporary appearances give the mind something to think about. Since things are always coming and going, shifting and changing, the mind remains very occupied. This is life to the mind.

However, we are not the mind, and what is life to the mind is actually agitation or suffering for us. It’s like keeping our attention with the restless waves on a stormy sea, fearing what will happen to the wave, while ignoring the changeless nature of the sea at its depths. Focusing on the surface is suffering. Realizing and abiding as the depth is peace.

The practice we have already committed to today is also the practice that will bring us to realize peace. It is the practice of focusing on the depth instead of the surface. We will focus on awareness in ourselves, and we will focus on life in each living thing that we encounter today. It doesn’t matter if the people we encounter seem happy, angry, or afraid. The life in each one is the same. Life-awareness is the changeless depth of our source.

My Thoughts

Today, I am focused on myself as life awareness. I know that I am life or to put it another way, I am formless Self, that which God created and remains as it was created. I had an opportunity to use this. Someone triggered worry in me and instead of following those habitual ego thoughts and feelings, I asked for another way to see this. Jesus showed me something I am going to try to put into words.

I saw myself as outside the bodies and the drama as it unfolded. Looking at it, I recognized it was just thoughts given form and these thoughts came from beliefs. I was being given the chance to decide if I wanted to keep believing the same thing based on how it affected the self. At the same time, this other person who I cared about a lot, was outside the scene and making the same deliberations.

How he processed it was not my concern, only that he was doing so and that neither of us was in any way changed by the tableau we were engrossed in. That which was observing, that self, was not altered in any way by the script being played out but was experiencing it as if the feelings were it’s own, and this helped motivate the decisions being made.

What I gained from this experience was that what I am is safe.

My friend is safe. Our choices don’t hurt us. We exist outside of the script even as we experience the script. This made it easier for me to let go of the old way of thinking that was causing my suffering. It no longer seemed to be about me. She no longer seemed to be me. Then, as always, I went back to thinking me into existence again. But I am not the same exact me. I am changed.

This is from my 2009 journal.

Here is something I’ve noticed. If the ego can’t get me interested in the latest drama, it bombards the mind with a constant stream of ego thoughts perhaps in the hope that one of them will hook me. For instance, I had barely gotten out of bed when I noticed the thought that my car has 88,000 miles on it. This led to worry thoughts about my warranty ending and concern I might have to buy a new car before I am ready.

Who knows where that would have gone had I more interest in it. I’m happy to be using my most recent favorite counter-thought as I practice total surrender. I borrowed this from Mooji. “Take it up with the boss, okay? I don’t deal with it anymore; it’s not my business anymore. I’ve handed myself in.” Before getting dressed I thought about getting on the scale and felt some tension at the thoughts. Then I remembered that I don’t deal with this anymore; I’ve turned myself in.

This kind of thing goes on all day. The ego always has another thought ready in case I’m not interested in the current one. Mind watching is so helpful. I might let a whole stream of thoughts go by, but if one catches my attention and leads to distress of any kind or degree, or even if it leads to pleasant fantasies, I notice it and I let it go to Spirit. This is how I am letting go of the illusion. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it seems to be working.

To enjoy the Pathways of Light Insights on ACIM Lesson 272 click here.

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