ACIM Workbook Daily Lesson 132, Year 2022

ACIM Workbook Lesson 132 I loose the world from all I thought it was.

Lesson 132

I loose the world from all I thought it was.

1.What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs? ²And what can save the world except your Self? ³Belief is powerful indeed. ⁴The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth. ⁵A madman thinks the world he sees is real, and does not doubt it. ⁶Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts’ effects. ⁷It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last.

As we begin to learn how powerful are our thoughts, we also learn that the world is an illusion. It is easy to dismiss the ego thoughts as unimportant since they don’t make anything that is real but that would be a mistake. We made this world and continue to make it through our beliefs. What makes an entire world cannot be called unimportant and should not be dismissed.

Salvation Is Easily Achieved

2. Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his mind, and all his thoughts change with it. ²Now the source of thought has shifted, for to change your mind means you have changed the source of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think. ³You free the past from what you thought before. ⁴You free the future from all ancient thoughts of seeking what you do not want to find.

When Jesus says we are free to change our minds, he is not talking about noticing a thought and deciding not to think it anymore. That is a strategy that is doomed to failure. Our thoughts are the effects of our beliefs and to change our beliefs we need to change the source of them. Our thoughts and beliefs are sourced from either our split minds or our real mind.

Changing Our Minds

The ego thought system is based on the belief in separation and what comes from that belief are thoughts of fear, anger, guilt, hatred, and the like. What comes from our real mind are thoughts of love, joy, and peace. So if we want to be free and to free the world, we must change the mind with which we think. In that way, all our thoughts change with it.

In so doing, we free both the past and the future, the past from what you thought before and the future from all these ancient thoughts. Oh, by the way, if you thought that you have private thoughts shared by no one, that would be wrong. If you believed they were sourced by your separate mind, that would be wrong, too.

All thoughts we have are ancient thoughts. Like the world and all the stories of separate individuals they came into being with the tiny mad idea. We don’t think them up, they just show up and we notice them. Then we join with the ego or with the Holy Spirit to decide if we want to keep believing that thought, or if we want to release it.

The World Set Free

3. The present now remains the only time. ²Here in the present is the world set free. ³For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world. ⁴You have enslaved the world with all your fears, your doubts and miseries, your pain and tears; and all your sorrows press on it, and keep the world a prisoner to your beliefs. ⁵Death strikes it everywhere because you hold the bitter thoughts of death within your mind.

We begin to see how important it is that we change our mind and choose to be in union with the Holy Spirit rather than the ego. This is from Rules for Decision in Chapter 30.

²For you and your adviser must agree on what you want before it can occur. ³It is but this agreement that permits all things to happen. ⁴Nothing can be caused without some form of union, be it with a dream of judgment or the Voice for God. ⁵Decisions cause results because they are not made in isolation. ⁶They are made by you and your adviser, for yourself and for the world as well. (ACIM, T-30.I.16:2-6)

Choosing Union

I have been practicing consciously choosing to be in union with the Holy Spirit during the day. When I notice a thought that enslaves the world with fear, doubts, pain, or any form of suffering, I change my mind and join with the Holy Spirit instead. It is simple and takes only a few seconds. I felt a stab of pain in my body this morning and I closed my eyes for a moment and let my mind go still.

The ego is found in the chaos of a mind thinking. The Holy Spirit is found in the silence. In this present moment, I let the Holy Spirit undo the belief that pain is real. I freed the world from the belief in pain. At least a little, but that little is taken by the Holy Spirit and delivered to each mind that is open to it. These small practices do far more good than we realize.

You Find What You Look For

4. The world is nothing in itself. ²Your mind must give it meaning. ³And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. ⁴Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. ⁵Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came.

When I believed in guilt, the idea that I chose this life story with all its pain and suffering was upsetting. But then I came to realize that there is a difference between guilt and responsibility. Guilt condemns me but taking responsibility presents an opportunity to change things. Jesus tells us throughout the Course that we are as God created us, we are innocent. So, to believe I am guilty I must join with the ego to decide this. I can easily change my mind and join with the Holy Spirit. I free myself from the ego judgment and free the world as well. Now, I fully accept that the world is what I want it to be. It is exactly what I chose to find when I came here.

There Is No World!

5. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. ²Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. ³Ideas leave not their source. ⁴This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. ⁵It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind.

6. But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is. ²There is no world! ³This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. ⁴Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. ⁵He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

The World Is in Our Mind

The world seems to exist because that is what we want to see. It is up to us to change our mind about what we want the world to be to us. Since our thoughts made the world, our changed thoughts will show us something else. We will see a world without the fear and guilt that makes this world so painful. As Jesus tells us frequently, ideas leave not their source.

The idea of a world of separation is in our mind. As long as this idea is in our mind, the world will appear to be real to us because this is what we want. There is no world outside our desire for one. This is where Jesus blows our minds as he tells us that there is no world! That is a completely uncompromising statement. He emphasizes it with the next statement. ³This is the central thought the course attempts to teach.

He also acknowledges that it might take some lifetimes to reach acceptance of this idea. I am not waiting for other lifetimes. I accept that the world is an idea in my mind that I am projecting outward so that I can see my thoughts in action. This is the lifetime that I am using this projected world to change my mind. I am choosing to do this instead of trying to make it work. It’s a sinking ship. I’m through arranging the deck chairs. I’m throwing them overboard.

The Sick Are Healed, the Dead Arise

7. But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. ²Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. ³Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. ⁴Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.

8. And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today. ²Today’s idea is true because the world does not exist. ³And if it is indeed your own imagining, then you can loose it from all things you ever thought it was by merely changing all the thoughts that gave it these appearances. ⁴The sick are healed as you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death.

I am one who is finding the truth in this course and in its exercises. It does indeed seem unbelievable that we will heal the sick and raise the dead by merely changing our mind. And yet I do believe it. I believe it because sickness and death are just ideas in the mind. They appear to be outside the mind in bodies that don’t exist but there is nothing outside the mind.

You Are As God Created You

9. A lesson earlier repeated once must now be stressed again, for it contains the firm foundation for today’s idea. ²You are as God created you. ³There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state. ⁴How can a world of time and place exist, if you remain as God created you?

God is Life and so to believe Life created death is truly insane. God is Love and Love does not create pain and suffering. He created me and so I cannot be in pain and I cannot suffer. I certainly cannot die. Anything that seems to be happening that is not part of God is an illusion, plain and simple. It is an illusion, a dream, a hallucination. It is the effect of a powerful mind imagining something impossible.

Your Self Is the Salvation of the World

10. What is the lesson for today except another way of saying that to know your Self is the salvation of the world? ²To free the world from every kind of pain is but to change your mind about yourself. ³There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought.

11. Yet if you are as God created you, you cannot think apart from Him, nor make what does not share His timelessness and Love. ²Are these inherent in the world you see? ³Does it create like Him? ⁴Unless it does, it is not real, and cannot be at all. ⁵If you are real the world you see is false, for God’s creation is unlike the world in every way. ⁶And as it was His Thought by which you were created, so it is your thoughts which made it and must set it free, that you may know the Thoughts you share with God.

Jesus is using unfailing logic to help us see how it is the world cannot be real. And so it follows that if it is not real, it must only be in our minds. We made the world with our thoughts and we must undo it by returning our minds to only the thoughts we think with God.

Release the World!

12. Release the world! ²Your real creations wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. ³God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. ⁴What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him.

In this paragraph, Jesus begins with a plea that we release the world. We made it up in our minds and so only we can release it. I also love this sentence.

³God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself.

Jesus is telling us that He is our Father and as His Son we are exactly like Him. There is no place where the Father ends and the Son beings as something separate from Him. What are we doing here dreaming we are bodies?

Deny Illusions but Accept the Truth

13. There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness. ²Can a world which comes from this idea be real? ³Can it be anywhere? ⁴Deny illusions, but accept the truth. ⁵Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. ⁶Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.

If I start to think that the world is real and that I am separated from my Father, I am going to re-read paragraph 12. Over and over Jesus is telling us that we have not created a world apart from God. We only dream this is possible and we could ever want it accomplished.

Our Practice

14. Today our purpose is to free the world from all the idle thoughts we ever held about it, and about all living things we see upon it. ²They can not be there. ³No more can we. ⁴For we are in the home our Father set for us, along with them. ⁵And we who are as He created us would loose the world this day from every one of our illusions, that we may be free.

15. Begin the fifteen-minute periods in which we practice twice today with this:

²I who remain as God created me would loose the world from all I thought it was. ³For I am real because the world is not, and I would know my own reality.

⁴Then merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let your mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed, along with you.

Do you want to be free from all pain and suffering, from fear, guilt, hate, and war? Do you want to be free from death? Then release the world from these beliefs. How do you do this? He tells us the answer. Merely rest and let your mind in quietness be changed. We can all do that.

Healing Comes to Many

16. You need not realize that healing comes to many brothers far across the world, as well as to the ones you see nearby, as you send out these thoughts to bless the world. ²But you will sense your own release, although you may not fully understand as yet that you could never be released alone.

17. Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your ideas to all the world, and say whenever you are tempted to deny the power of your simple change of mind:

²I loose the world from all I thought it was, and choose my own reality instead.