Lesson 132

Lesson 132
I loose the world from all I thought it was.
What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs? And what can save the world except your Self? Belief is powerful indeed. The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth. A madman thinks the world he sees is real, and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts’ effects. It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last.

Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his mind, and all his thoughts change with it. Now 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. You free the past from what you thought before. You free the future from all ancient thoughts of seeking what you do not want to find.

The present now remains the only time. Here in the present is the world set free. For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world. You 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. Death strikes it everywhere because you hold the bitter thoughts of death within your mind.

The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps 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. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came.

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

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. There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not 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. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others 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.

And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today. Today’s idea is true because the world does not exist. And 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. The 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.

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

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

Yet if you are as God created you, you cannot think apart from Him, nor make what does not share His timelessness and Love. Are these inherent in the world you see? Does it create like Him? Unless it does, it is not real, and cannot be at all. If you are real the world you see is false, for God’s creation is unlike the world in every way. And 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.

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

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. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.

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. They can not be there. No more can we. For we are in the home our Father set for us, along with them. And we who are as He created us would loose the world this day from every one of our illusions, that we may be free.

Begin the fifteen-minute periods in which we practice twice today with this:
I who remain as God created me would loose the world from
all I thought it was. For I am real because the world is not,
and I would know my own reality.

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

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. But you will sense your own release, although you may not fully understand as yet that you could never be released alone.

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:

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

 

Journal

“Belief is powerful indeed. The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth.”

“Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his mind, and all his thoughts change with it.”

I have understood the power of thought for a long time now, and even before the Course, I believed I had to be careful of the thoughts in my mind. It was a long time though before I learned what it means to really monitor my thoughts and that I could learn to change my mind. Even then, it took time for me to become willing to do this practice and to become consistent in it. Now I do it without hesitancy.

It feels like I am bringing individual thoughts to the Holy Spirit to be removed from my mind, and that is one way to think of it. But to think of it as asking for another way to see reflects the truth more accurately. I am not really changing my thoughts, I am changing the source of my thoughts. Those thoughts that I don’t want to keep come from thinking with the ego mind. I am developing the habit of thinking with my holy mind instead.

“Here in the present is the world set free.”

The world is nothing. It seems to be something as my mind gives it meaning and when I use the ego mind to do that. Those thoughts are based on fear and guilt and so I imprison the world with the suffering that comes from those thoughts. But right now in this moment and only in the now moment, I can change that.

“There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. Ideas leave not their source.”

Jesus is so very clear here. We came into the world that we wanted. It is exactly what we chose it to be. In learning to think from our holy mind rather than our ego mind, we will change the world. It is impossible that this not happen. The world is what we think it is, so if we change what we think, the world will change.

The reason we don’t see this change as we give up one thought after another is that we are still in the baby stage of changing the mind with which we think. I have a thought of judgment and I immediately feel uneasy because I have practiced releasing judgmental thoughts and now I know I don’t want them anymore.

I have learned through contrast how it feels to judge and how much better it feels when I don’t judge. The bigger picture is that I am teaching myself that I want to think with my holy mind, that this is how I reach peace. I am teaching myself to change the source of my thinking.

So, while changing my mind about individual thoughts is the way I learn that I want to change the source of my thinking, the world does not experience a substantive change until I achieve the larger goal of changing the source of my thoughts. And it will not become the real world until all of our mind changes. My concern, however, is to do my part in changing the mind.

“There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach.”

There can be a lot of resistance to this idea but eventually, we must come to accept it. This is the reason the world changes with our thoughts. It exists only in our mind. Jesus says that when we accept this truth, the lesson will be given in a form they can understand. Maybe it will occur as we do this lesson. Or another one. Maybe it will come gradually as it is happening for me. Just a few months ago, the idea of the world not being real was something I resisted. Today, I have no idea why I resisted it. It seems so obvious to me now.

“And 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. The 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 love reading about people whose minds have changed to the degree that they experience these miracles of healing and even rising from the dead. I love reading about it because it reminds me of the truth and since we are all faced constantly with the illusion of our making, it really helps to be reminded that we can as easily make something else, something closer to reality, at least kinder than what we made with the ego.

One of my favorite reminders happened at a workshop put on by Nouk Sanchez. She was teaching that there is no death and that miracles are literal. There was one skeptic in the group who doubted everything. He crossed his arms stubbornly and said, “I would like to see a literal miracle.” And then he dropped dead.

His heart had stopped at that moment, and while one in the group began to resuscitate him with CPR, the rest of the group stood in a circle around them and firmly held to believe that there is no death. The paramedics arrived and used the paddles on him repeatedly. After he had been without a heartbeat for 25 minutes, the paramedics were ready to give up, thinking they were not going to get a heartbeat and even if they did, he would be a vegetable because of the length of time he went without a heartbeat.

They were in touch with the hospital and the doctors told them to try one more time and then to call it. The last attempt they made brought his heart back online. I was amazed that these people were able to hold their vision that there is no death for that length of time without flagging. One of the people there was his daughter and another was a niece. Not only did he start breathing but he fully recovered. He came back as a kinder better person and as a healer.

“How can a world of time and place exist, if you remain as God created you?”

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

To fully accept this is to change everything. It is to release the world from all I made of it. It is only an illusion of creation and thus is not eternal and can be released as I release the thoughts that maintain it.

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

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

This brings me back to my daily practice of resting in God and allowing the change to occur. I rest in certainty, confidence and gratitude.

Regina’s Tips

“A madman thinks the world he sees is real, and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thought’s effects. It is but WHEN THEIR SOURCE IS RAISED TO QUESTION that the hope of freedom comes to him at last.”

In other words, we are not concerned with effects at all. We are not looking out to see if there is or is not sickness, war, death, etc. We are focused inward in this way:

What is the source of this thought I am thinking now? Is it ego or truth? If it is ego, I let it go because it is ego. If I can feel it is truth, I contemplate it and/or follow it, as appropriate.

If we take today’s lesson down to this basic practice, and practice it, we are doing what is intended.

It’s the ‘keep it simple’ spirit. KISS

My Thoughts

I agree that our part is to recognize that the world we see is not real at all and that we must change the source of our thoughts. That is the work to be done. I do believe in miracles that are often made manifest as the mind is healed. But that is not for me to concern myself with. I change the source of my thoughts and miracles take care of themselves.

Past Entries

As I read this lesson today a number of things stand out to me. I have learned to be very vigilant for my thoughts because I know that it is my thoughts that make this world I see. This is good, but it is also very important for me to know that the way I do this is to change the source of my thoughts. My thoughts are always sourced either with ego or with God. There is no third choice.

When I notice an ego sourced thought, and I release it to Holy Spirit, I am asking that He heal me of the belief that I want the ego to be the source of my thinking. This is very good news, indeed! If I had to release every ego thought I ever have, I would be here forever. But I am not releasing each thought, I am noticing when a thought is not a thought of God so that I can remember my desire to think only the thoughts I think with God.

Once I have let go of that belief, the belief that I want ego thinking, I will naturally embrace God as the Source of all thoughts. My thoughts will then generate an illusion of joy and peace and finally, they will release the idea of this world and my mind will return to its natural state as part of God. It will return to eternal bliss and true creation.

I have gone back and forth on the idea of the world. There are statements in the Course that have left me wondering if the world exists. I have wondered if maybe Jesus means the world as I see it does not exist. But as I read this lesson it seems very clear that there is no world. Jesus says:

“There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach.”

We made the world with our thoughts. We hold the world in place with our thoughts. We keep sickness, war, hatred, and death in place with our thoughts. None of this is true or real, but it may as well be as far as our experience goes. We are powerful creators, and when we make something that causes suffering we experience suffering, even though it is not a true creation. The only way to end the suffering is to change our mind.

“Dr. Quantum” Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, physicist, says it like this: The Universe doesn’t exist without a perceiver of that universe.” We are the perceiver and what is perception except for our beliefs about something. We are learning that first, we are deciding what we want to see, and then it appears, not the other way around.

What naturally follows is that we can see something different if we change our minds about what we want to see, and we do that for a while. Finally, we give up perception altogether as we accept knowledge instead. When we let go of perception entirely we are no longer perceivers and then with no one to perceive it, the world ceases to exist. The joke is that the world never did exist; only our thoughts about it existed.

As we begin to loose the world from what we thought it was through changing our minds and thinking with God instead of ego, our thoughts change and as our thoughts change the effects of those thoughts change, and the world changes. If I notice that someone’s body is sick and I feel bad for them or afraid for them or myself, and go around frantically looking for a cure then I am feeding into the belief system that made this world.

If I notice that someone’s body is sick, and remember that neither the body nor the disease exists separate from the belief in my mind, then I am undoing the world. There may be bleeding to staunch or medicine to take because those are the rules we created for this illusion. Doing these things does not keep the illusion going if I remember the truth while I do them. And in remembering the truth for that person or for myself influences the outcome. It is the way we pray and the way we heal.

Here is one reason I used to have trouble giving up the idea that the world is not real. It is not that I still enjoy the drama too much to relinquish it. Here is what felt like a loss to me. I would think, where will my precious children be if this all ceases to exist? Without bodies how would I identify these people as special to me? Would there be no mother-child relationship that has been so precious to me? I am not mother. Yikes!

In the past this thought has stopped me in my tracks. Holy Spirit helped me with these fears and others. Here is a message He gave me that helped me to see this differently.

Holy Spirit: There is no loss as you give up the world you made with your imagination. You made the idea of bodies to hold separation in your mind. You pretended that these bodies held bits of God’s Son apart from you and apart from each other. Through your belief in separation, the bodies expressed competition and this led to attack, war, murder, loss. You gathered some bodies close to you and formed alliances; friends, lovers, families, children. You defined each relationship and its importance to you, according to what you could gain through the relationship. Depressing, isn’t it. It is also frightening and stressful.

Which part of this do you feel would be a loss if it ceased to exist, Myron? There is not one part of the world as you created it that is worth keeping. There is no love in this world. Yes, you have made something you call love, but it is based on need and loss. It is not really love. Those relationships are more about allies than loved ones. What relationship do you have in which your love is completely unconditional, in which your love cannot be swayed by the winds of fortune? Which relationship feels safe to you? You fear your children’s disapproval. You fear their loss to others. You fear their bodies will get sick and die and that would be the greatest betrayal of all. The love you feel is too close to hate to be scrutinized too closely.

These are not your real creations, you holy Son of God! Let go your belief that they are. Let go of your belief that you want them anymore. I assure you that you let go of nothing. You lose nothing. Those bodies you love will cease to exist, but the spirit you love cannot be destroyed because it is real. It is your understanding that is purified, and in that purification, you remember what love is, and in that remembrance you experience love.

2017

I was enthralled as I read the lesson this morning. I wonder if I ever realized how important this lesson really is. If we accepted fully everything Jesus is telling us here, it would be the last lesson we would need. I think I resisted it for so long because I was not ready to wake up. I did it the slow way, working on ego thoughts as they came up, letting them go as I could.

There is nothing wrong with that. Most people do it this way, but I encourage everyone who is tired of suffering to read this lesson slowly and contemplate each sentence. Let it sink into your mind very deeply. Our desire for salvation is all the Holy Spirit needs in order to heal us. Let this willingness for God build in you as you take in what Jesus is telling you in this lesson. The Holy Spirit will do the rest.