Lesson 189
I feel the Love of God within me now.
1. There is a light in you the world can not perceive. ²And with its eyes you will not see this light, for you are blinded by the world. ³Yet you have eyes to see it. ⁴It is there for you to look upon. ⁵It was not placed in you to be kept hidden from your sight. ⁶This light is a reflection of the thought we practice now. ⁷To feel the Love of God within you is to see the world anew, shining in innocence, alive with hope, and blessed with perfect charity and love.
I am having a conversation with someone I know through Facebook. The world he sees is vastly unfair and dangerous. He sees himself and many others as victims and unfairly treated. He thinks that those who are not outraged by this as enemies. He is not alone in the way he sees the world. All of us go through this to one degree or another. It might not be the only way we see it, but there will be many times in which we do.
Until we learn a different way, we focus our attention outward trying to change things in the world, make people see how unfair and hurtful they are and convince them to change and then join us in the crusade to affect change. I am not saying that we might have a role to play in the arena of the world, but it is not our purpose, and to think it is is an error that will keep us in the world rather than freeing us from it.
On the other hand, if we recognize that the world is just a reflection of what is going on in our minds, we can begin to change the world by changing our minds about the world. Where one person sees a fearful world, we can see a loving world just by changing the mind with which we perceive it. If I look at the world from the perspective of the split mind, I will always see the world through a filter of fear and guilt. If I look at it from the perspective of the holy mind, I will always see love instead. It is that simple.
Here is an example. I was sexually abused as a child. For most of my life, I simply didn’t let myself think about it and seldom talked about it. But the effects were there, affecting my relationships even though I didn’t let myself see the connection. Eventually, after practicing the Course for a long time, I let those memories rise up and I looked at them with the Holy Spirit.
This is what it means to forgive. I forgave the situation, everyone involved in it, and myself. I can write about this now and acknowledge the damage done. But I can also say that the damage was healed in the forgiveness of it. I honestly thought that by not thinking about the problem, I was free of it. But not forgiving it held me bound to the problem and caused me to look with fearful eyes at the world. Not looking at it was my way of cherishing my wounds.
Looking with the Holy Spirit was how I forgave and cleansed myself of that painful lens through which I perceived my relationships and the world. I do this with all things I perceive in the world if I feel less than happy and peaceful. I do self-inquiry if I need to sus out the core belief. I look at it with the Holy Spirit, and now I do this without fear of what I will find or fear of sacrifice at what I might be giving up. As a result, the world is a kinder and happier place for me.
2. Who could feel fear in such a world as this? ²It welcomes you, rejoices that you came, and sings your praises as it keeps you safe from every form of danger and of pain. ³It offers you a warm and gentle home in which to stay a while. ⁴It blesses you throughout the day, and watches through the night as silent guardian of your holy sleep. ⁵It sees salvation in you, and protects the light in you, in which it sees its own. ⁶It offers you its flowers and its snow, in thankfulness for your benevolence.
This does not mean that there is nothing but perfectly joyful things happening in the world, not even in my little patch of Heaven on earth. My children still have challenges and I am by default involved in them. The difference is that I am not afraid for them as I used to be and I no longer think it is my job to make life smoother and easier for them. I care and I hope they find their way through their script in a way that helps them to achieve their purpose and fulfill their role and to do this as quickly and painlessly as possible. But it is what it is and all of it is valuable to them and to the rest of the Sonship, even their apparent failures are lessons God would have us all learn.
Being safe in the world did not prevent me from being involved in the two hurricanes last year, as well as an unprecedented freeze and flooding like my area has not seen before. All this on top of the pandemic and all that happened with that and the way the world has become so polarized politically. But what it did for me is that I went through it with far less suffering that would have happened before. In those moments when I looked at it from the ego’s point of view, I saw the value in it as I forgave it and went back to being calm and peaceful and did it quickly.
What I know is that we wrote these scripts together at the moment we made the decision to experience something different than reality. No one is guilty of the script they have chosen to experience and no one is their script. We are here to undo the world and observing a particular script (life story) and recognizing the beliefs we are ready to forgive is the best way to do this. As we forgive, the fearful, dangerous world we chose to see changes dramatically and becomes a warm and welcoming world instead.
3. This is the world the Love of God reveals. ²It is so different from the world you see through darkened eyes of malice and of fear, that one belies the other. ³Only one can be perceived at all. ⁴The other one is wholly meaningless. ⁵A world in which forgiveness shines on everything, and peace offers its gentle light to everyone, is inconceivable to those who see a world of hatred rising from attack, poised to avenge, to murder and destroy.
4. Yet is the world of hatred equally unseen and inconceivable to those who feel God’s Love in them. ²Their world reflects the quietness and peace that shines in them; the gentleness and innocence they see surrounding them; the joy with which they look out from the endless wells of joy within. ³What they have felt in them they look upon, and see its sure reflection everywhere.
From my Facebook friend’s point of view, he cannot imagine that I could see it differently than he does. He thinks I am in denial or just plain blind and uncaring because I don’t see what he does. This change in perception is something that must be experienced to understand. It requires a leap of faith and the determination to achieve our goal. From my point of view, I cannot see any reason to keep suffering when it is not necessary. And I cannot see the world in the way he sees it.
5. What would you see? ²The choice is given you. ³But learn and do not let your mind forget this law of seeing: You will look upon that which you feel within. ⁴If hatred finds a place within your heart, you will perceive a fearful world, held cruelly in death’s sharp-pointed, bony fingers. ⁵If you feel the Love of God within you, you will look out on a world of mercy and of love.
6. Today we pass illusions, as we seek to reach to what is true in us, and feel its all-embracing tenderness, its Love which knows us perfect as itself, its sight which is the gift its Love bestows on us. ²We learn the way today. ³It is as sure as Love itself, to which it carries us. ⁴For its simplicity avoids the snares the foolish convolutions of the world’s apparent reasoning but serve to hide.
If you have not committed to your function, or even if you have done so, this is the day to commit and renew your decision to be the savior of the world you came here to be. The only cost is the loss of fear, pain, and suffering. The reward is beyond what words can describe. At the very least, you will live a happier more peaceful life.
7. Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. ²Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. ³Hold onto nothing. ⁴Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. ⁵Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God.
I love how Jesus talks as if doing this is simple. Well, I guess it is very simple, but it is not always easy because we don’t start off wanting to do it. Once we practice this enough, it becomes not only simple but easy. He says to set aside these things because right now the mind is so full of what it thinks it knows that there is no room for what is true.
One thing I want to say is that we can set aside the Course along with everything else while we practice meditating so that we get the message directly from the Holy Spirit. As we read the Course, we take away or add to what we are reading based on our past experiences and what we think we know. When we rest our minds in God, we receive healing directly with nothing in the way. But unless you are fully enlightened, I recommend you pick the Course back up when you are finished with this practice. If it were really the end of our need for the Course, this paragraph would have been put at the end, not in the middle.
8. Is it not He Who knows the way to you? ²You need not know the way to Him. ³Your part is simply to allow all obstacles that you have interposed between the Son and God the Father to be quietly removed forever. ⁴God will do His part in joyful and immediate response. ⁵Ask and receive. ⁶But do not make demands, nor point the road to God by which He should appear to you. ⁷The way to reach Him is merely to let Him be. ⁸For in that way is your reality proclaimed as well.
9. And so today we do not choose the way in which we go to Him. ²But we do choose to let Him come. ³And with this choice we rest. ⁴And in our quiet hearts and open minds, His Love will blaze its pathway of itself. ⁵What has not been denied is surely there, if it be true and can be surely reached. ⁶God knows His Son, and knows the way to him. ⁷He does not need His Son to show Him how to find His way. ⁸Through every opened door His Love shines outward from its home within, and lightens up the world in innocence.
10. Father, we do not know the way to You. ²But we have called, and You have answered us. ³We will not interfere. ⁴Salvation’s ways are not our own, for they belong to You. ⁵And it is unto You we look for them. ⁶Our hands are open to receive Your gifts. ⁷We have no thoughts we think apart from You, and cherish no beliefs of what we are, or Who created us. ⁸Yours is the way that we would find and follow. ⁹And we ask but that Your Will, which is our own as well, be done in us and in the world, that it become a part of Heaven now. ¹⁰Amen.
There can be a temptation to ask for help and then decide how it should come. When I hear someone talking about vivid and beautiful experiences with meditation, I want that. I want His answer to meet my expectations and can be disappointed that this is not how it works for me. I am learning to let that go because it prevents me from receiving what I need instead of what I want. I stopped telling God how I wanted to experience Him and just let Him be. ⁴And in our quiet hearts and open minds, His Love will blaze its pathway of itself.
I think that last paragraph, that beautiful prayer, explains the last two paragraphs perfectly.