ACIM Workbook Lesson 3
I do not understand anything I see in this room
[on this street, from this window, in this place].
W-pI.3.1. Apply this idea in the same way as the previous ones, without making distinctions of any kind. 2 Whatever you see becomes a proper subject for applying the idea. 3 Be sure that you do not question the suitability of anything for application of the idea. 4 These are not exercises in judgment. 5 Anything is suitable if you see it. 6 Some of the things you see may have emotionally-charged meaning for you. 7 Try to lay such feelings aside, and merely use these things exactly as you would anything else.
W-pI.3.2. The point of the exercises is to help you clear your mind of all past associations, to see things exactly as they appear to you now, and to realize how little you really understand about them. 2 It is therefore essential that you keep a perfectly open mind, unhampered by judgment, in selecting the things to which the idea for the day is to be applied. 3 For this purpose one thing is like another; equally suitable and therefore equally useful.
Initial Insight: Again, Jesus reminds us to apply this idea to everything without making any distinctions. This is important because one of our problems is that we tend to judge everything and so we will naturally want to decide which things we understand and which we don’t. Jesus wants us to know that we don’t understand anything! He says this: The point of the exercises is to help you clear your mind of all past associations, to see things exactly as they appear to you now, and to realize how little you really understand about them. He wants us to come at the world with a completely open mind unhampered by our past judgments. We are going to learn to see the world differently than we ever have. This is very exciting!
Daily Application: When I first did these lessons, I could not imagine how this could be true, but now after consistent practice, reminding myself that I don’t understand anything, I know it is true and I love that it is true. I am a clean slate every day, waiting to be informed by That which does know. This has been very helpful to me in my daily life.
For instance, I am thinking of buying a new house and for a little while I was listening to the ego try to figure out how this out to go and I became anxious. Of course, I was. The ego is not a good advisor since the ego mind doesn’t understand anything. I turned away from that voice and to the Holy Spirit and I returned to my usual peaceful state.
Insights from Holy Spirit: The ego doesn’t like the idea that it doesn’t know anything, but that is the simple truth. It has only what it has learned in the past with which it can make decisions and what you learned in the past was not the truth. God created the Holy Spirit and placed it in your mind so that you would have a true Helper, an Advisor that does know.
Thank you for taking the time to practice our communication like this. The more you practice communicating with me, the clearer the communication becomes. You have already seen that after a while doing this, you became more alert to the thoughts I was giving you even when you were not writing. You also became better able to discriminate between the ego thoughts and My thoughts.
Gratitude: I am very grateful to the Holy Spirit and to God for creating It to be my Guide and my Helper.