Lesson 91
Miracles are seen in light.
W-pI.91.1. It is important to remember that miracles and vision necessarily go together. 2 This needs repeating, and frequent repeating. 3 It is a central idea in your new thought system, and the perception that it produces. 4 The miracle is always there. 5 Its presence is not caused by your vision; its absence is not the result of your failure to see. 6 It is only your awareness of miracles that is affected. 7 You will see them in the light; you will not see them in the dark.
This paragraph is important. It states very clearly that miracles are always available to us. They are always there. Why is it, then, that we are mostly unaware of them? Why do miracles seem so rare in our lives? It is because we cannot see miracles in the dark. These miracles, these changes in perception that take us from fear to love cannot be known if we persist in keeping the mind in darkness. We must be willing for the light if we are to experience the miracle of a healed mind.
W-pI.91.2. To you, then, light is crucial. 2 While you remain in darkness, the miracle remains unseen. 3 Thus you are convinced it is not there. 4 This follows from the premises from which the darkness comes. 5 Denial of light leads to failure to perceive it. 6 Failure to perceive light is to perceive darkness. 7 The light is useless to you then, even though it is there. 8 You cannot use it because its presence is unknown to you. 9 And the seeming reality of the darkness makes the idea of light meaningless.
Like the miracle, light is always there. It is there because light represents God and God is never absent. The light in our mind is permanent, eternal, and never changing. It is there because it is God’s Will that it be there. Like the miracle, we see it if that is our desire, and it is absent to us if we deny it. To deny light is to ask for darkness and in darkness, we are unable to see the miracle and we are unaware of the light. It is as if there is no light.
W-pI.91.3. To be told that what you do not see is there sounds like insanity. 2 It is very difficult to become convinced that it is insanity not to see what is there, and to see what is not there instead. 3 You do not doubt that the body’s eyes can see. 4 You do not doubt the images they show you are reality. 5 Your faith lies in the darkness, not the light. 6 How can this be reversed? 7 For you it is impossible, but you are not alone in this.
Accepting that what I see with these eyes is not actually there was the hardest thing for me to do. I could see, feel, hear, and taste a world, how could that world not be real? Of course, I was using a body that doesn’t exist in reality to experience a world that doesn’t exist in reality. Still, it was so strange. And then, I was told that reality does exist and I am part of that reality. I was being asked to know myself as something I couldn’t imagine. This would not be possible without help but, I did have help. Now I have no problem accepting the truth even though I still do not remember it, and I know that this world and this body is not real.
W-pI.91.4. Your efforts, however little they may be, have strong support. 2 Did you but realize how great this strength, your doubts would vanish. 3 Today we will devote ourselves to the attempt to let you feel this strength. 4 When you have felt the strength in you, which makes all miracles within your easy reach, you will not doubt. 5 The miracles your sense of weakness hides will leap into awareness as you feel the strength in you.
The reason I no longer doubt the truth is that I did believe in Jesus and I believed he is the author of this Course, so I believed what his book tells me. I had doubts and I was uncertain that I would ever succeed in following his instructions, much less in awakening from this crazy dream. But I kept trying. I put in the effort and I began to experience the strength of the unseen support that was mine because of my efforts. As I began to feel this strength in me, I lost all doubt and I began to experience miracles easily and frequently.
W-pI.91.5. Three times today, set aside about ten minutes for a quiet time in which you try to leave your weakness behind. 2 This is accomplished very simply, as you instruct yourself that you are not a body. 3 Faith goes to what you want, and you instruct your mind accordingly. 4 Your will remains your teacher, and your will has all the strength to do what it desires. 5 You can escape the body if you choose. 6 You can experience the strength in you.
I am not this body. I am not in this body. This body cannot contain me. I still feel like a body but sometimes, I don’t. I still experience what the body experiences, at least to some degree, but that is changing. It is changing because that is what I want. It is my truest desire to be free from any belief in the body. That does not mean that it will disappear, but it does mean that without the belief that I am in this body, that I am this body, I will stop believing it can make sickness or injury.
I know that it can’t, that only my thoughts make form, but there must still be some confusion in my mind as I still get sick and feel pain, though not as often or as much as before. I look forward to this remaining confusion being undone and I know it will be. This is the escape from the body that I can experience right now and right here while still being aware of the story. Others have done this and so can I. Eventually, maybe even in this lifetime, I will escape forever, never to return to another story.
W-pI.91.6. Begin the longer practice periods with this statement of true cause and effect relationships:
2 Miracles are seen in light.
3 The body’s eyes do not perceive the light.
4 But I am not a body. 5 What am I?
6 The question with which this statement ends is needed for our exercises today. 7 What you think you are is a belief to be undone. 8 But what you really are must be revealed to you. 9 The belief you are a body calls for correction, being a mistake. 10 The truth of what you are calls on the strength in you to bring to your awareness what the mistake conceals.
I will not see the light with my eyes. Eyes can only see illusions and the light is not an illusion. It is reality. I will know the light, perceive the light with my mind. At least that has been my experience so far. In that light, I have come to know that I am something entirely different than the body/personality of Myron. I have no personal self but that lack of a personal self is not permanent yet and so I continue to do this work.
What I have experienced thus far has made it impossible to think of myself in the way I once did. Now, even when I slip temporarily into a story, I am fully aware that I am doing this and I stop myself before I get too far into it. I know that I am only imagining a story and imagination is just thought in the mind that has been given form by the mind. It is temporary and I am eternal so it cannot be me.
W-pI.91.7. If you are not a body, what are you? 2 You need to be aware of what the Holy Spirit uses to replace the image of a body in your mind. 3 You need to feel something to put your faith in, as you lift it from the body. 4 You need a real experience of something else, something more solid and more sure; more worthy of your faith, and really there.
I realized that if I just practice these exercises and put aside my doubts and fears long enough to do so, I would be shown something I could believe in. The way it showed up for me was a slowly changing understanding of reality. It is hard for me to explain what that was like or even what it is like now. All I can say is that things I used to worry about no longer worry me.
Things I thought I had to have, both material and emotional, I no longer think I need. Death does not scare me nor does it call to me. I am mostly happy and peaceful. I used to feel separate from everyone and reluctant to join. Now I feel so much love for others and I feel connected to them, even those I do not really know. That is the me that I am. It replaces the me that was my identity in the past.
W-pI.91.8. If you are not a body, what are you? 2 Ask this in honesty, and then devote several minutes to allowing your mistaken thoughts about your attributes to be corrected, and their opposites to take their place. 3 Say, for example:
4 I am not weak, but strong.
5 I am not helpless, but all powerful.
6 I am not limited, but unlimited.
7 I am not doubtful, but certain.
8 I am not an illusion, but a reality.
9 I cannot see in darkness, but in light.
W-pI.91.9. In the second phase of the exercise period, try to experience these truths about yourself. 2 Concentrate particularly on the experience of strength. 3 Remember that all sense of weakness is associated with the belief you are a body, a belief that is mistaken and deserves no faith. 4 Try to remove your faith from it, if only for a moment. 5 You will be accustomed to keeping faith with the more worthy in you as we go along.
I don’t know how this works for others. For myself, I just open my heart and wait to see how it feels to know the strength of God in me, to know that who I am is unlimited. I wait for the feeling of being strong and powerful. It is a subtle feeling that is overcome with a feeling of love and gratitude.
W-pI.91.10. Relax for the rest of the practice period, confident that your efforts, however meager, are fully supported by the strength of God and all His Thoughts. 2 It is from Them that your strength will come. 3 It is through Their strong support that you will feel the strength in you. 4 They are united with you in this practice period, in which you share a purpose like Their Own. 5 Theirs is the light in which you will see miracles, because Their strength is yours. 6 Their strength becomes your eyes, that you may see.
W-pI.91.11. Five or six times an hour, at reasonably regular intervals, remind yourself that miracles are seen in light. 2 Also, be sure to meet temptation with today’s idea. 3 This form would be helpful for this special purpose:
4 Miracles are seen in light. 5 Let me not close my eyes because of this.
God and all His Thoughts (all that He created) support me and their strong support helps me to feel my own strength as part of Creation. Their strength is mine. I cannot fail. Not ever.