Lesson 42: God is my strength. Vision is His gift.

The goal of this course is important to you. Don’t forget it.

But, what is the goal? How come we keep forgetting?

Because one of the ego’s most effective tools is forgetting, sleeping, denying.

Lesson 42 offers us two very powerful thoughts: God is my strength. Vision is His gift. And combines them.

Lesson 42 also “sets forth a cause and effect relationship that explains why you cannot fail in your efforts to achieve the goal of this course.”

What is the goal of this course?  Simply refer to the Introduction to the Text: “The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance.”

ACIM Zen Koan: “Your passage through time and space is not at random. You cannot but be in the right place at the right time.” This is not fortune-telling. Don’t try to understand it. Let it in-form you.

God is my strength. Vision is His gift.

Interestingly, Jesus says while we are doing today’s practice, we “may also reach a point where no thoughts at all seem to come to mind.” He calls this “interference” — it’s what Eckhart Tolle calls “sinking below thought” rather than “rising above thought”. In Lessons 8 and 10, Jesus refers to this as the mind actually being “blank,” and not in a good way.

Jesus encourages us, when doing the practice given in Lesson 42, to think of nothing except thoughts that occur to us in relation to God is my strength. Vision is His gift. He gives us examples, “Vision must be possible. God gives truly.” and “God’s gifts to me must be mine, because He gave them to me.”  He then says:

“You may, in fact, be astonished at the amount of course-related understanding some of your thoughts contain.”

He concludes with:

“The more often you repeat the idea during the day, the more often you will be reminding yourself that the goal of the course is important to you, and that you have not forgotten it.”

What is the goal of this course? “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” T-16.IV.6:1

Note: Bold mine. Also, I find it useful to see the word “interference” as “inter-fear-ence” — I think that is one of the astonishing, yet so simple, course-related understandings that have come to me over the years.

Lesson 41: God goes with me wherever I go.

The one thing we do not do, says Jesus in Lesson 41, is question the reality of the problem.

The problem is that we, “the separated ones” feel so lonely and abandoned that it leads to depression, “anxiety, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering and intense fear of loss.” But these feelings are the effects, the symptoms, of our fixed belief that we are separated from God and can never go Home. They are not the cause.

Jesus tells us, “…despite the serious and tragic forms” our idea of separation produces, this idea is not reality. Jesus knows we are convinced life in human form on planet earth is reality, but he lays out the truth for us anyway:

“Deep within you is everything that is perfect, ready to radiate through you and out into the world. It will cure all sorrow and pain and fear and loss because it will heal the mind that thought these things were real, and suffered out of its allegiance to them.”

He goes on, “You can never be deprived of your perfect holiness because its Source goes with you where you go.” And he adds, “We understand you do not believe all this. How could you, when the truth is hidden deep within, under a heavy cloud of insane thoughts, dense and obscuring, yet representing all you see?”

Jesus advises that we “sink down and inward, away from the world, and all the foolish thoughts of the world. You are trying to reach past all these things. You are trying to leave appearances and approach reality.”

Lesson 41 is so full, it offers so much. It tells us “It is quite possible to reach God. In fact it is very easy, because it is the most natural thing in the world.”

Quite importantly, for so many of us, Jesus concludes, “You can indeed afford to laugh at fear thoughts, remembering that God goes with you wherever you go.”

Lesson 40: I am blessed as a Son of God.

Lesson 40 begins, “Today we will begin to assert some of the happy things to which you are entitled, being what you are.” I love this phrase, “being what you are” and it helps to capitalize it like this, “being What You Are”. Our true state is one of pure Being, beyond words, intellectual concepts, beyond human comprehension. Being What We Are, what we truly are, is our natural state of undifferentiated oneness, ineffable yet recognized when we encounter our true Self.

When Jesus gives us Godly attributes and happy things to which we are entitled, we use them as confirmations of Reality; not positive affirmations with which to buoy ourselves up. “I am blessed as a Son of God,” and “I am happy, peaceful, loving and contented” are inarguable statements, which, if given pure attention, will blossom within us.

I also very much appreciate Jesus telling us, “If you forget [to do the lesson], try again. If there are long interruptions, try again. Whenever you remember, try again.” This reminds me of the Sufi poem, Come Again (by Rumi, I think) which has been put to music and sung by many. Here’s one of my favorite versions.

Lesson 39: My holiness is my salvation.

“The world the holy see is beautiful because they see their innocence in it.” T-20.III.6:3

Lesson 39 tells us guilt is hell. What is the opposite of guilt? The wholeness and holiness of Innocence. Of undifferentiated Oneness.

Jesus says in this lesson, “God does not know unholiness. Can it be He does not know His Son?”

We are God’s genderless Son, God’s Creation. Therefore we are holy. Lesson 39 help us uncover our eternal holiness, seemingly buried under sin, guilt and fear.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers you have built against it.” T-16.IV.6:1

The exercise offered in Lesson 39 is to be repeated and applied often. Practice is the way to experiencing the answer to, “If guilt is hell, what is its opposite?” Each of us must find this out for ourself.

Lesson 38: There is nothing my holiness cannot do.

Let’s pull some amazing quotes from Lesson 38:

“The purpose of today’s exercises is to begin to instill in you a sense that you have dominion over all things because of what you are.”

“Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind.”

“Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest.”

“Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do. Your holiness, then, can remove all pain, can end all sorrow, and can solve all problems. It can do so in connection with yourself and with anyone else.”

Ken Wapnick used to say that the dream of the world and bodies is our dream and we could have dreamt it any way we wanted to. So why did we dream it up the way we have? Filled with acute suffering and exquisitely difficult complexities. Ken also often said that we can drag Jesus into our personal dreams and demand that he fix our imaginary human problems; it is okay to do that. It’s just that pulling Jesus into our ego dreams will keep us on the bottom rungs of the ladder back to God’s Kingdom in Heaven.

“This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream’s alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. They are the glad effects of taking back the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released because the mind acknowledges “this is not done to me, but I am doing this.” And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of the world undone.” T-28.II.12:1-7

I looked up the word “manifest” and it said, “clear or obvious to the eye or mind” and “easily understood”. I am not interested in manifesting in this world, on the bodily level. Yes, I would love to have perfect health, wealth and happy relationships, but deep inside I know that what would make me truly happy is Knowing What I Am and the little me, the person Amy, will become the temporary instrument of Identity-Free Being.

So, to reiterate, it is okay to use the power of the mind to manifest physically and psychologically in the ego dream, but it will not satisfy, ultimately. Applying “the power of your holiness to all problems, difficulties or suffering in any form” occurs in the Mind and heals the mind. The dream outcomes are secondary.

As I practice the exercises in Lesson 38, and apply them to my life situation at the present time, my mind-set is that of a conduit, an instrument, of the Holy Spirit. That has a feeling of rightness to it.

Note: Bold mine.

Lesson 37: My holiness blesses the world.

How extraordinary! To experience the first glimmerings (I love that word) of our true function in the world; why we are here, truly, based on the Holy Spirit’s point of view.

Jesus explains, “Your purpose is to see the world through your own holiness.”

My purpose, your purpose, our purpose … is to see the world through our own holiness.

This means we must get in touch with our holiness. The ego certainly  has not been describing us to ourselves as holy. At best, the ego is “holier than thou,” which is a state of superiority. At worst, the ego is relentlessly critical, hating, resentful and attacking. As well as panicking, fearful, abandoned and desolate. Anything to divide and conquer. The opposite of Wholeness/Holiness.

“Your holiness is the salvation of the world. It lets you teach the world that it is one with you, not by preaching to it, not by telling it anything, but merely by your quiet recognition that in your holiness are all things blessed along with you,” says Jesus. “Those who see themselves as whole make no demands.”

Making no demands, because as explained elsewhere in the Course, as God’s Creations we have no needs, “offers everyone his full due.”  And, “No one loses; nothing is taken away from anyone; everyone gains through your holy vision. It signifies the end of sacrifice because it offers everyone his full due.”

The word “bless,” in the Oxford Language Dictionary, means “to make holy”. “My holiness blesses the world” could read, “My holiness makes holy the world” by healing the split ego mind and restoring our awareness of What We Are as Spirit-Mind, not human mind.

Before we step onto a spiritual path, meaning and purpose are limited to human definitions of “success”. Once on a spiritual path, in this case, A Course in Miracles, meaning and purpose are redefined. And what a relief that is! My holiness blesses the world. My holiness blesses you, dear reader. Your holiness blesses me. For we are One.

Lesson 36: My holiness envelops everything I see.

“My holiness envelops everything I see” is an extension of yesterday’s idea that “My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy.” Yesterday, Jesus established the Source of our true Identity. We are holy because we are an extension of God’s Wholeness. God is the Great Light and we are God’s Great Rays. Nothing can but arise except from the Light of Being.

I do not mean to sound lofty or unattainable. Quite the opposite. My desire is simply to clear a path that makes for smooth passage from fogginess to clarity. As personal identity becomes unnecessary, the conduit within opens and widens and an inner bell tolls resoundingly, signaling, “Come this way, come, come.”*

When time collapses and we move from the horizontal to the vertical plane, we become a beacon of Light, a radiant star, a luminous miracle worker elevating understanding to depths that rise higher than Heaven. For spatial orientation no longer exists as the ego would have us know it. The Lightness of Being needs not gravitational anchors.

“If your mind is part of God’s you must be sinless, or a part of His Mind would be sinful. Your sight is related to His Holiness, not to your ego, and therefore not to your body.”

Allow yourself to be lifted up, comforted, and released by Lesson 36. All lessons hold the key to complete unlearning. Any one of them will do. Especially if this is not your first time round.

* Listen: https://youtu.be/U_w7FsEVir8?si=ghFloehFop5fk9yL

Lesson 35: My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy.

The emphasis of Lesson 35 is on the perceiver rather than the perceived.

After all the self-criticism and self-aggrandizing is equalized in the realization that all self-regard is ego-driven, this lesson becomes an exalted Fact checking mission: My mind is part of God’s … therefore, I am very holy. Fact.

Everything else is “seen through the eyes of the image”. To clarify what that means, Lesson 15 is a good reminder, “My thoughts are images that I have made.” Fact.

When I no longer want ego-identity, what is True is more and more easily accessible. My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy. Happy sigh. Fact.

Lesson 34: I could see peace instead of this.

My problem is that I tend to feel Jesus is criticizing me. My first pass with much of A Course in Miracles is to feel inadequate and that I should be doing something differently or better than I am now. Along with this, is my feeling that my best is not good enough and that I will, inevitably, fail at the exercise for the day.

Luckily, Ken Wapnick instilled in me the understanding that to do A Course in Miracles correctly, one must fail and then forgive oneself for that failure. In other words, we come to the Course ego-identified, and when ego tries to wrong-mindedly practice the ACIM exercises, that automatically excludes the Holy Spirit from right-mindedly coming to the rescue.

So, as I matured as an ACIM student and practitioner, not only did humor replace my guilty feelings, but the initial sense of being criticized or challenged by Jesus now melts into feeling gently coached, as if he is putting his hands on my shoulders and easing me away from battle-worn wrong-mind towards above-the-battleground right-mind.

Ken also said, in his later years, that the ACIM workbook practice could be boiled down to Lesson 5: “I’m never upset for the reason I think” and Lesson 34: “I could see peace instead of this.” These two lessons, practiced together, address all ego detours and re-align us with Spirit.

However, to be a full-fledged student of A Course in Miracles, Jesus tells us we must read the entire Text, practice every lesson in the Workbook for Students, and, if we want to be teachers of God, read the Manual for Teachers. We are also well-advised to read the two supplemental pamphlets, The Song of Prayer, and Psychotherapy, which were scribed soon after the Course was published (because it was immediately misunderstood by many).

What stands out for me, in Lesson 34, is that peace of mind is an “internal matter” and to attain peace of mind we must attend to our “inner world”. A Course in Miracles is a mind training program, and mind training takes place in the … wait for it … mind.