Author:Amy Torres

Lesson 20: I am determined to see.

Though it is written in a straightforward, matter-of-fact manner, to my surprise Lesson 20 touches my heart. The Jesus touch is light yet powerful. My heart softens, relaxes, expands and anticipates with a sense of promise….

Jesus explains that the approach in the lessons so far has been “quite casual” and this has been “intentional” and “very carefully planned”.  It gets through to me that Jesus cares about me. That he understands that if I feel forced to do the lessons a certain way, it won’t work. He says, “Yet you will not see if you regard yourself as being coerced, and if you give in to resentment and opposition.”

I’m at a point in my study, practice, and teaching of A Course in Miracles that I know Jesus is directing his communication to the dreamer of the ego dream of separation from God. But that does not preclude the teaching entering me at the person level. The infiltration of Jesus’ Light seems to enter Amy’s heart. The difference between being lost in personal identity and this experience is that there is a lifting up and expanding outward through a lightness of heart and widening of lung capacity accompanied by a lack of thinking … that feels elevated.

Jesus is including all of us, who he understands are seeming fragments of the same One in the “crucial importance of the reversal of your thinking” because “the salvation of the world depends on it.” The opposite of ego thinking is Oneness Thought (not thinking as we do it with the human brain).  Giving up how we see to the Holy Spirit, because we want to, results in accurate spiritual vision — we see that at our essence, we all come from the same Source: God Light.

“Walk in light and do not see the dark companions, for they are not fit companions for the Son of God, who was created of light and in light. The Great Light always surrounds you and shines out from you. How can you see the dark companions in a light such as this? If you see them, it is only because you are denying the light. But deny them instead, for the light is here and the way is clear.” T-11.III.4:6-10

Jesus puts his kindly hand on our shoulder and says, “Your decision to see is all that vision requires. What you want is yours.” What we really want, is ours. It requires true honesty to realize that we’ve been wanting to be separate from God. “The world you see depicts exactly what you thought you did.” T-27.VIII.7:2 And now we can choose again. Free will is ours.

I’m no bible scholar, but what comes next sounds very bible-ish to me: “God has one Son, and he is the resurrection and the life. His will is done because all power is given him in Heaven and on earth. In your determination to see is vision given you.” There is a purity and power to these words. They are heartening without being commanding. I feel like I’m being given a way out of madness. Another word for that is “salvation”. Oh yes, Jesus mentioned salvation in the first paragraph of Lesson 20, which, this year, 2025, also happens to be Inauguration Day in the United States of America. A day, in this person’s view, which is much in need of salvation.

Jesus concludes Lesson 20 with this: “The extra repetitions should be applied to any situation, person or event that upsets you. You can see them differently, and you will. What you desire you will see. Such is the real law of cause and effect as it operates in the world.” Amen!

Lesson 19: I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.

Here’s an unorthodox idea: “cause and effect are never separate”.

It doesn’t matter if it seems we think first or perceive first or see first. If we’re align with fear thoughts, the effect of fear will be its cause: fear.

If we’re aligned with Love thoughts, the effect of Love will be its cause: Love.

Fear causes fear. The effect is fear. Love causes Love. The effect is Love.

Next, Jesus hits us with “minds are joined” and rightly notes that this seems to carry an “enormous sense of responsibility” and possibly a sense of an “invasion of privacy”. We have resistance to the FACT (not just an idea — Jesus states it is a fact) that minds are joined.

As Course students, we are discovering that, unconsciously, we have chosen to know ourselves as individuals, separate from God Mind. This choice went underground the unholy instant we pursued it because the ego distorts our natural function of extension of Love in God Mind to projection of fear whilst in ego mind. There is an ego law that whatever we hurl away from ourself (project) erases our conscious knowing of what came before the projection.

That is why we do not remember how we came to be in our current state, believing we are people in a (mostly threatening and dangerous, but sometimes beautiful) dualistic world.

Jesus also reassures us in Lesson 19 that “salvation must be possible because it is the Will of God”. The salvation that Jesus offers us in the ACIM workbook helps us understand that we are not alone in experiencing the effects of our thoughts because our thoughts determine our seeing. If we see through the Holy Spirit’s Light filter, we experience our brothers as Light-filled because we have joined minds.

The Truth is streamed through us (the miracle promised in A Course in Miracles) and reflected back to us. If we see through the ego’s dark filter, we experience our brothers as separate and every man for himself; that distorted seeing and experiencing is why we have come for salvation.

The radical teaching of A Course in Miracles trains the mind to relax and question every idea and value we have ever held. First, we need to excavate the unconscious dark thinking of which we’ve been unaware. We have resistance to this. Often, we are unaware of our resistance. This is the challenge: to follow Jesus’ instructions in the Introduction to the workbook:

“You are merely asked to apply the ideas as you are directed to do so. You are not asked to judge them at all. You are asked only to use them. It is their use that will give them meaning to you, and will show you that they are true.”

Also:

“A theoretical foundation such as the text provides is necessary as a framework to make the exercises in this workbook meaningful. Yet it is doing the exercises that will make the goal of the course possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of this workbook to train your mind to think along the lines the text sets forth.”

If you haven’t read the text, I fill in some of the blanks for you in these commentaries on the lessons. I, myself, did the workbook first. Along the way, during that first year with A Course in Miracles, I dipped into the text and read the Manual for Teachers.

Eventually (and it took years), I worked my way through the text and the supplemental pamphlets (Song of Prayer: Prayer, Forgiveness, Healing, and Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice). The amount of time it takes to move through the workbook and the text does not matter. All that matters is that you are willing to practice and cultivate a relationship with your Inner Teacher (called Holy Spirit in ACIM).

Lesson 18: I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.

In truth, God Mind is Oneness.  When we quiet our mind, we experience the Stately Calm Within. And that alters how we see everything and everyone in the physical world.

Our experience as humans is as individuals, tribes, communities, etc. In actuality, our Source (God) is Light and our essence is Light.

We are not alone in experiencing the effects of our seeing because the thoughts that give rise to seeing are never neutral.

The world is neutral until it is infused with thought.

Bodies are neutral until they are infused with thought.

Or to put it a better way, the world and bodies are always neutral — they only seem to take on meaning depending on the thought that turns them into a symbol of darkness or Light; separation or Unity; fear or Love; death or Life.

If our thoughts are aligned with God, Spirit, Source, then we experience “others” as brothers.

If our thoughts are aligned with ego, the separate I, then we experience brothers as others.

In other words, if the Cause of our seeing is God’s Light, Light is the filter through which we experience the physical world and everyone and everything in it.

If the cause (that lower case “c” is deliberate) of our seeing is ego darkness, darkness is the filter through which we experience the physical world and everyone and everything in it.

The Course in Miracles workbook lessons are training the mind to remember its essence, to turn towards the Light, embrace the Light, and be embraced by the Light. Recognizing ourselves as Light is the recognition of a loving, unified Self. It must be perceived to be believed.

Lesson 17: I see no neutral things.

We cannot see neutral things if our thinking is not neutral. And we learned yesterday that it is not.

Thoughts always come first, then seeing. We believe that seeing comes first, then thoughts.

But just because we believe something doesn’t make it true or real.

The way cause and effect operate in the world is the opposite of what is really cause and effect. The ego says the world is happening to us. Jesus explains that our thinking is what causes the world to appear before us and seem real to us.

“Regardless of what you may believe, you do not see anything that is really alive or really joyous. That is because you are unaware as yet of any thought that is really true, and therefore really happy.”

Mindboggling … in a good way 🙂

Lesson 16: I have no neutral thoughts.

In Lesson 16 we find out that thoughts are never neutral. Neither are thoughts big or little, powerful or weak. “They are merely true or false.”

The idea of “idle thoughts” is an oxymoron: thoughts “give rise to the perception of a whole world” and are therefore capable of either churning out countless illusions or extending God’s Truth.

Photo by Ian Dyball

The world is a neutral thing, and the body is a neutral thing. But thoughts are what activates the darkness or light within the world and the body. This is why it is important to pay attention to fear thoughts: so that you can nip them in the bud.

Essentially, we come to realize that we can think with the delusional ego thought system, which never makes us happy. Or we can change teachers and think with the Holy Spirit, Who guides us out of the hell and insanity of the ego by shining an illuminated path back Home.

Lesson 15: My thoughts are images that I have made.

What we think of as seeing is not what Jesus would call seeing. He says the function we have given the body’s eyes is “image making.” True seeing, from Jesus’ point of view, is Vision. Holy Spirit Vision. And it has nothing to do with perceiving external objects.

Jesus says we do not understand “image making” now but we will begin to understand it when we “have seen little edges of light around the same familiar objects which you see now.” That will be the beginning of real vision.

It turns out that we may “have many ‘light episodes’.” They may be unexpected, and take different forms, and we are not to be afraid of them. They “symbolize true perception” and prepare the way to Knowledge.

I can attest to experiencing light episodes in the form of what doctors call “ocular migraines.” The first time my eyesight was assaulted with strident flashing lights, I was afraid I was having a stroke. It turns out what looks like a visual event is actually a little brain spasm. It happened another time or two before I remembered what Jesus told us in Lesson 15: “Do not be afraid of them.”

I consciously relaxed and allowed the ocular migraine (there was no painful headache, just flashing lights so I’ll just call them “oculars” from now on) to unfold. It resolves in about 30 minutes and I was no more the worse for wear. But I was still anxious, just less so.  However, as years went by and oculars came and went, I really did let go of fear and trusted there was no danger.

The visuals became prism-like, reflecting beautiful colors. A kaleidoscopic light show to be enjoyed. When I mentioned this to doctors, ophthalmologists and neurologists, they knew nothing of this kind of ocular. For them, oculars were in black and white and maintained the lightning flash formation at the periphery of eyesight.

It would be easy to overlook my oculars as a health concern and not connect them to spirituality. Except spiritual awakening is the consuming interest of my life and so I managed to remember Lesson 15 and apply it. That is what’s important. The ego is a master of forgetting. The Holy Spirit helps us have selective remembering. When we make a habit of remembering our workbook lessons, and the principles within them, we are well on our way to recognizing the Truth that abides within us, even when we’re oblivious to it.

Lesson 14: God did not create a meaningless world.

Being told that God did not create a meaningless world can seem harshly critical or genuinely liberating depending on where you are at when you encounter this lesson.

It is easy to misunderstand the title of this lesson and interpret it as since God created the world, it must have meaning even when it seems bleak and terrifying, unjust and unrewarding.

To be perfectly clear, Jesus is explaining that this world is meaningless, and because it is meaningless, we can be sure it is not God-created. Therefore, it must be man-made; dreamed up by ego.

Jesus tells us that we will, “…let go the thoughts we have written on the world, and see the Word of God in their place.” Imagine our words are darkness and as we allow them to be erased, the Light beneath them is revealed. But Jesus warns us that this process, even though it truly is salvation, can be experienced as “quite difficult and even quite painful.”

In the text, Jesus says, “Undermining the ego’s thought system must be perceived as painful, even though this is anything but true.” T-4.11.5:1

Now comes the reassurance on which we must rely:

“Some of them [the early steps towards salvation] will lead you directly into fear. You will not be left there. You will go far beyond it. Our direction is toward perfect safety and perfect peace.“

The purpose of Lesson 14 is to experience a thought reversal–a shift in perception as to who the maker of the world is. God creates an ongoing, infinite, eternal, loving state of Mind … not planet earth. This is not meant to minimize or deny what we experience as worldly problems–it is meant to awaken us to the face that we are dreaming a bad dream about a world that does not exist.

Lesson 13: A meaningless world engenders fear.

The reason meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety is us, the “separated ones,” is that it is actually symbolic of the ego’s story that we are in a power struggle with God.

The ego knows that if it does not seduce us with its ideas about the world, there will be an opening in which its unreality and powerlessness is clearly seen. Jesus says, “And on this alone it is correct.” BUT we need to “learn to recognize the meaningless, and accept it without fear.”

Having studied and absorbed the Course for over 25 years, recognizing the meaningless has become less and less fearful and more and more inviting. The statement, “A meaningless world engenders fear because I think I am in competition with God.” is a relief because it boils all the world’s problems down to one existential mistake. A huge mistake, but a correctable mistake. And that is compelling. That is where I am more than willing to switch teachers from defaulting to ego to free-willingly choosing another way. A better way. The Light of Truth, Love and Life.

Lesson 12: I am upset because I see a meaningless world.

Speaking for myself, I feel afraid seeing a meaningless world because that means random violence, cruelty and chaos to me. But what Jesus is telling us is that the world only has the meaning we assign to it. The ego set the world up to embody and symbolize separation from God. The world, in and of itself, is a neutral thing. When used by the Holy Spirit, the world symbolizes Union and reflects God’s Love.

Lesson 12 gives us a “correction for a major perceptual distortion.” We have believed, unconsciously, what the ego has told us about the world. Jesus gives us exercises that challenge, what has until now, been absolute to us: that, as yesterday’s lesson illustrated, our thoughts, not external objects and events, determine the world we see.

If we can accept the world as meaningless, or neutral, and let God’s Truth be written upon it for us, it would make us indescribably happy, says Jesus. We have “written” meaning upon the world to make sense of it but that hasn’t worked. If we can trust Jesus, we will see that “Beneath your words is written the Word of God.” How beautiful!

Jesus goes on to tell us, “the ultimate purpose of these exercises” is to allow our words to be erased so that we can see God’s Word. As I open myself to this, something Loving slowly moves through my heart and brings tears to my eyes. Healing is in process. Miracles are swirling within like gentle snowflakes, pure and purifying.

Lesson 11: My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.

The key to forgiveness lies in today’s idea (My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world) because it leads to a reversal of the thinking of the world.

Instead of assuming that the external world is happening to us, Jesus introduces a new idea: our thoughts determine the world we see.

Today’s idea, we are told, “contains the foundation for the peace, relaxation and freedom from worry that we are trying to achieve” and “in this idea is your release made sure.”