Author:Amy Torres

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.

 

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

“I could see peace instead of this.” becomes the antidote for all fear, anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, you name it. We’re not mindlessly beating our breasts with it. We are feeling our way into the very deepest truth of how possible it is to go within and find the peace that abides inside us, then choose to stay with the peaceful state of mind that awakens us to our natural, spiritual Self.

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Lesson 33: There is another way of looking at the world.

Before even reading this lesson, what comes to mind is that Jesus “died” at the age of 33. Yes, his body dropped away, but the way he saw that experience was that he was resurrected.

“The message the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive any form of assault in persecution, because you cannot be persecuted. If you respond with anger, you must be equating yourself  with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely.” T-6.I.4:6-7

Lesson 33 is the next step in recognizing that we can shift our perception (interpretation) of both our inner and outer worlds by practicing observing what arises without investing our emotions and thoughts in what is observed. Just watch. Unhurriedly. Without selectivity. And see what happens 🙂

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Lesson 32: I have invented the world I see.

I love this lesson. It is so liberating and empowering. We are not victims of the world we see because we have invented the world we see. We can “give it up as easily as you made it up”. The forgiveness practice of A Course in Miracles is all about giving up. Giving all our little thoughts, opinions, interpretations, assumptions and judgments up to the Holy Spirit.

Lesson 32 introduces the idea that the world we see outside, and the thoughts in our heads, are both in our imaginations.

We are told to look around our outer world and then close our eyes and look around our inner world, trying to realize they are the same. Again, as in previous lessons, we are urged by Jesus to be unhurried, as we “watch the images your imagination presents to your awareness”.  Ken Wapnick often said that the miracle is the recognition that we are not the body, we are a Mind. Lesson 32 begins the process, through forgiveness, of miracle-mindedness. We are emerging from the fog of forgetfulness into the Light of the Present Memory.

“The Holy Spirit can indeed make sure of memory, for God himself is there. Yet this is not a memory of past events, but only of a present state. … The Holy Spirit’s use of memory is quite apart from time. He does not use it as a means to keep the past, but rather as a way to let it go.” T-28.I:4-5

For me, this practice is relieving and refreshing because it is reinforcing the Inner Knowing that is not-Amy that was guided to the Course in the first place.

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Lesson 31: I am not the victim of the world I see.

Remember, Lesson 23 told us there is no point in lamenting the world. This is an empowering idea, not a despairing one. Our inner world is the cause of our outer world.

In Chapter 21, Jesus explains, “Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. But though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you it is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. Perception is a result and not a cause.” (ACIM, T-21.in.1:1-8)

Lesson 31 tells us to “survey your inner world, merely let whatever thoughts cross your mind come into your awareness, each to be considered for a moment, and then replaced by the next. Try not to establish any kind of hierarchy among them. Watch them come and go as dispassionately as possible. Do not dwell on any one in particular, but try to let the stream move on evenly and calmly, without any special investment on your part.”

Miracle Principle #1, from the Text, tells us: “There is no order of difficulty among miracles.” One is not ‘harder’ or ‘bigger’ than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal.”

Jesus says today’s idea is a “declaration of release” and “independence in the name of your own freedom. And in your freedom lies the freedom of the world”. But freedom requires practice, not just reading. Practice requires patience. So take Jesus’ advice, “As you sit and quietly watch your thoughts, repeat today’s idea to yourself as often as you care to, but with no sense of hurry.”

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Lesson 30: God is in everything I see because God is in my mind.

Ken Wapnick used to say that this lesson is not about pantheism. According to Google, “Pantheism is the belief that God and the universe are the same things rather than separate things. In other words, ‘God is all, and all is God. ‘ The term pantheism was developed in the eighteenth century from the Greek roots pan, meaning all, and theos, meaning God.”

As we join with the Holy Spirit, we rise above the battleground of earth world, and see from an exalted perspective, which A Course in Miracles calls “vision”. Lesson 30 introduces us to a new kind of ‘projection’. The ego uses projection to rid itself of unbearable feelings of sin, guilt and fear. When the Holy Spirit uses what the ego made for healing the split mind, projection is used to withdraw the ego projection.

When ego projection is withdrawn, we are no longer blinded by all the forms we have bombarded ourselves with in order to blockage our recognition of ourselves as Mind, God Mind. Mind streams Life, Love and Light; that is its nature. There is nothing to see without the Light in which form seems to arise. The Holy Spirit’s vision is projection, withdrawn.

Jesus calls this “real vision” in Lesson 30, explaining that real vision is not limited by distance or space, and does not rely upon physical eyesight at all. “The mind is its only source.”

“These eyes, made not to see, will never see. For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. What was its maker’s goal but not to see? For this the body’s eyes are perfect means, but not for seeing. See how the body’s eyes rest on externals and cannot go beyond. Watch how they stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form to meaning. Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form means understanding has been obscured.” T-22.III.6:1-8

Imaginary seeing (worldly eyesight) and real vision are both generated in the Mind. Worldly eyesight, believed in, seems real but that does not make it so. God is in everything we see because God is in our Mind. And we are in the Mind of God; that is the discovery that transforms everything.

 

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Lesson 29: God is in everything I see.

God is in everything I see because the essence of What I Am is the Light of God.

Holy Spirit vision precedes ego eyesight. It is returning to Holy Spirit vision that imbues everything I see with Godliness.

Separation from God, by necessity, acknowledges God. Separation seems to arise from Wholeness. The memory of God within me, and all of us, is the Voice for God, the umbilical cord that keeps us attached to our Source, no matter how much we experience ourselves as separate; no matter how much we cut off communication from God.

I just watched my video on this lesson from Workin’ the Workbook, and it still stands: Lesson 29: God is in everything I see.

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