Author:Amy Torres

Lesson 28: Above all else I want to see things differently.

I like the word “above” in the title of Lesson 28. It translates, to me, as “my highest priority”.

My highest priority is to see things differently.

Next comes what I want. What I really want, according to Jesus. That means my highest priority is my desire to see things differently.

“Things” covers everything that is seen. The entire outside world, including my body. Because Jesus is speaking to the formless dreamer of the ego dream, the form in which we experience ourselves is actually exterior to the Mind-Self. And Jesus is speaking to our Mind-Self, knowing that we are dreaming. Jesus is softly whispering “wake up” in all the workbook lessons. It’s up to us whether we hit the snooze button … or begin to listen to the Inner Voice infiltrating our self-induced dream state.

Jesus tells us that in the Lesson 28 practice periods we “will be making a series of definite commitments.” Thank goodness he adds, “The question of whether you will keep them in the future is not our concern here. If you are willing at least to make them now, you have started on the way to keeping them.”

What we consider “seeing” is not really seeing (Jesus has been pointing this out to us since Lesson 1: Nothing I see means anything).

Paragraph 3 drops a bombshell:

“When you say, ‘Above all else I want to see this table differently,’ you are making a commitment to withdraw your preconceived ideas about the table, and open your mind to what it is, and what it is for. You are not defining it in past terms. You are asking what it is, rather than telling it what it is. You are not binding its meaning to your tiny experience of tables, nor are you limiting its purpose to your little personal thoughts.”

Withdrawing preconceived ideas is equivalent to unlearning. There is no learning in God Mind. The ego introduced teaching and learning. Jesus and the Holy Spirit emanate the Light of Truth, which dissolves ego learning.

Jesus tells us, “You will not question what you have already defined.”  This is profound. This is how we build a sense of reality about the unreal. We do not question what we see, hear, feel, smell, taste and touch. We take the input of our senses to be factual, even as we know that senses distort and select some things over others.

Jesus continues, “And the purpose of these exercises is to ask questions and receive the answers.” In the text, Jesus explains that ego questions are not really questions — they are statements disguised as questions. The purpose of statements proffered in question form is to reinforce, via implicitness, that a situation is true and real.

For instance, “Why is the sky blue?” assumes that there is a sky and that there are colors and the color of the sky is blue. None of which is physically true, according to A Course in Miracles.

There is an appearance of blue sky, in our imagination, along with sensations experienced in the mind which channels them into physical form. This sounds outrageous to the ego. But the way we perceive with ego is clearly madness to Jesus.

Lesson 28 follows up with an extraordinary suggestion: “You could, in fact, gain vision from just that table, if you would withdraw all your own ideas from it, and look upon it with a completely open mind.”

Withdraw all our own ideas from the table!!! How does one do that? Do we dare?

Jesus encourages us: [The table] has something to show you; something beautiful and clean and of infinite value, full of happiness and hope. Hidden under all your ideas about it is its real purpose, and the purpose it shares with all the universe.”

by Greg Rakozy

“In using the table as a subject for applying the idea for today, you are therefore really asking to see the purpose of the universe. You will be making this same request of each subject that you use in the practice periods. And you are making a commitment to each of them to let its purpose be revealed to you, instead of placing your own judgment upon it.”

Ken Wapnick, over the many years of his teaching A Course in Miracles, said countless times that A Course in Miracles is all about purpose. He emphasized that Jesus is teaching us to ask, about everything, what is it for? And there are only two possible answers, described in various ways: fear or Love, ego or Spirit, darkness or Light. The choice is ours.

Note: Bold mine.

Lesson 27: Above all else I want to see.

More than anything, I want to see. Really see. See truly. The way Jesus sees.

I feel motivated. And I feel understood. Jesus gets it that giving spiritual vision priority in my life will provoke insidious ego thoughts about loss and deprivation. What do I have to give up in order to see spiritually? But Jesus is very reassuring in Lesson 27. He says we don’t have to fully mean it when we say, “Above all else I want to see.”

He also says that vision has no cost to anyone and that vision can only bless. He is giving us those follow-up phrases as positive self-talk. Jesus is very psychologically astute 🙂

Then he asks, “The real question is, how often will you remember? How much do you want today’s idea to be true?”

Sincerity, in A Course in Miracles, is of the utmost importance. Honesty and sincerity will save us lot of time. Time that would have been spent suffering in senseless human struggles.

Right at the beginning of the ACIM Text, we are told:

“Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful and the holy. Do not forget this. The Love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another, because vision is still so dim. You can use your body best to help you enlarge your perception so you achieve real vision, of which the physical eye is incapable. Learning to do this is the body’s only true usefulness.” T-1

Lesson 26: My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability.

I fear attack because I believe I have attacked God. I state this calmly, but realizing this feels like it comes with a thousand exclamation points.

If this goes for me, it also goes for you. WE fear attack because we believe we have attacked God.

God’s Law: “…what would have effects through you must also have effects on you.”

What does that mean?

“…if you fear attack, you must believe that you are not invulnerable.”

That makes sense.

“Attack thoughts therefore make you vulnerable in your own mind, which is where the attack thoughts are.“*

Jesus logically extends his logic: attack thoughts and invulnerability contradict each other. They must! Because invulnerability fears nothing. So invulnerability attacks nothing. Today’s idea “introduces the thought that you always attack yourself first”.

We ALWAYS attack ourselves first.

The purpose of attack thoughts is to weaken the way we know ourselves. The ego is a divisive thought. The ego’s tiny, mad idea that we could separate from God’s Wholeness seeks to maintain its existence by introducing “I” thoughts and image-making into the Seamless Mind of God. Perception, first as mind interpretation, next as bodily sensory organs, seduces us into believing ourselves to have attacked God, and horrors!, to now be on the receiving end of God’s wrath.

“A false image of yourself has come to take the place of what you are.”

Despair not, salvation awaits:

“Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so.”

Jesus tells us at the beginning of Lesson 26 that the law that “what would have effects through you must also have effects on you” will ultimately save us, “but you are misusing it now”.  As we reverse our thinking, through the mind training of A Course in Miracles, and especially its workbook lessons, the effects of God’s Love are recognized, accepted, and embraced.

*Bold mine. Images courtesy of Freepik.

Lesson 25: I do not know what anything is for.

Typically, I read the workbook lesson all the way through. Then, I do the practice. Next, I go back and re-read the lesson, allowing whatever stands out to be given my attention. Like this:

“Purpose is meaning.”

“…the ego is not you.”

“…withdraw the goals you have assigned to the world, instead of trying to reinforce them.”

“…the goals you now perceive…are all concerned with “personal” interests. Since you have no personal interests, your goals are really concerned with nothing.”

As a longtime Course student, I know that Jesus is speaking to the dreamer of the ego dream, not the little me named Amy. I know that the “you” being addressed all throughout A Course in Miracles is what Ken Wapnick calls the decision-maker, the part of the Mind that has free will, the power of decision, the ability to choose. When Jesus says “you have no personal interests,” he is reminding the dreamer of the ego dream that it is Spirit, a creation of God- Mind, not a human body.

Let’s continue:

Jesus tells us that, as humans, we do understand purpose at superficial, worldly levels, such as, “a telephone is for the purpose of talking to someone who is not physically in your immediate vicinity. What you do not understand is what you want to reach him for. And it is this that makes your contact with him meaningful or not.”

“It is crucial to your learning to be willing to give up the goals you have established for everything. The recognition that they are meaningless, rather than “good” or “bad,” is the only way to accomplish this.”

These ideas are found in the Text as well. For instance:

“Yet your willingness to learn of [the Holy Spirit] depends on your willingness to question everything you learned of yourself, for you who learned amiss should not be your own teacher.” T-11.VIII.3:8, and

“To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold.” T-24.Intro, and

“Let us forget the purpose of the world the  past has given it.” T-29.VII.7:1

Over the years, questioning every value that Amy holds has become more and more relaxing. For one thing, as recognition of what we truly are, Spirit, increases, Amy’s values align with Spirit values. This is the development of true integrity and results from seeing with the Holy Spirit’s vision.

Spirit values are always aligned with the highest good of all. There is awareness that what happens to any one person, family, community, region, country, all over the world (e.g., climate change), happens to all of us because we are joined on the atomic* level and we are joined in Spirit. That affects our personal choices: our integrity grows, our fearlessness grows, our compassion and love grows.

In conclusion, here’s one last paragraph to reinforce Lesson 25:

“Everything the ego tells you that you need will hurt you. For although the ego urges you again and again to get, it leaves you nothing, for what you get it will demand of you. And even from the very hands that grasped it, it will be wrenched and hurled into the dust. For where the ego sees salvation it sees separation, and so you lose whatever you have gotten in its name. Therefore ask not of yourself what you need, for you do not know, and your advice to yourself will hurt you. For what you think you need will merely serve to tighten up your world against the light, and render you unwilling to question the value that this world can really hold for you.” ACIM T-13.VII.11

*The internet says that in ancient Greek philosophy, the word “atom” is derived from “atomos” which meant “uncuttable” — the concept was that matter is made up of tiny, indivisible particles (this was a philosophical idea, not scientific).

Lesson 24: I do not perceive my own best interests.

Today is a big day because we are opening our minds to having been wrong about everything … AND being glad that we have been wrong because NOW learning can begin.  Learning is actually UN-learning all that the ego has taught.

“Let me repeat that the ego’s qualifications as a guide are singularly unfortunate, and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a teacher of salvation.” T-9.IV.8:3

Jesus advises in Lesson 24, “If these exercises are done properly, you will quickly recognize that you are making a large quantity of demands of the situation which have nothing to do with it. You will also recognize that many of your goals are contradictory, that you have no unified outcome in mind, and that you must experience disappointment in connection with some of your goals,  however the situation turns out.”

Notice how often Jesus uses the word “recognize” which means “re-cognize” which means “re-know”. We are simply trading off the teacher who prefers fantasy and insanity to God’s Knowledge and Sanity for becoming aware of what we already know, have, and are: the Light of God.

Jesus also recommends honesty. Honesty, in A Course in Miracles, is the equivalent of sincerity and innocence. And innocence, in ACIM, is the same as Wholeness and Holiness. Take a few minutes to relax and breathe that in and out.

Lesson 23: I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.

This lesson has a huge impact on me. Let’s break it down:

Title:  If attack thoughts are given up (released to the Holy Spirit), “I,” the dreamer of the worldly-human dream, can escape from the seen world, the world eyesight proffers.

Paragraph 1: Today’s idea contains the only way out of fear that will ever succeed. This way cannot fail. But it is not our seeing that needs changing — it is our thoughts. Why?

Paragraph 2: Cause and effect. One of my favorite lines in A Course in Miracles is, “There is no point in lamenting the world.” Or as Jesus puts it in Chapter 21, “Seek not to change the world. Choose to change your mind about the world.” In other words, the world is an effect of a thought; an attack thought that, believed in, has the power to make us insane and delusional. So, if we change the source of our thoughts, we address the cause of the world we see.

Paragraph 3: The first sentence references yesterday’s lesson: What I see is a form of vengeance. It expands upon this idea by explaining that what we see outside ourselves, the world and all its inhabitants, is a “pictorial representation” of our hostile, hateful, frightened thoughts. Jesus poses the question: “Is not fantasy a better word for such a process, and hallucination a more appropriate term for the result?” He is using our terms for mental illness. Could it be that we are all mentally ill and hallucinating?

Paragraph 4: Jesus tells us that our eyesight has us seeing the external world without us seeing ourselves as the image maker. We have been introduced to this idea in Lesson 15: My thoughts are images that I have made. He reprises his statement, “There is no point in lamenting the world,” by reiterating, “You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause.” Cause and effect are crucial because once we comprehend that we have caused the world we seem to be the victim of, we will be able to choose true salvation, and not the ego’s self-serving view of salvation. Then, “loveliness can light your images…” and we will no longer feel abandoned and alone.

Paragraph 5: Now that we are aware that the cause of the world can be changed, we need to know how. Jesus explains (1) we must identify the cause of the world, (2) we must use our free will to let go of our belief in the ego, and (3) we must allow God to work through us via the Holy Spirit. In paragraphs 6 and 7, he gives us the practice details.  These three steps are the forgiveness practice! To restate: (1) Identify cause, (2) Let go of cause, and (3) Let God.

This lesson is huge for me, and deserving of more than one day spent on its practice. Not obsessively nor perfectionistically, just enough to digest this meta spiritual pointing.

Lesson 22: What I see is a form of vengeance.

“When you believe something, you have made it true for you. When you believe what God does not know, your thought seems to contradict His, and this makes it appear as if you are attacking Him.” T-7.VI.7:7-8

We unconsciously try to escape our feelings of guilt and fear by projecting them onto the world and everyone and everything in the world.

This seems outrageous because we limit ourselves to specific people, places and things, and it seems ludicrous that “little ole me” is attacking the entire planet and population. But when we slowly and deeply contemplate the above quote, it is possible for the truth to dawn on us, little by little. We are, after all, only on Lesson 22.

So even if we do not feel overtly angry, if we are willing to trust Jesus and his teaching, we will allow the possibility that he is right in showing us what we take for “reality” is actually a “savage fantasy”.

Lesson 21: I am determined to see things differently.

The word “determined” is discouraging for me. Determination is not a strong part of my temperament. Let me contemplate what I just said for a moment … determination means not to be deterred. Not to be thrown off course. Mine is not a stubborn personality; my head is closer to the clouds than my feet to the ground. My grounding technique is to have a kitty cozily planted in my lap, as is the case right now. Complete with blissful purrs.

Lesson 21 becomes possible when I change the word “determined” to “willing,” Jesus forgive me 🙂 I am willing to see things differently.

Why did this not bother me yesterday? Lesson 20, “I am determined to see,” did not seem so demanding. Jesus simply explained, “Your decision to see is all that vision requires.” A change of mind felt possible. Determination feels forced. Yesterday, Jesus said, “Yet you will not see if you regard yourself as being coerced, and if you give in to resentment and opposition.”

I guess the way I’m feeling resentment and opposition is that I feel set up for failure when he pushes determination in today’s lesson. I am willing to see things differently works for me. I feel open and receptive instead of striving willfully. Also, it is possible to read “determined” as “destined.” It is predetermined that I shall see differently as I learn to discern the false from the True.

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).