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.
