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.
