Lesson 42: God is my strength. Vision is His gift.
The goal of this course is important to you. Don’t forget it.
But, what is the goal? How come we keep forgetting?
Because one of the ego’s most effective tools is forgetting, sleeping, denying.
Lesson 42 offers us two very powerful thoughts: God is my strength. Vision is His gift. And combines them.
Lesson 42 also “sets forth a cause and effect relationship that explains why you cannot fail in your efforts to achieve the goal of this course.”
What is the goal of this course? Simply refer to the Introduction to the Text: “The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance.”
ACIM Zen Koan: “Your passage through time and space is not at random. You cannot but be in the right place at the right time.” This is not fortune-telling. Don’t try to understand it. Let it in-form you.
God is my strength. Vision is His gift.
Interestingly, Jesus says while we are doing today’s practice, we “may also reach a point where no thoughts at all seem to come to mind.” He calls this “interference” — it’s what Eckhart Tolle calls “sinking below thought” rather than “rising above thought”. In Lessons 8 and 10, Jesus refers to this as the mind actually being “blank,” and not in a good way.
Jesus encourages us, when doing the practice given in Lesson 42, to think of nothing except thoughts that occur to us in relation to God is my strength. Vision is His gift. He gives us examples, “Vision must be possible. God gives truly.” and “God’s gifts to me must be mine, because He gave them to me.” He then says:
“You may, in fact, be astonished at the amount of course-related understanding some of your thoughts contain.”
He concludes with:
“The more often you repeat the idea during the day, the more often you will be reminding yourself that the goal of the course is important to you, and that you have not forgotten it.”
What is the goal of this course? “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” T-16.IV.6:1
Note: Bold mine. Also, I find it useful to see the word “interference” as “inter-fear-ence” — I think that is one of the astonishing, yet so simple, course-related understandings that have come to me over the years.
