ACIM Workbook Lesson 53 – for Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Affirmation: “My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.”
Selected Passage:
“I have real thoughts as well as insane ones. I can therefore see a real world, if I look to my real thoughts as my guide for seeing. (WB86)”
Reflections:
Even before sustained Awakening, we have real thoughts as well as insane ones. We have moments of Awakening before the sustainability that A Course of Love calls the “elevated Self of form.” Eckhart Tolle makes the same point in a CD interview entitled, “Even the Sun Will Die.” This New Age thought is rapidly becoming mainstream.
Affirmation: “”I am upset because I see a meaningless world.”
Selected Passage:
“I am grateful that this world is not real, and that I need not see it at all unless I choose to value it. And I do not choose to value what is totally insane and has no meaning. (WB86)”
Reflections:
We can clear our mind’s upset far easier than we have imagined. We can choose not to see insanity at all; we can just rush to the side of those who need our help, recognizing that we are seeing illusions–however real they appear to be.
Affirmation: “A meaningless world engenders fear.”
Selected Passage:
“The totally insane engenders fear because it is completely undependable, and offers no grounds for trust. . . .Now I choose to withdraw this belief, and place my trust in reality. In choosing this, I will escape all the effects of the world of fear, because I am acknowledging that it does not exist. (WB86)”
Reflections:
This passage is the perfect one to recall when we are tempted to get angry with someone. The anger is the fact that fear has intruded on our world, and the word or action that has precipitated the anger is actually an insane one. We know, though, that our brother or sister is actually innocent, and he or she is only making a mistake in attacking us. This is the way that we can tame our temper.
Affirmation: “God did not create a meaningless world.”
Selected Passage:
“Why should I continue to suffer from the effects of my own insane thoughts, when the perfection of creation is my home? Let me remember the power of my decision, and recognize where I really abide. (WB87)”
Reflections:
I am actually not in this world of insanity. My Self is elsewhere, looking on (an interpretation, not stated in ACIM). We are really at Home, and we are “visiting” this world, which seems so insane to us at times. Let us hope to remember that this insanity does not have to affect us adversely. Even if bad things happen, we can rise above with our mind and spirit, with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Affirmation: “My thoughts are images that I have made.”
Selected Passage:
“The fact that I see a world in which there is suffering and loss and death shows me that I am seeing only the representation of my insane thoughts, and am not allowing my real thoughts to cast their beneficent light on what I see. (WB87)”
Reflections:
If we are seeing rightly, we will recognize the suffering and death as illusions–too insane to be considered without “reconsidering.” We need to realize that Reality is wholly benign. We are not there now (at least most of us are not), but we can turn to our “real thoughts” and let them assure us that there is a better way to look at the pain that we are observing around us.
Prayer:
Dear Father/Mother,
I want to leave illusions behind. I want to leave my madness, my insanity, behind. I want to see only reality in this world. I do not have to wait to die to see reality. Help me today to live freely and peacefully, without anger and attack, and with a loving and forgiving attitude.
Your way is mine, dear God. Help me to walk Your way from now on, beginning today.
Amen.
