Being Upset II

ACIM Workbook Lesson 12 – for Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Affirmation:  “I am upset because I see a meaningless world.”

Selected Passage:

“The importance of this idea lies in the fact that it contains a correction for a major perceptual distortion.  You think that what upsets you is a frightening world, or a sad world, or a violent world, or an insane world.  All these attributes are given it by you.  The world is meaningless in itself.  (WB19)”

Reflections:

This passage is a further elucidation of the fact that projection makes perception.  Even if we are new students to A Course in Miracles, we can understand that when we feel good, we are more tolerant of our brothers and sisters.  When we are feeling down, we are more likely to welcome attack of them, an attack brought on by our anger.  And stress or depression may be the underlying emotion that is fueling the upset.

We bring to this world all that it is really is, as long as we are lost in the dream.  The dream will turn happier as we turn our lives over to the Holy Spirit for guidance, and we will dream the “happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings” (a quotation from the Text).  This new way of seeing can follow us quite awhile, until some external event triggers doubt, and we are led to understand that we do not fully understand that even happy dreams are not the culmination of what is desirable.  The real world is, and this God grants when we are ready.  This is at the point of Awakening.  Jesus provides through ACIM the means to get to that end, and revelation may occasionally reveal the end to us in advance (a Text tenet).

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Help me to recognize why I see a meaningless world.  It is brought on by my attraction to egoistic thinking.  I do not have to view insane thoughts or attack thoughts as anything but illusion.  And then I have nothing to fear, because illusion does not accomplish anything (though we may allow it to make us absolutely miserable).

Help me today to turn aside attacks or insanity (not legal, but simply meaning that we are seeing amiss).  May I have Your help in living a sane life today.

Amen.