Perception vs. Knowledge

ACIM Workbook Lesson 43 – for Saturday, February 12, 2011

Affirmation:  “God is my Source.  I cannot see apart from Him.”

Selected Passage:

“Perception is not an attribute of God.  His is the realm of knowledge.  Yet He has created the Holy Spirit as the Mediator between perception and knowledge.  Without this link with God, perception would have replaced knowledge forever in your mind.  With this  link with God, perception will become so changed and purified that it will lead to knowledge.  This is its function as the Holy Spirit sees it.  Therefore, that is its function in truth.  (WB67)”

Reflections:

This passage explains better than anywhere in ACIM the difference between perception and knowledge.  In our little minds, we perceive; when God has informed our Self, we know.

Perception is relative, and it is subject to the mistakes of the ego.  Knowledge is always right on target.  And knowledge is always something coming from the Holy Spirit, part of the three-in-One God that is described biblically.  We do not always know when our perceptions are inaccurate, because we are caught in the throes of the ego.  But we do have an inkling about knowledge.  Its main characteristic is that it is always loving.  If our thoughts about a given situation partake of anything but love, we are lost in perception.

We are close here to the concept of “projection makes perception,” an oft-repeated tenet of the Text.  But knowledge comes quietly, and it comes surely.  It is a harbinger of the real world, also a tenet of the Text.  What is the real world?  It is seen only for instances from time to time, when we have had a moment of Awakening through revelation from God.  Then, when Awakening has been sustained (a tenet of A Course of Love), we know rather than perceive on an ongoing basis.

We need not to be impatient for knowledge to overtake us.  As is often stressed, once our journey without distance has begun, the end is certain.  And the end is always accompanied by knowledge, a surety that what we see and recognize is true.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

When I am going about my daily round, I am normally perceiving rather than knowing.  I ask today that I know more often than I have in the past.  This knowing is Your gift, and it comes straight from you.  I know when I have left the ego behind, at least temporarily.  I would leave the ego behind more and more, especially beginning today.

I am not interested in what I project if it leads to perceiving things that are ego-inspired.  Let me fully understand the promptings of the Holy Spirit, so that I will be led to follow them more often.  Guidance is always true.  I would follow Your Holy Spirit today.

Amen.