Course
in Miracles
Workbook
Lesson 181
Introduction
to Lessons 181 -
200
Our next few lessons make a special point of firming up your
willingness to make your weak commitment strong; your scattered goals
blend into one intent. You are not asked for total dedication all the
time as yet. But you are asked to practice now in order to attain the
sense of peace such unified commitment will bestow, if only
intermittently. It is experiencing this that makes it sure that you
will give your total willingness to following the way the course sets
forth.
Our lessons now are geared specifically to widening horizons, and
direct approaches to the special blocks that keep your vision narrow,
and too limited to let you see the value of our goal. We are attempting
now to lift these blocks, however briefly. Words alone can not convey
the sense of liberation which their lifting brings. But the experience
of freedom and of peace that comes as you give up your tight control of
what you see speaks for itself. Your motivation will be so intensified
that words become of little consequence. You will be sure of what you
want, and what is valueless.
And so we start our journey beyond words by concentrating first on what
impedes your progress still. Experience of what exists beyond
defensiveness remains beyond achievement while it is denied. It may be
there, but you cannot accept its presence. So we now attempt to go past
all defenses for a little while each day. No more than this is asked,
because no more than this is needed. It will be enough to guarantee the
rest will come.
I
trust my brothers, who are
one with me.
Trusting your brothers is essential to establishing and holding up your
faith in your ability to transcend doubt and lack of sure conviction in
yourself. When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by
what you have perceived in him. You do not look beyond his errors.
Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to your awareness of the
Self that lies beyond your own mistakes, and past his seeming sins as
well as yours.
Perception has a focus. It is this that gives consistency to what you
see. Change but this focus, and what you behold will change
accordingly. Your vision now will shift, to give support to the intent
which has replaced the one you held before. Remove your focus on your
brother's sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in
sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what you
see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are
witnesses to sins in you. And you will not transcend their sight and
see the sinlessness that lies beyond.
Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such little focuses
give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent. We
instruct our minds that it is this we seek, and only this, for just a
little while. We do not care about our future goals. And what we saw an
instant previous has no concern for us within this interval of time
wherein we practice changing our intent. We seek for innocence and
nothing else. We seek for it with no concern but now.
A major hazard to success has been involvement with your past and
future goals. You have been quite preoccupied with how extremely
different the goals this course is advocating are from those you held
before. And you have also been dismayed by the depressing and
restricting thought that, even if you should succeed, you will
inevitably lose your way again.
How could this matter? For the past is gone; the future but imagined.
These concerns are but defenses against present change of focus in
perception. Nothing more. We lay these pointless limitations by a
little while. We do not look to past beliefs, and what we will believe
will not intrude upon us now. We enter in the time of practicing with
one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within.
We recognize that we have lost this goal if anger blocks our way in any
form. And if a brother's sins occur to us, our narrowed focus will
restrict our sight, and turn our eyes upon our own mistakes, which we
will magnify and call our "sins." So, for a little while, without
regard to past or future, should such blocks arise we will transcend
them with instructions to our minds to change their focus, as we say:
It is not
this that I would look upon.
I trust my
brothers, who are one with me.
And we
will also use this thought to keep us safe throughout the day.
We do not seek for long-range goals. As each obstruction seems to block
the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an instant from
the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and uncorrected will remain.
Nor do we
ask for fantasies. For what we seek to look upon is really
there. And as our focus goes beyond mistakes, we will behold a wholly
sinless world. When seeing this is all we want to see, when this is all
we seek for in the name of true perception, are the eyes of Christ
inevitably ours. And the Love He feels for us becomes our own as well.
This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in
ourselves.
The world
which once proclaimed our sins becomes the proof that we are
sinless. And our love for everyone we look upon attests to our
remembrance of the holy Self which knows no sin, and never could
conceive of anything without Its sinlessness. We seek for this
remembrance as we turn our minds to practicing today. We look neither
ahead nor backwards. We look straight into the present. And we give our
trust to the experience we ask for now. Our sinlessness is but the Will
of God. This instant is our willing one with His.
John
and
Ananda
Audio
- Listen
with your Heart
Holy
Spirit, Please share with me how I can learn what you teach in
Lesson 181...
"Introduction
to Lessons 181 - 200"
Dear Child of Love....We
have reached a point in our studies where it
is clear that we are the makers of the world we call our home.
What we
feel about ourself is what we will see in our world. As we come
into
this awareness let us be clear that God's Will is the only way to
Oneness...He is Love...All will one day remember - You will lead the
way...
Take the mask off of the
Christed One that appears through out the day
- See Him as He is as he appears in all His silly dsguises...As you
accept our Father's Will for you and simply allow His Love to shine
upon You - You will reflect the Christed One's Love upon all that
appear to you in your world....They will become who they are through
your perception in seeing only the Christ within and without.
