To post comments in the discussion, click "Reply" in any of the posts. While everyone is welcome to view the discussion, only registered users can post comments. Click here to register.

Good Morning!

Today's lesson gives us a glimpse of the "other way of seeing", which is to see peace instead of this.  "This" is whatever is upsetting us or causing anxiety, depression, etc.  As the Workbook tells us over and over again, "Peace of mind is clearly an internal matter".  It is only from this perspective that we can begin to see peace outside of us. In A Course in Miracles T.24.Intro.1, it says "Forget not that the motivation for this course is the attainment and the keeping of the state of peace."  I think sometimes we will do well to remember WHY we are doing this Course!  If we are not doing the Course for the attainment and keeping of peace, then why are we doing it?  I remember back many years ago when I was first drawn to the Course, I did not undertake its study for peace, I was in a great deal of pain and I wanted release from it.  It wasn't until many years later, that peace became my entire focus.  In fact, my resolution for 2009 was to do these Workbook lessons again because I felt that peace was eluding me.  I wanted to be accountable for my peace of mind because I wasn't always seeing it "out there". 

"To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold."  T.24.Intro 2:1.  I am happy to do this because I know that many of my values are misshapen by my beliefs and perceptions of the way the world is supposed to be.  I am grateful that I can be reminded of this simple way to bring myself back into peace when I have gone off on yet another ego tantrum.  "I could see peace in this situation instead of what I now see in it."  Amen!

Joan

The sentence that stands out most to me in this lesson is 1:4 "It is from your peace of mind that a peaceful perception of the world arises." This gets right to the core of what the Course is addressing. All that is important is that I perceive the world peacefully. I am not pleading for peace in the world. In order to that, I would first have to make conflict real and then put it out into the world. There is no world apart from the way I perceive it. As a student of the Course, I need only to be concerned with correcting my perception, which is done by correcting how I think. This is always accomplished by choosing the correct teacher. Sounds simple, right?

In paragraph 3 says to “Search your mind for fear thoughts, anxiety-provoking situations, "offending" personalities or events, or anything else about which you are harboring unloving thoughts.”  This is a great example of how I am being asked look at my darkest thoughts and bringing them to the light rather than the other way around. If my mind were filled with only loving thoughts, I wouldn‘t need this lesson (or this course for that matter). It only has meaning for me when I allow myself to get in touch with those unloving thoughts which come from my unloving teacher – the ego.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false.” (T-16.IV.6:1-2)