An Example of My Journey Through ACIM Lesson 132
We have the power to change what we believe about the world.
“I loose the world from all I thought it was.“
I could not help but copy the whole lesson and comment nearly line per line:
1. What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs?
*The world does not have to be in chains.
²And what can save the world except your Self?
*Claim your power.
³Belief is powerful indeed.
⁴The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth.
⁵A madman thinks the world he sees is real, and does not doubt it.
⁶Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts’ effects.
⁷It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last.
*Our thoughts are more important than our circumstances.
2. Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his mind, and all his thoughts change with it.
*We WANT to believe it is SO DIFFICULT. And it is not.
²Now the source of thought has shifted, for to change your mind means you have changed the source of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think.
*”Now the source of thought HAS shifted.” This suggests you have done something. The Something is “clearing the slate” with the true universal forgiveness of all creation for the momentary belief in separation found in the Atonement.
³You free the past from what you thought before.
*Atoning Forgiveness does this. Think Undoing, Erasing, Evaporating, Dissolving, Eradicating.
⁴You free the future from all ancient thoughts of seeking what you do not want to find.
*From the Atonement there is no need to look outside yourself for fulfillment because you know God has given you all that IS.
3. The present now remains the only time.
*Not a now that ignores what the body or emotions experience but a now that knows things are not as they appear according to the senses at this moment. And that beyond the senses is the truth that will grow in awareness inside of you once you give it a chance to. Once you “will” it to be real along with God.
²Here in the present is the world set free.
*Breathe and know that this is so because God Wills it to be.
³For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world.
*To the world. To the Whole Sonship. To multi-verses. To multi-dimensions. Feel it bloom inside you. Freedom to BE. Be Free. Be Safe. Be Worthy. Be Loved. Be Beautiful. Be God’s begotten Child.
⁴You have enslaved the world with all your fears, your doubts and miseries, your pain and tears; and all your sorrows press on it, and keep the world a prisoner to your beliefs.
*Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. You do not have to be in charge. God will take the wheel.
⁵Death strikes it everywhere because you hold the bitter thoughts of death within your mind.
*You can KNOW there is no death. You KNOW it now. Embrace that Knowledge. =God IS
4. The world is nothing in itself. ²Your mind must give it meaning. ³And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real.
*This could very well pertain to what we think as WHOLE consciousness and not just to the individual. *It could also be groups or facets. In other words, do not use this statement as another reason to feel guilty. Know that the Mind of Christ Believes it has separated from God subconsciously and we have created a multitude of ways to suffer for that.
⁴Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. ⁵Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came.
*There is a well-accepted theory at this time that we came here for lessons and experiences that we wanted to have. That seems to justify not only suffering but existence. This is a false belief. Jesus is taking a bit further than this and saying that we chose to accept the belief that we are to suffer (not learn, SUFFER) and we seek ways to show this is so because we sense a lack EVEN in the spirit world when we are creating the circumstances that we will come to earth in. In our true state, we have NOTHING to learn because we have all that the Father has. We have KNOWLEDGE. And there is no opposite to God. There is no good and evil knowledge. There is only God or HE is NOT omnipotent. You can know that He is IF you will trust the witness within.
5. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release.
*You have the power. Each of you, individually.
²Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly.
*Have you decided that suffering and hardship are not the Will of God? It is in your power to change that thinking for the Sonship of Christ.
Will you do so, now?!??!!!
³Ideas leave not their source.
*Jesus has said the world is “ideas”. Ideas made the world of illusion through the ego. Christ’s Vision in Heaven sees the world very differently. It is invisible to us now but it can be “known” through the vision that the Holy Spirit gives us.
⁴This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. ⁵It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind.
6. But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is.
*It sounds like we are not “connected” to our own thoughts!
²There is no world!
*If the world is “ideas” as Jesus says in the Course, our thoughts make the world what it is currently and can alter it as well. “There is no world!” says to me that there is nothing outside myself and getting ahold of my thoughts will bring me back into alignment with God and the peace that is my inheritance.
*This should not be taken as a matter of “Immediate Reflection” though I suspect for some it is not impossible. For most, I suspect it is a matter of faith in the Inner Witness of the Holy Spirit as noted above.
³This is the central thought the course attempts to teach.
*That there is no world.
⁴Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth.
*The universal forgiveness really helps with establishing what must be real and what is not. What we need to be spending our energy and mental faculties on and what will wash away with awakening.
⁵He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.
*This sounds like reincarnation to me. We seem to step into the “spirit world” to regroup and contemplate our lessons. Coming back to earth for experience, to help with the awakening, that will be up to us individually along with the help of the ascended masters overseeing the Universal Plan Jesus speaks of in the Urtext of ACIM.
7. But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now.
*Prepared from past lives, even?!!! I have no doubt about this. One lifetime could never give us enough experience and time to sort these matters out.
²Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize.
*It is very personalized. Do not judge YOUR awakening by someone else’s.
³Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it.
*If this is not the description of a near-death experience, I do not know what is!
⁴Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.
*Inter-galactic experiences anyone? Out-of-body experiences? We are familiar with these today even if they are not within our experience. Perhaps there are others I have not thought of.
8. And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today.
*Hence, the many roads that can lead us to understanding the “world” as a place outside of us does NOT exist. And could not, because like God our experience is WITHIN, NOT outside of ourselves. This is not the same thing as saying that it is not real. For it is VERY real to us. We have the POWER, however, to look at what we see and DECIDE if it is what we ARE and what we WANT.
²Today’s idea is true because the world does not exist.
*Today’s idea is “I loose the world from what I thought it was.
³And if it is indeed your own imagining, then you can loose it from all things you ever thought it was by merely changing all the thoughts that gave it these appearances.
*Hooray!!
⁴The sick are healed as you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death.
*You and I have the ability to raise the dead. Do not put a timeline on this or have expectations. Instead, do as he says and “let thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death.”
9. A lesson earlier repeated once must now be stressed again, for it contains the firm foundation for today’s idea.
*Which is, “I loose the world from what I thought it was.”
²You are as God created you. ³There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state. ⁴How can a world of time and place exist, if you remain as God created you?
*Please, read that again. And again…etc. Please remember that eternity is not stagnant (a false interpretation of “no time that can bring change to your eternal state.”) for God has Willed CREATION through His Son. It has not and will not ever stop. ALL has been given to His Son (you) and He delights is your diverse expressions of existence of which suffering has NO Part.
10. What is the lesson for today except another way of saying that to know your Self is the salvation of the world?
*A capitalized Self in ACIM typically means our highest self or Christ of which you are a part in the Sonship. You are the Christ that the world has been waiting for. You are the savior and redeemer along with every other part of the Sonship.
²To free the world from every kind of pain is but to change your mind about yourself.
³There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought.
*There it is:: The world IS within YOUR mind in THOUGHT.
11. Yet if you are as God created you, you cannot think apart from Him, nor make what does not share His timelessness and Love.
*Meaning the true world could have nothing that is not OF God.
²Are these inherent in the world you see? ³Does it create like Him?
⁴Unless it does, it is not real, and cannot be at all.
*This does not mean that you will not be affected by it for a time or that NOTHING ANYWHERE including God is not real.
⁵If you are real the world you see is false, for God’s creation is unlike the world in every way.
*That would include my body. ACIM teaches I am not a body. Therefore I am not the pain that the body feels either. I do not need to remove the pain but the belief that the pain is me. Instead, I may look at the pain as a signpost or guide to the direction that I want to pursue as inspired by the Holy Spirit.
⁶And as it was His Thought by which you were created, so it is your thoughts which made it and must set it free, that you may know the Thoughts you share with God.
*Acknowledge your power!
12. Release the world!
²Your real creations wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth.
*We do not have any idea of our capabilities at this moment.
³God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself.
*This is where people want to put on the cloak of godhood and say we do not need Father anymore but do not fall for this trickery. You are “you” inside the Mind and Heart (feeling) of God. But you are not Him. You are only Him in part and every other part of the Sonship encompasses the Whole that is God. This would include all universes and dimensions as well as every particle upon earth; seen and unseen.
⁴What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him.
*Is this not comforting! We can never be alone or unprotected or lacking; ever!
13. There is no world because it is a thought apart from God,
*This is critical to our understanding who we really are and what our power is.
and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness.
*He is speaking of the world that we think that we see.
²Can a world which comes from this idea be real? ³Can it be anywhere?
⁴Deny illusions, but accept the truth.
⁵Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world.
⁶Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.
*Understand that this will be with our spiritual eyes. The ones that the Holy Spirit gives us with Vision. And in that vision, you may find that you see the ego behavior more clearly and may even become more sensitive to it but that does not mean that you will not have the peace and joy that comes from knowing the world of ego is an illusion and that we are all within God’s Mind and Care.
14. Today our purpose is to free the world from all the idle thoughts we ever held about it, and about all living things we see upon it. ²They can not be there. ³No more can we. ⁴For we are in the home our Father set for us, along with them. ⁵And we who are as He created us would loose the world this day from every one of our illusions, that we may be free.
15. Begin the fifteen-minute periods in which we practice twice today with this:
²I who remain as God created me would loose the world from all I thought it was. ³For I am real because the world is not, and I would know my own reality. ⁴Then merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let your mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed, along with you.
16. You need not realize that healing comes to many brothers far across the world, as well as to the ones you see nearby, as you send out these thoughts to bless the world.
*What one in the Sonship does affects the Whole.
²But you will sense your own release, although you may not fully understand as yet that you could never be released alone.
*Full release is all there is because we in the Sonship are ONE.
17. Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your ideas to all the world, and say whenever you are tempted to deny the power of your simple change of mind:
²I loose the world from all I thought it was, and choose my own reality instead.
*Who am I? What am I? These are the core questions we each need to answer. This lesson shows that we decide that and choose all that there is by acknowledging that God is all that could ever be and we are each a part of Him as His Son.
Thanks for reading! Much love and gratitude!
Till next time, God bless, debi.
