My thoughts* on Manual for Teachers (of God, ACIM) #21 The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world’s perception.
8. How Can Perception of Order of Difficulties Be Avoided?
1. The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world’s perception.
²It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized.
³A larger object overshadows a smaller one.
⁴A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal.
⁵And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world’s standards, completely upsets the mental balance.
⁶What the body’s eyes behold is only conflict.
⁷Look not to them for peace and understanding.
2. Illusions are always illusions of differences.
* If you stop and think about this you will see that it is how the world is run today. It is how people make money and how our public opinion polls are swayed.
* You are told by the media what you are to think about and where you should give your attention. ONLY BY HAVING A RICH AND FULL INNER LIFE will you know what YOU think and Who you want to listen to. Father SEES and SHARES EQUALITY, “the world” focuses on differences and creating a lack that you did not know you had for a few to gain.
²How could it be otherwise?
³By definition, an illusion is an attempt to make something real that is regarded as of major importance, but is recognized as being untrue.
⁴The mind therefore seeks to make it true out of its intensity of desire to have it for itself.
⁵Illusions are travesties of creation; attempts to bring truth to lies.
⁶Finding truth unacceptable, the mind revolts against truth and gives itself an illusion of victory.
* Truth happens to be God’s Reality.
⁷Finding health a burden, it retreats into feverish dreams.
* Fear, neglect, we chase thoughts that victimize us and make us feel powerless.
⁸And in these dreams the mind is separate, different from other minds, with different interests of its own, and able to gratify its needs at the expense of others.
* We deny our unity and the webs of convoluted stories seem so thick and impenetrable we convince ourselves that they are real.
3. Where do all these differences come from?
²Certainly they seem to be in the world outside.
³Yet it is surely the mind that judges what the eyes behold.
⁴It is the mind that interprets the eyes’ messages and gives them “meaning.”
⁵And this meaning does not exist in the world outside at all.
⁶What is seen as “reality” is simply what the mind prefers.
⁷Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body’s eyes to find it.
⁸The body’s eyes will never see except through differences.
⁹Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests.
¹⁰Only the mind evaluates their messages, and so only the mind is responsible for seeing.
¹¹It alone decides whether what is seen is real or illusory, desirable or undesirable, pleasurable or painful.
* When we deny truth which is God, the One Original and Universal Creator we have set up the Matrix that identifies what appears fearful and impossible to avoid. Even for the rich and famous death hovers near.
4. It is in the sorting out and categorizing activities of the mind that errors in perception enter.
* Placing things in different compartments instead of in reliance on Father’s interpretation leaves us feeling trapped.
²And it is here correction must be made.
³The mind classifies what the body’s eyes bring to it according to its preconceived values, judging where each sense datum fits best.
* Did you hear the word “judging?” Father will Guide us through SPIRIT when we let Him.
⁴What basis could be faultier than this?
⁵Unrecognized by itself, it has itself asked to be given what will fit into these categories.
⁶And having done so, it concludes that the categories must be true.
* We use tradition, society’s opinions, our own limited experiences or history; anything besides God, to define the world we exist in outside of the Atonement.
⁷On this the judgment of all differences rests, because it is on this that judgments of the world depend.
⁸Can this confused and senseless “reasoning” be depended on for anything?
5. There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion.
²Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one?
³Will he agree more quickly to the unreality of a louder voice he hears than to that of a softer one?
⁴Will he dismiss more easily a whispered demand to kill than a shout?
⁵And do the number of pitchforks the devils he sees carrying affect their credibility in his perception?
⁶His mind has categorized them all as real, and so they are all real to him.
⁷When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear.
⁸And so it is with healing.
* THIS is where the scribes of the Course miss the concept of the inner world needing to be adjusted so that the outer world is able to modify itself accordingly. They repeatedly suggest that Jesus is telling them that “all illusions will disappear” and what they are missing is that THEY NO LONGER APPEAR AS REAL. There is a big difference here.
* One could say that there are many “forms” of distress for me in many directions and yet those in the various directions would say “IF ONLY she would yada, yada, things would be so great,” and I sit back and view the whole and know that there are many roads of confusion among the people, situations, and philosophies that I have come across in my lifetime. I finally understand that I am not able to unwind any of their stories for them or place them in the direct line of my love which comes from Father through me but I CAN acknowledge Father and know that ALL IS WELL, BECAUSE HE IS ALL THAT IS AND ONE DAY ALL WILL KNOW THIS.
* The issues have not disappeared from before me they are recognized by me to be the illusions that they are because of my allowing God’s Existence and my place as a part of His Son that gives me Direction from Him through SPIRIT.
⁹The properties of illusions which seem to make them different are really irrelevant, for their properties are as illusory as they are.
6. The body’s eyes will continue to see differences.
* THERE. There is the truth but it is shared in a funky way when it does not speak of spiritual eyes or third eye. The body’s eyes will have to exist in the midst of confusion BUT THE PRESENCE OF SPIRIT MAKES IT BEARABLE IN A WAY THAT I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DESCRIBE AND TAKES YOU INTO A WORLD THAT FEELS AS IF IT IS SO DISTANT OR DIFFERENT but the difference is found only in allowing God’s Presence or not.
²But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them.
* For us as mortals this sentence makes no sense and I cannot help but think that it was the ego’s way of shoving in an idea that they felt they had no way to comprehend or understand making the Course itself unattainable. Especially, as a teach of God.
³There will be those who seem to be “sicker” than others, and the body’s eyes will report their changed appearances as before.
* This says we will see things as they are in the illusion of unreality and we will know they are unreal.
⁴But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal.
* Knowing them to be unreal does not mean that they do not need to be addressed. There is a doing that tells us that we believe the truth that we understand to be Father.
⁵This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world.
⁶And of these two, but one is real.
* The scribes and editors did get understand that there were two categories they just totally blocked the idea of GOD being the TRUTH, LOVE, and REALITY that is being spoken of here.
⁷Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place — for differences cannot exist within it — so too are illusions without distinctions.
* The way that this is worded, it can be misunderstood.
* #1 Separation from God is separation from God is separation from God. THIS is how the apparent differences in the illusion are all the same and it is what helped my mind understand that we are all just guilty as the other or just as innocent depending on which we decide to see, the ego=god mentality that made what we see at this time or Father, the One Original and Universal Creator.
* #2 An illusion is an illusion, is an illusion. Correct. However, this does not mean that they will not need to be dealt with individually once the understanding of the illusion sets the mind of the son in the Atonement and has him listening to Guidance from Father through SPIRIT.
* #3 Nor do I feel that Jesus is saying that each part of the Sonship of Christ will not be allowed to manifest, morph, or visualize ALL that the Father has given him in any diverse way he desires once he has acknowledged Father’s Part in All That Is, including himself and anything that “expresses” thereafter in creation through the United Will of Father and Son.
⁸The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing.
* “Healing,” being the decision to SEE GOD.
⁹The one answer to all illusions is truth.
* “Truth,” being that GOD IS.
(ACIM, M-8.1:1–6:9)
* Free pexel photo: Each of these persons are equal before God no differential of size makes them different.
My comments are based on what I understand on the 1st of February 2025.
To Father be ALL Glory and Praise Given AS His Son, debi.
