Lesson56

[Prev] [Next]

LESSON 56
February 25

Review I - Lessons 26 to 30

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"Above all else I want to see."

"Above all else I want to see differently."

"God is in everything I see."

"God is in everything I see because God is in my mind."

PRACTICE SUMMARY

(See Review I Practice Summary)

COMMENTARY

The Door Behind The World

There is a door behind this world which, if opened, will allow me to see past this world to a world that reflects the Love of God (3:4). It is a door in my mind, a door to vision.

This world, full of "pain, illness, loss, age and death," simply reflects what I think I am (1:3; 2:1,2). It is an hallucination superimposed over reality, hiding it and seemingly replacing it.

The opening line of the review asks: "How can I know who I am when I see myself as under constant attack?" Think about that. If I am truly under constant attack, beset by illness, loss, age and death, how can I be a perfect creation of God? How can God even be real? I believe in a self-image that is constantly threatened. If I am threatened, how could I be an eternal, spiritual being? If the picture I see in this world is true, then I am nothing, worth nothing, and destined for destruction. I may as well say with the rich man in the Gospel story, "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!" I may as well take what I can get because nothing will last, including myself.

Something in all of us, however, tells us that we are more than this (5:2). Something in us resonates when we read, in the Course, that nothing real can be threatened. If that is true, and I am real, then the world I see must be false. The picture it is showing me, reinforcing my image of myself as vulnerable, must be a lie. Either I am real and the world is not, or the world is real and I am not. "For I am real because the world is not, and I would know my own reality" (W-pI.132.15:3).

Therefore my greatest need is vision. I need to open that door in my mind, "look past all appearances" (5:6), and see a world that reflects God's Love, and by so doing remember who I really am. "Behind every image I have made, the truth remains unchanged" (4:2). "In my own mind, behind all my insane thoughts of separation and attack, is the knowledge that all is one forever. I have not lost the knowledge of Who I am because I have forgotten it" (5:2-3).

I want to open that door behind the world and see the truth again. I want to remember.