ACIM Workbook Lesson 132 ~ May 11
http://courseinmiracles.com/workbook_lessons/part_1/lesson132.htm
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" Lesson 132
"I loose the world from all I thought it was."
What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs?
And what can save the world except your Self?
Belief is powerful indeed. The thoughts
you hold are mighty, and illusions are
as strong in their effects as is the truth.
A madman thinks the world he sees is real
and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed
by questioning his thoughts' effects. It is
but when their source is raised to question that
the hope of freedom comes to him at last.|
Yet is salvation easily achieved,
for anyone is free to change his mind,
and all his thoughts change with it. Now the source
of thought has ****fted, for to change your mind
means you have changed the source of all ideas
you think or ever thought or yet will think.
You free the past from what you thought before.
#You free the future from all ancient thoughts
of seeking what you do not want to find.|
The present now remains the only time.
Here in the present is the world set free.
For as you let the past be lifted and
release the future from your ancient fears,
you find escape and give it to the world.
You have enslaved the world with all your fears,
your doubts and miseries, your pain and tears,
and all your sorrows press [upon] it, and
keep [it] a prisoner to your beliefs.
Death strikes it everywhere because you hold
the bitter thought of death within your mind.|
The world is nothing in itself. Your mind
must give it meaning. And what you behold
upon it are your wishes, acted out
so you can look on them and think them real.
Perhaps 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. Yet in truth you found
exactly what you looked for when you came.|
There is no world apart from what you wish,
and herein lies your ultimate release.
Change but your mind on what you want to see,
and all the world must change accordingly.
Ideas leave not their source. This central theme
is often stated in the text, and must
be borne in mind if you would understand
the lesson for today. It is not pride
which tells you that you made the world you see,
and that it changes as you change your mind.|
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.
There is no world! This is the central thought
the course attempts to teach. Not 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. He will
return and go still farther, or perhaps
step back a while and then return again.|
But healing is the gift of those who are
prepared to learn there is no world, and can
accept the lesson now. Their readiness
will bring the lesson to them in some form
which they can understand and recognize.
Some see it suddenly on point of death,
and rise to teach it. Others 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.|
And some will find it in this course, and in
the exercises that we do today.
Today's idea is true because the world
does not exist. And 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. The 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.|
A lesson earlier repeated once
must now be stressed again, for it contains
the firm foundation for today's idea.
You are as God created you. There is
no place where you can suffer, and no time
that can bring change to your eternal state.
How can a world of time and place exist
if you remain as God created you?|
What is the lesson for today except
another way of saying that to know
your Self is the salvation of the world?
To free the world from every kind of pain
is but to change your mind about yourself.
There is no world apart from your ideas
because ideas leave not their source, and you
maintain the world within your mind in thought.|
Yet if you are as God created you,
you cannot think apart from Him, nor make
what does not share His timelessness and love.
Are these inherent in the world you see?
Does it create like Him? Unless it does,
it is not real and cannot be at all.
If you are real the world you see is false,
for God's creation is unlike the world
in every way. And 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.|
Release the world! Your real creations wait
for this release to give you fatherhood,
not of illusions, but as God in truth.
God shares His Fatherhood with you who are
His Son, for He makes no distinctions in
what is Himself and what is still Himself.
What He creates is not apart from Him,
and nowhere does the Father end, the Son
begin as something separate from Him.|
There is no world because it is a thought
apart from God, and made to separate
the Father and the Son, and break away
a part of God Himself and thus destroy
His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this
idea be real? Can it be anywhere?
Deny illusions, but accept the truth.
Deny you are a shadow briefly laid
upon a dying world. Release your mind,
and you will look upon a world released.|
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. They can not be there,
no more than we. For we are in the home
our Father set for us along with them.
And we who are as He created us
would loose the world this day from every one
of our illusions, that we may be free.|
Begin the fifteen minute periods
in which we practice twice today with this:
"I who remain as God created me
Would loose the world from all I thought it was.
For I am real because the world is not,
And I would know my own reality."
Then merely rest, alert but with no strain,
and let your mind in quietness be changed
so that the world is freed along with you.|
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.
But you will sense your own release, although
you may not fully understand as yet
that you could never be released alone.|
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:
"I loose the world from all I thought it was,
And choose my own reality instead." "
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