A Course In Miracles from My Perspective

June 30th 2015  Review I 

Lesson 53
Review of Lessons 11 - 15 

• Intention:  Begin the day by reading the five ideas, with the comments included.  Thereafter, it is not necessary to follow any particular order in considering them, though each one should be practiced at least once.  Devote two minutes or more to each practice period, thinking about the idea and the related comments after reading them over.  Do this as often as possible during the day.  If any one of the five ideas appeals to you more than the other, concentrate on that one.  At the end of the day, however, be sure to review all of them once more.

• Practice:  It is not necessary to cover the comments that follow each idea either literally or thoroughly in the practice periods.  Try, rather, to emphasize the central point of each comment and how it relates to its associated idea.  After reading each idea and its related comments, the exercise should be done with your eyes closed and if possible, when you are alone in a quiet place. 
    
•  Application:  The purpose of your learning is to enable you to bring the quiet with you, and to heal distress and turmoil.  This is not done by avoiding them and seeking a haven of isolation for yourself.  You will yet learn that peace is part of you, and requires only that you be there to embrace any situation in which you are.  And finally you will learn that there is no limit to where you are, so that your peace is everywhere, as you are.
    
  You will note that, for review purposes, some of the ideas are not given in quite their original form.  Use them as they are given here.  It is not necessary to return to the original statements, nor to apply the ideas as was suggested then.  We are now emphasizing the relationships among the first fifty of the ideas we have covered, and the cohesiveness of the thought system to which they are leading.you.

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(11)  My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.
Since the thoughts of which I am aware do not mean anything, the world that pictures them can have no meaning.  What is producing this world is insane, and so is what it produces.  Reality is not insane, and I have real thoughts as well as insane ones.  I can therefore see a real world, if I look to my real thoughts as my guide for seeing.
  

(12)  I am upset because I see a meaningless world.
Insane thoughts are upsetting.  They produce a world in which there is no order anywhere.  Only chaos rules a world that represents chaotic thinking, and chaos has no laws.  I cannot live in peace in such a world.  I am grateful that this world is not real, and that I need not see it at all unless I choose to value it.  And I do not choose to value what is totally insane and has no meaning.
     

(13)  A meaningless world engenders fear.
The totally insane engenders fear because it is completely undependable, and offers no grounds for trust.  Nothing in madness is dependable.  It holds out no safety and no hope.  But such a world is not real.  I have give it the illusion of reality, and have suffered from my belied in it.  Now I choose to withdraw this belief, and place my trust in reality.  In choosing this, I will escape all the effects of the world of fear, because I am acknowledging that it does not exist.  
  
(14)  God did not create a meaningless world.
How can a meaningless world exist if God did not create it?  He is the Source of all meaning, and everything that is real is in His Mind.  It is in my mind too, because He created it with me.  Why should I continue to suffer from the effects of my own insane thoughts, when the perfection of creation is my home?  Let me remember the power of my decision, and recognize where I really abide.
     
(15)  My thoughts are images that I have made.
Whatever I see reflects my thoughts.  It is my thoughts that tell me where I am and what I am.  The fact that I see a world in which there is suffering and loss and death shows me that I am seeing only the representation of my insane thoughts, and am not allowing my real thoughts to cast their beneficent light on what iI see.  Yet God's way is sure.  The images I have made cannot prevail against Him because it is not my will that they do so.  My will is His, and I will place no other gods before Him.
     

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Insights/comments:

• The mechanics of how we seem to exist in a world of illusions is the focus of today's ideas.  It is exactly like the common experience we have of dreaming.  When we dream, we created a three-dimensional world and fill it with whatever we want, trees, sky, lakes, rivers, buildings, people and situations.  We then enter into our dream as a particular character and experience our dream life through that character in whatever scenes we've created.  For all intents and purposes our dream life is as real as the life we recognize in our waking state, but with different rules, like the ability to move seamlessly between one dream location and another instantly. 
    
  It is clearly obvious that our dream world is generated from our thoughts, but what is not so obvious, is that our thoughts are also the source of our waking world.  We will know this more clearly when at some point we wake up and realize that all that happened in our dream was unreal and therefore without effects.  In the mean time, and to facilitate our awakening, it is helpful to remember the difference between God's world of reality and the apparent reality of dreams:  God's world is eternally full of peace and joy, while our dream worlds *dreaming and waking) are temporary and provide fleeting joys. 

I and my Creator are One.