A Course In Miracles from My Perspective

July 1st 2015  Review I 

Lesson 54
Review of Lessons 16 - 20 

• 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.

---

  
(16)  I have no neutral thoughts.
Neutral thoughts are impossible because all thoughts have power.  They will either make a false world or lead me to the real one.  But thoughts cannot be without effects.  As the world I see arises from my thinking errors, so will the real world rise before my eyes as I let my errors be corrected.  My thoughts cannot be neither true nor false.  They must be one or the other.  What I see shows me which they are.
  

(17)  I see no neutral things.
What I see witnesses to what I think.  If I did not think I would not exist, because life is thought.  Let me look on the world I see as the representation of my own state of mind.  I know that my state of mind can change.  And so I know the world I see can change as well.
     

(18)  I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.
If I have no private thoughts, I cannot see a private world.  Even the mad idea of separation had to be shared before it could form the basis of the world I see.  Yet that sharing was a sharing of nothing.  I can also call upon my real thoughts, which share everything with everyone.  As my thoughts of separation call to the separation thoughts of others, so my real thoughts awaken the real thoughts in them.  And the world my real thoughts show me will dawn on their sight as well as mine.  
  
(19)  I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.
I am alone in nothing.  Everything I think or say or do teaches all the universe.  A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain.  He cannot be alone in anything.  It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God.
     
(20)  I am determined to see.
Recognizing the shared nature of my thoughts, I am determined to see.  I would look upon the witnesses that show me the thinking of the world has been changed.  I would behold the proof that what has been done through me has enabled love to replace fear, laughter to replace tears, and abundance to replace loss.  I would look upon the real world, and let it teach me that my will and the Will of God are one.
     

---

Insights/comments:

• The  oneness of life is emphasized by the ideas we review today.  The implications of a life of oneness with God, are that we are one with everyone and everything in creation, and that what we do affects every aspect of the unified whole.  All the characters in a dream share their thoughts and are affected by the actions of everyone else in the dream simply because they all have one source, the dreamer.   Similarly, we all share our thoughts, see what everyone else sees, and are affected by what everyone else does, because we all share one common Source, God.  God's mind is the pool of real thoughts from which we may draw, for His mind is the source of all that is real.  God created only one Son, the Sonship of the unified children of God, of which we are part, and we therefore all share the thoughts of the one mind of the Sonship.  The world we see is the dream of the Sonship.  We are all characters in this dream, and can therefore affect the whole of the sonship by exchanging our dream thoughts for the real thoughts we share with God.
    

I and my Creator are One.