Today’s idea has been stated many times and in various ways in this Course, because it is the key to releasing the illusion that you are a victim of a world outside of yourself and whose effects are beyond your control. Recognizing that the world as you perceive and experience it is merely a reflection of the state of your inner health offers you two priceless gifts. First, the world you perceive and experience instructs you as to the state of your inner health, which is where sound health or ill-health actually reside rather than in your body or any external manifestation. In this regard the world that you perceive and experience is diagnostic of your state of inner health. Second, you understand that ill-health resides in your mind and nowhere else. In this regard the world that you perceive and experience is therapeutic for your state of inner health.
A state of inner ill-health is always the result of the ego aspect of your mind operating in your mind, and then being reflected in the world you perceive and experience outside yourself. This will be the case until the ego’s perspective is no longer valued and the ego itself relinquished, at which point your mind will become whole and your state of inner health will be wholly sound again, and forever. This relinquishment, decided by your own freewill, is one way of stating the goal of this Course. To reach this goal it is essential that you understand the only real purpose that looking “outside” yourself has, which is to receive the diagnostic and therapeutic gifts that today’s idea offers.
If the world is perceived as a place of danger, violence, or even of vengeance (for instance, the vengeance of a frightening force wielding its power against you because of mistakes you or others have made), today’s idea accurately indicates that this experience is the result of holding such thoughts in your mind. This Course has called all such thoughts “attack thoughts” in recognition of the idea at their core. Anyone who has projected their anger onto the world will fear that danger, violence or vengeance is waiting to strike at them. Their own attacks will then likely be perceived as self-defense. This circle of mis-projection and mirrored reaction becomes an increasingly vicious one until they are willing to change how they conceive and perceive the world. Otherwise, thoughts of attack and counterattack will preoccupy them and people their entire world. What peace of mind is possible to those caught in this circle?
It is from the fantasy of the world happening to you in any form that you want to be free. Isn’t it joyous news to hear that this fantasy is not real? Isn’t it a happy discovery to find that you can release yourself from your illusions? You made up what you fear and would defend against. Nothing that you fear exists in Reality, and only exists in your mind as you choose to hold it there. To that degree have you temporarily removed your mind from Reality.
Look at the world around you at least five times today, for at least a minute each time. As your eyes move slowly from one object to another, from one body to another, say to yourself:
“I look upon only the perishable. I look upon nothing that will last forever. What I look upon is not real.
The world I perceive is a reflection of the state of my inner health.”
At the end of each practice period, ask yourself: “What world do I really want to conceive, perceive and experience?” The answer is surely obvious.