ARCIM

Daily Lesson 91 ~
April 1

Miracles are seen in the Light of the world.

It is important to remember that miracles and vision necessarily go together. This needs repeating, and frequent repeating. It is a central Idea in your new thought system and the new perception that it produces. The miracle is always present. Its presence is not caused by your vision. Its absence is not the result of your failure to see. It is only your awareness of miracles that is affected by your vision or lack of it. You will see them in the Light of the world. You will not see them in the dark.

To you, then, the Light of the world is crucial. While you remain in darkness the miracle remains unseen. Thus you are convinced it is not there. This follows from the premises from which the darkness comes. Denial of the Light leads to failure to perceive It. Failure to perceive the Light is to believe that you can perceive in darkness. The Light is temporarily useless to you then, even though It is there. You cannot use It because Its Presence is unknown to you. And the seeming reality of the darkness makes the Idea of Light seem meaningless.

To be told that what you do not perceive is there may sound like insanity. It is very difficult to become convinced that it is insanity not to perceive what is there, and to perceive what is not there instead. You do not doubt that the body’s eyes can perceive. You do not doubt that the images they show you are reality. Your faith therefore currently lies in the darkness, not the Light. How can this be reversed? For you alone it would be impossible, but you are not alone in this.

Your efforts, however little they may be, have strong Support. If you only realized how great this Strength is, your doubts would vanish. Today we will devote ourselves to the attempt to let you feel this Strength. When you have felt the Strength in you that makes all miracles within your easy reach, you will not doubt. The miracles your sense of weakness hides will leap into awareness as you feel this Strength in you.

Three times today, set aside about ten minutes for a quiet time in which you try to leave your weakness behind. This is accomplished very simply as you remind yourself that you are not a body, and that your true being is far beyond a body. Your will remains your teacher, and your will has all the Strength to do whatever it desires. Your faith will be in what you will, as you instruct your mind accordingly. You can transcend the body, your perceived source of weakness, if you choose. You can experience the Strength in you.

Begin the longer practice periods with this statement of true cause and effect relationships:

“Miracles are seen in the Light of the world. The body’s eyes do not perceive the Light. But a body is not what I am. What am I?”

The question with which this statement ends is needed for our exercises today. What you currently think you are is a belief that must be undone for you to be able to see. And what you really are must be revealed to you. The belief that you are a body calls for correction, being a mistake. The Truth of what you are calls on the Strength in you to bring to your awareness what the mistake concealed.

If a body is not what you are, what are you? You need to be aware of what the Holy Spirit uses to replace the image of a body in your mind. You need to feel something to put your faith in, as you lift it from the body. You need a real experience of something else, something more solid and more sure, more worthy of your faith, and really there.

If a body is not what you are, then what are you? Ask this in honesty, and then devote several minutes to allowing your mistaken thoughts about the attributes of your true being to be corrected, and their opposites to take their place. Say, for example:

“I am strong, not weak.”

“I am certain, not doubtful.”

“I am powerful, not helpless.”

“I am limitless, not limited.”

“I am part of Reality, not an illusion.”

“I can see in Light, not in darkness.”

In the second phase of the exercise period, try to experience these truths about yourself. Concentrate particularly on the experience of Strength. Remember that all sense of weakness is associated with the belief that you are a body, a belief that is mistaken and deserves no faith. Try to remove your faith from it, if only for a moment. Each moment you do, as we proceed, will help you to become accustomed to having faith in what is worthy in you.

Relax for the rest of the practice period, confident that your efforts, however meager, are fully supported by the Strength of the Divine and all Its eternal Thoughts. It is from Them your Strength will come. It is through Their strong Support that you will feel the Strength in you. They are united with you in this practice period as in this Course, in which you share a Purpose like Their own. Theirs is the Light in which you will see miracles, because Their Strength is yours. Their Strength becomes your vision, that you may see.

Five or six times an hour, at reasonably regular intervals, remind yourself that miracles are seen in the Light of the world. Also, be sure to meet with today’s idea any temptation to mis-project. This form would be helpful for this special purpose:

“Miracles are seen in the Light of the world. Let me open my perception to this.”

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 6: Spirit’s Lessons of Undoing

 

1. The Parallel Lines of Knowledge and Perception

I do not need expressions of gratitude any more than I needed physical protection. But my sisters and brothers do need to develop their weakened ability to be grateful, or they will not be able to appreciate all of the Divine’s Gifts to them. The Divine also does not need your appreciation, but you do.

You cannot love what you do not appreciate, and fear makes appreciation impossible. Whenever you are afraid of what you are, you do not appreciate it, and will therefore reject it and mis-project it. As a result, you will teach rejection. The Power of the Children of the Divine is operating all the time, because they were created as creators. Their influence on each other is limitless, and must be used for their joint awakening.

Each one must learn to teach that all forms of rejection are utterly meaningless. The separation is the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this, you demonstrate that you still believe it. This is not as the Divine thinks, and you must think as It thinks if you are to know the Divine and yourself again.

Any split in will must involve a rejection of part of the will, and this is the belief in separation. The Wholeness of the Divine, which is Its Peace, cannot be appreciated except by a whole mind, which recognizes the Wholeness of the Divine’s Creation and by this Recognition knows its Creator. The will of a whole mind is also whole.

Separation and exclusion are synonymous, as are separation and dissociation. It was said before that the separation was and is dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, mis-projection became its main defense, or the device that kept and still keeps it going. The reason, however, may not be as straightforward as it may seem, as can be observed when we consider the process carefully. What you mis-project you disown, and therefore do not believe is yours. You are therefore excluding yourself from it, and by this very act are making a statement that you are different from another who hasn’t disowned it. Since you have also judged against what you have mis-projected or cast away from yourself, you have attacked it by rejecting it. By doing this unconsciously you try to keep the fact out of awareness that you must have attacked yourself first in order to have split yourself, and through keeping this fact out of your awareness you imagine that you have made yourself safe.

Projection in this sense of mis-projection, or projection to separate rather than extend, will always hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its only purpose is to keep the separation intact. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel “justifiably” different from your sisters and brothers and separated from them. The ego “justifies” mis-projection on the entirely spurious grounds that it makes you feel better to cast away from yourself what you don’t like in yourself, rather than accepting it and bringing it to Spirit for true Evaluation. By excluding part of yourself from yourself, you also exclude your sisters and brothers, thus obscuring equality with them still further. Mis-projection and attack are therefore inevitably related, because mis-projection is always a means of justifying attack, even if the attack takes place unconsciously, and even if it is really against yourself.

Anger without mis-projection is impossible, as is mis-projection without anger. The ego uses projection only to distort your perception of both yourself and your sisters and brothers. It begins by excluding something you think exists in you that you do not want, and leads directly to your excluding yourself from your sisters and brothers. This is how it upholds the separation.

But we know that there is another, appropriate, use of projection, which has been discussed previously in this Course. Every ability of the ego has a better counterpart, because its abilities are directed by the mind, which has a better Voice. The Holy Spirit as well as the ego utilizes projection, but since their goals are opposite, so are their results. The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving you as perfect. Knowing that this Perfection is shared, Spirit recognizes It in your sisters and brothers, thus strengthening It in both you and them. Instead of anger, this awakens Love in each of you for both of you because it establishes Inclusion. Perceiving Equality, the Holy Spirit perceives equal needs. This invites Atonement automatically, because the Remedy of the Atonement is the one need that is universal.

To perceive yourself in this way is the only way in which you can find Happiness in this world. This is because it is the acknowledgment that this world is inherently unhappy, but also that in reality you are not in this world. How else can you find Joy in a joyless place except by realizing that you are not in such a place, i.e., that you are actually in a joyful place? If you were having a nightmare and awoke, you would be joyful to realize that you were not actually in the nightmare. You cannot be anywhere that the Divine did not put you, and the Divine created you as Part of It. That is both where you are and what you are. This is completely unalterable. It is total Inclusion. You cannot change this now or ever. It is forever true. It is not a belief, but a fact.

Anything that the Divine creates is as true as It is. Its Truth has Its Being only in Its perfect Inclusion in That alone that is perfect. To deny this in any way is to deny yourself and the Creator of Perfection, because it is impossible to accept one without the other. The perfect Equality of the Holy Spirit’s Perception is the parallel of the perfect Equality of the Divine’s Knowledge. The ego’s perception has no parallel or counterpart in the Divine, but the Holy Spirit remains the Bridge between perception and Knowledge. By enabling you to use perception in a way that parallels Knowledge, you will ultimately meet Knowledge and know It.

The ego believes that the meeting of parallel lines is impossible. But you might remember that the human eye perceives them as if they do meet in the distance, which is the same as in the future when time and space are conceived as one dimension, that is, both as learning devices that are unnecessary in Eternity. Non-Euclidean geometry theoretically supports the interpretation of the ultimate convergence of the parallel.

Everything real does meet in the Divine, because Everything was created by It and in It. The Creator created Its Children by extending Its Thought and retaining these Extensions in Its Mind forever. All Its Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they were created neither partially nor in part. The Holy Spirit enables you to perceive this Wholeness now, which is true vision.

You can no more truly pray for yourself alone than you can find Joy for yourself alone. True prayer is a restatement of Inclusion, directed by the Holy Spirit within the Divine Laws. The Divine created you to create. But you cannot extend Its Realm until you know Its Wholeness. Thoughts begin in the mind of the thinker, from which, like Light, they extend everywhere. This is as true of the Divine’s Thinking as it is of yours. However, because your mind is temporarily split, you can also perceive as well as think. Yet perception itself is contained within the basic laws of mind. You perceive from your mind, and extend your perceptions outward to return to you what you sent them to find.

Although perception of any kind is ultimately unnecessary, human beings made it and the Holy Spirit can therefore use it well. Spirit can inspire perception and lead it toward the Divine by making it parallel to the Divine’s Way of Thinking, or Knowledge, thus guaranteeing their ultimate meeting. This convergence seems to be far in the future only because your mind is not yet in perfect accord with the Idea, and therefore does not will It now. The Holy Spirit uses time but knows that time is only temporary (in this case a statement that is neither redundant nor a pun). Coming from the Divine, Spirit uses everything for Good, though only strengthens what is true in each thing, letting everything else go.

Since the Holy Spirit is in your mind, your spirit must be able to relate only to what is true. The Holy Spirit can speak only for this because It speaks for the Divine. It reminds you to return your whole mind to the Divine, because your whole mind has never left It. If it has never left It, then you need only perceive your mind as it truly is, or perceive it truly, for it to be returned. The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the Recognition that the separation never actually occurred. The ego cannot prevail against this, because it is an explicit statement that the ego never actually occurred.

The ego can accept the idea that return is necessary because it can so easily make the idea seem so difficult. But the Holy Spirit tells you that even return is unnecessary, because what never happened cannot be a problem at all. But it does not follow that human beings cannot make the idea of return both necessary and difficult.

The Divine made nothing either necessary or difficult. But the separated ones have perceived both as if they were part of the Divine’s perfect Creation. Yet it is surely clear that the Perfect need nothing, and cannot experience Perfection as a difficult accomplishment because that is what they are. This is the way you must learn to perceive the Divine’s Creation, bringing all of your perceptions into the one parallel Line that the Holy Spirit sees. This Line is the direct Line of Communication with the Divine, and lets your mind converge with Spirit’s. There is no conflict anywhere in this perception, because it means that all perception is guided by the Holy Spirit, Whose Mind is fixed on the Divine (as discussed previously regarding the Set or Fixation Point of Creation).

Only the Holy Spirit can resolve conflict because in this world only the Holy Spirit is conflict-free. Spirit perceives only what is true in your mind, and extends this everywhere to only what is true in other minds.

The difference between the ego’s use of mis-projection and Projection as the Holy Spirit uses It is very simple. The ego mis-projects to exclude and therefore to deceive. The Holy Spirit projects by recognizing Itself in every mind, and thus perceives all minds as One. Nothing conflicts in this perception because what the Holy Spirit perceives – the Face or Presence of Divine Essence – is the same everywhere. Spirit sees the Divine in whatever and wherever It sees, and, because Spirit is united with the Divine and Its perfect Creation, It offers to all the whole Realm of Heaven always. This is the one Message that the Divine gave to Spirit, for which Spirit must speak because that is what It is.

The Peace of the Divine rests in that Message, and so the Peace of the Divine rests in you. The great Peace of the Realm shines in your mind forever, but it must shine everywhere to make you aware of It. The Holy Spirit was given to you with perfect impartiality, and only by perceiving It impartially can you perceive It at all. The ego is legion, appearing as multiple separated fragments, but the Holy Spirit is One. No darkness abides anywhere in the Realm. Your part in the Atonement is only to allow no darkness to abide in your own mind. This accord with Light is unlimited because it is in accord with the Light of the world. Each of us is the Light of the world, and by joining our minds in this Light we proclaim the Realm of the Divine together and as One.