ARCIM

Daily Lesson 132 ~
May 12

I loose the world from all I thought it was.

What keeps the world bound in illusions but your false beliefs? And what can release the world except your holy Self? Belief is powerful indeed. The thoughts you hold are mighty, as you are, and illusions are as strong in their effects in this world as is the Truth. An insane person thinks the world they look upon is real, and they do not doubt it. Nor can they be swayed by questioning their thoughts’ effects. It is only when the source of their thoughts is raised to question that the hope of freedom from madness comes to them at last.

Yet is awakening easily achieved, for anyone is free to change their mind, and all their thoughts will change with it. Now the source of thought has shifted, for to transform 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 Freedom and give It to the world. You have imprisoned the world with all your fears, your doubts and miseries, pain and tears. 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 perceive within 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 sought when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein is your ultimate Release. Just change your mind on what you want to perceive, and all the world must change accordingly.

Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the Text of this Course, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride that tells you that you made the world you perceive, and that it changes as you fundamentally change or transform your mind. But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and totally apart from what you chance to believe 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 they can let themself be led along the Road to Truth. Each 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 that there is no world, and who can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form that they can understand and recognize.

Some see this lesson 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 the world you look upon is indeed your own imagining, a screen that takes the forms you project upon it, 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 must now be stressed again, for it contains the Truth that is the firm foundation for today’s idea. You are as the Divine created you. There is no place in Reality 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 the Divine created you?

What is the lesson for today except another way of saying that to know your Self is the awakening of the world? To free the world from every kind of pain is just to transform your mind about yourself. There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain in thought within your mind the world you have decided that you want to live in.

Yet if you are as the Divine created you, then in truth you cannot think apart from It, nor make what does not share Its Timelessness and Love. Are these inherent in the world you look upon? In this world do you create like your Creator? Unless it reflects Heaven, this world is not real and cannot be at all.

If you are real then the world that can be looked upon must be false, for the Divine’s Creation is unlike the world of illusions in every way. And as it was the Creator’s Thought by which you were created, so it is your thoughts that made the world and that must set it free, that you may know the Thoughts you share with the Divine.

Release the world! Your real creations wait for this release to awaken you to your creatorship, not of illusions, but through the Divine by which you were created in Truth. The Divine shares Its Creatorship with you who are Its Child, for It makes no distinctions in what is Itself and what is also Itself as Its Children. What It creates is not apart from It, and nowhere does the Creator end and Its Children begin as something separate from It.

There is no world as it appears to be because this world is a thought apart from the Divine, and made to separate the Creator and Its Children, and break away a Part of the Divine Itself and thus obliterate Its Wholeness from the mind. Can a world that comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere?

Deny illusions and accept the Truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. Release your mind, and you will see a world released.

Today our purpose is to free the world from all the idle thoughts we ever held about it, and about all created things we look upon in it. They cannot be there, no more than we can. For we are eternally in the Home our Creator set for us along with them. And we who are as the Divine 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 the Divine 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 transformed so that the world is freed along with you.

As you send out these thoughts to bless the world, you need not realize that healing comes to many sisters and brothers far across the world, as well as to the ones you perceive nearby. 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 whenever you are tempted to deny the power of your simple change of mind, say:

“I loose the world from all I thought it was,

and choose my own reality instead.”

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 11: The Dissolution of the Ego

 

2. The Divine Wills to Be Joined

You have learned of your need of healing. Would you bring anything else to the Divine Family in time, recognizing your need of healing for yourself? For in this recognition rests the beginning of Knowledge, the Foundation on which the Divine will help you establish again the Thought System that you share with It. Every miracle you place upon this Foundation is blessed by the Divine. For you are restoring the holy Dwelling Place of Its Children, where It wills Its Children be, and where they are. In whatever Part of the Mind of the Divine Family you restore this Reality, you restore It to yourself. For you dwell in the Mind of the Divine with your sisters and brothers, because the Divine Itself willed to be joined.

To be alone is to be separated from Infinity, but how can this be, if Infinity has no end? No one can be beyond the Limitless, because what has no limits must be Everywhere. There are no beginnings and no endings in the Divine, Whose Universe is Itself. Can you exclude yourself from the Divine’s Universe, or from the Divine, Who is the eternal Universe? “My Creator and I are One” with you, for you are Part of us. Do you really believe that Part of the Divine can be missing or lost to It?

If you were not Part of the Divine, Its Will would not be unified. Is this conceivable? Can Part of Its Mind contain nothing? If your Place in Its Mind cannot be filled by anyone except you, and your filling It was your creation, without you there would be an empty place in the Divine’s Mind. Extension cannot be blocked, and It has no voids. It continues forever, however much It is denied. Your denial of Its Reality arrests It in time, but not in Eternity. That is why your creations have not ceased to be extended, and why so much is waiting for your Return.

Waiting is possible only in time, but time has no meaning. You who made delay can leave time behind simply by recognizing that neither beginnings nor endings were created by the Eternal, Who placed no limits on Its Creation or upon those who create like It. You do not know this simply because you have tried to limit what It created, and so you believe that all creation is limited. How, then, could you know your creations, having denied Infinity? The Laws of the Universe, which are the Laws of the Divine, do not permit contradiction. What holds for the Divine holds for you. If you believe that you are absent from the Divine, you will believe that It is absent from you.

Infinity is meaningless without you, and you are meaningless without the Divine. There is no end to the Divine and Its Creation, for we are the Divine’s Universe. The Divine is not incomplete, and It is not childless. Because It willed to be joined, It created a Creation like Itself. Do not deny It Its Children, for your unwillingness to accept Its Creatorship has denied you yours. See Its Creations as Its Children, for your creations were created in honor of It.

The Universe of Love does not stop because you do not see It, and your closed spiritual eye has not lost the ability to see. Behold the Glory of the Divine’s Creation, and you will learn what It has kept for you. The Divine has given you a Place in Its Mind which is yours forever. But you could keep It only by giving It, as It was given to you. Could you be alone there, if It was given you because the Divine willed to be joined? The Divine’s Mind cannot be decreased. It can only be increased, and Everything It creates has the Function of creating. Love only extends and does not limit, and what It creates is infinite and eternal.

To give without limit is the Divine’s Will for you, because only this can bring you the Joy that is Its, and that It wills to share with you. Your love is as boundless as Its because it is Its. Could any Part of the Divine be without Its Love, and could any Part of Its Love be contained? The Divine is your Heritage and Inheritance, because Its one Gift is Itself. How can you give except like It, if you would know Its Gift to you? Give, then, without limit and without end, to learn how much the Divine has given you. Your ability to accept It depends on your willingness to give as It gives. Your creatorship and your Creator are One.

The Divine willed to create, and your will is Its. It follows, then, that you will to create, since your will follows from Its. And being the Extension of Its Will, yours must be the same. Yet what you will you do not currently know. This is not strange when you realize that to deny is to not know. The Divine’s Will is that you are Its Child. By denying this, you denied your own will, and therefore do not know what it is.

The reason you must ask what the Divine’s Will is in everything is merely because It is yours. You do not currently know what It is, but the Holy Spirit remembers It for you. Ask Spirit, therefore, what the Divine’s Will is for you in everything, and It will tell you yours. It cannot be too often repeated that you do not currently know it. Whenever what the Holy Spirit tells you appears to you to be coercive, it is only because you do not currently recognize your own will.

Your mis-projection of the ego as your self outside yourself makes it appear as if the Divine’s Will is outside yourself, and therefore not your own. In this deluded interpretation it does appear as if it is possible for the Divine’s Will and yours to conflict. The Divine, then, may seem to demand of you what you do not want to give, and thus deprive you of what you think you want. Yet would the Divine, Who wants only your will, be capable of this? Your will is Its Life, which It has given to you. Even in time you cannot live apart from It, for being asleep to the Divine is not death. What It created can sleep, but it cannot end, which means it cannot die. Immortality is Its Will for Its Children, and Its Children’s will for themselves. Thus the Divine’s Children cannot will death for themselves, because their Creator is Life, and Its Children are like It.

Creation is your will because It is the Divine’s. You cannot be happy unless you do what you truly will, and you cannot change this because it is immutable. But it is immutable by the Divine’s Will and yours, for otherwise Its Will would not have been extended. You are currently afraid to know the Divine’s Will because you believe It is not your will. This belief is your entire sickness and your entire fear. Every symptom of sickness and fear stems from this belief, because this is the belief that makes you want not to know. Believing this, you hide in darkness, denying that the Light is in you.

You are asked to trust the Holy Spirit only because It speaks for you. It is the Voice of and for the Divine. Always remember that the Divine wills to be joined. It shares Its Will with you. It does not thrust It upon you. Remember also that what It gives It holds, which means that nothing It gives can contradict It. You who share in Its Life must share It to know It, for true sharing is knowing.

Blessed are you who learn that to hear the Will of your Creator is to know your own. For it is your will to be like your Creator, Whose Will it is that it be so. The Divine’s Will is that Its Children be One, and united with It in Its Oneness. That is why healing is the beginning of the Recognition that your will is the Divine’s Will.