Our next few lessons make a special point of firming up your
willingness to make your weak commitment strong; your scattered
goals blend into one intent. You are not asked for total dedication all
the time, as yet. But you are asked to practice now in order to attain
the sense of peace such unified commitment will bestow, if only
intermittently. It is experiencing this which makes it sure that you will
give your total willingness to following the way the course sets forth.
Our lessons now are geared specifically to widening horizons,
and direct approaches to the special blocks which keep your vision
narrow, and too limited to let you see the value of our goal. We are
attempting now to lift these blocks, however briefly. Words alone can
not convey the sense of liberation which their lifting brings. But the
experience of freedom and of peace that comes as you give up your
tight control of what you see speaks for itself. Your motivation will be
so intensified that words become of little consequence. You will be
sure of what you want and what is valueless.
And so we start our journey beyond words by concentrating
first on what impedes our progress still. Experience of what exists
beyond defensiveness remains beyond achievement while it is
denied. It may be there, but you cannot accept its presence. So we
now attempt to go past all defenses for a little while each day. No
more than this is asked because no more than this is needed. It will
be enough to guarantee the rest will come.
Lesson 181
“I trust my brothers, who are one with me.”
Trusting your brothers is essential to establishing and holding up
your faith in your ability to transcend doubt and lack of sure
conviction in yourself. When you attack a brother, you proclaim that
he is limited by what you have perceived in him. You do not look
beyond his errors. Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to
your awareness of the Self that lies beyond your own mistakes, and
past his seeming sins as well as yours.
Perception has a focus. It is this which gives consistency to what
you see. Change but this focus, and what you behold will change
accordingly. Your vision now will shift to give support to the intent
which has replaced the one you held before. Remove your focus on
your brother’s sins, and you experience the peace that comes from
faith in sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what
you see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are
witnesses to sins in you. And you will not transcend their sight and
see the sinlessness that lies beyond.
Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such little focuses
give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent. We
instruct our minds that it is this we seek and only this, for just a little
while. We do not care about our future goals, and what we saw an
instant previous has no concern for us within this interval of time
wherein we practice changing our intent. We seek for innocence and
nothing else. We seek for it with no concern but now.
A major hazard to success has been involvement with your past
and future goals. You have been quite preoccupied with how
extremely different the goals this course is advocating are from those
you held before. And you have also been dismayed by the depressing
and restricting thought that, even if you should succeed, you will
inevitably lose your way again. How could this matter? For the past is
gone; the future but imagined. These concerns are but defenses
against present change of focus in perception. Nothing more.
We lay these pointless limitations by a little while. We do not
look to past beliefs, and what we will believe will not intrude upon
us now. We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look
upon the sinlessness within. We recognize that we have lost this goal
if anger blocks our way in any form. And if a brother’s sins occur to
us, our narrowed focus will restrict our sight and turn our eyes upon
our own mistakes, which we will magnify and call our “sins.”
So, for a little while, without regard to past or future, should
such blocks arise, we will transcend them with instructions to our
minds to change their focus, as we say:
“It is not this that I would look upon.
I trust my brothers, who are one with me.”
And we will also use these thoughts to keep us safe throughout the
day. We do not seek for long range goals. As each obstruction seems
to block the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an
instant from the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and
uncorrected will remain.
Nor do we ask for fantasies. For what we seek to look upon is
really there. And as our focus goes beyond mistakes, we will behold a
wholly sinless world. When seeing this is all we want to see, when
this is all we seek for in the name of true perception, are the eyes of
Christ inevitably ours. And the love He feels for us becomes our own
as well. This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world
and in ourselves.
The world which once proclaimed our sins becomes the proof
that we are sinless. And our love for everyone we look upon attests to
our remembrance of the holy Self Which knows no sin, and never
could conceive of anything without Its sinlessness. We seek for this
remembrance as we turn our minds to practicing today. We look
neither ahead nor backwards. We look straight into the present. And
we give our trust to the experience we ask for now. Our sinlessness is
but the Will of God. This instant is our willing one with His.
Britney Shawley added:
"We recognize that we have lost this goal if anger blocks our way in any form. And if a brother's sins occur to us, our narrowed focus will restrict our sight, and turn our eyes upon our own mistakes, which we will magnify and call our "sins." So, for a little while, without regard to past or future, should such blocks arise we will transcend them with instructions to our minds to change their focus, as we say:
It is not this that I would look upon.
I trust my brothers, who are one with me.