A Course In Miracles Lesson 88

A Course In Miracles Lesson 88
A Course In Miracles lesson 88 reviews lessons 75 and 76.
Reality is Peaceful. Review of Lesson 75
I choose to recognize wellness all around me.
Release from mental and emotional pain is a decision I make. That decision is to choose to recognize the permanent qualities of Creation and the unreal qualities of destruction.
Choosing a path of pain or violence does not make pain or violence real. It only makes pain my experience. But my experience is not an accurate account of what is really going on in this world. My experience is limited. And I can not understand this world. (Lesson 25)
Pain is not real. It hurts very much but that intensity does not make it real. When we give our attention to darkness, we make that condition real for our experience. But we do not have the power to make darkness real. Darkness is an absence, a nothingness of no real consequence.
Violence does not exist in true Reality. But it can exist in our chosen experience. And violence is what we have chosen at this time. To end that ongoing pain, we must recognize the difference between what is real and what is an illusion. Creative energy is never destructive. It creates eternally for the joy of creating.
In this lesson, we are asked to consider the belief that violence is not real. Violence hurts, but that pain is not real in relation to the timeless, eternal peace of Reality. It is temporary. It lasts as long as we give it our attention. To validate pain as real is to perpetuate it and turn it into suffering. To fixate on pain is to make pain a constant experience. It is in our power to end that state of suffering by remembering that pain is an illusion being included in a much larger Field.
Knowing that suffering ends is the beginning of ending suffering. Do not give pain your attention. Turn towards the qualities of light from wherever you may be. Even in the darkest of dungeons, there is still peace of some kind.
It is not possible to stay in that which is impermanent. Release from pain is much like the process of waking from sleep. There is no stopping the arising awareness of what is true in the same way the waking up process is unstoppable. We can not stay asleep. We rise up naturally. Likewise, we can not stay in suffering. We will arise from it one way or another because the Light is what it is and awakening has begun.
New Inner Dialogue to remember throughout the day
“This situation with this person can not undo the peace I have achieved within because nothing undoes the Light that has arrived on Earth.”
“I decide now to see in this person before me our shared interest in peace.”
“I know (name) wants peace as I want peace. The path they are on inevitably leads to light just as my path does.”
“I do not understand anyone’s path. But I can know that all paths lead to Light.”
“In this situation, I will be very careful not to add descriptions that are not really there. I will place my full attention on what is real.”
I am governed only by light. Review of Lesson 76
Violence and destruction are not forces of energy. They are the opposite and are therefore nothing. The (seeming) event of violence is not creative and therefore not of a lasting, eternal nature. Reality is eternal because it is creative.
A Course In Miracles is asking us to consider pain and violence as unreal. It is not asking us to convince ourselves that something does not hurt when it does hurt. It is asking us to understand that pain is not real. Violence does hurt but it does not go on and on. It is not of a lasting nature. It is not real in the same way Peace is real.
There is no external force of destruction against us. If there were, we would not exist. We would already be destroyed because there would be no fighting or overcoming an external force of destruction. Since we do exist, the Field in which we exist is of a nature that is conducive to existence. It is Creative. There are no other laws beyond the Creative conditions of life. We exist as part of eternity. It is not possible to destroy eternity. It is a force and a power that is unassailable. Connecting to the eternity within you gives you unlimited ease and resource through whatever you may be working with in the physical world.
We are not subject to any other laws greater that Reality. No other laws exist and as such, whatever effects we may feel from the temporary events of other conditions are not of a serious nature.
This may outrage those who suffer greatly and who feel overwhelmed by the intensity of how much pain they are experiencing as well as the understanding of how unjust that pain is. But again, ACIM is not asking us to convince ourselves that pain does not hurt. That is an insane request. We are being asked to consider how serious that pain really is in relation to our true state of being.
The story of a man nailed to a cross who was left to die slowly is a story of the most outrageous violence. The aim of the story is to show that physical pain and mental confusion do not last. Suffering is overcome in that story to offer a message that it is possible to disempower violence as something permanent. When the man who survived that ordeal said in the story, “It is accomplished.” He was asking that we let that process of overcoming confusion also be true in our own minds. Let what he went through and achieved also be understood as an ordeal we have gone through and achieved.
Because minds are connected, what you achieve is also achieved in this world. We can learn and grow through peace and joy. Peace and joy are, in fact, the only way we can learn because there IS nothing else to learn aside from that eternal wellness. Once we learn of the true nature of reality and understand there are no other real states beyond that state of Grace, we put down the experiences of violence as methods for learning.
There is nothing to learn in pain other than that we do not want it. Pain and suffering is not a law of the cosmos. Light does not need darkness to exist. Light exists without opposite. But this is not a state we can perceive or understand in a physical body. The physical body is not an accurate source of information. The physical body is an expression of one’s state of mind. The mind is eternal and therefore the mind is free to compose seeming “realities” that are not true or lasting. True reality enables me to choose for myself what I will believe is true. But when I am convinced of something that does not mean I am correct in what I’ve decided. It means I am free to feel correct while mistaken. I can choose to follow a more accurate path of perception by first understanding that my mind holds tremendous power. That power is governed by a state of constant Wellness.
New Inner Dialogue to remember throughout the day
When pain comes today, I can expand my awareness around it and remind myself, “Even though this hurts, it is not serious in relation to all that I really am.”
“This confusion or pain I feel now is not real. It hurts but I do not need to give it my attention by being afraid of it.”
“I can pivot my attention towards a more stable focus and diminish the power of the pain I feel.”
“I can remember a larger, more reliable state of experience beyond this temporary event of pain.”