A Course In Miracles lesson 110 states: I am as nature created me.
Nothing that has happened in this world has changed what I am. In the same way, putting on a costume does not alter my body, no experience, and no relationship has ever harmed my true identity.
My body may have experienced great harm. I may have used my own body to inflict harm on another. And in these conditions, I feel painful emotions. I feel that errors have occurred in my life that can never be repaired. I believe that my actions and the actions of others have caused irreversible damage. And this is hell.
Today I learn that what I thought has happened has not really happened. The truth of what I am has not ever been altered by any event in this world. This world is a dream. As the dreamer, I remain as I was created. Even though I may be asleep, I am still fully connected, loved, wanted, and supported in the most profound way. Just because I am sleeping does not mean I have been separated from what I am and where I am from.
This lesson will be encountered again and again in this course because it is the most fundamental and important teaching for us to ever grasp. This one thought is enough to solve any problem you ever face. This lesson is actually enough to shift the whole world into peace. When we reconnect our awareness with the fact that we are infinite beings of infinite beauty, we bring a tremendous resource into our life conditions. When we become lucid of this strange dream of disconnection we are having and we know we are dreaming even as the dream continues, we are able to connect to an innocence that releases us from all the complications of harm we think has affected our lives. We become curious witnesses and interested participants in life. The dream becomes a means to use whatever may happen as an opportunity to become more aware, more lucid, and more connected to true reality.
When we reconnect to our innocence, when we know that we always remain as Creation created us, we can not experience fear. The notion of death holds no power over the dreamer who understands the unique beauty each dream offers. Life becomes a fascinating gift of colorful experiences when we remember we always remain as God created us.
Today’s idea is all we ever need to release our minds from suffering. It is not only able to heal your mind of suffering, but also heal any mistake any mind has ever made at any time. Today’s lesson is quite a lesson! This concept, when realized, can heal all mistakes of the past. Not just your mistakes, but all mistakes. Your experience of the world can become quite a different quality if you relax into being comfortable with resounding peace. Knowing that you are of God, with God, from God, and for the voice that is God is the transformation out of time into the timeless.
Time is a means to learn more and more about the infinite. Remembering our infinite nature while also experiencing an illusion of finite form is the learning process that ultimately ends the need for time at all. We use time to learn about the nature of the cosmos. What we ultimately discover is that we are the cosmos. We are as God created us.
But this lesson may make some readers pause with concern. You may find it uncomfortable to believe that what you think has happened has not really happened because it sure feels like it did. If nothing that happens in this life is real, how would people be held responsible for their harmful behavior? If our conduct was of no consequence, what would happen to kindness and consideration for others? Would we spiral into even greater savages than we already behave as? Is this idea suggesting that a person’s wrong-doings are of no real consequence? How do we apply such an idea to the heinous crimes we know occur in this world, or perhaps have experienced firsthand?
This lesson is not asking us to stick our heads in the sand. It is offering the only way out of suffering by guiding us to shift what we identify with as real. We are more than our vulnerable bodies. We are more than one single moment in time. Relief from the pain of this world can only come by removing our attention from this world to some degree. Being in the world, not of it is the perspective we are moving towards so that we do not get consumed by the gravitational pull of pain and suffering.
We will continue on after this body dies. Identifying ourselves as only vulnerable bodies is not the whole truth. This lesson brings in more information about our situation. Learning to identify in a genuine way with a nonphysical aspect of ourselves does not lead to violent behavior because the nature of the nonphysical is not of a violent nature. Realizing our divinity is not a dangerous activity. It includes a perspective of compassion and gentleness. If such perspectives have not occurred, then light consciousness has not been realized. There is nothing dangerous about today’s lesson and it does not ask us to cultivate irrational positivity. It asks us to include a metaphysical dimension to our finite experience.
The constant process of navigating the physical and the spiritual dimensions that we simultaneously are is not easy. But we are learning how to hold seemingly polarized ideas as one. This, in turn, unifies our minds. Since we spend most of our time focused on the physical dimension, it is only logical that we should take some time each day to actively include the metaphysical dimension in our awareness. Today we are asked to place our attention on our eternal nature.
It is not possible to make sense of this world because this world is entirely temporary and ever-changing. The temporary is inherently baffling and painful. The temporary can not ever be understood and trying to do so only leads to suffering. Releasing the notion that this world can be understood may cause us to feel despair for a time until we learn how to place our attention on that which can be understood and relied upon as sane. Sanity is available to us in this world, it is simply not of this world. It is spiritual which is to say, it is a belief we choose to adopt.
And so, we say again with this assurance of Truth behind us, nothing that has happened in this world has altered what we really are. No matter how badly we have been knocked around, we still remain as we were created by Creation.
Where is this reality for us if it is not what we are currently experiencing? Where is the sun when it is hidden by clouds? The sun is where it is. Just because you can not send the clarity of the God dimension does not mean it does not exist. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Today’s lesson is the only lesson we ever need to find graceful ways through any life situation. Connecting to the metaphysical truth about you is the only way to release yourself from the mistakes you feel you have made as well as release yourself from the pain of the mistakes you believe other people have made against you. Today is an invitation toward tremendous power. Any wrongdoings your mind is attached to can be released. You were not created to suffer. You were created by Joy to be joyful.
When we get knocked down by some hard blow in life, it is tempting to want that blow to destroy us, to let that blow be the reason we can not get back up and engage. We want to be taken down and stopped once and for all. We feel angry to find that we survive the blow, we rise up despite our suffering, we prevail, and have the energy we don’t want to have. We are angry to discover how strong we really are and just want to vanish into weakness. Part of us wants something to be too difficult to recover from so that we can stay broken and be carried.
Let’s consider this longing to collapse more closely. It is actually perfectly in line with what God wants for us as well. When we find life too hard to handle and we want to be taken down and taken care of, who are we wanting that from? Other people? What if, as yesterday’s lesson suggests, we instead rest in God? When we feel resistant to showing up in life as we know we “should”, what if we lean back and let ourselves be carried by a larger power rather than spiral down into shame and guilt? Wanting to collapse and quit is no problem at all when we add in a connection to a higher power. We do not have to “do” all the living. We can let a higher source carry us through because we are made of that same source energy. It is within and available at any time.
The last four paragraphs of today’s lesson get pretty thick with Christian terminology. Here are a few attempts to redefine these terms to clarify the message. Let my suggestions prompt your own unique translations.
Where it says: “Seek Him within you who is Christ in you, son of God and brother to the world, the savior who has been forever saved…”
Let’s change:
“Him” to “That.”
“Christ” to “clear, compassionate awareness”
“Son of God” to “extension of Creation”
“Savior” to “Helper or Guide”
“Saved” with “ release from mental anguish”
The passage might read something like:
Seek that within you which is a clear, compassionate awareness and an extension of Creation found within your own being. This awareness is the helper within who has been forever released from all mental anguish. This helper can help you find relief from mental anguish any time you seek relief. Ask this helping presence to give you guidance through your mind, and sit quietly to hear the word spoken from your deep, high self that is the same compassionate awareness we find in others all around us.
The lesson then asks us to not externalize our understanding of the Helper. The energy dimension of help, (Christ consciousness, Buddha nature) is not an object or an external person to be depended on. Wearing a charm or contemplating an image can only be helpful if it reminds us of our own inner wisdom and capacities to conduct miracles.
We are like that from which we seek help. We are seeking help from our own Self. We are as God created us. To let go of what today’s lesson calls “idols” is to let go of any security blankets, lucky charms, and any attachment to objects as having any power. Wear a necklace for the joy of it and commune with beauty. But do not imbibe it with any external powers. Remember from Lesson 2 that it is our attention that gives every object in this room all the meaning it has.
Declare today’s lesson as often as you can remember. Set an alarm and let this lesson interrupt today’s activities and take a moment to remember:
Nothing has altered my inherent innocence. I am and will always remain exactly as God created me.