We believe  that we have committed a dreadful sin and are now living in a body, that we are a victim of the world, and that we are different and separate from all other bodies. It is this individual identity that we think we are because of our identification with the deceived mind, that gives rise to all desiring and manifesting. But this "me" is just the beliefs I have about who I am that have not been fully investigated and questioned. It is truly a mistaken identity according to the Course but this mistaken identity runs our lives. This ego that is described as the stranger within who has walked into our holy home, with our permission, now seems to have a powerful hold on us but only because we have invested belief  in it. The Course tells us that faith can move mountains but that is nothing to the power that we have used to imprison ourselves. That kind of power can now be used to free the Self.

We say we want  happiness, peace and love, a desire that keeps us all in a searching mode for the special relationship, for happiness that we hope will come from buying that new car or new house, having more prestige and power in the world.  But the ego has an agenda that it keeps from our awareness. What is that agenda? It is simply to "seek but do not find". I had so many hopes of building the kind of life that I wanted as a young adult. What happened? I became disillusioned. And what a gift that truly was! Oh, yes, it was painful along the way to this discovery. To discover that special relationships start out beautifully but lose their luster and attractiveness was a hard lesson. But that is what this spiritual journey is about. We have these circumstances arise in our lives so that we can begin to question. And in the questioning, the answers are provided. It is only when we think we know, that we are not open to a new way of seeing. For some of us it requires a great deal of pain to come to this readiness. Whatever amount of pain it takes to open the mind to this questioning is what our script has called in. Thus, it is all perfect. Yet it is in these experiences that we suffer. Why? Because we think we are reaching out for pleasure but instead we don't realize that it is pain, masking as pleasure. We don't know the difference. And it is when we suffer enough that we get motivated to see that there must be another way. 

And it is then that we are ready to listen to another Voice. Through the Course the Holy Spirit is inviting us to hear His perspective. What is that perspective that we are invited to take in?  It is that we are love, unlimited, have never sinned, that we are not a body in reality, and that the truth about us is wholly sinless and glorious. The decision maker in our minds listens to the ego or the Holy Spirit and chooses which it will believe. When this lesson says that whatever suffers is not a part of me, it means that I can withdraw my belief in suffering, grief and pain. But do I want to? That does seem like a silly question. I think that I don't want to suffer yet if I am suffering then there is some payoff that I am getting from this suffering. I get to be right about my belief that I am a victim of the world I see and it is the cause of my suffering and not my own choice.   

The most clear example for me of this came when my husband died and I was feeling a lot of grief. Then at some point when the pain of grief had been lived for some time,  I turned to the Holy Spirit in my mind and had the realization that this grief was a decision that I was making and could choose otherwise. I realized that I had a choice to be happy in spite of  his seeming death. I realized that from outside of the dream there is no death. That death is a mockery of God proving Him wrong. Yes, the body can die, but who we are, can't. That was quite a revelation for me. I could withdraw my investment in sadness any time I decided to do so. It felt powerful to feel the love for my husband and yet make a choice to be happy. When I would do this, the ego would tell me that I should feel guilty about being happy. So now I could look at the guilt with the love of Jesus and see that it was a joke. Can you see how tricky this ego is? It has so many ways of keeping us in hell.

Some might say that this is denial. And indeed we are denying that the sadness and grief are a part of something true about us. What we are disowning is a falsity. We are disowning "self concepts and deceits and lies about the holy Son of God" (1.7) We have denied the truth about ourselves. We have denied it by accepting falsity into our minds. We have come to believe that the false is true-that suffering, sadness, grief, worry, jealousy, insecurity etc are all aspects of something that is true about is. No, we are not asked to deny that we are feeling these things, only to deny that they are ultimately the truth about us. So we look at the feelings we are experiencing and free ourselves by bringing awareness to them and  by acknowledging that they are not the truth. It is a very freeing concept.

It is not only the big events in our lives that bring about suffering and sadness. In fact we are told in the course that   "You feel so vulnerable and open to attack that just a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a circumstance that suits you not, or an event that you did not anticipate upsets your world and hurls it into chaos" (T.24.III.3:1) Isn't that how it is? Don't we so often suffer, worry, agitate about the seemingly small things that come our way?  But it does not matter.  Anything that takes away from our peace is the same. All problems are the same. They hold back the light of truth in us when we give them the power to do so.    

We are called  to be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. (T6.V.C.2.8) and to be as vigilant against the ego as we are for God.  This lesson tells us that we have to be "faithful in disowning falsity". Who we are in Truth is not what we have made of ourselves. It is worth reading the piece in the text that talks of how our self concept got developed. (31.5) Self-Concept vs. Self. While we are in this world, we have worked very hard to develop a concept of ourselves that can "meet the world on equal terms." In the world, when we do this well we are considered mature. Yet through the course we are working on the undoing of this self concept as it is a lie about who we really are and aims to keep us convinced we are something we are not.

There is no statement that the world (we) are more afraid to hear than this: "I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself" Yet in this recognition is when we come to know the truth about ourselves.     "I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love. In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. In me is love perfect, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. I am the holy home of God Himself. I am the Heaven where His Love resides. I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His Own". (What am I? workbook part II.14)

That is the truth about ourselves but it truly frightens us to let go of the concepts we have made. To let go of our identity with our egos and our bodies. To become the observer of our pain and suffering and  choose to withdraw belief in it. We do not need to deny our suffering or our pain, but in the experience of it just remind ourselves that "whatever suffers is not part of me." This may then begin to loosen the identification we have with the ego and give welcome to the Self that we have disowned. (1.1) The suffering blocks our "ancient love" for our Father (2.1) which is always there but not in our awareness. In fact when we are suffering, sad, grieving, it is God that we blame for this, whether consciously or unconsciously, we make Him responsible. In this lesson, we are being reminded that God has never wanted this for us. It is the choice we have made to make something of ourselves that we are not. 

 "You are wholly lovely. A perfect shaft of pure light. Before your loveliness the stars stand transfixed and bow to the power of your will. What do children know of their creation, except what their Creator tells them? You were created above the angels, because your role involves creation as well as protection. You who are in the image of the Father need bow only to Him before Whom I (Jesus) kneel with you" (From Absence from Felicity, pg. 19) Our love for God is so powerful that we are actually afraid of it. We cover it over with distractions and our deceits and lies. We truly are afraid of our redemption. (Fear of Redemption 13.III) The pull of this attraction is so strong in us. And it is this same love that wants us to love ourselves and extend that love to our brother. I am as I was created, perfect and serene and whatever suffers is not a part of me. So identify the negative emotions today in your practice, whatever they may be and affirm that whatever is sad, depressed, frustrated.....is not a part of you. It is a very freeing beautiful thought and it loosens the mind from identification with lies and deceits about ourselves. Feel the power of your ancient love for God as His for you as you go over this prayer today.

 "Father, my ancient love for You returns, and lets me love Your Son again as well. Father I am as You created me. Now is Your Love remembered and my own. Now do I understand that they are one". (2.1-4)

 Love and blessings, Sarah

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²⁹ The introduction of reason into the ego's thought system is the beginning of its undoing. For reason and the ego are contradictory. Nor is it possible for them to co-exist in your awareness. And reason's goal is to make plain and therefore obvious. You can see reason. This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally. If it is not the body's sight, it must be understood. For it is plain, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It can be understood. And here do reason and the ego separate to go their different ways.

³⁰ The ego's whole continuance depends on its belief you cannot learn this course. Share this belief, and reason will be unable to see your errors and make way for their correction. For reason sees through errors, telling you what you thought was real is not. Reason can see the difference between sin and mistakes because it wants correction. Therefore, it tells you what you thought was uncorrectable can be corrected, and thus it must have been an error. The ego's opposition to correction leads to its fixed belief in sin and disregard of errors. It looks on nothing that can be corrected. Thus does the ego damn and reason save.

³¹ Reason is not salvation in itself, but it makes way for peace and brings you to a state of mind in which salvation can be given you. Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. No one who looks on it without the help of reason would try to pass it. The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet reason sees through it easily because it is an error. The form it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from reason's eyes.

³² Only the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it does not recognize and does not know if it is there or not. Everything which the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole, without the meaning that the whole would give. And yet mistakes, regardless of their form, can be corrected. Sin is but error in a special form the ego venerates. It would preserve all errors and make them sins. For here is its own stability, its heavy anchor in the shifting world it made-the rock on which its church is built and where its worshipers are bound to bodies and believe the body's freedom is their own.

³³ Reason will tell you that the form of error is not what makes it a mistake. If what the form conceals is a mistake, the form cannot prevent correction. The body's eyes see only form. They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. And they were made to look on error and not see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin and stopping at the outside form of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness as if it were a solid wall see truly? It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived.

³⁴ These eyes, made not to see, will never see. For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. What was its maker's goal but not to see? For this the body's eyes are perfect means, but not for seeing. See how the body's eyes rest on externals and cannot go beyond. Watch how they stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form to meaning. Nothing's so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form means understanding has been obscured.

³⁵ Only mistakes have different forms, and so they can deceive. You can change form because it is not true. It could not be reality because it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is not reality, it must be an illusion and is not there to see. And if you see it, you must be mistaken, for you are seeing what can not be real as if it were. What cannot see beyond what is not there must be distorted perception and must perceive illusions as the truth. Could it then recognize the truth?

³⁶ Let not the form of his mistakes keep you from him whose holiness is yours. Let not the vision of his holiness, the sight of which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from you by what the body's eyes can see. Let your awareness of your brother not be blocked by your perception of his sins and of his body. What is there in him that you would attack except what you associate with his body, which you believe can sin? Beyond his errors is his holiness and your salvation. You gave him not his holiness but tried to see your sins in him to save yourself. And yet his holiness is your forgiveness. Can you be saved by making sinful the one whose holiness is your salvation?

³⁷ A holy relationship, however newly born, must value holiness above all else. Unholy values will produce confusion, and in awareness. In an unholy relationship, each one is valued because he seems to justify the other's sin. He sees within the other what impels him to sin against his will. And thus he lays his sins upon the other and is attracted to him to perpetuate his sins. And so it must become impossible for each to see himself as causing sin by his desire to have sin real. Yet reason sees a holy relationship as what it is-a common state of mind, where both give errors gladly to correction that both may happily be healed as one.

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