Jesus kicks off this Lesson with a truly powerful statement: The idea of giving up attack thoughts is "the only way out of fear that will ever succeed. Nothing else will work; everything else is meaningless." (W.23.1.1-2) Everything else we do to try to diminish or mitigate our fears is totally meaningless. Now that certainly gets my attention! What have you tried to do to reduce your fear? I have tried to build my confidence and self-esteem, develop good management skills, become an effective strategist, build up my material resources, have a close circle of friends, become effective in managing the challenges of my life by finding ways to distract from them, in addition to avoiding, repressing and denying my fears. Jesus says we will never overcome our fear by changing anything we try to do in the world. None of our strategies will work because fear is still in the mind. This keeps us living in a state of anxiety. Only by changing the cause of fear, which comes from our own attack thoughts, will we be free of it. Everything we try to do with all our plans and strategies is to attempt to diminish fear, but it is always there. Thus, the only way out of fear is to give up our attack thoughts, and he says, "But this way cannot fail." (W.23.1.3)
The choice for healing is the decision to look at these attack thoughts. To deny them is to decide to keep them. It is also valuable to remember attack thoughts are not what they may seem. Attack thoughts reflect our need to be right about the way we see things. For us, this justifies our attacks and counterattacks in the name of our defense. Attack thoughts show up in many different forms, which may look like hate, pride, shame, frustration, anxiety, irritation and murder, if not in form then in our thoughts of vengeance. Our attack thoughts can also be concealed under thoughts of caring, worry, concern and sympathy. When we have these thoughts, we join in someone's pain and forgetting who they are and who we are. We identify with their weakness. We see them as vulnerable, which is not the truth of who they are.
Our belief is, if we can somehow manage the externals in our lives better, we can live a better, happier life. This just keeps us in the cycle of the ego, where we try to manage effects rather than look to the cause, which is the thought system of sin, guilt and fear in our wrong minds. Jesus is showing us there is a way out, not by doing anything in the world, but by changing the way we see the world. When we look at the world, we see destruction, violence, sickness, pain and suffering. Oh yes, there is also beauty, pleasure and happiness in our perception of the world, but it does not last. It is only temporary, and ultimately for all of us it ends the same way---in death. In our efforts to manage things in the world, some of what we do succeeds for a time, but it does not last. It can't last if the cause is in the mind. More and more problems emerge and we become disillusioned. Until then, we continue to think if we could get other people to do or not to do things that anger us, if we could manage to look good, if we could get the kids to behave, if the car doesn't break down, if the landlord doesn't raise the rent, if we could make more money, if we could control our tempers, if we could win the argument, if we could enhance our self-esteem, if we could find the right partner, or if we could learn better coping mechanisms, then life would be good and we would be happy.
We constantly work to fix things in the world by controlling, manipulating, managing, or trying to make our lives better through a variety of strategies. This is like addressing a symptom, while the underlying problem still remains unchanged. Thus, the problems and the anxiety we feel will simply arise again in another form. Why? They arise again because the thought system in our mind, based on the separation and resulting in our belief in sin, guilt and fear, is reflected on the screen of this world. If the world is just crystallized images of the thoughts in our minds reflected back at us, then to try to change the world changes nothing. Our minds are the cause and the world is the effect. Our own attack thoughts make up the world we see.
We lament so much about the world. We work hard to try to change things in the world. Doesn't it feel like a losing battle? Well, this Lesson would tell us, indeed it is! If the world is just the effect of our thoughts, and our thoughts are the cause, then to try to change the effect is like trying to change the image on a movie screen instead of changing that which is projecting the image. This is an exercise in futility. If we change the cause (our minds), the effect changes automatically. What we have a hard time with is we are the movie maker. We see only our own thoughts projected onto the world. In other words, we just hallucinate and do not see at all. What we call reality is just a projection, but we are convinced it is reality. Until we are willing to bring awareness to our attack thoughts, we will not believe in the power of our minds. In fact, the world offers us a way to diminish the power of our minds and make us believe we are, in fact, a victim of what we see and experience, rather than its maker.
"You see the world that you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image maker. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause. This is what salvation means, for where is the world you see when its cause is gone?" (W.23.4.1-3) What we are saved from is the belief system of the ego that says we deserve punishment for what we believe we have done in stealing our identity from God and separating from Him. This belief is projected out, resulting in a body and a world that are not real. Yes, we now seem to have our own separate identity, our own separate existence, our self that is unique and seemingly housed in a body, but at the expense of knowing who we really are. The ego says we have committed a terrible crime---we have sinned, which brings guilt that is too much for the mind, and so it is projected out onto this world of bodies. If this is real, God is not. He must then be just an illusion. Either we are real, or God is. Both can't be true. Either Oneness is true, or the world of duality is. Jesus assures us, our experience here is not real. He tells us there is no external reality outside of our minds. If this is so, we truly are hallucinating. When we start to recognize our mind as the cause of what we experience, we then have the power to change our minds as to how we see the world. When we increasingly recognize the world is a reflection of our inward condition, the purpose of everything we experience then becomes one of healing.
This does not suggest we do nothing in the world, or ignore our responsibilities here. Jesus is not saying that. He recognizes, as long as we believe in this reality, we need to look after our bodies and take care of our living in responsible ways. He does not ask us to deny what we believe in, only to look at changing our thoughts from attack to forgiveness, until the reality of this world diminishes in our minds. We want to take care of our bodies in the meantime, as they are our key learning devices for the time being. Further, the world can become a wonderful classroom for undoing our ego thought system. Thus, the body and the world now serve another purpose. It all becomes a means for undoing the guilt in our minds.
Our role in this process is essential. We think we can turn to Jesus or the Holy Spirit and ask that they take away our fear, but Jesus says that is not helpful. We are the ones who made it in the first place. If the fear is to be undone, we are the ones to bring attention to it. We have kept it mostly hidden from our awareness. We have been in denial about the origin of this fear, which is the choice to separate from Love. Now, with our willingness to look at our fear thoughts, we can start the process of bringing them to the light. There is no other way to our spiritual awakening, except to look at our attack and fear thoughts. There is no spiritual bypass to the truth without going through the undoing process, but we are not alone in this. We have mighty help in our own minds.
In Chapter 2 of the text, Jesus says, "The correction of fear is your responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. These conditions always entail a willingness to be separate." (T.2.VI.4.1-5)(ACIM OE T.2.IV.75) Later in this section, he says, "You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful. I have already indicated that you cannot ask me to release you from fear. I know it does not exist, but you do not. If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is. I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking." (T.2.VII.1.1-5)(ACIM OE T.2.V.93)
To give up our attack thoughts, we must first look at them. Mind watching is such an important part of the process of healing in this world. This requires that we first recognize our minds are the cause of what we see. The second is that we let go of the cause by determining we no longer want these attack thoughts. It is not a matter of willpower, but a matter of willingness. Now we must give the Holy Spirit permission to replace the images we have made. He tells us they have already been replaced! If we are willing to look at the blocks in our own minds, we will no longer see a world of vengeance because the thoughts of love and peace are already in our minds. It is who we really are as we were created, but hidden from us by the ego, which is made of fear. We need to cooperate in this process in the first part only. We need to be very honest with ourselves, take responsibility for our thoughts, and agree they no longer serve us.
We hang onto our grievances so tenaciously. The ego does not want to let go of them. You will notice how stubbornly we resist letting go of our attack thoughts. How we nourish our concerns, our anxieties, our stories. That is what Jesus is talking about when he talks of fantasies. We all feel victimized by something or someone. The story behind the world I experience is all about attack thoughts. It is not what the world is, because the world is nothing. It is just a reflection of our attack thoughts projected out. "Each of your perceptions of 'external reality' is a pictorial representation of your own attack thoughts." (W.23.3.2) The mind is the cause, and the world is just an effect. There is no external world. The world is just a reflection of our own minds. As Jesus reminds us, "it is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition." (T.21.IN.1.5)(ACIM OE T.21.I.1) This concept is obviously difficult for us, but it is important because it is the key to our healing. Otherwise, we put all of our attention on the externals, hoping if they can be changed, then we will be happy. Jesus is making it clear that this is an impossible goal.
The ego is invested in holding onto grievances. Because of this investment in being right about the way we see things, it takes a lot of determination just to keep doing this work. It takes even more determination when we see we are "to include both your thoughts of attacking and of being attacked. Their effects are exactly the same because they are exactly the same." (W.23.7.1-2) This is not readily recognized, as Jesus acknowledges, but we don't have to understand this in order to do the practice as prescribed here. We just need to cooperate in this process of taking responsibility for our fear thoughts in order to escape from the world we see. This is based on the fact that minds are joined, as we learned earlier. Whether we see ourselves as a victim or victimizer makes no difference. Attack is attack. Victims are always pointing their finger at someone who is guilty, which is the basis for the story of what others have done to us. We want them to be guilty and suffer the punishment for their sins, but we will always be the ones who suffer until we give up our victim stance.
Now we are given a way to "escape" into peace, into confidence, into our invulnerability, into feeling the safety of our Being in His Hands, and into a deep sense of knowing we are One. Our perfection is guaranteed. The truth is there is no separation. Under our fears, grievances, anger, and frustration is the truth of who we are as beautiful, sparkling clear lights. We don't experience this as the truth about ourselves, as a constant in our lives, because we listen to the voice of the ego tell us we are attackers, victimizers and victims. We clearly have healing work to do in undoing the fear thoughts that block the truth about ourselves. If we see ourselves here in this body, and in this seeming world of pain, suffering and death with intermittent periods of happiness and pleasure, we are not alone. It is the same thing for all of us.
Being willing to look at our dark thoughts, which block the awareness of the Self we are, is our responsibility. No one will do it for us. Jesus said he cannot do it, because we are the ones who made the choice to separate, we are the ones who give power to our thoughts, and now we can make the choice for truth. The Power of the Holy Spirit is always available to shine away the darkness, once we bring our thoughts forward for healing. He waits patiently for us to do our part. He waits patiently for us to identify our defenses we hold like armor against the truth. We see these defenses as our protection, but in fact they are our fear thoughts held like a shield against the light. Our part is to bring our own guilt, which we have projected onto others, back into our own minds, look at it honestly and bring it to the light of Truth where it is healed.
The process we are talking about here is summarized where Jesus tells us, "The idea for today introduces the thought that you are not trapped in the world you see, because its cause can be changed. This change requires, first, that the cause be identified and then let go, so that it can be replaced. The first two steps in this process require your cooperation. The final one does not. Your images have already been replaced. By taking the first two steps, you will see that this is so." (W.23.5.1-6)
Today, throughout the day, whenever we are feeling out of peace, we remember, "I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts." (W.23) For five practice periods in the day, look about you, repeat the idea slowly to yourself first, then close your eyes and devote about a minute to searching your mind for your attack thoughts (meaning fear, worry, sadness, anger, anxiety, depression, grievances, concerns, frustrations, expectations, etc.). Mind searching is required because we defend against our own attack thoughts and are not aware of what we keep hidden from ourselves.
"As each one crosses your mind say:
"I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about_________.
"Hold each attack thought in mind as you say this, and then dismiss that thought and go on to the next." (W.23.6.3-5)
Remember to include both your thoughts of attacking and of being attacked. They are the same. We think we are angry because someone caused us pain, but just as the Lesson yesterday affirmed, everything coming at us from outside us is just a counterattack for our own attack thoughts. We may feel like a victim in someone's attack, but, in fact, the victim makes a powerful victimizer. I experienced that in a demonstration, where I was asked to be a victim by lying on the floor and having someone responsible for getting me back on my feet. Of course, I made it impossible for anyone to help me successfully, and my 'helpers' were soon victimized by me in their defeat. Thus, the victim became the victimizer. This is very much like what is being illustrated here, where the victim is holding all the power.
Love and blessings, Sarah
