January 3, 2009

Free from All Past Associations


Today's lesson of A Course In Miracles, "I do not understand anything I see", is a great lesson of undoing our false perceptions and concepts regardless of how we may feel about them. They are all meaningless because reality has nothing to do with them. Reality does not need to be understood. Reality does not need our definition to be what it is. There is nothing to understand. There is nothing hidden. Reality is perfectly clear and open, but it cannot be understood. It can only be known. Yet what are we doing in our minds? We judge. We define everything. In other words, we give everything all the meaning it has for us, and we suffer from the delusion that we understand what we think and see and do.

The meaning we give all things is not true, because we are not thinking with the mind of God Who is the only Source of reality and truth. Justifying what we think things are will not solve our problem. What is our problem? We don't know ourselves.

We don't know the only thing that can be known. We don't know the very thing we are and by which we live. That is impossible and clearly the case of our insanity. Yet normally as humans we do not doubt our situation. Our situation is not based on one true idea. That is why we are given lessons to undo our situations and identity. We train our minds to no longer give meaning where there is none. We train our minds to overlook any appearance and experience of separation. As a result of that we wake up and experience a different world and self. We see Christ and God in everything, no longer to be subject to meaningless and past thoughts. That is a very different experience.

Anything we see is a proper subject for our application of today's lesson. Questioning the suitability of anything for application of the idea is really just our need to be faithful to our own mistaken thoughts and ideas. It is very clear to me that the Course is either totally true or not at all. Truth is true, and nothing else is true. While we can and must not deny our emotions - we are emotionally involved - we cannot let ourselves be deceived by any "emotionally-charged meaning" things may have for us. We have to put such feelings aside and use them as everything else. That is easy if we want to. It is easy when we include everything in with our practice. Only that will set us free. In our judgments we become the jailer of things, and no jailer is exempt from what he does. We practice to be free from our own past associations and let things be what they are. They don't need our thoughts about them.

"The point of the exercises is to help you clear your mind of all past associations, to see things exactly as they appear to you now, and to realize how little you really understand about them." (A Course In Miracles, Workbook Lesson 3)


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posted by Alban Fenle

 

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God is but Love, and therefore so are you.

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I Am under no Laws but God's
Workbook Lesson 76, one of the most challenging lessons in A Course In Miracles: I Am under no Laws but God's.

We have observed before how many senseless things have seemed to you to be salvation. Each has imprisoned you with laws as senseless as itself. You are not bound by them. Yet to understand that this is so, you must first realize salvation lies not there. While you would seek for it in things that have no meaning, you bind yourself to laws that make no sense. Thus do you seek to prove salvation is where it is not.

Today we will be glad you cannot prove it. For if you could, you would forever seek salvation where it is not, and never find it. The idea for today tells you once again how simple is salvation. Look for it where it waits for you, and there it will be found. Look nowhere else, for it is nowhere else.

Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws you have set up to save you. You really think that you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs. You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off disease and death. You really think you are alone unless another body is with you.

It is insanity that thinks these things. You call them laws, and put them under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve no purpose. You think you must obey the "laws" of medicine, of economics and of health. Protect the body, and you will be saved.

These are not laws, but madness. The body is endangered by the mind that hurts itself. The body suffers just in order that the mind will fail to see it is the victim of itself. The body's suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really suffers. It would not understand it is its own enemy; that it attacks itself and wants to die. It is from this your "laws" would save the body. It is for this you think you are a body.

There are no laws except the laws of God. This needs repeating, over and over, until you realize it applies to everything that you have made in opposition to God's Will. Your magic has no meaning. What it is meant to save does not exist. Only what it is meant to hide will save you.

The laws of God can never be replaced. We will devote today to rejoicing that this is so. It is no longer a truth that we would hide. We realize instead it is a truth that keeps us free forever. Magic imprisons, but the laws of God make free. The light has come because there are no laws but His.

We will begin the longer practice periods today with a short review of the different kinds of "laws" we have believed we must obey. These would include, for example, the "laws" of nutrition, of immunization, of medication, and of the body's protection in innumerable ways. Think further; you believe in the "laws" of friendship, of "good" relationships and reciprocity. Perhaps you even think that there are laws which set forth what is God's and what is yours. Many "religions" have been based on this. They would not save but damn in Heaven's name. Yet they are no more strange than other "laws" you hold must be obeyed to make you safe.

There are no laws but God's. Dismiss all foolish magical beliefs today, and hold your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice That speaks the truth to you. You will be listening to One Who says there is no loss under the laws of God. Payment is neither given nor received. Exchange cannot be made; there are no substitutes; and nothing is replaced by something else. God's laws forever give and never take.

Hear Him Who tells you this, and realize how foolish are the "laws" you thought upheld the world you thought you saw. Then listen further. He will tell you more. About the Love your Father has for you. About the endless joy He offers you. About His yearning for His only Son, created as His channel for creation; denied to Him by his belief in hell.

Let us today open God's channels to Him, and let His Will extend through us to Him. Thus is creation endlessly increased. His Voice will speak of this to us, as well as of the joys of Heaven which His laws keep limitless forever. We will repeat today's idea until we have listened and understood there are no laws but God's. Then we will tell ourselves, as a dedication with which the practice period concludes:

I am under no laws but God's.

We will repeat this dedication as often as possible today; at least four or five times an hour, as well as in response to any temptation to experience ourselves as subject to other laws throughout the day. It is our statement of freedom from all danger and all tyranny. It is our acknowledgment that God is our Father, and that His Son is saved.