Lesson: Week 12
by Tom Baker
Overview
It can be said that the whole A Course in Miracles is presented in microcosm over the span of the first fifty lessons. The first lesson states: Nothing I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] means anything. The 50th lesson is I am sustained by the Love of God. We go from the meaningless of our own thoughts to the total sustenance of the Love of God. As we move through the first fifty lessons the power and presence of God becomes the basis for vision that sees with the eyes of love and is dependent on God for that seeing. We start with the insight that our thoughts are driving us crazy and finish with the insight that in God our vision is saved and our sanity is restored. Vision=Sanity.
The first prerequisite for us allowing God to sustain us is that we not only stop taking our thoughts so seriously but that we cease believing them at all. First because they are in the past and then, in Lesson 10, because they are not our real thoughts. The Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Holiness within us, is thinking holistically, is joined with all the rest of reality and is outside of linear time. God’s thinking is shared thinking, not private, secretive, guarded thinking shared by only a select few, which characterizes the ego way of thinking. God’s thinking is also true for eternity rather than true for an age group such as the magical thinking of a child, the romantic thinking of a couple newly met, or the rigid thinking of an older person.
Lessons 11 through 19 make the point that the world we see is really the world we interpret through projection. In other words I project my never neutral thoughts onto the neutral canvas of the world and that’s what I see. This can also mean that I go along with another’s projection when I see the world from their perspective. An example of this is the victim mentality encouraged by a good deal of media. The results of not believing my thoughts or my thoughts about the world is a mind that is at least questioning its inner thoughts and worldly perceptions. The healing mind no longer believes its thoughts without inquiry nor does it believe what it sees without correcting for projection. This in effect takes away any one or anything to blame, including the self.
Lessons 20 & 21 are lessons that remind us of our determination to see in general and to correct the specific things I see that are not true. This is to prepare us to disconnect from a central dynamic of the ego.
Lessons 22 through 34. This central dynamic is attack, often with the motivation of vengeance. The way to stop attacking is to recognize that you do not know what is best for you and, in fact, do not know the true purpose of things. Also attack thoughts undermine our safety from attack or the perception there of. When we attack and defend we ground the idea in our minds that we are victims and must defend ourselves from attack. This is in fact how the ego thinks. Notice here that the ego always needs an enemy, is always a victim of someone or something, and often uses criticism and judgment with which to attack. This dynamic is often played out in love relationships where the other becomes the enemy who victimizes the intimate other and is criticized and judged and finally is eliminated in divorce. All intimate relationships that want to succeed must protect themselves from ego hijacking. The other is never your enemy nor are you their victim. No defense is needed. Criticism and judgment must be examined as possible projections or defenses or attacks in disguise. The other is a sacrament of God, a doorway to the divine, a holy experience.
Lessons 35 through 39 assert that the central quality of the human being is holiness. In one way this is a counter statement to one of the ego’s assumptions about us that we have betrayed Holiness Itself and so are sinners. Psychologically we have the constant feeling that something is wrong with us that needs to be fixed or changed or healed from. This points to the intrusion of the ego. From the ego’s perspective it is that we are bad and need to be punished.
© Copyright Tom Baker 2014