Lesson 36: My holiness envelops everything I see.

Feb 4 (edited) in Feed

🧩 Back to the Perceived

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📘 "Today’s idea extends the idea for yesterday from the perceiver to the perceived. ²You are holy because your mind is part of God’s. ³And because you are holy, your sight must be holy as well. ⁴“Sinless” means without sin. ⁵You cannot be without sin a little. ⁶You are sinless or not. ⁷If your mind is part of God’s you must be sinless, or a part of His Mind would be sinful. ⁸Your sight is related to His Holiness, not to your ego, and therefore not to your body." (ACIM, W-36.1:1-8)

🌟 We can see the care with which Jesus, in these lessons, has us move our attention from the outer to the inner and then back again. The point is for us to see the sameness of the perceiver and the perceived. Ideas do not leave their source, they either project to their likeness, with the ego; or extend to their likeness, with the Holy Spirit. This is akin to recognizing the tree by its fruits, or as the saying goes, "Tell me what you see [think], and I'll tell you who you are [and what you think]".

🌟 This first paragraph is one of these very explicit passages. Jesus doesn't hold anything back for us to guess or understand later but unfurls a logic that is difficult to argue with. He makes it obvious that if we are having a hard time feeling our holiness enveloping everything we see, this must be because we project our guilt instead of extending our innocence. Once again, it is a step in the right direction when we realize that.

🔎 “This is another example of what we have referred to as a Level One statement, meaning that something either is wholly true or wholly false; there is absolutely no compromise between non-duality and duality. Statements such as these form the bedrock for the thought system of A Course in Miracles: its uncompromising metaphysics. We either sinned against God by separating from Him; or we did not, thus remaining as God created us—at one with Him Who is our Source.” Excerpt from Journey through the Workbook of "A Course in Miracles", Kenneth Wapnick, Vol. 1, p. 110.

🌟 Interestingly, we also see in this paragraph the first clear statement about the body being by default in service of the ego:

🔎 “There is the ego part of our minds, but there is the other part that is holy. The implication to be drawn from the last part of this statement is that our body comes from the wrong mind, not the right mind. I have often said that no one in his or her right mind would be born into this world. It is only someone in the wrong mind, fleeing from the perceived wrath of God, who would come here. This does not mean the body cannot be used to serve a different purpose, as we have already seen and shall discuss again; but ontologically, the body is an expression of separation, sin, and attack. Its purpose of protecting the separation defines it”. Excerpt from Journey through the Workbook of "A Course in Miracles", Kenneth Wapnick, Vol. 1, p. 111.

🌟 The point here is not to vilify the body or relate to it as if it were a sinful thing. When we let in the sane (saint) part of our mind, when we start living guided by the Holy Spirit, we also start to see our bodies as instruments of communication and can put them in service of the atonement through forgiveness. We will come back to this idea later on.

🧩 Protecting our Protection

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📘 "Four three-to-five-minute practice periods are required for today. ²Try to distribute them fairly evenly, and make the shorter applications frequently, to protect your protection throughout the day." (ACIM, W-36.2:1-2)

🌟 By recommending we distribute our practice sessions "fairly evenly" throughout the day, Jesus would like us to see our frequent application of the idea as a protective thought.

🔎 “The “protection” is the thought for the day: “My holiness envelops everything I see.” In a larger sense, of course, our protection is the Presence of the Holy Spirit or Jesus. (...)To “protect the protection” requires that we be vigilant to what we are thinking, which we do by being vigilant to what we are perceiving. If I want to know what I think about myself and God, all I need do is devote one moment to what I think about you.” Excerpt from Journey through the Workbook of "A Course in Miracles", Kenneth Wapnick, Vol. 1, p. 111.

🌟 By staying alert and paying attention to our thoughts about others, we gain insight into our thoughts about ourselves and our concept of God.

🌟 This lesson begs the question, for the sake of our own assessment, when we look around at the world, do we extend our holiness, or do we "curse" the world by judging it? Let's use today's lesson to remind ourselves that we have a choice 🙂

🙈 PS: I've just replaced the picture of Lesson 36 in the folder shared below as I noticed a typo in the previous one, just so you know if you have downloaded them ;-)

💙🪄 Love and Light 🪄💙

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* My comment on this lesson follows my studying of the in-depth comment of the same lesson by Kenneth Wapnick in his published work, Journey through the Workbook of "A Course in Miracles". While it may sometimes contain my thoughts on it, it is essentially my humble take and summary of the masterful work of Kenneth. I share them here in the hope that someone might find them helpful.

** I also share, in these ACIM posts, the wallpaper images that I use on my phone and change every day to help me commit to my lesson, in the hope that some might enjoy them as well. Here is the link to a Dropbox folder where you can download the lessons's wallpaper for mobile I have uploaded so far.

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