Lesson 24: “I do not perceive my own best interests.”

This lesson says, “If these exercises are done properly, you will quickly recognize that you are making a larger number of demands on the situation which have nothing to do with it.”  

We are learning in the Course how to truly love ourselves.

When we love ourselves, we act lovable because we feel lovable, and this is the foundation of God’s certainty. 

We are at peace because when we feel so good about ourselves we are able to stay above the battleground. 

We are able to rise above the challenges because we feel God’s elevated vibration. 

We feel it and experience it and we exude it as well.

The Course is giving us the keys to the Kingdom through our mind’s true joy and gratitude via the way we keep our mind above the battleground. 

We are just learning to play our parts in the process and remember to look within. 

We absolutely must clear out our minds first before we can take any steps in replacing those thoughts. 

We have to have the courage to look at them.

Courage can be very scarce and hard to come by because it takes a certain kind of willingness to be in the state of something new, and this can feel altogether vulnerable because it is so different. 

The vulnerability makes the ego want to run and hide.  This is understandable.

We are asked to forgive ourselves in the process when we can not raise our minds to the challenge of simply looking within. 

This can entirely rock our boats because it feels foreign and unknown.

The Course is giving us simple directions so we don’t have to struggle any more in the process than the struggle we all find ourselves in getting to that place of honest self discovery.

  We have to be willing to shed light on our inner worlds and this is a huge deal because the ego is more practiced at pretending to be numb and blind. 

Just remember that our looking at our inner worlds is the way to get to that place of peace, because peace always comes with the simple invitation we experience in the process of looking. 

When we invite that part of ourselves to be seen, instantly we are healed because it is God’s energy of inclusion that we feel in the process. 

This is why it works to heal us if we just open our minds to the process.  We can have faith in God.