Lesson 9: “I see nothing as it is now.”

This lesson says, “The recognition that you do not understand is a prerequisite for undoing your false ideas.”    The Course says that we want to apply what we learn.  We want to live it and feel it and do it.  We don’t want to stop at the ideas themselves.  When we exchange ideas it is just a mental exercise.  This is sometimes helpful to get us to the place where we understand it intellectually.  We want to share ideas with like minded people and hear their experiences and challenges applying the Course to their lives.  This is food for thought and can be one step in the process of whatever individual path we take in that process of evolving our minds in the learning to consistently choose God over the ego.  The Course explains in detail how our minds work so we can readily identify what unhelpful processes our minds do that are steps toward perpetuating the problem.  This is part of our path and we often can use this for what it is.  

However, the Course teaches us to apply everything.  The Course says don’t leave anything from the grasp of God.  We want to give God every aspect of our lives.  We want to stay firmly committed to the practice of the Course.  We learn how to let go of the past and future and stay steadfastly in the now.  Then peace will be upon us because through applying the Course we have let go of everything else that was blocking the way to Love’s Presence.  

The Course says that we are shown in the book how to go deeply into our minds so we can identify where we still are stuck and then gives us instruction how to release all of that to God’s altar, where God will happily cast it all out- any bit of the memory of our thinking.  God ultimately gives us the Holy Spirit whom we can ask any time we get stuck.  We just need to pray and ask while we sit in our certainty that God will provide us with all we need in the time that suits God and the Supreme plan of God’s will.

We are invited to practice the Course.  This is part of why doing the workbook is such a helpful piece of applying the Course to our lives.  The Workbook gives us very clear instructions how to do the lessons in a practical way and slowly brings us to a place where we no longer need the words of the Course.  We can throw away the book if we like because from our practice we have learned how to live in the experience of the energy and feelings of what the Course teaches.  in the end, we do the Course all the time, and we no longer need to think about the Course because it is within us already.

If something about the Course or the workbook makes us resist, look deeper within and ask God to teach us how to forgive.  We want to learn to forgive the Course for pushing our buttons.  We want to forgive ourselves for needing to learn forgiveness more deeply.  We need to forgive the Course for all the stuff we don’t understand.  We can also forgive Jesus for anyway we may be holding a grudge about the instructions we receive in the Course.    

We need to know that forgiveness is the one of the few most important lessons of the Course.  But within that, we want to forgive with a feel of completion.  We want to experience the forgiven as already done.  This is the way I find useful to make forgiveness seem and be clearly evident in my consciousness.  We want to bring as much of our love and forgiveness to a feeling state in our minds and selves.  We want to allow this forgiveness to be almost palpable that the feeling and experience is so strong.  This is then a true experience of living in a mind of forgiveness.