Introduction

1. Today we begin a series of review sessions.^I

²Each one will cover five of the ideas presented earlier, starting with the first and ending with the fiftieth.

³Each idea is followed by a brief comment, which you should consider as you review it.

⁴The exercises are to be practiced as follows:

2. Begin the day by reading the five ideas and the accompanying comments.

²After that, there is no need to follow a specific order in how you think about them, although each one should be practiced at least once.

³Spend two minutes or more in each practice period reflecting on the idea and its related comment.

⁴Do this as often as you can throughout the day.

⁵If one of the five ideas appeals to you more than the others, focus on that one.

⁶But be sure to review them all once more at the end of the day.

3. There is no need to approach the comments in a literal or exhaustive way during the practice periods.

²Try instead to grasp the central point of each idea and think about it.^II

³These review exercises should be done with your eyes closed and, if possible, when you are alone in a quiet place.

4. This is especially important for the practice periods at your current stage of learning.

²However, it is equally important that you begin to learn not to require any special setting in order to apply what you have learned.

³In fact, you will need to apply it even more in situations that seem disturbing than in those that appear quiet and peaceful.

⁴The purpose of your learning is to enable you to bring stillness with you wherever you go and to heal distress and turmoil.

⁵This is not achieved by avoiding difficult situations or seeking a place of seclusion.

5. You will learn that Peace is part of you, and only requires your presence to bring peace to any situation in which you find yourself.

²Eventually, you will understand that it does not matter at all where you are in order to see your Peace reflected in everything, just as it is within you.^III

6. You will notice that in this review, the ideas are not always presented in the exact form in which they were originally given.

²Use them as they are presented now.

³There is no need to return to their original formulations or to apply them exactly as was suggested at the time.

⁴What we emphasize now is the way in which these first fifty ideas are related and the consistency of the thought system to which they lead you.

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^I Notice the pedagogy that Jesus is applying in this Workbook. First of all, repetition. When the idea to be practiced during the day is first presented, you are asked to repeat it, bringing it to mind with a certain frequency throughout the day. The reason for this is that, figuratively speaking, for a given stimulus to become a specific response, a particular behavior, or interpretation, it must travel a certain path through the impenetrable jungle of your mind. That is why it is necessary to open a trail between those two points and keep it open, accessible, and familiar by walking it many times. In this way, traveling through it becomes easy and familiar.

Now, with this review, we once again walk the path we have not taken for several weeks, and thus we make sure that we know the way well. But this time we make the journey somewhat differently. Now Jesus adds a new resource: we use different vehicles to travel it, we use slightly different words, and He even encourages us to use the ones that come to us. This way we learn that the wording of the idea is not some kind of magic spell, but that what really matters is the concept the words convey. Thus, we learn to distinguish between form and content.

^II Perhaps this is the most important part of the exercise: try to understand the essence of what Jesus is attempting to convey with each idea. Try to express it in your own words, or better still, try to reach the concept itself without any word crossing your mind; try to reach the essence of the idea through a feeling. If you are able to understand the idea without words, then you have truly understood it.

From there, do not treat the idea as a statement or formulation; remain with the pure understanding and recognize that this understanding is the truth. This is the most effective way to incorporate it into your thought system as something functional.

Understand that a thought system is not a set of ideas that must necessarily be formulated in a certain way. It is true that it can be described that way, but also in many others. A thought system, in itself, is a specific “position” of the mind, a mental paradigm; it is a way of using the mind, or rather, the way your mind approaches what it perceives or conceives.

^III Take these last lines very much to heart. Remember that this is a Course in mind training. In reality, it is training for the “lower” part of your mind; the other part needs no training, for it is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit and functions perfectly in eternity. What you are doing now is simply cleaning and ordering the house where the ego dwells, although perhaps it would be more accurate to say that what you are doing with these practices is expelling the ego from that part of your holy mind where it had shamelessly settled. It has no right to be there. You are simply getting rid of an extraordinarily troublesome and disturbing tenant.

You can also interpret the situation in an even more appropriate way. Understand that the ego, in reality, does not exist; it is no one and nothing—it is only a poor way of using your mind. In this Course the term “ego” is used with a purely didactic purpose and as a learning device, but the ego has no entity whatsoever. That is why, when you read of “wrong-mindedness,” it is really referring to the ego: the wrong way of using your holy mind. The problem is that, for now, it is the only one you know; the other way you hardly remember at all, but you certainly yearn for it.

In this process of “cleaning and ordering” your house, it is essential that you use the resources provided as often as possible and, above all, whenever you face a disturbing situation, a problem, or an upset. Remember the introduction to Chapter 30: “These steps are not new to you, but they are still only ideas, and not the rules by which you live. Therefore, we must practice them for a while until they become the rules by which you live. What we are seeking is that these rules become habits to be available for ANY need” (T-30.I.1:6-8).

LESSON 51

Today’s review covers the following ideas: W-1 to W-5 ^I

1. W-1 “Nothing I see means anything.”

²The reason this is so is that I am seeing what is nothing, and nothing has no meaning.^II

³I must recognize this in order to learn how to see.

⁴What I think I see now has taken the place of Vision.

⁵I must let it go by recognizing that it means nothing, so that Vision may take its place.

2. W-2 “I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me.”^III

²I have judged everything I look upon.

³And it is this, and only this, that I see.

⁴That is not seeing.

⁵It is merely an illusion of reality, because I have made my judgments entirely apart from Reality.

⁶I am willing to acknowledge the invalidity of my judgments because I want to see.

⁷My judgments have hurt me, and I do not want to see through them any longer.

3. W-3 “I do not understand anything I see.”

²How can I understand what I see when I have misjudged it?

³What I see is the projection of my own errors of thought. ⁴I do not understand what I see because it is not understandable.^IV

⁵There is no point in trying to understand it.

⁶And yet it is entirely reasonable to let it go, to make room for what can be seen, understood, and loved.^V

⁷I can exchange what I see now for that, simply by being willing to do so.

⁸Is this not a better choice than the one I made before?

4. W-4 “These thoughts do not mean anything.”^VI

²The thoughts I am aware of do not mean anything because I am trying to think without God.

³What I call “my” thoughts are not my real Thoughts.^VII

⁴My real Thoughts are the Thoughts I think with God.

⁵I am not aware of them because I have allowed “my” own thoughts to take their place.

⁶I am willing to recognize that “my” thoughts mean nothing and to let them go.

⁷I choose to replace them with what they were meant to replace.

⁸“My” own thoughts mean nothing, but all of Creation resides in the Thoughts I think with God.^VIII

5. W-5 “I am never upset for the reason I think.”

²I am never upset for the reason I think because I am constantly trying to justify “my” own thoughts.

³I am constantly trying to make them true.

⁴I make everything my “enemy” so I can justify my anger and my attacks.^IX

⁵I have not realized how much I have misused everything I see by assigning this role to my thoughts.

⁶I did this to defend a thought system that has hurt me and that I no longer want.

⁷I am willing to let it go.

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^I Helen was a somewhat finicky editor and disliked the idea of repeating the review lesson subtitles. That is why Jesus offered her a different formulation for each one.

^II This line explains very well what is happening in your mind. Nothing you see means anything because, in truth, you are not seeing anything at all; you are only projecting images onto the screen of your conscience, and you call that “seeing.” What you believe you see is nothing but an illusion, except that your mind has labeled what it has conceived as “something” or “things.” It has also applied the labels “outside me” and “reality.” And, to complete the process, it has assigned an even longer label describing their function: “what this thing is for.”

What appears on all those labels is not exactly “false,” but rather “fictitious,” entirely whimsical and arbitrary. Of all the labels, the one that harms you the most is the one that says “real,” because that is precisely the one that leaves you utterly confused and the one that most hurts you. If you had not placed that label, nothing could affect or disturb you, and you would understand that everything is the product of your fertile imagination, of your capacity to create imaginary worlds—a kind of artistic production.

^III This should be obvious, even to you, as you begin studying this Course. Surely you notice that you interpret the present moment very differently from the person next to you, still more differently than the dog accompanying you, not to mention the ant you just stepped on, for example. In truth, you are not relating to anything but your own interpretations of what you perceive.

Moreover, what you perceive is not even “outside” you; it is in your mind, just like what you call “my body” and the idea you have of yourself. Though this may frighten you somewhat, all of it is fictitious. Yet there is no reason for fear; if you feel afraid, it is a sign that you are doing the exercises correctly.

However, if working with these ideas does not stir up at least a certain uneasiness, it may be that you are not yet fully grasping their meaning. Do not be troubled by this, but seek to go deeper into the true sense of what is being proposed to you.

^IV Of course you do not understand anything you see! In fact, you do not even understand what it means “to understand,” since you confuse it with “remembering” your own interpretations and judgments. Yet, if you engage in a small exercise of honesty, you will notice that once you remove from what you see all the “labels” you yourself have placed there, your mind is left blank. Then what you behold evokes nothing that comes from you.

In reality, the only real aspect of the contents of your mind is the love it manifests.

^V To understand this line, it may help you to take a quick look at Lesson 29.

^VI The magnitude of what this idea implies is such that it can hardly be expressed in words, for the idea itself denies and undermines words altogether. Moreover, if you recall, the idea is reiterated and reinforced in Lesson 10 with a similar statement. This is one of the many devastating declarations for the ego that the student of this Course usually admits and accepts lightly, without major consequences in his personal life.

Perhaps you consider yourself a student of A Course in Miracles, perhaps you say you accept its postulates and are dedicated to its reading; you may even try to practice it with all the honesty of which you are capable, yet you have probably noticed that problems keep arising. Your old thought system has its own inertia and resists change. And that is normal. Do not worry about it. Persevere and trust.

Understand that, although change could be instantaneous, it usually involves a process that unfolds over time. Also remember that, ultimately, your old thought system will not change itself. That is impossible. Jesus tells you that the final step is taken by God. It is up to you to do what you can to create the conditions for this to happen as soon as possible—nothing more.

^VII Realize that what you call “my” thoughts is nothing but the ego’s voice in your mind. Do not be afraid to set aside that insidious voice and relinquish those thoughts of “yours.” Do not be possessive, for that greedy impulse is precisely the effect of the ego in your mind. You cannot lose anything real; do not forget that.

^VIII “The thoughts I think with God” are Creation itself, all of Creation, and the only thing that exists, in other words, Reality.

^IX Do not judge yourself harshly for thinking this way and functioning in this manner. You must realize that you do so because, though you may not acknowledge it, you are deeply frightened; you are very afraid. The profound terror you feel, but conceal from yourself, is so intolerable that you cannot endure it within and try to rid yourself of it by projecting it outward in angry forms. Your attacks on your brothers, and theirs on you, are nothing but this: the projection of an unbearable fear. Both they and you, in truth, are asking for help in that difficult situation. Forgive yourself for this, and forgive them as well. Only forgiveness and prayer will save you. Remember that it does not matter where you are; what matters is where you are headed.