Today we review the following: W-31 to W-35

1. W-31 “I am not the victim of the world I see.” ^I

²How can I be the victim of a world that can be entirely undone by my decision?

³My chains are loosened.

⁴I can drop them off just by desiring to do so.

⁵The prison door is open.

⁶I can leave simply by walking out.

⁷Nothing holds me in this world.

⁸Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner.

⁹I would give up these insane desires and walk into the sunlight at last.

2. W-32 “I have invented the world I see.”^II

²I made up the prison in which I see myself.

³Only by recognizing this will I be free.

⁴I have deceived myself into believing it is possible to imprison the Son of God.

⁵I was bitterly mistaken in this belief, but I do not want to continue believing it.

⁶The Son of God must be forever free.

⁷He is as God created him, and not what I would make of him.

⁸He is where God would have him be, and not where I tried to hold him prisoner.

3. W-33 “There is another way of looking at the world.” ^III

²Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it.

³I see everything upside down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth.

⁴I see the world as a prison for the Son of God.

⁵Then the world must really be a place where he can be set free.

⁶I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom.

4. W-34 “I could see peace instead of this.”^IV

²When I see the world as a place of freedom, I will realize it reflects the Laws of God instead of the rules I made up for it to obey.

³I will understand that peace, not war, abides in it.

⁴And I will perceive that peace also abides in the hearts of all who share this place with me.

5. W-35 “My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy.” ^V

²As I share the peace of the world with my brothers, I begin to understand that this peace comes from deep within myself.

³The world I look upon reflects the light of my forgiveness and returns that light to me.

⁴In this light I begin to see what the illusions I held about myself were hiding.

⁵Now I begin to understand the holiness of all living things, including myself, and their oneness with me.

^I You are only a victim of yourself: of your own interpretations, of the stories you tell yourself. Take a close look: you spend all your time chattering with yourself in your mind. You sustain your particular description of the world with that incessant talk that consumes you. Observe that compulsive and unstoppable dialogue well: it never ceases. You cannot stop it. It is an endless story you repeat to yourself all the time, reflecting the fears and desires of your ego. It is riddled with small or large resentments and revenges, with small or large gestures through which your ego expresses its sense of grandiosity, retaliation, and vainglory. None of that is you. It is nothing but an immense foolishness that keeps you hypnotized in a nonexistent world.

This is what Jesus refers to when he says in Lesson 10: “My thoughts do not mean anything.” You may know someone who suffers from logorrhea and speaks compulsively and incessantly. They are unaware of others and do not use their words to communicate anything to anyone. They are utterly insensitive to the needs or interests of those before them. Their minds work very, very poorly. It is the tiresome and pitiful monologue of drunkards.

And the same thing happens to you, except that you do not usually voice aloud that boring narrative. Keep in mind that while you are telling yourself all that nonsense—those stories engendered from apparent affronts and desires of the past—you are missing the present right before you. That is why your mind “is preoccupied with past thoughts”; that is why “you have invented the world you see.”

To stop the internal dialogue and to see with innocent eyes what lies before you is a prodigious feat that you are completely incapable of achieving; but if you ask for it with your whole heart, it will be granted. To approach it, you can begin first by becoming aware of that compulsive chatter, which is really a monologue. As soon as you notice it, it will cease, but after a while, without realizing it, it will return. Then, notice it again, and it will once more stop. Do not despair; on the contrary, rejoice. You are simply beginning to become aware of how the ego functions in your mind. This is, no doubt, an unpleasant perception, but it will affect you only if you identify with it. In reality, you are beginning to disassociate yourself from that sickly way of using your mind.

Forgive that dialogue you hold with yourself; let it pass, do not judge it or condemn it: it is not real. In fact, that voice you hear has nothing to do with you; that is not who you are. Yet the discourse contains, woven within itself, the notion that what you hear comes from you and are your own thoughts. And, in truth, it is not so; but that is the reason why it is so hard for you to let it go.

^II My mind knows only the stories it tells itself about everything. The world does not exist, but my mind tells itself a story about a world it imagines, just as it does while it sleeps and says it dreams. My mind invents worlds without end. At times, I recognize that those worlds I imagine are fantasies, but most of the time, the stories I tell myself bear a label that says: “This is real.” Once I have read that label and believed what it says, I am utterly lost to truth, and only suffering will lead me to seek an alternative.

Yet suffering is not necessary at all. Train and discipline your mind to systematically forgive the ego’s narrative.

^III Indeed there is another way of seeing the world, but it is not up to me to say what it is. In fact, I find myself now in a pitiful situation precisely because I assigned myself that role of deciding what the world is. I do not know, but I will be told. It is a knowledge that will surface in my mind when I simply allow it.

^IV Of course! Peace is an absolutely real concept; conflict, however, is an invention. Be radical about this. It is a non-negotiable reality. Always refuse conflictive interpretations; they are unreal and you do not want them.

^V This is the only truth. Dare to embrace it, even if only for an instant, and you will have opened the doors of your release. Familiarize yourself with this idea, and it does not matter if you do not yet believe it.

The best way, the fastest and most effective way to embrace it is to ascribe holiness to others. Set your will on seeing your brother as holy, even if your mind and your gut reject the idea. Insist on it with absolute determination.

You may be certain that, in time, your efforts will be rewarded, and you will begin to see the world and everyone in it with benevolent eyes, and at the end of it all, even yourself.