Today’s review covers the following ideas: W-6 to W-10
1. W-6 “I am upset because I see what is not there.”I
²Reality is never frightening.II
³It is impossible that it could upset me.
⁴Reality brings only perfect peace.
⁵When I am upset, it is always because I have replaced reality with illusions I made up.
⁶Illusions disturb me because I have given them reality; therefore, I see reality as an illusion.
⁷Nothing in God’s Creation is affected in any way by this confusion of mine.
⁸I am always upset over nothing.III
2. W-7 “I see only the past.” IV
²When I look around, I condemn the world I look upon.
³And I call that seeing.
⁴I use the past against everyone and everything, and thus I turn them into my “enemies.”
⁵When I have forgiven myself and remembered who I am, I will bless everyone and everything I see.
⁶There will be no past, and therefore no “enemies.”
⁷And I will look with God upon all that I failed to see before.
3. W-8 “My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.”V
²I see only my own thoughts, and my mind is preoccupied with the past.
³What, then, can I see as it is?
⁴Let me remember that I look upon the past to prevent the present from dawning in my mind.VI
⁵Let me understand that I am trying to use time against God.VII
⁶Let me learn to give up the past, realizing that in doing so I am letting go of nothing.
4. W-9 “I see nothing as it is now.”VIII
²If I see nothing as it is now, then truly I am not seeing at all.
³I can only see what is here now.
⁴The choice is not between seeing the past or the present; it is simply between seeing or not seeing.
⁵What I have chosen to see has cost me Vision.
⁶Now I would choose again, that I may see.
5. W-10 “My thoughts do not mean anything.”IX
²I have no private thoughts.
³Yet I am aware only of my private thoughts.
⁴What can these thoughts mean?
⁵They do not exist; therefore, they mean nothing.
⁶But my mind is part of Creation and of its Creator.
⁷Would I not rather join the thinking of the universe, than obscure all that is really mine with my pitiful “private” thoughts that mean nothing?
I I see “what is not there” because, in truth, I only relate to my own interpretations, the stories I tell myself, which are nowhere but in my mind, for being ideas, they have never left the source from which they came. Out there there is nothing, because there is nothing outside my mind, since my mind, which is God’s, is all that exists. What disturbs me is not anything “out there,” but the story I have just told myself, which is the story of a disturbance.
II I do not yet know this, because I do not remember what “Reality” is, and this is because I have forgotten it by replacing it with the voice of the ego, that which I have called “my thoughts.” Now my mind finds itself in a kind of “hypnotic” state, gazing at images I am projecting onto the screen of my conscience. Something like watching a movie at the cinema. Reality is Existence, a perfect abstraction that we can interpret in its three aspects of Love, Truth, and Power, the divine triad. To exist is an absolutely satisfying condition that inspires not fear, but certainty, love, and infinite power.
III It is nothing because it is an illusion that has no being in itself; it is the symbol of an impossible idea: the notion of being an individual entity separate from God. And what I say I see is nothing but the “story” I am telling myself.
IV “I see only the past” because my mind relates only to meanings I assigned in the past, and the forms I believe I see are symbols of those ancient meanings. It is exactly the same as in night dreams, where everything I see is nothing but formulations of meanings I myself attributed in the past.
V The verb “To preoccupy” is very peculiar, since it means to concern oneself with something before dealing with it, which is absurd. It is a concept that refers to the mental state preceding the decision to act.
For the mind to be absorbed in that “pre-occupation” implies an awareness that something must be changed because it is “wrong,” or at least could be “better.” The perception of that need to change something always entails a certain uneasiness and discomfort—the motivation—that can become very sharp.
In truth, to pre-occupy oneself is nothing other than to suffer while contemplating in fear and helplessness a demand for life’s response that exceeds what you consider yourself capable of.
VI It is important to understand that the mind cannot handle two things simultaneously: either it occupies itself with the past, or it occupies itself with the present. One must choose between those two sole options.
You tend to choose the past because that is where sin and guilt are found, and dealing with them is the ego’s perverse pleasure. In the innocence of the present, the ego dissolves. Guilt is what guarantees the ego’s continuity. The innocence of the present is the price you pay for being absorbed in the past.
VII Time, in its imaginary aspects of past and future, is the gesture the mind makes to separate itself from concepts it denies itself access to.
God is real and exists only in the real aspect of time: the present.
VIII The fundamental characteristics of the present are innocence and peace; the perfect absence of guilt and threat.
The present is always perfectly satisfying. If it is not, it is clear evidence that you are contemplating the past or anticipating the future, the nonexistent aspects of time.
IX Again the idea of Lesson 4 is repeated. It is a crucial idea in the paradigm of this Course. So important is it that it is impossible to be too aware of it, for it is constantly forgotten.
Realize that the mind was created to behold the truth; that is why it considers true whatever appears before it, whether reality or illusion. The mind always tends to regard as truthful what it beholds; hence forgiving is the undoing of that mental impulse.
To forgive, at bottom, is to undo an understandable error, for the mind must deal with strange and improper forms arising from an utterly false primordial idea: that you are separate from God. Once your mind has accepted that monumental error, it is inevitable that phantoms will arise from it, and your poor mind, accustomed to truth, is inevitably deceived by those offspring of madness.
So whenever something disturbs you, remember that the thought which gave rise to that unease—the voice of the ego within you—really means nothing. Forgive it, do not hold it against yourself, and behold the present with the love it deserves.