Lesson 347
Anger must come from judgment. Judgment is
The weapon I would use against myself,
To keep the miracle away from me.
Father, I want what goes against my will, and do not want what is my will to
have. Straighten my mind, my Father. It is sick. But You have offered freedom,
and I choose to claim Your gift today. And so I give all judgment to the One You
gave to me to judge for me. He sees what I behold, and yet He knows the truth.
He looks on pain, and yet He understands it is not real, and in His
understanding it is healed. He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my
awareness. Let Him judge today. I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your
Own. And He will speak for me, and call Your miracles to come to me.
Listen today. Be very still, and hear the gentle Voice for God assuring you that
He has judged you as the Son He loves.
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Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey
Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the
following site: ~M. Street.
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Lesson 347.
"Anger must come from judgment. Judgment is
The weapon I would use against myself,
To keep the miracle away from me."
*Lesson 347 is another opportunity for us to realize the insanity of our
choices, here exemplified by judging ourselves, the cause of our anger. Thus we
again see the importance of recognizing the purpose behind our making the world
and judging everything in it. Such judgments hold us in a state of mindlessness,
which keeps the Holy Spirit's miracle away from us.*
(1:1-3) "Father, I want what goes against my will, and do not want what is my
will to have. Straighten my mind, my Father. It is sick."
*This passage calls to mind the well-known lament of St. Paul: "Why is it that
the good that I would, I do not do, and the evil that I would not do, I do do?"
(Romans 7:19) In other words, why I am insane? Why is it that part of me wants
to do the right thing, and yet I always end up doing the wrong thing; and the
wrong things I do not want to do, are the very things I find myself doing? This
is Jesus' point here, making clear to us our insanity in doing the very things
that keep us from being happy. We think happiness comes through holding
grievances or worshipping the gods of specialness. Yet they only bring us
sadness, and our minds are sick to think otherwise. Humility helps us realize
this sick insanity, the precursor to letting it go.*
(1:4-8) "But You have offered freedom, and I choose to claim Your gift today.
And so I give all judgment to the One You gave to me to judge for me. He sees
what I behold, and yet He knows the truth. He looks on pain, and yet He
understands it is not real, and in His understanding it is healed. He gives the
miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness."
*Interestingly, in the context of this passage the Holy Spirit sees the world
through our eyes. Strictly speaking, of course, He does not see anything; the
point being we should not deny what our eyes see, but rather look at the world
through different lens. Jesus tells us, for example, that we should look on
pain: "Do not deny the existence of wars, floods, and famine, from which people
suffer. Do not deny the suffering. But let me help you to look at pain
differently. Let me use your perception of suffering to show you that it mirrors
your choice for an internal thought of suffering." This, then, is the world's
only value -- there is no other way to return to the mind except through the
world, because we made it and believe we are here. Though the world is not holy
in itself, it can yet serve the holy purpose of reflecting back to us the
repressed mind's choices, which correct the purpose served by the ego's dreams
of anger, judgment, pain, and death: to hide the fact that we are the mind's
decision maker, the dreamer of the dream.*
(1:9-11) "Let Him judge today. I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your
Own. And He will speak for me, and call Your miracles to come to me."
*I simply have to ask the Holy Spirit's help, and thus Jesus tells us:*
(2) "Listen today. Be very still, and hear the gentle Voice for God assuring you
that He has judged you as the Son He loves."
*To be still means to silence my thoughts of judgment, anger, and specialness,
and above all, my arrogant assertions that I am right.*
