Lesson 351. My sinless brother is my guide to peace. My sinful brother is my guide to pain.
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Lesson 351.
My sinless brother is my guide to peace.
My sinful brother is my guide to pain.
And which I choose to see I will behold.
Who is my brother but Your holy Son? And if I see him sinful I proclaim myself a
sinner, not a Son of God; alone and friendless in a fearful world. Yet this
perception is a choice I make, and can relinquish. I can also see my brother
sinless, as Your holy Son. And with this choice I see my sinlessness, my
everlasting Comforter and Friend beside me, and my way secure and clear. Choose,
then, for me, my Father, through Your Voice. For He alone gives judgment in Your
Name.
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Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from his book set
called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be
purchased at the following site: ~ M. Street.
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Lesson 351.
"My sinless brother is my guide to peace.
My sinful brother is my guide to pain.
And which I choose to see I will behold."
*As we shall see, these final lessons are composed only of prayers to God. The
first two are similar in presenting the mind's opposite thought systems --
sinfulness and sinlessness (Lesson 351), and judgment and love (Lesson 352) --
and our ability to choose between them. We could say: I choose to see one or the
other -- sin or sinlessness -- and beholding my choice, I make it real in my
perception. Thus the way I perceive you will show me how I have perceived
myself.*
(1:1) "Who is my brother but Your holy Son?"
*Remember, the Son of God is one, and therefore the way I see you must be the
way I see me. To believe anything different from that principle denies the
Atonement and affirms the seeming reality of the separation.*
(1:2-3) "And if I see him sinful I proclaim myself a sinner, not a Son of God;
alone and friendless in a fearful world. Yet this perception is a choice I make,
and can relinquish."
*The only way we let this perception go is to realize it is a choice that brings
us pain -- the turning point on our journey. Jesus thus appeals to the selfish
need in all of us to feel better. The problem is, as we have already seen, that
we do not know what will make us feel better. We think that pleasure is pain and
pain is pleasure. Thus our need for a Teacher to instruct us in the difference,
helping us to understand that forgiveness alone brings pleasure, while a life of
attack and fear reinforces the pain of our separation and aloneness. Once this
understanding is made clear to us, the choice is not difficult to make.*
(1:4-7) "I can also see my brother sinless, as Your holy Son. And with this
choice I see my sinlessness, my everlasting Comforter and Friend beside me, and
my way secure and clear. Choose, then, for me, my Father, through Your Voice.
For He alone gives judgment in Your Name."
*We have seen that God does not choose. These words but symbolize Jesus
reminding us that we are the ones who have to choose the Holy Spirit -- our
Comforter and Friend -- as correction for the original and ongoing choice for
the ego's thought system of separation, sin and hate. Thus does the Holy
Spirit's Love become the basis for our judgment of God's Son as sinless, the
certain means for our returning home along the path of forgiveness, and the way
we remember that God's Name is ours -- our inheritance as His beloved and
unified Son. Thus we say to our innocent brother, in the words of Helen's poem,
"God's Likeness":
"How holy are you, Son of God! How pure
Your thoughts; how innocent your mind. In you
I see the Host of God; His Love, His Joy,
His one creation, indivisible.
You are as like to God as I to you,
And being like to you, I am like Him."
(The Gifts of God, p.17).*
Love and Blessings,
Lyn Johnson 719-369-1822
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