Lesson 18. I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.
The idea for today is another step in learning that the thoughts which give rise
to what you see are never neutral or unimportant. It also emphasizes the idea
that minds are joined, which will be given increasing stress later on.
Today's idea does not refer to what you see as much as to how you see it.
Therefore, the exercises for today emphasize this aspect of your perception. The
three or four practice periods which are recommended should be done as follows:
Look about you, selecting subjects for the application of the idea for today as
randomly as possible, and keeping your eyes on each one long enough to say:
I am not alone in experiencing the effects of how I see ___.
Conclude each practice period by repeating the more general statement:
I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.
A minute or so, or even less, will be sufficient for each practice period.
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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 18. "I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing."
*I noted in my Prelude that in the workbook, as well as in the text, Jesus often
develops a specific theme, sets that one down and returns to the previous one.
We see here the introduction of the idea that minds are joined, a theme central
to A Course in Miracles -- the oneness of God's Son and, specifically here, the
oneness of God's Son in his separated state.*
(1) "The idea for today is another step in learning that the thoughts which give
rise to what you see are never neutral or unimportant. It also emphasizes the
idea that minds are joined, which will be given increasing stress later on."
*Just as things in the world are different projections of the one thought of
separation, so are the seemingly different people but part of the one separated
Son. This means that all split minds are joined, because they come from one
thought.
Before the fragmentation occurred, a topic discussed at the beginning of Chapter
18 of the text, there was only one error or thought, just as in Heaven there is
only one Son. Minds are joined as one, because there is only the Mind of Christ,
which is One, and at one with the Mind of God. Much more importantly for our
purposes, however, is the principle that all <split minds> are joined too. We
are but fragmented perceptions and images that we -- our decision-making minds,
outside time and space -- made so we would believe that separation is reality.
In truth, all the seemingly separated fragments of God's Son, which we usually
think of as homo sapiens, but actually include everything we perceive -- animate
and inanimate -- are simply split-off parts of the one thought that says: "I
have achieved the impossible. I am separate, autonomous, independent, free, and
in control of my life." Here is that important passage from Chapter 18, which
presents the concept of the <one> thought that made the world:
"You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution. It has taken
many forms, because it was the substitution of illusion for truth; of
fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided and
divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it
once was one, and still is what it was. That one error, which brought truth to
illusion, infinity to, time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your
whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it, and every special
relationship that you have ever made is part of it."
"You may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you
see. You do not realize the magnitude of that one error. It was so vast and so
completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality had to emerge.
What else could come of it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you
begin to look at them. But nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity
of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter
knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to
make further substitutions." (T-18.1.4-5)*
(2) "Today's idea does not refer to what you see as much as to how you see it.
Therefore, the exercises for today emphasize this aspect of your perception. The
three or four practice periods which are recommended should be done as follows:"
*This is the point I mentioned earlier -- perception is not only <what> we see,
but <how> we see it. There is no distinction between the two. We make a
distinction for teaching purposes, but it is arbitrary because the
<interpretation> is what gives rise to what we see. The ego's interpretation is
that I <want> to see a separated, hostile, vengeful world so I do not have to
see these attributes in myself. In other words, the fact that my need to see a
certain way determines what I see is why we can say that what we see and how we
see it are one and the same.
The instructions in the remainder of the lesson are certainly familiar to us by
now.*
(3) "Look about you, selecting subjects for the application of the idea for
today as randomly as possible, and keeping your eyes on each one long enough to
say:
I am not alone in experiencing the effects of how I see ___.
Conclude each practice period by repeating the more general statement:
I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.
A minute or so, or even less, will be sufficient for each practice period."
*We thus move from our specific perceptions to the generalization that teaches
us that <all> our perceptions are the same, for they emanate from the same split
mind that unites the Sonship as one.*
