Lesson 107. Truth will correct all errors in my mind.
(1) What can correct illusions but the truth? And what are errors but
illusions that remain unrecognized for what they are? Where truth has
entered errors disappear. They merely vanish, leaving not a trace by
which to be remembered. They are gone because, without belief, they have
no life. And so they disappear to nothingness, returning whence they
came. From dust to dust they come and go, for only truth remains.
(2) Can you imagine what a state of mind without illusions is? How it
would feel? Try to remember when there was a time, -- perhaps a minute,
maybe even less -- when nothing came to interrupt your peace; when you
were certain you were loved and safe. Then try to picture what it would
be like to have that moment be extended to the end of time and to
eternity. Then let the sense of quiet that you felt be multiplied a
hundred times, and then be multiplied another hundred more.
(3) And now you have a hint, not more than just the faintest intimation
of the state your mind will rest in when the truth has come. Without
illusions there could be no fear, no doubt and no attack. When truth has
come all pain is over, for there is no room for transitory thoughts and
dead ideas to linger in your mind. Truth occupies your mind completely,
liberating you from all beliefs in the ephemeral. They have no place
because the truth has come, and they are nowhere. They can not be found,
for truth is everywhere forever, now.
(4) When truth has come it does not stay a while, to disappear or change
to something else. It does not shift and alter in its form, nor come and
go and go and come again. It stays exactly as it always was, to be
depended on in every need, and trusted with a perfect trust in all the
seeming difficulties and the doubts that the appearances the world
presents engender. They will merely blow away, when truth corrects the
errors in your mind.
(5) When truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect
constancy, and love which does not falter in the face of pain, but looks
beyond it, steadily and sure. Here is the gift of healing, for the truth
needs no defense, and therefore no attack is possible. Illusions can be
brought to truth to be corrected. But the truth stands far beyond
illusions, and can not be brought to them to turn them into truth.
(6) Truth does not come and go nor shift nor change, in this appearance
now and then in that, evading capture and escaping grasp. It does not
hide. It stands in open light, in obvious accessibility. It is
impossible that anyone could seek it truly, and would not succeed. Today
belongs to truth. Give truth its due, and it will give you yours. You
were not meant to suffer and to die. Your Father wills these dreams be
gone. Let truth correct them all.
(7) We do not ask for what we do not have. We merely ask for what
belongs to us, that we may recognize it as our own. Today we practice on
the happy note of certainty that has been born of truth. The shaky and
unsteady footsteps of illusion are not our approach today. We are as
certain of success as we are sure we live and hope and breathe and
think. We do not doubt we walk with truth today, and count on it to
enter into all the exercises that we do this day.
(8) Begin by asking Him Who goes with you upon this undertaking that He
be in your awareness as you go with Him. You are not made of flesh and
blood and bone, but were created by the selfsame Thought which gave the
gift of life to Him as well. He is your Brother, and so like to you your
Father knows that You are Both the same. It is your Self you ask to go
with you, and how could He be absent where you are?
(9) Truth will correct all errors in your mind which tell you you could
be apart from Him. You speak to Him today, and make your pledge to let
His function be fulfilled through you. To share His function is to share
His joy. His confidence is with you, as you say:
<Truth will correct all errors in my mind,
And I will rest in Him Who is my Self.>
Then let Him lead you gently to the truth, which will envelop you and
give you peace so deep and tranquil that you will return to the familiar
world reluctantly.
(10) And yet you will be glad to look again upon this world. For you
will bring with you the promise of the changes which the truth that goes
with you will carry to the world. They will increase with every gift you
give of five small minutes, and the errors that surround the world will
be corrected as you let them be corrected in your mind.
(11) Do not forget your function for today. Each time you tell yourself
with confidence, "Truth will correct all errors in my mind," you speak
for all the world and Him Who would release the world, as He would set
you free.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The commentary on this lesson is an excerpt from Kenneth Wapnick's eight volume
series of
books, called: "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can
be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesson 107. "Truth will correct all errors in my mind."
*This is a lovely lesson that contrasts truth and illusion, and even
more to the point, makes it clear the impossibility of our understanding
truth and how happy it will make us. This is why throughout A Course in
Miracles Jesus talks to us about the <reflections> of truth or holiness.
Strictly speaking, of course, truth and holiness exist only in Heaven.*
(1:1-2) "What can correct illusions but the truth? And what are errors
but illusions that remain unrecognized for what they are?"
*This is the ego's thought system, which consists of the double shield
of oblivion: The world is the external shield "protecting" us from the
mind's guilt, and the guilt is the internal shield "protecting" us from
the mind's love, which undoes our individuality and specialness. The
point is to recognize the error, which is not in bodies, but in our
minds, where truth resides as well.
Jesus now describes what is basically impossible to describe:*
(2:1 -- 3:1) "Can you imagine what a state of mind without illusions is?
How it would feel? Try to remember when there was a time, -- perhaps a
minute, maybe even less -- when nothing came to interrupt your peace;
when you were certain you were loved and safe. Then try to picture what
it would be like to have that moment be extended to the end of time and
to eternity. Then let the sense of quiet that you felt be multiplied a
hundred times, and then be multiplied another hundred more."
"And now you have a hint, not more than just the faintest intimation of
the state your mind will rest in when the truth has come."
*Our thoughts on happiness and peace are but a <very, very, very> faint
glimmer of their true nature. Thus Jesus asks: "Why would you throw away
this glorious reality of my love, reflecting to you God's Love and the
source of your happiness, and choose instead the tiny bits of special
nothings that you covet, cherish, and would even kill for? Whatever you
think constitutes the truth of your safety is mistaken." Note that Jesus
does not speak of the body but of the mind -- the source of our misery
and pain, and happiness and peace.
This passage also implies there is no way the body could ever know real
peace, for peace does not reside in the world nor the various states to
which we aspire, but only in the mind made free of guilt and fear. That
is the peace St. Paul described as passing all understanding
(Philippians 4:7), and of which the manual for teachers speaks:
"It has been said that there is a kind of peace that is not of this
world ... in every way it is totally unlike all previous experiences. It
calls to mind nothing that went before. It brings with it no past
associations. It is a new thing entirely.... the simple understanding
that His Will is wholly without opposite. There is no thought that
contradicts His Will, yet can be true. ... The Will of God is one and
all there is. This is your heritage. The universe beyond the sun and
stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive, belong to you.
God's peace is the condition for His Will. Attain His peace, and you
remember Him." (M-20.1:1;2:2-5;6:2-3,9-13).
Can anything here even approach that state? *
(4:1) "When truth has come it does not stay a while, to disappear or
change to something else."
*Everything in this world changes and metamorphoses into something else.
No matter how much we covet and seek their satisfaction, we know from
experience the good feeling does not last, the proof it is not the
truth. Indeed, our most special relationship of all -- with our bodies
-- ends in total failure, for we all die. Yet if the love of Jesus is
present in our relationships, the good feeling must and will last. His
love alone, reflecting the eternal Love of God will endure, while we
dream. The forms of specialness -- the thrills, excitements, and
pleasures are transient. Thus Jesus' love is a constant appeal to us,
for he designates "what lasts" as the criterion for distinguishing
between the valuable and the valueless, as we shall see later in Lesson
133.*
(5:1) "When truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect
constancy, and love which does not falter in the face of pain, but looks
beyond it, steadily and sure."
*Again, Jesus is not saying there will be no pain or difficulty; they
are undone by realizing that their cause does not lie in the external,
or in the failure of our needs to be met, but in, quite simply, having
dropped his hand. Pain thus comes from telling Jesus: "I am not
interested in you, for I know better"; while peace is the happy result
of admitting we were wrong.*
(6:1-4) "Truth does not come and go nor shift nor change, in this
appearance now and then in that, evading capture and escaping grasp. It
does not hide. It stands in open light, in obvious accessibility. It is
impossible that anyone could seek it truly, and would not succeed."
*If we do not feel the truth and comfort of Jesus' love, it is because
we have not sought it, as we are afraid of the light and wish to remain
in darkness. Our special bodies reflect the ego's thought system of
darkness, which we cling to because we fear the light of truth in which
our individuality would go, as would our problems, judgments, and
grievances. Without these, who would we be? Revisiting these telling
lines, we read of the ego's fear:
"There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:
"I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am
doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself."
Yet in this learning is salvation born. And What you are will tell you
of Itself." (T-31.V.17.6-9).
Thus we do not seek truth truly, for we do not want to succeed and hear
our Self tell us What we are.*
(7) "We do not ask for what we do not have. We merely ask for what
belongs to us, that we may recognize it as our own. Today we practice on
the happy note of certainty that has been born of truth. The shaky and
unsteady footsteps of illusion are not our approach today. We are as
certain of success as we are sure we live and hope and breathe and
think. We do not doubt we walk with truth today, and count on it to
enter into all the exercises that we do this day."
*Our asking for what belongs to us is the accepting of the Atonement,
asking the decision-making part of our minds to choose again -- the
truth of what we are over the illusion. Since we are asking only for
truth, we cannot fail. Illusions have no power once we withdraw our
belief in them. Today's exercises take us further down the path of
certainty, which we take us further down the path of certainty, which
we happily walk with the truth of Jesus' love by our side.*
(8:1) "Begin by asking Him Who goes with you upon this undertaking that
He be in your awareness as you go with Him."
*Jesus asks again to choose him or the Holy Spirit as our Guide as we go
through the day, bringing to Them all forms of upset and disquiet, the
myriad ways we had chosen illusion over truth. Changing teachers, our
journey to nowhere becomes the journey home.*
(9: 1-5) "Truth will correct all errors in your mind which tell you you
could be apart from Him. You speak to Him today, and make your pledge to
let His function be fulfilled through you. To share His function is to
share His joy. His confidence is with you, as you say:
<Truth will correct all errors in my mind,
And I will rest in Him Who is my Self.>"
*Thus we choose to remember our function of forgiveness: bringing the
errors of past mistaken choices to the truth in our minds, as we walk
the path that leads to our Self.*
(9:6) "Then let Him lead you gently to the truth, which will envelop you
and give you peace so deep and tranquil that you will return to the
familiar world reluctantly."
*Jesus addresses the integration of what we know to be the truth in our
minds with our functioning in the world, and example of biblical idea of
being in the world and yet not of it (John 17:14,16,18). This means we
continue to live in the world, because the experience of light, truth,
and love is so wonderful that by contrast the world seems a veritable
hell. Thus Jesus tells us he knows what we feel, at the same time
encouraging the right-minded part of our minds. In fact it is the
experience of peace that enables us to "return" to the world, but
differently, an important theme to which we shall return. The power of
this peace was nicely captured in another of Helen's poems, "Awake in
Stillness":
Peace cover you, within without the same,
In shining silence and peace so deep
No dream of sin and evil can come near
Your quiet mind.
(The Gifts of God, p.73).*
(10:1-2) "And yet you will be glad to look again upon this world. For
you will bring with you the promise of the changes which the truth that
goes with you will carry to the world."
* What are these changes? Before I asked Jesus for help, I was
miserable, angry, depressed, anxious, and a very unhappy victim.
Realizing I would be happier with a new teacher, I released my
investment in the ego's specialness. Thus I am seen differently, for I
<am> different. As the workbook says later: I "smile more frequently"
(W-p1.155.1:2). This indicates something has changed -- anger and
depression to happiness and joy -- and says, in effect: because minds
are one, the choice I have made you can make, the teacher I have chosen
is in your mind as well.
That is the meaning of Jesus' lovely statement in the text, "Teach not
that I died in vain. Teach rather that I did not die by demonstrating
that I live in you" (T-11.VI.7:3-4). Our happiness demonstrates his life
in us. This does not mean we literally walk around smiling, but that we
remain peaceful, knowing that nothing in the world has power to disrupt
our peace. Living in the presence of Jesus' love means we live with his
presence all the time. Our quiet joy witnesses to his truth in our
minds, as all our ego thoughts are gently laid aside. The joy born of
the forgiveness of ourselves extends gladly through the Sonship and is
carried to the world.*
(11) "Do not forget your function for today. Each time you tell yourself
with confidence, "Truth will correct all errors in my mind," you speak
for all the world and Him Who would release the world, as He would set
you free."
*What better way to end the discussion of this lesson than to quote the
end of the manual for teachers. These lovely verses, already partly
quoted, encapsulate our function of forgiving ourselves, thereby
forgiving the world. Jesus' gratitude to us echoes our own to him, who
led us to this sacred place, wherein our choice was made for truth
instead of illusion, freedom instead of imprisonment, life instead of
death:
"And now in all your doings be you blessed.
God turns to you for help to save the world.
Teacher of God, His thanks He offers you,
And all the world stands silent in the grace
You bring from Him. You are the Son He loves,
And it is given you to be the means
Through which His Voice is heard around the world,
To close all things of time; to end the sight
Of all things visible; and to undo
All things that change. Through you is ushered in
A world unseen, unheard, yet truly there.
Holy are you, and in your light the world
Reflects your holiness, for you are not
Alone and friendless. I give thanks for you,
And join your efforts on behalf of God,
Knowing they are on my behalf as well,
And for all those who walk to God with me. AMEN." (M-29.8).*
