Lesson 32. I have invented the world I see.
Today we are continuing to develop the theme of cause and effect. You are not
the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as
easily as you made it up. You will see it or not see it, as you wish. While you
want it you will see it; when you no longer want it, it will not be there for
you to see.
The idea for today, like the preceding ones, applies to your inner and outer
worlds, which are actually the same. However, since you see them as different,
the practice periods for today will again include two phases, one involving the
world you see outside you, and the other the world you see in your mind. In
today's exercises, try to introduce the thought that both are in your own
imagination.
Again we will begin the practice periods for the morning and evening by
repeating the idea for today two or three times while looking around at the
world you see as outside yourself. Then close your eyes and look around your
inner world. Try to treat them both as equally as possible. Repeat the idea for
today unhurriedly as often as you wish, as you watch the images your imagination
presents to your awareness.
For the two longer practice periods three to five minutes are recommended, with
not less than three required. More than five can be utilized, if you find the
exercise restful. To facilitate this, select a time when few distractions are
anticipated, and when you yourself feel reasonably ready.
These exercises are also to be continued during the day, as often as possible.
The shorter applications consist of repeating the idea slowly, as you survey
either your inner or outer world. It does not matter which you choose.
The idea for today should also be applied immediately to any situation that may
distress you. Apply the idea by telling yourself:
a.. I have invented this situation as I see it.
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This is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries from his book set called: "Journey
Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles." which can be purchased at the
following site:?
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Lesson 32. "I have invented the world I see."
(1:1-2) "Today we are continuing to develop the theme of cause and effect. You
are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it."
*I am not a victim of the world I see because I am the victim of my thoughts,
which made up this world. Looked at from a metaphysical point of view, my entire
life -- from birth to death -- is my dream; the script of victimization I wrote
to accomplish the ego's purpose. As we have already seen, this purpose is to
keep my individual existence, but split off my belief in sin by projecting it
onto others. If my life is my dream, my play, my script, then I am obviously the
author. Thus am I a victim of my own script writing. In truth, the decision
maker identified with the ego -- the part of my split mind that identifies with
separation -- wrote this script to teach that the world is a prison and everyone
in it is my jailer. When I invite Him in, the Holy Spirit joins me there to
teach me this world can now become a classroom in which I learn I made it up. He
teaches me further <why> I did so: to protect my individuality and specialness.
Therefore, because I made it up, because I invented the world I see, I can
change it.
Again, "I have invented the world I see" refers back to the idea that my life is
my invention, based on the unreal premise I have been unfairly treated as a
little child and therefore in need of defenses. Thus I, as healthy ego,
literally invent the world that will always prove I am right and everyone else
is wrong, and so my attack thoughts and behavior are justified.*
(1:3-5) "You can give it up as easily as you made it up. You will see it or not
see it, as you wish. While you want it you will see it; when you no longer want
it, it will not be there for you to see."
*Jesus once again is talking about motivation: it is my <wish> to see a
victimizing world, even if that wish is out of awareness, as most wishes are.
The world of victimization I see is there because I <want> it to be there. While
it is not explained in this lesson, the reason I want a world of victimization
is to be able to say the sin of separation is yours and not mine. A telling
passage near the end of Chapter 27 in the text makes this dynamic -- here
implicit -- quite clear:
"The world you see depicts exactly what you thought you did. Except that now
you think that what you did is being done to you. The guilt for what you thought
is being placed outside yourself, and on a guilty world that dreams your dreams
and thinks your thoughts instead of you. It brings its vengeance, not your own.
... The world but demonstrates an ancient truth; you will believe that others do
to you exactly what you think you did to them. But once deluded into blaming
them you will not see the cause of what they do, because you want the guilt to
rest on them." (T.27.VIII.7.2-5;8:1-2).
The reigning principle of the ego's thought system, to make this important
statement again, is the preservation of separation and individuality, but
without their concomitant sin. Therefore, in the world of specifics I project my
sin onto you and declare you to be the sinning victimizer, not me. In this way I
have my ego's cake and eat it too. I have my individuality and specialness -- my
self -- < but I am not responsible for them >: someone else has made me what I
am.
To repeat, I can give the world up as easily as I made it when I took the ego as
my teacher instead of Jesus. I merely change my decision by dropping the ego's
hand and taking his instead. It is very simple. What makes it difficult to do is
its implication: if I do this, I will disappear as I know myself, and then who
will I be? That is the fear. Our task is to allow ourselves to get in touch with
that fear, and then watch the insane defenses we choose to protect ourselves
against something <that is not there anyway>.
Jesus is appealing here to our motivation, as he does consistently throughout A
Course in Miracles. If we really want to be happy we need to follow what he
says, because that alone will make us happy. But that means that we have to be
able to say that he was right and we were wrong. That is the most difficult
thing for anyone in this world to admit.*
(2:1) "The idea for today, like the preceding ones, applies to your inner and
outer worlds, which are actually the same."
*You can see how often in these early lessons Jesus makes this point. He is not
speaking metaphorically or figuratively; he is speaking quite literally. You
want to think deeply about what this really means -- the full implications of
saying the inner and outer worlds are the same. It is these implications that
are so frightening and unsettling.*
(2:2-3) "However, since you see them as different, the practice periods for
today will again include two phases, one involving the world you see outside
you, and the other the world you see in your mind. In today's exercises, try to
introduce the thought that both are in your own imagination."
*A passage like this is crucial because Jesus is explaining why he uses the
language of duality. Most of the time he speaks to us as if there were a world
out there; people who have to be forgiven: a world of time and space in which
all this occurs; a Holy Spirit and Jesus that run around in our minds trying to
help us. Moreover, Jesus speaks of God as if He, too, were a person with
different body parts: arms, hands, feet, voice, lips, etc. Thus he tells us here
that he uses terms of duality because <we> see the inner and the outer as
different; and therefore he will construct practice periods to reflect that
duality -- not because the inner and the outer are truly different, but because
that is our experience, and he will meet us in the condition in which we think
we are (T-25.1.7:4).
Students of A Course in Miracles repeatedly get trapped in duality when they
miss lines like this and take its words literally, when Jesus is stating it is
not like that at all. Thus he says that he will treat the outer world as if it
were separate from the inner; indeed, as if there were even an outer world. A
passage in the text provides perhaps the best explanation of this dualistic
style of A Course in Miracles in presenting Jesus' teaching message. Its
importance is such that it will be repeated often throughout these volumes,
helping to forestall students mistaking the Course's form for its content:
"Since you believe that you are separate, Heaven presents itself to you as
separate, too. Not that it is in truth, but that the link that has been given
you to join the truth may reach to you through what you understand. ... All this
takes note of time and place as if they were discrete, for while you think that
part of you is separate, the concept of a oneness joined as one is
meaningless.... Yet must It use the language that this mind can understand, in
the condition in which it thinks it is." (T-25.1.5:1-2;7:1,4).
The final sentence of this lesson's second paragraph is also extremely
important. Both the world we see outside and the world we see within our minds
exist only in our imagination. We made it all up: the thought of separation; an
inner world of sin, guilt, and fear, which the belief in separation spawns; and
the projected world that is <nothing> but the shadow of the ego's imaginary
inner world. All we are really talking about, therefore, is a make-believe world
that appears outside.
This teaching is continued.*
(3) "Again we will begin the practice periods for the morning and evening by
repeating the idea for today two or three times while looking around at the
world you see as outside yourself. Then close your eyes and look around your
inner world. Try to treat them both as equally as possible. Repeat the idea for
today unhurriedly as often as you wish, as you watch the images your imagination
presents to your awareness."
*Jesus is reinforcing what he has been teaching us: these thoughts are made up
-- thoughts of anger, specialness, self-hatred, anxiety, and terror exist only
in our imagination; whether they come in thoughts of pleasure or thoughts of
pain. Because we are talking about imaginary thoughts, we are also talking about
imaginary worlds. There is no difference.*
(4) "For the two longer practice periods three to five minutes are recommended,
with not less than three required. More than five can be utilized, if you find
the exercise restful. To facilitate this, select a time when few distractions
are anticipated, and when you yourself feel reasonably ready."
*Here we see Jesus urging us to find a peaceful, restful time (and implicitly
space as well) in which to meditate. From his comments in other parts of the
Course, it is understood that Jesus does not want us to make our spiritual life
ritualistic. However, since we are still early in our training and not very
disciplined as yet in our vigilance for the ego, this kind of structure is
helpful (see, e.g., the discussion in M-16.2-5).
The lesson's concluding paragraphs underscore our <new> kind of practicing:
using the day's idea "as often as possible," and especially when we are tempted
to perceive the cause of our distress as being outside us:*
(5-6) "These exercises are also to be continued during the day, as often as
possible. The shorter applications consist of repeating the idea slowly, as you
survey either your inner or outer world. It does not matter which you choose."
"The idea for today should also be applied immediately to any situation that may
distress you. Apply the idea by telling yourself:
I have invented this situation as I see it."
*You can see how radically different this is from the world's view, from how we
normally perceive things. We think choosing either our inner or outer world does
make a difference. This would be apparent, for example, when we conclude that
what we think does not matter as long as we do not say or act on it. Jesus,
though, is explaining that it makes no difference whether we express our
thoughts or silently think them. Our judgments have as much effect on us and the
mind of the Sonship as do our acting them out. It is fine not to act them out --
he once told Helen that he was not against a certain amount of discipline -- but
if we do not change the underlying thinking, these thoughts simply remain in our
minds, awaiting their inevitable fate of projection. The consequences are that
we shall always be fighting the losing battle of trying to curtail our
aggression: the mind's hostility and specialness. Therefore, we need to go to
the source of the problem -- our thoughts -- which was having turned to Jesus,
saying: "You are wrong, and I am right." Undoing the source is telling him:
"Thank God you were right and I was wrong. There <is> another way of looking at
the world."
In these lessons Jesus has been helping us realize we have two ways of looking
at the world, which come from two thought systems or selves -- a wrong and right
mind -- and two teachers: the ego and Jesus. This realization will grow as the
lessons continue. Up to now, most of the emphasis has been on the ego's way of
looking at the world. That is why the early lessons told us we do not truly see
anything, for we see what is not there. Therefore, everything we perceive is
meaningless. It is also why the lessons have emphasized our attack thoughts,
perceiving a world of vengeance, etc. From here through Lesson 50, however,
Jesus teaches us there is another available choice, another way of looking at
the world. It is that thought he introduces in the next lesson.*
