Reflections 29 to 42

29/ Responsibility Is Ours

26th May 2022

Lesson 29: God is in everything I see. (ACIM, W-29)

God is in everything I see? I don’t think so. God is in nothing I see because I don’t know what God is. And yet this lesson is the whole basis for vision. It tells us that God would be in everything I see if only I could only see properly.

This lesson shows us we put all the meaning we have onto anything we see. We see everything through the eyes of the ego. We give it form and call it a name. We see nothing through the eyes of the Holy Spirit. We just see a gap. So we have to start somewhere, and this lesson is like a new start.

A Course in Miracles tells us that miracles do nothing because all minds are joined. No mind is separate. However, ACIM also tells us it is our dream which perceives the mind as separate. A separate mind is a separate body.  A body is a barrier. ACIM asks us to look past the body.

The ego commands the body. The ego is a nasty bit of work disguised as love. The ego secretly desires total dominance over everyone it meets, although it submits if it feels it can’t achieve this, or it might kill. Whatever it does, fear is at its core. The ego holds the guilt that we are separate. The ego creates all our illusions. The ego manifests itself as sickness, disease and ill health.

No mind is sick until another mind agrees that they are separate. And thus it is their joint decision to be sick. If you withhold agreement and accept the part you play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in letting it perceive itself as separate and apart from you. (ACIM, T-28.III.2:1-3)

By doing the lessons in the Workbook, we learn not to support the ego. We learn to undo it. Without support, the dream will fade away without effects. For it is your support that strengthens it (ACIM, T-28.III.1:7-8). The responsibility is ours, and each lesson in the Workbook helps us with this task.

Cate Grieves explains this more fully with her fifth talk on the The Obstacles to Peace (ACIM, T-19.IV). The Link for the talk is below.

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30/ An Empty Space

27th May 2022 

Lesson 30: God is in everything I see because God is in my mind. (ACIM, W-30)

This lesson teaches us that what we see in the world comes from the mind.  This is the complete opposite to what we believe. We believe that the world tells us what we see. The mind is the receiver. A Course in Miracles teaches us that everything arises out of the mind.

If God is everywhere, then God is also in our minds. This just makes sense. It also makes sense that what we focus on becomes our reality. When challenges arise, seemingly out of nowhere, then it’s hard to blame the mind. But it is easy to notice what the mind is doing, and then to do something about it.

The Workbook gives us the platform to practice. What happens in our lives becomes the fuel with which to work. If we feel fear, we face it as best we can. If we are angry, we simply look at its source. All the lessons help us with this. Each lesson would solve any problem if we understood it completely and fully.

The cause of pain is separation, not the body, which is only its effect. Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the empty space between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by. (ACIM, T-28.III.5:1-2)

A Course in Miracles uses this analogy as a metaphor for the space between us. This space is quickly covered over. However, with what do we fill the space? ACIM tells us we only have two choices. One is to do with fear, the other is to do with love. The ego creates the fear. The Holy Spirit creates the love.

An empty space is there to be filled. The thought system we use is there to fill it. A Course in Miracles teaches us that projection makes perception. We project whatever is in our minds. When we perceive with the Holy Spirit, this means we see nothing but peace. We have risen above the battleground. The whole purpose of ACIM is to make us know that peace is what we are.

What is the world except a little gap perceived to tear eternity apart, and break it into days and months and years? And what are you who live within the world except a picture of the Son of God in broken pieces, and each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of clay? (ACIM, T-28.III.7:4-5)

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31/ Finding Certainty

28th May 2022 

Lesson 31: I am not the victim of the world I see. (ACIM, W-31)

The world we see includes the world without and the world within. Not being a victim means we start with the world within. What are our thoughts producing?  What world are we creating?

It all comes down to illusion and truth. A Course in Miracles compares us all to a giant jigsaw puzzle. We are splintered apart and yet joined as one. Each one of us appears to be a separate piece, and yet each one of us is essential to the whole. We are all so interconnected that we can’t help but influence each other.

We all have separate dreams within the dream. The broken pieces of the puzzle can only be joined by the practical act of joining. This means recognizing the truth within each other. Each piece is having a dream of being apart. Each piece contributes to the whole, and each piece contains the whole.

It is the dream you fear, and not the mind. You see them as the same, because you think that you are but a dream. And what is real and what is but illusion in yourself you do not know and cannot tell apart. (ACIM, T-28.IV.2:8-10)

A Course in Miracles guides us on a journey of discovery. We learn that we are spirit. We understand the past is gone. We let go of every thread of guilt that keeps us bound to form. We discover that our minds are free within the world of form. This means nothing can bind us. Nothing can harm us.

Finding certainty means knowing the above is true. Finding certainty means seeing only the formless within each other. It is our reliance on form that keeps us bound, and it is our reliance on form that has to be released. Slowly, the pieces of the puzzle reconnect. The picture becomes whole again.

The Holy Spirit’s function is to take the broken picture of the Son of God and put the pieces into place again. This holy picture, healed entirely, does He hold out to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture in itself.  To each He offers his Identity, which the whole picture represents, instead of just a little, broken bit that he insisted was himself. (ACIM, T-28.IV.8:1-3)

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32/ Fog and Mist

29th May 2022 

Lesson 32: I have invented the world I see. (ACIM, W-32)

A Course in Miracles tells us that we are responsible for what we see. ACIM tells us we choose the feelings that we want to experience. Our minds therefore follow the law of attraction. We either limit ourselves, or we expand our Selves.

What is a sense of sickness but a sense of limitation? (ACIM, T-28.V.1:1)

What is there God created to be sick? (ACIM, T-28.V.5:1)

A Course in Miracles wants us to know the reality of what we are doing to ourselves. This is so different to the reality that we really should be experiencing. Our minds are acting like a smokescreen. Reality never disappears. Reality is always with us, despite what we are seeing.

For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and what they see and hear they but report. It is not they that hear and see, but you, who put together every jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of evidence, and make a witness to the world you want. (ACIM, T-28.V.5:6-7)

It is as if we are surrounded by fog and mist. Sometimes, what we are experiencing is so awful that we cry out for help. Help is then provided in lots of different ways.

A Course in Miracles is one form of help. Everything it tells us is very clear. Every sentence just points to just one thing - that what is within us is complete clarity. There is nothing within us that is not this clarity. Our minds just think there is.

You are your Self or an illusion. (ACIM, T-28.V.3:9)

When we understand this, then the fog and mist begins to clear. We don’t have to go anywhere or do anything. A Course in Miracles tells us we just need to perceive correctly.  We need to practice being still. The teachings then begin to make sense, and clarity can return.

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33/ A Symbol of Limitation

30th May 2022 

Lesson 33: There is another way of looking at the world. (ACIM, W-33)

The body is our identity. This is how we see ourselves. We live and die within this body and then the body returns to dust. Our whole life is a picture of the body, immortalised through memories and pictures. The body is who we are as it ages, changes, and dies.

A Course in Miracles tells us that our relationship with the body is based on nothing. The body is inert, passive, benign and only appropriate to the use we make of it. The body tends to represent a little gap that does not exist. This little gap is why the world arises. It seems real, and yet it has no reality.

The thing you hate and fear and loathe and want, the body does not know. You send it forth to seek for separation and be separate. And then you hate it, not for what it is, but for the uses you have made of it. (ACIM, T-28.VI.3:1-3)

This little gap is the exploiter of our hate. This little gap is where the ego lives. In fact the ego is this little gap. The ego contains all our fears, and the ego loves to feed the body with those fears.

The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call your own and all the rest of what is really yours. You hate it, yet you think it is your self, and that, without it, would your self be lost. This is the secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart. (ACIM, T-28.VI.4:1-3)

When today’s lesson tells us we need another way of looking at the world, it is also telling us we need another way of looking at our lives. It tells us that, when the body is used as an extension of the ego, then we are creating all our fears. The ego has no connection to truth. And yet, through the ego, we are shaping the world we see. A Course in Miracles is all about teaching us that the ego is meaningless. The ego is not real. ACIM is all about finding a whole different way of looking at the world we see.

We need to look past the gap. We need to join with a mind that has no gap. This is when our fears disappear. The gap, the ego, the body - they are all just symbols of our limitation. Limitation does not exist in a mind that knows the truth.

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34/ Total Acceptance

31st May 2022 

Lesson 34: I could see peace instead of this. (ACIM, W-34)

This lesson tells us we have two states of mind. One is peaceful, the other is not. It says that peace of mind is something that only we can master. Currently, our peace of mind has to be temporary at best. A Course in Miracles is all about having a mind that is endlessly peaceful.

We are so used to its opposite. We are so used to staving off our fragility. We make and plan and concoct all sorts of ways to stop ourselves from feeling peace’s opposite.  It is basically a lifetime’s work. And then we die, and it has to start all over again.

A Course in Miracles is about starting from just where we are. This means we start with a mind that is not peaceful. We start with a mind that does not understand the importance of the person in front of us. ACIM tells us our relationship is everything. Of itself, the body means nothing.

We never think that the people we hate are the solution. We probably think the solution lies only in those we love.  We try to protect ourselves. The metaphor of a house built on straw is used. The house symbolises our safety, except for the fact that the wind will blow it away. We learn that our real protection lies only in the mind. 

Your home is built upon your brother’s health, upon his happiness, his sinlessness, and everything his Father promised him. No secret promise you have made instead has shaken the Foundation of his home. (ACIM, T-28.VII.7:1-2)

If happiness is in the mind, it has to be within each one of us. Happiness is not exclusive.  A Course in Miracles is all about showing us the source of our happiness. It tells us only the removal of guilt from the mind can allow both happiness and peace to shine through. 

A Course in Miracles is never an easy option. However, in the end, it all comes to a total acceptance. Healing is never partial. Healing is only total. Either we know peace totally, or not at all.

There is no middle ground in any aspect of salvation. You accept it wholly or accept it not. What is unseparated must be joined. And what is joined cannot be separate. (ACIM, T-28.VII.2:7-10)

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35/ Fear and Hate

1^st June 2022 

Lesson 35: My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy. (ACIM, W-35)

This lesson tells us what we have forgotten. We only understand that we are part of form, that we are a part of the world. We have established our lives and are living them the best we can.  A Course in Miracles gives us another perspective. ACIM tells us that only the formless is real and everything else is one big illusion. For us, this seems unsound, untrue, and possibly delusional.

We are told that the idea for today will describe what vision will show us. A Course in Miracles’ purpose is to take us beyond sight to vision – if we want it. However, we have to want it fully. Anything else and we remain where we are. This means being seemingly stuck in the world, with the ego, and all the issues that go along with that.

Fear and hate are the opposite of what today’s idea describes. We might cover it up with all our projects and plans, but fear and hate are always there. We have to cut the supply from its source. This way, another Source appears, and it changes everything we have ever known in every way.

There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent. There is nothing to be feared. There is no way in which a gap could be conceived of in the Wholeness that is His. The compromise the least and littlest gap would represent in His eternal Love is quite impossible. (ACIM, T-29.I.1:1-4)

Fear and hate obscure the above. Fear and hate play no part in it. Fear and hate fuel the gap that creates the distance between us as individuals, between our Self and God, and between the ego and the Holy Spirit in our minds. We just have to close this gap by undoing our resistance.

No one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore must he be afraid of God. Certain it is he knows not what love means. He fears to love and loves to hate, and so he thinks that love is fearful; hate is love. (ACIM, T-29.I.2:3-5)

If we are confused, we need to find out why. A Course in Miracles is uncompromising. The whole book – the Text, the Workbook, the Manual for Teachers – simply points to one thing; that God is love, and the ego is the opposite to that love. The opposite of love is fear – and ACIM tells us that fear is the same as hate. So it is one or the other. Fear and hate is what we know now; love becomes what we want to know.

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36/ The Ego’s Story

2nd June 2022 

Lesson 36: My holiness envelops everything I see. (ACIM, W-36)

What we see is not holy – this is self evident if we think with the ego. We see threat instead of love. We see other egos instead of spirit. We see what we are not instead of what we are.

A Course in Miracles tells us we have a mind that is holy, and we have a mind that has forgotten it is holy. It tells us that we have a mind that is part of God’s, and we have a mind that has forgotten that it is part of God’s. Any mind that is part of God’s does not think the way we do. There is no opposite to God, and the way we think is the complete opposite of anything that Infinite Love might think.

Our minds think with the ego. This means loud, dominant thoughts that might appear to be important but are actually vacuous. The ego makes us feel as if it is critically important that it is in charge. Without it, everything would be chaos and loss. Protecting ourselves from chaos and loss is the subtext to everything the ego is telling us, even when we are behaving as if we are in charge.

There is a shock that comes to those who learn their savior is their enemy no more. There is a wariness that is aroused by learning that the body is not real. And there are overtones of seeming fear around the happy message, “God is Love.” (ACIM, T-29.I.8:5-7)

The ego’s story is vicious. It might cover it up with something else but when it has to play the vicious card, it does this very easily. The ego permeates our minds with its vicious nature so that we feel we can never escape. The ego is what A Course in Miracles tells us we have to undo if we want true happiness. However, we simply have to look at the ego. We have to face it. We have to enquire as to whether the things it is telling us are true. We have to find out what it is real and what is not real. 

A Course in Miracles provides the foundation for doing this. Our job is to provide the will.

Cate Grieves looks into the stories that the ego tells us with her sixth talk on The Obstacles to Peace (ACIM, T-19.IV). This talk is three hours long because each person within the group has a chance to share their story. The Link for the talk is below.

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37/ Change Is Within

3rd June 2022 

Lesson 37: My holiness blesses the world. (ACIM, W-37)

A Course in Miracles tells us that our Guest comes in silently. 

Your Guest has come. You asked Him, and He came. You did not hear Him enter, for you did not wholly welcome Him. And yet His gifts came with Him. He has laid them at your feet, and asks you now that you will look on them and take them for your own. (ACIM, T-29.II.4:1-5)

A Course in Miracles tells us that our other guest does the opposite.

What you have given “life” is not alive, and symbolizes but your wish to be alive apart from life; alive in death, with death perceived as life, and living, death. (ACIM, T-29.II.6:2)

A Course in Miracles dismisses the ego. It dismisses all thoughts of doom and gloom, of worldly success and high achievement. It says that the body is not born and does not die. ACIM states there is no death. We are just dreaming a dream and, within this dream, we only have one other choice; that is to dream with the Holy Spirit. When we do that, we can bless the images that we see.

The Holy Spirit is silent. The ego is noisy. A Course in Miracles is very clear. We can only think with one or the other. There is no other way of thinking, which means we have no neutral thoughts. The thoughts of the ego are often demanding and pressured; the thoughts of the Holy Spirit are always joyful and reassuring. With the thoughts of the Holy Spirit, we can only have clarity of mind; with the thoughts of the ego, we often have to numb our minds to stop our thoughts.

Why would you not perceive it as a release from suffering to learn that you are free? Why would you not acclaim the truth instead of looking on it as an enemy? Why does an easy path, so clearly marked it is impossible to lose the way, seem thorny, rough and far too difficult for you to follow? (ACIM, T-29.II.1:1-3)

All change is within. We find our peace within and we find our fear within. Each thought arises from a different guest. The ego creates confusion while the Holy Spirit creates peace. Our minds contain both. It is up to us to choose just one.

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38/ The Spark of Light

4th June 2022 

Lesson 38: There is nothing my holiness cannot do. (ACIM, W-38)

Essentially, we all go through our lives with an identity. We have a name, perhaps an address, and are employed or unemployed. We might see ourselves as being happy or sad. We might live life to its fullest or we might just be rumbling along. Or we might be so depressed we want to end it all, right here and now.

This lesson reverses everything we think about ourselves. It tells us that our true nature is beyond every restriction of time and space. It tells us that there is a power within us that knows no boundaries. We need to find it. The question is, how?

A Course in Miracles tells us that the body does not change. It just represents a larger dream that change is possible: There is no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. Yet here on earth it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things. And they reflect the teacher who is teaching them. (ACIM, T-29.II.7:4-6)

Our internal teacher is crucial. The voice that calls the loudest is our current teacher. It often demands we be something, yet it is never content at just being. However, we have another internal Voice that is quieter. This Voice knows that we are changeless. It wants us to just be. It knows that, whatever we do and wherever we go, we will always be quite fine.

A Course in Miracles teaches forgiveness as the method of attaining an awareness of this Voice. Forgiveness is also the essential ingredient for finding our spark of light. This spark of light is as elusive as the Voice within us. And yet both are there. Both are who we are. Both are the same.

Within the dream of bodies and of death is yet one theme of truth; no more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of light created in the dark, where God still shines. You cannot wake yourself. Yet you can let yourself be wakened. (ACIM, T-29.III.3:1-3)

The voice that is the loudest loves to point out faults. The other Voice shows us our perfection, both in ourselves and each other. Listening to this Voice might mean seeing the little spark of light. Our journey is all about finding that spark of light in each other. By seeing it in another, this means that we can awaken too. We can awaken because we have seen the Source from which it came.

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39/ A Hellish State of Mind

5th June 2022 

Lesson 39: My holiness is my salvation. (ACIM, W-39)

This lesson starts with a question. It wants us to ponder the opposite of guilt. The inference is that, if we understand that guilt is hell, then we have found the cause of the root of our suffering.

A Course in Miracles tells us that hell is not a place. Hell does not exist. Hell is simply a state of mind. The lesson states that the holiness within us is its opposite in every way. When it says that holiness is salvation, it means that we can awaken from the hell that we have made.  We learn that we are dreaming. And we have the chance to awaken from this dream.

The choice is not between which dreams to keep, but only if you want to live in dreams or to awaken from them. Thus it is the miracle does not select some dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence. You cannot dream some dreams and wake from some, for you are either sleeping or awake. And dreaming goes with only one of these. (ACIM, T-29.IV.1:5-8)

A Course in Miracles makes one thing very clear. No matter what the form the dream might take - whether we are happy or sad - fear is never absent from the dream. 

The fear is seen within, without, or both. Or it can be disguised in pleasant form. But never is it absent from the dream, for fear is the material of dreams, from which they all are made. Their form can change, but they cannot be made of something else. (ACIM, T-29.IV.2:3-6). 

Only by awakening from the dream is there a total absence of fear. Having a hellish state of mind is just a reminder that the ego is the interpreter of the dream. Everything is perceived through that lens of fear. This is inevitable, unavoidable, and the basis for all our anxiety. 

The only alternative is the Holy Spirit. When we wake up in the morning, A Course in Miracles suggests we ask the Holy Spirit to become our lens, and that we keep doing this throughout the day. We can then become the author of a new dream. Peace is the lens as our perception changes.

A Course in Miracles is not about denial. ACIM is about taking responsibility.  We let the Holy Spirit be in charge. This means we gather evidence, and we allow the results to speak for themselves.

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40/ Apart and Yet the Same

6th June 2022 

Lesson 40: I am blessed as a Son of God. (ACIM, W-40)

If this lesson tells me that I am blessed as a Son of God, then it means that you are blessed as a Son of God as well. No one can be excluded, even though I may want you to be. This is our challenge. We are told that every person, every plant, every inanimate drop of nothingness is the essence of God. This is so far from what we know as to be laughable.

And what is God? God is probably just three letters on a page. God really has no meaning because God is just an experience. We can’t even mention God without a sense of guilt. So really, the lesson today is meaningless to the ego. To the ego, the lesson today might as well be letters on a page.

A Course in Miracles is a course in repetition. We repeatedly read the same things over and over again.  We read that we all contain the same elusive Self. We read that we are all lost in a collective dream, and we just need to awaken. We read that we will all eventually awaken, and this is a fact.

A dream is given you in which he is your savior, not your enemy in hate. A dream is given you in which you have forgiven him for all his dreams of death; a dream of hope you share with him, instead of dreaming evil separate dreams of hate. (ACIM, T-29.V.7:1-2)

A Course in Miracles teaches us to look on every man, woman and child equally, without judgement, and with vision beyond what our eyes can see. The 365 lessons in the Workbook give us the practical application to do this. It is not important how much we believe each lesson. We are simply told it is the practice that is important. The mind needs to learn to see things differently.

The mind is therefore the key. The mind that thinks with the ego makes us apart and separate. The mind that thinks with the Holy Spirit still sees the same things, but knows that we are simply spirit. We are apart and yet the same, which is the dilemma that we face. To begin to get to grips with this concept, we need to start visiting the quietness within.

There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten; where no memory of sin and of illusion lingers still. There is a place in you which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard. There is a resting place so still no sound except a hymn to Heaven rises up to gladden God the Father and the Son. (ACIM, T-29.V.1:1-3)

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41/ Our Willingness to Forgive

7th June 2022 

Lesson 41: God goes with me wherever I go. (ACIM, W-41)

This lesson tells us that the Source of all joy goes with us wherever we go. This Source is changeless, perfect and utterly beyond all form. It can’t be described, only experienced. And this Source is deep within us. It is ours for the asking.

A Course in Miracles tells us we have forgotten who we are. We have forgotten our heritage. We have forgotten this one fact - that we are God’s Son. Being God’s Son has nothing to do with our sex, our body, and has nothing to do with what changes around us. It is the essence of who we are. It is our Self, and it is the memory of this Self that haunts us.  

Change is the greatest gift God gave to all that you would make eternal, to ensure that only Heaven would not pass away. You were not born to die. You cannot change, because your function has been fixed by God. (ACIM, T-29.VI.4:1-3)

A Course in Miracles tells us that the goal of forgiveness is not to keep time, but to end it. Then, when we have achieved its effects, we can control time. Time does not control us. We know who we are, what we are, and why we are here. This is a state of mind so completely different to how we feel now, but it is our only choice. We face it or forget it.

 Our willingness to forgive depends on two things. How willing we are to forgive our brother, and how much we desire peace instead of pain.  A Course in Miracles says that both are interchangeable. They basically mean the same thing. We either live with the ego or the Holy Spirit.  Both will interpret these two questions differently.

It’s a question of peeling away the layers. The truth within us is bigger than anything we can imagine. But it is what we are. 

The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the Sacred Son of God within. (ACIM, T-29.V.2:3-4)

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42/ The Purpose of the World

8th June 2022 

Lesson 42: God is my strength. Vision is His gift. (ACIM, W-42)

Today’s lesson can be a real turn off if our lives are difficult. However, its message is clear

Seek not outside yourself. (ACIM, T-29.VII.1:1)

Seek not outside your Father for your hope. (ACIM, T-29.VII.10:6)

We probably think that God can’t possible help us with anything. A Course in Miracles tells us that all strength and all weakness is within us. It tells us that everything we fear, everything we love, we project out into the world. We have no idea that we create what we see. 

A Course in Miracles also adds the following.

The Son of Life cannot be killed. (ACIM, T-29.VI.2:3)

The fear of God is but the fear of loss of idols. (ACIM, T-29.VII.9:6)

The point is that we do not know the purpose of the body, and we do not know the purpose of the world. We think the purpose of both is to give us what we lack. This is why we create something - anything - to cover over this lack. That is the meaning behind the fear of loss of idols.

The lesson today suggests that our passage through time and space is not at random. We are always in the right place, at the right time, and this is without exception. The power of God is always within us. This makes the purpose of the world redundant. Nothing is real except what is real within us.

 All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is outside yourself to be complete and happy. (ACIM, T-29.VII.6:1)