Regina’s Tip for Lesson 1
Many people have completed the Workbook multiple times without achieving true perception. Gentle Healing provides a new way to go through the Workbook. This new way of going through the Workbook has been successful before, and it can be successful again.
What’s different with Gentle Healing?
The Introduction to the Workbook says, “A theoretical foundation such as the text provides is necessary as a framework to make the exercises in this workbook meaningful.” (Italics are mine.)
Gentle Healing uses some sections from the ACIM text to provide a “theoretical foundation” for the Workbook exercises, but Gentle Healing also uses other texts and other teachings as part of the “theoretical foundation.” These spiritual resources are often easier to understand than ACIM, so the theory is more easily applied while practicing the lessons. The daily tips, which are published on the Awakening Together website, are a very important part of the Gentle Healing “theoretical foundation.”
What is true perception?
First, let me briefly explain what mistaken perception is. Mistaken perception is perceiving and interpreting the world through a self-centered mental filter, known as the ego. The ego is basically a mental program that has been built throughout your lifetime. It tells you who you are, what everything you experience is, and it gives self-referencing meaning to everything you perceive. Meaning that is created through self-referencing is mistaken perception, because it defines what you see and experience in terms of ‘you’ and what ‘that’ has to do with ‘you.’
Every person on earth has an individual ego. No two egoic filters are the same. Therefore, when any person perceives the world through the eogic filter, that person sees a world that is completely unique. Other people see the world differently, as it relates to them.
True perception is seeing the world clearly, without the egoic filter. Prejudice, bias, separatist judgment and individual self-referencing are removed from the way you see when you see with true perception.
True perception is a freer way of seeing. When you see with mistaken perception, you experience a lot of conflict and upset based on the individual interpretation of what you see. When you see with true perception, individual interpretation is removed, so you feel happy, at ease and in acceptance of what you see. You are no longer tied to the world in a reactionary way. You are free to be you, and what you perceive is free to be what it is. The world does not have an effect on you without egoic self-referencing.
Homework for the week:
- Homework Assignment A: ACIM Workbook Lessons 1-7
- First, read the lesson all the way through and then practice the lesson according to its instructions
- If you have done the ACIM workbook before, you may add what you hear and feel to the exercises for Lessons 1-3
- As you do exercises 1-3, you may notice the meaning you have given to things. Just notice and continue with the exercise
- Tip for Lesson 4: Sometimes people have trouble remembering to do the workbook lesson when it is to be done more than twice per day. They get on with their day and forget all about the lesson. Here’s a tip: When you finish the workbook lesson 4 in the morning, make a decision about when you will do it next. After you do the lesson the second time, make a decision about when to do it again. After the third time, make a decision about when to do it for the fourth time. If you make a conscious decision about when you will do the exercise next, you are less likely to forget to do it.
- Homework Assignment B: Read NTI Luke, Chapters 12 (p151-155), and Chapters 16-17 (p161-167).
- Do not read all at once. Read a little each day contemplatively.
- Explore the reading through journaling. Journal clarity, questions, confusion, resistance, willingness, etc.
- If there is a Bible icon before a verse reference, read those verses from the Bible before reading that interpretation from NTI
- Listen to Adyashanti video in Gentle Healing Playlist: Click Here to Watch
