Regina’s Tip for Lesson 36
Setting the Goal from Chapter 17 in A Course in Miracles says:
The value of deciding in advance what you want to happen is simply that you will perceive the situation as a means to make it happen. You will therefore make every effort to overlook what interferes with the accomplishment of your objective, and concentrate on everything that helps you meet it. It is quite noticeable that this approach has brought you closer to the Holy Spirit’s sorting out of truth and falsity. The true becomes what can be used to meet the goal. The false becomes the useless from this point of view. The situation now has meaning, but only because the goal has made it meaningful.
Today’s Workbook lesson puts forth a goal:
My holiness envelops everything I see.
Setting the Goal says that the advantage to determining the goal in advance is you will “overlook what interferes with the accomplishment of your objective.” It also says:
“It is quite noticeable that this approach has brought you closer to the Holy Spirit’s sorting out of truth and falsity.”
In other words, in order to realize that your holiness envelops everything you see, you must overlook everything false that would say otherwise. The Workbook points out what must be overlooked in order to meet today’s goal. That is the idea that you are anything less than sinless.
The idea that you are less than sinless is what I call the I am bad belief. The I am bad belief interprets the things you see through the idea that you are not good enough. For example, the I am bad belief may show up in your mind in one of these ways:
You glance at a rug on the floor and think,
“I should have vacuumed that rug. I am so lazy.”
While waiting for an appointment, you stare at a wall and
mentally criticize yourself for something ‘stupid’ you said earlier.
You look at your hands and think, “I am getting old and ugly.”
As you walk towards your desk chair, you distractedly think,
“I will never get this project done on time. They all think I’m a loser.
That’s because I am a loser.”
An attractive person catches your eye, and you think,
“I’m such a fat pig.”
As you sit with a pen in your hand, balancing the checkbook, you think,
“I can’t ever make enough money. I’m a failure at life.”
In other words, in order to realize that your holiness envelops everything you see including that rug, that wall, these fingers, that chair, that body, and this pen, you must overlook thoughts that spawn from the I am bad belief.
The idea that you are not good enough is false. The idea that you are holy is true. The goal today is to experience the true by disregarding the false.
Homework for this week
- Homework Assignment A: Workbook Lessons 36-42.
- Homework Assignment B: Read NTI Luke, Chapter 9 (p 144-146) and NTI Galatians (p 327-338).
- Homework Assignment C: Nondual Awakening Meditation – Where am I? by Gary Weber, which is a video in the Gentle Healing Playlist: Click Here to Watch
