We are going to spend two days with lesson 65, because lesson 65 represents two important objectives:
1 – Realizing total commitment to awakening by realizing truth is the only thing we really want.
2 – Seeing that mind’s thinking is filled with other goals & desires, which distract from our commitment to awakening.
As we’ve learned from both NTI Ephesians and The Code, the thoughts that show up in our mind and seem like our personal thoughts are not really ours. They are part of the code. They are made up by totality’s deluded fascination with the dream. As totality involves itself with dream-thoughts, more dream-thoughts become manifest. We experience those manufactured thoughts as ‘my thoughts’, but they aren’t what they appear to be. That means the goals imbedded in those thoughts are not ours either.
Ultimately, it also means that we are not the character/person those thoughts tell us we are. The entire thought-driven identification is a hoax.
The word “salvation” as it is presented in A Course in Miracles means awakening from this hoax, from this deluded fascination with the dream, and awakening to our truth. It is called “salvation” because all suffering…ours, the suffering of others and the suffering of the planet…comes from the dream and is activated by attention on the dream.
Remember, the real is the father of the unreal. The unreal gets its apparent reality from our attention. The unreal seems real, because the one engrossed by it is real. It seems real because we are looking at it through our attention, which is real.
What are we? It’s time that we turn our attention from this temporal illusion to discover what we, the watcher, is.
“My only function is the one God gave me.” That function is determining the difference between what is unreal and what I am, removing attention from what is unreal and abiding as myself. Ultimately, abiding as myself—being who I am—is my function.
As you look at thoughts today and tomorrow, try to see beyond the story being presented to the content of the thought. The content is the energy that the thought represents. Is it fear? Worry? Guilt? Unworthiness? Attack? Defense? Jealousy? Control? etc.
After you notice the content, ask yourself, “Is [content] what I want?” It will be easy to see it isn’t. Then you can genuinely go on to say, “This thought reflects a goal that is preventing me from accepting my function.”
