A Course in Miracles Lesson Insights

To gain the most from A Course in Miracles Lesson Insights, we recommend that you
read the corresponding lesson in the Workbook of the Second or
Third Edition of A Course in Miracles published by the Foundation for Inner Peace.
Click here to read or listen to this ACIM Workbook Lesson online.

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Listen to Lesson 196 Insights

ACIM Workbook Lesson 196 Insights

“It can be but myself I crucify.”

I see today’s lesson as very empowering. It is teaching me that all power is in me. There is nothing external to me that can harm me. Nothing, no exceptions. This puts me fully in charge of my experience and it eliminates all belief in enemies. There is no external force in any form to battle against. There is nothing to defend against. All fear, all pain, all sorrow and guilt are products of my own thinking.

Since they come from my thinking, I can be free of them by changing my thinking. I need no external help but I do need to be willing to accept the Help that is in my mind, ready to teach me the difference between true and false, real and unreal. My freedom does not wait on time. It waits only on my willingness to let the Holy Spirit in my mind show me the Love behind all the forms of fear I have imagined. My own thoughts are the cause of all my distress.

In this world, we are taught and taught again that we must protect ourselves from myriad external forms of danger. Now we are being encouraged to recognize the true source of that perceived danger — our own thoughts. No longer need we be helpless victims. Our power is recognized once again as we accept it is our own thoughts that are the cause and we have the power to change our thoughts.

This is perhaps the most difficult part of changing our mind. We have so thoroughly taught ourselves that our thoughts are powerless that we need help in recognizing the falsity of this teaching. By the grace of God we have that Help. It is the Holy Spirit in our minds. He needs only our willingness to open to His teaching for Him to bring us the gift of new perception which shows us our strength, our innocence and our safety.

With His vision we see that only Love is real, that God is our Friend and our Father. Now we can walk with confidence and peace, knowing God goes with us wherever we go. We always have a Friend Who will show us the truth, Whom we can trust.

I have great gratitude for today’s idea, for by it I am able to recognize my true Strength, my Self, and recognize I am not an ego. I am in truth the extension of Love I was created to be.

This lesson reminds me how important it is to really look at the thoughts I am putting my belief in. It is these thoughts that create my experience. As long as I continue to believe something outside is the cause of my experience, I am denying my salvation and putting up a barrier against God.

It is only the ego’s thought system that generates the idea there is anything outside myself. My job now is to expand my willingness to remember it is always an inside job. As I am willing to monitor my thoughts, I will soon learn to recognize when I am joining with the ego thought system. Joining with this thought system is the same as crucifying myself.

The Course tells me it does not take a thousand years to undo the ego thought system. The time is shortened when I am willing to look at ego thoughts and take them to the Holy Spirit to be undone. This needs to be my consistent practice, the one habit I consistently apply to every concern, every anxiety, every circumstance where I am not in peace.

In reality, the world is nothing. My belief in separate bodies comes only from my joining with the ego thought system. It is only my thoughts that give a world “outside” me any meaning. I can practice today letting the Holy Spirit give the world all the meaning it has for me.

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