Journal for Day 22
LESSON 22
What I see is a form of vengeance.
This lesson describes the horrific cycle of attack and defend and how it perpetuates the illusion. If I hold attack thoughts in my mind, then I will perceive a world as attacking me. If I let attack thoughts just slide through my mind without giving them power through my belief in them, I will perceive the world differently.
I used to be very confused about how to perceive sickness. When I got sick enough that going to the doctor was necessary, I felt guilty, like I was betraying Jesus by not accepting healing of the body through mind healing. I felt like a failure. So when I did go to the doctor it was as if he were the symbol of my failure and so I did what humans tend to do, I projected my guilt onto him, and so attacked him. Mostly in my mind, but I did attack.
And, of course, I didn’t receive the help I went for, or if I did, I didn’t feel good about it. I often thought that he was not a good doctor, when all along, I was not a good patient. Later, I matured in my understanding of the Course and I no longer felt wrong for going to the doctor. I just thought of the doctor as my partner in the healing of this body. I worked on healing my mind and he worked on healing my body, and I accepted both healings to the degree I was able.
What happened is that I started finding my way to doctors that I liked and appreciated, doctors who seemed always to have my best interests at heart and appeared to be very competent at their jobs. All of this occurred because I made a decision to disrupt the cycle of attack and defend. I no longer had any desire to take vengeance on myself for “seemingly” betraying Jesus with my sick body, and so I no longer experienced vengeance from the medical community in the form of poor or mediocre doctors.
This is the way all attack thoughts work. If we believe we are being attacked and that attack in return is justified, our life becomes a war zone with no peace in sight. It happens in relationships the same way. When I was married, I held my husband’s behavior against him and felt justified in defending myself.
The very fact that I thought I needed defense increased my belief in an unsafe relationship, and so of course I believed that more defense was needed. It was a crazy self-perpetuating cycle. Eventually, I had to ask for another way to see because even divorce did not relieve the distress. Deciding that I was done with vengeance and done with suffering, and deciding that I was willing to do whatever it took to be at peace is what broke that cycle.
What I think, I see
Here is how Regina starts her discourse on the cycle of seeing and believing.
It is simple: Mind decides an idea is valuable or meaningful, and through this decision that idea becomes manifest in some way. When it is manifest, it is experienced. If mind decides the experience has importance or meaning, it seems real. Once an idea is experienced as real, it is like a mesmerizing spell that mind ignorantly believes and the spell continues as real.
To wake up from this cycle, one must choose to step outside of the spell-continuance process. One may step out at the level of mental idea or one may step out at the level of manifest experience. Either way, the step out process is the same. One must see that the idea or experience is not meaningful. One must not give it value or importance. One must return to the constant spiritual practice of Self-inquiry and Self-watching.
Here is what I read in ACIM in Lesson 325. It is very similar, I think.
1 This is salvation’s keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own. ...
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