Day 51
3 Where do all these differences come from? Certainly they seem to be in the world outside. Yet it is surely the mind that judges what the eyes behold. It is the mind that interprets the eyes’ messages and gives them “meaning.” And this meaning does not exist in the world outside at all. What is seen as “reality” is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body’s eyes to find it. The body’s eyes will never see except through differences. Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests. Only the mind evaluates their messages, and so only the mind is responsible for seeing. It alone decides whether what is seen is real or illusory, desirable or undesirable, pleasurable or painful.
No matter what the body’s eyes tells us we see we must yet interpret that thing. We give everything all the meaning it has for us. How we perceive all things is up to us. It is very helpful at this point to ask for help. My experience has been that if I feel upset in any way about something I see, the Holy Spirit can always show me a different meaning.
I became convinced of this when I read some of the interpretations of the Bible Jesus gave us in the Text. One of them particularly impressed upon me how important it is to read with the Holy Spirit rather than the ego. The Biblical quote said, “God will not be mocked.” Before I had ACIM, I thought of this passage as scary. It seemed like a threat. If I mocked God, that is if I did or believed anything He didn’t like, I was in trouble.
Jesus explained that I saw it this way because I was reading with the ego, which is a fear based thought system, so my understanding would naturally be fearful. He then told me that this quote was actually a promise and a reassurance. Reading it with the Holy Spirit I understood it to mean that nothing that we could do would in any way affect God, so don’t worry about it.
I visualize it this way. My mind has two filters. One of them is a truth filter, the other is a distorted separation filter. I read these simple words, “God will not be mocked.” They have no particular meaning until I filter them; they are just words, symbols of symbols. If I am using my God filter, I am reassured by the meaning they take on as the words pass through peace, love, joy, wholeness, and perfection. If I filter them through my ego filter, I am frightened by the meaning, which is affected by all that the ego filter holds; the beliefs in fear, suffering, punishment, shame, guilt, and death.
This one reinterpretation convinced me to form the happy habit of doing all things with the Holy Spirit rather than ego, so that I could discern from a true perspective, rather than from a perspective distorted by fear and guilt. The more perfectly I do this, the more peaceful and happy I am.
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