Lesson 52
1 Today's review covers these ideas:
[6] I am upset because I see what is not there.
2 Reality is never frightening. It is impossible that it could upset me. Reality brings only perfect peace. When I am upset, it is always because I have replaced reality with illusions which I made up. The illusions are upsetting because I have given them reality and thus regard reality as an illusion. Nothing in God's creation is affected in any way by this confusion of mine. I am always upset by nothing.
[7] I see only the past.
3 As I look about, I condemn the world I look upon. I call this seeing. I hold the past against everyone and everything, making them my "enemies." When I have forgiven myself and remembered who I am, I will bless everyone and everything I see. There will be no past and therefore no "enemies." And I will look with love on all that I failed to see before.
[8] My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
4 I see only my own thoughts, and my mind is preoccupied with the past. What, then, can I see as it is? Let me remember that I look on the past to prevent the present from dawning on my mind. Let me understand that I am trying to use time against God. Let me learn to give the past away, realizing that in so doing I am giving up nothing.
[9] I see nothing as it is now.
5 If I see nothing as it is now, it can truly be said that I see nothing. I can see only what is now. The choice is not whether to see the past or the present: it is merely whether to see or not. What I have chosen to see has cost me vision. Now I would choose again that I may see.
[10] My thoughts do not mean anything.
6 I have no private thoughts. Yet it is only private thoughts of which I am aware. What can these thoughts mean? They do not exist, and so they mean nothing. Yet my mind is part of creation and part of its Creator. Would I not rather join the thinking of the universe than to obscure all that is really mine with my pitiful and meaningless "private" thoughts?
