 Today's workbook lesson is giving us the chance to unpin, to unwind, from the belief in being trapped in appearances, when our very identity of love, of the living Christ, a perfect idea in the mind of God, has been forgotten, has been completely pushed out of awareness. And now appearances seem to have come to take the place of love and light. This condition could be called hallucination, just like a dry and thirsty traveler walking through a desert, feeling scorched and hot and parched and dry may hallucinate. An oasis of shade and water, the sleeping Son of God, has believed himself to be bereft of his Holy Father, his Holy Creator, and now finds himself lost and wandering in a desert of images. A desert of perception that God did not create, a fantasy world, a fictitious linear stream of images that have nothing to do with reality, nothing to do with eternity, divine love and happiness. And so the first step in healing from this apparent condition of separation is to realize that all upsets, all upsets experienced are coming because there's a perception and that perception is not there. And the ego may ask, but why is it there? But remember the ego is the denial of God, the denial of love, the denial of eternity. The ego is a death wish, and if you give your mind to a death wish, if you give your attention to a death wish, your focus, what else could you expect but a hallucination? Death and hallucination go together. Life, eternal life and happiness go together. In this world we get apples from apple trees and oranges from orange trees and grapes from grape vines. Why would it be possible to get perception, temporary fleeting images from an eternal Creator? God has absolutely nothing to do with the perceptual world and God is reality. And so hallucinations cannot exist, cannot have reality. You don't get images from something that's abstract and eternal. You don't get a linear stream of symbols on a timeline from that which has no beginning and no end, that which is infinite. Now earlier in the text we were talking about distorted miracle impulses, misdirected miracle impulses. What is a miracle impulse but a call to remember God? To forgive the world and accept the truth of abstract reality, to forget the images, to release the image maker and accept reality exactly as it is. There are some new age teachings that teach you can create your own reality. And there are some that will say a course of miracles is simply a new age teaching. But I tell you this, Jesus in the Course is teaching the exact opposite of you create your own reality. Jesus is teaching us that God is the Creator of reality. And even as a child of God you can only accept reality exactly as it is. You can accept reality. And he gives us the means to accept reality. He says you must accept the atonement for the error of ego. Accept the correction for the belief in separation. Accept. So this lesson, I am upset because I see something that is not there, gives a hint of going way, way beyond the law of attraction. Way beyond the belief in manifestation. It's being humble. Humble enough in your mind to begin to see that it's only an upset when because I believe that there's something that's not there. Because I'm seeing, perceiving something that's not there. You might rephrase the lesson is I'm upset because I seem to be hallucinating. And the only way that you can be open to another way of seeing Christ vision, light, an experience of vision that is not involving the body. The body's eyes. A vision that does not involve perception, revelation, the great rays, knowledge, reality. I must first be open to the idea that what I seem to see, what I seem to perceive through consciousness and the five senses is actually not there. And it's not there because God didn't create it. So the text said we may get glimpses of the end, which Jesus calls revelation, but we must take every small step that is asked of us. We must progressively prepare our mind for the direct approach to God that is coming in these later workbook lessons. Because without this attention, this care, this willingness to follow every step, then the remembrance of God will still seem frightening. It will still seem fearful. It will generate fear instead of the awe that is the appropriate experience with regard to the Creator. The Bible is very famous for saying, fear God and keep his commandments. And I will simply reinterpret that right now. Is be an awe of God the Creator and come to know this awe by forgiving the world, forgiving the ego, forgiving the belief that one could ever be separate from a loving God and a loving Creator. Today we are happy to behold and acknowledge first that there seems to be a hallucination in front of us and that I am never upset. Because of what seems to be a hallucination simply stated, I am upset because I see something that is not there.