 Beautiful to see you again and to be with you and go through these lessons. And we're just starting February here, February 1st. So, Thursday, February 1st, 2024. And our lesson for today is lesson 32. I have invented the world I see. Today we are continuing to develop the theme of cause and effect. You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up. You will see it or not see it as you wish. While you want it, you will see it. When you no longer want it, it will not be there for you to see. The idea for today, like the preceding one, supplies to your inner and outer worlds, which are actually the same. However, since you see them as different, the practice periods for today will again include two phases. One involving the world you see outside you and the other, the world you see in your mind. In today's exercises, try to introduce the thought that both are in your own imagination. Again, we will begin the practice periods for the morning and evening by repeating the idea for today two or three times while looking around at the world you see as outside yourself. Then close your eyes and look around your inner world. Try to treat them both as equally as possible. Repeat the idea for today unhurriedly and as often as you wish. As you watch the images, your imagination presents to you on your awareness. For longer practice periods, three to five minutes are recommended, not less than three required. More than five can be utilized if you find the exercise restful. To facilitate this, select a time when few distractions are anticipated and when you yourself feel reasonably ready. These exercises are also to be continued during the day as often as possible. The shorter applications consist of repeating the idea slowly as you survey either your inner or outer world. It does not matter which you choose. The idea for today should be also applied immediately to any situation that may distress you. Apply the idea by telling yourself, I have invented this situation as I see it. So I have invented the world I see. If we look at this lesson, you may recall lesson number seven in the workbook. I see only the past. It's basically saying the same thing. I have invented. It's saying that invented is past tense. So it's saying that you're perceiving the past. You're perceiving past images. And then this lesson is bringing the responsibility back to the mind, not seeing the causation of the world as in the world. For example, some scientists say the Big Bang is where the cosmos came from. That's an event that's still in time and space. An explosion of gases. And then the gases spread out and then the gases cool and they become planets. No, no, it's a story. It's a story of the ego. And yet I have invented the world I see brings it back to, oh, I have done this thing and it is this that I would undo. Jesus teaches us in the text of his Course in Miracles. You can't escape from something that you think is being done to you apart from your will, apart from your mind or apart from your decision. So when we get back to the mechanism of mind, we start to see that this is the mechanism of decision. Consciousness is the domain of the ego, but there's a choice between the right mind and the wrong mind. The wrong mind is where the Holy Spirit, Jesus, by the wrong mind is the ego. But you can't really fully move into forgiveness while you blame the world for anything. So if you blame time or society or the government, if you blame your spouse or your children or your parents or your neighbors, relatives, if you're blaming anything of the cosmos, it does not matter what. If there's a blame game going on, yesterday's lesson, I am not the victim of the world I see. That is a precursor for giving up the belief in projection that there's something outside of the mind and coming back deeper and deeper in to see that I am the dreamer of the dream. No other cause does it have or ever will. So I have invented the world I see is not only saying the world is past, it's indented over and done, but also that it wasn't done to me. I gave my mind, my powerful mind to a tiny, mad idea, and that seemed to project an invented world of the past. The reason it's invented, the reason it's past is the Holy Spirit corrected it. The instant it seemed to be invented. So it was simultaneously corrected, all glory to God. And now I can't really accept the correction. I can't really accept the atonement that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are offering to me if I still persist in thinking that there's something happening outside of me. Or even if I persist in thinking that there's a script. There have been teachers that say there's a Holy Spirit script for the world and an ego script for the world. That is nonsense. It's an aton. That's an invention too. The Holy Spirit does not see a linear world. The Holy Spirit sees that the world is over. It's all one thing. You might go around to Lesson 300, only an instant does this world endure. In that lesson, he will tell us later on, much later in the workbook, that basically everything of the unholy instant, the time of terror, the tiny tick of time, is all what contains everything of the cosmos. And then the I Am Presence, which is prior to this mad idea, before Abraham was I Am, before ego appeared to be, I Am as God created me and remain as God created me. This is the deep healing that comes when you realize that an invention is fiction. An invention is fantasy. There are positive and negative fantasies. Fantasy is the attempt to make false associations, she tells us in the text, and it obtained pleasure from them. But the whole cosmos, the whole linear cosmos is a cosmic fantasy. And this lesson also points to, I just recently, in the last Saturday movie workshop or free movie session that I did on Tribe of Christ, I showed Ruby Sparks, and I went right at this distinction, that Jesus is telling us in this lesson that your imagination, both the inner world of imagination and your perceived outer world of imagination, are the same, that all of these thoughts of the imagination are the same, because they're all egoic. None of these imagined thoughts, you know, lesson 15, my thoughts or images I've made, none of the imagined thoughts are from God. God didn't create this world. God doesn't know about this world. The Holy Spirit is a bridge, is a creation of God that seems to take the form of a voice in the mind that can guide you and can direct you and carry you and lift you higher and higher and higher into the happy dream. And God calls you back to, takes you beyond the happy dream into eternal creation, eternal oneness, eternal love. But we're looking today and we're seeing, like in the movie Ruby Sparks, I was saying that in the deceived mind and the sleeping mind, there's a distinction between what's thought or imagined and between what seems to be the external world, and they are the same. There is no line between Jesus says the thoughts you think you think and the world that you think you see. So today's lesson is more saying, wow, there's an imagination going. It's like that song. It was just my imagination running away with me, deceiving me, making me forget that I'm the Christ. I'm the living Christ. And so this imaginary world of thoughts is basically the same as what seems to be the external world. So if you're seeing any person, place, thing, object, anything at all is existing external to your mind, then that is the error. And the way out of it is to come back and say, wow, I invented the world I see. You think of a name of a person who you don't like, or maybe you do like them, but you like something about them or you don't like something about them or something they've said or done or anything at all that you perceive. Even if you perceive atoms and protons and neutrons as outside your mind, everything is an image. Yes, protons, neutrons and electrons are images. I have invented the protons, neutrons and electrons. I've invented the black holes and the quasars, the galaxies and the solar system. I've invented the planets, the mountains, the oceans. I've invented the world I see. It is not there before I come. I did not come like a little soul and come into it. I, as Jesus said, when you came, you brought the world with you. The world doesn't pre-exist outside of your mind. The world is a projection and it's an invention, fictitious invention. And when you begin to see that, you have to start to first admit, I have done this thing and it is this I would undo. You cannot just try to dismiss it by the words. You have to see it. It has to be a miracle, an insight where it's like, I have done this thing, the whole cosmos, and it is this, the whole cosmos, that I would undo. In my mind, in my mind, Jesus is teaching us that the salvation of the world depends on me, not a personal me, but on the mind. And it depends on choosing redemption, salvation, the correction in the mind. Jesus was our demonstration of that. He showed not only that it could be done, but that it was done. It was accomplished. He says, when I awoke, you were with me. He's just teaching us over and over. It's a perceptual hallucination. And don't think that it's external to your mind and don't think that something else causes you to be, feel a certain way, be a certain way. No, no, no, nada, nada, nada. He's bringing it back. I have invented the world I see. Because if I chose it, I must be able to un-choose it. I must be able to choose again. He says, you are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up. You will see it or not see it as you wish. While you want it, you will see it. When you no longer want it, it will not be there for you to see. Wow. That says, give it to me straight, Jesus. Don't mess around. Okay, okay. I'm not going to dress it up at all. It's straight. So today I think in order to really have some help from the text with this practicing this lesson, we're going to go to chapter two and we're going to section six. It's called fear and conflict. If you're going to give up an invented world, you really have to see that, you know, that as the workbook lesson says, what I see is a form of vengeance. You have to start to see the whole cosmos for what it is. It's just a misperception. A linear cosmos is a misperception. A simultaneous cosmos is a corrected cosmos. It's all in one corrected instant with the Holy Spirit's perspective. Jesus is smiling and laughing with us all the time because it has been corrected. But we have to look a little bit at fear and conflict because as long as the mind wants to hold on to two irreconcilable thought systems, love and fear, and doesn't want them to come together because when you bring fear together with love or darkness together with light, the fear and the darkness disappear. They can't stand even seem to be in the presence of divine love. So that's the key. That's the actual key here is taking a close look at fear and conflict. And you can't just dismiss fear and conflict by saying it's not real, by saying the words. You have to actually experience that there is nothing to fear. You have to actually experience that there is nothing to fear. So here we go. Chapter 2, section 6, fear and conflict. Being afraid seems to be involuntary, something beyond your own control. Yet I have said already that only constructive acts should be involuntary. My control can take over everything that does not matter while my guidance can direct everything that does if you so choose. Let's look at that. Only constructive acts should be involuntary. Miracles are involuntary, and that's what it means. If you're letting the miracle come through you and extend, you're extending the miracle, that's involuntary. But only constructive acts, only very helpful acts should be involuntary. In other words, don't try to decide first how to be helpful. Pray, listen and follow. Ask for help to have the miracle. Ask which miracles you should perform. Jesus knows. Only Jesus can perform miracles indiscriminately because he's completed his part perfectly and he is the atonement principle. He is the presence of correction. He is one with the Holy Spirit. That's why you ask Jesus which miracle should I perform. The next sentence, sentence three, my control can take over everything that does not matter while my guidance can direct everything that does if you so choose. Okay, what's the difference? What is it? Everything that does not matter. That's everything of time and space. That's all the effects of time and space. That's all the effects of the ego's projection. Jesus says my control can take over everything that does not matter. He's going to orchestrate time and space for the miracle and you don't have to think about anything in form. About the body. About getting perceived needs met. About big question people say all the time. What should I do? Should I do this? Should I do that? How should I behave? Jesus is saying I'll take over everything that does not matter including behavior. He will take over that and all the aspects of time and space all the projected images while my guidance can direct everything that does not and what is that? Well, everything that does matter we'll say while my guidance can direct everything that does does matter. That is actually talking about the mind. Your mind matters. Your beliefs matter. Your thoughts matter. Your seeming decisions. Well, decision is a mechanism of the mind. Those decisions matter. But it's all at the mind level. Right mind or wrong mind. Right mind or wrong mind. Jesus is saying my guidance can direct everything that does and if you really align with Jesus and the Holy Spirit then that is where guidance comes in. I know there are teachers who have taught the course who basically say no, you can't. There's no such thing as guidance. You aren't guided. You can't be guided. No, no, no. Read the book. Read the book. The book is filled with references to guidance and this guidance again is actually directed at the mind. It's directed at what do you want? Do you want wholeness, completion? Do you want happiness, joy, peace of mind? Do you want these things? That is where the guidance comes in. So he's really working with us to purify our hearts, to purify our minds, to become completely right minded. That's what Jesus is aiming for. He's not giving importance to the projected world of time and space. He knows that it's all the past. It's just past symbols. And so he can take over. He says my control can take over everything that does not matter and that's all of time and space. So don't worry about the circumstances of your perception or the situations and don't think that there's all these situational, circumstantial problems. There aren't. The problem is wrong mindedness or wrong thinking, believing the ego and all of its wrong minded thoughts and that's what generates this hallucination of a world. So we have to come back and let Jesus's guidance direct everything that does matter and that is your let Jesus direct your thoughts and he will direct your thoughts by guiding them. The Holy Spirit and Jesus guide the mind. So sentence four, fear cannot be controlled by me but it can be self-controlled. Fear prevents me from giving you my control. The presence of fear shows that you have raised body thoughts to the level of mind. This removes them from my control and makes you feel personally responsible for them. This is an obvious confusion of levels. Again, if you're going to learn about level confusion, you actually have to read what Jesus is saying right here. Read chapter two, section six. Don't go on personal interpretations of level confusion because there is no freedom and there is no release from misinterpretations of level confusion. Right mind is seeing that everything is of the mind and that there is no reality to the ego or to the effects, the projections of the ego. And wrong-mindedness is the belief that the ego is real and the projected world of time and space is real. And here he's teaching us, the presence of fear shows that you have raised body thoughts to the level of mind. This removes them from my control and makes you feel personally responsible for them. You know, this is where you have to go beyond all interpretations of being normal or trying to act normal. If you seem to be doing anything in this world, if you're looking at the behavior, because you believe you have to fight off sickness or death or starvation, you're still seeing the sickness as external in the bodies and still perceiving events like the death of the body as something that you have to guard against. You have to fight against. That's why people have worldly careers and worldly jobs is because they still haven't seen that you... If you're raising body thoughts to the level of mind, then you're going to feel guilty because of that. You're going to see that you have external needs and that you have to do things with the body to meet those external needs. But all you need is love, as the Beatles said, all you need is the correction in the mind. It opens the mind back to the living Christ, the eternal Christ and the light of the mind, an idea in the mind of God. So this is really crucial as we review our lesson for today. I have invented the world I see. You can basically see in this lesson 32 that once you claim, ah, it was I who invented it, it was believing in the ego that generated fear. God did not create the fear. Heaven has nothing to do with fear. Heaven has nothing to do with worry and anxiety. Heaven is eternal, but if you believe and you raise body thoughts to the level of mind for whatever reason, you believe you're doing something or not doing something in form that will be helpful for you, it's still raising body thoughts to the level of mind because you're still giving power to the doer and you're not the doer, you're the being, the being of Christ, not the doer. So when he says this removes them from my control, in other words, don't raise body thoughts to the level of mind. Don't give body thoughts creative ability. Even if you think you have a favorite course teacher or a favorite spiritual teacher and the body of that teacher would taught you something, no, no, those are reflections, projections of what is believed in the mind. It's all the mind. The mind is all. The mind is all powerful. And if you raise body thoughts to the level of mind, you're saying that bodies are causative because whatever you raise to the level of mind is you're raising it to the level of causation and bodies don't cause anything. They never have caused anything. They never will cause anything. They're part of the projection, the past, future projection. I had a friend one time who was saying, I don't know, my partner and I, one of us wants to have a child. The other one doesn't want to have a child. And how do I resolve this conflict? And I said, well, you start, you have to go all the way inside to the miracle because as long as you are having this discussion, we'll say disagreement about whether to have a child or not, you're still out there on the level of effects. You're tinkering around there and you actually believe you have some control over the world. You have control over your state of mind. You have control over your alignment. You have control over being peaceful, joyful, loving, harmony. But you have no control over the world you made. I have invented the world I see. Let's really take that to heart here. Jesus continues in the second paragraph. I do not foster level confusion, but you must choose to correct it. You would not excuse insane behavior on your part by saying you could not help it. Why should you condone insane thinking? There is a confusion here that you would do well to look at clearly. You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think. You cannot separate yourself from the truth by giving autonomy to behavior. This is controlled by me automatically as soon as you place what you think under my guidance. Whenever you are afraid and it is sure sign that you have allowed your mind to miscreate and have not allowed me to guide it. It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome on this thought can result in healing. When you are fearful, you have chosen wrongly. That is why you feel responsible for it. You must change your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of willingness. You do not need guidance except at the mind level. Correction belongs only at the level where change is possible. Change does not mean anything at the symptom level where it cannot work. The correction of fear is your responsibility. When you ask for a release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask instead for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. These conditions always entail a willingness to be separate. At that level, you can help it. You are much too tolerant of mind wandering and are passively condoning your mind's miscreations. The particular result does not matter, but the fundamental error does. The correction is always the same. Before you choose to do anything, ask me if your choice is in accord with mind. If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear. Fear is always a sign of strain arising whenever what you want conflicts with what you do. The situation arises in two ways. First, you can choose to do conflicting things, either simultaneously or successively. This produces conflicted behavior, which is intolerable to you because the part of the mind that wants to do something else is outraged. Second, you can behave as you think you should, but without entirely wanting to do so. This produces consistent behavior, but entails great strain. In both cases, the mind and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in a situation in which you are doing what you do not only want to do. This arouses a sense of coercion that usually produces rage and the projection is likely to follow. Whenever there is fear, it is because you have not made up your mind. Therefore, split and your behavior inevitably becomes erratic. Correcting at the behavior level can shift the error from the first to the second type, but will not obliterate. It is possible to reach a state in which you bring your mind under my guidance without conscious effort, but this implies a willingness that you have not developed as yet. The Holy Spirit cannot ask more than you are willing to do. The strength to do comes from your undivided decision. There is no strain in doing God's will as soon as you recognize that it is also your own. The lesson here is quite simple, but particularly apt to be overlooked. I will therefore repeat it, urging you to listen. Only your mind can produce fear. It does so whenever it is conflicted in what it wants, producing inevitable strain as wanting and doing are discordant. This can be corrected only by accepting a unified goal. Our unified goal is the Atonement that is the sole responsibility of the Teacher of God, another place in the Course that is the sole responsibility of the Miracle Worker. There are no other responsibilities except the correction. We do that by choosing the Miracle, allowing the Miracle to come through us. Jesus is calling us to be a Miracle Worker or a Teacher of God because really it is all for our mind to accept the correction. It is not really about bodies and words. It is about choosing a purpose in mind and then generalizing it and transferring that to everything in every one, every object, everything in the cosmos. One purpose brings everything back into unified awareness, harmony, joy, happiness. It is a happy dream. We are going to go through this one more time. I have invented the world I see. Practice that today while you seem to look at any thought, imagination that you have or anything you perceive in the world. I have invented the world I see. God bless you. Have a joyful day. See you soon.