Lesson 119
Review 3
Practice Instructions
See Practice Instructions Review 3
Commentary
The first idea speaks of the correction of all error. The two explanatory sentences that follow speak on a very high level, defining “error” as any thought that we can be hurt. What I am is spirit. Spirit is eternal and unchanging, created by God like Himself. By the Course’s definition, what can be hurt or damaged is not real. That includes our bodies, our woundable psyches, everything we see in the physical universe; all of it has an end. “Nothing real can be threatened,” says the introduction to the Text (In.2:2). What I am learning is the invulnerability of my being, the eternal safety of my Self, at rest in the Mind of God.
We are undergoing a very gradual and gentle weaning away from our identification with the ephemeral. What we are, in truth, does not die. We have dreamed a dream, and foolishly have come to believe the dream is us. We are not the dream; we are the dreamer. (The Text speaks at length of this in Chapter 27, Sections VIII through XI) The Holy Spirit eases us through a transitional phase, changing our terrifying dream into a happy one, so that we will waken softly and joyfully, no longer gripped by terrors of the night.
How are we to shift our dream? It is too great a leap to go from a state where pain and hurt and death are bitter realities to us, into an awareness of our eternal nature. So the second idea for today speaks of the means by which we can begin, gently, to shift into the happy dream: forgiveness. We come to recognize our sinlessness, and thus our Self, by forgiving all things around us. We have to learn to accept the truth in ourselves, and we do so by learning to see past the error in others, until with a start of recognition, we realize that what is beneath the errors of others is Something we share with them. We find ourselves in our brothers and sisters, through forgiveness. What we have learned to give to others has, all the time, been given to ourselves. We awaken by awaking others. We teach peace to learn it. In kindness and mercy towards others, we ourselves fall into the kind and merciful heart of God.