Read on the ACIM CE App: https://acimce.app/:W-56
Lesson 56
Review I
Practice Instructions
See Practice Instructions Review I
Commentary
The Door behind the World
There is a door behind this world which, if opened, will allow me to see past this world to a world that reflects the love of God (3:4). It is a door in my mind, a door to vision.
This world, full of “pain, illness, loss, age, and death” (1:3) simply reflects what I think I am (2:2-3). It is a hallucination superimposed over reality, hiding it and seemingly replacing it.
The opening line of the review asks: “How can I know who I am when I see myself as under constant attack?” (1:2). Think about that. If I am truly under constant attack, beset by illness, loss, age and death, how can I be a perfect creation of God? How can God even be real? I believe in a self-image that is constantly threatened. If I am threatened, how could I be an eternal, spiritual being? If the picture I see in this world is true, then I am nothing, worth nothing, and destined for destruction. I may as well say, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” I may as well take what I can get because nothing will last, including myself.
Something in all of us, however, tells us that we are more than this (5:2). Something in us resonates when we read, in the Course, that nothing real can be threatened. If that is true, and I am real, then the world I see must be false. The picture it is showing me, reinforcing my image of myself as vulnerable, must be a lie. Either I am real and the world is not, or the world is real and I am not. “For I am real because the world is not, and I would know my own reality” (W-132.15:3).
Therefore my greatest need is vision. I need to open that door in my mind, “look past all appearances” (4:6), and see a world that reflects God’s Love, and by so doing remember who I really am. “Behind every image I have made, the truth remains unchanged” (4:2). “In my own mind, behind all my insane thoughts of separation and attack, is the knowledge that all is one forever. I have not lost the knowledge of who I am because I have forgotten it” (5:2-3).
I want to open that door behind the world and see the truth again. I want to remember.
