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Marianne Williamson
A Course in Miracles, Lesson 55
Original Air Date: February 24, 2008
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With this review, you practice taking further responsibility for the nature of your thoughts. With Lesson 55, very powerful principles are being introduced into your thinking: that any attack thought keeps you bound to the pain of this world and that you do not perceive your own best interests. You are training to surrender yourself to the thoughts of God, and the goals that He has set for your life.

Today's review includes the following:

I am determined to see things differently.
What I see now are but signs of disease, disaster and death. This cannot be what God created for His beloved Son. The very fact that I see such things is proof that I do not understand God. Therefore I also do not understand His Son. What I see tells me that I do not know who I am. I am determined to see the witnesses to the truth in me, rather than those which show me an illusion of myself.

What I see is a form of vengeance.
The world I see is hardly the representation of loving thoughts. It is a picture of attack on everything by everything. It is anything but a reflection of the Love of God and the love of His Son. It is my own attack thoughts that give rise to this picture. My loving thoughts will save me from this perception of the world, and give me the peace God intended me to have.

I can escape from this world by giving up attack thoughts.
Herein lies salvation, and nowhere else. Without attack thoughts I could not see a world of attack. As forgiveness allows love to return to my awareness, I will see a world of peace and safety and joy. And it is this I choose to see, in place of what I look on now.

I do not perceive my own best interests.
How could I recognize my own best interests when I do not know who I am? What I think are my best interests would merely bind me closer to the world of illusions. I am willing to follow the Guide God has given me to find out what my own best interests are, recognizing that I cannot perceive them by myself.

I do not know what anything is for.
To me, the purpose of everything is to prove that my illusions about myself are real. It is for this purpose that I attempt to use everyone and everything. It is for this that I believe the world is for. Therefore I do not recognize its real purpose. The purpose I have given the world has led to a frightening picture of it. Let me open my mind to the world's real purpose by withdrawing the one I have given it, and learning the truth about it.

Quote of the Day
"Examining the past can help clarify many of our problems, but healing doesn't occur in the past. It occurs in the present. There is practically a mania these days for blaming the events of our childhood for our current despair. What the ego doesn't want us to see is that our pain doesn't come from the love we weren't given in the past, but from the love we ourselves aren't giving in the present. Salvation is only found in the present. Every moment we have a chance to change our past and our future by reprogramming the present."

— Excerpted from A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles

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A Course in Miracles is owned by the Foundation for A Course in Miracles and is used with permission. For more information about A Course in Miracles, please visit The Foundation for Inner Peace at www.acim.org.
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