Welcome to active meditation.
A course in miracles,
Lesson 13.
A meaningless world engenders fear.
We prepare for this exercise by placing our body in a comfortable position so that we won't have to move it for several minutes.
We close our eyes.
We will be opening them up again for this exercise.
We take three deep breaths to relax our mind and body.
The out-breath longer than the in-breath.
And to help relax,
We remove all expression from our face.
Do this now.
Place your body in a comfortable position.
Take three deep breaths and remove all expression from your face.
And to help relax,
We remove all expression from our face.
This is a course in miracles.
It is a required course.
Only the time you take it is voluntary.
Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum.
It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time.
The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love,
For that is beyond what can be taught.
It does aim,
However,
At removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence,
Which is your natural inheritance.
The opposite of love is fear.
But what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way.
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
I am looking at a meaningless world,
A meaningless world engenders fear.
Today's idea is really another form of the preceding one,
Except that it is more specific as to the emotion around.
Actually,
A meaningless world is impossible.
Nothing without meaning exists.
However,
It does not follow that you will not think you perceive something that has no meaning.
On the contrary,
You will be particularly likely to think you do perceive it.
Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones.
It represents the situation in which God and the ego challenge each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space that meaningless provides.
The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own ideas there,
Fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own impotence and unreality.
And on this alone,
It is correct.
It is essential therefore that you learn to recognize the meaningless and accept it without fear.
If you are fearful,
It is certain that you will endow the world with attributes that it does not possess and crowded with images that do not exist.
To the ego,
Illusions are safety devices as they must also be to you who equate yourself with the ego.
The exercises for today,
Which should be done about three or four times,
For not more than a minute or so at most each time,
Are to be practiced in a somewhat different way from the preceding ones.
With eyes closed,
Repeat today's idea to yourself.
Then open your eyes and look about you slowly,
Saying,
I am looking at a meaningless world.
Repeat this statement to yourself as you look about.
Then close your eyes and conclude with a meaningless world in gender sphere,
Because I think I am in competition with God.
Let's practice.
Say to yourself,
I am looking at a meaningless world.
Open your eyes.
Look about you slowly.
Say to yourself,
Say in your mind,
I am looking at a meaningless world.
Close your eyes.
A meaningless world in gender sphere,
Because I think I am in competition with God.
You may find it difficult to avoid resistance in one form or another to this concluding statement.
Whatever form such resistance may take,
Remind yourself that you are really afraid of such a thought because of the vengeance of the enemy.
You are not expected to believe the statement at this point and will probably dismiss it as preposterous.
Note carefully,
However,
Any signs of overt or covert fear which it may arouse.
This is our first attempt at stating an explicit cause and effect relationship of a kind which you are very inexperienced in recognizing.
Do not dwell on the concluding statement and try not even to think of it except during the practice period.
That will suffice at present.
Let's practice again.
Open your eyes.
Look about you.
Say to yourself,
Say in your mind,
I am looking at a meaningless world.
Close your eyes.
A meaningless world engenders fear because I think I am in competition with God.
I am looking at a meaningless world.
A meaningless world engenders fear because I think I am in competition with God.
Let's return to our regular waking state of thoughts,
Feelings and actions.
To time and space.
Take a few deep breaths to help establish the waking state.
And return fully alert,
Comfortable in all instruments of awareness.
The heightened awareness of our environment and the knowledge I am aware.
I am.
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
