This is my favorite lesson in the entire Course in Miracles.
This was for me the AHA! moment. I hated this lesson!!! I refused to do it or believe it!! I had hundreds of reasons why this was ridiculous and foolish!! Jesus had to be kidding, right? But here, Jesus put it to me quite directly
W-181.1. Trusting your brothers is essential to establishing and holding up your faith in your ability to transcend doubt and lack of sure conviction in yourself. 2 When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by what you have perceived in him. 3 You do not look beyond his errors. 4 Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to your awareness of the Self that lies beyond your own mistakes, and past his seeming sins as well as yours.
This explained to me why I could not look at my brother and see the Christ – I was limiting him to the error I perceived in him. That error was blinding me to the Truth about Who my brother really is. This is where I recognized the reason that a Miracle is a shift in perception.
W-181.2. Perception has a focus. 2 It is this that gives consistency to what you see. 3 Change but this focus, and what you behold will change accordingly. 4 Your vision now will shift, to give support to the intent which has replaced the one you held before. 5 Remove your focus on your brother’s sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. 6 This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. 7 For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in you. 8 And you will not transcend their sight and see the sinlessness that lies beyond.
This was the answer to all of my questions about how to see my brother differently. I had been looking through the Course for hints from Jesus as to HOW He did it. He gave us a few clues – especially in the Clarification of Terms where He says:
“C-5.2. The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God. 2 So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God.”
Whether I like it or not, whether I agree that my brother is sinless or not, whether I think my brother is a jerk or not, no matter what I think, the way Jesus did it was by trusting His brothers. Jesus knew the Script was written, He knew the brother was not the character in the script, He looked beyond the character and saw the Truth. AND HE REMEMBERED GOD!! He became identified with the Christ – He became the Christ. That is how important the Lesson is. It is the KEY to my salvation.
I can trust my brother because his character is acting the role it was assigned in my dream, I cannot be harmed in a dream. in the dream we are human, with human fears and frailties. Humans are fearful by nature, and they have a very limited repertoire of reactions to the world they perceive. Humans are programmed by nature and DNA to survive and replicate. Every human story is the same story with a few variations. Because the stories are all the same – it is the variations we appreciate. Seeing differences is essential to believing the story, so the Holy Spirit teaches us to look for sameness. In seeing our sameness, I learned to trust. Learning to Trust is the only thing necessary – it means I must give up my stories of the past and the future, the story of the character in the dream:
W-181.4. A major hazard to success has been involvement with your past and future goals. …..
W-181.5. How could this matter? 2 For the past is gone; the future but imagined. 3 These concerns are but defenses against present change of focus in perception. 4 Nothing more. 5 We lay these pointless limitations by a little while. 6 We do not look to past beliefs, and what we will believe will not intrude upon us now. 7 We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within.
The character in the dream is not guilty of the “sins” you once believed were true. This Course is asking you to give up all judgments, all of your ideas of “right” and “wrong” – to give up all beliefs in “sinful” behaviors, thoughts and actions. None of what is happening in a dream is either right or wrong. That includes everything you have “done” or thought or wished for, all of your sinful, guilty thoughts. Give them up! You have done nothing wrong, nor has your brother. We are just watching a movie that was made long ago. It is a story, and it is not true. You are innocent, and so is your brother.
Ask the Holy Spirit to help you shift your perceptions so that you can see the Truth about yourself and your brother. These next Lessons are made to promote the shift. The time is NOW!
Thank you for sharing this with me!