Trust and Faith - Lesson 181 – A Course In Miracles Group Discussion

'I trust my brothers, who are one with me.’ - lesson 181 – a Weekly Zoom Call with James for Students of “A Course in Miracles.”
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Lesson 181

I trust my brothers, who are one with me.

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. ²When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by what you have perceived in him. ³You do not look beyond his errors. ⁴Rather, 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.

2. Perception has a focus. ²It is this that gives consistency to what you see. ³Change but this focus, and what you behold will change accordingly. ⁴Your vision now will shift, to give support to the intent which has replaced the one you held before. ⁵Remove your focus on your brother’s sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. ⁶This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. ⁷For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in you. ⁸And you will not transcend their sight and see the sinlessness that lies beyond.

3. Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such little focuses give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent. ²We instruct our minds that it is this we seek, and only this, for just a little while. ³We do not care about our future goals. ⁴And what we saw an instant previous has no concern for us within this interval of time wherein we practice changing our intent. ⁵We seek for innocence and nothing else. ⁶We seek for it with no concern but now.

4. A major hazard to success has been involvement with your past and future goals. ²You have been quite preoccupied with how extremely different the goals this course is advocating are from those you held before. ³And you have also been dismayed by the depressing and restricting thought that, even if you should succeed, you will inevitably lose your way again.

5. How could this matter? ²For the past is gone; the future but imagined. ³These concerns are but defenses against present change of focus in perception. ⁴Nothing more. ⁵We lay these pointless limitations by a little while. ⁶We do not look to past beliefs, and what we will believe will not intrude upon us now. ⁷We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within.

6. We recognize that we have lost this goal if anger blocks our way in any form. ²And if a brother’s sins occur to us, our narrowed focus will restrict our sight, and turn our eyes upon our own mistakes, which we will magnify and call our “sins.” ³So, for a little while, without regard to past or future, should such blocks arise we will transcend them with instructions to our minds to change their focus, as we say:

⁴It is not this that I would look upon.
⁵I trust my brothers, who are one with me.

7. And we will also use this thought to keep us safe throughout the day. ²We do not seek for long-range goals. ³As each obstruction seems to block the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an instant from the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and uncorrected will remain.

8. Nor do we ask for fantasies. ²For what we seek to look upon is really there. ³And as our focus goes beyond mistakes, we will behold a wholly sinless world. ⁴When seeing this is all we want to see, when this is all we seek for in the name of true perception, are the eyes of Christ inevitably ours. ⁵And the Love He feels for us becomes our own as well. ⁶This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves.

9. The world which once proclaimed our sins becomes the proof that we are sinless. ²And our love for everyone we look upon attests to our remembrance of the holy Self which knows no sin, and never could conceive of anything without Its sinlessness. ³We seek for this remembrance as we turn our minds to practicing today. ⁴We look neither ahead nor backwards. ⁵We look straight into the present. ⁶And we give our trust to the experience we ask for now. ⁷Our sinlessness is but the Will of God. ⁸This instant is our willing one with His. (https://acim.org/acim/en/s/589#1:1-9:8 | W-181.1:1–9:8)
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We are delighted to be offering an additional weekly Zoom workshop with James Blanchard Cisneros on Wednesdays. The Wednesday weekly Zoom calls are for people who are interested in exploring topics related to “A Course in Miracles”. During each Zoom call, participants will have time to ask questions and discuss “A Course in Miracles” topics. The current plan is to hold the weekly “A Course in Miracles” Zoom calls on Wednesdays at 7pm est – beginning June 5.
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We hope you will join us for this special opportunity to connect with James and other like minded people.
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When: Wednesdays (beginning June 5)
Time: 7pm est
Cost: Free
Registration is required. Please click here to sign up for this weeks zoom call. https://www.chosentoremember.com/acim-zooms/