Day 304

Today's Lesson:

Let not my world obscure the sight of Christ.

I can obscure my holy sight, if I intrude my world upon it. Nor can I behold the holy sights Christ looks upon, unless it is His vision that I use. Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward. I would bless the world by looking on it through the eyes of Christ. And I will look upon the certain signs that all my sins have been forgiven me.

You lead me from the darkness to the light; from sin to holiness. Let me forgive, and thus receive salvation for the world. It is Your gift, my Father, given me to offer to Your holy Son, that he may find again the memory of You, and of Your Son as You created him.

Miracles I'm noticing:

Today's lesson is a great reminder that when I look at the world through my eyes, I will only see what is reflected from my own mind. But when I consciously look at the world through the eyes of Christ, I will see everything differently. When I change the way I look at things, the things I look at really will change. The key is awareness.

As I forgive myself and others, using the course's definition of forgiveness (see Day 297 for more information and a definition of this "new" forgiveness), I really will bring salvation to the world.

I also love that today's lesson says "perception is a mirror, not a fact." Whenever I see something that I don't particularly like - I'm especially working on being non-judgmental - it is comforting to know that what I see is simply my perception and can be switched to the Truth. I think we all know the Truth when we experience it. There is kind of a sigh of recognition, or a deja vu kind of feeling, I think, when we remember those things we already knew at some point. That is what I refer to as Truth - or seeing the world through the eyes of Christ. It is so wonderful to know that we can do all things Christ has done and even more. There are no limits when we connect with that consciousness.

At our course gathering last night, we talked about being in the now and how that is all we ever really have anyway. We spend so much time (which is also just an illusion) planning and worrying and preparing for the future, but all that does is waste the time we have now in the present moment. Yesterday's text said "Future loss is not your fear. But present joining is your dread. Who can feel desolation except now? A future cause as yet has no effects. And therefore must it be that if you fear, there is a present cause. And it is this that needs correction, not a future state (Chapter 26, VIII, 4, 3-8)."

When I got home last night I watched an Oprah episode from the past week that I had recorded. It was all about lessons we can learn from people who have a terminal illness (in this case cancer) and have gotten an entirely different perspective on time. If you haven't seen it yet, here is the entire video of Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" which he gave to students and faculty at Carnegie-Mellon University on September 18. For Randy, it really may be his last lecture, although the intention for this lecture series at Carnegie-Mellon is, for most other lecturers, a theoretical lecture if it were to be their last. Since he has advanced pancreatic cancer, it may well be true for him. This is a great example of living in the now.



If this is not an example of choosing the miracle, I don't think I'll ever find it. If you don't know what you want in your life, how will anyone - including the Universe or God - know what you want? Let Randy Pausch teach us all to make the changes in our lives now.