Read on the ACIM CE App: https://acimce.app/:W-53
Lesson 53
Review I
Practice Instructions
See Practice Instructions Review I
Commentary
Today’s review carries enormous impact for me. In each of the short review paragraphs are sentences that convey to me the awesome power of my own mind: its power to choose its thoughts, and thus choose the world that it sees.
I have real thoughts as well as insane ones. I can therefore see a real world, if I look to my real thoughts as my guide for seeing. (1:4-5)
I am grateful that this world is not real, and that I need not see it at all unless I choose to value it. And I do not choose to value what is totally insane and has no meaning. (2:5-6)
Now I choose to withdraw this belief and place my trust in reality. In choosing this, I will escape all the effects of the world of fear, because I am acknowledging that it does not exist. (3:7-8)
Let me remember the power of my decision and recognize where I really abide. (4:6)
The images I have made cannot prevail against Him because it is not my will that they do so. My will is His, and I will place no other gods before Him. (5:6-7)
If I remember the power of my decision, I can choose not to value what is insane; I can choose to withdraw my belief in it. I do not have to accept that the images I have made have power to overcome God’s Will; I do not have to make gods out of them. I can look to my real thoughts and let them guide my seeing. The words “choose” and “decision” and “will” echo through these paragraphs. What power has been given to my mind!
I once read these ten review lessons onto tape; they fit on less than a 30-minute tape, read quite slowly. Recording them had tremendous impact on me, and listening to the tape several dozen times had even more impact. These fifty pithy paragraphs are a remarkable overview of the Course’s thought system. And as I read them aloud, I found myself putting deep feeling into sentences such as “I cannot live in peace in such a world. I am grateful that this world is not real, and…I do not choose to value what is totally insane and has no meaning” (2:4-6). Every time I came to a line that said, “I do not choose” or “I choose,” it was as though something deep within me was shifting. I felt a growing determination, and a sense of being enabled by God to choose what my mind would think and what my perception would see. Try reading today’s lesson aloud and see how it feels.