Week 20, Lesson 131-137, Academy for the Workbook of A Course in Miracles, 5/17/25

Lessons 131-137

12 God knows not of your plans to change His will. ²The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which you thought to govern it.

Defense= Attack= Planning= Sickness

³And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life to death. ⁴You can but choose to think you die or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. ⁵What is created is apart from all of this. ⁶Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. ⁷What is unalterable cannot change, and what is wholly sinless cannot sin.

13 Such is the simple truth. ²It does not make appeal to might nor triumph. ³It does not command obedience, nor seek to prove how pitiful and futile your attempts to plan defenses which would alter it. ⁴It merely wants to give you happiness, for such its purpose is. ⁵Perhaps it sighs a little when you throw away its gifts. ⁶And yet it knows with perfect certainty that what God wills for you must be received.

14 It is this fact which demonstrates that time is an illusion, for it lets you think what God has given you is not the truth right now, as it must be. ²The thoughts of God are quite apart from time. ³For time is but another meaningless defense you made against the truth. ⁴Yet what God wills is here, and you remain as He created you.
☀️[CE W-136.12-14]

1 Only love is strong, because it is undivided. ²The strong do not attack, because they see no need to do so. ³Before the idea of attack can enter your mind, you must have perceived yourself as weak.
☀️[CE T-12.VIII.1:1-3]

Beginning to understand true choice and forgiveness.

²If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment, or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick.
☀️[CE W-136.20:2]

4 Love cannot suffer, because it cannot attack. ²The remembrance of love therefore brings invulnerability with it. ³Do not side with sickness in the presence of a Son of God, even if he believes in it, for your acceptance of God in him acknowledges the love of God which he has forgotten.
☀️[CE T-10.III.4:1-3]

9 Healing, forgiveness, and the glad exchange of all the world of sorrow for a world where sadness cannot enter are the means by which the Holy Spirit urges you to follow Him.
☀️[CE W-137.9:1]

6 There is no world! ²This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. ³Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. ⁴He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.
☀️[CE W-132.6]

6 One thing is sure: Hallucinations serve a purpose, and when that purpose is no longer held, they disappear. ²Therefore, the question never is whether you want them, but always, do you want the purpose that they serve?
☀️[CE T-20.VIII.6:1-2]

³This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have.
☀️[CE W-133.2:3]

7 But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. ²Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. ³Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. ⁴Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.

8 And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today. ²Today’s idea is true because the world does not exist, and if it is indeed your own imagining, then you can loose it from all things you ever thought it was by merely changing all the thoughts that gave it these appearances.
☀️[CE W-132.7-8]

³Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult...
12 What is the gain to you in learning this? ²It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain. ³Heaven itself is reached by empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own.
☀️[CE W-133.11-12]

4 Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat which has been judged as real? ²All this cannot be done unconsciously.
³But afterwards your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent, a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by yourself.
☀️[CE W-136.4]

⁵A madman thinks the world he sees is real and does not doubt it. ⁶Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts’ effects. ⁷It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last. [CE W-132.1:4-7]

…you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. [CE W-134.2:1]
The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth and not illusions.
☀️[CE W-134.3:1]

135. If I defend myself I am attacked
1 Who would defend himself unless he thought he was attacked, that the attack was real, and that his own defense could save himself? ²And herein lies the folly of defense: It gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. ³It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult.

2 And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish. ²You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is happening, because it must contain what threatens you. ³A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness, a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense. The world is based on this insane belief. ☀️(L.135)

5 Healing might thus be called a counter-dream, which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth, but not in truth itself. ²Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred. ³Just as the real world will arise to take the place of what has never been at all, healing but offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas which dreams embroider into pictures of the truth.
☀️[CE W-137.5]

=========================
How to donate:
The classes are freely given and payment is not required to attend.
Your donations are appreciated and helpful. Suggested donation $10-20 or more per class.

Donation methods:
Venmo: Brian Theard @teachonlylove
PayPal: miraclesarenatural@gmail.com, This is Brian Theard’s personal paypal account.

To avoid fees, when asked…
What’s it for? Enter something like - donation, gift, thank you, friendship or love!

Choose payment type, select “For friends and family”.
To send without a fee requires using a checking account, not credit card.
✨🤲✨