We are a week into the E-course on A Course in Miracles and I am finding it a useful addition to my spiritual practices. In the first week, a very helpful lesson was the reminder from the ACIM Workbook (Lesson 34), entitled “I could see peace instead of this.”
The text from the Workbook encourages the reader to “search your mind for fear thoughts, anxiety-producing situations, ‘offending’ personalities or events, or anything else about which you are harboring unloving thoughts.” Then as each one arises in your mind, you are to repeat: “I could see peace in this situation instead of what I now see in it.” With that, you let go of whatever thought was troubling you.
Unless you’re a hermit in a remote desert (and maybe even then), you’re going to have situations arise in the course of day-to-day interactions with people that irritate you, frustrate you, annoy you, frighten you, disgust you, or upset you in some other way. As your normal, usual reactions occur, you can put the brakes on immediately with the thought from Lesson 34: “I could see peace instead of this.”
Another expression for the same rethinking is: “I could experience peace in this situation instead of what I am experiencing now.”
God be with you in increasing the peacefulness of your life.
