Teachings of Christ Mind

^13.1 Now that we have established the consistency of our former purpose, that of establishing your identity, and our new purpose, that of the miracle that will allow you to exist as who you are in human form, we may proceed unencumbered by any doubt you might have had concerning whether or not you would desire the new goal toward which we work.

^13.2 We proceed by further defining the temptations of the human experience. In “A Treatise on the Art of Thought,” we spoke of these temptations in regards to extremes of the human experience, saying that these things that draw you from the peace of God draw you from the state in which you are aware of who you are, and so cause you to be aware only of a self of human experience, or a personal self. While you may still feel a connection to God during such times, you will not be dwelling within the peace of God. Your Self and God will be but memories to you while your reality remains that of the physical experience and the personal self. In such times you can conceive only of a God outside of yourself and trust not in the benevolence of the experience, whether it be an extreme experience of pain or of pleasure. You begin to fear that pleasure will end or that pain will not end. Once fear has entered, doubt and guilt are never far behind.

^13.3 These temptations will concern you less and less as we uncover their true meaning by looking beyond the experiences themselves to the cause.

^13.4 Broad brushstrokes have been made now, giving you the beginnings of a vision of a life in physical form that will not include the very temptations we are beginning to lay out. Because you have made these things that would but seem to tempt you, you have believed in them and their ability to affect you. You have unlearned many of these lessons and need not repeat unlearning that has been accomplished. The new learning that lies ahead of you now is simply learning in accordance with the new thought system of the truth; accepting the truth and leaving illusion behind. The new thought system is simple to learn. What is of love is truth. What is of fear is illusion. The temptation is to see love where it is not and to not see fear where it is. But your ability to distinguish between love and fear as cause is all that is important now as you will create the new according to what you believe to be the truth and translate into ideas.

^13.5 Remember now that pleasure and pain as perceived by the body are from the same source. That source has not been the body but your beliefs about your body and yourself. You have believed pleasure to come at a cost, the cost of pain. You have believed in the laws of man, laws that were made to perpetuate the idea that you must pay for everything, or earn everything that you would care to make your own, and then that you must protect what you have against those who would take it away.

^13.6 This is a simple place to start because each of you are tempted to hang on to this idea despite all that it has cost you. To replace this idea with the idea of there being no loss but only gain under the laws of love, is to resist the temptation of requiring yourself to pay for what you gain.

^13.7 I say this is a simple place to start because you can put this new idea into practice today and every day by simply refusing the temptation to believe in concepts such as earning and paying. How you implement this idea will be your choice. But the idea that you do not have to earn your way nor pay your way must be birthed and lived by. While most of you will immediately think of your survival needs, this is far from the only area in which the idea of earning or paying your way can be found. This old idea is consistent with all beliefs of an “if this then that” nature. You might start practicing this idea by repeating these words to yourself:

^13.8 “I am safe and nothing that I do or do not do will threaten my safety.”

^13.9 As you say these words you will realize that you do believe in them. You believe, but you cannot imagine the truth of these words really being represented in the life you live here. This you must now do. You must represent the truth of these words with your life.

^13.10 You are not, however, meant to test these words with foolish acts. To do so would be to act as if this were magic rather than the truth. To act as if this is the truth is what you are called to do. You may even begin by something as simple as choosing one thing a day that you will change to reflect the fact that you have accepted this new idea. Choose an act that will cause you no fear to begin with. For instance, you might tell yourself something such as this: “I have an idea that if I sleep as long as I feel I need to sleep in the morning, I will awake refreshed and ready for my day and no dire consequences will befall me from this action.” Another act might be as simple as allowing yourself to freely spend a small amount of money each day that you ordinarily would not spend, always with the idea in mind that this will not affect your budget in any negative respect.

^13.11 While these examples may seem so simple that you regard them as little more than the self-help kind of advice I have said this Course would not provide, they are but aids to help you in the development of your own ideas. If you remember that all of your ideas are to be based on love, you will not fail to birth ideas of consequence.

^13.12 The second aspect of this lesson will then be regarding your ideas about the consequences that seem to result from whatever action your ideas have suggested. You must birth the idea of having no reason to fear these consequences, no matter what they may be. You must, in truth, birth the idea of benevolence and abundance.

^13.13 Notice that the simple examples I gave were examples of action. Ideas can certainly be birthed without the need for action, but one of the factors that distinguishes an idea from a belief is a requirement of action. That action, while not necessarily physical, is the action of giving birth. Realize that you believe in many things that did not originate with yourself. But it is not until you have your own ideas about those beliefs that you own those beliefs in terms of making them your beliefs. To believe without forming your own ideas about your beliefs is to be in danger of succumbing to false beliefs.

^13.14 To form your own ideas is to be creative. Forming your own ideas happens in relationship. Taking action on your ideas forms a relationship between your physical form and your Self as your physical self represents, in form, the thought or image produced within the Self. Ideas, in the context in which we are speaking of them here, are thoughts or images originating from the Self and being represented by the personal self. It is only in this way that the personal self will be able to represent the Self in truth.