Good morning. We get questions from our YouTube subscribers and so I thought from time to
time I would use these videos as a way of addressing some of these questions. One question
which actually has been asked more than once, not only by our YouTube subscribers but in
workshops, is how come after doing the workbook or while doing the workbook I don't feel any
better. Doesn't the workbook promise or the Course promise that in doing these lessons
my mind would be healed, et cetera? Of course, that's not a promise as such and I think people
who have gone through the workbook and feel that nothing has changed, unfortunately have
omitted reading a sentence right near the end of the workbook that says "This course
is a beginning, not an end." In other words, the purpose of the workbook is to really help
us undergo as students of the Course a one-year training program that sets our feet on the
right path with the right teacher. And that path as I have described other times really
is a path that Jesus leads us on from the state of mindlessness, i.e., identifying as
a body, to the state of mindfulness which is recognizing and remembering that we are
a decision-making mind and we have a choice. That is the journey, and one way of understanding
what the workbook does for us is that it really helps us recognize that everything is going
on in the mind. "Ideas leave not their source," which is a prominent theme not only in the
text and the manual, but also in the workbook, that what we see outside is a projection of
what we see inside. Lesson 23 says that the world we see is a "pictorial representation"
of our attack thoughts. It is to help us recognize that we are minds and not bodies, that things
do not happen to us, that we don't feel happy or sad because of external events. But what
we feel directly comes from what our mind chooses because our mind is the only thing
that there is. Within the illusion, all there is is a split mind and it's healing that split
mind that awakens from the dream of mindlessness and the ego's thought system of guilt back
to the capital "M" Mind that is our true identity of Christ. So that the purpose of the workbook
is really to begin a lifelong process, to once again set our feet on the right journey
with the right teacher so that it would be unusual I think for students to go through
the workbook and feel that their minds were healed, that their lives were appreciably
better. If that happens, all well and good, but it certainly would be a mistake to have
that as an expectation. We are all more than aware of how identified we are with our ego
thought system, how difficult it is even for students, people who have been students of
the Course for ten, twenty, thirty years, to let go of judgment. Our whole identity
is built on judgment. In fact, the ego thought system began with judgment. We were born in
judgment. Being in a body says that we believe that judgment is salvation, seeing other people
as sinful which leaves us as being sinless. It is very difficult just to snap one's course
fingers or do the workbook and be done with the ego. I frequently talk about Freud's discovery
of the phenomenon of resistance, which was a very significant discovery actually, that
his patients did not want to get better, that there was an unconscious resistance to getting
well. Even though that concept is not talked about the way Freud did in A Course in Miracles,
Jesus is certainly referring to it all the way through. That's why within the illusion
of time, our Atonement path takes time. Jesus over and over again refers to this as a process.
He talks about six stages in the "Development of Trust." He talks about when we take his
hand on the journey, the ego becomes retaliative. As we find ourselves walking towards the light,
the ego plunges us back into darkness. So it is obvious as one works through the Course
that this is a process of learning which really means it is a process of learning that our
ego lied to us and our true teacher, the Holy Spirit or Jesus, is the only one who tells
the truth, that the world is not responsible for our dis-ease, our discomfort, our pleasure
or our pain. Indeed, there is no world. Once again, it's a "pictorial representation."
It's an "outside picture of an inward condition," that inward condition being the mind's decision-making
ability, choosing either the ego as its teacher or the Holy Spirit as its teacher. So that
this is a process and what the student should focus on is not having his or her mind healed
and seeing that as a goal to which one should strive and attain. Rather what you should
focus on is your daily lessons and leave the larger picture to your teacher. In other words
to shift images, if you are playing in a symphony orchestra, your job is just to follow the
baton of the conductor and play the notes on your page. It's the conductor's responsibility
how your instrument and all the instruments blend together to form the glorious whole
of the symphony. But your job is just to play what's on your page as best as possible and
follow the conductor's baton which keeps you in rhythm. So that we're not asked in this
course to have our eyes on the larger picture. Our eyes should be on our daily practice and
our daily lessons. And if you do the workbook faithfully and diligently, then at the end
of that one-year training program you will be well on your way to spending the rest of
your life with your teacher learning what it means to be a mind and not to be a mindless
body, learning that forgiveness is indeed the key to happiness and not judgment. But
this takes practice. This takes dedication. This takes devotion and, again, it takes the
day-in and day-out practice of the lessons of forgiveness.