PERCEPTION IS A MIRROR

Discipling our minds, retraining our perceptions, changes the world….

Jan 14, 2024

A mirror in the desert reflects the sunset — Our World Reflects Our Mind

I read and listen to a lot of inspirational things throughout the day and into the night. Having something playing softly while I sleep, whether it’s chakra balancing music or someone chanting, I believe that the information is being absorbed into my mind, awakening me and enlivening my mind to become more and more aware of my true nature, which is Spirit.

And… once every so often, I read or hear something that makes me stop, sit up and take notice. It puts every fiber of my being on alert: Here is something I need to know!

Today was such a day.

Listening to my A Course in Miracles lesson for the day, Lesson 304 this line leaped out:

Perception is a mirror, not a fact.

And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.

(ACIM: Lesson 304:3-4)

Whoa!

This concept is fundamental in the Course, but I’ve never encountered it in such a clear and simple way.

What I see – what I perceive – “out there” is not really out there. It’s in here!

What I perceive is what is in my mind. And then it bounces back at me. It is reflected in my perception – instantaneously.

All of it. What I see personally in front of me on the streets of Paris; what I see on the news — It all comes from me, and it comes right back at me.

Twice in the Text of the Course, this line appears:

Projection makes perception.

(ACIM: Text:13:3:5 and Text 21:Introduction:1)

We are projectors. We project our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, ideas, “knowledge” onto people, things, situations, etc. and then that person, place, thing, or situation flashes back to us, reflecting what we projected onto it.

In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, written almost 50 years before the Course, these lines appear:

Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation- some fact of my life- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment…. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.
(Page 417, Alcoholics Anonymous)

Further on in it says:

When I focus on what’s good today, I have a good day, and when I focus on what’s bad, I have a bad day. If I focus on a problem, the problem increases; if I focus on the answer, the answer increases.
(Page 419, Alcoholics Anonymous)

So, not long after I finished my ACIM lesson, I was walking the dogs and listening to an Abraham-Hicks talk on YouTube.

At the 6:13 mark in the video, Abraham says this:

….you want somebody else to do something so that you can feel better and… you got to give that up. You're living a very conditional love. You're saying, “That condition feels good to me, and that condition feels bad to me, so [fix] that condition…. then I'll feel better.”
And [that] is… sloppy thinking. You're saying, “I don't want to ever have to deliberately direct my thoughts. I want… to figure out how to control the world so that… most of what I see will make me feel good.”
What you [really] want [is] the discipline to turn your thoughts… use your willpower… use your determination… you want to use… everything… [to] direct your thought toward the things that feel good. [Then] you will have not a problem in the world…
(Abraham-Hicks talk, January 13, 2024)

In other words, if conditions determine how we feel and what we do – how we respond – that is a conditional way of living.

Because projection makes perception – then the Universal answer is to go inside and see what we’re thinking and how we’re feeling first.

And if we find ourselves perturbed, uneasy, stressed, sad, lonely, or any other of the Pandora’s Box of ill-feeling emotions, we cannot depend on conditions changing to make us feel better.

Instead, we can depend on our ability to discipline our thinking and feeling. If we practice moving them to a higher vibrational level, then the world we see, the world we perceive, will shift automatically to line up with our new perception.

Abraham-Hicks says later in the same talk:

…your brain it's not a storage cabinet where there are all these memories and things. It's a transmitting and receiving mechanism. So the fact that you've been thinking a lot of thoughts about a lot of things means you've got some momentum going….

Thoughts and feelings, left unmonitored and unchecked, build up steam. We need to pay attention and stop them before they gain momentum.

This is where practice, practice, practice comes in. If you are like most people who are living and feeling based on outer conditions – we need to train our minds and emotional system to calibrate not to conditions, but to our disciplined direction. So, pay close attention to thoughts and feelings, and catch the negative ones early, when they are easily managed and re-directed.

Abraham uses the analogy of a car on a hill. If your car starts rolling down a hill, you can easily stop it – if you catch it right away. If you wait too long, you are not going to stop it halfway down the hill. There’s too much momentum at that point.

Same with our thoughts. Same with our feelings. Same with our minds.

The Course says it this way in Lesson 64, Let me not forget my function.

Today’s idea is merely another way of saying “Let me not wander into temptation.” Your function here is to be the light of the world…. practice with these thoughts:

Let me not forget my function.

Let me not try to substitute mine for God’s.

Let me forgive and be happy.

In the frequent applications of today’s idea throughout the day, devote several minutes to reviewing these thoughts, and then thinking about them and about nothing else. This will be difficult, at first particularly, since you are not proficient in the mind discipline that it requires. You may need to repeat “Let me not forget my function” quite often to help you concentrate.
(ACIM, W-64 emphasis added)

When we realize (seeing with real-eyes) that we have agency over our minds, our thinking and feeling; when we realize that this is the “answer to all my problems”; when we come to believe that projection makes perception then we have the greatest of all the gifts the Universe has for us:

Freedom!

Look carefully at what you see today. Look carefully at what your mind is doing today.

As I say in Prosperity Now!, quoting a powerful idea from Eric Butterworth:

Our job is not to set things right. Our job is to see things right.

I will close with this amazing Butterworth quote:

Right seeing is the fundamental essence of truth.

Metaphysics is a technique in right seeing.

Happy Sunday,

Johnny

PERCEPTION IS A MIRROR

Discipling our minds, retraining our perceptions, changes the world….

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