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Lesson 181
Lesson 181

I trust my brothers, who are one with me.

Trusting your brothers is essential to establishing and holding up your faith in your ability to transcend doubt and lack of sure conviction in yourself. When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by what you have perceived in him. You do not look beyond his errors. Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to your awareness of the Self that lies beyond your own mistakes, and past his seeming sins as well as yours.


Perception has a focus. It is this which gives consistency to what you see. Change but this focus, and what you behold will change accordingly. Your vision now will shift to give support to the intent which has replaced the one you held before. Remove your focus on your brother's sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in you. And you will not transcend their sight and see the sinlessness that lies beyond.


Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such little focuses give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent. We instruct our minds that it is this we seek and only this, for just a little while. We do not care about our future goals, and what we saw an instant previous has no concern for us within this interval of time wherein we practice changing our intent. We seek for innocence and nothing else. We seek for it with no concern but now.


A major hazard to success has been involvement with your past and future goals. You have been quite preoccupied with how extremely different the goals this course is advocating are from those you held before. And you have also been dismayed by the depressing and restricting thought that, even if you should succeed, you will inevitably lose your way again. How could this matter? For the past is gone; the future but imagined. These concerns are but defenses against present change of focus in perception. Nothing more.


We lay these pointless limitations by a little while. We do not look to past beliefs, and what we will believe will not intrude upon us now. We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within. We recognize that we have lost this goal if anger blocks our way in any form. And if a brother's sins occur to us, our narrowed focus will restrict our sight and turn our eyes upon our own mistakes, which we will magnify and call our sins.


So, for a little while, without regard to past or future, should such blocks arise, we will transcend them with instructions to our minds to change their focus, as we say:

It is not this that I would look upon.

I trust my brothers, who are one with me.


And we will also use these thoughts to keep us safe throughout the day. We do not seek for long range goals. As each obstruction seems to block the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an instant from the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and uncorrected will remain.


Nor do we ask for fantasies. For what we seek to look upon is really there. And as our focus goes beyond mistakes, we will behold a wholly sinless world. When seeing this is all we want to see, when this is all we seek for in the name of true perception, are the eyes of Christ inevitably ours. And the love He feels for us becomes our own as well. This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves.


The world which once proclaimed our sins becomes the proof that we are sinless. And our love for everyone we look upon attests to our remembrance of the holy Self Which knows no sin, and never could conceive of anything without Its sinlessness. We seek for this remembrance as we turn our minds to practicing today. We look neither ahead nor backwards. We look straight into the present. And we give our trust to the experience we ask for now. Our sinlessness is but the Will of God. This instant is our willing one with His.

✨ Summary & practice

Trust your brothers, they are yourself.

This lesson teaches you something very important: to trust yourself and rise above the doubt within you, you must first trust your brothers. When you attack someone, through a word, a thought, or a judgment, you declare that this person is limited by what you perceived in them. In letting go of the focus on the sins of others, we experience the peace born of faith in innocence. The exercises consist of allowing the small points of focus to give way to your deeper need for your own innocence to become visible.

Perception works like a projector: it has a point of focus that makes everything you see coherent. If you change only this point of focus, everything you see changes too. Stop focusing on your brother’s sins, and you will experience the peace that comes from faith in innocence.

Here is how to practice today: first, let all these small points of focus give way to your deep need to let your innocence become visible. Instruct your mind that this is what you seek, and only this, just for a brief moment. Do not worry about your future goals. By integrating this wisdom, you transform every moment into an opportunity to return to true peace.

Practice:

Today, take three times five minutes to sit quietly. Repeat the idea of the day and let your mind rest in the thought that your brothers are innocent. When a judgmental thought arises against someone, gently say to yourself: 'I let this point of focus give way to peace.' Observe how your perception of this person changes when you stop focusing on their mistakes.

Remember: your trust in your brothers is nothing other than the trust God has placed in you, for in truth you are one in your creation.

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