Does ‘All Things Are Lessons God Would Have Me Learn’ Mean I’m Being Punished? | ACIM Lesson 193

So often in the spiritual / metaphysical world, people reach for the “lesson” explanation when talking about why something difficult or painful happened. As if suffering is some kind of necessary prerequisite for learning.

A Course in Miracles presents a completely opposite take on this in Workbook lesson 193,

“All things are lessons God would have me learn.”

W-pI.193

The first line of the lesson is,

“God does not know of learning.”

Boom!

So much for blaming God for making us go through hard sh*t to teach us stuff.

God does not understand learning because He knows that in Truth, our Reality is that we are a perfect extension of His being and as such we possess all knowledge. 

However, that Reality is outside our awareness because we are still asleep and dreaming that we’re in this world, and in that context our awakening does depend on our learning what the truth is.

So what are the lessons God would have us learn?

Well, for starters – here’s our learning objective aka God’s will for us:

“He wills the happiness His Son inherited of Him be undisturbed; eternal and forever gaining scope, eternally expanding in the joy of full creation, and eternally open and wholly limitless in Him.”

So… complete happiness and joy with no limitation increasing forever?

Ummmm… Yes please – I’ll have what He’s having. 

Basically, this lesson is reminding us that it is our contradictions of the truth – our perception of fear in this world and what appears to happen in it – that causes our suffering. We require help in correcting our perception and transforming it to love so that we can actually see with true vision rather than perceiving with our senses.

In our perception there is an overwhelming and seemingly insurmountable number of ways in which we experience pain in the world. We begin with the erroneous idea that we have (or ever could be) willfully separated from God and our brothers. This results in our belief that we are guilty, and we project that guilt outward in vain attempts to try and be free of it.

It shows up within our own bodies in countless manifestations of sickness and dis-ease, and in our minds in the myriad of mental illnesses we experience. 

We keep projecting our separation-crazy in the form of conflict.

It starts close to home in our interpersonal relationships, and keeps expanding to larger and larger groups of people in the form of political, racial, religious, and all other forms of conflict – eventually extending to entire countries attempting to overtake one another. 

But this lesson is telling us that those things – all things – are opportunities for us to apply the one practice that will heal them all, because they are all the same.

All of our difficulties, our problems, and our pain are the result of our unforgiveness.

So the one lesson that God would have us learn in order to end all forms of suffering is

“Forgive, and you will see this differently.”

ACIM W-pI.193.3:7

The Course further affirms,

“And as we practice, let us think about all things we saved to settle by ourselves, and kept apart from healing. Let us give them all to Him Who knows the way to look upon them so that they will disappear.”

W-pI.193.11:4-5

Essentially, Jesus is asking us how us handling our conflict and problems on our own is working out for us so far.

Imma go out on a limb here and say that it isn’t, as evidenced by the afore-mentioned bazillion ways in which we are polarized from others, ourselves, and God.

Our practice, then, is very simple. It’s the shortest version of the miracle the Course gifts us with: seven words to transform any situation or experience: 

“I will forgive, and this will disappear.” 

The one lesson God would have us learn is to be happy for all eternity.

This mantra is the Holy Grail.

It will change your life.

Does ‘All Things Are Lessons God Would Have Me Learn’ Mean I’m Being Punished? | ACIM Lesson 193

I love you.

Kelly

Kelly Russell, The Rock Your Joy Coach

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