The Two Visions

A Course in Miracles talks about two “visions”, “sights”, or “perceptions”. (In my translation into plain language I used only “perception” for clarity). This “seeing” is not done with the body’s eyes. It is an inner seeing. It occurs in the mind from one of two unconnected places in your mind. It is much like these two visions are two different platforms in your mind. One platform, the lower platform, is in the world. On that platform you are very involved with the world. You can move around on that platform and look at the world from different angles, but all of those angles are on the same level. The change in view is not a real change. It is simply a different angle on the same thing. For example, you learn something new about someone and you “see them in a new light”. Outwardly they have not changed, so you do not “see” them in a new physical light. You see them from a new point of view within your mind. Your inner vision of them changed. You stood in a different place on that lower platform and saw them from a new angle.

The other platform is outside of and above the lower platform and its world. This platform, or Vision, is detached from the other, lower platform and can see that it and the world it seems to be in are not real. On that platform you merely observe the lower platform without judgment. When you “see” from that higher platform you experience a true shift, or change. This Vision is what ACIM calls a miracle, the Holy Spirit’s Vision, Christ’s Vision, or the Real World. (When you are wholly in that Vision I refer to it as a “higher miracle”).

So the shift in vision that ACIM talks about is not merely a “nicer” view of the world.  It is a shift to a whole other part of your mind that has nothing to do with the body, the thought system of the body (ego/personal thought system), or the world. Sometimes when I tell a client that I can see that something in the world is not real they ask, “But don’t you still see (some form)?” Yes, the body’s eyes still report forms. But when I see something is not real I am standing on the higher platform. In that Vision I do not just see as unreal what the body’s eyes are reporting at the moment. That Vision transcends the entire lower platform. In that Vision I see that the image that the body’s eyes report, the entire world it seems to be in, the body itself, and the inner vision of the thought system of the body are not real. It is a wholesale shift in vision that transcends the entire experience of the universe of form.

Next week’s article will discuss this Vision and the Holy Relationship.

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Learn about the books The ACIM Mentor Articles, The Plain Language A Course in Miracles, 4 Habits for Inner Peace, and Releasing Guilt for Inner Peace at www.acimmentor.com.

You can listen to Regina Dawn Akers' interview of Liz last Sunday by clicking on the link on the first page of www.acimmentor.com.