In this video recording of a class given as part of the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum led by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise, Bruce Rawles reads and discusses A Course In Miracles Workbook Lesson 197: “It can be but my gratitude I earn.” – W-pI.197. Both this lesson and Workbook Lesson 195 provide us with opportunities to look at ego’s substitute for real gratitude – a.k.a. gratitude to destroy. In Lesson 195 we explore ego’s comparative “gratitude” and in this lesson, we’re alerted to ego’s conditional gratitude, which can be nullified if we’re not compensated by outcomes in the world that are to our personal liking.
Here are the first three paragraphs from his lesson:
“Here is the second step we take to free your mind from the belief in outside force pitted against your own. You make attempts at kindness and forgiveness. Yet you turn them to attack again, unless you find external gratitude and lavish thanks. Your gifts must be received with honor, lest they be withdrawn. And so you think God’s gifts are loans at best; at worst, deceptions which would cheat you of defenses, to ensure that when He strikes He will not fail to kill.
How easily are God and guilt confused by those who know not what their thoughts can do. Deny your strength, and weakness must become salvation to you. See yourself as bound, and bars become your home. Nor will you leave the prison house, or claim your strength, until guilt and salvation are not seen as one, and freedom and salvation are perceived as joined, with strength beside them, to be sought and claimed, and found and fully recognized.
The world must thank you when you offer it release from your illusions. Yet your thanks belong to you as well, for its release can only mirror yours. Your gratitude is all your gifts require, that they be a lasting offering of a thankful heart, released from hell forever. Is it this you would undo by taking back your gifts, because they were not honored? It is you who honor them and give them fitting thanks, for it is you who have received the gifts.” – W.pI.197.1-3
This video interleaves content from Lesson 197 with related commentary by Kenneth Wapnick from his insightful work Journey Through The Workbook (Volume 6 on Lesson 197).
(This recording was made August 26, 2020.)
See also Undoing Gratitude to Destroy: Workbook Lesson 195.
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