Lesson 023: ”I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.”
AI Reframe: Letting go of hostile or defensive thinking brings freedom.
Suggested Exercise:
Five times, for about a minute each, look about you and repeat today’s idea:
I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.
Then, close your eyes and search your mind for any attack thoughts or thoughts of being attacked that occur to you. With each one say to yourself:
I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts about ______________.
Then dismiss the thought in search of the next one.
View timelapse of the coloring of today’s mandala
on My YouTube Channel:
https://youtu.be/UlmjwtJt8ho?si=sA0K0t8xc4pBA4bH.
Message
This lesson tells us that if we want to experience peace and love, all we need to do is give up our attack thoughts—those thoughts that attack our peace. These thoughts arise when we choose to see the world through the filter of fear, which the Course reminds us is not real.
Simple, right?
In truth, we are already the embodiment of love and peace. But when the ego-mind takes the driver’s seat, everything we see gets filtered through fear, creating a veil between us and our inherent Self.
Lesson 23 is essentially saying this: if you want to change how you experience the world, you must change your thoughts about it. Just as “I think, therefore I am” applies on a personal level, it also applies to the world we see. The outer world is the effect; our thoughts are the cause.
The real challenge, then, is catching ourselves before we get hypnotized by what the mind calls chaos:
“But look what’s happening over here.”
“What about what that person is doing?”
“What if they go to war?”
Can you feel the fear oozing out of those thoughts?
As the lesson states:
“If the cause of the world you see is attack thoughts, you must learn that it is these thoughts which you do not want… There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world.”
And later:
“You are not trapped in the world you see, because its cause can be changed.”
The process is simple, though not always easy: identify the attack thoughts, let them go, and allow them to be replaced. If the first two steps are done, the third happens automatically.
And, as luck—or Spirit—would have it, I got to practice this in real time.
During a group Zoom session this morning, I found myself becoming increasingly annoyed with one of the participants. Agitated. Escalating. Then—thankfully—I remembered today’s lesson.
I’ll be honest: applying it wasn’t graceful. The ego immediately chimed in with a classic “yes, but…”
“Yes, but she’s going on and on.”
“Yes, but she’s taking over the whole session.”
“Yes, but she thinks she knows everything.”
Sound familiar?
My way of letting go was simple: I kept repeating today’s idea until I could feel the attack thoughts soften and my peace begin to return.
Did this change her behavior?
No.
What changed was my relationship to it.
Was there still a twinge of irritation lingering? Yes. But the volume dropped. The edge softened. And peace—real peace—had room to re-enter.
As we’ve been reminded again and again throughout these lessons, this work is not about changing what we see. It’s about changing our thoughts—our response—to what we see.
And that’s how we loosen our grip on the world we made… and remember the peace that was never actually lost. ✨
“Lesson 23…offers the secret key to the ocean of love that all these spiritual practices keep promising. It offers escape from the closed psychological structures that cause our pain, our problem.”
— “The Course in Miracles Experiment” by Pam Grout
Blessings & Peace,
Maureen, The Mandala Lady
transforming soul whispers into mandalas and channeled messages for clarity, peace, and love
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