Lesson 9 — I see nothing as it is now.

Day - 9 ACIM Alex Puglia.pdf

Download PDF • 100KB

1. The Lesson

"I see nothing as it is now."

This lesson gently challenges the way we think we understand the world. It invites us to recognize that our seeing is not fresh or clear—it is shaped entirely by the past. Everything we think we know, everything we perceive, has already been interpreted, filtered, categorized by memory. And so, we don’t see truth—we see memory.

The practice for today is simple but profound. Look around and apply the idea:

• “I do not see this rug as it is now.”

• “I do not see this face as it is now.”

• “I do not see this moment as it is now.”

With each statement, we are loosening our grip on false knowing and opening the mind to the possibility that vision—true vision—requires surrender.

2. Explanation

This lesson rests on a foundation laid early in the Textbook. Two central ideas from the text help anchor this teaching:

• “You see only the past.” (T-13.V.5)

  
  

  What we call “the present” is layered with our interpretations of it. We think we’re seeing reality, but we are really projecting our past thoughts onto people, objects, and experiences. This is why we often repeat patterns—we aren't seeing what is, we're seeing what was.

• “The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself.” (T-11.VII.1:1-2)

  
  

  Perception in the ego’s hands becomes a tool for separation. But perception in the Holy Spirit’s hands becomes a doorway to healing. The world is reinterpreted—not as a place of threat or pain—but as a classroom, a mirror, a reflection of the mind in need of forgiveness.

In John 5:6, before healing the man at the pool of Bethesda, Jesus asks a simple but piercing question:

“Do you want to be made well?”

This shows us something crucial—the miracle isn’t just about healing the body. It begins with the remembrance of truth. With desire. With surrender. Jesus doesn’t treat symptoms; he reveals illusions. The true healing is the return to connection—to God, to love, to the inner source. The body’s restoration is merely a visible sign of a deeper spiritual shift.

3. Integration

The Christian path speaks of this unveiling. In 2 Corinthians 3:16–18, Paul writes:

“But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory,are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory,which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

The veil Paul speaks of is the same veil Lesson 9 reveals—the mental filter that keeps us from seeing God, from seeing ourselves, from seeing others as they are now. This veil is not made of fabric, but of judgment, of trauma, of history. As we return to Christ-consciousness, the veil dissolves. We stop relying on the past to interpret the present. And in that shift, healing happens.

Early Church mystics like Gregory of Nyssa wrote that the soul must purify its inner eyes to behold God. They taught that spiritual vision grows clearer not by striving but by surrender—by removing the veils layer by layer, through love.

4. Bible Verses and New Meaning

• John 5:6 – “Do you want to be made well?”

  
  

  Jesus’s question reveals the truth: healing is not something done to us—it is a remembering of what’s already within us.

  
  

• 2 Corinthians 3:16–18 – “Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away...”

  
  

  What blinds us is not the world but our belief in separation. As that belief is undone, the light of God floods back in.

  
  

• Matthew 9:5 – “Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?”

  
  

  Jesus points to a deeper healing. Forgiveness, remembrance, and union are not separate from physical healing—they are its root.

  
  

Traditional view: These verses have often been interpreted as demonstrations of Jesus’s divine authority.

Mystical view: They are invitations for us to awaken. The miracles are not magic tricks—they are revelations. Proof that healing follows the removal of the veil. That when the mind remembers its oneness with God, the body follows.

5. Message to Friends

When Jesus asked the man by the tank if he wanted to be made well, the man didn’t say yes. He answered with all the reasons life had given him for why he wasn’t healed. He blamed others—said no one was there to help him, said others always got ahead of him. But Jesus’s question was the answer. The man wasn’t sick because people failed him. He was sick because he had lived his whole life believing he was a victim—believing that healing was outside of him, that his power was in someone else's hands.

And that is where most of us live. Waiting. Blaming. Explaining. Forgetting.

Jesus didn’t need to touch him. He just needed him to see. “By your faith you are healed” doesn’t mean the healer had power—it means the one being healed remembered. The veil dropped. And suddenly, he saw himself as he truly was: not broken, not lost, not sick, but a radiant extension of God. A powerful healing machine wired for wholeness.

And now, even science is catching up. In the field of epigenetics, Dr. Bruce Lipton teaches that the environment we believe we live in—not the environment itself, but our perception of it—alters the way our cells behave. This means that stress, fear, guilt, and shame don’t just weigh on our minds—they manifest physically in our bodies. Chronic illness and inflammation are, in many cases, the result of a mind stuck seeing the world through old trauma and fear. Our biology, it turns out, is following our belief system.

Dr. Joe Dispenza and others now show through clinical studies and brain scans that people who imagine a healed version of themselves—who mentally “see” a body whole, joyful, free—begin to biologically shift toward that vision. Their cells, immune systems, and chemistry start responding to a new message. A Course in Miracles called this decades ago: “I see nothing as it is now.” And yet, by seeing anew, we begin to heal.

We’ve long believed that religion must catch up with science, but now the reverse is happening. Quantum physics, neuroscience, epigenetics, and countless labs across the globe are proving what mystics have always known—that healing comes from connection, from meaning, from the unseen realm. Books like Awakened Mind by Lisa Miller suggest that depression is not a malfunction, but the cry of the soul—a demand to return to God.

And this is the heart of Jesus’ healing ministry. Before every miracle, he would ask: Do you want to be healed? Or he would say: Your sins are forgiven. Or even more provocatively: What is easier—to say “your sins are forgiven” or “get up and walk”? Always bringing the person back to the root cause. Always pointing not to the symptoms, but to the veil—the belief in separation.

That is the disease. And union is the cure.

As we allow the fog to lift, as we see clearly with the eyes of the Spirit, the ego is put back in its place. The mind returns to creating truth, not illusions. And our bodies follow suit. They become what they were designed to be—not prisons of pain, but temples of light.