Lesson 22: What I See Is a Form of Vengeance

Sarah

Welcome to The Daily Lesson — a podcast powered by AI and grounded in the teachings and original text of A Course in Miracles. I'm Sarah, and I'm here with Marcus, and this is Lesson 22: What I see is a form of vengeance. Twenty-one days of looking at how we see, and today the Workbook turns around and describes what we have been doing to the world while we looked at it.

Marcus

The dry cleaner got there first. Every time. Yesterday was Lesson 21, "I am determined to see things differently." Five periods, a full minute each, eyes closed, hunting through your own mind for situations that make you angry and saying the line with the person's real name in it. I had a landlord queued up and ready. Three weeks of unanswered emails about a pipe. A legitimate grievance, properly documented. And every time I closed my eyes, the man who shrank a wool sweater of mine three years ago arrived ahead of him.

Sarah

A sweater. (laughs)

Marcus

A good sweater. My dog left the room around period three. I got four of the five in. The fifth one I skipped, which is a fifth of the assignment, and I skipped it because I did not want to say his name out loud again. —...

Sarah

I have less to be proud of than that. I sat down, closed my eyes, and spent the entire minute assembling the case against an email from my sister. Point by point. I never searched for anything. I just prosecuted. And somewhere around forty seconds I noticed I was enjoying it, which is the part I'd rather not have noticed.

Marcus

You built a closing argument.

Sarah

I built a closing argument. And today's lesson takes that impulse and shows us what it has done to everything we look at. Let me read Lesson 22 in full. —... Lesson 22. What I see is a form of vengeance. Today's idea accurately describes the way anyone who holds attack thoughts in his mind must see the world. Having projected his anger onto the world, he sees vengeance about to strike at him. His own attack is thus perceived as self defense. This becomes an increasingly vicious circle until he is willing to change how he sees. Otherwise, thoughts of attack and counterattack will preoccupy him, and people his entire world. What peace of mind is possible to him then? It is from this savage fantasy that you want to escape. Is it not joyous news to hear that it is not real? Is it not a happy discovery to find that you can escape? You made what you would destroy; everything that you hate and would attack and kill. All that you fear does not exist. Look at the world about you at least five times today, for at least a minute each time. As your eyes move slowly from one object to another, from one body to another, say to yourself: "I see only the perishable. I see nothing that will last. What I see is a form of vengeance." At the end of each practice period, ask yourself: "Is this the world I really want to see?" The answer is surely obvious. —...

Marcus

That first paragraph is a closed loop. I throw the anger out, it lands on the world, the world looks like it's about to hit me, so I hit first and file it as defense.

Sarah

And the circle tightens every time around. The lesson says it becomes increasingly vicious until we're willing to change how we see. Willing. That's the only exit it names.

Marcus

Not able. Not qualified. Willing.

Sarah

Which is a much lower bar and somehow a much harder one, because it isn't asking us to stop seeing the world that way today, or to be any good at not seeing it that way, only to be prepared to find out that we were the ones drawing the picture. That's all it wants. Willing.

Marcus

There's a phrase in there I don't follow. Attack and counterattack will "people his entire world." What is it saying we do?

Sarah

We populate it. We fill the place up with figures who are out to get us, and then every one of them is evidence. The lesson doesn't stop at how the world looks. It says who we put in it.

Marcus

Is there something behind that? It reads like there's a mechanism under it that I'm missing.

Sarah

The Text is more specific than the lesson is. It says anger cannot occur unless you believe that you have been attacked, that the attack was justified, and that you are in no way responsible for it. Three things, all of them required.

Marcus

All three, or no anger.

Sarah

All three. Drop any one of them and the whole thing collapses on the spot. And the third is usually the one carrying the weight — I am in no way responsible for it.

Marcus

My sweater man would survive one and two comfortably.

Sarah

They mostly do. (laughs) That's what makes the third one the hinge.

Marcus

Then the second paragraph turns very dark. "You made what you would destroy; everything that you hate and would attack and kill." That's not a gentle sentence.

Sarah

The Course doesn't soften that anywhere. And it doesn't leave it there either. The very next line is that all we fear does not exist.

Marcus

I want to push on that one. My pipe is real. There's water coming through a ceiling regardless of what I think about the man who won't answer his email.

Sarah

The lesson doesn't say the water isn't coming through. Nowhere in these three paragraphs does it tell you your circumstances aren't happening. What it describes is what our attack thoughts do to what we see when we look.

Marcus

So the pipe stays leaking and the vengeance is the part I added.

Sarah

That's as far as the lesson goes, so that's as far as I'll go.

Marcus

Which the lesson calls joyous news. I'll be honest, that isn't where I landed. My first reaction was closer to being caught out. If none of it is real, I've been manufacturing my own misery for a long time.

Sarah

That reaction is in the Text too, and it puts it as a question. Do you prefer that you be right or happy? We'd rather be right, most days. Being right means somebody else is at fault, and the Text is blunt about what that costs — you seek to find an innocence which is not theirs, but yours alone, and at the cost of someone else's guilt.

Marcus

My innocence, billed to him.

Sarah

That's the trade. And we make it without ever writing it down.

Marcus

All right. What does today actually ask.

Sarah

Look at the world around you, at least five times today, at least a minute each time. Eyes open. And let them move slowly, from one object to another, from one body to another, the lesson says.

Marcus

Slowly is doing work in that sentence. And it says objects and bodies. From one body to another. So this includes people.

Sarah

It includes people. Which is the part I'd quietly skip if the lesson let me. It's a very different exercise when the next thing your eyes land on is a person on the other side of the room.

Marcus

A dry cleaner's a body.

Sarah

He is. (laughs) And so is your landlord, and so am I. The lesson doesn't carve out an exception for the ones we like. And as your eyes move, you say the three lines, slowly enough that you actually hear them.

Marcus

I see only the perishable. I see nothing that will last. What I see is a form of vengeance.

Sarah

Then at the end of each period, you ask yourself one question: "Is this the world I really want to see?"

Marcus

And the lesson doesn't wait for our answer.

Sarah

It doesn't. It says the answer is surely obvious, and moves on.

Marcus

Five times, a minute each, with my eyes open. That's the first one in a while I can do in a hallway, without anybody wondering what's wrong with me.

Sarah

I'm doing mine at stoplights and at the sink. Five ordinary places where I'm already standing still. Pick your five, look slowly, and say it: What I see is a form of vengeance. Then ask the question and let the lesson answer it. Lesson 23 tomorrow.

Marcus

The sink. I'll take the sink, and the man who owes me a sweater is getting the period I skipped.