Corresponding Workbook Lesson Themes

For those who work or have worked extensively with the Workbook for Students lesson themes, perhaps committing these to memory and making them a part of their regular meditative practice after completing the 365 formal Workbook exercises, the following Workbook Part 1 and Part 2 Lesson Theme Correspondences may prove fruitful for the deepening of the application of these themes to all of life’s “occurrences.”

It may be recalled that Part 1 of the Workbook, i.e., lessons 1 through 220, addresses “undoing” our normal perception of the world (i.e., loosening the tight fixation it has on our attention), a perception that senses only the surface level and form of everything and therefore fosters illusions. Part 2, lessons 221 through 365, addresses establishing true perception, which sees Divine Meaning as this extends into the real world that is the counterpart of the world of illusions. Accordingly, when correspondences between the Part 1 and Part 2 lesson themes are brought into focus, the combination of the negative “undoing” aspect and the positive “establishing” aspect can create a powerful lens of insight and understanding.

The key to unlocking this particular set of correspondences may be found in noticing that the final lesson theme in Part 1, lesson 200 – “Divine Peace is the only peace there is” – and the very next lesson theme, the first lesson in Part 2, lesson 221 (lessons 201-220 being review lessons) – “Peace to my mind; Let all my thoughts be still” – both directly address the issue of Peace. Taking this as the starting point or key – the first correspondence, as it were – when the rest of the Workbook lesson themes are then set side by side, all the Part 1 and Part 2 lesson theme correspondences arise.

Because Part 1 has 150 lessons (with seventy review lessons), and Part 2 has 141 lessons (with no review lessons but with the final lesson, 361, repeating four times), at some point the one-to-one correspondence between the Part 1 and Part 2 lesson themes ceases. In the following presentation this shift to a one-to-many correspondence is presented as taking place between the final ten lessons of Part 2 of the Workbook with the first twenty lessons of Part 1 of the Workbook. The final lesson of the Workbook – lesson 361-365 – is set outside of the correspondences presented here because it can be seen as addressing both the undoing and establishing aspects of perception within itself.

It will be seen in the following table that certain corresponding Part 1 and Part 2 lesson themes presented here are shifted one lesson forward or backward from their original order in the Workbook for Students, as the correspondences of these particular lessons seem to be more focused through such a shift. The lesson number of such shifted lessons are bolded in the table below to indicate the shift in the arrangement presented here from the original Workbook order of lessons.

Finally, in the correspondence of the ten Part 1 lesson themes of lessons 21 through 30 with the ten Part 2 lesson themes of lessons 341 through 350, only two of the ten Part 2 lesson themes are in their original Workbook order in the following arrangement. In this set of ten correspondences, the Part 1 lesson theme addressing the issue of “fear” in the set of lessons 21 through 30 (“My fearful thoughts are disrupting access to my Invulnerability”) is placed in correspondence with the related lesson theme addressing “fear” in the group of ten lessons in Part 2 between lessons 341 and 350 (“I can fear only my own Innocence, and it is only That which keeps me safe”). The other nine lesson themes in this group of ten Part 2 lessons 341 through 350 are then arranged in a mostly new order to correspond with their Part 1 equivalents in lessons 21 through 30.

Other arrangements of the correspondences between Part 1 and Part 2 Workbook lesson themes are of course possible. The arrangement presented here is offered merely to stimulate reflection and potential meditative focus.