Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

Talk given by Dr. Kenneth Wapnick of The Foundation for Inner Peace.

“Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” is a folk song that became prominent during the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, though the song was composed as a traditional gospel hymn well before World War I. Its lyrics were adapted by civil rights activist Alice Wine to encourage other activists to continue on, persevering in the face of any and all obstacles. Recorded by many notable singers, including Duke Ellington/Mahalia Jackson, Odetta, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Bruce Springsteen, the song was the title of the 1987 PBS documentary series about the civil rights movement. The song’s moving refrain, Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, serves as the theme of this article, for in A Course in Miracles Jesus asks us similarly: “Keep your eyes on the prize (salvation), remember your purpose, and hold on to me as you journey along to reclaim your rightful inheritance as God’s Son and return home.”
Remembering Our Purpose
Our lives have become so much with us that it is often difficult to remember the right-minded purpose for our coming into the world, which is to learn the lessons of forgiveness that would lead to the prize of salvation, the penultimate step before ending the dream of exile and awaking to the God we never left (T-10.I.2:1). We also tend to forget what first attracted us to A Course in Miracles: the “something” (or “someone”) that spoke to us as we opened its pages. In the end, this "something,” regardless of its form, can be nothing less than the attraction of love for love (T-12.VIII). Few would deny the Course’s unmistakable authority, with its voice being gently authoritative but without the harsh authoritarianism of many spiritual texts or teachers. Whether or not one accepts the dictating voice as that of Jesus, no one could doubt that its loving and gently wise nature is consonant with the Presence the sane world has associated with him for over two millennia.
Indeed, the purpose of the workbook’s year-long lessons is to train the mind to keep its eyes on the prize, remembering our daily purpose of healing relationships,
from the moment our eyes open in the morning to the time we go to sleep, and then on through the night until our eyes reopen to greet the new day. As Jesus reminds us:
Forget not that the healing of God’s Son is all the world is for. That is the only purpose the Holy Spirit sees in it, and thus the only one it has. Until you see the
healing of the Son as all you wish to be accomplished by the world, by time and all appearances, you will not know the Father nor yourself (T-24.VI.4:1-3).
We need to recognize that the world is not too much with us, despite Wordsworth’s wonderful poem, and as tempting as it is to identify with his words, or Hamlet’s: “How all occasions do inform against me….” To the contrary, it is the ego that is too much with us and informs against our right-minded intentions, given that power by the mind’s own decision. This is another way of saying that we need to forget the world’s purpose of amassing more and more toys of
specialness, regardless of their cost, and remember our daily purpose of promoting the healing of the mind’s faulty belief system of guilt and judgment. Hour by hour, minute by minute, even second by second, we aim to recognize our true identity in the world of separation as dreaming minds, and not the dream figures of bodies, “the ‘hero’ of the [ego’s] dream” (T-27.VIII). We need to constantly and consistently inform our days with the thought that our ultimate purpose is to awaken from the dream of separation, and our specific purpose is the daily practice of forgiveness, the sine qua non for achieving the prize of
salvation. “How should the teacher of God spend his day?” in the manual for teachers summarizes this daily attitude throughout each twenty-four-hour period of our lives (M-16.4-5). In fact, we should begin each day with the thought that God is our only goal (W-pII.257-60): …let him [God’s teacher] but remember that he
chooses to spend [quiet] time with God as soon as possible, and let him do so…as soon as possible after waking…(M-16.4:3,7).
And then again at night, just before retiring: If possible, however, just before going to sleep is a desirable time to devote to God. It sets your mind into a pattern of rest, and orients you away from fear (M-16.5:6-7).
Jesus urging us in this way is reminiscent of words written over fifteen hundred years ago, when St. Benedict wrote the Rule that has been the foundation of Western monastic life, up to the present one. This holy man wrote that as soon as one awakes, before even “heeding the necessities of nature,” one should remember God, and all through the day as well. He wrote: “In all things God may be "glorified” (in omnibus glorificetur Deus). Indeed, “Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ” (Christo omnino nihil praeponant). Benedict’s exhortation to his monks—today and those he has grandfathered throughout the centuries—
reflects what A Course in Miracles has taught us to recognize as the shift from body to mind, form to content, the ego to God.

The Course’s version of this thought emphasizes the negation of the ego’s negation of our Source, the decisionmaking mind maintaining vigilance only for God and His Kingdom (T-6.V-C) by foreswearing the trinkets of nothing the world attempts to convince us are worthwhile, if not salvific. This saying “not no” (T-1.VII.12:4), allows the truth of our Self to surface in our minds as we bring the darkness of illusions to the light of truth. Thus we read in the text:
Your task is not to seek for love [or truth], but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false (T-16.IV.6:1-2).
Inevitably, then, our experiences would be for the glorification of God and His Son, sharing the common purpose of choosing the means (forgiveness) for achieving Jesus’ end (salvation). Here is what our internal teacher asks us to keep in mind, the thought of invulnerability that would undo the ego’s lies and stories:
There is one thought in particular that should be remembered throughout the day. It is a thought of pure joy; a thought of peace, a thought of limitless release.… You think you made a place of safety for yourself.… It is not so.… Your defenses will not work, but you are not in danger.… Recognize this, and they will disappear (M-16.6:1-3,5,11,13).
The key word here is thought, which is the sole province of the mind, not the body’s brain. Just as Benedict was not really speaking of the forms of monastic life but an attitude, neither does Jesus speak of behavior in his course. Indeed, the need for ongoing corrections to the sixth-century saint’s vision of dedication to truth—recall the Course’s words: “Let, then, your dedication be to the eternal…” (T-19.I.16:1)—led to the rise of different forms of Benedictinism and other religious orders, and then the inevitable corrections within these corrections. And on and on, up to and including the present day. These changes can be directly traced to the perennial confusion of form and content, mind and body. [2]
 As Jesus said in a discussion of the special relationship, with a not-so-veiled reference to the Catholic religions and their sacrament of the Eucharist (communion at Mass):
Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in ritual, remember love is content, and not form of any kind. The special relationship is a
ritual of form, aimed at raising the form to take the place of God at the expense of content. There is no meaning in the form, and there will never be. The special
relationship…[is] a senseless ritual in which strength is extracted from the death of God, and invested in His killer as the sign that form has triumphed over content,
and love has lost its meaning (T-16.V.12:1-4).
To attain the prize of salvation, therefore, we need to learn to keep our eye on the content of our minds, the decision to be wrong or right minded: to choose the ego and its thought system of separation, sin, and specialness, or to decide for Jesus and his corrective thoughts of forgiveness, healing, and peace. That is why remembering the aforementioned thought should be our primary focus throughout the days of our lives. What else could be more important than identifying with this idea, which is indeed our protection, salvation, and very life? What indeed in....

The balance of this talk can be read here: (http://www.facim.org/acim/newsletters/20132401.pdf)