I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 170

There is No Cruelty In God And None In Me.

No one attacks without intent to hurt. This can have no exception. When you think that you attack in self-defense, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty. You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom. And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion and from fear.

2. How thoroughly insane is the idea that to defend from fear is to attack! For here is fear begot and fed with blood, to make it grow and swell and rage. And thus is fear protected, not escaped. Today we learn a lesson which can save you more delay and needless misery than you can possibly imagine. It is this:

You make what you defend against, and by your own defense

against it is it real and inescapable. Lay down your arms,

And only then will you perceive it false.

3. It seems to be the enemy without that you attack. Yet your defense sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable. For love now has an “enemy,” an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are.

4. If you consider carefully the means by which your fancied self-defense proceeds on its imagined way, you will perceive the premises on which the idea stands. First, it is obvious ideas must leave their source. For it is you who make attack and must have first conceived of it, yet you attack outside yourself and separate your mind from him who is to be attacked, with perfect faith the split you made is real.

5. Next are the attributes of love bestowed upon its “enemy.” For fear becomes your safety and protector of your peace, to which you turn for solace, and escape from doubts about your strength, and hope of rest in dreamless quiet. And as love is shorn of what belongs to it and it alone, it is endowed with attributes of fear. For love would ask you lay down all defense as merely foolish, and your arms indeed would crumble into dust, for such they are.

6. With love as enemy must cruelty become a god, and gods demand that those who worship them obey their dictates and refuse to question them. Harsh punishment is meted out relentlessly to those who ask if their demands are sensible or even sane. It is their enemies who are unreasonable and insane, while they are always merciful and just.

7. Today we look upon this cruel god dispassionately. And we note that though his lips are smeared with blood and fire seems to flame from him, he is but made of stone. He can do nothing. We need not defy his power. He has none. And those who see in him their safety have no guardian, no strength to call upon in danger, and no mighty warrior to fight for them.

8. This moment can be terrible. But it can also be the time of your release from abject slavery. You make a choice, standing before this idol, seeing him exactly as he is. Will you restore to love what you have sought to wrest from it and lay before this mindless piece of stone? Or will you make another idol to replace it? For the god of cruelty takes many forms. Another can be found.

9. Yet do not think that fear is the escape from fear. Let us remember what the course has stressed about the obstacles to peace. The final one, the hardest to believe is nothing, and a seeming obstacle with the appearance of a solid block, impenetrable, fearful, and beyond surmounting, is the fear of God Himself. Here is the basic premise which enthrones the thought of fear as god. For fear is loved by those who worship it, and love appears to be invested now with cruelty.

10. Where does the totally insane belief in gods of vengeance come from? Love has not confused its attributes with those of fear. Yet must the worshippers of fear perceive their own confusion in fear’s “enemy”; its cruelty as now a part of love. And what becomes more fearful than the Heart of love itself? The blood appears to be upon His lips; the fire comes from Him. And He is terrible above all else cruel beyond conception, striking down all who acknowledge Him to be their God.

11. The choice you make today is certain. For you look for the last time upon this bit of carven stone you made and call it god no longer. You have reached this place before, but you have chosen that this cruel god remain with you in still another form, and so the fear of God returned with you. This time you leave it here. And you return to a new world unburdened by its weight, beheld not in its sightless eyes but in the vision that your choice restored to you.

12. Now do your eyes belong to Christ, and He looks through them. Now your voice belongs to God, and echoes His. And now your heart remains at peace forever. You have chosen Him in place of idols, and your attributes, given by your Creator, are restored to you at last. The Call of God is heard and answered. Now has fear made way for love, as God Himself replaces cruelty.

13. Father, we are like You. No cruelty abides in us, for there is none in You. Your peace is ours. And we bless the world with what we have received from you alone. We choose again, and make our choice for all our brothers, knowing they are one with us. We bring them Your salvation as we have received it now. And we give thanks for them who render us complete. In them we see Your glory, and in them we find our peace. Holy are we, because Your holiness has set us free. And we give thanks. Amen.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“There is no cruelty in God and none in me.”  Today I lay down my arms, that I may see with the eyes of Christ, hear with the ears of Christ, speak with the voice of Christ. I choose today to lay down the idol of fear to return to a new world unburdened by its weight with the vison of Christ restored to me by choice. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 169

By Grace I Live. By Grace I Am Released.

Grace is an aspect of the love of God which is most like the state prevailing in the unity of truth. It is the world’s most lofty aspiration, for it leads beyond the world entirely. It is past learning yet the goal of learning, for grace cannot come until the mind prepares itself for true acceptance. Grace becomes inevitable instantly in those who have prepared a table where it can be gently laid and willingly received, an altar clean and holy for the gift.

2. Grace is acceptance of the love of God within a world of seeming hate and fear. By grace alone the hate and fear are gone, for grace presents a state so opposite to everything the world contains that those whose minds are lightened by the gift of grace cannot believe the world of fear is real.

3. Grace is not learned. The final step must go beyond all learning. Grace is not the goal this course aspires to attain. Yet we prepare for grace in that an open mind can hear the Call to waken. It is not shut tight against God’s Voice. It has become aware that there are things it does not know, and thus is ready to accept a state completely different from experience with which it is familiarly at home.

4. We have perhaps appeared to contradict our statement that the revelation of the Father and the Son as one has been already set. But we have also said the mind determines when that will be, and has determined it. And yet we urge you to bear witness to the Word of God.^330. to hasten the experience of truth, and speed its advent into every mind which recognizes its effects on you.

5. Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His being He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him. We say “God is,” and then we cease to speak, for in that knowledge words are meaningless. There ae no lips to speak them, and no part of mind sufficiently distinct to feel that it is now aware of something not itself. It has united its Source, and like the Source Itself. It merely is.

6. We cannot speak nor write nor even think of this at all. It comes to every mind when total recognition that its will is God’s has been completely given and received completely. It returns the mind into the endless present, where the past and future cannot be conceived. It lies beyond salvation; past all thought of time, forgiveness, and the holy face of Christ. The Son of God has merely disappeared into his Father, as his Father has in him. The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state.

7. This is beyond experience we try to hasten. Yet forgiveness, taught and learned, brings with it the experiences which bear witness that the time the mind itself determined to abandon all but this is near at hand.^334. We do not hasten it in that what you will offer was concealed from Him Who teaches what forgiveness means. All learning was already in His Mind, accomplished and complete. He recognized all that time holds, and gave it to all minds that each one might determine, from a point where time has ended, when it is released to revelation and eternity.

8. We have repeated several times before that you but make a journey that is done. For oneness must be here. Whatever time the mind has set for revelation is entirely irrelevant to what must be a constant state, forever as it was; forever to remain as it is now. We merely take the part assigned long since, and fully recognized as perfectly fulfilled by Him Who wrote salvation’s script in His Creator’s Name, and in the name of His Creator’s Son.

9. There is no need to further clarify what no one in the world can understand. When revelation of your oneness comes, it will be known and fully understood. Now we have work to do, for those in time can speak of things beyond and listen to words which explain what is to come is past already. Yet what meaning can the words convey to those who count the hours still, and rise and work and go to sleep by them?

10. Suffice it, then, that you have work to do to play your part. The ending must remain obscure to you until your part is done. It does not matter, for your part is still what all the rest depends on. As you play the role assigned to you, salvation comes a little nearer each uncertain heart that does not beat as yet in tune with God. Forgiveness is the central theme which runs throughout salvation, holding all its parts in meaningful relationships, the course it runs directed and its outcome sure.

11. And now we ask for grace, the final gift forgiveness can bestow. Experience that grace provides will end in time, for grace foreshadows Heaven yet does not replace the thought of time but for a little while. That interval suffices. It is here that miracles are laid, to be returned by you from holy instants you receive through grace in your experience to all who see the light that lingers on your face.

12. What is the face of Christ but his who went a moment into timelessness and brought the clear reflection of the unity he felt an instant back to bless the world? How could you finally attain to it forever, while a part of you remains outside; unknowing, unawakened, and in need of you as witness to the truth?

13. Be grateful to return, as you were glad to go an instant and accept the gifts which grace provided you. You carry them back to yourself. And revelation stands not far behind. Its coming is ensured. We ask for grace and for experience that comes from grace. We welcome the release it offers everyone. We do not ask for the unaskable. We do not look beyond what grace can give. For this we can give in the grace that has been given us.

14. Our learning goal today does not exceed this prayer, yet in the world what could be more than what we ask this day of Him Who gives the grace we ask, as it was given Him?

By grace I live. By grace I am released.

By grace I give. By grace I will release.^[1].

^{[1.] A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

^{Footnote 334. Matthew 4:17 (KJV): “From that time Jesus began to preach, and say, Repent: for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This paragraph seems to be another attempt to reconcile the paradox that we are trying to hasten something whose time is set already. the resolution seems to be that while our forgiveness seems to speed experiences of truth into our minds, those experiences are actually just the signs that the time of awakening the mind has already set is “near at hand.” Again, somehow both are true—we are hastening something that is already set. Again, the resolution of this may require a vantage point that is outside of linear time.}

Personal Notes:

“By grace I live. By grace I am released.”

.” I prepare my mind today with help of Holy Spirit to lay the gift of grace on the clean and holy alter of my mind, lightened by the gift of grace their will be no belief in the world of fear to be real. Oneness is the idea God is. And in His being, He encompasses all things. I take the part assigned me, recognized, and fulfilled by Holy Spirit Who wrote salvation’s script in Our Creator’s Name, and in the Name of Our Creator’s Son. I accept my role in the salvation of the world as my special function^337. with gladness. Forgiveness being the central theme which runs throughout salvation, holding all its parts in meaningful relationships, the course directed and its outcome sure. What we ask Is given us. By grace I live. By grace I am released. By grace I give. By grace I will release. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 168

Your Grace Is Given Me. I Claim It Now.

God speaks to us. Shall we not speak to Him. He is not distant. He makes no attempt to hide from us. We try to hide from Him, and suffer from deception. He remains entirely assessable. He loves His Son. There is no certainty but this, yet this suffices. He will lose His Son forever. When his mind remains asleep, He loves him still. And when his mind awakes, He loves him with a never-changing love.^325.

2. If you but knew the meaning of His love, hope and despair would be impossible, for hope would be forever satisfied; despair of any kind unthinkable. His grace His answer is to all despair, for in it lies remembrance of His love. Would He not gladly give the means by which His will is recognized? His grace is yours by your acknowledgment. And memory of Him awakens in the mind which asks the means of Him whereby its sleep is done.

3. Today we ask God the gift He has most carefully preserved within our hearts, waiting to be acknowledged. This the gift by which God leans to us and lifts us up, taking salvation’s final step Himself. All steps but this we learn, instructed by His Voice. But finally He comes Himself and takes us in His arms and sweeps away the cobwebs of our sleep. His gift of grace is more than just an answer. It restores all memories the sleeping mind forgot, all certainty of what love’s meaning is.

4. God loves His Son. Request Him now to give the means by which this world will disappear, and vision first will come, with knowledge but an instant later. For in grace you see a light that covers all the world in love, and watch fear disappear from every face as hearts rise up and claim the light as theirs. What now remains that Heaven be delayed an instant longer? What remains undone when your forgiveness rests on everything?

5. It is a new and holy day today, for we receive what has been given us. Our faith lies in the Giver, not our own acceptance. We acknowledge our mistakes, but He to Whom all error is unknow is yet the One Who answers our mistakes by giving us the means to lay them down and rise to Him in gratitude and love.

6. And He descends to meet us as we come to Him, for what He has prepared for us He gives and we receive. Such is His will, because He loves His Son. To Him we pray today, returning but the words he gave to us through His Own Voice, His Word, His Love:

Your grace is given me. I claim it now.

Father, I come to You. And You will come

to me who ask. I am the Son You love.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

^{Footnote 325. Jeremiah 31:3 (KJV): “The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.”}

Personal Notes:

“Your grace is given me. I claim it now.”

It is a new and holy day today, for we receive what has been given us. Grace is usually seen in the Course as a free gift from God that asks nothing of the receiver, or as a state of pure innocence and ease in which no sacrifice is required. In this lesson it takes on a more specific meaning. It is what God gives us in the final step, where He reaches down and lifts us into the perfect knowledge of Him. The next lesson suggests that what we are really asking for is a foretaste of that final awakening, a temporary experience of divine union: “Experience that grace provides will end in time, for grace foreshadows Heaven yet does not replace the thought of time but for a little while. His grace is answer to all despair, restoring all memories the sleeping mind forgot. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 167

There Is One Life, and That I Share With God.

There are not different kinds of life, for life is like truth. It does not have degrees. Life is the one condition in which all that God created share. Like all His thoughts, it has no opposite. There is no death because what God created shares His life. There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist. There is no death because the Father and the Son are one.

2. In this world there appears to be a state that is life’s opposite. You call it death. Yet we have learned that the idea of death takes many forms. It is the one idea which underlies all feelings that are not supremely happy. It is the alarm to which you give response of any kind that is not perfect joy. All sorrow, loss, anxiety and suffering and pain, even a little sigh of weariness, a slight discomfort, or the merest frown, acknowledge death. And thus deny you live.

3. You think that death is of the body. Yet it is but an idea, irrelevant to what is seen as physical. A thought is in the mind. It can be then applied where mind directs it, but its origin is where it must be changed if change occurs. Ideas leave not their source. The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God.

4. Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator. It is the belief conditions change, emotions alternate because of causes you cannot control, you did not make, and you can never change. It is the fixed belief ideas can leave their source and take on qualities the source does not contain, becoming different from their own origin, apart from it in kind as well as distance, time, and form.

5. Death cannot come from life. Ideas remain united to their source. They can extend all that their source contains. In that they can go far beyond themselves. But they cannot give birth to what was never given them. As they are made, so will their making be. As they were born, so will they then give birth. And where they came from, there will they return.

6. The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist, because it has no source. For mind creates all things that are, and cannot give them attributes it lacks, nor change its own eternal, mindful state. It cannot make the physical. What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep.

7. The opposite of life can only be another form of life. As such, it can be reconciled with what created it, because it is not opposite in truth. Its form may change; it may appear to be what it is not. Yet mind is mind, awake or sleeping. It is not its opposite in anything created, nor in what it seems to make when it believes it sleeps.

8. God creates only mind awake. He does not sleep, and His creations cannot share what He gives not, nor make conditions which He does not share with them. The thought of death is not the opposite to thoughts of life. Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly, but yet within themselves, for they are everywhere.

9. What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time, an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was.

10. Let us today be children of the truth, and not deny our holy heritage. Our life is not as we imagine it. Who changes life because he shuts his eyes, or makes himself what he is not because he sleeps and sees in dreams an opposite to what he is? We will not ask for death in any form today. Nor will we let imagined opposites to life abide even an instant where the thought of life eternal has been set by God Himself.

11. His holy home we strive to keep today as He established it and wills it be forever and forever. He is Lord of what we think today. And from His thoughts, which have no opposite, we understand there is one life, and that we share with Him, with all creation, with their thoughts as well, whom He created in a unity of life which cannot separate in death and leave the Source of life from where it came.

12. We share our life because we have one Source, a Source from Which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect. As we were, so are we now and will forever be. A sleeping mind must waken as it sees its own perfection mirroring the Lord of life so perfectly it fades into what is reflected there. And now it is no more a mere reflection. It becomes the thing reflected and the light which made refection possible. No vision now is needed. For the wakened mind is one that knows its Source, its Self, its holiness.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“There is one life, and that I share with God.” I choose today to identify with truth as the child of God that I am. I do not ask for death in any form. I accept freedom from all thoughts of bad dreams and sleep that is not real. I choose to abide in this one life eternally set by God Himself with all creation, with their thoughts as well, whom He created in a unity of life which cannot separate in death. We have been given a choice, I choose life, and all that encompasses in Christ Jesus, in the Love of God Himself. Ideas leave not their source. I am an idea that has not left my Source—God! God has established me as one with Him. This is the one life I share with God; holy, righteous, loved, protected, joyous, limitless, and the list goes on as one with my Creator. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 166

I Am Entrusted With The Gifts Of God.

All things are given you. God’s trust in you is limitless. He knows His Son. He gives without exception, holding nothing back that can contribute to your happiness. And yet, unless your will is one with His, His gifts are not received. But what would make you think there is another will than His?

2. Here is the paradox that underlies the making of the world. This world is not the will of God, and so it is not real. Yet those who think it real must still believe there is another will, and one which leads to opposite effects from those He wills. Impossible indeed, but every mind which looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy, and true believes in two creators—or in one, himself alone. But never in one God.

3. The gifts of God are not acceptable to anyone who holds such strange beliefs. He must believe that to accept God’s gifts, however evident they may become, however urgently he may be called to claim them as his own, is to be pressed to treachery against himself. He must deny their presence, contradict the truth, and suffer to preserve the world he made.

4. Here is the only home he thinks he knows. Here is the only safety he believes that he can find. Without the world he made is he an outcast, homeless and afraid. He does not realize that it is here he is afraid indeed, and homeless too; an outcast wandering so far from home, so long away, he does not realize he has forgotten where he came from, where he goes, and even who he really is.

5. Yet in his lonely, senseless wanderings, God’s gifts go with him, all unknown to him. He cannot lose them. But he will not look at what is given him. He wanders on, aware of the futility he sees about him everywhere, perceiving how his little lot but dwindles as he goes ahead to nowhere. Still he wanders on in misery and poverty, alone though God is with him, and a treasure his so great that everything the world contains is valueless before its magnitude.

6. He seems a sorry figure—weary, worn, in threadbare clothing, and with feet that bleed a little from the rocky road he walks. No one but has identified with him, for everyone who comes here has pursued the path he follows, and has felt defeat and hopelessness as he is feeling them. Yet is he really tragic, when you see that he is following the way he chose, and need but realize Who walks with him and open up his treasures to be free?

7. This is your chosen self, the one you made as a replacement for reality. This is the self you savagely defend against all reason, every evidence, and all the witnesses with proof to show this is not you. You heed them not. You go on your appointed way, with eyes cast down lest you might catch a glimpse of truth, and be released from self-deception and set free.

8. You cower fearfully lest you should feel Christ’s touch upon your shoulder and perceive His gentle hand directing you to look upon your gifts. How could you then proclaim your poverty and exile? He would make you laugh at this perception of yourself. Where is self-pity then? And what becomes of all the tragedy you sought to make for him whom God intended only joy?

9. Your ancient fear has come upon you now, and justice has caught up with you at last. Christ’s hand has touched your shoulder, and you feel that you are not alone. You even think the miserable self you thought was you may not be your identity. Perhaps God’s Word is truer than your own. Perhaps His gifts to you are real. Perhaps He has not wholly been outwitted by your plan to keep His Son in deep oblivion and go the way you chose without your Self.

10. God’s will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His will. There was a need He did not understand, to which He gave an Answer. That is all. And you who have this Answer given you have need no more of anything but this.

11. Now do we live, for now we cannot die. The wish for death is answered, and the sight that looked upon it now has been replaced by vision which perceives that you are not what you pretend to be. One walks with you Who gently answers all your fears with this one merciful reply: “It is not so.” He points to all the gifts you have each time the thought of poverty oppresses you, and speaks of His companionship when you perceive yourself as lonely and afraid.

12. Yet He reminds you still of one thing more you forgotten. For His touch on you has made you like Himself. The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make in which to hide from God. He has reminded you of all the gifts that God has given you. He speaks as well of what becomes your will when you accept these gifts and recognize they are your own.

13. The gifts are yours, entrusted to your care, to give to all who chose the lonely road you have escaped. They do not understand they but pursue their wishes. It is you who teach them now. For you have learned of Christ there is another way for them to walk. Teach them by showing them the happiness that comes to those who feel the touch of Christ and recognize God’s gifts. Let sorrow not tempt you to be unfaithful to your trust.

14. Your sighs will now betray the hopes of those who look to you for their release. Your tears are theirs. If you are sick, you but withhold their healing. What you fear but teaches them their fears are justified. Your hand become the giver of Christ’s touch. Your change of mind becomes the proof that who accepts God’s gifts can never suffer anything. You are entrusted with the world’s release from pain.

15. Betray it not. Become the living proof of what Christ’s touch can offer everyone. God has entrusted all His gifts to you. Be witness in your happiness to how transformed the mind becomes which chooses to accept His gifts and feel the touch of Christ. Such is your mission now. For God entrusts the giving of His gifts to all who have received them. He has shared His joy with you. And now you go to share it with the world.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“I am entrusted with the gifts of God.” Let me not forget today who I am, Who goes with me, before me and empowers me in all I put my mind and hand to. I will focus today on the fact that I am entrusted with the gifts of God, to share with the world that all will see and know we are never alone, never without every resource needed for this journey. I receive Christ’s touch to be a witness in happiness, accepting God’s gifts that I may share His joy with the world. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 165

Let Not My Mind Deny The Thought of God.

What makes this world seem real except your own denial of the truth that lies beyond? What but your thoughts of misery and death obscures the perfect happiness and the eternal life your Father wills for you? And what could hide what cannot be concealed except illusion? What could keep from you what you already have except your choice to see it not, denying it is there?

2. The thought of God created you. It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from it an instant. It is yours eternally. By it you live. It is your source of life, holding you one with it, and everything is one with you because it left you not. The thought of God protects you, and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. Eternity and everlasting life shine in your mind because the thought of God has left you not and still abides with you.

3. Who would deny his safety and his peace, his joy, his healing and his peace of mind, his quiet rest, his calm awakening, if he but recognized where they abide? Would he not instantly prepare to go where they are found, abandoning all else as worthless in comparison with them? And having found them, would he not make sure they stay with him and he remains with them?

4. Deny not Heaven. It is yours today but for the asking. Nor need you perceive how great the gift, how changed your mind will be, before it comes to you. Ask to receive and it is given you. Conviction lies within it. Till you welcome it as yours, uncertainty remains. Yet God is fair. Sureness is not required to receive what only your acceptance can bestow.

5. Ask with desire. You need not be sure that you request the only thing you want. But when you have received, you will be sure you have the treasure you have always sought. What would you then exchange it for? What would induce you now to let it fade away from your ecstatic vision? For this sight proves that you have exchanged your blindness for the seeing eyes of Christ: your mind has come to lay aside denial and accept the thought of God as its inheritance.

6. Now is all doubting past, the journey’s end made certain, and salvation given you. Now is Christ’s power in your mind, to heal as you were healed. For now are you among the saviors of the world. Your destiny lies there and nowhere else. Would God consent to let His Son remain forever starved by his denial of the nourishment he needs to live? Abundance dwells in him, and deprivation cannot cut him off from God’s sustaining love and from his home.

7. Practice today in hope. For hope indeed is justified. Your doubts are meaningless, for God is certain, and the thought of Him is never absent. Sureness must abide within you who are host to Him. This course removes all doubts which you have interposed between Him and your certainty of Him. We count on Him and not upon ourselves to give us certainty. And in His Name we practice as His Word directs we do.

8. His sureness lies beyond our every doubt. His love remains beyond our every fear. The thought of Him is still beyond all dreams and in our minds, according to His will.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“Let not my mind deny the thought of God.” Today I will not let thoughts of misery and death obscure the perfect happiness and eternal life my Father wills for me. The thought of God created me is eternally mine. By it I live. It is my source of life. The thought of God protects me, cares for me, makes soft my resting place and smooth my way, lighting my mind with happiness and love. Let not my mind deny the thought of God, wherein lies my safety, peace, healing, peace of mind, quiet rest, my calm awakening in recognition and remembrance of where they abide. I do not deny Heaven it is mine today for the asking. In God’s Great Love for us sureness is not required to receive what only our acceptance can bestow. I practice in hope today for hope is justified all doubts are meaningless, for God Is Certain and the thought of Him is never absent. Sureness must abide within me who is the host of God Himself. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 164

Now Are We One With Him Who Is Our Source.

What time but now can truth be recognized? The present is the only time there is. And so today, this instant, now, we come to look upon what is forever there; not in our sight, but in the eyes of Christ. He looks past time and sees eternity as represented there. He hears the sounds the senseless, busy world engenders, yet He hears them faintly, for beyond them all He hears the song of Heaven and the Voice of God more clear, more meaningful, more near.

2. The world fades easily away before His sight. Its sounds grow dim. A melody from far beyond the world increasingly is more and more distinct; an ancient Call to Which He gives an ancient answer. You will recognize them both, for they are but your answer to your Father’s Call to you. Christ answers for you, echoing your Self, using your voice to give His glad consent, accepting your deliverance for you.

3. How holy is your practicing today, as He gives you His sight and hears for you, and answers in your name the Call He hears. How quiet is the time you give to spend with Him beyond the world. How easily are all your seeming sins forgot and all your sorrows unremembered. On this day is grief laid by, for sights and sounds which come from nearer than the world are clear to you who will today accept the gifts He gives.

4. There is a silence into which the world cannot intrude. There is an ancient peace you carry in your heart and have not lost. There is a sense of holiness in you the thought of sin has never touched. All this today you will remember. Faithfulness in practicing today will bring rewards so great and so completely different from all things you sought before that you will know that here your treasure is, and here your rest.

5. This is the day when vain imaginings part like a curtain, to reveal what lies beyond them. Here is what is really clear made visible, while all the shadows which appear to hide it merely sink away. Now is the balance righted, and the scales of judgement left to Him Who judges true. And in His judgement will a world unfold in perfect innocence before your eyes. Now will you see it through the eyes of Christ. Now is its transformation clear to you.

6. Brother, this day is sacred to the world. Your vision, given you from far beyond all things within the world, looks back on them in a new light. And what you see becomes the healing and salvation of the world. The valuable and valueless are both perceived, and recognized for what they are. And what is worthy of your love receives your love, while nothing to be feared remains.

7. We will not judge today. We will receive but what is given us from judgment made beyond the world. Our practicing today becomes our gift of thankfulness for our release from blindness and from misery. All that we see will but increase our joy, because its holiness reflects our own. We stand forgiven in the sight of Christ, with all the world forgiven in our own. We bless the world, as we behold it in the light in which our Savior looks on us, and offer it the freedom given us through His forgiving vision, not our own.

8. Open the curtain in your practicing by merely letting go all things you think you want. Your trifling treasures put away, and leave a clean and open space within your mind where Christ can come and offer you the treasure of salvation. He has need of your most holy mind to save the world. Is not this purpose worthy to be yours? Is not Christ’s vision worthy to be sought above the world’s unsatisfying goals?

9. Let not today slip by without the gifts it holds for you receiving your consent and your acceptance. We can change the world if you acknowledge them. You may not see the value your acceptance gives the world, but this you surely want: You can exchange all suffering for joy this very day. Practice in earnest and the gift is yours. Would God deceive you? Can His promise fail? Can you withhold so little when His hand holds out complete salvation to His Son?^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“Now are we one with Him Who is our Source.” The present is the only time there is. The world fades away before His sight and its sounds grow dim. In practicing today, I ask for the eyes and ears of Christ to see and hear. In quiet time I spend with my Heavenly Father beyond the world. Peace, joy, and a sense of holiness I will remember here. Thankful for release from blindness and misery. I stand forgiven in the sight of Christ Jesus and I bless the world in the light which my savior looks on us. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 163

There Is No Death.³¹² The Son of God Is Free.

Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may appear as sadness, fear, anxiety, or doubt; as anger, faithlessness, and lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as you are not may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are but reflections of the worshipping of death as savior and as giver of release.

2. Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of guilty, and the lord of all illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand, all hopes and wishes in its blighting grasp, all goals perceived but in its sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless, and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone will surely come.

3. All things but death are seen to be unsure, too quickly lost however hard to gain, uncertain in their outcome, apt to fail the hopes they once engendered and to leave the taste of dust and ashes in their wake, in place of aspirations and of dreams. But death is counted on. For it will come with certain footsteps when the time has come for its arrival. It will never fail to take all life as hostage to itself.

4. Would you bow down to idols such as this? Here is the strength and might of God Himself perceived within an idol made of dust. Here is the opposite of God proclaimed as lord of all creation; stronger than His will for life, the endlessness of love, and Heaven’s perfect, changeless constancy. Here is the will of Father and of Son defeated finally, and laid to rest beneath the headstone death has placed upon the body of the holy Son of God.

5. Unholy in defeat, he has become what death would have him be. His epitaph, which death itself has written, gives no name to him, for he has passed to dust. It says but this: “Here lies a witness God is dead.” And this it writes again and still again, and kneeling down with foreheads to the ground, they whisper fearfully that it is so.

6. It is impossible to worship death in any form and still select a few you would not cherish and would yet avoid, while still believing in the rest. For death is total. Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible. For here again we see an obvious position, which we must accept if we be sane: What contradicts one thought entirely cannot be true unless its opposite is proven false.

7. The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it. For it implies that God was once alive and somehow perished—killed, apparently, by those who did not want Him to survive. Their stronger will could triumph over His, and so eternal life gave way to death. And with the Father died the Son as well.

8. Death’s worshippers may be afraid. And yet can thoughts like these be fearful? If they saw that it is only this which they believe, they would be instantly released. And you will show them this today. There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and our own as well. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This is the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past death and see the life beyond.

9. Our Father, bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your love, which shines in everything. We live and breathe in You alone.^316. We are not separate from Your eternal life. There is no death, for death is not Your will. And we abide where You have placed us, in the life we share with You and with all living, things, to be like You and part of You forever. We accept Your thoughts as ours, and our will is one with Yours eternally. Amen.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

^{Footnote 312. Proverbs 12:28 (KJV): “In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.”}

^{Footnote 316. Acts 17:28 (RSV): “In him we live and move and have our being.” The reason the course substitutes “breathe” for “move” here may be to emphasize the theme of life, since breath signifies life.}

Personal Notes:

“There is no death. The Son of God is free.” I ask My Heavenly Father to let me see with the eyes of Christ to not be deceived of the many forms’ death appears in, to remember and not doubt the fact of who I am, the holy, righteous, and redeemed son of God that death and decay does not touch. I will remember this today to walk in this truth that I can light the way for those who forgot. I renounce this false belief in death for salvation of all my brothers and myself. God did not make death. Whatever form it takes must be an illusion. It is given us to look past death and see the life beyond. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 162

I Am As God Created Me.

This single thought, held firmly in the mind, would save the world. From time to time we will repeat it, as we reach another stage in learning. It will mean far more to you as you advance. These words are sacred, for they are the words God gave in answer, to the world you made. By them it disappears, and all things seen within its misty clouds and vaporous illusions vanish as these words are spoken. For they come from God.

2. Here is the Word by which the Son became his Father’s happiness, His love, and His completion. Here creation is proclaimed, and honored as it is. There is no dream these words will not dispel, no thought of sin and no illusion that the dream contains that will not fade away before their might. They are the trumpet of awakening that sounds around the world.^310. The dead awake in answer to its call. And those who live and hear this sound will never look on death.^311.

3. Holy indeed is he who makes these words his own; arising with them in his mind, recalling them throughout the day, at night bringing them with him as he goes to sleep. His dreams are happy and his rest secure, his safety certain and his body healed, because he sleeps and wakens with the truth before him always. He will save the world, because he gives the world what he receives each time he practices the words of truth.

4. Today we practice simply. For the words we use are mighty, and they need no thoughts beyond themselves to change the mind of him who uses them. So wholly is it changed that it is now the treasury in which God places all gifts and all His love, to be distributed to all the world, increased in giving, kept complete because its sharing is unlimited. And thus you learn to think with God. Christ’s vision has restored your sight by salvaging your mind.

5. We honor you today. Yours is the right to perfect holiness you now accept. With this acceptance is salvation brought to everyone, for who could cherish sin when holiness like this has blessed the world? Who could despair when perfect joy is yours, available to all as remedy for grief and misery, all sense of loss, and the complete escape from sin and guilt?

6. And who would not be brother to you now; you, his redeemer and his savior? Who could fail to welcome you into his heart with loving invitation, eager to unite with one like him in holiness? You are as God created you. These words dispel the night, and darkness is no more. The light is come today to bless the world, for you have recognized the Son of God, and in your recognition is the world’s.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

^{Footnote 310. 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 (RSV): “Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.” The above passage says that the words “I am as God created me” are the trumpet “that sounds around the world” and raises all sleepers from death into life.}

^{Footnote 311. John 8:51 (RSV): “Truly, truly, I say to you, if any one keeps my word, he will never see death.’ In the above allusion, it is those who accept the truth of “I am as God created me” who will never see death.}

Personal Notes:

“I am as God created me.” These words are God’s answer to the world we made. By them all that we saw in its misty clouds and vaporous illusions vanish as these words are spoken for they come from God. Holy am I who makes these words my own. Happy are my dreams and I rest secure, my safety certain and my body healed, because I sleep and awaken with this truth before me always. Today I simply practice these words which dispel the night, and darkness is no more. The light is come today to bless the world in recognition of the Son of God. I am as God created me. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now.

Lesson 161

Give Me Your Blessing, Holy Son of God.

Today we practice differently, and take a stand against our anger, that our fears may disappear and offer room to love. Here is salvation in the simple words in which we practice with today’s idea. Here is the answer to temptation which can never fail to welcome in the Christ where fear and anger had prevailed before. Here is Atonement made complete, the world passed safely by, and Heaven now restored. Here is the answer of the Voice of God.

2. Complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind.^304. But part of it is now unnatural. It does not look on everything as one. It sees instead but fragments of the whole, for only thus could it invent the partial world you see. The purpose of all seeing is to show you what you wish to see. All hearing but brings to your mind the sound it wants to hear.

3. Thus were specifics made. And now it is specifics we must use in practicing. We give them to the Holy Spirit that He may employ them for a purpose which is different from the one we gave them. Yet He can use but what we made, to teach us from a different point of view, so we can see a different use in everything.

4. One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these worlds bring perfect clarity with them to you? What can they seem to be but empty sounds; pretty, perhaps, correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction, in the sense that it is all-encompassing. We need to see a little, that we learn a lot.

5. It seems to be the body that we feel limits our freedom, makes us suffer, and at last puts out our life. Yet bodies are but symbols of a concrete form of fear. Fear without symbols calls for no response, for symbols can stand for the meaningless. Love needs no symbols, being true. But fear attaches to specifics, being false.

6. Bodies attack, but minds do not. This thought is surely reminiscent of our text, where it is often emphasized. This is the reason bodies easily become fear’s symbols. You have many times been urged to look beyond the body, for its sight presents the symbol of love’s “enemy” Christ’s vision does not see. The body is the target for attack, for no one thinks he hates a mind. Yet what but mind directs the body to attack? What else could be the seat of fear except what thinks of fear?

7.  Hate is specific. There must be a thing to be attacked. An enemy must be perceived in such a form he can be touched and seen and heard, and ultimately killed. When hatred rests upon a thing, it calls for death as surely as God’s Voice proclaims there is no death. Fear is insatiable, consuming everything its eyes behold, seeing itself in everything, compelled to turn upon itself and to destroy.

8.  Who sees a brother as a body sees him as fear’s symbol. And he will attack, because what he beholds is his own fear external to himself, poised to attack and howling to unite with him again. Mistake not the intensity of rage projected fear must spawn. It shrieks in wrath and claws the air in frantic hope it can reach to its maker and devour him.^307.

9. This do the body’s eyes behold in one whom Heaven cherishes, the angels love, and God created perfect. This is his reality. And in Christ’s vision is his loveliness reflected in a form so holy and so beautiful that you could scarce refrain from kneeling at his feet. Yet you will take his hand instead, for you are like him in the sight which sees him thus.

10. Attack on him is enemy to you, for you will not perceive that in his hands is your salvation. Ask him but for this, and he will give it to you. Ask him not to symbolize your fear. Would you request that love destroy itself? Or would you have it be revealed to you and set you free?

11. Today we practice in a form we have attempted earlier. Your readiness is closer now, and you will come today nearer Christ’s vision. If you are intent on reaching it, you will succeed today. And once you have succeeded, you will not be willing to accept the witnesses your body’s eyes call forth. What you will see will sing to you in ancient melodies you will remember. You are not forgot in Heaven. Would you not remember it?

12. Select one brother, symbol of the rest, and ask salvation of him. See him first as clearly as you can, in that same form to which you are accustomed. See his face, his hands and feet, his clothing. Watch him smile, and see familiar gestures that he makes so frequently. Then think of this: What you are seeing now conceals from you the sight of one who can forgive you all your sins, whose sacred hands can take the nails which pierce your own away and lift the crown of thorns which you have placed upon your bleeding head.

13. Ask this of him, that he may set you free:

Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.

I would behold you with the eyes of Christ,

And see my perfect sinlessness in you.

     And He will answer Whom you called upon. For He will hear the Voice of God in you, and answer in your own. Behold him now whom you have seen as merely flesh and bone, and recognize that Christ has come to you.

14. Today’s idea is your safe escape from anger and from fear. Be sure you use it instantly, should you be tempted to attack a brother and perceive in him a symbol of your fear. And you will see him suddenly transformed from enemy to savior; from the devil into Christ.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

Give me your blessing, holy Son of God. I choose one brother as symbol of the rest asking for the vision of Christ to see this brother as the Son of God he is, that God created perfect. And ask this of him: Give me your blessing, holy Son of God. I would behold you with the eyes of Christ, and see my perfect sinlessness in you. I plan ahead to use this instantly should I be tempted to attack a brother and perceive in him the symbol of my fear. And I will see him suddenly transformed from enemy to savior, from the devil into Christ. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 160

I Am at Home. Fear Is The Stranger here.

Fear is a stranger to the ways of love. Identify with fear, and you will be a stranger to yourself.  And thus you are unknown to you. What is your Self remains an alien to the part of you which thinks that it is real, but different from yourself. Who could be sane in such a circumstance? Who but a madman could believe he is what he is not, and judge against himself?

2. There is a stranger in our midst, who comes from an idea so foreign to the truth he speaks a different language, looks upon a world truth does not know, and understands what truth does not know, and understands what truth regards as senseless. Stranger yet, he does not recognize to whom he comes, and yet maintains his home belongs to him, while he is alien now who is at home.

3. And yet how easy it would be to say, “This is my home. Here I belong, and will not leave because a madman says I must.” What reason is there for not saying this? What could the reason be, except that you had asked this stranger in to take your place and let you be a stranger to yourself? No one would let himself be dispossessed so needlessly, unless he thought there was another home more suited to his tastes.

4. Who is the stranger? Is it fear or you that is unsuited to the home which God provided for His Son? Is fear His Own, created in His likeness? Is it fear that love completes and is completed by? There is no home can shelter love and fear. They cannot coexist. If you are real, then fear must be illusion. And if fear is real, then you do not exist at all.

5. How simply then, the question is resolved. Who fears but denied himself and said, “I am the stranger here. And so I leave my home to one more like me than myself, and give him all I thought belonged to me.” Now is he exiled of necessity, not knowing who he is, uncertain of all things but this: that he is not himself, and that his home has been denied to him.

6. What does he search for now? What can he find? A stranger to himself can find no home wherever he may look, for he has made return impossible. His way is lost, except a miracle will search him out and show him that he is no stranger now. The miracle will come, for in his home his Self remains. It asked no stranger in, and took no alien thought to be itself. And it will call Its Own unto Itself, in recognition of what is Its Own.

7. Who is the stranger? Is he not the one your Self calls not? You are unable now to recognize the stranger in your midst, for you have given him your rightful place. Yet is your Self as certain of Its Own as God is of His Son. He cannot be confused about creation. He is sure of what belongs to Him. No stranger can be interposed between His knowledge and His Son’s reality. He does not know of strangers. He is certain of His Son.

8. His certainty suffices.^302. Whom He knows to be His Son belongs where He has set His Son forever. He has answered you who ask, “Who is the stranger?” Hear His Voice assure you, quietly and sure, that you are not a stranger to your father, nor is your Creator stranger made to you. Whom God has joined remains forever one,^303. at home in Him, no stranger to Himself.

9. Today we offer thanks that Christ has come to search the world for what belongs to Him. His vision sees no strangers, but beholds His Own and joyously unites with them. They see Him as a stranger, for they do not recognize themselves. Yet as they give Him welcome, they remember. And He leads them gently home again where they belong.

10. Not one does He forget. Not one He fails to give you to remember, that your home may be complete and perfect as it was established. He has not forgotten you, but you will not remember Him until you look on all as He does. Who denies his brother is denying Him, and refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered, and salvation come.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.” I am not to fear my brothers, not any of them, no matter what they have done or what I fear they will do. I am to love alone and bring all my brothers to acceptance into the Sonship of God.  As this happens, the stranger flees, and my true Self returns and is at home again in my mind and it is so peaceful and loving and good.  “This is my home.  Here I belong!  I will not leave because a madman says I must.”  I will not let fear take the place of me, who is Love in my home.  In Jesus name.  Amen.^[2]. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

^{{2], Excerpt from Eckie F at http://www.eckiefriar.com}

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 159

I Give The Miracles I Have Received.

No one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first you have it in your own possession. Here the laws of Heaven and the world agree. But here they also separate. The world believes that to possess a thing, it must be kept. Salvation teaches otherwise. To give is how to recognize you have received. It is the proof that what you have is yours.

2. You understand that you are healed when you give healing. You accept forgiveness as accomplished in yourself when you forgive. You recognize your brother as yourself, and thus do you perceive that you are whole. There is no miracle you cannot give, for all are given you. Receive them now by opening the storehouse of your mind, where they are laid, and giving them away.

3. Christ’s vision is a miracle. It comes from far beyond itself, for it reflects eternal love and the rebirth of love which never died but has been kept obscure. Christ’s vision pictures Heaven, for it sees a world so like to Heaven that what God created perfect can be mirrored there. The darkened glass the world presents can show but twisted images in broken parts.^293. The real world pictures Heaven’s innocence.

4. Christ’s vision is the miracle in which all miracles are born. It is their source, remaining with each miracle you give, and yet remaining yours. It is the bond by which the giver and receiver are united in extension here on earth, as they are one in Heaven. Christ beholds no sin in anyone, and in His sight the sinless are as one. Their holiness was given by His Father and Himself.

5. Christ’s vision is the bridge between the worlds, and in its power can you safely trust to carry you from this world into one made holy by forgiveness. Things which seem quite solid here are merely shadows there—transparent, faintly seen, at times forgot, and never able to obscure the light that shines beyond them. Holiness has been restored to vision, and the blind can see.^295.

6. This is the Holy Spirit’s single gift, the treasure house.^296. to which you can appeal with perfect certainty for everything that can contribute to your happiness. All are laid here already. All can be received but for the asking. Here the door is never locked, and no one is denied his least request or his most urgent need. There is no sickness not already healed, no lack unsatisfied, no need unmet within this golden treasury of Christ.

7. Here does the world remember what was lost when it was made. For here it is repaired, made new again, but in a different light. What was to be the home of sin becomes the center of redemption and the hearth of mercy, where the suffering are healed and welcome. No one will be turned away from this new home where his salvation waits. No one is stranger to him. No one asks for anything of him except the gift of his acceptance of his welcoming.

8. Christ’s vision is the holy ground in which the lilies of forgiveness set their roots.^289. This is their home. They can be brought from here back to the world, but they can never grow in its unnourishing and shallow soil. They need the light and warmth and kindly care Christ’s charity affords. They need the love with which He looks on them. And they become His messengers, which give as they received.

9. Take from His storehouse, that its treasures may increase. His lilies do not leave their home when they are carried back into the world. Their roots remain. They do not leave their source, but carry its beneficence with them, and turn the world into a garden like the one they came from and to which they go again with added fragrance. Now are they twice blessed. The messages they brought from Christ have been delivered and returned to them. And they return them gladly unto Him.

10. Behold the store of miracles set out for you to give. Are you not worth the gift, when God appointed it to be given you? Judge not God’s Son,^299. but follow in the way He has established. Christ has dreamed the dream of a forgiven world. It is His gift whereby a sweet transition can be made from death to life, from hopelessness to hope. Let us an instant dream with Him. His dream awakens us to truth. His vision gives the means for a return to our unlost and everlasting sanctity in God.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“I give the miracles I have received.” To give is how to recognize you have received. Christ’s vision is a miracle in which all miracles are born, it is the bond by which the giver and receiver are united in extension here on earth. Let me remember today Christ vision is the bridge between the worlds having the power to carry us safely from this world into one made holy by forgiveness. In Christ’s vision the false pictures of safety, security, love, and peace will not obscure the light that shines beyond them. Holiness has been restored to vision and the blind can see. We become His messengers as we give as we receive. I appeal with perfect certainty to the treasure house of gifts laid out for me to receive that I may give all things that contribute to our happiness. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 158

Today I Learn to Give as I Receive.

What has been given you? The knowledge that you are a mind, in Mind and purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid, because you were created out of love. Nor have you left your Source, remaining as you were created. This was given you as knowledge which you cannot lose. It was given as well to every living thing, for by that knowledge only does it live.

2. You have received all this. No one who walks the world but has received it. It is not this knowledge which you give, for this is what creation gave. All this cannot be learned. What, then, are you to learn to give today? Our lesson yesterday evoked a theme found early in the text: Experience cannot be shared directly, in the way that vision can.^290. The revelation that the Father and the Son are one will come in time to every mind. Yet is that time determined by the mind itself, not taught.

3. The time is set already. It appears to be quite arbitrary, yet there is no step along the road that anyone takes but by chance. It has already been taken by him, although he has not yet embarked on it. For time but seems to go in one direction. We but undertake a journey that is over, yet it seems to have a future still unknown to us.

4. Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appearances which does not change. The script is written. When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again, reviewing mentally what has gone by.

5. The teacher does not give experience, because he did not learn it. It revealed itself to him at its appointed time. But vision is his gift. This he can give directly, for Christ’s knowledge is not lost, because He has a vision He can give to anyone who asks. The Father’s will and His are joined in knowledge, yet there is a vision which the Holy Spirit sees because the Mind of Christ beholds it too.

6. Here is the joining of the world of doubt and shadows made with the intangible. Here is the quiet place within the world made holy by forgiveness and by love. Here are all contradictions reconciled, for here the journey ends. Experience—unlearned, untaught, unseen—is merely there. This is beyond our goal, for it transcends what needs to be accomplished. Our concern is with Christ’s vision. This we can attain.

7. Christ’s vision has one law: It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body, an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees.

8. This can be taught, and must be taught by all who would achieve it. It requires but the recognition that the world cannot give anything that faintly can compare with this in value, nor set up a goal which does not merely disappear when this has been perceived. And this you give today: See no one as a body. Greet him as the Son of God he is, acknowledging that he is one with you in holiness.

9. Thus are his sins forgiven him, for Christ has vision which has power to overlook them all. In His forgiveness they are gone. Unseen by One they merely disappear, because a vision of the holiness which lies beyond them comes to take their place. It matters not what form they took, nor how enormous they appeared to be, nor who seemed to be hurt by them. They are no more, and all effects they seemed to have are gone with them, undone and never to be done.

10. Thus do you learn to give as you receive. And thus Christ’s vision looks on you as well. This lesson is not difficult to learn if you remember in your brother you see but yourself. If he be lost in sin, so must you be; if you see light in him, your sins have been forgiven by yourself. Each brother whom you meet today provides another chance to let Christ’s vision shine on you and offer you the peace of God.

11. It matters not when revelation comes, for that is not of time. Yet time has still one gift to give in which true knowledge is reflected in a way so accurate its image shares its unseen holiness; its likeness shines with its immortal love. We practice seeing with the eyes of Christ today. And by the holy gifts we give, Christ’s vision looks upon ourselves as well.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“Today I learn to give as I receive.” Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, yet there is a plan behind appearances which does not change. When experience will come to end doubting has been set. The teacher does not give experience, it is revealed at its appointed time, but vision is a gift. Our concern is with Christ’s vision, this we can attain. Walking in Christ’s vision we will not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body, an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings, and all events. Without the slightest fading of the light it sees. This can be taught, it requires but recognition that we see no one as a body, but greet him as the Son of God he is, that he is one with you in holiness, sins are forgiven for Christ’s vision has power to overlook them all. They are no more, all effects are gone with them, undone, never to be done. Thus do we learn to give as we receive. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 157

Into His Presence Would I Enter Now.

This is a day of silence and of trust. It is a special time of promise in your calendar of days. It is a time Heaven has set apart to shine upon and cast a timeless light upon this day when echoes of eternity are heard. This day is holy, for it ushers in a new experience, a different kind of feeling and awareness. You have spent long days and nights in celebrating death. Today you learn to feel the joy of life.

2. This is another crucial turning point in the curriculum. We add a new dimension now, a fresh experience which sheds a light on all that we learned already, and prepares us for what we have yet to learn. It brings us to the door where learning ceases, and we catch a glimpse of what lies past the highest reaches it can possibly attain. It leaves us here an instant, and we go beyond it, sure of our direction and our goal.

3. Today it will be given you to feel a touch of Heaven, though you will return to paths of learning. Now you have come far enough along the way to alter time sufficiently to rise above its laws and walk into eternity a while. This you will learn to do increasingly as every lesson, faithfully rehearsed, brings you more swiftly to this holy door and leaves you, for a moment, to your Self.

4. He will direct your practicing today, for what you ask for now is what He wills. And having joined your will with His this day, what you are asking must be given you. Nothing is needed but today’s idea to light your mind and let it rest in still anticipation and in quiet joy, wherein you quickly leave the world behind.

5. From this day forth your ministry takes on a genuine devotion, and a glow that travels from your fingertips to those you look upon. A vision reaches everyone you meet, and everyone you think of or who thinks of you. For your experience today will so transform your mind that it becomes the touchstone for holy thoughts of God.

6. Your body will be sanctified today, its only purpose being now to bring the vision of what you experience this day to light the world. We cannot give experience like this directly. Yet it leaves a vision in our eyes which we can offer everyone, that he may come the sooner to the same experience in which the world is quietly forgot and Heaven is remembered for a while.

7. As this experience increases and all goals but this become of little worth, the world to which you will return becomes a little closer to the end of time, a little more like Heaven in its ways, a little nearer its deliverance. And you who bring it light will come to see the light more sure, the vision more distinct.

8. The time will come when you will not return in the same form in which you now appear, for you will have no need of it. Yet now it has a purpose, and will serve it well. Today you will embark upon a course you have not dreamed of. But the Holy One,^289. The Giver of the happy dreams of life, Translator of perception into truth, the holy Guide to Heaven given you, has dreamed for you this journey which you make and start today with the experience this day holds out to you to be your own.

9. Into Christ’s presence will you enter now, serenely unaware of everything except His shining face and perfect love. The vision of His face will stay with you, but there will be an instant which transcends all vision, even this, the holiest. This you will never teach, for you attained it not through learning. Yet the vision speaks of your remembrance of what you knew that instant, and will surely know again.^[1].

^{[1]. A course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

^{Footnote 289.The Old Testament often refers to God as “The Holy One of Israel.” in the gospels, Jesus is referred to by an unclean spirit as “The Holy One of God” (see Mark 1:24 and Luke 4:34). Here, “the Holy One” is the Holy Spirit.}

Personal Notes:

“Into His presence would I enter now.” Holy Spirit will direct my practicing today, for what I ask for now is what He wills. Having joined my will with His, what I am asking must be given me. Nothing is needed but today’s idea to light my mind and let it rest in still anticipation and in quiet joy, wherein I quickly leave the world behind. Into Christ presence I enter serenely unaware of everything except His shining face and perfect love. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 156

I Walk With God in Perfect Holiness.

Today’s idea but states the simple truth which makes the thought of sin impossible. It promises there is no cause for guilt, and being causeless, it does not exist. It follows surely from the basic thought so often mentioned in the text: ideas leave not their source. If this be true, how could you be apart from God? How could you walk the world alone and separate from your Source?

2. We are not inconsistent in the thoughts that we present in our curriculum. Truth must be true throughout if it be true. It cannot contradict itself, nor be in parts uncertain and in others sure. You cannot walk the world apart from God because you could not be without Him. He is what your life is. Where you are He is. There is one life. That life you share with Him. Nothing can be apart from Him and live.

3. Yet where He is there must be holiness as well as life. No attribute of His remains unshared by everything that lives. What lives is holy as Himself, because what shares His life is part of Holiness, and could no more be sinful than the sun could choose to be of ice, the sea elect to be apart from water, or the grass grow with roots suspended in the air.

4. There is a Light in you which cannot die, Whose presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you. All things that live bring gifts to you and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet. The scent of flowers is their gift to you. The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat, and lay their leaves before you on the ground that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper round your holy head.^281.

5. The light in you is what the universe longs to behold. All living things are still before you, for they recognize Who walks with you. The Light you carry is their own, and thus they see in you their holiness, saluting you as Savior and as God. Accept their reverence, for it is due to Holiness Itself, Which walks with you, transforming in Its gentle light all things into Its likeness and Its purity.^282.

6. This is the way salvation works. As you step back, the light in you steps forward and encompasses the world. It heralds not the end of sin in punishment and death. In lightness and in laughter is sin gone, because its quaint absurdity is seen. It is a foolish thought, a silly dream, not frightening—ridiculous perhaps, but who would waste an instant in approach to God Himself for such a senseless whim?

7. Yet you have wasted many, many years on just this foolish thought. The past is gone, with all its fantasies. They keep you bond no longer. The approach to God is near. And in the little interval of doubt that still remains, you may perhaps lose sight of your Companion, and mistake Him for the senseless, ancient dream that now is past.

8. “Who walks with me?” This question should be asked a thousand times a day, till certainty has ended doubting and established peace. Today let doubting cease. God Speaks for you in answering your question with these words.

I walk with God in perfect holiness.

I light the world, I light my mind, and all

The minds which God created one with me.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“I walk with God in perfect holiness.” This promises there is no cause for guilt, and being causeless it does not exist. We do not walk the world apart from God because He is always with us, He is what our life is. Where we are He is. There is one life, that we share with Him. Nothing can be apart from Him and live. Footnote 281.beautifully states: The flowers, waves, trees and wind are depicted as treating you like royalty—bowing down to you, shielding you from heat, laying a carpet before you—because, as the next paragraph says, they recognize the God Who walks with you. Holiness Itself, walks with us transforming in Its gentle light all things into Its likeness and Its purity. Footnote 282. States: Genesis 1:26 (KJV) : “And God said, Let us make in our image , after our likeness.” This is the way salvation works. As you step back, the light in you steps forward and encompasses the world. I remind myself several times today: “I walk with God in perfect holiness. I light the world, I light my mind, and all the minds which God created one with me.”. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

Love is God

God is Love

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 155

I Will Step Back and Let Him Lead The Way.

There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently. Your forehead is serene, your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them, as you were before.

2. The world is an illusion. Those who choose to come to it are seeking for a place where they can be illusions and avoid their own reality. Yet when the find their own reality is even here, then they step back and let it lead the way. What other choice is really theirs to make? To let illusion walk ahead of truth is madness. But to let illusion sink behind the truth and let the truth stand forth as what is, is merely sanity.

3. This is the simple choice we make today. The mad illusion will remain awhile in evidence, for those to look upon who chose to come, and have not yet rejoiced to find they were mistaken in the choice. They cannot learn directly from the truth because they have denied that it is so. And so they need a teacher who perceives their madness, but who still can look beyond illusion to the simple truth in them.

4. If truth demanded they give up the world, it would appear to them as if it asked the sacrifice of something that is real. Many have chosen to renounce the world while still believing its reality, and they have suffered from a sense of loss and have not been released accordingly. Others have chosen nothing but the world, and they have suffered from a sense of loss still deeper, which they have not understood.

5. Between these paths there is another road that leads away from loss of every kind, for sacrifice and deprivation both are quickly left behind. This is the way appointed for you now. You walk this path as others walk, nor do you seem to be distinct from them, although you are indeed. Thus can you serve them while you serve yourself, and set their footsteps on the way which God has opened up to you, and them through you.

6. Illusion still appears to cling to you, that you may reach them. Yet it has stepped back, and it is not illusion that they hear you speak of nor illusion which you bring their eyes to look on and their minds to grasp. Now can the truth, which walks ahead of you, speak to them through illusion, for the road leads past illusion now, while on the way you call to them that they may follow you.

7. All roads will lead to this one in the end. For sacrifice and deprivation are paths which lead nowhere, choices for defeat, and aims which will remain impossible. All this steps back as truth comes forth in you, to lead your brothers from the ways of death and set them on the way to happiness. Their suffering is but illusion. Yet they need a guide to lead them out of it, for they mistake illusion for the truth.

8. Such is salvation’s call, and nothing more. It asks that you accept the truth and let it go before you, lighting up the path of ransom from illusion. It is not a ransom with a price. There is no cost, but only gain. Illusion can but seem to hold in chains the holy Son of God. It is but from illusions he is saved. As they step back he finds himself again.

9. Walk safely now, yet carefully, because this path is new to you, and you will find that you are tempted still to walk ahead of truth and let illusion be your guide. Your holy brothers have been given you to follow in your footsteps as you walk with certainty of purpose to the truth. It goes before you now, that they may see something with which they can identify; something they understand to lead the way.

10. Yet at the journey’s ending will there be no gap, no distance between truth and you. And all illusions walking in the way you traveled will be gone from you as well, with nothing left to keep the truth apart from God’s completion, holy as Himself. Step back in faith, and let truth lead the way. You know not where you go, but One Who knows goes with you. Let Him lead you with the rest.

11. When dreams are over, time has closed the door on all the things that pass, and miracles are purposeless, the holy Son of God will make no journeys. There will be no wish to be illusion rather than the truth. And we step forth toward this as we progress along the way that truth points out to us. This is our final journey, which we make for everyone. We must not lose our way. For as truth goes before us, so it goes before our brothers who will follow us.

12. We walk to God. Pause and reflect on this. Could any way be holier, or more deserving of your effort, of your love, and of your full intent? What way could give you more than everything, or offer less and still content the holy Son of God? We walk to God. The truth that walks before us now is one with Him, and leads us to where He has always been. What way but this could be a path that we would choose instead.

13. Your feet are safely set upon the road that leads the world to God. Look not to ways which seem to lead you elsewhere. Dreams are not a worthy guide for you who are God’s Son. Forget not He has placed His hand in yours, and given you your brothers in His trust in you. He cannot be deceived. His trust has made your pathway certain and your goal secure. You will not fail your brothers nor your Self.

14. And now He asks but that you think of Him a while each day, that He may speak to you and tell you of His love, reminding you how great His trust, how limitless His love. In your name and His Own, which are the same, we practice gladly with this thought today:

I will step back and let Him lead the way,

For I would walk along the road to Him.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“I will step back and let Him lead the way.” Such is salvation’s call, and nothing more. To accept the truth and let it go before me, lighting up the path of ransom from illusion. I walk safely, yet carefully because this path is new to me, if I find myself tempted to walk ahead of truth to let illusion be my guide I will remember Who I put my trust in, to Whom I belong and who I am, a Son of God, I step back in faith, and let truth lead the way, for I would not know where to go, or how, but The One Who knows goes with me. I choose Him to lead me and go before me lighting the way. I will step back and let Him lead the way, for I would walk along the road to Him. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 154

I Am Among The Ministers of God.

Let us today be neither arrogant nor falsely humble. We have gone beyond such foolishness. We cannot judge ourselves, nor need we do so. These are but attempts to hold decision off, and to delay commitment to our function. It is not our part to judge our worth, nor can we know what role is best for us—what we can do within a larger plan we cannot see in its entirety. Our part is cast in Heaven, not in hell. And what we think is weakness can be strength; what we believe to be our strength is often arrogance.

2. Whatever your appointed role may be, it was selected by the Voice for God, Whose function is to speak for you as well. Seeing your strengths exactly as they are, and equally aware of where they can be best applied, for what, to whom, and when, He chooses and accepts your part for you. He does not work without your own consent, but He is not deceived in what you are, and listens only to His Voice in you.

3. It is through His ability to hear one Voice Which is His Own that you become aware at last there is one Voice in you. And that one Voice appoints your function and relays it to you, giving you the strength to understand it, do what it entails, and to succeed in everything you do that is related to it. God has joined His Son in this, and thus His Son becomes His messenger of unity with Him.

4. It is this joining through the Voice Which speaks of laws the world does not obey, Which promises salvation from all sin, with guilt abolished in the mind which God created sinless. Now this mind becomes aware again of Who created it, and of His lasting union with itself. So is Self the one reality in which its will and that of God are joined.

5. A messenger does not elect to write the message he delivers. Nor does he question the right of him who does, nor ask why he has chosen those who will receive the message that he brings. It is enough that he accept it, bring it to the ones for which it is appointed, and fulfill his role in its delivery. If he insists on judging what the messages should be or what their purpose is or where they should be carried, he is failing to perform his proper part as bringer of the Word.

6. There is one major difference in the role of Heaven’s messengers which sets them off from those the world appoints: The messages which they deliver are intended first for them. And it is only as they can accept them for themselves that they become able to bring them further, and to give them everywhere that they were meant to be. Like earthly messengers, they did not write the messages they bear, but they become their first receivers in the truest sense, receiving to prepare themselves to give.

7. An earthly messenger fulfills his role by giving all the messages away. The messengers of God perform their part by their acceptance of His messages as for themselves, and show they understand the messages by giving them away. They choose no roles that are not given them by His authority. And so they gain by every message which they give away.

8. Would you receive the messages of God? For thus do you become His messenger. You are appointed now. And yet you wait to give the messages you have received. And so you do not see that they are yours, and do not recognize them. No one can receive, and understand he has received, until he gives. For in the giving is his own acceptance of what he received.

9. You who are now the messenger of God, receive His messages, for that is part of your appointed role. He has not failed to offer what you need, nor has it been left unaccepted. Yet another part of your appointed task is yet to be accomplished. He Who has received for you the messages of God would have them be received by you as well. For thus do you identify with Him and claim your own.

10. It is this joining that we undertake to recognize today. We will not seek to keep our minds apart from Him who speaks for us, for it is but our voice we hear as we attend Him. He alone can speak to us and for us, joining in one Voice the getting and the giving of God’s Word, the giving and receiving of His Will.

11. We practice giving Him what He would have, that we may recognize His gifts to us. He needs our voice that He may speak through us. He needs our hands to hold His messages and carry them to those whom He appoints. He needs our feet to bring us where He Wills, that those who wait in misery may be at last delivered. And He needs our will united with His Own, that we may be the true receivers of the gifts He gives.

12. Let us but learn this lesson for today: We will not recognize what we receive until we give it. You have heard this said a hundred ways, a hundred times, and yet belief is lacking still. But this is sure: Until belief is given it, you will receive a thousand miracles and then receive a thousand more, but will not know that God Himself has left no gift beyond what you already have, nor has denied the tiniest of blessings to His Son. What can this mean to you until you have identified with Him and with His Own.

13. Our lesson for today is stated thus:

I am among the ministers of God,

And I am grateful that I have the means

By which to recognize that I am free.

     The world recedes as we light up our minds and realize these holy words are true. They are the message sent to us today from our Creator. Now we demonstrate how they have changed our minds about ourselves and what our function is. For as we prove that we accept no will we do not share, our many gifts from our Creator will spring to our sight and leap into our hands, and we will understand what we received.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“I am among the ministers of God.” I come today without judgement of myself, of anyone, or anything. Trusting whatever my appointed role may be is selected by the Voice of God, Who speaks to me as well, knowing exactly what my strengths are, where they can be best applied, for what, for whom and when. I ask Holy Spirit into every part of my heart, mind, body and soul, for direction, and all the answers that I need at the appropriate time. I ask to learn this lesson today in all its fullness that I would not delay my brothers or myself from walking in the freedom, peace, joy and abundance that is our gifts from our Heavenly Father. “I am among the ministers of God, and I am grateful that I have the means by which to recognize that I am free.” Let me be the light shining forth to light the way for us all. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 153

In My Defenselessness My Safety Lies.

You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the “gifts” it merely lends to take away again, attend this lesson well. The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its gifts of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus.

2. The world gives rise but to defensiveness. For threat brings anger, anger makes attack seem reasonable, honestly provoked, and righteous in the name of self-defense. Yet is defensiveness a double threat, for it attests to weakness, and sets up a system of defense that cannot work. Now are the weak still further undermined, for there is treachery within. The mind is now confused, and knows not where to turn to find escape from its imaginings.

3. It is as if a circle bound it, and another in that one, until escape no longer can be hoped for nor attained. Attack, defense; defense, attack become the circles of the hours and the days which bind the mind in heavy bands of steel with iron overlaid, returning but to start again. There seems to be no break nor ending in the ever-tightening grip of imprisonment upon the mind.

4. Defenses are the costliest of all the prices which the ego would exact. In them lies madness in a form so grim that hope of sanity but seems to be an idle dream beyond the possible. The sense of threat the world encourages is so much deeper and so far beyond the frenzy and intensity of which you can conceive that you have no idea of all the devastation it has wrought. You are its slave. You know not what you do in fear of it.^262. You do not understand how much you have been made to sacrifice who feel its iron grip upon your heart.

5. You do not realize what you have done to sabotage the holy peace of God by your defensiveness. For you behold the Son of God as but a victim to attack by fantasies, by dreams and by illusions he has made; yet helpless in their presence, needful only of defense by still more fantasies and dreams by which illusions of his safety comfort him.

6. Defenselessness is strength. It testifies to recognition of the Christ in you. Perhaps you will recall the course maintains that choice is always made between His strength and your own weakness, seen apart from Him. Defenselessness can never be attacked, because it recognizes strength so great attack is folly, or a silly game a tired child might play when he becomes too sleepy to remember what he wants.

7. Defensiveness is weakness. It proclaims you have denied the Christ and come to fear His Father’s anger. What can save you now from your delusion of an angry god, whose fearful image you believe you see at work in all the evils of the world? What but illusions could defend you now, when it is but illusions which you fight?

8. We will not play such childish games today, for our true purpose is to save the world, and we would not exchange for foolishness the endless joy our function offers us. We would not let our happiness slip by because a senseless fragment of a dream happened to cross our minds, and we mistook the figures in it for the Son of God, its tiny instant for eternity.

9. We look past dreams today, and recognize that we need no defense because we were created unassailable, without all thought or wish or dream in which attack has any meaning. Now we cannot fear, for we have left all fearful thoughts behind. And in defenselessness we stand secure, serenely certain of our safety now, sure of salvation, sure we will fulfill our chosen purpose as our ministry extends its holy blessing through the world.

10. Be still a moment, and in silence think how holy is your purpose, how secure you rest, untouchable within its light. God’s ministers have chosen that the truth be with them. Who is holier than they? Who could be surer that his happiness is fully guaranteed? And who could be more mightily protected? What defense could possibly be needed by the ones who are among the chosen ones of God, by His election and their own as well?

11. It is the function of God’s ministers to help their brothers choose as they have done. God has elected all, but few come to realize His will is but their own.^267. And while you fail to teach what you have learned, salvation waits and darkness holds the world in grim imprisonment. Nor will you learn that light has come to you and your escape has been accomplished. For you will not see the light until you offer it to all your brothers. As they take it from your hands, so will you recognize it as your own.

12. Salvation can be thought of as a game that happy children play. It was designed by One Who loves His children, and Who would replace their fearful toys with joyous games which teach them that the game of fear is gone. His game instructs in happiness because there is no loser. Everyone who plays must win, and in his winning is the gain for everyone ensured. The game of fear is gladly laid aside when children come to see the benefits salvation brings.

13. You who have played that you are lost to hope, abandoned by your Father, left alone in terror in a fearful world made mad by sin and guilt, be happy now. That game is over. Now a quiet time has come, in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of Heaven’s children and the Son of God. We pause but for a moment more, to play our final, happy game upon this earth. And then we go to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless.

14. So is the story ended. Let this day bring the last chapter closer to the world, that everyone may learn the tale he reads of terrifying destiny, defeat of all his hopes, his pitiful defense against a vengeance he cannot escape, was but his own deluded fantasy. God’s ministers have come to waken hm from the dark dreams this story has evoked in his confused, bewildered memory of this distorted tale. God’s Son can smile at last, on learning that it is not true.

15. Today we practice in a form we will maintain for quite a while. We will begin each day by giving our attention to the daily thought as long as possible. Five minutes now becomes the least we give to preparation for a day in which salvation is the only goal we have. Ten would be better; fifteen better still. And as distraction ceases to arise to turn us from our purpose, we will find that half an hour is too short a time to spend with God. Nor will we willingly give less at night in gratitude and joy.

16. Each hour adds to our increasing peace, as we remember to be faithful to the will we share with God. At times, perhaps, a minute, even less, will be the most that we can offer as the hour strikes. Sometimes we will forget. At other times the business of the world will close on us, and we will be unable to withdraw a little while and turn our thoughts to God. Yet when we can, we will observe our trust as ministers of God in hourly remembrance of our mission and His love. And we will quietly sit by and wait on Him and listen to His Voice, and learn what He would have us do the hour that is yet to come, while thanking Him for all the gifts He have us in the one gone by.

17. In time, with practice, you will never cease to think of Him, and hear His loving Voice guiding your footsteps into quiet paths where you will walk in true defenselessness, for you will know that Heaven goes with you. Nor would you keep your mind away from Him a moment, even though your time is spent in offering salvation to the world. Think you He will not make this possible for you who chose to carry out His plan for the salvation of the world and yours?

18. Today our theme is our defenselessness. We clothe ourselves in it as we prepare to meet the day. We rise up strong in Christ, and let our weakness disappear as we remember that His strength abides in us. We will remind ourselves that He remains beside us through the day, and never leaves our weakness unsupported by His strength. We call upon His strength each time we feel the threat of our defenses undermine our certainty of purpose. We will pause a moment as He tells us, “I am here.”

19. Our practicing will now begin to take the earnestness of love, to help you keep your mind from wandering from its intent. Be not afraid or timid.²⁷⁰ There can be no doubt that you will reach your final goal. The ministers of God can never fail, because the love and strength and peace that shine from them to all their brothers come from Him. These are His gifts to you. Defenselessness is all you need to give Him in return. You lay aside but what was never real, to look on Christ and see His sinlessness.^[1].

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“In my defenselessness my safety lies.” Defensiveness is a double threat, for it attest to weakness and sets up a system of defense that cannot work. It confuses the mind and does not know where to turn to find escape from its imaginings. Not realizing we have sabotaged the holy peace of God by our defensiveness. Defenselessness is strength. It testifies to recognition of the Christ in us. I put away such childish games to exchange foolishness for the endless joy my function offers me. I let all fearful thoughts behind, and in defenselessness I stand secure, certain of my safety now, sure of salvation, sure I will fulfill my chosen purpose as my ministry extends its holy blessing through the world. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 152

The Power of Decision is My Own.

No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is.

2. You may believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. Yet can truth have exceptions? If you have the gift of everything, can loss be real? Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where love and perfect holiness abide? Truth must be all-inclusive if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposite and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely.

3. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. Without the first the second has no meaning, but without the second is the first no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This cannot be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false, and truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false.

4. This is the simplest of distinctions, yet the most obscure. But not because it is a difficult distinction to perceive. It is concealed behind a vast array of choices which do not appear to be entirely your own. And thus the truth appears to have some aspects which belie consistency, but do not seem to be but contradictions introduced by you.

5. As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with transitory states by definition false. And the that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind, in all awareness and in all response. This is the all-inclusiveness which sets the truth apart from falsehood, and the false kept separate from the truth as what it is.

6. Is it not strange that you believe to think you made the world you see is arrogance? God made it not. Of this you can be sure! What could He know of the ephemeral, the sinful and the guilty, the afraid, the suffering and lonely, and the mind which lives within a body that must die? You but accuse Him of insanity to think He made a world where such things seem to have reality. He is not mad. Yet only madness makes a world like this.

7. To think that God mad chaos, contradicts His will, invented opposites to truth, and suffers death to triumph over life—all this is arrogance. Humility would see at once these things are not of Him. And can you see what God created not? To think you can see what God willed not to be. And what could be more arrogant than this?

8. Let us be truly humble, and accept what we have made as what it is. The power of decision is your own. Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear. What rises to awareness then will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now. And it will take the place of self-deceptions made but to usurp the alter to the Father and the Son.

9. Today we practice true humility, abandoning the false pretense by which the ego seeks to prove it arrogant. Only the ego can be arrogant. But truth is humble in acknowledging its mightiness, its changelessness, and its eternal wholeness, all-encompassing, God’s perfect gift to His beloved Son.

10. We lay aside the arrogance which says that we are sinners, guilty and afraid, ashamed of what we are, and lift our hearts in true humility instead to Him Who has created us immaculate, like to Himself in power and in love. The power of decision is our own. And we accept of Him that which we are, and humbly recognize the Son of God.

11. To recognize God’s Son implies as well that all self-concepts have been laid aside, and recognized as false. Their arrogance has been perceived, and in humility the radiance of God’s Son, his gentleness, his perfect sinlessness, his Father’s love, his right to Heaven and release from hell are joyously accepted as our own. Now do we join in glad acknowledgment that lies are false and only truth is true.

12. We think of truth alone as we arise, and spend five minutes practicing its ways, encouraging our frightened minds with this:

The power of decision is my own.

This day I will accept myself as what

My Father’s will created me to be.

     Then will we wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions as we humbly ask our Self that He reveal Himself to us. And He Who never left will come again to our awareness, grateful to restore His home to God, as it was meant to be.

13. In patience wait for Him throughout the day, and hourly invite Him with the words with which the day began, concluding it with this same invitation to your Self. God’s Voice will answer, for He speaks for you and for your Father. He will substitute the peace of God for all your frantic thoughts, the truth of God for self-deceptions, and God’s Son for your illusions of yourself.^[1]

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“The power of decision is my own.” Because I do have the gift of everything, loss, pain, grief, fear and sickness cannot enter my mind where love and perfect holiness abide. Truth must be all-inclusive if it be truth at all. Salvation is the recognition that truth is true and nothing else is true. The power of decision is my own. My decision is to accept my rightful place as co-creator of the universe. I think of truth alone upon waking spending five minutes practicing its ways, encouraging my frightened mind: The power of decision is my own. This day I will accept myself as what my Father’s will created me to be. Then waiting in silence, giving up all self-deceptions, humbly asking Self that He reveal Himself to me. And He who never left will come again to my awareness, grateful to restore His home to God, as it was meant to be. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 151

All Things Are Echoes of The Voice of God.

No one can judge on partial evidence. That is not judgement. It is merely an opinion based on ignorance and doubt. Its seeming certainty is but a cloak for the uncertainty it would conceal. It needs irrational defense because it is irrational. And its defense seems strong, convincing, and without a doubt because of all the doubting underneath.

2.  You do not seem to doubt the world you see. You do not really question what is shown you through the body’s eyes. Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed. Why would you trust them so implicitly? Why but because of underlying doubt which you would hide with show of certainty?

3.  How can you judge? Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you, yet witness never falser was, than this. But how else do you judge the world you see? You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. You think your fingers touch reality and close upon the truth. This is awareness which you understand, and think more real than what is witnessed to by the eternal Voice of God Himself.

4.  Can this be judgement? You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you. You cannot judge. You merely can believe the ego’s judgments, all of which are false. It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are, how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt.

5.  This thing it speaks of and would yet defend it tells you is yourself. And you believe that this is so with stubborn certainty. Yet underneath remains the hidden doubt that what it shows you as reality with such conviction it does not believe. It is itself alone that it condemns. It is within itself it sees the guilt. It is own despair it sees in you.

6.  Hear not its voice. The witnesses it sends to prove to you its evil is your own are false, and speak with certainty of what they do not know. Your faith in them is blind, because you would not share the doubts their lord cannot completely vanquish. You believe to doubt his vassals is to doubt yourself. Yet you must learn to doubt their evidence will clear the way to recognize yourself, and let the Voice for God alone be judge of what is worthy of your own belief.

7.  He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, or what his body’s mouth says to your ears, or what your fingers’ touch reports of him. He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God’s Son.²⁵² He recognizes only what God loves, and in the holy light of what He sees do all the ego’s dreams of what you are vanish before the splendor He beholds.

8.  Let Him be judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt, because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its face. Christ cannot doubt Himself. The Voice of God can only honor Him, rejoicing in His perfect, everlasting sinlessness. Whom He has judged can only laugh at guilt, unwilling now to play with toys of sin, unheeding of the body’s witnesses before the rapture of Christ’s holy face.

9.  And thus He judges you. Accept His word for what you are, for He bears witness to your beautiful creation and the Mind Whose thought created your reality. What can the body mean to Him Who knows the glory of the Father and the Son? What whispers of the ego can He hear? What could convince Him that your sins are real?

10.  Let Him be judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth. He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle face of Christ in all of them. You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings and teach the single lesson which they all contain.

11.  He will select the elements in them that represents the truth, and disregard those aspects which reflect but idle dreams. And he will reinterpret all you see, and all occurrences, each circumstance, and every happening which seems to touch on you in any way from His one frame of reference, wholly unified and sure. And you will see the love beyond the hate, the constancy in change, the pure in sin, and only Heaven’s blessing on the world.

12.  Such is your resurrection, for your life is not a part of anything you see. It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness, within the Holy, holy as Itself. In everyone and everything His Voice will speak to you of nothing but your Self and your Creator, Who is one with Him. So will you see the holy face of Christ in everything, and hear in everything no sound except the echo of God’s Voice.

13.  We practice wordlessly today, except at the beginning of the time we spend with God. We introduce these times with but a single, slow repeating of today’s idea. And then we watch our thoughts, appealing silently to Him Who sees the elements of truth in each of them. Let Him evaluate all thoughts that come to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the will of God.

14.  Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son, as proof of His eternal love. And as each thought is thus transformed, it takes on healing power from the Mind Which saw the truth in it, and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. All threads of fantasy are gone, and what remains is unified into a perfect thought that offers its perfection everywhere.

15.  Spend fifteen minutes thus when you awake, and gladly give another fifteen more before you go to sleep. Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified. So are you taught to teach the Son of God the holy lesson of his sanctity. No one can fail to listen when you hear the Voice of God give honor to God’s Son. And everyone will share the thoughts with you which has retranslated in your mind.

16.  Such is your Eastertide. And so you lay the gift of snow-white lilies on the world, replacing witnesses to sin and death. Through your transfiguration is the world redeemed and joyfully released from guilt. Now do we lift our resurrected minds in gladness and in gratitude to Him Who has restored our sanity to us.

17.  And we will hourly remember Him Who is salvation and deliverance. As we give thanks, the world unites with us and happily accepts our holy thoughts, which Heaven has corrected and made pure. Now has our ministry begun at last, to carry round the world the joyous news that truth has no illusions, and the peace of God, through us, belongs to everyone.^[1]

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“All things are echoes of the Voice of God.” I choose not to listen to the voice of ego and the witnesses it would send to declare me and my brothers as guilty. I listen for the Voice of God letting Him be the judge of what we are, it is in His certainty only which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty So Great that doubt is meaningless before Its face. I let Him be judge as well of everything that seems to happen to me in this world. His lessons will enable me to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth. Removing all faith in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. I practice wordlessly today, except at the beginning of the time spent with God slowly repeating the idea for today, “All things are echoes of the Voice of God.” Letting Him evaluate all thoughts that come to mind, removing the elements of dreams, and giving them back to me as clean ideas which do not contradict the will of God. As each thought is transformed, it takes on healing power from the Mind Which saw the truth in it and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. I set aside fifteen minutes on waking and fifteen more before going to sleep to meditate on this idea for today. Our ministry begins as all our thoughts are purified. Through our transfiguration is the world redeemed and joyfully released from guilt. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 150

My Mind Holds Only What I Think With God

1. (139)  I will accept Atonement for myself.

2. (140)  Only salvation can be said to cure.^[1]

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“I will accept Atonement for myself. Here is the end of choice. For here we come to a decision to accept ourselves as God created us. Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself and be unsure of what you really are. Let us not allow our holy minds to occupy themselves with senseless musings such as this. We have a mission here. We did not come to reinforce the madness which we once believed in. let us not forget the goal which we accepted. It is more than just our happiness alone we came to gain. What we accept as what we are proclaims what everyone must be along with us. Today accept atonement, not to change reality, but merely to accept the truth about ourselves, and go our way rejoicing in the endless love of God. “I will accept Atonement for myself, for I remain as God created me.” “Only salvation can be said to cure.” Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that made the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. We will try today to find the source of healing, which is in our minds because our Father placed it there for us. We need but seek it, and it must be found. “Only salvation can be said to cure. Speak to us Father, that we may be healed.” I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 149

My Mind Holds Only What I Think With God.

1. (137).  As I am healed I am not healed alone.

2. (138).  Heaven is the decision I must make. ^[1]

^{[1[. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“As I am healed I am not healed alone.” To be healed is to accept what always was the simple truth, and always will remain exactly as it has forever been. Yet eyes accustomed to illusions must be shown that what they look upon is false. Healing might be called a counter dream, which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth, but not in truth itself, healing removes illusions that have not occurred. Just as forgiveness shines away all sin, and the real world must occupy the place of what you made, so healing must replace fantasies of sickness you have held before the simple truth. Healing is freedom, healing is shared, healing is strength. Healing, forgiveness, and the glad exchange of all the world of sorrow for a world where sadness cannot enter are the means by which Holy Spirit urges you to follow Him. “As I am healed I am not healed alone. And I would share my healing with world, that sickness may be banished from the mind of God’s one Son, Who is my only Self.” “Heaven is the decision I must make.” Choosing depends on learning. And the truth cannot be learned, but only recognized. In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is known. Decisions are the outcome of your learning, for they rest on what you have accepted as the truth of what you are and what your needs must be. We make the choice for Heaven as we wake, and spend five minutes making sure that we have made the one decision that is sane. As every hour passes we declare our choice again, in a brief quiet time devoted to maintaining sanity. And close the day acknowledging we choose but what we want. “Heaven I the decision I must make. I make it now and will not change my mind, because it is the only thing I want. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life, in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 148

My Mind Holds Only What I Think With God.

1.  (135)  If I defend myself I am attacked.

2.  (136)  Sickness is a defense against the truth.^[1]

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“If I defend myself I am attacked.” If I resort to defense, I give illusions full reality, adding illusions to illusions, making correction doubly difficult. If I attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as I wish, I am operating from a belief I must protect myself. Defense is frightening and stems from fear, making fear real. A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plan which it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own. It waits until it has been taught what should be done, then proceeds to do it. It does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it. Without defenses, I become a light which Heaven gratefully acknowledges to be its own. And it will lead me on in ways appointed for my happiness according to the ancient plan, begun when time was born. “If I defend myself I am attacked. But in defenselessness I will be strong, and I will learn what my defenses hide. “Sickness is a defense against the truth.” Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, and reduce it to a little pile of disassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. Defenses make facts unrecognizable. Truth has power far beyond defense, for no illusion can remain where it has been allowed to enter. “Sickness is a defense against the truth. I will accept the truth of what I am, and let my mind be wholly healed today.” I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 147

My Mind Holds Only What I Think With God.

1.  (133) I will not value what is valueless.

2.  (134) Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.^[1]

^{[1] A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“I will not value what is valueless.” You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. This course does not attempt to take from you the little you have. It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions that the world contains. There are no satisfactions in the world. If you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you choose is valueless. What fades and dies was never there, and makes no offering to him who chooses it. He is deceived by nothing in a form he thinks he likes. All things are valuable or valueless. Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult. “I will not value what is valueless, and only what has value do I seek, for only that do I desire to find. “Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. The twisted view of what salvation means is easily corrected when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. It must be limited to what is false. It is irrelevant to everything except illusions. Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies, but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, “My brother, what you think is not the truth.” “Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. Should I accuse myself of doing this? I will not lay this chain upon myself. No one is crucified alone, and yet no one can enter Heaven by Himself.” I continue to pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 146

My Mind Holds Only What I Think With God.

1.  (131) No one can fail who ask to reach the truth.

2.  (132) I loose the world from all I thought it was.^[1]

^{[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“No one can fail who asks to reach the truth.” Failure is all about “me” while I seek for goals which cannot be achieved. Looking for permanence in the impermanent, for love where there is none, for safety in the midst of danger, immortality within the darkness of the dream of death. Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness. Heaven remains my one alternative to this strange world I made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. “I ask to see a different world and think a different kind of thought from those I made. The world I seek I did not make alone; the thoughts I want to think are not my own. Today I choose to refrain from dismal thoughts and meaningless laments. Salvation time has come. “I loose the world from all I thought it was.” A madman thinks the world he sees is real and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts’ effects. It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last. The present now remains the only time. Here in the present is the world set free. For as I let the past be lifted and release the future from my ancient fears, I find escape and give it to the world. To know true Self is the salvation of the world, to free the world from every kind of pain is but to change our mind about our-Self. “I who remain as God created me would loose the world from all I thought it was. For I am real because the world is not, and I would know my own reality. After repeating these ideas for today, merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let your mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed along with you. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 144 Review (127 & 128)

My Mind Thinks Only What I Think With God

1.  (127) There is no love but God’s.

2.  (128) The world I see has nothing that I want.^[1]

^{[1[ A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“My mind thinks only what I think with God.” There is no love but God’s. Love is one. It has no separate parts and no divergencies and no distinctions. It is like itself, unchanged throughout. It never alters with a person or circumstance. It is the heart of God and therefore of His Son. Love cannot judge. As it is one itself, it looks on all as one. Its meaning lies in oneness. Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds Them bout forever as the same. Love’s meaning is your own, and shared by God Himself. For what you are is what He is. There is no love but His, and what He is, is everything there is. There is no limit placed upon Himself, and so are you unlimited as well. The world I see has nothing that I want. Today I practice letting go all thought of values I have given to the world. I leave it free of purposes I gave its aspects and its phases and its dreams. Holding it purposeless within my mind, loosening it from all I wished it were. Peace and be still a little while and see how far we rise above the world when we release our mind from chains and let it seek the level it finds itself at home. To free our wings, to fly in sureness and in joy, to join our holy purpose, to rest in our Creator to be restored to sanity, to freedom, and to love. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

                                                                                            Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 143 Review of (125 & 126)

My Mind Holds Only What I Think With God

1.  (125) In quiet I receive God’s Word today.

2.  (126) All that I give is given to myself.^[1]

^{[1], A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes.

“My mind holds only what I think with God.” Lesson 125; In stillness we will hear His Voice today, without intrusions of our petty thoughts, without our personal desires, and without all judgement of His Holy Word. Today we will not listen to the world, but wait in silence for the Word of God. As every hour passes by today, I will be still a moment in quiet to receive the Word of God. Review Lesson 126; All that is given is given to myself. Remembering the giver and receiver are the same, I spend a quiet moment opening my mind to His correction and His Love. The Help I need to learn this is true is with me now. And I will trust Him. I ask Holy Spirit to lead and guide us in our quiet time with our Heavenly Father today. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 142 Review of (123 and 124)

My Mind Holds Only What I Think With God.

1. (123) I thank my Father for His Gifts to me.

2. (124) Let me remember I am one with God.

Personal Notes:

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”  Doing practice exercise of 123 with recorded audio on the hour remembering; I thank my Father for His gifts to me. Today with an attitude of gratitude, I lift my heart above despair and raise my thankful eyes, no longer looking downward to the dust. Singing the song of thankfulness today in honor of the Self Which God has willed to be our true identity in Him. Practice 124 Let me remember I am one with God. Again, I give thanks for my identity in God. My home is safe, protection guaranteed in all I do, power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. We can fail in nothing. I will not doubt His love for me, nor question His protection and His care. No meaningless anxieties can come between our faith and our awareness of His presence.  I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus. Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 141 Review of (121 and 122)

My Mind Holds Only What I Think With God.

1. (121) Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

2. (122) Forgiveness offers everything I want.

Personal Notes:

“My mind holds only what I think with God.”  Doing practice exercise of 121 with recorded audio on the hour remembering; Forgiveness is the key to happiness. I would awaken from the dream that I am mortal, fallible, and full of sin, and know I am the perfect Son of God. Practice 122 Forgiveness offers everything I want. Today I have accepted this as true. Today I have received the gifts of God. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus. Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Review 4

Introduction

Now we review again, this time aware we are preparing for the second part of learning how the truth can be applied. Today we will begin to concentrate on readiness for what will follow next. Such is our aim for this review and for the lessons following. Thus we review the recent lessons and their central thoughts in such a way as will facilitate the readiness that we would now achieve.

2.  There is a central theme that unifies each step in the review we undertake, which can be simply stated in these words.

My mind holds only what I think with God.

     This is a fact, and represents the truth of what you are and What your Father is. It is this thought by which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as co-creator with Himself. It is this thought which fully guarantees salvation to the Son, for in his mind no thoughts can dwell but those his Father shares. Lack of forgiveness blocks this thought from his awareness. Yet it is forever true.

3.  Let us begin our preparation with some understanding of the many forms in which the lack of true forgiveness may be carefully concealed. Because they are illusions, they are not perceived to be but what they are: defenses which protect unforgiving thoughts from being seen and recognized. Their purpose is to show you something else, and hold correction off through self-deception made to take its place.

4.  And yet your mind holds only what you think with God. Your self-deceptions cannot take the place of truth, no more than can a child who throws a stick into the ocean change the coming and going of the tides, the warming of the water by the sun, the silver of the moon on it by night. So do we start each practice period in this review with readying our minds to understand the lessons that we read, and see the meaning which they offer us.

5.  Begin each day, with time devoted to the preparation of your mind to learn what each idea you will review that day can offer you in freedom and in peace. Open your mind and clear it of all thoughts that would deceive, and let this thought alone engage it fully and remove the rest:

My mind holds only what I think with God.

6.  Five minutes with this thought will be enough to set the day along the lines which God appointed, and to place His Mind in charge of all the thoughts you will receive that day. They will not come from you alone, for they will all be shared with Him. And so each one will bring the message of His love to you, returning messages of yours to Him. So will communion with the Lord of hosts be yours, as He Himself has willed it be. And as His Own completion joins with Him, so will He join with you who are complete, as you unite with Him and He with you.

7.  After your preparation, merely read each of the two ideas assigned to you to be reviewed that day. Then close your eyes and say them slowly to yourself. There is no hurry now, for you are using time for its intended purpose. Let each word shine with the meaning God has given it, as it was given to you through His Voice. Let each idea that you review that day give you the gift which He has laid in it for you to have of Him. And we will use no format for our practicing but this:

8.  Each hour of the day, bring to your mind the thought with which the day began, and spend a quiet moment with it. Then repeat the two ideas you practice for the day unhurriedly, with time enough to see the gifts which they contain for you, and let them be received where they were meant to be. We add no other thoughts, but let them be the messages they are. We need no more than that to give us happiness and rest, and endless quiet, perfect certainty, and all our Father wills that we receive as the inheritance we have of Him.

9.  Each day of practicing, as we review, we close as we began, repeating first the thought that made the day a special time of blessing and of happiness for us, and through our faithfulness restored the world from darkness to the light, from grief to joy, from pain to peace, from sin to holiness.

10.  God offers thanks to you who practice thus the keeping of His Word. And as you give your mind to the ideas for the day again before you sleep, His gratitude surrounds you in the peace wherein He willed you be forever, and which you are learning now to claim again as your inheritance.^[1].

^[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Personal Notes:

“My mind holds only what I think with God.” I plan to begin each day of reviews 121-140 with time devoted to preparing my mind to learn what each idea of the day will offer me in freedom and in peace. Setting five minutes on the hour to say and remember “My mind holds only what I think with God.”  And repeating unhurriedly the two ideas for the day. To remember again before going to sleep. I pray for Holy Spirit to lead, guide, and teach each one of us on this journey of seeking Truth and direction in Christ Jesus. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 140

Only Salvation Can Be Said To Cure.

“Cure” is a word that cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as beneficial. What the world perceives as therapeutic is but what will make a body better. When it tries to heal the mind, it sees no separation from the body, where it thinks the mind exists. Its forms of healing thus must substitute illusions for illusions. One belief in sickness takes another form, and so the patient now perceives himself as well.

2.  He is not healed. He merely had a dream that he was sick, and in the dream he found a magic formula to make him well. Yet he has not awakened from the dream, and so his mind remains exactly as it was before. He has not seen the light that would awaken him and end the dream. What difference does the content of a dream make in reality? One either sleeps or wakens. There is nothing in between.

3.  The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings are different from the dreaming of the world, where one can merely dream he is awake. The dreams forgiveness lets the mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep so that the dreamer dreams another dream. His happy dreams are heralds of the dawn of truth upon the mind. They lead from sleep to gentle waking, so that dreams are gone. And thus they cure for all eternity.

4.  Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that made the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.

5.  Peace be to you who have been cured in God and not in idle dreams. For cure must come from holiness, and holiness cannot be found where sin is cherished. God abides in holy temples. He is barred where sin has entered. Yet there is no place where He is not. And therefore sin can have no home in which to hide from His beneficence. There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide.

6.  This is the thought that cures. It does not make distinctions among unrealities. Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where the need for healing is. This is no magic. It is merely an appeal to truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever. It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real.

7.  Let us not try today to seek to cure what cannot suffer sickness. Healing must be sought but where it is, and then applied to what is sick, so that it can be cured. There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. The mind that brings illusions to the truth is really changed. There is change but this. For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes which have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?

8.  Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. We will try today to find the source of healing, which is in our minds because our Father placed it there for us. It is no farther from us than ourselves. It is as near to us as our own thoughts, so close it is impossible to lose.^244. We need but seek it, and it must be found.

9.  We will not be misled today by what appears to us as sick. We go beyond appearances today and reach the source of healing, from which nothing is exempt. We will succeed to the extent to which we realize that there can never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and equally untrue. Here there are no degrees, and no beliefs that what does not exist is truer in some forms than others. All of them are false, and can be cured because they are not true.

10. So do we lay aside our amulets, our charms and medicines, our chants and bits of magic in whatever form they take. We will be still and listen for the Voice of healing, Which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. No voice but that can cure. Today we hear a single Voice Which speaks to us of truth where all illusions end and peace returns to the eternal, quiet home of God.

11.  We waken hearing Him, and let Him speak to us five minutes as the day begins, and end the day by listening again five minutes more before we go to sleep. Our only preparation is to let our interfering thoughts be laid aside, not separately, but all of them as one. They are the same. We have no need to make them different, and thus delay the time when we can hear our Father speak to us. We hear now. We come to Him today.

12. With nothing in our hands to which we cling, with lifted hearts and listening minds, we pray:

Only salvation can be said to cure.

Speak to us, Father, that we may be healed.

     And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds, nor offer proof to us that it is real. This will we learn today. And we will say our prayer for healing hourly, and take a minute as the hour strikes to hear the answer to our prayer be given us, as we attend in silence and in joy. This is the day when healing comes to us. This is the day when separation ends, and we remember who we really are.^[1].

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Footnote 244. Deuteronomy 30: 11-14 (RSV): “For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it? But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”

Personal Notes:

“Only salvation can be said to cure.”  Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. I begin this day by five minutes listening and waiting on the Voice of my Heavenly Father and again five minutes more before I go to sleep. And hourly taking a minute, I say prayer for healing to hear the answer to our prayers in silence and joy. This is the day when healing comes to us, remembering who we really are. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 139

I Will Accept Atonement For Myself.

Here is the end of choice. For here we come to a decision to accept ourselves as God created us. And what is choice except uncertainty of what we are? There is no doubt, that is not rooted here. There is no question but reflects this one. There is no conflict that does not entail the single simple question “What am I?”

2.  Yet who could ask this question except one who has refused to recognize himself? Only refusal to accept yourself could make the question seem to be sincere. That only thing that can be surely known by any living thing is, what it is. From this one point of certainty it looks on other things as certain as itself. Uncertainty about what you must be is self-deception on a scale so vast its magnitude can hardly be conceived.

3.  To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead. For what is life except to be yourself, and what but you can be alive instead? Who is the doubter? What is it he doubts? Whom does he question? Who can answer him? He merely states that he is not himself, and therefore, being something else, becomes a questioner of what that something is.

4.  Yet he could never be alive at all unless he knew the answer. If he asks as if he does not know, it merely shows he does not want to be the thing he is. He has accepted it because he lives, has judged against it and denied its worth, and has decided that he does not know the only certainty by which he lives. Thus he becomes uncertain of his life, for what it is has been denied by him.

5.  It is for this denial that you need Atonement. Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth. You are yourself. There is no doubt of this, and yet you doubt it. But you do not ask what part of you can really doubt yourself. It cannot really be a part of you that asks this question, for it asks of one who knows the answer. Were it part of you, uncertainty would be impossible.

6.  Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself and be unsure of what you really are. This is the depth of madness. Yet it is universal question of the world. What does this prove except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true? Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are.

7.  And they will come again until the time Atonement is accepted, and they learn it is impossible to doubt yourself and not to be aware of what you are. Only acceptance can be asked of you, for what you are is certain. It is set forever in the holy Mind of God and in your own. It is so far beyond all doubt and question that to ask what it must be is all the proof you need to show that you believe the contradiction that you know not what you cannot fail to know.

8.  Is this a question, or a statement which denies itself in statement? Let us not allow our holy minds to occupy themselves with senseless musings such as this. We have a mission here. We did not come to reinforce the madness which we once believed in. Let us not forget the goal which we accepted. It is more than just our happiness alone we came to gain. What we accept as what we are proclaims what everyone must be along with us.

9.  Fail not your brothers, or you fail yourself. Look lovingly on them, that they may know that they are part of you and you of them. This does Atonement teach, and demonstrates the oneness of God’s Son is unassailed by his belief he knows not what he is. Today accept Atonement, not to change reality, but merely to accept the truth about yourself, and go your way rejoicing in the endless love of God.²⁴¹ It is but this that we are asked to do. It is but this that we will do today.

10.  Five minutes in the morning and at night we will devote to dedicating our minds to our assignment for today. We start with this review of what our mission is:

I will accept Atonement for myself,

For I remain as God created me.

11.  We have not lost the knowledge that God gave to us when He created us like Him. We can remember it for everyone, for in creation are all minds as one. And in our memory is the recall how dear our brothers are to us in truth, how much a part of us is every mind, how faithful they have really been to us, and how our Father’s love contains us all.

12.  In thanks for all creation, in the Name of its Creator and His oneness with all aspects of creation, we repeat our dedication to our cause today each hour, as we lay aside all thoughts that would distract us from our holy goal. For several minutes let your mind be cleared of all the foolish cobwebs which the world would weave around the holy Son of God. And learn the fragile nature of the chains which seem to keep the knowledge of yourself apart from your awareness, as you say:

I will accept Atonement for myself,

For I remain as God created me.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Footnote 241. Acts 8:39 (RSV): “And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught up Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.”

Personal Notes:

The last several Lessons have been pretty lengthy and in experiencing times of needing pause with this, I want to encourage all readers and listeners of this course not to become weary of the many words and great need for focus, the demands for concentration in repetitiveness; Not to be discouraged but to invite Holy Spirit to work with you for enlightenment, to be patient, it will all come together, the Truth will be revealed as we Choose to see Love, as we Choose to see with our Spiritual eyes and Hear with our Spiritual ears. “I will accept Atonement for myself.” I set five minutes morning and at night to dedicating my mind to the assignment for today: I will accept Atonement for myself, for I remain as God created me. To remember this on the hour, to clear my mind of all the foolish cobwebs which the world would weave around the holy Son of God. To look Lovingly on all my brothers that they may know that they are part of me and I part of them. I will accept Atonement for myself, for I remain as God created me. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 138

Heaven Is The Decision I Must Make.

In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are alternatives to choose between. We think that all things have an opposite, and what we want we choose. If Heaven exists there must be hell as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we perceive and what we think is real. Creation knows no opposite, but here is opposition part of being “real”.

2.  It is this strange perception of the truth that makes the choice of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. It is not really thus. Yet what is true in God’s creation cannot enter here unless it is reflected in some form the world can understand. Truth cannot come where it could only be perceived with fear, for this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions. Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come.

3.  Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. Decision lets one of conflicting goals become the aim of effort and expenditure of time. Without decision, time is but a waste and effort dissipated. It is spent for nothing in return, and time goes by without results. There is no sense of gain, for nothing is accomplished, nothing learned.

4.  You need to be reminded that you think a thousand choices are confronting you, when there is really only one to make, and even this but seems to be a choice. Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. You make but one. And when that one is made, you will perceive it was no choice at all, for truth is true and nothing else is real. There is no opposite to choose instead. There is no contradiction to truth.

5.  Choosing depends on learning. And the truth cannot be learned, but only recognized. In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is known. But knowing is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this course. Ours are teaching goals, to be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you. Decisions are the outcome or your learning, for they rest on what you have accepted as the truth of what you are and what your needs must be.

6.  In this insanely complicated world, Heaven appears to take the form of choice, rather than merely being what it is. Of all the choices you have tried to make, this is the simplest, most definitive, the prototype of all the rest, the one which settles all decisions. If you could decide the rest, this one remains unsolved. But when you solve this one, the others are resolved with it, for all decisions but conceal this one by taking different forms. Here is the final and the only choice in which is truth accepted or denied.

7.  So we begin today considering the choice that time was made to help us make. Such is its holy purpose, now transformed from the intent you gave it: that it be a means for demonstration hell is real, hope changes to despair, and life itself must in the end be overcome by death. In death alone are opposites resolved, for ending opposition is to die. And thus salvation must be seen as death, for life is seen as conflict. To resolve the conflict is to end your life as well.

8.  These mad beliefs can gain unconscious hold of great intensity, and grip the mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas about its own protection. It must be saved from salvation, threatened to be safe, and magically armored against truth. And these decisions are made unaware to keep them safely undisturbed, apart from question and from reason and from doubt.

9.  Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in the shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this time with Heaven’s help. And all mistakes in judgement which the mind had made before are open to correction, as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized.

10.  The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as is the ending of the fear of hell, when it is raised from its protecting shroud of unawareness and is brought to light. Who can decide between the clearly seen and the unrecognized? Yet who can fail to make a choice between alternatives when only one is seen as valuable, the other as a wholly worthless thing, a but imagined source of guilt and pain? Who hesitates to make a choice like this? And shall we hesitate to choose today?

11.  We make the choice for Heaven as we wake, and spend five minutes making sure that we have made the one decision that is sane. We recognize we make a conscious choice between what has existence and what has nothing but an appearance of the truth. Its pseudo-being, brought to what is real, is flimsy and transparent in the light. It holds no terror now, for what was made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate demands obscurity for fear to be invested there. Now it is recognized as but a foolish, trivial mistake.

12.  Before we close our eyes in sleep tonight we reaffirm the choice that we have made each hour in between. And now we give the last five minutes of our waking day to the decision with which we awoke. As every hour passed by we declared our choice again, in a brief quiet time devoted to maintaining sanity. And finally we close the day with this, acknowledging we chose but what we want:

Heaven is the decision I must make.

I make it now and will not change my mind, because it is the only thing I want.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Personal Notes:

“Heaven is the decision I must make.” Upon waking I spend the first five minutes making sure I have made this one decision that is sane. And reaffirm this decision on the hour through the day. Finally I close the day with this acknowledgment of what I want: Heaven is the decision I must make. I make it now and will not change my mind, because it is the only thing I want. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 137

As I Am Healed I Am Not Healed Alone.

Today’s idea remains the central thought on which salvation rests. For healing is the opposite of all the worlds ideas which dwell on sickness and on separate states. Sickness is a retreat from others and a shutting off of joining. It becomes a door that closes on a separate self and keeps it isolated and alone.

2.  Sickness is isolation, for it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh which it cannot surmount. The world obeys the laws that sickness serves, but healing operates apart from them.

3.  It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. In sickness must he be apart and separate. But healing is his own decision to be one again, and to accept his Self with all Its parts intact and unassailed. In sickness does his Self appear to be dismembered and without the unity which gives it life. But healing is accomplished as he sees the body has no power to attack the universal oneness of God’s Son.

4.  Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth, but healing demonstrates that truth is true. The separation sickness would impose has never really happened. To be healed is merely to accept what always was the simple truth, and always will remain exactly as it has forever been. Yet eyes accustomed to illusions must be shown that what they look upon is false. So healing, never needed by the truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real.

5.  Healing might thus be called a counter-dream, which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth, but not in truth itself. Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred. Just as the real world will arise to take the place of what has never been at all, healing but offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas which dreams embroider into pictures of the truth.

6.  Yet think not healing is unworthy of your function here. For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real. The body seems to be more stable and more solid than the mind. And love becomes a dream, while fear remains the one reality which can be seen and justified and fully understood.

7.  Just as forgiveness shines away all sin, and the real world must occupy the place of what you made, so healing must replace the fantasies of sickness you have held before the simple truth. When sickness has been seen to disappear in spite of all the laws which hold it cannot but be real, then questions have been answered, and the laws can be no longer cherished nor obeyed.

8.  Healing is freedom. For it demonstrates that dreams will not prevail against the truth. Healing is shared. And by this attribute it proves that laws unlike the ones which hold that sickness is inevitable are more potent than their sickly opposites. Healing is strength. For by its gentle hand is weakness overcome, and minds which were walled off within a body free to join with other minds, to be forever strong.

9.  Healing, forgiveness, and the glad exchange of all the world of sorrow for a world where sadness cannot enter are the means by which the Holy Spirit urges you to follow Him. His gentle lessons teach how easily salvation can be yours; how little practice you need undertake to let His laws replace the ones you made to hold yourself a prisoner to death.

10.  His life becomes your own as you extend the little help He asks in freeing you of everything that ever caused you pain. And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you. Perhaps you will not recognize them all, nor realize how great your offering to all the world when you let healing come to you. But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gifts that you receive when you are healed.

11.  Those who are healed become the instruments of healing. Nor does time elapse between the instant they are healed and all the grace of healing it is given them to give. What is opposed to God does not exist, and who accepts it not within his mind becomes a haven where the weary can remain to rest. For here is truth bestowed, and here are all illusions brought to truth.

12.  Would you not offer shelter to God’s will? You but invite your Self to be at home, and can this invitation be refused? Ask the inevitable to occur, and you will never fail. The other choice is but to ask what cannot be to be, and this cannot succeed. Today we ask that only truth will occupy our minds, that thoughts of healing will this day go forth from what is healed to what must yet be healed, aware that they will both occur as one.

13.  We will remember, as the hour strikes, our function is to let our minds be healed, that we may carry healing to the world, exchanging curse for blessing, pain for joy, and separation for the peace of God. Is not a minute of the hour worth the giving to receive a gift like this? Is not a little time a small expense to offer for the gift of everything?

14.  Yet must we be prepared for such a gift. And so we will begin the day with this, and give ten minutes to these thoughts with which we will conclude today at night as well:

As I am healed I am not healed alone.

And I would share my healing with the world,

That sickness may be banished from the mind of God’s one Son, Who is my only Self.

15.  Let healing be through you this very day. And as you rest in quiet, be prepared to give as you receive, to hold but what you give, and to receive the Word of God to take the place of all the foolish thoughts that ever were imagined. Now we come together to make well all that was sick, and offer blessing where there was attack. Nor will we let this function be forgot as every hour of the day slips by, remembering our function with this thought:

As I am healed I am not healed alone.

And I would bless my brothers, for I would

Be healed with them, as they are healed with me.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Persona Notes:

“As I am healed I am not healed alone.” I will remember, as the hour strikes, my function is to let my mind be healed, that I may carry healing to the world, exchanging curse for blessing, pain for joy, and separation for the peace of God. Beginning the day with ten minutes to these thoughts and concluding today at night as well: As I am healed I am not haled alone. And I would share my healing with the world, that sickness may be banished from the mind of God’s one Son, Who is my only Self. On the hour I will remember my function with this thought: As I am healed I am not healed alone. And I would bless my brothers, for I would be healed with them, as they are healed with me. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now.

Lesson 136

Sickness Is A Defense Against The Truth.

No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach which carries all of them to truth and merely leaves them there to disappear.

2.  Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, and reduce it to a little pile of disassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself.

3.  Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done.

4.  Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat which has been judged as real? All this cannot be done unconsciously. But afterwards your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent, a happening beyond your state of mind, and outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by yourself.

5.  It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your “reality” which makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control. But what you have forgot can be remembered, given willingness to reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded by oblivion. Your not remembering is but the sign that this decision still remains in force as far as your desires are concerned.

6.  Mistake this not for fact. Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. They aim at doing this, and this they seem to do. Every defense takes fragments of the whole, assembles them without regard to all their true relationships, and thus constructs illusions of a whole which is not there. It is this process which imposes threat, and not whatever outcome may result.

7.  When parts are wrested from the whole and seen as separate and wholes within themselves, they become symbols standing for attack upon the whole, successful in effect, and never to be seen as whole again. And yet you have forgotten that they stand but for your own decision of what should be real, to take the place of what is real.

8.  Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more.

9.  How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your “true” identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be.

10.  Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God’s design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will. His Son is dust, the Father incomplete, and chaos sits in triumph on His throne.

11.  Such is your planning for your own defense. And you believe that Heaven quails before such mad attacks as these, with God made blind by your illusions, truth turned into lies, and all the universe made slave to laws which your defenses would impose on it. Yet who believes illusions but the one who made them up? Who else can see them and react to them as if they were the truth?

12.  God knows not of your plans to change His will. The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which you thought to govern it. And Heaven has not bowed to hell, not life to death. You can but choose to think you die or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change, and what is wholly sinless cannot sin.

13.  Such is the simple truth. It does not make appeal to might nor triumph. It does not command obedience, nor seek to prove how pitiful and futile your attempts to plan defenses which would alter it. It merely wants to give you happiness, for such its purpose is. Perhaps it sighs a little when you throw away its gifts. And yet it knows with perfect certainty that what God wills for you must be received.

14.  It is this fact which demonstrates that time is an illusion, for it lets you think what God has given you is not the truth right now, as it must be. The thoughts of God are quite apart from time. For time is but another meaningless defense you made against the truth. Yet what God wills is here, and you remain as He created you.

15.  Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusion can remain where it has been allowed to enter, and it comes to any mind which would lay down its arms and cease to play with folly. It is found at any time today, if you will choose to practice giving welcome to the truth.

16.  This is our aim today. And we will give a quarter of an hour twice to ask the truth to come to us and set us free.²³⁴ And truth will come, for it is has never been apart from us. It merely waits for just this invitation which we give today. We introduce it with a healing prayer to help us rise above defensiveness and let truth be as it has always been:

Sickness is a defense against the truth.

I will accept the truth of what I am,

And let my mind be wholly healed today.

17.  Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey.

18.  Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. And you will recognize you practiced well by this: the body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more.

19.  Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body’s health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.

20.  Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement, or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick.

21.  Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:

I have forgotten what I really am,

For I mistook my body for myself.

Sickness is a defense against the truth.

But I am not a body. And my mind

Cannot attack. So I cannot be sick.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Footnote 234. John 8:32 (KJV): “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Personal Notes:

“Sickness is a defense against the truth” today I set aside two fifteen minute periods to say and remind myself; Sickness is a defense against the truth. I will accept the truth of what I am, And let my mind be wholly healed today. If I let my mind begin to have attack thoughts I will instantly tell myself; I have forgotten what I really am, For I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defense against the truth. But I am not a body. And my mind Cannot attack. So I cannot be sick. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 135

If I Defend Myself I Am Attacked.

Who would defend himself unless he thought he was attacked, that the attack was real, and that his own defense could save himself? And herein lies the folly of defense: It gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult.

2.  And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish. You operate from a belief you must protect yourself from what is happening, because it must contain what threatens you. A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness, a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense.

3.  The world is based on this insane belief. And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve but to preserve its sense of threat. For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart.

4.  Defense is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. You think it offers safety, yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified. Is it not strange you do not pause to ask, as you elaborate your plans and make your armor thicker and your locks more tight, what you defend, and how and against what?

5.  Let us consider first what you defend. It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect itself, and needing your defense. What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern are needful to protect its little life? What but the body falters and must fail to serve the Son of God as worthy host?

6.  Yet it is not the body that can fear, nor be a thing to fear. It has no needs but those which you assign to it. It needs no complicated structures of defense, no health-inducing medicine, no care, and no concern at all. Defend its life, or give it gifts to make it beautiful or walls to make it safe, and you but say your home is open to the thief of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded with your very life.

7.  Is not this picture fearful? Can you be at peace with such a concept of your home? Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus except your own belief? It is your mind which gave the body all functions that you see in it, and set its value far beyond a little pile of dust and water. Who would make defense of something that he recognized as this?

8.  The body is in need of no defense. This cannot be too often emphasized. It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it to roles it cannot fill, to purposes beyond its scope, and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish. Such attempts, ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad attacks you make upon it. For it seems to fail your hopes, your needs, your values, and your dreams.

9.  The “self” that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?

10.  Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits, and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source.

11.  These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond with health when they have been corrected and replaced with truth. This is the body’s only real defense. Yet is this where you look for its defense? You offer it protection of a kind from which it gains no benefit at all, but merely adds to your distress of mind. You do not heal, but merely take away the hope of healing. For you fail to see where hope must lie if it be meaningful.

12.  A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans which it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own. It waits until it has been taught what should be done, and then proceeds to do it. It does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it. It is secure in certainty that obstacles cannot impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal which serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone.

13.  A healed mind is relieved from the belief that it must plan, although it cannot know the outcome that is best, the means by which it is achieved, or how to recognize the problem that the plan is made to solve. It must misuse the body in its plans until it recognizes this is so. But when it has accepted this as true, then is it healed, and lets the body go.

14.  Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself must make the body sick. It is not free to be a means of helping in a plan which far exceeds its own protection, and which needs its service for a little while. In this capacity is health assured, for everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly, and with the strength that has been given it and cannot fail.

15.  It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are but defenses, with the purpose all of them were made to realize. They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection, at the cost of truth. This is not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take, for the denial of reality is very obvious. Yet planning is not often recognized as a defense.

16.  The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings. It does not think that it will be provided for unless it makes its own provisions. Time becomes a future emphasis, to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from past events and previous beliefs. This overlooks the present, for it rests on the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course.

17.  The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. What it has learned before becomes the basis for its future goals. Its past experience directs its choice for what will happen. And it does not see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs. Anticipation plays no part at all, and present confidence directs the way.

18.  Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. Their aim is to select what you approve and disregard what you consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. Yet what remains is meaningless indeed. For it is your reality which is the “threat” that your defenses would attack, obscure, and take apart and crucify.

19.  What could you not accept if you but knew that everything that happens, all events past, present, and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan. For He would never offer pain to you, but your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life.

20.  Your present trust in Him is the defense which promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy which constantly increases, as this life becomes a holy instant, set in time but heeding only immortality. Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that only your defenses would conceal.

21.  Without defenses, you become a light which Heaven gratefully acknowledges to be its own. And it will lead you on in ways appointed for your happiness according to the ancient plan, begun when time was born. Your followers will join their light with yours, and it will be increased until the world is lighted up with joy. And gladly will our brothers lay aside their cumbersome defenses, which availed them nothing and could only terrify.

22.  We will anticipate that time today with present confidence, for this is part of what is planned for us. We can be sure that everything we need is given us for our accomplishment of this today. We make no plans for how it will be done, but realize that our defenselessness is all that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty.

23.  For fifteen minutes twice today, we rest from senseless planning and from every thought which blocks the truth from entering our minds. Today we will receive instead of plan, that we may give instead of organize. And we are given truly, as we say:

If I defend myself I am attacked.

But in defenselessness I will be strong,

And I will learn what my defenses hide.

24.  Nothing but that. If there are plans to make, you will be told of them. They may not be the plans you thought were needed, nor indeed the answer to the problems which you thought confronted you. But they are answers to another kind of question, which remains unanswered yet in need of answering until the answer comes to you at last.

25.  All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you will receive today. And in the light and joy of simple truth, you will but wonder why you ever thought that you must be defended from release. Heaven asks nothing. It is hell that makes extravagant demands for sacrifice. You give up nothing in these times today when, undefended, you present yourself to your Creator as you really are.

26.  He has remembered you. Today you will remember Him. For this is Eastertime in your salvation, and you rise again from what was seeming death and hopelessness. Now is the light of hope reborn in you, for now you come without defense to learn the part for you within the plan of God. What little plans or magical beliefs can still have value, when you have received your function from the Voice of God Himself?

27.  Try not to shape this day as you believe would benefit you most, for you cannot conceive of all the happiness that comes to you without your planning. Learn today. And all the world will take this giant stride and celebrate your Eastertime with you. Throughout the day, as foolish little things appear to raise defensiveness in you and tempt you to engage in weaving plans, remind yourself this is a special day for learning and acknowledge it with this:

This is my Eastertime. And I would keep it holy.

I will not defend myself, because the Son of God needs no defense

Against the truth of his reality.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Personal Notes:

“If I defend myself I am attacked” A healed mind does not plan. A healed mind is relieved from the belief that it must plan. The mind that plans is refusing to allow for change. I set aside two fifteen-minute periods to remind myself “If I defend myself I am attacked. But in defenselessness I will be strong, and I will learn what my defenses hide.” Although today’s lesson is not new to me the review of it has been such a blessing and answered the questions that were plaguing my mind the past several days, I needed reminded and feel so blessed! If there are plans to make, I will be told of them. They may not be the plans I thought were needed, nor the answers to the problems which I thought confronted me. Throughout the day, as foolish little things appear to raise defensiveness and tempt my to engage in weaving plans, I remind myself and acknowledge with this: “This is my Eastertime. And I would keep it holy. I will not defend myself, because the Son of God needs no defense against the truth of his reality. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now.

Lesson 134

Let Me Perceive Forgiveness As It Is.

Let us review the meaning of “forgive”, for it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something which entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth. In such a view, forgiveness must be seen as mere eccentric folly, and this course appear to rest salvation on a whim.

2.  This twisted view of what salvation means is easily corrected when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. It must be limited to what is false. It is irrelevant to everything except illusions. Truth is God’s creation, and to pardon this is meaningless. All truth belongs to Him, reflects His laws, and radiates His love. Does this need pardon? How can you forgive the sinless and eternally benign?

3.  The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth and not illusions. You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind as you regard yourself.

4.  Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception. For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. Thus is forgiveness really but a sin, like all the rest. It says the truth is false, and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass, as white as snow.²²⁵ It is delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish. It would see as right the plainly wrong, the loathsome as the good.

5.  Pardon is no escape in such a view. It merely is a further sign that sin is unforgivable—at best to be concealed, denied, or called another name, for pardon is a treachery to truth. Guilt cannot be forgiven. If you sin, your guilt is everlasting. Those who are forgiven from the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned: first by themselves for what they think they did, and once again by those who pardon them.

6.  It is sin’s unreality which makes forgiveness natural and kind and sane; a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. It does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly, with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth. And there they disappear entirely.

7.  Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies, but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, “My brother, what you think is not the truth.”

8.  The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth. It is because of this that it becomes the undeceiver in the face of lies, the great restorer of the simple truth. By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth, which had been blocked by dreams of guilt. Now are you free to follow in the way to truth, which had been blocked by dreams of guilt. Now are you free to follow in the way your true forgiveness opens up to you. For if one brother has received this gift of you, the door is open to yourself.

9.  There is a very simple way to find the door to true forgiveness, and perceive it open wide in welcome. When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for this is self-deception. Ask instead, “Should I accuse myself of doing this?”

10.  Thus will you see alternatives for choice in terms which render choosing meaningful, and keep your mind as free of guilt and pain as God Himself intended it to be, and as it is in truth. It is but lies which would condemn. In truth is innocence the only thing there is. Forgiveness stands between illusions and the truth; between the world you see and that which lies beyond; between the hell of guilt and Heaven’s gate.

11.  Across this bridge, as powerful as love which laid its blessing on it, are all dreams of evil and of hatred and attack brought silently to truth. They are not kept to swell and bluster, and to terrify the foolish dreamer who believes in them. He has been gently wakened from his dream by understanding what he thought he saw was never there. And now he cannot feel that all escape has been denied to him.

12.  He does not have to fight to save himself. He does not have to kill the dragons which he thought pursued him. Nor need he erect the heavy walls of stone and iron doors he thought would make him safe. He can take off the ponderous and useless armor made to chain his mind to fear and misery. His step is light, and as he lifts his foot to stride ahead, a star is left behind to point the way to those who follow him.

13.  Forgiveness must be practiced, for the world cannot perceive its meaning, nor provide a guide to teach you its beneficence. There is no thought in all the world which leads to any understanding of the laws it follows or the thought which it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is your own reality. And yet it joins your mind with the reality in you.

14.  Today we practice true forgiveness, that the time of joining be no more delayed. For we would meet with our reality in freedom and in peace. Our practicing becomes the footsteps lighting up the way for all our brothers, who will follow us to the reality we share with them.

15.  That this may be accomplished, let us give a quarter of an hour twice today, and spend it with the Guide Who understands the meaning of forgiveness and was sent to us to teach it. Let us ask of Him:

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

16.  Then choose one brother as He will direct, and catalogue his “sins” as one by one they cross your mind. Be certain not to dwell on any one of them, but realize that you are using his “offenses” but to save the world from all ideas of sin. Briefly consider all the evil things you thought of him, and each time ask yourself:

Would I condemn myself for doing this? ²²⁸

17.  Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now you are prepared for freedom. If you have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty, you will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weight across your chest, a deep and certain feeling of relief. The time remaining should be given to experiencing the escape from all the heavy chains you sought to lay upon your brother, which were laid upon yourself.

18.  Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will be so many times when you forget its meaning and attack yourself. When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself:

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

Should I accuse myself of doing this?

I will not lay this chain upon myself.

19.  In everything you do remember this:

No one is crucified alone, and yet

No one can enter Heaven by himself.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Footnote 228. This question does not mean “If I did this same thing, would I condemn myself for it?” (Because if I wouldn’t condemn myself for it, then I shouldn’t condemn him.) “Would” here is an archaic usage that refers to desire or wish, a usage that is very common in the Course. The question therefore means “Do I want to condemn myself for doing this?” (Because that is exactly what I am doing when I condemn my brother for doing it.) The principle behind this is that a rule we apply to others we will then apply to ourselves. Therefore, if we condemn another for a particular “sin,” we will then condemn ourselves for our version of that same “sin.” Is this what we really want to do? That is what we are asking ourselves in this exercise.

Personal Notes:

“Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.” I set aside two fifteen-minute practice periods today to say and remember this idea for today. As I lightly reflect on what I may have perceived as and offence of a brother I will ask myself: “would I condemn myself for doing this?” I set my mind to practice forgiveness throughout the day, should I forget and have a thought of attack against myself, I will remind myself; “Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. Should I accuse myself of doing this? I will not lay this chain upon myself.” I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing the Way We See Things Now.

Lesson 133

I Will Not Value What is Valueless.

Sometimes in teaching there is benefit, particularly after you have gone through what seems theoretical and quite remote from what the student has already learned, to bring him back to practical concerns. This we will do today. We will not speak of lofty, world-encompassing ideas, but dwell instead on benefits to you.

2.  You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions that the world contains. There are no satisfactions in the world.

3.  Today we list the real criteria by which to test all things you think you want. Unless they meet these sound requirements, they are not worth desiring at all, for they can but replace what offers more. The laws which govern choice you cannot make, no more than you can make alternatives from which to choose. The choosing you can do; indeed you must. And it is wise to learn the laws you set in motion when you choose, and what alternatives you choose between.

4.  We have already stressed there are but two, however many there appear to be. The range is set, and this you cannot change. It would be most ungenerous to you to let alternatives be limitless, and thus delay your final choice until you had considered all of them in time, and not been brought so clearly to the place where there is but one choice which must be made.

5.  Another kindly and related law is that there is no compromise in what your choice must bring. It cannot give you just a little, for there is no in between. Each choice you make brings everything to you or nothing. Therefore, if you learn the test by which you can distinguish everything from nothing, you will make the better choice.

6.  First, if you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you choose is valueless. A temporary value is without all value. Time can never take away a value that is real. What fades and dies was never there, and makes no offering to him who chooses it. He is deceived by nothing in a form he thinks he likes.

7.  Next, if you choose to take a thing away from someone else, you will have nothing left. This is because when you deny his right to everything, you have denied your own. You therefore will not recognize the things you really have, denying they are there. Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the belief that loss can offer gain. Yet loss must offer loss and nothing more.

8.  Your next consideration is the one on which the others rest: Why is the choice you make of value to you? What attracts your mind to it? What purpose does it serve?²²¹ Here it is easiest of all to be deceived, for what the ego wants it fails to recognize. It does not even tell the truth as it perceives it, for it needs to keep the halo which it uses to protect its goals from tarnish and from rust, that you may see how “innocent” it is. Yet is its camouflage a thin veneer which could deceive but those who are content to be deceived. Its goals are obvious to anyone who cares to look for them.

9.  Here is deception doubled, for the one who is deceived will not perceive that he has merely failed to gain. He will believe that he has served the ego’s hidden goals. And though he tries to keep its halo clear within his vision, yet must he perceive its tarnished edges and its rusted core. His ineffectual mistakes appear as sins to him, because he looks upon the tarnish as his own, the rust a sign of deep unworthiness within himself. He who would still preserve the ego’s goals and serve them as his own makes no mistakes, according to the dictates of his guide. This guidance teaches it is error to believe that sins are but mistakes, for who would suffer for his sins if this were so?

10.  And so we come to the criterion for choice which is the hardest to believe, because its obviousness is overlaid with many levels of obscurity: If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed the ego’s goals to come between the real alternatives, and thus you do not realize there are but two. And the alternative you think you chose seems fearful and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is.

11. All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. Choosing is simple just because of this. Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult.

12.  What is the gain to you in learning this? It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain. Heaven itself is reached by empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. We will attempt to reach this state today, with self-deception laid aside and with an honest willingness to value but the truly valuable and the real.

13.  Our two extended practice periods of fifteen minutes will begin with this:

I will not value what is valueless,

And only what has value do I seek,

For only that do I desire to find.

     And then receive what waits for everyone who reaches unencumbered to the gate of Heaven, which swings open as he come.

14.  Should you begin to let yourself collect some needless burdens or believe you see some difficult decisions facing you, be quick to answer with this simple thought:

I will not value what is valueless,

For what is valuable belongs to me.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Personal Notes:

“I will not value what is valueless.”  I set aside two fifteen-minute practice periods today to say and remember; (I will not value what is valueless, and only what has value do I seek, for only that do I desire to find.) Should I be tempted to collect needless burdens or believe I see difficult decisions, I will be quick to answer with this simple thought: (I will not value what is valueless, for what is valuable belongs to me. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing the Way We See Things Now

Lesson 132

I Loose The World From All I Thought it Was.

What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs? And what can save the world except your Self? Belief is powerful indeed. The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth. A madman thinks the world he sees is real and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts’ effects. It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last.

2.  Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his mind, and all his thoughts change with it. Now the source of thought has shifted, for to change your mind means you have changed the source of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think. You free the past from what you thought before. You free the future from all ancient thoughts of seeking what you do not want to find.

3.  The present now remains the only time. Here in the present is the world set free. For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world. You have enslaved the world with all your fears, your doubts and miseries, your pain and tears; and all your sorrows press upon it and keep it a prisoner to your beliefs. Death strikes it everywhere because you hold the bitter thought of death within your mind.

4.  The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly.

5.  Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind. But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is.

6.  There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

7.  But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.

8.  And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today. Today’s idea is true because the world does not exist, and if it is indeed your own imagining, then you can loose it from all things you ever thought it was by merely changing all the thoughts that gave it these appearances. The sick are healed as you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death.²¹⁵

9.  A lesson earlier repeated once must now be stressed again, for it contains the firm foundation for today’s idea: You are as God created you. There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state. How can a world of time and place exist if you remain as God created you?

10.  What is the lesson for today except another way of saying that to know your Self is the salvation of the world? To free the world from every kind of pain is but to change your mind about yourself. There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought.

11.  Yet if you are as God created you, you cannot think apart from Him, nor make what does not share His timelessness and love. Are these inherent in the world you see? Does it create like Him? Unless it does, it is not real and cannot be at all. If you are real the world you see is false, for God’s creation is unlike the world in every way. And as it was His thought by which you were created, so it is your thoughts which made it and must set it free, that you may know the thoughts you share with God.

12.  Release the world! Your real creations wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. God shares His fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him.

13.  There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son and break away a part of God Himself, and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.

14.  Today our purpose is to free the world from all the idle thoughts we ever held about it, and about all living things we see upon it. They cannot be there; no more than we. For we are in the home our Father set for us along with them. And we who are as He created us would loose the world this day from every one of our illusions, that we may be free.

15.  Begin the fifteen-minute periods in which we practice twice today with this:

I who remain as God created me

Would loose the world from all I thought it was.

For I am real because the world is not,

And I would know my own reality.

     Then merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let your mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed along with you.

16.  You need not realize that healing comes to many brothers far across the world, as well as to the ones you see nearby, as you send out these thoughts to bless the world. But you will sense your own release, although you may not fully understand as yet that you could never be released alone.

17.  Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your ideas to all the world, and say whenever you are tempted to deny the power of your simple change of mind:

I loose the world from all I thought it was,

And choose my own reality instead.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Footnote 215. Matthew 10:8 (KJV): “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.”

Personal Notes:

“I loose the world from all I thought it was.”  I set aside two fifteen-minute periods today to say and remind myself; I who remain as God created me

Would loose the world from all I thought it was.

For I am real because the world is not,

And I would know my own reality.      Then merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let my mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed along with me.

Throughout the day, I seek to increase the freedom sent through these ideas to all the world, and say whenever I may be tempted to deny the power of my simple change of mind:

I loose the world from all I thought it was,

And choose my own reality instead.

Then merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let my mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed along with me. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing the Way We See Things Now

Lesson 131

No One Can Fail Who Asks to Reach The Truth.

Failure is all about you while you seek for goals which cannot be achieved. You look for permanence in the impermanent, for love where there is none, for safety in midst of danger, immortality within the darkness of the dream of death. Who could succeed where contradiction is the setting of his searching, and the place to which he comes to find stability?

2.  Goals which are meaningless are not attained. There is no way to reach them, for the means by which you strive for them are meaningless as they are. Who can use such senseless means and hope through them to gain in anything? Where can they lead? And what can they achieve that offers any hope of being real?

3.  Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness. And while you seek for life you ask for death. You look for safety and security, while in your heart you pray for danger, and protection for the little dream you made.

4.  Yet searching is inevitable here. For this you came, and you will surely do the thing you came for. But the world cannot dictate the goal for which you search unless you give it power to do so. Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one which comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want.

5.  Be glad that search you must. Be glad as well to learn you search for Heaven, and must find the goal you really want. No one can fail to want this goal, and reach it in the end. God’s Son cannot seek vainly, though he try to force delay, deceive himself, and think that it is hell he seeks. When he is wrong he finds correction; when he wanders off he is led back to his appointed path.

6.  No one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless, and unchanging love. You will find Heaven. Everything you seek but this will fall away, but not because it has been taken from you. It will go because you do not want it. You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness.

7.  Why wait for Heaven? It is here today. Time is the great illusion it is past or in the future. Yet this cannot be if it is where God will His Son to be. How could the will of God be in the past or yet to happen? What He wills is now, without a past and wholly futureless. It is as far removed from time as is a tiny candle from a distant star, or what you chose from what you really want.

8.  Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other’s sorry outcome, which is Heaven’s opposite in every way.

9.  God does not suffer conflict, nor is His creation split in two. How could it be His Son could be in Hell, when God Himself established him in Heaven? Could he lose what the Eternal Will has given him to be his home forever? Let us try no longer to impose an alien will upon His single purpose. He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now, beyond the reach of time.

10.  Today we will not choose a paradox in place of truth. How could the Son of God make time to take away the will of God? He denies himself and contradicts what has no opposite. He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven, and believes that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find. Leave foolish thoughts like these behind today, and turn your mind to true ideas instead.

11.  No one can fail who asks to reach the truth, and it is truth we ask to reach today. We will devote ten minutes to this goal three times today. And we will ask to see the rising of the real world to replace the foolish images that we held dear, with true ideas arising in the place of thoughts which have no meaning, no effect, and neither source nor substance in truth.

12.  This we acknowledge as we start upon our practice periods. Begin with this:

I ask to see a different world and think a

different kind of thought from those I made.

The world I seek I did not make alone;

The thoughts I want to think are not my own.

     For several minutes watch your mind and see, although your eyes are closed, the senseless world you think is real. Review the thoughts as well which are compatible with such a world, and which you think are true. Then let them go, and sink below them to the holy place where they can enter not. There is a door beneath them in your mind which you could not completely lock to hide what lies beyond.

13.  Seek for that door and find it. But before you try to open it, remind yourself no one can fail who asks to reach the truth, and it is this request you make today. Nothing but this has any meaning now; no other goal is valued now nor sought; nothing before this door you really want, and only what lies past it do you seek.

14.  Put out your hand and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes, and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams.

15. You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you that you might approach this door some day and, through His aid, slip effortlessly past it to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all your searching here and all the seeking of the world, which end together as you pass beyond the door.

16.  Remember often that today should be a time of special gladness, and refrain from dismal thoughts and meaningless laments. Salvation’s time has come. Today is set by Heaven itself to be a time of grace for you and for the world. If you forget this happy fact, remind yourself with this:

Today I seek and find all that I want.

My single purpose promises it to me.

No one can fail who asks to reach the truth.^[1].

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Persona Notes:

“No one can fail who asks to reach the truth.” I set aside three ten-minute periods to say and remember; I ask to see a different world and think a different kind of thought from those I made. The world I seek I did not make alone; the thoughts I want to think are not my own. Today I refrain from dismal thoughts and meaningless laments as I remind myself; Today I seek and find all that I want. My single purpose promises it to me. No one can fail who asks to reach the truth. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing the Way We See Things Now

Lesson 130

It is Impossible to See Two Worlds.

Perception is consistent. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see. Your values are determiners of this, for what you value you must want to see, believing what you see is really there. No one can see a world his mind has not accorded value. And no one can fail to look upon what he believes he wants.

2.  Yet who can really hate and love at once? Who can desire what he does not want to have reality? And who can choose to see a world of which he is afraid? Fear must make blind, for this its weapon is: that which you fear to see you cannot see. Love and perception thus go hand in hand but fear obscures in darkness what is there.

3.  What then, can fear project upon the world? What can be seen in darkness that is real? Truth is eclipsed by fear, and what remains is but imagined. Yet what can be real in blind imaginings of panic born? What would you want that thus is shown to you? What would you wish to keep in such a dream?

4.  Fear has made everything you think you see: all separation, all distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world. They are not there. Love’s enemy has made them up. Yet love can have no enemy, and so they have no cause, no being, and no consequence. They can be valued, but remain unreal. They can be sought, but they cannot be found.

5.  Today we will not seek for them, nor waste this day in seeking not what can be found. It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. Seek for the one, the other disappears. But one remains. This is the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. The real and the unreal are all there is to choose between, and nothing more than these.

6.  Today we will attempt no compromise where none is possible. The world you see is proof you have already made a choice as all-embracing as its opposite. What we would learn today is more than just the lesson that you cannot see two worlds. It also teaches that the one you see is quite consistent from the point of view from which you see it. It is all a piece, because it stems from one emotion and reflects its source in everything you see.

7.  Six times today, in thanks and gratitude, we gladly give five minutes to the thought which ends all compromise and doubt, and go beyond it all as one. We will not make a thousand meaningless distinctions, nor attempt to bring with us a little part of unreality as we devote our minds to finding only what is real.

8.  Begin your searching for the other world by asking for strength beyond your own, and recognizing what it is you seek. You do not want illusions, and you come to these five minutes emptying your hands of all the petty treasures of this world. You wait for God to help you as you say:

It is impossible to see two worlds.

Let me accept the strength God offers me

and see no value in this world, that I

may find my freedom and deliverance.

9.  God will be there. For you have called upon the great unfailing Power Who will take this giant step with you in gratitude. Nor will you fail to see His thanks expressed in tangible perception and in truth. You will not doubt what you will look upon, for though it is perception, it is not the kind of seeing that your eyes alone have ever seen before. And you will know God’s strength upheld you as you made this choice.

10.  Dismiss temptation easily today whenever it arises, merely by remembering the limits on your choice. The unreal or the real, the false or true, is what you see and only what you see. Perception is consistent with your choice, and hell or Heaven comes to you as one.

11.  Accept a little part of hell as real, and you have damned your eyes and cursed your sight, and what you will behold is hell indeed. Yet the release to Heaven still remains within your range of choice, to take the place of everything that hell would show to you. All you need say to any part of hell, whatever form it takes, is simply this:

It is impossible to see two worlds.

I seek my freedom and deliverance,

And this is not part of what I want.^[1].

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Personal Notes:

“It is impossible to see two worlds.” In thanks and gratitude, I come to six five-minute periods today asking my Heavenly Father for strength beyond my own to help me recognize what I seek. I do not want illusions, I come with hands empty of petty treasures of this world. I wait for God to help me, as I say: It is impossible to see two worlds. Let me accept the strength God offers me and see no value in this world, that I may find my freedom and deliverance. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing the Way We See Things Now

Lesson 129

Beyond This World There Is A World I Want.

This is the thought which follows from the one we practiced yesterday. You cannot stop with the idea this world is worthless, for unless you see that there is something else to hope for, you will only be depressed. Our emphasis is not on giving up the world, but on exchanging it for what is far more satisfying, filled with joy, and capable of offering you peace. Think you this world can offer that to you?

2.  It might be worth a little time to think once more about the value of this world. Perhaps you will concede there is no loss in letting go all thought of value here. The world you see is merciless indeed: unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end.

3.  Is it a loss to find a world instead where losing is impossible?²⁰⁸ Where love endures forever, hate cannot exist, and vengeance has no meaning? Is it a loss to find all things you really want, and know they have no ending and they will remain exactly as you want them throughout time?

4.  Yet even they will be exchanged at last for what we cannot speak of. For you go from there to where words fail entirely, into a silence where the language is unspoken and yet surely understood. Communication, unambiguous and plain as day, remains unlimited for all eternity. And God Himself speaks to His Son, as His Son speaks to Him. Their language has no words, for what They say cannot be symbolized. Their knowledge is direct and wholly shared and wholly one.

5.  How far away from this are you who stay bound to this world. And yet how near are you when you exchange it for the world you want. Now is the last step certain; now you stand an instant’s space away from timelessness. Here can you but look forward, never back to see again the world you do not want. Here is the world that comes to take its place as you unbind your mind from little things the world sets forth to keep you prisoner there. Value them not, and they will disappear. Esteem them, and they will seem real to you.

6.  Such is the choice. What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed! Let it be given you today. It waits but for your choosing it to take the place of all the things you seek but do not want.

7.  Practice your willingness to make this change ten minutes in the morning and at night, and once more in between. Begin with this:

Beyond this world there is a world I want.

I choose to see that world instead of this,

For here is nothing that I really want.

     Then close your eyes upon the world you see, and in silent darkness watch the lights that are not of this world light one by one, until where one begins another ends loses all meaning as they blend in one. Today the lights of Heaven bend to you, to shine upon your eyelids as you rest beyond the world of darkness. Here is light your eyes cannot behold. And yet your mind can see it plainly, and can understand.

8.  A day of grace is given you today, and we give thanks. This day we realize that what you feared to lose was only loss. Now do we understand there is no loss, for we have seen its opposite at last, and we are grateful that the choice is made. Remember your decision hourly, and take a moment to confirm your choice by laying by whatever thoughts you have and dwelling briefly only upon this:

The world I see has nothing that I want.

Beyond this world there is a world I want.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Footnote 208. This refers to what the Course often calls the real world, a world we can see now if we look with the eyes of Christ. Thus, the phrase “beyond this world” in today’s idea does not imply that we need to physically leave this world to find the “world I want.” Rather, it implies that we need to use the eyes of Christ to look past the world shown to us by our body’s eyes.

Personal Notes:

“Beyond this world there is a world I want.” Footnote 208. Explains we see beyond this world with the eyes of Jesus our spiritual eyes not our bodies eyes. I choose to see the world beyond the body’s eyes instead, for there is nothing I really want. The Light of the world lives inside of me and completely envelopes me. Every second, of every minute of every hour of every day, I ask my Heavenly Father to let me see with the eyes of Christ Jesus, to hear with the ears of Jesus, to love with the heart of Jesus, with all strength, all power, wisdom and discernment, the Will and Will power of God to live out this time on earth to Glorify God, to usher in The Kingdom of God to be a part of ending separation, to be part of increasing unity, wholeness and healing. Let me to recognize that what I feared as loss was only nothingness, there is no loss and suffering in Christ Jesus as the holy son of God but only gain, love, peace, joy, healing, and wholeness. I ask for Holy Spirit to teach me this truth and let me not forget or be led astray by illusions and falsehoods of the world I thought I saw. The world I see has nothing I want. Beyond this world there is a world I want. I set aside ten minutes morning and evening to rest in this thought. I pray for all my brothers for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing the Way We See Things Now.

Lesson 128

The World I See Has Nothing That I Want.

The world you see has nothing that you need to offer you; nothing that you can use in any way, nor anything at all that serves to give you joy. Believe this thought, and you are saved from years of misery, from countless disappointments, and from hopes that turn to bitter ashes of despair. No one but must accept this thought as true, if he would leave this world behind and soar beyond its petty scope and little ways.

2.  Each thing you value here is but a chain that binds you to the world, and it will serve no other end but this. For everything must serve the purpose you have given it until you see a different purpose there. The only purpose worthy of your mind this world contains is that you pass it by, without delaying to perceive some hope where there is none. Be you deceived no more. The world you see has nothing that you want.

3.  Escape today the chains you place upon your mind when you perceive salvation here. For what you value you make part of you as you perceive yourself. All things you seek to make your value greater in your sight limit you further, hide your worth from you, and add another bar across the door that leads to true awareness of your Self.

4.  Let nothing that relates to body thoughts delay your progress to salvation, nor permit temptation to believe the world has anything you want to hold you back. Nothing is here to cherish. Nothing here is worth one instant of delay and pain, one moment of uncertainty and doubt. The worthless offers nothing. Certainty of worth cannot be found in worthlessness.

5.  Today we practice letting go all thought of values we have given to the world. We leave it free of purposes we gave its aspects and its phases and its dreams. We hold it purposeless within our minds, and loosen it from all we wish it were. Thus do we lift the chains that bar the door to freedom from the world, and go beyond all little values and diminished aims.

6.  Peace and be still a little while, and see how far you rise above the world when you release your mind from chains and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home. It will be grateful to be free a while. It knows where it belongs. But free its wings, and it will fly in sureness and in joy to join its holy purpose. Let it rest in its Creator, there to be restored to sanity, to freedom, and to love.

7.  Give it ten minutes’ rest three times today. And when your eyes are opened afterwards, you will not value anything you see as much as when you looked at it before. Your whole perspective on the world will shift by just a little every time you let your mind escape its chains. The world is not where it belongs. And you belong where it would be, and where it goes to rest when you release it from the world. Your Guide is sure. Open your mind to Him. Be still and rest.

8. Protect your mind throughout the day as well. And when you think you see some value in an aspect or an image of the world, refuse to lay this chain upon your mind, and tell yourself with quiet certainty:

This will not tempt me to delay myself.

The world I see has nothing that I want.^[1].

^{[1]. A course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.}

Personal Notes:

“The world I see has nothing that I want.” Two years ago, when my study group did this lesson a brother in the group made a song out of the idea for the day, which I snatched on to. And found it very helpful to go through the day singing (nothing here will temp to delay myself; the world I see holds nothing that I want or need) its is such a joyful reminder as I go about the day. I also give ten minutes three times today to rest and think on this idea learning to apply it to daily living. I hope it will be as much of blessing to you as it was for me. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life, in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing the Way We See Things Now

Lesson 127

There is No Love But God’s.

Perhaps you think that different kinds of love are possible. Perhaps you think there is a kind of love for this, a kind of love for that; a way of loving one, another way of loving still another. Love is one. It has no separated parts and no degrees, no kinds nor levels, no divergencies and no distinctions. It is like itself, unchanged throughout. It never alters with a person or circumstance. It is the heart of God and therefore of His Son.

2.  Love’s meaning is obscure to anyone who thinks that love can change. He does not see that changing love must be impossible. And thus he thinks that he can love at times and hate at other times. He also thinks that love can be bestowed on one and yet remain itself although it is withheld from others. To believe these things of love is not to understand it. If it could make such distinctions, it would have to judge between the righteous and the sinner, and perceive the Son of God in separate parts.

3.  Love cannot judge. As it is one itself, it looks on all as one. It’s meaning lies in oneness. And it must elude the mind that thinks of it as partial or in part. There is no love but God’s, an all of love is His. There is no other principle which rules where love is not. Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds Them forever as the same.

4.  No course whose purpose is to teach you what you really are could fail to emphasize there is no difference in what you are and what love is. Love’s meaning is your own, and shared be God Himself. For what you are is what He is. There is no love but His, and what He is, is everything there is. There is no limit placed upon Himself, and so are you unlimited as well.

5.  No laws the world obeys can help you grasp love’s meaning. What the world believes was made to hide love’s meaning and to keep it dark and secret. There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is, and what you are as well. Seek not within the world to find your Self. Love is not found in darkness and in death. Yet is it perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear its voice.

6.  Today we practice making free our minds of all the laws we think we must obey, of all the limits under which we live and all the changes which we think are part of human destiny. Today we take the largest single step this course requests in our advance towards its established goal. If you achieve the faintest glimmering of what love means today, you have advanced in distance without measure and in time beyond the count of years to your release.

7.  Let us together, then, be glad to give some time to God today and understand there is no better use for time than this. For fifteen minutes twice today, escape from every law in which you now believe. Open your mind and rest. The world that seems to hold you prisoner can be escaped by anyone who does not hold it dear. Withdraw all value you have placed upon its meager offerings and senseless gifts, and let the gift of God replace them all.

8.  Call to your Father, certain that His Voice will answer. He Himself has promised this. And He Himself will place a spark of truth within your mind wherever you give up a false belief, a dark illusion of your own reality and what love means. He will shine through your idle thoughts today and help you understand the truth of love. In loving gentleness He will abide with you,²⁰⁶ as you allow His Voice to teach love’s meaning to your clean and open mind. And He will bless the lesson with His Love.

9.  Today the legion of the future years of waiting for salvation disappears before the timelessness of what you learn. Let us give thanks today that we are spared a future like the past. Today we leave the past behind us, nevermore to be remembered. And we raise our eyes upon a different present, where a future dawns unlike the past in every attribute.

10.  The world in infancy is newly born. And we will watch it grow in health and strength, to shed its blessings upon all who come to learn to cast aside the world they thought was made in hate to be love’s enemy. Now are they all made free along with us. Now are they all our brothers in God’s love.

11.  We will remember them throughout the day, because we cannot leave a part of us outside our love if we would know our Self. At least three times an hour think of one who makes the journey with you, and who came to learn what you must learn. And as he comes to mind, give him this message from your Self:

I bless you, brother, with the love of God,

Which I would share with you. For I would learn

The joyous lesson that there is no love but

God’s and yours and mine and everyone’s.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Footnote 206. John 14:16 (KJV): “And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.”

Personal Notes:

“There is no love but God’s.” Today I practice freeing my mind of all the laws I thought I must obey, of all the limits under which we live and all the changes which I thought were part of human destiny. Thankful to give some time to God today for fifteen minutes twice today, opening my mind to rest. Calling on my Father, certain His Voice will answer to place a spark of truth within my mind as I give up false beliefs of dark illusions of what my own reality and love means. In loving gentleness, He will abide with me, as I allow His Voice to teach love’s meaning to my clean and open mind. I make it a point to remember my brothers throughout the day who journey with me to learn what we must learn. And give them this message; I bless you, brother, with the love of God, which I would share with you. For I would learn the joyous lesson that there is no love but God’s and yours and mine and everyone’s. I pray for all my brothers and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life, in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 126

All That I Give is Given to Myself.

Today’s idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course would bring about. If you believed this statement, there would be no problem in complete forgiveness, certainty of goal, and sure direction. You would understand the means by which salvation comes to you, and would not hesitate to use it now.

2.  Let us consider what you do believe in place of this idea. It seems to you that other people are apart from you, and able to behave in ways which have no bearing on your thoughts, nor yours on theirs. Therefore your attitudes have no effect on them, and their appeals for help are not in any way related to your own. You further think that they can sin without affecting your perception of yourself, while you can judge their sins and yet remain apart from condemnation and at peace.

3.  When you “forgive” a sin, there is no gain to you directly. You give charity to one unworthy, merely to point out that you are better, on a higher plane than he whom you forgive. He has not earned your charitable tolerance, which you bestow on one unworthy of the gift because his sins have lowered him beneath a true equality with you. He has no claim on your forgiveness. It holds out a gift to him, but hardly to yourself.

4.  Thus is forgiveness basically unsound; a charitable whim, benevolent yet undeserved; a gift bestowed at times, at other times withheld. Unmerited, withholding it is just, nor is fair that you should suffer when it is withheld.  The sin which you forgive is not your own. Someone apart from you committed it. And if you then are gracious unto him be giving him what he does not deserve, the gift is no more yours than was his sin.

5.  If this be true, forgiveness has no grounds on which to rest dependably and sure. It is an eccentricity in which you sometimes choose to give indulgently an undeserved reprieve. Yet it remains your right to let the “sinner” not escape the justified repayment for his sins. Think you the Lord of Heaven would allow the world’s salvation to depend on this? Would not His care for you be small indeed if your salvation rested on a whim?

6.  You do not understand forgiveness. As you see it, it is but a check upon overt attack, without requiring correction in your mind. It cannot give you peace as you perceive it. It is not a means for your release from what you see in someone other than yourself. It has no power to restore your unity with him to your awareness. It is not what God intended it to be for you.

7.  Not having given Him the gift He asks of you, you cannot recognize His gifts, and think He has not given them to you. Yet would He ask you for a gift unless it was for you? Could He be satisfied with empty gestures, and evaluate such petty gifts as worthy of His Son? Salvation is a better gift than this, and true forgiveness, as the means be which it is attained, must heal the mind that gives, for giving is receiving. What remains as unreceived has not been given, but what has been given must have been received.

8.  Today we try to understand the truth that giver and receiver are the same. You will need help to make this meaningful, because it is so alien to the thoughts to which you are accustomed. But the Help you need is there. Give Him your faith today, and ask Him that He share your practicing in truth today. And if you only catch a tiny glimpse of the release which lies in the idea we practice for today, this is a day of glory for the world.

9.  Give fifteen minutes twice today to the attempt to understand today’s idea. It is the thought by which forgiveness takes its proper place in your priorities. It is the thought that will release your mind from every bar to what forgiveness means, and let you realize its worth to you.

10.  In silence, close your eyes upon the world which does not understand forgiveness, and seek sanctuary in the quiet place where thoughts are changed and false ideas laid by. Repeat today’s idea, and ask for help in understanding what it really means. Be willing to be taught. Be glad to hear the Voice of truth and healing speak to you, and you will understand the words He speaks, and recognize He speaks your words to you.

11.  As often as you can, remind yourself you have a goal today, an aim which makes this day of special value to yourself and all your brothers. Do not let your mind forget this goal for long, but tell yourself:

All that I give is given to myself.

The help I need to learn that this is true

Is with me now. And I will trust in Him.

     Then spend a quiet moment opening your mind to His correction and His love. And what you hear of Him you will believe, for what He gives will be received by you.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Personal Notes:

“All that I give is given to myself.” Footnote 204. Of this lesson in paragraph 2; States the overall idea seems to be that, because we believe we are separate from others, we believe that what they think, feel, do and are, has no bearing on what we think, feel, do, and are, and vice versa. We also believe that how we see them has no effect on how we see ourselves. The truth, however, is the reverse of everything this paragraph says: Other people are not apart from us. Their behavior does have a bearing on our thoughts, and our thoughts do have bearing on their thoughts. Our attitudes do have an effect on them. Their appeals for help are the same as ours. If they “sin,” that does effect our perception of ourselves. And if we judge their “sins” we will experience self-condemnation and loss of peace. That is why all that we give to them is given to ourselves. Lesson states, as we try to understand this idea, we will need help to make this meaningful, because it is so alien to the thoughts we are accustomed. As I sought sanctuary in the quiet place and called on Holy Spirit to help me with this “feeling” of resistance I only got part of my answer which was that I just didn’t like being responsible for someone else’s poor choices or attitudes. And I was led of Holy Spirit, that we learn together and to call a “friend” my study buddy. In my delay of responding to the guidance of Holy Spirit, my study partner called me, and together I found such blessed clarification and illumination of this truth. All that I give is given to myself. The help I need to learn that this is true is with me now. And I will trust in Him. I encourage you today to call upon the help of Holy Spirit who resides in all of us, to help make this truth real to you today and not to neglect the power of two the power of learning together in unity of the brotherhood. I pray for all my brothers, sisters, and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing The Way We See Things Now

Lesson 125

In Quiet I Receive God’s Word Today.

Let this day be a day of stillness and of quiet listening. Your Father wills you hear His word today. He calls to you from deep within your mind where He abides. Hear Him today. No peace is possible until His Word is heard around the world; until your mind, in quiet listening, accepts the message which the world must hear to usher in the quiet time of peace.

2.  This world will change through you. No other means can save it, for God’s plan is simply this: The Son of God is free to save himself, given the Word of God to be his Guide, forever in his mind and at his side, to lead him securely to his Father’s house by his own will, forever free as God’s. he is not led by force, but only love. He is not judged, but only sanctified.

3.  In stillness we will hear His Voice today, without intrusion of our petty thoughts, without our personal desires, and without all judgment of His holy Word. We will not judge ourselves today, for what we are can not be judged. We stand apart from all the judgments which the world has laid upon the Son of God. It knows him not. Today we will not listen to the world, but wait in silence for the Word of God.

4.  Hear, holy Son of God, your Father speak. His Voice would give to you His holy Word to spread across the world the tidings of salvation¹⁹⁸ and the holy time of peace. We gather at the throne of God today, the quiet place within your mind where He abides forever in the holiness which He created and will never leave.

5.  He has not waited until you return your mind to Him to give His Word to you. He has not hid Himself from you while you have wandered off a little while from Him. He does not cherish the illusions which you hold about yourself. He knows His Son, and wills that he remain as part of Him regardless of his dreams; regardless of his madness that his will is not his own.

6.  Today He speaks to you. His Voice awaits your silence, for His Word cannot be heard unless your mind is quiet for a while, and meaningless desires have been stilled. Await His Word in quiet. There is peace within you to be called upon today, to help make ready your most holy mind to hear the Voice of its Creator Speak.

7.  Three times today, at times most suitable for silence, give ten minutes set apart from listening to the world, and choose instead a gentle listening to the Word of God. He speaks nearer than your heart to you.¹⁹⁹ His Voice is closer than your hand. His love is everything you are and that He is; the same as you, and you the same as He.

8.  It is your voice to which you listen as He speaks to you. It is your Word He speaks. It is the Word of freedom and of peace, of unity of will and purpose, with no separation nor division in the single Mind of Father and Son. In quiet listen to your Self today, and let Him tell you God has never left His Son, and you have never left your Self.

9.  Only be quiet. You will need no rule but this to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body’s eyes. Only be still and listen. You will hear the Word in which the will of God the Son joins in His Father’s will, at one with it, with no illusions interposed between the wholly indivisible and true.

10.  As every hour passes by today, be still a moment and remind yourself you have a special purpose for this day: in quiet to receive the Word of God.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Footnote 198. Luke 8:1 (KJV): “And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the Kingdom of God: and the twelve were with Him.”

Footnote 199. Deuteronomy 30:14 (RSV): “But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”

Personal Notes:

“In quiet I receive God’s Word today.” We are not led by force, but only love. We are not judged, but only sanctified. In stillness we will hear His Voice today, without intrusion of our petty thoughts, without our personal desires, and without all judgment of His holy Word. Today I will not listen to the world, but wait in silence for the Word of God. We gather at the throne of God today, the quiet place within our mind where He abides forever in the holiness which He created and will never leave. His Voice awaits our silence, for His word cannot be heard unless our mind is quiet for a while. I set aside three times today giving ten minutes set apart from listening to the world, and choose instead a gentle listening to the Word of God. To be quiet is the only rule we need today to lift above the thinking of the world and free our vision from the body’s eyes. Only be still and listen. In quiet I receive God’s Word today. I pray for all my brothers, sisters, and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen! Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing the Way We See Things Now

Lesson 124

Let Me Remember I Am One With God.

Today we will again give thanks for our identity in God. Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. We can fail in nothing. Everything we touch takes on a shining light which blesses and which heals. At one with God and all the universe, we go our way rejoicing,¹⁹²with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us.

2.  How holy are our minds! And everything we see reflects the holiness within the mind at one with God and with itself. How easily do errors disappear and death give place to everlasting life. Our shining footprints point the way to truth, for God is our Companion as we walk the world a little while. And those who come to follow us will recognize the way because the light we carry stays behind, yet still remains with us as we walk on. What we received is our eternal gift to those who follow after, and to those who went before or stayed with us a while. And God, Who loves us with the equal love in which we were created, smiles on us and offers us the happiness we gave.

3.  Today we will not doubt His love for us, nor question His protection and His care. No meaningless anxieties can come between our faith and our awareness of His presence. We are one with Him today in recognition and remembrance. We feel Him in our hearts. Our minds contain His thoughts. Our eyes behold His loveliness in all we look upon. Today we see only the loving and the lovable.

4.  We see it in appearances of pain, and pain gives way to peace. We see it is the frantic, in the sad and the distressed, the lonely and afraid, who are restored to the tranquility and peace of mind in which they were created. And we see it in the dying and the dead as well, restoring them to life. All this we see because we saw it first within ourselves.

5.  No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. No thought of theirs but has the power to heal all forms of suffering in anyone in times gone by and times as yet to come as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now. Their thoughts are timeless, and apart from distance as apart from time.

6.  We join in this awareness as we say that we are one with God. For in these words we say as well that we are saved and healed; that we can save and heal accordingly. We have accepted and we now would give, for we would keep the gifts our Father gave. Today we would experience ourselves at one with Him, so that the world may share our recognition of reality. In our experience the world is freed; as we deny our separation from our Father, it is healed along with us.

7.  Peace be to you today.¹⁹⁴ Secure your peace by practicing awareness you are one with your Creator, as He is with you. Sometime today, whenever it seems best, devote a half an hour to the thought that you are one with God. This is our first attempt at an extended period for which we give no rules nor special words to guide your meditation. We will trust God’s Voice to speak as He sees fit today, certain He will not fail. Abide with Him this half an hour. He will do the rest.

8.  Your benefit will not be less if you believe that nothing happened. You may not be ready to accept the gain today. Yet sometime, somewhere, it will come to you, nor will you fail to recognize it when it dawns with certainty upon your mind. This half an hour will be framed in gold, with every minute like a diamond set around the mirror that this exercise will offer you. And you will see Christ’s face upon it, in reflection of your own.

9.  Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will see your own transfiguration in the glass this holy half an hour will hold out to you, to look upon yourself.¹⁹⁷ When you are ready you will find it there, within your mind and waiting to be found. You will remember then the thought to which you gave this half an hour, thankfully aware no time was ever better spent.

10.  Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will look into this glass and understand the sinless light you see belongs to you; the loveliness you look on is your own. Count this half hour as your gift to God, in certainty that His return will be a sense of love you cannot understand, a joy too deep for you to comprehend, a sight too holy for the body’s eyes to see. And yet you can be sure someday, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will understand and comprehend and see.

11.  Add further jewels to the golden frame that holds the mirror offered you today by hourly repeating to yourself:

Let me remember I am one with God,

at one with all my brothers and my Self,

in everlasting holiness and peace.^[1].

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Footnote 192. Acts 8:39 (RSV): “And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught up Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.”

Footnote 194. Luke 24:36 (KJV): “And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.”

Footnote 197. Matthew 17:2 (RSV): “And he (Jesus) was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light.” The above passage uses this as a symbol for what you will see happen to yourself as you look into the mirror “this holy half an hour will hold out to you.”

Personal Notes:

“Let me remember I am one with God” I give thanks for me identity in God. I give thanks for the guarantee of safety, protection in all I do. I give thanks for power and strength in all my undertakings. I give thanks for the shining light which blesses and heals all that I touch. I give thanks as I remember I am one with God and all the universe and go my way rejoicing. I choose not to doubt His love for me or question His protection and care. I choose not to except any meaningless anxieties to come between my faith and my awareness of His presence. Let me remember I am one with God. Let my eyes behold God’s loveliness in all I look upon, to see only the loving and the lovable. No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. Let us secure our peace by practicing awareness that we are one with our Creator as we devote a half an hour to the thought that we are one with God. You may not be ready to accept the gain today, yet sometime, somewhere, it will come to us, we will not fail to recognize it when it dawns with certainty upon our minds. Let me remember I am one with God, at one with all my brothers and my Self, in everlasting holiness and peace. I pray for all my brothers, sisters, and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend.

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing the Way We See Things Now

Lesson 123

I Thank My Father for His Gifts to Me.

Today let us be thankful. We have come to gentler pathways and to smoother roads. There is no thought of turning back and no implacable resistance to the truth. A bit of wavering remains, some small objections and a little hesitance, but we can well be grateful for our gains, which are far greater than we realize.

2.  A day devoted now to gratitude will add the benefit of some insight into the real extent of all the gains which you have made, the gifts you have received. Be glad today, in loving thankfulness, your Father has not left you to yourself, nor let you wander in the dark alone. Be grateful He has saved you from the self you thought you made to take the place of Him and His creation. Give Him thanks today.

3.  Give thanks that He has not abandoned you, and that His love forever will remain shining on you, forever without change. Give thanks as well that you are changeless, for the Son He loves is changeless as Himself. Be grateful you are saved. Be glad you have a function in salvation to fulfill. Be thankful that your value far transcends your meager gifts and petty judgements of the one whom God established as His Son.

4.  Today in gratitude we lift our hearts above despair and raise our thankful eyes, no longer looking downward to the dust. We sing the song of thankfulness today in honor of the Self Which God has willed to be our true identity in Him. Today we smile on everyone we see, and walk with lightened footsteps as we go to do what is appointed us to do. We do not go alone. And we give thanks that in our solitude a Friend has come to speak the saving Word of God to us.

5.  And thanks to you for listening to Him. His Word is soundless if it be not heard. In thanking Him the thanks are yours as well. An unheard message will not save the world, however mighty be the Voice that speaks, however loving may the message be. Thanks be to you who heard, for you become the messenger who brings His Voice with you, and lets It echo round and round the world.

6.  Receive the thanks of God today, as you give thanks to Him. For He would offer you the thanks you give, since He receives your gifts in loving gratitude and gives them back a thousand times more than they were given. He will bless your gifts by sharing them with you, and so they grow in power and in strength until they fill the world with gladness and with gratitude.

7.  Receive His thanks and offer yours to Him for fifteen minutes twice today. And you will realize to Whom you offer thanks, and whom He thanks as you are thanking Him. This holy half hour given Him will be returned to you in terms of years for every second; power to save the world eons more quickly for your thanks to Him.

8.  Receive His thanks, and you will understand how lovingly He holds you in His Mind, how deep and limitless His care for you, how perfect His gratitude to you. Remember hourly to think of Him and give Him thanks for everything He gave His Son, that he might rise above the world, remembering his Father and his Self.^[1]

[1]. A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Personal Notes:

“I thank my Father for His gifts to me” Once know The Truth there can be no turning back, no resistance to Truth. Although there may be a bit of wavering, small objections, and a little hesitance we can be grateful for our gains, devoting an attitude of gratitude to our Heavenly Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit and ourselves for all the gains we have made and for the gifts we have received and in turn given. Thankful we do not wander in the dark alone. I give thanks that He has not abandoned me and that His Love forever will remain shining on me, forever without change. Today in gratitude I lift my heart above despair and raise my thankful eyes no longer looking downward to the dust. Today I sing a new song of thankfulness. I will remember today to take 15 minutes morning and evening to list the many things I am thankful for to my Father. I pray for all my brothers, sisters, and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love

Part 1

Undoing the Way We See Things Now

Lesson 122

Forgiveness Offers Everything I Want.

What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

2.  All this forgiveness offers you, and more. It sparkles in your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rest upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace. All this forgiveness offers you, and more.

3.  Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world. It lets you recognize the Son of God, and clears your memory of all dead thoughts, so that remembrance of your Father can arise across the threshold of your mind.

4.  What would you want forgiveness cannot give? What gifts but these are worthy to be sought? What fancied value, trivial effect, or transient promise never to be kept can hold more hope than what forgiveness brings? Why would you seek an answer other than the answer which will answer everything? Here is the perfect answer, given to imperfect questions, meaningless requests, halfhearted willingness to hear, and less-than-halfway diligence and partial trust.

5.  Here is the answer! Seek for it no more. You will not find another one instead. God’s plan for your salvation cannot change, nor can it fail. Be thankful it remains exactly as He planned it. Changelessly it stands before you like an open door, with warmth and welcome calling from beyond the doorway, bidding you to enter in and make yourself at home where you belong.

6.  Here is the answer! Would you stand outside while all of heaven waits for you within? Forgive and be forgiven. As you give you will receive.¹⁹⁰ There is no plan but this for the salvation of the Son of God. Let us today rejoice that this is so, for here we have an answer, clear and plain, beyond deceit in its simplicity. All the complexities the world has spun of fragile cobwebs disappear before the power and majesty of this extremely simple statement of the truth.

7.  Here is the answer! Do not turn away in aimless wandering again. Accept salvation now! It is the gift of God and not the world. The world can give no gifts of any value to a mind which has received what God has given as its own. God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness from you.

8.  Open your eyes today and look upon a happy world of safety and of peace. Forgiveness is the means by which it comes to take the place of hell. In quietness it rises up to greet your open eyes and fill your heart with deep tranquility as ancient truths, forever newly born, arise in your awareness. What you will remember then could never be described. Yet your forgiveness offers it to you.

9.  Remembering the gifts forgiveness gives, we undertake our practicing today with hope and faith that this will be the day salvation will be ours. Earnestly and gladly will we seek for it today, aware we hold the key within our hands, accepting Heaven’s answer to the hell we made but where we would remain no more.

10.  Morning and evening do we gladly give a quarter of an hour to the search in which the end of hell is guaranteed. Begin in hopefulness, for we have reached the turning point, at which the road becomes far easier. And now the way is short that yet we travel. We are close indeed to the appointed ending of the dream.

11.  Sink into happiness as you begin these practice periods, for they hold out the sure reward of questions answered and what your acceptance of the answer brings. Today it will be given you to feel the peace forgiveness offers and the joy the lifting of the veil holds out to you.

12.  Before the light you will receive today, the world will fade until it disappears, and you will see another world arise you have no words to picture. Now we walk directly into light, and we receive the gifts which have been held in store for us since time began, kept waiting for today. Forgiveness offers everything you want. Today all things you want are given you.

13.  Let not your gifts recede throughout the day as you return again to meet a world of shifting change and bleak appearances. Retain your gifts in clear awareness as you see changeless in the heart of change, the light of truth behind appearances. Be tempted not to let your gifts slip by and drift into forgetfulness, but hold them firmly in your mind by your attempts to think of them at least a minute as each quarter of an hour passes by. Remind yourself how precious are these gifts with this reminder, which has power to hold your gifts in your awareness through the day:

Forgiveness offers everything I want.

Today I have accepted this as true.

Today I have received the gifts of God.^[1]

[1] A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.

Footnote 190. Luke 6:37-8 (RSV): “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” The above sentence also seems to be a reworking of “As you sow, so shall you reap,” which is a popularized form of Galatians 6:7 (KJV): “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

Personal Notes:

“Forgiveness offers everything I want. Today I have accepted this as true. Today I have received the gifts of God.” Today I have practiced remembering this gift of forgiveness to receive and give at least on the quarter hour briefly and for longer periods of time morning, evening, and midday. Earnestly and gladly, I seek awareness the key to accepting Heaven’s answer to the hell we made here is in my hand of giving and receiving forgiveness which I have accepted as true. I pray for all my brothers, sisters and myself for continued guidance, wisdom, discernment, protection, and illumination of purpose in The Way, The Truth, The Life in Christ Jesus, Amen. Thank you for sharing with me. Walk in Love my friend!

God is Love

Love is God

I choose Love