Forgiveness is a choice. I never see my brother as he is, for that is far beyond perception. What I see in him is merely what I wish to see, because it stands for what I want to be truth. It is to this alone that I respond, however much I seem to be impelled by outside happenings. I choose to see what I would look upon, and this I see and only this. My brother’s sinlessness shows me that I would look upon my own. And I will see it, having chosen to behold my brother in its holy light.
2. What could restore Your memory to me except to see my brother’s sinlessness? His holiness reminds me that he was created one with me and like myself. In him I find my Self, and in Your Son I find the memory of You as well.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
I choose to see my brother’s sinlessness. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
I will not wait another day to find the treasures which my Father offers me. Illusions must be vain, and dreams are gone even while they are woven out of thoughts that rest on false perception. Let me not accept such meager gifts again today. God’s Voice is offering the peace of God to all who hear and choose to follow Him. This is my choice today. And so I go to find the treasures God has given me.
2. I seek but the eternal. For Your Son can be content with nothing less than this. What, then, can be his solace but what You are offering to his bewildered mind and frightened heart, to give him certainty and bring him peace? Today I would behold my brother sinless. This is Your will for me, for thus will I behold my sinlessness.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
Today I claim the gifts forgiveness gives. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Conflict must be resolved. It cannot be evaded, set aside, denied, disguised, seen somewhere else, called by another name, or hidden by deceit of any kind, if it would be escaped. It must be seen exactly as it is, where it is thought to be, in the reality which has been given it, and with the purpose that the mind accorded it. For only then are its defenses lifted, and the truth can shine upon it as it disappears.
2. Father, forgiveness is the light You chose to shine away all conflict and all doubt, and light the way for our return to You. No light but this can end our evil dreams. No light but this can save the world. For this alone will never fail in anything, being Your gift to Your beloved Son.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
Forgiveness ends the dream of conflict here. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
The ego makes illusions. Truth undoes its evil dreams by shining them away. Truth never makes attack; it merely is. And by its presence is the mind recalled from fantasies, awaking to the real. Forgiveness bids this presence enter in and take its rightful place within the mind. Without forgiveness is the mind in chains, believing in its own futility. Yet with forgiveness does the light shine through the dream of darkness, offering it hope and giving it the means to realize the freedom that is its inheritance.
2. We would not bind the world again today. Fear holds it prisoner. And yet Your love has given us the means to set it free. Father, we would release it now. For as we offer freedom, it is given us, and we would not remain as prisoners while You hold out our freedom unto us.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
Fear binds the world. Forgiveness sets it free. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
The ego is idolatry; the sign of limited and separated self, born in a body, doomed to suffer and to end its life in death. It is the will that sees the will of God as enemy and takes a form in which it is denied. The ego is the “proof” that strength is weak and love is fearful, life is really death, and what opposes God alone is true.
2. The ego is insane. In fear it stands beyond the everywhere, apart from all, in separation from the infinite. In its insanity it thinks it has become a victor over God Himself, and in its terrible autonomy it “sees” the will of God has been destroyed. It dreams of punishment and trembles at the figures in its dreams, its “enemies” who seek to murder it before it can ensure its safety by attacking them.
3. The Son of God is egoless. What can he know of madness and the death of God when he abides in Him? What can he know of sorrow and of suffering when he lives in eternal joy? What can he know of fear and punishment, of sin and guilt, of hatred and attack, when all there is surrounding him is everlasting peace, forever conflict-free and undisturbed, in deepest silence and tranquility?
4. To know reality is not to know the ego and its thoughts, its works, its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in it entails. In suffering, the price for faith in it is so immense that crucifixion of the Son of God is offered daily at its darkened shrine, and blood must flow before the altar where its sickly followers prepare its feast of death.149
5. Yet will one lily of forgiveness change the darkness into light; the altar to illusions to the shrine of Life Itself. And peace will be restored forever to the holy minds which God created as His dwelling place, His joy, His love, completely His, completely one with Him.
Footnote 149. This imagery is drawn from the Eucharist, especially the Catholic Mass, in which the body and blood of the Son of God is offered daily. The implication of the image here is that all who believe in the ego carry out a kind of twisted Mass every day, in which their true nature as God’s Son is continually crucified.
Lesson 331
There Is No Conflict. For My Will Is Yours.
How foolish, Father, to believe Your Son could cause himself to suffer! Could he make a plan for his damnation, and be left without a certain way to his release? You love me, Father. You could never leave me desolate, to die within a world of pain and cruelty. How could I think that Love has left Itself? There is no will except the will of Love. Fear is a dream, and has no will that can conflict with Yours. Conflict is sleep, and peace awakening. Death is illusion; life, eternal truth. There is no opposition to Your will. There is no conflict, for my will is Yours.
2. Forgiveness shows us that God’s will is one and that we share it. Let us look upon the holy sights forgiveness shows today, that we may find the peace of God. Amen.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
There is no conflict, for my will is Yours. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Let us this day accept forgiveness as our only function. Why should we attack our minds and give them images of pain? Why should we teach them they are powerless, when God holds out His power and His love, and bids them take what is already theirs? The mind that is made willing to accept God’s gifts has been restored to spirit, and extends its freedom and its joy as is the will of God united with its own. The Self Which God created cannot sin, and therefore cannot suffer. Let us choose today that He be our identity, and thus escape forever from all things the dream of fear appears to offer us.
2. Father, Your Son cannot be hurt. And if we think we suffer, we but fail to know our one identity we share with You. We would return to it today, to be made free forever from all our mistakes, and to be saved from what we thought we were.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
I will not hurt myself again today. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Father, I thought I wandered from Your will, defied it, broke its laws, and interposed a second will more powerful than Yours. Yet what I am in truth is but Your will, extended and extending. This am I, and this will never change. As You are one, so am I one with You. And this I chose in my creation, where my will became forever one with Yours. That choice was made for all eternity. It cannot change and be in opposition to itself. Father, my will is Yours. And I am safe, untroubled and serene, in endless joy, because it is Your will that it be so.
2. Today we will accept our union with each other and our Source. We have no will apart from His, and all of us are one because His will is shared by all of us. Through it we recognize that we are one. Through it we find our way at last to God.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
I have already chosen what You will. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
What seems to be the second place is first, for all things we perceive are upside down until we listen to the Voice of God. it seems that we will gain autonomy but by our striving to be separate, and that our independence from the rest of God’s creation is the way in which salvation is obtained. Yet all we find is sickness, suffering, and loss and death. This is not what our Father wills for us, nor is there any second to His will. To join with His, it is to find our own. And since our will is His, it is to Him that we must go to recognize our will.
2. There is no will but Yours. And I am glad that nothing I imagine contradicts what You would have me be. It is Your will that I be holy, safe, eternally at peace. And happily I share that will which You, my Father, gave as part of me.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
I choose the second place to gain the first.I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
I am not asked to take salvation on the basis of an unsupported faith. For God has promised He will hear my call and answer me Himself. Let me but learn from my experience that this is true, and faith in Him must surely come to me. This is the faith that will endure, and take me further and still farther on the road that leads to Him. For thus I will be sure that He has not abandoned me and loves me still, awaiting but my call to give me all the help I need to come to Him.
2. Father, I thank You that Your promises will never fail in my experience, if I but test them out. Let me attempt therefore to try them, and to judge them not. Your Word is one with You. You give the means whereby conviction comes, and surety of Your abiding love is gained at last.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
I need but call and You will answer me. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy thought that never left its home. I am forever Your effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide. And all Your attributes abide in me, because it is Your will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and its effect are indistinguishable. Let me know that I am an effect of You, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in Heaven, so on earth.141 Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your love, where earth will disappear, and separate things united in glory as the Son of God.
2. Let us today behold earth disappear: at first transformed, and then, forgiven, fade entirely into God’s holy will.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote: 141.Matthew 6:10 (RSV): “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.” Here “as it is in Heaven, so on earth” means that just as my being is God’s effect in Heaven, so my life is God’s effect on earth: “Your plan I follow here” (1:8).
Personal Notes:
I am forever an effect of God. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
This is salvation’s keynote. What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the things the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real, and guarded as one’s own. From insane wishes comes an insane world. From judgment comes a world condemned. And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world comes forth, with mercy for the holy Son of God, to offer him a kindly home where he can rest a while before he journeys on, and help his brothers walk ahead with him and find the way to Heaven and God.140
2. Our Father, Your ideas reflect the truth, and mine apart from Yours but make up dreams. Let me behold what only Yours reflect, for Yours and Yours alone establish truth.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 140. Because perception comes from a process of deciding what I want, making images of what I want, and then projection those images and seeing them in the world, I can see two different worlds. Through judgment, I will want to look on images that should be condemned, and they are what I will see. Through forgiveness, I will want to see images of a gentle, merciful world, and that is the world I will see.
Personal Notes:
All things I think I see reflect ideas. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Father, You are the One Who gave the plan for my salvation to me. You have set the way I am to go, the role to take, and every step in my appointed path. I cannot lose the way. I can but choose to wander off a while and then return. Your loving Voice will always call me back and guide my feet aright. My brothers all can follow in the way I lead them. Yet I merely follow in the way to You, as You direct me and would have me go.
2. So let us follow, One Who knows the way. We need not tarry, and we cannot stray except and instant, from His loving hand. We walk together, for we follow Him. And it is He Who makes the ending sure and guarantees a safe returning home.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
I merely follow, for I would not lead. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Here is the only “sacrifice” You ask of Your beloved Son: You ask him to give up all suffering, all sense of loss and sadness, all anxiety and doubt, and freely let Your love come streaming in to his awareness, healing him of pain and giving him Your Own eternal joy. Such is the “sacrifice” You ask of me, and one I gladly make; the only “cost” of restoration of Your memory to me, for the salvation of the world.
2. And as we pay the debt we owe to truth–a debt which merely is the letting go of self-deceptions and of images we worshipped falsely—truth returns to us in wholeness and in joy. We are deceived no longer. Love has now returned to our awareness. And we are at peace again, for fear has gone and only love remains.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
I gladly make the “sacrifice” of fear. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
I sacrifice illusions, nothing more. And as illusions go I find the gifts illusions tried to hide, awaiting me in shining welcome and in readiness to give God’s ancient messages to me. His memory abides in every gift that I receive of Him. And every dream serves only to conceal the Self Which is God’s only Son, the likeness of Himself,137 the Holy One Who still abides in Him forever, as He still abides in me.
2. Father, to You all sacrifice remains forever inconceivable. And so I cannot sacrifice except in dreams. As You created me, I can give up nothing You gave me. What You did not give has no reality. What loss can I anticipate except the loss of fear, and the return of love into my mind?[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 137. Genesis 1:26 (KJV): “And God said Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
Personal Notes:
I can give up but what was never real. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Creation is the sum of all God’s thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself. There was no time when all that It created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that It created suffers any change. Forever and forever are God’s thoughts exactly as they were and as they are, unchanged through time and after time is done.
2. God’s thoughts are given all the power that their own Creator has, for He would add to love by its extension. Thus His Son shares in creation, and must therefore share in power to create. What God has willed to be forever one will still be one when time is over, and will not be changed throughout the course of time, remaining as it was before the thought of time began.
3. Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in creation is His will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole. Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate, forever held within His holy will beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection, and of any spot upon its sinlessness.
4. We are creation; we the Sons of God. We seem to be discrete, and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For Love remains with all Its thoughts, Its sureness being theirs. God’s memory in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator. Let our function be only to let this memory return only to let God’s will be done on earth,136 only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us.
5. Our Father calls to us. We hear His Voice, and we forgive creation in the Name of its Creator, Holiness Itself, Whose holiness His Own creation shares, Whose holiness is still a part of us.
Lesson 321
Father, My Freedom Is In You Alone.
I did not understand what makes me free, nor what my freedom is, nor where to look to find it. Father, I searched in vain until I heard Your Voice directing me. Now I would guide myself no more, for I have neither made nor understood the way to find my freedom. But I trust in You. You Who endowed me with my freedom as Your holy Son will not be lost to me. Your Voice directs me, and the way to You is opening and clear to me at last. Father, my freedom is in You alone. Father, it is my will that I return.
2. Today we answer for the world, which will be freed along with us. How glad are we to find our freedom through the certain way our Father has established. And how sure is all the world’s salvation, when we learn our freedom can be found in God alone.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 136. Matthew 6:10 (RSV): “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.” In the above reference, we are the instruments through which God’s will is done on earth.
Personal Notes:
Father, my freedom is in You alone. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
The Son of God is limitless. There are no limits on his strength, his peace, his joy, or any attributes his Father gave in his creation. What he wills with his Creator and Redeemer must be done. His holy will can never be denied, because his Father shines upon his mind and lays before it all the strength and love in earth and Heaven. I am he to whom all this is given. I am he in whom the power of my Father’s will abides.
2. Your will can do all things in me, and then extend to all the world as well through me. There is no limit on Your will. And so all power has been given to Your Son.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 134. Matthew 28:18 (KJV): “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. “Just as the Bible says that all power has been given unto Jesus in heaven and earth, so we are told here that all power has been given unto us “in earth and Heaven” (1:4).
Personal Notes:
My Father gives all power unto me. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Here is a thought from which all arrogance has been removed, and only truth is left. For arrogance opposes truth, but where there is no arrogance, the truth will come immediately and fill up the space the ego left unoccupied by lies. Only the ego can be limited, and therefore it must seek for aims which are curtailed and limiting. The ego thinks that what one gains, totality must lose. And yet it is the will of God I learn that what one gains is given unto all.
2. Father, Your will is total, and the goal that stems from it shares its totality. What aim but the salvation of the world could You have given me? And what but this could be the will my Self has shared with You?[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
I came for the salvation of the world. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
In me, God’s holy Son, are reconciled all parts of Heaven’s plan to save the world. What could conflict, when all the parts have but one purpose and one aim? How could there be a single part that stands aside, or one of more or less importance than the rest? I am the means by which God’s Son is saved, because salvation’s purpose is to find the sinlessness that God has placed in me. I was created as the thing I seek. I am the goal the world is searching for. I am God’s Son, His one eternal love. I am salvation’s means and end as well.
2. Let me today, my Father, take the role You offer me in Your request that I accept Atonement for myself. For thus does what is thereby reconciled in me become as surely reconciled to You.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
In me salvation’s means and end are one. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
I have a special place to fill, a role for me alone. Salvation waits until I take this part as what I choose to do. Until I make this choice am I the slave of time and human destiny. But when I willingly and gladly go the way my Father’s plan appointed me to go, then will I recognize salvation is already here, already given all my brothers and already mine as well.
2. Father, Your way is what I choose today. Where it would lead me do I choose to go; what it would have me do I choose to do. Your way is certain and the end secure. The memory of You awaits me there. And all my sorrows end in Your embrace, which You have promised to Your Son, who thought mistakenly that he had wandered from the sure protection of Your loving arms.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
I follow in the way appointed me. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
As every gift my brothers give is mine, so every gift I give belongs to me. Each one allows a past mistake to go, and leave no shadow on the holy mind my Father loves. His grace is given me in every gift a brother has received throughout all time and past all time as well. My treasure house is full, and angels watch its open doors, that not one gift is lost and only more are added. Let me come to where my treasures are and enter in where I am truly welcome and at home, among the gifts that God has given me.
2. Father, I would accept Your gifts today. I do not recognize them. Yet I trust that You Who gave them will provide the means by which I can behold them, see their worth, and cherish only them as what I want.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
All gifts I give my brothers are my own. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Each day a thousand treasures come to me with every passing moment. I am blessed with gifts throughout the day, in value far beyond all things of which I can conceive. A brother smiles upon another, and my heart is gladdened. Someone speaks a word of gratitude or mercy, and my mind perceives this gift and takes it as its own. And everyone who finds the way to God becomes my savior, pointing out the way to me and giving me his certainty that what he learned is surely mine as well.
2. I thank You, Father, for the many gifts that come to me today and every day from every Son of God. My brothers are unlimited in all their gifts to me. Now may I offer them my thankfulness, that gratitude to them may lead me on to my Creator and His memory.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
All gifts my brothers give belongs to me. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
From new perception of the world, there comes a future very different from the past. The future now is recognized as but extension of the present. Past mistakes can cast no shadows on it, so that fear has lost its idols and its images,127 and being formless, it has no effects. Death will not claim the future now, for life is now its goal, and all the needed means are happily provided. Who can grieve or suffer when the present has been freed, extending its security and peace into quiet future filled with hope?
2. Father, we were mistaken in the past, and choose to use the present to be free. Now do we leave the future in Your hands, leaving behind our past mistakes, and sure that You will keep Your present promises and guide the future in their holy light.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 127. The shadows on the future cast by our past mistakes are all the frightening events we envision in the future in which our mistakes will catch up with us. These anticipated events are fear’s “idols” and “images.”
Personal Notes:
I seek a future different from the past. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Father, there is a vision which beholds all things as sinless, so that fear has gone, and where it was is love invited in. And love will come wherever it is asked. This vision is Your gift. The eyes of Christ look on a world forgiven. In His sight are all its sins forgiven, for He sees no sin in anything He looks upon. Now let His true perception come to me, that I may waken from the dream of sin and look within upon my sinlessness, which You have kept completely undefiled upon the alter to Your holy Son, the Self with Which I would identify.
2. Let us today behold each other in the sight of Christ. How beautiful we are! How holy and how loving! Brother, come and join with me today. We save the world when we are joined. For in our vision it becomes as holy as the light in us.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
Now let a new perception come to me. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Perception follows judgment. Having judged, you therefore see what you would look upon. For vision merely serves to offer you what you would have. It is impossible to overlook what you would see, and fail to see what you have chosen to behold. How surely, therefore, must the real world come to greet the holy sight of anyone who takes the Holy Spirit’s purpose as his goal for seeing. And he cannot fail to look upon what Christ would have him see, and share Christ’s love for what he looks upon.
2. I have no purpose for today except to look upon a liberated world, set free from all the judgments I have made. Father, this is Your will for me today, and therefore it must be my goal as well.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
I see all things as I would have them be. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Christ’s Second Coming gives the Son of God the gift to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgment is in which perception ends.124 At first you see a world which has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.
2. The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation, for it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ’s sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless.
3. You who believe that God’s Last Judgment will condemn the world to hell along with you, accept this holy truth. God’s Judgment is the gift of the correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God’s saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering; return to peace, security and happiness; and union with your own identity.
4. God’s Final Judgment is as merciful as every step in His appointed plan to bless His Son and call him to return to the eternal peace He shares with him. Be not afraid of love. For it alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears125 and gently waken from his dreams of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks you give it welcome. And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free.
5. This is God’s Final Judgment: “You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am your Father, and you are my Son.”[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 124. According to the Text, the Last Judgment is a final reevaluation of all our thoughts and deeds, in which the mind will “preserve only what is good…[and] … will inevitably disown its miscreations” (T-2.XIII.6:3, 5)
Footnote 125. Revelation 21:4 (KJV): “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” The above passage is saying that the Last Judgment, rather than being fearful, is so loving that it heals all sorrow and wipes away all tears.
Lesson 311
I Judge All Things As I Would Have Them Be.
Judgement was made to be a weapon used against the truth. It separates what it is being used against, and sets it off as if it were a thing apart. And then it makes of it what you would have it be. It judges what it cannot understand, because it cannot see totality, and therefore judges falsely.126 Let us not use it today, but make a gift of it to Him Who has a different use for it. He will relieve you of the agony of all judgments you have made against yourself, and reestablish peace of mind by giving you God’s judgment of His Son.
2. Father, we wait with open minds today to hear Your judgment of the Son You love. We do not know him and we cannot judge. And so we let Your love decide what he whom You created as Your Son must be.[1]
Footnote 126. Our judgments are always made according to a very partial and incomplete picture of things. They “cannot see totality,” and since accurate judgment requires seeing the entire picture—the totality—our judgment will inevitably judge falsely.
Personal Notes:
I judge all things as I would have them be. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
This day, my Father, would I spend with You, as You have chosen all my days should be. And what I will experience is not of time at all. The joy that comes to me is not of days nor hours, for it comes from Heaven to Your Son. This day will be Your sweet reminder to remember You, Your gracious calling to Your holy Son, the sign Your grace has come to me, and that it is Your will that I be free today.
2. We spend this day together, you and I, and all the world joins with us in our song of thankfulness and joy to Him Who gave salvation to us, and Who sets us free. We are restored to peace and holiness. There is no room in us for fear today, for we have welcomed love into our hearts.]1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
In fearlessness and love I spend today. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Within me is eternal innocence, because it is God’s will that it be there forever and forever. I, His Son, whose will is limitless as is His Own, can will no change in this. For to deny my Father’s will is to deny my own. To look within is but to find my will as God created it and as it is. I fear to look within because I think I made another will which is not true, and made it real. Yet it has no effects. Within me is the holiness of God. within me is the memory of Him.
2. The step I take today, my Father, is my sure release from idle dreams of sin. Your altar stands serene and undefiled. It is the holy altar to my Self, and there I find my true identity.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
I will not fear to look within today. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
I have conceived of time in such a way that I defeat my aim. If I elect to reach past time to timelessness, I must change my perception of what time is for. Time’s purpose cannot be to keep the past and future one. The only interval in which I can be saved from time is now, for in this instant has forgiveness come to set me free. The birth of Christ is now, without a past or future. He has come to give His present blessing to the world, restoring it to timelessness and love. And love is ever-present, here and now.
2. Thanks for this instant, Father. It is now I am redeemed. This instant is the time You have appointed for Your Son’s release, and for salvation of the world in him.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
This instant is the only time there is. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Father, Your will is mine, and only that. There is no other will for me to have. Let me not try to make another will, for it is senseless and will cause me pain. Your will alone can bring me happiness, and only Yours exists. If I would have what only You can give, I must accept Your will for me and enter into peace where conflict is impossible, Your Son is one with You in being and in will, and nothing contradicts the holy truth that I remain as You created me.
2. And with this prayer, we enter silently into a state where conflict cannot come, because we join our holy will with God’s in recognition that they are the same.120. [1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 120. The prayer, in other words, is meant to introduce a meditation in which “we enter silently into a state where conflict cannot come.”
Personal Notes:
Conflicting wishes cannot be my will. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
What but Christ vision would I use today,119 when it can offer me a day in which I see a world so like to Heaven that an ancient memory returns to me? Today I can forget the world I made. Today I can go past all fear and be restored to love and holiness and peace. Today I am redeemed, and born anew into a world of mercy and of care, of loving-kindness and the peace of God.
2. And so, our Father, we return to You, remembering we never went away; remembering Your holy gifts to us. In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give. We cannot make an offering sufficient for Your Son. But in Your love the gift of Christ is his.[1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 119. This clarifies what the “gift of Christ” is in today’s idea; it is “Christ vison.”
Personal Notes:
The gift of Christ is all I seek today. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Who uses but Christ’s vision finds a peace so deep and quiet, undisturbable and wholly changeless, that the world contains no counterpart. Comparisons are still before this peace. And all the world departs in silence as this peace envelops it and gently carries it to truth,118 no more to be the home of fear. For love has come, and healed the world by giving it Christ’s peace.
2. Father, the peace of Christ is given us, because it is Your will that we be saved. Help us today but to accept Your gift and judge it not. For it has come to us to save us from our judgement on ourselves.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 118. Luke 2:29 (RSV): “ Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” These are the words of Simeon, who can at last die in peace because he has seen the infant Christ in the temple in Jerusalem. In this Course reference, “all the world departs in silence,” being carried from fear to truth, as it is enveloped by Christ’s peace.
Personal Notes:
There is a peace that Christ bestows on us. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
I can obscure my holy sight, if I intrude my world upon it. Nor can I behold the holy sights Christ looks upon unless it is His vision that I use. Perception is a mirror, not a fact, and what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward. I would bless the world by looking on it through the eyes of Christ. And I will look upon the certain signs that all my sins have been forgiven me.117
2. You lead me from the darkness to the light; from sin to holiness. Let me forgive, and thus receive salvation for the world. It is Your gift, my Father, given me to offer to Your holy Son, that he may find again the memory of You, and of Your Son as You created him.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 117. If “what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward,” and I look on a forgiven world, that means that what I see will be a visible sign “that all my sins have been forgiven me.”
Personal Notes:
Let not my world obscure the sight of Christ. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Watch with me, angels, watch with me today. Let all God’s holy thoughts surround me and be still with me while Heaven’s Son is born. Let earthly sounds be quiet and the sights to which I am accustomed disappear. Let Christ be welcomed where He is at home, and let Him hear the sounds He understands and see but sights which show His Father’s love.115 Let Him no longer be a stranger here, for He is born again in me today.
2. Your Son is welcome, Father. He has come to save me from the evil self I made.
He is the Self that You have given me.
He is but what I really am in truth.
He is the Son You love above all things.
He is my Self as You created me.
It is not Christ that can be crucified.
Into Your world let me receive Your Son.116, [1]
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 114. This lesson was dictated shortly before Christmas. It is dated December 22, 1970 in the Urtext.
Footnote 115. This means “Let Christ be welcomed into the real world, where the sights and sounds reflect His heavenly home.” The implication is that we allow Christ to be born in us when we see with true perception and thus make our minds a welcoming home for Him.
Footnote 116. “Your world” is the real world. See W-301, 1:4: “Let me see Your world instead of mine.”
Personal Notes:
The holy Christ is born in me today. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Father, our eyes are opening at last. Your holy world awaits us, as our sight is finally restored and we can see. We thought we suffered, but we had forgot the Son whom You created. Now we know that darkness is our own imagining, and light is there for us to look upon. Christ’s vision changes darkness into light, for fear must disappear when love has come. Let me forgive Your holy world today, that I may look upon its holiness and understand it but reflects my own.
2. Our Love awaits us as we go to Him, and walks beside us, showing us the way.113 He fails in nothing. He the end we seek, and He the means by which we come to Him.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 113. “Our Love” is God, since God is “the end we seek” (2:3)
Personal Notes:
Where darkness was I look upon the light. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Christ Second Coming, which is sure as God, is merely the correction of mistakes and the return of sanity. It is a part of the condition which restores the never lost, and reestablishes what is forever and forever true. It is the invitation to God’s Word to take illusion’s place; the willingness to let forgiveness rest upon all things without exception and without reserve.
2. It is this all-inclusive nature of Christ’s Second Coming that permits it to embrace the world and hold you safe within its gentle advent, which encompasses all living things with you. There is no end to the release the Second Coming brings, as God’s creation must be limitless. Forgiveness lights the Second Coming’s way because it shines on everyone as one, and thus is oneness recognized at last.
3. The Second Coming ends the lessons which the Holy Spirit teaches, making way for the Last Judgement, in which learning ends in one last summary that will extend beyond itself, and reaches up to God. The Second Coming is the time in which all minds are given to the hands of Christ, to be returned to spirit in the name of true creation and the will of God.
4. The Second Coming is the one event in time which time itself cannot affect. For everyone who ever came to die or yet will come or who is present now is equally released from what he made. In this equality is Christ restored as one identity, in which the Sons of God acknowledge that they all are one. And God the Father smiles upon His Son, His one creation and His only joy.
5. Pray that this Second Coming will be soon, but do not rest with that. It needs your eyes and ears and hands and feet. It needs your voice. And most of all, it needs your willingness. Let us rejoice that we can do God’s will, and join together in its holy light. Behold, the Son of God is one in us, and we can reach our Father’s love through him.
Lesson 301
And God Himself Shall Wipe Away All Tears.112
Father, unless I judge I cannot weep, nor can I suffer pain or feel I am abandoned and unneeded in the world. This is my home because I judge it not, and therefore is it only what You will. Let me today behold it uncondemned, through happy eyes forgiveness has released from all distortion. Let me see Your world instead of mine, and all the tears I shed will be forgotten, for their cause is gone. Father, I will not judge Your world today.
2. God’s world is happy. Those who look on it can only add their joy to it, and bless it as a cause of further joy in them. We wept because we did not understand. But we have learned the world we saw was false, and will look upon God’s world today.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 112. Revelation 21:4 (KJV): “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” In the Bible, God will wipe away all tears through a transformation of the world in which evil is vanquished and death itself is overcome. In the above lesson, God will wipe all tears away because when we cease to judge we will see His world (the real world), a happy world that is inherently free of pain and loneliness.
Personal Notes:
And God Himself shall wipe away all tears. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
This is a thought that can be used to say that death and sorrow are the certain lot of all who come here, for their joys are gone before they are possessed or even grasped. Yet this is also an idea that lets no false perception keep you in its hold nor represent more than a passing cloud upon a sky eternally serene. And it is this serenity we seek—unclouded, obvious, and sure—today.
2. We seek Your holy world today. For we, Your loving Sons, have lost our way a while. But we have listened to Your Voice and learned exactly what to do to be restored to Heaven and our true identity. And we give thanks today the world endures but for an instant. We would go beyond that tiny instant to eternity.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
Only an instant does this world endure. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
My holiness is far beyond my own ability to understand or know. Yet God my Father, Who created it, acknowledges my holiness as His. Our will, together, understands it. And our will, together, knows that it is so.
2. Father, my holiness is not of me. It is not mine to be destroyed by sin. It is not mine to suffer from attack. Illusions can obscure it, but cannot put out its radiance nor dim its light. It stands forever perfect and untouched. In it are all things healed, for they remain as You created them. And I can know my holiness. For Holiness Itself created me, and I can know my Source because it is Your will that You be known.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
Eternal holiness abides in me. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
My gratitude permits my love to be accepted without fear, and thus am I restored to my reality at last. All that intruded on my holy sight forgiveness takes away, and I draw near the end of senseless journeys, mad careers, and artificial values. I accept instead what God establishes as mine, sure that in that alone I will be saved; sure that I go through fear to meet my Love.
2. Father, I come to You today, because I would not follow any way but Yours. You are beside me. Certain is Your way. And I am grateful for Your holy gifts of certain sanctuary and escape from everything that would obscure my love for God my Father and His holy Son.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
I love You, Father, and I love Your Son. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Forgiveness is the only gift I give, because it is the only gift I want, and everything I give I give myself. This is salvation’s simple formula. And I, who would be saved would make it mine, to be the way I live within a world that needs salvation, and that will be saved as I accept Atonement for myself.
2. Father, how certain are Your ways, how sure their final outcome, and how faithfully is every step in my salvation set already and accomplished by Your grace. Thanks be to You for Your eternal gifts, and thanks to You for my identity.[1].
Footnote [1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
Forgiveness is the only gift I give. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
The Holy Spirit needs my voice today, that all the world may listen to Your Voice and hear Your Word through me. I am resolved to let You speak through me, for I would use no words but Yours and have no thoughts which are apart from Yours, for only Yours are true. I would be savior to the world I made. For having damned it, I would set it free that I may find escape and hear the Word Your holy Voice will speak to me today.
2. We teach today what we would learn, and that alone. And so our learning goal becomes an unconflicted one, and possible of easy reach and quick accomplishment. How gladly does the Holy Spirit come to rescue us from hell, when we allow His teaching to persuade the world through us to seek and find the easy path to God![1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
The Holy Spirit speaks through me today. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Christ asks that He may use my eyes today, and thus redeem the world. He asks this gift that He may offer peace of mind to me and take away all terror and all pain. And as they are removed from me, the dreams that seemed to settle on the world are gone. Redemption must be one. As I am saved, the world is saved with me, for all of us must be redeemed together. Fear appears in many different forms, but love is one.107.
2. My Father, Christ has asked a gift of me, and one I give that it be given me. Help me to use the eyes of Christ today, and thus allow the Holy Spirit’s love to bless all things that I may look upon, that His forgiving love may rest on me.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 107. “Love is one” here means that it unites everyone in the experience of salvation. Therefore, “Fear appears in many different forms” here must refer to fear as something that separates people into a multitude of highly individual experiences of fear. We see this same idea in the Text, which says that fear “has many forms, for the content of individual delusions differs greatly” (T-13.V.1:4).
Personal Notes:
The Holy Spirit looks through me today. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
I am a Son of God. And can I be another thing as well? Did God create the mortal and corruptible? What use has God’s beloved Son for what must die? And yet a neutral thing does not see death, for thoughts of fear are not invested there, nor is a mockery of love bestowed upon it. Its neutrality protects it while it has a use. And afterwards, without a purpose, it is laid aside. It is not sick or old or hurt. It is but functionless, unneeded, and cast off. Let me not see it more than this today: of service for a while, and fit to serve, to keep its usefulness while it can serve, and then to be replaced for greater good.
2. My body, Father cannot be Your Son, and what is not created cannot be sinful or sinless, neither good nor bad. Let me, then, use this dream to help Your plan that we awaken from all dreams we made.106, [1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 106. We “use this dream to help Your plan that we awaken from all dreams” by using the body to communicate love to our brothers. That is how the body can be “of service” (1:10) to God’s plan.
Personal Notes:
My body is a wholly neutral thing. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
All fear is past because its source is gone,105 and all its thoughts went with it. Love remains the only present state, whose Source is here forever and forever. Can the world seem bright and clear and safe and welcoming with all my past mistakes oppressing it and showing me distorted forms of pain? Yet in the present love is obvious and its effects apparent. All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last.
2. Father, let not Your holy world escape my sight today. Nor let my ears be deaf to all the hymns of gratitude the world is singing underneath the sounds of fear. There is a real world which the present holds safe from all past mistakes. And I would see only this world before my eyes today.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 105. The “source” of fear her appears to be the past, specifically “my past mistakes” (1:3).
Personal Notes:
All fear is past and only love is here. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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’s promises make no exceptions. And He guarantees that only joy can be the final outcome found for everything. Yet it is up to us when this is reached; how long we let an alien will, appear to be opposing His.102 And while we think this will is real, we will not find the end He has appointed as the outcome of all problems we perceive, all trials we see, and every situation that we meet. Yet is the ending certain, for God’s will is done in earth and Heaven.103 We will seek and we will find according to His will, which guarantees that our will is done.104
2. We thank You, Father, for Your guarantee of only happy outcomes in the end. Help us not interfere and so delay the happy endings You have promised us for every problem that we can perceive; for ever trial we think we still must meet.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Footnote 102. The “alien will” is the ego’s will, which is alien to us because it does not represent our true desires.
Footnote 103. Matthew 6:10 (KJV): “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” The above reference, rather than asking us to pray that God’s will be done on earth, simply acknowledges that in the end His will is done on earth. This is why “A happy outcome to all things is sure.”
Footnote 104. Matthew 7:7 (RSV): “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” In the above reference, what we seek we will find because God’s will guarantees that our will—our true desire—is “done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10 [KJV]).
Personal Notes:
A happy outcome to all things is sure. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made. Your world is seen through eyes of fear, and brings the witnesses of terror to your mind. The real world cannot be perceived except through eyes of forgiveness blesses, so they see a world where terror is impossible and witnesses to fear cannot be found.
2. The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world; a sure correction for the sights of fear and sounds of battle that your world contains. The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace. Nothing but rest is here. There are no cries of pain and sorrow heard, for nothing here remains outside forgiveness. And the sights are gentle. Only happy sights and sounds can reach the mind that has forgiven itself.101
3. What need has such a mind for thoughts of death, attack, and murder? What can it perceive surrounding it but safety, love, and joy? What is there it would choose to be condemned, and what is there that it would judge against? The world it sees arises from a mind at peace within itself. No danger lurks in anything it sees, for it is kind, and only kindness does it look upon.
4. The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin and guilt is over, and God’s Son no longer sleeps. His waking eyes perceive the sure reflection of his Father’s love; the certain promise that he is redeemed. The real world signifies the end of time, for this perception makes time purposeless.
5. The Holy Spirit has no need of time when it has served His purpose. Now He waits but that one instant more for God to take His final step, and time has disappeared, taking perception with it as it goes and leaving but the truth to be itself. That instant is our goal, for it contains the memory of God. And as we look upon a world forgiven, it is He Who calls to us and comes to take us home, reminding us of our identity, which forgiveness has restored to us.
Footnote 101. Since the mind has forgiven itself, it no longer sees itself surrounded by frightening people and events poised to punish it for its sins.
Lesson 291
This Is A Day Of Stillness And Of Peace.
Christ’s vision looks through me today. His sight shows me all things forgiven and at peace, and offers this same vision to the world. And I accept this vison in its name, both for myself and for the world as well. What loveliness we look upon today! What holiness we see surrounding us! And it is given us to recognize it is a holiness in which we share; it is the holiness of God Himself.
2. This day my mind is quiet to receive the thoughts You offer me. And I accept what comes from You instead of from myself. I do not know the way to You, but You are wholly certain. Father, guide Your Son along the quiet path that leads to You. Let my forgiveness be complete, and let the memory of You return to me.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
This is a day of stillness and of peace. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Unless I look upon what is not there, my present happiness is all I see. Eyes that begin to open see at last, and I would have Christ’s vision come to me this very day. What I perceive without God’s Own correction for the sight I made is frightening and painful to behold. Yet I would not allow my mind to be deceived by the belief the dream I made is real and instant longer. This the day I seek my present happiness, and look on nothing else except the thing I seek.
2. With this resolve I come to You and ask Your strength to hold me up today, while I but do Your will. You cannot fail to hear me, Father. What I ask have You already given me, and I am sure that I will see my happiness today.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
My present happiness is all I see. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Unless the past is over in my mind, the real world must escape my sight. For I am really looking nowhere; seeing but what is not there. How can I then perceive the world forgiveness offers? This the past was made to hide, for this the world that can be looked on only now. It has no past, for what can be forgiven but the past, and if it is forgiven, it is gone.
2. Father, let me not look upon a past that is not there. For You have offered me Your own replacement, in a present world the past has left untouched and free of sin. Here is the end of guilt, and here am I made ready for Your final step. Shall I demand that You wait longer for Your Son to find the loveliness You planned to be the end of all his dreams and all his pain?[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
The past is over. It can touch me not. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
This is the thought that leads the way to You, and brings me to my goal. I cannot come to You without my brother. And to know my Source, I first must recognize what You created one with me. my brother’s is the hand that leads me on the way to You. His sins are in the past, along with mine, and I am saved because the past is gone. Let me not cherish it within my heart, or I will lose the way to You. My brother is my savior. Let me not attack the savior You have given me, but let me honor him who bears Your Name, and so remember that it is my own.
2. Forgive me, then, today. And you will know you have forgiven me if you behold your brother in the light of holiness. He cannot be less holy than can I, and you cannot be holier than he.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
Let me forget my brother’s past today. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Where would I go but Heaven? What could be a substitute for happiness? What gift could I prefer before the peace of God? what treasure would I seek and find and keep that can compare with my identity? And would I rather live with fear than love?
2. You are my goal, my Father. What but You could I desire to have? What way but that which leads to You could I desire to walk? And what except the memory of You could signify to me the end of dreams and futile substitutions for the truth? You are my only goal. Your Son would be as You created him. What way but this could I expect to recognize my Self, and be at one with my identity?[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
You are my goal, my Father. Only You. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
Father, how still today! How quietly do all things fall in place! This is the day that has been chosen as the time in which I come to understand the lesson that there is no need that I do anything. In You is every choice already made. In You has every conflict been resolved. In You is everything I hope to find already given me. Your peace is mine. My heart is quiet, and my mind at rest. Your love is Heaven, and Your love is mine.
2. The stillness of today will give us hope that we have found the way and traveled far along it to a wholly certain goal. Today we will not doubt the end that God Himself has promised us. We trust in Him, and in our Self, Who still is one with Him.[1].
[1]. A Course In Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition.
Personal Notes:
The hush of Heaven holds my heart today. I meditate on above prayer today, and in quiet I wait to hear my Father’s Voice. 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!
I choose Love 