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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
