What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?
All this forgiveness offers you, and more. It sparkles in your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace. All this forgiveness offers you, and more.
Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up which hides the Face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world. It lets you recognize the Son of God, and clears your memory of all dead thoughts so that remembrance of your Father can arise across the threshold of your mind. What would you want forgiveness cannot give? What gifts but these are worthy to be sought? What fancied value, trivial effect, or transient promise never to be kept, can hold more hope than what forgiveness brings?
Why would you seek an answer other than the answer that will answer everything? Here is the perfect answer, given to imperfect questions, meaningless requests, half-hearted willingness to hear, and less than halfway diligence and partial trust. Here is the answer! Seek for it no more. You will not find another one instead.
God's plan for your salvation cannot change, nor can it fail. Be thankful it remains exactly as He planned it. Changelessly it stands before you, like an open door with warmth and welcome calling from beyond the doorway, bidding you to enter in, and make yourself at home where you belong.
Here is the answer! Would you stand outside while all of Heaven waits for you within? Forgive and be forgiven. As you give you will receive. There is no plan but this for the salvation of the Son of God. Let us today rejoice that this is so, for here we have an answer, clear and plain, beyond deceit in its simplicity.
All of the complexities the world has spun of fragile cobwebs disappear before the power and the majesty of this extremely simple statement of the truth. Here is the answer! Do not turn away in aimless wandering again. Accept salvation now. It is the gift of God and not the world. The world can give no gifts of any value to a mind which has received what God has given as its own.
God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness from you. Open your eyes today, and look upon a happy world of safety and of peace. Forgiveness is the means by which it comes to take the place of hell. In quietness it rises up to greet your open eyes, and fill your heart with deep tranquility as ancient truths, forever newly born, arise in your awareness. What you will remember then can never be described. Yet your forgiveness offers it to you.
Remembering the gifts forgiveness gives, we undertake our practicing today with hope and faith that this will be the day salvation will be ours. Earnestly and gladly will we seek for it today, aware we hold the key within our hands, accepting Heaven's answer to the hell we made, but where we would remain no more.
Morning and evening do we gladly give a quarter of an hour to the search in which the end of hell is guaranteed. Begin in hopefulness, for we have reached the turning point at which the road becomes far easier. And now the way is short that yet we travel. We are close indeed to the appointed ending of the dream.
Sink into happiness as you begin these practice periods, for they hold out the sure rewards of questions answered, and what your acceptance of the answer brings. Today it will be given you to feel the peace forgiveness offers, and the joy the lifting of the veil holds out to you.
Before the light you will receive today the world will fade until it disappears, and you will see another world arise you have no words to picture. Now we walk directly into light, and we receive the gifts which have been held in store for us since time began, kept waiting for today.
Forgiveness offers everything you want. Today all things you want are given you. Let not your gifts recede throughout the day, as you return again to meet a world of shifting change and bleak appearances. Retain your gifts in clear awareness as you see the changeless in the heart of change; the light of truth behind appearances.
Be tempted not to let your gifts slip by, and drift into forgetfulness but hold them firmly in your mind by your attempts to think of them at least a minute as each quarter of an hour passes by. Remind yourself how precious are these gifts with this reminder, which has power to hold your gifts in your awareness through the day:
"Forgiveness offers everything I want.
Today I have accepted this as true.
Today I have received the gifts of God."
We said that peace must first surmount the obstacle of your desire to get rid of it. Where the attraction of guilt holds sway, peace is NOT WANTED. The second obstacle that peace must flow across, and closely related to the first, is the belief that the body is valuable FOR WHAT IT OFFERS. For here is the attraction of guilt MADE MANIFEST in the body, and SEEN in it.
THIS is the value that you think peace would ROB you of. This is what you believe that it would dispossess, and leave YOU homeless. And it is this for which YOU would deny a home to peace. This "sacrifice" you feel to be too great to make, too much to ask of you. Is it a SACRIFICE, or a RELEASE? What has the body REALLY given you, that justifies your strange belief that in it lies salvation? Do you not see that this is the belief in DEATH? Here is the focus of the perception of Atonement as murder. Here is the SOURCE of the idea that love is fear.
The Holy Spirit's messengers are sent far beyond the body, calling the mind to join in holy communion, and be at peace. Such is the message that I gave them, for YOU. It is only the messengers of FEAR that see the body, for they look for what can suffer. Is it a sacrifice to be REMOVED from what can suffer? The Holy Spirit does not DEMAND you "sacrifice" the hope of the body's pleasures. It HAS no hope of pleasure. But neither can it bring you fear of pain. Pain is the ONLY "sacrifice" the Holy Spirit asks. And this He WOULD remove.
Peace is extended from you only to the eternal. And it reaches out FROM the eternal in YOU. It flows across all else. The second obstacle is no more solid than the first. For you will neither to get rid of peace, nor to LIMIT it. What are these obstacles that you would interpose between peace and its going forth, but barriers you place between your will and its accomplishment? You WANT communion, NOT the feast of fear. You WANT salvation, NOT the pain of guilt. AND YOU WANT YOUR FATHER, NOT a little mound of clay, to be your home.
In your holy relationship is your Father's Son. He has NOT lost communion with Him. NOR WITH HIMSELF. When you agreed to join each other, you acknowledged this is so. This has NO cost. But it HAS release from cost. You have paid very dearly for your illusions. And NOTHING you have paid for brought you peace. Are you not GLAD that Heaven can not BE sacrificed?And sacrifice can not BE asked of you? There IS no obstacle that you can place before our union, for in your holy relationship I am there ALREADY. We will surmount all obstacles TOGETHER, for we stand WITHIN the gates, and not outside.
How easily the gates are opened from within, to let peace through to bless the tired world! Can it be difficult for us to walk past barriers together, when you have JOINED the Limitless? The end of guilt is in your hands, to give. Would you stop now, to LOOK for guilt in each other? Let me be to you the symbol of the END of guilt, and look upon each other, as you would look on me. Forgive me for all the sins you think the Son of God committed. And in the light of your forgiveness, he will remember who he is, and forget what never was.
I ask for your forgiveness, for if YOU are guilty, so must I be. And if I surmounted guilt and overcame the world, you were WITH me. Would you see in me the symbol of guilt, or of the END of guilt? Remembering that what I signify to you, you see within YOURSELF? From your holy relationship, Truth proclaims the truth, and Love looks on itself. Salvation flows from deep within the home you offered to my Father and to me. And we are there together, in the quiet communion in which the Father and the Son are joined.
Oh come ye faithful, to the holy union of the Father and Son in YOU. And keep YOU not apart from what is offered you, in gratitude for giving peace its home in Heaven. Send forth to all the world the joyous message of the end of guilt, and all the world will answer. Think of your happiness, as everyone offers you witness of the end of sin, and shows you that its power is gone forever. Where can guilt be, when the belief in sin is gone? And where is death, when its great advocate is heard no more?
Forgive me your illusions, and release me from punishment for what I have NOT done. So will YOU learn the freedom that I taught, by teaching freedom to each other, and so releasing me. I am within your holy relationship, yet you would imprison me behind the obstacles you RAISE to freedom, and bar my way to YOU. Yet it is not possible to keep AWAY One Who is there ALREADY. And IN Him, it IS possible that our communion, where we are ALREADY joined, will be the focus of the new perception that will bring light to all the world, contained in YOU.
Salvation and forgiveness are the same. They both imply that something has gone wrong; something you need be saved from or forgiven for; something amiss that needs corrective change, something apart or different from the Will of God. Thus do both terms imply something impossible but yet which has occurred, resulting in a state of conflict between what is and what could never be.
Truth and illusions both are equal now, for both have happened. The impossible becomes the thing you need forgiveness for; salvation from. Salvation is the borderland between truth and illusion. It reflects the truth because it is the means by which you can escape illusions. Yet it is not truth because it undoes what was never done.
How could there be a meeting place at all where earth and Heaven can be reconciled within a mind where both of them exist? The mind which sees illusions thinks them real. They have existence in that they are thoughts. And yet they are not real because the mind that thinks these thoughts is separate from God.
What joins the separated mind and thoughts with Mind and Thought which are forever One? What plan could hold the truth inviolate, yet recognize the need illusions bring, and offer means by which they are undone without attack, and with no touch of pain? What but a Thought of God could be this plan by which the never done is overlooked, and sins forgotten which were never real?
The Holy Spirit holds this plan of God exactly as it was received of Him within the Mind of God, and in your own. It is apart from time in that its Source is timeless. Yet it operates in time because of your belief that time is real. Unshaken does the Holy Spirit look on what you see; on sin and pain and death, on grief and separation and on loss. Yet does He know one thing must still be true; God still is Love, and this is not His Will.
This is the Thought Which brings illusions to the truth, and sees them as appearances behind which is the changeless and the sure. This is the Thought Which saves and Which forgives, because It lays no faith in what is not created by the only Source It knows. This is the Thought Whose function is to save by giving you Its function as your own.
Salvation is your function, with the One to Whom the plan was given. Now are you entrusted with this plan, along with Him. He has one answer to appearances regardless of their form, their size, their depth, or any attribute they seem to have:
"Salvation is my only function here.
God still is Love, and this is not His Will."
You who will yet work miracles, be sure you practice well the idea for today. Try to perceive the strength in what you say, for these are words in which your freedom lies. Your Father loves you. All the world of pain is not His will. Forgive yourself the thought He wanted this for you. Then let the Thought with Which He has replaced all your mistakes enter the darkened places of your mind which thought the thoughts that never were His Will. This part belongs to God, as does the rest. It does not think its solitary thoughts and make them real by hiding them from Him.
Let in the light, and you will look upon no obstacle to what He wills for you. Open your secrets to His kindly Light, and see how bright this Light still shines in you. Practice His Thought today, and let His Light seek out and lighten up all darkened spots, and shine through them to join them to the rest.
It is God's will your mind be One with His. It is God's Will that He has but one Son. It is God's Will that His one Son is you. Think of these things in practicing today, and start your longer practice periods with this instruction in the way of truth:
"Salvation is my only function here.
Salvation and forgiveness are the same."
Then turn to Him who shares your function with you, and let Him teach you what you need to learn to lay all fear aside, and know your Self as Love Which has no opposite in you.
Forgive all thoughts which would oppose the truth of your completeness, unity and peace. You cannot lose the gifts your Father gave. You do not want to be another self. You have no function that is not of God. Forgive yourself the one you think you made. Forgiveness and salvation are the same. Forgive what you have made, and you are saved.
You have a special message for today which has the power to remove all forms of doubt and fear forever from your mind. If you are tempted to believe them true, remember that appearances can not withstand the truth these mighty words contain:
"Salvation is my only function here.
God still is Love, and this is not His Will."
Your only function tells you you are One. Remind yourself of this between the times you give five minutes to be shared with Him Who shares God's plan with you. Remind yourself:
"Salvation is my only function here."
Thus do you lay forgiveness on your mind, and let all fear be gently laid aside that Love may find Its rightful place in you, and show you that you are the Son of God.
What waits in perfect certainty BEYOND salvation is not our concern. For you have barely started to allow your first, uncertain steps to be directed up the ladder separation led you down. The miracle alone is your concern at present. Here is where we must BEGIN. And, having started, will the way be made serene and simple in the rising up to waking and the ending of the dream. When you accept a miracle, you do not ADD your dream of fear to one that is ALREADY being dreamed. Without SUPPORT the dream will fade away, without effects. For it is your SUPPORT that strengthens it. No mind is sick until another mind AGREES that they are separate. And thus, it is their JOINT decision to be sick.
If you WITHHOLD agreement, and accept the part YOU play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in LETTING it perceive itself as separate and apart from YOU. Thus is the body NOT perceived as sick by BOTH your minds, from SEPARATE points of view. UNITING with a brother's mind prevents the CAUSE of sickness, and perceived effects. Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate. The miracle does nothing just because the minds ARE joined, and CANNOT separate. Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN.
Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him. He has not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and YOU have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been bred. Thus are you JOINED in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him. Fight not His coming with illusions, for it is His coming that you WANT above all things that seem to glisten in the dream. The end of dreaming is the end of FEAR, and love was NEVER in the world of dreams.
The gap IS little. Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every form of ill, because it is a WISH to keep apart, and NOT to join. And thus it seems to give a CAUSE to sickness which is NOT its cause. The PURPOSE of the gap is all the cause that sickness has. For it was made to keep you separated in a body which you see as if it were the CAUSE of pain. The cause of pain is separation, NOT the body, which is only its EFFECT. Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the vacant place between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by. And covered just as fast, as water rushes in to close the gap, and as the waves, in joining, cover it.
Where is the gap BETWEEN the waves, when they have joined, and covered up the space which seemed to keep them separate for a little while?Where is the grounds for sickness, when the minds have joined to close the gap BETWEEN them, where the weeds of sickness seemed to grow? God builds the bridge, but only in the space left clean and vacant by the miracle. The seeds of sickness and the shame of sin He CANNOT bridge, for He cannot destroy the alien will that He created not. Let its effects be gone, and clutch them not with eager hands, to keep them for yourself. The miracle will brush them all aside, and thus make room for Him Who wills to come, and bridge His Son's returning to Himself.
Count, then, the silver miracles and golden dreams of happiness as all the treasures you would keep within the storehouse of the world. The door is open, NOT to thieves, but to your starving brothers, who mistook for gold a shining pebble, and who stored away a heap of snow that shone like silver. They have nothing left behind the open door. What is the world except a little gap, perceived to tear eternity apart, and break it into days and months and years? And what are YOU who live within the world, except a picture of the Son of God in broken pieces, each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of clay?
Be not afraid, but let your world be lit with miracles. And where the gap was seen to stand BETWEEN you, join your brother there. And sickness will be seen WITHOUT a cause. The dream of healing in forgiveness lies, and gently shows you YOU have never sinned. The miracle would leave NO proof of guilt, to bring you witness to what never WAS. And, in your storehouse, it will make a place of welcome for your Father and your Self. The door is open, that all those may come who would no longer starve, and would enjoy the feast of plenty set before them there. And they will meet with your invited Guests the miracle has asked to come to you.
This is a feast unlike indeed to those the dreaming of the world has shown. For here, the more that anyone receives, the more is left for all the rest to share. The Guests have brought unlimited supply with Them. And no-one is deprived, or can deprive. Here is a feast the Father lays before His Son, AND shares it equally with him. And in Their sharing there can BE no gap, in - which abundance falters and grows thin. Here can the lean years enter not, for time waits not upon this feast, which HAS no end. For Love has set Its table in the space that seemed to keep your Guests APART from you.
Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified perception. Partial Atonement is a meaningless idea, just as special areas of hell in Heaven is inconceivable. Accept Atonement and you are healed. Atonement is the Word of God. Accept His Word and what remains to make sickness possible? Accept His Word and every miracle has been accomplished. To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there then he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him?
The progress of the teacher of God may be slow or rapid, depending on whether he recognizes the Atonement's inclusiveness or for a time excludes some problem areas from it. In some cases, there is a sudden and complete awareness of the perfect applicability of the lesson of the Atonement to all situations. This, however, is comparatively rare. The teacher of God may have accepted the function God has given him long before he has learned all that his acceptance holds out to him. It is only the end that is certain. Anywhere along the way, the necessary realization of inclusiveness may reach him. If the way seems long, let him be content. He has decided on the direction he will take. What more is asked of him? And having done what was required, would God withhold the rest?
That forgiveness is healing needs to be understood, if the teacher of God is to make progress. The idea that a body can be sick is a central concept in the ego's thought system. This thought gives the body autonomy, separates it from the mind, and keeps the idea of attack inviolate. If the body could be sick Atonement would be impossible. A body that can order a mind to do as it sees fit could merely take the place of God and prove salvation is impossible. What then is left to heal? The body has become lord of the mind. How could the mind be returned to the Holy Spirit unless the body is killed? And who would want salvation at such a price?
Certainly sickness does not appear to be a decision. Nor would anyone actually believe he wants to be sick. Perhaps he can accept the idea in theory, but it is rarely if ever consistently applied to all specific forms of sickness, both in the individual's perception of himself and of all others as well. Nor is it at this level that the teacher of God calls forth the miracle of healing. He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the Face of Christ shining in front of him, correcting all mistakes and healing all perception. Healing is the result of the recognition, by God's teacher, of Who it is that is in need of healing. This recognition has no special reference. It is true of all things that God created. In it are all illusions healed.
When a teacher of God fails to heal, it is because he has forgotten Who he is. Another's sickness thus becomes his own. In allowing this to happen, he has identified with another's ego, and has thus confused him with a body. In so doing, he has refused to accept Atonement for himself, and can hardly offer it to his brother in Christ's Name. He will, in fact, be unable to recognize his brother at all, for his Father did not create bodies, and so he is seeing in a brother only the unreal. Mistakes do not correct mistakes, and distorted perception does not heal. Step back now, teacher of God. You have been wrong. Lead not the way, for you have lost it. Turn quickly to your Teacher, and let yourself be healed.
The offer of Atonement is universal. It is equally applicable to all individuals in all circumstances. And in it is the power to heal all individuals of all forms of sickness. Not to believe this is to be unfair to God, and thus unfaithful to Him. A sick person perceives himself as separate from God. Would you see him as separate from you? It is your task to heal the sense of separation that has made him sick. It is your function to recognize for him that what he believes about himself is not the truth. It is your forgiveness that must show him this. Healing is very simple. Atonement is received and offered. Having been received, it must be accepted. It is in the receiving, then, that healing lies. All else must follow from this single purpose.
Who can limit the power of God Himself? Who then can say who can be healed of what, and what must remain beyond God's power to forgive? This is insanity indeed. It is not up to God's teachers to set limits upon Him, because it is not up to them to judge His Son. And to judge His Son is to limit his Father. Both are equally meaningless. Yet this will not be understood until God's teacher recognizes that they are the same mistake. Herein does he receive Atonement, for he withdraws his judgment from the Son of God, accepting him as God created him. No longer does he stand apart from God, determining where healing should be given and where it should be withheld. Now can he say with God, "This is my beloved Son, created perfect and forever so."
Perhaps you think that different kinds of love are possible. Perhaps you think there is a kind of love for this, a kind for that; a way of loving one, another way of loving still another. Love is one. It has no separate parts and no degrees; no kinds nor levels, no divergences and no distinctions. It is like itself, unchanged throughout. It never alters with a person or a circumstance. It is the heart of God and also of His Son.
Love's meaning is obscure to anyone who thinks that love can change. He does not see that changing love must be impossible. And thus he thinks that he can love at times and hate at other times. He also thinks that love can be bestowed on one and yet remain itself although it is withheld from others. To believe these things of love is not to understand it. If it could make such distinctions it would have to judge between the righteous and the sinner, and perceive the Son of God in separate parts.
Love cannot judge. As it is one itself, it looks on all as one. Its meaning lies in oneness. And it must elude the mind that thinks of it as partial or in part. There is no love but God's, and all of love is His. There is no principle which rules where love is not. Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds them both forever as the same.
No course whose purpose is to teach you what you really are could fail to emphasize there is no difference in what you are and what love is. Love's meaning is your own, and shared by God Himself. For what you are is what He is. There is no love but His, and what He is is everything there is. There is no limit placed upon Himself, and so are you unlimited as well.
No laws the world obeys can help you grasp love's meaning. What the world believes was made to hide love's meaning and to keep it dark and secret. There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is, and what you are as well. Seek not within the world to find your Self. Love is not found in darkness and in death. Yet it is perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear its Voice.
Today we practice making free our minds of all the laws you think you must obey; of all the limits under which you live, and all the changes which you think are part of human destiny. Today we take the largest single step this course requests in your advance toward its established goal. If you achieve the faintest glimmering of what love means today, you have advanced in distance without measure and in time beyond the count of years to your release.
Let us together, then, be glad to give some time to God today, and understand there is no better use for time than this. For fifteen minutes twice today escape from every law in which you now believe. Open your mind and rest. The world which seems to hold you prisoner can be escaped by anyone who does not hold it dear. Withdraw all value you have placed upon its meagre offerings and senseless gifts, and let the Gift of God replace them all.
Call to your Father, certain that His Voice will answer. He Himself has promised this. And He Himself will place a spark of truth within your mind wherever you give up a false belief, a dark illusion of your own reality and what love means. He will shine through your idle thoughts today, and help you understand the truth of love. In loving gentleness He will abide with you, as you allow His Voice to teach love's meaning to your clean and open mind. And He will bless the lesson with His Love.
Today the legion of the future years of waiting for salvation disappears before the timelessness of what you learn. Let us give thanks today that we are spared a future like the past. Today we leave the past behind us, never more to be remembered. And we raise our eyes upon a different present, where a future shines unlike the past in every attribute.
The world in infancy is newly born. And we will watch it grow in strength and health to shed its blessing upon all who come to learn to cast aside the world they thought was made in hate to be love's enemy. Now are they all made free along with us. Now are they all our brothers in God's Love.
We will remember them throughout the day because we cannot leave a part of us outside our love, if we would know our Self. At least three times an hour think of one who makes the journey with you, and who came to learn what you must learn. And as he comes to mind, give him this message from your Self:
"I bless you, brother, with the Love of God
Which I would share with you. For I would learn
The joyous lesson that there is no love
But God's and yours and mine and everyone's."
Although in truth the term sacrifice is altogether meaningless, it does have meaning in the world. Like all things in the world its meaning is temporary, and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it. Now its real meaning is a lesson. Like all lessons it is an illusion, for in reality there is nothing to learn. Yet this illusion must be replaced by a corrective device; another illusion that replaces the first, so both can finally disappear. The first illusion, which must be displaced before another thought system can take hold, is that it is a sacrifice to give up the things of this world. What could this be but an illusion, since this world itself is nothing more than that?
It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give. What can the sacrifice of nothing mean? It cannot mean that you have less because of it. There is no sacrifice in the world's terms that does not involve the body. Think a while about what the world calls sacrifice. Power, fame, money, physical pleasure; who is the hero to whom all these things belong? Could they mean anything except to a body? Yet a body cannot evaluate. By seeking after such things the mind associates itself with the body, obscuring its identity and losing sight of what it really is.
Once this confusion has occurred, it becomes impossible for the mind to understand that all the "pleasures" of the world are nothing. But what a sacrifice,- and it is sacrifice indeed - all this entails! Now has the mind condemned itself to seek without finding; to be forever dissatisfied and discontented; to know not what it really wants to find. Who can escape this self-condemnation? Only through God's Word could this be possible. For self-condemnation is a decision about identity, and no-one doubts what he believes he is. He can doubt all things, but never this.
God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. To them he sacrifices all his peace. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?
What is the real meaning of sacrifice? It is the cost of believing in illusions. It is the price that must be paid for the denial of truth. There is no pleasure of the world that does not demand this, for otherwise the pleasure would be seen as pain. And no-one asks for pain if he recognizes it. It is the idea of sacrifice that makes him blind. He does not see what he is asking for. And so he seeks it in a thousand ways and in a thousand places, each time believing it is there and each time disappointed in the end. "Seek but do not find" remains this world's stern decree, and no-one who pursues the world's goals can do otherwise.
You may believe this course requires sacrifice of all you really hold dear. In one sense that is true, for you hold dear the things that crucify God's Son. And it is the course's aim to set him free. But do not be mistaken about what sacrifice means. It always means the giving up of what you want. And what, oh teacher of God, is it that you want? You have been called by God, and you have answered. Would you now sacrifice that Call? Few have heard it as yet, and they can but turn to you. There is no other hope in all the world that they can trust. There is no other voice in all the world that echoes God's. If you would sacrifice the truth, they stay in hell. And if they stay, you will remain with them.
Do not forget that sacrifice is total. There are no "half sacrifices." You cannot give up Heaven partially. You cannot be a little bit in hell. The Word of God has no exceptions. It is this that makes It holy and beyond the world. It is Its holiness that points to God. It is Its holiness that makes you safe. It is denied if you attack any brother for anything. For it is here the split with God occurs. A split that is impossible. A split that cannot happen. Yet a split in which you surely will believe, because you have set up a situation that is impossible. And in this situation the impossible can seem to happen. It seems to happen at the "sacrifice" of truth.
Teacher of God, do not forget the meaning of sacrifice, and remember what each decision you make must mean in terms of cost. Decide for God, and everything is given you at no cost at all. Decide against Him and you choose nothing at the expense of the awareness of everything. What would you teach? Remember only what you would learn. For it is here that your concern should be. Atonement is for you. Your learning claims it and your learning gives it. The world contains it not, but learn this course and it is yours. God holds out His Word to you, for He has need of teachers. What other way is there to save His Son?
The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. You who are steadfastly devoted to misery, MUST first recognize that you ARE miserable and NOT happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach WITHOUT this contrast, for you believe that misery IS happiness. This has so confused you, that you have undertaken to learn to do what you can NEVER do, believing that, UNLESS you learn it, you will NOT be happy. You do NOT realize that the foundation on which this most peculiar learning goal depends, means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. This DOES make sense to you.
Have faith in nothing, and you will FIND the treasure that you sought. But you will add another burden to your mind, ALREADY burdened, or you would NOT have sought another. You will believe that NOTHING IS OF VALUE, and will VALUE it. A little piece of glass, a speck of dust, a body, or a war, are one to you. For if you value ONE thing made of nothing, you HAVE believed that nothing CAN be precious, and that you CAN learn how to make the UNtrue true. The Holy Spirit, SEEING where you are, but KNOWING you are elsewhere, begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that TRUTH IS TRUE. This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end, the ONLY one.
Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds. Consider all the distortions you have made of nothing; all the strange forms and feelings, and actions and reactions, that you have woven out of it. Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth and nothing are you LESS inclined to listen to. The contrast between what is true, and what is not, is PERFECTLY apparent, yet you do NOT see it. The simple and the obvious are NOT apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns BECAUSE of them. All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that ALL THIS IS NOT TRUE.
To these unhappy learners, who would teach themselves nothing, and delude themselves into believing that it is NOT nothing, the Holy Spirit says, with steadfast quietness, "The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and EVERYTHING beside it is not there. Let Me make the one distinction FOR you, which you CANNOT make, but NEED to learn. Your faith in nothing IS deceiving you. Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs. You will find NO deception there, but only the simple Truth. And you will love it, because you will UNDERSTAND it."
Like you, the Holy Spirit did NOT make truth. Like God, He KNOWS it to be true. He brings the LIGHT of truth into the darkness, and LETS it shine on you. And as it shines, YOUR BROTHERS see it, and, realizing that this light is NOT what you have made, they see in you MORE than YOU see. They will be happy learners of the lesson which this light brings to them, because it teaches them release from nothing, and from all the works of nothing. The heavy chains which SEEM to bind them unto despair, they do NOT see as nothing, until YOU bring the light TO them. And THEN they see the chains have disappeared, and so they MUST have been nothing.
And YOU will see it WITH them. BECAUSE you taught them gladness and release, they will become YOUR teachers in release and gladness. When you teach ANYONE that truth is true, YOU LEARN IT WITH HIM. And so you learn that what seemed hardest was the easiest. Learn to be happy learners. You will NEVER learn how to make nothing everything. But see that this HAS BEEN your goal, and RECOGNIZE how foolish it has been. Be glad it is undone, for, when you look at it in simple honesty, it IS undone. We said before, "Be not content with nothing," for you HAVE believed that nothing COULD content you. IT IS NOT SO.
If you would be a happy learner, you must give EVERYTHING that YOU have learned over to the Holy Spirit, to be UNlearned FOR you. And THEN begin to learn the joyous lessons that come quickly, on the firm foundation that truth is true. For what is builded there IS true, and BUILT on truth. The universe of learning will open up before you, in all its gracious simplicity. With truth before you, you will not look back. The happy learner meets the conditions of learning here, as he also meets the conditions of knowledge in the Kingdom.
All this lies in the Holy Spirit's plan to free you from the past, and open up the way to freedom FOR you. For truth IS true. What else could ever be, or ever was? This simple lesson holds the key to the dark door, which you believe is locked forever. You MADE this door OF nothing, and behind it IS nothing. The key is only the light which shines away the shapes and forms and fears of nothing. Accept this key to freedom, from the hands of Christ, Who gives it to you, that you may join Him in the holy task of bringing light to darkness. For, like your brothers, YOU do not realize the light has come, and freed you from the sleep of darkness.
Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be FREE of darkness. The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave YOU asleep. The Vision of Christ is GIVEN, the very instant that it is perceived. Where everything is clear, it is ALL holy. The quietness of its simplicity is so compelling, that you will realize IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DENY THE SIMPLE TRUTH. For there IS nothing else. God is everywhere, and His Son is IN Him WITH everything. Can he sing the dirge of sorrow, when THIS is true?
In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are alternatives to choose between. We think that all things have an opposite, and what we want we choose. If Heaven exists there must be hell as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we perceive and what we think is real.
Creation knows no opposite. But here is opposition part of being "real." It is this strange perception of the truth which makes the choice of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. It is not really thus. Yet what is true in God's creation cannot enter here, until it is reflected in some form the world can understand. Truth cannot come where it could only be perceived with fear, for this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions. Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come.
Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. Decision lets one of the conflicting goals become the aim of effort and expenditure of time. Without decision time is but a waste and effort dissipated. It is spent for nothing in return. And time goes by without results. There is no sense of gain, for nothing is accomplished; nothing learned.
You need to be reminded that you think a thousand choices are confronting you when there is really only one to make. And even this but seems to be a choice. Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. You make but one. And when that one is made, you will perceive it was no choice at all, for truth is true and nothing else is real. There is no opposite to choose instead. There is no contradiction to the truth.
Choosing depends on learning. But the truth cannot be learned but only recognized. In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is known. But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this course. Ours are teaching goals to be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you. Decisions are the outcome of your learning, for they rest on what you have accepted as the truth of what you are and what your needs must be.
In this insanely complicated world Heaven appears to take the form of choice, rather than merely being what it is. Of all the choices you have tried to make this is the simplest, most definitive, the prototype of all the rest, the one which settles all decisions. If you could decide the rest, this one remains unsolved. But when you solve this one the others are resolved with it, for all decisions but conceal this one by taking different forms. Here is the final and the only choice in which is truth accepted or denied.
So we begin today considering the choice that time was made to help us make. Such is its holy purpose, now transformed from the intent you gave it; that it be a means for demonstrating hell is real, hope changes to despair, and life itself must in the and be overcome by death. In death alone are opposites resolved, for ending opposition is to die. And thus salvation must be seen as death, for life is seen as conflict. To resolve the conflict is to end your life as well.
These mad beliefs can gain unconscious hold of great intensity, and grip the mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas about its own protection. It must be saved from salvation, threatened to be safe, and magically armored against truth. And these decisions are made unaware to keep them safely undisturbed, apart from question and from reason and from doubt.
Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this time with Heaven's help, and all mistakes in judgment which the mind had made before are open to correction as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized.
The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as is the ending of the fear of hell, when it is raised from its protective shield of unawareness, and is brought to light. Who can decide between the clearly seen and the unrecognized? Yet who can fail to make a choice between alternatives when only one is seen as valuable; the other as a wholly worthless thing, a but imagined source of guilt and pain?
Who hesitates to make a choice like this? And shall we hesitate to choose today? We make the choice for Heaven as we wake, and spend five minutes making sure that we have made the one decision that is sane. We recognize we make a conscious choice between what has existence and what has nothing but an appearance of the truth. Its pseudo-being brought to what is real, is flimsy and transparent in the light. It holds no terror now, for what was made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate, demands obscurity for fear to be invested there. Now it is recognized as but a foolish, trivial mistake.
Before we close our eyes in sleep tonight we reaffirm the choice that we have made each hour in between. And now we give the last five minutes of our waking day to the decision with which we awoke. As every hour passed, we have declared our choice again in a brief quiet time devoted to maintaining sanity. And finally we close the day with this, acknowledging we chose but what we want:
"Heaven is the decision I must make.
I make it now and will not change my mind,
Because it is the only thing I want."
You have taught well, and yet you have not learned how to ACCEPT the comfort of your teaching. If you will consider WHAT you have taught, and how alien it is to what you THOUGHT you knew, you will be COMPELLED to recognize that your Teacher came from BEYOND your thought-system, and so could look upon it fairly, and perceive it was untrue. And He MUST have done so from the basis of a very different thought-system, and one with NOTHING IN COMMON WITH YOURS. For certainly, what He has taught, and what you taught THROUGH Him, HAS nothing in common with what you taught BEFORE He came. And the results have been to bring peace where there was pain, and suffering has disappeared, to be replaced by joy.
You HAVE taught freedom, but you have NOT learned how to be free. We once said, "By their fruits ye shall know them, and they shall know themselves." For it is certain that you judge YOURSELF according to your teaching. The ego's teaching produces IMMEDIATE results, because ITS decisions are immediately ACCEPTED AS YOUR CHOICE. And this acceptance MEANS that you are willing to judge yourself accordingly. Cause and effect are very clear in the ego's thought-system, because all your learning has been directed toward ESTABLISHING the relationship between them. And would you NOT have faith in what you have so diligently taught yourself to believe? But remember how much care you have exerted in choosing its witnesses, and in AVOIDING those who spoke for the Cause of truth, and ITS effects.
Does not the fact that you have NOT learned what you HAVE taught, show you that you do NOT perceive the Sonship as one? And does it not also show you that you do not regard YOURSELF as one? For it is impossible to teach successfully, WHOLLY without conviction, and it is equally impossible that conviction be OUTSIDE you. You could never have taught freedom, unless you DID believe in it. And it MUST be that what you taught CAME FROM YOURSELF. And yet, this self you clearly DO NOT KNOW, and do not recognize EVEN THOUGH IT FUNCTIONS. What functions, must be THERE. And it is ONLY if you deny WHAT IT HAS DONE, that you could possibly deny its presence.
This is a course in how to KNOW yourself. You have TAUGHT what you are, but have NOT let what you are, teach YOU. You have been VERY careful to avoid the obvious, and NOT to see the REAL cause and effect relationship that is PERFECTLY apparent. Yet, within you, is EVERYTHING you taught. What can it be, that has NOT learned it? It must be this that is REALLY outside yourself, NOT by your own projection, BUT IN TRUTH. And it is this, that you have TAKEN IN, that is NOT you. What YOU accept into your minds, does not REALLY change them. Illusions are but beliefs in WHAT IS NOT THERE. And the seeming conflict between truth and illusion can ONLY be resolved by SEPARATING YOURSELF FROM THE ILLUSION, and NOT from truth.
Your teaching has already DONE this, for the Holy Spirit is PART OF YOU. Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God and you, as you are God and Him together. For God's answer to the separation added more to you than you tried to TAKE AWAY. He protected both your creations AND you together, keeping one with you what you would EXCLUDE. And they will TAKE THE PLACE of what YOU took in, to replace THEM. They are QUITE real, and part of the self you do not know. And they communicate to you through the Holy Spirit, and their power and gratitude to you for THEIR creation, they offer gladly to your teaching of your self, who is their home.
You who are host to God, are also host to THEM. For nothing real has ever left the mind of its Creator. And what is NOT real was NEVER there. You are NOT two selves in conflict. What is BEYOND GOD? If you who hold Him, and whom He holds, ARE the universe, all else must be OUTSIDE, where NOTHING is. YOU have taught this, and from far off in the universe, yet NOT beyond yourself, the witnesses to your teaching have gathered to help you learn. Their gratitude has joined with yours and God's, to strengthen your faith in what you taught. FOR WHAT YOU TAUGHT IS TRUE. Alone, you stand OUTSIDE your teaching and APART from it. But WITH them, you MUST learn that you but taught YOURSELF, and LEARNED from the conviction you SHARED with them.
This year you will begin to learn, and make learning COMMENSURATE with teaching. You have CHOSEN this, by your own willingness to teach. Though you seemed to suffer for it, the joy of teaching will yet be yours. For the joy of teaching is IN THE LEARNER, who offers it to the teacher in gratitude, and shares it WITH him. As you learn, your gratitude to your SELF, Who teaches you what He IS, will grow and help you honor Him. And you will learn His power and strength and purity, and love Him as His Father does. His Kingdom has no limits and no end, and there is nothing in Him that is not perfect and eternal. All this is YOU, and nothing OUTSIDE of this IS you. To your most Holy Self all praise is due, for what you are, and for what He is Who created you AS you are.
Sooner or later must everyone bridge the gap which he imagines exists between his selves. Each one builds this bridge, which CARRIES HIM ACROSS the gap, as soon as he is willing to expend some little effort on behalf of bridging it. His little efforts are powerfully supplemented by the strength of Heaven, and by the united will of all who make Heaven what it is, being joined within it. And so the one who would cross over, is literally transported there. Your bridge is builded stronger than you think, and your foot is planted firmly on it. Have no fear that the attraction of those who stand on the other side and wait for you, will not draw you safely across. For you WILL come where you would be, and where your Self awaits you.