"Father, I must return Your Love for me. For giving and receiving are the same, and You have given all Your Love to me. I must return It, for I want It mine in full awareness, blazing in my mind, and keeping it within Its kindly light, inviolate, beloved, with fear behind and only peace ahead. How still the way Your loving Son is led along to You!"
Brother, we find that stillness now. The way is open. Now we follow it in peace together. You have reached your hand to me, and I will never leave you. We are one, and it is but this oneness that we seek as we accomplish these few final steps which end a journey that was not begun.
Within me is Eternal Innocence, because it is God's Will that It be there forever and forever. I, His Son, whose will is limitless as is His own, can will no change in this. For to deny my Father's Will is to deny my own. To look within is but to find my will as God created it, and as it is. I fear to look within because I think I made another will which is not true, and made it real. Yet it has no effects. Within me is the holiness of God. Within me is the memory of Him.
"The step I take today, my Father, is my sure release from idle dreams of sin. Your altar stands serene and undefiled. It is the holy altar to my Self, and there I find my true Identity."
The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is ALWAYS its central teaching. It never PUTS it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation is intensely engaged in the SEARCH for love. Yet the ego, though encouraging the search very actively, makes one proviso; - do not FIND it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as, "Seek and do NOT find." This is the ONE promise that it holds out to you, and the one promise IT WILL KEEP. For the ego pursues its goal with fanatic insistence, and its reality-testing, though severely impaired, is completely consistent.
The search which the ego undertakes is therefore bound to be defeated. And since it also teaches that IT is your identification, its guidance leads you to a journey which MUST end in perceived SELF defeat. For the ego CANNOT love, and in its frantic search FOR love, it is seeking WHAT IT IS AFRAID TO FIND. The SEARCH is inevitable, because the ego is part of your mind, and because of its source, the ego is not wholly split off, or it could not be believed at all. For it is your mind that BELIEVES in it, and gives existence TO it. Yet it is ALSO your mind that has the power to DENY its existence, and you will surely do so when you realize exactly what the journey it sets you IS.
It is surely obvious that no-one WANTS to find WHAT WOULD UTTERLY DEFEAT HIM. Being UNABLE to love, the ego would be totally inadequate in Love's presence, for it could not respond at all. YOU would HAVE to abandon its guidance, for it would be quite apparent that it had NOT taught you the response pattern you NEED. The ego will therefore DISTORT love, and teach you that LOVE calls forth the responses the ego CAN teach. Follow its teaching, then, and you will SEARCH for love, BUT WILL NOT RECOGNIZE IT.
But DO you realize that the ego MUST set you on a journey that cannot BUT lead to a sense of futility and depression? To seek and NOT to find is hardly joyous. Is this the promise YOU would keep? The Holy Spirit offers you another promise, and one that will lead to joy. For HIS promise is always, "Seek and you WILL find," and under HIS guidance you cannot BE defeated. His is the journey to ACCOMPLISHMENT, and the goal HE sets before you He WILL GIVE YOU. For He will never deceive God's Son, Whom He loves with the love of the Father.
You WILL undertake a journey, because you are not at home in this world. And you WILL search for your home, whether you know where it is or not. If you believe it is OUTSIDE yourself, the search will be futile, for you will be seeking where it is NOT. You do not know how to look within yourself, for you DO NOT BELIEVE YOUR HOME IS THERE. Yet the Holy Spirit knows it FOR you, and He will guide you TO your home, because that is His Mission. As He fulfills HIS mission, He will teach you YOURS. For your mission is the same as His. By guiding your BROTHERS home, you are but following HIM.
Behold the Guide your Father gave you, that you might learn you have eternal life. For death is not your Father's Will nor yours, and whatever is true IS the Will of the Father. You pay no price for life, for that was given you, but you DO pay a price for death, and a very heavy one. If death is your treasure, you will sell everything else to purchase it. And you will believe that you HAVE purchased it BECAUSE you have sold everything else. BUT YOU CANNOT SELL THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. Your inheritance can neither be bought NOR sold. There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him.
The Atonement was not the price of your wholeness, but it WAS the price of your AWARENESS of your wholeness. For what you chose to "sell" had to be kept FOR you, since you COULD not "buy" it back. Yet YOU must invest in it, not with money, but WITH YOUR SPIRIT. For Spirit is Will, and will IS the "price" of the Kingdom. Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have BEEN redeemed. The Holy Spirit guides you into Life Eternal, but YOU must relinquish your investment in death, or you will not see it, though it is all around you.
"So would I liberate all things I see, and give to them the freedom that I seek. For thus do I obey the law of love, and give what I would find and make my own. It will be given me because I have chosen it as the gift I want to give. Father, Your gifts are mine. Each one that I accept gives me a miracle to give. And giving as I would receive, I learn Your healing miracles belong to me."
Our Father knows our needs. He gives us grace to meet them all. And so we trust in Him to send us miracles to bless the world and heal our minds as we return to Him.
"Father, I come to You today to seek the peace that You alone can give. I come in silence. In the quiet of my heart, the deep recesses of my mind, I wait and listen for Your Voice. My Father, speak to me today. I come to hear Your Voice in silence and in certainty and love, sure You will hear my call and answer me."
Now do we wait in quiet. God is here because we wait together. I am sure that He will speak to you, and you will hear. Accept my confidence, for it is yours. Our minds are joined. We wait with one intent; to hear our Father's answer to our call, to let our thoughts be still and find His peace, to hear Him speak to us of what we are, and to reveal Himself unto His Son.
You have surely noticed an emphasis throughout our recent lessons on the connection between fulfilling your function and achieving happiness. This is because you do not really see the connection. Yet there is more than just a connection between them; they are the same. Their forms are different, but their content is completely one.
The ego does constant battle with the Holy Spirit on the fundamental question of what your function is. So does it do constant battle with the Holy Spirit about what your happiness is. It is not a two-way battle. The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond. He knows what your function is. He knows that it is your happiness.
Today we will try to go past this wholly meaningless battle, and arrive at the truth about your function. We will not engage in ceaseless arguments about what it is. We will not become hopelessly involved in defining happiness and determining the means for achieving it. We will not indulge the ego by listening to its attacks on truth. We will merely be glad that we can find out what truth is.
Our longer practice period today has as its purpose your acceptance of the fact that not only is there a very real connection between the function God gave you and your happiness, but that they are actually identical. God gives you only happiness. Therefore the function He gave you must be happiness, even if it appears to be different. Today's exercises are an attempt to go beyond these differences in appearance, and recognize a common content where it exists in truth.
Begin the 10 to 15 minute practice period by reviewing these thoughts:
"God gives me only happiness.
He has given my function to me.
Therefore my function must be happiness."
Try to see the logic in this sequence, even if you do not accept the conclusion. It is only if the first two thoughts are wrong that the conclusion could be false. Let us, then, think about the premises for a while, as we are practicing.
The first premise is that God gives you only happiness. This could be false, of course, but in order to be false it is necessary to define God as something He is not. Love cannot give evil, and what is not happiness is evil. God cannot give what He does not have, and He cannot have what He is not. Unless God gives you only happiness, He must be evil. And it is this definition of Him which you are believing if you do not accept the first premise.
The second premise is that God has given you your function. We have seen that there are only two parts of your mind. One is ruled by the ego, and is made up of illusions. The other is the home of the Holy Spirit, where truth abides. There are no other guides but these to choose between, and no other outcomes possible as a result of your choice but the fear which the ego always engenders and the love which the Holy Spirit always offers to replace it.
Thus it must be that your function is established by God through His Voice or is made by the ego which you made to replace Him. Which is true? Unless God gave your function to you, it must be the gift of the ego. Does the ego really have gifts to give, being itself an illusion and offering only the illusion of gifts?
Think about this during the longer practice period today. Think also about the many forms which the illusion of your function has taken in your mind, and the many ways in which you try to find salvation under the ego's guidance. Did you find it? Were you happy? Did they bring you peace? We need great honesty today. Remember the outcomes fairly, and consider also whether it was ever reasonable to expect happiness from anything the ego has ever proposed. Yet the ego is the only alternative to the Holy Spirit's Voice.
You will listen to madness or hear the truth. Try to make this choice as you think about the premises on which our conclusion rests. We can share in this conclusion, but in no other. For God Himself shares it with us.
Today's idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same, and the different as different. On one side stand all illusions. All truth stands on the other. Let us try today to realize that only the truth is true.
In the shorter practice periods, which would be most helpful today if undertaken twice an hour, this form of the application is suggested:
"My happiness and function are one,
because God has given me both."
It will not take more than a minute, and probably less, to repeat these words slowly, and think about them a little as you say them.
Failure is all about you while you seek for goals which cannot be achieved. You look for permanence in the impermanent; for love where there is none; for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death. Who could succeed where contradiction is the setting of his searching, and the place to which he comes to find stability?
Goals which are meaningless are not attained. There is no way to reach them, for the means by which you strive for them are meaningless as they are. Who can use such senseless means and hope through them to gain in anything? Where can they lead? And what could they achieve that offers any hope of being real? Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death. You look for safety and security while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you made.
Yet searching is inevitable here. For this you came, and you will surely do the thing you came for. But the world can not dictate the goal for which you search unless you give it power to do so. Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one which comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want.
Be glad that search you must. Be glad as well to learn you search for Heaven, and must find the goal you really want. No one can fail to want this goal, and reach it in the end. God's Son cannot seek vainly, though he try to force delay, deceive himself, and think that it is hell he seeks. When he is wrong he finds correction, when he wanders off he is led back to his appointed task.
No one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. You will find Heaven. Everything you seek but this will fall away, yet not because it has been taken from you. It will go because you do not want it. You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness.
Why wait for Heaven? It is here today. Time is the great illusion it is past or in the future. Yet this cannot be if it is where God wills His Son to be. How could the Will of God be in the past or yet to happen? What He wills is now, without a past and wholly futureless. It is as far removed from time as is a tiny candle from a distant star, or what you chose from what you really want.
Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.
God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two. How could it be His Son could be in hell when God Himself established him in Heaven? Could he lose what the Eternal Will has given him to be his home forever? Let us not try longer to impose an alien will upon His single purpose. He is here because He Wills to be, and what He wills is present now beyond the reach of time.
Today we will not choose a paradox in place of truth. How could the Son of God make time to take away the Will of God? He thus denies himself, and contradicts what has no opposite. He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven, and believes that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find. Leave foolish thoughts like these behind today, and turn your mind to true ideas instead. No one can fail who asks to reach the truth, and it is truth we ask to reach today.
We will devote ten minutes to this goal three times today, and we will ask to see the rising of the real world to replace the foolish images that we held dear, with true ideas arising in the place of thoughts which have no meaning, no effect, and neither source nor substance in the truth. This we acknowledge as we start upon our practice periods. Begin with this:
"I ask to see a different world, and think
A different kind of thoughts from those I made.
The world I seek I did not make alone,
The thoughts I want to think are not my own."
For several minutes watch your mind and see, although your eyes are closed, the senseless world you think is real. Review the thoughts as well which are compatible with such a world, and which you think are true. Then let them go, and sink below them to the holy place where they can enter not. There is a door beneath them in your mind which you could not completely lock to hide what lies beyond.
Seek for that door and find it. But before you try to open it, remind yourself no one can fail who asks to reach the truth, and it is this request you make today. Nothing but this has any meaning now; no other goal is valued now nor sought; nothing before this door you really want, and only what lies past it do you seek.
Put out your hand and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams.
You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you that you might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all your searching here and all the seeking of the world, which end together as you pass beyond the door.
Remember often that today should be a time of special gladness, and refrain from dismal thoughts and meaningless laments. Salvation's time has come. Today is set by Heaven Itself to be a time of grace for you and for the world. If you forget this happy fact, remind yourself with this:
"Today I seek and find all that I want.
"My single purpose offers it to me.
No one can fail who asks to reach the truth."
You who were created by Love like Itself can hold no grievances and know your Self. To hold a grievance is to forget who you are. To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body. It is the decision to let the ego rule your mind, and to condemn the body to death. Perhaps you do not yet fully realize just what holding grievances does to your awareness. It seems to split you off from your Source, and make you unlike Him. It makes you believe that He is like what you think you have become, for no one can conceive of his Creator as unlike himself.
Shut off from your Self, Who remains aware of His likeness to His Creator, your Self seems to sleep, while the part of your mind that weaves illusions in its sleep appears to be awake. Can all this arise from holding grievances? Oh yes! For he who holds grievances denies he was created by Love, and his Creator has become fearful to him in his dreams of hate. Who can dream of hatred and not fear God?
It is as sure that those who hold grievances will redefine God in their own image as it is certain that God created them like Himself and defined them as part of Him. It is as sure that those who hold grievances will suffer guilt as it is certain that those who forgive will find peace. It is as sure that those who hold grievances will forget who they are as it is certain that those who forgive will remember.
Would you not be willing to relinquish your grievances if you believed all this were so? Perhaps you do not think that you can let all your grievances go. That, however, is simply a question of motivation. Today we will try to find out how you would feel without them. If you succeed even by ever so little, there will never be a problem in motivation ever again.
Begin today's extended practice period by searching your mind for those against whom you hold what you regard as major grievances. Some of these will be quite easy to find. Then think of the seemingly minor grievances you hold against those you like, and even think you love. It will quickly become apparent that there is no one against whom you do not cherish grievances of some sort. This has left you alone in all the universe in your perception of yourself.
Determine now to see all these people as friends. Say to them all, collectively, thinking of each one in turn as you do so:
"I would see you as my friend,
that I may remember you are part of me,
and come to know myself."
Spend the remainder of the practice period trying to think of yourself as completely at peace with everyone and everything, safe in a world which protects you and loves you, and which you love in return.
Try to feel safety surrounding you, hovering over you, and holding you up. Try to believe, however briefly, that nothing can harm you in any way. At the end of the practice period tell yourself:
"Love holds no grievances.
when I let all my grievances go,
I will know I am perfectly safe."
The short practice periods should include a quick application of today's ideas in this form, whenever any thought of grievance arises against anyone, physically present or not:
"Love holds no grievances.
Let me not betray my Self."
In addition, repeat the idea several times an hour in this form:
"Love holds no grievances.
I would wake to my Self
by laying all my grievances aside
and wakening in Him."
"Forgiveness, truth's reflection, tells me how to offer miracles, and thus escape the prison house in which I think I live. Your holy Son is pointed out to me, first in my brother; then in me. Your Voice instructs me patiently to hear Your Word and give as I receive. And as I look upon Your Son today, I hear Your Voice instructing me to find the way to You as You appointed that the way shall be: 'Behold his sinlessness and be you healed'."
The idea for today explains why you can see all purpose in anything. It explains why nothing is separate, by itself or in itself. And it explains why nothing you see means anything. In fact, it explains every idea we have used thus far, and all subsequent ones as well. Today's idea is the whole basis for vision.
You will probably find this idea very difficult to grasp at this point. You may find it silly, irreverent, senseless, funny, and even objectionable. Certainly God is not in a table, for example, as you see it. Yet we emphasized yesterday that a table shares the purpose of the universe. And what shares the purpose of the universe shares the purpose of its Creator.
Try then, today, to begin to learn how to look on all things with love, appreciation, and open-mindedness. You do not see them now. Would you know what is in them? Nothing is as it appears to you. Its holy purpose stands beyond your little range. When vision has shown you the holiness that lights up the world, you will understand today's idea perfectly. And you will not understand how you could ever have found it difficult.
Our six two minute practice periods for today should follow a now familiar pattern; begin with repeating the idea to yourself, and then apply it to randomly chosen subjects about you, naming each one specifically. Try to avoid the tendency toward self-directed selection, which may be particularly tempting in connection with today's idea because of its wholly alien nature. Remember that any order which you impose is equally alien to reality.
Your list of subjects should therefore be as free of self-selection as possible. For example, a suitable list might include:
"God is in this coat hanger."
"God is in this magazine."
"God is in this finger."
"God is in this lamp."
"God is in that body."
"God is in that door."
"God is in that wastebasket."
In addition to the assigned practice periods, repeat the idea for today at least once an hour, looking slowly about you as you say the words unhurriedly to yourself. At least once or twice you should experience a sense of restfulness as you do this.