In no situation which arises do you realize the outcome that would make you happy. Therefore you have no guide to appropriate action, and no way of judging the result. What you do is determined by your perception of the situation, and that perception is wrong. It is inevitable, then, that you will not serve your own best interests. Yet they are your only goal in any situation which is correctly perceived. Otherwise you will not recognize what they are.
If you realized that you do not perceive your own best interests, you could be taught what they are. But in the presence of your conviction that you do know what they are, you cannot learn. The idea for today is a step toward opening your mind so that learning can begin.
The exercises for today require much more honesty than you are accustomed to using. A few subjects, honestly and carefully considered in each of the five practice periods which should be undertaken today, will be more helpful than a more cursory examination of a large number. Two minutes are suggested for each of the mind-searching periods which the exercises involve.
Practice periods begin with repeating today's idea, followed by searching the mind, with closed eyes, for unresolved situations about which you are currently concerned. The emphasis should be on uncovering the outcome you want. You will quickly realize that you have a number of goals in mind as part of the desired outcome; and also that these goals are on different levels, and often conflict.
Name each situation that occurs to you, and enumerate carefully as many goals as possible that you would like to be met in its resolution. The form of each application should be roughly as follows:
"In the situation involving ____, I would like ____ to happen, and ____ to happen," and so on.
Try to cover as many different kinds of outcome as may honestly occur to you, even if some of them do not appear to you to be directly related to the situation, or even to be inherent in it at all.
If these exercises are done properly, you will quickly recognize that you are making a large number of demands of the situation which have nothing to do with it. You will also recognize that many of your goals are contradictory, that you have no unified outcome in mind, and that you must experience disappointment in connection with some of your goals however the situation turns out. After covering the list of as many hoped for goals as possible for each unresolved situation that crosses your mind, say to yourself:
"I do not perceive my own best interests in this situation,"
and go on to the next.
Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? We have asked this question before, but now we need to consider it still more carefully. It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as "the way of nature," not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the "natural" law of life. The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path, - all this is taken as the Will of God. And no-one asks if a benign Creator could will this.
In this perception of the universe as God created it, it would not be possible to think of Him as loving. For who decreed that all things pass away, ending in dust and disappointment and despair, can but be feared. He holds your little life in his hand but by a thread, ready to break it off without regret or care, perhaps today. Or if he waits, yet is the ending certain. Who loves such a god knows not of love, because he has denied that life is real. Death has become life's symbol. His world is now a battleground, where contradiction reigns and opposites make endless war. Where there is death is peace impossible.
Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real.
The curious belief that there is part of dying things that may go on apart from what will die does not proclaim a loving God, nor re-establish any grounds for trust. If death is real for anything there is no life. Death denies life. But if there is reality in life, death is denied. No compromise in this is possible. There is either a god of fear or One of Love. The world attempts a thousand compromises, and will attempt a thousand more. Not one can be acceptable to God's teachers, because not one could be acceptable to God. He did not make death because He did not make fear. Both are equally meaningless to Him.
The "reality" of death is firmly rooted in the belief that God's Son is a body. And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real. But God would not be loving. There is no point at which the contrast between the perception of the real world and that of the world of illusions becomes more sharply evident. Death is indeed the death of God, if He is Love. And now His Own creation must stand in fear of Him. He is not Father but destroyer. He is not Creator but avenger. Terrible His Thoughts and fearful His image. To look on His creations is to die.
"And the last to be overcome will be death." Of course! Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die? The inconsistencies, the compromises and the rituals the world fosters in its vain attempts to cling to death and yet to think love real are mindless magic, ineffectual and meaningless. God is, and in Him all created things must be eternal. Do you not see that otherwise He has an opposite, and fear would be as real as love?
Teacher of God, your one assignment could be stated thus: Accept no compromise in which death plays a part. Do not believe in cruelty, nor let attack conceal the truth from you. What seems to die has been misperceived and carried to illusion. Now it becomes your task to let the illusion be carried to the truth. Be steadfast but in this; be not deceived by the "reality" of any changing form. Truth neither moves nor wavers nor sinks down to death and dissolution. And what is the end of death? Nothing but this; the realization that the Son of God is guiltless now and forever. Nothing but this. But do not let yourself forget it is not less than this.
Seek not outside yourself. For it will fail, and you will weep each time an idol falls. Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace EXCEPTING there. Each idol that you worship when God calls will never answer in His place. There IS no other answer you can substitute, and find the happiness His Answer brings. Seek not outside yourself. For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting WHERE it must be found. What if it is not there? Do you prefer that you be right or happy? Be you glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer elsewhere. You will fail.
But it is given you to know the truth, and NOT to seek for it outside yourself. No-one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion, or some dream that there is something OUTSIDE of himself that will bring happiness and peace to him. If everything is IN him, this can not be so. And therefore, BY his coming, he denies the truth about himself, and seeks for something MORE than everything, as if a part of it were separated off, and found where all the REST of it is NOT. This is the purpose he bestows upon the body; that it seek for what he lacks, and GIVE him what would make himself complete.
And thus he wanders aimlessly about, in search of something that he cannot find, believing him to be what he is not. The lingering illusion will impel him to seek out a thousand idols, and to seek beyond them for a thousand more. And each will fail him, all excepting one; for he will die, and does not understand the idol that he seeks IS but his death. Its FORM appears to be outside himself. Yet does he seek to kill God's Son within, and PROVE that he is victor over him. This is the purpose EVERY idol has, for this the role that is assigned to it, and this the role that cannot BE fulfilled.
Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the body's betterment is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death. For you believe that you can suffer lack, and lack IS death. To sacrifice is to GIVE UP, and thus to be without, and to have suffered loss. And, BY this giving up is life renounced. Seek not outside yourself. The search implies you are not whole within, and fear to look upon your devastation, and prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are. Idols must fall BECAUSE they have no life, and what is lifeless IS a sign of death. You came to die, and what would you expect, but to PERCEIVE the signs of death you seek?
No sadness and no suffering proclaims a message OTHER than an idol found, which represents a parody of life which, in its lifelessness, is really death, conceived as real and given living form. Yet each must fail and crumble and decay, because a form of death can not BE life, and what is sacrificed can not BE whole. All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is OUTSIDE of you to be complete and happy. It is vain to worship idols in the hope of peace. God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself.
Let us forget the purpose of the world the past has given it. For otherwise, the future WILL be like the past, and but a series of depressing dreams, in which all idols fail you, one by one, and you see death and disappointment everywhere. To change all this, and open up a road of hope and of release in what appeared to be an endless circle of despair, you need but to decide you do not KNOW the purpose of the world. You GIVE it goals it does not have, and thus do YOU decide what it is for. You try to see in it a place of idols, found outside yourself, with power to make complete what is within by splitting what you are BETWEEN the two.
You CHOOSE your dreams, for they are what you wish, perceived AS IF it had been given you. And idols do what you would have them do, and HAVE the power you ascribe to them. And you pursue them vainly in the dream, because you want their power as your own. Yet where ARE dreams, but in a mind asleep? And CAN a dream succeed in making real the pictures it projects outside itself? Save time, my brothers! Learn what time is FOR. And speed the end of idols in the world made sad and sick by seeing idols there. Your holy minds are altars unto God, and where He is NO idols can abide.
The fear of God is but the fear of loss of idols. It is NOT the fear of loss of your reality. But YOU have made of your reality an idol, which you must protect AGAINST the light of truth. And all the world becomes the means by which this idol can be saved. Salvation thus appears to THREATEN life, and offer death. It is not so. Salvation seeks to prove there IS no death, and ONLY life exists. The sacrifice of death is NOTHING lost. An idol CANNOT take the place of God. Let Him remind you of His Love for you, and do not seek to drown His Voice in chants of deep despair to idols of yourself. Seek not outside your Father for your hope. For hope of happiness is NOT despair.
There is a tendency to think the world can offer consolation and escape from problems that its purpose is to keep. Why should this be? Because it is a place where choice among illusions seems to be the ONLY choice. And YOU are in control of outcomes of your choosing. Thus you think, within the narrow band from birth to death, a little time is given you to use for you alone; a time when everyone conflicts with you, but you can choose which road will lead you out of conflict, and AWAY from difficulties which concern you not. But they ARE your concern. How, then, can you escape from them by leaving them behind? What MUST go with you, you will take with you whatever road you choose to walk along.
Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes.
There IS no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you would prefer to try them all, before you REALLY learn they are but one. The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way EXCEPT the pathways offered by the world. And, learning THEY led nowhere, lost their hope. And yet this was the time they COULD have learned their greatest lesson. All must reach this point, and go BEYOND it. It is true indeed there is no choice at all within the world. But this is NOT the lesson in itself. The lesson has a PURPOSE, and in THIS you come to understand what it is FOR.
Why would you seek to try another road, another person or another place, when you HAVE learned the way the lesson starts, but do not yet perceive what it is for? Its purpose is the ANSWER to the search that all must undertake who still believe there is another answer to be found. Learn now, WITHOUT despair, there is no hope of answers in the world. But do not judge the lesson which is but BEGUN with this. Seek not another signpost in the world which seems to point to still another road. No longer look for hope where there is none. Make fast your learning NOW, and understand you but waste time unless you go BEYOND what you have learned to what is yet to learn. For from this lowest point will learning lead to heights of happiness, in which you see the PURPOSE of the lesson shining clear, and perfectly within your learning grasp.
Who would be willing to be turned AWAY from all the roadways of the world, UNLESS he understood their real futility? Is it not needful that he should BEGIN with this to seek another way instead? For while he sees a choice where there is none, what power of decision can he use? The great RELEASE of power must begin with learning where it really HAS a use. And what decision has power, if it be applied in situations without choice? The learning that the world can offer but ONE choice, no matter what its form may be, is the beginning of acceptance that there is a REAL alternative instead. To fight AGAINST this step is to defeat your purpose here. You did not come to learn to find a road the world does not contain.
The search for DIFFERENT pathways in the world is but the search for different FORMS of truth. And this would KEEP the truth from being reached. Think not that happiness is EVER found by following a road AWAY from it. This makes NO sense, and CANNOT be the way. To you who seem to find this course to be too difficult to learn, let me repeat that, to achieve a goal, you must proceed in its direction, not AWAY from it. And EVERY road that goes the other way will NOT advance the purpose to be found. If THIS be difficult to understand, then IS this course impossible to learn. But only then. For otherwise, it is a simple teaching in the obvious.
There IS a choice which you have power to make, when you have seen the real alternatives. UNTIL that point is reached you HAVE no choice, and you can but decide how you would choose the better to deceive yourself again. This course attempts to teach no more than that the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the SAME illusion and the SAME mistake. All choices in the world depend on this; - You choose BETWEEN your brother and yourself, and you will gain as much as he will lose, and what you lose is what is given him. How utterly OPPOSED to truth is this, when what the lesson's purpose is to teach that what your brother loses YOU have lost, and what he gains is what is given YOU.
He has not left His Thoughts! But you forgot His Presence, and remember not His Love. No pathway in the world can lead to Him, nor any worldly goal is one with His. What road in all the world will lead within, when EVERY road was made to separate the journey and the purpose it MUST have, unless it be but futile wandering? All roads that lead AWAY from what you are will lead you to confusion and despair. Yet has He never left His Thoughts to die, without their Source forever in themselves. He has not left His Thoughts. He could no more depart from them than they could keep Him out. In unity with Him do they abide, and in their Oneness BOTH are kept complete.
There IS no road that leads away from Him. A journey FROM yourself does not exist. How foolish and insane it is to think that there COULD be a road with such an aim. Where could it go? And how could you be made to travel on it, walking there without your own Reality at one with you? Forgive yourself your madness, and forget all senseless journeys and all goal-less aims. They have no meaning. You can NOT escape from what you are. For God IS merciful, and did not let HIS Son abandon Him. For what He is be thankful, for in that is YOUR escape from madness and from death. Nowhere but where He is can YOU be found. There IS no path that does not lead to Him.