Lesson 314 "I seek a future different from the past."

Question 8 - What is the Real World?

The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made. Your world is seen through eyes of fear, and brings the witnesses of terror to your mind. The real world cannot be perceived except through eyes forgiveness blesses, so they see a world where terror is impossible, and witnesses to fear can not be found.

The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world; a sure correction for the sights of fear and sounds of battle which your world contains. The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace. Nothing but rest is here. There are no cries of pain and sorrow heard, for nothing here remains outside forgiveness. And the sights are gentle. Only happy sights and sounds can reach the mind that has forgiven itself.

What need has such a mind for thoughts of death, attack and murder? What can it perceive surrounding it but safety, love and joy? What is there it would choose to be condemned, and what is there that it would judge against? The world it sees arises from a mind at peace within itself. No danger lurks in anything it sees, for it is kind and only kindness does it look upon.

The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin and guilt is over, and God's Son no longer sleeps. His waking eyes perceive the sure reflection of his Father's Love; the certain promise that he is redeemed. The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless.

Section 9 - The Purpose of the Body

It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize. The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you.

God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will ALWAYS seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him. The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe.

This fragment of your mind is such a tiny part of it that, could you but appreciate the whole, you would see instantly that it is like the smallest sunbeam is to the sun. Or like the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it IS the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the ocean. Think how alone and frightened is this little thought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart, against the universe. The sun becomes the sunbeam's "enemy," which would devour it. And the ocean terrifies the little ripple, and "wants" to swallow it.

Yet neither sun nor ocean is even aware of all this strange and meaningless activity. They merely continue, unaware that they are feared and hated by a tiny segment of themselves. Even that segment is not LOST to them, for it could not survive APART from them And what IT thinks it is in no way changes its total dependence on them FOR ITS BEING. Its whole existence still remains IN THEM. Without the sun, the sunbeam WOULD be gone; the ripple WITHOUT the ocean IS inconceivable.

Such is the strange position in which those in a world inhabited by bodies seem to be. Each body seems to house a SEPARATE mind, a DISCONNECTED thought, living alone and in no way joined to the Thought by which it was created. Each tiny fragment seems to be self-contained, needing each other for SOME things, but by no means TOTALLY dependent on their One Creator for EVERYTHING. And needing the whole to give them ANY meaning, for by themselves, they DO mean nothing. Nor HAVE they any life apart, and by themselves.

Yet, like the sun and ocean, your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part regards ITSELF as you. It is not missing; it could not EXIST if it were separate, nor would the whole BE whole without it. It is not a separate kingdom, ruled by an IDEA of separation from the rest. Nor does a fence surround it, preventing it from JOINING with the rest, and keeping it apart from its Creator. This little aspect is NO DIFFERENT from the whole, being continuous with it, and at one with it. It leads no separate life, because its life IS in the Oneness in which its being was created.

Do not accept this little, fenced-off aspect as your Self. The sun and ocean are as nothing, beside what YOU are. The sunbeam sparkles only in the sunlight, and the ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean. Yet in neither sun nor ocean is the power that rests in you. Would you remain WITHIN your tiny kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all he surveys, who looks on nothing, but who would still die to DEFEND it? This little self is NOT your kingdom. Arched high above it, and surrounding it, with love, is the glorious whole, which offers all its happiness and deep content to EVERY part.

The little aspect that you think you set apart is no exception. Love knows no bodies, and reaches to everything created like itself. Its total lack of limit IS its meaning. It is COMPLETELY impartial in its giving, encompassing ONLY to preserve and KEEP COMPLETE what it would give. In your tiny kingdom you have so little! Should it not, then, be there that you would call on love to enter? Look at the desert, dry and unproductive, scorched and joyless, that makes up your little kingdom. And realize the life and joy that love would bring to it, from where IT comes, and where it would return WITH you.

The Thought of God surrounds your little kingdom, waiting at the barrier you built, to come in and shine upon the barren ground. See how life springs up everywhere! The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and quiet, offering rest to those who lost their way, and wander in the dust. Give them a place of refuge, prepared by love for them, where once a desert was. And every one you welcome will bring love with him, from Heaven for you. They enter one by one into this holy place, but they will not depart as they had come, alone.

The holy instant is your invitation to love, to enter into your bleak and joyless kingdom, and transform it into a garden of peace and welcome. Love's answer is inevitable. It will come, because you came WITHOUT the body, and interposed no barriers which would INTERFERE with its glad coming. In the holy instant, you ask of love only what it offers everyone, neither less nor more. Asking for EVERYTHING, you will RECEIVE it. And your shining Self will lift the tiny aspect that you tried to hide from Heaven, straight into Heaven. No part of love calls on the whole in vain. No son of God remains OUTSIDE His Fatherhood.

Be sure of this; love has entered your special relationship, and entered fully, at your weak request. You do NOT recognize that love has come, because you have not yet let go of ALL the barriers you hold against EACH OTHER. And you will NOT be able to give love welcome separately. You could no more know God alone, than He knows YOU without your brother. But, TOGETHER, you could no more be UNAWARE of love, than love could know you not, or fail to recognize ITSELF in you.

You have reached the end of an ancient journey not realizing yet that it is over. You are still worn and tired, and the desert's dust still seems to cloud your eyes, and keep you sightless. Yet He Whom you welcomed has come to you, and would welcome YOU. He has waited long to give you this. Receive it now of Him, for He would have you KNOW Him. Only a little wall of dust still stands between you. Blow on it lightly and with happy laughter, and it will fall away. And walk into the garden love has prepared for BOTH of you.

Section 4 - God's Witnesses

Condemn your Savior not because he thinks he is a body. Far beyond his dreams is his reality. But he must learn he is a Savior first, before he can remember what he is. And he must save who would BE saved. On saving YOU depends his happiness. For who is Savior, but the one who GIVES salvation? Thus he learns it must be his to give. UNLESS he gives, he will not know he HAS, for giving is the proof of having. Only those who think that God is lessened by their strength could fail to understand this must be so. For who COULD give unless he has, and who could lose by giving what must be INCREASED thereby?

Think you the Father LOST Himself when He created you? Was HE made weak because He shared His Love? Was He made incomplete by YOUR perfection? Or are you the proof that He IS perfect and complete? Deny Him not His witness in the dream His Son prefers to his reality. He must be Savior FROM the dream he made, that he be free of it. He must see someone ELSE as NOT a body, one with him, without the wall the world has built to keep apart all living things who know not that they live. Within the dream of bodies and of death, is yet one theme of truth. No more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of light created in the dark, where God shines still.

You cannot wake yourself. But you can LET yourself be wakened. You can overlook your brother's dreams. So perfectly can you forgive him his illusions, he becomes your Savior from YOUR dreams. And as you see him shining in the space of light where God abides within the darkness, you will see that God Himself is where his body is. Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows MUST give way to light. The darkness cannot CHOOSE that it remain. The coming of the light MEANS it is gone. In glory will you see your brother then, and understand what REALLY fills the gap so long perceived as keeping you apart.

How holy are you, that the Son of God can be your Savior in the midst of dreams of desolation and disaster. See how eagerly he comes, and steps aside from heavy shadows that have hidden him, and shines on you in gratitude and love. He is himself, but not himself alone. And as his Father lost not part of Him in your creation, so the light in him is brighter still, because you gave your light to him, to save him from the dark. And now the light in you must be as bright as shines in him. This is the spark that shines within the dream; that you can help him waken, and be sure his waking eyes will rest upon you first, and in his glad salvation YOU are saved.

Section 4 - The Borderland

Complexity is not of God. How COULD it be, when all He knows is One? He knows of ONE creation, ONE reality, ONE truth, and but ONE Son. Nothing CONFLICTS with Oneness. How, then, COULD there be complexity in Him? What IS there to decide? For it is CONFLICT that makes choice complex. The truth is simple; it is one, WITHOUT an opposite. And how could strife enter in its simple Presence, and bring complexity where Oneness is? The truth makes NO decisions, for there is nothing to decide BETWEEN. And ONLY if there were could choosing be a necessary step in the advance toward Oneness. What is everything leaves room for NOTHING ELSE.

Yet is this magnitude beyond the scope of this curriculum. Nor is it necessary we dwell on anything that cannot be immediately grasped. There is a borderland of thought that stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and WHEN you reach it is APART from time. Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought TOGETHER; where conflicting values MEET, and ALL illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven. Here is every thought made pure and wholly simple. Here is sin denied, and everything that IS received instead.

This is the journey's end. We have referred to it as the "real world." And yet there is a contradiction here, in that the words imply a LIMITED reality, a PARTIAL truth, a SEGMENT of the universe made true. This is because knowledge makes NO attack upon perception. They are brought together, and only ONE continues past the gate where Oneness is. Salvation IS a borderland, where place and time and choice have meaning still, and yet it can be seen that they are temporary, OUT of place, and EVERY choice has been ALREADY made.

Nothing the Son of God believes can be destroyed. But what is truth to him must be brought to the last comparison that he will ever make; the last evaluation that will be possible, the final judgment upon this world. It is the judgment of the truth upon illusion, of knowledge on perception; IT HAS NO MEANING AND DOES NOT EXIST. This is NOT your decision. It is but a simple statement of a simple fact. But in this world there ARE no simple facts, because what is the same and what is different remain unclear. The one ESSENTIAL thing to make a choice at all is this distinction. And herein lies the difference between the worlds. In this one, choice IS made impossible. In the real world, is choosing simplified.

That there IS choice is an illusion. Yet, within this ONE lies the undoing of every illusion, NOT excepting this. Is not this like your special function, where the separation is undone by change of PURPOSE in what once was specialness, and now IS union? ALL illusions are but one. And, in the recognition this is so, lies the ability to give up ALL attempts to choose BETWEEN them, and make them different. How simple is the choice between two things so clearly UNalike. There IS no conflict here. No sacrifice is possible in the relinquishment of an illusion RECOGNIZED as such. Where ALL reality has been withdrawn from what was NEVER true, can it BE hard to give it up, and choose what MUST be true?

Section 3 - False versus True Healing

Distinctions therefore must be made between true healing and its faulty counterpart. The world of opposites is healing's place, for what in Heaven could there be to heal? As prayer within the world can ask amiss and seeming charity forgive to kill, so healing can be false as well as true; a witness to the power of the world or to the everlasting Love of God.

False healing merely makes a poor exchange of one illusion for a "nicer" one; a dream of sickness for a dream of health. This can occur at lower forms of prayer, combining with forgiveness kindly meant but not completely understood as yet. Only false healing can give way to fear, so sickness will be apt to strike again. False healing can indeed remove a form of pain and sickness. But the cause remains, and will not lack effects. The cause is still the wish to die and overcome the Christ. And with this wish is death a certainty, for prayer IS answered. Yet there is a kind of seeming death that has a different source. It does not come because of hurtful thoughts and raging anger at the universe. It merely signifies the end has come for usefulness of body functioning. And so it is discarded as a choice, as one lays by a garment now outworn.

This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us. But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again.

We call it death, but it is liberty. It does not come in forms that seem to be thrust down in pain upon unwilling flesh, but as a gentle welcome to release. If there has been true healing, this can be the form in which death comes when it is time to rest a while from labor gladly done and gladly ended. Now we go in peace to freer air and gentler climate, where it is not hard to see the gifts we gave were saved for us. For Christ is clearer now; His vision more sustained in us; His Voice, the Word of God, more certainly our own.

This gentle passage to a higher prayer, a kind forgiveness of the ways of earth, can only be received with thankfulness. Yet first true healing must have come to bless the mind with loving pardon for the sins it dreamed about and laid upon the world. Now are its dreams dispelled in quiet rest. Now its forgiveness comes to heal the world and it is ready to depart in peace, the journey over and the lessons learned.

This is not death according to the world, for death is cruel in its frightened eyes and takes the form of punishment for sin. How could it be a blessing, then, and how could it be welcome when it must be feared? What healing has occurred in such a view of what is merely opening the gate to higher prayer and kindly justice done? Death is reward and not a punishment. But such a viewpoint must be fostered by the healing that the world cannot conceive. There is no partial healing. What but shifts illusions has done nothing. What is false cannot be partly true. If you are healed your healing is complete. Forgiveness is the only gift you give and would receive.

Lesson 92 "Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one."

The idea for today is an extension of the previous one. You do not think of light in terms of strength and darkness in terms of weakness. That is because your idea of what seeing means is tied up with the body, and its eyes and brain. This is why you believe that you can change what you see by keeping little bits of glass or other clear material before your eyes held in a frame or placed against the eye. These are among the many magical beliefs that come from the conviction you are a body, and the body's eyes can see.

You also believe the body's brain can think. If you but understood the nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea. It is as if you thought you held the match that lights the sun, and gives it all its warmth; or that you held the universe imprisoned in your hand, securely bound until you let it go. Yet this is no more foolish than to believe the body's eyes can see; the brain can think.

It is God's strength in you that is the light in which you see, as it is His Mind with which you think. His strength denies your weakness. It is your weakness that sees through the body's eyes, peering about in darkness to behold the likeness of itself; the small, the weak, the sickly and the dying, those in need, the helpless and afraid, the sad, the poor, the starving and the joyless. These are seen through eyes which cannot see and cannot bless.

Strength overlooks these things by seeing past appearances. It keeps its steady gaze upon the light that lies beyond them. It unites with light, of which it is a part. It sees itself. It brings the light in which your Self appears. In darkness you perceive a self that is not there. Strength is the truth about you; weakness is an idol falsely worshipped, and adored that strength may be dispelled, and darkness rule where God appointed that there should be light.

Strength comes from truth, and shines with light its Source has given it; weakness reflects the darkness of its maker. It is sick and looks on sickness, which is like itself. Truth is a savior, and can only will for happiness and peace for everyone. It gives its strength to everyone who asks, in limitless supply. It sees that lack in anyone would be a lack in all, and so it gives its light that all may see, and benefit as one. Its strength is shared, that it may bring to all the miracle in which they will unite in purpose and forgiveness and in love.

The light of strength is not the light you see. It does not change and flicker and go out. It does not shift from night to day and back to darkness 'til the morning comes again. The light of strength is constant, sure as love, forever glad to give itself away because it cannot give but to Itself. No one can ask in vain to share its sight, and none who enters its abode can leave without a miracle before his eyes, and strength and light abiding in his heart.

The strength in you will offer you the light and guide your seeing, so you do not dwell on idle shadows which the body's eyes provide for self-deception. Strength and light unite in you, and where they meet your Self stands ready to embrace you as Its own. Such is the meeting place we try today to find and rest in, for the peace of God is where your Self, His Son, is waiting now to meet Itself again, and be as One.

Let us give 20 minutes twice today to join this meeting. Let yourself be brought unto your Self. Its strength will be the light in which the gift of sight is given you. Leave, then, the dark a little while today, and we will practice seeing in the light, closing the body's eyes, and asking truth to show us how to find the meeting place of self and Self, where light and strength are one.

After the morning meeting, we will use the day in preparation for the time at night when we will meet again in hope and trust. Let us repeat as often as we can the idea for today, and recognize that we are being introduced to sight, and led away from darkness to the light where only miracles can be perceived.

Section 6 - Specialness and Guilt

The special love relationship is the ego's chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven. It does not APPEAR to be a weapon, but if you consider HOW you VALUE it, and why, you will realize what it MUST be. The special love relationship is the ego's most boasted gift, and the one that has the most appeal to those unwilling to relinquish guilt. The "dynamics" of the ego are clearest here, for, counting on the attraction of this offering, the fantasies which center around this, are often quite open. Here, they are usually judged to be quite acceptable, and even NATURAL. No-one considers it bizarre to love and hate together, and even those who believe that hate is "sin", merely feel guilty, but do NOT correct it.

This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here, where the ILLUSION of love is accepted IN ITS PLACE, love is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION.

It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish for special love from God, that the ego's hatred triumphs. For the special relationship is THE RENUNCIATION OF THE LOVE OF GOD, and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness that He denied. And it is essential to the preservation of the ego, that you believe this specialness is NOT hell, but HEAVEN. For the ego would never have you see that the separation can ONLY BE LOSS, being the one condition in which Heaven CANNOT be.

To everyone, Heaven is completion. There CAN be no disagreement on this, because both the ego AND the Holy Spirit accept it. They are, however, in complete DISagreement on what completion IS, and HOW it is accomplished. The Holy Spirit knows that self completion lies first in union, and then in the EXTENSION of union. To the ego, completion lies in triumph, and in the extension of the "victory," even to the final triumph over God. In THIS it sees the ultimate FREEDOM of the self, for nothing would remain to interfere with IT. And this IS its idea of Heaven. From this it follows that union, which is a condition in which the EGO cannot interfere, MUST BE HELL.

The special relationship is a strange and unnatural ego device for joining hell and Heaven, and making them indistinguishable. And the attempt to find the imagined "best" of BOTH worlds, has merely led to FANTASIES of both, and to the inability to perceive either one AS IT IS. The special relationship is the triumph of this confusion. It is a kind of union from which UNION IS EXCLUDED, and the BASIS for the ATTEMPT at union RESTS on exclusion. What better example could there be of the ego's maxim, "Seek, and do NOT find?"

Most curious of all, is the concept of the self, which the ego fosters in the special relationship. This "self" SEEKS the relationship, to MAKE ITSELF COMPLETE. Yet, when it FINDS the special relationship in which it thinks it can ACCOMPLISH this, IT GIVES ITSELF AWAY, and tries to TRADE itself for the self of another. This is NOT union, for there is NO increase and NO extension. Each partner tries to sacrifice the self he does NOT want, for one he thinks he would PREFER. He feels guilty for the "sin" of TAKING, and of giving nothing of value in return. For how much value CAN he place upon a self that he would GIVE AWAY, to get a BETTER one?

The "better" self the ego seeks is ALWAYS one that is MORE special. And whoever SEEMS to possess a special self is "loved," FOR WHAT CAN BE TAKEN FROM HIM. Where both partners see this special self IN EACH OTHER, the EGO sees "a union made in Heaven." For NEITHER will recognize that HE HAS ASKED FOR HELL, and so he will NOT interfere with the ego's ILLUSION of Heaven, which it offered him TO INTERFERE WITH HEAVEN. Yet if ALL illusions are of fear, and they CAN be of nothing else, the illusion of Heaven is nothing more than an ATTRACTIVE form of fear, in which the guilt is buried deep, and rises in the form of "love."

The appeal of hell lies ONLY in the terrible attraction of guilt, which the ego holds out to those who place their faith in littleness. The conviction of littleness lies in EVERY special relationship, for only the deprived COULD value specialness. The "DEMAND" for specialness, and the perception of the GIVING of specialness AS AN ACT OF LOVE, would MAKE LOVE HATEFUL. And the REAL purpose of the special relationship, in strict accordance with the ego's goals, is to DESTROY reality and SUBSTITUTE ILLUSION. For the ego is ITSELF an illusion, and ONLY illusions can BE the witnesses to its reality.

If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, WOULD YOU WANT IT? Let us not think of its fearful nature, nor of the guilt it MUST entail, nor of the sadness and the loneliness. For these are only ATTRIBUTES of the whole religion of the separation, and the total context in which it is thought to occur. The central theme in its litany to sacrifice is that GOD MUST DIE SO YOU CAN LIVE. And it is this theme that is acted out in the special relationship. Through the death of YOUR self, you think you can ATTACK another self, and snatch it FROM the other, to REPLACE the self that you despised. And you despise it BECAUSE YOU DO NOT THINK IT OFFERS YOU THE SPECIALNESS THAT YOU DEMAND. And, HATING it, YOU have made it little and unworthy, BECAUSE YOU ARE AFRAID OF IT.

Over and over and over, this ritual is enacted. And it is NEVER completed, nor ever will BE completed. For the RITUAL of completion CANNOT complete, and life arises not from death, nor Heaven from hell. Whenever ANY form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in ritual, remember love is CONTENT, and NOT form of ANY kind. The special relationship is a RITUAL OF FORM, aimed at the raising of the form to take the place of God, at the EXPENSE of content. There IS no meaning in the form, AND THERE WILL NEVER BE. The special relationship MUST be recognized for what it is; a senseless ritual, in which strength is extracted from the death of God, and invested in His killer, as the sign that form has triumphed over content, and love has LOST its meaning.

Would you WANT this to be possible, even APART from its evident impossibility? For, if it WERE possible, you would have made YOURSELF helpless. God is not angry. He merely could not let this happen. You can NOT change His Mind. No rituals that you have set up, in which the dance of death delights you, can bring death to the Eternal. Nor can your chosen substitute for the Wholeness of God, have ANY influence at all upon It. See in the special relationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods before Him, and, by worshipping them, to obscure THEIR tininess, AND HIS GREATNESS.

In the name of YOUR completion, you do not WANT this. And every idol that you raise to place BEFORE Him, stands before YOU, in place of what YOU are. Salvation lies in the simple fact that illusions are NOT fearful, BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT TRUE. And they but SEEM to be fearful to the extent to which you fail to recognize them FOR WHAT THEY ARE. And you WILL fail to do this, to the extent to which you WANT them to be true. And, to the same extent, you are DENYING truth, and so are making YOURSELF unable to make the simple choice between truth and illusion, fantasy and God.

Remember this, and you will have no difficulty in perceiving the decision as just what it IS, and nothing more. The core of the separation delusion lies simply in the fantasy DESTRUCTION of love's meaning. And, unless its meaning is RESTORED to you, you CANNOT know yourself, who SHARE its meaning. Separation is only the decision NOT to know yourself. Its whole thought-system is a carefully-contrived learning experience, designed to lead AWAY from truth, and into fantasy. Yet, for every learning that would hurt you, God offers you correction, and COMPLETE escape from ALL its consequences.

The decision whether or not to listen to this course and follow it, is but the choice between truth and illusion. For here IS truth, SEPARATED from illusion, and NOT confused with it at all. How simple does this choice become when it is perceived as only what it is. For ONLY fantasies made confusion in choosing possible, and they are totally UNreal. This year is thus the time to make the EASIEST decision that ever confronted you, and also the ONLY one. You will cross the bridge into reality, simply because you will recognize that God is on the other side AND NOTHING AT ALL IS HERE. It is impossible NOT to make the natural decision, as this is realized.

Section 5 - The Branching of the Road

Special Message:

When you come to the place where the branch in the road is quite apparent, you cannot go ahead. You MUST go one way or the other. For now, if you go straight ahead, the way you were going before you came to the branch, YOU WILL GO NOWHERE. The whole purpose of coming this far is to decide WHICH BRANCH YOU WILL TAKE FROM HERE ON. The way you came no longer matters. IT CAN NO LONGER SERVE.

No-one who reaches this far CAN make the wrong decision. But he CAN delay. And there is no part of the journey that seems more hopeless and futile than standing where the road branches, and not deciding which way to go. It is only the first few steps along the right way that seem hard, because you HAVE chosen, but you still think you can go back and make the other choice.

This is not so. A choice made with the power of Heaven to uphold it cannot BE undone. Your way IS decided.

There will be nothing you will NOT be told, if you acknowledge this.

YOU will become His messengers, returning Him unto Himself. Think of the loveliness that YOU will see, who walk with Him! And think how beautiful will each of you look to the other! How happy you will be to be TOGETHER, after such a long and lonely journey where you walked alone. The gates of Heaven, open now for you, will you now open to the sorrowful. And none who looks upon the Christ in you but will rejoice. How beautiful the sight you saw beyond the veil, which you will bring to light the tired eyes of those as weary now as once you were. How thankful will they be to see you come among them, offering Christ's forgiveness to dispel their faith in sin.

Every mistake you make the other will gently have corrected FOR you. For, in his sight, your loveliness is HIS salvation, which he would PROTECT from harm. And each will be the other's strong protector from EVERYTHING that seems to rise between you. So shall you walk the world with me, whose message has not yet been given everyone. For you are here to let it be RECEIVED. God's offer still is open; yet it waits acceptance. From you who have accepted it, is it received. Into your joined hands is it safely given. For you who SHARE it have become its willing guardians and protectors.

To all who share the love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received. And so they learn that it is theirs forever. All barriers disappear before their coming, as every obstacle was finally surmounted that seemed to rise and block THEIR way before. This veil you lift together opens the way to truth to more than you. Those who would let illusions be lifted from their minds are this world's Saviors, walking the world with their Redeemer, and carrying His message of hope and freedom and RELEASE from suffering to everyone who NEEDS a miracle to save him.

How EASY is it to offer this miracle to everyone! No-one who has received it for himself COULD find it difficult. For, BY receiving it, he learned it was not given him alone. Such is the function of a holy relationship; to RECEIVE together, and give as you received. Standing BEFORE the veil, it still seems difficult. But hold out your JOINED hands and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self you share.

Section 4 - The Forgiveness of Specialness

Forgiveness is the end of specialness. Only illusions can BE forgiven, and then they disappear. Forgiveness is release from ALL illusions, and that is why it is impossible but PARTLY to forgive. No-one who clings to ONE illusion can see himself as sinless, for he holds one error to himself as lovely still. And so he calls it "unforgivable," and makes it sin. How can he then give HIS forgiveness wholly, when he would not receive it for himself? For it is sure he WOULD receive it wholly, the instant that he gave it so. And thus HIS secret guilt would disappear, forgiven by himself.

It is not YOU that is so vulnerable and open to attack that just a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a circumstance that suits you not, or an event that you did not anticipate upsets your world, and hurls it into chaos. Truth is not frail. Illusions leave it perfectly unmoved and undisturbed. But specialness is NOT the truth in you. IT can be thrown off balance by ANYTHING. What rests on nothing NEVER can be stable. However large and over-blown it SEEMS to be, it still must rock and turn and whirl about with every breeze.

Without foundation nothing is secure. Would God have left His Son in such a state, where safety HAS no meaning? No, -- His Son is safe, resting on Him. It is your specialness that is attacked by everything that walks and breathes, or creeps or crawls, or even lives at all. Nothing is safe from its attack, and it is safe from nothing. It will forever more BE unforgiving, for that is what it IS. A secret vow that what God wants for you will never be, and that you will oppose His Will forever. Nor is it possible the two can ever be the same, while specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between them, and makes them enemies.

God asks for your forgiveness. He would have no separation, like an alien will, rise between what He wills for you, and what YOU will. THEY are the same, for neither one wills specialness. How could they will the death of love itself? Yet they are powerless to make attack upon illusions. They are NOT BODIES; as One Mind they wait for all illusions to be BROUGHT to them, and left behind. Salvation challenges not even death. And God Himself, Who knows that death is NOT your will, must say, "Thy will be done," because YOU think it is.

Forgive the great Creator of the universe, the Source of life, of love and holiness, the perfect Father of a perfect Son, for your illusions of your specialness. Here is the hell you chose to be your home. He chose not this for you. Ask not He enter this. The way is barred to love and to salvation. Yet if you would release your brother from the depths of hell, you have forgiven Him Whose Will it is you rest forever in the arms of peace, in perfect safety, and without the heat and malice of one thought of specialness to mar your rest. Forgive the Holy One the specialness He could not give, and yet you made instead.

The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of loveliness they do not see. Freedom and peace and joy stand there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death. Yet they hear nothing. They are lost in dreams of specialness. They hate the call that would awaken them. And they curse God because He did not make their dream reality. Curse God and die, but not by Him Who made not death, but only in the dreams. Open your eyes a little; see the Savior God gave to you that you might look on him, and give him back his birthright. It is YOURS.

The slaves of specialness will yet be free. Such is the Will of God, and of His Son. Would God condemn HIMSELF to hell and to damnation? And do YOU will that this be done unto your Savior? God calls to you from him to join His Will to save you BOTH from hell. Look on the print of nails upon his hands that he holds out for your forgiveness. God asks your mercy on His Son, and on Himself. Deny them not. They ask of you but that your will be done. They seek your love that you may love yourself. Love not your specialness instead of them. The print of nails are on your hands as well. Forgive your Father it was NOT His Will that you be crucified.

Lesson 107 "Truth will correct the errors in my mind."

Can you imagine what a state of mind without illusions is? How it would feel? Try to remember when there was a time, - perhaps a minute, maybe even less, - when nothing came to interrupt your peace; when you were certain you were loved and safe. Then try to picture what it would be like to have that moment be extended to the end of time and to eternity. Then let the sense of quiet that you felt be multiplied a hundred times, and then be multiplied another hundred more.

And now you have a hint, not more than just the faintest intimation of the state your mind will rest in when the truth has come. Without illusions there could be no fear, no doubt and no attack. When truth has come all pain is over, for there is no room for transitory thoughts and dead ideas to linger in your mind. Truth occupies your mind completely, liberating you from all beliefs in the ephemeral. They have no place because the truth has come, and they are nowhere. They cannot be found, for truth is everywhere forever now.

When truth has come it does not stay a while, to disappear, or change to something else. It does not shift and alter in its form, nor come and go and go and come again. It stays exactly as it always was, to be depended on in every need, and trusted with a perfect trust in all the seeming difficulties and the doubts which the appearances the world presents engender. They will merely blow away when truth corrects the errors in your mind.

When truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect constancy, and love which does not falter in the face of pain but looks beyond it, steadily and sure. Here is the gift of healing, for the truth needs no defense, and therefore no attack is possible. Illusions can be brought to truth to be corrected. But the truth stands far beyond illusions, and can not be brought to them to turn them into truth.

Truth does not come and go nor shift nor change, in this appearance now and then in that, evading capture and escaping grasp. It does not hide. It stands in open light, in obvious accessibility. It is impossible that anyone could seek it truly and would not succeed. Today belongs to truth. Give truth its due, and it will give you yours. You were not meant to suffer and to die. Your Father wills these dreams be gone. Let truth correct them all.

We do not ask for what we do not have. We merely ask for what belongs to us, that we may recognize it as our own. Today we practice on the happy note of certainty which has been born of truth. The shaky and unsteady footsteps of illusion is not our approach today. We are as certain of success as we are sure we live and hope and breathe and think. We do not doubt we walk with truth today, and count on it to enter into all the exercises that we do this day.

Begin by asking Him Who goes with you upon this undertaking that He be in your awareness as you go with Him. You are not made of flesh and blood and bone, but were created by the self-same Thought Which gave the gift of life to Him as well. He is your Brother, and so like to you your Father knows that you are both the same. It is your Self you ask to go with you, and how could He be absent where you are?

Truth will correct all errors in your mind which tell you you could be apart from Him. You speak to Him today, and make your pledge to let His function be fulfilled through you. To share His function is to share His joy. His confidence is with you as you say:

"Truth will correct all errors in my mind,

And I will rest in Him who is my Self."

Then let Him lead you gently to the truth which will envelop you and give you peace so deep and tranquil that you will return to the familiar world reluctantly.

And yet you will be glad to look again upon this world. For you will bring with you the promise of the changes which the truth that goes with you will carry to the world. They will increase with every gift you give of five small minutes, and the errors which surround the world will be corrected as you let them be corrected in your mind.

Do not forget your function for today. Each time you tell yourself with confidence, "Truth will correct all errors in my mind," you speak for all the world, and Him Who would release the world as He would set you free.

Lesson 191 "I am the holy Son of God Himself"

Here is your declaration of release from bondage of the world. And here as well is all the world released. You do not see what you have done by giving to the world the role of jailor to the Son of God. What could it be but vicious and afraid, fearful of shadows, punitive and wild, lacking all reason, blind, insane and sad?

What have you done that this should be your world? What have you done that this is what you see? Deny your own identity and this is what remains. You look on chaos and proclaim it as yourself. There is no sight that fails to witness this to you. There is no sound that does not speak of frailty within you and without; no breath you draw that does not seem to bring you nearer death; no hope you hold but will dissolve in tears.

Yet what is it except a game you play in which identity can be denied? You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everything set free. In this one truth are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality.

But let today's idea find a place among your thoughts, and you have risen far above the world and all the worldly thoughts that hold it prisoner. And from this place of safety and escape you will return and set it free. For he who can accept his true identity is truly saved. And his salvation is the gift he gives to everyone in gratitude to Him Who pointed out the way to happiness that changed his whole perception of the world.

One holy thought like this and you are free; you are the holy Son of God Himself. And with this holy thought you learn as well that you have freed the world. You have no need to use it cruelly and then perceive this savage need in it. You set it free of your imprisonment. You will not see a devastating image of yourself walking the world in terror, with the world twisting in agony because your fears have laid the mark of death upon its heart.

Be glad today how very easily is hell undone. You need but tell yourself:

"I am the holy Son of God Himself.

I cannot suffer; cannot be in pain;

I cannot lose, nor can I fail to do

All that salvation asks."

And in that thought is everything you look on wholly changed.

A miracle has lighted up all dark and ancient caverns where the rites of death echoed since time began. For time has lost its hold upon the world. The Son of God has come in glory to redeem the lost, to save the helpless and to give the world the gift of his forgiveness. Who could see the world as dark and sinful when God's Son has come again at last to set it free?

You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you.

Then let the Son of God awaken from his sleep, and opening his holy eyes return again to bless the world he made. In error it began. But it will end in the reflection of his holiness. And we will sleep no more and dream of death. Then join with me today. Your glory is the light that saves the world. Do not withhold salvation longer. Look about the world and see the suffering there. Is not your heart willing to bring your weary brothers rest?

They must await your own release. They stay in chains 'til you are free. They cannot see the mercy of the world until you find it for yourself. They suffer pain until you have denied its hold on you. They die 'til you accept your own Eternal Life. You are the holy Son of God Himself. Remember this and all the world is free. Remember this and earth and Heaven are one.

Section 5 - Obstacles to Peace - 1 - The Desire to Get Rid of It

Why would you want peace homeless? What do you think that it must DISPOSSESS, to dwell in you? What SEEMS to be the cost you are so unwilling to pay? The little barriers of sand still stand between you. Would you reinforce them NOW? You are NOT asked to let them go for yourselves alone. Christ asks it of you, for HIMSELF. He would bring peace to everyone. And how can He do this, EXCEPT through you? Would you let a little bank of sand, a wall of dust, a tiny seeming barrier stand between your brothers and salvation?

And yet it IS this little remnant of attack you cherish still against each other, that is the first obstacle the peace in you encounters, in its going forth. This little wall of hatred would STILL oppose the Will of God, and keep It limited. The Holy Spirit's purpose rests in peace within you. Yet you are STILL unwilling to let it JOIN you wholly. You still oppose the Will of God, just by a little. But that little IS a limit you would place upon the whole. God's Will is One, NOT many. It HAS no opposition, for there is none BESIDE It.

What you would still contain behind your little barrier, and keep SEPARATE from each other, is mightier than the universe. For it would HOLD BACK the universe AND ITS CREATOR. This little wall would hide the purpose of Heaven, and keep it FROM Heaven. Would you thrust salvation AWAY from the GIVER of salvation? For such have YOU become. Peace could no more DEPART from you than from God. Fear not this little obstacle. It can NOT contain the Will of God. Peace WILL flow across it, and join you WITHOUT hindrance.

Salvation cannot BE withheld from you. It IS your purpose. You CANNOT will APART from this. You HAVE no purpose apart from each other, nor apart from the one you asked the Holy Spirit to SHARE with you. The little wall will fall away so quietly, beneath the wings of peace! For it will send its messengers from you to all the world. And barriers will fall away before their coming, as easily as those which YOU would interpose will be surmounted. To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall. For in the miracle of YOUR relationship, WITHOUT this barrier, is EVERY miracle contained.

There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they ARE all the same. Each is a gentle WINNING OVER, from the appeal of guilt to the appeal of love. How can this FAIL to be accomplished, WHEREVER it is undertaken? Guilt can raise no REAL barriers against it. And all that seems to stand between you MUST fall away, because of the appeal YOU answered. And from you who answered, He Who answered you would call. His home is in your holy relationship. Do not attempt to stand BETWEEN Him and His holy purpose, for it IS yours. But let Him quietly EXTEND the miracle of your relationship to everyone CONTAINED in it, as it was given.

There is a hush in Heaven, a happy expectancy, a little pause of gladness, in acknowledgment of the journey's end. For Heaven knows you well, as you know Heaven. No illusions stand between you. Look not upon the little wall of shadows. The sun has risen OVER it. How can a shadow KEEP you from the sun? No more can YOU be kept by shadows from the light in which illusions end. EVERY miracle is but the end of an illusion. Such was the journey; such its ending. And in the goal of truth, which YOU ACCEPTED, must ALL illusions end.

The little, insane wish to get rid of Him Whom you invited IN, and push Him OUT, MUST produce conflict. As you look upon the world, this little wish, uprooted and floating aimlessly, can land and settle briefly upon ANYTHING. For it HAS no purpose now. BEFORE the Holy Spirit entered to abide with you, it SEEMED to have a MIGHTY purpose; the fixed and unchangeable dedication to sin and its results. Now it is aimless, wandering pointlessly, causing no more than tiny interruptions in love's appeal.

This feather of a wish, this tiny illusion, this microscopic remnant of the belief in sin, is all that remains of what once SEEMED to be the world. It is no longer an unrelenting barrier to peace. Its pointless wandering makes its results APPEAR to be more erratic and unpredictable than before. Yet what COULD be more unstable than a tightly-organized delusional system? Its SEEMING stability is its pervasive WEAKNESS, which extends to EVERYTHING. The VARIABILITY which the little remnant induces, merely indicates its LIMITED results.

How mighty can a little feather be, before the great wings of truth? Can it oppose an eagle's flight, or hinder the advance of summer? Can it interfere with the EFFECTS of summer's sun upon a garden covered by the snow? See but how easily this little wisp is lifted up and carried away, never to return. And part with it in gladness, not regret. For it is nothing in itself, and STOOD FOR nothing when you had greater faith in its protection. Would you not rather greet the summer sun, than fix your gaze upon a disappearing snowflake, and shiver in remembrance of the winter's cold?

Section 5 - Entering the Ark

Nothing can hurt you, unless you give it the power to do so. For YOU give power as the laws of this world INTERPRET giving; as you give, you LOSE. It is not up to you to give power at all. Power is of God, GIVEN by Him, and RE-AWAKENED by the Holy Spirit, Who knows that, as you give you GAIN. He gives NO power to sin, and therefore it HAS none. Nor to its results, as this world sees them; sickness and death and misery and pain. These things have not occurred, because the Holy Spirit sees them not, and gives no power to their seeming source. Thus would He keep you free of them.

Being without illusion of what you are, the Holy Spirit merely gives EVERYTHING to God, Who has already given AND RECEIVED all that is true. The UNtrue He has neither received NOR given. Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien, and can no more enter than can their source. And therein lies your need to see your brother sinless. In him is Heaven. See sin in him INSTEAD, and Heaven is lost to YOU. But see him as he IS, and what is yours shines from him to you.

Your Savior gives you ONLY love. But what you would RECEIVE of him, is up to you. It lies in him to overlook ALL your mistakes, and therein lies his OWN salvation. And so it is with YOURS. Salvation is a lesson in giving, as the Holy Spirit interprets it. It is the re-awakening of the laws of God in minds that have established OTHER laws, and given them power to enforce what God created not. Your insane laws were made to GUARANTEE that you would make mistakes, and give them power over you by ACCEPTING their results as your just due.

What COULD this be but madness? And is it THIS that you would see within your Savior FROM insanity? He is as free from this as you are, and in the freedom that you see in HIM, you see your own. For this you SHARE. What God has given follows HIS laws, and His alone. Nor is it possible for those who follow them to suffer the results of any other source. Those who choose freedom will experience only ITS results. Their power is of God. And they will give it only to what GOD has given, to SHARE with them.

Nothing but this can touch them, for they see ONLY this, sharing their power according to the Will of God. And thus their freedom is established AND MAINTAINED. It is upheld through ALL temptations to imprison and to BE imprisoned. It is THEM, who learned of freedom, that you should ask what freedom IS. Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars, for those with little wings have not accepted for THEMSELVES the power to share with you. The sinless give as they received. See, then, the power of sinlessness within your brother, and share with him the power of the RELEASE from sin you offered HIM.

To each who walks this earth in seeming solitude is a Savior given, whose special function here is to release him, and so to free himself. In the world of separation, each is appointed separately, though they are all the same. But those who KNOW that they are all the same, need not salvation. And each one FINDS his Savior, when he is ready to look upon the face of Christ, and see Him sinless. The plan is not of you, nor need you be concerned with anything except the part that has been given YOU to learn. For He Who knows the rest will see to it WITHOUT your help. But think not that He does not need your part, to help Him with the rest. For in your part lies ALL of it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole completed WITHOUT your part. The ark of peace is entered two by two, yet the beginning of another world goes with them. Each holy relationship must enter here, to learn its special function in the Holy Spirit's plan, now that it SHARES His purpose. And, as this purpose is fulfilled, a new world rises, in which sin can enter not, and where the Son of God can enter WITHOUT fear. And where he rests a while, to forget imprisonment, and to remember freedom.

How can he enter, to rest and to remember, without YOU? Except you be there, he is NOT complete, and it is his COMPLETION that he remembers there. This is the purpose GIVEN you. Think not that your forgiveness of each other serves but you two alone. For the whole new world rests in the hands of every two who enter here, to rest. And as they rest, the face of Christ shines on them, and they remember the laws of God, forgetting all the rest, and yearning only to have His laws perfectly fulfilled in them and all their brothers.

Think you, when this has been achieved, that you will rest WITHOUT them? You could no more leave one of them outside than I could leave you, and forget part of myself. You may wonder how you can BE at peace when, while you are in time, there is so much that must be done BEFORE the way to peace is open. Perhaps this seems impossible to YOU. But ask yourself if it is possible that GOD would have a plan for your salvation that does NOT work. Once you accept HIS plan as the ONE function that you would fulfill, there WILL be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not ARRANGE for you, WITHOUT your effort.

Section 4 - Healing and Time

Yet neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as Heaven. For your definition of Heaven IS hell and oblivion, and the REAL Heaven is the greatest threat you think you COULD experience. For hell and oblivion are ideas which YOU made up, and you are bent on DEMONSTRATING their reality, TO ESTABLISH YOURS. If THEIR reality is questioned, you believe that YOURS is. For you believe that ATTACK established your reality, and that your DESTRUCTION is the final proof THAT YOU WERE RIGHT.

Under the circumstances, would it not be MORE DESIRABLE to have been wrong, even apart from the fact that you WERE wrong? For while it could perhaps be argued that death suggests there WAS life, no one would claim that it proves there IS life. And even the PAST life, which death might indicate, could only have been futile if it must come to this, and NEEDS this to prove that it WAS. You question Heaven, but you do NOT question this. You could heal and be healed, if you DID question it. And even though you know not Heaven, might it not be more desirable than death? You have been as selective in your questioning as in your perception. An open mind is more honest than this.

The ego has a very strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that the questioning might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end, believes that the past is the ONLY aspect of time that is meaningful. You will remember that we said its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity, by MAKING THE FUTURE LIKE THE PAST, and thus AVOIDING the present. By the notion of PAYING FOR the past in the future, the past becomes the DETERMINER of the future, making THEM continuous, WITHOUT an intervening present. For the ego uses the present ONLY as a brief transition TO the future, in which it brings the past TO the future, BY INTERPRETING THE PRESENT IN PAST TERMS.

NOW has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of PAST hurts, and it reacts to the present AS IF it were past. For the ego cannot tolerate RELEASE from the past, and though it is no more, the ego tries to preserve its IMAGE by responding as if it were present. Thus, it dictates reactions to those you meet NOW from a PAST reference point, obscuring their PRESENT reality. In effect, if you FOLLOW its dictates, you will react to your brothers as though they were SOMEONE ELSE, and this will surely prevent you from perceiving them AS THEY ARE. And you will receive messages from them out of your OWN past because, by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to LET IT GO. You thus DENY yourself the message of release that every brother offers you NOW.

The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you must ESCAPE. For they are not real, and have no hold over you, unless YOU bring them WITH you. They carry the spots of pain in your minds, directing you to attack in the present, in retaliation for a past that is no more. AND THIS DECISION IS ONE OF FUTURE PAIN. For unless you learn that PAST pain is delusional, you are choosing a future of delusions, and losing the endless opportunities which you COULD find for release in the present. For the ego would PRESERVE your nightmares, and PREVENT you from awaking, and understanding that THEY are past.

Would you RECOGNIZE a holy encounter, if you are merely perceiving it as a meeting with your OWN past? For you are meeting no one, and the SHARING of salvation, WHICH MAKES THE ENCOUNTER HOLY, is excluded from your sight. The Holy Spirit teaches that you always meet YOURSELF, and the encounter is holy because YOU are. The ego teaches that you always encounter your PAST, and because your dreams WERE not holy, the future CANNOT be, and the present is without meaning. It is evident that the Holy Spirit's perception of time is the exact opposite of the ego's. And the reason is equally clear, for they perceive the GOAL of time as diametrically opposed.

The Holy Spirit interprets time's PURPOSE as rendering the need for it UNNECESSARY. Thus does He regard the function of time as temporary, serving only His teaching function, which is temporary by definition. HIS emphasis is therefore on the ONLY aspect of time which CAN extend to the infinite. For NOW is the closest approximation of eternity that this world offers. And it is in the REALITY of now, without past OR future, that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. For only now is HERE, and IT presents the opportunities for the holy encounters, in which salvation can be found.

The ego, on the other hand, regards the function of time as one of extending itself IN PLACE of eternity. For, like the Holy Spirit, the ego interprets the goal of time as its own. The continuity of past and future, UNDER ITS DIRECTION, is the only purpose it perceives in time, and it closes over the present, so that no gap in the EGO's continuity can occur. ITS continuity, then, would KEEP you in time, while the Holy Spirit would release you FROM it. And it is HIS interpretation of the means of salvation that you must learn to accept, if you would share His goal of salvation FOR you.

You, too, will interpret the function of time as you interpret yours. If you accept your function in the world of time AS HEALING, you will emphasize ONLY the aspect of time in which healing can occur. For healing CANNOT be accomplished in the past, and MUST be accomplished in the present to RELEASE the future. THIS interpretation ties the future to the present, and EXTENDS THE PRESENT, rather than the past. But if you interpret your function as DESTRUCTION, you will lose sight of the present, and hold on to the past TO ENSURE A DESTRUCTIVE FUTURE. And time WILL be as you interpret it, for OF ITSELF it IS nothing.

Section 4 - The Real Alternative

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.

Section 6 - The Healing Example

The ONLY way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends WITHOUT your help. But you ARE needed that it can BEGIN. ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth, because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED. No-one can ask ANOTHER to be healed. But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not HAVE? And who can SHARE what he denies HIMSELF? The Holy Spirit speaks to YOU. He does not speak to someone ELSE. Yet BY your listening, His Voice extends, BECAUSE you have accepted what He says.

Health is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief. No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible. But if you are AFRAID of healing, then it cannot come through you. The ONLY thing that is required for a healing is a lack of fear. The fearful are NOT healed, and cannot heal. This does NOT mean the conflict must be gone forever from your mind. For if it were, there were no NEED for healing any more. But it DOES mean, if only for an instant, you love without attack. An instant is sufficient. Miracles wait not on time.

The holy instant is the miracle's abiding-place. From there, each one is born into this world, as witness to a state of mind which has TRANSCENDED conflict, and has reached to peace. It carries comfort from the place of peace into the battleground, and DEMONSTRATES that war has no effects. For all the hurt that war has sought to bring; the broken bodies and the shattered limbs, the screaming dying and the silent dead, are gently lifted up and comforted. There IS no sadness, where a miracle has come to heal. And nothing more than just ONE instant of your love WITHOUT attack is necessary, that all this occur.

Consider well its question. It is asked of you on YOUR behalf. A dying world asks only that you rest an instant from attack upon YOURSELF, that it be healed. Come to the holy instant and be healed, for nothing that is there received is left behind, on your returning to the world. And BEING blessed, you will bring blessing. Life is given you, to give the dying world. And suffering eyes no longer will accuse, but shine in thanks to you who blessing gave. The holy instant's radiance will light YOUR eyes, and give them sight to see beyond ALL suffering, and see Christ's Face INSTEAD. Healing REPLACES suffering. Who looks on one cannot PERCEIVE the other, for they CANNOT both be there. And what YOU see the world will witness, and will witness TO.

Thus is YOUR healing everything the world requires, that it may be healed. It needs ONE lesson that has perfectly been learned. And then, when YOU forget it, will the world remind you gently of what you have taught. No reinforcement will its thanks withhold from you who let yourselves be healed, that it might live. It will call forth its witnesses to show the Face of Christ to you who brought the sight to THEM, by which THEY witnessed it. The world of accusation is replaced by one in which all eyes look lovingly upon the friend who brought them their release. And happily your brother will perceive the many friends he thought were enemies.

Problems are not specific, but they take specific forms, and these specific shapes make up the world. And no-one understands the nature of his problem. If he DID, it would be there no more for him to see. Its very NATURE is that it is NOT. And thus, WHILE he perceives it, he can NOT perceive it as it is. But HEALING is apparent in specific instances, and generalizes to include them all. This is because they really ARE the same, DESPITE their different forms. All learning aims at transfer, which becomes complete within two situations which are seen as one. For ONLY common elements are there. But this can only be attained by One Who does not see the DIFFERENCES you see.

The total transfer of your learning is NOT made by you. But that it HAS been made, IN SPITE of all the differences you see, convinces YOU that they could not be real. Your healing WILL extend, and WILL be brought to problems that you thought were NOT your own. And it will ALSO be apparent that your many DIFFERENT problems will be solved, as any ONE of them has been escaped. It CANNOT be their differences which made this possible, for learning does not jump from situations to their opposites, and bring the SAME effects. All healing MUST proceed in lawful manner, in accord with laws that have been properly perceived, but NEVER violated. Fear you not the way that YOU perceive them. You ARE wrong, but there is One within you Who is RIGHT.

Leave, then, the transfer of your learning to the One Who REALLY understands its laws, and Who will GUARANTEE that they remain unviolated and unlimited. Your part is merely to apply what He has taught you TO YOURSELF, and He will do the rest. And thus the power of your learning will be PROVED to you, by all the many DIFFERENT witnesses it finds. Your brother FIRST among them will be seen, but thousands stand behind him, and beyond each one of them there are a thousand more. Each one may SEEM to have a problem which is DIFFERENT from the rest. Yet they are solved TOGETHER. And their common Answer shows the QUESTIONS could not have been separate.

Peace be to you whom is healing offered. And you will learn that peace is given you, when you accept the healing for yourself. Its TOTAL value need not be appraised by YOU, to let you understand that you have benefited from it. What occurred within the instant which love entered in WITHOUT attack, will stay with you forever. YOUR healing will be ONE of its effects, as will your brother's. Everywhere you go, will you behold its multiplied effects. Yet all the witnesses that you behold will be FAR less than all there really ARE. Infinity cannot be understood by merely counting up the separate parts. God thanks you for your healing, for He knows it is a gift of love unto His Son, and therefore is it given unto Him.

Section 7 - The Temple of the Holy Spirit

The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator. If it were elsewhere, it WOULD rest upon contingency. But there IS nothing else. And this is wholly loving and forever. Yet has the Son of God invented an unholy relationship between him and his Father. His REAL relationship is one of perfect union, and unbroken continuity. The one he made is partial, self-centered, broken into fragments and full of fear. The one created by his Father is wholly self-encompassing and self-EXTENDING. The one he made is wholly self-DESTRUCTIVE and self-LIMITING.

Nothing can show the contrast better than the experience of both a holy and an unholy relationship. The first is based on love, and rests on it serene and undisturbed. THE BODY DOES NOT INTRUDE UPON IT. Any relationship in which the body enters is based, NOT on love, but on idolatry. Love wishes to be known, COMPLETELY understood, and shared. IT HAS NO SECRETS; nothing that it would keep apart and hide. It walks in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome, and in sincerity so simple and so obvious it cannot BE misunderstood.

But idols do not share. Idols ACCEPT, but never make return. They can BE loved, but cannot love. They do not understand what they are offered, and any relationship in which they enter, has LOST its meaning. The love of THEM has MADE love meaningless. They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight, and happy in the body's darkness, where they can hide, and keep their secrets hidden, along with them. And they have NO relationships, for no-one else is welcome there. They smile on no-one, and those who smile on them they do not see.

Love has no darkened temples, where mysteries are kept obscure and hidden from the sun. IT DOES NOT SEEK FOR POWER, but for RELATIONSHIPS. The body is the ego's chosen weapon for seeking power THROUGH relationships. And its relationships MUST be unholy, for what they ARE, it does not even SEE. It wants them solely for the offerings on which its idols thrive. The rest it merely throws away, for all that IT could offer, is seen as valueless. Homeless, the ego seeks as many bodies as it can collect, to place its idols in, and so establish them as temples to itself.

The Holy Spirit's temple is NOT a body, but a RELATIONSHIP. The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. Here, the unholy relationship escapes reality, and seeks for crumbs to keep itself alive. Here it would drag its brothers, holding them here in its idolatry. Here it is "safe," for here love CANNOT enter. The Holy Spirit does not build His temples where love can never be. Would He Who SEES the face of Christ choose as His home the only place in all the universe where it can NOT be seen?

You CANNOT make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will NEVER be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater, and of love's CONDEMNATION. For here is love made fearful, and hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshipped here are shrouded deep in mystery, and kept APART from those who worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no relationships, and no return. Here is the "mystery" of separation perceived in awe and held in reverence. What God would have NOT be, is here kept "safe" from Him. But what you do NOT realize is what you fear within your brother, and would not SEE in HIM, is what makes God seem fearful and kept unknown.

Idolaters will ALWAYS be afraid of love. For nothing so severely threatens them as love's approach. Let love draw near them and OVERLOOK the body, as it will surely do, and they retreat in fear, feeling the seeming firm foundation of their temple begin to shake and loosen. Brothers, you tremble with them. But what you fear is but the herald of escape. This place of darkness is NOT your home. Your temple is NOT threatened. You are idolaters no longer. The Holy Spirit's purpose lies safe in your RELATIONSHIP, and NOT your bodies. You have ESCAPED the body. Where you are now, the BODY cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set HIS temple there.

There is no order in relationships. They either ARE, or not. An unholy relationship is NO relationship. It is a state of isolation, which SEEMS to be what it is NOT. No more than that. The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, ALL relationships were made meaningless. In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea, and give it the ILLUSION of reality. And so it SEEMED to have a home, that held together for a little while in time, and vanished. For what could house this mad idea AGAINST reality, but for an instant?

Idols MUST disappear, and leave no trace behind their going. The unholy instant of their seeming power is frail as is a snowflake, but without its loveliness. Is this the substitute you WANT, for the eternal blessing of the holy instant, and its unlimited beneficence? Is the malevolence of the unholy relationship, so seeming powerful and so bitterly misunderstood, and so invested in FALSE attraction, your preference to the holy instant, which offers peace and understanding? Then lay aside the body and quietly TRANSCEND it, rising to welcome what you REALLY want. And from His holy temple look you not back on what you have awakened FROM. For no illusions CAN attract the minds that have TRANSCENDED them, and left them far behind.

The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on.

And here he is more dead than living. But it is also here he makes his choice again, between idolatry and love. Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying tribute to the body, or LET himself be given freedom from it. Here he can ACCEPT the holy instant, offered him to REPLACE the unholy one he chose before. And here can he learn relationships are his SALVATION, NOT his doom. You who ARE learning this may still be fearful, but you are NOT immobilized. The holy instant IS of greater value now to you than its unholy seeming counterpart, and you HAVE learned you REALLY want but one.

This is no time for sadness. Perhaps confusion, but hardly discouragement. YOU HAVE A REAL RELATIONSHIP. And it HAS meaning. It is as like your real relationship with God, as equal things are like themselves. Idolatry is past and meaningless. Perhaps you fear each other a little yet; perhaps a shadow of the fear of God remains with you. But what is that to those who have been given one TRUE relationship, BEYOND the body? Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ? And can they long withhold the memory of their relationship with their Father FROM themselves, and keep remembrance of His Love APART from their awareness?

Section 4 - Littleness versus Magnitude

Be not content with littleness, but be sure you understand what littleness is, and why you could never BE content with it. Littleness is the offering you gave YOURSELF. You offered this in place of magnitude, AND ACCEPTED IT. Everything in this world is little, because it is a world made out of littleness, in the strange belief that littleness CAN content you. When you strive for anything in the world, WITH THE BELIEF THAT IT WILL BRING YOU PEACE, you are belittling yourself, and blinding yourself to glory. Littleness and glory are the choices open to your striving and your vigilance. You will ALWAYS choose one AT THE EXPENSE of the other.

But what you do not realize, each time you choose, is that your choice is your evaluation OF YOURSELF. Choose littleness, and you will NOT have peace, for you will have judged yourself UNWORTHY of it. And whatever you offer as a substitute, is much too poor a gift to satisfy you. It is essential that you accept the fact, and accept it gladly, that there is NO form of littleness that can EVER content you. You are free to try as many as you wish, but all you will be doing is to delay your homecoming. For you will be content ONLY in magnitude, which IS your home.

There is a deep responsibility you owe yourself, and one which you must learn to remember ALL the time. The lesson will seem hard at first, but you will learn to love it, when you realize that it is true, and constitutes a tribute to your power. You who have sought AND FOUND littleness, remember this: Every decision that you make stems from WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE, and represents the value that you PUT upon yourself. Believe the little can content you, and, by LIMITING yourself, you will NOT be satisfied. For your function is NOT little, and it is only by finding your function, and fulfilling it that you can ESCAPE from littleness.

There is no doubt about what your function IS, for the Holy Spirit KNOWS what it is. There is no doubt about its magnitude, for it reaches you through Him, FROM Magnitude. You do not have to strive for it, because you HAVE it. All your striving must be directed AGAINST LITTLENESS, for it DOES require vigilance to protect your magnitude in this world. To hold your magnitude in perfect awareness, in a world of littleness, is a task the little cannot undertake. Yet it is asked of you, in tribute to your magnitude, and NOT your littleness. Nor is it asked of you alone.

The power of God will support every effort you make on behalf of the magnitude of His dear Son. Search for the little, and you DENY yourself His power. God is not willing that His Son be content with less than everything. For He is not content without His Son, and His Son cannot be content with less than His Father has given him. We asked you once before, "Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God?" Let this question be asked you by the Holy Spirit in you, EVERY time you make a decision. For every decision you make DOES answer this, and invites sorrow or joy, accordingly.

When God GAVE Himself to you in your creation, He ESTABLISHED you as host to Him forever. He has NOT left you, and YOU have not left HIM. All your attempts to deny His magnitude, and make His Son hostage to the ego, CANNOT make little whom God has joined with Him. Every decision you make is made for Heaven or for hell, and will bring you AWARENESS of what you decided FOR. The Holy Spirit can hold your magnitude, clean of ALL littleness, clearly and in perfect safety in your minds, untouched by every little gift the world of littleness would offer you. But for this, you cannot side AGAINST Him in what He wills for you.

Decide for God through Him. For littleness, and the belief that you can be CONTENT with littleness, are the decisions YOU have made about yourself. The power and the glory that lie in you, from God, are for all who, like you, perceive themselves as little, and have deceived themselves into believing that littleness can be blown up, BY THEM, into a sense of magnitude that can content them. Neither GIVE littleness, nor ACCEPT it. All honor is due the host of God. Your littleness deceives you, but your magnitude is of Him Who dwells in you, and in Whom you dwell. Touch no-one, then, with littleness, in the Name of Christ, eternal Host unto His Father.

Is it a sacrifice to leave littleness behind, and wander not in vain? It is not sacrifice to wake to glory. But it IS a sacrifice to accept anything LESS than glory. Learn that you MUST be worthy of the Prince of Peace, born in you, in honor of Him Whose host you are. You know not what love means because you have sought to purchase it with little gifts, thus VALUING it too little to be able to understand its magnitude. LOVE IS NOT LITTLE, and love dwells in you, for you are host to Him. Before the greatness that lives in you, your poor appreciation of yourself, and all the little offerings you have given, slip into nothingness.

Holy Child of God, when will you learn that ONLY holiness can content you, and give you peace? Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did. It is BECAUSE I learned for YOU, that you can learn of ME. I would but teach you what is yours, so that, together, we can replace the shabby littleness, that binds the host of God to guilt and weakness, with the glad awareness of the glory that is in him. My birth in you is your awakening to grandeur. Welcome me not into a manger, but into the altar to holiness, where holiness abides in perfect peace.

My Kingdom is not of this world, because it is in YOU. And YOU are of your Father. Let us join in honoring you, who MUST remain forever BEYOND littleness. Decide with me, who have decided to abide with you. I will as my Father wills, knowing His Will is constant, and at peace forever with Itself. You will be content with nothing BUT His Will. Accept no less, remembering that everything I learned is yours. What my Father loves, I love as He does, and I can no more accept it as what it is NOT, than He can. And no more can YOU.

When you have learned to accept what you are, you will make no more gifts to offer to yourselves, for you will know you are COMPLETE, in need of nothing, and unable to accept ANYTHING for yourself. But you will gladly give, HAVING received. The host of God need not seek to find ANYTHING. If you are wholly willing to leave Salvation to the plan of God, and UNwilling to attempt to grasp for peace YOURSELF, Salvation will be GIVEN you. But think not you can substitute YOUR plan for His. Rather, join with me in His, that we may release all those who would be bound, proclaiming together that the Son of God is host to Him.

Thus will we let no-one forget what YOU would remember. And thus WILL you remember it. Call forth in everyone ONLY the remembrance of God, and of the Heaven that is in him. For where you would help your brother be, there will you think YOU are. Hear not his call for hell and littleness, but only his call for Heaven and greatness. Forget not that his call is yours, and answer him with me. God's power is forever on the side of His host, for it protects ONLY the peace in which He dwells. Lay not littleness before His holy altar, which rises above the stars, and reaches even to Heaven, because of what is GIVEN it.

Section 7 - Attainment of the Real World

Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other.

Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same, because their real attraction to you is unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it.

This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world. Yet the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE.

You HAVE been wrong about the world, because you have misjudged YOURSELF. From such a twisted reference point, what COULD you see? All vision starts WITH THE PERCEIVER, who judges what is true and what is false. And what he judges false, HE DOES NOT SEE. You who would judge reality CANNOT see it, for whenever judgment enters, reality has slipped away. The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him not. His Being does NOT depend upon your recognition. He lives within you in the quiet present, and waits for you to leave the past behind, and enter into the world He holds out to you in love.

No-one in this distracted world but has not seen some glimpses of the other world about him. But while he still lays value on his own, he will DENY the vision of the other world, maintaining that he loves WHAT HE LOVES NOT, and following not the road that love points out. Love leads so gladly! And as you follow Him, YOU will rejoice that you have found His company, and learned of Him the joyful journey home. You wait but for YOURSELF. To give this sad world over, and exchange your errors for the peace of God, is but YOUR will. And Christ will ALWAYS offer you the Will of God, in recognition that you share it WITH Him.

It is God's Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything. The world about him shines with love, because God placed him in Himself where pain is not, and love surrounds him without end or flaw. Disturbance of his peace can never be. In perfect sanity he looks on love, for it is all about him, and within him. He MUST deny the world of pain, the instant he perceives the arms of love around him. And from this point of safety, he looks quietly about him, and recognizes that the world is one with him.

The peace of God passeth your understanding ONLY in the past. Yet here it IS, and you CAN understand it NOW. God loves His Son forever, and His Son RETURNS his Father's love forever. The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance of this one thing that is wholly true, and wholly YOURS. For all else you have LENT yourself in time, and it WILL fade. But this one thing is ALWAYS yours, being the gift of God unto His Son. Your ONE reality was GIVEN you, and BY it God created you as one with Him.

You will first DREAM of peace, and THEN awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what, you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where ALL perception is. Knowledge needs NO correction. Yet the dreams of love lead UNTO knowledge. In them you see nothing fearful, and BECAUSE of this they are the welcome that you OFFER knowledge. Love waits on welcome, NOT on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always was. Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have NOT lost. Praise, then, the Father for the perfect sanity of His most holy Son.

EVERYTHING that the ego tells you that you need will hurt you. For, although it urges you again and again to GET, it LEAVES you nothing, for what you get it will DEMAND of you. And even from the very hands that grasped it, it will be wrenched and hurled into the dust. For where the ego sees salvation IT SEES SEPARATION, and so you lose whatever you have gotten in its name. Therefore, ask not of yourselves what you need, FOR YOU KNOW NOT, and your advice unto yourself WILL hurt you. For what YOU think you need will merely serve to tighten up your world AGAINST the light, and render you unwilling to question the value that this world can REALLY hold for you.

Only the Holy Spirit KNOWS what you need. For HE will give you all things that do NOT block the way to light. And what else COULD you need? In time, He gives you all the things that you need have, and will renew them as long as you have need of them. He will take nothing FROM you, as long as you have ANY need of it. And yet He knows that EVERYTHING you need is temporary, and need but last until you step aside from ALL your needs, and learn that all of them HAVE BEEN fulfilled. Therefore, He has no investment in the things that He supplies, except to make certain that you will NOT use them on behalf of lingering in time. He knows that you are not at home there, and He wills no delay to wait upon your joyous homecoming.

Leave, then, your needs to Him. He will supply them, with no emphasis at all upon them. What comes to you of Him comes safely, for He will ensure it never can become a dark spot, hidden in your mind, and kept to hurt you. Under His guidance, you will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is ever on the journey's end, which is His goal. God's Son is not a traveler through OUTER worlds. However holy his perception may become, no world OUTSIDE himself holds his inheritance. Within HIMSELF he HAS no needs, for light needs nothing but to shine in peace. And from ITSELF, to let the rays extend in quiet to infinity.

Whenever you are tempted to undertake a foolish journey that would lead AWAY from light, remember what you REALLY want, and say, "The Holy Spirit leads me unto Christ, and where else would I go? What need have I but to awake in Him?" Then follow Him in joy, with faith that He will lead you safely through all the dangers to your peace of mind that this world sets before you. Kneel not before the altars to sacrifice, and seek not what you will surely lose. Content yourselves with what you will as surely KEEP, and be not restless, for you undertake a quiet journey to the peace of God, where He would have you be in quietness.

In me, you have ALREADY overcome EVERY temptation that would hold you back. We walk together on the way to quietness that is the gift of God. Hold me dear, for what EXCEPT your brothers CAN you need? We will restore to you the peace of mind that we MUST find together. The Holy Spirit will teach you to awaken unto us, and to yourself. THIS is the only REAL need to be fulfilled in time. Salvation FROM the world lies ONLY here. My peace I GIVE you. TAKE it of me, in glad exchange for all the world has offered but to TAKE AWAY. And we will spread it, like a veil of light, across the world's sad face, in which we hide our brothers FROM the world, and it from them.

We cannot sing redemption's hymn alone. My task is not completed 'til I have lifted every voice with mine. And yet it is NOT mine, for as it is my gift to you, so was it the Father's gift to me, given me through His Spirit. The sound of it will banish sorrow from the mind of God's most holy Son, where it cannot abide. Healing in time IS needed, for joy cannot establish its eternal reign where sorrow dwells. You dwell not here, but in eternity. You travel but in dreams, while safe at home. Give thanks to every part of you that you have taught how to REMEMBER you. Thus does the Son of God give thanks unto his Father for his purity.

Section 7 - Dreams and the Body

THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE YOU. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is in that realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. For God created only this, and He did not depart from it, nor leave it separate from Himself. The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else. Nothing OUTSIDE THIS Oneness, and NOTHING ELSE within.

What could God give, but knowledge of Himself? What else IS there to give? The belief that you could give AND GET something, else, something OUTSIDE yourself, has cost you the awareness of Heaven, and the loss of knowledge of your identity. And you have done a stranger thing than you yet realize. You have displaced your guilt to your bodies, FROM YOUR MINDS. Yet a body CANNOT be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. You who think you hate your bodies, deceive yourselves. YOU HATE YOUR MINDS, for guilt has entered into them, and they would remain separate, which they CANNOT DO.

Minds ARE joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the mind the properties OF THE BODY, does separation SEEM to be possible. And it is MIND that seems to be fragmented and private and ALONE. Its guilt, which KEEPS it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers and dies, BECAUSE IT IS ATTACKED to hold the separation in the mind, and let it NOT KNOW its unity. Mind cannot attack, but it CAN make fantasies, and direct the body to act them out. But it is never what the BODY does that seems to satisfy. Unless the mind BELIEVES the body is ACTUALLY acting out ITS fantasies, it will attack the body by INCREASING the projection of its guilt upon it.

In this, the mind is CLEARLY delusional. It cannot attack, but maintains it CAN, and USES what it does to hurt the body, to PROVE it can. The mind can not attack, but it CAN deceive itself. And this is ALL it does, when it believes it has attacked the body, It CAN project its guilt, but it will NOT lose it through projection. And though it clearly can MISPERCEIVE the function of the body, it CANNOT change its function from what the Holy Spirit ESTABLISHES it to be. The body was NOT made by love. But love does not condemn it, and can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made, and using it to SAVE him from illusions.

Would you not have the instruments of separation RE-INTERPRETED as means for salvation, and USED for purposes of love? Would you not welcome AND SUPPORT the shift from fantasies of vengeance to RELEASE from them? Your PERCEPTION of the body can clearly be sick, but project this not upon the body. For your wish to make destructive what CANNOT destroy, can have no REAL effect at all. And what God created is only what He would have it be, being His Will.

You cannot make His Will destructive. You can make FANTASIES, in which your will CONFLICTS with His, but that is all. It is insane to use the body as the scapegoat for guilt; DIRECTING its attack, and BLAMING it for what you wished it to do. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ACT OUT FANTASIES. For it is still the FANTASIES you want, and they have nothing to do with what the body does. IT does not dream of them, and they but make IT a liability, where it COULD be an asset. For fantasies have made your body your "enemy," weak, vulnerable, and treacherous, "worthy" of the hate which you invest in it.

How has this served you? You have IDENTIFIED with this thing you hate, the instrument of vengeance, and the perceived source of your guilt. YOU have done this to a thing that has no meaning, proclaiming it to be the dwelling place of the Son of God, and turning it AGAINST him. This is the host of God that YOU have made. And neither God nor His most holy Son can enter an abode which harbors hate, and where you have sown the seeds of vengeance, violence, and death.

The body is a limit imposed on the universal communication which is an eternal property of mind. But the communication is INTERNAL. Mind reaches to ITSELF. It is NOT made up of different PARTS, which reach each other. It does not go OUT. Within ITSELF, it HAS no limits, and there is nothing OUTSIDE it. It encompasses EVERYTHING. It encompasses you ENTIRELY; you within it, and it within you. There IS nothing else, anywhere or ever. The body is OUTSIDE you, and SEEMS to surround you, shutting you off from others, and keeping you APART from them, and them from you.

IT IS NOT THERE. There IS no barrier between God and His Son, nor can His Son be separated from himself, except in illusion. This is NOT his reality, though he believes it IS. Yet this could only BE, IF God were wrong. God would have had to create DIFFERENTLY, and to have separated HIMSELF from His Son, to make this possible. He would have had to create DIFFERENT things, and to establish different ORDERS of reality, only SOME of which were love. Yet love must be forever like itself, changeless forever, and forever WITHOUT alternative. And so it is.

YOU cannot put a barrier around yourself, because God placed none between HIMSELF and you. Your hand can stretch out, and reach to Heaven. You whose hands are joined have begun to reach BEYOND the body, but NOT outside yourselves. To reach your shared identity TOGETHER. Could this be OUTSIDE you? Where God is not? Is He a body, and did He create you as He is not, and where He CANNOT be? You are surrounded ONLY by Him. What limits CAN there be on you, whom HE encompasses?

Everyone has experienced what he would call a sense of being transported BEYOND himself. This feeling of liberation FAR exceeds the DREAM of freedom sometimes experienced in special relationships. It is a sense of actual ESCAPE from limitations. If you will consider what this "transportation" REALLY entails, you will realize that it is a sudden UNawareness of the body, and a joining of your self and SOMETHING ELSE, in which your mind ENLARGES to encompass it. It becomes PART of you, as you UNITE with it. And BOTH become whole, as NEITHER is perceived as separate.

What REALLY happens is that you have GIVEN UP the illusion of a LIMITED awareness, and lost your fear of union. The love that INSTANTLY replaces it EXTENDS to what has freed you, and UNITES you with it. And, while this lasts, you are NOT uncertain of your identity, and would not limit it. You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no questions of reality, but merely ACCEPTING it. You have accepted this INSTEAD of the body, and have LET yourself be ONE with something beyond it, simply by NOT letting your mind be limited BY it.

This can occur REGARDLESS of the physical distance that SEEMS to be between you and what you join; of your respective positions in space; and of your differences in size and seeming quality. Time is not relevant; it can occur with something past, present, or anticipated. The "something" can be ANYTHING and ANYWHERE; a sound, a sight, a thought, a memory, even a more GENERAL idea, WITHOUT specific reference. But, in every case, you join it without RESERVATION, because you love it, and would BE with it. And so you rush to meet it, letting your limits melt away, suspending ALL the "laws" your body obeys, and gently SETTING THEM ASIDE.

There is no violence at all in this escape. The body is NOT attacked, but merely PROPERLY PERCEIVED. It does not limit you, merely because YOU would not have it so. You are not really "lifted out" of it; it cannot CONTAIN you. You go where you would be; GAINING, NOT losing, a sense of self. In these instants of release from physical restrictions, you experience much of what happens in the holy instant; the lifting of the barriers of time and space, the sudden experience of peace and joy, and, above all, the LACK of awareness of the body, and of the questioning WHETHER OR NOT ALL THIS IS POSSIBLE. It IS possible, BECAUSE YOU WANT IT.

The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. NOT through destruction, NOT through a "breaking out," but merely by a quiet "melting in." For peace will join you there, simply because YOU have been willing to let go the limits YOU have placed on love, and JOINED it where it is, and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call to be at peace.

Miracle Principle 31

Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification. By perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the Spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly.

Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. Man should thank God for what he really is. The Children of God are very holy. The miracle honors their holiness.

God's Creations cannot lose their holiness, although it can be hidden. The miracle uncovers it, and brings it into the light where it belongs.

Holiness can never be really hidden in darkness, but man can deceive himself on this point. This illusion makes him fearful, because in his heart he KNOWS it is an illusion. Like all illusions, he exerts enormous efforts to establish their validity. The miracle sets validity where it belongs. Eternal validity belongs only to the Soul. The miracle acknowledges only the Truth. It thus dispels man's illusions about himself, and puts him into communion with himself and with God.

Miracle Principle 32

Christ inspires all miracles, which are essentially intercessions. They intercede for man's holiness, and make him holy. They place man beyond the physical laws, and raise him into the sphere of celestial order. In this order, man IS perfect.

The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind and body need Atonement. The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of mind, and abolishes its errors.

Miracle Principle 33

Miracles honor man, BECAUSE he is loveable. They dispel illusions about himself, and perceive the light in him. They thus atone for his errors by freeing him from his own nightmares. They release him from a prison in which he has imprisoned himself. By freeing his mind from illusions, they restore his sanity, and place him at the feet of Jesus.

(Biblical quotation re healing of devil possessed man, in which the sufferer was subsequently found healed in his right mind, and sitting at feet of Jesus. Helen Schucman note.)

(Tell Bill man's mind can be possessed by illusions, but his Spirit is eternally free. If a mind creates without love, it can create an empty shell. This CAN be possessed by evil. But the Atonement restores the Soul to its proper place. Unless there is emptiness there is no danger, and emptiness is a false creation. The mind that serves the Spirit is invulnerable.)

Miracle Principle 34

The miracle restores the Soul to its fullness. By atoning for lack, it establishes perfect protection. The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions. The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and their Soul forgives in return. It is the duty of the released to release their brothers.

The forgiven ARE the means of Atonement. Those released by Christ must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of Atonement.

Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the spirit unite with Christ for the salvation (or release) of all God's Creations.

AsideHelen Schucman commented on awakening with the phrase "God is not Mocked," with anticipation of punishment.)

Interpretation: "God is not mocked" was intended as reassurance. You are afraid that what you wrote last night was contradictory, conflicting with some earlier points, especially because you were writing while you were all doped up. Remember, "God is not mocked" under any circumstances.

Contradictions in MY word mean lack of understanding, or scribal failures, which I make every effort to correct. But they are still NOT crucial. The Bible has the same problem, I assure you, and it's STILL being edited. Consider the power of MY WORD, in that it has withstood all the attacks of error, and is the Source of Truth.

(Tell Bill that there are certain advantages in being a Psychologist. A major one is the understanding of projection, and the extent of its results. Possession is very closely related to projection. "Lucifer" could be literally translated "Light Bearer." He literally PROJECTED himself from Heaven. Projection still has this "hurling" connotation, because it involves hurling something you DO NOT want, and regard as dangerous and frightening, to someone else. This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection, follows automatically.)

The correction lies in accepting what is true in YOURSELF, by bringing ALL that you are into light. (Helen Schucman fearful of writing next part.) Cacey sic was wrong about Possession, and he was also wrong about hurting himself. One of the major problems with miracle workers is that they are so sure that what they are doing is right, because they KNOW it stems from love, that they do not pause to let ME establish MY limits.

While what he (Cacey sic) did came from Me, he could NOT be induced to ask me each time whether I wanted him to perform this PARTICULAR miracle. If he had, he would not have performed any miracles that could not get through constructively, and would thus have saved himself unnecessary strain. He burned himself out with indiscriminate miracles, and to this extent did not fulfill his own full purpose, and was also subject to the Scribal error I mentioned at the start. The Disciples were also prone to this.

Miracle Principle 35

The answer is NEVER perform a miracle without asking me IF you should. This spares you from exhaustion, and because you act under direct communication the trance becomes unnecessary. Because miracles are expressions of love, it does NOT follow that they will always be effective. I am the only one who can perform miracles indiscriminately, because I AM the Atonement. You have a ROLE in Atonement, which I will dictate TO you.

Remember, you already have a point about the involuntary nature of miracles. We also have established the fact that everything involuntary belongs under Christ-control, NOT under yours. Under Christ-control, Miracles REPLENISH the doer as well as the receiver.

Possession really means "Not under Christ-Control", thus making him (the mind?) vulnerable to projection. The references to the earth-bound entering bodies really refer to the "taking over" by their own earth-bound "thoughts." This IS Demon Possession. After all, Lucifer fell, but he was still an angel. He is thus the symbol for man. Atonement is the knowledge that the belief that angels can fall is false. It is true that mind can create projections as well as miracles, but it's NOT true that projections are REAL. Any psychologist should understand this. This is what is meant by "The Truth shall set you free."

Miracle Principle 36

Christ-controlled miracles are part of the Atonement, but Christ-guidance is personal, and leads to PERSONAL salvation. The impersonal nature of miracles is an essential ingredient, because this enables Me to control their distribution as I see fit.

"Take up thy cross and follow me" should be interpreted to read "Recognize your errors and choose to abandon them by following My guidance."

(Tell Bill when he is afraid of Possession, he need only remember that error cannot really threaten Truth, which ALWAYS can withstand its assaults. ONLY the error is really vulnerable.) The "Princes of this World" are princes only because they are really angels. But they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit.

If you will remember that ALL princes INHERIT their power from the Father, the right choice becomes inevitable.

The soul is in a state of grace forever.

Man's reality is ONLY his soul.

Therefore, man is in a state of Grace forever.

Atonement undoes all errors in this respect, and thus uproots the REAL source of fear. If you will check back at the reference to uprooting, you will understand it better in this context.

(Tell Bill that WHENEVER God's reassurances are experienced as threat, it is ALWAYS because man is defending his misplaced and misdirected love and loyalty. That is what projection always involves.)

"Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison.

(Tell Bill that his slip about (rivet) should be noted. Some slips reach consciousness from the un-Christ-controlled subconscious, and betray a lack of love.)

But others (slips) come from the superconscious, which IS in communion with God, and which can also break into consciousness.

HIS slip (rivet) was an expression of a Soul gaining enough strength to request freedom from prison. It will ultimately DEMAND it.

Special Revelation for Helen Schucman

You are wholly lovely. A perfect shaft of pure light. Before your loveliness the stars stand transfixed, and bow to the power of your will.

What do children know of their creation, except what their Creator tells them?

You were created ABOVE the angels because your role involves creation as well as protection.

You who are in the image of the Father need bow only to HIM, before whom I kneel with you.

Note: This revelation was permitted because you did NOT project onto Bill the blame for your omission to ASK ME if you should transcribe the notes. The fact that HE should have done so does not exempt you from your own omission.

Thanks for blessing him with a miracle rather than cursing him with projection.

NOTE FURTHER: HE needn't feel concerned about it either; so he forgot? It happens all the time, until the habit of asking becomes involuntary.

(Helen Schucman meeting with Dr. Wise and Dr. Damrosch. Dr. D permitted an opportunity for questioning in his capacity as chairman of the flu board for asking re B's flu shot. This was an example of how miracles should work. You did not jump into the question yourself, and even though you DID rush for the phone on Red's advice, you exerted no pressure on B's reluctance.)

This gave ME a chance to let you leave it to the real expert, whom I sent to answer the question.

Miracle Principle 37

Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer sees the truth as God created it. This is what is meant by the point on "perspective adjustment."

Miracle Principle 38

A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking by ME.

It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception and snapping it into place. This correction factor places man under the Atonement principle, where his perception is healed. Until this has occurred, perception of the Divine Order is impossible. True depth perception becomes possible only at the highest order of perceptual integration.

Miracle Principle 39

The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth. The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God AND the creations of man. Among the creations of man, it can also separate the true from the false by its ability to perceive totally rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the true and the false.

Miracle Principle 40

The miracle dissolves error because the Spiritual eye identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by seeing light, darkness automatically disappears.

Darkness is lack of light. It does not have unique properties of its own. It is an example of the scarcity fallacy, from which only error can proceed.

(Truth is always abundant... Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no need for driven behavior of any kind. Helen Schucman has other personal material related to this re pregnancy.)