IA´s Journal

The Dreamer of the Dream

Suffering is an emphasis upon all that the world has done toinjure you. Here is the world´s demented version of salvarion clearly shown.Like to a dream of punishment, in which the dreamer is unconscious of whatbrought on the attack against himself, he sees himself attacked unjustly and bysomething not himself. He is the victim of this ”something else,”a thingoutside himself, for which he has no reason to be held responsible. He must beinnocent because he knows not what he does, but what is done to him. Yet is hisown attack upon himself apparent still, for it is he who bears the suffering.And he cannot escape because its source is been outside himself. Now you arebeing shown you can escpe. All that is needed is you look upon the problem asit is, and not the way that you have set it up. How could there be another wayto solve a problem that is very simple, but has been obscured by heavy cloudsof complication, which were made to keep the problem unresolved? Without theclouds the problem will emerge in all its primitive simplicity. The choice willnot be difficult, because the problem is absurb when clearly seen. No one hasdifficulty making up his mind to let a simple problem be resolved it it is seenas hurting him, and also very easily removed. The ”reasoning” by which theworld is made, on which it rests, by which it is maintained, is simply this:”You are hte cause of what I do. Your presence justifies my wrath, and youexist and think apart from me. While you attack I must be innocent. And what Isuffer from is your attack.” No one who looks upon this ”reasoning” exactly asit is could fail to see it does not follow and it makes no sense. Yet it seemssensible, because it looks as if the world were hurting you. And so it seems asif there is no need to go beyond the obvious in terms of cause. There is indeeda need. The world´s escape from condemnation is a need which those within theworld are joined in sharing. Yet they do not recongnize their common need. For eachone thinks that if he does his part, the condemnation of the world will rest onhim. And it is this that he perceives to be his part in its deliverance.Vengeance must have a focus. Otherwise is the avenger´s knife in his own hand,and pointed to himself. And he must see it in another´s hand, if he would be avictim of attack hed id not choose. And thus he suffers from the wounds a knifehe does not hold has made upon himself. This is the purpose of the world hesees. And looked at thus, the world provides the means by which this purposeseems to be fulfilled. The means attest the purpose, but are not themselves acause. Nor will the cause be changed by seeing it apart from its effects. Thecause produces the effects, which then bear witness to the cause, and notthemselves. Look, then, beyond effects. It is not here the cause of suffering andsin must lie. Adn dwell not on the suffering ans sin, for they are butreflections of their cause. The part you play in salvaging the world fromcondemnation is your own escape. Forget not that the witness to the world ofevil cannot speak except for what has seen a need for evil in the world. Andthis is where your guilt was first beheld. In separation from your brother wasthe first attack upon yourself again. And it is this the world bears witnessto. Seek not another cause, nor look among the mighty legions of its witnessesfor its undoing. They support its claim on your allegiance. What conceals thetruth is not where you should look to find the truth. The witnesses to sin allstand within one little space. And it is here you find the cause of yourperspective on the world. Once you were unaware of what the cause of everythingthe world appeared to thrust upon you, univited and unasked, must really be. Ofone thing you were sure: of all the many causes you perceived as bringing painand suffering to you, your guilt was not among them. Nor did you in any wayrequest them for yourself. This is how all illusions came about. The one whomakes them does not see himself as making them, and their reality does notdepend on him. Whatever cause they have is something quite apart from him, andwhat he sees is separate from his mind. He cannot doubt his dream´s reality,because he does not see the part he plays in making them and making them seemreal. No one can waken from a dream the world is dreaming for him. He becomes apart of something else´s dream. He cannot choose to waken from a dream hed id notmake. Helpless he stands, a victim to a dream conceived and cherished by aseparate mind. Careless indeed of him this mind must be, as thoughtless of hispeace and happiness as is the weather or the time of day. It loves him not, butcasts him as it will in any role that satisfies its dream. So little is hisworth that he is but a dancing shadow, leaping up and down according to asenseless plot conceived within the idle dreaming of the world. This is the onlypicutere you can see; the one alternative that you can choose, the otherpossiblity of cause, if you be not the dreamer of your dreams. And this is whatyou choose if you deny the cause of suffering is in your mind. Be glad indeedit is, for thus are you the one decider of your destiny in time. The choice isyours to make between a sleeping death and dreams of evil or a happy wakeningand joy of life. What could you choose between but life or death, waking orsleeping, peace or war, your dreams or your reality? This is a risk of thinkingdeath is peace, because the world equates the body with the Self Which Godcreated. Yet a thing can never be its opposite. And death is opposite to peace,because it is the opposite of life. And life is peace. Awaken and forget allthoughts of death, and you will find you have the peace of God. Yet if the choiceis really given you, then you must see the cause of the things you choosebetween exactly as they are and where they are. What choice can be made betweentwo states, but one of which is clearly recognized? Who could be free to choosebetween effects, when only one is seen as up to him? And honest choice couldnever be perceived as one in which the choice as split between a tiny you andan enormous world, with different dreams about the trust in you. The gapbetween reality and dreams lies not between the dreaming of the world is but apart of your own dream you gave away, and saw as if it were its start andending, both. Yet was it started the part you see and do not doublt is real.How could you doubt it while you lie asleep, and dream in secret that its causeis real? A brother separated from yourself, an ancient enemy, a murdere whostalks you in the night and plots your death, yet plans that it be lingeringand slow; of this you dream. Yet underneath this dream is yet another, in whichyou become the murderer, the secret enemy, the scavenger and the destroyer ofyour brother and the world alike. Here is the cause of suffering, the spacebetween your little dreams terror and of ancient hate, the instant of disaster,all are here. Here is the cause of unreality. And it is here that it will beundone. You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No other cause it has, norever will. Nothing more fearful than an idle dream has terrified God´s Son, andmade him think that he has lost his innocence, denied his Father, and made warupon himself. So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken toreality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear, unless agentler dream preceded his awaking, and allowed hiss calmer mind to welcome,not to fear, the Voice That calls with love to waken him. God willed he wakengently and with joy, and gave him means to waken without fear. Accept the dreamHe gave instead of yours. It is not difficult to change a dream when once thedreamer has been recongized. Rest in the Holy Spirit, and allow His gentledreams to take a place of those you dreamed in terror and in fear of death. Hebrings forgiving dreams, in which the choice is not who is the murderer and whoshall be the victim. In the dreams He brings there is no murder and there is nodeath. The dream of guilt is fading from your sight, although you eyes areclosed. A smile has come to lighten up your sleeping face. The sleep is peacfulnow, for these are happy dreams. Dream softly of your sinless brother, whounites with you in holy innocence. And from this dream the Lord of Heaven willHimself awaken His beloved Son. Dream of your brother´s kindnesses instead ofdwelling in your dreams on his mistakes. Select his thoughtfulness to dreamabout instead of counting up the hurts he gave. Forgive him his illusions, and givethanks to him for all the helpfulness to dream about instead of counting up thehurts he gave. Forgive him his illusions, and givet hanks to him for all thehelpfulness he gave. And do not brush aside his many gifts because he is notperfect in your dreams. He represents his Father, Whom you see as offering bothlife and death to you. Brother, He gives but life. Yet what you see as gifts toyou. Let all your brother´s gifts be seen in light of charity and kindnessoffered you. And let no pain disturb your dream of deep appreciation for hisgifts to you.

Love

The ”Hero” of the Dream

The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world.There is no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream in which itacts if it were a person to be seen and be believed. It takes the central placein every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by other bodies, borninto the world outside the body, lives a little while and dies, to be united inthe dust with other bodies dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it tolive, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is itsmain concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure,and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itselfits pains and joys are different and can be told apart. The dreaming of theworld takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to prove it isautonomous and real. It puts things on itself that it has brought with littlemetal discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and real. It worksto get them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless thingsit does not need and does not even want. It hires other bodies, that they mayprotect it and collect more senseless things that it can call its own. It looksabout for special bodies that can share its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is acomqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it isthe slave of bodies that would hurt and torture it. The body´s serialadventures, from the time of birht to dying is the theme of eveyr dream theworld has ever had. The ”hero” of this dream will never change, nor will itspurpose. Though the dream itself takes many forms, and seems to show a greatvariety of places and events wherein its ”hero” finds itself, the dream has butone purpose, taught in many ways. This single lesson does it try to teachagain, and still again, and yet once more; that it is cause and not effect. Andyou are its effect, and cannot be its cause. Thus are you not the dreamer, butthe dream. And so you wander idly in and out of place and events that itcontrives. That this is all the body does is true, for it is but a figure in adream. But who reacts to figures in a dream unless he sees them as if they werereal? The instant that he sees them as they are they have no more effects onhim, because he understands he gave them their effects by causing them andmaking them seem real. How willing are you to escape effects of all the dreamsthe world has ever had? Is ti your wish to let no dream appear to be the causeof what it is you do? Then let us merely look upon the dream´s beginning forthe part you see is but the second part, whose cause lies in the first. No oneasleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No onebelieves there really was a time when he knew nothing of a body, and couldnever have conceived this world as real. He would have seen at once that thereideas are one illusion, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. Howserious they now appear to be! And no one can remember when they would have metwith laughter and with disbelief. We can remember this, if we but look directlyat their cause. And we will see the grounds for laughter, not a cause for fear.Let us return the dream he gave away unto dreamer, who perceives the dream asseparate from himself and done to him. Into eternity, where all is one, therecrept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In hisforgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of bothaccomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away, andunderstand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think thattime can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time. Atimlessness in which is time made real; a part of God that can attack itself; aseparate brother as an enemy ; a mind within a body all are forms ofcircularity whose ending starts at its beginning, ending at its cause. Theworld you see depcits exactly what you thought you did. Except that now youthink that what you did is being done to you. The guilt for what you thought isbeing placed outside yourself, and on a guilty world that dreams your dreamsand thinks your thoughts instead of you. It brings its vengeance, not your own.It keeps you narrowly confined within a body, which it punishes because of allthe sinful things the body does within its dream. You have no power to make thebody stop its evil deeds because you did not make it, and cannot control itsactions nor its purpose nor its fate. The world but demonstrates an ancienttruth; you will believe that others do to you exactly what you think you did tothem. But once deluded into blaming them you will not see the cause of whatthey do, because you want the guilt to rest on them. How childish is thetetulant device to keep your innocence by pushing guilt outside yourself, butnever letting go! It is not easy to perceive the jest when all around you doyour eyes behold its heavy consequences, but without their trifling cause.Without the cause do its effects seem serious and sad indeed. Yet they butfollow. And it is their cause that follows nothing and is but a jest. In gentlelaughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks not to effects. Howelse could He correct your error, who have overlooked the cause entirely? Hebids you bring each terrible effect to Him that you may look together on itsfoolish cause and laugh with Him a while. You judge effects, but He has judgedtheir cause. And by His judgment are effects removed. Perhaps you come intears. But hear Him say, ”My brother, holy Son of God, behold your idle dream,in which this could occur.” And you will leave the holy instant with yourlaughter and your brother´s joined with His. The secret of salvation is butthis: That you are doing this unto yourself. No matter what the form of theattack, still is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain andsuffering you feel, this is still true. For you could not react at all tofigures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. This single lesson learnedwill set you free from suffering, whatever form it takes. The Holy Spirit willrepeat this one inclusive lesson of deliverance until it has been learned,regaredless ot the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt youbring to Him He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this oneanswer takes away the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The formaffects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the singel cause ofall of them, no matter what their form. And you will understand the miracle reflectthe simple statement, ”I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.”Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like therest. He sees no difference where none exist, and He will teach you how eachone is caused. None has a different cause from all the rest, and all of themare easily undone by but a single lesson truly learned. Salvation is a secretyou have kept but from yourself. The universe proclaims it so. Yet to itswitnesses you pay no heed at all. For they attest the thing you do not want toknow. They seem to keep it secret from you. Yet you need but learn you chosebut not to listen, not to see. How differently will you perceive the world whenthis is recongnized! When you forgive the world your guilt, you will be free otit. Its innocence does not demand your guilt, nor does your guiltlessness reston its sins. This is the obvious; a secret kept from no one but yourself. Andit is this that has maintained you separate from the world, and kept yourbrother separate form you. Now need you but to learn that both of you areinnocent or guilty. The one thing that is impossible is that you be unlike eachother; that they both be true. This is the only secret yet to learn. And itwill be no secret you are healed.

Love

THE UNDOING OF FEAR
The Present Memory

The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done. It does not add, but merely takes away. And what it takes away is long since gone, but being kept in memory appears to have immediate effects. This world was over long ago. The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them and loved them for a little while. The miracle but shows the past is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects. Remembering a cause can but produce illusions of its presence, not effects. All the effects of guilt are here no more. For guilt is over. In its passing went its consequences, left without a cause. Why would you cling to it in memory if you did not desire its effects? Remembering is as selective as preception, being its past tense. It is perception of the past as if it were occuring now, and still were there to see. Memory, like perception,is a skill made by you to take the place of what God gave in your creation. And like all the things you made, it can be used to serve another purpose, and tobe means for something else. It can be used to heal and not to hurt, if you so wish it be. Nothing employed for healing represents an effort to do anything at all. It is a recognition that you have no needs which mean that something must be done. It is an unselective memory, that is not used to interfere with truth.All things the Holy Spirit can employ for healing have been given Him, without the content and the purpose for which they have been made. They are but skills without an application. They await their use. They have no dedication and no aim. The Holy Spirit can indeed make use of memory, for God Himself is there.Yet this is not a memory of past events, but only of a present state. You are so long accustomed to believe that memory holds only what is past, that it is hard for you to realize it is a skill that can remember now. The limitations on remembering the world imposes on it are as vast as those you let the World impose on you. There is no link of memory to the past. If you would have it there, then there it is. But only your desire made the link, and only you have held it to a part of time where guilt appears to linger still. The Holy Spirit´s use of memory is guite apart from time. He does not seek to use it asa means to keep the past, but rather as a way to let it go. Memory holds the message it receives, and does what it is given to do. It does not write the message, nor appoint what it is for. Like to the body, it is purposeless within itself. And if it seems to serve to cherish ancient hate, and gives youpictures of injustices and hurts that you were saving, this is what you askedits message he and that it is. Committed to its vaults, the history of all thebody´s past is hidden there. All of the strange associations made to keep the pastalive, the present dead, are stored witin it, waiting your command that they bebrought to you, and lived again. And thus do their effects appear to beincreased by time, which took away their cause. Yet time is but another phaseof what does nothing. It works hand in hand with all the other attributes withwhich you seek to keep concealed the truth about yourself. Time neither takesaway nor can restore. And yet you make strange use of it, as if the past hadcaused the present, which is but a consequence in which no change can be madepossible because its cause has gone. Yet change must have a cause that willendure, or else it will not last. No change can be made in the present if its causeis past. Only the past is held in memory as you make use of it, and so it is away to hold the past against the now. Remember nothing that you taughtyourself, for you were badly taught. And who would keep a senseless lesson inhis mind, when he can learn and can preserve a better one? When ancientmemories of hate appear, remember that their cause is gone. And so you cannotunderstand what they are for. Let not the cause that you would givet hem now bewhat it was that made them what they were, or seemed to be. Be glad that it isgone, for this is what you would be pardoned from. And see, instead, the neweffects of cause accepted now, with consequences here. They will surpise youwith their loveliness. The ancient new ideas they bring will be the happy consequensesof a cause so ancient that it far exeeds to span of memory which yourperception sees. This is the Cause of Holy Spirit has remembered for you, whenyou would forget. It is not past because He let it not be unremembered. It hasnever changed, because there never was a time in which Hed id not keep Itsafely in your mind. Its consequences will indeed seem new, because you thoughtthat you remembered not their Cause. Yet was It never absent from your mind,for it was not your Father´s Will that He be unremembered by His Son. What youremember never was. It came from causelessness which you confused with cause.It can deserve but laughter, when you learn you have remembered consequencesthat were causeless and could never be effects. The miracle reminds you of aCause forever present, perfectly untouched by time and interference. Neverchanged from what It is. And you are Its effects, and changeless and as perfectas Itself. Its memory does not lie in past, nor waits the future. It is notrevealed in miracles. They bu tremind you that It will no longer be denied. Youwho have sought to lay a judgment on your own Creator cannot understand it isnot He Who laid a judgment on His Son. You would deny Him His effects, yet havethey never been denied. There was no time in which His Son could be condemnedfor what was causeless and against His Will. What your remembering wouldwitness to is but the fear of God. He has not done the thing you fear. No morehave you. And so your innocence has not been lost. You need no healing to behealed. In quietness, see in the miracle a lesson in allowing Cause to have ItsOwn effects, and doing nothing that would interfere. The miracle comes quietlyinto the mind that stops an instant and is still. It reaches gently from thatquiet time, and from the mind it healed is quiet then, to other minds to shareits quietness. And they will join in doing nothing to prevent its radiantextension back into the Mind Which caused all minds to be. Born out of sharing,there can be no pause in time to cause the miracle delay in hastening to allunquiet minds, and bringing them an instant´s stillness, when the memory of Godreturns to them. Their own remembering is quiet now, and what has come to takeits place will not be wholly unremembered afterwards. He to Whom time is givenoffers thanks for every quiet instant given Him. For in that instant is God´smemory allowed to offer all its treasures to the Son of God, from whom theyhave been kept. How gladly does He offer them unto the one from whom He hasbeen given them! And His Creator shares His thanks, because He would not bedeprived of His effects. The instant´s silence that His Son accepts givenwelcome to eternity and Him, and lets Them enter where They would abide. For inthat instant does the Son of God do nothing that would make himself afraid. Howinstantly the memory of God arises in the mind that has no fear to keep thememory away! Its own remembering has gone. There is no past to keep its fearfulimage in the way of glad awakening to present peace. The ♥♥♥♥♥ets of eternityresound throughout the stillness, yet disturb it not. And what is nowremembered is not fear, but rather is the Cause that fear was made to renderunremembered and undone. The stillness speaks in gentle sounds of love the Sonof God remembers from before his own remembering came in between the presentand the past, to shut them out. Now is the Son of God at last aware of presentCause and Its bening effects. Now does he understand what he has made iscauseless, having no effects at all. He has done nothing. And in seeing this,he understands he never had a need for doing anything, and never did. His Causeis Its effects. There never was a cause beside it that could tenerate adifferent past or future. Its effects are changelessly eternal, beyond fear,and past the world of sin entirely. What has been lost, to see the causelessnot? And where is sacrifice, when memory of God has come to take the place ofloss? What better way to close the little gap between illusions and realitythan to allow the memory of God to flow across it, makein it a bridge aninstant will suffice to reach beyond? For God has closed it with Himself, Hismemory has not gone by, and left a stranded Son forever on a shore where he canglimpse another shore that he can never reach. His Father wills that he belifted up and gently carried over. He has built the bridge, and it is He Whowill transport His Son across it. Have no fear that He will fail in what Hewills. Nor that you be excluded from the Will that is for you.

Love

Reversing Effect and Cause

Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet without effects there is no cause. The cause a cause is made by its effects; the Father is a Father by His Son. Effects do not create their cause, but they establish,its causation. Thus, the Son gives Fatherhood to his Creator, and receives the gift that he has given Him. It is because he is God´s Son that he must also be a father, who creates as God created him. The circle of creation has no end.Its starting and its ending are the same. But in itself it holds the universe of all creation, without beginning and without an end. Fatherhood is creation.Love must be extended. Purity is not confined. It is the nature of the innocent to be forever uncontained, without a barrier of limitaiton. Thus is purity not the body. Nor can it be found where limitation is. The body can be healed by its effects, which are as limitless as is itself. Yet must all healing come about because the mind is recognized as not within the body, and its innocence is quite apart from it, and where all healing is. Where, then, is healing? Only where its cause is given its effects. For sickness is a meaningless attempt to give effects to causelessness, and make it be a cause. Always in sickness does the Son of God attempt to make himself his cause, and not allow himself to be his Father´s Son. For this impossible desire, he does not believe that he isLove´s effect, and must be cause because of wht he is. The cause of healing isthe only Cause of everything. It has but one effect. And in the recognition,causelessness is given no effects and none is seen. A mind within a body and aworld of other bodies, each with separate minds, are your ”creations,”you the ”other”mind, creating with effects unlike yourself. And as their ”father,” you must belike them. Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep,and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, awaken you, butmerely shows you who the dreamer is. It teaches you there is a choice of dreamswhile you are still asleep, depending on the purpose of your dreaming. Do youwish for dreams of healing, or for dreams of death? A dream is like a memory inthat it pictures what you wanted shown to you. An empty storehouse, with anopen door, holds all your shreds of memories and dreams. Yet if you are thedreamer, you perceive this much at least: That you have caused the dream, andcan accept another dream as well. But for this change in content of the dream,it must be realized that it is you who dreamed the dreaming that you do notlike. It is but an effect that you have caused, and you would not be cause ofthis effect. In dreams of murder and attack are you the victim in a dying bodyslain. But in forgiving dreams is no one asked to be the victim and thesufferer. These are the happy dreams the miracle exchanges for your own. Itdoes not ask you make another; only that you see you made the one you wouldexchange for this. This world is causeless, as is every dream, that anyone hasdreamed within the world. No plans are possible, and no design exists thatcould be found and understood. What else could be expected from a thing thathas no cause? Yet if it has no cause, it has no purpose. You may cause a dream,but never will you give it real effects. For that would change its cause, andit is this you cannot do. The dreamer of a dream is not awake, but does notknow he sleeps. He sees illusions of himself as sick or well, depressed ofhappy, but without a stable cause with guaranteed effects. The miracleestablishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is acrusial step in dealing with illusions. No one is afraid of them when heperceives he made them up. The fear was held in place because hed id not seethat he was author of the dream, and not a figure in the dream. He giveshimself the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. And it is but thisthe dream has put together and has offended him, to show him that his wisheshave been done. Thus does he fear his own attack, but sees it as another´shands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but not their cause. Heauthored not his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused. The miracledoes nothing but to show him that he has done nothing. What he fears is causewithout the consequences that would make it cause. And so it never was. Theseparation started with the dream the Father was deprived of His effects, and powerlessto keep them since He was no longer their Creator. In the dream, the dreamermade himself. But what he made was turned against him, taking on the role ofits creator, as the dream have hated him. His body is their slav which theyabuse because the motives he has given it have they adopted as their own. Andhate it for the vengeance it would offer them. It is their vengeance on thebody which appears to prove the dreamer could not be the maker of the dream.Effects and cause are first split off, and then reversed, so that effects becomesa cause; the cause, effect. This is the separation´s final step, with whichsalvation, which proceeds to go the other way, begins. This final step is aneffect of what has gone before, appearing as a cause. The miracle is the firststep in giving back to cause the function of causation, not effect. For theconfusion has produced the dream, and while it lasts will wakiening be feared.Nor will the call to wakening be heard, becasue it seems to be the call to fear.Like every lesson that the Holy Spirit requests you learn, the miracle isclear. It demonstrates what He would have you learn, and shows you its effectsare what you want. In His forgiving dreams are the effects of your undone, andhated enemies perceived as friends with merciful intent. Their enmity is seenas causeless now, because they did not make it. And you can accept the role ofmaker of their hate, because you see that it has no effects. Now are you freedfrom this much of the dream; the world is neutral, and the bodies that stillseem to move about as separate things need not be feared. And so they are notsick. The miracle returns the cause of fear to you who made it. But it alsoshows that, having no effects, it is not cause, because the function ofcausation is to have effects. And where effects are gone, there is no cause.Thus is the body healed by miracles because they show the mind made sickness,and employed the body to be victim, or effect, or what it made. Yet half thelesson will not teach the whole. The miracle is useless if you learn but thatthe body can be healed, for this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. Thelesson is the mind was sick that thought the body coud be sick; projecting outits guilt caused nothing, and had no effects. This world is full of miracles.They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sinand guilt. They are the dream´s alternative, the choice to be the dreamer,rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. They are the gladeffects of taking back the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body isreleased because the mind acknowledges ”this is not done to me, but I am doingthis.” And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. Beginninghere, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descentto separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder done, and allthe dreaming of the world undone.

Love

The Agreement to Join

What waits in perfect certainty beyond salvation is not our concern. For you have barely started to allow your first, uncertain steps to be directed up the ladder separation led you down. The miracle alone is your concern at present. Here is where we must begin. And having started, will the way be made serene and simple in the rising up to waking and the ending of the dream. When you accept a miracle, you do not add your dream of fear to one that is already being dremed.Without support, the dream will fade away without effects. For it is your support that strengthens it. No mind is sick until another mind agrees that they are separate. And thus it is their joint decision to be sick. If you withhold agreement ande accept the part you play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in letting it perceive itself as separate and apart from you. Thus is the body not perceived as sick by both your minds from separate points of view. Uniting with a brother´s mind prevents the cause of sickness and perceived effects. Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate. The miracle does nothing just because the minds are joined, and cannot separate. Yet in the dreaming has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which are separated and which cannot join. Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have you abandoned him to hiss own dream by sharing it with him. He has not seen tthe cause of sickness where it is, and you have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been bred. Thus are you joined insickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherised, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him. Fight not His coming with illusions, for itis His coming that you want above all things that seem to glister in the dream.The end of dreaming is the end of fear, and love has never in the world of dreams. The gap is little. Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every formof ill, because it is a wish to keep apart and not to join. And thus it seems to give a cause to sickness which is not its cause. The purpose of the gap is al lthe cause that sickness has. For it was made to keep you separated, in a body which you see as if it were the cause of pain. The cause of pain is spearation,not the body, which is only its effect. Yet separation is but empty space,enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the empty Place between the ripple s that a ship has made in passing by. And covered just as fast, as water rushes in to close the gap, and as the waves in joining cover it. Where is the gap between the waves when they have joined, and covered up the space which seemed to keep them separate for a little while? Where are the grounds for sickness when the minds have joined to close the little gap between them, where the seeds of sickness seemed to grow? God builds the bridge, but only in the space left clean and vacant by the miracle. The seeds of sicknessand the shame of guilt He cannot bridge, for He can not destroy the alien will that He created not. Let its effects be gone and clutch them not with eager hands,to keep them for yourself. The miracle will brush them all aside, and thus make room for Him Who wills to come and bridge His Son´s returning to Himself.Count, then, the silver miracles and golden dreams of happiness as all thet reasures you would keep within the storehouse of the world. The door is open,not the thieves, but to your starving brothers, who mistook for gold the shining of a pebble, and who stored a heep of snow that shone like silver. They have nothing left behind the open door. What is the world except a little gap perceived to tear eternity apart, and break it into days and months and years?And what are you who live within the world except a picture of the Son of God in broken pieces, each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of clay?Be not afraid, but let your world be lit by miracles. And where the gap was seen to stand between you, join your brother there. And sickness will be seen without a cause. The dream of healing in forgiveness lies, and gently shows you that you never sinned. The miracle would leave no proof of guilt to bring you witness to what never was. And in your storehouse it will make a place of welcome for your Father and your Self. The door is open, that all those may come who would no longer starve, and would enjoy the feast of plenty set Before them there. And they will meet with your invited Guests the miracle has asked to come to you. This is a feast unlike indeed to those the dreaming of the world has shown. For here, the more that anyone receives, the more is left for all the rest to share. The Guests have brought unlimited supply with Them. And no one is deprived or can deprive. Here is a feast the Father lays before His Son, and shares it equally with him. And in Their sharing there can be no gapin which abudance falters and grows thin. Here can the lean years enter not, fortime waits not upon this feast, which has no end. For Love has set its table in the space that seemed to keep your Guests apart from you.

Love

The Greater Joining

Accepting the Atonement for yourself means not to give support to someone´s dream of sickness and of death.It means that you share not his wish to separate, and let him turn illusions of himself. Nor do you wish that they be turned, instead, on you. Thus have they no effects. And you are free of dreams of pain because you let him be. Unless you help him, you will suffer pain with him because that is your wish. And you become a figure in his dream of pain, as he is yours. So do you both becomei llusions, and without identity. You could be anyone of anything, depending on whos evil dream you share. You can be sure of just one thing; that you are evil, for you share in dreams of fear. There is a way of finding certainty right here and now. Refuse to be a part of fearful dreams whatever form they take, for you will lose identity in them. You find yourself by not accepting them as causing you, and giving you effects. You stand part from them, but not apart from him who dreams them. Thus you separate the dreamer from the dream, and join in one,but let the other go. The dream is but illusion in the mind. And with the mind you would unite, but never with the dream. It is the dream you fear, and not the mind. You see them as the same, because you think that you are but a dream.And what is real and what is but illusion in yourself you do not know and cannot tell apart. Like you, your brother thinks he is a dream. Share not in his illusion of himself, for your identity depends on his reality. Think,rather, of him as a mind in which illusions still persist, but as a mind which brother is to you. He is not brother made by what he dreams, nor is his body,”hero” of the dream, your brother. It is his reality that is your brother, as is yours to him. Your mind and his are joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but seem to make a little gap, where your shave joined with his. And yet, between your minds there is no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him not, because his dreams would separate from you. Therefore release him, merely by your claim on brotherhood, and not a dream of fear. Let him acknowledge whohe is, by not supporting his illusions by your faith, but if you do, you will have faith in yours. With faith in yours, he will not be released, and you are kept in bondage to his dream. And dreams of fear will haunt the little gap,inhabited but by illusions which you have supported in each other´s minds. Be certain, if you do your part, he will do his, for he will join you where you stand. Call not to him to meet you in the gap between you, or you must Believe that it is your reality as well as his. You cannot do his part, but this you do when you become a passive figure in his dreams, instead of dreamer of your own.Identity in dreams is meaningless because the dreamer and the dream are one.Who shares a dream must be the dream he shares, because by sharing is a cause produced. You share confusion and you are confused, for in the gap no stable self exists. What is the same seems different, because what is the same appears to be unlike. His dream are yours because you lett hem be. But if you took your own away would he be free of them, and o fhis own as well. Your dream are witnesses to his, and his attest the truth of yours. Your dream are witnessesto his, and his attest the truth of yours. Yet if you see there is no truth in yours, his dream will go, and he will understand what made the dream. The Holy Spirit is in both your minds, and He is One because there is no gap that separates His Oneness from Itself. The gap between your bodies matters not, for what is joined in Him is always one. No one is sick if someone else accepts his union with him. His desire to be sick and separated mind can not remain without a witness or a cause. And both are gone if someone wills to be united with him.He has dreams that he was separated from his brother who, by sharing not his dream, has left the space between them vacant. And the Father comes to join His Son the Holy Spirit joined. The Holy Spirit´s function is to take the broken picture of the Son of God and put the space into place again. This holy picture, healed entirely, does He hold out to every separate piece that Thinks it is a picture in itself. To each he offers his Identity, Which the whole picture represents, instead of just a little, broken bit that he insisted was himself. And when he sees this picture he will recongnize himself. If you share not your brother´s evil dream, this is the picture that the miracle will Place within the gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness oand of sin. And here the Father will receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to himself. I thank You, Father, knowing You will come to close each little gap that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy Son. Your holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. And they are joined because what is in one is in them all. How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is recognized as being part of the completed picture of God´s Son! The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing. For the whole is in each one. And every aspect ofthe Son of God is just the same as every other part. Join not your brother´s dreams but join with him, and where you join His Son the Father is. Who seeks for substitutes when he perceives he has lost nothing? Who could want to have the ”benefits” of sickness when he has recieved the simple happiness of health?What God as given cannot be a loss, and what is not of Him has no effects.What, then, would you perceive within the gap? The seeds of sickness come from the belief that there is joy in separation, and its giving up would be a sacrifice. But miracles are the result when you do not insist on seeing in the gap what is not there. Your willingness to let illusions go is all the Healer of God´s Son requires. He will place the seeds of healing where the seeds of sickness were. And there will be no loss, but only gain.

Love

The Alternative to Dream of Fear

What is a sense of sickness but a sense of limitation? Of a splitting off and separating from? A gap perceived between your selfves and what is seen as health? The good is seen outside; the evil, in. And thus is sickness separating off the self from good, and keeping evil in. God is the Alternate to dreams of fear. Who shares in them can never share in Him. But who withdraws his mind from sharing them is sharing Him.There is no other choice. Except you share it, nothing can exist. And you exist because God shares His Will with you, that His creation might create. It is the sharing of the evil dream of hate and malice, bitterness and death, of sin and suffering and pain and loss, that makes them real. Unshared, they are perceived as meaningless. The fear is gone from them because you did not givet hem your support. Where fear has gone there love must come, because there are but these alternatives. Where one appears, the other disappears. And which you share becomes the only one you have. You have the one that you accept, because the only one you have. You have the one that you accept, because it is the only one you wish to have. You share no evil dream if you forgive the dreamer, and perceive that he is not the dream he made. And so he cannot be a part of yours, from which you both are free.Forgiveness separates the dreamer from the evil dream, and thus releases him.Remember if you share an evil dream, and thus release him. Remember if you share an evil dream, you will believe you are the dream you share. And fearing it, you will not want to know your own Identity, because you think that It is fearful. And you will deny your Self, and walk upon an alien ground which your Creator did not make, and where you seem to be a something you are not. You will make war upon your Self, Which seems to be your enemy; and will attack your brother, as a part of what you hate. There is no compromise. You are your Self or an illusion. What can be between illusion and the truth? A middle ground, where you can be a thing that is not you, must be a dream and cannot be the truth. You have conceived a little gap between illusions and the truth to be the place where all your safety lies, and where your Self is safely hidden by what you have made. Here is a world established that is sick, and this the world the body´s eyes perceive. Here are the sounds it hears; the voices thatits ears were made to hear. Yet sights and sounds the body can perceive are meaningless. It cannot see nor hear. It does not know what seeing is; what listening is for. It is a little able to perceive as it can judge or understand or know. Its eyes are blind; its ears are deaf. It can not think, and so it cannot have effects. What is there God created to be sick? And what that He created not can be? Let not your eyes behold a dream; your ears bear witness to illusion. They were made to look upon a world that is not there; to hear the voices that can make no sound. Yet are there other sounds and other sights that can be seen and heard and understood. For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and what they see and hear they but report. It is not they that hear and see, but you, who put together every jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of evidence, and make a witness to the world you want. Let not the body´s ears and eyes perceive these countless fragments seen within the gap that you imagined,and lett them persuade their maker his imaginings are real. Creation proves reality becuse it shares the funcition all creation shares. It is not made of little bits of glass, a piece of wood, a thread or two, perhaps, all put togehter to attest its truth. Reality does not depend on this. There is no gap that separates the truth from dreams and from illusions. Truth has left no room for them in any place or time. For it fills every place and every time, and makes them wholly invisible. You who believe there is a little gap between you and your brother, do not see that it is here you are as prisoners in a World perceived to be existing here. The world you see does not exist, because theplace where you perceive it is not real. The gap is carefully concealed in fog,and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. Yet in the gap is nothing. And there are no awesome secrets and no darkened tombs where terror rises from the bones of death. Look at the little gap, and you behold the innocence and emptiness of sin that you will see within yourself, when you have lost the fear of recongnizing love.

Love

The Secret Vows

Who punishes the body is insane.For here the little gap is seen, and yet it is not here. It has not judged itself, nor make itself to be what it is not. It does not seek to make of pain a joy and look for lasting pleasures in the dust. It does not tell you what its purpose is and cannot understand what it is for. It does not tell you what its purpose is and cannot understand what it is for. It does not victimize, because it has not will, no preferences and no doubts. It does not wonder what it is.And so it has no need to be compretitive. It can be victimized, but cannot feel itself as victim. It accepts no role, but does what it is told, without attack.It is indeed a senseless point of view to hold responsible for sight a thing that cannot see, and blame it for the sounds you do not like, although it cannot hear. It suffers not the punishment you give because it has no feeling.It behaves in ways you want, but never makes the choice. It is not born and does not die. It can but follow aimlessly the path on which it has been set.And if that path is changed, it walks as easily another way. It takes no sides and judges not the road it travels. It perceives no gap, because it does not hate, it can be used for hate, but it cannot be hateful made thereby. The thing you hate and fear and loathe and want, the body does not know. You send it forth to seek for separation and to be a separate thing. And then you hate it,not for what it is, but for the uses you have made of it. You shrink from what it sees and what it hears, and hate its frailty and littleness. And you despite its acts, but not your own. It sees and acts for you. It hears your voice. And it is fail and little by your wish. It seems to punish you, and thus deserve your hatred for the limitations that it brings to you. Yet you have made of it a symbol for the limitations that you want your mind to have and see and keep. The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call your own and all the rest of what is really yours. You hate it, yet you think it is your self, and that, without it, would your self be lost. This is the secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart. This is the secret oath you take again, wherever you perceive yourself attacked. No on can suffer if he does not see himself attacked, and losing by attack. Unstated and unheard in consiousness is every pledge to sickness. Yet it is a promise to another to be hurt by him, and to attack him in return. Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that it will suffer pain. It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret, in agreement with another´s secret wish to be apart from you, as you would be apart from him. Unless you both agree that is your wish, it can have no effects. Whoever says, ”There is no gap between my mind and yours” had kept God´s promise, not his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. And by his healing is his brother healed. Let this be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and not apart. And he will keep the promise that you make with him, because it is the one that he has made to God, as God has made to him. God keeps His promises; His Son keeps his. In his creation did his Father say, ”You are beloved of Me and I of you forever. Be your perfect as Myself,for you can never be apart from Me.” His Son remembers not that he replied ”I Will,” though in that promise he was born. Yet God reminds him of it every time he does not share a promise to be sick, but lets his mind be healed and unified. His secret vows are powerless before the Will of God, Whose promises he shares. And what he substitutes is not his will, who has made promise of himself to God.

Love

The Ark of Safety

God asks for nothing, and His Son, like Him, need ask for nothing. For there is no lack in him. An empty space, a little gap, would be a lack. And it is only there that he could want to something he has not. A space where God is not, a gap between the Father and the Son is not the Will of either, who have promised to be one. God´s promise is a promise to Himself, and there is no one who could be untrue to what He wills as part of what He is. The promise that there is no gap between Himself and what He is cannot be false. What will can come between what must be one, and inWhose Wholeness there can be no gap? The beautiful relationship you have with all your brothers is a part of you because it is a part of God Himself. Are you no sick, if you deny yourself your wholeness and your health, the Source of help, the Call to healing and the Call to heal? Your savior waits for healing,and the world waits with him. Nor are you apart from it. For healing will beone or not at all, its oneness being where the healing is. What could correct for separation but its opposite? There is no middle ground in any aspect of salvation. You accept is wholly or accept it not. What is unseparated must be joined. And what is joined cannot be separated. Either there is a gap between you and your brother, or you are as one. There is no in between, no other choice, and no allegiance to be split between the two. A split alligance is but faithlessness to both, and merely sets you spinning round, to grasp uncertainly at any straw that seems to hold some promise of relief. Yet who can build this home upon a straw, and count on it as shelter from the wind? The body can be made a home like this, because it lacks foundation in the truth. And yet,because it does, it can be seen as not your home, but merely as an aid to help you reach the Home where God abides. With this as purpose is the body healed.It is not used to witness to the dream of separation and disease. Nor it is idly blamed for what it did not do. It serves to help the healing of God´s Son,and for this purpose it cannot be sick. It will not join a purpose not your own,and you have chosen that it not be sick. All miracles are based upon this choice, and given you the instant it is made. No forms of sickness are immune,becasue the choice cannot be made in terms of form. The choice of sicknessseems to be of form, yet it is one, as is its opposite. And you are sick or well, accordingly. But never you alone. This world is but the dream that you can be alone, and think without affecting those apart from you. To be alone must mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot but be sick. This seems to prove that you must be apart. Yet all it means is that you tried to keep a promise to be true to faithlessness. Yet faithlessness is sickness. It is like the house set upon straw. It seems to be quite solid and substantial in itself.Yet its stability cannot be judged apart from its foundation. If it rests on straw,there is no need to bar the door and lock the window and make fast the bolts. The wind will topple it, and rain will come and carry it into oblivion. What is the sense in seeking to be safe in what was made for danger and for fear? Why burden it with further locks and chains and heavy anchors, when its weaknesslies, not in itself, but in the frailty of the little gap of nothingness where on it stands? What can be safe that rests upon a shadow? Would you build your home upon what will collapse beneath a feather´s weight? Your home is built upon your brother´s health, upon his happiness, his sinlessness and Everything his Father promised him. No secret promise you have made instead his shaken the Foundation of his home. The wind will blow upon it and the rain will be at against it, but with no effect. The world will wash away and yet this house will stand forever, for its strength lies not within itself alone. It is an ark of safety, resting on God´s promise that His Son is safe forever in Himself.What gap can interpose itself between the safety of this shelter and its Source? From here the body can be seen as what it is, and neither less nor more in worth than the extent to which it can be used to liberate God´s Son unto of holiness a little while, because it shares your Father´s Will with you.

Love

THE AWAKENING
The Closing of the Gap

There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent. There is nothing to be feared. There is no way in which a gap could be conceived of in the Wholeness that is His. The compromise the least and the little gap would represent in His eternal Love is quite impossible. For it would mean His Love could harbor just a hint of hate, His gentleness turn sometimes to attack, and His eternal patience sometimes fail. All this do you believe, when you perceive a gap between your brother and yourself. How could you trust Him, then? For He must be deceptive in His Love, Be wary, then; let him not come too close, and leave a gap between you and His Love, through which you can escape if there be need for you to flee. Here is the fear of God most plainly seen. For love is treacherous to those who fear,since fear and hate can never be apart. No one who hates but is afraid of love,and therefore must he be afraid of God. Certain it is he knows not what love means. He fears to love and loves to hate, and so het hinks that love is fearful; hat is love. This is the consequence the little gap must bring to those who cherish it, and think that it is their salvation and their hope. The fear of God! The greatest obstacle that peace must flow across has not yet gone.The rest are past, but this one still remains to block your path, and make the way to light seem dark and fearful, perilous and bleak. You had decided that your brother is your enemy. Sometimes a friend, perhaps, provided that your separate interests made your friendship possible a little while. But not without a gap between you, les the turn again into an enemy. A cautious frienship, limited in scope and carefully restricted in amount, became the treaty you had made with him. You shared a qualified entente, in which a clause of separation was a point on which you both agreed to keep intact. And violating this was thought to be breach of treaty not to be allowd. The gap between you is not one of space between two separate bodies. This but seems to be dividing off your separate minds. It is the symbol of a promise made to meet when you prefer, and separate until you both elect to meet again. And then your bodies seem to get in touch, and signify a meeting place to join. But always is it possible to go your separate ways. Conditional upon the ”right” to separate will you agree to meet from time to time, and keep apart in intervals of separation, which protect you from the ”sacrifice” of love. The body saves you,for it gets away from total sacrifice and gives you time in which to build again your separate seves, which you believe diminish as yo meet. The body could not separate your minds unless you wanted it to be a cause of separationand of distance seen between you. Thus do you endow it with a power that lies not within itself. And herein lies its power over you. For now you think that it determines when you meet, and limits your ability to make communion with each other´s mind. And now it tells you where to go and how to go there, what is feasible for you to undertake, and what you cannot do. It dictates what its health can tolerate, and what will tire it and make it sick. And its ”inherent”weaknesses set up the limitations on what you would do, and keep your purpose limited and weak. The body will accommondate to this, if you would have it so.It will allow but limited indulgences in ”love” with intervals of hatred inbetween. And it will take command of when to ”love,” and when to shrink more safely into fear. It will be sick because you do not know what loving means. And so you must misuse each circumstance and everyone you meet, and see in thema purpose not your own. It is not love that asks a sacrifice. But fear demands the sacrifice of love, for in love´s presence fear cannot abide. For hate to be maintained, love must be feared; and only sometimes presen, sometimes gone.Thus is love seen as treacherous, because it seems to come and go uncertainly,and offer no stability to you. You do not see how limited and weak is your allegiance, and how frequently you have demanded that love go away, and leave you quietly alone in ”peace”. The body, innocent of any goal, is your exuse for variable goals you hold, and force the body to maintain. You do not fear its weakness, but its lack of strength or weakness. Would you recongize that nothing stands between you? Would you know there is no gap behind which you can hide? There is a shock that comes to those who learn their savior is their enemy no more. There is a wariness that is aroused by learning that the body is not real. And there are overtones of seeming fear around the happy message, ”God is Love”. Yet all that happens when the gap is gone is peace eternal. Nothing more than that, and nothing less. Without the fear of God, what could induce you to abandon Him? What toys or trinkets in the gap could serve to hold you back an instant from His Love? Would you allow the body to say ”no” to Heaven´scalling, were you not afraid to find a loss of self in finding God? Yet can yourself be lost by being found?

Love

The Comming of the Guest

Why would you not perceive it as a release from suffering to learn that you are free? Why would you not Acclaim the truth instead of looking on it as an enemy? Why does an easy path, so clearly marked it is impossible to lose the way, seem thorny, rough and far to difficult for you to follow? Is it not because you see it as the road to hell instead of looking on it as a simply way, without a sacrifice or any loss, to find yourself in Heaven and in God? Until you realize you give up nothing,until you understand there is no loss, you will have some regrets about the way that you have chosen. And you will not see the many gains your choice has offered you. Yet though you do not see them, they are there. Their cause has been effected, and they must be present where their cause has entered in. You have accepted healing´s cause, and so it must be you are healed. And being healed, the power to heal must also now be yours. The miracle is not a separate thing that happens suddenly, as an effect without a cause. Nor is it, in itself, a cause. Be where its cause is must it be. Now it is caused, though not as yet perceived. And its effects are there, though not yet seen. Look inward now, and you will not behold a reason for regret, but cause indeed for glad rejoicing and for hope of peace. It has been hopless to attempt to find the hope of peace upon a battleground. It has been futile to demand escape from sin and pain of what was made to serve the function of retaining sin and pain. For pain and sin are one illusion, as are hate and fear, attack and guilt but one.Where they are causeless their effects are gone, and love must come wher ever they are not. Why are you not rejoicing? You are free of pain and sickness,misery and loss, and all effects of hatred and attack. No more is pain your friend and guilt your god, and you should welcome the effects of love. Your Guest has come. You asked Him, and He came. You did not hear Him enter, for you did not wholly welcome Him. And yet His gifts came with Him. He has laid them at your feet, and asks you now that you will look on them and take them for your own. He needs your help in giving them to all who walks apart, believing they are separate and alone. They will be healed when you accept your gifts,because your Guest will welcome everyone whose feet have touched the holy ground whereon you stand, and where His gifts for them are laid. You do not see how much you now can give, because of everything you have received. Yet He Who entered in but waits for you to come where you invited Hm to be. There is no other place where He can find His host, nor where His host can meet with Him. And nowhere else His gifts of peace and joy, and all the happiness His Presence brings, can be obtained. For they are where He is Who brought them with Him, that they might be yours. You cannot see your Guest, but you can see the gifts He brought. And when you look on them, you will believe His Precense must be there. For what you now can do could not be done without the love and grace His Presence holds. Such is the promise of the loving God. His Son have life and every living thing be part of him, and nothing else have life. What you have given ”life” is not alive, and symbolizes but your wish to be alive part from life, alive in death, with death perceived as life, and living, death.Confusion follows on confusion here, for on confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. Its base does not change,although it seems to be in constant change. Yet what is that except the state confusion really means? Stability to those who are confused in meaningless, and shift and change become the law on which they redicate their lives. The body does not change. It represents the larger dream that change is possible. To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you found yourself before. There is no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. Yet here on earth it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things. And they reflect the teacher who is teaching them. The body can appear to change with time, with sickness or with health, and with events that seem to alter it. Yet this but means the mind remains unchanged in its belief of what the purpose of the body is. Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its nothingness is guarantee that it can not be sick. In your demand that it be more than this lies the idea of sickness. For it asks that God be less than all He really is.What, then, becomes of you, for it is you of whom the sacrifice is asked? For He is told that part of Him belongs to Him no longer. He must sacrifice your self,and in His sacrifice are you made more and He is lessened by the loss of you.And what is gone from Him becomes your god, protecting you from being part of Him. The body that is asked to be a god will be attacked, because it snothingness has not been recognized. And so it seems to be a thing with Power in itself. As something, it can be perceived and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. And it can fail to be what you demanded that it be. And you will hate it for its littleness, unmindful and that failure to perceive that it is nothing. Yet its nothingness is your salvation, from which you would flee. As ”something” is the body asked to be God´s enemy, replacing what He is with littleness and limits and despair. It is His loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate. For if He be the Sun of everything, then what is not in Him does not exist, and His completion is its nothingness. Your savior is not dead, nor does he dwell in what was built as a temple unto death. He lives in God, and it is this that makes him savior unto you, and only this. His body´s nothingness realeases yours from sickness and from death. For what is yours cannot be more or less that what is his.

Love

God´s Witnesses

Condemn your savior not because he thinks he is a body. For 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 lerns it must be his to give. Unless he gives he will not know he has, 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 would 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 his perfection? Or are you the proof that He is perfect and complete? Deny Him not His witness in the dream His Son prefers 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 leath is yet one theme of truth, no more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of light created in the dark, where God still shines. You cannot Wake yourself. Yet 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. There, in its place,God´s witness has set forth the gentle way of kindness to God´s Son. Whom you forgive is given power to forgive you your illusions. By your gift of freedom it is given unto you. Make way for love, which you did not create, but which you can extend. On earth this means forgive your brother, that the darkness maybe lifted from your mind. When light has come to him through your forgiveness, he will not forget his savior, leaving him unsaved. For it was in your face he saw the light that he would keep beside him, as he walks through darkness tothe everlasting Light. How holy are you, that the Son of God can be your savior in the midst of dream 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, so 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 on you. And in his glad salvation you are saved.

Love

Dream Roles

Do you believe that truth can be but some illusions? They are dreams because they are not true. Their equal lack of truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which means that you have understood that dreams are dreams; and that escape depends, not on the dream,but only on awaking. Could it be some dreams are kept, and others, wakened from? The choice is not between which dreams to keep, but only if you want to live in dreams or to waken from them. Thus it is the miracle does not select some dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence. You cannot dream some Dreams and wake from some, for you are either sleeping or awake. And dreaming goe swith only one of these. The dreams you think you like would hold you back as much as those in which the fear is seen. For every dream is but a dream offear, no matter what the form it seems to take. The fear is seen within,without, or both. Or it can be disguised in pleasant form. But never is it absent from the dream, for fear is the material of dreams, from which they all are made. Their form can change, but they cannot be made of something else. The miracle were tracherous indeed if it allowed you still to be afraid because you did not recognize the fear. You would not then be willing to awake, for which the miracle prepares the way. In simplest form, it can be said attack is are sponse to function unfulfilled as you perceive the function. It can be in you or someone else, but where it is perceived it will be there it is attacked.Depression or assault must be the theme of every dream, for they are made of fear. The thin disguise of pleasure and of joy in which they may be wrapped but slightly veils the heavy lump of fear that is their core. And it is this the miracle perceives, and not the wrappings in which it is bound. When you are angry, is it not because someone has failed to fill the function you allotted him? And does not this become the ”reason” you attack is justified? The Dreams you think you like are those in which the functions yo have given have been filled; the needs which you ascribe to you are met. It does not matter if theybe fulfilled or merely wanted. It is the idea that they exist from which the fears arise. Dreams are not wanted more or less. They are desired or not. And each one represents some function that you have assigned; some goal which an event, or body, or a thing should represent, and should achieve for you. If it succeeds you think you like the dream. If it should fail you think the dream is sad. But whether it succeeds or fails is not its core, but just the flimsy covering. How happy would your dreams become if you were not the one who gave the ”proper” role to every figure which the dream contains No one can fail but your idea of him, and there is no betrayal but of this. The core of dreams the Holy Spirit gives is never one of fear. The coverings may appear to change, but what they mean has changed because they cover something else. Perceptions are determined by their purpose, in that they seem to be what they are for. A shadow figure who attacks becomes a brother giving you a chance to help, if this becomes the function of the dream. And dreams of sadness thus are turned to joy. What is your brother for? You do not know, because your function is obscure to you. Do not ascribe a role to him that you imagine would bring happiness to you. And do not try to hurt him when he fails to take the part that you assigned to him, in what you dream your life was meant to be. He asks for help in every dream he has, and you have help to give him if you see the function of the dream as He perceives its function, Who can utilize all Dreams as means to serve the function given Him. Because He loves the dreamer, not thedream, each dream becomes an offering of love. For at its center is His Love for you, which lights whatever form it takes with love.

Love

The Changeless Dwelling Place

There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten; where no memory of sin and of illusion linger still. There is a place in you which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard. There is a resting place so still no sound except a hymn to Heaven rises up to gladden God the Father and the Son. Where both abide areThey remembered, both. And where They are is Heaven and is peace. Think not that you can change Their dwelling place. For your Identity abides in Them, and where They are, forever must you be. The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within. Here is the role the Holy Spirit gives to you who wait upon the Son of God, and would behold him waken and be glad. He is part of you and you of him, because he is his Father´s Son, and not for any purpose you may see in him. Nothing is asked of you but to accept the changeless and eternal that abide in him, for your Identity is there. The Peace in you can but be found in him. And every thought of love you offer him but brings you nearer to your wakening to peace eternal and endless joy. This sacred Son of God is like yourself, the mirror of his Father´s Love for you,the soft reminder of his Father´s Love by which he was created and which still abides in him as it abides in you. Be very still and hear God´s Voice in him,and let It tell you what his function is. He was created that you might be whole, for only the complete can be a part of God´s completion, which created you. There is no gift the Father asks of you but that you see in all Creation but the shining glory of His gift to you. Behold His Son, His perfect gift, in whom his Father shines forever, and to whom is all creation given as his own.Because he has it is it given you, and where it lies in him behold your peace.The quiet that surrounds you dwells in him, and from this quiet come the happy dream in which your hand are joined in innocence. These are not hands that grasp in dreams of pain. They hold no sword, for they have left their hold one very vain illusion of this world. And being empty they receive, instead, a brother´s hand in which completion lies. If you but knew the glorious goal that lies beyond forgiveness, you would not keep hold on any thought, however light the touch of evil on it may appear to be. For you would understand how great the cost of holding anything God did not give in minds that can direct the hand to bless, and lead God´s Son unto his Father´s house. Would you not want to bea friend to him, created by his Father as His home? If God esteems him worthy of Himself, would you attack him with the hands of hate? Who would lay bloody hands on Heaven itself, and hope to find its peace? Your brother thinks he holds the hand of death. Believe him not. But learn, instead, how blessed are you who can release him, just by offering him yours. A dream is given you in which he is your savior, not your enemy in hate. A dream is given you which you have forgiven him for all his dreams of death; a dream of hope you share with him, instead of dreaming evil separate dreams of hate. Why does it seem so hard to share this dream? Because unless the Holy Spirit gives the dream its function, it was made for hate, and will continue in death´s services. Each form it takes in some way calls for death. And those who serve the lord of death have come to worship in a separated world, each with his tiny spear and rusted sword, to keep his ancient promises to die. Such is the core of fear in every dream that has been kept apart from use by Him Who sees a different function for a dream. When dreams are shared they lose the function of attackand separation, even though it was for this that every dream was made. Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is not where changelessness is found. Let us be glad indeed that this is so, and seek not the eternal in this world. Forgiving dreams are means to step aside from dreming of a world outside yourself. And leading finally beyond all dreams, unto the peace of everlasting life.

Love

Forgiveness and the End of Time

How willing are you to forgive your brother? How much do you desire peace instead of endless strife and misery and pain? These questions are the same, in different form. Forgiveness is your peace, for herein lies the end of separation and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss. This isthe ”sacrifice” salvation asks, and gladly offers peace instead of this. Swear not to die, you holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot be killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that must be one. What seems eternal all will have an end. The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons and the lives of men; Where time has se an end is not where the eternal is. God´s Soncan never change by what men made of him. He will be as he was and as he is,for time appointed not his destiny, nor set the hour of his birth and death.Forgiveness will not change him. Yet time waits upon forgivness that the things of time may disappear because they have no use. Nothing survives its purpose.If it be conceived to die, then die it must unless it does not take this purpose as its own. Change is the only thing that can be made a blessing here,where purpose is not fixed, however changeless it appears to be, and establish it as changeless and eternal. You can give yourself a purpose that you do not have. But you can not remove the power to change your mind, and see Another purpose there. Change is the greatest gift God gave to all that you would make eternal, to ensure that only Heaven would not pass away. You were not born to die. You cannot change, because your function has been fixed by God. All other goals are set in time and change that time might be preserved, excepting one.Forgiveness does not aim at keeping time, but at its ending, when it has no use. Its purpose ended, it is gone. And where it once held seeming sway is now restored the function God established for His Son in full awareness. Time can set no end to its fulfillment nor its changelessness. There is no death because the living share the function their Creator gave to them. Life´s function cannot be to die. It must be life´s extension, that it be as one forever and forever, without end. This world will bind your feet and tie your hands and kill your body only if you think that it was made to crusify God´s Son. For even though it was a dream of death, you need not let it stand for this to you. Let this be changed, and nothing in the world but must be changed as well. For nothing here but is defined as what you see it for. How lovely is the World whose purpose is forgiveness of God´s Son! How free from fear, how filled with blessing and with happiness! And what a joyous thing it is to dwell a Little while in such a happy place! Nor can it be forgot, in such a world, it is a little while till timelessness comes quietly to take the place of time.

Love

Seek Not Outside Yourself

Seek not outside yourself. For it will fail, and you will weep each time and idol falls. Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace excepting there. Each idol that you worship when God calls will never answer in His place. There is no other answer you can substitute, and find the happiness. His answer brings. Seek not outside yourself. For all your path comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found. What if it is not there?Do you prefer that you be right or happy? Be you glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer elsewhere. You will fail. But it is given you to know the truth, and not to seek for it ourside yourself. No one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion, or some Dream that there is something outside of himself that will bring happiness and peace to him. If everything is in him this cannot be so. And therefore by his coming,he denies the truth about himself, and seeks for something more than everything, as if a part of it were separated off and found where all the rest of it is not. This is the purpose he bestows upon the body; that it seek for what he lacks, and give him what would make himself complete. And thus he wanders aimlessly about, in seach of something that he cannot find, believing that he is what he is not. The lingering illusion will impel him to seek out a thousand idols, and to seek beyond them for a thousand more. And each will fail him, all excepting one; for he will die, and does rot understand the idol that he seeks is but his death. Its form appears to be outside himself. Yet does he seek tokill God´s Son within, and prove that he is victor over him. This is the purpose every idol has, for this the role that is assigned to it, and this the role that cannot be fulfilled. Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in whichthe body´s betterment is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death. For you believe that you can suffer lack, and lack is death. To sacrifice is to give up, and thus to be without and and to have suffered loss.And by this giving up is life renounced. Seek not outside yourself. The serch implies you are not whole within and fear to look upon your devastation, but prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are. Idols must fall because they have no life, and what is lifeless is sign of death. You came to die, and what would you expect but to perceive the signs of death you seek? No sadness and no suffering proclaim a message other than an idol found that represents a parody of life which, in its lifelessness, is really death, conceived as real and given living form. Yet each must fail and crumble and decay, because a form of death cannot be life, and what is sacrificed cannot be whole. All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is outside yourself to be complete and happy. It is vain to worship idols in the hope of peace. God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idols takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself. Let us forget the purpose of the world the past has given it. For otherwises, the future will be like the past,and but a series of depressing dreams, in which all idols fail you, one by one,and you see death and disappointment everywhere. To change all this, and open up a road of hope and of release in what appeared to be an endless circle of despair, you need but to decide you do not know the purpose of the world. You give it goals it does not have, and thus do you decide what it is for. You try to see in it a place of idols found outside yourself, with power to make complete what is within by splitting what you are between the two. You choose your dreams, for they are what you wish, perceived as if it had been given you.Your idols do what you would have them do, and have the power you ascribe to them. And you pursue them vainly in the dream, because you want their power as your own. Yet where are dreams, but in a mind asleep? And can a dream succeed in making real the picture it projects outside itself? Save time, my brother;learn what time is for. And speed the end of idols in a world made sad and sickby seeing idols there. Your holy mind is altear unto God, and where He is no idols can abide. The fear of God is but the fear of loss of idols. It is not the fear of loss of your reality. But you have made of your reality an idol,which you must protect against the light of truth. And all the world becomes the means by which this idol can be saved. Salvation thus appears to threaten life and offer death. It is not so. Salvation seeks to prove there is no death,and only life exists. The sacrifice of death is nothing lost. An idol cannot take the place of God. Let Him remind you of His Love for you, and do not seekto drown His Voice in chants of deep despair to idols of yourself. Seek not outside your Father for your hope. For hope of happiness is not despair.

Love

The Anti-Christ

What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. That is the only power that they have. Their purpose is obscure, and they are feared and worshipped, both, because you do not know what they are for, and why they have been made. An idol is an image of your brother that you would value more that he is. Idols are made that he may be replaced, no matter what their form. And it is this that never is perceived and recognized. Be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or a circomstance, and object owned or wanted, or a right demamded or achieved, it is the same. Let not their form deceive you. Idols are but substitutes for your reality. In some way, you believe they will complete your little self, for safety in a world perceived as dangerous,with forces massed against your confidence and peace of mind. They have the power to supply your lacks, and add the value that you do not have. No one believes in idols who has not enslaved himself to littleness and loss. And thus must seek beyond his little self for strength to raise his head, and stand apart from all the misery the world reflects. This is the penalty for looking not within for certainty and quiet calm that liberates you from the world, and lets you stand apart, in quiet and in peace. An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of anti-Christ, that constitutes a gap between the Christ and what you see. An idol is a wish, made tangible and given form, and thus perceived as real and seen outside the mind. Yet it is still a thought,and cannot leave the mind that is its source. Nor is its form apart from the idea it represents. All forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ. And fall Before His face lika a dark veil that seems to shut your off from Him, alone in darkness.Yet the light is there. A cloud does not put out the sun. No more a veil can banish what it seems to separate, nor darken by one with the light itself. The world of idols is a veil across the face of Christ, because its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself. A dark and fearful purpose, yet a thought without the power to change one blade of grass from something living to a sign of death. Its form is nowhere, for its source abides within your mind where God abideth not. Where is this place where what is everywhere has been excluded and been kept apart? What hand could be held up to block God´s way? Whose voice could make demand He enter not? The ”more-than-everything” is not a thing to make you tremble and to guail in fear. Christ´s enemy is nowhere. He can take no form in which he ever will be real. What is an idol? Nothing! It must be believed before it seems to come to life, and given power that it may befeared. Its life and power are its believer´s gift, and this is what the miracle restores to what has life and power worthy of the gift of Heaven and eternal peace. The miracle does not restore the truth, the light the veil between has not out out. It merely lifts the veil, and lets the truth shine unencumbered, being what it is. It does not need belief to be itself, for it has been created; so it is. An idol is established by belief, and when it is withdrawn the idol ”dies.” This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power past omnipotece, a place beyond the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and Place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened.Here the deathless come to die, the all encompassing to suffer loss, the timelessto be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God,as perfect, sinless and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while;to suffer pain and finally to die. Where is an idol? Nowhere! Can there be a gap in what is infinite, a place where time can interrupt eternity? A place of darkness set where all is light, a dismal alcove separated off from what is endless has no place to be. An idol is beyond where God has set all things and left no room for anything to be except His Will. Nothing and nowhere must an idol be, while God is everything and everywhere. What purpose has an idol,then? What is it for? This is the only question that has many answers, each depending on the one of whom the question has been asked. The world believes in idols. No one comes unless he worshipped them, and still attempts to seek for one that yet might offer him a gift reality does not contain. Each worshipper of idols harbors hope his special deities will give him more than other men possess. It must be more. It does not really matter more of what; more beauty,more intelligence, more wealth, or even more affliction and more pain. But more of something is an idol for. And when one fails another takes its place, with hope of finding more of something else. Be not deceived by forms the ”something” takes. An idol is a means for getting more. And it is this that is against God´s Will. God has not many sons, but only one. Who can have more, and who begiven less? It is for him the Holy Spirit speaks, and tells you idols have no purpose here. For more than Heaven can you never have. If Heaven is within, why would you seek for idols that would make of Heaven less, to give you more than God bestowed upon your brother and on you, as one with Him? God gave you all there is. And to be sure you could not lose it, did He also give the same to every living thing as well. And thus is every living thing a part of you, as of Himself. No idol can establish you as more than God. But you will never becontent with being less.

Love

The Forgiving Dream

The slave of idols is a willing slave. For willing he must be to let himself bow down in worship to what has no life, and seek for power in the powerless. What happened to the holy Son of God that this could be his wish; to let himself fall lower than the stones upon the ground, and look to idols that they raise him up? Hear, then, your story in the dream you made, and ask yourself if it be not the truth that you Believe that it is not a dream. A dream of judgment came into the mind that God created perfect as Himself. And in that dream was Heaven changed to hell, and God made enemy unot His Son. How can God´s Son awaken from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge not, and he will waken. For the dream will seem to last while he is part of it. Judge not, for he who judges will have need of idols, which will hold the judgment of from resting on himself. Nor can he know the Self he has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself a part of evil dreams, where idols are your ”true” identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid in terror and in guilt upon yourself. All figures is the Dream are idols, made to save you from the dream. Yet they are part of what they have been made to save you from. Thus does an idol keep the dream alive and terrible, for who could wish for one unless he were in terror and despair? And this the idol represents, and so its worship is the worship of despair and terror, and the dream from which they come. Judgment is an injustice to God´s Son, and it is justice that who judges him will not escape the penalty he laid upon himself within the dream he made. God knows of justice, not of penalty. But in the dream of judgment you attack and are condemned; and wish to be the slave of idols, which are interposed between your judgment and the penalty it brings. There can be no salvation in the dream as you are dreaming it. For idols must be part of it, to save you from what you believe you have accomplished, and have done to make you sinful and put out the light within you. Little child, the light is there. You do but dream, and idols are the toys you dream you play with. Who has need of toys but children? They pretend they rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and talk and think and feel and speak to them. Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the minds of those who play with them.But they are eager to forget that they made up the dream in which their toys are real, nor recognize their wishes are their own. Nightmares are childish dreams. The toys have turned against the child who thought he made them real.Yet can a dream attack? Or can a toy grow large and dangerous and fierce and wild? This does the child believe, because he fears his thoughts and gives them to the toys instead. And their reality becomes his own, because they seem to save him from his thoughts. Yet do they keep his thoughts alive and real, but seen outside himself, where they can turn against him for his treachery to them. He thinks he needs them that he may escape his thoughts, because he thinks the thoughts are real. And so he makes of anything a toy, to make his world remain outside himself, and play that he is but a part of it. There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. Seek not to retain the toys of children. Put them all away, for you have need of them no more. The dream of judgment is a children´s game, in which the child becomes the father,powerful, but with the little wisdom of a child. What hurts him is destroyed;what helps him, blessed. Except he judges this as does a child, who does not know what hurts and what will heal. And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he made.Yet is the real world unaffected by the world he thinks is real. Nor have its laws been changed because he does not understand. The real world still is but a dream. Except the figures have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray. It is a dream in which no one is used to substitute for something else, nor interposed between the thoughts the mind conceives and what it sees. No one is used for something he is not, for childish things have all been put away.And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy, because that is the purpose that it has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms that enter in the dream are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love. Forgiving dreams have little need to last. They are not made to separate the mind from what it thinks. They do not seek to prove the dream is being dreamed by someone else.And in these dreams a melody is heard that everyone remembers, though he has not heard it since before all time began. Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, butwith the holiness that never left the altar that abides forever deep within the Son of God. And when he hears this song again, he knows he never heard it not.And where is time, when dreams of judgment have been put away? Whenever you feel fear in any form, - and you are fearful if you do not feel a deep content,a certainty of help, a calm assurance Heaven goes with you, - be sure you made an idol, and believe it will betray you. For beneath your hope that it will save you lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal and uncertainty, so deep and bitter that the dream cannot conceal completely all your sense of doom. Yourself-betrayal must result in fear, for fear is judgment, leading surely to the frantic search for idols and for death. Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety and have not attacked yourself. So do your childish terrors melt away, and dreams become a sign that you have made a new beginnig, not Another try to worship idols and to keep attack. Forgiving dreams are kind to everyone who figures in the dream. And so they bring the dreamer full release from dreams of fear. He does not fear his judgment for he has judged no one, nor has sought to be released through judgment from what judgment must impose. And all the while he is remembering what he forgot, when judgment seemed to be the way to save him from its penalty.

Love

THE NEW BEGINNING
Rules for Decision

Decisions are continous. You do not always know when you are making them. But with a little practice with the ones you recognize, a set begins to form which sees you through the rest. It is not wise to let yourself becomes preoccupied with every step you take. The proper set, adopted consciously each time you wake, will put you well ahead.And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. Do not fight yourself. But think about the kind of day you want, and tell yourself there is a way in which this very day can happen just like that. Then try again to have the day you want.
1 The outlook starts with this:
”Today I will make no decisionsby myself.”
This means that you are choosing not to be the judge of what to do. But it must also means you will not judge the situations where you will be called upon to make response. For if you judge them, you have set the rules for how you should react to them. And then Another answer cannot but produce confusion and uncertainty and fear. This is your major problem now. You still make up your mind, and then decide to ask what you should do. And what you hear may not resolve the problem as you saw it first.This leads to fear, because it contradicts what you perceive and so you feel attacked. And therefore angry. There are rules by which this will not happen.But it does occur at first, while you are learning how to hear.
2 Throughout the day, at anytime you think of it and have a quiet moment for reflection, tell yourself again the kind of day you want; the feeling you would have, the things you want to happen to you, and the thing you would experience, and say,
”If I make no decisions by myself,
This is the day that will begiven me.”
These two procedures, praticed well, will serve to let you be directed without fear, for opposition will not first arise and then become a problem in itself. But there will still be times when you have judged already. Now the answer will provoke attack, unless you quickly straighten out your mind to want to answer that will work. Be certain this has happened if you feel yourself unwilling to sit by and ask to have the answer given to you. This means you have decided by yourself, and can not see the question. Now you need a quick restorative before you ask again.
3 Remember once again the day you want, and recongnize that something has occured that is not part of it.Then realize that you have asked a question by yourself, and must have set ananswer in your terms. Then say:
”I have no question. I forgot what to decide.”
This cancels out the terms that you have set, and lets the answer show you what the question must have really been. Try to observe this rule without delay, despite your opposition. For you have already gotten angry. And your fear of being answered in a different way from what your version of the questins asks will gain momentum, until you believe the day you want is one in which you get your answer to your question.And you will not get it, for it would destroy the day by robbing you of what you really want. This can be very hard to realize, when once you have decided by yourself the rules that promise you a happy day. Yet this decision still canbe undone, by simple methods that you can accept.
4 If you are so unwilling to recieve you cannot even let your question go, you can begin to change your mind with this:
”At least I can decide I do notlike what I feel now.”
This much is obvious, and paves the way for the next easy step.
5 Having decided that you do not like the way you feel, what could be easier than to continue with,
”And so I hope I have been wrong.”
This works against the sense of opposition, and reminds you that help is not being trust upon you but is something that you want and that you need, because you do not like the way you feel. This tiny opening will be enough to let you go ahead with just a few more steps you need to let yourself be helped. Now you have reached the turning point, because it has occurred to you that you will again if what you have decided is not so. Until this point is reached, you will believe your happiness depends on being right. But this much reason have you now attained; you would be better off if you were wrong.
6 This tiny grain of wisdom will suffice to take you further. You are not coerced, but merely hope to get athing you want. And you can say in perfect honsety,
”I want another way to look at this.”
Now you have changed your mind about the day, and have remembered what you really want. Its purpose has no longer been obscured by the insane belief you want it for the goal of being right when you are wrong. Thus is the readiness for asking brought to your awareness, for you cannot be in conflict when you ask for what you want, and see that it is this for which you ask.
7 This final step is but acknowledgment of lack of opposition to be helped. It is a statement of an openmind, not certain yet, but willing to be shown:
”Perhaps there is another way to look at this.
What can I lose by asking?”
Thus you now can ask a question that makes sense, and so the answer will make sense as well. Nor will you fight against it, for you see that it is you who will be helped by it. It must be clear that it is easier to have a happy day if you prevent unhappiness from entering at all. But this takes practice in the rules that will protect you from the ravages of fear. When this has been achived, the sorry dream of judgment has forever been undone. But meanwhile, you have need for practicing the rules for its undoing. Let us, then, consider once again the very first of the decisions which are offered here. We said you can begin a happy day with the determination not to make decisions by yourself. This seems to be a real decision in itself. And yet, you cannot make decisions by yourself. The only question really is with what you choose to make them. That is really all. The first rule, then, is not coercion, but a simple statement of a simple fact. You will not make decisions by yourself whatever you decide. For they are made with idols or with God. And you ask help of anti-Christ or Christ, and which you choose will join with you and tell you what to do. Your day is not at random.It is set by what you choose to live it with, and how the friend whose counsel you have sought perceives your happiness. You always ask advice before you can decide on anything. Let this be understood, and you can see there cannot be coercion here, nor grounds for opposition that you may be free. There is no freedom from what must occur. And if you think there is you must be wrong. The second rule as well is but a fact. For you and your adviser must agree on what you want before it can occur. It is but this agreement that permits all things to happen. Nothing can be caused without some from of union, be it a dream of judgment of the Voice of God. Decisions cause results because they are not made in isolation. They are made by you and your adviser, for yourself and for the world as well. The day you want you offer to the world, for it will be what you have asked for, and will reinforce the rule of your adviser in the world. Whose kingdom is the world fo you today? What kind of day will you decide to have? It needs but two who would have happiness this day to promise it to all the world.It needs but two to understand that they cannot decide alone, to guarantee the joy they asked for will be wholly shared. For they have understood the basic law that makes decision powerful, and gives it all effects that it will ever have. It needs but two. These two are joined before there can be a decision.Let this be the one reminder that you keep in mind, and you will have the day you want, and give it to the world by having it yourself. Your judgment has been lifted from the world by your decision for a happy day. And as you have received, so must you give.

Love

Freedom of Will

Do you not understand that to oppose the Holy Spirit is to fight yourself? He tells you but your will; He speaks for you. In His Divintiy is but your own. And all he knows is but your knowledge, saved for you that you may do your will through Him. God asks you do your will. He joins with you. He did not set His Kingdom up alone. And Heaven itself but represents your will, where everything created is for you. No spark of life but was created with your glad consent, as you would have it be. And not one Thought that God has ever had but waited for your blessing to be born.God is no enemy to you. He asks no more than that He hear you call Him”Friend”. How wonderful is it to do your will! For that is freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom´s name. Unless you do your will you are not free. And would God leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never lose your will when He gave you His perfect Answer. Hear It now, that you may be reminded of His Love and learn your will. God would not have His Son made prisoner to what he does not want.He joins with you in willing you be free. And to oppose Him is to make a choice against yourself, and choose that you be bound. Look once again upon enemy, the one you chose to hate instead of love. For thus was hatred born into the world,and thus the rule of fear established there. Now hear God speak to you, through Him Who is His Voice and yours as well, reminding you that it is not your will to hate and be prisoner to fear, a slave to death, a little creature with a little life. Your will is boundless; it is not your will that it be bound. What lies in you has joined with God Himself in all creation´s birth. Remember Him Who has created thing but gives you thanks, for it is by your will that it was born. No light of Heaven shines except for you, for it was set in Heaven by your will. What cause have you for anger in a world that merely waits your blessing to be free? If you be prisoner, then God Himself could not be free.For what is done to him whom God so loves is done to God Himself. Think not He wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him.He would but keep your will forever and forever limitless. This world awaits the freedom you will give when you have recognized that you are free. But you will not forgive the world until you have forgiven Him Who gave your will to you. For it is by your will the world is given freedom. Nor can you be free apart from Him Whose holy Will you share. God turns to you to ask the world besaved, for by your own salvation is it healed. And no one walks upon the Earth but must depend on your decision, that he learn death has no power over him,because hes hares your freedom as hes hares your will. It is your will to heal him, and because you have decided with him, he is healed. And now is God forgiven, for you chose to look upon your brother as a friend.

Love

Beyond All Idols

Idols are quite specific. But your will is universal, being limitless. And so it has no form, nor is content for its expression in the terms of form. Idols are limits. They are the belief that there are forms that will bring happiness, and that, by limiting, is all attained.It is as if you said, ”I have no need of everything. This little thing I want,and it will be as everything to me.” And this must fail to satisfy, because it is your will that everything be yours. Decide for idols and you ask for loss.Decide for truth and everything is yours. It is not form you seek. What form can be a substitute for God the Father´s Love? What form can take the place ofall the love in the Divinity of God the Son? What idol can make two of what is one? And can the limitless be limited? You do not want an idol. It is not your will to have one. It will not bestow on you the gift you seek. When you decide upon the form of what you want, you lose the understanding of its purpose. So you see your will within the idol, thus reducing it to a specific form. Yet this could never be your will, because what shares in all creation cannot be content with small ideas and little things. Behind the search for every idollies the yearning for completion. Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited.To seek a special person or a thing to add to you to make yourself complete,can only mean that you believe some form is missing. And by finding this, you will achive completion in a form you like. This is the purpose of an idol; that you will not look beyond it, to the source of the belief that you are incomplete. Only if you had sinned could this be so. For sin is the idea you are alone and separated off from what is whole. And thus it would be necessary for the search for wholeness to be made beyond the boundaries of limits on yourself. It never is the idol that you want. But what you think it offers you,you want indeed and have the right to ask for. Nor could it be possible it be denied. Your will to be complete is but God´s Will, and this is given you by being His. God knows not form. He cannot answer you in terms that heve no meaning. And you will could not be satisfied with empty forms, made but to fill a gap that is not there. It is not this you want. Creation gives no separate person and no separate things the power to complete the Son of God. What idol can be called upon to give the Son of God what he already has? Completion is the function of God´s Son. He has no need to seek for it at all. Beyond all idols stands his holy will to be but what he is. For more than whole is meaningless. If there were change in him, if he could be reduced to any form and limited to what is not in him, he would not be as God created him. What idol can he need to be himself? For can he give a part of him away? What is not whole cannot make whole. But what is really asked for cannot be denied. Your will is garanted. Not in any form that would content you not, but in the whole completely lovely Thought God holds of you. Nothing that God knows not exists.And what He knows exists forever, changelessly. For thoughts endure as long as does the mind that thought of them. And in the Mind of God there is no ending,nor a time a in which His Thoughts were absent or could suffer change. Thoughts you think are in your mind, as you are the Mind Which thought of you. And so there are no separate parts in what exists within God´s Min d. It is forever one, eternally united and at peace. Thoughts seem to come and go. Yet all this means is that you are sometimes aware of them, and sometimes not. An unremembered thought is born again to you when it returns to your awareness.Yet it did not die when you forgot it. It was always there, but you were unaware of it. The Thought God holds of you is perfectly unchanged by your forgetting. It will always be exactly as it was before the time when you forgot, and will be just the same when you remember. And it is the same within the interval when you forgot. The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change,and shine forever. They await not birth. They wait for welcome and remembering.The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. Yet still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there; no instant when its lights grew dimmer or less perfectever was. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky that holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embrace it and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven.It is not the distance nor the time that keeps this star invisible to earth.But those who seek for idols cannot know that star is there. Beyond all idols is the Thought God holds of you. Completely unaffected by the turmoil and the terror of the world, the dreams of birth and death that here are dreamed, the myriad of forms that fear can take; quite undisturbed, the Thought God holds of you remains exactly as it always was. Surrounded by a stillness so complete not sound of battle comes remotely near, it rests in certainty and perfect peace.Here is your one reality kept safe, completely unaware of all the world that worships idols, and that knows not God. In perfect sureness of its changelessness and of its rest in its eternal home, the Thought God holds of you has never left the Mind of its Creator, Whom it knows as its Creator knows that it is there. Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where you are? Is your reality a thing apart from you, and in a world which your reality knows nothing of? Outside you there is no eternal sky, no changeless star and no realtiy. The mind of Heaven´s Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of Father and of Son joined in creation which can have no end. You have not two realities, but one. Nor can you be aware of more than one. And idol or the Though tGod holds of you is your reality. Forget not, then, that idols must keep hidden what you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your own. The star shines still; the sky has never changed. But you, the holy Son of God Himself, are unaware of your reality.

Love

The Truth Behind Illusions

You will attack what does not satisfy, and thus you will not see you made it up. You always fight illusions.For the truth behind them is so lovely and so still in loving gentleness, were you aware of it you would forget defensivness entirely, and rush to its embrace. The truth could never be attacked. And this you knew when you made idols. They were made that this might be forgotten. You attack but false ideas,and never truthful ones. All idols are the false ideas you made to fill the gap you think arose between yourself and what is true. And you attack them for the things you think they represent. What lies beyond them cannot be attacked. The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children´s toys. A child is frightened when a wooden head springs up as a closed box is opened suddenly, or when a soft and silent woolly bear begins to squek as he takes hold of it. The rules he made for boxes and for bears have failed him, and have broken his”control” of what surrounds him. And he is afraid, because he thought the rules protected him. And he is afraid, because he thought the rules protected him.Now must he learn the boxes and the bears did not deceive him, broke no rules,nor mean his world is made chaotic and unsafe. He was mistaken. He misunderstood what made him safe, and thought that it had left. The gap that is not there is filled with toys in conuntless forms. And each one seems to break the rules you set for it. It never was the things you thought. It must appear to break you rules for safety, since the rules were wrong. But you are not endangered. You can laugh at popping heads and squeaking toys, as does the child who learns they are not threat to him. Yet while he likes to play with them, he still perceives them as obeying rules he made for his enjoyment. So there still are rules that they can seem to break and frighten him. Yet is heat the mercy of his toys? And can they represent a threat to him? Reality observes the laws of God, and not the rules you set. It is His laws that guarantee your safety. All illusions that you believe about yourself obey no laws. They seem to dance a little while, according to the rules you set for them. But then they fall and cannot rise again. They are but toys, my child, so do not grieve for them. Their dancing never brought you joy. But neither were they things to frighten you, nor make you safe if they obeyed your rules. They must be neither cherished nor attacked, but merely looked upon as children´s toys without a single meaning of their own. See one in them and you will see the mall. See none in them and they will touch you not. Appearances deceive because they are appearances and not reality. Dwell not on them in any form. They but obscure reality, and they bring fear because they hide the truth. Do not attack what you have made to let you be deceived, for thus you prove that you have been deceived. Attack has power to make illusions real. Yet what it makes is nothing. Who could be made fearful by a power that can have no real effect at all? What could it be but an illusion, making things appear like to itself?Look calmly at its toys, and understand that they are idols which but dance to vain desire. Give them not your worship, for they are not there. Yet this is equally forgotten in attack. God´s Son needs no defense against his dreams. His idols do not threaten him at all. His one mistake is the he thinks them real.What can the power of illusions do? Appearances can but decieve the mind that wants to be deceived. And you can make a simple choice that will forever Place you far beyond deception. You need not concern yourself with how this will be done, for this you cannot understand. But you will understand that Mighty changes have been quickly brought about, when you decide one very simple thing; you do not want whatever you believe an idol gives. For thus the Son of God declares that he is free of idols. And thus is he free. Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be except a happy dream? It asks you but that you forgive all things that no one ever did; to overlook what is not there, and not to look upon the unreal as reality. You are but asked to let your will be done, and seek no longer for the things you do not want. And you are asked to let yourself be free of all the dreams of what you never were, and seek no more to substitute the strength of idle wishes for the Will of God. Here does the dream of separation start to fade and disappear. For here the gap that is not there begins to be perceived without the toys of terror that you made. No more than this is asked. Be glad indeed salvation asks so little, not so much. It asks for nothing in reality. And ever in illusions it but asks forgiveness be the substitute for fear. Such is the only rule for happy dreams. The gap is emptied of the toys of fear, and the nits unreality its plain. Dreams are for nothing. And the Son of God can have no need of them. They offer him no single thing that he could ever want. He is delivered from illusions by his will, and but restored to what he is. What could God´s plan for his salvation be, except a means to give him to Himself?

Love

The Only Purpose

The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. Fear is not its goal, for the escape from guilt becomes its aim. The value of forgiveness is perceived and takes the place of idols, are sought no longer,for their ”gifts” are not held dear. No rules are idly set, and no demands are made of anyone or anything to twist and fit into the dream of fear. Instead,there is a recognized that all things must be first forgiven, and then understood. Here, it is thought that understanding is acquired by attack.There, it is clear that by attack is understanding lost. The folly of persuing guilt as goal is fully reconginzed. And idols are not wanted there, for guilt is understood as the sole cause of pain in any form. No on is tempted by its vain appeal, for suffering and death have been perceived as things not wanted and not striven for. The possiblility of freedom has been grasped and welcomed,and the means by which it can be gained can now be understood. The world becomes a place of hope, because its only purpose is to be a place where hope of happiness can be fulfilled. And no one stands outside this hope, because the world has been united in belief the purpose of the world is one which all must share, if hope be more than just a dream. Not yet is Heaven quite remembered,for the purpose of forgivness still remians. Yet everyone is certain he will go beyond forgiveness, and he but remains until it is made perfect in himself. He has no wish for anything but this. And fear has dropped away, because he is united in his purpose with himself. There is a hope of happiness in him so sureand constant he can barely stand and wait a little longer, with his feet still touching earth. Yet is he glad to wait till every hand is joined, and every heart made ready to arise and go with him. For thus is he made ready for the step in which is all forgiveness left behind. The final step is God´s, because it is but God Who could create a perfect Son and share His Fatherhood with him. No one outside of Heaven knows how this can be, for understanding this is Heaven itself. Even the real world has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity. And so is Heaven´s Son prepared to be himself, and to remember that the Son of God knows everything his Father understands, and understands it perfectly with Him. The real world still falls short of this, for this is God´sOwn purpose; only His, and yet completely shared and perfectly fulfilled. The real world is a state in which the mind has learned how easily do idols go when they are still perceived but wanted not. How willingly the mind can let them go when it has understood that idols are nothing and nowhere, and are purposeless.For only then can guilt and sin be seen without a prupose, and as meaningless.Thus is the real world´s purpose gently brought into awareness, to replace the goal of sin and guilt. And all that stood between your image of yourself and what you are, forgiveness washes joyfully away. Yet God need not create His Sonagain, that what is his be given back to him. The gap between your brother and yourself was never there. And what the Son of God knew is creation he must know again. When brothers join in purpose in the world of fear, they stand already at the edge of the real world. Perhaps they still look back, and think they seean idol that they want. Yet has their path been surely set away from idol stoward reality. For when they joined their hands it was Christ´s hand they took, and they will look on Him Whose hand they hold. The face of Christ is looked upon before the Father is remembered. For He must be unremembered till His Son has reached beyond forgiveness to the Love of God. Yet is the Love of Christ accepted first. And then will come the knowledge. They are one. How lightand easy is the step across the narrow boundaries of the world of fear when you have recognizied Whose hand you hold! Within your hand is everyone you need to walk with perfect confidence away from fear forever, and to go straight on, and quickly reach to gate of Heaven itself. For He Whose hand you hold was waiting but for you to join Him. Now that you have come, would He delay in showing youthe way that He must walk with you? His blessing lies on you as surely as His Father´s Love rests upon Him. His gratitude to you is past you understanding,for you have enabled Him to rise from chains and go with you, together, to His Father´s house. And ancient hate is passing from the world. And with it goes all hatred and all fear. Look back no longer, for what lies ahead is all you ever wanted in your heart. Give up the world! But not to sacrifice. You never wanted it. What happiness have you sought here that did not bring you pain? What moment of content has not been bought at fearful price in coins of suffering? Joy has no cost. It is your sacred right, and what you pay for is not happiness. Be speeded on your way by honstly, and let not your expereinces here decived in retospekt. They were notf ree from bitter cost and joyless consequensce. Do not look back except in honesty. And when an idol tempts you, think of this:

There never was a time an idol brought
You anything except the ”gift”of guilt.
Not one was bought except the cost of pain,
Nor was it ever paid by you alone.

Be merciful unto your brother,then. And do not choose and idol thoughtlessly, remembering that he will pay the cost as well as you. For he will be delayed when you look back, and you will not perceive Whose loving hand you hold. Look forward, then, and walk in confidence, with happy hearts that beat in hope and do not pound in fear. The Will of God forever lies in those whose hands are joined. Until they joined,they thought He was their enemy. But when they joined and shared a purpose,they were free to learn their will is one. And thus the Will of God must reach to their awareness. Nor can they forget for long that it is but their own.

Love

The Justification for Forgiveness

Anger is nerver justified.Attack has no foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this forgiveness rests, and is but natural. You are not asked to offer pardon where attack is due, and would be justified. For that would mean that you forgive a sin by overlooking what is really there. This is not pardon. For it would assume that, by responding in a way which is not justified, your pardon will become the answer to attack that has been made. And thus is pardon inappropriate, by being garanted where it is not due. Pardon is Always justified. It has a sure foundation. You do not forgive the unforgivable, nor overlook a real attack that calls for punishment. Salvation does not lie in being asked to make unnatural responses which are inappropriate to what is real. Instead, it merely asks that you respond appropriately to what is not real by not perceiving what has not occured. If pardon were unjustified, you would be asked to sacrifice your rights when you return forgiveness for attack. But you are merely asked to see forgiveness as the natural reaction to distress that rests on error, and thus calls for help. Forgiveness is the only sane response. It keeps your rights from being sacrificed. This understanding is the only change that lets the real world rise to take the place of dream of terror.Fear cannot arise unless attack is justified, and if it had a real Foundation pardon would have none. The real world is achieved when you perceive the basis of forgiveness is quite real and fully justified. While you regard it as a gift unwarranted, it must uphold the guilt you would ”forgive.” Unjustified forgiveness is attack. And this is all the world can ever give. It pardons”sinners” sometimes, but remains aware that they have sinned. And so they do not merit the forgiveness that it gives. This is the false forgiveness which the world employs to keep the sense of sin alive. And recognizing God is just,it seems impossible His pardon could be real. Thus is the fear of God the sure result of seeing pardon as unmerited. No one who sees himself as guilty can avoid the fear of God. But he is saved from this dilemma if he can forgive. The mind must think of its Creator as it looks upon itself. If you can see your brother merits pardon, you have learned forgiveness is your right as much ashis. Nor will you think that God intends for you a fearful judgment that your brother does not merit. For it is the truth that you can merit neither more norless than he. Forgiveness recognized as merited will heal. It gives the miracle its strength to overlook illusions. This is how you learn that you must be forgiven too. There can be no appearance that can not be overlooked. For if there were, it would be necessary first there be some sin that stands beyond forgiveness. There would be an error that is more than a mistake; a special form of error that remains unchangeable, eternal, and beyond correction or escape. There would be one mistake that had the power to undo creation, and to make a world that could replace it and destroy the Will of God. Only if this were possible could there be some appearances that could withstand the miracle,and not be healed by it. There is no surer proof idolatry is what you wish than a belief there are some forms of sickness and of joylessness forgiveness cannot heal. This means that you prefer to keep some idols, and are not prepared, as yet, to let all idols go. And thus you think that some apperances are real and not appearances at all. Be not deceived about the meaning of a fixed belief that some appearances are harder to look past than others are. It always means you think forgiveness must be limited. And you have set a goal of partial pardon and a limited escape from guilt for you. What can this be except a false forgiveness of yourself, and everyone who seems apart from you? It must be true the miracle can heal all forms of sickness, or it cannot heal. Its purpose cannto be to judge which forms are real, and which appearances are true. If one appearance must remain apart from healing, one illusion must be part of truth.And you could not escape all guilt, but only some of it. You must forgive God´s Son entirely. Or you will keep an image of yourself that is not whole, and will remain afraid to look within and find escape from every idol there. Salvation rests on faith there cannot be some forms of guilt that you cannot forgive. And so there cannot be appearances that have replaced the truth about God´s Son.Look on your brother with the willingness to see him as he is. And do not keep a part of him outside your willingness that he be healed. To heal is to make whole. And what is whole can have no missing parts that have been kept outside.Forgiveness rests on recognizing this, and being glad there cannot be some forms of sickness which the miracle must lack the power to heal. God´s Son is perfect, or he cannot be God´s Son. Nor will you know him, if you think he does not merit the escape from guilt in all its consequences and its forms. There is no way to think of him but this, if you would know the truth about yourself.

”I thank You, Father, for Your perfect Son,
And in this glory will I see my own.”

Here is the joyful statement that there are no forms of evil that can overcome the Will of God; and glad acknowledgment that guilt has not succeeded by your wish to make illusions real. And what is this except a simple statement of the truth? Look on your brother with this hope in you, and you will understand he could not make an error that could change the truth in him. It is not difficult to overlook mistakes that have been given no effects. But what you see as having power to make an idol of the Son of God you will not pardon. For he has become to you a graven image and a sign of death. Is this you savior? Is his Father wrong about His Son? Or have you been deceived in him who has been given you to heal, for your salvation and deliverance?

Love

The New Interpretation

Would God have left the meaning of the world to your interpretation? If He had, it has no meaning. For it cannot be that meaning changes constantly, and yet is true. The Holy Spirit looks upon the world as with one purpose, changelessly established. And no situation can affect ist aim, but must be in accord with it. For only if its aim could change with every situation could each one be open to interpretation which is differently every time you think of it. You add an element into the script you write for every minute in the day, and all that happens now means something else. You take away another element, and every meaning shifts accordingly.What do your scripts reflect except your plans for what the day should be? And thus you judge disaster and success, advance, retreat, and gain and loss. These judgments all are made according to the roles the script assigns. The fact they have no meaning in themselves is demonstrated by the ease with which theselabels change with other judgments, made on different aspects of expereince. And then, in looking back, you think you see another meaning in what Went before. What have you really done, except to show there was no meaning there?But you assigned a meaning in the light of goals that change, with every meaning shifting as they change. Only a constant purpose can endow events with stable meaning. But if must accord one meaning to them all. If they are given different meaning, it must be that they reflect but different purposes. And this is all the meaning that they have. Can this be meaning? Can confusion be what meaning means? Perception cannot be in constant flux, and make allowance for stability of meaning but to show you wrote a fearful script, and are afraid accordingly. But not because the thing you fear has fearful meaning in itself.A common purpose is the only means whereby perception can be stabilized, and one interpretation given to the world and all experiences here. In this shared purpose in one judgment shared by everyone and everything you see. You do not have to judge, for you have learned one meaning has been given everything, and you are glad to see it everywhere. It cannot change because you would perceive it everywhere, unchanged by circumstance. And so you offer it to all events,and let them offer you stability. Escape form judgment simply lies in this; all things have but one purpose, which you share with all the world. And nothing inthe world can be opposed to it, for it belongs to everything, as it belongs to you. In single purpose is the end of all ideas of sacrifice, which must assume a different purpose for the one who gains and him who loses. There could be no thought of sacrifice apart from this idea. And it is this idea of different goals that makes perception shift and meaning change. In one united goal diest his become impossible, for your agreement makes interpretation stabilize and last. How can communicatin really be established while the symbols that are used mean different things? The Holy Spirit´s goal gives one interpretation,meaningful to you and to your brother. Thus can you communicate with him, and he with you. In symbols that you both can understand the sacrifice of meaning is undone. All sacrifice entails the loss of your ability to see relationships among events. And looked at separately they have no meaning. For there is no light by which they can be seen and understood. They have no purpose. And what they are for cannot be seen. In any thought of loss there is no meaning. No one has agreed with you on what it means. It is a part of a distorted script, which cannot be interpreted with meaning. It must be forever unintelligible. This is not communication. Your dark dreams are but the senseless, isolated scrips you write in sleep. Look not to separate dreams for meaning. Only dreams of pardon can be shared. They mean the same to both of you. Do not intepret out of solitude, for what you see means nothing. It will shift in what it stands for,and you will believe the world is an uncertain place, in which you walk in danger and undertainty. It is but your interpretation which are lacking instability, for they are not in line with what you really are. This is a state so seemingly unsafe that fear must rise. Do not continue thus, my brother. We have one Interpreter. And through His use of symbols are we joined, so that they mean the same to all of us. Our common language lets us speak to all our brothers, and to understand with them forgiveness has been given to us all, and thus we can communicate again.

Love

Changeless Reality

Appearances deceive, but can be changed. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all, and if you fail to see beyond appearances you are deceived. For everything you see will change,and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and capable of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that makes it real, and keeps it separate from all appearances. It must transcend all form to be itself. It cannot change. The miracle is means to demonstrate that all appearances can change because they are appearances, and cannot have the changelessness reality entails. The miracle attest salvation from appearances by showing they can change. Your brother has a changelessness in him behyond appearance and deception, both. It is obscured by changing views of him that you perceive as his reality. The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health, his perfect freedom from all forms of lack, and safety from disaster of all kinds. The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can be easily be changed. This demonstrates that it was never real, and could not stem from his reality. For that is changeless, and has no effects that anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter. But appearances are shown to be unreal because the change. What is temptation but a wish to make illusions real? It does not seem to be the wish that no reality be so. Yet it is an assertion that some forms of idols have a powerful appeal that makes them harder to resist than those you would not want to have reality. Temptation, then, is nothing more than this; a prayer the miracle touch not some dreams, but keep their unreality obscure and give to them reality instead. And Heaven gives no answer to the prayer, nor can a miracle be given you to heal appearances you do not like. You have established limits. What you ask is given you, but not of God Who knows no limits. You have limited yourself. Reality is changeless. Miracles but show what you have interposed between reality and your awareness is unreal, and does not interfere at all. The cost of the belief there must be some appearances beyond and hope of change is that the miracle cannot come forth from you consistently. For you have asked it be withheld from power to heal all dreams. There is no miracle you cannot have when you desire healing. But there is no miracle that can begiven you unless you want it. Choose what you would heal, and He Who gives all miracles has not been given freedom to bestow His gifts upon God´s Son. When he is tempted, he denies reality. And he becomes the willing slave of what he chose instead. Because reality is changeless is a miracle already there to heal all things that change, and offer them to you to see in happy form, devoid offear. It will be given you to look upon your brother thus. But not while you would have it otherwise in some respects. For this but means you would not have him healed and whole. The Christ in him is perfect. Is it this that you would look upon? Then let there be no dreams about him that you would prefer to seeing this. And you will see the Christ in him because you let Him come to you. And when He has appeared to you, you will be certain you are like Him, for He is the changeless in your brother and in you. This will you look upon when you decide there is not one appearance you would hold in place of what your brother really is. Let no temptation to prefer a dream allow uncertainty to enter here. Be not made guilty and afraid when yo are tempted by a dream of what he is. But do not give it Power to replace the changeless in him in your sight of him. There is no false appearance but will fade, if you request a miracle instead. There is no painfrom which he is not free, if you would have him be what he is. Why should you fear to see the Christ in him? You but behold yourself in what you see. As he is healed are you made free of guilt, for his appearance is your own to you.

Love

THE FINAL VISION
The Simplicity of Salvation

How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has not occured, and can have no effects. And that is all. Can this be hard to learn by anyone who wants it to be true? Only unwillingness to learn it could make such an easy lesson difficult. How hard is it to see that what is false can not be true, and what is true can not be false? You can no longer say that you perceive no differences in false and true. You have been told excatly how to tell one from the other, and just what to do if you become confused. Why,then, do you persist in learning not such simple things? There is a reason. But confuse it not with difficutly in the simple things salvation asks you learn.It teaches but the very obvious. It merely goes from one apparent lesson to the next, in easy steps that lead you gently from on to another, with no strain a tall. This cannot be confusing, yet you are confused. For some how you believe that what is totally confused is easier to learn and understand. What you have taught yourself is such a giant learning feat it is indeed incredible. But you accomplished it because you wanted to, and did not pause in diligence to judge it hard to learn or too complex to grasp. No one who understands what you have learned, how carefully you learned it, and the pains to which you went to practice and repeat the lessons endlessly, in every form you could conceive of them,could ever doubt the power of your learning skill. There is no greater power in the worlds. The world was made by it, and even now depends on nothing else. The lessons you have taught yourself have been so overlearned and fixed they rise like heavy curtains to obscure the simple and obvious. Say not you cannot learn them. For your power to learn is strong enough to teach you that your will is not your own, your thoughts do not belong to you, and even you are someone else. Who could maintain that lessons such as these are easy? Yet you have learned more than this. You have continued, taking every step, however difficult, without complaint, until a world was built that suited you. And every lesson that makes up the world arises from the first acomplisment of learning;an enormity so great the Holy Spirit´s Voice seems small and still before its magnitude. The world began with one strange lesson, powerful enough to render God forgotten, and His Son and alien to himself, in exile from the home where God Himself established him. You who have taught yourself the Son of God is guilty, say not that you cannot learn the simple things salvation teaches you! Learning is an ability you made and gave yourself. It was not made to do the Will of God, but to uphold a wish that it could be opposed, and that a will apart from it was yet more real than it. And this has learning sought to demonstrate, and you have learned what it was made to teach. Now does you ancient overlearning stand implaceble before that Voice of truth, and teach you that Its lessons are not true; too hard to lern, too difficult to see, and too opposed to what is really true. Yet you will learn them, for their learning is the only purpose for your learning skill the Holy Spirit sees in all the world.His simple lessons in forgiveness have a power mightier than yours, beause they call from God and from your Self to you. Is this a little Voice, so small and still It cannot rise above the senseless noise of sounds have no meaning? God willed not His Son forget Him. And the power of His Will is in the Voice That speaks for Him. Which lesson will you learn? What outcome is inevitable, sure as God, and far beyond all doubt and question? Can it be your little learning, strange in outcome and incredible in difficulty will withstand the simple lessons being taught to you in every moment of each day, since time began and learning had been made? The lessons to be learned are only two. Each has its outcomee in a different world. And each world follows surely from its source.The certain outcome of the lesson that God´s Son is guilty is the world you see. It is a world of terror and despair. Nor is there hope of happiness in it.There is no plan for safety you can make that ever will succeed. There is no joy that you can seek for here and hope to find. Yet this is not the only outcome with your learning can produce.However much you may have over learned your chosen task, the lesson that reflects the Love of God is stronger still. And you will learn God´s Son is innocent, and see another world. The outcome of the lesson that God´s Son is guiltless is a world in which there is no fear, and everything is lit with hope and sparkles with a gentle friendliness. Nothing but calls to you in soft appeal to be your friend, and let it join with you. And never does a call remain unheard, misunderstood, nor left unanswered inthe self same tongue in which the call was made. And you will understand it was this call that everyone and everything within the world has always made, but you had not perceived it as it was. And now you see you were mistaken. You had been deceived by forms the call was hidden in. And so you did not hear it, and had lost a friend who always wanted to be part of you. The soft, eternal calling of each part of God´s creation to the whole is heard throughout the world this second lesson brings. There is no living thing that does not share the universal Will that it be whole, and that you do not leave its call unheard. Without your answer is it left to die, as it is saved from death when you have heard its calling as the ancient call to life, and understood that it is but your own. The Christ in you remembers God with all the certainty with which He knows His Love. But only if His Son all the certainty with which He knows His Love. But only if His Son is innocent can He be Love. For God were fear indeed if he whom He created innocent could be a slave to guilt. God´s perfect Son remembers his creation.But in guilt he has forgotten what he really is. The fear of God results assurely from the lesson that His Son is guilty as God´s Love must be remembered when he learns his innocence. For hate must father fear, and look upon its father as itself. How wrong are you who fail to hear the call that echoes past each seeming call to death, that sings behind each murderous attack and pleads that love restore the dying world. You do not understand Who calls to you beyond each form of hate; each call to war. Yet you will recognize Him as you give Him anser in the language that He calls. He will appear when you have answered Him, and you will know in Him that God is Love. What is temptation but a wish to make the wrong decision on what you would learn, and have an outcome that you do not want? It is the recognition that it is a state of mind unwanted that becomes the means whereby the choice is reassessed; another outcome seen to be preferred. You are decieved if you believe you want disaster and disunity and pain. Hear not the call for this within yourself. But listen, rather, tothe deeper call beyond it that appeals for peace and joy. And all the World will give you joy and peace. For as you hear, you answer. And behold! Your answer is the poof of what you learned. Its outcome is the world you look upon.Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean and what their purpose is. Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for. We do not know. Let every image held of everyone be loosened from our minds and swept away. Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone. Now do you know him not. But you are free to learn of him, and learn of him anew. Now is he born again to you, and you are born again to him, without the past that sentenced him to die, and you with him. Now is he free to live as you are free, because an ancient learning passed away, and left a place for truth to be reborn.

Love

Walking with Christ

An ancient lesson is not overcome by the opposing of the new and old. It is not vanquished that the truth be known, nor fought against to lose the truth´s appeal. There is no battle that must be prepared; no time to be expended, and no plans that need be laid for bringing in the new. There is an ancient battle being waged against the truth, but truth does not respond. Who could be hurt in such a war, unless he hurts himself? He has no enemy in truth. And can he be assailed by dreams? Let us review again what seems to stand between you and the truth of what you are. For there are steps in its relinquishment. The first is a decision that you make. But afterwards, the truth is given you. You would establish truth.And by your wish you set two choices to be made, each time you think you must decide on anything. Neither is true. Nor are they different. Yet must we see them both, before you can look past them to the one alternative that is a different choice. But not in dreams you made, that this might be obscured to you. What you would choose between is not a choice and gives but the illusion it is free, for it will have one outcome either way. Thus is it really not a choice at all. The leader and the follower emerge as separate roles, each seeming to possess advantages you would not want to lose. So in their fusion there appears to be the hope of satisfaction and of peace. You see your selfdivided into both these roles, forever split between the two. And every friend or enemy becomes a means to help you save yourself from this. Perhaps you call it love. Perhaps you think that it is murder justified at last. You hate the one you gave the leader´s role when you would have it, and you hate as well his not assuming it at times you want to let the follower in you arise, and give away the role of leadership. And this is what you made your brother for, and learnd to think that this his purpose is. Unless he serves it, he has not fulfilled the function that was given him by you. And thus he merits death,because he has no purpose and no usefulness to you. And what of him? What doe she want of you? What could he want, but what you want of him? Here in is life as easily as death, for what you choose you choose as well for him. Two calls you make to him, as he to you. Between these two is choice, because from them there is a different outcome. If he be the leader or the follower to you it matters not,for you have chosen death. But if he calls for death or calls for life, for hate or for forgiveness and for help, is not the same in outcome. Hear the one,and you are separate from him and are lost. But hear the other, and you join with him and in your answer is salvation found. The voice you hear in him is but your own.What does he ask you for! And listen well! For he is asking what will come to you, because you see an image of yourself and hear your voice requesting what you want. Before you answer, pause to think of this:

”The answer that I give my brother is
What I am asking for. And what I learn
Of him is what I learn about myself.”

Then let us wait an instant andbe still, forgetting everything we thought we heard; remembering how much we do not know. This brother neither leads nor follows us, but walks beside us on the self same road. He is like us, as near or far away from what he want as he willlet him be. We make no gains he does not make with us, and we fall back if he doesn not advance. Take not his hand in anger but in love, for in his progress do you count your own. And we go separately alon the way unless you keep him safely by your side. Because he is your equal in God´s Love, you will be saved from all appearances and answer to the Christ Who calls to you. Be still and listen. Think not ancient thoughts. Forget the dismal lessons that you learned aobut this Son of God who calls to you. Christ calls to all with equaltenderness, seeing no leaders and no followers, and hearing but one answer to them all. Because He hears on Voice, he cannot hear a different answer from the one He gave when God appointed Him His only Son. Be vary still an instant. Come without all thought of what you ever learned before, and put aside all images you made. The old will fall away before the new without your opposition or intent. There will be no attack upon the things you thought were precious and in need of care. There will be no assault upon your wish to hear a call that never has been made. Nothing will hurt you in this holy place, to which you come to listen silently and learn the truth of what you really want. No more than this will you be asked to learn. But as you hear it, you will understand you need but come away without the thoughts you did not want, and that were never true. Forgive your brother all appearances, that are but ancient lessons you have taught yourself about the sinfulness in you. Hear but his call formercy and release from all the fearful images he holds of what he is and of what you must be. He is afraid to walk with you, and thinks perhaps a bit behind, a bit ahead would be safer place for him to be. Can you make progress if you think the same, advancing only when he would step back, and falling back when he would go ahead? For so do you forget the journey´s goal, which is but to decide to walk with him, so neither leads nor follows. Thus it is a way you go together, not alone. And in this choice is learning´s outcome changed, for Christ has been reborn to both of you. An instant spet without your old ideas of who your great companion is and what he should be asking for, will be enought to let this happen. And you will perceive his purpose is the same as It takes, perhaps, a different form in him, but it is not the form you answer to.He asks and you receive, for you have come with but one purpose; that you both may learn you love each other with a brother´s love. And as a brother, must his Father be the same as yours, as he is like yourself. Together is your joint inheritance remembered and accepted by you both. Alone it is denied to both of you. Is it not clear that while you still insist on leading or on following,you think you walk alone, with no one by your side? This is the road to nowhere,for the light cannot be given while you walk alone, and so you cannot see which way you go. And thus there is confusion, and a sense of endless doubting as you stagger back and forward in the darkness and alone. Yet these are but appearances of what the journey is, and how it must be made. For next to you is One Who holds the light before you, so that every step is made in certainty and sureness of the road. A blindfold can indeed obscure your sight, but cannot make the way itself grow dark. And He Who travels with you has the light.

Love

The Self-Accused

Only the self-accused condemn. As you prepare to make a choice that will result in different outcomes, thereis first one thing that must be overlearned. It must become a habit of response to all temptation, and to every situation that occurs. Learn this, and learn it well, for it is here delay of happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot realize. You never hate your brother for his sins, but only for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, it but obscures the fact that you believe it to be yours, and therefore meriting a ”just” attack. Why should his sins be sins, if you did not believe they could not be forgiven in you? Why are they real in him, if you did not believe that they are your reality? And why do you attack them everywhere except you hate yourself? Are you a sin? You answer ”yes”whenever you attack, for by attack do you assert that you are guilty, and must give as you deserve. And what can you deserve but what you are? If you did notbelieve that you deserved attack, it never would occur to you to give attack toanyone at all. Why should you? What would be the gain to you? What could the outcome be that you would want? And how could murder bring you benefit? Sins are in bodies. They are not perceived in minds. They are not seen as purposes,but actions. Bodies act, and minds do not. And therefore must the body be at fault for what it does. It is not seen to be a passive thing, obeying your commands, and doing nothing of itself at all. If you are sin you are a body,for the minds acts not. And purpose must be in the body, not the mind. The body must act on its own, and motivate itself. If you are sin you lock the mind within the body, and you give its purpose to its prison house, which act sinstead of it. A jailer does not follow orders, but enforces orders on the prisoner. Yet is the body prisoner, and not the mind. The boyd thinks not houghts. It has no power to lern, to pardon, nor enslave. It gives no orders that the mind need serve, nor sets conditions that it must obey. It holds in prison but the willing mind that would abide in it. It sickens at the bidding of the mind that would become its prisoner. And it grows old and dies, because the mind is sick within itself. Learning is all that causes change. And so the body, where no learning can occur, could never change unless the mind preferred the body change in its appearances, to suit the purpose given by the mind. For mind can learn, and there is all change made. The mind that thinks it is a sin has but one purpose; that the body be the source of sin, to keep it in the prison house it chose and guards and holds itself at bay, a sleeping prisoner to the snarling dogs of hate and evil, sickness and attack; of pain and age, of grief and suffering. Here are the thoughts of sacrifice preserved, for here guilt rules, and orders that the world be like itself; a place where nothing can find mercy, nor survive the ravages of fear except in murder and in death. For here are you made sin, and sin cannot abide the joyous and the free, for they are enemies which sin must kill. In death is sin preserved, and those who Think that they are sin must die for what they think they are. Let us be glad that you will see what you believe, and that it has been given you to change what you believe. The body will but follow. It can never lead you whre you would not be. It does not guard your sleep, nor interfere with your awakening. Release your body from imprisonment, and you will se no one as prisoner to what you have escaped. You will not want to hold in guilt your chosen enemies, nor keepin chains, to the illusion of a changing love, the ones you think are friends.The innocent release in gratitude for their release. And what they see upholds their freedom from imprisonment and death. Open your mind to change, and there will be no ancient penalty exacted from your brother or yourself. For God has said there is no sacrifice that can be asked; there is no sacrifice that can be made.

Love

The Real Alternative

There is a tendency to think the world can offer consolation and escape from problems that its purpose is to keep. Why should this be? Because it is a place where choice among illusions seems to be the only choice. And you are in control of outcome of your choosing. Thus you think, within the narrow band from birth to death, a Little time is given you to use for you alone; a time when everyone conflicts with you, but you can choose which road will lead you out of conflict, and away from difficulties that concern you not. Yet they are your concern. How, then, can you escape from them by leaving them behind? What must go with you, you will take with you whatever road you choose to walk along. Real choce is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. All its roads but lead to disappontment, nothingness and death. There is no choice in its alternative.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 road 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 when 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 serch that all must undertake who still believe there is another answer to be found. Learn now, without despair,there is no hope of answer in the world. But do not judge the lesson that is but begun with this. Seek not another sign post in the world that 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? It is 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 serch 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 happinesss 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 leads to 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 that you have power to make when you have seen the real alternaives. 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 isstill the same illusiojn and the same mistake. All choices in the world depend on this; you choose between your brother and yourself, and 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 all 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 remembered not His Love. No pathway in the world can lead to Him, nor any worldly goal be one with His. What road in all the world will lead within, when every road was made to separate thej ourney from 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.

Love

Self Concept versus Self

The learning of the world is built upon a concept of the self adjusted to the world´s reality. It fits it well. For this an image is that suits a world of shadows and illusions. Here it walks at home, where what it sees is one with it. The building of a concept of the self is what the learning of the world is for. This is its purpose; that you come without a self, and make one as you go along. And by the time you reach ”maturity” you have perfected it, to meet the world on equal terms, atone with its demans. A concept of the self is made by you. It bears no likeness to yourself at all. It is an idol, made to take the place of your reality as Son of God. The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing thatit appears to be. For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted on. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It serches for companions and it looks, at times with pity, on the suffering, ands omething offers solace. It believes that it is good within an evil world. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears at thein justices the world accords to those who would be generous and good. This aspect never makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse. The face of innocence the concept of the self so proudly wears can tolerate attack in slef-defence, for is it not a well-known fact the world deals harsly with defenseless innocnece? No one who makes a picture of himself omits this face, for he has need of it. The other side he does not want to see. Yet it is here the learning of the world has set its sights, for it is here the world´s ”reality” is set, to see to it the idol lasts. Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson nin a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face that smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this: ”I am the thing you made of me,and as you look on me, you stand condemned because of what I am.” On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the parthways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on them will not escape. Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what you are has now become his sin. For this is no forgiveness possible. No loger does it matter what he does, for your accusing finger Points to him, unwawering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved and kept in darkness,where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. You can be neither blamed for what you are, nor can you change the things it makes you do. And you are each the symbol of your sins to one another, silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency, condemning still your brother for the hated thing you are. Concepts are learned. They are not natural. Apart from learning they do not exist. They are not given, so they must be made. Not one of them is true, and many come from feverish imaginations, hot with hatred and distortions born of fear. What is a consept but a thought to which its maker gives a meaning of his own? Concpets maintain the world. But they can not be used to demonstrate the world is real. For all of them are made within the world, born in its shadown, growing in its ways and finally ”maturing” in its thought. They are ideas of idols, painted with the brushes of the world, which cannot make a single picture representing truth. A concept of the self is meaningless, for no one here can see what it is for, and there fore cannot picture what it is. Yet is all learning that the world directs begun and ended with the single aim of teaching you this concept of yourself, that you will choose to follow this world´s laws, and never seek to go beyond its roads nor realize the way you see this concept of the self must be undone, if any peace of minds is to be given you. Nor can it be unlearned except by lessons aimed to teach that you are something else. For otherwise, you would be asked to make exchange of what you now believe for total loss of self, and greater terror would arise in you. Thus are the Holy Spirit´s lesson plans arrange in easy steps, that though there besome lack of ease at times and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation of what seems to be the evidence on its behalf. Let us consider, then, what proof there is that you are what your brother made of you. For even though you do not yet perceive that this is whatyou think, you surely learned by now that you behave as if it were. Does here act for you? And does he know exactly what would happen? Can he see your future and ordain, before it comes, what you should do in every circumstance?He must have made the world as well as you to have such prescience in the things to come. That you are what your brother made of you seems most unlikely.Even if he did, who gave the face of innocence to you? Is this your contribution? Who is, then, the ”you” who made it? And who is deceived by all your goodness, and attacks it so? Let us forget the concept´s foolishness, and merely think of this; there are two parts to what you think yourself to be. Ifone were generated by your brother, who was there to make the other? And from whom must something be kept hidden? If the world be evil, there is still no need to hide what you are made of. Who is there to see? And what but is attacked could need defense? Perhaps the reason why this concept must be kept in darkness is that, in the light, the one who would not think it true is you.And what would happen to the world you see, if all its underpinnings were removed? Your concept of the world depends upon this concept of the self. And both would go, if either one were ever raised to doubt. The Holy Spirit doesnot seek to throw you into panic. So He merely asks if just a little question might be raised. There is an alternate about the thing that you must be. You might, for instance, be the thing you chose to have your brother be. This shifts the concept of the self from what is wholly passive, and at least makes way active choice, and some acknowledment that interaction must have entered in. There is some understanding that you chose for both of you, and what here presents has meaning that was given it by you. It also shows some glimmering of sight into perception´s law that what you see reflects the state of the perceiver´s mind. Yet who was it that did the choosing first? If you are what chose your brother be, alternatives were there to choose among, and someone must have first decided on the one to choose, and let the other go. Althoug this step has gains, it does not yet approach a basic question. Something must have gone before these concepts of the self. And something must have done the learning which gave rise to them. Nor can this be explained by either view. The main advantage of the shifting to the second from the first is that you somehow entered in the choice by your decision. But this gain is paid in almost equal loss, for now you stand accused of guilt for what your brother is. And you must share his guilt, because you chose it for him in the image of your own. While only he was trecherous before, now must you be condemned along with him. The concept of the self has always been the great preoccupation of the world. And everyone believes that he must find the answer to the riddle of himself. Salvation can be seen as nothing more than the escape from concepts. It does not concern itself with content of the mind, but with the simple statement that it thinks. And what can think has choice, and can be shown that different thoughts have different consquence. So it can learn that everything it thinks reflects the deep confusion that it feels about how it was made and what it is. And vaguely does the concept of theself appear to answer what it does not know. Seek not your Self in symbols.There can be no concept that can stand for what you are. What matters it which concept you accept while you percieve a self that interacts with evil, and reacts to wicked things? Your concept of yourself will still remain quite meaningless. And you will not perceive that you can interact but with yourself.To see a quilty world is but the sign your learning has been guided by the world, and you behold it as you see yourself. The concept of the self embraces all you look upon, and nothing is outside of this perception. If you can be hurt by anything, you see a picture of your secret wishes. Nothing more than this. And in your suffering of any kind you see your own concealed desire to kill. You will make many concepts of the self as learning goes along. Each one will show the changes in your own relationships, as your perception of yourself is changed. There will be some confusion every time there is a shift,but be your thankful that the learning of the world is loosening its grasp uponyour mind. And be you sure and happy in the cofidence that it will go at last,and leave your mind at peace. The role of the accuser will appear in many places and in many forms. And each will seem to be accusing you. Yet have no fear it will not be undone. The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them. There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will see you know not what you are. It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindred and unbound. Where concepts of the self have be laid by is truth revelead exactly as it is. When every concept has been raised to doubt and question, and been recongized as made on no assumpptions that would stand the light, then is the truth left free to enter in its sanctuary,clean and free of guilt. There is no statement that the world is more afraid to heart han this:

”I do not know the thing I am,and therefore do not
know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look
upon the world or on myself.”

Yet in this learning is salvation born. And What you are will tell you of Itself.

Love

Recognizing the Spirit

You see the flesh or recognize the spirit. There is no compromise between the two. If one is real the other must be false, for what is real denies its opposite. There is no choice invision but this one. What you decide in this determines all you see and Think is real and hold as true. On this one choice does all your world depend, for here have you established what you are, as flesh or spirit in your own belief.If you choose flesh, you never will escape the body as you own reality, for you have chosen that you want it so. But choose the spirit, and all Heaven bends tot ouch your eyes and bless your holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more except to heal and comfort and to bless. Salvation is undoing. If you choose to see the body, you behold a world of separation, unrelated things, and happenings that make no sense at all. This one appears and disappears in death;that one is doomed to suffering and loss. And no one is exactly as he was an instant previous, nor will he be the same as he is now an instant hence. Whocould have trust where so much change is seen, for who is worthy if he be butdust? Salvation is undoing of all this. For constancy arises in the sight ofthose whose eyes salvation has released from looking at the cost of keepingguilt, because they chose to let it go instead. Salvation does not ask that youbehold the spirit and perceive the body not. It merely asks that this should beyour choice. For you can see the body without help, but do not understand howto behold a world apart from it. It is your world salvation will undo, and letyou see another world your eyes could never find. Be not concerned how thiscould ever be. You do not understand how what you see arose to meet your sight.For if you did, it would be gone. The veil of ignorance is drawn across theevil and the good, and must be passed, that both may disappear, so thatperception finds no hiding place. How isthis done? It is not done at all. What could there be within the universe thatGod created that must still be done? Only in arrogance could you conceive thatyou must make the way to Heaven plain. The means are given you by which to seethe world that will replace the one you made. Your will be done! In Heaven ason earth this is forever true. It matters not where you believe you are, norwhat you think the truth about yourself must really be. It makes no differencewhat you look upon, nor what you choose to feel or think or wish. For GodHimself has said, ”Your will be done.” And it is done to you accordingly. Youwho believe that you can choose to see the Son of God as you would have him be,forget not that no concept of yourself will stand against the truth of what youare. Undoing truth would be impossible. But concepts are not difficult tochange. One vision, clearly seen, that does not fit the picture as it was perceivedbefore will change the world for eyes that learn to see, because the concept ofthe self has changed.Are you invulnerable? Then the world is harmless in yoursight. Do you forgive? Then is the world forgiving, for you have forgiven it istrespasses, and so it looks on you with eyes that see as yours. Are you a body?So is all the world perceived as treacherous, and out to kill. Are you a spirit,deathless, and without the promise of corruption and the stain of sin upon you?So the world is seen as stable, fully worthy of your trust; a happy place torest in for a while, where nothing need be feared, but only loved. Who isunwelcome to the kind in heart? And what could hurt the truly innocent? Yourwill be done, you holy child of God. It does not matter if you think you are inearth or Heaven. What your Father wills of you can never change. The truth inyou remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as love itself.And you are worthy that your will be done!

Love

The Savior´s Vision

Learning is change. Salvation does not seek to use a means as yet too alien to your thinking to be helpful, nor to make the kinds of change you could not recognize. Concepts are needed while perception lasts, and changing concepts is salvation´s task. For it must deal in contrasts not in truth, which has no opposite and cannot change. Inth is world´s concepts are the guilty ”bad”; the ”good” are innocent. And no one here but holds a concept of himself in which he counts the ”good” to pardon him the ”bad.” Nor does he trust the ”good” in anyone, believing that the ”bad”must lurk behind. This concept emhasizes trachery, and trust becomes impossible. Nor could it change while you perceive the ”bad” in you. You could not recognize your ”evil” thoughts as long as you see value in attack. You will perceive them sometimes, but will not see them as meaningless. And so they comein fearful form, with content still concealed, to shake your sorry concept of yourself and blacken it with still another ”crime.” You cannot give yourself your innocence, for you are too confused about yourself. But should one brother dawn upon your sight as wholly worthy of forgiveness, then your concept of yourself is wholy changed. Your ”evil” thoughts have been forgiven with his,because you lett hem all affect you not. No longer do you choose that you should be the sign of evil and of guilt in him. And as you give your trust to what is good in him, you give it to the good in you. In terms of concepts, itis thus you see him more than just a body, for the good is never what the body seems to be. The actions of the body are perceived as coming from the ”baser”part of you, and thus of him as well. By forcing upon the good in him, the body grows decreaingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just as shadow circling round the good. And this will be your concept of yourself, when you have reached the world beyond the sight you Eyes alone can offer you to see. For you will not interpret what you see without the Aid That God has given you. And in His sight there is another world. You live in that world just as much as this. For both are concepts of yourself, which can be inter changed but never jointly held. The contrast is far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of yourself, because it was not made for you alone. Born as a gift for someone not perceived to be yourself, it has been given you. For your forgiveness, offered unto him, has been accepted now for both of you. Have faith in him who walks with you, so that your fearful concept of yourself may change. And look upon the good in him, that you may not be frightened by your ”evil” thoughts because they do not cloud your view of him. And all this shift requires is that you will willing that this happy change occur. No more than this is asked. On its behalf, remember what the concept of yourself that now you hold has brought you in its wake, and welcome the glad contrast offered you. Hold out your hand, that you may have the gift of kind forgiveness which you offer one whose need for it is just the same as yours. And let the cruel concept of yourself be changed to one the brings the peace of God. The concept of yourself that now you hold would guarantee your function here remain forever unaccomplished and undone. And thus it dooms you to a bitter sense of deep depression and futility. Yet it need not be fixed,unless you choose to hold it past the hope of change and keep it static and concealed within your mind. Give it instead to Him Who understands the changes that it needs to let it serve the function given you to bring you peace, that you may offer peace to have it yours. Alternatives are in your mind to use, and you cansee yourself another way. Would you not rather look upon yourself as needed for salvation of the world, instead of as salvation´s enemy? The concept of the self stands like a shield, a silent barricade before the truth, and hides it from your sight. All things you see are images, because you look on them as through a barrier that dims your sight and warps your vision, so that you behold nothing with clarity. The light is kept from everything you see. Atmost, you glimse a shadow of what lies beyond. At least, you merely look on darkness, and perceive the terrified imaginings that come from guilty thoughts and concepts born of fear. And what you see is hell, for fear is hell. And that is given you is for release; the sight, the vision and the inner Guide all lead you out of hell with those you love beside you, and the universe with them. Behold your role within the universe! To every part of true creation has the Lord of Love and Life entrusted all salvation from the misery of hell. And to each one has He allowed the grace to be a savior to the holy ones especially entrusted to his care. And this he learns when first he looks upon one brother as he looks upon himself, and sees the mirror of himself in him. Thus is the concept of himself laid by, for nothing stands between his sight and what he looks upon, to judge what he beholds. And in this single vision does he see the face of Christ, and understands he looks on everyone as he beholds this one. For there is light where darkness was before, and now the veil is lifted from his sight. The veil across the face of Christ, the fear of God and of salvation, and the love of guilt and death, they all are diffrent names for just one error; that there is a space between you and your brother, kept apart by an illusion of yourself that holds him off from you, and you away from him.The sword of judgment is the weapon that you give to the illusion of yourself, that it may fight to keep the space that holds your brother off unoccupied by love. Yet while you hold this sword, you must perceive the body as yourself,for you are bound to separation from the sight of him who holds the mirror to another view of what he is, and thus what you must be. What is temptation but the wish to stay in hell and misery? And what could this give rise to but animage of yourself that can be miserable, and remain in hell and torment? Who has learned to see his brother not as this has saved himself, and thus is he a savior to the rest. To everyone has God entrusted all, because a partial savior would be one who is but partly saved. The holy ones whom God has given each ofyou to save are everyone you meet or look upon, not knowing who they are; all those you saw an instant and forget, and those you knew a long while since, and those you will yet meet; the unremembered and the not yet born. For God has given you His Son to save from every concept that he ever held. Yet while you wish to stay in hell, how could you be the savior of the Son of God? For holiness is seen through holy eyes that look upon the innocence within, and this expect to see it everywhere. And so they call it forth in everyone theyl ook upon, that he may be what they expect of him. This is the savior´s vision; that he see his innocence in all he looks upon, and see his own salvation everywhere. He holds no concept of himself between his calm and open eyes and what he sees. He brings the light to what he looks upon, that he may see it as it really is. Whatever form temptation seems to take, it always but reflects a wish to be a self that you are not. And from that wish a concept rises, teaching that you are the thing you wish to be. It will remain your concept of yourself until the wish that fathered it no longer is held dear. But while you cherish it, you will behold your brother in the likeness of the self whose image has the wish begot of you. For seeing can but represnt a wish, because it has no power to create. Yet it can look with love or look with hate, depending only onthe simple choice of what ever you would join with what you see, or keep yourself apart and separate. The savior´s vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts, and prepare to look on only what the present holds. It cannot judge because it does not know. And recongnizing this, it merely asks, ”What is the meaning of what I behold?” Then is the answer given. And the door hel dopen for the face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks, in innocence, to see beyond the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear against the vision of the Christ in you. Be vigilant against temptation, then, remembering that it is but a wish, insane and meaningless, to make yourself a thing that you are not. And think as well upon the thing that you would be instgead. It isa thing of madness, pain and death; a thing of treachery and black despair, offailing dreams and no remaining hope except to die, and end the dream of fear.This is temptation; nothing more than this. Can this be difficult to chooseagainst? Concider what temptation is, and see the real alternatives you choosebetween. There are but two. Be not deceived by what appears as many choices.There is hell of Heaven, and of these you choose but one. Let not the world´slight, given unto you, be hidden from the world. It needs the light, for it isdark indeed, and men despair because the savior´s vision is withheld and what theysee is death. Their savior stands, unknowing and unknown, beholding them witheyes unopened. And they cannot see until he looks on them with seeing eyes, andoffers them forgiveness with his own. Can you to whom God say´s, ”Release MySon!” be tempted not to listen, when you learn that it is you for whom He asksrelease? And what but this is what this course would teach? And what but thisis there for you to learn?

Love

Choose Once Again

Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot eceed its tiny reach.Would you be this, if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this:

”’Choose once again if you would take your place
Among the saviors of the world,or would
remain in hell, and hold your brothers there.”

For He has come, and He is asking this. How do you make the choice? How easily is this explained! You always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you. And what you choose is what you think is real. Simply by never using weakness to direct your actions, you have given it no power. And the light of Christ in you isgiven charge of everything you do. For you have brought your weakness unto Him,and He has given you His strength instead. Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice Before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently says, ”My brother, choose again.” He would not leave one souce of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would relese your mind from everything that hides His face from you. His holiness is yours because He is the only Power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is the Self That God created as His only Son. The images you make cannot prevail against what God Himself would have you be. Be never fearful of temptation, then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ´s strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised animage of yourself before. For what appears to hide the face of Christ is powerless before His majesty, and disappears before His holy sight. The savior of the world, who see like Him, are merely those who choose His strength instead of their own weakness, seen apart from Him. They will redeem the world, for they are joined in all the power of the Will of God. And what they will is only what He wills. Learn, then, the happy habit of response to alltemptation to perceive yourself as weak and miserable with these words,

”I am as God created me, His Son
Can suffer nothing. And I am His Son.”

Thus is Christ´s stregth invited to prevail, replaceing all your weakness with the strength that comes from God and that can never fail. And thus are miracles as natural as fear and agony appeared to be before the choice for holiness was made. For in that choice are false distinctions gone, illusory alternatives laid by, and nothing left to interfere with truth. You are as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, regardless of the images you see. What you behold as sicknessand as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell. Yield not to this, and you will see all pain, in every form, wherever it occurs, but disappear as mists before the sun. A miracle has come to heal God´s Son, and close the door upon his Dreams of weakness, opening the way to his salvation and release. Choose once again what you would have him be, remembering that every choice again what you would have him be, remembering that every choice you make establishes you own identity as you will see it and believe it is. Deny me not the little gift I ask, when I exchange I lay before your feet the peace of God, and power to bring this Peace to everyone who wanders in the world uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear. For it is given you to join with him, and through the Christ in you unveil his eyes, and let him look upon the Christ in him. My brothers is salvation, do not fail to hear my voice and listen to my words. I ask for nothing but your won release. There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so incluslive it is but a step from there to Heaven. To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before. Yet this a vision is which you must share with everyone you see, for otherwise you will behold it not. To give this gift is how to make it yours. And God ordained, in loving kindness, that it be for you. Let us be glad that we can walk the world, and find so many chances to perceive another situation where God´s gift can once again be reconginzed as ours! And thus will all the vestiges of hell, the secret sins and hidden hates be bone. And all the loveliness which they concealed appear like lawns of Heaven to our sight, to lift us high above the thorny roads we travelled on before the Christ appeared.Hear me, my brothers, hear and join with me. God has ordained I can not call invain, and in His certainty I rest content. For you will hear, and you will choose again. And in this choice is everyone made free. I thank You, Father,for these holy ones who are my brothers as they are Your Sons. My faith in them is Yours. I am as sure that they will come to me as You are sure of what the yare, and will forever be. They will accept the gift I offer them, because You gave it me on their behalf. And as I would but do Your holy Will, so will they choose. And I give thanks for them. Salvation´s song will echo through the world with every choice they make. For we are one in purpose, and the end of hell is near. In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother who would join with me in reaching past temptation, and who looks with fixed determination towards the light that shines beyond in perfect constancy. Give me my own, for they belong to You. And can You fail in what is but Your Will? I give You thanks for what my brothers are. And as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell, and giving thank to You. And now we say ”Amen.” For Christ has come to dwell in the abode You set for Him before time was, in calm eternity. The journey closes, ending at the place where it began. No trace of it remains. Not one illusion is accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness still remains to hide the face of Christ from anyone. Thy Will is done, complete and perfectly, and all creationr ecognizes You, and knows You as the only Source it has. Clear in Your likeness does the Light shine forth from everything that lives and moves in You. For we have reached where all of us are one, and we are home, where You would have us be.

Love

INTRODUCTION

A theoretical foundation such as the text provides is necessary as a framework to make the exercises in this workbook meaningful. Yet it is doing the exercises that will make the goal of the course possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of this workbook to train your mind to think along the lines the text sets forth. The exercises are very simple. They do not require a great deal of time, and it does not matter where you do them. They need no preparation. The training period is one year. The exercises are numbered from 1 to 365. Do not undertake to do more than one set of exercises a day. The workbook is divided into two main sections, the first dealing with the undoing of the way you see now, and the second with the acquisition of thue perception. With the exception of the review periods, each day´s exercises are planned around one central idea, which is stated first. This is followed by a descrioption of the specific procedures by which the idea for the day is to be applied. The purpose of the workbook is to train your mind in a systematic way to a different perception of everyone and everything in the world. The exercises are planned to help you generalize the lessons, so that you will understand that each of them is equally applicable to everyone and everything you see. Transfer of training in true perception does not proceed as does transfer of the training of the world. Ift rue perception has been achieved in connection with any person, situation or event, total transfer to everyone and everything is certain. On the other hand,one exeption held apart from true perception makes its accomplishments anywhere impossible. The only general rules to be observed throughout, then, are: First,that the excersies be practised with great sepcificity, as will be indicated.This will help you to generalize the ideas involved to every situation in which you find yourself, and to everyone and everything in it. Second, be sure that you do not decide for yourself that there are some people, situations or things to which the ideas aree inapplicable. This will interfere with transfer of training. The very nature of thrue perception is that it has no limits. It is the opposite of the way you see now. The overall aim of the exercises is to increase your ability to extend the ideas you will be practicing to include everything.This will require no effort on your part. The exercises themselves meet to conditions necessary for this kind of transfer. Some of the ideas the workbook presents you will find hard to believe, and others may seem to be quite startling. This does not matter. You are merely asked to apply the ideas as you are directed to do. You are not asked to judge them at all. You are asked only to use them. It is their use that will give them meaning to you, and will show you that they are true. Remember only this; you need not believe the ideas, you need only to accept them, and you need not even welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist. None of this will matter, or decrease their efficacy. But do not allow yourself to make exceptions in applying the ideas the workbook contains, and whatever your reactions to the ideas may be, use them. Nothing more than that is required.

Love

LESSON 1

”Nothing I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place) means anything.”

Now look slowly around you, and practice applying this idea very specifically to whatever you see:

”This table does not mean anything.”
”This chair does not mean anything.”
This hand does not mean anything.”
”This foot does not mean anything.”
”This pen does not mean anything.”

Then look farther away from your immedite area, and apply the idea to a wider range:

”That door does not mean anything.”
”That body does not mean anything.”
”That lamp does not mean anything.”
”That sign does not mean anything.”
”That shadow does not mean anything.”

Notice that these statements are not arranged in any order, and make no allowance for differences in the kinds of things to which they are applied. That is the purpose of the exercise. The statement should merely by applied to anything you see. As you practice the idea for the day, use it totally indiscriminately. Do not attempt to apply it to everything you see, for these exercises should not become ritualistic. Only be sure that nothing you see is specifically excluded. One thing is like another as far as the application of the idea is concerned. Each of the first three lessons should not be done more htan twice a day each, preferable morning and evening. Nor should they be attempted for more than a minute or so, unless that entails a sense of hurry. A comfortable sense of leisure is essential.

Love

LESSON 2

”I have given everything I seein this room (on this street, from this window, in this place) all the meaning that it has for me.”

The exercises with this idea aret he same as those for the first one. Begin with the things that are near you, and apply the idea to whatever your glance rests on. Then increase the range outward. Turn your head so that you include whatever is on either side. If possible, turn around and apply the idea to what was behind you. Remain as indiscriminate as possible in selecting subjects for its application, do not concentrate on anything in particular, an do not attempt to include Everything you see in a given area, or you will introduce strain. Merely glance easily and fairly quickly around you, trying to avoid selection by size, brightness, color, material, or relative importance to you. Take the subjects simply as yousee them. Try to apply the exercise with equal ease to a body or a button, orfly or a floor, and arm or an apple. The sole criterion for applying the idea to anything is merely that your eyes have lighted on it. Make no attempt to include anything particular, but be sure that nothing is specially excluded.

Love

Lesson 3

”I do not understand anything I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place).”

Apply this idea in the same way as the previous ones, without making distinctions of any kind. Whatever you see becomes a proper subject for applying the idea. Be sure that you do not question the suitablility of anything for application of this idea. These are not excersies in judgment. Anything is suitable if you see it. Some of the things you see may have emotionally-charged meaning for you. Try to lay such feelings aside, and merely use these things exactly as you would anything else. The point of the excersises is to help you clear your mind of all past associations, to see things exactly as they appear to you now, and to realize how little you really understand about them. It is therefore essential that you keep a perfectly open mind, unhampered by judgment, in selecting the things to which the idea for the day is to be applied. For this purpose one thing is like another; equally sutiable and therefore equally useful.

Love

LESSON 4

”These thoughts do not mean anything. They are like the things I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place).”

Unlike the preceding ones, these exercises do not begin with the idea for the day. In these practice periods,begin with nothing the thoughts that are crossing your mind for about a minut.Then apply the idea to them. If you are already aware of unhappy thoughts, usem them as subjects for the idea. Do not, however, selcet only the thoughts you think are ”bad”. You will find, if you train yourself to look at your thoughts,that they represent such a mixture that, in a sense, none of them can be called”good” or ”bad.” This is why they do not mean anything. In selecting the subjects for the application of today´s idea, the usual specificity is required. Do not be afraid to use ”good” thoughts as well as ”bad”. None of them represents your real thoughts, which are being covered up by them. The ”good”ones are but shadows of what lies beyond, and shadows make sight difficult. The”bad” ones are blocks to sight, and make seeing impossible. You do not want either. This is a major exercise, and will be repeted from time to time in somewhat different form. The aim here is to train you in the first steps toward the goal of separating the meaningless from the meaningful. It is a first attempt in the long-range purpose of learning to see the meaningless as outside you, and the meaningful within. It is also the beginning of training your mind to recognize what is the same and what is different. In using your thoughts for application of the idea for today, identify each thought by the cental figure or event it contains; for example:

”This thought about ……………….does not mean anything. It is like the things I see in this room, (on this street,and so on).”

You can also use the idea for a particular thought that you recognize as harmful. This practice is useful, but is not a substitute for the more random procedures to be followed for the excercises. Do not, however, examine your mind for more than a minut or so. You are too in experienced as yet to avoid a tendency to become pointlessly preoccupied. Further, since these exercises are the first of their kind, you may find the suspension of judgment in connection with thoughts particularly difficult. Do not repeat these exercises more than three or four times during the day. We will return to them later.

Love

LESSON 5

”I am never upset for the reason I think.”

This idea, like the preceding one, can be used with any person, situation or event you think is causing your pain. Apply it specifically to whatever you believe is the cause of your upset,using the description of the feeling in whatever term seems accurat to you. The upset may seem to be fear, worry, depression, anxiety, anger, hatred, jealousy or any number of forms, all of which will be perceived as different. This is not true. However, until you learn that form does not matter, each form becomes a proper subject for the execises for the day. Applying the same idea to each of them separately is the first step in ultimately recognizing they are all thes ame. When using the idea for today for a specific perceived cause of an upset in any form, use both the name of the form in which you see the upset, and the cause which you ascribe to it. For example:

”I am not angry to……….for the reason I think.”
”I am not afraid of……….for the reason I think.”

But again, this should not be substituted for practice periods in which you first serch you mind for”sources” of upset in which you believe, and forms of upset which you think result. In these exercises, more than in the preceding ones, you may find it hard to be indiscriminate, and to avoid giving greater weight to some subjects than to others. It might help to preced the excercises with the statement:

”There are no small upsets. They are all equally disturbing to my peace of mind.”

Then examine your mind for whatever is distressing you, regardless of how much or how little you think it is doing so. You may also find yourself less willing to apply today´s idea tos ome perceived sources of upset than to others. If this occurs, think first of this:

”I cannot keep this form of upset and let the others go. For the purpose of these excercises, I will regard them all as the same.”

Then serch your mind for no morethan a minut or so, and try to identify a number of different forms of upset that are disturbing you, regardless of the relative importance you may give them. Apply the idea for today to each of them, using the name of both thes ource of the upset as you perceive it, and of the feeling as you experience it. Further example are:

”I am not worried about……….for the reason I think.”
”I am not depressed about……….for the reason I think.”

Three or four time during the day is enough.

Love

LESSON 6

”I am upset because I see something that is not there.”

The exercises with this idea are very similar to the preceding ones. Again, it is necessary to name both the form of upset (anger, fear, worry, depression and so on) and the perceived source very specifically for any application of the idea. For example:

”I am angry at……….because I see something that is not there.”
”I am worried about……….because I see something that is not there.”

Today´s idea is useful for application to anything that seems to upset you, and can profitably be used throughout the day for that purpose. However, the three or four practice periods which are required should be preceded by a minute or so of mind serching, as before, and the application of the idea to each upsetting thought uncovered in the search. Again, if you resist applying the idea to some upsetting thoughts more than to others, remind yourself of the two cautions stated in the previous lesson:

”There are no small upsets. They are all equally disturbing to my peace of mind.”
And
”I cannot keep this form of upset and let the others go. For the purpose of the excercises, then, I will regard them all as the same.”

Love

LESSON 7

”I see only the past.”

This idea is particularly difficult to believe at first. Yet it is the rationale for all of the preceding ones. It is the reason why nothing that you see means anything. It is the reason why you have given everything you see all the meaning that it has for you. It is the reason why you do not understand anything you see. It is ther eason why your thoughts do not mean anything, and why they are like the things you see. It is the reason why you are never upset for the reason you think. It is the reason why you are upset because you see something that is not there.Old ideas about time are very difficult to change, because everything you believe is rooted in time, and depends on your not learning these new ideas about it. Yet that is precisely why you need new ideas about time. This first time idea is not really so strange as it may sound at first. Look at a cup, for example. Do you see a cup, or are you merely reviewing your past experiences of picking up a cup, being thirsty, drinking from a cup, feeling the rim of a cup against your lips, having breakfast and so on? Are not your aesthetic reactions to the cup, too, based on past experiences? How else would you know whether or not this kind of cup will break if you drop it? What do you know about this cup except what you learned in the past? You would have no idea what this cup is,except for your past learning. Do you, then, really see it? Look about you.This is equally true of whatever you look at. Acknowledge this by applying the idea for today indiscriminatedly to whatever catches your eye. For example:

”I see only the past in this pencil.”
”I see only the past in this shoe.”
”I see only the past in this hand.”
”I see only the past in that body.”
”I see only the past in that face.”

Do not linger over any one thing in particular, but remember to omit nothing specifically. Glance briefly at each subject, and then move on to the next. Three or four practice periods,each to last a minut or so, will be enough.

Love

LESSON 8

”My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.”

This idea is, of course, the reason why you see only the past. No one really sees anything. He sees only his thoughts projected outward. The mind´s preoccupation with the past is the cause of the misconception about time from which you seeing suffers. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. It there fore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything. The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. Very few have realized what actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. The mind is actually blank when i does this, because it is not really thinking about anything. The purpose of the exercises for today is to begin to train your mind to recognize when it is not really thinking at all. While thoughtless ideas preoccupy your mind, the truth is blocked. Recognizing that your mind has been merely blank, rather than believing that it is filled with real ideas, is the first step to opening the way to vision. The exercises for today should be done with eyes closed. This is because you actually cannot see anything, and it is easier to recognize that no matter how vividly you may picture a thought, you are not seeing anything. With as little investment as possible, serch your mind for the usual minute or so, merely noting the thoughts you find there. Name each one by the central figure or theme it contains and pass on to the next.Introduce the practice period by saying:

”I seem to be thinking about……….”
Then name each of your thoughts specifically, for example:
”I seem to be thinking about(name of a person), about (name of an object), about (name of an emotion).”

And so on, concluding at the end of the mind serching period with:
”But my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.”

This can be done four or five time during the day, unless you find it irritates you. If you find it trying,three or four times is sufficient. You might find it helpful, however, to include your irritation, or any emotion that the idea for today may induce, in the mind serching itself.

Love

LESSON 9

”I see nothing as it is now.”

This idea obviously follows from the two preceding ones. But while you may be also to accept it intellectually. It is unlikely that it will mean anything to you as yet. However, understanding is not necessary at this point. In fact, the recognition that you do not understand is a prerequisite for undoing your false ideas. These exercises are concerned with practice, not with understanding. You do not need to practice what you already understand. It would indeed be circular to aim at understanding, and assume that you have it already. It is difficult for the untrained mind to believe that what it seems to picture is not there. This idea can be quite disturbing, and may meet with active resistance in any number of forms.Yet that does not preclude applying it. No more than that is required for these or any other exercises. Each small step will clear a little of the darkness away, and understanding will finally come to lighten every corner of the mind that has been cleared of the debris that darkens it. The exercises, for which three or four practice periods are sufficient, involve looking about you and applying the idea for the day to whatever you see, remembering the need for its indiscriminate application, and the essential rule of excluding nothing. For example:

”I do not see this typewriter as it is now.”
”I do not see this telephone as it is now.”
”I do not see this arm as it is now.”

Begin with things that are nearest you, and then extend the range outward:

”I do not see that coat rack as it is now.”
”I do not see this door as it is now.”
”I do not see this face as it is now.”

It is emphasized again that while complete inclusion should not be attempted, specific exclusion must be avoided. Be sure you are honest with yourself in making this distinction. You may be tempted to obscure it.

Love

LESSON 10

”My thoughts do not mean anything.”

This idea applies to all the thoughts of which you are aware, or become aware in the practice periods. The reason the idea is applicable to all of them is that they are not your real thoughts. We have made this distinction before, and will do so again. You have no basis for comparision as yet. When you do, you will have no doubt that what you once believed were your thoughts did not mean anything. This is the second time we have used this kind of idea. The form is only slightly different. This time the idea is intoduced with ”My thoughts” instead of ”These thoughts,”and no link is made overly with the things around you. The emphasis is now on the lack of reality of what you think you think. This aspect of the correction process began with the idea that the thoughts of which you are aware are meaningless, outside rather than within; and then stressed their past rather than their present status. Now we are emphasizing that the presence of these ”thoughts” mean that you are not thinking. This is merely another way of repeating our earlier statement that your mind is really a blank. To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it. As such, it is the prerequisite for vision. Close your eyes for these exercises, and introduce them by repeating the idea for today quite slowly to yourself. Then add:

”This idea will help to release me from all that I now believe.”

The exercises consist, as before, in serching your mind for all the thoughts that are available to you,without selection or judgment. Try to avoid classification of any kind. Infact, if you find it helpful to do so, you might imagine that you are watching an oddly assorted procession going by, which has little if any personal meaning to you. As each one crosses your mind, say:

”My thoughts about……….does not mean anything.”
”My thoughts about……….does not mean anything.”

Today´s though can obviously serve for any thought that distresses you at any time. In addition, five practice periods are recommended, each involving no more than a minut or so of mind serching. It is not recommended that this time period be extended, and it should be reduced to half minut or less if you experience dicomfort. Remember,however, to repeat the idea slowly before applying is specifically, and also to add:

”This idea will help me release me from all that I now believe.”

Love

Lesson 11

”My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.”

This is the first idea we have had that is related to a major phase of the correction process; the revesal of the thinking of the world. It seems as if the world determines what you perceive. Today´s idea introduces the concept that your thoughts determine the world you see. Be glad indeed to practice the idea in its initial form, for in this idea is your release made sure. The key to forgiveness lies in it. The practice periods for today´s idea are to be undertaken some what differently from the previous ones. Begin with your eyes closed, and repeat the idea slowly to yourself. Then open your eyes and look about, near and far, up and down, -anywhere. During the minut or so to be spent in using the idea merely repeat it to yourself, being sure to do so without haste, and with no sense of urgency or effort. To do these exercises for maximum benefit, the eyes should move from one thing to another fairly rapidly, since they should not linger on anything in particular. The words, however, should be used in an unhurried, even leisurely fashion. The introduction to this idea, in particular, should be practiced as casually as possible. It contains the foundation for the peace,relaxation and freedom from worry that we are trying to achieve. On concluding the exercises, close your eyes and repeat the idea once more slowly to yourself. Three practice periods today will probably be sufficient. However,if there is little or no uneasiness and an inclination to do more, as may as five may be undertaken. More than this is not recommended.

Love

Lesson 12

”I am upset because I see a meaningless world.”

The importance of this idea lies in the fact that it contain a correction for a major perceptual distortion. You think that what upsets you is a frightening world, or a sad world, or a violent world, or an insane world. All these attributes are given it by you. The World is meaningless in itself. These exercises are done with eyes open. Look around you, this time quite slowly. Try to pace yourself so that the slow shifting of your glance from one thing to another involves a fairly constant time interval. Do not allow the time of the shift to become makedly longer or shorter, but try, instead, to keep a measured, even tempo throughout. What you see does not matter. You teach yourself this as you give whatever your glance rests on equal attention and equal value. As look about you, say to yourself:

”I think I see a fearful world,a dangerous world, a hostile world, a sad world, a wicked world, a crazy world,”

and so on, using whatever descriptive terms happen to occur to you. If terms which seem positive rather than negative occur to you, include them. For example, you might think of ”a good world,”or ”a satisfying world.” If such terms occur to you, use them along with the rest. You may not yet understand why these ”nice” adjectives belong in these exercises but remember that a ”good world” implies a ”bad” one, and a ”satisfyting world” implies an ”unsatisfying” one. All terms which cross your mind are suitable subjects for today´s exercises. Their seeming quality does not matter.Be sure that you do not alter the time intervals between applying today´s idea to what you think is pleasant and what you think is unpleasant. For the purpose of these exercises, there is no diffrence between them. At the end of thepractice period, add:

”But I am upset because I see a meaningless world.”

What is meanigless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you,it would make you indescribably happy. But because it is meaningless, you are impelled to write upon it what you would have it be. It is this you see in it.It is these that is meaningless in truth. Beneath your words is written the World of God. The truth upsets you now, but when your words have been erased,you will see His. That is the ultimate purpose of these exercises. Three or four time is enough, for practicing the idea for today. Nor should the practice periods exceed a minut. You may find even this too long. Terminate the exercises whenever you experience a sense of strain.

Love

LESSON 13

”Ameaningless world engenders fear.”

Today´s idea is really Another form of the preceding one, except that it is more specific as to the emotion aroused. Actually, a meaningless world is impossible. Nothing without meaning exists. However, it does not follow that you will not think you perceivesomething that has no meaning. On the contrary, you will be particularly likelyto think you do perceive it. Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intenseanxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God andthe ego ”challenge” each other as to whose meaning is to be written in thefrantically to establish its own ideas there, fearful that the void mayotherwise be used to demonstrate its own ompotence and unreality. And on thisone it is correct. It is essential, therefore, that you learn to recognize themeaningless, and accept it without fear. If you are fearful, it is certain thatyou will endow the world with attributes that it does not possess, and crowd itwith images that do not exist. To the ego illusions are safety devices, as theymust also be to you who equate yourself with the ego. The exercises for today,which should be done about three or four times for not more than a minute or soat most each time, are to be practiced in a somewhat different way from thepreceding ones. With eyes closed, repeat today´s idea to yourself. Then openyou eyes, and look about you slowly, saying:

”I am looking at a meaninglessworld.”

Repeat this statement to yourselfas you look about. Then close your eyes, and conclude with:

”A meaningless world engendersfear because I think I am in completion with God.”

You may find it difficult toavoid resistance, in one form or another, to this concluding statement. Whateverform such resistance may take, remind yourelf that you are really afraid ofsuch a thought because of the ”vengeance” of the ”enemt.” Youn are not expectedto believe the statement at this point, and will probably dismis it aspreposterous. Note carefully, however, any signs of overt or covert fear whichit may arouse. This is our first attempt at stating an explicit cause andeffect relationship of a kind which you are very inexperienced in recognizing.Do not dwell on the concluding statement, and try not even to think of itexcept during the practice periods. That will suffice at present.

Love

LESSON 14

”God did not create a meaningless world.”

The idea for today is, of course, the reason why a meaningless world is impossible. What God did not create does not exist. And everything that does exist exists as He created it.The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist. The exercises for today are to be practised with eyes closed throughout. The mind searching period should be short, a minut at most. Do not have more than three practice periods with today´s idea unless you find them comfortable. If you do, it will be because you really understand what they are for. The idea for today is another step in learning to let go the thoughts that you have written on the world, and see the Word of God in their place. The early steps in this exchange, which can truly be called salvation, can be quite difficult and even quite painful. Some of them will lead you directly into fear. You will not be left there. You will go far beyond it. Our direction is toward perfect safety and perfect peace. With eyes closed, think of all the horrors in the world that cross your mind. Name each one as it occurs to you,and then deny its reality. God did not create it, and so it is not real. Say,for example:

”God did not create that war,and so it is not real.”
”God did not create that airoplane crash, and so it is not real.”
”God did not create that disaster (specify), and so it is not real.”

Suitable subjects for the application of today´s idea also include anything you are afraid might happen to you, or to anyone about whom you are concerned. In each case, name the ”disaster”quite specifically. Do not use general terms. For example, do not say. ”God did not create illness, ”but,”God did not create cancer,”or heart attacks, or whatever may arouse fear in you. This is your personal repertory of horrors at which you are looking. These things are apart of the world you see. Some of them are shared illusions, and others are part of your personal hell. It does not matter. What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning. In recognition of this fact, conclude the practice periods by repeating today´s idea:

”God did not create a meaningless world.”

The idea for today can, of course, be applied to anything that disturbs you during the day, aside from the practice periods. Be very specific in applying it. Say:

”God did not create a meaningless world. He idd not create (specify the situation which is disturbing you), and so it is not real.”

Love

Lesson 15

”My thoughts are images that I have made.”

It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing. You think you think them, and so you think you see them. This is how your ”seeing”was made. This is the function you have given your body´s eyes. It is not seeing. It is image-making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions. This introductory idea to the process of image-making that you call seeing will not have much meaning for you. You will begin to understand it when you have seen little edges of light around the same familiar objects which you see now. That is the beginning of real vision. You can be certain that real vision will come quickly when this has occured. As we go along, you may have many ”light episodes.” They may take many different forms, some of them quite unexpected. Do not be afraid of them. They are signs that you are opening your eyes at last. They will not persist, because they merely symbolize true perception, and they are not related to knowledge. These exercises will not reveal knowledge to you. But they will prepare the way to it. In practicin the idea for today, repeat it first to yourself, and then apply it to whatever you see around you, using its name and letting your eyes rest on it as you say:

”This ……….is an imagen that I have made.”
”That ………is an imagen that I have made.”

It is not necessary to include a large number of specific subjects for the application of today´s idea. It is necessary, however, to continue to look at each subject while you repeat thei dea to yourself. The idea should be repeated quite slowly each time. Although you will obviously not be able to apply the idea to very many things during the minute or so of practice that is recomended, try to make the selection as random as possible. Less than a minut will do for the practice periods, if you begin to feel uneasy. Do not have more than three application periods for today´s idea unless you feel completely comfortable with it, and do not exceed four. However, the idea can be applied as needed throughout the day.

Love