The Responsibillity for Sight

We have repeated how little is asked of you to learn this course. It is the same small willingness you need to have your whole relationship transformed to joy; the little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit for which He gives you everything; the very little on which salvation rests; the tiny change of mind by which the crusifixtion is changed to resurrection. And behind true, it is so simple that it cannot fail to be compleately understood. Rejected yes, but not abiguous. And if you choose against it now it will not be because it is obscure, but rather that this little cost seemed, in your judgment, to be too much to pay for peace. This is the only thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain and the complete escape from sin, all to be given you. Say only this, but mean it with no resevation, forhere the power of salvation lies:

”I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the
goal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me
I ask for, and receive as I have asked.”

Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you. Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear. It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events ouside of him. It is impossible that happenings that come to him were not his choice. His power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which he seems to find himself by chance or accident. No accident nor chance is possible within the universe as God created it, outside of which is nothing. Suffer, and you decided sin war your goal. Be happy, andyou gave the power of decision to Him Who must decide for God for you. This isthe little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit, and even this He gives to you tog ive yourself. For by this gift is given you the power to release your savior,that he may give salvation unto you. Begrudge not then this little offering. Withhold it, and you keep the world as now you see it. Give it away, andeverything you see goes with it. Never was so much given for so little. In the holy instant is this exchange effected and maintained. Here is the world you do not want brought to the one you do. And here the one you do is given youbecause you want it. Yet for this, the power of your wanting must first be recognized. You must accept its strength, and not its weakness. You must perceive that what is strong enough to make a world can let it go, and can accept correction if it is willing to see that it was wrong. The world you seeis but the idle witness that you were right. This witness s insane. You trainedit in its testimony, and as it gave it back to you, you listened and convicedyourself that what it saw was true. You did this to yourself. See only this,and you will also see how circular the reasoning on which your ”seeing” rests.This was not given you. This was your gift to you and to your brother. Bewilling, then, to have it taken from him and be replaced with truth. And as youlook upon the change in him, it will be given you to see it in yourself.Perhaps you do not see the need for you to given this little offering. Lookcloser, then, at what it is. And, very simply, see in it the whole exchange ofseparation for salvation. All that the ego is, is an idea that it is possiblethat things should happen to the Son of God without his will; and thus withoutthe Will of his Creator, Whose Will cannot be separate from his own. This isthe Son of God´s replacement for his will, a mad revolt against what mustforever be. This is the statement that he has the power to make God powerlessand so to take it for himself, and leave himself without what God has willedfor him. This is the mad idea you have enshrined upon your altars, and whichyou worship. And everything that threatens this seems to attack your faith, forhere is it invested. Think not that you are faithless, for your belief andtrust in this is strong indeed.The Holy Spirit can give you faith in holinessand vision to see it easily enough. But you have not left open and unoccupiedthe altar where the gift belong. Where they should be, you have set up youridols to something else. This other ”will,” which seems to tell you what musthappen, you give reality. And what would show you otherwise must therefore seemunreal. All that is asked of you is to make room for truth. You are not askedto make or do what lies beyond your understanding. All you are asked to do islet it in; only to stop your interference with what will happen of itself;simply to recognize again the presence of what you thought you gave away. Bewilling, for an instant, to leave your altars free of what you placed uponthem, and what is really there you cannot fail to see. The holy instant is notan instant of creation, but of recognition. For recognition comes of vision andsuspended judgment. Then only it is possible to look within and see what mustbe there, plainly in sight, and wholly independent of inference and judgment.Undoing is not your task, but it is up to you to welcome it or not. Faith anddesire go hand in hand, for everyone believes in what he wants. We have alreadysaid that wishful thinking is how the ego deals with what it wants, to make itso. There is not better demonstration of the power of wanting, and therefore offaith, to make its goals seem real and possible. Faith in the unreal leads toadjustment of reality to make it fit the goal of madness. The goal of sininduces the perception of a fearful world to justify its purpose. What youdesire, you will see. And if its reality in false, you will uphold it by notrealizing all the adjustments you have introduced to make it so. When vison isdenied, confusion of cause and effect becomes inevitable. The purpose nowbecomes to keep obscure the cause of the effect, and make effect appear to be acause. The seeming independence of effect enables it to be regarded as standingby itself, and capable of serving as a cause of the events and feelings itsmaker thinks it couses. Earlier, we spoke of your desire to create your ownCreator, and be father and not son to Him. This is the same desire. The Son isthe effect, whose Cause he would deny. And so he seems to be the cause, and toconfuse the two is merely to fail to understand them both. It is as needfulthat you recognize you made the world you see, as that you recognize that youdid not create yourself. They are the same mistake. Nothing created not by yourCreator has any influence over you. And if you think what you have made cantell you what you see and feel, and place your faith in its ability to do so,you are denying your Creator and believing that you made yourself. For if youthink the world you made has power to make you what it wills, you are comfusingSon and Father; effect and Source. The Son´s creation are like his Father´s.Yet in creating them the Son does not delude himself that he is independent ofhis Source. His union with It is the Source of his creating. Apart from this hehas no power to create, and what he makes is meaningless. It changes nothing increation, depends intirely upon the madness of its maker, and cannot serve tojustify the madness. Your brother thinks he made the world with you. Thus hedenies creation. With you, het hinks the world he made, made him. Thus hedenies he made it. Yet the truth is you were both created by loving Father, Whocreated you together and as one. See what ”proves” otherwise, and you deny yourwhole reality. But grant that everything that seems to stand between you,keeping you from each other and separate from your Father, you made in secret,and the instant of release has come to you. All its effects are gone, becauseits source has been uncovered. It is its seeming independence of its sourcethat keeps you prisoner. This is the same mistake as thinking you areindependent of the Source by Which you were created, and have never left.

Love