Lesson 137

When I am healed I am not healed alone.

1. Today’s idea remains the central thought on which salvation rests. ²For healing is the opposite of all the world’s ideas which dwell on sickness and on separate states. ³Sickness is a retreat from others, and a shutting off of joining. ⁴It becomes a door that closes on a separate self, and keeps it isolated and alone.

2. Sickness is isolation. ²For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. ³It gives the body final power to make the separation real, and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh, which it can not surmount.

3. The world obeys the laws that sickness serves, but healing operates apart from them. ²It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. ³In sickness must he be apart and separate. ⁴But healing is his own decision to be one again, and to accept his Self with all Its parts intact and unassailed. ⁵In sickness does his Self appear to be dismembered, and without the unity that gives It life. ⁶But healing is accomplished as he sees the body has no power to attack the universal Oneness of God’s Son.

4. Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth. ²But healing demonstrates that truth is true. ³The separation sickness would impose has never really happened. ⁴To be healed is merely to accept what always was the simple truth, and always will remain exactly as it has forever been. ⁵Yet eyes accustomed to illusions must be shown that what they look upon is false. ⁶So healing, never needed by the truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real.

5. Healing might thus be called a counter-dream, which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth, but not in truth itself. ²Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred. ³Just as the real world will arise to take the place of what has never been at all, healing but offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas which dreams embroider into pictures of the truth.

6. Yet think not healing is unworthy of your function here. ²For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real. ³The body seems to be more solid and more stable than the mind. ⁴And love becomes a dream, while fear remains the one reality that can be seen and justified and fully understood.

7. Just as forgiveness shines away all sin and the real world will occupy the place of what you made, so healing must replace the fantasies of sickness which you hold before the simple truth. ²When sickness has been seen to disappear in spite of all the laws that hold it cannot but be real, then questions have been answered. ³And the laws can be no longer cherished nor obeyed.

8. Healing is freedom. ²For it demonstrates that dreams will not prevail against the truth. ³Healing is shared. ⁴And by this attribute it proves that laws unlike the ones which hold that sickness is inevitable are more potent than their sickly opposites. ⁵Healing is strength. ⁶For by its gentle hand is weakness overcome, and minds that were walled off within a body free to join with other minds, to be forever strong.

9. Healing, forgiveness, and the glad exchange of all the world of sorrow for a world where sadness cannot enter, are the means by which the Holy Spirit urges you to follow Him. ²His gentle lessons teach how easily salvation can be yours; how little practice you need undertake to let His laws replace the ones you made to hold yourself a prisoner to death. ³His life becomes your own, as you extend the little help He asks in freeing you from everything that ever caused you pain.

10. And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you. ²Perhaps you will not recognize them all, nor realize how great your offering to all the world, when you let healing come to you. ³But you are never healed alone. ⁴And legions upon legions will receive the gift that you receive when you are healed.

11. Those who are healed become the instruments of healing. ²Nor does time elapse between the instant they are healed, and all the grace of healing it is given them to give. ³What is opposed to God does not exist, and who accepts it not within his mind becomes a haven where the weary can remain to rest. ⁴For here is truth bestowed, and here are all illusions brought to truth.

12. Would you not offer shelter to God’s Will? ²You but invite your Self to be at home. ³And can this invitation be refused? ⁴Ask the inevitable to occur, and you will never fail. ⁵The other choice is but to ask what cannot be to be, and this can not succeed. ⁶Today we ask that only truth will occupy our minds; that thoughts of healing will this day go forth from what is healed to what must yet be healed, aware that they will both occur as one.

13. We will remember, as the hour strikes, our function is to let our minds be healed, that we may carry healing to the world, exchanging curse for blessing, pain for joy, and separation for the peace of God. ²Is not a minute of the hour worth the giving to receive a gift like this? ³Is not a little time a small expense to offer for the gift of everything?

14. Yet must we be prepared for such a gift. ²And so we will begin the day with this, and give ten minutes to these thoughts with which we will conclude today at night as well:

³When I am healed I am not healed alone. ⁴And I would share my healing with the world, that sickness may be banished from the mind of God’s one Son, Who is my only Self.

15. Let healing be through you this very day. ²And as you rest in quiet, be prepared to give as you receive, to hold but what you give, and to receive the Word of God to take the place of all the foolish thoughts that ever were imagined. ³Now we come together to make well all that was sick, and offer blessing where there was attack. ⁴Nor will we let this function be forgot as every hour of the day slips by, remembering our purpose with this thought:

⁵When I am healed I am not healed alone. ⁶And I would bless my brothers, for I would be healed with them, as they are healed with me.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-137/when-i-am-healed-i-am-not-healed-alone/en/s/542

Lesson 136

Sickness is a defense against the truth.

1. No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. ²For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. ³Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. ⁴When this is seen, healing is automatic. ⁵It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear.

2. Sickness is not an accident. ²Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. ³And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. ⁴The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. ⁵The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself.

3. Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. ²They are secret, magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. ³They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. ⁴In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done.

4. Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? ²All this cannot be done unconsciously. ³But afterwards, your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent; a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by yourself.

5. It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your “reality” that makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control. ²But what you have forgot can be remembered, given willingness to reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded by oblivion. ³Your not remembering is but the sign that this decision still remains in force, as far as your desires are concerned. ⁴Mistake not this for fact. ⁵Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. ⁶They aim at doing this, and it is this they do.

6. Every defense takes fragments of the whole, assembles them without regard to all their true relationships, and thus constructs illusions of a whole that is not there. ²It is this process that imposes threat, and not whatever outcome may result. ³When parts are wrested from the whole and seen as separate and wholes within themselves, they become symbols standing for attack upon the whole; successful in effect, and never to be seen as whole again. ⁴And yet you have forgotten that they stand but for your own decision of what should be real, to take the place of what is real.

7. Sickness is a decision. ²It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. ³It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. ⁴Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more.

8. How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? ²Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. ³You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. ⁴Thus is your “true” identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. ⁵For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be.

9. Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live, but cannot overcome your choice to die. ²And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God’s design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will. ³His Son is dust, the Father incomplete, and chaos sits in triumph on His throne.

10. Such is your planning for your own defense. ²And you believe that Heaven quails before such mad attacks as these, with God made blind by your illusions, truth turned into lies, and all the universe made slave to laws which your defenses would impose on it. ³Yet who believes illusions but the one who made them up? ⁴Who else can see them and react to them as if they were the truth?

11. God knows not of your plans to change His Will. ²The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which you thought to govern it. ³And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life to death. ⁴You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. ⁵What is created is apart from all of this. ⁶Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. ⁷What is unalterable cannot change. ⁸And what is wholly sinless cannot sin.

12. Such is the simple truth. ²It does not make appeal to might nor triumph. ³It does not command obedience, nor seek to prove how pitiful and futile your attempts to plan defenses that would alter it. ⁴Truth merely wants to give you happiness, for such its purpose is. ⁵Perhaps it sighs a little when you throw away its gifts, and yet it knows, with perfect certainty, that what God wills for you must be received.

13. It is this fact that demonstrates that time is an illusion. ²For time lets you think what God has given you is not the truth right now, as it must be. ³The Thoughts of God are quite apart from time. ⁴For time is but another meaningless defense you made against the truth. ⁵Yet what He wills is here, and you remain as He created you.

14. Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where truth has been allowed to enter. ²And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms, and cease to play with folly. ³It is found at any time; today, if you will choose to practice giving welcome to the truth.

15. This is our aim today. ²And we will give a quarter of an hour twice to ask the truth to come to us and set us free. ³And truth will come, for it has never been apart from us. ⁴It merely waits for just this invitation which we give today. ⁵We introduce it with a healing prayer, to help us rise above defensiveness, and let truth be as it has always been:

⁶Sickness is a defense against the truth. ⁷I will accept the truth of what I am, and let my mind be wholly healed today.

16. Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. ²There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal, and keep defended from the light of truth. ³There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. ⁴It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey.

17. Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. ²And you will recognize you practiced well by this: The body should not feel at all. ³If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. ⁴No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. ⁵Its usefulness remains and nothing more.

18. Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. ²As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. ³The body’s health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. ⁴You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.

19. Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. ²If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick.

20. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. ²Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:

³I have forgotten what I really am, for I mistook my body for myself. ⁴Sickness is a defense against the truth. ⁵But I am not a body. ⁶And my mind cannot attack. ⁷So I can not be sick.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-136/sickness-is-a-defense-against-the-truth/en/s/541

Lesson 135

If I defend myself I am attacked.

1. Who would defend himself unless he thought he were attacked, that the attack were real, and that his own defense could save himself? ²And herein lies the folly of defense; it gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. ³It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult. ⁴And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish.

2. You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is happening because it must contain what threatens you. ²A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense. ³The world is based on this insane belief. ⁴And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve but to preserve its sense of threat. ⁵For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart.

3. Defense is frightening. ²It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. ³You think it offers safety. ⁴Yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified. ⁵Is it not strange you do not pause to ask, as you elaborate your plans and make your armor thicker and your locks more tight, what you defend, and how, and against what?

4. Let us consider first what you defend. ²It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. ³It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect itself and needing your defense. ⁴What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern are needful to protect its little life? ⁵What but the body falters and must fail to serve the Son of God as worthy host?

5. Yet it is not the body that can fear, nor be a thing of fear. ²It has no needs but those which you assign to it. ³It needs no complicated structures of defense, no health-inducing medicine, no care and no concern at all. ⁴Defend its life, or give it gifts to make it beautiful or walls to make it safe, and you but say your home is open to the thief of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded with your very life.

6. Is not this picture fearful? ²Can you be at peace with such a concept of your home? ³Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus except your own belief? ⁴It is your mind which gave the body all the functions that you see in it, and set its value far beyond a little pile of dust and water. ⁵Who would make defense of something that he recognized as this?

7. The body is in need of no defense. ²This cannot be too often emphasized. ³It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it to roles it cannot fill, to purposes beyond its scope, and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish. ⁴Such attempts, ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad attacks you make upon it. ⁵For it seems to fail your hopes, your needs, your values and your dreams.

8. The “self” that needs protection is not real. ²The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. ³Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?

9. Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. ²For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. ³You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. ⁴And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source.

10. These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond with health when they have been corrected and replaced with truth. ²This is the body’s only real defense. ³Yet is this where you look for its defense? ⁴You offer it protection of a kind from which it gains no benefit at all, but merely adds to your distress of mind. ⁵You do not heal, but merely take away the hope of healing, for you fail to see where hope must lie if it be meaningful.

11. A healed mind does not plan. ²It carries out the plans that it receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own. ³It waits until it has been taught what should be done, and then proceeds to do it. ⁴It does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it. ⁵It is secure in certainty that obstacles can not impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal that serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone.

12. A healed mind is relieved of the belief that it must plan, although it cannot know the outcome which is best, the means by which it is achieved, nor how to recognize the problem that the plan is made to solve. ²It must misuse the body in its plans until it recognizes this is so. ³But when it has accepted this as true, then is it healed, and lets the body go.

13. Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself must make the body sick. ²It is not free to be the means of helping in a plan which far exceeds its own protection, and which needs its service for a little while. ³In this capacity is health assured. ⁴For everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly, and with the strength that has been given it and cannot fail.

14. It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are but defenses, with the purpose all of them were made to realize. ²They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection, at the cost of truth. ³This is not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take, where the denial of reality is very obvious. ⁴Yet planning is not often recognized as a defense.

15. The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings. ²It does not think that it will be provided for, unless it makes its own provisions. ³Time becomes a future emphasis, to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from past events and previous beliefs. ⁴It overlooks the present, for it rests on the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course.

16. The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. ²What it has learned before becomes the basis for its future goals. ³Its past experience directs its choice of what will happen. ⁴And it does not see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs. ⁵Anticipation plays no part at all, for present confidence directs the way.

17. Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. ²Their aim is to select what you approve, and disregard what you consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. ³Yet what remains is meaningless indeed. ⁴For it is your reality that is the “threat” which your defenses would attack, obscure, and take apart and crucify.

18. What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? ²Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. ³But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. ⁴While you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life.

19. Your present trust in Him is the defense that promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy that constantly increases, as this life becomes a holy instant, set in time, but heeding only immortality. ²Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that only your defenses would conceal.

20. Without defenses, you become a light which Heaven gratefully acknowledges to be its own. ²And it will lead you on in ways appointed for your happiness according to the ancient plan, begun when time was born. ³Your followers will join their light with yours, and it will be increased until the world is lighted up with joy. ⁴And gladly will our brothers lay aside their cumbersome defenses, which availed them nothing and could only terrify.

21. We will anticipate that time today with present confidence, for this is part of what was planned for us. ²We will be sure that everything we need is given us for our accomplishment of this today. ³We make no plans for how it will be done, but realize that our defenselessness is all that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty.

22. For fifteen minutes twice today we rest from senseless planning, and from every thought that blocks the truth from entering our minds. ²Today we will receive instead of plan, that we may give instead of organize. ³And we are given truly, as we say:

⁴If I defend myself I am attacked. ⁵But in defenselessness I will be strong, and I will learn what my defenses hide.

23. Nothing but that. ²If there are plans to make, you will be told of them. ³They may not be the plans you thought were needed, nor indeed the answers to the problems which you thought confronted you. ⁴But they are answers to another kind of question, which remains unanswered yet in need of answering until the Answer comes to you at last.

24. All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you will receive today. ²And in the light and joy of simple trust, you will but wonder why you ever thought that you must be defended from release. ³Heaven asks nothing. ⁴It is hell that makes extravagant demands for sacrifice. ⁵You give up nothing in these times today when, undefended, you present yourself to your Creator as you really are.

25. He has remembered you. ²Today we will remember Him. ³For this is Eastertime in your salvation. ⁴And you rise again from what was seeming death and hopelessness. ⁵Now is the light of hope reborn in you, for now you come without defense, to learn the part for you within the plan of God. ⁶What little plans or magical beliefs can still have value, when you have received your function from the Voice for God Himself?

26. Try not to shape this day as you believe would benefit you most. ²For you can not conceive of all the happiness that comes to you without your planning. ³Learn today. ⁴And all the world will take this giant stride, and celebrate your Eastertime with you. ⁵Throughout the day, as foolish little things appear to raise defensiveness in you and tempt you to engage in weaving plans, remind yourself this is a special day for learning, and acknowledge it with this:

⁶This is my Eastertime. ⁷And I would keep it holy. ⁸I will not defend myself, because the Son of God needs no defense against the truth of his reality.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-135/if-i-defend-myself-i-am-attacked/en/s/540

Lesson 134

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

1. Let us review the meaning of “forgive,” for it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something that entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth. ²In such a view, forgiveness must be seen as mere eccentric folly, and this course appear to rest salvation on a whim.

2. This twisted view of what forgiveness means is easily corrected, when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. ²It must be limited to what is false. ³It is irrelevant to everything except illusions. ⁴Truth is God’s creation, and to pardon that is meaningless. ⁵All truth belongs to Him, reflects His laws and radiates His Love. ⁶Does this need pardon? ⁷How can you forgive the sinless and eternally benign?

3. The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth, and not illusions. ²You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth, in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. ³This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind, as you regard yourself.

4. Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception. ²For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. ³Thus is forgiveness really but a sin, like all the rest. ⁴It says the truth is false, and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass; as white as snow. ⁵It is delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish. ⁶It would see as right the plainly wrong; the loathsome as the good.

5. Pardon is no escape in such a view. ²It merely is a further sign that sin is unforgivable, at best to be concealed, denied or called another name, for pardon is a treachery to truth. ³Guilt cannot be forgiven. ⁴If you sin, your guilt is everlasting. ⁵Those who are forgiven from the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned; first, by themselves for what they think they did, and once again by those who pardon them.

6. It is sin’s unreality that makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. ²It does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly, with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth. ³And there they disappear entirely.

7. Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. ²It sees their nothingness, and looks straight through the thousand forms in which they may appear. ³It looks on lies, but it is not deceived. ⁴It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. ⁵It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, “My brother, what you think is not the truth.”

8. The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth. ²It is because of this that it becomes the undeceiver in the face of lies; the great restorer of the simple truth. ³By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth, which has been blocked by dreams of guilt. ⁴Now are you free to follow in the way your true forgiveness opens up to you. ⁵For if one brother has received this gift of you, the door is open to yourself.

9. There is a very simple way to find the door to true forgiveness, and perceive it open wide in welcome. ²When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for that is self-deception. ³Ask instead, “Would I accuse myself of doing this?”

10. Thus will you see alternatives for choice in terms that render choosing meaningful, and keep your mind as free of guilt and pain as God Himself intended it to be, and as it is in truth. ²It is but lies that would condemn. ³In truth is innocence the only thing there is. ⁴Forgiveness stands between illusions and the truth; between the world you see and that which lies beyond; between the hell of guilt and Heaven’s gate.

11. Across this bridge, as powerful as love which laid its blessing on it, are all dreams of evil and of hatred and attack brought silently to truth. ²They are not kept to swell and bluster, and to terrify the foolish dreamer who believes in them. ³He has been gently wakened from his dream by understanding what he thought he saw was never there. ⁴And now he cannot feel that all escape has been denied to him.

12. He does not have to fight to save himself. ²He does not have to kill the dragons which he thought pursued him. ³Nor need he erect the heavy walls of stone and iron doors he thought would make him safe. ⁴He can remove the ponderous and useless armor made to chain his mind to fear and misery. ⁵His step is light, and as he lifts his foot to stride ahead a star is left behind, to point the way to those who follow him.

13. Forgiveness must be practiced, for the world cannot perceive its meaning, nor provide a guide to teach you its beneficence. ²There is no thought in all the world that leads to any understanding of the laws it follows, nor the Thought that it reflects. ³It is as alien to the world as is your own reality. ⁴And yet it joins your mind with the reality in you.

14. Today we practice true forgiveness, that the time of joining be no more delayed. ²For we would meet with our reality in freedom and in peace. ³Our practicing becomes the footsteps lighting up the way for all our brothers, who will follow us to the reality we share with them. ⁴That this may be accomplished, let us give a quarter of an hour twice today, and spend it with the Guide Who understands the meaning of forgiveness, and was sent to us to teach it. ⁵Let us ask of Him:

⁶Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

15. Then choose one brother as He will direct, and catalogue his “sins,” as one by one they cross your mind. ²Be certain not to dwell on any one of them, but realize that you are using his “offenses” but to save the world from all ideas of sin. ³Briefly consider all the evil things you thought of him, and each time ask yourself, “Would I condemn myself for doing this?”

16. Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. ²And now you are prepared for freedom. ³If you have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty, you will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weight across your chest, a deep and certain feeling of relief. ⁴The time remaining should be given to experiencing the escape from all the heavy chains you sought to lay upon your brother, but were laid upon yourself.

17. Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will still be many times when you forget its meaning and attack yourself. ²When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself:

³Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. ⁴Would I accuse myself of doing this? ⁵I will not lay this chain upon myself.

⁶In everything you do remember this:

⁷No one is crucified alone, and yet no one can enter Heaven by himself.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-134/let-me-perceive-forgiveness-as-it-is/en/s/539

Lesson 133

I will not value what is valueless.

1. Sometimes in teaching there is benefit, particularly after you have gone through what seems theoretical and far from what the student has already learned, to bring him back to practical concerns. ²This we will do today. ³We will not speak of lofty, world-encompassing ideas, but dwell instead on benefits to you.

2. You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. ²When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. ³This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. ⁴It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains. ⁵There are no satisfactions in the world.

3. Today we list the real criteria by which to test all things you think you want. ²Unless they meet these sound requirements, they are not worth desiring at all, for they can but replace what offers more. ³The laws that govern choice you cannot make, no more than you can make alternatives from which to choose. ⁴The choosing you can do; indeed, you must. ⁵But it is wise to learn the laws you set in motion when you choose, and what alternatives you choose between.

4. We have already stressed there are but two, however many there appear to be. ²The range is set, and this we cannot change. ³It would be most ungenerous to you to let alternatives be limitless, and thus delay your final choice until you had considered all of them in time; and not been brought so clearly to the place where there is but one choice that must be made.

5. Another kindly and related law is that there is no compromise in what your choice must bring. ²It cannot give you just a little, for there is no in between. ³Each choice you make brings everything to you or nothing. ⁴Therefore, if you learn the tests by which you can distinguish everything from nothing, you will make the better choice.

6. First, if you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is valueless. ²A temporary value is without all value. ³Time can never take away a value that is real. ⁴What fades and dies was never there, and makes no offering to him who chooses it. ⁵He is deceived by nothing in a form he thinks he likes.

7. Next, if you choose to take a thing away from someone else, you will have nothing left. ²This is because, when you deny his right to everything, you have denied your own. ³You therefore will not recognize the things you really have, denying they are there. ⁴Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. ⁵Yet loss must offer loss, and nothing more.

8. Your next consideration is the one on which the others rest. ²Why is the choice you make of value to you? ³What attracts your mind to it? ⁴What purpose does it serve? ⁵Here it is easiest of all to be deceived. ⁶For what the ego wants it fails to recognize. ⁷It does not even tell the truth as it perceives it, for it needs to keep the halo which it uses to protect its goals from tarnish and from rust, that you may see how “innocent” it is.

9. Yet is its camouflage a thin veneer, which could deceive but those who are content to be deceived. ²Its goals are obvious to anyone who cares to look for them. ³Here is deception doubled, for the one who is deceived will not perceive that he has merely failed to gain. ⁴He will believe that he has served the ego’s hidden goals.

10. Yet though he tries to keep its halo clear within his vision, still must he perceive its tarnished edges and its rusted core. ²His ineffectual mistakes appear as sins to him, because he looks upon the tarnish as his own; the rust a sign of deep unworthiness within himself. ³He who would still preserve the ego’s goals and serve them as his own makes no mistakes, according to the dictates of his guide. ⁴This guidance teaches it is error to believe that sins are but mistakes, for who would suffer for his sins if this were so?

11. And so we come to the criterion for choice that is the hardest to believe, because its obviousness is overlaid with many levels of obscurity. ²If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed the ego’s goals to come between the real alternatives. ³And thus you do not realize there are but two, and the alternative you think you chose seems fearful, and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is.

12. All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. ²Choosing is easy just because of this. ³Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke, which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult. ⁴What is the gain to you in learning this? ⁵It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain.

13. Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. ²We will attempt to reach this state today, with self-deception laid aside, and with an honest willingness to value but the truly valuable and the real. ³Our two extended practice periods of fifteen minutes each begin with this:

⁴I will not value what is valueless, and only what has value do I seek, for only that do I desire to find.

14. And then receive what waits for everyone who reaches, unencumbered, to the gate of Heaven, which swings open as he comes. ²Should you begin to let yourself collect some needless burdens, or believe you see some difficult decisions facing you, be quick to answer with this simple thought:

³I will not value what is valueless, for what is valuable belongs to me.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-133/i-will-not-value-what-is-valueless/en/s/538

Lesson 132

I loose the world from all I thought it was.

1. What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs? ²And what can save the world except your Self? ³Belief is powerful indeed. ⁴The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth. ⁵A madman thinks the world he sees is real, and does not doubt it. ⁶Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts’ effects. ⁷It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last.

2. Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his mind, and all his thoughts change with it. ²Now the source of thought has shifted, for to change your mind means you have changed the source of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think. ³You free the past from what you thought before. ⁴You free the future from all ancient thoughts of seeking what you do not want to find.

3. The present now remains the only time. ²Here in the present is the world set free. ³For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world. ⁴You have enslaved the world with all your fears, your doubts and miseries, your pain and tears; and all your sorrows press on it, and keep the world a prisoner to your beliefs. ⁵Death strikes it everywhere because you hold the bitter thoughts of death within your mind.

4. The world is nothing in itself. ²Your mind must give it meaning. ³And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. ⁴Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. ⁵Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came.

5. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. ²Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. ³Ideas leave not their source. ⁴This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. ⁵It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind.

6. But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is. ²There is no world! ³This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. ⁴Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. ⁵He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

7. But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. ²Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. ³Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. ⁴Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.

8. And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today. ²Today’s idea is true because the world does not exist. ³And if it is indeed your own imagining, then you can loose it from all things you ever thought it was by merely changing all the thoughts that gave it these appearances. ⁴The sick are healed as you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death.

9. A lesson earlier repeated once must now be stressed again, for it contains the firm foundation for today’s idea. ²You are as God created you. ³There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state. ⁴How can a world of time and place exist, if you remain as God created you?

10. What is the lesson for today except another way of saying that to know your Self is the salvation of the world? ²To free the world from every kind of pain is but to change your mind about yourself. ³There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought.

11. Yet if you are as God created you, you cannot think apart from Him, nor make what does not share His timelessness and Love. ²Are these inherent in the world you see? ³Does it create like Him? ⁴Unless it does, it is not real, and cannot be at all. ⁵If you are real the world you see is false, for God’s creation is unlike the world in every way. ⁶And as it was His Thought by which you were created, so it is your thoughts which made it and must set it free, that you may know the Thoughts you share with God.

12. Release the world! ²Your real creations wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. ³God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. ⁴What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him.

13. There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness. ²Can a world which comes from this idea be real? ³Can it be anywhere? ⁴Deny illusions, but accept the truth. ⁵Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. ⁶Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.

14. Today our purpose is to free the world from all the idle thoughts we ever held about it, and about all living things we see upon it. ²They can not be there. ³No more can we. ⁴For we are in the home our Father set for us, along with them. ⁵And we who are as He created us would loose the world this day from every one of our illusions, that we may be free.

15. Begin the fifteen-minute periods in which we practice twice today with this:

²I who remain as God created me would loose the world from all I thought it was. ³For I am real because the world is not, and I would know my own reality.

⁴Then merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let your mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed, along with you.

16. You need not realize that healing comes to many brothers far across the world, as well as to the ones you see nearby, as you send out these thoughts to bless the world. ²But you will sense your own release, although you may not fully understand as yet that you could never be released alone.

17. Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your ideas to all the world, and say whenever you are tempted to deny the power of your simple change of mind:

²I loose the world from all I thought it was, and choose my own reality instead.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-132/i-loose-the-world-from-all-i-thought-it-was/en/s/537

Lesson 131

No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.

1. Failure is all about you while you seek for goals that cannot be achieved. ²You look for permanence in the impermanent, for love where there is none, for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death. ³Who could succeed where contradiction is the setting of his searching, and the place to which he comes to find stability?

2. Goals that are meaningless are not attained. ²There is no way to reach them, for the means by which you strive for them are meaningless as they are. ³Who can use such senseless means, and hope through them to gain in anything? ⁴Where can they lead? ⁵And what could they achieve that offers any hope of being real? ⁶Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death. ⁷You look for safety and security, while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you made.

3. Yet searching is inevitable here. ²For this you came, and you will surely do the thing you came for. ³But the world can not dictate the goal for which you search, unless you give it power to do so. ⁴Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one that comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want.

4. Be glad that search you must. ²Be glad as well to learn you search for Heaven, and must find the goal you really want. ³No one can fail to want this goal and reach it in the end. ⁴God’s Son can not seek vainly, though he try to force delay, deceive himself and think that it is hell he seeks. ⁵When he is wrong, he finds correction. ⁶When he wanders off, he is led back to his appointed task.

5. No one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. ²You will find Heaven. ³Everything you seek but this will fall away. ⁴Yet not because it has been taken from you. ⁵It will go because you do not want it. ⁶You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness.

6. Why wait for Heaven? ²It is here today. ³Time is the great illusion it is past or in the future. ⁴Yet this cannot be, if it is where God wills His Son to be. ⁵How could the Will of God be in the past, or yet to happen? ⁶What He wills is now, without a past and wholly futureless. ⁷It is as far removed from time as is a tiny candle from a distant star, or what you chose from what you really want.

7. Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. ²God made no contradictions. ³What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. ⁴He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other’s sorry outcome which is Heaven’s opposite in every way.

8. God does not suffer conflict. ²Nor is His creation split in two. ³How could it be His Son could be in hell, when God Himself established him in Heaven? ⁴Could he lose what the Eternal Will has given him to be his home forever? ⁵Let us not try longer to impose an alien will upon God’s single purpose. ⁶He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now, beyond the reach of time.

9. Today we will not choose a paradox in place of truth. ²How could the Son of God make time to take away the Will of God? ³He thus denies himself, and contradicts what has no opposite. ⁴He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven, and believes that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find.

10. Leave foolish thoughts like these behind today, and turn your mind to true ideas instead. ²No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth, and it is truth we seek to reach today. ³We will devote ten minutes to this goal three times today, and we will ask to see the rising of the real world to replace the foolish images that we hold dear, with true ideas arising in the place of thoughts that have no meaning, no effect, and neither source nor substance in the truth.

11. This we acknowledge as we start upon our practice periods. ²Begin with this:

³I ask to see a different world, and think a different kind of thought from those I made. ⁴The world I seek I did not make alone, the thoughts I want to think are not my own.

⁵For several minutes watch your mind and see, although your eyes are closed, the senseless world you think is real. ⁶Review the thoughts as well which are compatible with such a world, and which you think are true. ⁷Then let them go, and sink below them to the holy place where they can enter not. ⁸There is a door beneath them in your mind, which you could not completely lock to hide what lies beyond.

12. Seek for that door and find it. ²But before you try to open it, remind yourself no one can fail who seeks to reach the truth. ³And it is this request you make today. ⁴Nothing but this has any meaning now; no other goal is valued now nor sought, nothing before this door you really want, and only what lies past it do you seek.

13. Put out your hand, and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. ²Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes, and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. ³A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams.

14. You cannot fail today. ²There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you, that you might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it, to the light. ³Today that day has come. ⁴Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. ⁵This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all your searching here, and all the seeking of the world, which end together as you pass beyond the door.

15. Remember often that today should be a time of special gladness, and refrain from dismal thoughts and meaningless laments. ²Salvation’s time has come. ³Today is set by Heaven itself to be a time of grace for you and for the world. ⁴If you forget this happy fact, remind yourself with this:

⁵Today I seek and find all that I want.

⁶My single purpose offers it to me.

⁷No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-131/no-one-can-fail-who-seeks-to-reach-the-truth/en/s/536

Lesson 130

It is impossible to see two worlds.

1. Perception is consistent. ²What you see reflects your thinking. ³And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see. ⁴Your values are determiners of this, for what you value you must want to see, believing what you see is really there. ⁵No one can see a world his mind has not accorded value. ⁶And no one can fail to look upon what he believes he wants.

2. Yet who can really hate and love at once? ²Who can desire what he does not want to have reality? ³And who can choose to see a world of which he is afraid? ⁴Fear must make blind, for this its weapon is: That which you fear to see you cannot see. ⁵Love and perception thus go hand in hand, but fear obscures in darkness what is there.

3. What, then, can fear project upon the world? ²What can be seen in darkness that is real? ³Truth is eclipsed by fear, and what remains is but imagined. ⁴Yet what can be real in blind imaginings of panic born? ⁵What would you want that this is shown to you? ⁶What would you wish to keep in such a dream?

4. Fear has made everything you think you see. ²All separation, all distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world. ³They are not there. ⁴Love’s enemy has made them up. ⁵Yet love can have no enemy, and so they have no cause, no being and no consequence. ⁶They can be valued, but remain unreal. ⁷They can be sought, but they can not be found. ⁸Today we will not seek for them, nor waste this day in seeking what can not be found.

5. It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. ²Seek for the one; the other disappears. ³But one remains. ⁴They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. ⁵The real and the unreal are all there are to choose between, and nothing more than these.

6. Today we will attempt no compromise where none is possible. ²The world you see is proof you have already made a choice as all-embracing as its opposite. ³What we would learn today is more than just the lesson that you cannot see two worlds. ⁴It also teaches that the one you see is quite consistent from the point of view from which you see it. ⁵It is all a piece because it stems from one emotion, and reflects its source in everything you see.

7. Six times today, in thanks and gratitude, we gladly give five minutes to the thought that ends all compromise and doubt, and go beyond them all as one. ²We will not make a thousand meaningless distinctions, nor attempt to bring with us a little part of unreality, as we devote our minds to finding only what is real.

8. Begin your searching for the other world by asking for a strength beyond your own, and recognizing what it is you seek. ²You do not want illusions. ³And you come to these five minutes emptying your hands of all the petty treasures of this world. ⁴You wait for God to help you, as you say:

⁵It is impossible to see two worlds. ⁶Let me accept the strength God offers me and see no value in this world, that I may find my freedom and deliverance.

9. God will be there. ²For you have called upon the great unfailing power which will take this giant step with you in gratitude. ³Nor will you fail to see His thanks expressed in tangible perception and in truth. ⁴You will not doubt what you will look upon, for though it is perception, it is not the kind of seeing that your eyes alone have ever seen before. ⁵And you will know God’s strength upheld you as you made this choice.

10. Dismiss temptation easily today whenever it arises, merely by remembering the limits of your choice. ²The unreal or the real, the false or true is what you see and only what you see. ³Perception is consistent with your choice, and hell or Heaven comes to you as one.

11. Accept a little part of hell as real, and you have damned your eyes and cursed your sight, and what you will behold is hell indeed. ²Yet the release of Heaven still remains within your range of choice, to take the place of everything that hell would show to you. ³All you need say to any part of hell, whatever form it takes, is simply this:

⁴It is impossible to see two worlds. ⁵I seek my freedom and deliverance, and this is not a part of what I want.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-130/it-is-impossible-to-see-two-worlds/en/s/535

Lesson 129

Beyond this world there is a world I want.

1. This is the thought that follows from the one we practiced yesterday. ²You cannot stop with the idea the world is worthless, for unless you see that there is something else to hope for, you will only be depressed. ³Our emphasis is not on giving up the world, but on exchanging it for what is far more satisfying, filled with joy, and capable of offering you peace. ⁴Think you this world can offer that to you?

2. It might be worth a little time to think once more about the value of this world. ²Perhaps you will concede there is no loss in letting go all thought of value here. ³The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. ⁴It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. ⁵No lasting love is found, for none is here. ⁶This is the world of time, where all things end.

3. Is it a loss to find a world instead where losing is impossible; where love endures forever, hate cannot exist and vengeance has no meaning? ²Is it loss to find all things you really want, and know they have no ending and they will remain exactly as you want them throughout time? ³Yet even they will be exchanged at last for what we cannot speak of, for you go from there to where words fail entirely, into a silence where the language is unspoken and yet surely understood.

4. Communication, unambiguous and plain as day, remains unlimited for all eternity. ²And God Himself speaks to His Son, as His Son speaks to Him. ³Their language has no words, for what They say cannot be symbolized. ⁴Their knowledge is direct and wholly shared and wholly one. ⁵How far away from this are you who stay bound to this world. ⁶And yet how near are you, when you exchange it for the world you want.

5. Now is the last step certain; now you stand an instant’s space away from timelessness. ²Here can you but look forward, never back to see again the world you do not want. ³Here is the world that comes to take its place, as you unbind your mind from little things the world sets forth to keep you prisoner. ⁴Value them not, and they will disappear. ⁵Esteem them, and they will seem real to you.

6. Such is the choice. ²What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? ³This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed! ⁴Let it be given you today. ⁵It waits but for your choosing it, to take the place of all the things you seek but do not want.

7. Practice your willingness to make this change ten minutes in the morning and at night, and once more in between. ²Begin with this:

³Beyond this world there is a world I want. ⁴I choose to see that world instead of this, for here is nothing that I really want.

⁵Then close your eyes upon the world you see, and in the silent darkness watch the lights that are not of this world light one by one, until where one begins another ends loses all meaning as they blend in one.

8. Today the lights of Heaven bend to you, to shine upon your eyelids as you rest beyond the world of darkness. ²Here is light your eyes can not behold. ³And yet your mind can see it plainly, and can understand. ⁴A day of grace is given you today, and we give thanks. ⁵This day we realize that what you feared to lose was only loss.

9. Now do we understand there is no loss. ²For we have seen its opposite at last, and we are grateful that the choice is made. ³Remember your decision hourly, and take a moment to confirm your choice by laying by whatever thoughts you have, and dwelling briefly only upon this:

⁴The world I see holds nothing that I want.

⁵Beyond this world there is a world I want.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-129/beyond-this-world-there-is-a-world-i-want/en/s/534

Lesson 128

The world I see holds nothing that I want.

1. The world you see holds nothing that you need to offer you; nothing that you can use in any way, nor anything at all that serves to give you joy. ²Believe this thought, and you are saved from years of misery, from countless disappointments, and from hopes that turn to bitter ashes of despair. ³No one but must accept this thought as true, if he would leave the world behind and soar beyond its petty scope and little ways.

2. Each thing you value here is but a chain that binds you to the world, and it will serve no other end but this. ²For everything must serve the purpose you have given it, until you see a different purpose there. ³The only purpose worthy of your mind this world contains is that you pass it by, without delaying to perceive some hope where there is none. ⁴Be you deceived no more. ⁵The world you see holds nothing that you want.

3. Escape today the chains you place upon your mind when you perceive salvation here. ²For what you value you make part of you as you perceive yourself. ³All things you seek to make your value greater in your sight limit you further, hide your worth from you, and add another bar across the door that leads to true awareness of your Self.

4. Let nothing that relates to body thoughts delay your progress to salvation, nor permit temptation to believe the world holds anything you want to hold you back. ²Nothing is here to cherish. ³Nothing here is worth one instant of delay and pain; one moment of uncertainty and doubt. ⁴The worthless offer nothing. ⁵Certainty of worth can not be found in worthlessness.

5. Today we practice letting go all thought of values we have given to the world. ²We leave it free of purposes we gave its aspects and its phases and its dreams. ³We hold it purposeless within our minds, and loosen it from all we wish it were. ⁴Thus do we lift the chains that bar the door to freedom from the world, and go beyond all little values and diminished goals.

6. Pause and be still a little while, and see how far you rise above the world, when you release your mind from chains and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home. ²It will be grateful to be free a while. ³It knows where it belongs. ⁴But free its wings, and it will fly in sureness and in joy to join its holy purpose. ⁵Let it rest in its Creator, there to be restored to sanity, to freedom and to love.

7. Give it ten minutes rest three times today. ²And when your eyes are opened afterwards, you will not value anything you see as much as when you looked at it before. ³Your whole perspective on the world will shift by just a little, every time you let your mind escape its chains. ⁴The world is not where it belongs. ⁵And you belong where it would be, and where it goes to rest when you release it from the world. ⁶Your Guide is sure. ⁷Open your mind to Him. ⁸Be still and rest.

8. Protect your mind throughout the day as well. ²And when you think you see some value in an aspect or an image of the world, refuse to lay this chain upon your mind, but tell yourself with quiet certainty:

³This will not tempt me to delay myself.

⁴The world I see holds nothing that I want.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-128/the-world-i-see-holds-nothing-that-i-want/en/s/533

Lesson 127

There is no love but God’s.

1. Perhaps you think that different kinds of love are possible. ²Perhaps you think there is a kind of love for this, a kind for that; a way of loving one, another way of loving still another. ³Love is one. ⁴It has no separate parts and no degrees; no kinds nor levels, no divergencies and no distinctions. ⁵It is like itself, unchanged throughout. ⁶It never alters with a person or a circumstance. ⁷It is the Heart of God, and also of His Son.

2. Love’s meaning is obscure to anyone who thinks that love can change. ²He does not see that changing love must be impossible. ³And thus he thinks that he can love at times, and hate at other times. ⁴He also thinks that love can be bestowed on one, and yet remain itself although it is withheld from others. ⁵To believe these things of love is not to understand it. ⁶If it could make such distinctions, it would have to judge between the righteous and the sinner, and perceive the Son of God in separate parts.

3. Love cannot judge. ²As it is one itself, it looks on all as one. ³Its meaning lies in oneness. ⁴And it must elude the mind that thinks of it as partial or in part. ⁵There is no love but God’s, and all of love is His. ⁶There is no other principle that rules where love is not. ⁷Love is a law without an opposite. ⁸Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds Them both forever as the same.

4. No course whose purpose is to teach you to remember what you really are could fail to emphasize that there can never be a difference in what you really are and what love is. ²Love’s meaning is your own, and shared by God Himself. ³For what you are is what He is. ⁴There is no love but His, and what He is, is everything there is. ⁵There is no limit placed upon Himself, and so are you unlimited as well.

5. No law the world obeys can help you grasp love’s meaning. ²What the world believes was made to hide love’s meaning, and to keep it dark and secret. ³There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is, and what you are as well.

6. Seek not within the world to find your Self. ²Love is not found in darkness and in death. ³Yet it is perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear love’s Voice. ⁴Today we practice making free your mind of all the laws you think you must obey; of all the limits under which you live, and all the changes that you think are part of human destiny. ⁵Today we take the largest single step this course requests in your advance towards its established goal.

7. If you achieve the faintest glimmering of what love means today, you have advanced in distance without measure and in time beyond the count of years to your release. ²Let us together, then, be glad to give some time to God today, and understand there is no better use for time than this.

8. For fifteen minutes twice today escape from every law in which you now believe. ²Open your mind and rest. ³The world that seems to hold you prisoner can be escaped by anyone who does not hold it dear. ⁴Withdraw all value you have placed upon its meager offerings and senseless gifts, and let the gift of God replace them all.

9. Call to your Father, certain that His Voice will answer. ²He Himself has promised this. ³And He Himself will place a spark of truth within your mind wherever you give up a false belief, a dark illusion of your own reality and what love means. ⁴He will shine through your idle thoughts today, and help you understand the truth of love. ⁵In loving gentleness He will abide with you, as you allow His Voice to teach love’s meaning to your clean and open mind. ⁶And He will bless the lesson with His Love.

10. Today the legion of the future years of waiting for salvation disappears before the timelessness of what you learn. ²Let us give thanks today that we are spared a future like the past. ³Today we leave the past behind us, nevermore to be remembered. ⁴And we raise our eyes upon a different present, where a future dawns unlike the past in every attribute.

11. The world in infancy is newly born. ²And we will watch it grow in health and strength, to shed its blessing upon all who come to learn to cast aside the world they thought was made in hate to be love’s enemy. ³Now are they all made free, along with us. ⁴Now are they all our brothers in God’s Love.

12. We will remember them throughout the day, because we cannot leave a part of us outside our love if we would know our Self. ²At least three times an hour think of one who makes the journey with you, and who came to learn what you must learn. ³And as he comes to mind, give him this message from your Self:

⁴I bless you, brother, with the Love of God, which I would share with you. ⁵For I would learn the joyous lesson that there is no love but God’s and yours and mine and everyone’s.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-127/there-is-no-love-but-gods/en/s/532

Lesson 126

All that I give is given to myself.

1. Today’s idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal that this course will bring about. ²If you believed this statement, there would be no problem in complete forgiveness, certainty of goal, and sure direction. ³You would understand the means by which salvation comes to you, and would not hesitate to use it now.

2. Let us consider what you do believe, in place of this idea. ²It seems to you that other people are apart from you, and able to behave in ways which have no bearing on your thoughts, nor yours on theirs. ³Therefore, your attitudes have no effect on them, and their appeals for help are not in any way related to your own. ⁴You further think that they can sin without affecting your perception of yourself, while you can judge their sin, and yet remain apart from condemnation and at peace.

3. When you “forgive” a sin, there is no gain to you directly. ²You give charity to one unworthy, merely to point out that you are better, on a higher plane than he whom you forgive. ³He has not earned your charitable tolerance, which you bestow on one unworthy of the gift, because his sins have lowered him beneath a true equality with you. ⁴He has no claim on your forgiveness. ⁵It holds out a gift to him, but hardly to yourself.

4. Thus is forgiveness basically unsound; a charitable whim, benevolent yet undeserved, a gift bestowed at times, at other times withheld. ²Unmerited, withholding it is just, nor is it fair that you should suffer when it is withheld. ³The sin that you forgive is not your own. ⁴Someone apart from you committed it. ⁵And if you then are gracious unto him by giving him what he does not deserve, the gift is no more yours than was his sin.

5. If this be true, forgiveness has no grounds on which to rest dependably and sure. ²It is an eccentricity, in which you sometimes choose to give indulgently an undeserved reprieve. ³Yet it remains your right to let the sinner not escape the justified repayment for his sin. ⁴Think you the Lord of Heaven would allow the world’s salvation to depend on this? ⁵Would not His care for you be small indeed, if your salvation rested on a whim?

6. You do not understand forgiveness. ²As you see it, it is but a check upon overt attack, without requiring correction in your mind. ³It cannot give you peace as you perceive it. ⁴It is not a means for your release from what you see in someone other than yourself. ⁵It has no power to restore your unity with him to your awareness. ⁶It is not what God intended it to be for you.

7. Not having given Him the gift He asks of you, you cannot recognize His gifts, and think He has not given them to you. ²Yet would He ask you for a gift unless it was for you? ³Could He be satisfied with empty gestures, and evaluate such petty gifts as worthy of His Son? ⁴Salvation is a better gift than this. ⁵And true forgiveness, as the means by which it is attained, must heal the mind that gives, for giving is receiving. ⁶What remains as unreceived has not been given, but what has been given must have been received.

8. Today we try to understand the truth that giver and receiver are the same. ²You will need help to make this meaningful, because it is so alien to the thoughts to which you are accustomed. ³But the Help you need is there. ⁴Give Him your faith today, and ask Him that He share your practicing in truth today. ⁵And if you only catch a tiny glimpse of the release that lies in the idea we practice for today, this is a day of glory for the world.

9. Give fifteen minutes twice today to the attempt to understand today’s idea. ²It is the thought by which forgiveness takes its proper place in your priorities. ³It is the thought that will release your mind from every bar to what forgiveness means, and let you realize its worth to you.

10. In silence, close your eyes upon the world that does not understand forgiveness, and seek sanctuary in the quiet place where thoughts are changed and false beliefs laid by. ²Repeat today’s idea, and ask for help in understanding what it really means. ³Be willing to be taught. ⁴Be glad to hear the Voice of truth and healing speak to you, and you will understand the words He speaks, and recognize He speaks your words to you.

11. As often as you can, remind yourself you have a goal today; an aim which makes this day of special value to yourself and all your brothers. ²Do not let your mind forget this goal for long, but tell yourself:

³All that I give is given to myself. ⁴The Help I need to learn that this is true is with me now. ⁵And I will trust in Him.

⁶Then spend a quiet moment, opening your mind to His correction and His Love. ⁷And what you hear of Him you will believe, for what He gives will be received by you.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-126/all-that-i-give-is-given-to-myself/en/s/531

Lesson 125

In quiet I receive God’s Word today.

1. Let this day be a day of stillness and of quiet listening. ²Your Father wills you hear His Word today. ³He calls to you from deep within your mind where He abides. ⁴Hear Him today. ⁵No peace is possible until His Word is heard around the world; until your mind, in quiet listening, accepts the message that the world must hear to usher in the quiet time of peace.

2. This world will change through you. ²No other means can save it, for God’s plan is simply this: The Son of God is free to save himself, given the Word of God to be his Guide, forever in his mind and at his side to lead him surely to his Father’s house by his own will, forever free as God’s. ³He is not led by force, but only love. ⁴He is not judged, but only sanctified.

3. In stillness we will hear God’s Voice today without intrusion of our petty thoughts, without our personal desires, and without all judgment of His holy Word. ²We will not judge ourselves today, for what we are can not be judged. ³We stand apart from all the judgments which the world has laid upon the Son of God. ⁴It knows him not. ⁵Today we will not listen to the world, but wait in silence for the Word of God.

4. Hear, holy Son of God, your Father speak. ²His Voice would give to you His holy Word, to spread across the world the tidings of salvation and the holy time of peace. ³We gather at the throne of God today, the quiet place within the mind where He abides forever, in the holiness that He created and will never leave.

5. He has not waited until you return your mind to Him to give His Word to you. ²He has not hid Himself from you, while you have wandered off a little while from Him. ³He does not cherish the illusions which you hold about yourself. ⁴He knows His Son, and wills that he remain as part of Him regardless of his dreams; regardless of his madness that his will is not his own.

6. Today He speaks to you. ²His Voice awaits your silence, for His Word can not be heard until your mind is quiet for a while, and meaningless desires have been stilled. ³Await His Word in quiet. ⁴There is peace within you to be called upon today, to help make ready your most holy mind to hear the Voice for its Creator speak.

7. Three times today, at times most suitable for silence, give ten minutes set apart from listening to the world, and choose instead a gentle listening to the Word of God. ²He speaks from nearer than your heart to you. ³His Voice is closer than your hand. ⁴His Love is everything you are and that He is; the same as you, and you the same as He.

8. It is your voice to which you listen as He speaks to you. ²It is your word He speaks. ³It is the Word of freedom and of peace, of unity of will and purpose, with no separation nor division in the single Mind of Father and of Son. ⁴In quiet listen to your Self today, and let Him tell you God has never left His Son, and you have never left your Self.

9. Only be quiet. ²You will need no rule but this, to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body’s eyes. ³Only be still and listen. ⁴You will hear the Word in which the Will of God the Son joins in His Father’s Will, at one with it, with no illusions interposed between the wholly indivisible and true. ⁵As every hour passes by today, be still a moment and remind yourself you have a special purpose for this day; in quiet to receive the Word of God.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-125/in-quiet-i-receive-gods-word-today/en/s/530

Lesson 124

Let me remember I am one with God.

1. Today we will again give thanks for our Identity in God. ²Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. ³We can fail in nothing. ⁴Everything we touch takes on a shining light that blesses and that heals. ⁵At one with God and with the universe we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us.

2. How holy are our minds! ²And everything we see reflects the holiness within the mind at one with God and with itself. ³How easily do errors disappear, and death give place to everlasting life. ⁴Our shining footprints point the way to truth, for God is our Companion as we walk the world a little while. ⁵And those who come to follow us will recognize the way because the light we carry stays behind, yet still remains with us as we walk on.

3. What we receive is our eternal gift to those who follow after, and to those who went before or stayed with us a while. ²And God, Who loves us with the equal love in which we were created, smiles on us and offers us the happiness we gave.

4. Today we will not doubt His Love for us, nor question His protection and His care. ²No meaningless anxieties can come between our faith and our awareness of His Presence. ³We are one with Him today in recognition and rememberance. ⁴We feel Him in our hearts. ⁵Our minds contain His Thoughts; our eyes behold His loveliness in all we look upon. ⁶Today we see only the loving and the lovable.

5. We see it in appearances of pain, and pain gives way to peace. ²We see it in the frantic, in the sad and the distressed, the lonely and afraid, who are restored to the tranquility and peace of mind in which they were created. ³And we see it in the dying and the dead as well, restoring them to life. ⁴All this we see because we saw it first within ourselves.

6. No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. ²No thought of theirs but has the power to heal all forms of suffering in anyone, in times gone by and times as yet to come, as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now. ³Their thoughts are timeless, and apart from distance as apart from time.

7. We join in this awareness as we say that we are one with God. ²For in these words we say as well that we are saved and healed; that we can save and heal accordingly. ³We have accepted, and we now would give. ⁴For we would keep the gifts our Father gave. ⁵Today we would experience ourselves at one with Him, so that the world may share our recognition of reality. ⁶In our experience the world is freed. ⁷As we deny our separation from our Father, it is healed along with us.

8. Peace be to you today. ²Secure your peace by practicing awareness you are one with your Creator, as He is with you. ³Sometime today, whenever it seems best, devote a half an hour to the thought that you are one with God. ⁴This is our first attempt at an extended period for which we give no rules nor special words to guide your meditation. ⁵We will trust God’s Voice to speak as He sees fit today, certain He will not fail. ⁶Abide with Him this half an hour. ⁷He will do the rest.

9. Your benefit will not be less if you believe that nothing happens. ²You may not be ready to accept the gain today. ³Yet sometime, somewhere, it will come to you, nor will you fail to recognize it when it dawns with certainty upon your mind. ⁴This half an hour will be framed in gold, with every minute like a diamond set around the mirror that this exercise will offer you. ⁵And you will see Christ’s face upon it, in reflection of your own.

10. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will see your own transfiguration in the glass this holy half an hour will hold out to you, to look upon yourself. ²When you are ready you will find it there, within your mind and waiting to be found. ³You will remember then the thought to which you gave this half an hour, thankfully aware no time was ever better spent.

11. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will look into this glass, and understand the sinless light you see belongs to you; the loveliness you look on is your own. ²Count this half hour as your gift to God, in certainty that His return will be a sense of love you cannot understand, a joy too deep for you to comprehend, a sight too holy for the body’s eyes to see. ³And yet you can be sure someday, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will understand and comprehend and see.

12. Add further jewels to the golden frame that holds the mirror offered you today, by hourly repeating to yourself:

²Let me remember I am one with God, at one with all my brothers and my Self, in everlasting holiness and peace.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-124/let-me-remember-i-am-one-with-god/en/s/529

Lesson 123

I thank my Father for His gifts to me.

1. Today let us be thankful. ²We have come to gentler pathways and to smoother roads. ³There is no thought of turning back, and no implacable resistance to the truth. ⁴A bit of wavering remains, some small objections and a little hesitance, but you can well be grateful for your gains, which are far greater than you realize.

2. A day devoted now to gratitude will add the benefit of some insight into the real extent of all the gains which you have made; the gifts you have received. ²Be glad today, in loving thankfulness, your Father has not left you to yourself, nor let you wander in the dark alone. ³Be grateful He has saved you from the self you thought you made to take the place of Him and His creation. ⁴Give Him thanks today.

3. Give thanks that He has not abandoned you, and that His Love forever will remain shining on you, forever without change. ²Give thanks as well that you are changeless, for the Son He loves is changeless as Himself. ³Be grateful you are saved. ⁴Be glad you have a function in salvation to fulfill. ⁵Be thankful that your value far transcends your meager gifts and petty judgments of the one whom God established as His Son.

4. Today in gratitude we lift our hearts above despair, and raise our thankful eyes, no longer looking downward to the dust. ²We sing the song of thankfulness today, in honor of the Self that God has willed to be our true Identity in Him. ³Today we smile on everyone we see, and walk with lightened footsteps as we go to do what is appointed us to do.

5. We do not go alone. ²And we give thanks that in our solitude a Friend has come to speak the saving Word of God to us. ³And thanks to you for listening to Him. ⁴His Word is soundless if it be not heard. ⁵In thanking Him the thanks are yours as well. ⁶An unheard message will not save the world, however mighty be the Voice that speaks, however loving may the message be.

6. Thanks be to you who heard, for you become the messenger who brings His Voice with you, and lets It echo round and round the world. ²Receive the thanks of God today, as you give thanks to Him. ³For He would offer you the thanks you give, since He receives your gifts in loving gratitude, and gives them back a thousand and a hundred thousand more than they were given. ⁴He will bless your gifts by sharing them with you. ⁵And so they grow in power and in strength, until they fill the world with gladness and with gratitude.

7. Receive His thanks and offer yours to Him for fifteen minutes twice today. ²And you will realize to Whom you offer thanks, and Whom He thanks as you are thanking Him. ³This holy half an hour given Him will be returned to you in terms of years for every second; power to save the world eons more quickly for your thanks to Him.

8. Receive His thanks, and you will understand how lovingly He holds you in His Mind, how deep and limitless His care for you, how perfect is His gratitude to you. ²Remember hourly to think of Him, and give Him thanks for everything He gave His Son, that he might rise above the world, remembering his Father and his Self.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-123/i-thank-my-father-for-his-gifts-to-me/en/s/528

Lesson 122

Forgiveness offers everything I want.

1. What could you want forgiveness cannot give? ²Do you want peace? ³Forgiveness offers it. ⁴Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? ⁵Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? ⁶Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

2. All this forgiveness offers you, and more. ²It sparkles on your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. ³It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. ⁴And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace. ⁵All this forgiveness offers you, and more.

3. Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world. ²It lets you recognize the Son of God, and clears your memory of all dead thoughts so that remembrance of your Father can arise across the threshold of your mind. ³What would you want forgiveness cannot give? ⁴What gifts but these are worthy to be sought? ⁵What fancied value, trivial effect or transient promise, never to be kept, can hold more hope than what forgiveness brings?

4. Why would you seek an answer other than the answer that will answer everything? ²Here is the perfect answer, given to imperfect questions, meaningless requests, halfhearted willingness to hear, and less than halfway diligence and partial trust. ³Here is the answer! ⁴Seek for it no more. ⁵You will not find another one instead.

5. God’s plan for your salvation cannot change, nor can it fail. ²Be thankful it remains exactly as He planned it. ³Changelessly it stands before you like an open door, with warmth and welcome calling from beyond the doorway, bidding you to enter in and make yourself at home, where you belong.

6. Here is the answer! ²Would you stand outside while all of Heaven waits for you within? ³Forgive and be forgiven. ⁴As you give you will receive. ⁵There is no plan but this for the salvation of the Son of God. ⁶Let us today rejoice that this is so, for here we have an answer, clear and plain, beyond deceit in its simplicity. ⁷All the complexities the world has spun of fragile cobwebs disappear before the power and the majesty of this extremely simple statement of the truth.

7. Here is the answer! ²Do not turn away in aimless wandering again. ³Accept salvation now. ⁴It is the gift of God, and not the world. ⁵The world can give no gifts of any value to a mind that has received what God has given as its own. ⁶God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness from you.

8. Open your eyes today and look upon a happy world of safety and of peace. ²Forgiveness is the means by which it comes to take the place of hell. ³In quietness it rises up to greet your open eyes, and fill your heart with deep tranquility as ancient truths, forever newly born, arise in your awareness. ⁴What you will remember then can never be described. ⁵Yet your forgiveness offers it to you.

9. Remembering the gifts forgiveness gives, we undertake our practicing today with hope and faith that this will be the day salvation will be ours. ²Earnestly and gladly will we seek for it today, aware we hold the key within our hands, accepting Heaven’s answer to the hell we made, but where we would remain no more.

10. Morning and evening do we gladly give a quarter of an hour to the search in which the end of hell is guaranteed. ²Begin in hopefulness, for we have reached the turning point at which the road becomes far easier. ³And now the way is short that yet we travel. ⁴We are close indeed to the appointed ending of the dream.

11. Sink into happiness as you begin these practice periods, for they hold out the sure rewards of questions answered and what your acceptance of the answer brings. ²Today it will be given you to feel the peace forgiveness offers, and the joy the lifting of the veil holds out to you.

12. Before the light you will receive today the world will fade until it disappears, and you will see another world arise you have no words to picture. ²Now we walk directly into light, and we receive the gifts that have been held in store for us since time began, kept waiting for today.

13. Forgiveness offers everything you want. ²Today all things you want are given you. ³Let not your gifts recede throughout the day, as you return again to meet a world of shifting change and bleak appearances. ⁴Retain your gifts in clear awareness as you see the changeless in the heart of change; the light of truth behind appearances.

14. Be tempted not to let your gifts slip by and drift into forgetfulness, but hold them firmly in your mind by your attempts to think of them at least a minute as each quarter of an hour passes by. ²Remind yourself how precious are these gifts with this reminder, which has power to hold your gifts in your awareness through the day:

³Forgiveness offers everything I want.

⁴Today I have accepted this as true.

⁵Today I have received the gifts of God.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-122/forgiveness-offers-everything-i-want/en/s/527

Lesson 121

Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

1. Here is the answer to your search for peace. ²Here is the key to meaning in a world that seems to make no sense. ³Here is the way to safety in apparent dangers that appear to threaten you at every turn, and bring uncertainty to all your hopes of ever finding quietness and peace. ⁴Here are all questions answered; here the end of all uncertainty ensured at last.

2. The unforgiving mind is full of fear, and offers love no room to be itself; no place where it can spread its wings in peace and soar above the turmoil of the world. ²The unforgiving mind is sad, without the hope of respite and release from pain. ³It suffers and abides in misery, peering about in darkness, seeing not, yet certain of the danger lurking there.

3. The unforgiving mind is torn with doubt, confused about itself and all it sees; afraid and angry, weak and blustering, afraid to go ahead, afraid to stay, afraid to waken or to go to sleep, afraid of every sound, yet more afraid of stillness; terrified of darkness, yet more terrified at the approach of light. ²What can the unforgiving mind perceive but its damnation? ³What can it behold except the proof that all its sins are real?

4. The unforgiving mind sees no mistakes, but only sins. ²It looks upon the world with sightless eyes, and shrieks as it beholds its own projections rising to attack its miserable parody of life. ³It wants to live, yet wishes it were dead. ⁴It wants forgiveness, yet it sees no hope. ⁵It wants escape, yet can conceive of none because it sees the sinful everywhere.

5. The unforgiving mind is in despair, without the prospect of a future which can offer anything but more despair. ²Yet it regards its judgment of the world as irreversible, and does not see it has condemned itself to this despair. ³It thinks it cannot change, for what it sees bears witness that its judgment is correct. ⁴It does not ask, because it thinks it knows. ⁵It does not question, certain it is right.

6. Forgiveness is acquired. ²It is not inherent in the mind, which cannot sin. ³As sin is an idea you taught yourself, forgiveness must be learned by you as well, but from a Teacher other than yourself, Who represents the other Self in you. ⁴Through Him you learn how to forgive the self you think you made, and let it disappear. ⁵Thus you return your mind as one to Him Who is your Self, and Who can never sin.

7. Each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own how to forgive itself. ²Each one awaits release from hell through you, and turns to you imploringly for Heaven here and now. ³It has no hope, but you become its hope. ⁴And as its hope, do you become your own. ⁵The unforgiving mind must learn through your forgiveness that it has been saved from hell. ⁶And as you teach salvation, you will learn. ⁷Yet all your teaching and your learning will be not of you, but of the Teacher Who was given you to show the way to you.

8. Today we practice learning to forgive. ²If you are willing, you can learn today to take the key to happiness, and use it on your own behalf. ³We will devote ten minutes in the morning, and at night another ten, to learning how to give forgiveness and receive forgiveness, too.

9. The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same. ²Yet we will try to learn today that they are one through practicing forgiveness toward one whom you think of as an enemy, and one whom you consider as a friend. ³And as you learn to see them both as one, we will extend the lesson to yourself, and see that their escape included yours.

10. Begin the longer practice periods by thinking of someone you do not like, who seems to irritate you, or to cause regret in you if you should meet him; one you actively despise, or merely try to overlook. ²It does not matter what the form your anger takes. ³You probably have chosen him already. ⁴He will do.

11. Now close your eyes and see him in your mind, and look at him a while. ²Try to perceive some light in him somewhere; a little gleam which you had never noticed. ³Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture that you hold of him. ⁴Look at this picture till you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers him, and makes the picture beautiful and good.

12. Look at this changed perception for a while, and turn your mind to one you call a friend. ²Try to transfer the light you learned to see around your former “enemy” to him. ³Perceive him now as more than friend to you, for in that light his holiness shows you your savior, saved and saving, healed and whole.

13. Then let him offer you the light you see in him, and let your “enemy” and friend unite in blessing you with what you gave. ²Now are you one with them, and they with you. ³Now have you been forgiven by yourself. ⁴Do not forget, throughout the day, the role forgiveness plays in bringing happiness to every unforgiving mind, with yours among them. ⁵Every hour tell yourself:

⁶Forgiveness is the key to happiness. ⁷I will awaken from the dream that I am mortal, fallible and full of sin, and know I am the perfect Son of God.

https://acim.org/acim/lesson-121/forgiveness-is-the-key-to-happiness/en/s/526

Lesson 120

For morning and evening review:

1. (109) **I rest in God.**

²I rest in God today, and let Him work in me and through me, while I rest in Him in quiet and in perfect certainty.

2. (110) **I am as God created me.**

²I am God’s Son. ³Today I lay aside all sick illusions of myself, and let my Father tell me Who I really am.

3. On the hour:

²**I rest in God.**

³On the half hour:

⁴**I am as God created me.**

https://acim.org/acim/review-iii/lesson-120/en/s/525

Lesson 119

For morning and evening review:

1. (107) **Truth will correct all errors in my mind.**

²I am mistaken when I think I can be hurt in any way. ³I am God’s Son, whose Self rests safely in the Mind of God.

2. (108) **To give and to receive are one in truth.**

²I will forgive all things today, that I may learn how to accept the truth in me, and come to recognize my sinlessness.

3. On the hour:

²**Truth will correct all errors in my mind.**

³On the half hour:

⁴**To give and to receive are one in truth.**

https://acim.org/acim/review-iii/lesson-119/en/s/524

Lesson 118

For morning and evening review:

1. (105) **God’s peace and joy are mine.**

²Today I will accept God’s peace and joy, in glad exchange for all the substitutes that I have made for happiness and peace.

2. (106) **Let me be still and listen to the truth.**

²Let my own feeble voice be still, and let me hear the mighty Voice for Truth Itself assure me that I am God’s perfect Son.

3. On the hour:

²**God’s peace and joy are mine.**

³On the half hour:

⁴**Let me be still and listen to the truth.**

https://acim.org/acim/review-iii/lesson-118/en/s/523