Lesson 157
Into His Presence would I enter now.
1. This is a day of silence and of trust. ²It is a special time of promise in your calendar of days. ³It is a time Heaven has set apart to shine upon, and cast a timeless light upon this day, when echoes of eternity are heard. ⁴This day is holy, for it ushers in a new experience; a different kind of feeling and awareness. ⁵You have spent long days and nights in celebrating death. ⁶Today you learn to feel the joy of life.
2. This is another crucial turning point in the curriculum. ²We add a new dimension now; a fresh experience that sheds a light on all that we have learned already, and prepares us for what we have yet to learn. ³It brings us to the door where learning ceases, and we catch a glimpse of what lies past the highest reaches it can possibly attain. ⁴It leaves us here an instant, and we go beyond it, sure of our direction and our only goal.
3. Today it will be given you to feel a touch of Heaven, though you will return to paths of learning. ²Yet you have come far enough along the way to alter time sufficiently to rise above its laws, and walk into eternity a while. ³This you will learn to do increasingly, as every lesson, faithfully rehearsed, brings you more swiftly to this holy place and leaves you, for a moment, to your Self.
4. He will direct your practicing today, for what you ask for now is what He wills. ²And having joined your will with His this day, what you are asking must be given you. ³Nothing is needed but today’s idea to light your mind, and let it rest in still anticipation and in quiet joy, wherein you quickly leave the world behind.
5. From this day forth, your ministry takes on a genuine devotion, and a glow that travels from your fingertips to those you touch, and blesses those you look upon. ²A vision reaches everyone you meet, and everyone you think of, or who thinks of you. ³For your experience today will so transform your mind that it becomes the touchstone for the holy Thoughts of God.
6. Your body will be sanctified today, its only purpose being now to bring the vision of what you experience this day to light the world. ²We cannot give experience like this directly. ³Yet it leaves a vision in our eyes which we can offer everyone, that he may come the sooner to the same experience in which the world is quietly forgot, and Heaven is remembered for a while.
7. As this experience increases and all goals but this become of little worth, the world to which you will return becomes a little closer to the end of time; a little more like Heaven in its ways; a little nearer its deliverance. ²And you who bring it light will come to see the light more sure; the vision more distinct. ³The time will come when you will not return in the same form in which you now appear, for you will have no need of it. ⁴Yet now it has a purpose, and will serve it well.
8. Today we will embark upon a course you have not dreamed of. ²But the Holy One, the Giver of the happy dreams of life, Translator of perception into truth, the holy Guide to Heaven given you, has dreamed for you this journey which you make and start today, with the experience this day holds out to you to be your own.
9. Into Christ’s Presence will we enter now, serenely unaware of everything except His shining face and perfect Love. ²The vision of His face will stay with you, but there will be an instant which transcends all vision, even this, the holiest. ³This you will never teach, for you attained it not through learning. ⁴Yet the vision speaks of your rememberance of what you knew that instant, and will surely know again.
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Lesson 156
I walk with God in perfect holiness.
1. Today’s idea but states the simple truth that makes the thought of sin impossible. ²It promises there is no cause for guilt, and being causeless it does not exist. ³It follows surely from the basic thought so often mentioned in the text; ideas leave not their source. ⁴If this be true, how can you be apart from God? ⁵How could you walk the world alone and separate from your Source?
2. We are not inconsistent in the thoughts that we present in our curriculum. ²Truth must be true throughout, if it be true. ³It cannot contradict itself, nor be in parts uncertain and in others sure. ⁴You cannot walk the world apart from God, because you could not be without Him. ⁵He is what your life is. ⁶Where you are He is. ⁷There is one life. ⁸That life you share with Him. ⁹Nothing can be apart from Him and live.
3. Yet where He is, there must be holiness as well as life. ²No attribute of His remains unshared by everything that lives. ³What lives is holy as Himself, because what shares His life is part of Holiness, and could no more be sinful than the sun could choose to be of ice; the sea elect to be apart from water, or the grass to grow with roots suspended in the air.
4. There is a light in you which cannot die; whose presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you. ²All things that live bring gifts to you, and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet. ³The scent of flowers is their gift to you. ⁴The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat, and lay their leaves before you on the ground that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper round your holy head.
5. The light in you is what the universe longs to behold. ²All living things are still before you, for they recognize Who walks with you. ³The light you carry is their own. ⁴And thus they see in you their holiness, saluting you as savior and as God. ⁵Accept their reverence, for it is due to Holiness Itself, which walks with you, transforming in Its gentle light all things unto Its likeness and Its purity.
6. This is the way salvation works. ²As you step back, the light in you steps forward and encompasses the world. ³It heralds not the end of sin in punishment and death. ⁴In lightness and in laughter is sin gone, because its quaint absurdity is seen. ⁵It is a foolish thought, a silly dream, not frightening, ridiculous perhaps, but who would waste an instant in approach to God Himself for such a senseless whim?
7. Yet you have wasted many, many years on just this foolish thought. ²The past is gone, with all its fantasies. ³They keep you bound no longer. ⁴The approach to God is near. ⁵And in the little interval of doubt that still remains, you may perhaps lose sight of your Companion, and mistake Him for the senseless, ancient dream that now is past.
8. “Who walks with me?” ²This question should be asked a thousand times a day, till certainty has ended doubting and established peace. ³Today let doubting cease. ⁴God speaks for you in answering your question with these words:
⁵I walk with God in perfect holiness. ⁶I light the world, I light my mind and all the minds which God created one with me.
https://acim.org/acim/lesson-156/i-walk-with-god-in-perfect-holiness/en/s/562
Lesson 155
I will step back and let Him lead the way.
1. There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. ²You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently. ³Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. ⁴And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. ⁵Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them, as you were before.
2. The world is an illusion. ²Those who choose to come to it are seeking for a place where they can be illusions, and avoid their own reality. ³Yet when they find their own reality is even here, then they step back and let it lead the way. ⁴What other choice is really theirs to make? ⁵To let illusions walk ahead of truth is madness. ⁶But to let illusion sink behind the truth and let the truth stand forth as what it is, is merely sanity.
3. This is the simple choice we make today. ²The mad illusion will remain awhile in evidence, for those to look upon who chose to come, and have not yet rejoiced to find they were mistaken in their choice. ³They cannot learn directly from the truth, because they have denied that it is so. ⁴And so they need a Teacher Who perceives their madness, but Who still can look beyond illusion to the simple truth in them.
4. If truth demanded they give up the world, it would appear to them as if it asked the sacrifice of something that is real. ²Many have chosen to renounce the world while still believing its reality. ³And they have suffered from a sense of loss, and have not been released accordingly. ⁴Others have chosen nothing but the world, and they have suffered from a sense of loss still deeper, which they did not understand.
5. Between these paths there is another road that leads away from loss of every kind, for sacrifice and deprivation both are quickly left behind. ²This is the way appointed for you now. ³You walk this path as others walk, nor do you seem to be distinct from them, although you are indeed. ⁴Thus can you serve them while you serve yourself, and set their footsteps on the way that God has opened up to you, and them through you.
6. Illusion still appears to cling to you, that you may reach them. ²Yet it has stepped back. ³And it is not illusion that they hear you speak of, nor illusion that you bring their eyes to look on and their minds to grasp. ⁴Nor can the truth, which walks ahead of you, speak to them through illusions, for the road leads past illusion now, while on the way you call to them, that they may follow you.
7. All roads will lead to this one in the end. ²For sacrifice and deprivation are paths that lead nowhere, choices for defeat, and aims that will remain impossible. ³All this steps back as truth comes forth in you, to lead your brothers from the ways of death, and set them on the way to happiness. ⁴Their suffering is but illusion. ⁵Yet they need a guide to lead them out of it, for they mistake illusion for the truth.
8. Such is salvation’s call, and nothing more. ²It asks that you accept the truth, and let it go before you, lighting up the path of ransom from illusion. ³It is not a ransom with a price. ⁴There is no cost, but only gain. ⁵Illusion can but seem to hold in chains the holy Son of God. ⁶It is but from illusions he is saved. ⁷As they step back, he finds himself again.
9. Walk safely now, yet carefully, because this path is new to you. ²And you may find that you are tempted still to walk ahead of truth, and let illusions be your guide. ³Your holy brothers have been given you, to follow in your footsteps as you walk with certainty of purpose to the truth. ⁴It goes before you now, that they may see something with which they can identify; something they understand to lead the way.
10. Yet at the journey’s ending there will be no gap, no distance between truth and you. ²And all illusions walking in the way you travelled will be gone from you as well, with nothing left to keep the truth apart from God’s completion, holy as Himself. ³Step back in faith and let truth lead the way. ⁴You know not where you go. ⁵But One Who knows goes with you. ⁶Let Him lead you with the rest.
11. When dreams are over, time has closed the door on all the things that pass and miracles are purposeless, the holy Son of God will make no journeys. ²There will be no wish to be illusion rather than the truth. ³And we step forth toward this, as we progress along the way that truth points out to us. ⁴This is our final journey, which we make for everyone. ⁵We must not lose our way. ⁶For as truth goes before us, so it goes before our brothers who will follow us.
12. We walk to God. ²Pause and reflect on this. ³Could any way be holier, or more deserving of your effort, of your love and of your full intent? ⁴What way could give you more than everything, or offer less and still content the holy Son of God? ⁵We walk to God. ⁶The truth that walks before us now is one with Him, and leads us to where He has always been. ⁷What way but this could be a path that you would choose instead?
13. Your feet are safely set upon the road that leads the world to God. ²Look not to ways that seem to lead you elsewhere. ³Dreams are not a worthy guide for you who are God’s Son. ⁴Forget not He has placed His Hand in yours, and given you your brothers in His trust that you are worthy of His trust in you. ⁵He cannot be deceived. ⁶His trust has made your pathway certain and your goal secure. ⁷You will not fail your brothers nor your Self.
14. And now He asks but that you think of Him a while each day, that He may speak to you and tell you of His Love, reminding you how great His trust; how limitless His Love. ²In your Name and His Own, which are the same, we practice gladly with this thought today:
³I will step back and let Him lead the way, for I would walk along the road to Him.
https://acim.org/acim/lesson-155/i-will-step-back-and-let-him-lead-the-way/en/s/561
Lesson 154
I am among the ministers of God.
1. Let us today be neither arrogant nor falsely humble. ²We have gone beyond such foolishness. ³We cannot judge ourselves, nor need we do so. ⁴These are but attempts to hold decision off, and to delay commitment to our function. ⁵It is not our part to judge our worth, nor can we know what role is best for us; what we can do within a larger plan we cannot see in its entirety. ⁶Our part is cast in Heaven, not in hell. ⁷And what we think is weakness can be strength; what we believe to be our strength is often arrogance.
2. Whatever your appointed role may be, it was selected by the Voice for God, Whose function is to speak for you as well. ²Seeing your strengths exactly as they are, and equally aware of where they can be best applied, for what, to whom and when, He chooses and accepts your part for you. ³He does not work without your own consent. ⁴But He is not deceived in what you are, and listens only to His Voice in you.
3. It is through His ability to hear one Voice which is His Own that you become aware at last there is one Voice in you. ²And that one Voice appoints your function, and relays it to you, giving you the strength to understand it, do what it entails, and to succeed in everything you do that is related to it. ³God has joined His Son in this, and thus His Son becomes His messenger of unity with Him.
4. It is this joining, through the Voice for God, of Father and of Son, that sets apart salvation from the world. ²It is this Voice which speaks of laws the world does not obey; which promises salvation from all sin, with guilt abolished in the mind that God created sinless. ³Now this mind becomes aware again of Who created it, and of His lasting union with itself. ⁴So is its Self the one reality in which its will and that of God are joined.
5. A messenger is not the one who writes the message he delivers. ²Nor does he question the right of him who does, nor ask why he has chosen those who will receive the message that he brings. ³It is enough that he accept it, give it to the ones for whom it is intended, and fulfill his role in its delivery. ⁴If he determines what the messages should be, or what their purpose is, or where they should be carried, he is failing to perform his proper part as bringer of the Word.
6. There is one major difference in the role of Heaven’s messengers, which sets them off from those the world appoints. ²The messages that they deliver are intended first for them. ³And it is only as they can accept them for themselves that they become able to bring them further, and to give them everywhere that they were meant to be. ⁴Like earthly messengers, they did not write the messages they bear, but they become their first receivers in the truest sense, receiving to prepare themselves to give.
7. An earthly messenger fulfills his role by giving all his messages away. ²The messengers of God perform their part by their acceptance of His messages as for themselves, and show they understand the messages by giving them away. ³They choose no roles that are not given them by His authority. ⁴And so they gain by every message that they give away.
8. Would you receive the messages of God? ²For thus do you become His messenger. ³You are appointed now. ⁴And yet you wait to give the messages you have received. ⁵And so you do not know that they are yours, and do not recognize them. ⁶No one can receive and understand he has received until he gives. ⁷For in the giving is his own acceptance of what he received.
9. You who are now the messenger of God, receive His messages. ²For that is part of your appointed role. ³God has not failed to offer what you need, nor has it been left unaccepted. ⁴Yet another part of your appointed task is yet to be accomplished. ⁵He Who has received for you the messages of God would have them be received by you as well. ⁶For thus do you identify with Him and claim your own.
10. It is this joining that we undertake to recognize today. ²We will not seek to keep our minds apart from Him Who speaks for us, for it is but our voice we hear as we attend Him. ³He alone can speak to us and for us, joining in one Voice the getting and the giving of God’s Word; the giving and receiving of His Will.
11. We practice giving Him what He would have, that we may recognize His gifts to us. ²He needs our voice that He may speak through us. ³He needs our hands to hold His messages, and carry them to those whom He appoints. ⁴He needs our feet to bring us where He wills, that those who wait in misery may be at last delivered. ⁵And He needs our will united with His Own, that we may be the true receivers of the gifts He gives.
12. Let us but learn this lesson for today: We will not recognize what we receive until we give it. ²You have heard this said a hundred ways, a hundred times, and yet belief is lacking still. ³But this is sure; until belief is given it, you will receive a thousand miracles and then receive a thousand more, but will not know that God Himself has left no gift beyond what you already have; nor has denied the tiniest of blessings to His Son. ⁴What can this mean to you, until you have identified with Him and with His Own?
13. Our lesson for today is stated thus:
²I am among the ministers of God, and I am grateful that I have the means by which to recognize that I am free.
14. The world recedes as we light up our minds, and realize these holy words are true. ²They are the message sent to us today from our Creator. ³Now we demonstrate how they have changed our minds about ourselves, and what our function is. ⁴For as we prove that we accept no will we do not share, our many gifts from our Creator will spring to our sight and leap into our hands, and we will recognize what we received.
https://acim.org/acim/lesson-154/i-am-among-the-ministers-of-god/en/s/560
Lesson 153
In my defenselessness my safety lies.
1. You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the “gifts” it merely lends to take away again; attend this lesson well. ²The world provides no safety. ³It is rooted in attack, and all its “gifts” of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. ⁴It attacks, and then attacks again. ⁵No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus.
2. The world gives rise but to defensiveness. ²For threat brings anger, anger makes attack seem reasonable, honestly provoked, and righteous in the name of self-defense. ³Yet is defensiveness a double threat. ⁴For it attests to weakness, and sets up a system of defense that cannot work. ⁵Now are the weak still further undermined, for there is treachery without and still a greater treachery within. ⁶The mind is now confused, and knows not where to turn to find escape from its imaginings.
3. It is as if a circle held it fast, wherein another circle bound it and another one in that, until escape no longer can be hoped for nor obtained. ²Attack, defense; defense, attack, become the circles of the hours and the days that bind the mind in heavy bands of steel with iron overlaid, returning but to start again. ³There seems to be no break nor ending in the ever-tightening grip of the imprisonment upon the mind.
4. Defenses are the costliest of all the prices which the ego would exact. ²In them lies madness in a form so grim that hope of sanity seems but to be an idle dream, beyond the possible. ³The sense of threat the world encourages is so much deeper, and so far beyond the frenzy and intensity of which you can conceive, that you have no idea of all the devastation it has wrought.
5. You are its slave. ²You know not what you do, in fear of it. ³You do not understand how much you have been made to sacrifice, who feel its iron grip upon your heart. ⁴You do not realize what you have done to sabotage the holy peace of God by your defensiveness. ⁵For you behold the Son of God as but a victim to attack by fantasies, by dreams, and by illusions he has made; yet helpless in their presence, needful only of defense by still more fantasies, and dreams by which illusions of his safety comfort him.
6. Defenselessness is strength. ²It testifies to recognition of the Christ in you. ³Perhaps you will recall the text maintains that choice is always made between Christ’s strength and your own weakness, seen apart from Him. ⁴Defenselessness can never be attacked, because it recognizes strength so great attack is folly, or a silly game a tired child might play, when he becomes too sleepy to remember what he wants.
7. Defensiveness is weakness. ²It proclaims you have denied the Christ and come to fear His Father’s anger. ³What can save you now from your delusion of an angry god, whose fearful image you believe you see at work in all the evils of the world? ⁴What but illusions could defend you now, when it is but illusions that you fight?
8. We will not play such childish games today. ²For our true purpose is to save the world, and we would not exchange for foolishness the endless joy our function offers us. ³We would not let our happiness slip by because a fragment of a senseless dream happened to cross our minds, and we mistook the figures in it for the Son of God; its tiny instant for eternity.
9. We look past dreams today, and recognize that we need no defense because we are created unassailable, without all thought or wish or dream in which attack has any meaning. ²Now we cannot fear, for we have left all fearful thoughts behind. ³And in defenselessness we stand secure, serenely certain of our safety now, sure of salvation; sure we will fulfill our chosen purpose, as our ministry extends its holy blessing through the world.
10. Be still a moment, and in silence think how holy is your purpose, how secure you rest, untouchable within its light. ²God’s ministers have chosen that the truth be with them. ³Who is holier than they? ⁴Who could be surer that his happiness is fully guaranteed? ⁵And who could be more mightily protected? ⁶What defense could possibly be needed by the ones who are among the chosen ones of God, by His election and their own as well?
11. It is the function of God’s ministers to help their brothers choose as they have done. ²God has elected all, but few have come to realize His Will is but their own. ³And while you fail to teach what you have learned, salvation waits and darkness holds the world in grim imprisonment. ⁴Nor will you learn that light has come to you, and your escape has been accomplished. ⁵For you will not see the light, until you offer it to all your brothers. ⁶As they take it from your hands, so will you recognize it as your own.
12. Salvation can be thought of as a game that happy children play. ²It was designed by One Who loves His children, and Who would replace their fearful toys with joyous games, which teach them that the game of fear is gone. ³His game instructs in happiness because there is no loser. ⁴Everyone who plays must win, and in his winning is the gain to everyone ensured. ⁵The game of fear is gladly laid aside, when children come to see the benefits salvation brings.
13. You who have played that you are lost to hope, abandoned by your Father, left alone in terror in a fearful world made mad by sin and guilt; be happy now. ²That game is over. ³Now a quiet time has come, in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of Heaven’s children and the Son of God.
14. We pause but for a moment more, to play our final, happy game upon this earth. ²And then we go to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless. ³So is the story ended. ⁴Let this day bring the last chapter closer to the world, that everyone may learn the tale he reads of terrifying destiny, defeat of all his hopes, his pitiful defense against a vengeance he can not escape, is but his own deluded fantasy. ⁵God’s ministers have come to waken him from the dark dreams this story has evoked in his confused, bewildered memory of this distorted tale. ⁶God’s Son can smile at last, on learning that it is not true.
15. Today we practice in a form we will maintain for quite a while. ²We will begin each day by giving our attention to the daily thought as long as possible. ³Five minutes now becomes the least we give to preparation for a day in which salvation is the only goal we have. ⁴Ten would be better; fifteen better still. ⁵And as distraction ceases to arise to turn us from our purpose, we will find that half an hour is too short a time to spend with God. ⁶Nor will we willingly give less at night, in gratitude and joy.
16. Each hour adds to our increasing peace, as we remember to be faithful to the Will we share with God. ²At times, perhaps, a minute, even less, will be the most that we can offer as the hour strikes. ³Sometimes we will forget. ⁴At other times the business of the world will close on us, and we will be unable to withdraw a little while, and turn our thoughts to God.
17. Yet when we can, we will observe our trust as ministers of God, in hourly remembrance of our mission and His Love. ²And we will quietly sit by and wait on Him and listen to His Voice, and learn what He would have us do the hour that is yet to come; while thanking Him for all the gifts He gave us in the one gone by.
18. In time, with practice, you will never cease to think of Him, and hear His loving Voice guiding your footsteps into quiet ways, where you will walk in true defenselessness. ²For you will know that Heaven goes with you. ³Nor would you keep your mind away from Him a moment, even though your time is spent in offering salvation to the world. ⁴Think you He will not make this possible, for you who chose to carry out His plan for the salvation of the world and yours?
19. Today our theme is our defenselessness. ²We clothe ourselves in it, as we prepare to meet the day. ³We rise up strong in Christ, and let our weakness disappear, as we remember that His strength abides in us. ⁴We will remind ourselves that He remains beside us through the day, and never leaves our weakness unsupported by His strength. ⁵We call upon His strength each time we feel the threat of our defenses undermine our certainty of purpose. ⁶We will pause a moment, as He tells us, “I am here.”
20. Your practicing will now begin to take the earnestness of love, to help you keep your mind from wandering from its intent. ²Be not afraid nor timid. ³There can be no doubt that you will reach your final goal. ⁴The ministers of God can never fail, because the love and strength and peace that shine from them to all their brothers come from Him. ⁵These are His gifts to you. ⁶Defenselessness is all you need to give Him in return. ⁷You lay aside but what was never real, to look on Christ and see His sinlessness.
https://acim.org/acim/lesson-153/in-my-defenselessness-my-safety-lies/en/s/559
Lesson 152
The power of decision is my own.
1. No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. ²No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. ³No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. ⁴And no one dies without his own consent. ⁵Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. ⁶Here is your world, complete in all details. ⁷Here is its whole reality for you. ⁸And it is only here salvation is.
2. You may believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. ²Yet can truth have exceptions? ³If you have the gift of everything, can loss be real? ⁴Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? ⁵Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where love and perfect holiness abide? ⁶Truth must be all-inclusive, if it be the truth at all. ⁷Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely.
3. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true. ²This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. ³Without the first, the second has no meaning. ⁴But without the second, is the first no longer true. ⁵Truth cannot have an opposite. ⁶This can not be too often said and thought about. ⁷For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false. ⁸And truth has lost its meaning. ⁹Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false.
4. This is the simplest of distinctions, yet the most obscure. ²But not because it is a difficult distinction to perceive. ³It is concealed behind a vast array of choices that do not appear to be entirely your own. ⁴And thus the truth appears to have some aspects that belie consistency, but do not seem to be but contradictions introduced by you.
5. As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with transitory states by definition false. ²And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind; in all awareness and in all response. ³This is the all-inclusiveness which sets the truth apart from falsehood, and the false kept separate from the truth, as what it is.
6. Is it not strange that you believe to think you made the world you see is arrogance? ²God made it not. ³Of this you can be sure. ⁴What can He know of the ephemeral, the sinful and the guilty, the afraid, the suffering and lonely, and the mind that lives within a body that must die? ⁵You but accuse Him of insanity, to think He made a world where such things seem to have reality. ⁶He is not mad. ⁷Yet only madness makes a world like this.
7. To think that God made chaos, contradicts His Will, invented opposites to truth, and suffers death to triumph over life; all this is arrogance. ²Humility would see at once these things are not of Him. ³And can you see what God created not? ⁴To think you can is merely to believe you can perceive what God willed not to be. ⁵And what could be more arrogant than this?
8. Let us today be truly humble, and accept what we have made as what it is. ²The power of decision is our own. ³Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear. ⁴What rises to awareness then will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now. ⁵And it will take the place of self-deceptions made but to usurp the altar to the Father and the Son.
9. Today we practice true humility, abandoning the false pretense by which the ego seeks to prove it arrogant. ²Only the ego can be arrogant. ³But truth is humble in acknowledging its mightiness, its changelessness and its eternal wholeness, all-encompassing, God’s perfect gift to His beloved Son. ⁴We lay aside the arrogance which says that we are sinners, guilty and afraid, ashamed of what we are; and lift our hearts in true humility instead to Him Who has created us immaculate, like to Himself in power and in love.
10. The power of decision is our own. ²And we accept of Him that which we are, and humbly recognize the Son of God. ³To recognize God’s Son implies as well that all self-concepts have been laid aside, and recognized as false. ⁴Their arrogance has been perceived. ⁵And in humility the radiance of God’s Son, his gentleness, his perfect sinlessness, his Father’s Love, his right to Heaven and release from hell, are joyously accepted as our own.
11. Now do we join in glad acknowledgment that lies are false, and only truth is true. ²We think of truth alone as we arise, and spend five minutes practicing its ways, encouraging our frightened minds with this:
³The power of decision is my own. ⁴This day I will accept myself as what my Father’s Will created me to be.
⁵Then will we wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions, as we humbly ask our Self that He reveal Himself to us. ⁶And He Who never left will come again to our awareness, grateful to restore His home to God, as it was meant to be.
12. In patience wait for Him throughout the day, and hourly invite Him with the words with which the day began, concluding it with this same invitation to your Self. ²God’s Voice will answer, for He speaks for you and for your Father. ³He will substitute the peace of God for all your frantic thoughts, the truth of God for self-deceptions, and God’s Son for your illusions of yourself.
https://acim.org/acim/lesson-152/the-power-of-decision-is-my-own/en/s/558
Lesson 151
All things are echoes of the Voice for God.
1. No one can judge on partial evidence. ²That is not judgment. ³It is merely an opinion based on ignorance and doubt. ⁴Its seeming certainty is but a cloak for the uncertainty it would conceal. ⁵It needs irrational defense because it is irrational. ⁶And its defense seems strong, convincing, and without a doubt because of all the doubting underneath.
2. You do not seem to doubt the world you see. ²You do not really question what is shown you through the body’s eyes. ³Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. ⁴That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger, when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! ⁵Why would you trust them so implicitly? ⁶Why but because of underlying doubt, which you would hide with show of certainty?
3. How can you judge? ²Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. ³Yet witness never falser was than this. ⁴But how else do you judge the world you see? ⁵You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. ⁶You think your fingers touch reality, and close upon the truth. ⁷This is awareness that you understand, and think more real than what is witnessed to by the eternal Voice for God Himself.
4. Can this be judgment? ²You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you. ³You cannot judge. ⁴You merely can believe the ego’s judgments, all of which are false. ⁵It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt.
5. This thing it speaks of, and would yet defend, it tells you is yourself. ²And you believe that this is so with stubborn certainty. ³Yet underneath remains the hidden doubt that what it shows you as reality with such conviction it does not believe. ⁴It is itself alone that it condemns. ⁵It is within itself it sees the guilt. ⁶It is its own despair it sees in you.
6. Hear not its voice. ²The witnesses it sends to prove to you its evil is your own are false, and speak with certainty of what they do not know. ³Your faith in them is blind because you would not share the doubts their lord can not completely vanquish. ⁴You believe to doubt his vassals is to doubt yourself.
7. Yet you must learn to doubt their evidence will clear the way to recognize yourself, and let the Voice for God alone be Judge of what is worthy of your own belief. ²He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body’s mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers’ touch reports of him. ³He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God’s Son. ⁴He recognizes only what God loves, and in the holy light of what He sees do all the ego’s dreams of what you are vanish before the splendor He beholds.
8. Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt, because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its face. ²Christ cannot doubt Himself. ³The Voice for God can only honor Him, rejoicing in His perfect, everlasting sinlessness. ⁴Whom He has judged can only laugh at guilt, unwilling now to play with toys of sin; unheeding of the body’s witnesses before the rapture of Christ’s holy face.
9. And thus He judges you. ²Accept His Word for what you are, for He bears witness to your beautiful creation, and the Mind Whose Thought created your reality. ³What can the body mean to Him Who knows the glory of the Father and the Son? ⁴What whispers of the ego can He hear? ⁵What could convince Him that your sins are real? ⁶Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. ⁷His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth.
10. He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. ²He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle face of Christ in all of them. ³You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings, and teach the single lesson that they all contain.
11. He will select the elements in them which represent the truth, and disregard those aspects which reflect but idle dreams. ²And He will reinterpret all you see, and all occurrences, each circumstance, and every happening that seems to touch on you in any way from His one frame of reference, wholly unified and sure. ³And you will see the love beyond the hate, the constancy in change, the pure in sin, and only Heaven’s blessing on the world.
12. Such is your resurrection, for your life is not a part of anything you see. ²It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness, within the Holy, holy as Itself. ³In everyone and everything His Voice would speak to you of nothing but your Self and your Creator, Who is one with Him. ⁴So will you see the holy face of Christ in everything, and hear in everything no sound except the echo of God’s Voice.
13. We practice wordlessly today, except at the beginning of the time we spend with God. ²We introduce these times with but a single, slow repeating of the thought with which the day begins. ³And then we watch our thoughts, appealing silently to Him Who sees the elements of truth in them. ⁴Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back again as clean ideas that do not contradict the Will of God.
14. Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son, as proof of His eternal Love. ²And as each thought is thus transformed, it takes on healing power from the Mind which saw the truth in it, and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. ³All the threads of fantasy are gone. ⁴And what remains is unified into a perfect Thought that offers its perfection everywhere.
15. Spend fifteen minutes thus when you awake, and gladly give another fifteen more before you go to sleep. ²Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified. ³So are you taught to teach the Son of God the holy lesson of his sanctity. ⁴No one can fail to listen, when you hear the Voice for God give honor to God’s Son. ⁵And everyone will share the thoughts with you which He has retranslated in your mind.
16. Such is your Eastertide. ²And so you lay the gift of snow-white lilies on the world, replacing witnesses to sin and death. ³Through your transfiguration is the world redeemed, and joyfully released from guilt. ⁴Now do we lift our resurrected minds in gladness and in gratitude to Him Who has restored our sanity to us.
17. And we will hourly remember Him Who is salvation and deliverance. ²As we give thanks, the world unites with us and happily accepts our holy thoughts, which Heaven has corrected and made pure. ³Now has our ministry begun at last, to carry round the world the joyous news that truth has no illusions, and the peace of God, through us, belongs to everyone.
https://acim.org/acim/lesson-151/all-things-are-echoes-of-the-voice-for-god/en/s/557
Lesson 150
My mind holds only what I think with God.
1(139) I will accept Atonement for myself.
(140) Only salvation can be said to cure.
Lesson 149
My mind holds only what I think with God.
1(137) When I am healed I am not healed alone.
(138) Heaven is the decision I must make.
Lesson 148
My mind holds only what I think with God.
1(135) If I defend myself I am attacked.
(136) Sickness is a defense against the truth.
Lesson 147
My mind holds only what I think with God.
1(133) I will not value what is valueless.
(134) Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Lesson 146
My mind holds only what I think with God.
1(131) No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.
(132) I loose the world from all I thought it was.
Lesson 145
My mind holds only what I think with God.
1(129) Beyond this world there is a world I want.
(130) It is impossible to see two worlds.
Lesson 144
My mind holds only what I think with God.
1(127) There is no love but God’s.
(128) The world I see holds nothing that I want.
Lesson 143
My mind holds only what I think with God.
1(125) In quiet I receive God’s Word today.
(126) All that I give is given to myself.
Lesson 142
**Review**
My mind holds only what I think with God.
1(123) I thank my Father for His gifts to me.
(124) Let me remember I am one with God.
Lesson 141
**Review**
My mind holds only what I think with God.
1(121) Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
(122) Forgiveness offers everything I want.
Lesson 140
Only salvation can be said to cure.
1. “Cure” is a word that cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as beneficial. ²What the world perceives as therapeutic is but what will make the body “better.” ³When it tries to heal the mind, it sees no separation from the body, where it thinks the mind exists. ⁴Its forms of healing thus must substitute illusion for illusion. ⁵One belief in sickness takes another form, and so the patient now perceives himself as well.
2. He is not healed. ²He merely had a dream that he was sick, and in the dream he found a magic formula to make him well. ³Yet he has not awakened from the dream, and so his mind remains exactly as it was before. ⁴He has not seen the light that would awaken him and end the dream. ⁵What difference does the content of a dream make in reality? ⁶One either sleeps or wakens. ⁷There is nothing in between.
3. The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings are different from the dreaming of the world, where one can merely dream he is awake. ²The dreams forgiveness lets the mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep, so that the dreamer dreams another dream. ³His happy dreams are heralds of the dawn of truth upon the mind. ⁴They lead from sleep to gentle waking, so that dreams are gone. ⁵And thus they cure for all eternity.
4. Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. ²For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. ³Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. ⁴Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. ⁵It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. ⁶And that is cure indeed. ⁷For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.
5. Peace be to you who have been cured in God, and not in idle dreams. ²For cure must come from holiness, and holiness can not be found where sin is cherished. ³God abides in holy temples. ⁴He is barred where sin has entered. ⁵Yet there is no place where He is not. ⁶And therefore sin can have no home in which to hide from His beneficence. ⁷There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide.
6. This is the thought that cures. ²It does not make distinctions among unrealities. ³Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where the need for healing is. ⁴This is no magic. ⁵It is merely an appeal to truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever. ⁶It is not a thought that judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. ⁷It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real.
7. Let us not try today to seek to cure what cannot suffer sickness. ²Healing must be sought but where it is, and then applied to what is sick, so that it can be cured. ³There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. ⁴The mind that brings illusions to the truth is really changed. ⁵There is no change but this. ⁶For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes that have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?
8. Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. ²We will try today to find the source of healing, which is in our minds because our Father placed it there for us. ³It is not farther from us than ourselves. ⁴It is as near to us as our own thoughts; so close it is impossible to lose. ⁵We need but seek it and it must be found.
9. We will not be misled today by what appears to us as sick. ²We go beyond appearances today and reach the source of healing, from which nothing is exempt. ³We will succeed to the extent to which we realize that there can never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and equally untrue. ⁴Here there are no degrees, and no beliefs that what does not exist is truer in some forms than others. ⁵All of them are false, and can be cured because they are not true.
10. So do we lay aside our amulets, our charms and medicines, our chants and bits of magic in whatever form they take. ²We will be still and listen for the Voice of healing, which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. ³No voice but this can cure. ⁴Today we hear a single Voice which speaks to us of truth, where all illusions end, and peace returns to the eternal, quiet home of God.
11. We waken hearing Him, and let Him speak to us five minutes as the day begins, and end the day by listening again five minutes more before we go to sleep. ²Our only preparation is to let our interfering thoughts be laid aside, not separately, but all of them as one. ³They are the same. ⁴We have no need to make them different, and thus delay the time when we can hear our Father speak to us. ⁵We hear Him now. ⁶We come to Him today.
12. With nothing in our hands to which we cling, with lifted hearts and listening minds we pray:
²Only salvation can be said to cure.
³Speak to us, Father, that we may be healed.
⁴And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection, and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds, nor offer proof to us that it is real. ⁵This will we learn today. ⁶And we will say our prayer for healing hourly, and take a minute as the hour strikes, to hear the answer to our prayer be given us as we attend in silence and in joy. ⁷This is the day when healing comes to us. ⁸This is the day when separation ends, and we remember Who we really are.
https://acim.org/acim/lesson-140/only-salvation-can-be-said-to-cure/en/s/545
Lesson 139
I will accept Atonement for myself.
1. Here is the end of choice. ²For here we come to a decision to accept ourselves as God created us. ³And what is choice except uncertainty of what we are? ⁴There is no doubt that is not rooted here. ⁵There is no question but reflects this one. ⁶There is no conflict that does not entail the single, simple question, “What am I?”
2. Yet who could ask this question except one who has refused to recognize himself? ²Only refusal to accept yourself could make the question seem to be sincere. ³The only thing that can be surely known by any living thing is what it is. ⁴From this one point of certainty, it looks on other things as certain as itself.
3. Uncertainty about what you must be is self-deception on a scale so vast, its magnitude can hardly be conceived. ²To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead. ³For what is life except to be yourself, and what but you can be alive instead? ⁴Who is the doubter? ⁵What is it he doubts? ⁶Whom does he question? ⁷Who can answer him?
4. He merely states that he is not himself, and therefore, being something else, becomes a questioner of what that something is. ²Yet he could never be alive at all unless he knew the answer. ³If he asks as if he does not know, it merely shows he does not want to be the thing he is. ⁴He has accepted it because he lives; has judged against it and denied its worth, and has decided that he does not know the only certainty by which he lives.
5. Thus he becomes uncertain of his life, for what it is has been denied by him. ²It is for this denial that you need Atonement. ³Your denial made no change in what you are. ⁴But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth. ⁵You are yourself. ⁶There is no doubt of this. ⁷And yet you doubt it. ⁸But you do not ask what part of you can really doubt yourself. ⁹It cannot really be a part of you that asks this question. ¹⁰For it asks of one who knows the answer. ¹¹Were it part of you, then certainty would be impossible.
6. Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself, and be unsure of what you really are. ²This is the depth of madness. ³Yet it is the universal question of the world. ⁴What does this mean except the world is mad? ⁵Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true?
7. Nothing the world believes is true. ²It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are. ³And they will come again until the time Atonement is accepted, and they learn it is impossible to doubt yourself, and not to be aware of what you are.
8. Only acceptance can be asked of you, for what you are is certain. ²It is set forever in the holy Mind of God, and in your own. ³It is so far beyond all doubt and question that to ask what it must be is all the proof you need to show that you believe the contradiction that you know not what you cannot fail to know. ⁴Is this a question, or a statement which denies itself in statement? ⁵Let us not allow our holy minds to occupy themselves with senseless musings such as this.
9. We have a mission here. ²We did not come to reinforce the madness that we once believed in. ³Let us not forget the goal that we accepted. ⁴It is more than just our happiness alone we came to gain. ⁵What we accept as what we are proclaims what everyone must be, along with us. ⁶Fail not your brothers, or you fail yourself. ⁷Look lovingly on them, that they may know that they are part of you, and you of them.
10. This does Atonement teach, and demonstrates the Oneness of God’s Son is unassailed by his belief he knows not what he is. ²Today accept Atonement, not to change reality, but merely to accept the truth about yourself, and go your way rejoicing in the endless Love of God. ³It is but this that we are asked to do. ⁴It is but this that we will do today.
11. Five minutes in the morning and at night we will devote to dedicate our minds to our assignment for today. ²We start with this review of what our mission is:
³I will accept Atonement for myself, for I remain as God created me.
⁴We have not lost the knowledge that God gave to us when He created us like Him. ⁵We can remember it for everyone, for in creation are all minds as one. ⁶And in our memory is the recall how dear our brothers are to us in truth, how much a part of us is every mind, how faithful they have really been to us, and how our Father’s Love contains them all.
12. In thanks for all creation, in the Name of its Creator and His Oneness with all aspects of creation, we repeat our dedication to our cause today each hour, as we lay aside all thoughts that would distract us from our holy aim. ²For several minutes let your mind be cleared of all the foolish cobwebs which the world would weave around the holy Son of God. ³And learn the fragile nature of the chains that seem to keep the knowledge of yourself apart from your awareness, as you say:
⁴I will accept Atonement for myself, for I remain as God created me.
https://acim.org/acim/lesson-139/i-will-accept-atonement-for-myself/en/s/544
Lesson 138
Heaven is the decision I must make.
1. In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are alternatives to choose between. ²We think that all things have an opposite, and what we want we choose. ³If Heaven exists there must be hell as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we perceive, and what we think is real.
2. Creation knows no opposite. ²But here is opposition part of being “real.” ³It is this strange perception of the truth that makes the choice of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. ⁴It is not really thus. ⁵Yet what is true in God’s creation cannot enter here until it is reflected in some form the world can understand. ⁶Truth cannot come where it could only be perceived with fear. ⁷For this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions. ⁸Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come.
3. Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. ²Decision lets one of conflicting goals become the aim of effort and expenditure of time. ³Without decision, time is but a waste and effort dissipated. ⁴It is spent for nothing in return, and time goes by without results. ⁵There is no sense of gain, for nothing is accomplished; nothing learned.
4. You need to be reminded that you think a thousand choices are confronting you, when there is really only one to make. ²And even this but seems to be a choice. ³Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. ⁴You make but one. ⁵And when that one is made, you will perceive it was no choice at all. ⁶For truth is true, and nothing else is true. ⁷There is no opposite to choose instead. ⁸There is no contradiction to the truth.
5. Choosing depends on learning. ²And the truth cannot be learned, but only recognized. ³In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is known. ⁴But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this course. ⁵Ours are teaching goals, to be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you. ⁶Decisions are the outcome of your learning, for they rest on what you have accepted as the truth of what you are, and what your needs must be.
6. In this insanely complicated world, Heaven appears to take the form of choice, rather than merely being what it is. ²Of all the choices you have tried to make this is the simplest, most definitive and prototype of all the rest, the one which settles all decisions. ³If you could decide the rest, this one remains unsolved. ⁴But when you solve this one, the others are resolved with it, for all decisions but conceal this one by taking different forms. ⁵Here is the final and the only choice in which is truth accepted or denied.
7. So we begin today considering the choice that time was made to help us make. ²Such is its holy purpose, now transformed from the intent you gave it; that it be a means for demonstrating hell is real, hope changes to despair, and life itself must in the end be overcome by death. ³In death alone are opposites resolved, for ending opposition is to die. ⁴And thus salvation must be seen as death, for life is seen as conflict. ⁵To resolve the conflict is to end your life as well.
8. These mad beliefs can gain unconscious hold of great intensity, and grip the mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas about its own protection. ²It must be saved from salvation, threatened to be safe, and magically armored against truth. ³And these decisions are made unaware, to keep them safely undisturbed; apart from question and from reason and from doubt.
9. Heaven is chosen consciously. ²The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. ³All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding, to be judged again, this time with Heaven’s help. ⁴And all mistakes in judgment that the mind had made before are open to correction, as the truth dismisses them as causeless. ⁵Now are they without effects. ⁶They cannot be concealed, because their nothingness is recognized.
10. The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as is the ending of the fear of hell, when it is raised from its protective shield of unawareness, and is brought to light. ²Who can decide between the clearly seen and the unrecognized? ³Yet who can fail to make a choice between alternatives when only one is seen as valuable; the other as a wholly worthless thing, a but imagined source of guilt and pain? ⁴Who hesitates to make a choice like this? ⁵And shall we hesitate to choose today?
11. We make the choice for Heaven as we wake, and spend five minutes making sure that we have made the one decision that is sane. ²We recognize we make a conscious choice between what has existence and what has nothing but an appearance of the truth. ³Its pseudo-being, brought to what is real, is flimsy and transparent in the light. ⁴It holds no terror now, for what was made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate, demands obscurity for fear to be invested there. ⁵Now it is recognized as but a foolish, trivial mistake.
12. Before we close our eyes in sleep tonight, we reaffirm the choice that we have made each hour in between. ²And now we give the last five minutes of our waking day to the decision with which we awoke. ³As every hour passed, we have declared our choice again, in a brief quiet time devoted to maintaining sanity. ⁴And finally, we close the day with this, acknowledging we chose but what we want:
⁵Heaven is the decision I must make. ⁶I make it now, and will not change my mind, because it is the only thing I want.
https://acim.org/acim/lesson-138/heaven-is-the-decision-i-must-make/en/s/543