And you and he will not be able to give love welcome separately.

You could no more know God alone than He knows you without your brother.

 But together you could no more be unaware of love than love could know you not, or fail to recognize itself in you.

Mind cannot attack, but it can make fantasies and direct the body to act them out.

Yet it is never what the body does that seems to satisfy.

Unless the mind believes the body is actually acting out its fantasies, it will attack the body by increasing the projection of its guilt upon it.

Pleasure and pain

Pleasure and pain are equally unreal, because their purpose cannot be achieved.


Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning.
And they share the lack of meaning which their purpose has.

Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. For either witness is the same, and carries but one message:
"You are here, within this body, and you can be hurt.

You can have pleasure, too, but only at the cost of pain."
 
These witnesses are joined by many more.
 
Each one seems different because it has a different name, and so it seems to answer to a different sound. Except for this, the witnesses of sin are all alike.

Call pleasure pain, and it will hurt.
 
Call pain a pleasure, and the pain behind the pleasure will be felt no more. Sin's witnesses but shift from name to name, as one steps forward and another back.
 
Yet which is foremost makes no difference. Sin's witnesses hear but the call of death.

Undoing is for unreality. And this reality will do for you.

Merely by being what it is, does truth release you from everything that it is not.

The Atonement is so gentle you need but whisper to it, and all its power will rush to your assistance and support.

You are not frail with God beside you. Yet without Him you are nothing.

The Atonement offers you God. The gift that you refused is held by Him in you.

The Holy Spirit holds it there for you. God has not left His altar, though His worshippers placed other gods upon it. The temple still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it is holiness.

 In the temple, holiness waits quietly for the return of them that love it.
 
The Presence knows they will return to purity and to grace.
 
The graciousness of God will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss with the immortal assurance of their Father's Love.

The picture of your brother that you see means nothing.

You have decided that your brother is a symbol for a "hateful-love," a "weakened-power," and above all, a "living-death."

And so he has no meaning to you, for he stands for what is meaningless. He represents a double thought, where half is cancelled out by the remaining half.

Yet even this is quickly contradicted by the half it cancelled out, and so they both are gone. And now he stands for nothing.

Symbols which but represent ideas that cannot be must stand for empty space and nothingness.
Yet nothingness and empty space can not be interference.

What can interfere with the awareness of reality is the belief that there is something there.

"Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."

In space and time there is the constant demand to engage with time and space.

What is the amount of time I am willing to give to God. Through my brothers this time is multiplied a thousandfold and tens of thousands more.

And when it is returned to you, it will surpass in might the little gift you gave as much as does the radiance of the sun outshine the tiny gleam a firefly makes an uncertain moment and goes out.

The steady brilliance of this light remains and leads you out of darkness, nor will you be able to forget the way again.


Begin these happy exercises with the words the Holy Spirit speaks to you, and let them echo round the world through Him:


Spirit am I, a holy Son of God, free of all limits, safe and healed and whole, free to forgive, and free to save the world.

Specialness is the function that you gave yourself. It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body.

Choose, then, his body or his holiness as what you want to see, and which you choose is yours to look upon.

Yet will you choose in countless situations, and through time that seems to have no end, until the truth be your decision.

For eternity is not regained by still one more denial of Christ in him.

And where is your salvation, if he is but a body?

Where is your peace but in his holiness?

And where is God Himself but in that part of Him He set forever in your brother's holiness, that you might see the truth about yourself, set forth at last in terms you recognized and understood?

Whose kingdom is the world for you today?

 

What kind of day will you decide to have?

It needs but two who would have happiness this day to promise it to all the world.

It needs but two to understand that they cannot decide alone, to guarantee the joy they asked for will be wholly shared.

For they have understood the basic law that makes decision powerful, and gives it all effects that it will ever have. It needs but two.

These two are joined before there can be a decision.
Let this be the one reminder that you keep in mind, and you will have the day you want, and give it to the world by having it yourself.

Your judgment has been lifted from the world by your decision for a happy day.

And as you have received, so must you give.

A Question

The fundamental question you continually ask yourself cannot properly be directed to yourself at all.

You keep asking what it is you are. This implies that the answer is not only one you know, but is also one that is up to you to supply.

Yet you cannot perceive yourself correctly. You have no image to be perceived.

The word "image" is always perception-related, and not a part of knowledge.

Images are symbolic and stand for something else.

The idea of "changing your image" recognizes the power of perception, but also implies that there is nothing stable to know.

Concepts

But concepts are not difficult to change.

One vision, clearly seen, that does not fit the picture as it was perceived before will change the world for eyes that learn to see, because the concept of the self has changed.

Are you invulnerable? Then the world is harmless in your sight.
 
Do you forgive? Then is the world forgiving, for you have forgiven it its trespasses, and so it looks on you with eyes that see as yours.
 
Are you a body? So is all the world perceived as treacherous, and out to kill.
 
Are you a spirit, deathless, and without the promise of corruption and the stain of sin upon you?
 
So the world is seen as stable, fully worthy of your trust; a happy place to rest in for a while, where nothing need be feared, but only loved. Who is unwelcome to the kind in heart?
 
And what could hurt the truly innocent?

Testing

The test of everything on earth is simply this; "What is it for?"

The answer makes it what it is for you. It has no meaning of itself, yet you can give reality to it, according to the purpose that you serve.

Here you are but means, along with it. God is a Means as well as End.

In Heaven, means and end are one, and one with Him. This is the state of true creation, found not within time, but in eternity.

To no one here is this describable. Nor is there any way to learn what this condition means.

Not till you go past learning to the Given; not till you make again a holy home for your creations is it understood.

A co-creator with the Father must have a Son. Yet must this Son have been created like Himself.
 
A perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken from; not born of size nor place nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of any kind.
 
Here do the means and end unite as one, nor does this one have any end at all.
 
All this is true, and yet it has no meaning to anyone who still retains one unlearned lesson in his memory, one thought with purpose still uncertain, or one wish with a divided aim.

ideas

The idea of orders of need, which follows from the original error that one can be separated from God, requires correction at its own level before the error of perceiving levels at all can be corrected.

You cannot behave effectively while you function on different levels. However, while you do, correction must be introduced vertically from the bottom up.

This is because you think you live in space, where concepts such as "up" and "down" are meaningful.

Ultimately, space is as meaningless as time. Both are merely beliefs.

The real purpose of this world is to use it to correct your unbelief.

 

You can never control the effects of fear yourself, because you made fear, and you believe in what you made. In attitude, then, though not in content, you resemble your Creator, Who has perfect faith in His creations because He created them.

 

Belief produces the acceptance of existence. That is why you can believe what no one else thinks is true. It is true for you because it was made by you.

Connect

Truth and illusion have no connection. This will remain forever true, however much you seek to connect them.

But illusions are always connected, as is truth. Each is united, a complete thought system, but totally disconnected to each other.

And to perceive this is to recognize where separation is, and where it must be healed. The result of an idea is never separate from its source.

The idea of separation produced the body and remains connected to it, making it sick because of the mind's identification with it.

You think you are protecting the body by hiding this connection, for this concealment seems to keep your identification safe from the "attack" of truth.

Teaching

It is difficult to understand that levels of teaching the universal course is a concept as meaningless in reality as is time.

The illusion of one permits the illusion of the other. In time, the teacher of God seems to begin to change his mind about the world with a single decision, and then learns more and more about the new direction as he teaches it.

We have covered the illusion of time already, but the illusion of levels of teaching seems to be something different.

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate that these levels cannot exist is simply to say that any level of the teaching-learning situation is part of God's plan for Atonement, and His plan can have no levels, being a reflection of His Will.

Salvation is always ready and always there. God's teachers work at different levels, but the result is always the same.

Each teaching-learning situation is maximal in the sense that each person involved will learn the most that he can from the other person at that time.
 
In this sense, and in this sense only, we can speak of levels of teaching.
Using the term in this way, the second level of teaching is a more sustained relationship, in which, for a time, two people enter into a fairly intense teaching-learning situation and then appear to separate.

The Body

The body is nothing more than a framework for developing abilities, which is quite apart from what they are used for.

That is a decision. The effects of the ego's decision in this matter are so apparent that they need no elaboration, but the Holy Spirit's decision to use the body only for communication has such a direct connection with healing that it does need clarification.

The unhealed healer obviously does not understand his own vocation.

Only minds communicate. Since the ego cannot obliterate the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to create, it can only teach you that the body can both communicate and create, and therefore does not need the mind.
 
The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can act like the mind, and is therefore self-sufficient. Yet we have learned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning, since you can act in accordance with what you do not believe.

A Memory

Remember you are His completion and His Love.

Remember your weakness is His strength. But do not read this hastily or wrongly.

If His strength is in you, what you perceive as your weakness is but illusion. And He has given you the means to prove it so.

Ask all things of His Teacher, and all things are given you. Not in the future but immediately; now.

God does not wait, for waiting implies time and He is timeless. Forget your foolish images, your sense of frailty and your fear of harm, your dreams of danger and selected "wrongs." God knows but His Son, and as he was created so he is.

In confidence I place you in His Hands, and I give thanks for you that this is so.

I am not a body

With universal belief, we replace one concept of body with another.

As an infant, we had a body which we exchanged for the body of a child; when we outgrew that body, we exchanged it for the body of youth; still later, that body gave way to the body of the adult, which contained within itself a new function—the power to reproduce itself.

That power was not in our infant body; it was not in our childhood body. But, as we advanced in years, we found that the power to become parents left us, because it was no longer a necessary function of our experience to be parents.

Then we were ready to go on to different modes of life. So we look back and we see ourselves give up our dolls and toys; and, then, marbles, baseball, football, and school books; and, finally, we leave behind parenthood.

Each time, as a function of our life drops away, we leave a part of our body behind and acquire a different concept of body and with it a different role in life.

You must come to the point where you understand your body and its function in your life; you must understand that you are not this body, and this body is not you:

This body is an instrument through which you are functioning. You are the life of the body; you are the soul of the body; you are the intelligence of the body.

You are that which uses the body as an instrument for your activities.

You are that which walks or writes or paints or buys or sells, but the body is the instrument for the performance of that activity, and it is always obedient to you.

(From Joel Goldsmith)

The Secret

The secret of life is right identification. Right identification changes your life the very moment that you have a conscious awareness of your true identity and begin to embody it, the very moment that you recognize and realize:



The secret enemies of peace, your least decision to choose attack instead of love, unrecognized and swift to challenge you to combat and to violence far more inclusive than you think, are there by your election.

Do not deny their presence nor their terrible results. All that can be denied is their reality, but not their outcome.



All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, to be defended though unrecognized, is faith in specialness.

This takes many forms, but always clashes with the reality of God's creation and with the grandeur that He gave His Son.

What else could justify attack? For who could hate someone whose Self is his, and Whom he knows?

 Only the special could have enemies, for they are different and not the same.

And difference of any kind imposes orders of reality, and a need to judge that cannot be escaped.

Awakens

Everyone in their time awakens to the fact that life lived without
Atonement with ones Source is a futile life.

Even if it has been successful to the accumulation of the stories of this world

Perfection

The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving you as perfect.

Knowing this perfection is shared He recognizes it in others, thus strengthening it in both. Instead of anger this arouses love for both, because it establishes inclusion.

Perceiving equality, the Holy Spirit perceives equal needs.

This invites Atonement automatically, because Atonement is the one need in this world that is universal.

To perceive yourself this way is the only way in which you can find happiness in the world. That is because it is the acknowledgment that you are not in this world, for the world is unhappy.

Correction

Correction is for all who cannot see.

To open the eyes of the blind is the Holy Spirit's mission, for He knows that they have not lost their vision, but merely sleep.

He would awaken them from the sleep of forgetting to the remembering of God. Christ's eyes are open, and He will look upon whatever you see with love if you accept His vision as yours.

The Holy Spirit keeps the vision of Christ for every Son of God who sleeps. In His sight the Son of God is perfect, and He longs to share His vision with you.

He will show you the real world because God gave you Heaven. Through Him your Father calls His Son to remember.

The awakening of His Son begins with his investment in the real world, and by this he will learn to re-invest in himself.

For reality is one with the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit blesses the real world in Their Name.

Communication

The limit on communication cannot be the best means to expand communication. Yet the ego would have you believe that it is.

Although the attempt to keep the limitations that a body would impose is obvious here, it is perhaps not so apparent why holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation.

But let us consider the kinds of things you are apt to hold grievances for.

Are they not always associated with something a body does?

A person says something you do not like. He does something that displeases you. He "betrays" his hostile thoughts in his behavior.

You are not dealing here with what the person is. On the contrary, you are exclusively concerned with what he does in a body.
 
You are doing more than failing to help in freeing him from the body's limitations. You are actively trying to hold him to it by confusing it with him, and judging them as one.
 
Herein is God attacked, for if His Son is only a body, so must He be as well. A creator wholly unlike his creation is inconceivable.

Ego

A major source of the ego's off-balanced state is its lack of discrimination between the body and the Thoughts of God.

Thoughts of God are unacceptable to the ego, because they clearly point to the nonexistence of the ego itself.

The ego therefore either distorts them or refuses to accept them. It cannot, however, make them cease to be. It therefore tries to conceal not only "unacceptable" body impulses, but also the Thoughts of God, because both are threatening to it.

Being concerned primarily with its own preservation in the face of threat, the ego perceives them as the same. By perceiving them as the same, the ego attempts to save itself from being swept away, as it would surely be in the presence of knowledge.

In Gods name

You and your brother will yet come together in my name, and your sanity will be restored.

I raised the dead by knowing that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God created.

Why do you believe it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable?

I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles; you do.

I have called and you will answer. I understand that miracles are natural, because they are expressions of love.

My calling you is as natural as your answer, and as inevitable.

Mind the mechanism of decissions

When it is understood that the mind is an instrument, it should also be understood of what it is the instrument, because an instrument must of necessity have something governing and controlling it.

Unfortunately, the average mind is not controlled, even though some people try to control it, thereby often working havoc with their lives because they have not yet learned that the mind cannot be controlled by man.

The mind is an instrument for something higher than itself, and that something is the one Self.

When we come to the point where the mind is governed by the Self, we will be embraced in a peace that passes understanding.

Then we do not control the body or the mind, but the activity of Truth in our consciousness, of which we become aware through the mind, keeps the mind clear, clean, harmonious, and vital; and it in its turn manages, controls, and governs the body, acting as the purifying agent of both mind and body.

From ( Joel Goldsmit)

For hope of happiness is not despair.

Yet where are dreams but in a mind asleep?

And can a dream succeed in making real the picture it projects outside itself?
Save time, my brother; learn what time is for.

And speed the end of idols in a world made sad and sick by seeing idols there. Your holy mind is altar unto God, and where He is no idols can abide.

The fear of God is but the fear of loss of idols. It is not the fear of loss of your reality.
But you have made of your reality an idol, which you must protect against the light of truth.

And all the world becomes the means by which this idol can be saved. Salvation thus appears to threaten life and offer death.


It is not so. Salvation seeks to prove there is no death, and only life exists. The sacrifice of death is nothing lost. An idol cannot take the place of God.

Let Him remind you of His Love for you, and do not seek to drown His Voice in chants of deep despair to idols of yourself. Seek not outside your Father for your hope.

Function

Yesterday and todays lessons brings to my immediate attention that my function is not to locate myself in the mis-interpretation of my own past identity ...or the spaces of this mis-interpretation  
 
As I see only the past there is no justification for any idea about my location
 
There is an attraction to say:  " I am guided to do something else, or go somewhere else ...when all locations are an illusion ..who is guiding me from one illusion into another???
 
The Holy Spirit is not an idea to use to bring me into other spaces of this dream! But to show me that where I am there is a new moment of self-recognition right where I Am.

Lesson 65 The idea for today reaffirms your commitment to salvation.
 
It also reminds you that you have no function other than that.
 
Both these thoughts are obviously necessary for a total commitment.
 
Salvation cannot be the only purpose you hold while you still cherish others.
 
The full acceptance of salvation as your only function necessarily entails two phases; the recognition of salvation as your function, and the relinquishment of all the other goals you have invented for yourself.

Look at yourself

Look at yourself, and you will see a body.

Look at this body in a different light and it looks different.

And without a light it seems that it is gone. Yet you are reassured that it is there because you still can feel it with your hands and hear it move.

Here is an image that you want to be yourself. It is the means to make your wish come true.

It gives the eyes with which you look on it, the hands that feel it, and the ears with which you listen to the sounds it makes. It proves its own reality to you.

Escape

Your healing will extend, and will be brought to problems that you thought were not your own.

And it will also be apparent that your many different problems will be solved as any one of them has been escaped.

It cannot be their differences which made this possible, for learning does not jump from situations to their opposites and bring the same results.

All healing must proceed in lawful manner, in accord with laws that have been properly perceived but never violated.

Fear you not the way that you perceive them.

You are wrong, but there is One within you Who is right.

Transfer

Leave, then, the transfer of your learning to the One Who really understands its laws, and Who will guarantee that they remain unviolated and unlimited.

Your part is merely to apply what He has taught you to yourself, and He will do the rest.

And it is thus the power of your learning will be proved to you by all the many different witnesses it finds.

Your brother first among them will be seen, but thousands stand behind him, and beyond each one of them there are a thousand more. Each one may seem to have a problem that is different from the rest.

Yet they are solved together. And their common answer shows the questions could not have been separate.

Heaven's smile

In the holy instant, you will see the smile of Heaven shining on both you and your brother.

And you will shine upon him, in glad acknowledgment of the grace that has been given you.

For sin will not prevail against a union Heaven has smiled upon.
Your perception was healed in the holy instant Heaven gave you.

Forget what you have seen, and raise your eyes in faith to what you now can see.

The barriers to Heaven will disappear before your holy sight, for you who were sightless have been given vision, and you can see.

Look not for what has been removed, but for the glory that has been restored for you to see.