Lord of Heaven

You who would be content with specialness, and seek salvation in a war with love, consider this:

The holy Lord of Heaven has Himself come down to you, to offer you your own completion.

What is His is yours because in your completion is His Own. He Who willed not to be without His Son could never will that you be brotherless.

And would He give a brother unto you except he be as perfect as yourself, and just as like to Him in holiness as you must be?

There must be doubt before there can be conflict. And every doubt must be about yourself. Christ has no doubt, and from His certainty His quiet comes.

He will exchange His certainty for all your doubts, if you agree that He is one with you, and that this oneness is endless, timeless, and within your grasp because your hands are His.

He is within you, yet He walks beside you and before, leading the way that He must go to find Himself complete. His quietness becomes your certainty.

And where is doubt when certainty has come?

A Quote from LAO-TZE

There is no need to run outside

For better seeing,

Nor to peer from a window.

Rather abide 

At the center of your being;

For the more you leave it, the less you learn.

Contact

The teachers of God have no set teaching level.

Each teaching-learning situation involves a different relationship at the beginning, although the ultimate goal is always the same; to make of the relationship a holy relationship, in which both can look upon the Son of God as sinless.

There is no one from whom a teacher of God cannot learn, so there is no one whom he cannot teach.

However, from a practical point of view he cannot meet everyone, nor can everyone find him.

Therefore, the plan includes very specific contacts to be made for each teacher of God.

There are no accidents in salvation. Those who are to meet will meet, because together they have the potential for a holy relationship.

They are ready for each other.

Silence

And now we wait in silence, unafraid and certain of Your coming.

We have sought to find our way by following the Guide You sent to us.

We did not know the way, but You did not forget us.

And we know that You will not forget us now. We ask but that Your ancient promises be kept which are Your Will to keep.

We will with You in asking this. The Father and the Son, Whose holy Will created all that is, can fail in nothing.

In this certainty, we undertake these last few steps to You, and rest in confidence upon Your Love, which will not fail the Son who calls to You.

Happy

If you choose to see yourself as unloving you will not be happy.

You are condemning yourself and must therefore regard yourself as inadequate.

Would you look to the ego to help you escape from a sense of inadequacy it has produced, and must maintain for its existence?

Can you escape from its evaluation of you by using its methods for keeping this picture intact?

You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from within it. Its range precludes this.

You can only go beyond it, look back from a point where sanity exists and see the contrast.

Only by this contrast can insanity be judged as insane.

No Teacher of God should feel disappointed in space and time

Be certain, if you do your part, he will do his, for he will join you where you stand. 

Call not to him to meet you in the gap between you, or you must believe that it is your reality as well as his. 

You cannot do his part, but this you do when you become a passive figure in his dreams, instead of dreamer of your own. I

Identity in dreams is meaningless because the dreamer and the dream are one. 

Who shares a dream must be the dream he shares, because by sharing is a cause produced.

Asking

Let reason take another step. 
If you attack whom God would heal and hate the one He loves, then you and your Creator have a different will.

Yet if you are His Will, what you must then believe is that you are not yourself.

You can indeed believe this, and you do.

And you have faith in this and see much evidence on its behalf.

And where, you wonder, does your strange uneasiness, your sense of being disconnected, and your haunting fear of lack of meaning in yourself arise?

It is as though you wandered in without a plan of any kind except to wander off, for only that seems certain.
      

Roses ( From Emmerson)

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage.

He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day.

There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.

Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike.

But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future.

He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

God made you a body.

 Very well. Let us accept this and be glad. As a body, do not let yourself be deprived of what the body offers.

  Take the little you can get. God gave you nothing.

The body is your only savior. It is the death of God and your salvation.

This is the universal belief of the world you see.

Some hate the body, and try to hurt and humiliate it.

Others love the body, and try to glorify and exalt it.

But while the body stands at the center of your concept of yourself, you are attacking God's plan for salvation, and holding your grievances against Him and His creation, that you may not hear the Voice of truth and welcome It as Friend.

Your chosen savior takes His place instead. It is your friend; He is your enemy.

What is a Miracle?

A dream as well. 
But look at all the aspects of this dream and you will never question any more.

Look at the kindly world you see extend before you as you walk in gentleness.

Look at the helpers all along the way you travel, happy in the certainty of Heaven and the surety of peace.

And look an instant, too, on what you left behind at last and finally passed by.

      This was the ego - all the cruel hate, the need for vengeance and the cries of pain, the fear of dying and the urge to kill, the brotherless illusion and the self that seemed alone in all the universe.

This terrible mistake about yourself the miracle corrects as gently as a loving mother sings her child to rest. Is not a song like this what you would hear?

Would it not answer all you thought to ask, and even make the question meaningless?

A Promise

Let this be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and not apart.

And he will keep the promise that you make with him, because it is the one that he has made to God, as God has made to him.

God keeps His promises; His Son keeps his. In his creation did his Father say, "You are beloved of Me and I of you forever.

Be you perfect as Myself, for you can never be apart from Me." His Son remembers not that he replied "I will," though in that promise he was born.

Yet God reminds him of it every time he does not share a promise to be sick, but lets his mind be healed and unified.

His secret vows are powerless before the Will of God, Whose promises he shares.

And what he substitutes is not his will, who has made promise of himself to God.

Faith

Faith is as easily exchanged for knowledge as is the real world.

For faith arises from the Holy Spirit's perception, and is the sign you share it with Him.

Faith is a gift you offer to the Son of God through Him, and wholly acceptable to his Father as to Him. And therefore offered you.

Your holy relationship, with its new purpose, offers you faith to give unto your brother.

Your faithlessness has driven you and him apart, and so you do not recognize salvation in him.

Yet faith unites you in the holiness you see, not through the body's eyes, but in the sight of Him Who joined you, and in Whom you are united.

Grace is not given to a body, but to a mind.

And the mind that receives it looks instantly beyond the body, and sees the holy place where it was healed.

Carlos Castanedas "The Art of Dreaming"

During one of our conversations, don Juan stated that, in order to appreciate the position of

dreamers and dreaming  one has to understand the struggle of modern-day sorcerers to steer sorcery away from concreteness toward the abstract.

"What do you call concreteness, don Juan?" I asked.

"The practical part of sorcery," he said. "The obsessive fixation of the mind on practices and

techniques, the unwarranted influence over people. All of these were in the realm of the sorcerers

of the past."

"And what do you call the abstract?"

"The search for freedom, freedom to perceive, without obsessions, all that's humanly possible.

I say that present-day sorcerers seek the abstract because they seek freedom; they have no interest

in concrete gains. There are no social functions for them, as there were for the sorcerers of the

past. So you'll never catch them being the official seers or the sorcerers in residence."

"Do you mean, don Juan, that the past has no value to modern-day sorcerers?"

"It certainly has value. It's the taste of that past which we don't like.

Reaction

Whenever the reaction to learning is depression, it is because the true goal of the curriculum has been lost sight of.

In this world, not even the body is perceived as whole.

Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions with little or no relationship to each other, so that it appears to be ruled by chaos.

Guided by the ego, it is. Guided by the Holy Spirit, it is not.

It becomes a means by which the part of the mind you tried to separate from spirit can reach beyond its distortions and return to spirit.

The ego's temple thus becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, where devotion to Him replaces devotion to the ego.

In this sense the body does become a temple to God; His Voice abides in it by directing the use to which it is put.

The Kingdom

There are no idolaters in the Kingdom, but there is great appreciation for everything that God created, because of the calm knowledge that each one is part of Him. God's Son knows no idols, but he does know his Father.

Health in this world is the counterpart of value in Heaven.

It is not my merit that I contribute to you but my love, for you do not value yourself.

When you do not value yourself you become sick, but my value of you can heal you, because the value of God's Son is one.

When I said, "My peace I give unto you," I meant it. Peace comes from God through me to you. It is for you although you may not ask for it.

Simplicity

This is a very simple course.

Perhaps you do not feel you need a course which, in the end, teaches that only reality is true.

But do you believe it? When you perceive the real world, you will recognize that you did not believe it. 

Yet the swiftness with which your new and only real perception will be translated into knowledge will leave you but an instant to realize that this alone is true.

And then everything you made will be forgotten; the good and the bad, the false and the true.

For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight.

The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into Heaven.

The reinterpretation of the world is the transfer of all perception to knowledge.

Transition

Across the bridge it is so different!  For a time the body is still seen, but not exclusively, as it is seen here. 

The little spark that holds the Great Rays within it is also visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness. 

Once you have crossed the bridge, the value of the body is so diminished in your sight that you will see no need at all to magnify it. 

For you will realize that the only value the body has is to enable you to bring your brothers to the bridge with you, and to be released together there.

Asking

Asking for everything, you will receive it.

And your shining Self will lift the tiny aspect that you tried to hide from Heaven straight to Heaven. 

No part of love calls on the whole in vain.

No Son of God remains outside His Fatherhood.

Be sure of this; love has entered your special relationship, and entered fully at your weak request.

You do not recognize that love has come, because you have not yet let go of all the barriers you hold against your brother.

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.

Magnitude

Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond all of them.

Perceiving His results, you will understand where He must be, and finally know what He is.

You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there.

Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for His Presence.

What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses that speak for It. For you can be aware of what you cannot see, and

It can become compellingly real to you as Its Presence becomes manifest through you. 

Receiving

True light that makes true vision possible is not the light the body's eyes behold. It is a state of mind that has become so unified that darkness cannot be perceived at all.

And thus what is the same is seen as one, while what is not the same remains unnoticed, for it is not there.

This is the light that shows no opposites, and vision, being healed, has power to heal.

This is the light that brings your peace of mind to other minds, to share it and be glad that they are one with you and with themselves.

This is the light that heals because it brings single perception, based upon one frame of reference, from which one meaning comes.
Here are both giving and receiving seen as different aspects of one Thought whose truth does not depend on which is seen as first, nor which appears to be in second place.

Here it is understood that both occur together, that the Thought remain complete.

And in this understanding is the base on which all opposites are reconciled, because they are perceived from the same frame of reference which unifies this Thought.

One thought, completely unified, will serve to unify all thought.

Praise, then,

..... the Father for the perfect sanity of His most holy Son.

Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. In Heaven this is so, for what could you need in eternity?

In your world you do need things. It is a world of scarcity in which you find yourself because you are lacking. 

Yet can you find yourself in such a world?

Without the Holy Spirit the answer would be no. Yet because of Him the answer is a joyous yes!

As Mediator between the two worlds, He knows what you have need of and what will not hurt you. Ownership is a dangerous concept if it is left to you.

The ego wants to have things for salvation, for possession is its law. 
Possession for its own sake is the ego's fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches it builds to itself.

And at its altar it demands you lay all of the things it bids you get, leaving you no joy in them.

Appearances

Appearances can but deceive the mind that wants to be deceived.

And you can make a simple choice that will forever place you far beyond deception.

You need not concern yourself with how this will be done, for this you cannot understand.

But you will understand that mighty changes have been quickly brought about, when you decide one very simple thing; you do not want whatever you believe an idol gives.

For thus the Son of God declares that he is free of idols. And thus is he free.

Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be except a happy dream?

It asks you but that you forgive all things that no one ever did; to overlook what is not there, and not to look upon the unreal as reality.

You are but asked to let your will be done, and seek no longer for the things you do not want.

And you are asked to let yourself be free of all the dreams of what you never were, and seek no more to substitute the strength of idle wishes for the Will of God.

Spirit is free

Your mind can be possessed by illusions, but spirit is eternally free.

If a mind perceives without love, it perceives an empty shell and is unaware of the spirit within.

But the Atonement restores spirit to its proper place.
The mind that serves spirit is invulnerable.

Darkness is lack of light as sin is lack of love.
It has no unique properties of its own.

It is an example of the "scarcity" belief, from which only error can proceed.

Truth is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no needs of any kind.

The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you; or rather, to restore it to your awareness.

You were given everything when you were created, just as everyone was.

Rebirth

Salvation is rebirth of the idea no one can lose for anyone to gain.

And everyone must gain, if anyone would be a gainer. Here is sanity restored.

And on this single rock of truth can faith in God's eternal saneness rest in perfect confidence and perfect peace.

Reason is satisfied, for all insane beliefs can be corrected here. And sin must be impossible, if this is true.

This is the rock on which salvation rests, the vantage point from which the Holy Spirit gives meaning and direction to the plan in which your special function has a part.

For here your special function is made whole, because it shares the function of the whole.

dreaming

No one can waken from a dream the world is dreaming for him.

He becomes a part of someone else's dream. He cannot choose to waken from a dream he did not make.

Helpless he stands, a victim to a dream conceived and cherished by a separate mind.

Careless indeed of him this mind must be, as thoughtless of his peace and happiness as is the weather or the time of day.

It loves him not, but casts him as it will in any role that satisfies its dream.

So little is his worth that he is but a dancing shadow, leaping up and down according to a senseless plot conceived within the idle dreaming of the world.

Dreams

For the dream of your ability to control reality by substituting a world that you prefer is terrifying.

Your attempts to blot out reality are very fearful, but this you are not willing to accept.

And so you substitute the fantasy that reality is fearful, not what you would do to it.
And thus is guilt made real.

Dreams show you that you have the power to make a world as you would have it be, and that because you want it you see it.

And while you see it you do not doubt that it is real. Yet here is a world, clearly within your mind, that seems to be outside.

You do not respond to it as though you made it, nor do you realize that the emotions the dream produces must come from you.

It is the figures in the dream and what they do that seem to make the dream.

You do not realize that you are making them act out for you, for if you did the guilt would not be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would be gone.