Miracles are seen in the light, and light and strength are one.
1. Today’s idea is an extension of the previous one.
²You do not associate light with strength, nor darkness with weakness.
³This is because your idea of what it means to see is tied to the body, and to its eyes and brain.
⁴That is why you believe you can change what you see by placing small pieces of glass or other transparent material before your eyes, held in a frame or placed against the eye.
⁵This is one of the many magical beliefs that arise from the conviction that you are a body, and that the body’s eyes can see.
2. You also believe that your body’s brain can think.
²If you understood the nature of thought, you would laugh at such an insane idea.
³It is as if you believed you hold the match that lights the sun and gives it all its heat, or that you kept the world imprisoned in your hand, firmly grasped, until you let it go.
⁴Yet this is no more insane than believing that the body’s eyes can see, or that the brain can know.
3. The Strength of God in you is the light in which you see, and His is the Mind with which you think.
²His Strength denies your weakness.
³It is your weakness that looks through the body’s eyes, that peers into the darkness to behold what is like itself: the small, the weak, the sick and dying, the needy, the helpless and afraid, the sad, the poor, the hungry, and the unhappy.
⁴This is what is seen through eyes that cannot see and cannot bless. I
4. Strength overlooks all these things by looking past appearances. II
²It keeps its gaze fixed on the light that lies beyond them.
³It joins with the light, of which it is a part.
⁴And it beholds itself.
⁵It is this that gives you the light in which your Self appears.
⁶In darkness you perceive a self that does not exist.
⁷Strength is the truth about you.
⁸But weakness is the idol you falsely worship and revere, that light may be displaced by darkness, where God intended there be light. III
5. Strength comes from truth and shines with the light its Source has given it.
²Weakness, on the other hand, reflects the darkness of its maker.
³It is sick and sees only sickness, which is like itself.
⁴Truth is a savior, and it can only create happiness and peace for all the world.
⁵And it gives its strength in limitless supply to everyone who asks.
⁶It sees that if anyone lacks anything, then all must lack.
⁷And so it gives its light, that all may see and benefit as one.
⁸Truth shares its strength, that miracles may be offered to all, in unity of purpose, forgiveness, and love.
6. Weakness, which looks in darkness, sees no purpose in forgiveness or in love.
²It sees all others as different from itself, and finds nothing in the world it wants to share.
³It judges and condemns, but does not love.
⁴It stays hidden in the dark, and dreams it is strong and victorious, a conqueror of ever-mounting limitations that grow huge in the dark.
⁵Weakness fears itself, attacks itself, and hates itself.
⁶Darkness covers all it sees, leaving it in dreams as fearsome as itself.
⁷There are no miracles here, only hatred.
⁸Weakness separates from what it sees, while light and strength perceive themselves as one.
7. The light of strength is not the light you see.
²It does not shift, nor waver, nor go out.
³It does not pass from night to day and back to darkness until the morning comes again.
⁴The light of strength is constant, sure as Love, and always glad to give, for what It gives is always given to Itself.
⁵No one can ask to share Its vision in vain, and none who enter Its dwelling can leave without a miracle before their eyes and strength and light within their heart.
8. The strength in you will offer you the light, and guide your seeing so that you do not dwell on idle shadows the body’s eyes provide to fool the mind.
²Strength and light unite in you, and where they meet, your Self awaits to welcome you as Its own.
³This is the meeting place we try to find today.
⁴Here we will rest, for in the Peace of God does your Self, His Son, await to meet Itself again and become as One.
9. Let us devote twenty minutes, twice today, to joining in this meeting.
²Let yourself be led to your Self.
³Its strength will be the light in which the gift of vision will be given you.
⁴So leave the darkness for a little while today, and practice seeing in the light.
⁵Close the body’s eyes and ask the truth to show you how to find the meeting place where Self and self unite, and where light and strength are one. IV
10. We will practice this in the morning and again at night.
²After the morning session, use the day to prepare for the evening one, in which, full of hope and confidence, we will meet again with our Self.
³Repeat today’s idea as often as you can.
⁴Realize that you are being introduced to the gift of vision. ⁵And recognize that you are being led from darkness to the light, where miracles alone can be perceived.
I Jeremiah 5:21 “Hear now this, O foolish people without understanding, who have eyes and see not, and who have ears and hear not.”
Mark 8:18 “Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember?”
II You see everything backwards because you are looking wrongly—and the proof of this is that what you see displeases you. When your heart is uneasy, it is warning you that your mind is malfunctioning.
Your “emotional system” is the “resonance” of your “intellectual system.” The heart—the symbol of love—is the “organ” that reflects the state of the mind—the symbol of knowledge.
Remember again the functions of the soul: to love, to know, and to create. These functions are attributed to the heart, the mind, and the will. In this world, every person possesses a functional heart—an “organ” that responds faithfully and reliably to his or her mental states. Yet it is no less true that their minds are sick and malfunctioning.
This is because they are affected by the idea of separation. In fact, the very belief in having an individual mind is the result of that perverse idea.
That is why this Course places immense emphasis on healing the mind, and to achieve this, it proposes that you place it under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The Voice of the Holy Spirit—Teacher of Knowledge and therefore of the mind—aligns your perception with Knowledge and allows you to interpret the dream in the most helpful and benevolent way possible. The proof of this is that when you follow His guidance, your heart is joyful and your mind is at peace.
This means that now your emotional and intellectual systems are functioning “properly.” The work this Course does with the mind has as its goal to open it to the “light” of knowledge, which is the natural state of the Mind of Being.
All this concerning the heart and the mind, by now, you more or less know. But now something more is proposed to you. This Lesson introduces the idea of strength. Strength is precisely the condition of will—that which makes Being a “creator.”
Understand that a sick mind—without light, malfunctioning—implies a fearful heart and a weak will.
This represents the perfect inversion of the joy, light, and strength—or peace, which is the same—of Being.
It is essential to understand that the central element in this equation is the mind. That is why this is a Course in mind training, which, through symbols—since that is the only way your fragmented mind can relate—provides you with a perfectly integrated vision of your present condition and your future goal—to be the Son of God—which is also your past and your eternal present.
For all these reasons, pay close attention to the idea of strength presented here. Strength is your natural condition, and the idea of weakness is an aberration that has entered your mind hand in hand with that other insane idea of being separate.
Your present condition—completely artificial—you yourself maintain in your mind through an endless stream of falsehoods you compulsively repeat to yourself.
You are unaware of doing this, yet it is enough to analyze honestly the language you use to communicate, and you will see that its very syntax, crowded with personal pronouns—mostly in the first person—is a constant reaffirmation of your dual mind.
Try to understand—though it will be very difficult—that all of this is completely fictitious, and that is why it requires your constant effort to remain in your holy mind as a hypnotic belief that diminishes you infinitely.
In reality, it would not even be necessary to evoke what you truly are in order to be it; it would be enough simply to stop deceiving yourself. But since you are so unwell, any means is useful for bringing light into your mind so that you may again enjoy what you have always been—and still are.
III Genesis 1:3 “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”
IV If fortune is kind to you, and even for the briefest instant you so much as brush lightly against the experience of Being proposed here, your doubts will be gone forever. From that moment on, you will live in a state of permanent incredulity toward what the eyes of your body report.
You will not understand how any of it is possible—and indeed, it is not. Yet you will no longer lose the disposition, now natural within you, to be patient and to practice forgiveness.
Now everything will make sense, and you will need no one to convince you of anything—not even to undertake a Course like this. It will no longer be necessary; you will have become the Course itself.