2. What Is Salvation?
1. Salvation is God’s promise to you that you will finally find your way to Him.
²And this promise cannot but be fulfilled.
³It guarantees that time will have an end, along with all the thoughts born within it.
⁴To every mind that thinks it harbors thoughts of separation, the Word of God is given to replace those thoughts of conflict with the Thought of peace.
2. The Thought of peace was given to the Son of God the instant his mind conceived of conflict.
²Before then there was no need for such a Thought, for peace was given without an opposite, and simply was.
³But a mind divided needs healing.
⁴And so, the Thought that holds the power to heal the split was placed within each fragment of that one mind that still remained whole, though it no longer recognized its oneness.
⁵For it no longer knew itself, and believed it had lost its own identity.
3. Salvation is an undoing in the sense that it does nothing, for it does not support the world of dreams and hate.I
²This causes illusions to disappear.
³By withdrawing support, it simply lets them fall away.
⁴And now what they concealed is revealed: an altar to the holy Name of God, where His Word is inscribed, with your offerings of forgiveness laid before Him, and just beyond them, the memory of God.
4. Let us come each day to this holy place and spend a little time together.
²Here we share our final dream.
³A dream with no sorrow in it, for it holds a hint of all the glory God has given us.
⁴In it the grass springs up, the trees blossom, and birds make their nests in their branches.
⁵The earth is reborn in this new perception.
⁶The night is over, and now we are united in the light.
5. From here we bring salvation to the world, for it is from here that we received it.
²Our song of joy proclaims to all the world that freedom has returned, that time is almost over, and that the Son of God has but a moment left to remember his Father, for dreams to end, eternity to shine away the world, and Heaven to be all that remains.
I Salvation, understood as a goal to be attained, is indeed a promise of God. But understood as the means by which you awaken to your true identity, it is nothing other than forgiveness.
Salvation is an undoing: the un-belief in what is unreal, illusory, impossible, and never occurred. As the Course teaches, “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.” All that salvation does is withdraw value and support from what is not true, allowing it to fade away of itself.
Throughout the Course, Jesus does not address the Son of God in His reality—who needs no salvation—but rather the part of your mind that believes in separation: the wrong mind, identified with the ego. The situation you find yourself in, however unsatisfying it may seem, is a condition chosen and sustained in time, because time itself is the means the mind uses to maintain separation. As long as you place peace, fulfillment, or union in a “future,” or relegate them to a “past,” you will continue to keep them beyond your reach.
That is why salvation depends upon your will. It is not something God must grant you at a given moment; it is something you accept when you truly decide to want it. Just as with peace, the first condition for receiving it is to desire it without reservation. To recognize that you do not have it because, deep down, you have not wanted it is an act of honesty that opens the door to change.
The obstacles that prevent the acceptance of salvation are the same as those the Course identifies as obstacles to peace: the desire to get rid of it, the attraction of guilt, the attraction of pain and death, and the fear of God. As long as these remain, you will continue to postpone the instant of your release.
Let not the apparent content of your perception trouble you, much less your interpretation of it: both are unreal. Forgive them and regard them kindly, as passing clouds that cannot alter the sky. Hold fast always to the certainty that, whatever you may believe, nothing real in you is ever in danger.
Salvation is not a conquest won through effort, but the gentle relinquishment of defending what was never true. When you cease to uphold illusions, the light that has always been within you is revealed. The peace and love you sought are not a future reward, but the intact inheritance you accept now, when at last you choose to desire it.
LESSON 231
Father, I only want to remember You.
1. Father,
what could I seek but Your Love?
²Perhaps I think I seek something else,
something I have called by many names.I
³Yet Your Love is all I seek and all I have ever truly sought.
⁴For there is nothing else I could ever really want to find.
⁵Let me remember You.
⁶What else could I desire but the truth about myself?
2. That is what you want, my brother.
²And you share that will with me and with our Father.
³To remember Him is Heaven.
⁴This is what we seek.
⁵And this alone shall we find.
I This is the human condition: to believe that there is something other than the Love of God. There is not—but you try to evade the underlying fear of being separate from Him with a thousand distractions and an entire world of illusions. Yet all of that will come to an end, for what had a beginning must also have an end.
A moment will come when your devotion will be greater than your fear of God, and then you will step out of the illusion. Jesus walks with you and is not deceived; take His hand and trust.
In the meantime, there may be days when you look at yourself and feel that you do not have that Love, that you miss it as though it were something distant or lost. That sense of lack is painful, and if you are honest, it prevents you from presenting yourself as someone who lives fully in the remembrance of God. Perhaps the only thing that sets you apart from others is that you are more aware of this distance, and that lucidity, though uncomfortable, is a step toward truth.
There are moments when that Love is glimpsed and experienced, but they seem far too few for the longing that burns in your heart. You would wish to live immersed in It, not merely have brief flashes. And yet, this very longing is also a calling—a reminder that what you seek is the only thing you have ever truly sought and that, deep within, you have never lost it.
The promise of God is sure. Though now it may seem that you seek many other things, the moment will come when you discover that all you truly want is to remember Him. That moment is not the result of chance, but of your will. The day you want the Love of God more than anything else, you will recognize it as your present and eternal inheritance.
Father, I only want to remember You.
Your Love is the only thing I have ever sought and the only real thing I will find.