My mind holds only what I think with God.I
1. W-129 “Beyond this world there is a world I want.”
2. W-130 “It is impossible to see two worlds.”
I Keep these three ideas clearly in mind as often as you can. You need do no more.
Category: Libro de Ejercicios
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LESSON 141 and FOURTH REVIEW
Introduction
1. We now begin a new review, this time with the awareness that we are preparing for the second part of a teaching through which we learn how truth can be applied.
²Today we begin to focus on becoming willing to receive what follows.
³This is our goal for this review and for the lessons to come.
⁴Therefore, we review the recent lessons and their central thoughts to help cultivate the willingness we now seek to achieve. I
2. There is one central theme that unifies every step of this review, and it can be simply stated in these words:
²My mind holds only what I think with God.II
³This is a fact, and it reflects the truth of what you are and of what your Father is.
⁴This is the Thought through which the Father gave Creation to the Son, establishing him as co-creator with Himself.
⁵This is the Thought that fully guarantees the salvation of the Son.
⁶For in his mind no thoughts can dwell but those his Father shares with him.
⁷It is unforgiveness that keeps this Thought from reaching his awareness.III
⁸Yet it remains eternally true.
3. Let us begin our preparation by seeking to understand the many forms in which the lack of true forgiveness can be carefully hidden.
²As illusions, they are not recognized for what they are.
³These forms taken by unforgiveness are defenses that protect your thoughts of grievance, keeping you from seeing them and recognizing them as such.
⁴Their purpose is to show you something else, so that instead of correcting them, you deceive yourself. IV
4. Yet your mind holds only what you think with God.
²The lies you tell yourself cannot take the place of truth.
³No more than a child who throws a stick into the ocean can alter the rhythm of the tides, stop the sun from warming the waters, or prevent the moon from silvering them by night.
⁴Thus, in this review we begin each practice period by preparing our mind to comprehend the lessons we read, and to understand the meaning they offer us.
5. Begin each day by taking time to prepare your mind to discover the freedom and peace the idea you will review can offer you.
²Open your mind, clear it of every deceptive thought, and devote it fully to this single Thought:
³My mind holds only what I think with God.
⁴Five minutes with this Thought will be enough to set the day in motion with God, and to let His Mind take charge of all the thoughts you will receive.
⁵They will not come from you alone, for you will share them with Him.
⁶And thus, each one of these thoughts will bring the message of His Love, and express your love for Him.
⁷In this way, you will enter into communion with the Lord of Hosts, just as He Himself has willed it to be. V
⁸And just as His own completion joins with Him, He will join with you, who are made complete as you unite with Him, and He with you.
6. After your preparation, simply read each of the two ideas assigned to you for review that day.
²Then close your eyes and repeat them slowly in silence.
³There is no rush now, for you are using time for the purpose for which it was created.
⁴Let each word shine with the meaning God has given it, for it has been given to you through His Voice.
⁵Accept the gift He has placed for you in every idea you review.
⁶And we will carry out all our practice in this one way:
7. Bring to mind each hour the Thought with which you began the day, and rest in it.
²Then slowly repeat the two ideas for the day, taking as much time as you need to see the gifts they hold for you, and let your mind receive them and place them where they belong.
8. We will add no other thoughts, but let the messages be what they are.
²We need no more than this to bring us happiness, rest, boundless quiet, perfect certainty, and everything our Father wills for us to receive as His inheritance.
9. We will conclude each daily review just as we began it, first repeating the Thought that made the day a special time of blessing and of happiness for us, and that through our renewed devotion has brought the world from darkness to light, from suffering to joy, from pain to peace, and from sin to holiness.
²God thanks you who practice in this way the keeping of His Word.
³And then, as you once again give your mind to the ideas of the day before sleeping, His gratitude will enfold you in the peace in which He wills for you to abide forever, and which you are now learning to reclaim again as your inheritance. VI
I Notice the emphasis placed on reaching a state of willingness to undertake the steps that follow. Jesus asks you to place all your good will in this task. Remember that this Course revolves around will, and now you are told that you must make use of it to approach the new objectives.
Be very honest with yourself and tell yourself the truth about what your priorities are in this life. Then, place your work with this Course within that scale of values you consider important: your family, your friends, your body, your work, your hobbies, your expectations—whatever they may be. Be completely sincere in doing this.
Realize that all those things you consider valuable are, in truth, illusions: they change with time, and a moment will come when they disappear from your life. They all form part of the bouquet of special love relationships the ego offers to distract your mind from the Love of God—the only Love that exists. All the love you think you see in those fantasies is nothing but an infinitesimal reflection of that Love, yet enmeshed in suffering, conflict, and lack.
Now do the following: regardless of the place you have thus far assigned to your Course practice, with the power of your will—and without regard at all for your preferences, desires, or likes—place your commitment to these practices at the very top of that scale; put it above everything else.
Again: it does not matter if you do not feel inclined or pleased to do so. It also does not matter if you think it is inconvenient, inappropriate, or will not benefit you. It does not matter. Do it!
Assign these practices the highest priority. Consider them more important to you than everything you possess—more important than your health, more important even than your life itself—and give them the corresponding treatment.
Exert yourself fully to do the exercises exactly as instructed, and to that end use solely and exclusively the power of your will. Do not worry at all if you believe you lack faith, trust, or devotion. That is of no importance whatsoever, because if you put your will to it as directed, it means you already possess great faith, trust, and devotion—even if you do not yet know it.
From now on you will begin to apply everything you have learned, and the most important thing of all is your willingness to listen to the Voice for God by silencing your mind, ceasing to give importance to your own thoughts. These will continue to come, but that does not matter either: simply pay them no attention and listen in the stillness. It is a very simple thing—but how hard it is to be simple, isn’t it? Do not worry: you have the rest of your earthly life to learn it. And be absolutely certain that it is the most joyous learning you have ever undertaken, and that it will bring you results beyond the reach of words.
You are beginning to relate to the unlimited part of your mind—the source of miracles, the dwelling place of God’s Love. You are taking your first steps into infinity. Prepare your heart for the most blissful surprise.
How blessed you are, my God!
II My mind holds only what I think with God, for that is the only real content that truly exists in the mind. Anything else your mind entertains is but an insubstantial fantasy; it is nothing.
Remember what is said in Lesson 8, paragraph 3: “The purpose of today’s exercises is to begin to train your mind to recognize when it is not really thinking at all. If you are thinking without meaning, you are blocking the truth. The first step in the undoing process is to recognize that your thoughts are meaningless, rather than to believe that they are real.”
The reason for this is clearly stated in the central idea of Lesson 10: “My thoughts do not mean anything.”
III This is because lack of forgiveness gives value and importance to resentful thoughts—fantasies, illusory interpretations of perception—that are without substance. The mind cannot simultaneously hold both truth and falsehood, and though this does not eliminate truth from the mind, it veils it with a dense covering and drives it into unconsciousness.
IV The sick mind’s will to separate from what it perceives requires a justification that form provides. Thus, the mind deceives itself by disguising what it perceives under multiple appearances whose purpose is to camouflage that single, permanent will to be separate from everything. The various forms, then, cannot be part of the perfect unity of the One Being and are perceived as something alien to oneself.
V Psalm 46:7 “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”
The expression “Lord of hosts,” also translated as “Lord of armies,” is repeated throughout the Bible on numerous occasions and refers to the Power of God to command the angelic hosts of Heaven.
VI Here Jesus gives us a very simple and unequivocal instruction. It is simply to sink into stillness, calmly repeat the two ideas of the day, and allow them to settle in your mind. There is very little to do here—only to be willing and trusting that it will happen; nothing more.
That is why, throughout the next ten days, there will also be no supplementary explanatory notes.
In a way, this review marks a turning point in the practice of the Workbook, which now shifts from being speculative to being assertive. You are no longer asked to involve your mind in considerations belonging to your old way of thinking. It is assumed that you have done good work undoing your former thought system, and from now on you are invited to begin building upon the solid foundations of Reality.
LESSON 141
My mind holds only what I think with God.I
1. W-121 “Forgiveness is the key to happiness.”
2. W-122 “Forgiveness offers me everything I want.”
I Do not forget to repeat each hour: “My mind holds only what I think with God,” and say quietly to yourself the two ideas for today. Do not speculate about them; simply contemplate them calmly and offer them your love and your care. Do not judge them. Welcome them with tenderness of heart, and they will find their home in your mind.
Also, let these three ideas be your last thought before you fall asleep.
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LESSON 140
Salvation is the only cure.
1. No remedy the world considers helpful can truly be called a cure.
²The world’s therapeutic remedies merely “improve” the body.
³When they attempt to heal the mind, they treat it as though it were part of the body, and located within it.
⁴Their methods of healing only exchange one illusion for another.
⁵The belief in sickness now takes a different form, and the patient sees himself in this new way. I
2. But he has not been healed.
²He merely dreamed he was sick, and in the dream, he found a magic formula for a cure.
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 does the content of a dream truly matter? II
⁶For one is either asleep or awake.
⁷There is no in-between.
3. The happy dreams the Holy Spirit offers are different from the dreams of the world, where all one can do is dream of being awake.
²The dreams forgiveness brings to the mind do not reinforce the sleep, and so the dreamer can dream a different dream.
³Now his happy dreams are messengers announcing the dawn of truth in his mind.
⁴They lead from sleep to gentle waking, until all dreams vanish.
⁵And in this way, these dreams do heal for all eternity.
4. Atonement heals with certainty and cures all sickness.
²For the mind that understands sickness can only be a dream is not deceived by any form the dream may take.
³Where there is no guilt, there can be no sickness, for sickness is but another form of guilt.
⁴Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not healing.
⁵Atonement undoes the guilt that made sickness possible.
⁶And that is true healing.
⁷For now sickness has disappeared, and there is nothing left for it to return to. III
5. Peace be with you, who have been healed in God and not in idle dreams.IV
²For healing comes from Holiness, and Holiness cannot be found where sin is valued.
³God dwells in holy temples.
⁴He is forbidden entry where sin has entered.
⁵Yet there is no place where He is not.
⁶Therefore, sin can have no home where it hides from His Lovingkindness.
6. There is no place where Holiness is absent, nor any where sin and sickness can abide.
²This is the thought that heals.
³It makes no distinctions between one unreality and another.
⁴Nor does it attempt to heal what is not sick, for it knows where healing is truly needed.
⁵This is not magic.
⁶It is simply an appeal to truth, which cannot but heal, and heal forever.
⁷It is not a thought that judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or by anything that pertains to how it appears.
⁸It focuses only on what is real, and in truth, it knows no illusion can be real.
7. Let us not attempt to heal today what cannot be sick.
²Surely healing must be sought, but only for what can be sick—and then it must be applied, that it may be healed. V
³None of the remedies the world provides can change anything at all. VI
⁴What truly changes is the mind that brings illusions to the truth.
⁵There is no other change but this.
⁶For how is one illusion different from another, except by attributes that lack all substance, reality, essence, or anything truly distinct?
8. Today we seek to change our thoughts about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for every illusion, not the exchange of one illusion for another.
²Today we will attempt to find the Source of healing, which lies within our mind, because our Father placed it there for us.
³As close to us as we are to ourselves.
⁴As near as our own thoughts, as immediate as breath itself—impossible not to see. VII
⁵We need only seek it, and we will find it.
9. Today we will not be deceived by what seems to be sick.
²We go beyond appearances to reach the Source of healing, which affects all things.
³We will succeed to the extent that we realize there is no meaningful difference between what is false and what is equally false.
⁴There are no degrees here, and we will not believe that what does not exist can be more real in some forms than in others.
⁵All are false, and all can be healed, because none are true.
10. So we lay aside our talismans, our charms and medicines, our spells and tricks of magic—whatever form they take. VIII
²Today we enter deep stillness, and listen to the Voice of healing, which will cure all ills as one, restoring sanity to the Son of God.
³No voice but This can truly heal.
⁴Today we listen to one Voice alone, Which speaks of truth where all illusions end, and peace returns to God’s eternal, quiet home.
11. We awaken by hearing that Voice, and we let It speak to us for five minutes.
²And we close the day by listening once again for five minutes before we go to sleep.
³We prepare by letting go of every interfering thought—not one by one, but all at once.
⁴For they are all the same.
⁵There is no need to distinguish them, and so delay the moment when we can hear our Father speak to us.
⁶We hear Him now.
⁷Today we go to Him.
12. Holding nothing in our hands, with hearts uplifted and minds attentive, we pray:
²Salvation is the only cure.
³Speak to us, Father, that we may be healed.
⁴And we shall feel salvation cover us in gentle protection and in peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our mind or prove to us it is real.
⁵This is what we will learn today.
⁶We will repeat our healing prayer each hour, and give one minute to hearing the response that is given us in answer to our prayer, waiting in happy silence.
⁷Today is the day when healing comes to us.
⁸This is the day when separation ends, and we remember who we truly are.
I The world is an illusion, and every experience you have of it arises from what the mind believes, for illusions are nothing but beliefs.
Thus, the world believes in illness, believes in health, and also believes that a certain product or intervention can cause the body—also a belief—to heal (which is another belief), or not to heal (also a belief).
The world is built upon beliefs, for everything that exists within time and space—also beliefs—is illusory. The world “exists” in the mind that believes in it, for that is how the mind conceives and perceives it.
To believe is the power to create the impossible: what neither exists nor can exist, because it is different from its maker.
II This is precisely the foundation of forgiveness, the true reason why you must forgive the world: because it is a dream, and dreams are but dreams. So let them pass; no matter what form they take, they are not reality and therefore irrelevant. This is also the reason why the second principle of miracles says that they are not important.
III Notice that, although this Course constantly uses the verb to heal, it employs to cure only on very few occasions—and almost all of them in this Lesson. This is because this is a Course about causes, not about effects, which are irrelevant. The term to cure refers to symptoms—that is, the manifestation in the body (an idea in the mind) of the opinion the mind holds about itself. And that is always false—an illusion.
Curiously, the Spanish edition of the FIP reverses these terms. The word sanar (to heal) comes from the Latin sanare (to restore health), and this from sanus (sound, sane, not insane). The word curar (to cure), however, comes from the Latin curare, meaning to care for, to attend to; it has a more physical character. Thus, when you “cure” (care for, attend to) a wound, it “heals.”
IV John 20:19 “Then, the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’”
John 20:21 “So Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.’”
John 20:26 “And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, ‘Peace be with you.
V What cannot be sick is the body, for the simple reason that the body does not exist. The body is an illusion dreamt by the mind, which is real; therefore, the mind is the only thing that can be healed.
Today’s Lesson is unequivocal regarding what true healing is. Healing has nothing at all to do with curing the body, because this Course is about truth, not about improving illusions—even though that is what most of its students initially seek when they first approach it.
At this point, having accepted to some degree that the world is an illusion and that the idea of being a person is a consideration of the mind stressed by the idea of separation, it is understandable that the body is only a symbol the mind uses to articulate its dream of independence from God.
The body, in itself, is nothing. It is but a fabrication of a mind terrified by a truly frightening idea: the idea of being alone—separate from everything and confined within a fragile, temporary container. If you identify yourself with that idea, you cannot help but feel threatened and endangered. The story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is precisely the teaching that this is not true—that death is but an unfounded fear and that the body has no importance whatsoever.
This Course is about the healing of the mind. The curing of the body and the miracles that may occur as a consequence of that healing are but symbols within the dream, signifying that the mind is awakening to its true identity. That is why the second principle of miracles says that miracles are not important; illusions never can be. The purpose of this Course is not to perform miracles—though you will see them everywhere around you—but to heal the confused mind. Miracles are the effect of that healing, of that new way of understanding your reality and that of your brothers.
Notice how the Course uses the word healing when referring to what is real, and curing when referring to what is illusory. The body is an effect whose cause is the mind. A sick mind, harboring feelings of guilt and unworthiness, will conceive a sick and distorted body, for it projects in its dream something that reflects the idea it holds of itself.
A mind that is healing and awakening will see itself in a healthy, functional body, wholly dedicated to the healing of a world as illusory as the body in which it perceives itself.
A perfectly healthy mind is perfectly awake and does not dream at all. It conceives no forms nor relates to them in spatiotemporal terms; a healed mind creates in eternity.
VI Because the remedies of the world are illusions—effects—just like the symptoms they intend to cure, which are also effects, manifestations of the mind’s idea of itself. And effects do not relate to other effects, for they can do nothing of themselves.
Effects merely bear witness to what the mind thinks, and they have no power in themselves to accomplish anything. All power belongs to the mind.
VII Deuteronomy 30:11–14 “For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.”
VIII Jesus knows perfectly well that as long as you are identified with the idea of being a person, you are prone to fear. In fact, that tendency has made you addicted to frightening yourself, and you will find it difficult to let pass any opportunity to instill fear and guilt within yourself. You will even use this Course to do so. Try to restrain yourself a little, and do not punish yourself for failing to meet the lofty goals this Course proposes.
If your body falls ill, look within your mind—without obsession and with detachment—for possible unforgiveness your mind may have been harboring. It is a good opportunity to review your life and heal guilt, sin, and old grievances. Let them go. Do not hold them against anyone. Let them pass, and ask with all your heart for Jesus and the Holy Spirit to remove them from your mind forever. They cannot remain there without your active participation. Be very honest about this.
Pray, forgive, and trust. If you do this rightly, you will not heal—you are already healed—and the symptoms will disappear. Yet if doubt and fear still linger in your mind—even in their mildest form—do not worry, and resort to whatever curative (magical) means seem reasonable and appropriate to you. But above all, do not stress or feel guilty.
Be sure of two things: you are not yet ready for miraculous healing, but you are walking in the right direction. Relax and persevere. Jesus needs miracle workers like you—those who can face any difficulty and are not stopped even by their own weaknesses.
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LESSON 139
I will accept the Atonement for myself.
1. With this, all decisions come to an end.
²For in doing so, we choose to accept ourselves exactly as God created us.
³And what is choosing, if not entertaining uncertainty about what we are?
⁴All doubt rests on this.
⁵There is no doubt that does not reflect uncertainty about one’s own identity.
⁶There is no conflict that does not contain the single, simple question: “What am I?”
2. Yet who could ask this question except one who has refused to recognize himself?
²Only the refusal to accept oneself could make the question seem sincere.
³The only thing any living being can know with certainty is what he is.
⁴From this single certainty, he perceives other things as being just as certain as himself.
3. Uncertainty about what you are is such an enormous self-deception that its magnitude is almost beyond conception.
²To be alive and not know yourself is to believe that you are actually dead.
³For what is Life but to be yourself?
⁴And what else but you could possibly be alive in your place?
⁵Who is the one who doubts?
⁶What is he doubting?
⁷Whom is he asking?
⁸And who could possibly answer?
4. This uncertainty merely states that he is not himself; and so, believing he is something else, he becomes the one who asks what that something is. I
²Yet he could not be alive if he did not know the answer.
³If he asks as though he did not know, he is merely demonstrating that he does not wish to be what he is.
⁴Yet he must have accepted what he is, because he is alive.
⁵But he has condemned it, denied its worth, and chosen to believe he does not know the one certainty by which he lives.
5. That is why he doubts his life, for he has denied what his life is.
²This denial is why you need the Atonement.
³Your denial has not changed what you are in the least.
⁴But you have split your mind in two: one part that knows the truth, and one that does not.
⁵You are yourself.
⁶And that is beyond all doubt.
⁷Yet you do doubt it.
⁸But you do not ask which part of you could truly doubt yourself.
⁹That part which is questioning cannot really be part of you.
¹⁰For it is questioning the one who does know the answer.
¹¹If it were truly part of you, it would not doubt. II
6. The Atonement corrects the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself and not be certain of what you truly are.
²This is the height of madness.
³Yet it is the universal question of this world.
⁴And what could this possibly mean except that the world is insane?
⁵Why share in its madness by believing that what is so widespread here must be true?
⁶Nothing the world believes is true.
⁷The world is a place whose purpose is to be the home where those who claim not to know themselves can come to question what they are.
⁸And they will keep coming until the Atonement is accepted, and they learn that it is impossible to doubt themselves and not be aware of what they are.
7. You can only be asked to accept this, for what you are is beyond all question.
²It is forever established in the holy Mind of God and in your own.
³It lies so far beyond all doubt and questioning that to ask what you are is the only proof you need to recognize you believe in a contradiction: that you do not know what it is impossible not to know.
⁴Is this truly a question, or rather a statement that denies itself by being asked?
8. Let us not allow our holy minds to dwell on such absurd reflections.
²We have a mission to fulfill in this world.
³We did not come to reinforce the madness in which we once believed.
⁴Let us not forget the goal we have accepted.
⁵We came to reach far more than our own happiness.
⁶What we accept as being proclaims what everyone else cannot help but be along with us.
⁷Do not fail your brothers, or you will be failing yourself.
⁸Behold them with Love, so they may know they are part of you, and you of them.
9. This is what the Atonement teaches, and it proves that the oneness of the Son of God is untouched by his belief that he does not know what he is.
²Accept the Atonement today—not to change reality, but simply to accept the truth about yourself—and then go forth rejoicing in the infinite Love of God.
³This is what we are asked to do.
⁴And this is all we will do today.
10. Today we will devote five minutes in the morning and five minutes at night to this task.
²We begin by reviewing our mission with these words:
³I will accept the Atonement for myself.
⁴For I remain as God created me.
11. We have not lost the Knowledge God gave us when He created us like Himself.
²We can remember it for everyone, for in Creation all minds are one.
³And we retain in our memory the remembrance of how deeply we truly loved our brothers; of how all minds are part of us; of how faithful they truly have been to us; and of how the Love of our Father embraces us all.
12. Grateful for all of Creation, and in the Name of its Creator and His Oneness with every aspect of Creation, we reaffirm today our dedication to our cause each hour, letting go of every thought that would distract us from our holy purpose.
²Clear your mind for a moment of all the foolish cobwebs the world has spun around the holy Son of God, and see how fragile are the chains that seem to keep the knowledge of yourself beyond your awareness, as you say:
³I will accept the Atonement for myself.
⁴For I remain as God created me.
I Were it not for the apparently tragic consequences of this split in the mind, you would have to admit that, though the situation has dramatic overtones, it also has its comic side: a subject wanders through an imaginary world—product of a myriad of beliefs he blindly upholds without question—yet harbors enormous uncertainty about himself, which, ironically, is the only thing of which he should be certain.
II Perhaps, when you read this paragraph explaining that your mind is divided into two parts, it occurs to you to think that human beings have their minds divided into two parts. That is not so. The concept of “human being” is an idea that appears precisely in one of those two parts into which your mind, Son of God, seems to be divided. You have only one mind, which you share with all the Sonship, and that mind is whole and not divided at all, for God created it perfect. That division is not real, but purely imaginary. Were it real, the mind would be split for all eternity, for that would be its condition.
The human being—the concept of person or individual identity—is that virtual part of the mind that questions its own identity. You, as a person, as a human being, therefore do not have a mind divided into two parts. No. When you identify with your body and believe yourself to be in the world living a temporal life, you are experiencing yourself as the effect of that imaginary part of the mind that entertains the idea of separation.
What you understand as a “person” is a concept conceived by your hallucinated mind; it is the expression of the sick part of the mind’s vocation to be separate. Persons, from a strictly ontological standpoint, are effects, not subjects; they are not the cause of anything. That is why “persons” cannot be guilty: they have no entity and do not exist in reality.
If you have some understanding of computer science, you will grasp the following allegory, which is quite accurate. You can interpret the mind of the Son of God as the hard drive of a computer. Just as that hard drive is physically real, the mind of the Son of God is absolutely real. Now, perhaps you know that you can partition your hard drive to generate a virtual drive. It is still the same hard drive—nothing has changed—but you have given it instructions to interpret itself as if it were two. Now your computer apparently has two hard drives, the sum of which equals the total capacity of the physical drive. You can use one of those partitions for one purpose—for example, for applications and work documents—and the other for games.
The mind of the Son of God functions similarly: one part creates in eternity, and the other believes in the idea of separation and conceives imaginary worlds. The purpose of this Course is the integration of the mind and the end of that virtual partition; and the strategy it proposes to achieve this is to convince the imaginary part to stop engaging in unsatisfying pursuits and return to the fullness of which it is part.
For that integration to take place, the will must be involved. But since the will is always involved—being one of the three aspects of Being—it must now change: from desiring separation to choosing Heaven.
This Lesson, as indeed all the Lessons of this Course to some degree, appeals to your will so that you may be firmly willing to cease questioning your identity and to accept your condition as the Son of God. That is healing, and that is the Atonement. That is why you need to repeat to yourself that you accept the Atonement for yourself.
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LESSON 138
Heaven is the choice I must make.
1. In this world, Heaven is something that must be chosen, because here we believe there are alternatives from which to choose.
²We think that all things must have an opposite, and then we choose the one we want.
³If Heaven exists, then hell must exist as well, for contradiction is the way we fabricate what we perceive and believe to be real.
2. Creation has no opposite.
²Yet here, the opposite of what exists is also considered part of what is “real.” I
³This strange perception of truth is what makes choosing Heaven seem like giving up hell.
⁴In truth, it is not so.
⁵But what is true in the Creation of God cannot be made manifest here unless it is reflected in a form the world can understand.
⁶Truth cannot enter where it is feared.
⁷For this is the error of thinking truth can be brought to illusion.
⁸The very act of regarding what is opposite to Reality as real is an attack upon the truth.
⁹And that is why truth cannot come here.
3. Choosing is the obvious escape from all opposing thoughts. II
²To make a choice means that you invest your effort and your time in only one of two conflicting goals.
³If you do not choose, you waste your time, and your efforts go nowhere.
⁴Your investment is in vain.
⁵And time slips by without result.
⁶You feel you have gained nothing, for you have neither achieved nor learned anything.
4. You need to be reminded that although you believe you face a thousand choices, there is only one you need to make.
²And even that one only seems to be a choice. III
³Let not the host of doubts that a thousand decisions would induce confuse you.
⁴You are making but one.
⁵And once you make it, you will realize that it was not a choice at all.
⁶For only truth is true, and that is all there is to reality.
⁷There is nothing opposed to truth for you to choose instead.
⁸There is nothing that contradicts it.
5. Decisions are made based on what has been learned.
²But truth cannot be learned.
³Truth is simply recognized.
⁴And when you recognize it, you accept it.
⁵And in accepting it, you know it.
⁶Yet Knowledge lies beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this Course.
⁷Our teaching goals are attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you.
⁸Your decisions result from what you have learned, for they reflect what you have accepted as the truth of what you are, and thus of what your needs must be.
6. In this insane and twisted world, Heaven seems to be a choice you make instead of something that simply is.
²Of all the choices you have tried to make, this is the simplest, the most definitive, and the prototype that resolves them all.
³Even if you had made every other choice, this one would still remain to be made.
⁴But when you make it, all others are resolved with it, for they are but veils that hide it under different forms. IV
⁵This is the final choice, the one in which the truth is either accepted or denied.
7. And so today we begin to look upon this choice.
²Time was made for this, to be the aid in helping you to make this choice.V
³This is its holy purpose, now transformed from what you made it for.
⁴You made it as a means to prove that hell is real, that hope turns into despair, and that life itself must ultimately give way to death.
⁵You believed that death alone could resolve the conflict of opposing values, for ending opposition was to you the same as dying.
⁶And so you saw death as salvation, for you believed life was conflict.
⁷To you, to end the conflict was to end life as well.
8. These mad beliefs can lie entrenched so deeply in the mind’s unconscious that they grip it with such terror and anxiety that it cannot abandon the ideas it made to save itself.
²It now believes it must be saved from salvation, feel threatened to be safe, and be protected from the truth through magic.
³And to protect such thoughts, these decisions are made unconsciously, without awareness, reason, or doubt. VI
9. But Heaven is consciously chosen.
²It is a choice that cannot be made until alternatives are accurately perceived and clearly understood.
³All that is hidden in the shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this time with the help of Heaven.
⁴And all the errors of judgment the mind made before can now be corrected, for the truth dismisses them as having no cause.
⁵They now have no effects.
⁶They cannot be concealed, for their lack of substance is now recognized.
10. To choose Heaven consciously is as sure as ending fear of hell, once its unconscious shield has been removed and brought into the light.
²Who could decide between what he clearly sees and what he does not even recognize?
³But who could fail to choose between alternatives when only one of them is seen as having any value at all, and the other is seen as wholly worthless—nothing but a source of illusions, guilt, and pain?
⁴Who would hesitate to make such a choice?
⁵Shall we now hesitate to choose today?
11. We choose Heaven as we wake, and devote five minutes to ensuring we have made the only sane decision.
²We recognize that we are making a conscious choice between what really exists and what only seems to be.
³And when we bring its seeming reality to what is real, its weakness and transparency become clear in the light of truth.
⁴Now it no longer frightens, for what seemed enormous, vengeful, and with merciless hate requires darkness to be feared.
⁵Now it is seen as nothing but a foolish error, trivial and meaningless.
12. Throughout the day, we reaffirm our choice each hour, with a brief moment of quiet dedicated to preserving sanity.
²And as we go to sleep tonight, we once again confirm the choice we made each hour, and devote the final five minutes of our day to remembering the decision we made upon awakening.
³And we end the day by acknowledging we have simply chosen what we truly want, saying:
⁴Heaven is the choice I must make.
⁵I choose Heaven now, and I will not change my mind,
⁶Because Heaven is the only thing I want.
I This refers to the profoundly important cognitive bias of granting reality to absences—something that has already been discussed at length, yet can never be emphasized enough, for it is the core mechanism of the perception of the imaginary. This is not a cognitive bias formally identified by academic psychology, for it is so absolutely universal that it may be said to be part of the very condition of being human. Everything human, everything “physical,” the entire universe itself, arises into “existence” in the alienated mind by giving entity to what is absent.
Perception can take place only through contrasts, through distinctions, through separation. In order to perceive anything, you must contrast it, distinguish it, and separate it from everything else. For something to “exist” in your perception, it must necessarily be surrounded by the “nonexistence” of itself. In the perceptual realm, the absence of something is what gives that something its meaning. You call “space” what does not exist—what is not—and yet, for you, it is an extraordinarily significant concept, because it is what enables you to perceive.
What is, is; and what is not, is not. But in this deceitful world, what is not also is. In this insane world, it is believed that what is missing—the negative—has an existence of its own, and thus it is treated and attacked as such. This is why, here, evil is fought against—though it is nothing but the absence of good—for it is regarded as a fearsome and threatening enemy, instead of supplying the good that is plainly lacking. This is what illusion is: an ontological perversion—a play of shadows and voids within the fullness of love.
When you go to the cinema, a play of light and shadow produced by the interposition of the film’s frames against the projector’s light gives form on the screen to stories that make you laugh and cry. On that screen you see nothing but light and shadow in rapid succession—yet you are moved. It is nothing but a play of light and darkness, and your mind does the rest.
Realize that what happens in the cinema is an allegory of what you believe you see in your imaginary world. Think of God as the projector, whose light is His Love; the screen as consciousness; and the film as the will to be separate from God. The frame projected in an instant you call the present; those that precede it, the past; and those that follow, the future. Thus you construct your world. That film is not true, yet you have paid a high price for the ticket.
At some point, the possibility that there could be something other than the Love of God crossed your mind, and you began to imagine a world of shadows. Shadows are only the absence of light—but there you are, hunched in the seat of a dark theater, watching fantasies and believing them to be true. Yet, if you became aware of what was happening, how could you possibly suffer?
Realize that it makes no difference whether you are in Heaven or believe yourself to be in the world: a lucid mind cannot suffer—ever, under any circumstance.
II This entire Lesson revolves around the choice between what exists and what does not exist, between what is real and what is illusory. Obviously, only what is real exists, and it is perfectly abstract, limitless, and eternal; but the mind’s will to choose the impossible leads it to perceive a world of illusions that will never satisfy it, because they are not in accord with its own nature, which is real and, therefore, perfectly abstract, limitless, and eternal as well.
This is why the world does not know the meaning of love and is perplexed by the notion of consciousness, which it cannot locate within its material, concrete universe.
Now the sense of self-identity confuses the subject who questions it, and expressions such as “Know thyself” become true riddles. Which is surprising—were it not still more surprising that such a crucial question should be asked and left unanswered.
III Can choosing what alone exists even be called a choice?
IV The world’s purpose is precisely to distract the mind from the truth. That is the only purpose illusions have: to deceive the subject who entertains them.
An illusion that fails to deceive its maker is a poor illusion—or else it faces a subject who has set his will not to be deceived. One must keep in mind that an illusion “works” only with the consent of the one who beholds it; the subject must want to be deceived for the illusion to be effective.
V This is one way of reinterpreting personal life and understanding it as a path toward awakening to the truth—the Atonement—instead of a dreary journey toward death.
VI The ego’s true fear—the fear of the separate personal identity—is the fear of its own annihilation. There is nothing the ego fears more than the Love of God; that is why it keeps the mind entertained by proposing magical solutions to nonexistent problems of its own invention. Thus it keeps the mind busy improving the world or glorifying and protecting the body.
All this happens automatically and unconsciously, because the mind takes for granted the “reality” paradigm it faces. It does not question it at all, for it cannot conceive that everything it is telling itself is not true. The hypnotic power of beliefs is absolute in the mind that does not question. And how could the mind question the reality of what it perceives if it regards perception itself as something unquestionable a priori?
The mind that cannot distinguish between being and seeming to be cannot be free. Realize that this Lesson deals, above all, with the exercise of will.
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LESSON 137
When I am healed, I am not healed alone.
1. The idea for today remains the central thought upon which salvation rests.
²For healing is the opposite of all the world’s ideas, which are centered on sickness and states of separation.
³To be sick is to turn away from others and refuse to join with them.
⁴Sickness is a door that locks away a separate being, keeping him isolated and alone.
2. Sickness is isolation. I
²For it seems to keep one separate from the rest, so that he suffers what no one else can feel.
³Sickness gives the body the ultimate power to make separation real, and to keep the mind confined in solitude, divided and held in fragments by a solid wall of sickened flesh from which there is no escape.
⁴The world abides by the laws that sickness serves, but healing works beyond them.
3. It is impossible for anyone to heal alone. II
²In sickness, one can only be apart and separate.
³Healing, however, results from his own decision to be made one again, and to accept his Self with all its parts intact and unassailable.
⁴In sickness, his Self seems torn apart and lacking the unity that gives it life.
⁵But healing comes through the understanding that the body holds no power to attack the universal Oneness of the Son of God.
⁶Sickness seeks to prove that lies must be the truth.
⁷But healing proves that truth is true.
4. The separation that sickness tries to impose has never truly happened.
²Healing is nothing but the acceptance of what has always been the simple truth, and what will remain exactly as it always was.
³But to eyes accustomed to illusions, it must be shown that what they see is false.
⁴This is why healing—though never needed by the truth—must show that sickness is not real.
5. Healing, then, might be seen as a “counter-dream,” something that undoes the dream of sickness in the name of truth, though not truth itself.III
²Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were committed, healing merely removes illusions that never happened.
³And just as the real world will arise to take the place of what never was, healing repairs imagined states and false ideas that dreams have made appear as images of the truth.
6. Yet do not think that healing is unworthy of your function here.
²For the anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real. IV
³The body appears more solid and more stable than the mind.
⁴And Love becomes a dream, while fear remains the only reality that can be seen, justified, and fully understood.
7. Just as forgiveness makes all sin disappear, and the real world will replace what you have made, healing must take the place of sickly fantasies that you oppose to the simple truth.
²When sickness is seen to vanish despite all laws that claim it must be real, then all questions have been answered.
³And such laws can no longer be respected or obeyed.
8. Healing is freedom.
²For it shows that dreams cannot prevail against the truth.
³Healing is shared.
⁴And this quality proves that its laws are stronger than their sickly opposites, which claim that sickness must be inevitable.
⁵Healing is strength.
⁶For through its gentle hand, weakness is overcome.
⁷And minds once walled within a body are set free to join with other minds, and to be strong forever.
9. Healing, forgiveness, and the joyful exchange of the world of pain for one where sorrow has no place are the means the Holy Spirit gives you to follow Him.
²His gentle lessons teach how easily salvation can be attained, and how little you need do to let His laws replace the ones you made to keep you prisoner to death.
³Your life becomes the one He offers you when you give the little help He asks, that you may free yourself from all that ever caused you pain. [v]
10. And when you let yourself be healed, you see that all those around you are healed with you—those you think of, those beside you, and even those who seem to have no contact with you.
²You may not recognize them all, nor realize how great the gift you give the world when you allow healing to come to you.
³For you will never heal alone.
⁴When you are healed, a countless number of your brothers receive the gift you have received.
11. Those who are healed become healing instruments.
²And in the very instant they are healed, all the Grace of healing is bestowed upon them to be given.
³What stands against God does not exist, and the one who does not welcome illusions into his mind becomes a refuge where his weary brothers may find rest.
⁴For there is where the truth is given, and where all illusions are brought to it. VI
12. Would you not offer refuge to the Will of God?
²For in so doing, you invite your Self to dwell in Its home.
³Could such an invitation ever be refused?
⁴Ask for what is inevitable, and you will never fail.
⁵The other choice is but to ask for what cannot be, and this can never succeed.
⁶Today we ask that only truth inhabit our minds; that on this day, thoughts of healing move from what is already healed to what must still be healed, knowing both will occur at once.
13. When the hour strikes, we will remember that our function is to allow our minds to be healed, so we may bring healing to the world, and thus exchange curse for blessing, pain for joy, and separation for the Peace of God.
²Is it not worth one minute of each hour in exchange for such a gift?
³Is that not a tiny investment for a gift that gives everything?
14. Yet for such a gift we must prepare.
²Therefore, we will devote ten minutes at the start of the day, and another ten at night, to these thoughts:
³When I am healed, I am not healed alone.
⁴And I would share my healing with the world,
⁵That sickness may be banished from the mind of God’s One Son,
⁶Who is my only Self.
15. Let healing come through you today.
²And as you rest in quiet, prepare to give what you receive.
³Be ready to retain only what you give.
⁴And be prepared to receive the Word of God, to take the place of all the senseless thoughts you ever held.
⁵Now we join in healing all that was sick, and bringing blessings where there once was attack.
16. We will not let ourselves forget this function through the day, remembering our purpose with this thought:
²When I am healed, I am not healed alone.
³And I will bless my brothers,
⁴For I would heal with them,
⁵As they will heal with me.
I Few ideas are as hard to accept as this: illness is voluntary. And yet, this Lesson cannot be learned without assuming it. Whereas other teachings of the Course—regarding relationships, attitudes, or perceptions—seem more accessible or at least symbolic, when the Course states that the healing of the body is also a matter of decision, many begin to grow suspicious.
But here we are not asked to believe just like that. We are invited to observe, with radical honesty, the mental mechanism by which we choose to make ourselves sick and then forget it. That is the key: we make the decision quickly—out of fear, guilt, or a desire for specialness—and then we hide it. Thus illness becomes an alibi of the ego to reinforce separation: “my pain sets me apart,” “my case is different,” “no one can understand what I’m going through.” And in that self-image, the ego is strengthened.
Healing, in this context, does not consist in doing anything physical, nor even in achieving a clinical outcome. Healing is ceasing to lend yourself to the ego’s game. For this reason, the first step proposed to us is very concrete: to minimize the body and its symptoms. Do not dramatize. Do not talk about it. Do not make it identity. Not even with yourself. Illness has power only if we give it a purpose. If we take that purpose away, it loses strength.
This teaching is not aimed at perfect mystics, but at sincere students who, although they still doubt, are willing to stop deceiving themselves. And that is already a big step. Physical cure is not promised to us, but something more important is: to expose the ego’s trick, to stop using the body as an excuse not to love, and to approach that other, more real and deeper healing, which is peace.
To heal is to stop justifying separation and to choose, at last, peace.
II No one heals alone, because no one is alone except in dreams. Healing is, precisely, the recognition that you are not separate.
Careful: do not confuse healing with ceasing to have symptoms of illness; you can lose the symptoms and still be sick. Symptoms are the way you articulate the dialogue you maintain with yourself regarding your body; they are the manifestation of the things you tell yourself.
There is only one mind that dreams it is fragmented into a myriad of separate forms. The mind attacks itself by sickening the bodies it conceives and, in the same way, heals them when it regains sanity and returns to love—its true identity—by forgiving its illusions.
That mind is you. That is what you are. And both in the dream and in reality you have all the power God granted you in your creation. And thus you will believe or create, according to what your holy mind conceives.
III This illusory character of healing—as the repair of something that in reality never occurred—places it on a par with miracles, as seen in Miracle Principle 8 (T-1.P.8): “Miracles are a form of healing.”
It is crucial that you understand that miracles are not meant to “improve” anything that is “wrong” in the world, just as healing is not meant to heal the body. The world does not exist, and neither does the body! What sense can there be in healing an illusion? Healing, if it is true, occurs in the mind, which is the only thing that exists and, consequently, the only thing that can be healed. The wonders that miracles can accomplish in the world—or the healing of the body—are the results beheld in its dream by a mind that has been healed but has not yet awakened.
Therefore, it is essential that you understand that the mind should never seek healing or miracles with the purpose of healing the body or improving something in the world. That is not the purpose of miracles or of healing at all; for if it were, the mind would still be dreaming, believing its dream is real, and it would not truly have been healed. Miracles and healing are effects whose cause is the recognition of the simple truth: you remain as God created you.
Child of God, do not be afraid! Do not let the world’s dream frighten you. The world has no power over you, nor does it contain anything that could interest you in the least. The world is nothing! You, however, are real; you are the beloved Son of your Father. Become perfectly aware that you have every right to claim your divine heritage at any moment—right now, if you so wish—but also realize that it must be the only thing you want: the Love of God, and nothing else.
You may recall these words of Jesus in the Text: “There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us, for now, is that I have NOTHING ELSE. That leaves me in a state of true holiness, which in you is only a POTENTIAL.” (T-1.P.84.3).
Seek clarity of understanding, seek comprehension, seek the Light and Love of God—nothing else. If you set your mind to it, your world will improve, your body will heal—but that is of no importance whatsoever. If you make it important, you will have erred again. Your body is not important; the world is not important: they are only the representation of your fears and apparent lacks.
As long as you believe you are in time, look at them askance—just enough to meet your worldly obligations; nothing more. Devote yourself solely and exclusively to being happy. Remember that you will be guided as to what is most fitting regarding “what is not important.” That is the Holy Spirit’s task in the world. Surprising as it may seem, He concerns Himself only with what has no importance; He takes care of the minutiae so that you may be carefree—even in this world—and devote yourself to what does matter: your function, which is to enjoy the happiness that is yours as the Son of God and to extend it to others.
That is why God placed His Guide to serve His Holy Son in his derangement.
IV 1 John 2:18 “Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.”
1 John 2:22 “Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.”
V Notice how important what is said here is. Reflect on it. Realize that it is crucial for you to learn to develop communication between the lower part of your mind—in which you are normally installed all the time—and the higher part, where the Voice for God resides. To this end, you will have to learn to ask from mental silence and to develop a trusting listening.
VI That place is the mind that does not accept illusions.
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LESSON 136
Sickness is a defense against the truth.
1. No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness really serves.
²For then he understands as well that it has no meaningful purpose.
³Lacking cause and holding no real goal, sickness is impossible.
⁴Once this is seen, healing is automatic.
⁵This recognition dissolves the meaningless illusion by the same approach that brings all illusions to the truth, and simply lays them down to disappear.
2. Sickness is not an accident.
²Like all defenses, it is a mad device for self-deception. I
³And like all of them, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it useless, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of disconnected fragments.
⁴The aim of all defenses is to split the truth.
⁵Each fragment is seen as if it were the whole within itself.
3. Defenses are never made unconsciously, nor are they unintended. II
²They are secret, magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. III
³They seem to be unconscious simply because of how quickly you decide to use them.
⁴In that instant, even less than a second, you are fully aware of what you are trying to do, and then you simply forget.
4. Who but you evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to meet the threat you judge as real?
²All this cannot be done unconsciously.
³But afterward, your plan requires that you forget you made it, so it seems to be outside your own intent—a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of something you yourself caused.
5. The speed with which you choose to forget the role you play in shaping your “reality” is what makes defenses seem beyond your own control.
²But you can remember what you have forgotten if you are willing to reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded by oblivion.
³The fact you do not remember is merely the sign that this decision still remains in force, because you still desire its effects.
⁴Do not confuse this with fact.
⁵Your own defenses have obscured the truth.
⁶That is their purpose, and they accomplish it well. IV
6. Every defense takes fragments from the whole, assembles them without regard for how they are truly related, and thus constructs the illusion of a wholeness that does not exist.
²This process is what produces the sense of threat, not any consequence that might result.
³When you tear parts away from a perfectly unified whole and see them as separate things with meaning in themselves, they become symbols representing an attack on what is complete—and believing you have succeeded, you can no longer see the whole as one.
⁴And yet you have forgotten that these fragments represent nothing but your own decision about what should be real in order to replace what truly is. V
7. Sickness is a decision.
²It is not something that happens to you unwillingly, weakening you and causing you to suffer.
³It is a choice you make yourself—a plan you devise when, for an instant, the truth arises in your deluded mind, and your entire world seems to tremble and threaten to collapse.
⁴And so you become sick, that the truth may leave and no longer threaten your beliefs.
⁵What leads you to believe that sickness can succeed in protecting you from the truth?
⁶Simply this: sickness proves that the body is not separate from you, and that means you must be separate from the truth. VI
8. You suffer pain because the body feels it, and in that pain you become one with it.
²In this way your “true” identity is preserved, and the strange and troubling thought that you might be more than that little pile of dust is silenced and suppressed.
³For behold, that handful of dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs, stop your heart, and command you to die and cease to be.
⁴Thus, the body is stronger than the truth, which asks you to live but cannot override your decision to die.
⁵And this proves that the body is more powerful than Eternal Life, that Heaven is more fragile than hell, and that God’s plan for the salvation of His Son is opposed by a will stronger than His.
⁶The Son is nothing but dust, the Father is incomplete, and chaos sits triumphant upon the throne of God.
9. This is the plan you have made to defend yourself against the truth.
²And you believe that Heaven cowers before such insane attacks as these—attacks that blind God with your illusions, turn truth into lies, and enslave the entire universe to the laws your defenses seek to lay upon it.
³But who believes in illusions except the one who made them?
⁴Who but he could see them and respond to them as if they were true?
10. God knows nothing of your plans to alter His Will.
²The universe remains untouched by the laws you thought you placed upon it.
³And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor has Life succumbed to death.
⁴You can only choose to believe that you die, think you suffer illness, or imagine that you have somehow succeeded in distorting the truth.
⁵What was created remains beyond all this.
⁶Defenses are plans to overcome what cannot be attacked.
⁷The unchangeable cannot change.
⁸And what is absolutely sinless cannot sin. VII
11. This is the simple truth.
²It does not seek to impose itself or triumph over anything.
³It does not demand obedience, nor does it try to prove how feeble and useless are your efforts to construct defenses meant to change it.
⁴Truth only seeks to make you happy, for that is its purpose.
⁵It may sigh gently when you reject Its gifts, but It knows with perfect certainty that what God wills for you must be received.
12. This fact is what proves time to be an illusion.
²For it is time that lets you think what God has given you is not true right now, exactly as it must be.
³God’s Thoughts are completely independent of time.
⁴For time is just another senseless defense you have built against the truth.
⁵Yet what God wills is what exists here and now, and you remain exactly as He created you.
⁶The power of truth lies far beyond your defenses, for no illusion can remain where truth has been allowed to enter.
⁷And truth comes to every mind that lays down its arms and ceases to play with madness.
⁸You can find it at any moment—today, if you choose to welcome it.
13. This is our goal for today.
²We will devote two fifteen-minute periods to asking truth to come and set us free. VIII
³And truth will come, for it has never left us.
⁴It merely waits for the invitation we extend to it today.
⁵We offer it as a prayer of healing, that it may help us rise above our defensive posture and allow the truth to be as it has always been:
⁶Sickness is a defense against the truth.
⁷I will accept the truth of what I am today.
⁸And let my mind be wholly healed.
14. Healing will shine through your receptive mind, and peace and truth will replace conflict and vain imaginings.
²There will no longer be dark corners where sickness can conceal itself and defend against the light of truth.
³Nor will the shadowy figures from your dreams remain in your mind—those distorted and senseless pursuits with hidden purposes, born of madness.
⁴And so your mind will be healed of every sick desire you had commanded the body to obey.
15. By relieving the source of sickness, the body is healed. IX
²And you will know you have practiced well because the body will feel nothing at all.
³If you have succeeded, there will be no sense of sickness or of wellness, no pain and no pleasure.
⁴Now the mind no longer responds at all to what the body does.
⁵Only its usefulness remains, and nothing more.
16. You may not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by assigning it the purposes you made up.
²Once those are laid aside, the body’s strength will always be enough to serve the goals that are truly useful.
³The body’s health is now fully guaranteed, for it is no longer governed by time, by weather, by fatigue, by food or drink, nor by any law you used to place upon it.
⁴You need do nothing now to make the body well, for sickness has become impossible.
17. Yet this protection must be preserved through careful watchfulness.
²If you allow your mind to entertain thoughts of attack, to judge, or to make plans to protect itself against the future, you have once again mistaken yourself, and formed a bodily identity that will attack the body—for the mind has become ill.
³In such a case, remedy it at once, and do not allow your defensive posture to go on harming you.
⁴Be not confused about what must be healed, and say to yourself: X
⁵I have forgotten what I really am,
⁶for I mistook my body for myself.
⁷Sickness is a defense against the truth.
⁸But I am not a body.
⁹And my mind cannot attack.
¹⁰So I cannot be sick.
I This Lesson can only be understood in the context that to perceive is to dream, and that what you perceive is what you are dreaming. The dream is the result of the will to be separate and apart from what is Real. As a result of that strange vocation, you place your will in making the impossible real, and what you achieve is a notion of reality exclusive to yourself. This is how you become a subject separate from all that you perceive; this is how the Mind of the Son of God dreams an imaginary universe.
If your eyes see something your hands can touch, if your ears perceive sounds, and if you feel yourself within a body, you can be absolutely certain that you are dreaming, that what you behold is not real, and that your mind is deceiving itself because, in truth, it understands nothing of what it is imagining. That is not reality; that is nothing. It is the sad condition of a mind that has exchanged the glorious state of Existence for limitation, ignorance, and forgetfulness.
This may remind you a little of Chico Marx disguised as Groucho in the film Duck Soup, saying: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” But look deep into your heart, and you will understand that this is the truth.
It is important that you recognize where the difficulty lies in believing that what you perceive is not real. Your perception is a mental construct shaped by a belief: you believe in what you perceive precisely because you have perceived it through a belief that is entirely chosen and accepted. If you are now told that what you perceive is not real, you are, in fact, being asked to believe something that contradicts your beliefs. In other words, a conflict of beliefs appears. In reality, these are opposing concepts your mind treats on the same level, and they contradict each other; they cannot coexist. You have no other way out of the conflict than to choose one of those beliefs and abandon the other.
This is what this Course is proposing to you at all times: that you replace one set of beliefs with another. This is a change you cannot make lightly or partially. You must do it with full awareness, absolutely and with all its consequences. Therefore, you would do well to think about it carefully, to weigh the arguments for and against, and to begin putting it systematically into practice in all aspects of your life; only experience will bring you certainty. Now observe impartially the effects that this change of paradigm has in your personal life, and conclude with honesty whether they truly benefit you. If it is evident that it is an improvement, deepen and intensify its application; if not, ask yourself whether you have interpreted this teaching correctly, or simply abandon the attempt.
To exist, to Be, Reality—it is all exactly the opposite of what you perceive, and it is something you know very well, for you vaguely remember it and constantly seek it in everything you undertake—you, separated mind.
Reality is not experienced nor perceived: Reality is what you are. Reality is what you know and what you love. Reality is perfectly abstract, absolute, whole, and total. It has no separate parts, for it is One. It harbors no conflict, nor is it open to doubt or uncertainty, for it has no opposite. There is nothing that is not It—that is, you. Peace, Love, the infinite Light of Knowledge, and the absolute Power of Its Will are Its eternal condition.
Anything that is not that is not real and does not exist. Therefore, it can only be an illusion—something you imagine, just like the idea you have of yourself, which is nothing but the vocation to be separate, to be an ego.
Illness is one of the many resources of the dream to make the experience of separation seem realistic. To separate is to attack the integrity of reality; thus, illness serves to separate the subject into his particular suffering and exclusive condition. No one suffers illness as he does, nor experiences his pain, which is his own and unique.
The notion of sin is a similar resource to foster separation. Illness is physical and affects the body; sin is more abstract, for it is moral and refers to behavior. Yet, at bottom, they are the same, for they have the same purpose: they are forms of attack that serve to separate and to consolidate the dream—defenses against truth.
II Both the notion of sin and that of illness are voluntary decisions of the mind. The mind’s responsibility in establishing guilt is evident; that of illness is less so, but that is simply because the mind decides to hide that decision from itself in order not to assume responsibility for its own suffering—which is, clearly, a completely absurd act.
Yet, if you look closely, the mind does something very similar with sin: it always refers guilt to a “moral” instance higher than itself, and considers itself merely the innocent spectator and victim of that intolerable transgression of a “law” it has itself written.
The mind also suffers when it condemns sin, but it will never admit that it has been a gratuitous pain it has also granted itself. It will always seek to justify guilt through something “objectively” evil.
III Realize that illness and sin are the most “dynamic” and effective defenses for keeping the world’s thought system in place.
IV You do not perceive facts, but interpretations. Read again these last three paragraphs very slowly and carefully; they are crucial. They explain to you with absolute clarity the mechanism by which you deceive yourself—how you “hallucinate.” If you wish to know the truth, it is essential that you discover how you are deceiving yourself now.
V This is how stories are constructed: you fragment the perfect unity of all that is, you assign exclusive functions and attributes to each of the resulting parts, and you relate them to one another in a deranged way, introducing absurd bipolar notions to contrast what does not exist—attack and alliances, sin and forgiveness, love and hate, success and failure, illness and health. Yet all these are but stories dreamed by your hallucinated mind.
VI Illness is one of the most effective resources for preserving individual identity. Do you not want to be you? Do you not want to be special, unique, and exclusive, capable of making your own decisions and controlling what you call your life? How do you think you will achieve that with a mind whose very nature contradicts that idea? Now you know how you do it: by attacking—and attacking yourself, which are equivalent terms. But, obviously, that has a price: you will dream of the results of your attack on the world, your brothers, and yourself—you will dream of death.
It is certain that what is said here is very difficult for you to assimilate, and even more so to accept. You need not force yourself to believe it. Simply be respectful toward this definition of illness and consider it carefully. Then think about it often, and keep it in mind whenever you see someone ill or fall ill yourself. Reflect, then, whether it is possible that this perspective on illness explains the situation. You will probably realize that it fits perfectly, and you will probably also need many such confirmations before you are able to integrate it into your new thought system.
But remember: never force yourself to believe what this Course tells you; that is not the way. This is a Course about truth, and you will reach it—or rather, it will reach you—gladly and by your own will.
VII Rejoice that the world you believe you live in is nothing but a dream, as was said at the beginning. That is the context in which you must interpret this Lesson. None of it is true, nor has it ever been. The only thing that apparently remains, at least for now, is your will to be yourself.
Well then, until you finally abandon that inconvenient idea, better dream of what is kind and beneficent. Dream that you forgive the world and your brothers; dream that you forgive yourself and love yourself even in this particular form. Dream that, on your way to awakening, you are accompanied by a love reflected in everything, because you have placed it there through the power of your will.
And when that light you project upon the world becomes so intense that it nearly blinds you, you will realize that it comes from beyond the gates of Heaven, which have always stood open for you.
VIII John 8:32 “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
IX By relieving the mind of the absurd belief that truth is to be feared.
X Never forget: the only thing that must be healed is the mind. The mind is the only thing that can be sick, for the mind is the only thing that exists.