It is impossible to see two worlds.
1. Perception is consistent.
²What you see reflects what you are thinking.
³What you think merely reflects what you have chosen to see.
⁴And what you want to see is determined by your values.
⁵For you will surely want to see what you value.
⁶And then you will believe that what you see is really there.
⁷No one can see what his mind does not value.
⁸And no one can fail to see what he believes he wants. I
2. But who can truly hate and love at once?
²Who can desire what he does not want to be real?
³And who can wish to see a world that frightens him?
⁴Fear necessarily blinds, for that is its weapon; you cannot see what you are afraid to see.
⁵Love and perception go hand in hand.
⁶But fear hides in darkness what is really there. II
3. What then can fear project upon the world?
²What can be seen in darkness that is real?
³Fear eclipses truth, and only what you imagine remains.
⁴But what can be real in blind imaginings born of panic?
⁵What is it, then, that you want, that this be shown to you?
⁶What do you wish to keep in such a dream?
4. Fear has forged everything you think you see.
²Every separation, every distinction, and the countless differences you believe make up the world do not exist.
³The enemy of love invented them.
⁴Yet love can have no enemy.
⁵And so they have no cause, no being, and no consequence.
⁶They can be valued, but they remain unreal.
⁷They can be sought, but they cannot be found.
⁸Today we will not seek for them, nor waste the day in search of what cannot be found.
5. It is impossible to see two worlds that have no overlap.
²If you pursue one, the other disappears.
³But the one you seek is always there.
⁴These two worlds are the only choices you can make, for there are no others.
⁵You choose between the real and the unreal, and nothing else.
6. Today we will try not to make a compromise between the two, for that is impossible.
²The world you see is proof that you have already made a choice as vast as is its opposite.
³Today we want to learn more than just the lesson that you cannot see two worlds at once.
⁴This lesson also teaches you that the world you have chosen is entirely consistent from your point of view.
⁵It is all of one piece, because it arises from a single emotion, and reflects its source in everything you see. III
7. Gratefully and gladly, six times today we dedicate five minutes to the thought that wipes away all compromise and transcends all doubt.
²We will not make thousands of meaningless distinctions, nor attempt to carry with us a scrap of unreality as we devote our mind to finding only what is real.
8. Begin your search for that other world by calling on a Strength far greater than your own, and know what it is you seek.
²You no longer want illusions.
³And you prepare for these five minutes by emptying your hands of all the trivial treasures of this world.
⁴And so, you wait for God to help you, saying:
⁵It is impossible to see two worlds.
⁶I accept the strength God offers me.
⁷I will not value what is valueless.
⁸And thus I will find my freedom and my salvation.
9. God will be there waiting for you.
²For you have called upon the great unfailing Power, and gratefully He will take this mighty step with you.IV
³You will see His gratitude expressed in a new perception, clear and true.
⁴And you will not doubt what you behold.
⁵For though it is still perception, it is a kind your eyes have never seen before.
⁶And you will know that the Strength of God Himself has supported you in your choice.
10. Easily dismiss temptation today whenever it arises, simply by remembering the choices you are making.
²For you can see only the unreal or the real, the false or the true, and nothing else.
³Perception aligns with your choice, and thus you will see either Heaven or hell.
11. If you accept but a tiny part of hell as real, you have condemned your eyes and cursed your sight, and what you will behold will indeed be hell.
²But you can choose to free your mind and claim the Heaven of release instead of all the hell the world would show you.
³To every glimpse of hell, no matter what its form, respond with these words:
⁴It is impossible to see two worlds.
⁵I seek my freedom and my salvation,
⁶And this is not a part of what I want.
I First you think, and then you see — not the other way around. Perception is the result of your will. And you inevitably direct your will toward attaining what you value. That is why it is essential to choose carefully what is valuable to you, for that is what will appear before you. This is how you “create” the world you believe you see.
The perceptual process unfolds like this:
IDEA OF VALUE
↓
CONCEPTION OF A FORM THAT MATERIALIZES IT
↓
PERCEPTION OF THE ILLUSION THAT REPRESENTS ITFirst you ascribe value to something. Because you value it, you desire it. Because you desire it, you want to see it. And because you want to see it, you project it onto the screen of your consciousness. In other words: you see it. That is the power of your will in action.
This process occurs in your mind — both with the perception of illusions that represent what you value, and with those that represent the absence of value (what you fear). And unfortunately, this latter process happens far too often, for you have grown accustomed to perceiving an imaginary world built from absences of love — the dream that hypnotizes the mind that feels alone in the universe, enchanted by the notion of possessing an individual identity separate from everything.
And then you tell yourself that you have no will, that your mind is powerless — which is astonishing. How you deceive yourself!
You think of your will as nothing more than a wavering wish, at best a frail mental push that urges you to laboriously perform the tiresome tasks imposed by your desires. And you are unaware that it is, in fact, your will that has shaped the entire stage on which this sad drama is enacted.
Wake up and learn Who You Are! You are everything. You are the absolute author of your personal life. Everything you perceive is in you — but you are none of it.
You are only experiencing your own beliefs, for the mind that believes it is separate can experience nothing else. And of all those beliefs, the most absurd is the pitiful idea you have of yourself.
That “you” you think you are is nothing but this: a belief taking place in your mind — the mind of the Son of God.
Notice that what you do here, in this imagined mental space you call “the world,” is a reduced, illusory version of what you do in the Reality of Heaven, where you truly abide.
In Heaven, You Are.
To Be is to Love.
And to Love is to Give.
What you are, you give — you extend.
And that is to create.
And what you create are your Creations: the Reality your Being extends through Creation, just as Itself — you — was created by your Father.
II The world you believe you see is the world of the ego — that sickness of the mind born of the strange idea that you are “something” different from everything else, different from God. And that “something” — the ego — is also subject to the laws of perception when it denies reality.
The ego fears love, for the reality of love dispels the unreality of the ego. Since it fears love, it does not want to see it. And since it does not want to see it, it hides it. That is why you cannot see the real world through the eyes of the ego, for the real world reflects the Love of God. But it takes only the removal of the ego from the equation of perception for the real world to appear before your eyes. And that is as simple as ceasing to give importance to the idea you have of yourself — your ego. When the mind ceases to take that personal identity into account, the ego vanishes.
The dream that your still-sleeping mind believes it perceives is no longer affected by the notion of absence, and what it sees reflects the love underlying every illusion. Your eyes, for a brief time, still retain the memory of the old symbols that once told stories of separation, but now they appear outlined upon a background of radiant love. And that vision, having no further purpose, finally dissolves into the glorious vastness of Existence.
III The emotion that makes you see the world of the ego is fear, and the one that shows you the real world is love. It is impossible to see both worlds simultaneously, for emotions are unique and mutually exclusive. The mind can hold many ideas at once — even contradictory ones — but the heart offers you, in the present moment, only one emotion: the direct result of the relationships formed among the ideas in your mind.
The heart is the great simplifier, and its dictates are the conclusion of what the mind proposes. Do not look with the mind at what is in the mind, for you will get lost; look with the mind toward the heart, and there you will find the answer to what is occurring in your mind. The emotion of your heart is the sound generated by the interplay of ideas in your mind, and your Soul knows well how to interpret it.
IV This Lesson is another of the “giant steps” in the Workbook. The other Lessons in which they are mentioned are: 66, 94, 127, 130, 135, and 194.