I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.
1. Fear is a stranger on the paths of Love.
²If you identify with fear, you become a stranger to yourself.
³And then you do not know who you are.
⁴What your Self is remains unknown to the part of you that believes it is real, yet different from you. I
⁵Who could be in their right mind and think this way?
⁶Who but a madman could believe he is what he is not, and condemn himself?
2. There is a stranger among us.
²Something born of a thought completely alien to the Truth, speaking a different language.
³Something that looks upon a world unknown to Truth and interprets what, to Truth, has no meaning at all.
⁴But most surprising is this: though it does not recognize its Host, it claims this place as its own, and declares that the One who truly belongs here is the stranger.
⁵Yet how easy it would be to say:
⁶This is my home.
⁷This is where I belong.
⁸And I will not leave just because a madman says I must.
3. What reason is there not to say this?
²What other reason could there be, except that you have given this stranger your place and made yourself unknown to you?
³No one would so needlessly be driven from their home, unless they believed there was another place they would prefer.
4. Who is the stranger here?
²Who does not belong in the home God gave His Son?
³You—or fear?
⁴Is fear a creation of His, made in His likeness? II
⁵Does fear complete Love, and is it completed by Love?
⁶There is no home that can shelter both Love and fear.
⁷They cannot coexist.
⁸If you are real, then fear must be an illusion.
⁹But if fear is real, then you do not exist at all.
5. So simply is the question resolved.
²He who is afraid has but denied himself and said:
³I am the stranger here.
⁴And so I leave my home to someone who is more myself than I am.
⁵And I give away everything I believed was mine.
⁶Now he must live in exile, not knowing who he is, unsure of everything except this: that he is not himself, and that his home has been denied to him.
6. What could he now go in search of?
²What could he possibly find?
³He who has become a stranger to himself cannot find a home, no matter where he looks, for he has made return impossible. III
⁴He has lost the way, unless a miracle finds him and shows him now that he is not a stranger.
⁵That miracle will come.
⁶For his Self remains at home.
⁷His Self invited no stranger and confused no alien thought with Him.
⁸And He will call to what is His to come back to Him, for He knows what belongs to Him. IV
7. Who, then, is the stranger?
²Must it not be the one your Self does not call?
³You cannot now recognize the stranger with you, for you have given him your rightful place.
⁴Yet your Self is as certain of what is His as God is of His Son.
⁵He cannot be confused about Creation.
⁶He is sure of what is His.
⁷No stranger can intrude upon His knowledge or the reality of His Son.
⁸He knows nothing of strangers.
⁹God knows His Son with certainty.
8. The certainty of God is enough.
²He to whom God gives His Son belongs exactly where God placed him forever.
³God has answered your question: “Who is the stranger?”
⁴Hear His Voice assure you quietly and with certainty that you are no stranger to your Father, and your Creator is no stranger to you.
⁵He whom God has joined remains forever One, at home in Him, and not a stranger to Himself. V
9. Today we give thanks that Christ has come to seek in the world what is His.
²His vision sees no strangers, but beholds His Own and joyfully unites with them.
³They see Him as a stranger, for they do not recognize themselves.
⁴But when they welcome Him, they remember.
⁵And He gently leads them home, where they have always belonged.
10. Christ forgets no one.
²He offers you all your brothers so that you may remember them, and thus make their home complete and perfect, as it was created.
³He has not forgotten you.
⁴But you will not remember Him until you see everyone as He sees them.
⁵He who denies his brother is denying Him. VI
⁶And so he refuses the gift of vision, through which he clearly knows his Self, remembers his home, and attains salvation.
I That is the part of the mind governed by the ego, which identifies with the body and believes itself to be a “human being” with its own personal story. That part of your mind that does not know its Self is what you think you are almost all the time.
Today you are offered a fundamental observation: the way you perceive yourself determines your experience of the world. If you identify with the body, you will live in fear. The body is born to die, it becomes ill, it ages, it needs constant defense—and if you believe you are that, how could you not feel vulnerable?
But you are not the body. Neither its fragility, nor its limits, nor its needs are yours. You have assumed a borrowed identity, a caricature of yourself. And that false, fabricated identity is what sustains all your fears. Today you are told clearly: if you were to recognize yourself as you truly are, fear would disappear from your mind forever. Not because you had conquered it, but because it never made sense.
This world is built upon a lie: the idea that you are a separate self, an autonomous body, an individual consciousness that needs protection. That belief is the root of all your conflicts. And the Course does not seek to fix it or make it more bearable; it seeks to dismantle it entirely. For that identity is not only false—it is the cause of all your suffering.
Today you are reminded that you cannot define yourself. You do not know who you are. But there is One who does. And if you are willing to let go of your definition—your little self, your ideas, your roles, your names—and make room for truth, you will experience a new identity that needs no defense. And with it, peace.
The body will remain here for a time, but it will no longer be your reference point. It will be a useful instrument, nothing more. Your identity will not depend on its condition, its appearance, or its story. You will know yourself as free. Invulnerable. Whole. And from that truth, you will walk the world without fear, extending light wherever you go. For you will no longer be what you believed yourself to be. You will be what you have always been.
II Genesis 1:26–27 “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’”
III John 10:5 “They will not follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”
IV This is aCourse about Truth. Even so, nothing that is said here is the Truth, though all of it is true. Truth is ineffable; it simply is, and it cannot be precisely expressed in words, for words are symbols representing something different from what they are. Yet they are the only thing the mind that believes itself alone and separate can understand.
For this reason, the Course uses them with the purpose of healing that very mind. In this sense, symbols are extremely useful, for they can express all kinds of concepts—both those that are real and those that are not.
This Lesson, like nearly all of them, is deeply symbolic, and that is how you must understand it. It is an allegory of what seems to happen in the mind—but notice how fitting that “seems” is, for here an impossible story is told, one that only seems to occur.
In this allegory there are three characters: the ego, which is that intruder representing the fear that has entered your mind; you, who are the part of the mind with which you identify and to whom Jesus is speaking all the time; and your Self, which is your infinite eternal reality. Notice that the first two characters are imaginary, illusory, and only your Self is real. Do you see how difficult a task Jesus faces—to tell a story that never happened, to build a Course that in truth is unnecessary and yet one that you desperately need?
You need this Course because you believe yourself to be a certain idea you have of yourself, and that belief is your ego. That “you” you think you are and that ego you think affects you are both illusions—as is the fear you feel. None of it is true, and realizing this is salvation. What is nothing is saved from what is nothing; thus salvation, too, has not occurred in eternity. Salvation happens in time—but time does not exist.
All of this is true, but for you it makes no sense. How could it, if it is something that never happened? When that light enters your mind, for an instant you will laugh, but it will be a fleeting moment, for there time ends and eternity—ever as it was—is restored.
Meanwhile, here, in this absurd story of separation, you need not be afraid. Fear is only an imaginary idea that you have invited into your illusory personal mind, where it feels at home because it is as false as your own identity. They go hand in hand toward nowhere—or rather, toward that imaginary place where you think you can hide from God.
This Course is about forgiveness—or rather, about the willingness to forgive, to voluntarily abandon every lie, to change your will, to desire something else. It is a Course about the will to change.
Will is the power of the mind. Use it well, for with that power you make all things. It is the only power that exists. It is the power God gave you when He created you.
V Matthew 19:6 “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate.”
VI Matthew 25:45 “Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Truly I tell you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’”