No one can suffer loss unless it be
his own decision. No one suffers pain
except his choice elects this state for him.
No-one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick
unless these are the outcomes that he wants.
And no-one dies without his own consent.
Nothing occurs but represents your wish.
And nothing is omitted that you choose.
Here is your world, complete in all details.
Here is its whole reality for you.
And it is only here salvation is.
You may believe that this position is
extreme, and too inclusive to be true.
Yet can truth have exceptions? If you have
the gift of everything can loss be real?
Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy?
Can fear and sickness enter in a mind
where love and perfect holiness abide?
Truth must be all-inclusive if it be
the truth at all. Accept no opposite
and no exceptions, for to do so is
to contradict the truth entirely.
Salvation is the recognition that
the truth is true and nothing else is true.
This you have heard before, but may not yet
accept both parts of it. Without the first
the second has no meaning, but without
the second is the first no longer true.
Truth cannot have an opposite. This can
not be too often said and thought about.
For if what is not true is true as well
as what is true, then part of truth is false,
and truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but
the truth is true, and what is false is false.
This is the simplest of distinctions, yet
the most obscure. But not because it is
a difficult distinction to perceive.
It is concealed behind a vast array
of choices which do not appear to be
entirely your own. And thus the truth
appears to have some aspects which belie
consistency, but do not seem to be
but contradictions introduced by you.
As God created you, you must remain
unchangeable with transitory states
by definition false. And that includes
all shifts in feeling, alterations in
conditions of the body and the mind,
in all awareness and in all response.
This is the all-inclusiveness which sets
the truth apart from falsehood, and the false
kept separate from the truth as what it is.
Is it not strange that you believe to think
you made the world you see is arrogance?
God made it not. Of this you can be sure.
What does He know of the ephemeral,
the sinful and the guilty, the afraid,
the suffering and lonely, and the mind
that lives within a body that must die?
You but accuse Him of insanity
to think He made a world where such things seem
to have reality. He is not mad.
Yet only madness makes a world like this.
To think that God made chaos, contradicts
His Will, invented opposites to truth,
and suffers death to triumph over life,
all this is arrogance. Humility
would see at once these things are not of Him.
And can you see what God created not?
To think you can is merely to believe
you can perceive what God willed not to be.
And what could be more arrogant than this?
Let us today be truly humble, and
accept what we have made as what it is.
The power of decision is your own.
Decide but to accept your rightful place
as co-creator of the universe,
and all you think you made will disappear.
What rises to awareness then will be
all that there ever was, eternally
as it is now. And it will take the place
of self-deceptions made but to usurp
the altar to the Father and the Son.|
Today we practice true humility,
abandoning the false pretense by which
the ego seeks to prove it arrogant.
Only the ego can be arrogant.
But truth is humble in acknowledging
its mightiness, its changelessness and its
eternal wholeness, all-encompassing,
God's perfect gift to His beloved Son.
We lay aside the arrogance which says
that we are sinners, guilty and afraid,
ashamed of what we are. And lift our hearts
in true humility instead to Him
Who has created us immaculate,
like to Himself in power and in love.|
The power of decision is our own.
And we accept of Him that which we are,
and humbly recognize the Son of God.
To recognize God's Son implies as well
that all self-concepts have been given up
and recognized as false. Their arrogance
has been perceived, and in humility
the radiance of God's Son, his gentleness,
his perfect sinlessness, his Father's Love,
his right to Heaven and release from hell
are joyously accepted as our own.|
Now do we join in glad acknowledgment
that lies are false and only truth is true.
We think of truth alone as we arise,
and spend five minutes practicing its ways,
encouraging our frightened minds with this:
"
The power of decision is my own.