particularly after you have gone
through what seems theoretical and far
from what the student has already learned,
to bring him back to practical concerns.
This we will do today. We will not speak
of lofty, world-encompassing ideas,
but dwell instead on benefits to you.|
You do not ask too much of life, but far
too little. When you let your mind be drawn
to bodily concerns, to things you buy,
to eminence as valued by the world,
you ask for sorrow, not for happiness.
This course does not attempt to take from you
the little that you have. It does not try
to substitute utopian ideas
for satisfactions that the world contains.
There are no satisfactions in the world.|
Today we list the real criteria
By which to test all things you think you want.
Unless they meet these sound requirements,
They are not worth ** desiring at all,
For they can but replace what offers more.
The laws which govern choice you cannot make,
no more than you can make alternatives
from which to choose. The choosing you can do;
indeed you must. And it is wise to learn
the laws you set in motion when you choose,
and what alternatives you choose between.|
We have already stressed there are but two,
however many there appear to be.
The range is set, and this you cannot change.
It would be most ungenerous to you
to let alternatives be limitless,
and thus delay your final choice until
you had considered all of them in time,
and not been brought so clearly to the place
where there is but one choice which must be made.|
Another kindly and related law
is that there is no compromise in what
your choice must bring. It cannot give you just
a little, for there is no in between.
Each choice you make brings everything to you
or nothing. Therefore, if you learn the tests
by which you can distinguish everything
from nothing, you will make the better choice.|
First, if you choose a thing that will not last
forever, what you chose is valueless.
A temporary value is without
all value. Time can never take away
a value that is real. What fades and dies
was never there, and makes no offering
to him who chooses it. He was deceived
by nothing in a form he thought he liked.|
Next, if you choose to take a thing away
from someone else, you will have nothing left.
This is because when you deny his right
to everything, you have denied your own.
You therefore will not recognize the things
you really have, denying they are there.
Who seeks to take away has been deceived
by the belief that loss can offer gain.
Yet loss must offer loss and nothing more.|
Your next consideration is the one
on which the others rest. Why is the choice
you make of value to you? What attracts
your mind to it? What purpose does it serve?
Here it is easiest of all to be
deceived, for what the ego wants it fails
to recognize. It does not even tell
the truth as it perceives it, for it needs
to keep the halo which it uses to
conceal its goals from tarnish and from rust,
that you may see how innocent it is.|
Yet is its camouflage a thin veneer
which could deceive but those who are content
to be deceived. Its goals are obvious
to anyone who cares to look for them.
Here is deception doubled, for the one
who is deceived will not perceive that he
has merely failed to gain. He will believe
that he has served the ego's hidden goals.|
And though he tries to keep its halo clear
within his vision, yet must he perceive
its tarnished edges and its rusted core.
His ineffectual mistakes appear
as sins to him, because he looks upon
the tarnish as his own, the rust a sign
of deep unworthiness within himself.
He who would still preserve the ego's goals
and serve them as his own makes no mistakes
according to the dictates of his guide.
This guidance teaches it is error to
believe that sins are but mistakes, for who
would suffer for his sins if this were so?|
And so we come to the criterion
for choice which is the hardest to believe
because its obviousness is overlaid
with many layers of obscurity.
If you feel any guilt about your choice,
you have allowed the ego's goals to come
between the real alternatives, and thus
you do not realize there are but two.
And the alternative you think you choose
seems fearful and too dangerous to be
the nothingness it actually is.|
All things are valuable or valueless,
worthy or not of being sought at all,
entirely desirable, or
not worth the slightest effort to obtain.
Choosing is simple just because of this.
Complexity is nothing but a screen
of smoke that hides the very simple fact
that no decision can be difficult.
What is the gain to you in learning this?
It is far more than merely letting you
make choices easily and without pain.|
Heaven itself is reached by open hands
and open minds, which come with nothing to
find everything and claim it as their own.
We will attempt to reach this state today,
with self-deception laid aside, and with
an honest willingness to value but
the truly valuable and the real.
Our two extended practice periods
of fifteen minutes will begin with this:
