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You have the vision which enables each one to see the body not. And as you look upon each other, you will see an altar to your Father, holy as Heaven, glowing with radiant purity and sparkling with the shining lilies you laid upon it. What can you value more than this? Why do you think the body is a better home, a safer shelter for God's Son?
IX. THE VISION OF
SINLESSNESS
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Workbook for Students
Part II
What is Salvation?
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1Salvation is a promise made by God that you would find your way to Him at last. It cannot not be kept. It guarantees that time will have an end, and all the thoughts that have been born in time will end as well. God's Word is given every mind which thinks that it has separate thoughts and will replace these thoughts of conflict with the Thought of peace.
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Workbook for Students
Lesson 233
I give my life
to God to run* today.
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1
Father, I give You all my thoughts today. I would have none of mine. In place of them, give me Your own. I give You all my acts as well that I may do Your Will instead of seeking goals which cannot be obtained and wasting time in vain imaginings. Today I come to You. I will step back and merely follow You. Be You the Guide and I the follower who questions not the wisdom of the Infinite nor Love Whose tenderness I cannot comprehend but which is yet Your perfect gift to me.
2 Today we have one Guide to lead us on. And as we walk together, we will give this day to Him with no reserve at all. This is His day. And so it is a day of countless gifts and mercies unto us.
*Course in Miracles Society [CIMS] follows the original handscript: “I give my life to God to run today.”
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Lesson ARCHIVE
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Course in Miracles
Original Edition
Text
Chapter 20
The Promise of the Resurrection
IX. The Vision of
Sinlessness
par 67-77
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67 Vision will come to you at first in glimpses, but they will be enough to show you what is given you who see your brother sinless. Truth is restored to you through your desire, as it was lost to you through your desire for something else. Open the holy place which you closed off by valuing the "something else," and what was never lost will quietly return. It has been saved for you. Vision would not be necessary had judgment not been made. Desire now its whole undoing, and it is done for you.
68 Do you not want to know your own Identity? Would you not happily exchange your doubts for certainty? Would you not willingly be free of misery and learn again of joy? Your holy relationship offers all this to you. As it was given you, so will be its effects. And as its holy purpose was not made by you, the means by which its happy end is yours is also not of you. Rejoice in what is yours but for the asking and think not that you need make either means or end. All this is given you who would but see your brother sinless. All this is given, waiting on your desire but to receive it. Vision is freely given to those who ask to see.
69 Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision and to rejoice in along with Him. For peace will come to all who ask for it with real desire and sincerity of purpose, shared with the Holy Spirit and at one with Him on what salvation is. Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless that Christ may rise before your vision and give you joy. And place no value on your brother's body, which holds him to illusions of what he is. It is his desire to see his sinlessness, as it is yours. And bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what you have made of him.
70 The Holy Spirit guarantees that what God willed and gave you shall be yours. This is your purpose now, and the vision that makes it yours is ready to be given. You have the vision which enables each one to see the body not. And as you look upon each other, you will see an altar to your Father, holy as Heaven, glowing with radiant purity and sparkling with the shining lilies you laid upon it. What can you value more than this? Why do you think the body is a better home, a safer shelter for God's Son? Why would you rather look on it than on the truth? How can the engine of destruction be preferred and chosen to replace the holy home the Holy Spirit offers, where He will dwell with you?
71 The body is the sign of weakness, vulnerability, and loss of power. Can such a savior help you? Would you turn in your distress and need for help unto the helpless? Is the pitifully little the perfect choice to call upon for strength? Judgment will seem to make your savior weak. Yet it is
you who need his strength. There is no problem, no event or situation, no perplexity that vision will not solve. All is redeemed when looked upon with vision. For this is not
your sight, and brings with it the laws beloved of Him Whose sight it
is.
72 Everything looked upon with vision falls gently into place according to the laws brought to it by His calm and certain sight. The end for everything He looks upon is always sure. For it will meet His purpose, seen in unadjusted form and suited perfectly to meet it. Destructiveness becomes benign, and sin is turned to blessing under His gentle gaze. What can the body's eyes perceive, with power to correct? Its eyes
adjust to sin, unable to overlook it in any form and seeing it everywhere, in everything. Look through its eyes, and everything will stand condemned before you. All that could save you, you will never see. Your holy relationship, the source of your salvation, will be deprived of meaning, and its most holy purpose bereft of means for its accomplishment.
73 Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination. But vision sets all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway of Heaven's laws. What if you recognized this world is an hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see if you
accepted this? And would you
see it?
74 Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize
you did this. Once you accept this simple fact and take unto yourself the power you gave them, you are released from them. One thing is sure—hallucinations serve a purpose, and when that purpose is no longer held, they disappear. Therefore, the question never is whether you want them, but always, do you want the purpose which they serve? This world seems to hold out many purposes, each different and with different values. Yet they are all the same. Again there is no order but a seeming hierarchy of values.
75 Only two purposes are possible. And one is sin, the other holiness. Nothing is in between, and which you choose determines what you see. For what you see is merely how you elect to meet your goal. Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness. They are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin and seems to witness to its reality. It still is true that nothing is without. Yet upon nothing are all projections made. For it is the projection which gives the "nothing" all the meaning that it holds.
76 What has no meaning cannot be perceived. And meaning always looks within to find itself and
then looks out. All meaning that you give the world outside must thus reflect the sight you saw within; or better, if you saw at all or merely judged against. Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations that show you all the fearful outcomes of imagined sin into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily and heard with joy. They are His substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the ego's purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They step away from sin, reminding you that it is not reality which frightens you and that the errors which you made can be corrected.
77 When you have looked on what seemed terrifying and seen it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death and watched them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear, life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away, who need persuade you to accept the gift of vision? And after vision, who is there who could refuse what must come after? Think but an instant just on this—you can behold the holiness God gave His Son. And never need you think that there is something else for you to see.
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Sarah's Reflections
Lesson 233
I give my life to God
to guide* today.
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Sarah's Commentary:
Today's Lesson is all about surrender and the willingness to listen and submit to His Will, rather than relying on our own will. It is about trusting in Divine Wisdom, rather than the "wisdom" of our past learning. It reminds me of one of my favorite Lessons where we must release control over our own lives.
"I will step back and let Him lead the way."
(W.155) It is about giving over the thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that block our awareness of His presence---a presence which is always in our minds, closer than our own breath. We keep His thoughts away from us when we are determined to have it our way, when we hold grievances, when we think we know what would make us happy, when we believe we know our own best interests, when we hold onto our identity as an individual self, and when we invest in our specialness, believing we can gain at our brother's expense. We attempt to take from others what we believe would make us complete. When we believe that they no longer have anything to offer our specialness, we discard them.
Separation comes from the belief that we are something that others are not, and we have seized what others could never get. Others are despised while we are praised. While others suffer, we are happy. We cling to differences, rather than recognizing the sameness in everyone. We hold the belief that if others have more, it is because they have taken what we failed to get. It is the basis for all our grievances.
When we give Him all our thoughts, holding onto none of our own, He will direct all our acts and all we do and think and say. We then naturally and easily withdraw from illusion and pleasure, from worldly anxieties and desires, from works not of God, from the glory of our own ambitions, from confusion, conflict, and competition, and from the burden of our own opinions. It does not happen all at once. It is indeed a process of being in the flow of God's eternal Love where all comes easily and naturally. There is now no more conflict between the wrong-minded voice of the ego and the Voice of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus assures us that we can fully trust the Holy Spirit’s guidance while there is no reason to trust our own. With God, we can be certain. If we rely on our own "wisdom," we can never be certain. We cannot possibly know all of the outcomes, nor the impact of our decisions on everyone. We cannot rely on our own judgments because they are based on very limited information. Possibilities are infinite in number, and we cannot know them all, but the Holy Spirit can and does. We can rely on Him for everything. More and more, I notice how much I go through life, determining things on my own and simply forgetting to stop and to ask. It is a reflection of resistance and of the fear of truth, which is the fear of our own reality. We are still attached to our own captivity. We are still invested in the prison house of this world. There is still a desire for things of this world---for what is familiar to us.
As we recognize that our own pursuits have hurt us, we yield more and more to God. We stay open to His guidance in what we are to do and where we are to go. And in our daily routines, we invite His Presence to be with us. We are not asked to detach from the world, but only from the false self by recognizing our cherished illusions and letting them go. It is not easy because we do not always see what we are valuing. For me right now, I am trying more and more to step away from having opinions about everything. When I want to speak, I stop and reflect as to whether it is important to say anything at all. Also, I am increasingly asking myself why I am undertaking an activity. What is it for? I recognize how I have used my life for experiences, for power, and for pleasure. It is not helpful to judge myself for this and feel guilty, but it is very helpful to look at it and question it all. Only in this way can we give our life to God.
If we think we are not getting the answers we are seeking, believing He is not speaking to us, it is only because we are still listening to our own specialness. Part of the problem is that we are still wrapped up in our own thoughts and not willing to surrender our way. We think we know. Our wrong minds resist the truth. Our mantra is, "Don't tell me what to do." We feel weak when we do not know, or when we surrender to another seeming will. Yet it is only through this kind of surrender that our minds are open to being taught and to being guided. We can start by acknowledging that maybe we have been wrong about everything. In fact, we can be assured that we are wrong about everything because we have relied on the wrong teacher. This is difficult for us because we are so invested in our worldly identity. We are uncertain about trusting what, to us, is yet unseen and unknown.
To be willing to ask the Holy Spirit in everything requires that we stay vigilant with noticing how much we hold onto the belief that we can handle some parts of our lives on our own. It is about trying to maintain control, but what are we trying to control? We are actually using control to resist the Will of God and resist being drawn into the unknown. This reflects the final obstacle to peace, which is the fear of God. This fear shows up in areas of our lives where we are attached to keeping things as they are. The fear shows up when we think that God will require us to sacrifice our happiness, as we define it.
How does guidance come? For each of us, it will be unique. It has been helpful for me to realize that the voice of the Holy Spirit is actually my own voice. There was a time that I actually thought it was a voice apart from me. It requires discernment to recognize whether we are hearing the voice of the ego or of the Holy Spirit. Not everyone hears an actual voice. It may be just an inner prompt that comes from inspiration. If it is of the Holy Spirit, it will feel right and true. Perhaps it was this impulse that prompted you to pick up the Course, to join a particular study group, or to call a friend. We may receive prompts from "outside" sources as well. They may come through a book, a person, a sign of some kind, an inner nudge, a TV or radio program, or even a song. It does not come through our efforts, but through synchronicity. Through it, we feel mightily helped and supported in our journey. It is a sense of living in the flow where we allow the flow without interfering with it. We receive some outward sign of the gentle communication of Spirit and with it comes a sense of the tenderness and deep sense of security in which we are held. We sense that we are not alone in the world, but we are supported by the infinite organizing power of the Divine. We connect with it when we quiet our ego chatter and enter into His Presence in the silence of our hearts and the openness of our minds.
One thing I have found helpful at times in my process is to sit in meditation with pen in hand, listen in silence, and begin to write as thoughts come up, sometimes in answer to a situation in front of me. Some of this writing makes little sense initially, and yet, on rereading the notes, there are gems of truth that are perfect to address the questions in my mind. I have also found, if I open the Course book randomly, I have been given just the right guidance in answer to a question plaguing me. I simply ask to be helped and let it fall open and read what my eyes light on. Sometimes the answers have seemed quite obscure, but other times they have totally turned me in a whole new direction and have brought me back to sanity.
The key for me has been to ask and expect an answer. Whatever works for you is what is important. The guidance may seem very subtle at times; while at other times, it will be very apparent.
"When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you are being carried down a quiet path in summer."
(T.14.IV.6.1-2) (ACIM OE T.13.IX.92)
"Today we have one Guide to lead us on. And as we walk together, we will give this day to Him with no reserve at all. This is His day. And so it is a day of countless gifts and mercies unto us."
(W.233.2.1-2) His guidance carries not only His wisdom but His love for us, the tenderness of which we cannot comprehend. An important thing to remember about guidance, however, is that the ego can use it for its own ends, and as such, it can become a manipulative tool. I might, for example, give someone advice under the guise that it was guided, or I might want to ignore a request made by a brother on the basis it was "guidance" when, in fact, I did not want to help. I may even use "guidance" as a way to elevate my status as someone with a special relationship with the Divine. It is subtle, yet important, to recognize how the ego likes to elevate itself and use the idea of "guidance" to enhance its own specialness.
Also, it is important to remember that this Course is not about making our prison house of this world more attractive as a substitute for Heaven. Our goal is to awaken from the dream, not to try to make it more attractive. Therefore, if we are trying to bring the Holy Spirit into the dream by asking for guidance about options that will just make for a happier dream, it is serving the goals of the ego.
We are told,
"Salvation is an undoing in the sense that it does nothing, failing to support the world of dreams and malice. Thus it lets illusion go. By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust."
(W.PII.Q2.3.1-3) Then, the love beyond them will be revealed, which is what illusions hide. We let illusions go by looking at them. Look at the pleasures we seek that we think will make us happy and realize the pain that was brought to us instead. Be willing to accept that offerings of the body bring only guilt for which we think we deserve punishment and death. Yet by recognizing that it is only God's Love that will bring us eternal peace and joy, a new perspective dawns on our minds. Ask in everything:
What is it really for? What is being served by my pursuits in this moment? Is it to enhance the ego and my specialness, or to recognize I have been wrong about everything?
As we release our way and listen to a different Teacher, He will help us to remember what we are.
In our relationships, when we do not join with another's pain and when we do not let our peace be upset by someone's anger, we are demonstrating that we need not support anyone's dream of malice, including our own. While we are still called to act with kindness, compassion, help, and support, our minds remain at peace, remembering who our brother is in truth. And when we are not able to see our brother’s innocence, we bring our own self-attacking thoughts that we projected onto our brother to the Holy Spirit for healing. It is how we bring our life to God to run today.
*Course in Miracles Society [CIMS] follows the original handscript: “I give my life to God to run today.”
Love and blessings, Sarah
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Allen Watson's
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Allen joined Robert Perry in forming the Circle of Atonement in 1993 in Sedona, Arizona where Allen led retreats and workshops and authored many books based on “A Course in Miracles.” One of his most popular books is:
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