¹ Perhaps it is not yet quite clear to you that each decision that you make is one between a grievance and a miracle. Each grievance stands like a dark shield of hate before the miracle it would conceal. And as you raise it up before your eyes, you will not see the miracle beyond. Yet all the while it waits for you in light, but you behold your grievances instead.

² Today we go beyond the grievances to look upon the miracle instead. We will reverse the way you see by not allowing sight to stop before it sees. We will not wait before the shield of hate, but lay it down and gently lift our eyes in silence to behold the Son of God.

³ He waits for you behind your grievances, and as you lay them down he will appear in shining light where each one stood before. For every grievance is a block to sight, and as it lifts, you see the Son of God where he has always been. He stands in light, but you were in the dark. Each grievance made the darkness deeper, and you could not see.

⁴ Today we will attempt to see God's Son. We will not let ourselves be blind to him; we will not look upon our grievances. So is the seeing of the world reversed, as we look out toward truth, away from fear.

⁵ We will select one person you have used as target for your grievances and lay the grievances aside and look at him. Someone perhaps you fear and even hate; someone you think you love who angers you; someone you call a friend, but whom you see as difficult at times or hard to please—demanding, irritating, or untrue to the ideal he should accept as his according to the role you set for him.

⁶ You know the one to choose; his name has crossed your mind already. He will be the one of whom we ask God's Son be shown to us. Through seeing him behind the grievances that we have held against him, you will learn that what lay hidden while you saw him not is there in everyone and can be seen. He who was enemy is more than friend when he is freed to take the holy role the Holy Spirit has assigned to him. Let him be savior unto you today. Such is his role in God your Father's plan.

⁷ Our longer practice periods today will see him in this role. We will attempt to hold him in our mind, first as you now consider him. We will review his faults, the difficulties you have had with him, the pain he caused you, his neglect, and all the little and the larger hurts he gave. We will regard his body with its flaws and better points as well, and we will think of his mistakes and even of his "sins."

⁸ Then let us ask of Him Who knows this Son of God in his reality and truth that we may look on him a different way and see our savior shining in the light of true forgiveness given unto us. We ask Him in the Holy Name of God and of His Son, as holy as Himself:

⁹ Let me behold my savior in this one You have appointed as the one for me to ask to lead me to the holy light in which he stands, that I may join with him.

¹⁰ The body's eyes are closed, and as you think of him who grieved you, let your mind be shown the light in him beyond your grievances. What you have asked for cannot be denied. Your savior has been waiting long for this. He would be free and make his freedom yours. The Holy Spirit leans from him to you, seeing no separation in God's Son. And what you see through Him will free you both.

¹¹ Be very quiet now and look upon your shining savior. No dark grievances obscure the sight of him. You have allowed the Holy Spirit to express through him the role God gave Him that you might be saved. God thanks you for these quiet times today in which you laid your images aside and looked upon the miracle of love the Holy Spirit showed you in their place. The world and Heaven join in thanking you, for not one Thought of God but must rejoice as you are saved and all the world with you.

¹² We will remember this throughout the day and take the role assigned to us as part of God's salvation plan, and not our own. Temptation falls away when we allow each one we meet to save us and refuse to hide his light behind our grievances. To everyone you meet and to the ones you think of or remember from the past, allow the role of savior to be given that you may share it with them. For you both, and all the sightless ones as well, we pray:

¹³ Let miracles replace all grievances.

Course in Miracles

Original Edition

TEXT

Chapter 7

The Consistency

of the Kingdom



V. The Recognition of Truth

par 26-38

²⁶ God's meaning waits in the Kingdom because that is where He placed it. It does not wait in time. It merely rests in the Kingdom because it belongs there, as you do. How can you, who are God's meaning, perceive yourselves as absent from it? You can see yourselves as separated from your meaning only by experiencing yourself as unreal. This is why the ego is insane; it teaches that you are not what you are. This is so contradictory that it is clearly impossible. It is therefore a lesson which you cannot really learn, and therefore cannot really teach. Yet you are always teaching. You must therefore be teaching something else as well, even though the ego does not know what it is.

²⁷ The ego, then, is always being undone and does suspect your motives. Your mind cannot be unified in allegiance to the ego because the mind does not belong to it. Yet what is "treacherous" to the ego is faithful to peace. The ego's "enemy" is therefore your friend. We said before that the ego's friend is not part of you, since the ego perceives itself as at war and therefore in need of allies. You who are not at war must look for brothers and recognize all whom you see as brothers, because only equals are at peace.

²⁸ Because God's equal Sons have everything, they cannot compete. Yet if they perceive any of their brothers as anything other than their perfect equals, the idea of competition has entered their minds. Do not underestimate your need to be vigilant against this idea, because all your conflicts come from it. It is the belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore you have accepted the impossible as true. How is that different from saying that you are perceiving yourself as unreal?

²⁹ To be in the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention on it. As long as you believe that you can attend to what is not true, you are accepting conflict as your choice. Is it really a choice? It seems to be, but seeming and reality are hardly the same. You who are the Kingdom are not concerned with seeming. Reality is yours because you are reality. This is how having and being are ultimately reconciled, not in the Kingdom, but in your minds. The altar there is the only reality. The altar is perfectly clear in thought because it is a reflection of perfect Thought. It sees only brothers because it sees only in its own light.

³⁰ God has lit your minds Himself and keeps your minds lit by His light because His light is what your minds are. This is totally beyond question, and when you questioned it you were answered. The answer merely undoes the question by establishing the fact that to question reality is to question meaninglessly. That is why the Holy Spirit never questions. His sole function is to undo the questionable and thus lead to certainty. The certain are perfectly calm because they are not in doubt. They do not raise questions because nothing questionable enters their minds. This holds them in perfect serenity because this is what they share, knowing what they are.

³¹ As has so often been said, healing is both an art and a science. It is an art because it depends on inspiration in the sense that we have already used the term. Inspiration is the opposite of dispiriting and therefore means to make joyous. The dispirited are depressed because they believe that they are literally "without the Spirit," which is an illusion. You do not put the Spirit in them by inspiring them because that would be magic and therefore would not be real healing. You do, however, recognize the Spirit that is already there and thereby reawaken it. This is why the healer is part of the resurrection and the life. The Spirit is not asleep in the minds of the sick, but the part of the mind that can perceive it and be glad is.

³² Healing is also a science because it obeys the laws of God, Whose laws are true. Because they are true, they are perfectly dependable and therefore universal in application. The real aim of science is neither prediction nor control but only understanding. This is because it does not establish the laws it seeks, cannot discover them through prediction, and has no control over them at all. Science is nothing more than an approach to what already is. Like inspiration it can be misunderstood as magic and will be whenever it is undertaken as separate from what already is and perceived as a means for establishing it. To believe this is possible is to believe you can do it. This can only be the voice of the ego.

³³ Truth can only be recognized and need only be recognized. Inspiration is of the Spirit, and certainty is of God according to His laws. Both, therefore, come from the same Source, since inspiration comes from the Voice for God and certainty comes from the laws of God. Healing does not come directly from God, Who knows His creations as perfectly whole. Yet healing is [nevertheless] of God, because it proceeds from His Voice and from His laws. It is their result, in a state of mind which does not know Him. The state is unknown to Him and therefore does not exist, but those who sleep are stupefied, or better, unaware. Because they are unaware, they do not know.

³⁴ The Holy Spirit must work through you to teach you He is in you. This is an intermediary step toward the knowledge that you are in God because you are part of Him. The miracles which the Holy Spirit inspires can have no order of difficulty because every part of creation is of one order. This is God's Will and yours. The laws of God establish this, and the Holy Spirit reminds you of it. When you heal, you are remembering the laws of God and forgetting the laws of the ego. We said before that forgetting is merely a way of remembering better. It is therefore not the opposite of remembering, when it is properly perceived. Perceived improperly, it induces a perception of conflict with something else, as all incorrect perception does. Properly perceived, it can be used as a way out of conflict, as all proper perception can.

³⁵ All abilities, then, should be given over to the Holy Spirit, Who knows how to use them properly. He can use them only for healing because He knows you only as whole. By healing you learn of wholeness, and by learning of wholeness you learn to remember God. You have forgotten Him, but the Holy Spirit still knows that your forgetting must be translated into a way of remembering and not perceived as a separate ability which opposes an opposite. That is the way in which the ego tries to use all abilities, since its goal is always to make you believe that you are in opposition.

³⁶ The ego's goal is as unified as the Holy Spirit's, and it is because of this that their goals can never be reconciled in any way or to any extent. The ego always seeks to divide and separate. The Holy Spirit always seeks to unify and heal. As you heal you are healed because the Holy Spirit sees no order of healing. Healing is the way to undo the belief in differences, being the only way of perceiving the Sonship without this belief. This perception is therefore in accord with the laws of God, even in a state of mind which is out of accord with His. The strength of right perception is so great that it brings the mind into accord with His because it yields to His pull which is in all of you.

³⁷ To oppose the pull or the Will of God is not an ability but a real delusion. The ego believes that it has this ability and can offer it to you as a gift. You do not want it. It is not a gift. It is nothing at all. God has given you a gift which you both have and are. When you do not use it, you do not know you have it. By not knowing this, you do not know what you are. Healing, then, is a way of approaching knowledge by thinking in accordance with the laws of God and recognizing their universality. Without this recognition, you have made the laws themselves meaningless to you. Yet the laws are not meaningless, since all meaning is contained by them and in them.

³⁸ Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven because that is where the laws of God operate truly, and they can operate only truly since they are the laws of Truth. But seek this only because you can find nothing else. There is nothing else. God is all in all in a very literal sense. All being is in Him who is all Being. You are therefore in Him since your being is His. Healing is a way of forgetting the sense of danger the ego has induced in you by not recognizing its existence in your brothers. This strengthens the Holy Spirit in both of you, because it is a refusal to acknowledge fear. Love needs only this invitation. It comes freely to all the Sonship, being what the Sonship is. By your awakening to it, you are merely forgetting what you are not. This enables you to remember what you are.

Online here

Audio, Music, and Video

by CIMS SonShip Radio

AUDIO: Text Ch 7, V, 26-38 mp3

ONLINE SEARCHABLE Original Edition



Current Schedule of

Lessons & Text Readings PDF 2020