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What is one cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial of the separation is the reinstatement

of knowledge.

At the altar of God, the holy perception of God's Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it, and the Spirit of God's Son shines in the Mind of the Father and becomes one with it.

Very gently does God shine upon Himself, loving the extension of

Himself which is His Son.

The world has no purpose as it blends into the purpose of God. For the real world has slipped quietly into Heaven, where everything eternal in it

has always been.

There the Redeemer and the redeemed join in perfect love

of God and of each other.

Heaven is your home, and being in God, it must also be in you.

Graphics by © Deposit Photos

Lesson 131

¹ Failure is all about you while you seek for goals that cannot be achieved. You look for permanence in the impermanent, for love where there is none, for safety in the midst of danger, immortality within the darkness of the dream of death. Who could succeed where contradiction is the setting of his searching and the place to which he comes to find stability?

² Goals which are meaningless are not attained. There is no way to reach them, for the means by which you strive for them are meaningless as they are. Who can use such senseless means and hope through them to gain in anything? Where can they lead? And what could they achieve that offers any hope of being real?

³ Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death. You look for safety and security while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you made.

⁴ Yet searching is inevitable here. For this you came, and you will surely do the thing you came for. But the world can not dictate the goal for which you search unless you give it power to do so. Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought and one which comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new—an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want.

⁵ Be glad that search you must. Be glad as well to learn you search for Heaven and must find the goal you really want. No one can fail to want this goal and reach it in the end. God's Son cannot seek vainly, though he try to force delay, deceive himself, and think that it is hell he seeks. When he is wrong, he finds correction; when he wanders off, he is led back to his appointed task.

⁶ No one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator nor affect His perfect, timeless, and unchanging Love. You will find Heaven. Everything you seek but this will fall away, yet not because it has been taken from you. It will go because you do not want it. You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness.

⁷ Why wait for Heaven? It is here today. Time is the great illusion it is past or in the future. Yet this cannot be if it is where God wills His Son to be. How could the Will of God be in the past or yet to happen? What He wills is now, without a past and wholly futureless. It is as far removed from time as is a tiny candle from a distant star, or what you chose from what you really want.

⁸ Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways—its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures, and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one and earth the other's sorry outcome that is Heaven's opposite in every way.

⁹ God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two. How could it be His Son could be in hell when God Himself established him in Heaven? Could he lose what the Eternal Will has given him to be his home forever? Let us not try longer to impose an alien will upon His single purpose. He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now beyond the reach of time.

¹⁰ Today we will not choose a paradox in place of truth. How could the Son of God make time to take away the Will of God? He thus denies himself and contradicts what has no opposite. He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven and believes that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find. Leave foolish thoughts like these behind today, and turn your mind to true ideas instead.

¹¹ No one can fail who asks to reach the truth, and it is truth we ask to reach today. We will devote ten minutes to this goal three times today, and we will ask to see the rising of the real world to replace the foolish images that we held dear, with true ideas arising in the place of thoughts which have no meaning, no effect, and neither source nor substance in the truth.

¹² This we acknowledge as we start upon our practice periods. Begin with this:

¹³ I ask to see a different world and think a different kind of thought from those I made. The world I seek I did not make alone, the thoughts I want to think are not my own.

¹⁴ For several minutes watch your mind and see, although your eyes are closed, the senseless world you think is real. Review the thoughts as well which are compatible with such a world and which you think are true. Then let them go, and sink below them to the holy place where they can enter not. There is a door beneath them in your mind which you could not completely lock to hide what lies beyond.

¹⁵ Seek for that door and find it. But before you try to open it, remind yourself no one can fail who asks to reach the truth, and it is this request you make today. Nothing but this has any meaning now; no other goal is valued now nor sought; nothing before this door you really want, and only what lies past it do you seek.

¹⁶ Put out your hand and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams.

¹⁷ You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you that you might approach this door some day and through His aid slip effortlessly past it to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all your searching here and all the seeking of the world, which ends together as you pass beyond the door.

¹⁸ Remember often that today should be a time of special gladness, and refrain from dismal thoughts and meaningless laments. Salvation's time has come. Today is set by Heaven Itself to be a time of grace for you and for the world. If you forget this happy fact, remind yourself with this:

¹⁹ Today I seek and find all that I want. My single purpose offers it to me. No one can fail who asks to reach the truth.

~ Course in Miracles Society chose their title for this Lesson from the scribe’s original notes: "No one can fail who asks* to reach the truth."

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PART 1 ~ PART 2

VII. The Vision of Christ

par 53-60

⁵³ The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you cannot lose your Soul and there is no gain in the world, for of itself it profits nothing. To invest in something without profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost to you is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality by denying yours and gives you nothing in return. You cannot sell your Soul, but you can sell your awareness of it. You cannot perceive your Soul, but you will not know it while you perceive anything else as more valuable.

⁵⁴ The Holy Spirit is your strength because He perceives nothing but your Soul as you. He is perfectly aware that you do not know yourselves and perfectly aware of how to teach you what you are. Because He loves you, He will gladly teach you what He loves, for He wills to share it. Remembering you always, He cannot let you forget your worth. For the Father never ceases to remind Him of His Son, and He never ceases to remind His Son of the Father. God is in your memory because of Him. You chose to forget your Father, but you did not will to do so, and therefore you can decide otherwise. As it was my decision, so is it yours.

⁵⁵ You do not want the world. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it you look upon with love. This gives it the only reality it will ever have. Its value is not in itself, but yours is in you. As self-value comes from self- extension, so does the perception of self-value come from the projection of loving thoughts outward. Make the world real unto yourself, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and so it belongs to you.

⁵⁶ Correction is for all who cannot see. To open the eyes of the blind is the Holy Spirit's mission, for He knows that they have not lost their vision but merely sleep. He would awaken them from the sleep of forgetting to the remembering of God. Christ's eyes are open, and He will look upon whatever you see with love if you accept His vision as yours.

⁵⁷ The Holy Spirit keeps the vision of Christ for every Son of God who sleeps. In His sight the Son of God is perfect, and He longs to share His vision with you. He will show you the real world because God gave you Heaven. Through Him your Father calls His Son to remember. The awakening of His Son begins with his investment in the real world, and by this he will learn to reinvest in himself. For reality is one with the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit blesses the real world in their name.

⁵⁸ When you have seen this real world, as you will surely do, you will remember us. Yet you must learn the cost of sleeping and refuse to pay it. Only then will you decide to awaken. And then the real world will spring to your sight, for Christ has never slept. He is waiting to be seen, for He has never lost sight of you. He looks quietly on the real world, which He would share with you because He knows of the Father's love for Him. And knowing this, He would give you what is yours. In perfect peace He waits for you at His Father's altar, holding out the Father's love to you in the quiet light of the Holy Spirit's blessing. For the Holy Spirit will lead everyone home to his Father, where Christ waits as his Self.

⁵⁹ Every Child of God is one in Christ, for his Being is in Christ as Christ's is in God. Christ's love for you is His love for His Father, which He knows because He knows His Father's love for Him. When the Holy Spirit has at last led you to Christ at the altar to His Father, perception fuses into knowledge because perception has become so holy that its transfer to holiness is merely its natural extension. Love transfers to love without any interference, for the situations are identical. [Only the ability to make this transfer is the product of learning.] As you perceive more and more common elements in all situations, the transfer of your training under the Holy Spirit's guidance increases and becomes generalized. Gradually you learn to apply it to everyone and everything, for its applicability is universal. When this has been accomplished, perception and knowledge have become so similar that they share the unification of the laws of God.

⁶⁰ What is one cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial of the separation is the reinstatement of knowledge. At the altar of God, the holy perception of God's Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it, and the Spirit of God's Son shines in the Mind of the Father and becomes one with it. Very gently does God shine upon Himself, loving the extension of Himself which is His Son. The world has no purpose as it blends into the purpose of God. For the real world has slipped quietly into Heaven, where everything eternal in it has always been. There the Redeemer and the redeemed join in perfect love of God and of each other. Heaven is your home, and being in God, it must also be in you.

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Allen Watson joined Robert Perry to form 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: “A Workbook Companion: Vol I and II.”

Please send gifts of gratitude via PayPal to watsona@innocent.com.