Lessons 100-199

LESSON 100.




My part is essential to God's plan for salvation.

W-100.1. Just as God's Son completes his Father, so your part in it completes your Father's plan. 2 Salvation must reverse the mad belief in separate thoughts and separate bodies, which lead separate lives and go their separate ways. 3 One function shared by separate minds unites them in one purpose, for each one of them is equally essential to them all.

W-100.2. God's Will for you is perfect happiness. 2 Why should you choose to go against His Will? 3 The part that He has saved for you to take in working out His plan is given you that you might be restored to what He wills. 4 This part is as essential to His plan as to your happiness. 5 Your joy must be complete to let His plan be understood by those to whom He sends you. 6 They will see their function in your shining face, and hear God calling to them in your happy laugh.

W-100.3. You are indeed essential to God's plan. 2 Without your joy, His joy is incomplete. 3 Without your smile, the world cannot be saved. 4 While you are sad, the light that God Himself appointed as the means to save the world is dim and lusterless, and no one laughs because all laughter can but echo yours.

W-100.4. You are indeed essential to God's plan. 2 Just as your light increases every light that shines in Heaven, so your joy on earth calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you in God's plan. 3 God's messengers are joyous, and their joy heals sorrow and despair. 4 They are the proof that God wills perfect happiness for all who will accept their Father's gifts as theirs.

W-100.5. We will not let ourselves be sad today. 2 For if we do, we fail to take the part that is essential to God's plan, as well as to our vision. 3 Sadness is the sign that you would play another part, instead of what has been assigned to you by God. 4 Thus do you fail to SHOW the world how great the happiness He wills for you. 5 And so you do not recognize that it is yours.

W-100.6. Today we will attempt to understand joy is our function here. 2 If you are sad, your part is unfulfilled, and all the world is thus deprived of joy, along with you. 3 God asks you to be happy, so the world can see how much He loves His Son, and wills no sorrow rises to abate his joy; no fear besets him to disturb his peace. 4 You are God's messenger today. 5 You bring His happiness to all you look upon; His peace to everyone who looks on you and sees His message in your happy face.

W-100.7. We will prepare ourselves for this today, in our five-minute practice periods, by feeling happiness arise in us according to our Father's Will and ours. 2 Begin the exercises with the thought today's idea contains. 3 Then realize your part is to be happy. 4 Only this is asked of you or anyone who wants to take his place among God's messengers. 5 Think what this means. 6 You have indeed been wrong in your belief that sacrifice is asked. 7 You but receive according to God's plan, and never lose or sacrifice or die.

W-100.8. Now let us try to find that joy that proves to us and all the world God's Will for us. 2 It is your function that you find it here, and that you find it now. 3 For this you came. 4 Let this one be the day that you succeed! 5 Look deep within you, undismayed by all the little thoughts and foolish goals you pass as you ascend to meet the Christ in you.

W-100.9. He will be there. 2 And you can reach Him now. 3 What could you rather look upon in place of Him Who waits that you may look on Him? 4 What little thought has power to hold you back? 5 What foolish goal can keep you FROM success when He Who calls to you is God Himself?

W-100.10. He will be there. 2 You are essential to His plan. 3 You are His messenger today. 4 And you must find what He would have you give. 5 Do not forget the idea for today between your hourly practice periods. 6 It is your Self Who calls to you today. 7 And it is Him you answer, every time you tell yourself you are essential to God's plan for the salvation of the world.






LESSON 101.




God's Will for me is perfect happiness.

W-101.1. Today we will continue with the theme of happiness. 2 This is a key idea in understanding what salvation means. 3 You still believe it asks for suffering as penance for your "sins." 4 This is not so. 5 Yet you must think it so while you believe that sin is real, and that God's Son can sin.

W-101.2. If sin is real, then punishment is just and cannot be escaped. 2 Salvation thus cannot be purchased but through suffering. 3 If sin is real, then happiness must be illusion, for they cannot both be true. 4 The sinful warrant only death and pain, and it is this they ask for. 5 For they know it waits for them, and it will seek them out and find them somewhere, sometime, in some form that evens the account they owe to God. 6 They would escape Him in their fear. 7 And yet He will pursue, and they can not escape.

W-101.3. If sin is real, salvation must be pain. 2 Pain is the cost of sin, and suffering can never be escaped, if sin is real. 3 Salvation must be feared, for it will kill, but slowly, taking everything away before it grants the welcome boon of death to victims who are little more than bones before salvation is appeased. 4 Its wrath is boundless, merciless, but wholly just.

W-101.4. Who would seek out such savage punishment? 2 Who would not flee salvation, and attempt in every way he can to drown the Voice which offers it to him? 3 Why would he try to listen and accept Its offering? 4 If sin is real, its offering is death, and meted out in cruel form to match the vicious wishes in which sin is born. 5 If sin is real, salvation has become your bitter enemy, the curse of God upon you who have crucified His Son.

W-101.5. You need the practice periods today. 2 The exercises teach sin is not real, and all that you believe must come FROM sin will never happen, for it has no cause. 3 Accept Atonement with an open mind, which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God's Son. 4 There is no sin. 5 We practice with this thought as often as we can today, because it is the basis for today's idea.

W-101.6. God's Will for you is perfect happiness because there is no sin, and suffering is causeless. 2 Joy is just, and pain is but the sign you have misunderstood yourself. 3 Fear not the Will of God. 4 But turn to it in confidence that it will set you free FROM all the consequences sin has wrought in feverish imagination. 5 Say:




6 God's Will for me is perfect happiness.

7 There is no sin; it has no consequence.




8 So should you start your practice periods, and then attempt again to find the joy these thoughts will introduce INTO your mind.

W-101.7. Give these five minutes gladly, to remove the heavy LOAD you lay upon yourself with the insane belief that sin is real. 2 Today escape FROM madness. 3 You are set on freedom's road, and now today's idea brings wings to speed you on, and hope to go still faster to the waiting goal of peace. 4 There is no sin. 5 Remember this today, and tell yourself as often as you can:




6 God's Will for me is perfect happiness.

7 This is the truth, because there is no sin.






LESSON 102.




I share God's Will for happiness for me.

W-102.1. You do not want to suffer. 2 You may think it buys you something, and may still believe a little that it buys you what you want. 3 Yet this belief is surely shaken now, at least enough to let you question it, and to suspect it really makes no sense. 4 It has not gone as yet, but lacks the roots that once secured it tightly to the dark and hidden secret places of your mind.

W-102.2. Today we try to loose its weakened hold still further, and to realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause and with no power to accomplish anything. 2 It cannot purchase anything at all. 3 It offers nothing, and does not exist. 4 And everything you think it offers you is lacking in existence, like itself. 5 You have been slave to nothing. 6 Be you free today to join the happy Will of God.

W-102.3. For several days we will continue to devote our periods of practicing to exercises planned to help you reach the happiness God's Will has placed in you. 2 Here is your home, and here your safety is. 3 Here is your peace, and here there is no fear. 4 Here is salvation. 5 Here is rest at last.

W-102.4. Begin your practice periods today with this acceptance of God's Will for you:




2 I share God's Will for happiness for me, and I accept it as my function now.




3 Then seek this function deep within your mind, for it is there, awaiting but your choice. 4 You cannot fail to find it when you learn it is your choice, and that you share God's Will.

W-102.5. Be happy, for your only function here is happiness. 2 You have no need to be less loving to God's Son than He Whose Love created him as loving as Himself. 3 Besides these hourly five-minute rests, pause frequently today, to tell yourself that you have now accepted happiness as your one function. 4 And be sure that you are joining with God's Will in doing this.






LESSON 103.




God, being Love, is also happiness.

W-103.1. Happiness is an attribute of love. 2 It cannot be apart FROM it. 3 Nor can it be experienced where love is not. 4 Love has no limits, being everywhere. 5 And therefore joy is everywhere as well. 6 Yet can the mind deny that this is so, believing there are gaps in love where sin can enter, bringing pain instead of joy. 7 This strange belief would LIMIT happiness by redefining love as limited, and introducing opposition in what has no LIMIT and no opposite.

W-103.2. Fear is associated then with love, and its results become the heritage of minds that think what they have made is real. 2 These images, with no reality in truth, bear witness to the fear of God, forgetting being Love, He must be joy. 3 This basic error we will try again to bring to truth today, and teach ourselves:




4 God, being Love, is also happiness.

5 To fear Him is to be afraid of joy.




6 Begin your periods of practicing today with this association, which corrects the false belief that God is fear. 7 It also emphasizes happiness belongs to you, because of what He is.

W-103.3. Allow this one correction to be placed within your mind each waking hour today. 2 Then welcome all the happiness it brings as truth replaces fear, and joy becomes what you expect to take the place of pain. 3 God, being Love, it will be given you. 4 Bolster this expectation frequently throughout the day, and quiet all your fears with this assurance, kind and wholly true:




5 God, being Love, is also happiness.

6 And it is happiness I seek today.

7 I cannot fail, because I seek the truth.






LESSON 104.




I seek but what belongs to me in truth.

W-104.1. Today's idea continues with the thought that joy and peace are not but idle dreams. 2 They are your right, because of what you are. 3 They come to you FROM God, Who cannot fail to give you what He wills. 4 Yet must there be a place made ready to receive His gifts. 5 They are not welcomed gladly by a mind that has instead received the gifts it made where His belong, as substitutes for them.

W-104.2. Today we would remove all meaningless and self-made gifts which we have placed upon the holy altar where God's gifts belong. 2 His are the gifts that are our own in truth. 3 His are the gifts that we inherited before time was, and that will still be ours when time has passed INTO eternity. 4 His are the gifts that are within us now, for they are timeless. 5 And we need not wait to have them. 6 They belong to us today.

W-104.3. Therefore, we choose to have them now, and know, in choosing them in place of what we made, we but unite our will with what God wills, and recognize the same as being one. 2 Our longer practice periods today, the hourly five minutes given truth for your salvation, should begin with this:




3 I seek but what belongs to me in truth, And joy and peace are my inheritance.




4 Then lay aside the conflicts of the world that offer other gifts and other goals made of illusions, witnessed to by them, and sought for only in a world of dreams.

W-104.4. All this we lay aside, and seek instead that which is truly ours, as we ask to recognize what God has given us. 2 We clear a holy place within our minds before His altar, where His gifts of peace and joy are welcome, and to which we come to find what has been given us by Him. 3 We come in confidence today, aware that what belongs to us in truth is what He gives. 4 And we would wish for nothing else, for nothing else belongs to us in truth.

W-104.5. So do we clear the way for Him today by simply recognizing that His Will is done already, and that joy and peace belong to us as His eternal gifts. 2 We will not let ourselves lose sight of them between the times we come to seek for them where He has laid them. 3 This reminder will we bring to mind as often as we can:




4 I seek but what belongs to me in truth.

5 God's gifts of joy and peace are all I want.






LESSON 105.




God's peace and joy are mine.

W-105.1. God's peace and joy are yours. 2 Today we will accept them, knowing they belong to us. 3 And we will try to understand these gifts increase as we receive them. 4 They are not like to the gifts the world can give, in which the giver loses as he gives the gift; the taker is the richer by his loss. 5 Such are not gifts, but bargains made with guilt. 6 The truly given gift entails no loss. 7 It is impossible that one can gain because another loses. 8 This implies a LIMIT and an insufficiency.

W-105.2. No gift is given thus. 2 Such "gifts" are but a bid for a more valuable return; a loan with interest to be paid in full; a temporary lending, meant to be a pledge of debt to be repaid with more than was received by him who took the gift. 3 This strange distortion of what giving means pervades all levels of the world you see. 4 It strips all meaning FROM the gifts you give, and leaves you nothing in the ones you take.

W-105.3. A major learning goal this course has set is to reverse your view of giving, so you can receive. 2 For giving has become a source of fear, and so you would avoid the only means by which you can receive. 3 Accept God's peace and joy, and you will learn a different way of looking at a gift. 4 God's gifts will never lessen when they are given away. 5 They but increase thereby.

W-105.4. As Heaven's peace and joy intensify when you accept them as God's gift to you, so does the joy of your Creator grow when you accept His joy and peace as yours. 2 True giving is creation. 3 It extends the limitless to the unlimited, eternity to timelessness, and love unto itself. 4 It adds to all that is complete already, not in simple terms of adding more, for that implies that it was less before. 5 It adds by letting what cannot contain itself fulfill its aim of giving everything it has away, securing it forever for itself.

W-105.5. Today accept God's peace and joy as yours. 2 Let Him complete Himself as He defines completion. 3 You will understand that what completes Him must complete His Son as well. 4 He cannot give through loss. 5 No more can you. 6 Receive His gift of joy and peace today, and He will thank you for your gift to Him.

W-105.6. Today our practice periods will start a little differently. 2 Begin today by thinking of those brothers who have been denied by you the peace and joy that are their right under the equal laws of God. 3 Here you denied them to yourself. 4 And here you must return to claim them as your own.

W-105.7. Think of your "enemies" a little while, and tell each one, as he occurs to you:




2 My brother, peace and joy I offer you, That I may have God's peace and joy as mine.




3 Thus you prepare yourself to recognize God's gifts to you, and let your mind be free of all that would prevent success today. 4 Now are you ready to accept the gift of peace and joy that God has given you. 5 Now are you ready to experience the joy and peace you have denied yourself. 6 Now you can say, "God's peace and joy are mine," for you have given what you would receive.

W-105.8. You must succeed today, if you prepare your mind as we suggest. 2 For you have let all bars to peace and joy be lifted up, and what is yours can come to you at last. 3 So tell yourself, "God's peace and joy are mine," and close your eyes a while, and let His Voice assure you that the words you speak are true.

W-105.9. Spend your five minutes thus with Him each time you can today, but do not think that less is worthless when you cannot give Him more. 2 At least remember hourly to say the words which call to Him to give you what He wills to give, and wills you to receive. 3 Determine not to interfere today with what He wills. 4 And if a brother seems to tempt you to deny God's gift to him, see it as but another chance to let yourself receive the gifts of God as yours. 5 Then bless your brother thankfully, and say:




6 My brother, peace and joy I offer you, That I may have God's peace and joy as mine.






LESSON 106.




Let me be still and listen to the truth.

W-106.1. If you will lay aside the ego's voice, however loudly it may seem to call; if you will not accept its petty gifts that give you nothing that you really want; if you will listen with an open mind, that has not told you what salvation is; then you will hear the mighty Voice of truth, quiet in power, strong in stillness, and completely certain in Its messages.

W-106.2. Listen, and hear your Father speak to you through His appointed Voice, which silences the thunder of the meaningless, and shows the way to peace to those who cannot see. 2 Be still today and listen to the truth. 3 Be not deceived by voices of the dead, which tell you they have found the source of life and offer it to you for your belief. 4 Attend them not, but listen to the truth.

W-106.3. Be not afraid today to circumvent the voices of the world. 2 Walk lightly past their meaningless persuasion. 3 Hear them not. 4 Be still today and listen to the truth. 5 Go past all things which do not speak of Him Who holds your happiness within His Hand, held out to you in welcome and in love. 6 Hear only Him today, and do not wait to reach Him longer. 7 Hear one Voice today.

W-106.4. Today the promise of God's Word is kept. 2 Hear and be silent. 3 He would speak to you. 4 He comes with miracles a thousand times as happy and as wonderful as those you ever dreamed or wished for in your dreams. 5 His miracles are true. 6 They will not fade when dreaming ends. 7 They end the dream instead; and last forever, for they come FROM God to His dear Son, whose other name is you. 8 Prepare yourself for miracles today. 9 Today allow your Father's ancient pledge to you and all your brothers to be kept.

W-106.5. Hear Him today, and listen to the Word which lifts the veil that lies upon the earth, and wakes all those who sleep and cannot see. 2 God calls to them through you. 3 He needs your voice to speak to them, for who could reach God's Son except his Father, calling through your Self? 4 Hear Him today, and offer Him your voice to speak to all the multitude who wait to hear the Word that He will speak today.

W-106.6. Be ready for salvation. 2 It is here, and will today be given unto you. 3 And you will learn your function FROM the One Who chose it in your Father's Name for you. 4 Listen today, and you will hear a Voice which will resound throughout the world through you. 5 The bringer of all miracles has need that you receive them first, and thus become the joyous giver of what you received.

W-106.7. Thus does salvation start and thus it ends; when everything is yours and everything is given away, it will remain with you forever. 2 And the lesson has been learned. 3 Today we practice giving, not the way you understand it now, but as it is. 4 Each hour's exercises should begin with this request for your enlightenment:




5 I will be still and listen to the truth.

6 What does it mean to give and to receive?




W-106.8. Ask and expect an answer. 2 Your request is one whose answer has been waiting long to be received by you. 3 It will begin the ministry for which you came, and which will free the world FROM thinking giving is a way to lose. 4 And so the world becomes ready to understand and to receive.

W-106.9. Be still and listen to the truth today. 2 For each five minutes spent in listening, a thousand minds are opened to the truth and they will hear the holy Word you hear. 3 And when the hour is past, you will again release a thousand more who pause to ask that truth be given them, along with you.

W-106.10. Today the holy Word of God is kept through your receiving it to give away, so you can teach the world what giving means by listening and learning it of Him. 2 Do not forget today to reinforce your choice to hear and to receive the Word by this reminder, given to yourself as often as is possible today:




3 Let me be still and listen to the truth.

4 I am the messenger of God today, My voice is His, to give what I receive.






LESSON 107.




Truth will correct all errors in my mind.

W-107.1. What can correct illusions but the truth? 2 And what are errors but illusions that remain unrecognized for what they are? 3 Where truth has entered errors disappear. 4 They merely vanish, leaving not a trace by which to be remembered. 5 They are gone because, without belief, they have no life. 6 And so they disappear to nothingness, returning whence they came. 7 FROM dust to dust they come and go, for only truth remains.

W-107.2. Can you imagine what a state of mind without illusions is? 2 How it would feel? 3 Try to remember when there was a time,-perhaps a minute, maybe even less-when nothing came to interrupt your peace; when you were certain you were loved and safe. 4 Then try to picture what it would be like to have that moment be extended to the end of time and to eternity. 5 Then let the sense of quiet that you felt be multiplied a hundred times, and then be multiplied another hundred more.

W-107.3. And now you have a hint, not more than just the faintest intimation of the state your mind will rest in when the truth has come. 2 Without illusions there could be no fear, no doubt and no attack. 3 When truth has come all pain is over, for there is no room for transitory thoughts and dead ideas to linger in your mind. 4 Truth occupies your mind completely, liberating you FROM all beliefs in the ephemeral. 5 They have no place because the truth has come, and they are nowhere. 6 They can not be found, for truth is everywhere forever, now.

W-107.4. When truth has come it does not stay a while, to disappear or change to something else. 2 It does not shift and alter in its form, nor come and go and go and come again. 3 It stays exactly as it always was, to be depended on in every need, and trusted with a perfect trust in all the seeming difficulties and the doubts that the appearances the world presents engender. 4 They will merely blow away, when truth corrects the errors in your mind.

W-107.5. When truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect constancy, and love which does not falter in the face of pain, but looks beyond it, steadily and sure. 2 Here is the gift of healing, for the truth needs no defense, and therefore no attack is possible. 3 Illusions can be brought to truth to be corrected. 4 But the truth stands far beyond illusions, and can not be brought to them to turn them INTO truth.

W-107.6. Truth does not come and go nor shift nor change, in this appearance now and then in that, evading capture and escaping grasp. 2 It does not hide. 3 It stands in open light, in obvious accessibility. 4 It is impossible that anyone could seek it truly, and would not succeed. 5 Today belongs to truth. 6 Give truth its due, and it will give you yours. 7 You were not meant to suffer and to die. 8 Your Father wills these dreams be gone. 9 Let truth correct them all.

W-107.7. We do not ask for what we do not have. 2 We merely ask for what belongs to us, that we may recognize it as our own. 3 Today we practice on the happy note of certainty that has been born of truth. 4 The shaky and unsteady footsteps of illusion are not our approach today. 5 We are as certain of success as we are sure we live and hope and breathe and think. 6 We do not doubt we walk with truth today, and count on it to enter INTO all the exercises that we do this day.

W-107.8. Begin by asking Him Who goes with you upon this undertaking that He be in your awareness as you go with Him. 2 You are not made of flesh and blood and bone, but were created by the selfsame Thought which gave the gift of life to Him as well. 3 He is your Brother, and so like to you your Father knows that You are both the same. 4 It is your Self you ask to go with you, and how could He be absent where you are?

W-107.9. Truth will correct all errors in your mind which tell you you could be apart FROM Him. 2 You speak to Him today, and make your pledge to let His function be fulfilled through you. 3 To share His function is to share His joy. 4 His confidence is with you, as you say:




5 Truth will correct all errors in my mind, And I will rest in Him Who is my Self.




6 Then let Him lead you gently to the truth, which will envelop you and give you peace so deep and tranquil that you will return to the familiar world reluctantly.

W-107.10. And yet you will be glad to look again upon this world. 2 For you will bring with you the promise of the changes which the truth that goes with you will carry to the world. 3 They will increase with every gift you give of five small minutes, and the errors that surround the world will be corrected as you let them be corrected in your mind.

W-107.11. Do not forget your function for today. 2 Each time you tell yourself with confidence, "Truth will correct all errors in my mind," you speak for all the world and Him Who would release the world, as He would set you free.






LESSON 108.




To give and to receive are one in truth.

W-108.1. Vision depends upon today's idea. 2 The light is in it, for it reconciles all seeming opposites. 3 And what is light except the resolution, born of peace, of all your conflicts and mistaken thoughts INTO one concept which is wholly true? 4 Even that one will disappear, because the Thought behind it will appear instead to take its place. 5 And now you are at peace forever, for the dream is over then.

W-108.2. True light that makes true vision possible is not the light the body's eyes behold. 2 It is a state of mind that has become so unified that darkness cannot be perceived at all. 3 And thus what is the same is seen as one, while what is not the same remains unnoticed, for it is not there.

W-108.3. This is the light that shows no opposites, and vision, being healed, has power to heal. 2 This is the light that brings your peace of mind to other minds, to share it and be glad that they are one with you and with themselves. 3 This is the light that heals because it brings single perception, based upon one frame of reference, FROM which one meaning comes.

W-108.4. Here are both giving and receiving seen as different aspects of one Thought whose truth does not depend on which is seen as first, nor which appears to be in second place. 2 Here it is understood that both occur together, that the Thought remain complete. 3 And in this understanding is the base on which all opposites are reconciled, because they are perceived FROM the same frame of reference which unifies this Thought.

W-108.5. One thought, completely unified, will serve to unify all thought. 2 This is the same as saying one correction will suffice for all correction, or that to forgive one brother wholly is enough to bring salvation to all minds. 3 For these are but some special cases of one law which holds for every kind of learning, if it be directed by the One Who knows the truth.

W-108.6. To learn that giving and receiving are the same has special usefulness, because it can be tried so easily and seen as true. 2 And when this special case has proved it always works, in every circumstance where it is tried, the thought behind it can be generalized to other areas of doubt and double vision. 3 And FROM there it will extend, and finally arrive at the one Thought which underlies them all.

W-108.7. Today we practice with the special case of giving and receiving. 2 We will use this simple lesson in the obvious because it has results we cannot miss. 3 To give is to receive. 4 Today we will attempt to offer peace to everyone, and see how quickly peace returns to us. 5 Light is tranquility, and in that peace is vision given us, and we can see.

W-108.8. So we begin the practice periods with the instruction for today, and say:




2 To give and to receive are one in truth.

3 I will receive what I am giving now.




4 Then close your eyes, and for five minutes think of what you would hold out to everyone, to have it yours. 5 You might, for instance, say:




6 To everyone I offer quietness.

7 To everyone I offer peace of mind.

8 To everyone I offer gentleness.




W-108.9. Say each one slowly and then pause a while, expecting to receive the gift you gave. 2 And it will come to you in the amount in which you gave it. 3 You will find you have exact return, for that is what you asked. 4 It might be helpful, too, to think of one to whom to give your gifts. 5 He represents the others, and through him you give to all.

W-108.10. Our very simple lesson for today will teach you much. 2 Effect and cause will be far better understood FROM this time on, and we will make much faster progress now. 3 Think of the exercises for today as quick advances in your learning, made still faster and more sure each time you say, "To give and to receive are one in truth."






LESSON 109.




I rest in God.

W-109.1. We ask for rest today, and quietness unshaken by the world's appearances. 2 We ask for peace and stillness, in the midst of all the turmoil born of clashing dreams. 3 We ask for safety and for happiness, although we seem to look on danger and on sorrow. 4 And we have the thought that will answer our asking with what we request.

W-109.2. "I rest in God." 2 This thought will bring to you the rest and quiet, peace and stillness, and the safety and the happiness you seek. 3 "I rest in God." 4 This thought has power to wake the sleeping truth in you, whose vision sees beyond appearances to that same truth in everyone and everything there is. 5 Here is the end of suffering for all the world, and everyone who ever came and yet will come to linger for a while. 6 Here is the thought in which the Son of God is born again, to recognize himself.

W-109.3. "I rest in God." 2 Completely undismayed, this thought will carry you through storms and strife, past misery and pain, past loss and death, and onward to the certainty of God. 3 There is no suffering it cannot heal. 4 There is no problem that it cannot solve. 5 And no appearance but will turn to truth before the eyes of you who rest in God.

W-109.4. This is the day of peace. 2 You rest in God, and while the world is torn by winds of hate your rest remains completely undisturbed. 3 Yours is the rest of truth. 4 Appearances cannot intrude on you. 5 You call to all to join you in your rest, and they will hear and come to you because you rest in God. 6 They will not hear another voice than yours because you gave your voice to God, and now you rest in Him and let Him speak through you.

W-109.5. In Him you have no cares and no concerns, no burdens, no anxiety, no pain, no fear of future and no past regrets. 2 In timelessness you rest, while time goes by without its touch upon you, for your rest can never change in any way at all. 3 You rest today. 4 And as you close your eyes, sink INTO stillness. 5 Let these periods of rest and respite reassure your mind that all its frantic fantasies were but the dreams of fever that has passed away. 6 Let it be still and thankfully accept its healing. 7 No more fearful dreams will come, now that you rest in God. 8 Take time today to slip away FROM dreams and INTO peace.

W-109.6. Each hour that you take your rest today, a tired mind is suddenly made glad, a bird with broken wings begins to sing, a stream long dry begins to flow again. 2 The world is born again each time you rest, and hourly remember that you came to bring the peace of God INTO the world, that it might take its rest along with you.

W-109.7. With each five minutes that you rest today, the world is nearer waking. 2 And the time when rest will be the only thing there is comes closer to all worn and tired minds, too weary now to go their way alone. 3 And they will hear the bird begin to sing and see the stream begin to flow again, with hope reborn and energy restored to walk with lightened steps along the road that suddenly seems easy as they go.

W-109.8. You rest within the peace of God today, and call upon your brothers FROM your rest to draw them to their rest, along with you. 2 You will be faithful to your trust today, forgetting no one, bringing everyone INTO the boundless circle of your peace, the holy sanctuary where you rest. 3 Open the temple doors and let them come FROM far across the world, and near as well; your distant brothers and your closest friends; bid them all enter here and rest with you.

W-109.9. You rest within the peace of God today, quiet and unafraid. 2 Each brother comes to take his rest, and offer it to you. 3 We rest together here, for thus our rest is made complete, and what we give today we have received already. 4 Time is not the guardian of what we give today. 5 We give to those unborn and those passed by, to every Thought of God, and to the Mind in which these Thoughts were born and where they rest. 6 And we remind them of their resting place each time we tell ourselves, "I rest in God."






LESSON 110.




I am as God created me.

W-110.1. We will repeat today's idea FROM time to time. 2 For this one thought would be enough to save you and the world, if you believed that it is true. 3 Its truth would mean that you have made no changes in yourself that have reality, nor changed the universe so that what God created was replaced by fear and evil, misery and death. 4 If you remain as God created you fear has no meaning, evil is not real, and misery and death do not exist.

W-110.2. Today's idea is therefore all you need to let complete correction heal your mind, and give you perfect vision that will heal all the mistakes that any mind has made at any time or place. 2 It is enough to heal the past and make the future free. 3 It is enough to let the present be accepted as it is. 4 It is enough to let time be the means for all the world to learn escape FROM time, and every change that time appears to bring in passing by.

W-110.3. If you remain as God created you, appearances cannot REPLACE the truth, health cannot turn to sickness, nor can death be substitute for life, or fear for love. 2 All this has not occurred, if you remain as God created you. 3 You need no thought but just this one, to let redemption come to light the world and free it FROM the past.

W-110.4. In this one thought is all the past undone; the present saved to quietly extend INTO a timeless future. 2 If you are as God created you, then there has been no separation of your mind FROM His, no split between your mind and other minds, and only unity within your own.

W-110.5. The healing power of today's idea is limitless. 2 It is the birthplace of all miracles, the great restorer of the truth to the awareness of the world. 3 Practice today's idea with gratitude. 4 This is the truth that comes to set you free. 5 This is the truth that God has promised you. 6 This is the Word in which all sorrow ends.

W-110.6. For your five-minute practice periods, begin with this quotation FROM the text:




2 I am as God created me. 3 His Son can suffer nothing.

4 And I am His Son.




W-110.7. Then, with this statement firmly in your mind, try to discover in your mind the Self Who is the holy Son of God Himself.

W-110.8. Seek Him within you Who is Christ in you, the Son of God and brother to the world; the Savior Who has been forever saved, with power to save whoever touches Him, however lightly, asking for the Word that tells him he is brother unto Him.

W-110.9. You are as God created you. 2 Today honor your Self. 3 Let graven images you made to be the Son of God instead of what he is be worshipped not today. 4 Deep in your mind the holy Christ in you is waiting your acknowledgment as you. 5 And you are lost and do not know yourself while He is unacknowledged and unknown.

W-110.10. Seek Him today, and find Him. 2 He will be your Savior FROM all idols you have made. 3 For when you find Him, you will understand how worthless are your idols, and how false the images which you believed were you. 4 Today we make a great advance to truth by letting idols go, and opening our hands and hearts and minds to God today.

W-110.11. We will remember Him throughout the day with thankful hearts and loving thoughts for all who meet with us today. 2 For it is thus that we remember Him. 3 And we will say, that we may be reminded of His Son, our holy Self, the Christ in each of us:




4 I am as God created me.




5 Let us declare this truth as often as we can. 6 This is the Word of God that sets you free. 7 This is the key that opens up the gate of Heaven, and that lets you enter in the peace of God and His eternity.






REVIEW III




Introduction




W-rIII.in.1. Our next review begins today. 2 We will review two recent lessons every day for ten successive days of practicing. 3 We will observe a special format for these practice periods, that you are urged to follow just as closely as you can.

W-rIII.in.2. We understand, of course, that it may be impossible for you to undertake what is suggested here as optimal each day and every hour of the day. 2 Learning will not be hampered when you miss a practice period because it is impossible at the appointed time. 3 Nor is it necessary that you make excessive efforts to be sure that you catch up in terms of numbers. 4 Rituals are not our aim, and would defeat our goal.

W-rIII.in.3. But learning will be hampered when you skip a practice period because you are unwilling to devote the time to it that you are asked to give. 2 Do not deceive yourself in this. 3 Unwillingness can be most carefully concealed behind a cloak of situations you cannot control. 4 Learn to distinguish situations that are poorly suited to your practicing FROM those that you establish to uphold a camouflage for your unwillingness.

W-rIII.in.4. Those practice periods that you have lost because you did not want to do them, for whatever reason, should be done as soon as you have changed your mind about your goal. 2 You are unwilling to cooperate in practicing salvation only if it interferes with goals you hold more dear. 3 When you withdraw the value given them, allow your practice periods to be replacements for your litanies to them. 4 They gave you nothing. 5 But your practicing can offer everything to you. 6 And so accept their offering and be at peace.

W-rIII.in.5. The format you should use for these reviews is this: Devote five minutes twice a day, or longer if you would prefer it, to considering the thoughts that are assigned. 2 Read over the ideas and comments that are written down for each day's exercise. 3 And then begin to think about them, while letting your mind relate them to your needs, your seeming problems and all your concerns.

W-rIII.in.6. Place the ideas within your mind, and let it use them as it chooses. 2 Give it faith that it will use them wisely, being helped in its decisions by the One Who gave the thoughts to you. 3 What can you trust but what is in your mind? 4 Have faith, in these reviews, the means the Holy Spirit uses will not fail. 5 The wisdom of your mind will come to your assistance. 6 Give direction at the outset; then lean back in quiet faith, and let the mind employ the thoughts you gave as they were given you for it to use.

W-rIII.in.7. You have been given them in perfect trust; in perfect confidence that you would use them well; in perfect faith that you would see their messages and use them for yourself. 2 Offer them to your mind in that same trust and confidence and faith. 3 It will not fail. 4 It is the Holy Spirit's chosen means for your salvation. 5 Since it has His trust, His means must surely merit yours as well.

W-rIII.in.8. We emphasize the benefits to you if you devote the first five minutes of the day to your reviews, and also give the last five minutes of your waking day to them. 2 If this cannot be done, at least try to divide them so you undertake one in the morning, and the other in the hour just before you go to sleep.

W-rIII.in.9. The exercises to be done throughout the day are equally important, and perhaps of even greater value. 2 You have been inclined to practice only at appointed times, and then go on your way to other things, without applying what you learned to them. 3 As a result, you have gained little reinforcement, and have not given your learning a fair chance to prove how great are its potential gifts to you. 4 Here is another chance to use it well.

W-rIII.in.10. In these reviews, we stress the need to let your learning not lie idly by between your longer practice periods. 2 Attempt to give your daily two ideas a brief but serious review each hour. 3 Use one on the hour, and the other one a half an hour later. 4 You need not give more than just a moment to each one. 5 Repeat it, and allow your mind to rest a little time in silence and in peace. 6 Then turn to other things, but try to keep the thought with you, and let it serve to help you keep your peace throughout the day as well.

W-rIII.in.11. If you are shaken, think of it again. 2 These practice periods are planned to help you form the habit of applying what you learn each day to everything you do. 3 Do not repeat the thought and lay it down. 4 Its usefulness is limitless to you. 5 And it is meant to serve you in all ways, all times and places, and whenever you need help of any kind. 6 Try, then, to take it with you in the business of the day and make it holy, worthy of God's Son, acceptable to God and to your Self.

W-rIII.in.12. Each day's review assignments will conclude with a restatement of the thought to use each hour, and the one to be applied on each half hour as well. 2 Forget them not. 3 This second chance with each of these ideas will bring such large advances that we come FROM these reviews with learning gains so great we will continue on more solid ground, with firmer footsteps and with stronger faith.

W-rIII.in.13.

Do not forget how little you have learned.

2 Do not forget how much you can learn now.

3 Do not forget your Father's need of you,

As you review these thoughts He gave to you.






LESSON 111.




For morning and evening review:

W-111.1. (91) Miracles are seen in light.




2 I cannot see in darkness. 3 Let the light of holiness and truth light up my mind, and let me see the innocence within.




W-111.2. (92) Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one.




2 I see through strength, the gift of God to me. 3 My weakness is the dark His gift dispels, by giving me His strength to take its place.




W-111.3. On the hour:

2 Miracles are seen in light.

3 On the half hour:

4 Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one.






LESSON 112.




For morning and evening review:

W-112.1. (93) Light and joy and peace abide in me.




2 I am the home of light and joy and peace. 3 I welcome them INTO the home I share with God, because I am a part of Him.




W-112.2. (94) I am as God created me.




2 I will remain forever as I was, created by the Changeless like Himself. 3 And I am one with Him, and He with me.




W-112.3. On the hour:

2 Light and joy and peace abide in me.

3 On the half hour:

4 I am as God created me.






LESSON 113.




For morning and evening review:

W-113.1. (95) I am one Self, united with my Creator.




2 Serenity and perfect peace are mine, because I am one Self, completely whole, at one with all creation and with God.




W-113.2. (96) Salvation comes FROM my one Self.




2 FROM my one Self, Whose knowledge still remains within my mind, I see God's perfect plan for my salvation perfectly fulfilled.




W-113.3. On the hour:

2 I am one Self, united with my Creator.

3 On the half hour:

4 Salvation comes FROM my one Self.






LESSON 114.




For morning and evening review:

W-114.1. (97) I am spirit.




2 I am the Son of God. 3 No body can contain my spirit, nor impose on me a limitation God created not.




W-114.2. (98) I will accept my part in God's plan for salvation.




2 What can my function be but to accept the Word of God, Who has created me for what I am and will forever be?




W-114.3. On the hour:

2 I am spirit.

3 On the half hour:

4 I will accept my part in God's plan for salvation.






LESSON 115.




For morning and evening review:

W-115.1. (99) Salvation is my only function here.




2 My function here is to forgive the world for all the errors I have made. 3 For thus am I released FROM them with all the world.




W-115.2. (100) My part is essential to God's plan for salvation.




2 I am essential to the plan of God for the salvation of the world. 3 For He gave me His plan that I might save the world.




W-115.3. On the hour:

2 Salvation is my only function here.

3 On the half hour:

4 My part is essential to God's plan for salvation.






LESSON 116.




For morning and evening review:

W-116.1. (101) God's Will for me is perfect happiness.




2 God's Will is perfect happiness for me. 3 And I can suffer but FROM the belief there is another will apart FROM His.




W-116.2. (102) I share God's Will for happiness for me.




2 I share my Father's Will for me, His Son. 3 What He has given me is all I want. 4 What He has given me is all there is.




W-116.3. On the hour:

2 God's Will for me is perfect happiness.

3 On the half hour:

4 I share God's Will for happiness for me.






LESSON 117.




For morning and evening review:

W-117.1. (103) God, being Love, is also happiness.




2 Let me remember love is happiness, and nothing else brings joy. 3 And so I choose to entertain no substitutes for love.




W-117.2. (104) I seek but what belongs to me in truth.




2 Love is my heritage, and with it joy. 3 These are the gifts my Father gave to me. 4 I would accept all that is mine in truth.




W-117.3. On the hour:

2 God, being Love, is also happiness.

3 On the half hour:

4 I seek but what belongs to me in truth.






LESSON 118.




For morning and evening review:

W-118.1. (105) God's peace and joy are mine.




2 Today I will accept God's peace and joy, in glad exchange for all the substitutes that I have made for happiness and peace.




W-118.2. (106) Let me be still and listen to the truth.




2 Let my own feeble voice be still, and let me hear the mighty Voice for Truth Itself assure me that I am God's perfect Son.




W-118.3. On the hour:

2 God's peace and joy are mine.

3 On the half hour:

4 Let me be still and listen to the truth.






LESSON 119.




For morning and evening review:

W-119.1. (107) Truth will correct all errors in my mind.




2 I am mistaken when I think I can be hurt in any way. 3 I am God's Son, whose Self rests safely in the Mind of God.




W-119.2. (108) To give and to receive are one in truth.




2 I will forgive all things today, that I may learn how to accept the truth in me, and come to recognize my sinlessness.




W-119.3. On the hour:

2 Truth will correct all errors in my mind.

3 On the half hour:

4 To give and to receive are one in truth.






LESSON 120.




For morning and evening review:

W-120.1. (109) I rest in God.




2 I rest in God today, and let Him work in me and through me, while I rest in Him in quiet and in perfect certainty.




W-120.2. (110) I am as God created me.




2 I am God's Son. 3 Today I lay aside all sick illusions of myself, and let my Father tell me Who I really am.




W-120.3. On the hour:

2 I rest in God.

3 On the half hour:

4 I am as God created me.








LESSON 121.




Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

W-121.1. Here is the answer to your search for peace. 2 Here is the key to meaning in a world that seems to make no sense. 3 Here is the way to safety in apparent dangers that appear to threaten you at every turn, and bring uncertainty to all your hopes of ever finding quietness and peace. 4 Here are all questions answered; here the end of all uncertainty ensured at last.

W-121.2. The unforgiving mind is full of fear, and offers love no room to be itself; no place where it can spread its wings in peace and soar above the turmoil of the world. 2 The unforgiving mind is sad, without the hope of respite and release FROM pain. 3 It suffers and abides in misery, peering about in darkness, seeing not, yet certain of the danger lurking there.

W-121.3. The unforgiving mind is torn with doubt, confused about itself and all it sees; afraid and angry, weak and blustering, afraid to go ahead, afraid to stay, afraid to waken or to go to sleep, afraid of every sound, yet more afraid of stillness; terrified of darkness, yet more terrified at the approach of light. 2 What can the unforgiving mind perceive but its damnation? 3 What can it behold except the proof that all its sins are real?

W-121.4. The unforgiving mind sees no mistakes, but only sins. 2 It looks upon the world with sightless eyes, and shrieks as it beholds its own projections rising to attack its miserable parody of life. 3 It wants to live, yet wishes it were dead. 4 It wants forgiveness, yet it sees no hope. 5 It wants escape, yet can conceive of none because it sees the sinful everywhere.

W-121.5. The unforgiving mind is in despair, without the prospect of a future which can offer anything but more despair. 2 Yet it regards its judgment of the world as irreversible, and does not see it has condemned itself to this despair. 3 It thinks it cannot change, for what it sees bears witness that its judgment is correct. 4 It does not ask, because it thinks it knows. 5 It does not question, certain it is right.

W-121.6. Forgiveness is acquired. 2 It is not inherent in the mind, which cannot sin. 3 As sin is an idea you taught yourself, forgiveness must be learned by you as well, but FROM a Teacher other than yourself, Who represents the other Self in you. 4 Through Him you learn how to forgive the self you think you made, and let it disappear. 5 Thus you return your mind as one to Him Who is your Self, and Who can never sin.

W-121.7. Each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own how to forgive itself. 2 Each one awaits release FROM hell through you, and turns to you imploringly for Heaven here and now. 3 It has no hope, but you become its hope. 4 And as its hope, do you become your own. 5 The unforgiving mind must learn through your forgiveness that it has been saved FROM hell. 6 And as you teach salvation, you will learn. 7 Yet all your teaching and your learning will be not of you, but of the Teacher Who was given you to SHOW the way to you.

W-121.8. Today we practice learning to forgive. 2 If you are willing, you can learn today to take the key to happiness, and use it on your own behalf. 3 We will devote ten minutes in the morning, and at night another ten, to learning how to give forgiveness and receive forgiveness, too.

W-121.9. The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same. 2 Yet we will try to learn today that they are one through practicing forgiveness toward one whom you think of as an enemy, and one whom you consider as a friend. 3 And as you learn to see them both as one, we will extend the lesson to yourself, and see that their escape included yours.

W-121.10. Begin the longer practice periods by thinking of someone you do not like, who seems to irritate you, or to cause regret in you if you should meet him; one you actively despise, or merely try to overlook. 2 It does not matter what the form your anger takes. 3 You probably have chosen him already. 4 He will do.

W-121.11. Now close your eyes and see him in your mind, and look at him a while. 2 Try to perceive some light in him somewhere; a little gleam which you had never noticed. 3 Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture that you hold of him. 4 Look at this picture till you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers him, and makes the picture beautiful and good.

W-121.12. Look at this changed perception for a while, and turn your mind to one you call a friend. 2 Try to transfer the light you learned to see around your former "enemy" to him. 3 Perceive him now as more than friend to you, for in that light his holiness shows you your savior, saved and saving, healed and whole.

W-121.13. Then let him offer you the light you see in him, and let your "enemy" and friend unite in blessing you with what you gave. 2 Now are you one with them, and they with you. 3 Now have you been forgiven by yourself. 4 Do not forget, throughout the day, the role forgiveness plays in bringing happiness to every unforgiving mind, with yours among them. 5 Every hour tell yourself:




6 Forgiveness is the key to happiness. 7 I will awaken FROM the dream that I am mortal, fallible and full of sin, and know I am the perfect Son of God.






LESSON 122.




Forgiveness offers everything I want.

W-122.1. What could you want forgiveness cannot give? 2 Do you want peace? 3 Forgiveness offers it. 4 Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? 5 Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? 6 Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

W-122.2. All this forgiveness offers you, and more. 2 It sparkles on your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. 3 It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. 4 And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace. 5 All this forgiveness offers you, and more.

W-122.3. Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ FROM those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world. 2 It lets you recognize the Son of God, and clears your memory of all dead thoughts so that remembrance of your Father can arise across the threshold of your mind. 3 What would you want forgiveness cannot give? 4 What gifts but these are worthy to be sought? 5 What fancied value, trivial effect or transient promise, never to be kept, can hold more hope than what forgiveness brings?

W-122.4. Why would you seek an answer other than the answer that will answer everything? 2 Here is the perfect answer, given to imperfect questions, meaningless requests, halfhearted willingness to hear, and less than halfway diligence and partial trust. 3 Here is the answer! 4 Seek for it no more. 5 You will not find another one instead.

W-122.5. God's plan for your salvation cannot change, nor can it fail. 2 Be thankful it remains exactly as He planned it. 3 Changelessly it stands before you like an open door, with warmth and welcome calling FROM beyond the doorway, bidding you to enter in and make yourself at home, where you belong.

W-122.6. Here is the answer! 2 Would you stand outside while all of Heaven waits for you within? 3 Forgive and be forgiven. 4 As you give you will receive. 5 There is no plan but this for the salvation of the Son of God. 6 Let us today rejoice that this is so, for here we have an answer, clear and plain, beyond deceit in its simplicity. 7 All the complexities the world has spun of fragile cobwebs disappear before the power and the majesty of this extremely simple statement of the truth.

W-122.7. Here is the answer! 2 Do not turn away in aimless wandering again. 3 Accept salvation now. 4 It is the gift of God, and not the world. 5 The world can give no gifts of any value to a mind that has received what God has given as its own. 6 God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness FROM you.

W-122.8. Open your eyes today and look upon a happy world of safety and of peace. 2 Forgiveness is the means by which it comes to take the place of hell. 3 In quietness it rises up to greet your open eyes, and fill your heart with deep tranquility as ancient truths, forever newly born, arise in your awareness. 4 What you will remember then can never be described. 5 Yet your forgiveness offers it to you.

W-122.9. Remembering the gifts forgiveness gives, we undertake our practicing today with hope and faith that this will be the day salvation will be ours. 2 Earnestly and gladly will we seek for it today, aware we hold the key within our hands, accepting Heaven's answer to the hell we made, but where we would remain no more.

W-122.10. Morning and evening do we gladly give a quarter of an hour to the search in which the end of hell is guaranteed. 2 Begin in hopefulness, for we have reached the turning point at which the road becomes far easier. 3 And now the way is short that yet we travel. 4 We are close indeed to the appointed ending of the dream.

W-122.11. Sink INTO happiness as you begin these practice periods, for they hold out the sure rewards of questions answered and what your acceptance of the answer brings. 2 Today it will be given you to feel the peace forgiveness offers, and the joy the lifting of the veil holds out to you.

W-122.12. Before the light you will receive today the world will fade until it disappears, and you will see another world arise you have no words to picture. 2 Now we walk directly INTO light, and we receive the gifts that have been held in store for us since time began, kept waiting for today.

W-122.13. Forgiveness offers everything you want. 2 Today all things you want are given you. 3 Let not your gifts recede throughout the day, as you return again to meet a world of shifting change and bleak appearances. 4 Retain your gifts in clear awareness as you see the changeless in the heart of change; the light of truth behind appearances.

W-122.14. Be tempted not to let your gifts slip by and drift INTO forgetfulness, but hold them firmly in your mind by your attempts to think of them at least a minute as each quarter of an hour passes by. 2 Remind yourself how precious are these gifts with this reminder, which has power to hold your gifts in your awareness through the day:




3 Forgiveness offers everything I want.

4 Today I have accepted this as true.

5 Today I have received the gifts of God.






LESSON 123.




I thank my Father for His gifts to me.

W-123.1. Today let us be thankful. 2 We have come to gentler pathways and to smoother roads. 3 There is no thought of turning back, and no implacable resistance to the truth. 4 A bit of wavering remains, some small objections and a little hesitance, but you can well be grateful for your gains, which are far greater than you realize.

W-123.2. A day devoted now to gratitude will add the benefit of some insight INTO the real extent of all the gains which you have made; the gifts you have received. 2 Be glad today, in loving thankfulness, your Father has not left you to yourself, nor let you wander in the dark alone. 3 Be grateful He has saved you FROM the self you thought you made to take the place of Him and His creation. 4 Give Him thanks today.

W-123.3. Give thanks that He has not abandoned you, and that His Love forever will remain shining on you, forever without change. 2 Give thanks as well that you are changeless, for the Son He loves is changeless as Himself. 3 Be grateful you are saved. 4 Be glad you have a function in salvation to fulfill. 5 Be thankful that your value far transcends your meager gifts and petty judgments of the one whom God established as His Son.

W-123.4. Today in gratitude we lift our hearts above despair, and raise our thankful eyes, no longer looking downward to the dust. 2 We sing the song of thankfulness today, in honor of the Self that God has willed to be our true Identity in Him. 3 Today we smile on everyone we see, and walk with lightened footsteps as we go to do what is appointed us to do.

W-123.5. We do not go alone. 2 And we give thanks that in our solitude a Friend has come to speak the saving Word of God to us. 3 And thanks to you for listening to Him. 4 His Word is soundless if it be not heard. 5 In thanking Him the thanks are yours as well. 6 An unheard message will not save the world, however mighty be the Voice that speaks, however loving may the message be.

W-123.6. Thanks be to you who heard, for you become the messenger who brings His Voice with you, and lets It echo round and round the world. 2 Receive the thanks of God today, as you give thanks to Him. 3 For He would offer you the thanks you give, since He receives your gifts in loving gratitude, and gives them back a thousand and a hundred thousand more than they were given. 4 He will bless your gifts by sharing them with you. 5 And so they grow in power and in strength, until they fill the world with gladness and with gratitude.

W-123.7. Receive His thanks and offer yours to Him for fifteen minutes twice today. 2 And you will realize to Whom you offer thanks, and Whom He thanks as you are thanking Him. 3 This holy half an hour given Him will be returned to you in terms of years for every second; power to save the world eons more quickly for your thanks to Him.

W-123.8. Receive His thanks, and you will understand how lovingly He holds you in His Mind, how deep and limitless His care for you, how perfect is His gratitude to you. 2 Remember hourly to think of Him, and give Him thanks for everything He gave His Son, that he might rise above the world, remembering his Father and his Self.






LESSON 124.




Let me remember I am one with God.

W-124.1. Today we will again give thanks for our Identity in God. 2 Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. 3 We can fail in nothing. 4 Everything we touch takes on a shining light that blesses and that heals. 5 At one with God and with the universe we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us.

W-124.2. How holy are our minds! 2 And everything we see reflects the holiness within the mind at one with God and with itself. 3 How easily do errors disappear, and death give place to everlasting life. 4 Our shining footprints point the way to truth, for God is our Companion as we walk the world a little while. 5 And those who come to follow us will recognize the way because the light we carry stays behind, yet still remains with us as we walk on.

W-124.3. What we receive is our eternal gift to those who follow after, and to those who went before or stayed with us a while. 2 And God, Who loves us with the equal love in which we were created, smiles on us and offers us the happiness we gave.

W-124.4. Today we will not doubt His Love for us, nor question His protection and His care. 2 No meaningless anxieties can come between our faith and our awareness of His Presence. 3 We are one with Him today in recognition and remembrance. 4 We feel Him in our hearts. 5 Our minds contain His Thoughts; our eyes behold His loveliness in all we look upon. 6 Today we see only the loving and the lovable.

W-124.5. We see it in appearances of pain, and pain gives way to peace. 2 We see it in the frantic, in the sad and the distressed, the lonely and afraid, who are restored to the tranquility and peace of mind in which they were created. 3 And we see it in the dying and the dead as well, restoring them to life. 4 All this we see because we saw it first within ourselves.

W-124.6. No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. 2 No thought of theirs but has the power to heal all forms of suffering in anyone, in times gone by and times as yet to come, as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now. 3 Their thoughts are timeless, and apart FROM distance as apart FROM time.

W-124.7. We join in this awareness as we say that we are one with God. 2 For in these words we say as well that we are saved and healed; that we can save and heal accordingly. 3 We have accepted, and we now would give. 4 For we would keep the gifts our Father gave. 5 Today we would experience ourselves at one with Him, so that the world may share our recognition of reality. 6 In our experience the world is freed. 7 As we deny our separation FROM our Father, it is healed along with us.

W-124.8. Peace be to you today. 2 Secure your peace by practicing awareness you are one with your Creator, as He is with you. 3 Sometime today, whenever it seems best, devote a half an hour to the thought that you are one with God. 4 This is our first attempt at an extended period for which we give no rules nor special words to guide your meditation. 5 We will trust God's Voice to speak as He sees fit today, certain He will not fail. 6 Abide with Him this half an hour. 7 He will do the rest.

W-124.9. Your benefit will not be less if you believe that nothing happens. 2 You may not be ready to accept the gain today. 3 Yet sometime, somewhere, it will come to you, nor will you fail to recognize it when it dawns with certainty upon your mind. 4 This half an hour will be framed in gold, with every minute like a diamond set around the mirror that this exercise will offer you. 5 And you will see Christ's face upon it, in reflection of your own.

W-124.10. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will see your own transfiguration in the glass this holy half an hour will hold out to you, to look upon yourself. 2 When you are ready you will find it there, within your mind and waiting to be found. 3 You will remember then the thought to which you gave this half an hour, thankfully aware no time was ever better spent.

W-124.11. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will look INTO this glass, and understand the sinless light you see belongs to you; the loveliness you look on is your own. 2 Count this half hour as your gift to God, in certainty that His return will be a sense of love you cannot understand, a joy too deep for you to comprehend, a sight too holy for the body's eyes to see. 3 And yet you can be sure someday, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, you will understand and comprehend and see.

W-124.12. Add further jewels to the golden frame that holds the mirror offered you today, by hourly repeating to yourself:




2 Let me remember I am one with God, at one with all my brothers and my Self, in everlasting holiness and peace.






LESSON 125.




In quiet I receive God's Word today.

W-125.1. Let this day be a day of stillness and of quiet listening. 2 Your Father wills you hear His Word today. 3 He calls to you FROM deep within your mind where He abides. 4 Hear Him today. 5 No peace is possible until His Word is heard around the world; until your mind, in quiet listening, accepts the message that the world must hear to usher in the quiet time of peace.

W-125.2. This world will change through you. 2 No other means can save it, for God's plan is simply this: The Son of God is free to save himself, given the Word of God to be his Guide, forever in his mind and at his side to lead him surely to his Father's house by his own will, forever free as God's. 3 He is not led by force, but only love. 4 He is not judged, but only sanctified.

W-125.3. In stillness we will hear God's Voice today without intrusion of our petty thoughts, without our personal desires, and without all judgment of His holy Word. 2 We will not judge ourselves today, for what we are can not be judged. 3 We stand apart FROM all the judgments which the world has laid upon the Son of God. 4 It knows him not. 5 Today we will not listen to the world, but wait in silence for the Word of God.

W-125.4. Hear, holy Son of God, your Father speak. 2 His Voice would give to you His holy Word, to spread across the world the tidings of salvation and the holy time of peace. 3 We gather at the throne of God today, the quiet place within the mind where He abides forever, in the holiness that He created and will never leave.

W-125.5. He has not waited until you return your mind to Him to give His Word to you. 2 He has not hid Himself FROM you, while you have wandered off a little while FROM Him. 3 He does not cherish the illusions which you hold about yourself. 4 He knows His Son, and wills that he remain as part of Him regardless of his dreams; regardless of his madness that his will is not his own.

W-125.6. Today He speaks to you. 2 His Voice awaits your silence, for His Word can not be heard until your mind is quiet for a while, and meaningless desires have been stilled. 3 Await His Word in quiet. 4 There is peace within you to be called upon today, to help make ready your most holy mind to hear the Voice for its Creator speak.

W-125.7. Three times today, at times most suitable for silence, give ten minutes set apart FROM listening to the world, and choose instead a gentle listening to the Word of God. 2 He speaks FROM nearer than your heart to you. 3 His Voice is closer than your hand. 4 His Love is everything you are and that He is; the same as you, and you the same as He.

W-125.8. It is your voice to which you listen as He speaks to you. 2 It is your word He speaks. 3 It is the Word of freedom and of peace, of unity of will and purpose, with no separation nor division in the single Mind of Father and of Son. 4 In quiet listen to your Self today, and let Him tell you God has never left His Son, and you have never left your Self.

W-125.9. Only be quiet. 2 You will need no rule but this, to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision FROM the body's eyes. 3 Only be still and listen. 4 You will hear the Word in which the Will of God the Son joins in his Father's Will, at one with it, with no illusions interposed between the wholly indivisible and true. 5 As every hour passes by today, be still a moment and remind yourself you have a special purpose for this day; in quiet to receive the Word of God.






LESSON 126.




All that I give is given to myself.

W-126.1. Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal that this course will bring about. 2 If you believed this statement, there would be no problem in complete forgiveness, certainty of goal, and sure direction. 3 You would understand the means by which salvation comes to you, and would not hesitate to use it now.

W-126.2. Let us consider what you do believe, in place of this idea. 2 It seems to you that other people are apart FROM you, and able to behave in ways which have no bearing on your thoughts, nor yours on theirs. 3 Therefore, your attitudes have no effect on them, and their appeals for help are not in any way related to your own. 4 You further think that they can sin without affecting your perception of yourself, while you can judge their sin, and yet remain apart FROM condemnation and at peace.

W-126.3. When you "forgive" a sin, there is no gain to you directly. 2 You give charity to one unworthy, merely to point out that you are better, on a higher plane than he whom you forgive. 3 He has not earned your charitable tolerance, which you bestow on one unworthy of the gift, because his sins have lowered him beneath a true equality with you. 4 He has no claim on your forgiveness. 5 It holds out a gift to him, but hardly to yourself.

W-126.4. Thus is forgiveness basically unsound; a charitable whim, benevolent yet undeserved, a gift bestowed at times, at other times withheld. 2 Unmerited, withholding it is just, nor is it fair that you should suffer when it is withheld. 3 The sin that you forgive is not your own. 4 Someone apart FROM you committed it. 5 And if you then are gracious unto him by giving him what he does not deserve, the gift is no more yours than was his sin.

W-126.5. If this be true, forgiveness has no grounds on which to rest dependably and sure. 2 It is an eccentricity, in which you sometimes choose to give indulgently an undeserved reprieve. 3 Yet it remains your right to let the sinner not escape the justified repayment for his sin. 4 Think you the Lord of Heaven would allow the world's salvation to depend on this? 5 Would not His care for you be small indeed, if your salvation rested on a whim?

W-126.6. You do not understand forgiveness. 2 As you see it, it is but a CHECK upon overt attack, without requiring correction in your mind. 3 It cannot give you peace as you perceive it. 4 It is not a means for your release FROM what you see in someone other than yourself. 5 It has no power to restore your unity with him to your awareness. 6 It is not what God intended it to be for you.

W-126.7. Not HAVING given Him the gift He asks of you, you cannot recognize His gifts, and think He has not given them to you. 2 Yet would He ask you for a gift unless it was for you? 3 Could He be satisfied with empty gestures, and evaluate such petty gifts as worthy of His Son? 4 Salvation is a better gift than this. 5 And true forgiveness, as the means by which it is attained, must heal the mind that gives, for giving is receiving. 6 What remains as unreceived has not been given, but what has been given must have been received.

W-126.8. Today we try to understand the truth that giver and receiver are the same. 2 You will need help to make this meaningful, because it is so alien to the thoughts to which you are accustomed. 3 But the Help you need is there. 4 Give Him your faith today, and ask Him that He share your practicing in truth today. 5 And if you only catch a tiny glimpse of the release that lies in the idea we practice for today, this is a day of glory for the world.

W-126.9. Give fifteen minutes twice today to the attempt to understand today's idea. 2 It is the thought by which forgiveness takes its proper place in your priorities. 3 It is the thought that will release your mind FROM every bar to what forgiveness means, and let you realize its worth to you.

W-126.10. In silence, close your eyes upon the world that does not understand forgiveness, and seek sanctuary in the quiet place where thoughts are changed and false beliefs laid by. 2 Repeat today's idea, and ask for help in understanding what it really means. 3 Be willing to be taught. 4 Be glad to hear the Voice of truth and healing speak to you, and you will understand the words He speaks, and recognize He speaks your words to you.

W-126.11. As often as you can, remind yourself you have a goal today; an aim which makes this day of special value to yourself and all your brothers. 2 Do not let your mind forget this goal for long, but tell yourself:




3 All that I give is given to myself. 4 The Help I need to learn that this is true is with me now. 5 And I will trust in Him.




6 Then spend a quiet moment, opening your mind to His correction and His Love. 7 And what you hear of Him you will believe, for what He gives will be received by you.






LESSON 127.




There is no love but God's.

W-127.1. Perhaps you think that different kinds of love are possible. 2 Perhaps you think there is a kind of love for this, a kind for that; a way of loving one, another way of loving still another. 3 Love is one. 4 It has no separate parts and no degrees; no kinds nor levels, no divergencies and no distinctions. 5 It is like itself, unchanged throughout. 6 It never alters with a person or a circumstance. 7 It is the Heart of God, and also of His Son.

W-127.2. Love's meaning is obscure to anyone who thinks that love can change. 2 He does not see that changing love must be impossible. 3 And thus he thinks that he can love at times, and hate at other times. 4 He also thinks that love can be bestowed on one, and yet remain itself although it is withheld FROM others. 5 To believe these things of love is not to understand it. 6 If it could make such distinctions, it would have to judge between the righteous and the sinner, and perceive the Son of God in separate parts.

W-127.3. Love cannot judge. 2 As it is one itself, it looks on all as one. 3 Its meaning lies in oneness. 4 And it must elude the mind that thinks of it as partial or in part. 5 There is no love but God's, and all of love is His. 6 There is no other principle that rules where love is not. 7 Love is a law without an opposite. 8 Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds Them both forever as the same.

W-127.4. No course whose purpose is to teach you to remember what you really are could fail to emphasize that there can never be a difference in what you really are and what love is. 2 Love's meaning is your own, and shared by God Himself. 3 For what you are is what He is. 4 There is no love but His, and what He is, is everything there is. 5 There is no LIMIT placed upon Himself, and so are you unlimited as well.

W-127.5. No law the world obeys can help you grasp love's meaning. 2 What the world believes was made to hide love's meaning, and to keep it dark and secret. 3 There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is, and what you are as well.

W-127.6. Seek not within the world to find your Self. 2 Love is not found in darkness and in death. 3 Yet it is perfectly apparent to the eyes that see and ears that hear love's Voice. 4 Today we practice making free your mind of all the laws you think you must obey; of all the limits under which you live, and all the changes that you think are part of human destiny. 5 Today we take the largest single step this course requests in your advance towards its established goal.

W-127.7. If you achieve the faintest glimmering of what love means today, you have advanced in distance without measure and in time beyond the count of years to your release. 2 Let us together, then, be glad to give some time to God today, and understand there is no better use for time than this.

W-127.8. For fifteen minutes twice today escape FROM every law in which you now believe. 2 Open your mind and rest. 3 The world that seems to hold you prisoner can be escaped by anyone who does not hold it dear. 4 Withdraw all value you have placed upon its meager offerings and senseless gifts, and let the gift of God REPLACE them all.

W-127.9. Call to your Father, certain that His Voice will answer. 2 He Himself has promised this. 3 And He Himself will place a spark of truth within your mind wherever you give up a false belief, a dark illusion of your own reality and what love means. 4 He will shine through your idle thoughts today, and help you understand the truth of love. 5 In loving gentleness He will abide with you, as you allow His Voice to teach love's meaning to your clean and open mind. 6 And He will bless the lesson with His Love.

W-127.10. Today the legion of the future years of waiting for salvation disappears before the timelessness of what you learn. 2 Let us give thanks today that we are spared a future like the past. 3 Today we leave the past behind us, nevermore to be remembered. 4 And we raise our eyes upon a different present, where a future dawns unlike the past in every attribute.

W-127.11. The world in infancy is newly born. 2 And we will watch it grow in health and strength, to shed its blessing upon all who come to learn to cast aside the world they thought was made in hate to be love's enemy. 3 Now are they all made free, along with us. 4 Now are they all our brothers in God's Love.

W-127.12. We will remember them throughout the day, because we cannot leave a part of us outside our love if we would know our Self. 2 At least three times an hour think of one who makes the journey with you, and who came to learn what you must learn. 3 And as he comes to mind, give him this message FROM your Self:




4 I bless you, brother, with the Love of God, which I would share with you. 5 For I would learn the joyous lesson that there is no love but God's and yours and mine and everyone's.






LESSON 128.




The world I see holds nothing that I want.

W-128.1. The world you see holds nothing that you need to offer you; nothing that you can use in any way, nor anything at all that serves to give you joy. 2 Believe this thought, and you are saved FROM years of misery, FROM countless disappointments, and FROM hopes that turn to bitter ashes of despair. 3 No one but must accept this thought as true, if he would leave the world behind and soar beyond its petty scope and little ways.

W-128.2. Each thing you value here is but a chain that binds you to the world, and it will serve no other end but this. 2 For everything must serve the purpose you have given it, until you see a different purpose there. 3 The only purpose worthy of your mind this world contains is that you pass it by, without delaying to perceive some hope where there is none. 4 Be you deceived no more. 5 The world you see holds nothing that you want.

W-128.3. Escape today the chains you place upon your mind when you perceive salvation here. 2 For what you value you make part of you as you perceive yourself. 3 All things you seek to make your value greater in your sight LIMIT you further, hide your worth FROM you, and add another bar across the door that leads to true awareness of your Self.

W-128.4. Let nothing that relates to body thoughts delay your progress to salvation, nor permit temptation to believe the world holds anything you want to hold you back. 2 Nothing is here to cherish. 3 Nothing here is worth one instant of delay and pain; one moment of uncertainty and doubt. 4 The worthless offer nothing. 5 Certainty of worth can not be found in worthlessness.

W-128.5. Today we practice letting go all thought of values we have given to the world. 2 We leave it free of purposes we gave its aspects and its phases and its dreams. 3 We hold it purposeless within our minds, and loosen it FROM all we wish it were. 4 Thus do we lift the chains that bar the door to freedom FROM the world, and go beyond all little values and diminished goals.

W-128.6. Pause and be still a little while, and see how far you rise above the world, when you release your mind FROM chains and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home. 2 It will be grateful to be free a while. 3 It knows where it belongs. 4 But free its wings, and it will fly in sureness and in joy to join its holy purpose. 5 Let it rest in its Creator, there to be restored to sanity, to freedom and to love.

W-128.7. Give it ten minutes rest three times today. 2 And when your eyes are opened afterwards, you will not value anything you see as much as when you looked at it before. 3 Your whole perspective on the world will shift by just a little, every time you let your mind escape its chains. 4 The world is not where it belongs. 5 And you belong where it would be, and where it goes to rest when you release it FROM the world. 6 Your Guide is sure. 7 Open your mind to Him. 8 Be still and rest.

W-128.8. Protect your mind throughout the day as well. 2 And when you think you see some value in an aspect or an image of the world, refuse to lay this chain upon your mind, but tell yourself with quiet certainty:




3 This will not tempt me to delay myself.

4 The world I see holds nothing that I want.






LESSON 129.




Beyond this world there is a world I want.

W-129.1. This is the thought that follows FROM the one we practiced yesterday. 2 You cannot stop with the idea the world is worthless, for unless you see that there is something else to hope for, you will only be depressed. 3 Our emphasis is not on giving up the world, but on exchanging it for what is far more satisfying, filled with joy, and capable of offering you peace. 4 Think you this world can offer that to you?

W-129.2. It might be worth a little time to think once more about the value of this world. 2 Perhaps you will concede there is no loss in letting go all thought of value here. 3 The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. 4 It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. 5 No lasting love is found, for none is here. 6 This is the world of time, where all things end.

W-129.3. Is it a loss to find a world instead where losing is impossible; where love endures forever, hate cannot exist and vengeance has no meaning? 2 Is it loss to find all things you really want, and know they have no ending and they will remain exactly as you want them throughout time? 3 Yet even they will be exchanged at last for what we cannot speak of, for you go FROM there to where words fail entirely, INTO a silence where the language is unspoken and yet surely understood.

W-129.4. Communication, unambiguous and plain as day, remains unlimited for all eternity. 2 And God Himself speaks to His Son, as His Son speaks to Him. 3 Their language has no words, for what They say cannot be symbolized. 4 Their knowledge is direct and wholly shared and wholly one. 5 How far away FROM this are you who stay bound to this world. 6 And yet how near are you, when you exchange it for the world you want.

W-129.5. Now is the last step certain; now you stand an instant's space away FROM timelessness. 2 Here can you but look forward, never back to see again the world you do not want. 3 Here is the world that comes to take its place, as you unbind your mind FROM little things the world sets forth to keep you prisoner. 4 Value them not, and they will disappear. 5 Esteem them, and they will seem real to you.

W-129.6. Such is the choice. 2 What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? 3 This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed! 4 Let it be given you today. 5 It waits but for your choosing it, to take the place of all the things you seek but do not want.

W-129.7. Practice your willingness to make this change ten minutes in the morning and at night, and once more in between. 2 Begin with this:




3 Beyond this world there is a world I want. 4 I choose to see that world instead of this, for here is nothing that I really want.




5 Then close your eyes upon the world you see, and in the silent darkness watch the lights that are not of this world light one by one, until where one begins another ends loses all meaning as they blend in one.

W-129.8. Today the lights of Heaven bend to you, to shine upon your eyelids as you rest beyond the world of darkness. 2 Here is light your eyes can not behold. 3 And yet your mind can see it plainly, and can understand. 4 A day of grace is given you today, and we give thanks. 5 This day we realize that what you feared to lose was only loss.

W-129.9. Now do we understand there is no loss. 2 For we have seen its opposite at last, and we are grateful that the choice is made. 3 Remember your decision hourly, and take a moment to confirm your choice by laying by whatever thoughts you have, and dwelling briefly only upon this:




4 The world I see holds nothing that I want.

5 Beyond this world there is a world I want.






LESSON 130.




It is impossible to see two worlds.

W-130.1. Perception is consistent. 2 What you see reflects your thinking. 3 And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see. 4 Your values are determiners of this, for what you value you must want to see, believing what you see is really there. 5 No one can see a world his mind has not accorded value. 6 And no one can fail to look upon what he believes he wants.

W-130.2. Yet who can really hate and love at once? 2 Who can desire what he does not want to have reality? 3 And who can choose to see a world of which he is afraid? 4 Fear must make blind, for this its weapon is: That which you fear to see you cannot see. 5 Love and perception thus go hand in hand, but fear obscures in darkness what is there.

W-130.3. What, then, can fear project upon the world? 2 What can be seen in darkness that is real? 3 Truth is eclipsed by fear, and what remains is but imagined. 4 Yet what can be real in blind imaginings of panic born? 5 What would you want that this is shown to you? 6 What would you wish to keep in such a dream?

W-130.4. Fear has made everything you think you see. 2 All separation, all distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world. 3 They are not there. 4 Love's enemy has made them up. 5 Yet love can have no enemy, and so they have no cause, no being and no consequence. 6 They can be valued, but remain unreal. 7 They can be sought, but they can not be found. 8 Today we will not seek for them, nor waste this day in seeking what can not be found.

W-130.5. It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. 2 Seek for the one; the other disappears. 3 But one remains. 4 They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. 5 The real and the unreal are all there are to choose between, and nothing more than these.

W-130.6. Today we will attempt no compromise where none is possible. 2 The world you see is proof you have already made a choice as all-embracing as its opposite. 3 What we would learn today is more than just the lesson that you cannot see two worlds. 4 It also teaches that the one you see is quite consistent FROM the point of view FROM which you see it. 5 It is all a piece because it stems FROM one emotion, and reflects its source in everything you see.

W-130.7. Six times today, in thanks and gratitude, we gladly give five minutes to the thought that ends all compromise and doubt, and go beyond them all as one. 2 We will not make a thousand meaningless distinctions, nor attempt to bring with us a little part of unreality, as we devote our minds to finding only what is real.

W-130.8. Begin your searching for the other world by asking for a strength beyond your own, and recognizing what it is you seek. 2 You do not want illusions. 3 And you come to these five minutes emptying your hands of all the petty treasures of this world. 4 You wait for God to help you, as you say:




5 It is impossible to see two worlds. 6 Let me accept the strength God offers me and see no value in this world, that I may find my freedom and deliverance.




W-130.9. God will be there. 2 For you have called upon the great unfailing power which will take this giant step with you in gratitude. 3 Nor will you fail to see His thanks expressed in tangible perception and in truth. 4 You will not doubt what you will look upon, for though it is perception, it is not the kind of seeing that your eyes alone have ever seen before. 5 And you will know God's strength upheld you as you made this choice.

W-130.10. Dismiss temptation easily today whenever it arises, merely by remembering the limits of your choice. 2 The unreal or the real, the false or true is what you see and only what you see. 3 Perception is consistent with your choice, and hell or Heaven comes to you as one.

W-130.11. Accept a little part of hell as real, and you have damned your eyes and cursed your sight, and what you will behold is hell indeed. 2 Yet the release of Heaven still remains within your range of choice, to take the place of everything that hell would SHOW to you. 3 All you need say to any part of hell, whatever form it takes, is simply this:




4 It is impossible to see two worlds. 5 I seek my freedom and deliverance, and this is not a part of what I want.






LESSON 131.




No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.

W-131.1. Failure is all about you while you seek for goals that cannot be achieved. 2 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. 3 Who could succeed where contradiction is the setting of his searching, and the place to which he comes to find stability?

W-131.2. Goals that are meaningless are not attained. 2 There is no way to reach them, for the means by which you strive for them are meaningless as they are. 3 Who can use such senseless means, and hope through them to gain in anything? 4 Where can they lead? 5 And what could they achieve that offers any hope of being real? 6 Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death. 7 You look for safety and security, while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you made.

W-131.3. Yet searching is inevitable here. 2 For this you came, and you will surely do the thing you came for. 3 But the world can not dictate the goal for which you search, unless you give it power to do so. 4 Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one that comes to you FROM an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want.

W-131.4. Be glad that search you must. 2 Be glad as well to learn you search for Heaven, and must find the goal you really want. 3 No one can fail to want this goal and reach it in the end. 4 God's Son can not seek vainly, though he try to force delay, deceive himself and think that it is hell he seeks. 5 When he is wrong, he finds correction. 6 When he wanders off, he is led back to his appointed task.

W-131.5. No one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. 2 You will find Heaven. 3 Everything you seek but this will fall away. 4 Yet not because it has been taken FROM you. 5 It will go because you do not want it. 6 You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness.

W-131.6. Why wait for Heaven? 2 It is here today. 3 Time is the great illusion it is past or in the future. 4 Yet this cannot be, if it is where God wills His Son to be. 5 How could the Will of God be in the past, or yet to happen? 6 What He wills is now, without a past and wholly futureless. 7 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.

W-131.7. 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. 2 God made no contradictions. 3 What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. 4 He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.

W-131.8. God does not suffer conflict. 2 Nor is His creation split in two. 3 How could it be His Son could be in hell, when God Himself established him in Heaven? 4 Could he lose what the Eternal Will has given him to be his home forever? 5 Let us not try longer to impose an alien will upon God's single purpose. 6 He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now, beyond the reach of time.

W-131.9. Today we will not choose a paradox in place of truth. 2 How could the Son of God make time to take away the Will of God? 3 He thus denies himself, and contradicts what has no opposite. 4 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.

W-131.10. Leave foolish thoughts like these behind today, and turn your mind to true ideas instead. 2 No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth, and it is truth we seek to reach today. 3 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 hold dear, with true ideas arising in the place of thoughts that have no meaning, no effect, and neither source nor substance in the truth.

W-131.11. This we acknowledge as we start upon our practice periods. 2 Begin with this:




3 I ask to see a different world, and think a different kind of thought FROM those I made. 4 The world I seek I did not make alone, the thoughts I want to think are not my own.




5 For several minutes watch your mind and see, although your eyes are closed, the senseless world you think is real. 6 Review the thoughts as well which are compatible with such a world, and which you think are true. 7 Then let them go, and sink below them to the holy place where they can enter not. 8 There is a door beneath them in your mind, which you could not completely lock to hide what lies beyond.

W-131.12. Seek for that door and find it. 2 But before you try to open it, remind yourself no one can fail who seeks to reach the truth. 3 And it is this request you make today. 4 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.

W-131.13. Put out your hand, and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. 2 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. 3 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.

W-131.14. You cannot fail today. 2 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. 3 Today that day has come. 4 Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. 5 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 end together as you pass beyond the door.

W-131.15. Remember often that today should be a time of special gladness, and refrain FROM dismal thoughts and meaningless laments. 2 Salvation's time has come. 3 Today is set by Heaven itself to be a time of grace for you and for the world. 4 If you forget this happy fact, remind yourself with this:




5 Today I seek and find all that I want.

6 My single purpose offers it to me.

7 No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.






LESSON 132.




I loose the world FROM all I thought it was.

W-132.1. What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs? 2 And what can save the world except your Self? 3 Belief is powerful indeed. 4 The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth. 5 A madman thinks the world he sees is real, and does not doubt it. 6 Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts' effects. 7 It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last.

W-132.2. Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his mind, and all his thoughts change with it. 2 Now the source of thought has shifted, for to change your mind means you have changed the source of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think. 3 You free the past FROM what you thought before. 4 You free the future FROM all ancient thoughts of seeking what you do not want to find.

W-132.3. The present now remains the only time. 2 Here in the present is the world set free. 3 For as you let the past be lifted and release the future FROM your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world. 4 You have enslaved the world with all your fears, your doubts and miseries, your pain and tears; and all your sorrows press on it, and keep the world a prisoner to your beliefs. 5 Death strikes it everywhere because you hold the bitter thoughts of death within your mind.

W-132.4. The world is nothing in itself. 2 Your mind must give it meaning. 3 And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. 4 Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. 5 Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came.

W-132.5. There is no world apart FROM what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. 2 Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. 3 Ideas leave not their source. 4 This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. 5 It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind.

W-132.6. But it is pride that argues you have come INTO a world quite separate FROM yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart FROM what you chance to think it is. 2 There is no world! 3 This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. 4 Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. 5 He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

W-132.7. But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. 2 Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. 3 Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. 4 Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.

W-132.8. And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today. 2 Today's idea is true because the world does not exist. 3 And if it is indeed your own imagining, then you can loose it FROM all things you ever thought it was by merely changing all the thoughts that gave it these appearances. 4 The sick are healed as you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let thoughts of life REPLACE all thoughts you ever held of death.

W-132.9. A lesson earlier repeated once must now be stressed again, for it contains the firm foundation for today's idea. 2 You are as God created you. 3 There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state. 4 How can a world of time and place exist, if you remain as God created you?

W-132.10. What is the lesson for today except another way of saying that to know your Self is the salvation of the world? 2 To free the world FROM every kind of pain is but to change your mind about yourself. 3 There is no world apart FROM your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought.

W-132.11. Yet if you are as God created you, you cannot think apart FROM Him, nor make what does not share His timelessness and Love. 2 Are these inherent in the world you see? 3 Does it create like Him? 4 Unless it does, it is not real, and cannot be at all. 5 If you are real the world you see is false, for God's creation is unlike the world in every way. 6 And as it was His Thought by which you were created, so it is your thoughts which made it and must set it free, that you may know the Thoughts you share with God.

W-132.12. Release the world! 2 Your real creations wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. 3 God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. 4 What He creates is not apart FROM Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate FROM Him.

W-132.13. There is no world because it is a thought apart FROM God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness. 2 Can a world which comes FROM this idea be real? 3 Can it be anywhere? 4 Deny illusions, but accept the truth. 5 Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. 6 Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.

W-132.14. Today our purpose is to free the world FROM all the idle thoughts we ever held about it, and about all living things we see upon it. 2 They can not be there. 3 No more can we. 4 For we are in the home our Father set for us, along with them. 5 And we who are as He created us would loose the world this day FROM every one of our illusions, that we may be free.

W-132.15. Begin the fifteen-minute periods in which we practice twice today with this:




2 I who remain as God created me would loose the world FROM all I thought it was. 3 For I am real because the world is not, and I would know my own reality.




4 Then merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let your mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed, along with you.

W-132.16. You need not realize that healing comes to many brothers far across the world, as well as to the ones you see nearby, as you send out these thoughts to bless the world. 2 But you will sense your own release, although you may not fully understand as yet that you could never be released alone.

W-132.17. Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your ideas to all the world, and say whenever you are tempted to deny the power of your simple change of mind:




2 I loose the world FROM all I thought it was, and choose my own reality instead.






LESSON 133.




I will not value what is valueless.

W-133.1. Sometimes in teaching there is benefit, 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. 2 This we will do today. 3 We will not speak of lofty, world-encompassing ideas, but dwell instead on benefits to you.

W-133.2. You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. 2 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. 3 This course does not attempt to take FROM you the little that you have. 4 It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains. 5 There are no satisfactions in the world.

W-133.3. Today we list the real criteria by which to test all things you think you want. 2 Unless they meet these sound requirements, they are not worth desiring at all, for they can but REPLACE what offers more. 3 The laws that govern choice you cannot make, no more than you can make alternatives FROM which to choose. 4 The choosing you can do; indeed, you must. 5 But it is wise to learn the laws you set in motion when you choose, and what alternatives you choose between.

W-133.4. We have already stressed there are but two, however many there appear to be. 2 The range is set, and this we cannot change. 3 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 that must be made.

W-133.5. Another kindly and related law is that there is no compromise in what your choice must bring. 2 It cannot give you just a little, for there is no in between. 3 Each choice you make brings everything to you or nothing. 4 Therefore, if you learn the tests by which you can distinguish everything FROM nothing, you will make the better choice.

W-133.6. First, if you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is valueless. 2 A temporary value is without all value. 3 Time can never take away a value that is real. 4 What fades and dies was never there, and makes no offering to him who chooses it. 5 He is deceived by nothing in a form he thinks he likes.

W-133.7. Next, if you choose to take a thing away FROM someone else, you will have nothing left. 2 This is because, when you deny his right to everything, you have denied your own. 3 You therefore will not recognize the things you really have, denying they are there. 4 Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. 5 Yet loss must offer loss, and nothing more.

W-133.8. Your next consideration is the one on which the others rest. 2 Why is the choice you make of value to you? 3 What attracts your mind to it? 4 What purpose does it serve? 5 Here it is easiest of all to be deceived. 6 For what the ego wants it fails to recognize. 7 It does not even tell the truth as it perceives it, for it needs to keep the halo which it uses to protect its goals FROM tarnish and FROM rust, that you may see how "innocent" it is.

W-133.9. Yet is its camouflage a thin veneer, which could deceive but those who are content to be deceived. 2 Its goals are obvious to anyone who cares to look for them. 3 Here is deception doubled, for the one who is deceived will not perceive that he has merely failed to gain. 4 He will believe that he has served the ego's hidden goals.

W-133.10. Yet though he tries to keep its halo clear within his vision, still must he perceive its tarnished edges and its rusted core. 2 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. 3 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. 4 This guidance teaches it is error to believe that sins are but mistakes, for who would suffer for his sins if this were so?

W-133.11. And so we come to the criterion for choice that is the hardest to believe, because its obviousness is overlaid with many levels of obscurity. 2 If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed the ego's goals to come between the real alternatives. 3 And thus you do not realize there are but two, and the alternative you think you chose seems fearful, and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is.

W-133.12. All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. 2 Choosing is easy just because of this. 3 Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke, which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult. 4 What is the gain to you in learning this? 5 It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain.

W-133.13. Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. 2 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. 3 Our two extended practice periods of fifteen minutes each begin with this:




4 I will not value what is valueless, and only what has value do I seek, for only that do I desire to find.




W-133.14. And then receive what waits for everyone who reaches, unencumbered, to the gate of Heaven, which swings open as he comes. 2 Should you begin to let yourself collect some needless burdens, or believe you see some difficult decisions facing you, be quick to answer with this simple thought:




3 I will not value what is valueless, for what is valuable belongs to me.






LESSON 134.




Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

W-134.1. Let us review the meaning of "forgive," for it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something that entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth. 2 In such a view, forgiveness must be seen as mere eccentric folly, and this course appear to rest salvation on a whim.

W-134.2. This twisted view of what forgiveness means is easily corrected, when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. 2 It must be limited to what is false. 3 It is irrelevant to everything except illusions. 4 Truth is God's creation, and to pardon that is meaningless. 5 All truth belongs to Him, reflects His laws and radiates His Love. 6 Does this need pardon? 7 How can you forgive the sinless and eternally benign?

W-134.3. The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth, and not illusions. 2 You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth, in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. 3 This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind, as you regard yourself.

W-134.4. Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception. 2 For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. 3 Thus is forgiveness really but a sin, like all the rest. 4 It says the truth is false, and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass; as white as snow. 5 It is delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish. 6 It would see as right the plainly wrong; the loathsome as the good.

W-134.5. Pardon is no escape in such a view. 2 It merely is a further sign that sin is unforgivable, at best to be concealed, denied or called another name, for pardon is a treachery to truth. 3 Guilt cannot be forgiven. 4 If you sin, your guilt is everlasting. 5 Those who are forgiven FROM the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned; first, by themselves for what they think they did, and once again by those who pardon them.

W-134.6. It is sin's unreality that makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. 2 It does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly, with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth. 3 And there they disappear entirely.

W-134.7. Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. 2 It sees their nothingness, and looks straight through the thousand forms in which they may appear. 3 It looks on lies, but it is not deceived. 4 It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. 5 It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth."

W-134.8. The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth. 2 It is because of this that it becomes the undeceiver in the face of lies; the great restorer of the simple truth. 3 By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth, which has been blocked by dreams of guilt. 4 Now are you free to follow in the way your true forgiveness opens up to you. 5 For if one brother has received this gift of you, the door is open to yourself.

W-134.9. There is a very simple way to find the door to true forgiveness, and perceive it open wide in welcome. 2 When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell