Day 89 - A Course in Miracles
Chapter Eight: The Journey Back
VI. The Power of Joint Decision
42 We are the joint will of the Sonship, whose wholeness is for all. We begin the journey back by setting out together and gather in our brothers as we continue together. Every gain in our strength is offered for all, so they too can lay aside their weakness and add their strength to us. God's welcome waits for us all, and He will welcome us as I am welcoming you. Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true.43 I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours. If it were, you would have destroyed yourselves. Yet God did not will the destruction of His creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from yourselves, but from your illusions of yourselves. He has saved you for yourselves. Let us glorify Him whom the world denies, for over His Kingdom, it has no power. No one created by God can find joy in anything except the eternal. That is not because he is deprived of anything else, but because nothing else is worthyof him. What God and His Sons create is eternal, and in this and this only is their joy.
44 Listen to the story of the prodigal son, and learn what God's treasure is and yours: This son of a loving father left his home and thought he squandered everything for nothing of any value, although he did not know its worthlessness at the time. He was ashamed to return to his father because he thought he had hurt him. Yet when he came home, the father welcomed him with joy because only the son himself was his father's treasure. He wanted nothing else.
45 God wants only His Son because His Son is His only treasure. You want your creations as He wants His. Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for your creation. They do not leave you, any more than you have left your Creator, but they extend your creation as God extended Himself to you. Can the creations of God Himself take joy in what is not real? And what is real except the creations of God and those which are created like His? Your creations love you as your Soul loves your Father for the gift of creation. There is no other gift which is eternal, and therefore there is no other gift which is true.
46 How, then, can you accept anything else or give anything else and expect joy in return? And what else but joy would you want? You made neither yourself nor your function. You made only the decision to be unworthy of both. Yet you could not make yourself unworthy because you are the treasure of God. What He values is valuable. There can be no question of its worth because its value lies in God's sharing Himself with it and establishing its value forever.
47 Your function is to add to God's treasure by creating yours. His Will to you is His Will for you. He would not withhold creation from you because His joy is in it. You cannot find joy except as God does. His joy lay in creatingyou, and He extends His Fatherhood to you so that you can extend yourself as He did. You do not understand this because you do not understand Him. No one who does not know his function can understand it, and no one canknow his function unless he knows who he is. Creation is the Will of God. His Will created you to create. Your will was not created separate from His, and so it wills as He wills.
48 An "unwilling will" does not mean anything, being a contradiction in terms which actually leaves nothing. When you think you are unwilling to will with God, you are not thinking. God's Will is thought. It cannot be contradicted bythought. God does not contradict Himself, and His Sons, who are like Him, cannot contradict themselves or Him. Yet their thought is so powerful that they can even imprison the minds of God's Sons if they so choose. This choice does make the Son's function unknown to him, but never to his Creator. And because it is not unknown to his Creator, it is forever knowable to him.
49 There is no question but one you should ever ask of yourself- "Do I want to know my Father's Will for me?" Hewill not hide it. He has revealed it to me because I asked it of Him and learned of what He had already given. Our function is to function together because apart from each other we cannot function at all. The whole power of God's Son lies in all of us, but not in any of us alone. God would not have us be alone because He does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him.
50 Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God Himself and therefore as holy as He is. Through our creations, we extend our love and thus increase the joy of the Holy Trinity. You do not understand this for a very simple reason. You who are God's own treasure do not regard yourselves as valuable. Given this belief, you cannot understand anything. I share with God the knowledge of the value He puts upon you. My devotion to you is of Him, being born of my knowledge of myself and Him. We cannot be separated. Whom God has joined cannot be separated, and God has joined all His Sons with Himself. Can you be separated from your life and your being?
51 The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described, and it cannot be explained. I can make you aware of the conditions of truth, but the experience is of God. Together we can meet its conditions, but truth will dawn upon you of itself.
52 What God has willed for you is yours. He has given His Will to His treasure, whose treasure it is. Your heart lies where your treasure is, as His does. You who are beloved of God are wholly blessed. Learn this of me, and free the holy will of all those who are as blessed as you are.
L e s s o n 89 ~ Review II
[Review Lesson 77 and Lesson 78]
