April 13, 2018

Day 146 - A Course in Miracles

Day 146 - A Course in Miracles



Chapter Thirteen: From Perception to Knowledge

VI. The Testimony of Miracles


47 Yes, you are blessed indeed. Yet in this world, you do not know it. But you have the means for learning it and seeing it quite clearly. The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily and as well, as does the ego, except that His conclusions are not insane. They take a direction exactly opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego's logic and have seen its logical conclusions. And having seen them, we have realized that they cannot be seen but in illusions, for there alone their seeming clearness seems to be clearly seen. Let us now turn away from them and follow the simple logic by which the Holy Spirit teaches you the simple conclusions that speak for truth and only truth.

48 If you are blessed and do not know it, you need to learn it must be so. The knowledge is not taught, but its conditions must be acquired, for it is they that have been thrown away. You can learn to bless and cannot give what you have not. If, then, you offer blessing, it must have come first to yourself. And you must also have accepted it as yours, for how else could you give it away?

49 That is why your miracles offer you the testimony that you are blessed. If what you offer is complete forgiveness, you must have let guilt go, accepting the Atonement for yourself and learning you are guiltless. How could you learn what has been done for you, but which you do not know, unless you do what you would have to do if it had been done unto you? Indirect proof of truth is needed in a world made of denial and without direction. You will perceive the need for this if you will realize that to deny is the decision not to know. The logic of the world musttherefore lead to nothing, for its goal is nothing.

50 If you decide to have and give and be nothing except a dream, you must direct your thoughts unto oblivion. And if you have and give and are everything, and all this has been denied, your thought system is closed off and wholly separated from the truth. This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream is sacred to you. That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream.

51 Seeing is always outward. Were your thoughts wholly of you, the thought system which you made would be forever dark. The thoughts which the mind of God's Son projects have all the power that he gives to them. The thoughts he shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made are his beliefs. And it is these, and not the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love. They will not be taken from him. But they can be given up by him, for the Source of their undoing is in him. There is nothing in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane and leads to nothing. Yet in him who made this insane logic, there is One Who knows it leads to nothing, for He knows everything.

52 Any direction which will lead you where the Holy Spirit leads you not goes nowhere. Anything you deny which He knows to be true, you have denied yourself, and He must therefore teach you not to deny it. Undoing is indirect, as doing is. You were created only to create, neither to see nor do. These are but indirect expressions of the will to live, which has been blocked by the capricious and unholy whim of death and murder that your Father shared not with you. You have set yourselves the task of sharing what cannot be shared. And while you think it possible tolearn to do this, you will not believe all that is possible to learn to do.

53 The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching by showing you what you can never learn. His message is not indirect, but He must introduce the simple truth into a thought system which has become so twisted and so complex that you cannot see that it means nothing. He merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. But you, who cannot undo what you have made [nor escape the heavy burden of its dullness that lies upon your minds], cannot see through it. It deceives you because you chose to deceive yourselves. Those who choose to be deceived will merely attack direct approaches, which would seem but to encroach upon deception and strike at it.



REVIEW IV 
INTRODUCTION

R4:1 Now we review again, this time aware we are preparing for the second part of learning how the truth can be applied. Today we will begin to concentrate on readiness for what will follow next. Such is our aim for this review and for the lessons following. Thus we review the recent lessons and their central thoughts in such a way as will facilitate the readiness which we would now achieve.

2 There is a central theme that unifies each step in the review we undertake, which can be simply stated in these words:

3 My mind holds only what I think with God.

4 This is a fact and represents the truth of what you are and what your Father is. It is this thought by which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as co-creator with Himself. It is this thought which fully guarantees salvation to the Son. For in his mind no thoughts can dwell but those his Father shares. Lack of forgiveness blocks this thought from his awareness. Yet it is forever true.

5 Let us begin our preparation with some understanding of the many forms in which the lack of true forgiveness may be carefully concealed. Because they are illusions, they are not perceived to be but what they are—defenses which protect your unforgiving thoughts from being seen and recognized. Their purpose is to show you something else and hold correction off through self-deceptions made to take its place.

6 And yet your mind holds only what you think with God. Your self-deceptions cannot take the place of truth. No more than can a child who throws a stick into the ocean change the coming and the going of the tides, the warming of the water by the sun, the silver of the moon on it by night. So do we start each practice period in this review with readying our minds to understand the lessons that we read and see the meaning which they offer us.

7 Begin each day with time devoted to the preparation of your mind to learn what each idea you will review that day can offer you in freedom and in peace. Open your mind and clear it of all thoughts that would deceive, and let this thought alone engage it fully and remove the rest:

8 My mind holds only what I think with God.

9 Five minutes with this thought will be enough to set the day along the lines which God appointed and to place His Mind in charge of all the thoughts you will receive that day. They will not come from you alone, for they will all be shared with Him. And so each one will bring the message of His Love to you, returning messages of yours to Him. So will communion with the Lord of Hosts be yours, as He Himself has willed it be. And as His own completion joins with Him, so will He join with you who are complete as you unite with Him and He with you.

10After your preparation, merely read each of the two ideas assigned to you to be reviewed that day. Then close your eyes and say them slowly to yourself. There is no hurry now, for you are using time for its intended purpose. Let each word shine with the meaning God has given it as it was given to you through His Voice. Let each idea that you review that day give you the gift which He has laid in it for you to have of Him. And we will use no format for our practicing but this:

11 Each hour of the day bring to your mind the thought with which the day began and spend a quiet moment with it. Then repeat the two ideas you practice for the day unhurriedly, with time enough to see the gifts which they contain for you, and let them be received where they were meant to be. We add no other thoughts, but let them be the messages they are. We need no more than this to give us happiness and rest and endless quiet, perfect certainty, and all our Father wills that we receive as the inheritance we have of Him.

12 Each day of practicing, as we review, we close as we began, repeating first the thought that made the day a special time of blessing and of happiness for us and through our faithfulness restored the world from darkness to the light, from grief to joy, from pain to peace, from sin to holiness. God offers thanks to you who practice thus the keeping of His Word. And as you give your mind to the ideas for the day again before you sleep, His gratitude surrounds you in the peace wherein He wills you be forever and are learning now to claim again as your inheritance.




Workbook - L e s s o n 145


My mind holds only what I think with God.

[131] No one can fail who asks to reach the truth.

[132] I loose the world from all I thought it was.


365 Days Through A Course in Miracles
            A Daily Miracle Lesson


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