Introduction to Levels of Mind and Levels of Mind Diagram
Why a Clear Mind is Important

You do not know the meaning of love, and that is your handicap. Do not attempt to teach yourself what you do not understand, and do not try to set up curriculum goals where yours have clearly failed. Your learning goal has been not to learn, and this cannot lead to successful learning. You cannot transfer what you have not learned, and the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure. Would you ask those who have failed to learn what learning aids are for? They do not know. If they could interpret the aids correctly, they would have learned from them. (T.12.V.6.7)

Why do we learn the Course? - For the peace that comes with the stability of true perception (levellessness). Ego thinking upholds belief in separation by seeing victimization, competition, bodies, and all that comprises self-concept as real. Ego confuses the mind about cause (content) and effect (form); it distracts the mind from itself (content) by drawing its attention to images on the screen (form). The Holy Spirit consistently brings everything perceived on the screen back to the mind, where it can be seen as what it is: the out-picturing of the mind's false thoughts/beliefs. The Holy Spirit sees only wholeness, all things working together for good, and only two orders of thought: love or a call for love. When the Holy Spirit's thought system has the mind's allegiance, it is at peace. And peace of mind is the goal of life. In a state of sleep or mindlessness, my perception is very unreliable and changes continually. In a state of alertness or mindfulness, I can be aware of and detached from "ego" thoughts and see everything and everyone differently. When my mind changes, my perception changes, and the world I see is different from the way I saw before.

Key Points of the Five Levels of Mind

MIND – Mind is beyond levels, Mind Is.

Mind reaches to itself. It does not go out. Complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind. But part of it is now unnatural. It does not look on everything as one. It sees instead but fragments of the whole
T-18.VI. 5 Mind reaches to itself. 6 It is not made up of different parts, which reach each other. 7 It does not ~o out. 8 Within itself it has no limits, and there is nothing outside it. 9 It encompasses everything. 10 It encompasses you entirely; you within it and it within you. 11 There is nothing else, anywhere or ever ... The body is outside you, and but seems to surround you, shutting you off from others and keeping you apart from them, and them from you. 2 It is not there. 3 There is no barrier between God and His Son, nor can His Son be separated from Himself except in illusions. 4 This is not his reality, though he believes it is."

W-pI.161.2. complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind. 2 But part of it is now unnatural. 3 It does not look on everything as one. 4 It sees instead but fragments of the whole, for only thus could it invent the partial world you see. 5 The purpose of all seeing~ is to show you what you wish to see. 6 All hearing but brings to your mind the sounds it wants to hear.
Thus were specifics made. 2 And now it is specifics we must use in practicing~. 3 We leave them to the Holy Spirit, that He may employ them for a purpose which is different from the one we gave to them. 4 Yet He can use but what we made, to teach us from a different point of view, so we can see a different use in everything. One brother is all brothers. 2 Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. 3 Such is the truth. 4 Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? 5 Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? 6 What can they seem to be but empty sounds; pretty, perhaps, correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. 7 The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all encompassing. 8 We need to see a little, that we learn a lot. It seems to be the body that we feel limits our freedom, makes us suffer, and at last puts out our life. 2 Yet bodies are but symbols for a concrete form of fear. 3 Fear without symbols calls for no response, for symbols can stand for the meaningless. 4 Love needs no symbols, being true. 5 But fear attaches to specifics, being false.

DESIRE

(T.10.I.4.1)You will remember everything the instant you desire it wholly, for if to desire wholly is to create, you will have willed away the separation, returning your mind simultaneously to your Creator and your creations. Knowing them you will have no wish to sleep, but only the desire to waken and be glad. Dreams will be impossible because you will want only truth, and being at last your will, it will be yours.

BELIEF

(T.4.II.4.7) Think of the love of animals for their offspring, and the need they feel to protect them. That is because they regard them as part of themselves. No one dismisses something he considers part of himself. You react to your ego much as God does to His creations, -with love, protection and charity. Your reactions to the self you made are not surprising. In fact, they resemble in many ways how you will one day react to your real creations, which are as timeless as you are. The question is not how you respond to the ego, but what you believe you are. Belief is an ego function, and as long as your origin is open to belief you are regarding it from an ego viewpoint. When teaching is no longer necessary you will merely know God. Belief that there is another way of perceiving is the loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable. That is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is not the Self. Belief produces the acceptance of existence. You believe in what you make. You still believe you are an image of your own making. Belief is an ego function, and as long as your origin is open to belief you are regarding it from an ego viewpoint.

Belief that there is another way of perceiving is the loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable. No belief is neutral. Every one has the power to dictate each decision you make. For a decision is a conclusion based on everything that you believe.

THOUGHT

(T.1.I.12.2) Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual. You are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. Thoughts are not big or little; powerful or weak. They are merely true or false.

The Ordering of Thoughts:

(T.7.VI.2.6) Your ability to direct your thinking as you choose is part of its power. If you do not believe you can do this you have denied the power of your thought, and thus rendered it powerless in your belief.


EMOTION

You have but two emotions, love and fear one you made and one was given you. Each is a way of seeing, and different worlds arise from their different sights.
"I am never upset for the reason I think." I am upset because I see a meaningless world."
"I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts."

(T.3.VII.5.10) As you approach the Beginning, you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought system upon you as if it were the fear of death.

(T.4.IV.1.2) That you do listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings and your behavior.

PERCEPTION

What perception sees and hears appears to be real because it permits into awareness only what conforms to the wishes of the perceiver. Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.

(T.4.IV.8.6) Judge how well you have done this by your own feelings, for this is the one right use of judgment.

-THE FIVE LEVELS OF MIND-

PERCEPTION

Preface: What perception sees and hears appears to be real because it permits into awareness only what conforms to the wishes of the perceiver. This leads to a world of illusions, a world which needs constant defense precisely because it is not real. The world we see merely reflects our own internal frame of reference - the dominant ideas, wishes and emotions in our minds. "Projection makes perception." We look inside first, decide the kind of world we want to see and then project that world outside, making it the truth as we see it. We make it true by our interpretations of what it is we are seeing. If we are using perception to justify our own mistakes - our anger, our impulses to attack, our lack of love in whatever form it may take - we will see a world of evil, destruction, malice, envy and despair. All this we must learn to forgive, not because we are being "good" and "charitable, " but because what we are seeing is not true. We have distorted the world with out twisted defenses, and are therefore seeing what is not there. As we learn to recognize our perceptual errors, we also learn to look past them and "forgive" them. Perception is a function of the body, and therefore represents a limit on awareness. Perception sees through the body’s eyes and hears through the body’s ears. It evokes the limited responses which the body makes.

T-18.1.4. You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution. 2 It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of illusion for truth; of fragmentation for wholeness. 3 It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still is what it was. 4 That one error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. 5 Your whole world rests upon it. 6 Everything you see reflects it, and every special relationship that you have ever made is part of it. You may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you see. 2 You do not realize the magnitude of that one error. 3 It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality had to emerge. 4 What else could come of it? 5 Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. 6 But nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to make further substitutions.
That was the first projection of error outward. 2 The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and the truth. 3 For truth extends inward, where the idea of loss is meaningless and only increase is conceivable. 4 Do you really think it strange that a world in which everything is backwards and upside down arose from this projection of error? 5 It was inevitable. 6 For truth brought to this could only remain within in quiet, and take no part in all the mad projection by which this world was made.

T-1.11.6. The miracle minimizes the need for time. 2 In the longitudinal or horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. 3 However, the miracle entails a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception.

T-1.111.6. You respond to what you perceive, and as you perceive so shall you behave. 2 The Golden Rule asks you to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 3 This means that the perception of both must be accurate. 4 The Golden Rule is the rule for appropriate behavior. 5 You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive correctly. 6 Since you and your neighbor are equal members of one family, as you perceive both so you will do to both. 7 You should look out from the perception of your own holiness to the holiness of others.

T-1.VI.1. 6 Until the "separation," which is the meaning of the "fall" nothing~ was lacking~. 7 There were no needs at all. 8 Needs arise only when you deprive yourself. 9 You ad according~ to the particular order of needs you establish. 10 This, in turn, depends on your perception of what you are. A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need corrected. 2 This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of truth, and had thus perceived yourself as lacking. 3 The idea of order of needs arose because, having~ made this fundamental error, you had already fragmented yourself into levels with different needs. 4 As you integrate you become one, and your needs become one accordingly. 5 Unified needs lead to unified action, because this produces a lack of conflict.

T-1.VII.2. 4 You can use your body best to help you enlarge your perception so you can achieve real vision, of which the physical eye is incapable. 5 Learning to do this is the body's only true usefulness. Fantasy is a distorted form of vision. 2 Fantasies of any kind are distortions, because they always involve twisting perception into unreality.

T-2.111.3. 6 eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there <must> be a better way. 7 As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning point. 8 This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. 9 The alternating investment in the two levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict, which can become very acute. 10 But the outcome is as certain as God.
Spiritual vision literally cannot see error, and merely looks for Atonement. 2 All solutions the physical eye seeks dissolve. 3 Spiritual vision looks within and recognizes immediately that the altar has been defiled and needs to be repaired and protected. 4 Perfectly aware of the right defense it passes over all others, looking past error to truth. 5 Because of the strength of its vision, it brings the mind into its service. 6 This re-establishes the power of the mind and makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay, realizing that it only adds unnecessary pain. 7 As a result, the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort.

T-3.11.2. 5 Innocent or true perception means that you never misperceive and always see truly. 6 More simply, it means that you never see what does not exist, and always see what does ... 5 If nothing but the truth exists, right-minded seeing cannot see anything but perfection.

T-3.11.6.The way to correct distortions is to withdraw your faith in them and invest it only in what is true. 2 You cannot make untruth true. 3 If you are willing to accept what is true in everything you perceive, you let it be true for you.

(T.3.III.1.1) We have been emphasizing perception, and have said very little about knowledge as yet. This is because perception must be straightened out before you can know anything. To know is to be certain. Uncertainty means that you do not know. Knowledge is power because it is certain, and certainty is strength. Perception is temporary. As an attribute of the belief in space and time, it is subject to either fear or love. Misperceptions produce fear and true perceptions foster love, but neither brings certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is not knowledge. True perception is the basis for knowledge, but knowing is the affirmation of truth and beyond all perceptions.

T-3.111.2. 2 To recognize means to "know again," implying that you knew before. 3 You can see in many ways because perception involves interpretation, and this means that it is not whole or consistent. 4 The miracle, being a way of perception, is not knowledge. 5 It is the right answer to a question, but you do not question when you know. 6 Questioning illusions is the first step in undoing them. 7 The miracle, or the right answer, corrects them. 8 Since perceptions change, their dependence on time is obvious. 9 How you perceive at any given time determines what you do, and actions must occur in time.

T-3.1I1.3. The questioning mind perceives itself in time, and therefore looks for future answers.

T-3.111.4. True vision is the natural perception of spiritual sight, but it is still a correction rather than a fact. 2 Spiritual sight is symbolic, and therefore not a device for knowing. 3 It is, however, a means of right perception, which brings it into the proper domain of the miracle. 4 A "vision of God" would be a miracle rather than a revelation. 5 The fad that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge. 6 That is why visions, however holy, do not last.

T-3.111.5. 9 Perception, miracles and doing are closely related. 1 0 Knowledge is the result of revelation and induces only thought. 11 Even in its most spiritualized form perception involves the body. 12 Knowledge comes from the altar within and is timeless because it is certain. 13 To perceive the truth is not the same as to know it.

Right perception is necessary before God can communicate directly to His altars, which He established in His Sons. 2 There He can communicate His certainty, and His knowledge will bring peace without question. 3 God is not a stranger to His Sons, and His Sons are not strangers to each other. 4 Knowledge preceded both perception and time, and will ultimately replace them. 5 That is the real meaning of "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," and "Before Abraham was I am." 6 Perception can and must be stabilized, but knowledge is stable.

T-3.1V.1. 5 Perception did not exist until the separation introduced degrees, aspects and intervals. 6 Spirit has no levels, and all conflicts arise from the concept of levels. 7 Only the Levels of the Trinity are capable of unity. 8 The levels created by the separation cannot but conflict. 9 This is because they are meaningless to each other. Consciousness, the level of perception, was the first split introduced into the mind after the separation, making the mind a perceiver rather than a creator. 2 Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego. 3 The ego is a wrong-minded attempt to perceive yourself as you wish to be, rather than as you are. 4 Yet you can know yourself only as you are, because that is all you can be sure of. 5 Everything else is open to question.

The ego is the questioning aspect of the post-separation self, which was made rather than created. 2 It is capable of asking questions but not of perceiving meaningful answers, because these would involve knowledge and cannot be perceived. 3 The mind is therefore confused, because only One-mindedness can be without confusion. 4 A separated or divided mind must be confused. 5 It is necessarily uncertain about what it is. 6 It has to be in conflict because it is out of accord with itself. 7 This makes its aspects strangers to each other, and this is the essence of the fear-prone condition, in which attack is always possible. 8 You have every reason to feel afraid as you perceive yourself. 9 This is why you cannot escape from fear until you realize that you did not and could not create yourself. 10 You can never make your misperceptions true, and your creation is beyond your own error. 11 That is why you must eventually choose to heal the separation.

T-3.1V.4. Right-mindedness is not to be confused with the knowing mind, because it is applicable only to right perception. 2 You can be right-minded or wrong-minded, and even this is subject to degrees, clearly demonstrating that knowledge is not involved.. .3 The term "right-mindedness" is properly used as the correction for "wrong-mindedness," and applies to the state of mind that induces accurate perception. 4 It is miracle-minded because it heals misperception, and this is indeed a miracle in view of how you perceive yourself. Perception always involves some misuse of mind, because it brings the mind into areas of uncertainty. 2 The mind is very active. 3 When it chooses to be separated it chooses to perceive. 4 Until then it wills only to know. 5 Afterwards it can only choose ambiguously, and the only way outofambiguity is clear perception.

T-21.V.1. 7 Perception is a choice and not a fact. 8 But on this choice depends far more than you may realize as yet. 9 For on the voice you choose to hear, and on the sights you choose to see, depends entirely your whole belief in what you are. 10 Perception is a witness but to this, and never to reality.

T-21.V.8. Faith and perception and belief can be misplaced, and serve the great deceiver's needs as well as truth. 2 But reason has no place at all in madness, nor can it be adjusted to fit its end. 3 Faith and belief are strong in madness, guiding perception toward what the mind has valued. 4 But reason enters not at all in this. 5 For the perception would fall away at once, if reason were applied. 6 There is no reason in insanity, for it depends entirely on reason's absence. 7 The ego never uses it, because it does not realize that it exists.M-19.5. Pray for God's justice, and do not confuse His mercy with your owninsanity. 2 Perception can make whatever picture the mind desires to see. 3 Remember this. 4 In this lies either Heaven or hell, as you elect. 5 God's justice points to Heaven just because it is entirely impartial. 6 It accepts all evidence that is brought before it, omitting nothing and assessing nothing as separate and apart from all the rest.

W-pI1.304.1. 3 Perception is a mirror, not a fact. 4 And what I look on is my state of mind, reflected outward.

EMOTION

T-13.V.l. I have said you have but two emotions love and fear. 2 One is changeless butcontinually exchanged, being offered by the eternal to the eternal. 3 In this exchange it is extended, for it increases as it is given. 4 The other has many forms, for the content of individual illusions differs greatly. 5 Yet they have one thin in common; they are all insane. 6 They are made of sights that are not seen, and sounds that are not heard. 7 They make up a private world that cannot be shared. 8 For they are meaningful only to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. 9 In this world their maker moves alone, for only he perceives them.
Each one peoples his world with figures from his individual past, and it is because of this thatprivate worlds do differ. 2 Yet the figures that he sees were never real, for they are made up only of his reactions to his brothers, and do not include their reactions to him. 3 Therefore, he does not see he made them, and that they are not whole. 4 For these figures have no witnesses, being perceived in one separate mind only.
It is through these strange and shadowy figures that the insane relate to their insane world. 2 For they see only those who remind them of these images, and it is to them that they relate. 3 Thus do they communicate with those who are not there, and it is they who answer them. 4 And no one hears their answer save him who called upon them, and he alone believes they answered him. 5 Projection makes perception, and you cannot see beyond it. 6 Again and again have you attacked your brother, because you saw in him a shadow figure in your private world. 7 And thus it is youmust attack yourself first, for what you attack is not in others. 8 Its only reality is in your own mind, and by attacking others you are literally attacking what is not there.

T-13.V.l0. You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was given you. 2 Each is a way of seeing, and different worlds arise from their different sights.

W-pI.189.5. what would you see? 2 The choice is given you. 3 But learn and do not let your mind forget this law of seeing: You will look upon that which you feel within. 4 If hatred finds a place within your heart, you will perceive a fearful world, held cruelly in deaths sharp-pointed, bony fingers. 5 If you feel the Love of God within you, you will look out on a world of mercy and of love.

T-19.1V.A.ll. Love's messengers are gently sent, and return with messages of love andgentleness. 2 The messengers of fear are harshly ordered to seek out guilt, and cherish every scrap of evil and of sin that they can find, losing none of them on pain of death, and laying them respectfully before their lord and master. 3 Perception cannot obey two masters, each asking for messages of different things in different languages. 4 What fear would feed upon, love overlooks. 5 What fear demands, love cannot even see. 6 The fierce attraction that guilt holds for fear is wholly absent from love's gentle perception. 7 What love would look upon is meaningless to fear, and Quite invisible.
Relationships in this world are the result of how the world is seen. 2 And this depends on which emotion was called on to send its messengers to look upon it, and return with word of what they saw. 3 Fear's messengers are trained through terror, and they tremble when their master calls on them to serve him. 4 For fear is merciless even to its friends. 5 Its messengers steal guiltily away in hungry search of guilt, for they are kept cold and starving and made very vicious by their master, who allows them to feast only upon what they return to him. 6 No little shred of guilt escapes their hungry eyes. 7 And in their savage search for sin they pounce on any Living thing they see, and carry it screaming to their master, to be devoured. Send not these savage messengers into the world, to feast upon it and to prey upon reality. 2 For they will bring you word of bones and skin and flesh. 3 They have been taught to seek for the corruptible, and to return with gorges filled with things decayed and rotted. 4 To them suchthings are beautiful, because they seem to allay their savage pangs of hunger. 5 For they are frantic with the pain of fear, and would avert the punishment of him who sends them forth by offering~ him what they hold dear.

T-19.1V.A.14. The Holy Spirit has given you love's messengers to send instead of those you trained through fear. 2 They are as eager to return to you what they hold dear as are the others. 3 If you send them forth, they will see only the blameless and the beautiful, the gentle and the kind. 4 They will be as careful to let no little act of charity, no tiny expression of forgiveness, no little breath of love escape their notice. 5 And they will return with all the happy things they found, to share them lovingly with you. 6 Be not afraid of them. 7 They offer you salvation. 8 Theirs are the messages of safety, for they see the world as kind.If you send forth only the messengers the Holy Spirit gives you, wanting no messages but theirs, you will see fear no more. 2 The world will be transformed before your sight, cleansed of all guilt and softly brushed with beauty. 3 The world contains no fear that you laid not upon it.

W-pI.51.5. I am never upset for the reason I think ... 3 The upset may seem to be fear, worry, depression, anxiety, anger, hatred, jealousy or any number of forms, all of which will be perceived as different. 4 This is not true ...
W6. I am upset because I see something that is not there.
W7 I see only the past.
W12 I am upset because I see a meaningless world.'W13 A meaningless world engenders fear because I think I am in competition with God.
W23 I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.

THOUGHT

T-l.1.12. 2 Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. 3 One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual.

T-2.VI.2. 3 Why should you condone insane thinking? 4 There is a confusion here that you would do well to look at clearly. 5 You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. 6 The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. 7 What you do comes from what you think. 8 You cannot separate yourself from the truth by giving· autonomy to behavior. 9 This is controlled by me automatically as soon as you place what you think under my guidance. 10 Whenever you are afraid, it is a sure sign that you have allowed your mind to miscreate and have not allowed me to guide it.
It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of misthouht can result in healing. 2 When you are fearful, you have chosen wrongly. 3 That is why you feel responsible for it. 4 You must change your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of willingness. 5 You do not need guidance except at the mind level. 6 Correction belongs only at the level where change is possible. 7 Change does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work.
The correction of fear is your responsibility. 2 When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. 3 You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. 4 These conditions always entail a willingness to be separate. 5 At that level you can help it. 6 You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, and are passively condoning your mind's miscreations. 7 The particular result does not matter, but the fundamental error does. 8 The correction is always the same.

T-2.VI.9. 5 The mind is very powerful, and never loses its creative force. 6 It never sleeps. 7 Every instant it is creating. 8 It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge that can literally move mountains. 9 It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is arrogant, but that is not the real reason you do not believe it. 10 You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them. 11 This may allay awareness of the guilt, but at the cost of perceiving the mind as impotent. 12 If you believe that what you think is ineffectual you may cease to be afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it. 13 There are no idle thoughts.

T-2.VII.2. I cannot let you leave your mind unguarded, or you will not be able to help me. 2 Miracle working entails a full realization of the power of thought in order to avoid miscreation. 3 Otherwise a miracle will be necessary to set the mind itself straight, a circular process that would not foster the time collapse for which the miracle was intended. 4 The miracle worker must have genuine respect for true cause and effect as a necessary condition for the miracle to occur. Both miracles and fear come from thoughts. 2 If you are not free to choose one, you would also not be free to choose the other.

Lesson 16: I have no neutral thoughts. The idea for today is a beginning~ step in dispelling the belief that your thoughts have no effect. 2 Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. 3 There is no exception to this fact. 4 Thoughts are not big or little; powerful or weak. 5 They are merely true or false. 6 Those that are true create their own likeness. 7 Those that are false make theirs. There is no more self-contradictory concept than that of "idle thoughts." 2 What gives rise to the perception of a whole world can hardly be called idle ... Besides your recognizing that thoughts are never idle, salvation requires that you also recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war; either love or fear. 2 A neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible. 3 There is such a temptation to dismiss fear thoughts as unimportant, trivial and not worth bothering about that it is essential you recognize them all as equally destructive, but equally unreal.

T-3.VII.1. 6 It is a mistake to believe that a thought system based on lies is weak.

T-4.1.4. 7 If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian of your thought system and open it to me, I will correct it very gently and lead you back to God.

T-14.1.3. 3 The thoughts the mind of God's Son projects or extends have all the power that he gives to them. 4 The thoughts he shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made are his beliefs. 5 And it is these, and not the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love. 6 They will not be taken from him. 7 But they can be given up by him, for the Source of their undoing is in him.

The Ordering of Thoughts

T-3.VI.3. 5 You do not need judgment to organize your life, and you certainly do not need it to organize yourself.

T-5.V.6. 13 Delusional ideas are not real thoughts, although you can believe in them. 14 But you are wrong. 15 The function of thought comes from God and is in God. 16 As part of His Thought, you cannot think apart from Him. Irrational thought is disordered thought. 2 God Himself orders your thought because your thought was created by Him. 3 Guilt feelings are always a sign that you do not know this. 4 They also show that you believe you can think apart from God, and want to. 5 Every disordered thought is attended by guilt at its inception, and maintained by guilt in its continuance. 6 Guilt is inescapable by those who believe they order their own thoughts, and must therefore obey their dictates. 7 This makes them feel responsible for their errors without recognizing that, by accepting this responsibility, they are reacting irresponsibly. 8 If the sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself, and I assure you that it is, then the responsibility for what is atoned for cannot be yours. 9 The dilemma cannot be resolved except by accepting the solution of undoing. 10 You would be responsible for the effects of all your wrong thinking if it could not be undone. 11 The purpose of the Atonement is to save the past in purified form only. 12 If you accept the remedy for disordered thought, a remedy whose efficacy is beyond doubt, how can its symptoms remain?
The continuing decision to remain separated is the only possible reason for continuing guilt feelings. 2 We have said this before, but did not emphasize the destructive results of the decision. 3 Any decision of the mind will affect both behavior and experience. 4 What you want you expect. 5 This is not delusional. 6 Your mind does make your future, and it will turn it back to full creation at any minute if it accepts the Atonement first. 7 It will also return to full creation the instant it has done so. 8 Having given up its disordered thought, the proper ordering of thought becomes quite apparent.

T-14.XA. Perhaps you have been aware of lack of competition among your thoughts, which even though they may conflict, can occur together and in react numbers. 2 You may indeed be so used to this that it causes you little surprise. 3 Yet you are also used to c1assifyinfJ some of your thoughts as more important, larger or better, wiser, or more productive and valuable than others. 4 This is true of the thoughts that cross the mind of those who think they live apart. 5 For some are reflections of Heaven, while others are motivated by the ego, which but seems to think. The result is a weaving, changing pattern that never rests and is never still. 2 It shifts unceasingly across the mirror of your mind, and the reflections of Heaven last but a moment and grow dim, as darkness blots them out. 3 Where there was light, darkness removes it in an instant, and alternating patterns of light and darkness sweep constantly across your mind. 4 The little sanity that still remains is held together by a sense of order that you establish. 5 Yet the very fact that you can do this, and bring any order into chaos shows you that you are not an ego, and that more than an ego must be in you. 6 For the ego is chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible. 7 Yet though the order you impose upon your mind limits the ego, it also limits you. 8 To order is to judge, and to arrange by judgment. 9 Therefore it is not your function, but the Holy Spirit's. It will seem difficult for you to learn that you have no basis at all for ordering your thoughts. 2 This lesson the Holy Spirit teaches by giving you the shining examples of miracles to show you that your way of ordering is wrong, but that a better way is offered you. 3 The miracle offers exactly the same response to every call for help. 4 It does not judge the call. 5 It merely recognizes what it is, and answers accordingly.

T-26.VII.6. It is impossible that one illusion be less amenable to truth than are the rest. 2 But it is possible that some are given greater value, and less willingly offered to truth for healing and for help. 3 No illusion has any truth in it. 4 Yet it appears some are more true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. 5 All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is preference, not reality. 6 What relevance has preference to the truth? 7 Illusions are illusions and are false. 8 Your preference gives them no reality. 9 Not one is true in any way, and all must yield with equal ease to what God gave as answer to them all. 10 God's Will is One. 11 And any wish that seems to go against His Will has no foundation in the truth.

T-30.1I1.8. The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine forever. 2 They await not birth. 3 They wait for welcome and remembering. 4 The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. 5 So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. 6 Yet still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity.

BELIEF

T-1.VIA. 4 Belief produces the acceptance of existence. 5 That is why you can believe what no one else thinks is true.

T-1.VII.3. although you can perceive false associations, you can never make them real except to yourself. 8 You believe in what you make. 9 If you offer miracles, you will be equally strong in your belief in them.

T-2.VII.5. 5 What you believe is true for you.

T-3.VII.1. Every system of thought must have a starting point. 2 It begins with either a making or a creating, a difference we have already discussed. 3 Their resemblance lies in their power as foundations. 4 Their difference lies in what rests upon them. 5 Both are cornerstones for systems of belief by which one lives.

T-3.VIIA. Eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic expression for usurping the ability for self-creating. 2 This is the only sense in which God and His creations are not co-creators. 3 The belief that they are is implicit in the "self-concept," or the tendency of the self to make an image of itself. 4 Images are perceived, not known. 5 Knowledge cannot deceive, but perception can. 6 You can perceive yourself as self-creating, but you cannot do more than believe it. 7 You cannot make it true. 8 And, as I said before, when you finally perceive correctly you can only be glad that you cannot. 9 Until then, however, the belief that you can is the foundation stone in your thought system, and all your defenses are used to attack ideas that might bring it to Light. 10 You still believe you are an image of your own making. 11 Your mind is split with the Holy Spirit on this point, and there is no resolution while you believe the one thing that is literally inconceivable. 12 That is why you cannot create and are filled with fear about what you make. The mind can make the belief in separation very real and very fearful, and this belief is the "devil." 2 It is powerful, active, destructive and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. 3 look at your life and see what the devil has made. 4 But realize that this making will surely dissolve in the Light of truth, because its foundation is a lie.

T-4.11.4.7. The question is not how you respond to the ego, but what you believe you are. 8 Belief is an ego function, and as long as your origin is open to belief you are regarding~ it from an ego viewpoint. 9 When teaching is no longer necessary you will merely know God. 10 Belief that there is another way of perceiving is the loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable. 11 That is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is not the Self.

T-4.11.8.The ego believes it is completely on its own, which is merely another way of describing how it thinks it originated. 2 This is such a fearful state that it can only turn to other egos and try to unite with them in a feeble attempt at identification, or attack them in an equally feeble show of strength. 3 It is not free, however, to open the premise to question, because the premise is its foundation. 4 The ego is the mind's belief that it is completely on its own. 5 The ego’s ceaseless attempts to gain the spirit's acknowledgment and thus establish its own existence are useless. 6 Spirit in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. 7 It does not attack it; it merely cannot conceive of it at all. 8 While the ego is equally unaware of spirit, it does perceive itself as being rejected by something greater than itself.

T-5.11.12. 4 The power of our joint motivation is beyond belief, but not beyond accomplishment. 5 What we can accomplish together has no limits, because the Call for God is the Call to the unlimited. 6 Child of God, my message is for you, to hear and give away as you answer the Holy Spirit within you.

T-6.V.C.6. 4 You have believed that you are without the Kingdom, and have therefore excluded yourself from it in your belief. 5 It is therefore essential to teach you that you must be included, and that the belief that you are not is the only thing that you must exclude. Altars are beliefs, but God and His creations are beyond belief because they are beyond question. 3 The Voice for God speaks only for belief beyond question, which is the preparation for being without question. 4 As 10nSl as belief in God and His Kingdom is assailed by any doubts in your mind, His perfect accomplishment is not apparent to you.

T-7.VI.7.3 Belief does not require vigilance unless it is conflicted. 41f it is, there are conflicting components within it that have led to a state of war, and vigilance has therefore become essential. 5 Vigilance has no place in peace. 6 It is necessary against beliefs that are not true, and would never have been called upon by the Holy Spirit if you had not believed the untrue. 7 When you believe something, you have made it true for you. 8 When you believe what God does not know, your thought seems to contradict His, and this makes it appear as if you are attacking Him.

T-7.VIII.6. The Holy Spirit will teach you to perceive beyond your belief, because truth is beyond belief and His perception is true. 2 The ego can be completely forgotten at any time, because it is a totally incredible belief, and no one can keep a belief he has judged to be unbelievable. 3 The more you learn about the ego, the more you realize that it cannot be believed. 4 The incredible cannot be understood because it is unbelievable. 5 The meaninglessness of perception based on the unbelievable is apparent, but it may not be recognized as being beyond belief, because it is made by belief.

T-9.VII.6. You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from within it. 2 Its range precludes this. 3 You can only go beyond it, look back from a point where sanity exists and see the contrast. 4 Only by this contrast can insanity be judged as insane.

T-14.1.3. 2 Were your thoughts wholly of you, the thought system you made would be forever dark. 3 The thoughts the mind of God's Son projects extends have all the power that he gives to them. 4 The thoughts he shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made are his beliefs. 5 And it is these, and not the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love. 6 They will not be taken from him. 7 But they can be given up <by> him, for the Source of their undoing is in him.

T-9.VII. 7. 6 The Holy Spirit judges against the reality of the ego's thought system merely because He knows its foundation is not true. 7 Therefore, nothing that arises from it means anything. 8 He judges every belief you hold in terms of where it comes from. 9 If it comes from God, He knows it to be true. 10 If it does not, He knows that it is meaningless.

T-11.V.5. Every idea has a purpose, and its purpose is always the natural outcome of what it

is. 2 Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its results is merely to recognize that their source is not natural, being out of accord with your true nature. 3 I said before that to will contrary to God is wishful thinking and not real willing.

T-3.VII.5. 8 Your Self is still in peace, even thought your mind is in conflict. 9 You have not yet gone back far enough, and that is why you become so fearful. 10 As you approach the Beginning, you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought system upon you as if it were the fear of death. 11 There is no death, but there is a belief in death.

T-8.VII.16. Do not allow yourself to suffer from imagined results of what is not true. 2 Free your mind from the belief that this is possible. 3 In its complete impossibility lies your only hope for release.

T-24.in.2. To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. 2 Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning. 3 No belief is neutral. 4 Every one has the power to dictate each decision you make. 5 For a decision is a conclusion based on everything that you believe. 6 It is the outcome of belief, and follows it as surely as does suffering follow guilt and freedom sinlessness. 7 There is no substitute for peace. 8 What God creates has no alternative. 9 The truth arises from what He knows. 10 And your decisions come from your beliefs as certainly as all creation rose in His Mind because of what He knows.

T-14.VII.2. The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything that interferes with truth. 2 Truth is. 3 It can neither be lost nor sought nor found. 4 It is there, wherever you are, being within you. 5 Yet it can be recognized or unrecognized, real or false to you. 6 If you hide it, it becomes unreal to you because you hid it and surrounded it with fear. 7 Under each cornerstone of fear on which you have erected your insane system of belief, the truth lies hidden. 8 Yet you cannot know this, for by hiding truth in fear, you see no reason to believe that the more you look at fear the less you see it, and the clearer what it conceals becomes.

T-14.VII.4. Our emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable to the desirable; what you do not want to what you do. 2 You will realize that salvation must come to you this way, if you consider what dissociation is. 3 Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief which cannot coexist are both maintained. 4 If they are brought together, their joint acceptance becomes impossible. 5 But if one is kept in darkness from the other, their separation seems to keep them both alive and equal in their reality. 6 Their joining thus becomes the source of fear, for if they meet, acceptance must be withdrawn from one of them. 7 You cannot have them both, for each denies the other. 8 Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each in a separate place can be endowed with firm belief. 9 Bringing them together and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. 10 One will go, because the other is seen in the same place. Light cannot enter darkness when a mind believes in darkness, and will not let it go.

T-21.V.1. 7 Perception is a choice and not a fact. 8 But on this choice depends far more than you may realize as yet. 9 For on the voice you choose to hear, and on the sights you choose to see, depends entirely your whole belief in what you are. 10 Perception is a witness but to this, and never to reality.

T-21.V.8. Faith and perception and belief can be misplaced, and serve the great deceiver's needs as well as truth. 2 But reason has no place at all in madness, nor can it be adjusted to fit its end. 3 Faith and belief are strong in madness, guiding perception toward what the mind has valued. 4 But reason enters not at all in this. 5 For the perception would fall away at once, if reason were applied. 6 There is no reason in insanity, for it depends entirely on reason's absence. 7 The ego never uses it, because it does not realize that it exists.

T-22.111.2. The ego’s whole continuance depends on its belief you cannot learn this course. 2 Share this belief, and reason will be unable to see your errors and make way for their correction. 3 For reason sees through errors, telling you what you thought was real is not. 4 Reason can see the difference between sin and mistakes, because it wants correction. 5 Therefore, it tells you what you thought was uncorrectable can be corrected, and thus it must have been an error. 6 The ego’s opposition to correction leads to its fixed belief in sin and disregard of errors. 7 It looks on nothing that can be corrected. 8 Thus does the ego damn, and reason save. Reason is not salvation in itself, but it makes way for peace and brings you to a state of mind in which salvation can be given you.

The Helpful Use of Belief

T-ll.VI.3. This course is perfectly clear. 2 If you do not see it clearly, it is because you are interpretation against it, and therefore do not believe it. 3 And since belief determines perception, you do not perceive what it means and therefore do not accept it. 4 Yet different experiences lead to different beliefs, and with them different perceptions. 5 For perceptions are learned with beliefs, and experience does teach. 6 I am leading you to a new kind of experience that you will become less and less willing to deny. 7 Learning of Christ is easy, for to perceive with Him involves no strain at all. 8 His perceptions are your natural awareness, and it is only the distortions you introduce that tire you. 9 let the Christ in you interpret for you, and do not try to limit what you see by narrow little beliefs that are unworthy of God's Son.

T-13.1X.2. Faith can be rewarded only in terms of the belief in which the faith was placed. 5 Faith makes the power of belief, and where it is invested determines its reward. 6 For faith is always given what is treasured, and what is treasured is returned to you. The world can give you only what you gave it, for being nothing but your own projection, it has no meaning apart from what you found in it and placed your faith in. 2 Be faithful unto darkness and you will not see, because your faith will be rewarded as you gave it.

T-13.X.13. Like you, my faith and my belief are centered on what I treasure. 2 The difference is that I love <only> what God loves with me, and because of this I treasure you beyond the value that you set on yourself, even unto the worth that God has placed upon you. 3 I love all that He created, and all my faith and my belief I offer unto it. 4 My faith in you is as strong as all the love I give my Father. 5 My trust in you is without limit, and without the fear that you will hear me not.

Examples of "Specific" Beliefs

T-1.1.22 the belief that darkness can hide.
T-1.1V.3 the "scarcity" belief, from which only error can proceed.
T-1.1VA the belief in deprivation
T-2.11.2 belief that error can hurt you.
T-2.11.4 belief in space and time
T-22.inA belief in differences
T-2.1I1.1 belief that the body can be used as a means for attaining "atonement."
T-2.1V.2 the belief that what is amiss on one level can adversely affect another.
T-2.1VA the belief that miracles are frightening~.
T-2.V.1 the belief that release is imprisonment
T-2.V.7 the belief in physical sight.
T-4.1.7 the belief in superiority and inferiority.
T-15.1A The belief in hell
T-3.1.3 the belief that God rejected Adam and forced him out of the Garden of Eden.
T-3.11.3. When you lack confidence in what someone will do, you are attesting~ to your belief that he is not in his right mind.
T-3.V.7 5 Perception ... is impossible without a belief in "more" and "less." At every level it involves selectivity.
T-5.VA 9 Unnatural thinking will always be attended with guilt, because it is the belief in sin.
T-2.VI1.4 ... you believe you cannot control fear because you yourself made it, and your belief in it seems to render it out of your control.
T-6.V.B.1. , , All who believe in separation have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. 2 They believe in attack and rejection.
T-2.1V.2. 7 Physical illness represents a belief in magic.
T-3.VI1.5. 11 There is no death, but there is a belief in death.
T-4.1I1.5. Your belief in darkness and hiding is why the Light cannot enter.
T-6.11.1.Any split in mind must involve a rejection of part of it, and this is the belief in separation.
T-4.11.4. 10 Belief that there is another way of perceiving is the loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable. 11 That is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is not the Self.
T-15.1.6. The belief in guilt must lead to the belief in hell, and always does.
T-24.1.8. The fear of God and of your brother comes from each unrecognized belief in specialness. 2 For you demand your brother bow to it against his will.

DESIRE

T-3.VI.11. 3 Free will must lead to freedom. 4 Judgment always imprisons because it separates segments of reality by the unstable scales of desire. 5 Wishes are not facts. 6 To wish is to imply that willing is not sufficient. 7 Yet no one in his right mind believes that what is wished is as real as what is willed.

T-6.V.B.8. 8 To desire wholly is to create, and creating cannot be difficult if God Himself created you as a creator.

T-10.1.4. You will remember everything the instant you desire it wholly, for if to desire wholly is to create, you will have willed away the separation, returning your mind simultaneously to your Creator and your creations. 2 Knowing them you will have no wish to sleep, but only the desire to waken and be glad. 3 Dreams will be impossible because you will want only truth, and being at last your will, it will be yours.

T-12.VII1.5. 2 Yet the memory of God cannot shine in a mind that has obliterated it and wants to keep it so. 3 For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remember, and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality.

T-15.1V.2. Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to let all littleness. 2 The instant in which magnitude dawns upon you is but as far away as your desire for it. 3 As lon~ as you desire it not and cherish littleness instead, by so much is it far from you. 4 By so much as you want it will you bringing it nearer.

T-15.VII.14. 5 The willingness to communicate attracts communication to it, and overcomes loneliness completely. 6 There is complete forgiveness here, for there is no desire to exclude anyone from your completion, in sudden recognition of the value of his part in it. 7 In the protection of your wholeness, all are invited and made welcome.

T-15.VII1.2. Hear Him gladly, and learn of Him that you have need of no special relationships at all. 2 You but seek in them what you have thrown away. 3 And through them you will never learn the value of what you have cast aside, but still desire with all your heart. 4 Let us join together in making the holy instant all that there is, by desiring that it be all that there is.

T-18.1I1.4. 9 You have accepted God. 10 The holiness of your relationship is established in Heaven. 11 You do not understand what you accepted, but remember that your understanding is not necessary. 12 All that was necessary was merely the wish to understand. 13 That wish was the desire to be holy. 14 The Will of God is granted you. 15 For you desire the only thin~ you ever had, or ever were. Each instant that we spend together will teach you that this goal is possible, and will strengthen your desire to reach it. 2 And in your desire lies its accomplishment. 3 Your desire is now in complete accord with all the power of the Holy Spirit's Will. 4 No little, faltering footsteps that you may take can separate your desire from His Will and from His strength. 5 I hold your hand as surely as you agreed to take your brother's. 6 You will not separate, for I stand with you and walk with you in your advance to truth.

T-18.1I1.7. 4 We are made whole in our desire to make whole. 5 let not time worry you, for all the fear that you and your brother experience is really past. 6 Time has been readjusted to help us do, together, what your separate pasts would hinder. 7 You have gone past fear, for no two minds can join in the desire for love without love's joining them. Not one light in Heaven but goes with you. 2 Not one Ray that shines forever in the Mind of God but shines on you. 3 Heaven is joined with you in your advance to Heaven. 4 When such great lights have joined with you to give the little spark of your desire the power of God Himself, can you remain in darkness? 5 You and your brother are coming home together, after a long and meaningless journey that you undertook apart, and that led nowhere. 6 You have found your brother, and you will light each other's way.

T-18.1V.1. The holy instant is the result of your determination to be holy. 2 It is the answer. 3 The desire and the willingness to let it come precede its coming. 4 You prepare your mind for it only to the extent of recognizing that you want it above all else. 5 It is not necessary that you do more; indeed, it is necessary that you realize that you cannot do more.

T-18.V. 7. 3 I desire this holy instant for myself, that I may share it with my brother, whom I love. 4 It is not possible that I can have it without him, or he without me.

T-19.1V.D.5. 3 The desire to get rid of peace and drive the Holy Spirit from you fades in the presence of the quiet recognition that you love Him.

T-20.VII.5. 6 Seeing adapts to wish, for sight is always secondary to desire. 7 And if you see the body, you have chosen judgment and not vision. 8 For vision, like relationships, has no order. 9 You either see or not. Who sees a brother's body has laid a judgment on him, and sees him not. 2 He does not really see him as sinful; he does not see him at all.

T-20.VIII.1. 2 Truth is restored to you through your desire, as it was lost to you through your desire for something else. 3 Open the holy place that you closed off by valuing the "something else,· and what was never lost will quietly return. 4 It has been saved for you. 5 Vision would not be necessary had judgment not been made. 6 Desire now its whole undoing, and it is done for you.

T-20.VIII.3. Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision and to rejoice in along with Him. 2 For peace will come to all who ask for it with real desire and sincerity of purpose, shared with the Holy Spirit and at one with Him on what salvation is. 3 Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless, that Christ may rise before your vision and give you joy. 4 And place no value on your brother's body, which holds him to illusions of what he is.

T-21.1I.8. 6 Faith and desire go hand in hand, for everyone believes in what he wants. We have already said that wishful thinking is how the ego deals with what it wants, to make it so. 2 There is no better demonstration of the power of wanting, and therefore of faith, to make its goals seem real and possible. 3 Faith in the unreal leads to adjustments of reality to make it fit the goal of madness. 4 The goal of sin induces the perception of a fearful world to justify its purpose. 5 What you desire, you will see.

T-21.1I1.6. 5 You made perception that you might choose among your brothers, and seek for sin with them. 6 The Holy Spirit sees perception as a means to teach you that the vision of a holy relationship is all you want to see. 7 Then will you give your faith to holiness, desiring and believing in it because of your desire. Faith and belief become attached to vision, as all the means that once served sin are redirected now toward holiness ... Those who would free their brothers from the body can have no fear. 2 They have renounced the means for sin by choosing to let all limitations be removed. 3 As they desire to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of their belief and faith sees far beyond the body, supporting vision, not obstructing it. 4 But first they chose to recognize how much their faith had limited their understanding of the world, desiring to place its power elsewhere should another point of view be given them. 5 The miracles that follow this decision are also born of faith. 6 For all who choose to look away from sin are given vision, and are led to holiness.

T-21.VI.11. 5 God is not mocked; no more His Son can be imprisoned save by his own desire. 6 And it is by his own desire that he is freed. 7 Such is his strength, and not his weakness. 8 He is at his own mercy.

T-21.VII.5. 11 Do I desire a world I rule instead of one that rules me?12 Do I desire a world where I am powerful instead of helpless? 13 Do I desire a world in which I have no enemies and cannot sin? 14 And do I want to see what I denied because it is the truth? You may already have answered the first three questions, but not yet the last. 2 For this one still seems fearful, and unlike the others. 3 Yet reason would assure you they are all the same. 4 We said this year would emphasize the sameness of things that are the same. 5 This final question, which is indeed the last you need decide, still seems to hold a threat the rest have lost for you. 6 And this imagined difference attests to your belief that truth may be the enemy you yet may find.

T-21.VI1.10. Why is the final question so important? 2 Reason will tell you why. 3 It is the same as are the other three, except in time. 4 The others are decisions that can be made, and then unmade and made again. 5 But truth is constant, and implies a state where vacillations are impossible. 6 You can desire a world you rule that rules you not, and change your mind. 7 You can desire to exchange your helplessness for power, and lose this same desire as a little glint of sin attracts you. 8 And you can want to see a sinless world, and let an "enemy" tempt you to use the body's eyes and change what you desire. In content all the questions are the same. 2 For each one asks if you are willing to exchange the world of sin for what the Holy Spirit sees, since it is this the world of sin denies. 3 And therefore those who look on sin are seeing the denial of the real world. 4 Yet the last question adds the wish for constancy in your desire to see the real world, so the desire becomes the only one you have. 5 By answering the final question "yes," you add sincerity to the decisions you have already made to all the rest. 6 For only then have you renounced the option to change your mind again. 7 When it is this you do not want, the rest are wholly answered.

T-21.VII.13. 5 The power of the Son of God's desire remains the proof that he is wrong who sees himself as helpless. 6 Desire what you want, and you will look on it and think it real. 7 No thought but has the power to release or kill. 8 And none can leave the thinker's mind, or leave him unaffected.

T-21.VIII.2. The constancy of joy is a condition quite alien to your understanding. 2 Yet if you could even imagine what it must be, you would desire it although you understand it not. 3 The constancy of happiness has no exceptions; no change of any kind. 4 It is unshakable as is the Love of God for His creation. 5 Sure in its vision as its Creator is in what He knows, happiness looks on everything and sees it is the same. 6 It sees not the ephemeral, for it desires everything be like itself, and sees it so. 7 Nothing has power to confound its constancy, because its own desire cannot be shaken. 8 It comes as surely unto those who see the final question is necessary to the rest, as peace must come to those who choose to heal and not to judge.

T-21.VIII.3. Reason will tell you that you cannot ask for happiness inconstantly. 2 For if what you desire you receive, and happiness is constant, then you need ask for it but once to have it always. 3 And if you do not have it always, being what it is, you did not ask for it. 4 For no one fails to ask for his desire of something he believes holds out some promise of the power of giving it. 5 He may be wrong in what he asks, where, and of what. 6 Yet he will ask because desire is a request, an asking for, and made by one whom God Himself will never fail to answer. 7 God has already given all that he really wants. 8 Yet what he is uncertain of, God cannot give. 9 For he does not desire it while he remains uncertain, and God's giving must be incomplete unless it is received.

T-21.VII1.5. What is the holy instant but God's appeal to you to recognize what He has given you? 2 Here is the great appeal to reason; the awareness of what is always there to see, the happiness that could be always yours. 3 Here is the constant peace you could experience forever. 4 Here is what denial has denied revealed to you. 5 For here the final question is already answered, and what you ask for given. 6 Here is the future now for time is powerless because of your desire for what will never change. 7 For you have asked that nothing stand between the holiness of your relationship and your awareness of its holiness.

T-22.2.12. Beyond the body that you interposed between you and your brother, and shining in the golden light that reaches it from the bright, endless circle that extends forever, is your hOly relationship, beloved of God Himself. 2 How still it rests, in time and yet beyond, immortal yet on earth. 3 How great the power that lies in it. 4 Time waits upon its will, and earth will be as it would have it be. 5 Here is no separate will, nor the desire that anything be separate. 6 Its will has no exceptions, and what it wills is true. 7 Every illusion brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked and disappears. 8 For at its center Christ has been reborn, to light His home with vision that overlooks the world. 9 Would you not have this holy home be yours as well? 10 No misery is here, but only joy.

T-25.1.5. Since you believe that you are separate, Heaven presents itself to you as separate, too. 2 Not that it is in truth, but that the link that has been given you to join the truth may reach to you through what you understand. 3 Father and Son and Holy Spirit are as One, as all your brothers join as one in truth. 4 Christ and His Father never have been separate, and Christ abides within your understanding, in the part of you that shares His Father's Will. 5 The Holy Spirit links the other part-the tiny, mad desire to be separate, different and special-to the Christ, to make the oneness clear to what is really one. 6 In this world this is not understood, but can be taught.

T-29.VI.1. How willing are you to forgive your brother? 2 How much do you desire peace instead of endless strife and misery and pain? 3 These questions are the same, in different form.

T-30.VIIIA. 5 There is no miracle you cannot have when you desire healing. 6 But there is no miracle that can be given you unless you want it.

W-pI.20.5. 5 What you desire you will see. 6 Such is the real law of cause and effect as it operates in the world.

W-pI.133.13 4 / will not value what is valueless, and only what has value do /seek, for only that do / desire to find.

W-pI.182.12. You have not lost your innocence. 2 It is for this you yearn. 3 This is your heart's desire.

W-pI1.253.1. It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. 2 Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. 3 What happens is what I desire. 4 What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. 5 This must I accept. 6 For thus am lied past this world to my creations, children of my will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them and Him Who has created me.

W-pI1.287.2. You are my goal, my Father. 2 What but You could / desire to have? 3 What way but that which leads to You could / desire to walk? 4 And what except the memory of You could signify to me the end of dreams and futile substitutions for the truth? 5 You are my only goal.

M-28.1. Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. 2 It is a reawakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. 3 It is the acceptance of the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the world's purpose; the acceptance of the Atonement for oneself. 4 It is the end of dreams of misery, and the glad awareness of the Holy Spirit's final dream. 5 It is the recognition of the gifts of God. 6 It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. 7 It is the lesson in which learning ends, for it is consummated and surpassed with this. 8 It is the invitation to God to take His final step. 9 It is the relinquishment of all other purposes, all other interests, all other wishes and all other concerns. 10 It is the single desire of the Son for the Father.

S-1.1I1.6. It is not easy to realize that prayers for things, for status, for human love, for external gifts of any kind, are always made to set up jailers and to hide from guilt. 2 These things are used for goals that substitute for God, and therefore distort the purpose of prayer. 3 The desire for them <is> the prayer. 4 One need not ask explicitly. 5 The goal of God is lost in the quest for lesser goals of any kind, and prayer becomes requests for enemies. 6 The power of prayer can be quite clearly recognized even in this. 7 No one who wants an enemy will fail to find one. 8 But just as surely will he lose the only true goal that is given him. 9 Think of the cost, and understand it well. 10 All other goals are at the cost of God.

Seek Not Outside Yourself

T-29.VII.1. Seek not outside yourself. 2 For it will fail, and you will weep each time an idol falls. 3 Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace excepting there. 4 Each idol that you worship when God calls will never answer in His place. 5 There is no other answer you can substitute, and find the happiness His answer brings. 6 Seek not outside yourself. 7 For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insistin~ where it must be found. 8 What if it is not there? 9 Do you prefer that you be right or happy? lO Be you glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer elsewhere. 11 You will fail. 12 But it is given you to know the truth, and not to seek for it outside yourself. No one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion, or some dream that there is something outside of himself that will bring happiness and peace to him. 2 If everything is in him this cannot be so. 3 And therefore by his coming, he denies the truth about himself, and seeks for something more than everything, as if a part of it were separated off and found where all the rest of it is not. 4 This is the purpose he bestows upon the body; that it seek for what he lacks, and give him what would make himself complete. 5 And thus he wanders aimlessly about, in search of something that he cannot find, believing that he is what he is not. The lingering illusion will impel him to seek out a thousand idols, and to seek beyond them for a thousand more. 2 And each will fail him, all excepting one; for he will die, and does not understand the idol that he seeks is but his death. 3 Its form appears to be outside himself. 4 Yet does he seek to kill God's Son within, and prove that he is victor over him. 5 This is the purpose every idol has, for this the role that is assigned to it, and this the role that cannot be fulfilled.
Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the body's betterment is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death. 2 For you believe that you can suffer lack, and lack is death. 3 To sacrifice is to give up, and thus to be without and to have suffered loss. 4 And by this giving up is life renounced. 5 Seek not outside yourself. 6 The search implies you are not whole within and fear to look upon your devastation, but prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are. Idols must fall because they have no life, and what is lifeless is a sign of death. 2 You came to die, and what would you expect but to perceive the signs of death you seek? 3 No sadness and no suffering proclaim a message other than an idol found that represents a parody of life which, in its lifelessness, is really death, conceived as real and given living form. 4 Yet each must fail and crumble and decay, because a form of death cannot be life, and what is sacrificed cannot be whole. All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is outside yourself to be complete and happy. 2 It is vain to worship idols in the hope of peace. 3 God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. 4 No idol takes His place. 5 look not to idols. 6 Do not seek outside yourself.

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