April 19, 2018

Day 161 - A Course in Miracles

Day 161 - A Course in Miracles


Chapter Fifteen: The Purpose of Time

I. Introduction


1 Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? Yet that is what time is for—to learn just that and nothing more. God's Teacher cannot be satisfied with His teaching until it constitutes all your learning. He has not fulfilled His teaching function until you have become such a consistent learner that you learn only of Him. When this has happened, you will no longer need a teacher or time in which to learn.

2 One source of perceived discouragement from which you suffer is your belief that this takes time, and that the results of the Holy Spirit's teaching are far in the future. This is not so. For the Holy Spirit uses time in His own way and is not bound by it. [Time is His friend in teaching. It does not waste Him as it does you.] And all the waste that time seems to bring with it is due but to your identification with the ego, which uses time to support its belief in destruction. The ego, like the Holy Spirit, uses time to convince you of the inevitability of the goal and end of teaching. To the ego the goal is death, which is its end. But to the Holy Spirit the goal is life, which has no end.



L e s s o n 161

Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.


1 Today we practice differently and take a stand against our anger that our fears may disappear and offer room to love. Here is salvation in the simple words in which we practice today's idea. Here is the answer to temptation which can never fail to welcome in the Christ where fear and anger had prevailed before. Here is Atonement made complete, the world passed safely by, and Heaven now restored. Here is the answer of the Voice of God.

2 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, for only thus could it invent the partial world you see. The purpose of all seeing is to show you what you wish to see. All hearing but brings to your mind the sounds it wants to hear.

3 Thus were specifics made. And now it is specifics we must use in practicing. We give them to the Holy Spirit that He may employ them for a purpose which is different from the one we gave to them. 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.

4 One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? What can they seem to be but empty sounds, pretty, perhaps; correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all-encompassing. We need to see a little that we learn a lot.

5 It seems to be the body that we feel limits our freedom, makes us suffer, and at last puts out our life. Yet bodies are but symbols of a concrete form of fear. Fear without symbols calls for no response, for symbols can stand for the meaningless. Love needs no symbols, being true. But fear attaches to specifics, being false.

6 Bodies attack but minds do not. This thought is surely reminiscent of our text, where it is often emphasized. This is the reason bodies easily become fear's symbols. You have many times been urged to look beyond the body, for its sight presents the symbol of love's "enemy" Christ's vision does not see. The body is the target for attack, for no one thinks he hates a mind. Yet what but mind directs the body to attack? What else could be the seat of fear except what thinks of fear?

7 Hate is specific. There must be a thing to be attacked. An enemy must be perceived in such a form he can be touched and seen and heard and ultimately killed. When hatred rests upon a thing, it calls for death as surely as God's Voice proclaims there is no death. Fear is insatiable, consuming everything its eyes behold, seeing itself in everything, compelled to turn upon itself and to destroy.

8 Who sees a brother as a body sees him as fear's symbol. And he will attack because what he beholds is his own fear external to himself, poised to attack and howling to unite with him again. Mistake not the intensity of rage projected fear must spawn. It shrieks in wrath and claws the air in frantic hope it can reach to its maker and devour him.

9 This do the body's eyes behold in one whom Heaven cherishes, the angels love, and God created perfect. This is his reality. And in Christ's vision is his loveliness reflected in a form so holy and so beautiful that you could scarce refrain from kneeling at his feet. Yet you will take his hand instead, for you are like him in the sight that sees him thus.

10 Attack on him is enemy to you, for you will not perceive that in his hands is your salvation. Ask him but for this, and he will give it to you. Ask him not to symbolize your fear. Would you request that love destroy itself? Or would you have it be revealed to you and set you free?

11 Today we practice in a form we have attempted earlier. Your readiness is closer now, and you will come today nearer Christ's vision. If you are intent on reaching it, you will succeed today. And once you have succeeded, you will not be willing to accept the witnesses your body's eyes call forth. What you will see will sing to you of ancient melodies you will remember. You are not forgot in Heaven. Would you not remember it?

12 Select one brother, symbol of the rest, and ask salvation of him. See him first as clearly as you can in that same form to which you are accustomed. See his face, his hands and feet, his clothing. Watch him smile, and see familiar gestures which he makes so frequently. Then think of this—what you are seeing now conceals from you the sight of one who can forgive you all your sins, whose sacred hands can take the nails which pierce your own away and lift the crown of thorns which you have placed upon your bleeding head.

13 Ask this of him that he may set you free:

14 Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.
I would behold you with the eyes of Christ,
And see my perfect sinlessness in you.


15 And He will answer Whom you called upon, for He will hear the Voice of God in you and answer in your own. Behold him now whom you had seen as merely flesh and bone and recognize that Christ has come to you.

16 Today's idea is your safe escape from anger and from fear. Be sure you use it instantly, should you be tempted to attack a brother and perceive in him the symbol of your fear. And you will see him suddenly transformed from enemy to savior, from the devil into Christ.


365 Days Through A Course in Miracles
            A Daily Miracle Lesson


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* simple TABLE of CONTENTS! ...  with published posts until this moment.

START DAY: You can begin any time with the Teachings! Read, meditate and make the daily exercises, one by one, every day ... for 365 days! Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, ... until the completion of the 365 lessons!
LOVE, LIGHT & BLESSINGS    ~ SOPHIA ~


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