April 19, 2018

Day 164 - A Course in Miracles

Day 164 - A Course in Miracles



Chapter Fifteen: The Purpose of Time

IV. Littleness Versus Magnitude

22 Be not content with littleness, but be sure you understand what littleness is and why you could never be content with it. Littleness is the offering you gave yourself. You offered this in place of magnitude, and you acceptedit. Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness in the strange belief that littleness can content you. When you strive for anything in this world with the belief that it will bring you peace, you are belittling yourself and blinding yourself to glory. Littleness and glory are the choices open to your striving and your vigilance. You will always choose one at the expense of the other.

23 Yet what you do not realize each time you choose is that your choice is your evaluation of yourself. Choose littleness and you will not have peace, for you will have judged yourself unworthy of it. And whatever you offer as a substitute is much too poor a gift to satisfy you. It is essential that you accept the fact, and accept it gladly, that there is no form of littleness that can ever content you. You are free to try as many as you wish, but all you will be doing is to delay your homecoming. For you will be content only in magnitude, which is your home.

24 There is a deep responsibility you owe yourself, and one which you must learn to remember all the time. The lesson will seem hard at first, but you will learn to love it when you realize that it is true and constitutes a tribute to your power. You who have sought and found littleness, remember this: Every decision which you make stems from what you think you are and represents the value that you put upon yourself. Believe the little can content you, and by limiting yourself, you will not be satisfied. For your function is not little, and it is only by finding your function and fulfilling it that you can escape from littleness.

25 There is no doubt about what your function is, for the Holy Spirit knows what it is. There is no doubt about its magnitude, for it reaches you through Him from Magnitude. You do not have to strive for it because you have it. All your striving must be directed against littleness, for it does require vigilance to protect your magnitude in this world. To hold your magnitude in perfect awareness in a world of littleness is a task the little cannot undertake. Yet it is asked of you in tribute to your magnitude and not your littleness. Nor is it asked of you alone.

26 The power of God will support every effort you make on behalf of His dear Son. Search for the little, and you deny yourself His power. God is not willing that His Son be content with less than everything. For He is not content without His Son, and His Son cannot be content with less than His Father has given him. We asked you once before, "Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God?" Let this question be asked you by the Holy Spirit in you every time you make a decision. For every decision you make does answer this and invites sorrow or joy accordingly.

27 When God gave Himself to you in your creation, He established you as host to Him forever. He has not left you, and you have not left Him. All your attempts to deny His magnitude and make His Son hostage to the ego cannot make little whom God has joined with Him. Every decision you make is for Heaven or for hell and will bring you awareness of what you decided for. The Holy Spirit can hold your magnitude, clean of all littleness, clearly and in perfect safety in your minds, untouched by every little gift the world of littleness would offer you. But for this, you cannot side against Him in what He wills for you.

28 Decide for God through Him. For littleness and the belief that you can be content with littleness are the decisions you have made about yourself. The power and the glory that lie in you from God are for all who, like you, perceive themselves as little and have deceived themselves into believing that littleness can be blown up by them into a sense of magnitude that can content them. Neither give littleness, nor accept it. All honor is due the host of God. Your littleness deceives you, but your magnitude is of Him Who dwells in you and in Whom you dwell. Touch no one, then, with littleness, in the name of Christ, eternal Host unto His Father.

29 In this season (Christmas), which celebrates the birth of holiness into this world, join with me, who decided for holiness for you. It is our task together to restore the awareness of magnitude to the host whom God appointed for Himself. It is beyond all your littleness to give the gift of God, but not beyond you. For God would give Himself through you. He reaches from you to everyone and beyond everyone to His Son's creations, but without leaving you. Far beyond your little world but still in you, He extends forever. Yet He brings all his extensions to you as host to Him.

30 Is it a sacrifice to leave littleness behind and wander not in vain? It is not sacrifice to wake to glory. But it is a sacrifice to accept anything less than glory. Learn that you must be worthy of the Prince of Peace, born in you in honor of Him Whose host you are. You know not what love means because you have sought to purchase it with little gifts, thus valuing it too little to be able to understand its magnitude. Love is not little, and love dwells in you, for you are host to Him. Before the greatness that lives in you, your poor appreciation of yourself and all the little offerings you have given slip into nothingness. Holy Child of God, when will you learn that only holiness can content you and give you peace?

31 Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did. It is because I learned for you that you can learn of me. I would but teach you what is yours, so that together we can replace the shabby littleness that binds the host of God to guilt and weakness with the glad awareness of the glory that is in him. My birth in you is your awakening to grandeur. Welcome me not into a manger but into the altar to holiness, where holiness abides in perfect peace. My Kingdom is not of this world because it is in you. And you are of your Father. Let us join in honoring you, who must remain forever beyond littleness.

32 Decide with me, who have decided to abide with you. I will as my Father wills, knowing His Will is constant and at peace forever with Itself. You will be content with nothing but His Will. Accept no less, remembering that everything I learned is yours. What my Father loves, I love as He does, and I can no more accept it as what it is not than He can. And no more can you. When you have learned to accept what you are, you will make no more gifts to offer to yourselves, for you will know you are complete, in need of nothing, and unable to accept anything for yourself. But you will gladly give, having received. The host of God need not seek to find anything.

33 If you are wholly willing to leave salvation to the plan of God and unwilling to attempt to grasp for peace yourself, salvation will be given you. Yet think not you can substitute your plan for His. Rather, join with me in His that we may release all those who would be bound, proclaiming together that the Son of God is host to Him. Thus will we let no one forget what you would remember. And thus will you remember it.

34 Call forth in everyone only the remembrance of God and of the Heaven that is in him. For where you would help your brother be, there will you think you are. Hear not his call for hell and littleness, but only his call for Heaven and greatness. Forget not that his call is yours, and answer him with me. God's power is forever on the side of His host, for it protects only the peace in which He dwells. Lay not littleness before His holy altar, which rises above the stars and reaches even to Heaven because of what is given it.


L e s s o n 164


Now are we one with Him Who is our Source.

1 What time but now can truth be recognized? The present is the only time there is. And so today, this instant, now, we come to look upon what is forever there—not in our sight, but in the eyes of Christ. He looks past time and sees eternity as represented there. He hears the sounds the senseless busy world engenders, yet He hears them faintly, for beyond them all He hears the song of Heaven and the Voice of God more clear, more meaningful, more near.

2 The world fades easily away before His sight. Its sounds grow dim. A melody from far beyond the world increasingly is more and more distinct—an ancient call to which He gives an ancient answer. You will recognize them both. For they are but your answer to your Father's call to you. Christ answers for you, echoing your Self, using your voice to give His glad consent, accepting your deliverance for you.

3 How holy is your practicing today, as Christ gives you His sight and hears for you and answers in your name the call He hears. How quiet is the time you give to spend with Him beyond the world. How easily are all your seeming sins forgot and all your sorrows unremembered. On this day is grief laid by, for sights and sounds which come from nearer than the world are made clear to you who will today accept the gifts He gives.

4 There is a silence into which the world can not intrude. There is an ancient peace you carry in your heart and have not lost. There is a sense of holiness in you the thought of sin has never touched. All this today you will remember. Faithfulness in practicing today will bring rewards so great and so completely different from all things you sought before that you will know that here your treasure is and here your rest.

5 This is the day when vain imaginings part like a curtain to reveal what lies beyond them. Now is what is really there made visible, while all the shadows which appeared to hide it sink to obscurity. Now is the balance righted and the scales of judgment left to Him Who judges true. And in His judgment will a world unfold in perfect innocence before your eyes. Now will you see it with the eyes of Christ. Now is its transformation clear to you.

6 Brothers, this day is sacred to the world. Your vision, given you from far beyond all things within the world, looks back on them in a new light. And what you see becomes the healing and salvation of the world. The valuable and valueless are both perceived and recognized for what they are. And what is worthy of your love receives your love, while nothing to be feared remains.

7 We will not judge today. We will receive but what is given us from judgment made beyond the world. Our practicing today becomes our gift of thankfulness for our release from blindness and from misery. All that we see will but increase our joy because its holiness reflects our own. We stand forgiven in the sight of Christ, with all the world forgiven in our own.

8 We bless the world as we behold it in the light in which our Savior looks on us and offer it the freedom given us through His forgiving vision, now our own. Open the curtain in your practicing by merely letting go all things you think you want. Your trifling treasures put away and leave a clean and open space within your mind where Christ can come and offer you the treasure of salvation. He has need of your most holy mind to save the world.

9 Is not this purpose worthy to be yours? Is not Christ's vision worthy to be sought above the world's unsatisfying goals? Let not today slip by without the gifts it holds for you receiving your consent and your acceptance. We can change the world if you acknowledge them. You may not see the value your acceptance gives the world. But this you surely want—you can exchange all suffering for joy this very day. Practice in earnest, and the gift is yours. Would God deceive you? Can His promise fail? Can you withhold so little when His Hand holds out complete salvation to His Son?


365 Days Through A Course in Miracles
            A Daily Miracle Lesson


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