LESSON 130
It is impossible to see two worlds.
1. Perception is consistent. 2What you see reflects your thinking. 3And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see. 4Your values are determiners of this, for what you value you must want to see, believing what you see is really there. 5No one can see a world his mind has not accorded value. 6And no one can fail to look upon what he believes he wants.
2. Yet who can really hate and love at once? 2Who can desire what he does not want to have reality? 3And who can choose to see a world of which he is afraid? 4Fear must make blind, for this its weapon is: That which you fear to see you cannot see. 5Love and perception thus go hand in hand, but fear obscures in darkness what is there.
3. What, then, can fear project upon the world? 2What can be seen in darkness that is real? 3Truth is eclipsed by fear, and what remains is but imagined. 4Yet what can be real in blind imaginings of panic born? 5What would you want that this is shown to you? 6What would you wish to keep in such a dream?
4. Fear has made everything you think you see. 2All separation, all distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world. 3They are not there. 4Love’s enemy has made them up. 5Yet love can have no enemy, and so they have no cause, no being and no consequence. 6They can be valued, but remain unreal. 7They can be sought, but they can not be found. 8Today we will not seek for them, nor waste this day in seeking what can not be found.
5. It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. 2Seek for the one; the other disappears. 3But one remains. 4They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. 5The real and the unreal are all there are to choose between, and nothing more than these.
6. Today we will attempt no compromise where none is possible. 2The world you see is proof you have already made a choice as all-embracing as its opposite. 3What we would learn today is more than just the lesson that you cannot see two worlds. 4It also teaches that the one you see is quite consistent from the point of view from which you see it. 5It is all a piece because it stems from one emotion, and reflects its source in everything you see.
7. Six times today, in thanks and gratitude, we gladly give five minutes to the thought that ends all compromise and doubt, and go beyond them all as one. 2We will not make a thousand meaningless distinctions, nor attempt to bring with us a little part of unreality, as we devote our minds to finding only what is real.
8. Begin your searching for the other world by asking for a strength beyond your own, and recognizing what it is you seek. 2You do not want illusions. 3And you come to these five minutes emptying your hands of all the petty treasures of this world. 4You wait for God to help you, as you say:
5It is impossible to see two worlds. 6Let me accept the strength God offers me and see no value in this world, that I may find my freedom and deliverance.
9. God will be there. 2For you have called upon the great unfailing power which will take this giant step with you in gratitude. 3Nor will you fail to see His thanks expressed in tangible perception and in truth. 4You will not doubt what you will look upon, for though it is perception, it is not the kind of seeing that your eyes alone have ever seen before. 5And you will know God’s strength upheld you as you made this choice.
10. Dismiss temptation easily today whenever it arises, merely by remembering the limits of your choice. 2The unreal or the real, the false or true is what you see and only what you see. 3Perception is consistent with your choice, and hell or Heaven comes to you as one.
11. Accept a little part of hell as real, and you have damned your eyes and cursed your sight, and what you will behold is hell indeed. 2Yet the release of Heaven still remains within your range of choice, to take the place of everything that hell would show to you. 3All you need say to any part of hell, whatever form it takes, is simply this:
4It is impossible to see two worlds. 5I seek my freedom and deliverance, and this is not a part of what I want.