1. 1Sometimes in teaching there is benefit, particularly after you have gone through what seems theoretical and far from what the student has already learned, to bring him back to practical concerns. 2This we will do today. 3We will not speak of lofty, world-encompassing ideas, but dwell instead on benefits to you.

2. 1You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. 2When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. 3This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. 4It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains. 5There are no satisfactions in the world.

3. 1Today we list the real criteria by which to test all things you think you want. 2Unless they meet these sound requirements, they are not worth desiring at all, for they can but replace what offers more. 3The laws that govern choice you cannot make, no more than you can make alternatives from which to choose. 4The choosing you can do; indeed, you must. 5But it is wise to learn the laws you set in motion when you choose, and what alternatives you choose between.

4. 1We have already stressed there are but two, however many there appear to be. 2The range is set, and this we cannot change. 3It would be most ungenerous to you to let alternatives be limitless, and thus delay your final choice until you had considered all of them in time; and not been brought so clearly to the place where there is but one choice that must be made.

5. 1Another kindly and related law is that there is no compromise in what your choice must bring. 2It cannot give you just a little, for there is no in between. 3Each choice you make brings every­thing to you or nothing. 4Therefore, if you learn the tests by which you can distinguish everything from nothing, you will make the better choice.

6. 1First, if you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is valueless. 2A temporary value is without all value. 3Time can never take away a value that is real. 4What fades and dies was never there, and makes no offering to him who chooses it. 5He is deceived by nothing in a form he thinks he likes.

7. 1Next, if you choose to take a thing away from someone else, you will have nothing left. 2This is because, when you deny his right to everything, you have denied your own. 3You therefore will not recognize the things you really have, denying they are there. 4Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. 5Yet loss must offer loss, and nothing more.

8. 1Your next consideration is the one on which the others rest. 2Why is the choice you make of value to you? 3What attracts your mind to it? 4What purpose does it serve? 5Here it is easiest of all to be deceived. 6For what the ego wants it fails to recognize. 7It does not even tell the truth as it perceives it, for it needs to keep the halo which it uses to protect its goals from tarnish and from rust, that you may see how “innocent” it is.

9. 1Yet is its camouflage a thin veneer, which could deceive but those who are content to be deceived. 2Its goals are obvious to anyone who cares to look for them. 3Here is deception doubled, for the one who is deceived will not perceive that he has merely failed to gain. 4He will believe that he has served the ego’s hid­den goals.

10. 1Yet though he tries to keep its halo clear within his vision, still must he perceive its tarnished edges and its rusted core. 2His ineffectual mistakes appear as sins to him, because he looks upon the tarnish as his own; the rust a sign of deep unworthiness within himself. 3He who would still preserve the ego’s goals and serve them as his own makes no mistakes, according to the dictates of his guide. 4This guidance teaches it is error to believe that sins are but mistakes, for who would suffer for his sins if this were so?

11. 1And so we come to the criterion for choice that is the hardest to believe, because its obviousness is overlaid with many levels of obscurity. 2If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have al­lowed the ego’s goals to come between the real alternatives. 3And thus you do not realize there are but two, and the alternative you think you chose seems fearful, and too dangerous to be the noth­ingness it actually is.

12. 1All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. 2Choosing is easy just because of this. 3Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke, which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult. 4What is the gain to you in learn­ing this? 5It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain.

13. 1Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. 2We will attempt to reach this state today, with self-deception laid aside, and with an honest willingness to value but the truly valuable and the real. 3Our two extended practice periods of fifteen minutes each begin with this:

4I will not value what is valueless, and only what has value do I seek, for only that do I desire to find.

14. 1And then receive what waits for everyone who reaches, unen­cumbered, to the gate of Heaven, which swings open as he comes. 2Should you begin to let yourself collect some needless burdens, or believe you see some difficult decisions facing you, be quick to answer with this simple thought:

3I will not value what is valueless, for what is valuable belongs to me.