STAGING

A Course
In Miracles

Authorized Online Edition
Workbook For Students

 
 

LESSON 151

All things are echoes of the Voice for God.

1. 1No one can judge on partial evidence. 2That is not judgment. 3It is merely an opinion based on ignorance and doubt. 4Its seem­ing certainty is but a cloak for the uncertainty it would conceal. 5It needs irrational defense because it is irrational. 6And its defense seems strong, convincing, and without a doubt because of all the doubting underneath.

2. 1You do not seem to doubt the world you see. 2You do not really question what is shown you through the body’s eyes. 3Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. 4That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger, when you pause to rec­ollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! 5Why would you trust them so implicitly? 6Why but because of underlying doubt, which you would hide with show of certainty?

3. 1How can you judge? 2Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. 3Yet witness never falser was than this. 4But how else do you judge the world you see? 5You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. 6You think your fingers touch reality, and close upon the truth. 7This is awareness that you understand, and think more real than what is witnessed to by the eternal Voice for God Himself.

4. 1Can this be judgment? 2You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you. 3You cannot judge. 4You merely can believe the ego’s judgments, all of which are false. 5It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt.

5. 1This thing it speaks of, and would yet defend, it tells you is yourself. 2And you believe that this is so with stubborn certainty. 3Yet underneath remains the hidden doubt that what it shows you as reality with such conviction it does not believe. 4It is itself alone that it condemns. 5It is within itself it sees the guilt. 6It is its own despair it sees in you.

6. 1Hear not its voice. 2The witnesses it sends to prove to you its evil is your own are false, and speak with certainty of what they do not know. 3Your faith in them is blind because you would not share the doubts their lord can not completely vanquish. 4You believe to doubt his vassals is to doubt yourself.

7. 1Yet you must learn to doubt their evidence will clear the way to recognize yourself, and let the Voice for God alone be Judge of what is worthy of your own belief. 2He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body’s mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers’ touch reports of him. 3He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God’s Son. 4He recognizes only what God loves, and in the holy light of what He sees do all the ego’s dreams of what you are vanish before the splendor He beholds.

8. 1Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt, because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its face. 2Christ cannot doubt Himself. 3The Voice for God can only honor Him, rejoicing in His perfect, everlasting sinlessness. 4Whom He has judged can only laugh at guilt, unwilling now to play with toys of sin; unheeding of the body’s witnesses before the rapture of Christ’s holy face.

9. 1And thus He judges you. 2Accept His Word for what you are, for He bears witness to your beautiful creation, and the Mind Whose Thought created your reality. 3What can the body mean to Him Who knows the glory of the Father and the Son? 4What whispers of the ego can He hear? 5What could convince Him that your sins are real? 6Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. 7His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth.

10. 1He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. 2He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle face of Christ in all of them. 3You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings, and teach the single lesson that they all contain.

11. 1He will select the elements in them which represent the truth, and disregard those aspects which reflect but idle dreams. 2And He will reinterpret all you see, and all occurrences, each circumstance, and every happening that seems to touch on you in any way from His one frame of reference, wholly unified and sure. 3And you will see the love beyond the hate, the constancy in change, the pure in sin, and only Heaven’s blessing on the world.

12. 1Such is your resurrection, for your life is not a part of anything you see. 2It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness, within the Holy, holy as Itself. 3In every­one and everything His Voice would speak to you of nothing but your Self and your Creator, Who is one with Him. 4So will you see the holy face of Christ in everything, and hear in everything no sound except the echo of God’s Voice.

13. 1We practice wordlessly today, except at the beginning of the time we spend with God. 2We introduce these times with but a single, slow repeating of the thought with which the day begins. 3And then we watch our thoughts, appealing silently to Him Who sees the elements of truth in them. 4Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back again as clean ideas that do not contradict the Will of God.

14. 1Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as mir­acles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son, as proof of His eternal Love. 2And as each thought is thus transformed, it takes on healing power from the Mind which saw the truth in it, and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. 3All the threads of fantasy are gone. 4And what remains is unified into a perfect Thought that offers its perfection everywhere.

15. 1Spend fifteen minutes thus when you awake, and gladly give another fifteen more before you go to sleep. 2Your ministry be­gins as all your thoughts are purified. 3So are you taught to teach the Son of God the holy lesson of his sanctity. 4No one can fail to listen, when you hear the Voice for God give honor to God’s Son. 5And everyone will share the thoughts with you which He has retranslated in your mind.

16. 1Such is your Eastertide. 2And so you lay the gift of snow-white lilies on the world, replacing witnesses to sin and death. 3Through your transfiguration is the world redeemed, and joyfully released from guilt. 4Now do we lift our resurrected minds in gladness and in gratitude to Him Who has restored our sanity to us.

17. 1And we will hourly remember Him Who is salvation and deliverance. 2As we give thanks, the world unites with us and happily accepts our holy thoughts, which Heaven has corrected and made pure. 3Now has our ministry begun at last, to carry round the world the joyous news that truth has no illusions, and the peace of God, through us, belongs to everyone.