LESSON 189
I feel the Love of God within me now.
1. There is a light in you the world can not perceive. 2And with its eyes you will not see this light, for you are blinded by the world. 3Yet you have eyes to see it. 4It is there for you to look upon. 5It was not placed in you to be kept hidden from your sight. 6This light is a reflection of the thought we practice now. 7To feel the Love of God within you is to see the world anew, shining in innocence, alive with hope, and blessed with perfect charity and love.
2. Who could feel fear in such a world as this? 2It welcomes you, rejoices that you came, and sings your praises as it keeps you safe from every form of danger and of pain. 3It offers you a warm and gentle home in which to stay a while. 4It blesses you throughout the day, and watches through the night as silent guardian of your holy sleep. 5It sees salvation in you, and protects the light in you, in which it sees its own. 6It offers you its flowers and its snow, in thankfulness for your benevolence.
3. This is the world the Love of God reveals. 2It is so different from the world you see through darkened eyes of malice and of fear, that one belies the other. 3Only one can be perceived at all. 4The other one is wholly meaningless. 5A world in which forgiveness shines on everything, and peace offers its gentle light to everyone, is inconceivable to those who see a world of hatred rising from attack, poised to avenge, to murder and destroy.
4. Yet is the world of hatred equally unseen and inconceivable to those who feel God’s Love in them. 2Their world reflects the quietness and peace that shines in them; the gentleness and innocence they see surrounding them; the joy with which they look out from the endless wells of joy within. 3What they have felt in them they look upon, and see its sure reflection everywhere.
5. What would you see? 2The choice is given you. 3But learn and do not let your mind forget this law of seeing: You will look upon that which you feel within. 4If hatred finds a place within your heart, you will perceive a fearful world, held cruelly in death’s sharp-pointed, bony fingers. 5If you feel the Love of God within you, you will look out on a world of mercy and of love.
6. Today we pass illusions, as we seek to reach to what is true in us, and feel its all-embracing tenderness, its Love which knows us perfect as itself, its sight which is the gift its Love bestows on us. 2We learn the way today. 3It is as sure as Love itself, to which it carries us. 4For its simplicity avoids the snares the foolish convolutions of the world’s apparent reasoning but serve to hide.
7. Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. 2Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. 3Hold onto nothing. 4Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. 5Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God.
8. Is it not He Who knows the way to you? 2You need not know the way to Him. 3Your part is simply to allow all obstacles that you have interposed between the Son and God the Father to be quietly removed forever. 4God will do His part in joyful and immediate response. 5Ask and receive. 6But do not make demands, nor point the road to God by which He should appear to you. 7The way to reach Him is merely to let Him be. 8For in that way is your reality proclaimed as well.
9. And so today we do not choose the way in which we go to Him. 2But we do choose to let Him come. 3And with this choice we rest. 4And in our quiet hearts and open minds, His Love will blaze its pathway of itself. 5What has not been denied is surely there, if it be true and can be surely reached. 6God knows His Son, and knows the way to him. 7He does not need His Son to show Him how to find His way. 8Through every opened door His Love shines outward from its home within, and lightens up the world in innocence.
10. Father, we do not know the way to You. 2But we have called, and You have answered us. 3We will not interfere. 4Salvation’s ways are not our own, for they belong to You. 5And it is unto You we look for them. 6Our hands are open to receive Your gifts. 7We have no thoughts we think apart from You, and cherish no beliefs of what we are, or Who created us. 8Yours is the way that we would find and follow. 9And we ask but that Your Will, which is our own as well, be done in us and in the world, that it become a part of Heaven now. 10Amen.