¹ Perception is consistent. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see. Your values are determiners of this, for what you value you must want to see, believing what you see is really there. No one can see a world his mind has not accorded value. And no one can fail to look upon what he believes he wants.

² Yet who can really hate and love at once? Who can desire what he does not want to have reality? And who can choose to see a world of which he is afraid? Fear must make blind, for this its weapon is—that which you fear to see you cannot see. Love and perception thus go hand in hand, but fear obscures in darkness what is there.

³ What, then, can fear project upon the world? What can be seen in darkness that is real? Truth is eclipsed by fear, and what remains is but imagined. Yet what can be real in blind imaginings of panic borne? What would you want that this is shown to you? What would you wish to keep in such a dream?

⁴ Fear has made everything you think you see. All separation, all distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world. They are not there. Love's enemy has made them up. Yet love can have no enemy, and so they have no cause, no being, and no consequence. They can be valued but remain unreal. They can be sought, but they can not be found.

⁵ Today we will not seek for them nor waste this day in seeking not what can be found. It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. Seek for the one; the other disappears. But one remains. They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. The real and the unreal are all there is to choose between, and nothing more than these.

⁶ Today we will attempt no compromise where none is possible. The world you see is proof you have already made a choice as all-embracing as its opposite. What we would learn today is more than just the L e s s o n that you cannot see two worlds. It also teaches that the one you see is quite consistent from the point of view from which you see it. It 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 which ends all compromise and doubt and go beyond them all as one. We 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 recognize what it is you seek. You do not want illusions. And you come to these five minutes emptying your hands of all the petty treasures of this world. You wait for God to help you as you say:

⁹ It is impossible to see two worlds. Let me accept the strength God offers me and see no value in this world that I may find my freedom and deliverance.

¹⁰ God will be there. For you have called upon the great unfailing Power Who will take this giant step with you in gratitude. Nor will you fail to see His thanks expressed in tangible perception and in truth. You 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. And you will know God's strength upheld you as you made this choice.

¹¹ Dismiss temptation easily today whenever it arises merely by remembering the limits on your choice. The unreal or the real, the false or true is what you see, and only what you see. Perception is consistent with your choice, and hell or Heaven comes to you as one.

¹² 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. Yet the release of Heaven still remains within your range of choice to take the place of everything that hell would show to you. All you need say to any part of hell, whatever form it takes, is simply this:

¹³ It is impossible to see two worlds. I seek my freedom and deliverance, and this is not a part of what I want.

Course in Miracles

Original Edition

TEXT

Chapter 11

God's Plan for Salvation



VI. The Sane Curriculum

Par 43-52

[READING PAUSED FOR WEEKEND]

⁴³ Only love is strong because it is undivided. The strong do not attack because they see no need to do so. Before the idea of attack can enter your mind, you must have perceived yourself as weak. Because you had attacked yourself and believed that the attack was effective, you behold yourself as weakened. No longer perceiving yourself and all your brothers as equal and regarding yourself as weaker, you attempt to "equalize" the situation you have made. You use attack to do so because you believe that attack was successful in weakening you.

⁴⁴ That is why the recognition of your own invulnerability is so important in the restoration of your sanity. For if you accept your invulnerability, you are recognizing that attack has no effect. Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally, you will demonstrate that nothing happened. Therefore, by attacking you have not done anything. Once you realize this, there is no longer any sense in attack, for it manifestly does not work and cannot protect you. Yet the recognition of your invulnerability has more than negative value. If your attacks on yourself have failed to weaken you, you are still strong. You therefore have no need to "equalize" the situation to establish your strength.

⁴⁵ You will never realize the utter uselessness of attack except by recognizing that your attack on yourself had no effects. For others do react to attack if they perceive it, and if you are trying to attack them, you will be unable to avoid interpreting this as reinforcement. The only place where you can cancel out all reinforcement is in yourself. For you are always the first point of your attack, and if this has never been, it has no consequences.

⁴⁶ The Holy Spirit's love is your strength, for yours is divided and therefore not real. You could not trust your own love when you have attacked it. You cannot learn of perfect love with a split mind because a split mind has made itself a poor learner. You tried to make the separation eternal because you wanted to retain the characteristics of creation with your own content. Yet creation is not of you, and poor learners need special teaching. You have learning handicaps in a very literal sense.

⁴⁷ There are areas in your learning skills which are so impaired that you can progress only under constant, clear-cut direction provided by a Teacher Who can transcend your limited resources. He becomes your resource because, of yourself, you cannot learn. The learning situation in which you placed yourself is impossible, and in this situation you clearly require a special Teacher and a special curriculum. Poor learners are not good choices for teachers, either for themselves or for anyone else. You would hardly turn to them to establish the curriculum by which they can escape from their limitations. If they understood what is beyond them, they would not be handicapped.

⁴⁸ You do not know the meaning of love, and that is your handicap. Do not attempt to teach yourselves what you do not understand, and do not try to set up curriculum goals where yours have clearly failed. Your learning goal has been not to learn, and this cannot lead to successful learning. You cannot transfer what you have not learned, and the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure. Would you ask those who have failed to learn what learning aids are for? They do not know. For if they could interpret the aids correctly, they would have learned from them.

⁴⁹ We have said that the ego's rule is, "Seek and do not find." Translated into curricular terms, this is the same as saying, " Try to learn but do not succeed." The result of this curriculum goal is obvious. Every legitimate teaching aid, every real instruction, and every sensible guide to learning will be misinterpreted. For they are all for learning facilitation, which this strange curriculum goal is against. If you are trying to learn how not to learn and are using the aim of teaching to defeat itself, what can you expect but confusion? The curriculum does not make sense.

⁵⁰ This kind of "learning" has so weakened your mind that you cannot love, for the curriculum you have chosen is against love and amounts to a course in how to attack yourself. A necessary minor, supplementing this major curriculum goal, is learning how not to overcome the split which made this goal believable. And you can not overcome it, for all your learning is on its behalf. Yet your will speaks against your learning, as your learning speaks against your will, and so you fight against learning and succeed, for that is your will. But you do not realize even yet that there is something you do will to learn, and that you can learn it because it is your will to do so.

⁵¹ You who have tried to learn what you do not will should take heart, for although the curriculum you set yourself is depressing indeed, it is merely ridiculous if you look at it. Is it possible that the way to achieve a goal is not to attain it? Resign now as your own teachers. This resignation will not lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourselves and of the learning outcomes which have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor understand, you will become excellent learners and teachers. But it is not so yet and will not be so until the whole learning situation as you have set it up is reversed.

⁵² Your learning potential, properly understood, is limitless because it will lead you to God. You can teach the way to Him and learn it if you follow the Teacher Who knows it and His curriculum for learning it. The curriculum is totally unambiguous because the goal is not divided, and the means and the end are in complete accord. You need offer only undivided attention. Everything else will be given you. For it is your will to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the will of God's Son. His learning is as unlimited as he is.

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