A Course in Miracles

Chapter 12 - Problem With Guilt

Attainment of the Real World

Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself,

The world you see must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. You cannot see both worlds, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing and depends on what you cherish.

The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other. Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is not the same because their real attraction to you is unequal.

The Sad World You See

You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began.

Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it. This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads away from it into another world.

Yet the real world has the power to touch you even here because you love it. And what you call with love will come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it from every part of this strange world you made but do not want.

The only effort you need make to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did not make is willingness to learn the one you make is false.

You have been wrong about the world because you have misjudged yourself.

From such a twisted reference point
what could you see?

All vision starts with the perceiver, who judges what is true and what is false. And what he judges false he does not see.

You who would judge reality cannot see it, for whenever judgment enters reality has
slipped away. The out of mind is out of sight because what is denied is there, but is not recongized.

Christ is still there, although you know Him not. His Being does not depend upon your recognition. He lives within you in the quiet present, and waits for you to leave the past behind and enter into the world He holds out to you in love.

No one in this distracted world but has seen some glimpses of the other world about him. Yet while he still lays value on
his own, he will deny the vision of the other world, maintaining that he loves what he loves not, and following not the road that love points out.

Love leads so gladly!

And as you follow Him, you will rejoice that you have found His company, and learned of Him the joyful journey home.

You wait but for yourself.

To give this sad world over and exchange your errors for the peace of God is but your will. And Christ will always offer you the Will of God, in recognition that you share it with Him.

It is God’s Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain
as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything. The world about him shines with love because God placed him in
Himself where pain is not, and love surrounds him without end or flaw.

Disturbance of his peace can never be. In perfect sanity he looks on love, for it is all about him and within him.

He must deny the world of pain the instant he perceives the arms of love around him. And from this point of safety he looks quietly about him, and recognizes that the world is one with him.

God loves His Son forever, and His Son returns his Father’s Love forever.

The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance of this one thing that is wholly true and wholly yours. For all else you have lent yourself in time, and it will fade. But this one thing is always yours, being the gift of God unto His Son. Your ONE reality was given you, and by it God created you as one with Him.

Your one reality was given you, and by it God created you as one with Him.

Dream of Peace

You will first dream of peace, and then awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what you want is the
exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love.

In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams where all perception is.

Knowledge needs no correction. Yet the dreams of love lead unto knowledge. In them you see nothing fearful, and because of this they are the welcome that you offer knowledge.

Love waits on welcome, not on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always was. Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have not lost.

Praise, then, the Father for the perfect sanity of His most holy Son.

Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. In Heaven this is so, for what could you need in eternity?

In your world you do need things because it is a world of scarcity in which you find yourself because you are lacking.

Yet can you find yourself in such a world?

Without the Holy Spirit the answer would be no. Yet because of Him the answer is a joyous YES!

Only The Holy Spirit Knows What You Need

As Mediator between the two worlds, He knows what you have need of and what will not hurt you.

Ownership is a dangerous concept if it is left to you. The ego wants to have things for salvation, for possession is its law.

Possession for its OWN sake is the ego’s fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches that it builds unto itself. And at its altar it demands you lay all of the things it bids you get, leaving you no joy in them.

Everything that the ego tells you that you need will hurt you. For although the ego urges you again and again to get it, it
leaves you nothing, for what you get it will demand of you. And even from the very hands that grasped it, it will be wrenched and hurled into the dust. For where the ego sees salvation it sees separation, and so you lose whatever you have gotten in its name.

Therefore ask not of yourselves what you need, for you do not know, and your advice unto yourself will hurt you. For what you think you need will merely serve to tighten up your world against the light, and render you unwilling to question the value that this world can really hold for you.

Only the Holy Spirit knows what you need. For He will give you all things that do not block the way to light. And what
else could you need?

In time, He gives you all the things that you need have, and will renew them as long as you have need of them.

He will take nothing from you as long as you have any need of it. And yet He knows that everything you need is temporary, and will but last until you step aside from all your needs, and learn that all of them have been fulfilled.

Therefore He has no investment in the things that He supplies except to make certain that you will not use them on behalf of lingering in time. He knows that you are not at home there, and He wills no delay to wait upon your joyous home-coming.

Leave, then, your needs to Him.

He will supply them with no emphasis at all upon them. What comes to you of Him comes safely, for He will ensure it never can become a dark spot, hidden in your mind, and kept to hurt you.

Under His guidance you will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is ever on the journey’s end, which is His goal.

God’s Son is not a traveller through outer worlds. However holy his perception may become, no world outside himself holds his inheritance. Within himself he has no needs, for light needs nothing but to shine in peace, and from itself to let the rays extend in quiet to infinity.