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Chapter
20 - Promise of the Resurrection
Vision of Sinlessness
Vision
will come to you at first in glimpses, but they will
be enough to show you what is given you, who would
see your brother sinless.
Truth
is restored to you through your desire, as it was
lost to you through your desire for something else.
Open the holy place
which you closed off by valuing the “something
else”, and what was never lost will quietly
return. It has been
saved for you.
Vision
would not be necessary had judgment not been made.
Desire
now its whole undoing, and it is done for you.
Do
you not want to know your own identity?
Would
you not happily exchange your doubts for certainty? Would
you not willingly be free of misery, and learn again of
joy? Your holy relationship
offers all this to you. As it was given you, so will be
its effects. And as its holy purpose was not made by you,
the means by which its happy end is yours, is also not of
you. Rejoice
in what is yours but for the asking. And think not that
you need make either means or end. All this is
given you who would but see your brother sinless; all this
is given, waiting on your desire but to receive it.
Vision
is freely given to those who ask to see.
Your
brother’s sinlessness is given you in shining light,
to look on with the Holy Spirit’s vision and to rejoice
in along with Him. For peace will come to all who ask for
it, with real desire and sincerity of purpose, shared with
the Holy Spirit, and at one with Him on what salvation is.
Be willing, then, to see your
brother sinless, that Christ may rise before your vision
and give you joy. And
place no value on your brother’s body, which holds
him to illusions of what he is. It
is his desire to see his sinlessness, as it is yours. And
bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him
what you have made of him.
The
Holy Spirit guarantees that what God willed and gave you
shall be yours. This
is your purpose now, and the vision that makes it yours
is ready to be given. You
have the vision which enables each one to see the body
not. And
as you look upon each other, you will see an altar to
your Father, holy as Heaven, glowing with radiant purity
and sparkling with the shining lilies you laid upon it.
What
can you value more than this? Why
do you think the body is a better home, a safer shelter
for God’s Son? Why
would you rather look on it than on the truth? How
can the engine of destruction be preferred, and chosen
to replace the holy home the Holy Spirit offers, where
He will dwell with you?
The
body is the sign of weakness, vulnerability and loss
of power. Can
such a savior help you? Would
you turn in your distress and need for help unto the
helpless? Is
the pitifully little the perfect choice to call upon
for strength? Judgment
will seem to make your Savior weak, yet it is you
who need his strength. There
is no problem, no event or situation, no perplexity
that vision will not solve. All
is redeemed when looked upon with vision, for this
is not your sight, and brings with it the laws beloved
of Him Whose sight it is.
Everything
looked upon with vision falls gently into place, according
to the laws brought to it by His calm and certain
sight. The
end for everything He looks upon is always sure, for
it will meet His purpose, seen in unadjusted form,
and suited perfectly to meet it. Destructiveness
becomes benign, and sin
is turned to blessing under His gently gaze.
What
can the body’s eyes perceive, with power to correct?
Its
eyes adjust to sin, unable to overlook it in any form,
and seeing it everywhere, in everything.
Look
through its eyes, and everything will stand condemned
before you. All
that could save you, you will never see. Your
holy relationship, the source of your salvation, will
be deprived of meaning, and its most holy purpose bereft
of means for its accomplishment.
Judgment
is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle
game of death in your imagination, but vision sets all things
right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway of Heaven’s
laws.
What
if you recognized this world is a hallucination?
What
if you really understood you made it up? What
if you realized that those who seem to walk about
in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy
themselves, are wholly unreal? Could
you have faith in what you see, if you accepted this?
And would you see
it?
Hallucinations
disappear when they are recognized for what they are.
This
is the healing and the remedy.
Believe
them not and they are gone.
And all you need
to do is recognize you did this.
Once
you accept this simple fact, and take unto yourself
the power you gave them, you are released from them.
One
thing is sure; hallucinations serve a purpose,
and when that purpose is no longer held, they
disappear. Therefore,
the question never is whether you want them,
but always, do you want the purpose which they
serve? This
world seems to hold out many purposes, each
different and with different values, yet they
are all the same. Again
there is no order, but a seeming hierarchy of
values.
Only
two purposes are possible. And one is sin, the
other holiness. Nothing is in between, and which
you choose determines what you see. For what
you see is merely how you elect to meet your
goal. Hallucinations serve to meet the goal
of madness. They are the means by which the
outside world, projected from within, adjusts
to sin and seems to witness to its reality.
It still is true that nothing is without. Yet
upon nothing are all projections made. For it
is the projection which gives the “nothing”
all the meaning that it holds.
What
has no meaning cannot be perceived, and meaning
always looks within to find itself, and then
looks out. All
meaning that you give the world outside must
thus reflect the sight you saw within; or better,
if you saw at all or merely judged against.
Vision
is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates
your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild
hallucinations that show you all the fearful
outcomes of imagined sin, into the calm and
reassuring sights with which He would replace
them. These
gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily
and heard with joy.
They
are His substitutes for all the terrifying sights
and screaming sounds the ego’s purpose
brought to your horrified awareness.
They
step away from sin, reminding you that it is
not reality which frightens you, and that the
errors which you made can be corrected.
When
you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and
seen it change to sights of loveliness and peace;
when you have looked on scenes of violence and
death, and watched them change to quiet views
of gardens under open skies, with clear, life-giving
water running happily beside them in dancing
brooks that never waste away; who need persuade
you to accept the gift of vision?
And
after vision, who is there who could refuse
what must come after?
Think
but an instant just on this...
you
can behold the holiness God gave His Son, and never
need you think that there is something else for you
to see.
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