A Course in Miracles

Chapter 20 - Entering The Ark

Nothing can hurt you unless you give it the power to do so, for you give power as the laws of this world interpret giving; as you give you lose.

It is not up to you to give power at all.

Power is of God, given by Him, and re-awakened by the Holy Spirit, Who knows that as you give you gain.

He gives no power to "sin," and therefore it has none; nor to its results as this world sees them, –

• sickness and
• death and
• misery and
• pain.

These things have not occurred because the Holy Spirit sees them not and gives no power to their seeming source, thus would He keep you free of them.

Being without illusion of what you are, the Holy Spirit merely gives everything to God, Who has already given and received all that is true. The untrue He has neither received nor given.

Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien and can no more enter than can their source. And therein lies your need to see your brother sinless.

In him is Heaven.

See sin in him instead, and Heaven is lost to you.

But see him as he is, and what is yours shines from him to you.

Your Savior gives you only love, but what you would receive of him is up to you. It lies in him to overlook all your mistakes, and therein lies his own salvation, and so it is with yours. It is the re-awakening of the laws of God in minds that have established other laws, and given them power to enforce what God created not.

Your insane laws were made to guarantee that you would make mistakes, and give them power over you by accepting their results as your just due.

What could this be but madness?

And is it this that you would see within your Savior from insanity?

He is as free from this as you are, and in the freedom that you see in him, you see your own, for this you share.

What God has given follows His laws, and His alone. Nor is it possible for those who follow them to suffer the results of any other source.

Those who choose freedom will experience only its results.

Their power is of God, and they will give it only to what God has given, to share with them. Nothing but this can touch them, for they see only this, sharing their power according to the Will of God. And thus their freedom is established and maintained. It is upheld through all temptation to imprison and to be imprisoned.

It is of them who learned of freedom that you should ask what freedom is.

Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars, for those with little wings have not accepted for themselves the power to share with you. The sinless give as they received.

See, then, the power of sinlessness within your brother, and share with him the power of the release from sin you offered him.

The ark of peace is entered two by two, yet the beginning of another world goes with them.

Each holy relationship must enter here, to learn its special function in the Holy Spirit’s plan, now that it shares His purpose.

And as this purpose is fulfilled, a new world rises in which sin can enter not, and where the Son of God can enter without fear, and where he rests a while, to forget imprisonment and to remember freedom.

How can he enter, to rest and to remember, without you?

Except you be there, he is not complete. And it is his completion that he remembers there.

This is the purpose given you.

Think not that your forgiveness of each other serves but you two alone.

For the whole new world rests in the hands of every two who enter here to rest. And as they rest, the face of Christ shines on them, and they remember the laws of God, forgetting all the rest, and yearning only to have His laws perfectly fulfilled in them and all their brothers.

Think you when this has been achieved that you will rest without them?

You could no more leave one of them outside than I could leave you and forget part of myself.

To each who walks this earth in seeming solitude is a Savior given, whose special function here is to release him, and so to free himself.

In the world of separation each is appointed separately, though they are all the same. Yet those who know that they are all the same need not salvation.

And each one finds his Savior when he is ready to look upon the face of Christ, and see Him sinless.

The plan is not of you, nor need you be concerned with anything except the part that has been given you to learn, for He Who knows the rest will see to it without your help.

But think not that He does not need your part to help Him with the rest.

For in your part lies all of it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole completed without your part.

How Can You Be at Peace In Time?

You may wonder how you can be at peace when, while you are in time, there is so much that must be done before the way to peace is open.

Perhaps this seems impossible to you, but ask yourself if it is possible that God would have a plan for your salvation that does not work.

Once you accept His plan as the one function that you would fulfill, there will be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not arrange for you without your effort.

He will go before you making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way.

Nothing you need will be denied you. Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away before you reach it. You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill. As that was given you, so will its fulfillment be.

God’s guarantee will hold against all obstacles, for it rests on certainty and not contingency. It rests on you. And what can be more certain than a Son of God?

A Course in Miracles

Chapter 20 - Heralds of Eternity

In this world, God’s Son comes closest to himself in a holy relationship.

There he begins to find the certainty his Father has in him.

And there he finds his function of restoring his Father’s laws to what was held outside them, and finding what was lost.

Only in time can anything be lost, and never lost forever. So do the parts of God’s Son gradually join in time, and with each joining is the end of time brought nearer.

Each miracle of joining is a mighty herald of eternity. No one who has a single purpose, unified and sure, can be afraid. No one who shares his purpose with him can not be one with him. Each herald of eternity sings of the end of sin and fear. Each speaks in time of what is far beyond it.

Two voices raised together call to the hearts of everyone, and let them beat as one, and in that single heart beat is the unity of love proclaimed and given welcome.

Peace to your holy relationship, which has the power to hold the unity of the Son of God together. You give to one another for everyone, and in your gift is everyone made glad. Forget not Who has given you the gifts you give, and through your not forgetting this will you remember Who gave the gifts to Him to give to you.

It is impossible to overestimate your brother’s value.

Only the ego does this, but all it means is that it wants the other for itself, and therefore values him too little. What is inestimable clearly cannot be evaluated.

Do you recognize the fear that rises from the meaningless attempt to judge what lies so far beyond your judgment you cannot even see it?

Judge not what is invisible to you, or you will never see it. But wait in patience for its coming. It will be given you to see your brother’s worth when all you want for him is peace, and what you want for him you will receive.

How can you estimate the worth of him who offers peace to you?

What would you want except his offering?

His worth has been established by his Father, and you will recognize it as you receive his Father’s gift through him. What is in him will shine so brightly in your grateful vision that you will merely love him, and be glad.

You will not think to judge him, for who would (desire to) see the face of Christ and yet insist that judgment still has meaning? For this insistence is of those who do not see.

Vision or judgment is your choice, but never both of these.

Your brother’s body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function, for minds need not the body to communicate.

The sight that sees the body has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship. And while you look upon each other thus, the means and end have not been brought in line.

Why should it take so many holy instants to let this be accomplished, when one would do?

There is but one.

A Course in Miracles

Chapter 20 - Temple of the Holy Spirit

Let us consider now what he must learn, to share his Father’s confidence in him. What is he, that the Creator of the universe should offer it to him, and know it rests in safety? He looks upon himself not as his Father knows him, and yet it is impossible the confidence of God should be misplaced.

The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator.

If it were elsewhere it would rest upon contingency, but there is nothing else. And this is wholly loving and forever.

Yet has the Son of God invented an unholy relationship between him and his Father.

His real relationship is one of perfect union and unbroken continuity. The one he made is partial, self-centered, broken into fragments and full of fear.

The one created by his Father is wholly self-encompassing and self-extending. The one he made is wholly self-destructive and self-limiting.

Nothing can show the contrast better than the experience of both a holy and an unholy relationship.

Holy Relationship: The first is based on love, and rests on it serene and undisturbed. The body does not intrude upon it. Any relationship in which the body enters is based not on love, but on idolatry. Love wishes to be known, completely understood and shared. It has no secrets; nothing that it would keep apart and hide. It walks in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome and in sincerity so simple and so obvious it cannot be misunderstood, but idols do not share.

Unholy Relationship: Idols accept, but never make return. They can be loved, but cannot love. They do not understand what they are offered, and any relationship in which they enter has lost its meaning. They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight and happy in the body’s darkness, where they can hide and keep their secrets hidden along with them. And they have no relationships, for no one else is welcome there. They smile on no one, and those who smile on them they do not see.

Love has no darkened temples where mysteries are kept obscure and hidden from the sun. It does not seek for power, but for relationships.

The body is the ego’s chosen weapon for seeking power through relationships, and its relationships must be unholy, for what they are it does not even see. It wants them solely for the offerings on which its idols thrive. The rest it merely throws away, for all that it could offer is seen as valueless. Homeless, the ego seeks as many bodies as it can collect to place its idols in, and so establish them as temples to itself.

Holy Spirit's Temple

The Holy Spirit’s temple is not a body, but a relationship.

The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. Here the unholy relationship escapes reality, and seeks for crumbs to keep itself alive. Here it would drag its brothers, holding them here in its idolatry. Here it is “safe,” for here love cannot enter.

The Holy Spirit does not build His temples where love can never be.

Would He Who sees the face of Christ choose as His home the only place in all the universe where it can not be seen?

You cannot make the body the Holy Spirit’s temple, and it will never be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolator, and of love’s condemnation, for here is love made fearful and hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshipped here are shrouded in mystery and kept apart from those who worship them.

This is the temple dedicated to no relationships and no return. Here is the “mystery” of separation perceived in awe and held in reverence. What God would have not be is here kept “safe” from Him.

But what you do not realize is what you fear within your brother, and would not see in him, is what makes God seem fearful to you, and kept unknown.

Idolators will always be afraid of love, for nothing so severely threatens them as love’s approach. Let love draw near them and overlook the body, as it will surely do, and they retreat in fear, feeling the seeming firm foundation of their temple begin to shake and loosen.

Brothers, you tremble with them. Yet what you fear is but the herald of escape. This place of darkness is not your home. Your temple is not threatened. You are idolators no longer. The Holy Spirit’s purpose lies safe in your relationship and not your bodies. You have escaped the body.

Where you are the body cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set His temple there.

An Unholy Relationship is No Relationship

There is no order in relationships. They either are or not. An unholy relationship is no relationship. It is a state of isolation, which seems to be what it is not. No more than that.

The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, all your relationships were made meaningless.

In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea, and give it the illusion of reality. And so it seemed to have a home that held together for a little while in time, and vanished. For what could house this mad idea against reality but for an instant?

Idols must disappear, and leave no trace behind their going. The unholy instant of their seeming power is frail as is a snowflake, but without its loveliness.

Is this the substitute you want for the eternal blessing of the holy instant and its unlimited beneficence?

Is the malevolence of the unholy relationship, so seeming powerful and so bitterly misunderstood, and so invested in a false attraction, your preference to the holy instant, which offers you peace and understanding?

Then lay aside the body and quietly transcend it, rising to welcome what you really want. And from His holy temple, look you not back on what you have awakened from, for no illusions can attract the minds that have transcended them and left them far behind.