A Course in Miracles

From Chapter 13 - Testimony of Miracles and The Happy Learner

Only Truth Is True

Yes, you are blessed indeed. Yet in this world you do not know it. But you have the means for learning it, and seeing it quite clearly.

The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily and as well as does the ego, except that His conclusions are not insane. They take a direction exactly opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego's logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. And having seen them, we have realized that they can not be seen but in illusions. For there alone, their seeming clearness seems to be clearly seen.

Let us now turn away from them, and follow the simple logic by which the Holy Spirit teaches you the simple conclusions that speak for truth, and only truth.

If you are blessed and do not know it, you need to learn it must be so.

The knowledge is not taught, but its conditions must be acquired, for it is they that have been thrown away. You can learn to bless (offer miracles), and cannot give what you have not. If, then, you offer blessing, it must have come first to yourself. And you must also have accepted it as yours, for how else could you give it away?

That is why your miracles offer you the testimony that you are blessed.

If what you offer is complete forgiveness, you must have let guilt go, accepting the Atonement for yourself and learning you are guiltless. How could you learn what has been done for you, but which you do not know, unless you do what you would have to do, if it had been done unto you?

Indirect proof of truth is needed in a world made of denial and without direction.You will perceive the need for this, if you will realize that to deny is the decision not to know.

The logic of the world must therefore lead to nothing, for its goal is nothing. If you decide to have, and give, and be nothing except a dream, you must direct your thoughts unto oblivion. And if you have, and give, and are everything, and all this has been denied, your thought system is closed off and wholly separated from the truth.

This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity.

There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream is sacred to you. That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream.

Seeing is always outward. Were your thoughts wholly of you, the thought system which you made would be forever dark. The thoughts which the mind of God's Son projects have all the power that he gives to them.

The thoughts he shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made are his beliefs. And it is these, and not the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love.

They will not be taken from him. But they can be given up by him, for the Source of their undoing is in him. There is nothing in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane, and leads to nothing. Yet in him, who made this insane logic, there is One Who knows it leads to nothing, for He knows everything.

Any direction which will lead you where the Holy Spirit leads you not, goes nowhere. Anything you deny which He knows to be true, you have denied yourself, and He must therefore teach you not to deny it.

The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching by showing you what you can never learn. His message is not indirect, but He must introduce the simple truth into a thought system which has become so twisted and so complex that you cannot see that it means nothing.

He merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. But you who cannot undo what you have made, cannot see through it. It deceives you because you chose to deceive yourselves. Those who choose to be deceived will merely attack direct approaches, which would seem but to encroach upon deception and strike at it.

The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy.

The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is happiness. This has so confused you that you have undertaken to learn to do what you can never do, believing that unless you learn it, you will not be happy. You do not realize that the foundation on which this most peculiar learning goal depends means absolutely nothing. It does make sense to you.

Have faith in nothing, and you will find the "treasure" that you sought. Yet you will add another burden to your mind, already burdened or you would not have sought another. You will believe that nothing is of value, and will value it.

• A little piece of glass,
• a speck of dust,
• a body or
• a war

are one to you. For if you value one thing made of nothing, you have believed that nothing can be precious, and that you can learn how to make the untrue true.

The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are, but knowing you are elsewhere, begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that truth is true.

This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the only one. Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds.

Consider all the distortions you have made of nothing; all the strange forms and feelings and actions and reactions that you have woven out of it. Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth, and nothing are you less inclined to listen to.

The contrast between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, yet you do not see it. The simple and the obvious are not apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns because of them.

All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that all this is not true. To these unhappy learners who would teach themselves nothing, and delude themselves in believing that it is not nothing, the Holy Sprit says, with steadfast quietness:

"The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there.

Let me make the one distinction for you which you cannot make, but need to learn.

Your faith in nothing is deceiving you.

Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs. You will find no deception there, but only the simple truth. And you will love it, because you will understand it."

Like you, the Holy Spirit did not make truth. Like God, He knows it to be true. He brings the light of truth into the darkness, and lets it shine on you. And as it shines, your brothers see it, and realizing that this light is not what you have made, they see in you more than you see.

They will be happy learners of the lesson which this light brings to them, because it teaches them release from nothing and from all the works of nothing.

The heavy chains which seem to bind them unto despair they do not see as nothing, until you bring the light to them. And then, they see the chains have disappeared, and so they must have been nothing. And you will see it with them. Because you taught them gladness and release, they will become your teachers in release and gladness.

When you teach anyone that truth is true, you learn it with him. And so you learn that what seemed hardest was the easiest.

Learn to be happy learners. You will never learn how to make nothing everything. Yet see that this has been your goal, and recognize how foolish it has been. Be glad it is undone, for when you look at it in simple honesty, it is undone. We said before, "Be not content with nothing," for you have believed that nothing could content you. It is not so.

If you would be a happy learner, you must give everything that you have learned over to the Holy Spirit to be unlearned for you.

And then begin to learn the joyous lessons that come quickly on the firm foundation that truth is true. For what is builded there is true, and built on truth. The universe of learning will open up before you in all its gracious simplicity. With truth before you, you will not look back.

The happy learner meets the conditions of learning here, as he also meets the conditions of knowledge in the Kingdom. All this lies in the Holy Spirit's plan to free you from the past, and open up the way to freedom for you.

For truth is true. What else could ever be, or ever was?

This simple lesson holds the key to the dark door which you believe is locked forever. You made this door of nothing, and behind it is nothing. The key is only the light which shines away the shapes and forms and fears of nothing.

Accept this key to freedom from the hands of Christ, Who gives it to you, that you may join Him in the holy task of bringing light to darkness. For, like your brothers, you do not realize the light has come, and freed you from the sleep of darkness.

Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be free of darkness. The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave you asleep.

The vision of Christ is given the very instant that it is perceived. Where everything is clear, it is all holy. The quietness of its simplicity is so compelling that you will realize it is impossible to deny the simple truth. For there is nothing else.

God is everywhere, and His Son is in Him with everything. Can he sing the dirge of sorrow when this is true?