In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are alternatives to choose between. ²We think that all things have an opposite, and what we want we choose. ³If Heaven exists there must be hell as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we perceive, and what we think is real. Creation knows no opposite. ²But here is opposition part of being “real.” ³It is this strange perception of the truth that makes the choice of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. ⁴It is not really thus. ⁵Yet what is true in God’s creation cannot enter here until it is reflected in some form the world can understand. ⁶Truth cannot come where it could only be perceived with fear. ⁷For this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions. ⁸Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come. Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. ²Decision lets one of conflicting goals become the aim of effort and expenditure of time. ³Without decision, time is but a waste and effort dissipated. ⁴It is spent for nothing in return, and time goes by without results. ⁵There is no sense of gain, for nothing is accomplished; nothing learned. You need to be reminded that you think a thousand choices are confronting you, when there is really only one to make. ²And even this but seems to be a choice. ³Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. ⁴You make but one. ⁵And when that one is made, you will perceive it was no choice at all. ⁶For truth is true, and nothing else is true. ⁷There is no opposite to choose instead. ⁸There is no contradiction to the truth. Choosing depends on learning. ²And the truth cannot be learned, but only recognized. ³In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is known. ⁴But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this course. ⁵Ours are teaching goals, to be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you. ⁶Decisions are the outcome of your learning, for they rest on what you have accepted as the truth of what you are, and what your needs must be.

Today’s idea remains the central thought on which salvation rests. ²For healing is the opposite of all the world’s ideas which dwell on sickness and on separate states. ³Sickness is a retreat from others, and a shutting off of joining. ⁴It becomes a door that closes on a separate self, and keeps it isolated and alone. Sickness is isolation. ²For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. ³It gives the body final power to make the separation real, and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh, which it can not surmount. The world obeys the laws that sickness serves, but healing operates apart from them. ²It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. ³In sickness must he be apart and separate. ⁴But healing is his own decision to be one again, and to accept his Self with all Its parts intact and unassailed. ⁵In sickness does his Self appear to be dismembered, and without the unity that gives It life. ⁶But healing is accomplished as he sees the body has no power to attack the universal Oneness of God’s Son. Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth. ²But healing demonstrates that truth is true. ³The separation sickness would impose has never really happened. ⁴To be healed is merely to accept what always was the simple truth, and always will remain exactly as it has forever been. ⁵Yet eyes accustomed to illusions must be shown that what they look upon is false. ⁶So healing, never needed by the truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real. Healing might thus be called a counter-dream, which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth, but not in truth itself. ²Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred. ³Just as the real world will arise to take the place of what has never been at all, healing but offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas which dreams embroider into pictures of the truth.

“Who would defend himself unless he thought he were attacked, that the attack were real, and that his own defense could save himself? ²And herein lies the folly of defense; it gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. ³It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult. ⁴And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish. You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is happening because it must contain what threatens you. ²A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense. ³The world is based on this insane belief. ⁴And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve but to preserve its sense of threat. ⁵For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart. Defense is frightening. ²It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. ³You think it offers safety. ⁴Yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified. ⁵Is it not strange you do not pause to ask, as you elaborate your plans and make your armor thicker and your locks more tight, what you defend, and how, and against what? ²It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. ³It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect itself and needing your defense. ⁴What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern are needful to protect its little life? ⁵What but the body falters and must fail to serve the Son of God as worthy host? Yet it is not the body that can fear, nor be a thing of fear. ²It has no needs but those which you assign to it. ³It needs no complicated structures of defense, no health-inducing medicine, no care and no concern at all. ⁴Defend its life, or give it gifts to make it beautiful or walls to make it safe, and you but say your home is open to the thief of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded with your very life.

Let us review the meaning of “forgive,” for it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something that entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth. ²In such a view, forgiveness must be seen as mere eccentric folly, and this course appear to rest salvation on a whim. This twisted view of what forgiveness means is easily corrected, when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. ²It must be limited to what is false. ³It is irrelevant to everything except illusions. ⁴Truth is God’s creation, and to pardon that is meaningless. ⁵All truth belongs to Him, reflects His laws and radiates His Love. ⁶Does this need pardon? ⁷How can you forgive the sinless and eternally benign? The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth, and not illusions. ²You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth, in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. ³This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind, as you regard yourself. Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception. ²For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. ³Thus is forgiveness really but a sin, like all the rest. ⁴It says the truth is false, and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass; as white as snow. ⁵It is delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish. ⁶It would see as right the plainly wrong; the loathsome as the good. Pardon is no escape in such a view. ²It merely is a further sign that sin is unforgivable, at best to be concealed, denied or called another name, for pardon is a treachery to truth. ³Guilt cannot be forgiven. ⁴If you sin, your guilt is everlasting. ⁵Those who are forgiven from the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned; first, by themselves for what they think they did, and once again by those who pardon them.

What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs? ²And what can save the world except your Self? ³Belief is powerful indeed. ⁴The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth. ⁵A madman thinks the world he sees is real, and does not doubt it. ⁶Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts’ effects. ⁷It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last. Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his mind, and all his thoughts change with it. ²Now the source of thought has shifted, for to change your mind means you have changed the source of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think. ³You free the past from what you thought before. ⁴You free the future from all ancient thoughts of seeking what you do not want to find. The present now remains the only time. ²Here in the present is the world set free. ³For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world. ⁴You have enslaved the world with all your fears, your doubts and miseries, your pain and tears; and all your sorrows press on it, and keep the world a prisoner to your beliefs. ⁵Death strikes it everywhere because you hold the bitter thoughts of death within your mind. The world is nothing in itself. ²Your mind must give it meaning. ³And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. ⁴Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. ⁵Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. ²Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. ³Ideas leave not their source. ⁴This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. ⁵It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind.