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, 16:59, 29 October 2014Created page with 'Image:lighterstill.jpgright|frame <center>'''Heaven is the decision I must make.'''</center> Heaven is the decision I must make. In this world He...'
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<center>'''Heaven is the decision I must make.'''</center>
Heaven is the decision I must make.
In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are
alternatives to choose between. We think that all things have an opposite,
and what we want we choose. If 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. But here is opposition part of being "real." It is
this strange perception of the truth that makes the choice of Heaven seem to
be the same as the relinquishment of hell. It is not really thus. Yet what is
true in God's creation cannot enter here until it is reflected in some form the
world can understand. Truth cannot come where it could only be perceived
with fear. For this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions.
Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come.
Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. Decision lets
one of conflicting goals become the aim of effort and expenditure of time.
Without decision, time is but a waste and effort dissipated. It is spent for
nothing in return, and time goes by without results. There 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. And even this but seems to be a
choice. Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions
would induce. You make but one. And when that one is made, you will
perceive it was no choice at all. For truth is true, and nothing else is true.
There is no opposite to choose instead. There is no contradiction to the
truth.
Choosing depends on learning. And the truth cannot be learned, but only
recognized. In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is
known. But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the
framework of this course. Ours are teaching goals, to be attained through
learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you.
Decisions 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.
In this insanely complicated world, Heaven appears to take the form of
choice, rather than merely being what it is. Of all the choices you have tried
to make this is the simplest, most definitive and prototype of all the rest, the
one which settles all decisions. If you could decide the rest, this one remains
unsolved. But when you solve this one, the others are resolved with it, for
all decisions but conceal this one by taking different forms. Here is the final
and the only choice in which is truth accepted or denied.
So we begin today considering the choice that time was made to help us
make. Such is its holy purpose, now transformed from the intent you gave
it; that it be a means for demonstrating hell is real, hope changes to despair,
and life itself must in the end be overcome by death. In death alone are
opposites resolved, for ending opposition is to die. And thus salvation must
be seen as death, for life is seen as conflict. To resolve the conflict is to end
your life as well.
These mad beliefs can gain unconscious hold of great intensity, and grip the
mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas
about its own protection. It must be saved from salvation, threatened to be
safe, and magically armored against truth. And these decisions are made
unaware, to keep them safely undisturbed; apart from question and from
reason and from doubt.
Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives
are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be
raised to understanding, to be judged again, this time with Heaven's help.
And all mistakes in judgment that the mind had made before are open to
correction, as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without
effects. They cannot be concealed, because their nothingness is recognized.
The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as is the ending of the fear of
hell, when it is raised from its protective shield of unawareness, and is
brought to light. Who can decide between the clearly seen and the
unrecognized? Yet who can fail to make a choice between alternatives when
only one is seen as valuable; the other as a wholly worthless thing, a but
imagined source of guilt and pain? Who hesitates to make a choice like
this? And shall we hesitate to choose today?
We make the choice for Heaven as we wake, and spend five minutes
making sure that we have made the one decision that is sane. We recognize
we make a conscious choice between what has existence and what has
nothing but an appearance of the truth. Its pseudo-being, brought to what is
real, is flimsy and transparent in the light. It holds no terror now, for what
was made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate, demands obscurity for
fear to be invested there. Now it is recognized as but a foolish, trivial
mistake.
Before we close our eyes in sleep tonight, we reaffirm the choice that we
have made each hour in between. And now we give the last five minutes of
our waking day to the decision with which we awoke. As every hour
passed, we have declared our choice again, in a brief quiet time devoted to
maintaining sanity. And finally, we close the day with this, acknowledging
we chose but what we want:
<center>''Heaven is the decision I must make.''</center>
<center>''I make it now, and will not change my mind,''</center>
<center>''because it is the only thing I want.''</center>
[[Category: Workbook I]]
<center>'''Heaven is the decision I must make.'''</center>
Heaven is the decision I must make.
In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are
alternatives to choose between. We think that all things have an opposite,
and what we want we choose. If 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. But here is opposition part of being "real." It is
this strange perception of the truth that makes the choice of Heaven seem to
be the same as the relinquishment of hell. It is not really thus. Yet what is
true in God's creation cannot enter here until it is reflected in some form the
world can understand. Truth cannot come where it could only be perceived
with fear. For this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions.
Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come.
Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. Decision lets
one of conflicting goals become the aim of effort and expenditure of time.
Without decision, time is but a waste and effort dissipated. It is spent for
nothing in return, and time goes by without results. There 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. And even this but seems to be a
choice. Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions
would induce. You make but one. And when that one is made, you will
perceive it was no choice at all. For truth is true, and nothing else is true.
There is no opposite to choose instead. There is no contradiction to the
truth.
Choosing depends on learning. And the truth cannot be learned, but only
recognized. In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is
known. But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the
framework of this course. Ours are teaching goals, to be attained through
learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you.
Decisions 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.
In this insanely complicated world, Heaven appears to take the form of
choice, rather than merely being what it is. Of all the choices you have tried
to make this is the simplest, most definitive and prototype of all the rest, the
one which settles all decisions. If you could decide the rest, this one remains
unsolved. But when you solve this one, the others are resolved with it, for
all decisions but conceal this one by taking different forms. Here is the final
and the only choice in which is truth accepted or denied.
So we begin today considering the choice that time was made to help us
make. Such is its holy purpose, now transformed from the intent you gave
it; that it be a means for demonstrating hell is real, hope changes to despair,
and life itself must in the end be overcome by death. In death alone are
opposites resolved, for ending opposition is to die. And thus salvation must
be seen as death, for life is seen as conflict. To resolve the conflict is to end
your life as well.
These mad beliefs can gain unconscious hold of great intensity, and grip the
mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas
about its own protection. It must be saved from salvation, threatened to be
safe, and magically armored against truth. And these decisions are made
unaware, to keep them safely undisturbed; apart from question and from
reason and from doubt.
Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives
are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be
raised to understanding, to be judged again, this time with Heaven's help.
And all mistakes in judgment that the mind had made before are open to
correction, as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without
effects. They cannot be concealed, because their nothingness is recognized.
The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as is the ending of the fear of
hell, when it is raised from its protective shield of unawareness, and is
brought to light. Who can decide between the clearly seen and the
unrecognized? Yet who can fail to make a choice between alternatives when
only one is seen as valuable; the other as a wholly worthless thing, a but
imagined source of guilt and pain? Who hesitates to make a choice like
this? And shall we hesitate to choose today?
We make the choice for Heaven as we wake, and spend five minutes
making sure that we have made the one decision that is sane. We recognize
we make a conscious choice between what has existence and what has
nothing but an appearance of the truth. Its pseudo-being, brought to what is
real, is flimsy and transparent in the light. It holds no terror now, for what
was made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate, demands obscurity for
fear to be invested there. Now it is recognized as but a foolish, trivial
mistake.
Before we close our eyes in sleep tonight, we reaffirm the choice that we
have made each hour in between. And now we give the last five minutes of
our waking day to the decision with which we awoke. As every hour
passed, we have declared our choice again, in a brief quiet time devoted to
maintaining sanity. And finally, we close the day with this, acknowledging
we chose but what we want:
<center>''Heaven is the decision I must make.''</center>
<center>''I make it now, and will not change my mind,''</center>
<center>''because it is the only thing I want.''</center>
[[Category: Workbook I]]
