The world is a fantasy in my mind and I choose fantasy over and over with each decision I make and each thought I think. What makes salvation easy is to realize that I choose only between Heaven and hell, Truth or illusion, Life or death. No matter what seems numerous and endless choices in the world. Even the thoughts I think in the world of illusions are not my Real Thoughts. My Real Thoughts are the ones I think with God. These lessons of Truth will bring me back on the road to Sanity. I can replace my insane thoughts with Thoughts of Truth offered in the Course lessons.
Belief is very powerful. The thoughts I hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is Truth. A madman thinks the world he sees is real and does not doubt what he sees. It is only when the source of madness and its effects are questioned that the hope of Freedom comes at last: The source of this madness is.....myself.
The world of illusion is complicated and chaotic. Yet salvation is easy. Salvation is as easy as making a different choice and thinking a different thought. I am free to change my mind. And when I change my mind all my thoughts change with it. Now the source of thought has shifted, for to change my mind means I have changed the source of all ideas I think, have ever thought, or will yet think. When I choose illusions my thoughts are ones of injustice, inequality, war, death, sadness. When I choose Heaven my thoughts turn to Joy, Peace, Love and Happiness; I free the past which never was and I free the future from all the things I will search for but never find.
The present now remains the only time. In the present my mind is set free. I have enslaved my mind with all my fears, doubts, miseries, pain, tears, sorrows and thoughts of death. The world is nothing. Only my mind gives it meaning, and what I see is what I wish to see: a world "apart from" God. Maybe I think I did not make the world, that I came unwillingly to what was already made....this is false.
All I need do is change my mind about what I want to see and all the world must change accordingly. Ideas do not leave their source. The world is an idea in my mind and only in my mind it remains. There is nothing and no one outside me. It is not pride and arrogance that tells me I made the world I see. Pride tells me that I came into a world quite separate from myself, which behaves on its own from forces beyond my control.
THERE IS NO WORLD. This is the central thought the Course attempts to teach. I may not be ready to accept that. I will only go as far as I can let myself be led along the road to Truth. I will go forward on this road, then run back, then go forward again awhile, only to step back and then return later.
Healing is my gift when I am prepared to learn there is no world and can accept the lesson now. My willingness will bring the lesson to me in a form which I can understand and recognize. If the world does not exist, and it is indeed my own imagining, then I can let it go by merely changing my thoughts about it. The sick are healed as I let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead rise when I let Thoughts of Life replace thoughts of death.
I am as God created me. There is no suffering, death or change. I am God's Son: Eternal, Whole, United, Joyful, Peaceful and Happy. How can a world of "time" and "place" exist if I am as God created me? In Reality, I do not even think apart from God. I cannot make things that do not share His Timelessness and Love. In dreams I can make anything. In fantasy anything is possible, even a world apart from God. But it can never be Reality. I have never left God. I am Safe in Heaven dreaming of exile to a world "apart from" God.
God makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is His Son. What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end and the Son begin as something separate from Him. There is no world because the "world" is a thought apart from God made to separate the Father and the Son. Deny illusions and accept Truth. Deny that I am a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. When I release my mind, I will look upon a world released. For the world will mirror to me the thoughts in my mind.
For fifteen minutes twice today I will practice today's lesson, and realize that I am Real because the world is not. Then merely rest, alert but with no strain and let my mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed, along with me. When my mind heals, the world heals because the world is a thought in my mind.
Salvation is simple when I realize that my only choices are Heaven or hell, Love or fear, Reality or insanity, Truth or illusion, Life or death. And only one is Real. Today I choose Reality instead.
"I let go the world and all I thought it was."
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