ARCIM

Daily Lesson 166 ~
June 15

I am entrusted with the Gifts of the Divine.

All things are yours because the Divine’s Trust in you is limitless. It knows Its Children. It gives without exception, holding nothing back that can contribute to your Happiness. And yet, unless you know that your will is One with Its Will, you will not believe that you have received Its Gifts. But what would make you think there is a will other than the Divine’s?

Here is the paradox that underlies the making of the world. This world is not the Will of the Divine, and so it is not real. Yet those who think it real must still believe there is another will, and one that leads to opposite effects from those the Divine wills. This is impossible indeed. Yet every mind that looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators. Or in one: themself alone. But never in the Divine as the One Creator.

The Gifts of the Divine are not acceptable to anyone who holds such strange beliefs. They must believe that to accept the Divine’s Gifts – however evident These may become, however urgently they may be called to receive Them as their own – is to be pressed to treachery against themself as maker of the world that is in every way the opposite of the Divine’s Creation. Thus they fervently believe that they must deny the Presence of the Divine’s Gifts, contradict the Truth, and suffer to preserve the world they made.

This world is the only home of which they can conceive. Here is the only safety they believe that they can find. Without the world they made do they believe they would be outcast, without protection, and afraid. They do not realize that it is here in this strange world they made that they are without a home, and afraid indeed. Here they are outcasts wandering so far from their true Home, so long away, that they do not realize they have forgotten where they came from, where it is they go, and even who they really are.

Yet in their lonely, senseless wanderings the Divine’s Gifts go with them, as yet unknown to them. They cannot ever lose these Gifts. But they can refuse to behold what is given them. They wander on, aware of the futility they look upon everywhere around them, perceiving how their little lot merely dwindles as they go ahead to nowhere. Still they wander on in misery and poverty, feeling alone though the Divine is with them, and a Treasure so great is theirs that everything the world contains is valueless before Its Magnitude.

Those who believe this world is real appear to be tragic figures—weary, worn, in threadbare apparel, and with feet that bleed from the rocky road they walk. Everyone here has identified with them, for everyone who comes here has pursued the path they follow, and has felt defeat and hopelessness as they are feeling them. Yet are they really tragic when it is seen that they are merely following the way they chose, and that they need only realize Who walks with them to receive and accept Its Treasures to be free?

Until you realize this, the tragic will be your chosen self, the one you made as a replacement for Reality. This will be the self you savagely defend against all reason, every bit of evidence, and all the Witnesses with proof to show you that this is not you. Until you realize who you are, you will heed Them not. You will go on your chosen way, with eyes cast down lest you might catch a glimpse of Truth, be released from self-deception, and be free. You will cower fearfully until you allow yourself to feel the Touch of Divine Essence upon your shoulder, and perceive Its gentle Hand directing you to behold Its Gifts for you. How could you then proclaim your poverty in exile? You will then merely laugh at this perception of yourself. Where is self-pity then? And what becomes of all the tragedy you sought to make for the one for whom the Divine intends only Joy?

Your ancient fear of Realization has come upon you now, and Justice has caught up with you at last. The Hand of Divine Essence is touching your shoulder, and you sense that you are joined. You even think the miserable self you thought was you may not be your real Identity. Perhaps the Divine’s Word is truer than your own. Perhaps Its Gifts to you are real. Perhaps It has not been entirely outwitted by your plan to keep Its Child in deep oblivion and go the way you chose, without your holy Self.

The Divine’s Will does not oppose. It simply is. And It waits for your glad assent to join your will with It. It is not the Divine you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. It does not know about a plan so alien to Its Will. There was a need that the Divine did not understand, to which It gave an Answer. That is all. And you who have this Answer given you have need no more of anything but this.

Now do we live, for now we know we cannot die. The wish for death is answered, and the perception that looked upon it has now been replaced by vision that perceives that you are not what you pretend to be. There is One who walks with you Who gently answers all your fears with this one merciful Reply: “Only Truth is true.” It points to all the Gifts you have each time the thought of poverty oppresses you, and speaks of Its Companionship when you perceive yourself as lonely and afraid.

It reminds you still of one more thing you had forgotten. For Its Touch on you has reawakened the Memory that you are like Itself. The Gifts you have received are not for you alone. What It has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the Lesson that Its Giving holds, for It has awakened you from the dream of solitude you sought to make in which to hide from the Divine. It reminds you of all the Gifts the Divine has given you. It speaks as well of what becomes your will when you accept these Gifts, and recognize They are your own.

The Gifts are yours, entrusted to your care, to give to all who chose the lonely road you no longer wander on. These sisters and brothers do not yet understand that they merely pursue their wishes instead of following their true will. It is you who teach them now, as you are being taught. For you have learned from Divine Essence that there is another Way for you and them to walk. Teach them by showing them the Joy that comes to those who feel the Touch of Divine Essence and recognize the Divine’s Gifts. In letting go all illusions, and the past with them, let not the ego’s sorrow or regret tempt you to be unfaithful to what has been entrusted to you. Your sighs and anger will now betray the hopes of those who turn to you for their Release. Your guilt and tears are theirs. Your sickness withholds their healing. What you fear teaches them that their fears are justified.

Yet your hand becomes the giver of Divine Essence’s Touch, as you choose. Your transformation of mind becomes the proof that those who accept the Divine’s Gifts can never suffer anything.

You are entrusted with the world’s Release from pain and everything unreal. Be faithful to this Trust. Become the living proof of what Divine Essence’s Touch can offer everyone. The Divine has entrusted all Its Gifts to you. Be witness in your Happiness to how transformed the mind becomes that chooses to accept Its Gifts and feel the Touch of Divine Essence. Such is your Mission now. For the Divine entrusts the giving of Its Gifts to all who have received Them. It has shared Its Joy with you. And now you go to share It with the world.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 15: Dissolving Dissociation

 

2. Only Truth Is True

The Holy Spirit needs a joyful learner, in whom Its Mission can be joyfully accomplished. You who have been steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you have believed 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. Yet until now this foundation has seemed to make complete sense to part of your mind.

If you have faith in what is nothing, then nothing will be the treasure you will find, being the treasure that you sought. And in finding it you will merely add another burden to your mind that is already overburdened with debris. If it were not so then you would not have sought what is nothing as a treasure. But with a burdened state of mind you will believe that nothingness is of value, and you will value it. A colored piece of glass, a sparkling speck of dust, a body, or a drama even unto war will be the same to one under self-enchantment. For if one thing constructed out of nothing is valued, then it will be believed that nothingness can be precious, and that how to make the untrue true can be learned.

The Holy Spirit, seeing where you think you are, but knowing you are elsewhere, begins Its Lesson in Simplicity with the fundamental teaching that only Truth is true. This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and, in the end, the only one.

Simplicity is very difficult for burdened minds buckling under the weight of their illusions. Consider all the distortions you have made of nothing; all the strange forms and feelings, actions and reactions, that you have woven out of it. There is nothing so alien to the burdened mind as the simple Truth, and nothing is it less inclined to listen to. The contrast between what is true and what is false is perfectly apparent to the unburdened mind, yet many do not yet perceive it. The simple and the obvious are not apparent to those who would make mansions and finery of what is nothing, believing they are of greater worth because of these. All this the Holy Spirit sees, and It teaches simply that none of this is true.

To the unhappy learners who would teach themselves that nothingness is true, and delude themselves into believing that nothing is not nothing, the Holy Spirit says, with steadfast Quietness:

 

Only Truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and nothing except Truth exists. Let the one distinction be made for you that you cannot make for yourself but need to learn. Your faith in nothingness is deceiving you. Offer your faith to Reality, and I will place it gently in the Holy Place where it belongs. You will find only the simple Truth there, Which is completely Trustworthy. And you will love It, because you will understand It.

 

Like you, the Holy Spirit did not create Truth. Like the Divine, Spirit knows that only Truth is true. It brings the Light of Truth into the darkness, and lets It shine on you. And as It shines, your sisters and brothers see It, and, realizing that this Light is not what you have made, they perceive in you more than you perceive in yourself. They will be joyful learners of the Lesson this Light brings to them, because It teaches them release from nothingness, and from all the works of nothing. The heavy chains that seem to bind them to despair they do not perceive as nothing until you bring the Light to them. And then they see the chains have disappeared, and so these chains must have been nothing.

You will see the Light with your sisters and brothers. Because you taught them Gladness and Release, they will become your teachers in Release and Gladness. When you teach anyone that only Truth is true, you learn it with them. And so you learn that what seemed like the hardest lesson to learn was the easiest.

Learn to be a joyful learner through gratefully learning that you will never learn how to make nothingness into Reality. Merely recognize that this has been your goal, and understand how foolish it has been. Be glad it is undone, for when you behold it in simple honesty, it is undone. This Course has advised you not to believe that you can be content with nothing, for what is not real cannot be seen and has no value. For you have believed that nothingness could content you, and thankfully it is not so.

If you would be a joyful learner, you must give everything you have learned over to the Holy Spirit, to be unlearned for you. And then you will begin to learn the joyous Lessons that come quickly on the firm Foundation that only Truth is true. For what is built there is true, and founded on the 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 joyful learner meets the conditions of learning here, as they will also meet the Conditions of Knowledge in the Realm of Heaven.

All of this rests in the Holy Spirit’s Plan to free you from the past, and open up the Way to Freedom for you. For only Truth is true. What else could ever be, or ever was? This simple Lesson holds the Key to the dark door that you believed was locked forever. You made this door out of nothingness, and behind it is nothing. The Key is only the Light that shines away the shapes and forms and fears of nothingness. Accept this Key to Freedom from the Hands of Divine Essence, Who gives It to you, that you may join It in the holy task of bringing Light to darkness. For, like your sisters and brothers, you do not yet realize that the Light has come, and freed you from the dream of darkness.

Behold your sisters and brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be free of the darkness of nothingness. The Light in you will awaken them, and they will not leave you asleep. The Vision of Divine Essence is given the very Instant It is beheld. 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. The Divine is Everywhere, and Its Children are in their Creator, along with Everything. Can they be anything but joyful when they learn that this is true?