Corresponding Text Section

Chapter 21: Seeing Reality

8. The Power of Vision

Truth is restored to you through your desire for It, as It was lost to you through your desire for something else. Open the Holy Place that you closed off when you valued the something else, and what was never lost will quietly return. It has been saved for you. Vision would not be necessary had judgment not been made. Desire now judgment’s entire undoing, and it is undone for you.

Everyone wants to know their own true Identity. Everyone would happily exchange their doubts for Certainty if they just knew how. Each would willingly be free of misery and learn again of Joy. Your holy relationship offers all this to you.

Just as your holy relationship was given you, so will be its effects. And as its holy Purpose was not made by you, the means by which its happy end is yours are also not of your making. Rejoice in what is yours merely for the asking. And think not that you need make either means or end. Both of these are freely given you who would see your sisters and brothers as innocent. All this is given, waiting simply on your desire to receive it.

Vision is freely given to those who will – or wholly desire – to see. Your sisters and brothers’ Innocence is given you in shining Light, to behold with the Holy Spirit’s Vision, and to rejoice in along with Spirit. For Peace will come to all who ask for It with true sincerity and Clarity of Purpose, shared with the Holy Spirit, and at One with It regarding what awakening is.

Be willing, then, to see your sisters and brothers innocent and not separate, that Divine Essence may rise before your vision and give you Joy. And place no value apart from Spirit’s on your sisters and brothers’ bodies, which held them to illusions of what they are. It is their desire to see their Guiltlessness, as it is yours. Bless the Children of the Divine in your relationship with them, and perceive them as they were created and not as you would have made them.

The Holy Spirit guarantees that what the Divine has willed and given will be yours. This is your Purpose now, and the vision that makes It yours is ready to be given you. And so you already have the vision that enables you to see beyond the body. And as you behold each other, you will see an Altar to your Creator, holy as Heaven, glowing with radiant Innocence, and sparkling with the shining flowers of forgiveness you have laid upon It.

What could be valued more than this? Do you think that the body is a better home, a safer shelter for the Divine’s Children? Would you rather look on it than to see the Glory of your Creator shining through your sisters and brothers? How could what is projected by the ego as the engine of destruction and the vehicle of death be preferred, and chosen to replace the holy Home the Holy Spirit offers, and where It will dwell with you in Gladness?

The body as used by the ego is the sign of littleness, vulnerability, and loss of Power. Can such a protector help you? Would you turn in your distress and need for Help unto the helpless? Is the pitifully weak the right choice to call upon for Strength?

Judgment will seem to make your awakener weak. But it is you who need their Strength. There is no problem, no event or situation, no perplexity, that vision will not solve. All is set right when perceived with vision. For vision is not the perception you made. It brings with it the Laws beloved of Spirit, Whose Sight it is. Everything perceived with vision comes gently into place, according to the Laws brought to it by Spirit’s calm and certain Sight. The Purpose for everything It sees is always sure. For vision will meet Spirit’s Purpose, seen in unadjusted form, and suited perfectly to meet It. Destructiveness becomes benign and all things are turned to blessing under Spirit’s gentle Gaze.

What can the body’s eyes look upon that has Power to correct? Its eyes adjust to separation and thus to the belief in flaw, unable to overlook mistakes in any form, and therefore looking on the imperfect everywhere and in everything. Perceive through its eyes and everything will stand condemned before you. All that could awaken you from this can never be seen through its eyes. Through the body’s eyes your holy relationship – the source of your awakening – will be deprived of meaning, and its most holy Purpose bereft of means for Its Accomplishment.

And yet judgment is merely a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of fear, guilt and death in your fantasies. But vision sets all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway of Heaven’s Laws.

What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood that you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to attack and hurt and destroy themselves, to commit atrocities and die, are entirely unreal? Could you have faith in what you look upon if you recognized this? And would you even be able to look upon it? Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are, through coming into sanity again. This is the healing and the remedy. Remove your belief in hallucinations and they are gone. And all you need to do to awaken to Sanity is recognize you made insanity up. Once you accept this simple fact and take unto yourself the Power you gave your hallucinations, you are released from them.

One thing is sure: hallucinations serve a purpose, and when that purpose is no longer held, they vanish. Therefore, the question never is whether you want them, but always whether you want the purpose that they serve.

This world seems to offer many purposes, each different, and with different values. Yet in reality they are all the same. Again, there are no levels or orders of purposes but only a seeming hierarchy of needs and values. Only two purposes are possible. And one is separation, the other Union. Nothing is in between, and which you choose determines what you perceive. For what you perceive is merely how you elect to meet your goal.

Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness, and this goal is maintained through being identified as sanity. Hallucinations are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to separation and the belief in flaw, and seems to witness to their reality. But it is still true that nothing is outside you. Yet upon nothingness are all mis-projections made. For it is the mis-projection that gives nothingness all the meaning that it seems to hold.

What has no meaning cannot be seen. Meaning always beholds within to find Itself, and then sees all things like Itself from this Center. All meaning that you give the world that seems to be outside must thus reflect what you conceived within, and the meaning you give forth determines if you are seeing with or merely judging against.

Vision is the Means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams, your wild hallucinations that show you all fearful outcomes of things imagined in darkness into the calm and reassuring experiences with which It would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are beheld happily and heard with Joy. They are Spirit’s Substitutes for all the terrifying hallucinations and screaming sounds the ego’s purpose brought to your traumatized awareness. They step away from the belief in separation and flaw, reminding you that it is not Reality that frightens you, and that the errors that you made can all be corrected if you will them to be.

When you have looked upon what seemed terrifying and seen it change to sights of Loveliness and Peace; when you have looked upon scenes of violence and death and seen them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away, then who need persuade you to accept the Gift of Vision? And having vision, who is there who could refuse what must come after vision? Think but an Instant just on this: You can behold the Holiness the Divine gave Its Children. And never need you think that there is something else for you to perceive.