 Today we continue on with Chapter 2, the separation and the atonement, the origins of separation. To extend is a fundamental aspect of God which he gave to his son. In the creation God extended himself to his creations and imbued them with the same loving will to create. You have not only been fully created, but have also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in you. Because of your likeness to your Creator you are creative. No child of God can lose this ability because it is inherent in what he is, but he can use it inappropriately by projecting. The inappropriate use of extension or projection occurs when you believe that some emptiness or lack exists in you and that you can fill it with your own ideas instead of truth. This process involves the following steps. First, you believe that what God created can be changed by your own mind. Second, you believe that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect or lacking. Third, you believe that you can distort the creations of God, including yourself. Fourth, you believe that you can create yourself and that the direction of your own creation is up to you. These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the separation or the detour into fear. None of this existed before the separation, nor does it actually exist now. Everything God created is like him. Extension, as undertaken by God, is similar to the inner radiance that the children of the Father inherit from him. Its real source is internal. This is as true of the Son as of the Father. In this sense, the creation includes both the creation of the Son by God and the Son's creations when his mind is healed. This requires God's endowment of the Son with free will because all loving creation is freely given in one continuous line in which all aspects are of the same order. The Garden of Eden, or the pre-separation condition, was a state of mind in which nothing was needed. When Adam listened to the, quote, lies of the serpent, all he heard was untruth. You do not have to continue to believe what is not true unless you choose to do so. All that can literally disappear in the twinkling of an eye because it is merely a misperception. What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam and nowhere is there reference to his waking up. The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. Such a rebirth is impossible as long as you continue to project or miscreate. It still remains within you, however, to extend as God extended his spirit to you. In reality this is your only choice because your free will was given you for your joy in creating the perfect. All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that you have the ability to usurp the power of God. Of course you neither can nor have been able to do this. Here is the real basis for your escape from fear. The escape is brought about by your acceptance of the atonement which enables you to realize that your errors never really occurred. Only after the deep sleep fell upon Adam could he experience nightmares. If a light is suddenly turned on while someone is dreaming a fearful dream, you may initially interpret the light itself as part of this dream and be afraid of it. However when he awakens, the light is correctly perceived as the release from the dream which is then no longer a recorded reality. This release does not depend on illusions. The knowledge that illuminates not only sets you free but also shows you clearly that you are free. Whatever lies you may believe are of no concern to the miracle which can heal any of them with equal ease. It makes no distinctions among misperceptions. The sole concern is to distinguish between truth on the one hand and error on the other. Some miracles may seem to be of greater magnitude than others. But remember the first principle in this course. There is no order of difficulty in miracles. In reality you are perfectly unaffected by all expressions of lack of love. Peace can be from yourself and others, from yourself to others, or from others to you. Peace is an attribute in you. You cannot find it outside. Illness is some form of external searching. Health is inner peace and enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without and capable through your acceptance of miracles, of correcting the conditions preceding from lack of love in others. And from the workbook, lesson number seven, I see only the past. This idea is particularly difficult to believe at first. Yet it is the rationale for all of the preceding ones. It is the reason why nothing that you see means anything. It is the reason why you have given everything you see all the meaning that it has for you. It is the reason why you do not understand anything you see. It is the reason why your thoughts do not mean anything, and why they are like the things you see. It is the reason why you are never upset for the reason you think. It is the reason why you are upset because you see something that is not there. Old ideas about time are very difficult to change because everything you believe is rooted in time, and depends on your not learning these new ideas about it. But that is precisely why you need new ideas about time. This first time idea is not really so strange as it may sound at first. Look at a cup, for example. Do you see a cup, or are you merely reviewing your past experiences of picking up a cup, mean thirsty, drinking from a cup, feeling the rim of a cup against your lips, having breakfast, and so on? Are not your aesthetic reactions to the cup too based on past experiences? How else would you know whether or not this kind of cup will break if you drop it? What do you know about this cup, except what you learned in the past? You would have no idea what this cup is, except for your past learning. Do you then really see it? Look about you. This is equally true of whatever you look at. Acknowledge this by applying the idea for today indiscriminately to whatever catches your eye. For example, I see only the past in this pencil, I see only the past in this shoe, I see only the past in this hand, I see only the past in that body, I see only the past in that face. Do not linger over any one thing in particular, but remember to admit nothing specifically. Focus briefly at each subject and then move on to the next. There are four practice periods each to last a minute or so, would be enough. I see only the past. So now in our workbook lessons, we have reached a fundamental basic idea that Jesus tells us may be particularly difficult to believe at first. I see only the past and this idea will be very important in our awakening because this idea must be first acknowledged before an experience can come that is beyond this idea. This idea is so important that the preceding six ideas, the first six lessons of this workbook are all based on it. So you might say it is a very fundamental step on the seeming ladder of awakening. There will be ideas that will come along that may seem very radical, like the script is written, an idea that will come along that can seem very perplexing to students of this course. Actually that's just another form of this lesson, number seven, I see only the past. So when we say I see, it means I perceive. I perceive a world of images, a world of sequenced images that seem to come one after the other in what seems to be called daily life, in what seems to be a very linear cosmos moving from past to future in that direction, in one direction. And yet all of that, all of those perceptions are based on the past. The meanings that are seen, experienced, are based only, solely on the past. And if everything I perceive is the past, it can show at once how delusional the thoughts that pass the mind are and the images. I say delusional because think of this in terms of choice. If you go through the day making a series of choices that all seem to be different, choosing this over that, choosing to stay or to go, preferring one thing over the next, watching your eyes be drawn to one thing instead of another thing, planning the day, having a schedule, following a calendar, all of these things presume that there's something going on other than the past, that there's something actively present and actively unfolding in the direction of the future. It presumes that there are different locations in time and space, different increments of time, some much shorter and tinier, some much, much longer. And all of these presumptions rest on this belief that this world is somehow dynamic and unfolding can seem like an adventure to not know what the future is. It can seem like a mystery, yes even a mystery, the world can seem very mysterious, but even the belief that the world is a mystery is simply a denial of the lesson for today. I see only the past. For what is mysterious about this idea? There's nothing, nothing mysterious. You could say to yourself, I am looking upon the past, all I'm witnessing all throughout the day is the past. I'm trying to decide between what is past and what is past, all the choices I seem to make during this day, choices seemingly by a person, are all past too, hmm, that takes the mystery away. They used to say the human body is very mysterious and wondrous, no, not actually mysterious or wondrous if it's just the past. Such an emphasis on different body parts and parts of the script, the good parts, the better parts, pursuing the better parts, pursuing a better world, a better life, hmm, what does that mean? If it's all the past, how can you pursue what is already past, like a cat chasing its tail? It looks funny when we see a cat chasing its tail, we laugh, we think that is so silly, but what is it that's going on up out of bed in often hot pursuit of the past? What if all my future goals are the past? What if my ambitions are the past? You see, it starts to get simpler. Everything starts to become very, very similar as I open my mind, open, open, only to rest and settle into a very relieving thought, I see only the past. Now the ego may have a reaction to this idea today, it may actually say that this is absurd, that if this idea were true, if this time idea were true, then it makes a farce of the human condition, a total farce of the human condition. It's almost like having a million angels laughing at the same time, at all the perceived problems and difficulties and struggles because of this idea, I see only the past. And when the ego says this is absurd, then let's pause a moment and reflect how absurd it is. Is this really absurd? The ego may say, why do anything? Why do anything at all? Why go to work? Why try to keep the calendar and play the game if I see only the past? The ego says, what's the point? That embracing this idea, opening to this idea for today is the point. It's actually the only point that the day has. And if you are succeeding in embracing this idea, then you will begin to see that you have no problems at all. That all the problems that you thought you had today are all hypotheticals. They're all based on the belief that you can somehow choose your way through time and space when actually you can accept this idea and enter the gateway to the Atonement and on to the Kingdom of Heaven. And this is also a beautiful entryway into Divine Providence. Because think of it, if Jesus Christ wants you to fully accept this lesson today, I see only the past and will give you the means and everything you need to accept this lesson today, I see only the past, then everything that you need to accept this idea is already given you. The ego may say that if you accept this idea, I see only the past, that the world will come crashing down around you, that you're just through, you're just finished, you've just thrown in the towel of being a person, of being an achiever, of being an accumulator, the possessor. But don't you want to throw the towel in on that, if those things ever brought you lasting peace and happiness? So we are joined today in this idea, I am so very, very joined with you in throwing the towel in on this linear progression of what I call the past, past, and the future past. Let us stop these silly games of trying to divide time up into dualistic ideas such as past and future. That is not a God of duality, God did not create linear time and God did not create the past and the future. And some illusory little squeezed moment that's in between the two called the present. No, the present is not between the past and future, that's not true either. The present is before time was. Before Abraham was, I am. And the glory is that anything that seems to have been linear time is not worth the power, the attention, or the investment of the mind. We need no longer hold on to these foolish time ideas. If you follow my voice, if you feel the presence of what is speaking to you now, you will feel a strength, a stir of excitement, of passion, of complete release from everything that you believed before. So let's just go for it and focus on that right now. I see only the past. I am grateful that I see only the past. What I perceive is gone happily. So very happily. I see only the past.