 We continue today with chapter 16, the reward of teaching. We have already learned that everyone teaches and teaches all the time. You may have taught well and yet you may not have learned how to accept the comfort of your teaching. If you will consider what you have taught and how alien it is to what you thought you knew, you will be compelled to realize that your teacher came from beyond your thought system. Therefore, he could look upon it fairly and perceive it was untrue. He must have done so from the basis of a very different thought system and one with nothing in common with yours. For certainly what he has taught and what you have taught through him have nothing in common with what you taught before he came. And the results have been to bring peace where there was pain and suffering has disappeared to be replaced by joy. You may have taught freedom, but you have not learned how to be free. I said earlier, by their fruits you shall know them and they shall know themselves. For it is certain that you judge yourself according to your teaching. The ego's teaching produces immediate results because its decisions are immediately accepted as your choice. And this acceptance means that you are willing to judge yourself accordingly. Cause and effect are very clear in the ego's thought system because all your learning has been directed toward establishing the relationship between them. And would you not have faith in what you have so diligently taught yourself to believe? Yet remember how much care you have exerted in choosing its witnesses and in avoiding those which spoke for the cause of truth and its effects. Does not the fact that you have not learned what you have taught show you that you do not perceive the Sonship as one? And does it not also show you that you do not regard yourself as one? For it is impossible to teach successfully wholly without conviction. And it is equally impossible that conviction be outside of you. You could never have taught freedom unless you did believe in it. And it must be that what you taught came from yourself. Yet this self you clearly do not know and do not recognize it even though it functions. What functions must be there? And it is only if you deny what it has done that you could possibly deny its presence. This is a course in how to know yourself. You have taught what you are but have not let what you are teach you. You have been very careful to avoid the obvious and not to see the real cause and effect relationship that is perfectly apparent. Yet within you is everything you taught. What can it be that has not learned it? It must be this part that is really outside yourself, not by your own projection but in truth. And it is this part that you have taken in that is not you. What you accept into your mind does not really change it. Illusions are but beliefs in what is not there. And the seeming conflict between truth and illusion can only be resolved by separating yourself from the illusion and not from truth. Your teaching has already done this for the Holy Spirit as part of you. Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God and you as you are God and Him together. For God's answer to the separation added more to you than you tried to take away. He protected both your creations and you together, keeping one with you what you would exclude. And they will take the place of what you took in to replace them. They are quite real as part of the self you do not know. They communicate to you through the Holy Spirit and their power and gratitude to you for their creation. They offer gladly to your teaching of yourself who is their home. You who are host to God are also host to them. For nothing real has ever left the mind of its creator and what is not real was never there. You are not two selves in conflict. What is beyond God? If you who hold Him and whom He holds are the universe. All else must be outside where nothing is. You have taught this and from far off in the universe get not beyond yourself. The witnesses to your teaching have gathered to help you learn. Their gratitude has joined with yours and God's to strengthen your faith in what you taught. For what you taught is true. Alone you stand outside your teaching and apart from it. But with them you must learn that you but taught yourself and learn from the conviction you shared with them. This year you will begin to learn and make learning commensurate with teaching. You have chosen this by your own willingness to teach. Though you seem to suffer for it, the joy of teaching will yet be yours. For the joy of teaching is the learner who offers it to the teacher in gratitude and shares it with him. As you learn your gratitude to yourself who teaches you what he is will grow and help you honor him. And you will learn his power and strength and purity and love him as his father does. His kingdom has no limits and no end and there is nothing in him that is not perfect and eternal. All this is you and nothing outside of this is you. To your most holy self all praise is due for what you are and for what he is who created you as you are. Sooner or later must everyone bridge the gap he imagines exists between his selves. Each one builds this bridge which carries him across the gap as soon as he is willing to expand some little effort on behalf of bridging it. His little efforts are powerfully supplemented by the strength of heaven and by the united will of all who make heaven what it is, being joined within it. And so the one who would cross over is literally transported there. Your bridge is built stronger than you think and your foot is planted firmly on it. You have no fear that the attraction of those who stand on the other side and wait for you will not draw you safely across. For you will come where you would be and where yourself awaits you. And from the workbook, Lesson 128. The world I see holds nothing that I want. The world you see holds nothing that you need to offer you, nothing that you can use in any way or anything at all that serves to give you joy. Believe this thought and you are saved from years of misery, from countless disappointments, and from hopes that turn to bitter ashes of despair. No one but must accept this thought is true if he would leave the world behind and soar beyond its petty scope and little ways. Each thing you value here is but a chain that binds you to the world and it will serve no other end but this. For everything must serve the purpose you have given it until you see a different purpose there. The only purpose worthy of your mind this world contains is that you pass it by without delaying to perceive some hope where there is none. Be you deceived no more, the world you see holds nothing that you want. Escape today the change you place upon your mind when you perceive salvation here. For what you value you make part of you as you perceive yourself. All things you seek to make your value greater in your sight limit you further. Hide your worth from you and add another bar across the door that leads to true awareness of yourself. Let nothing that relates to body thoughts delay your progress to salvation. Nor permit temptation to believe the world holds anything you want to hold you back. Nothing is here to cherish. Nothing here is worth one instant of delay and pain. One moment of uncertainty in doubt. The worthless offer nothing. Certainty of worth cannot be found in worthlessness. Today we practice letting go all thought of values we have given to the world. We leave it free of purposes we gave its aspects and its phases and its dreams. We hold it purposeless within our minds and loosen it from all we wish it were. Thus do we lift the chains that bar the door to freedom from the world and go beyond all little values and diminished goals. Pause and be still a little while and see how far you rise above the world when you release your mind from chains and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home. It will be grateful to be free a while. It knows where it belongs but free its wings and it will fly in sureness and enjoy to join its holy purpose. Let it rest in its creator, there to be restored to sanity, to freedom and to love. Give it ten minutes rest three times today and when your eyes are open afterwards you will not value anything you see as much as when you looked at it before. Your whole perspective on the world will shift by just a little every time you let your mind escape its chains. The world is not where it belongs and you belong where it would be and where it goes to rest when you release it from the world. Your guide is sure. Open your mind to him. Be still and rest. Protect your mind throughout the day as well and when you think you see some value in an aspect or an image of the world refuse to lay this chain upon your mind but tell yourself with quiet certainty this will not tempt me to delay myself. The world I see holds nothing that I want. Amen.