 We continue with chapter 12, The Vision of Christ. The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you cannot lose your soul and there is no gain in the world. For of itself, it profits nothing. To invest without profit is surely to impoverish yourself and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost to you is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality by denying yours and gives you nothing in return. You cannot sell your soul, but you can sell your awareness of it. You cannot perceive your soul, but you will not know it while you perceive something else as more valuable. The Holy Spirit is your strength because he knows nothing but the Spirit as you. He is perfectly aware that you do not know yourself and perfectly aware of how to teach you to remember what you are. Because he loves you, he will gladly teach you what he loves. For he wills to share it. Remembering you always, he cannot let you forget your worth. For the Father never ceases to remind him of his son and he never ceases to remind his son of the Father. God is in your memory because of him. You choose to forget your Father, but you do not really want to do so and therefore you can decide otherwise. As it was my decision, so is it yours. You do not want the world. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it you look upon with love. This gives it the only reality it will ever have. Its value is not in itself, but yours is in you. As self-value comes from self-extension, so does the perception of self-value come from the extension of loving thoughts outward. Make the world real unto yourself, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit and so it belongs to you. Correction is for all who cannot see. To open the eyes of the blind is the Holy Spirit's mission, for he knows that they have not lost their vision, but merely sleep. He would awaken them from the sleep of forgetting to the remembering of God. Christ's eyes are open and he will look upon whatever you see with love if you accept his vision as yours. The Holy Spirit keeps the vision of Christ for every son of God who sleeps. In his sight the son of God is perfect and he longs to share his vision with you. He will show you the real world because God gave you heaven. In him your father calls his son to remember. The awakening of his son begins with his investment in the real world and by this he will learn to reinvest in himself. For reality is one with the father and the son and the Holy Spirit blesses the real world in their name. When you have seen this real world as you will surely do, you will remember us. Yet you must learn the cost of sleeping and refuse to pay it. Only then will you decide to awaken and then the real world will spring to your sight for Christ has never slept. He is waiting to be seen for he has never lost sight of you. He looks quietly on the real world which he would share with you because he knows of the father's love for him. And knowing this he would give you what is yours. In perfect peace he waits for you at his father's altar holding out the father's love to you in the quiet light of the Holy Spirit's blessing. For the Holy Spirit will lead everyone home to his father where Christ waits as his self. Every child of God is one in Christ for his being is in Christ as Christ is in God. Christ's love for you is his love for his father which he knows because he knows his father's love for him. When the Holy Spirit has at last led you to Christ at the altar to his father, perception fuses into knowledge because perception has become so holy that its transfer to holiness is merely its natural extension. Love transfers to love without any interference for the two are one. As you perceive more and more common elements in all situations, the transfer of training under the Holy Spirit's guidance increases and becomes generalized. Gradually you learn to apply it to everyone and everything for its applicability is universal. When this has been accomplished, perception and knowledge have become so similar that they share the unification of the laws of God. What is one cannot be perceived as separate and the denial of the separation is the reinstatement of knowledge. At the altar of God, the holy perception of God's Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it and the spirit of God's Son shines in the mind of the Father and becomes one with it. Very gently does God shine upon himself, loving the extension of himself that is his Son. The world has no purpose as it blends into the purpose of God, for the real world has slipped quietly into heaven where everything eternal in it has always been. There the redeemer and the redeemed join in perfect love of God and of each other. Heaven is your home and being in God it must also be in you. And from the workbook, Lesson 91, Miracles are seen in light. It is important to remember that miracles and vision necessarily go together. This needs repeating and frequent repeating. It is a central idea in your new thought system and the perception that produces it. The miracle is always there. Its presence is not caused by your vision. Its presence is not the result of your failure to see. It is only your awareness of miracles that is affected. You will see them in the light. You will not see them in the dark. To you then light is crucial. While you remain in darkness the miracle remains unseen. Thus you are convinced it is not there. This follows from the premises from which the darkness comes. Denial of light leads to failure to perceive it. Failure to perceive light is to perceive darkness. The light is useless to you then even though it is there. You cannot use it because its presence is unknown to you. And the seeming reality of the darkness makes the idea of light meaningless. To be told that what you do not see is there sounds like insanity. It is very difficult to become convinced that it is insanity not to see what is there and to see what is not there instead. You do not doubt that the body's eyes can see. You do not doubt the images they show you are a reality. Your faith lies in the darkness not in the light. How can this be reversed? For you it is impossible but you are not alone in this. Your efforts however little they may be have strong support. Did you but realize how great this strength your doubts would vanish? Today we will devote ourselves to the attempt to let you feel this strength. When you have felt the strength in you which makes all miracles within your easy reach, you will not doubt it. The miracles your sense of weakness hides will leap into awareness as you feel the strength in you. Three times today set aside about ten minutes for a quiet time in which you try to leave your weakness behind. This is accomplished very simply as you instruct yourself that you are not a body. Faith goes to what you want and you instruct your mind accordingly. Your will remains your teacher and your will has all the strength to do what it desires. You can escape the body if you choose. You can experience the strength in you. Begin the longer practice periods with this statement of true cause and effect relationships. Miracles are seen in light. The body's eyes do not perceive the light but I am not a body. What am I? The question with which this statement ends is needed for our exercises today. What you think you are is a belief to be undone but what you really are must be revealed to you. The belief you are a body calls for correction being a mistake. The truth of what you are calls on the strength in you to bring to your awareness what the mistake conceals. If you are not a body what are you? You need to be aware of what the Holy Spirit uses to replace the image of a body in your mind. You need to feel something to put your faith in as you lift it from the body. You need a real experience of something else, something more solid and more sure, more worthy of your faith and really there. If you are not a body what are you? Ask this in honesty and then devote several minutes to allow your mistaken thoughts about your attributes to be corrected and their opposites to take their place. Say for example, I am not weak but strong. I am not helpless but all powerful. I am not limited but unlimited. I am not doubtful but certain. I am not an illusion but a reality. I cannot see in darkness but in light. In the second phase of the exercise period try to experience these truths about yourself. Concentrate particularly on the experience of strength. Remember that all sense of weakness is associated with the belief you are a body, a belief that is mistaken and deserves no faith. Try to remove your faith from it if only for a moment. You will be accustomed to keeping faith with the more worthy in you as we go along. Relax for the rest of the practice period, confident that your efforts however meager are fully supported by the strength of God and all his thoughts. It is from them that your strength will come. It is through their strong support that you will feel the strength in you. They are united with you in this practice period in which you share a purpose like their own. Theirs is the light in which you will see miracles because their strength is yours. Their strength becomes your eyes that you may see. Five or six times an hour at reasonably regular intervals remind yourself that miracles are seen in light. Also, be sure to meet temptation with today's idea. This form would be helpful for this special purpose. Miracles are seen in light. Let me not close my eyes because of this. Miracles are seen in light. Today, from the instructions and descriptions and the text, we see where this is going. Everything that is practiced, everything that is studied in the Course, every meager effort, every little willingness is aimed at one experience. The vision of Christ. This is how all realization comes into awareness. The realization of self as Christ, as love, as divine abstract light is everything. Miracles light the way. Miracles point the mind inward in this direction. We are reminded from Jesus, the Holy Spirit is your strength because he knows nothing but the Spirit as you. He is perfectly aware that you do not know yourself and perfectly aware of how to teach you to remember what you are. Because he loves you, he will gladly teach you what he loves, for he wills to share it, remembering you always. He cannot let you forget your worth, for the Father never ceases to remind him of his son, and he never ceases to remind his son of the Father. God is in your memory because of him. All gratitude to the Holy Spirit for such a high function as the remembrance of Christ. For such a function of removing all the obstacles in the sleeping Son of God's mind so that the Son may recognize himself as the Christ. To open the eyes of the blind is the Holy Spirit's mission, for he knows that they have not lost their vision but merely sleep. He would awaken them from the sleep of forgetting to the remembering of God. Jesus reminds us that you must first learn the cost of sleeping and refuse to pay it. Only then will you decide to awaken. And then the real world will spring to your sight for Christ has never slept. He is waiting to be seen. Today we would see the Christ. We would behold the beauty of abstract light and love. We know that love will transfer without any interference and spread that our perception will merge and disappear in light. Perception and knowledge will become so similar that they share the unification of the laws of God and then perception is gone. And only light and love of eternity remain. The world has no purpose as it blends into the purpose of God. For the real world has slipped quietly into heaven where everything eternal in it has always been. There the Redeemer and the Redeemed join in perfect love of God and of each other. Heaven is our home and God in Christ and Christ in God won in spirit. We practice the means of awakening. Today miracles are seen in light. The body's eyes do not perceive the light but I am not a body. What am I? I am not an illusion but a reality. Miracles are seen in light.