 We continue on today with Chapter 9, The Answer to Prayer. Everyone who ever tried to use prayer to ask for something has experienced what appears to be failure. This is not only true in connection with specific things that might be harmful, but also in connection with requests that are strictly in line with this course. The latter in particular might be incorrectly interpreted as, quote, proof that the Course does not mean what it says. You must remember, however, that the Course states, and repeatedly, that its purpose is the escape from fear. Let us suppose, then, that what you asked of the Holy Spirit is what you really want, but you are still afraid of it. Should this be the cause, the case, your attainment of it would no longer be what you want. This is why certain specific forms of healing are not achieved, even when the state of healing is. An individual may ask for physical healing because he is fearful of bodily harm. At the same time, if he were healed physically, the threat to his thought system might be considerably more fearful to him than its physical expression. In this case, he is not really asking for release from fear, but for the removal of a symptom that he himself selected. This request is therefore not for healing at all. The Bible emphasizes that all prayer is answered, and this is indeed true. The very fact that the Holy Spirit has been asked for anything will ensure a response. Yet it is equally certain that no response given by him will ever be one that would increase fear. It is possible that his answer will not be heard. It is impossible, however, that it will be lost. There are many answers you have already received but have not yet heard. I assure you that they are waiting for you. If you would know your prayers are answered, never doubt a Son of God. Do not question him and do not confound him, for your faith in him is your faith in yourself. If you would know God and his answer, believe in me whose faith in you cannot be shaken. Can you ask of the Holy Spirit truly and doubt your brother? Believe his words are true because of the truth that is in him. You will unite with the truth in him, and his words will be true. As you hear him, you will hear me. Listening to truth is the only way you can hear it now and finally know it. The message your brother gives you is up to you. What does he say to you? What would you have him say? Your decision about him determines the message you receive. Remember that the Holy Spirit is in him and his voice speaks to you through him. What can so holy a brother tell you except truth? But are you listening to it? Your brother may not know who he is, but there is a light in his mind that does know. This light can shine into yours, giving truth to his words and making you able to hear them. His words are the Holy Spirit's answer to you. Is your faith in him strong enough to let you hear? You can no more pray for yourself alone and you can find joy for yourself alone. Prayer is the restatement of inclusion directed by the Holy Spirit under the laws of God. Salvation is of your brother. The Holy Spirit extends from your mind to his and answers you. You cannot hear the voice for God in yourself alone because you are not alone. And his answer is the only for what you are. You will not know the trust I have in you unless you extend it. You will not trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit or believe that it is for you unless you hear it in others. It must be for your brother because it is for you. Would God have created a voice for you alone? Could you hear his answer except as he hears all of God's sons? Hear of your brother what you would have me hear of you, for you would not want me to be deceived. I love you for the truth in you, as God does. Your deceptions may deceive you, but they cannot deceive me. Knowing what you are, I cannot doubt you. I hear only the Holy Spirit in you who speaks to me through you. If you would hear me, hear my brothers in whom God's voice speaks. The answer to all prayers lies in them. You will be answered as you hear the answer in everyone. Do not listen to anything else or you will not hear truly. Believe in your brothers because I believe in you and you will learn that my belief in you is justified. Believe in me by believing in them for the sake of what God gave them. They will answer you if you learn to ask only truth of them. Do not ask for blessings without blessing them, for only in this way can you learn how blessed you are. By following this way, you are seeking the truth in you. This is not going beyond yourself but toward yourself. Hear only God's answer in his sons and you are answered. To disbelieve is to side against or to attack. To believe is to accept and to side with. To believe is not to be credulous but to accept and appreciate. What you do not believe you do not appreciate and you cannot be grateful for what you do not value. There is a price you will pay for judgment because judgment is setting of a price. And as you said it, you will pay it. If paying is equated with getting, you will set the price low but demand a high return. You will have forgotten, however, that your return is in proportion to your judgment of worth. If paying is associated with giving, it cannot be perceived as loss. And the reciprocal relationship of giving and receiving will be recognized. The price will then be set high because of the value of the return. The price for getting is to lose sight of value, making it inevitable that you will not value what you receive. Valuing it little, you will not appreciate it and you will not want it. Never forget then that you set the value on what you receive and price it by what you give. To believe that it is possible to get much for little is to believe that you can bargain with God. God's laws are always fair and perfectly consistent by giving you receive. But to receive is to accept, not to get. It is impossible to not to have, but it is possible not to know you have. The recognition of having is the willingness for giving and only by this willingness can you recognize what you have. What you give is therefore the value you put on what you have, being the exact measure of the value you put upon it. And this in turn is the measure of how much you want it. You can ask of the Holy Spirit then only by giving to Him and you can give to Him only where you recognize Him. If you recognize Him in everyone, consider how much you will be asking of Him and how much you will receive. He will deny you nothing because you have denied Him nothing and so you can share everything. This is the way and the only way to have His answer because His answer is all you can ask for and want. Say then to everyone, because I will to know myself, I see you as God's Son and my brother. And from the workbook, lesson number 66, my happiness and my function are one. You have surely noticed an emphasis throughout our recent lessons on the connection between fulfilling your function and achieving happiness. This is because you do not really see the connection, yet there is more than just a connection between them. They are the same. Their forms are different, but their content is completely one. The ego does constant battle with the Holy Spirit on the fundamental question of what your function is. So does it do constant battle with the Holy Spirit about what your happiness is? It is not a two-way battle. The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond. He knows what your function is. He knows that it is your happiness. Today we will try to go past this holy meaningless battle and arrive at the truth about your function. We will not engage in senseless arguments about what it is. We will not become hopelessly involved in defining happiness and determining the means for achieving it. We will not indulge the ego by listening to its attacks on truth. We will merely be glad that we can find out what truth is. Our longer practice period today has as its purpose your acceptance of the fact that not only is there a very real connection between the function God gave you and your happiness, but that they are actually identical. God gives you only happiness. Therefore, the function he gave you must be happiness, even if it appears to be different. Today's exercises are an attempt to go beyond these differences in appearance and recognize the common content where it exists in truth. Begin the 10-15 minute practice period by reviewing these thoughts. God gives me only happiness. He has given my function to me. Therefore my function must be happiness. Try to see the logic in this sequence, even if you do not yet accept the conclusion. It is only if the first two thoughts are wrong that the conclusion could be false. Let us then think about the premises for a while as we are practicing. The first premise is that God gives you only happiness. This could be false, of course, but in order to be false it is necessary to define God as something he is not. Love cannot give evil. And what is not happiness is evil. God cannot give what he does not have. And he cannot have what he is not. Unless God gives you only happiness, he must be evil. And it is this definition of him you are believing if you do not accept the first premise. The second premise is that God has given you your function. We have seen that there are only two parts of your mind. One is ruled by the ego and is made up of illusions. The other is home of the Holy Spirit where truth abides. There are no other guides but these to choose between and no other outcomes possible as a result of your choice. But the fear that the ego always engenders and the love that the Holy Spirit always offers to replace it. Thus it must be that your function is established by God through his voice or is made by the ego which you have made to replace him. Which is true? Unless God gave your function to you, it must be the gift of the ego. Does the ego really have gifts to give, being itself an illusion and offering only the illusion of gifts? Think about this during the longer practice period today. Think also about the many forms of the illusion of your function has taken in your mind and the many ways in which you tried to find salvation under the ego's guidance. Did you find it? Were you happy? Did they bring you peace? We need great honesty today. Remember the outcomes fairly and consider also whether it was ever reasonable to expect happiness from anything the ego ever proposed. Yet the ego is the only alternative to the Holy Spirit's voice. You will listen to madness or hear the truth. Try to make this choice as you think about the premises on which our conclusions rest. We can share in this conclusion but in no other. For God himself shares it with us. Today's idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same and the different as the different. On one side stand all illusions. All truth stands on the other. Let us try today to realize that only the truth is true. In the shorter practice periods, which would be most helpful today, if undertaken twice an hour, this form of the application is suggested. My happiness and function are one because God has given me both. You will not take more than a minute and probably less to repeat these words slowly and think about them a little while as you say them. So today, through our text reading, through our workbook, we open to hear the Holy Spirit, the answer to our prayers, to receive guidance and to receive our function. And we open to the awareness that our happiness and our function are one. Our function of forgiveness is how our happiness is experienced and that God gave us our happiness in our creation. And nothing that the ego has made or said or done has changed our eternal happiness. Today, Jesus asked us to think about the many forms of the illusion of function that our mind has taken. The many ways in which we tried to find salvation under the ego's guidance. We have looked for happiness in personal gain. We have looked for happiness in personal recognition. We have looked for happiness in interpersonal relationships with people, dogs and cats and animals and pets, different possessions. We have looked forward in education and intelligence as the world judges it in status and degrees, cars, jobs, fancy locations, appealing temperatures, appealing weather patterns, climates. We have looked for happiness in safe countries, safe environments, and yet our happiness is our being as God created us. Our happiness has never been found in any of these forms, these passing forms that come and go and pass by like the clouds in the sky. We have looked for happiness in skills, in abilities, in languages. We have looked for happiness in pursuits, in hobbies, in interests, in accumulating money, in investments of the world, stock markets, bonds, insurance plans. All these things we have mistaken our function of forgiveness for, all these seeming human functions, human pursuits have let us know where. Even when we find relationships that we think we like, we can find happiness and these interpersonal relationships pass away. Either through leading a partner, having a partner leave, a partner getting sick and dying, or ourselves as bodies seeming to die. All of these pursuits of happiness in interpersonal relationships lead us nowhere. We are left with dust, dust in the wind. And so, as an alternative today, we seek for happiness where it can be found in our forgiveness. We have only one purpose today, to realize that our happiness and our function are one, that I am not a man or a woman or a child or an adult. I am not a human being. I am not American or Mexican or Russian or Greek. I am a forgiver, a forgiver of illusions. Today I want to see how happy I can be by letting go of all illusions, letting go of all these insane pursuits that I have believed I need to make me happy. I am not a being bound in time when I was created as eternity. Therefore, I will not look for my happiness in the future. I will not play the ego's game of I will be happy when the outcome, the form, is perfect. All outcomes of form will never be perfect because the ego made them, and the ego is the death wish. But I can forgive. I can release all illusions from my mind, all insane pursuits, all ambitions, all goals. Today I realize I have no career goal because happiness, present happiness, is my function. I will not be tempted by the future. Today I realize I have no future relationship goals. I am not hoping for a family. I am not hoping for growing old and getting white hair with somebody else, as well as myself. I am letting go of the on golden pond future of growing old together. My happiness is my function. No longer will I desire to be rich or famous or some other illusion of a body. Present happiness is my function. Today I rest in present happiness. Peaceful, serene, tranquil and content. As I say, my happiness and my function are one. Amen.