 We continue today with Chapter 17, Bringing Fantasy to Truth. The betrayal of the Son of God lies only in illusions, and all his, quote, sins are but his own imagining. His reality is forever sinless. He need not be forgiven but awakened. In his dreams he has betrayed himself, his brothers, and his God. Yet what is done in dreams has not been really done. It is impossible to convince the dreamer that this is so, for dreams are what they are because of their illusion of reality. Only in waking is the full release from them, for only then does it become perfectly apparent that they had no effect upon reality at all, and did not change it. Fantasies change reality. That is their purpose. They cannot do so in reality, but they can do so in the mind that would have reality be different. It is then only your wish to change reality that is fearful, because by your wish you think you have accomplished what you wish. This strange position, in a sense, acknowledges your power. Yet by distorting it and devoting it to, quote, evil, it also makes it unreal. You cannot be faithful to two masters who ask conflicting things of you. What you use in fantasy you deny to truth. Yet what you give to truth to use for you is safe from fantasy. When you maintain that there must be an order of difficulty in miracles, all you mean is that there are some things you would withhold from truth. You believe truth cannot deal with them only because you would keep them from truth. Very simply, your lack of faith in the power that heals all pain arises from your wish to retain some aspects of reality for fantasy. If you but realize what this must do to your appreciation of the whole, what you reserve for yourself you take away from him who would release you. Unless you give it back, it is inevitable that your perspective on reality be warped and uncorrected. As long as you would have it so, so long will the illusion of an order of difficulty in miracles remain with you. For you have established this order in reality by giving some of it to one teacher and some to another. And so you learn to deal with part of the truth in one way and in another way the other part. To fragment truth is to destroy it by rendering it meaningless. Orders of reality is a perspective without understanding. A frame of reference for reality to which it cannot really be compared at all. Think you that you can bring truth to fantasy and learn what truth means from the perspective of illusions. Truth has no meaning in illusion. The frame of reference for its meaning must be itself. When you try to bring truth to illusions, you are trying to make illusions real. And keep them by justifying your belief in them. But to give illusions to truth is to enable truth to teach that the illusions are unreal and thus enable you to escape from them. Reserve not one idea aside from truth or you establish orders of reality that must imprison you. There is no order in reality because everything there is true. Be willing then to give all you have held outside the truth to him who knows the truth and in whom all is brought to truth. Be not concerned with anything except your willingness to have this be accomplished. He will accomplish it, not you. But forget not this. When you become disturbed and lose your peace of mind because another is attempting to solve his problems through fantasy, you are refusing to forgive yourself for just this same attempt. And you are holding both of you away from truth and from salvation. As you forgive him, you restore to truth what was denied by both of you. And you will see forgiveness where you have given it. From the workbook, lesson 133, I will not value what is value less. Sometimes in teaching there is benefit, particularly after you have gone through what seems theoretical and far from what the student has already learned to bring him back to practical concerns. This we will do today. We will not speak of lofty world-encompassing ideas, but well instead on benefits to you. You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains. There are no satisfactions in the world. Today we list the real criteria by which to test all things you think you want, unless they meet these sound requirements they are not worth desiring at all, for they can but replace what offers more. The laws that govern choice you cannot make know more than you can make the alternatives from which to choose. The choosing you can do, indeed you must, but it is wise to learn the laws you set in motion when you choose and what alternatives you choose between. We have already stressed there are but two, however many there appear to be. The range is set and this we cannot change. It would be most ungenerous to you to let alternatives be limitless and thus delay your final choice until you had considered all of them in time and not been brought so clearly to the place where there is but one choice that must be made. Another kindly and related law is that there is no compromise in what your choice must bring. It cannot give you just a little, for there is no in between. Each choice you make brings everything to you or nothing. Therefore if you learn the tests by which you can distinguish everything from nothing, you will make the better choice. First, if you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is values. A temporary value is without all value. Time can never take away a value that is real. What fades and dies was never there and makes no offering to him who chooses it. He is deceived by nothing in a form he thinks he likes. Next, if you choose to take a thing away from someone else, you will have nothing left. This is because when you deny his right to everything, you have denied your own. You therefore will not recognize the things you really have denying they are there. Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. Yet loss must offer loss and nothing more. Your next consideration is the one on which the others rest. Why is the choice you make of value to you? What attracts your mind to it? What purpose does it serve? Here it is easiest of all to be deceived. For what the ego wants, it fails to recognize. It does not even tell the truth as it perceives it. For it needs to keep the halo which it uses to protect its skulls from tarnish and from rust. That you may see how, quote, innocent it is. Yet is its camouflage a thin veneer which could deceive but those who are content to be deceived. Its goals are obvious to anyone who cares to look for them. Here is deception doubled. For the one who is deceived will not perceive that he has merely failed to gain. He will believe that he has served the ego's hidden goals. Yet though he tries to keep its halo clear within his vision, still must he perceive its tarnished edges and its rusted core. His ineffectual mistakes appear as sins to him because he looks upon the tarnish as his own. The rusts a deep sign of unworthiness within himself. He who would still preserve the ego's goals and serve them as his own makes no mistakes, according to the dictates of his guide. This guidance teaches it is error to believe that sins are but mistakes. For who would suffer for his sins if this were so? And so we come to the criterion for choice that is the hardest to believe because its obviousness is overlaid with many levels of obscurity. If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed the ego's goals to come between the real alternatives and thus you do not realize there are but two and the alternative you think you chose seems fearful and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is. All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. Choosing is easy because of this. Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult. What is the gain to you in learning this? It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain. Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. We will attempt to reach this state today with self-deception laid aside and with an honest willingness to value but the truly valuable and the real. Our two extended practice periods of 15 minutes each begin with this. I will not value what is valueless and only what has value do I seek for only that do I desire to find and then receive what waits for everyone who reaches unencumbered to the gate of heaven which swings open as he comes. Should you begin to let yourself collect some needless burdens or believe you see some difficult decisions facing you, be quick to answer with this simple thought. I will not value what is valueless for what is valuable belongs to me. Amen.