 We continue with Chapter 8, the journey back, the direction of the curriculum. Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is. This is the prerequisite for knowledge only because those who are in conflict are not peaceful, and peace is the condition of knowledge because it is the condition of the kingdom. Knowledge can be restored only when you meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God who makes no bargains. It is merely the result of your misuse of His laws on behalf of an imaginary will that is not His. Knowledge is His will. If you are opposing His will, how can you have knowledge? I have told you what knowledge offers you, but perhaps you do not yet regard this as wholly desirable. If you did, you would not be so ready to throw it away when the ego asks for your allegiance. The distractions of the ego may seem to interfere with your learning, but the ego has no power to distract you unless you give it the power to do so. The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect it to say, I am not real. If you are not asked to dispel your hallucinations alone, you are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results to you. If you do not want them on the basis of laws of peace, they will be removed from your mind for you. Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does deprive you of peace. Yet in this war, there is no opponent. This is the reinterpretation of reality that you must make to secure peace, and the only one you need to ever make. Those whom you perceive as opponents are part of your peace, which you are giving up by attacking them. How can you have what you give up? You share to have, but you do not give it up yourself. When you give up peace, you are excluding yourself from it. This is a condition so alien to the kingdom that you cannot understand the states that prevails within it. Your past learning must have taught you wrong things, simply because it has not made you happy. On this basis alone, its value should be questioned. If learning aims at change, and that is always its purpose, are you satisfied with the changes your learning has brought you? Dissatisfaction with learning outcomes is a sign of learning failure, since it means that you did not get what you wanted. The curriculum of the atonement is the opposite of the curriculum you have established for yourself, but so is its outcome. If the outcome of yours has made you unhappy, and if you want a different one, a change in the curriculum is obviously necessary. The first change to be introduced is a change in direction. A meaningful curriculum cannot be inconsistent. If it is planned by two teachers, each believing in diametrically opposed ideas, it cannot be integrated. If it is carried out by these two teachers simultaneously, each one merely interferes with the other. This leads to fluctuation, but not to change. The volatile have no direction. They cannot choose one because they cannot relinquish the other, even if it does not exist. Their conflicted curriculum teaches them that all directions exist and gives them no rationale for choice. The total senselessness of such a curriculum must be fully recognized before a real change in direction becomes possible. You cannot learn simultaneously from two teachers who are in total disagreement about everything. Their joint curriculum presents an impossible learning task. They are teaching you entirely different things in entirely different ways, which might be possible except that both are teaching you about yourself. Your reality is unaffected by both, but if you listen to both, your mind will be split about what your reality is. And from the workbook, Lesson 56. Our review for today covers the following. My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability. How can I know who I am when I see myself as under constant attack? Pain, illness, loss, age, and death seem to threaten me. All my hopes and wishes and plans appear to be at the mercy of a world I cannot control. Yet perfect security and complete fulfillment are my inheritance. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see, but God has kept my inheritance safe for me. My own real thoughts will teach me what it is. Above all else I want to see. Recognizing that what I see reflects what I think I am, I realize that vision is my greatest need. The world I see attests to the fearful nature of the self-image I have made. If I would remember who I am, it is essential that I let this image of myself go. As it is replaced by truth, vision will surely be given me. And with this vision, I will look upon the world and on myself with charity and love. Above all else, I want to see differently. The world I see holds my fearful self-image in place and guarantees its continuance. While I see the world as I see it now, truth cannot enter my awareness. I would let the door behind this world be opened for me, that I may look past it to the world that reflects the love of God. God is in everything I see. Behind every image I have made, the truth remains unchanged. Behind every veil I have drawn across the face of love, its light remains undimmed. Beyond all my insane wishes is my will, united with the will of my Father. God is still everywhere and in everything, forever. And we who are part of Him will yet look past all appearances and recognize the truth behind, beyond, them all. God is in everything I see because God is in my mind. In my own mind, beyond, behind all my insane thoughts of separation and attack, is the knowledge that all is one forever. I have not lost the knowledge of who I am because I have forgotten it. It has been kept for me in the mind of God who has not left his thoughts. And I who am among them, am one with them and one with him. So today our text and our workbook lesson review is pointing to a new direction, a single direction for the mind toward vision. And we are also reminded of what is blocking that vision. Attack thoughts. Attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability. These are the blocks to Christ's vision. And we must reaffirm with great sincerity and determination that we want Christ's vision above all else I want to see. Above all else I want to see differently. Our past learning has taught us the wrong things. We are aware of this because we have not been happy in the past. So we question our learning. We question our learning outcomes in this world. We are looking for a new outcome, happiness. And the Atonement offers us this happiness. This decision in mind, this acceptance of the correction is happiness. To remember this happiness is to remember God. God is everything with this new vision. God is everything with Christ's vision. And so we say, God is in everything I see. And God is in everything I see because God is in my mind. If the source of everything is God, and the source of everything is in my mind, and I in the mind of God, that is the reason why I can see the world differently. And also the reason why I can look beyond the world, behind the world of images to the gateway to the Kingdom of Heaven within. In my own mind, behind all my insane thoughts of separation and attack is the knowledge that all is one forever. I have not lost the knowledge of who I am because I have forgotten it. It has been kept for me in the mind of God who has not left his thoughts. And I who am among them, am one with them and one with him. Amen.