 We continue today with Chapter 10, The Idols of Sickness, Introduction. Nothing beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving because nothing is beyond you. Time and eternity are both in your mind and will conflict until you perceive time solely as a means to regain eternity. You cannot do this as long as you believe that anything happening to you is caused by factors outside yourself. You must learn that time is solely at your disposal and that nothing in the world can take this responsibility from you. You can violate God's laws in your imagination, but you cannot escape from them. They were established for your protection and are as inviolate as your safety. God created nothing beside you and nothing beside you exists for you are part of Him. What except Him can exist? Nothing beyond Him can happen because nothing except Him is real. Your creations add to Him as you do, but nothing is added that is different because everything has always been. What can upset you except the ephemeral? And how can the ephemeral be real if you are God's only creation and He created you eternal? Your holy mind establishes everything that happens to you. Every response you make to everything you perceive is up to you because your mind determines your perception of it. God does not change his mind about you for he is not uncertain of himself and what he knows can be known because he does not know it only for himself. He created you for himself, but he gave you the power to create for yourself so you would be like him. That is why your mind is holy. Can anything exceed the love of God? Can anything then exceed your will? Nothing can reach you from beyond it because being in God you encompass everything. Believe this and you will realize how much is up to you. When anything threatens your peace of mind, ask yourself, has God changed his mind about me? Then accept his decision for it is indeed changeless and refuse to change your mind about yourself. God will never decide against you or he would be deciding against himself. At home in God. You do not know your creation simply because you would decide against them as long as your mind is split and to attack what you have created is impossible. But remember that it is as impossible for God. The law of creation is that you love your creations as yourself because they are part of you. Everything that was created is therefore perfectly safe because the laws of God protected by his love. Any part of your mind that does not know this has banished itself from knowledge because it has not met its conditions. Who could have done this but you? Recognize this gladly for in this recognition lies the realization that your banishment is not of God and therefore it does not exist. You are at home in God dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality. Is it your decision to do so? You recognize from your own experience that what you see in dreams you think is real while you are asleep. Yet the instant you awaken you realize that everything that seemed to happen in the dream did not happen at all. You do not think this strange even though all the laws of what you awaken to were violated while you slept. Is it not possible that you merely shifted from one dream to another without really waking? Would you bother to reconcile what happened in conflicting dreams or would you dismiss both together if you discovered that reality is in accord with neither? You do not remember being awake. When you hear the Holy Spirit you may feel better because loving then seems possible to you but you do not remember yet that it once was so and it is in this remembering that you will know it can be so again. What is possible has not yet been accomplished yet what has once been is so now if it is eternal. When you remember you will know that what you remember is eternal and therefore is now. You will remember everything the instant you desire it holy for if to desire holy is to create you will have willed away the separation returning your mind simultaneously to your Creator and your creations. Knowing them you will have no wish to sleep but only the desire to awaken and be glad. Dreams will be impossible because you will want only truth and being at last your will it will be yours. And from the workbook lesson number 73 I will there be light. Today we are considering the will you share with God. This is not the same as the ego's idle wishes out of which darkness and nothingness arise. The will you share with God has all the power of creation in it. The ego's idle wishes are unshared and therefore have no power at all. Its wishes are not idle in the sense that they can make a world of illusions in which your belief can be very strong. But they are idle indeed in terms of creation. They make nothing that is real. Idle wishes and grievances are partners or co-makers in picturing the world you see. The wishes of the ego give rise to it and the ego's need for grievances which are necessary to maintain it. People's it with figures that seem to attack you and call you for righteous judgment. These figures become the middlemen the ego employs to traffic in grievances. They stand between your awareness and your brothers reality. Beholding them you do not know your brothers or yourself. Your will is lost to you in this strange bartering in which guilt is traded back and forth and grievances increase with each exchange. Can such a world have been created by the will of the son of God sharing with his father? Did God create disaster for his son? Creation is the will of both together. Would God create a world that kills himself? Today we will try once more to reach the world that is in accordance with your will. The light is in it because it does not oppose the will of God. It is not heaven but the light of heaven shines on it. Darkness is vanished. The ego's idle wishes have been withdrawn. Yet the light that shines upon this world reflects your will and so it must be in you that we will look for it. Your picture of the world can only mirror what is within. The source of neither light nor darkness can be found without. Grievance is dark in your mind and you look out on a darkened world. Forgiveness lifts the darkness, reasserts your will and lets you look upon a world of light. We have repeatedly emphasized that the barrier of grievances is easily passed and cannot stand between you and your salvation. The reason is very simple. Do you really want to be in hell? Do you really want to weep and suffer and die? Forget the ego's arguments which seek to prove all this is really heaven. You know it is not so. You cannot want this for yourself. There is a point beyond which illusions cannot go. Suffering is not happiness and it is happiness you really want. Such is your will and truth and so salvation is your will as well. You want to succeed in what we are trying to do today. We undertake it with your blessing and your glad accord. We will succeed today if you remember that you want salvation for yourself. You want to accept God's plan because you share in it. You have no will that can really oppose it and you do not want to do so. Salvation is for you. Above all else you want the freedom to remember who you really are. Today it is the ego that stands powerless before your will. Your will is free and nothing can prevail against it. Therefore we undertake the exercises for today in happy confidence, certain that we will find what is your will to find and remember what it is your will to remember. No idle wishes can detain us nor deceive us with an illusion of strength. Today let your will be done and end forever the insane belief it is hell in place of heaven that you choose. We will begin our longer practice periods with the recognition that God's plan for salvation and only His is wholly in accord with your will. It is not the purpose of an alien will, thrust upon you unwillingly. It is the one purpose here on which you and your father are in perfect accord. You will succeed today the time appointed for the release of the Son of God from hell and from all idle wishes. His will is now restored to his awareness. He is willing this very day to look upon the light in him and be saved. After reminding yourself of this and determining to keep your will clearly in mind, tell yourself with gentle firmness and quiet certainty, I will there be light. Let me behold the light that reflects God's will and mine. Then let your will assert itself joined with the power of God and united with yourself. Put the rest of the practice period under their guidance. Join with them as they lead the way. In the shorter practice periods again make a declaration of what you really want. Say, I will there be light. Darkness is not my will. This should be repeated several times an hour. It is most important, however, to apply today's idea in this form immediately you are tempted to hold a grievance of any kind. This will help you let your grievance go instead of cherishing them and hiding them in darkness. I will there be light. So today we go past all of the idols of sickness, opening to the kingdom of heaven within, welling that there be light, welling that we know our own creations, we know God, we know our self, all as spirit, all as the same. Spirit is always the same. There are no differences in spirit. Spirit is not ephemeral. It is not temporary. It is not ever changing. Spirit is changeless. Today I am at home in God. Today I realize I am perfectly safe because I am protected and sustained by the laws of God. I have been dreaming of exile, but I am perfectly capable of awakening to reality. I am at home in God. It is my decision to awaken and to realize that everything that seemed to happen in the dream did not happen at all. I will no longer try to reconcile what seemed to happen in conflicting dreams because dreams are dreams are dreams. The dreams are all the same. They are unreal. There cannot be different forms of unreality. There cannot be different degrees of unreality, different facets of unreality. We lay aside such thoughts, such gibberish that would deny the truth, the truth that I am at home in God. My home is eternal. My home is light. I will use my will to remember the light of my existence. I will there be light. I share this will with God, it has all the power of creation in it. No longer will idle wishes and grievances block the way to my reality. I will there be light. Today I look at the world and see it as a silly game. The linear world, the linear cosmos is a projection of the ego. It's a trap. It's a distraction. It offers nothing of value. Why? Because the ego gave rise to it. And the ego uses its need for grievances to maintain itself. The ego uses the linear world to maintain itself. Peoples it with figures that seem to attack and call for righteous judgment. What is this game? These figures we call human beings become the middlemen the ego employs to traffic in grievances. People are the means the ego uses to traffic in grievances to act out attack thoughts. In this linear world, this false perception these people are the bringers of grievances, the witnesses to attack sickness and death. They stand between my awareness and my brother's reality as the Christ. My sister's reality as the Christ. When I behold these dream figures and give them reality giving reality to bodies and temporary measures I cannot know my brother's as the Christ. If I cannot see my brother's and sister's as the Christ I cannot recognize myself as the Christ. I will there be light. I will to remember. Jesus reminds us in today's lesson he says your will is lost to you in this strange bartering in which guilt is traded back and forth and grievances increase with each exchange. Today I will there be light. I lay aside all reciprocity, all bartering, all exchange all doing something to get something else. This is the law of the world, the law of linear time. Supply and demand, giving and form, getting and form. None of this has anything at all to do with the will of God and the will of the Son of God. God has nothing to do with this because this linear world of give and take, supply and demand is unlike eternity, unlike spirit. Jesus asked us a beautiful question in lesson 73. He says would God create a world that kills himself? No, such insanity. Today we will try once more to reach the world that is in accordance with your will. This is the real world, this is the happy dream. This is the forgiven world. We must behold a world that reflects our will for light. We look inside. Our picture of the world can only mirror what is within us. This real world is a reflection of forgiveness. This is what we choose today. As we state, in our heart I will there be light. Jesus asked us beautiful questions, very direct questions in the lesson for today. Do you really want to be in hell? Do you really want to weep and suffer and die? No. Instead, I will there be light. We undertake the exercises for today in happy confidence, certain that we will find what it is our will to find. And remember what it is our will to remember. I will there be light. I call upon the power of my mind. Let me behold the light that reflects God's will and mine. Darkness is not my will. I will there be light. Amen.