 We continue today with Chapter 20, The Consistency of Means and End. We have said much about the discrepancies of means and end and how these must be brought in line before your holy relationship can bring you only joy. But we have also said the means to meet the Holy Spirit's goal will come from the same source as does His purpose. Being so simple and direct, this Course has nothing in it that is not consistent. The seeming inconsistencies or parts you find more difficult than others are merely indications of areas where means and end are still discrepant. And this produces great discomfort. This need not be. This Course requires almost nothing of you. It is impossible to imagine one that asks so little or could offer more. The period of discomfort that follows the sudden change in a relationship from sin to holiness may now be almost over. To the extent you still experience it, you are refusing to leave the means to Him who changed the purpose. You recognize you want the goal. Are you not also willing to accept the means? If you are not, let us admit that you are inconsistent. A purpose is attained by means. And if you want a purpose, you must be willing to want the means as well. How can one be sincere and say, I want this above all else and yet I do not want to learn the means to get it? To obtain the goal of the Holy Spirit indeed asks little. He has no more to give the means as well. The means are second to the goal. And when you hesitate it is because the purpose frightens you and not the means. Remember this, for otherwise you will make the error of believing that means are difficult. Yet how can they be difficult if they are merely given you? They guarantee the goal and they are perfectly in line with it. Before we look at them a little closer, remember that if you think they are impossible, your wanting of the purpose has been shaken. For if a goal is possible to reach, the means to do so must be possible as well. It is impossible to see your brother as sinless and yet to look upon him as a body. Is this not perfectly consistent with the goal of holiness? For holiness is merely the result of letting the effects of sin be lifted, so what was always true is recognized. To see a sinless body is impossible, for holiness is positive and the body is merely neutral. It is not sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it is, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ or of the ego. Either must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot be. And both must be undone for purposes of truth. The body is the means by which the ego tries to make the unholy relationship seem real. The unholy instant is the time of bodies. But the purpose here is sin. It cannot be attained but an illusion, and so the illusion of a brother as a body is quite in keeping with the purpose of unholyness. Because of this consistency, the means remain unquestioned while the end is cherished. Seeing adapts to wish for sight is always secondary to desire. And if you see the body, you have chosen judgment and not vision. For vision, like relationships, has no order. You either see or not. Who sees a brother's body has laid a judgment on him and sees him not. He does not really see him as sinful. He does not see him at all. In darkness of sin, he is invisible. He can be but imagined in the darkness. And it is here that the illusions you hold about him are not held up to his reality. Here our illusions and reality kept separated. Here our illusions never brought to truth and always hidden from it. And here in darkness is your brother's reality imagined as a body, in unholy relationships with other bodies serving the cause of sin an instant before he dies. There is indeed a difference between this vain imagining and vision. The difference lies not in them but in their purpose. Both are but means, each one appropriate to the end for which it is employed. Neither can serve the purpose of the other for each one is a choice of purpose employed on its behalf. Either is meaningless without the end for which it was intended nor is it valued as a separate thing apart from the intention. The means seem real because the goal is valued and judgment has no value unless the goal is sin. The body cannot be looked upon except through judgment. To see the body is the sign that you lack vision and have denied the means the Holy Spirit offers you to serve his purpose. How can a holy relationship achieve its purpose through the means of sin? Judgment, you taught yourself. Vision is learned from him who would undo your teaching. His vision cannot see the body because it cannot look on sin. And thus it leads you to reality. Your holy brother, sight of whom is your release, is no illusion. Attempt to see him not in darkness for your imaginings about him will seem real there. Your closed eyes you shut him out. Such was your purpose. And while this purpose seems to have a meaning, the means for its attainment will be evaluated as worth the seeing. And so you will not see. Your question should not be, how can I see my brother without the body? Ask only, do I really wish to see him sinless? And as you ask, forget not that his sinlessness is your escape from fear. Salvation is the Holy Spirit's goal. The means is vision. For what the seeing look upon is sinless. No one who loves can judge. And what he sees is free of condemnation. And what he sees he did not make. For it was given him to see, as was the vision that made his seeing possible. And from the workbook, lesson 164, now are we one with him who is our source. What time but now can truth be known? The present is the only time there is. And so today, this instant, now, we come to look upon what is forever there. Not in our sight, but in the eyes of Christ. He looks past time and sees eternity as represented there. He hears the sounds, the senseless, busy world and genders. Yet he hears them faintly. For beyond them all he hears the song of heaven and the voice for God more clear, more meaningful, more near. The world fades easily away before his sight. Its sounds grow dim. A melody from far beyond the world increasingly is more and more distant, distinct. An ancient call to which he gives an ancient answer. You will recognize them both, for they are but your answer to your father's call to you. Christ answers for you, echoing yourself, using your voice to give his glad consent, accepting your deliverance for you. How holy is your practicing today? As Christ gives you his sight and hears for you, and answers in your name the call he hears. How quiet is the time you give to spend with him beyond the world. How easily are all your seeming sins for God and all your sorrows unremembered. On this day is grief laid by for sights and sounds that come from nearer and the world are clear to you who will today accept the gifts he gives. There is a silence into which the world cannot intrude. There is an ancient peace you carry in your heart and have not lost. There is a sense of holiness in you, the thought of sin has never touched. All this today you will remember. Faithfulness in practicing today will bring rewards so great and so completely different from all things you saw before that you will know that here your treasure is and here your rest. This is the day when vain imaginings part like a curtain to reveal what lies beyond them. Now is what is really there made visible while all the shadows which appeared to hide it merely sink away. Now is the balance righted and the scale of judgment left to him who judges true and in his judgment will a world unfold in perfect innocence before your eyes. Now will you see it with the eyes of Christ. Now is its transformation clear to you. Brother, this day is sacred to the world. Your vision, given you from far beyond all things within the world, looks back on them in a new light and what you see becomes the healing and salvation of the world. The valuable and valueless are both perceived and recognized for what they are and what is worthy of your love receives your love while nothing to be feared remains. We will not judge today. We will receive but is given as from judgment made beyond the world. Our practicing today becomes our gift of thankfulness for our release from blindness and from misery. All that we see will but increase our joy because its holiness reflects our own. We stand forgiven in the sight of Christ with all the world forgiven in our time. We bless the world as we behold it in the light in which our Savior looks on us and offer it the freedom given us through his forgiving vision, not our own. Open the curtain in your practicing by merely letting go all things you think you want. Your trifling treasures put away and leave a clean and open space within your mind where Christ can come and offer you the treasure of salvation. He has need of your most holy mind to save the world. Is not this purpose worthy to be yours? Is not Christ vision worthy to be sought above the world's unsatisfying goals? Let not today slip by without the gifts it holds for you receiving your consent and your acceptance. We can change the world if you acknowledge them. You may not see the value of your acceptance. It gives to the world. But this you surely want. You can exchange all suffering for joy this very day. Practice in earnest and give the gift. Is yours. Would God deceive you? Can his promise fail? Can you withhold so little when his hands hold out complete salvation to his Son? Amen.