 We continue with chapter 11, the problem and the answer. This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel you need a course which in the end teaches that only reality is true. But do you believe it? When you perceive the real world, you will recognize that you did not believe it. Yet the swiftness with which your new and only real perception will be translated into knowledge will leave you but an instant to realize that this alone is true. And then everything you made will be forgotten, the good and the bad, the false and the true. For as heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction but its translation into heaven. The reinterpretation of the world is the transfer of all perception to knowledge. The Bible tells you to become as little children. Little children recognize that they do not understand what they perceive and so they ask what it means. Do not make the mistake of believing that you understand what you perceive for its meaning is lost to you. Yet the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning for you and if you will let Him interpret it, He will restore to you what you have thrown away. Yet while you think you know its meaning, you will see no need to ask it of Him. You do not know the meaning of anything you perceive. Not one thought you hold is wholly true. The recognition of this is your first form beginning. Instruction and perception is your great need for you understand nothing. Recognize this but do not accept it for understanding is your inheritance. Perceptions are learned and you are not without the teacher. Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your willingness to question everything you learned of yourself. For you who learn to miss should not be your own teacher. No one can withhold truth except from himself. Yet God will not refuse the answer He gave. Ask then for what is yours and do not defend yourself against truth. You made the problem God has answered. Ask yourself therefore but one simple question. Do I want the problem or do I want the answer? Decide for the answer and you will have it for you will see it as it is and it is yours already. You may complain that this course is not sufficiently specific for you to understand and use. Yet perhaps you have not done what it specifically advocates. This is not a course in the play of ideas but in their practical application. Nothing could be more specific than to be told that if you ask you will receive. The Holy Spirit will answer every specific problem as long as you believe that problems are specific. His answer is both many and one as long as you believe that the one is many. You may be afraid of His specificity for fear of what you think it will demand of you. Yet only by asking will you learn that nothing of God demands anything of you. God gives. He does not take. When you refuse to ask it is because you believe that asking is taking rather than sharing. The Holy Spirit will give you only what is yours and will take nothing in return. For what is yours is everything and you share it with God. That is its reality. Would the Holy Spirit who wills only to restore be capable of misinterpreting the question you must ask to learn His answer? You have heard the answer but you have misunderstood the question. You believe that to ask for guidance of the Holy Spirit is to ask for deprivation. Little child of God, you do not understand your Father. You believe in a world that takes because you believe that you can get by taking and that by that perception you have lost sight of the real world. You are afraid of the world as you see it but the real world is still yours for the asking. Do not deny it to yourself for it can only free you. Nothing of God will enslave His Son whom He created free and whose freedom is protected by His being. Blessed are you who are willing to ask the truth of God without fear. For only thus can you learn that His answer is the release from fear. Beautiful child of God, you are asking only for what I promised you. Do you believe I would deceive you? The kingdom of heaven is within you. Believe that the truth is in me for I know that it is in you. God's sons have nothing they do not share. Ask for truth of any Son of God and you have asked it of me. Not one of us but has the answer in Him to give to anyone who asks it of Him. Ask anything of God's Son and His Father will answer you. For Christ is not deceived in His Father and His Father is not deceived in Him. Do not then be deceived in your brother and see only His loving thoughts as His reality. For by denying that His mind is split you will heal yours. Accept Him as His Father accepts Him and heal Him unto Christ. For Christ is His healing and yours. Christ is the Son of God who is in no way separate from His Father whose every thought is as loving as the thought of His Father by which He was created. Be not deceived in God's Son for thereby you must be deceived in yourself. And being deceived in yourself you are deceived in your Father in whom no deceit is possible. In the real world there is no sickness for there is no separation and no division. Only loving thoughts are recognized and because no one is without your help the help of God goes with you everywhere. As you become willing to accept this help by asking for it you will give it because you want it. Nothing will be beyond your healing power because nothing will be denied your simple request. What problems will not disappear in the presence of God's answer? Ask then to learn of the reality of your brother because this is what you will perceive in Him and you will see your beauty reflected in His. Do not accept your brother's variable perception of himself for his split mind is yours and you will not accept your healing without his. For you share the real world as you share heaven and his healing is yours. To love yourself is to heal yourself and you cannot perceive part of you as sick and achieve your goal. Brother we heal together as we live together and love together. Be not deceived in God's Son for He is one with Himself and one with His Father. Love Him who is beloved of His Father and you will learn of the Father's love for you. If you perceive offense in your brother pluck the offense from your mind for you are offended by Christ and are deceived in Him. Heal in Christ and be not offended by Him for there is no offense in Him. If what you perceive offends you you are offended in yourself and are condemning God's Son whom God condemneth not. Let the Holy Spirit remove all offenses of God's Son against Himself and perceive no one but through His guidance for He would save you from all condemnation. Accept His healing power and use it for all He sends you for He wills to heal the Son of God in whom He is not deceived. Children perceive frightening ghosts and monsters and dragons and they are terrified yet if they ask someone they trust for the meaning of what they perceive and are willing to let go their own interpretations in favor of reality their fear goes with them. When a child is helped to translate his quote ghost into a curtain, his quote monster into a shadow and his quote dragon into a dream he is no longer afraid and laughs happily at his own fear. You my child are afraid of your brothers and of your father and of yourself but you are merely deceived in them. Ask what they are of the teacher of reality and hearing his answer you too will laugh at your fears and replace them with peace. For fear lies not in reality but in the minds of children who do not understand reality. It is only their lack of understanding that frightens them and when they learn to perceive truly they are not afraid and because of this they will ask for truth again when they are frightened. It is not the reality of your brothers or your father or yourself that frightens you. You do not know what they are and so you perceive them as ghosts and monsters and dragons. Ask what their reality is from the one who knows it and he will tell you what they are. For you do not understand them and because you are deceived by what you see you need reality to dispel your fears. Would you not exchange your fears for truth if the exchange is yours for the asking? For if God is not deceived in you, you can be deceived only in yourself and you can learn the truth about yourself from the Holy Spirit who will teach you that as part of God, deceit in you is impossible. When you perceive yourself without deceit you will accept the real world in place of the false one you have made and then your father will lean down to you and take this last step for you by raising you unto himself. And from the workbook, lesson 85, today's review will cover these ideas. My grievances hide the light of the world in me. My grievances show me what is not there and hide from me what I would see. Recognizing this, what do I want my grievances for? They keep me in darkness and hide the light. Grievances and light cannot go together, but light and vision must be joined for me to see. To see, I must lay grievances aside. I want to see and this will be the means by which I will succeed. Specific applications of this idea might be made in these forms. Let me not use this as a block to cite. The light of the world will shine all this away. I have no need for this. I want to see. My salvation comes from me. Today I will recognize where my salvation is. It is in me because its source is there. It has not left its source and so it cannot have left my mind. I will not look for it outside myself. It is not found outside and then brought in. But from within me it will reach beyond and everything I see will but reflect the light that shines in me and in itself. These forms of the idea are suitable for more specific applications. Let this not tempt me to look away from me for my salvation. I will not let this interfere with my awareness of the source of my salvation. This has no power to remove salvation from me. My grievances hide the light of the world in me. My salvation comes from me. So the text reminds us again about the problem and the answer. This is echoing our recent workbook lessons, lesson number 79 and 80. Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved. Let me recognize my problems have been solved. The problem of the world, the problem of the cosmos, all problems are one problem. The belief that it is possible for the Son of God to leave the Father, the problem is the belief that Christ could leave heaven and take on a new identity in time and space. Unlike the spiritual identity that God created, eternal, loving, innocent and free. Not one thought the world teaches is true. The simplicity of the Course lies in the acceptance of this one experience. And with the acceptance of the Atonement, everything that was made will be forgotten. The good, the bad, the right, the wrong, the false, the true. The world of opposites will be forgotten. And then even the real world, the forgiven world, the happy dream will disappear and only love remains. Heaven is all in all. So we have been shown that we have been misperceiving the world, perceiving images that make no sense. Not one thought is wholly true. And Jesus tells us the recognition of this is our firm beginning. He says, Instruction and perception is your great need for you understand nothing. Recognize this but do not accept it for understanding is your inheritance. Today we follow the teacher, the comforter that was given the sleeping mind. The Holy Spirit is God's answer. And today I come down to the very simple question, do I want the problem or do I want the answer? Decide for the answer and you will have it, for you will see it as it is and it is yours already. We shall ask for the answer and we shall receive. We shall knock on the door to the kingdom of heaven and the door shall be opened. We do not understand anything of this world. We shall not be afraid of the real world of the Holy Spirit's answer to all the questions the ego can pose. Our identity is our answer. We shall see that identity in everyone we meet today and see it in ourself. We shall accept ourself as we truly are. Every loving thought is true. Every loving thought has come from our source, our Creator, and from the being that is ourself, the Christ. Today we will not accept our brother's variable perception of himself. We will accept our wholeness and accept the wholeness of everyone and everything. And today if we perceive an offense in a brother we shall pluck the offense from our mind and no longer be offended by Christ. Christ is our reality and only an ego misperception could bring an offense. We shall let go of all offenses today, all judgments, and accept reality to be exactly as it is. We will let go of all faulty interpretations in favor of reality and see the fear disappear as well. In this glorious state of mind of happiness and joy, all ghosts and monsters and dragons are gone. Now we can laugh at these silly thoughts and be free of them forever. Today we exchange our fears for the truth in honesty and simplicity. We shall see ourself as we truly are, as God created us. We use these two ideas from the workbook today to free our mind of grievances and accept salvation within our own mind where it has always been. My grievances hide the light of the world in me. Let me not use this as a block to sight. The light of the world will shine all this away. I have no need for this. I want to see. My salvation comes from me. Let this not tempt me to look away from me for my salvation. I will not let this interfere with my awareness of the source of my salvation. This has no power to remove salvation from me. Amen.