 Hi everyone. Welcome again to the Course in Miracles Lessons Live and today we're going to look at workbook lesson 133. I will not value what is valueless. Thank you Jesus. Wow. Here's what Jesus has to say to us today. 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. Oh my gosh are we in for a bright today. He's talking about what is practical and what is of benefit to you. So I can think of two no two words that are more joyful for me right now than practical and benefits. I'm ready to fully experience and embrace the practical benefits not world-encompassing ideas. 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, no more than you can make 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 that 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. When I'm reading these last paragraphs, these last two paragraphs, I'm thinking of that section in the course called the real alternatives. In that section Jesus says that the range is set there are but two and that men have died upon seeing that the roadways of the world were offering nothing but death. So if you're wanting a context for this workbook lesson today in these last two paragraphs, these paragraphs are confusing to you at all. Read the real alternative section because basically Jesus is saying in there all the roadways of the world lead to death. Men have died upon seeing this but if they had just taken one more step they would have been lifted to heights of happiness. That's a summary of the real alternative section. So it's basically saying these two paragraphs that I just read are basically saying there are no satisfactions in the world and when you choose any value of this world, anything at all whatsoever, you set in motion the laws of fear, the laws of the ego, of guilt, pain, shame. If you choose the ego even if you say I don't really recognize what that is but if you choose to value anything at all of this world and I mean absolutely anything at all in time and space in the linear cosmos that the ego projected. If you value what the ego invented then you are afraid of the correction and the real alternative is the Holy Spirit's correction, it's forgiveness, it's the goal of the course, it's the atonement, it's happiness, it's joy, it's love and if you value anything at all of this world then you set in motion the laws of the ego which have no basis and no reality because God didn't create the ego. God is so pure of pure spirit, love, light, eternity that God doesn't look upon the ego, it's the Holy Spirit that is the bridge that overlooks the error. You might say overlooks the darkness, the defiled altar, the ego belief and then looks to the light of the atonement and sees the great rays, the blazing lights of God and that's the Holy Spirit's function. But if you value something of this world, anything, anything at all of this world then that just means there's going to be a generated fear of the correction, of the atonement, of God, of Jesus. You can't love something that God didn't create. If you love something that is fictitious, it's fantasy, it's make-believe which is the whole cosmos then basically you cannot open your heart to the true love of God which is purely divine light and abstraction. It's like an eclipse where the correction now is the thing that you value and it's a total eclipse of the heart. It's a total eclipse of valuing the correction more than the error and then you accept the correction. So it's basically saying I'm going to choose the correction that opens me to heaven, to the remembrance of God's love. 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. Let's read that one sentence again. Each choice you make brings everything to you or nothing. Therefore, if you learn the test 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 valueless. 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. So this is hearkening back to the Beyond all idols section in the text where Jesus says your will is universal and cannot be content with form of any kind. And also that section has the very wonderful sentence, God knows not form, period. That one fits real well with our lesson 132 yesterday. There is no world exclamation point. Oh, look at those two. One from the text, one from the workbook. God knows not form, period. There is no world exclamation. Okay. I can just see that there's indescribable happiness in this realization because you're not going to be chasing after something that's Maya, that's illusion, that's fictitious, that's fantasy. Just accept the truth and be happy. 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 that they're there. Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. Yet loss must offer loss and nothing more. Okay. What's he's saying in this paragraph? If you choose to take a thing away from anyone, you have nothing left. He's basically saying that the concept of reciprocity is impossible. You cannot have a situation where you're giving to get something in return. You cannot look at anything like commerce as being real. You can't look at relationships in a reciprocal way. If I give you this to you, you'll give this to me. If I scratch your back, you'll scratch my back. The whole cosmos of linear time is based on reciprocity and he's basically saying here in paragraph seven, no, there is no such thing as reciprocity. God doesn't understand reciprocity. He's saying if you want to know God, you have to also not understand reciprocity. That's right. What does this mean for my business? Let's get about the father's business now. Is that all right? Is it all right to be about the father's business? What's the father's business? Love, divine love, agape love, eternal love, infinite love. That's the father's business. It doesn't have anything to do with commerce. No. Does it have anything to do with supply and demand? No. Does it have anything to do with reciprocity? No. Do you have to sign a contract? I'll do this if you do that and I agree to this if you do that. No, no, no, nada, nada, nada, nada. It doesn't involve reciprocity. It's a game. If you can watch the game and see it as a game, you will be indescribably happy. You don't have to deny what your body's eyes seem to be witnessing, but you know that there's no reciprocal arrangement involved in this moment. The present moment is not reciprocal. Okay. So we'll read those last two sentences. Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. Opposite, duality, nada, nada, nada. Yet loss must offer loss and nothing more. Okay. Basic fact. 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 goals from tarnish and from rust that you may see how 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 double. For the one who is deceived will not perceive that he has merely failed to gain. He will believe 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 rust, a sign of deep 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 game to you in learning this? It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without a 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 the 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 will 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. So as we just look at the lesson for the day, I will not value the valueless, we just have to remember one thing that that which is eternal, that which is everlasting, that which is of God, that which is of spirit, heaven is valuable and anything else that's temporary has no value whatsoever. We cannot continue to try to put those two words together, temporary value. No, there is no such thing. It's an oxymoron, it's a contradiction in terms to talk about temporary values because the present moment is our gateway to eternity and if we value anything of time, which would be linear time, the past and the future, we obliterate an awareness now and now is all there is. So if we want to know what's real and true and we want to be in the joy of heaven, we want to be peaceful, loving, gleeful, laughing, shining, sharing, extending, this moment is it. This moment offers everything that I could ever want. If you want something, why not just say I want to be present as Eckhart Tolle talks about. Presence is no small gift. The presence of God, the presence of love, the presence of oneness, this beautiful, beautiful, simple, simple presence is only obscured by the belief in linear time and the things of time and they're just not worth it. You know, if you were offered divine love and told the only thing you have to have in your heart is just to value it with all your heart. Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, and might. That's it. That's just valuing God, valuing love more than anything else. That's the choice. And also in the Bible in Corinthians it said that which is temporary will pass away, but that which is eternal will last forever. There it is. That's it, right in Corinthians. The introduction to a Course in Miracles. Nothing real can be threatened. Spirit cannot be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Yeah, there's nothing but spirit. Herein lies the peace of God. So thank you for joining me today. Wow, what a roll. Yesterday I lost the world from all I thought it was. And today I simply will not value what is valueless. And that's because love is too important to put any value on anything else but love, but divine love. Lots of love. It's time for me to go off to a movie workshop today. And if you want to sign up, yeah, sign up quickly because in about 40 minutes we launch on on the, I think there's only three movie workshops left. So we're going into a deep shift. This is mysticism. This is going deep, deep, deep, deep. That's all we are. That's all there is. So yeah, this is the third last movie workshop today. So if you haven't signed up, please do. I'm going to use a lot of Buddhist symbols from the teaching today. The title of the movie is Wandering But Not Lost. It's a it's a documentary of a Rinpoche. And I'm going to use that to teach the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Okay, lots of love. See you at the movies. Feel you in my heart.