ACIM Workbook Lesson 131 ~ May 10
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" Lesson 131
"No one can fail who [asks] to reach the truth."
Failure is all about you while you seek
for goals which cannot be achieved. You look
for permanence in the impermanent;
for love where there is none; for safety in
the midst of danger; immortality
within the darkness of the dream of death.
Who could succeed where contradiction is
the setting of his searching, and the place
to which he comes to find stability?|
Goals [which] are meaningless are not attained.
There is no way to reach them, for the means
by which you strive for them are meaningless
as they are. Who can use such senseless means
and hope through them to gain in anything?
Where can they lead? And what could they achieve
that offers any hope of being real?
#Pursuit of the imagined leads to death
because it is the search for nothingness,
and [as] you seek for life you ask for death.
You look for safety and security
while in your heart you pray for danger and
protection for the little dream you made.|
Yet searching is inevitable here.
For this you came, and you will surely do
the thing you came for. But the world can not
dictate the goal for which you search unless
you give it power to do so. Otherwise,
you still are free to choose a goal that lies
beyond the world and every worldly thought,
and one which comes to you from an idea
relinquished yet remembered, old yet new;
an echo of a heritage forgot,
yet holding everything you really want.|
Be glad that search you must. Be glad as well
to learn you [seek] for Heaven, and must find
the goal you really want. No one can fail
to want this goal, and reach it in the end.
God's Son cannot seek vainly, though he try
to force delay, deceive himself and think
that it is hell he seeks. When he is wrong
he finds correction. When he wanders off
he is led back to his appointed [path].|
#No one remains in hell, for no one can
abandon his Creator nor affect
His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love.
You will find Heaven. Everything you seek
but this will fall away, yet not because
it has been taken from you. It will go
because you do not want it. You will reach
the goal you really want as certainly
as God created you in sinlessness.|
#Why wait for Heaven? It is here today.
Time is the great illusion it is past
or in the future. Yet this cannot be
if it is where God wills His Son to be.
How could the Will of God be in the past
or yet to happen? What He wills is now,
without a past and wholly futureless.
It is as far removed from time as is
a tiny candle from a distant star,
or what you [made] from what you really want.|
Heaven remains your one alternative
to this strange world you made and all its ways;
its shifting patterns and uncertain goals,
its painful pleasures and its tragic joys.
God made no contradictions. What denies
its own existence and attacks itself
is not of Him. He did not make two minds,
with Heaven as the glad effect of one,
and earth the other's sorry outcome which
is Heaven's opposite in every way.|
God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His
creation split in two. How could it be
His Son could be in hell when God Himself
established him in Heaven? Could he lose
what the Eternal Will has given him
to be his home forever? Let us not
try longer to in impose an alien will
upon God's single purpose. He is here
because He Wills to be, and what He wills
is present now, beyond the reach of time.|
Today we will not choose a paradox
in place of truth. How could the Son of God
make time to take away the Will of God?
He thus denies himself, and contradicts
what has no opposite. He thinks he made
a hell opposing Heaven, and believes
that he abides in what does not exist,
while Heaven is the place he cannot find.|
Leave foolish thoughts like these behind today,
and turn your mind to true ideas instead.
No-one can fail who [asks] to reach the truth,
and it is truth we [ask] to reach today.
We will devote ten minutes to this goal
three times today, and we will ask to see
the rising of the real world to replace
the foolish images that we [held] dear,
with true ideas arising in the place
of thoughts [which] have no meaning, no effect,
and neither source nor substance in the truth.|
This we acknowledge as we start upon
our practice periods. Begin with this:
"I ask to see a different world, and think
A different kind of thoughts from those I made.
The world I seek I did not make alone,
The thoughts I want to think are not my own."
For several minutes watch your mind and see,
although your eyes are closed, the senseless world
you think is real. Review the thoughts as well
which are compatible with such a world,
and which you think are true. Then let them go,
and sink below them to the holy place
where they can enter not. There is a door
beneath them in your mind which you could not
completely lock to hide what lies beyond.|
Seek for that door and find it. But before
you try to open it, remind yourself
no one can fail who [asks] to reach the truth,
and it is this request you make today.
Nothing but this has any meaning now;
no other goal is valued now nor sought;
nothing before this door you really want,
and only what lies past it do you seek.|
#Put out your hand and see how easily
the door swings open with your one intent
to go beyond it. Angels light the way,
so that all darkness vanishes, and you
are standing in a light so bright and clear
that you can understand all things you see.
A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps,
will make you pause before you realize
the world you see before you in the light
reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite
forget in wandering away in dreams.|
You cannot fail today. There walks with you
the Spirit Heaven sent you that you might
approach this door some day, and through His aid
slip effortlessly past it to the light.
Today that day has come. Today God keeps
His ancient promise to His holy Son,
as does His Son remember his to Him.
This is a day of gladness, for we come
to the appointed time and place where you
will find the goal of all your searching here
and all the seeking of the world, which end
together as you pass beyond the door.|
Remember often that today [must] be
a time of special gladness, and refrain
from dismal thoughts and meaningless laments.
Salvation's time has come. Today is set
by Heaven itself to be a time of grace
for you and for the world. If you forget
this happy fact, remind yourself with this:
"Today I seek and find all that I want.
My single purpose [promises] it to me.
No one can fail who [asks] to reach the truth." "
~ Urtext of ACIM
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