“I loose the world from all I thought it was.”
What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs? And what can save
the world except your Self? Belief is powerful indeed. The thoughts
you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the
truth. A madman thinks the world he sees is real and does not doubt it.
Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts’ effects. It is but
when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom
comes to him at last.
Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his
mind, and all his thoughts change with it. Now the source of thought
has shifted, for to change your mind means you have changed the
source of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think.
You free the past from what you thought before. You free the future
from all ancient thoughts of seeking what you do not want to find. The
present now remains the only time. Here in the present is the world set
free. For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your
ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world.
You have enslaved the world with all your fears, with doubts and
miseries, your pain and tears, and all your sorrows press upon it and
keep it a prisoner to your beliefs. Death strikes it everywhere because
you hold the bitter thought of death within your mind. The world is
nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you
behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them
and think them real.
Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came
unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your
thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you
looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you
wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on
what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly.
Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in
the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the
lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world
you see, and that it changes as you change your mind. But it is pride
that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself,
impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance
to think it is.
There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts
to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as
far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return
and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.
But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is
no world, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the
lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize.
Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find
it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the
world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and
yet it clearly contradicts the world. And some will find it in this course,
and in the exercises that we do today. Today’s idea is true because the
world does not exist. And if it is indeed your own imagining, then you
can loose it from all things you ever thought it was by merely changing
all the thoughts that gave it these appearances. The sick are healed as
you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let
thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death.
A lesson earlier repeated once must now be stressed again, for it
contains the firm foundation for today’s idea. You are as God created
you. There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring
change to your eternal state. How can a world of time and place exist
if you remain as God created you?
What is the lesson for today except another way of saying that to
know your Self is the salvation of the world? To free the world from
every kind of pain is but to change your mind about yourself. There is
no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source,
and you maintain the world within your mind in thought.
Yet if you are as God created you, you cannot think apart from
Him, nor make what does not share His timelessness and love. Are
these inherent in the world you see? Does it create like Him? Unless
it does, it is not real and cannot be at all. If you are real the world you
see is false, for God’s creation is unlike the world in every way. And as
it was His Thought by which you were created, so it is your thoughts
which made it and must set it free, that you may know the Thoughts
you share with God.
Release the world! Your real creations wait for this release to
give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. God shares
His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no
distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. What He
creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the
Son begin as something separate from Him.
There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and
made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of
God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which
comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but
accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying
world. Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.
Today our purpose is to free the world from all the idle thoughts
we ever held about it, and about all living things we see upon it. They
can not be there; no more than we. For we are in the home our
Father set for us along with them. And we who are as He created us
would loose the world this day from every one of our illusions, that
we may be free.
Begin the fifteen minute periods in which we practice twice
today with this:
“I who remain as God created me
Would loose the world from all I thought it was.
For I am real because the world is not,
And I would know my own reality.”
Then merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let your mind in
quietness be changed so that the world is freed along with you.
You need not realize that healing comes to many brothers far
across the world as well as to the ones you see near by, as you send
out these thoughts to bless the world. But you will sense your own
release, although you may not fully understand as yet that you could
never be released alone.
Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your
ideas to all the world, and say whenever you are tempted to deny the
power of your simple change of mind:
“I loose the world from all I thought it was,
And choose my own reality instead.”
Brittany Shawley added:
There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.
Today our purpose is to free the world from all the idle thoughts we ever held about it, and about all living things we see upon it. They can not be there. No more can we. For we are in the home our Father set for us, along with them. And we who are as He created us would loose the world this day from every one of our illusions, that we may be free.
Begin the fifteen-minute periods in which we practice twice today with this:
I who remain as God created me would loose the world from
all I thought it was. For I am real because the world is not,
and I would know my own reality.