“Heaven is the decision I must make.”
In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are
alternatives to choose between. We think that all things have an
opposite, and what we want we choose. If Heaven exists there must
be hell as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we
perceive and what we think is real. Creation knows no opposite. But
here is opposition part of being “real.”
It is this strange perception of the truth which makes the choice
of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. It is not
really thus. Yet what is true in God’s creation cannot enter here until
it is reflected in some form the world can understand. Truth cannot
come where it could only be perceived with fear, for this would be
the error truth can be brought to illusions. Opposition makes the
truth unwelcome, and it cannot come.
Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites.
Decision lets one of conflicting goals become the aim of effort and
expenditure of time. Without decision time is but a waste and effort
dissipated. It is spent for nothing in return. And time goes by without
results. There is no sense of gain, for nothing is accomplished;
nothing learned.
You need to be reminded that you think a thousand choices are
confronting you, when there is really only one to make. And even
this but seems to be a choice. Do not confuse yourself with all the
doubts that myriad decisions would induce. You make but one. And
when that one is made you will perceive it was no choice at all, for
truth is true and nothing else is real. There is no opposite to choose
instead. There is no contradiction to the truth.
Choosing depends on learning. But the truth cannot be learned
but only recognized. In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is
accepted it is known. But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to
teach within the framework of this course. Ours are teaching goals to
be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and
what they offer you. Decisions are the outcome of your learning, for
they rest on what you have accepted as the truth of what you are and
what your needs must be.
In this insanely complicated world Heaven appears to take the
form of choice, rather than merely being what it is. Of all the choices
you have tried to make this is the simplest, most definitive, the
prototype of all the rest, the one which settles all decisions. If you
could decide the rest, this one remains unsolved. But when you solve
this one the others are resolved with it, for all decisions but conceal
this one by taking different forms. Here is the final and the only
choice in which is truth accepted or denied.
So we begin today considering the choice that time was made
to help us make. Such is its holy purpose, now transformed from the
intent you gave it; that it be a means for demonstrating hell is real,
hope changes to despair, and life itself must in the end be overcome
by death. In death alone are opposites resolved, for ending opposition
is to die. And thus salvation must be seen as death, for life is seen as
conflict. To resolve the conflict is to end your life as well.
These mad beliefs can gain unconscious hold of great intensity,
and grip the mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not
relinquish its ideas about its own protection. It must be saved from
salvation, threatened to be safe, and magically armored against truth.
And these decisions are made unaware to keep them safely
undisturbed; apart from question and from reason and from doubt.
Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until
alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in
shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this
time with Heaven’s help, and all mistakes in judgment which the
mind had made before are open to correction as the truth dismisses
them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be
concealed because their nothingness is recognized.
The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as is the ending of the
fear of hell when it is raised from its protective shield of unawareness,
and is brought to light. Who can decide between the clearly seen and
the unrecognized? Yet who can fail to make a choice between
alternatives when only one is seen as valuable, the other as a wholly
worthless thing, a but imagined source of guilt and pain? Who hesitates
to make a choice like this? And shall we hesitate to choose today?
We make the choice for Heaven as we wake, and spend five
minutes making sure that we have made the one decision that is sane.
We recognize we make a conscious choice between what has
existence and what has nothing but an appearance of the truth. Its
pseudo-being brought to what is real, is flimsy and transparent in the
light. It holds no terror now, for what was made enormous, vengeful,
pitiless with hate, demands obscurity for fear to be invested there.
Now it is recognized as but a foolish, trivial mistake.
Before we close our eyes in sleep tonight we reaffirm the choice
that we have made each hour in between. And now we give the last
five minutes of our waking day to the decision with which we
awoke. As every hour passed, we have declared our choice again in a
brief quiet time devoted to maintaining sanity. And finally we close
the day with this, acknowledging we chose but what we want:
“Heaven is the decision I must make.
I make it now and will not change my mind,
Because it is the only thing I want.”
Britney Shawley added:
Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding, to be judged again, this time with Heaven's help. And all mistakes in judgment that the mind had made before are open to correction, as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed, because their nothingness is recognized.