Lesson 158

“Today I learn to give as I receive.”

What has been given you? The knowledge that you are a mind, in
Mind and purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid because you
were created out of Love. Nor have you left your Source, remaining
as you were created. This was given you as knowledge which you
cannot lose. It was given as well to every living thing, for by that
knowledge only does it live.

You have received all this. No-one who walks the world but has
received it. It is not this knowledge which you give, for that is what
creation gave. All this cannot be learned. What, then, are you to learn to
give today? Our lesson yesterday evoked a theme found early in the text.

Experience cannot be shared directly in the way that vision can. The
revelation that the Father and the Son are One will come in time to
every mind. Yet is that time determined by the mind itself, not taught.
The time is set already. It appears to be quite arbitrary. Yet there
is no step along the road that anyone but takes by chance. It has
already been taken by him, although he has not yet embarked on it.

For time but seems to go in one direction. We but undertake a
journey that is over. Yet it seems to have a future still unknown to us.
Time is a trick; a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures
come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appearances
which does not change. The script is written. When experience will
come to end your doubting has been set. For we but see the journey
from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we
make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by.

The teacher does not give experience, because he did not learn
it. It revealed itself to him at its appointed time. But vision is his gift.
This he can give directly, for Christ’s knowledge is not lost because
He has a vision He can give to anyone who asks. The Father’s Will
and His are joined in knowledge. Yet there is a vision which the Holy
Spirit sees because the mind of Christ beholds it too.

Here is the joining of the world of doubt and shadows made with
the intangible. Here is a quiet place within the world made holy by
forgiveness and by love. Here are all contradictions reconciled, for here
the journey ends. Experience, unlearned, untaught, unseen, is merely
there. This is beyond our goal, for it transcends what needs to be
accomplished. Our concern is with Christ’s vision. This we can attain.

Christ’s vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and
mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond
the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed
by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams
of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every
circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest
fading of the light it sees.

This can be taught, and must be taught by all who would
achieve it. It requires but the recognition that the world can not give
anything that faintly can compare with this in value; nor set up a goal
which does not merely disappear when this has been perceived. And
this you give today; see no-one as a body. Greet him as the Son of
God he is, acknowledging that he is one with you in holiness.

Thus are his sins forgiven him, for Christ has vision which has
power to overlook them all. In His forgiveness they are gone. Unseen
by One, they merely disappear because a vision of the holiness which
lies beyond them comes to take their place. It matters not what form
they took, nor how enormous they appeared to be, nor who seemed
to be hurt by them. They are no more, and all effects they seemed to
have are gone with them, undone and never to be done.

Thus do you learn to give as you receive. And thus Christ’s vision
looks on you as well. This lesson is not difficult to learn if you
remember in your brother you but see yourself. If he be lost in sin so
must you be; if you see light in him your sins have been forgiven by
yourself. Each brother whom you meet today provides another chance
to let Christ’s vision shine on you, and offer you the peace of God.

It matters not when revelation comes, for that is not of time. Yet
time has still one gift to give in which true knowledge is reflected in
a way so accurate its image shares its unseen holiness; its likeness
shines with its immortal Love. We practice seeing with the eyes of
Christ today. And by the holy gifts we give, Christ’s vision looks
upon ourselves as well.

Britney Shawley added:

What has been given you? The knowledge that you are a mind, in Mind and purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid, because you were created out of love. Nor have you left your Source, remaining as you were created. This was given you as knowledge which you cannot lose. It was given as well to every living thing, for by that knowledge only does it live.

Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees.