Lesson 151 All things are echoes of the Voice for God

May 30 in Feed

No one can judge on partial evidence. ²That is not judgment. ³It is merely an opinion based on ignorance and doubt. ⁴Its seeming certainty is but a cloak for the uncertainty it would conceal. ⁵It needs irrational defense because it is irrational. ⁶And its defense seems strong, convincing, and without a doubt because of all the doubting underneath.

You do not seem to doubt the world you see. ²You do not really question what is shown you through the body’s eyes. ³Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. ⁴That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger, when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! ⁵Why would you trust them so implicitly? ⁶Why but because of underlying doubt, which you would hide with show of certainty?

How can you judge? ²Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. ³Yet witness never falser was than this. ⁴But how else do you judge the world you see? ⁵You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. ⁶You think your fingers touch reality, and close upon the truth. ⁷This is awareness that you understand, and think more real than what is witnessed to by the eternal Voice for God Himself.

Can this be judgment? ²You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you. ³You cannot judge. ⁴You merely can believe the ego’s judgments, all of which are false. ⁵It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt.

This thing it speaks of, and would yet defend, it tells you is yourself. ²And you believe that this is so with stubborn certainty. ³Yet underneath remains the hidden doubt that what it shows you as reality with such conviction it does not believe. ⁴It is itself alone that it condemns. ⁵It is within itself it sees the guilt. ⁶It is its own despair it sees in you.

Hear not its voice. ²The witnesses it sends to prove to you its evil is your own are false, and speak with certainty of what they do not know. ³Your faith in them is blind because you would not share the doubts their lord can not completely vanquish. ⁴You believe to doubt his vassals is to doubt yourself.

Yet you must learn to doubt their evidence will clear the way to recognize yourself, and let the Voice for God alone be Judge of what is worthy of your own belief. ²He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body’s mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers’ touch reports of him. ³He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God’s Son. ⁴He recognizes only what God loves, and in the holy light of what He sees do all the ego’s dreams of what you are vanish before the splendor He beholds.

Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt, because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its face. ²Christ cannot doubt Himself. ³The Voice for God can only honor Him, rejoicing in His perfect, everlasting sinlessness. ⁴Whom He has judged can only laugh at guilt, unwilling now to play with toys of sin; unheeding of the body’s witnesses before the rapture of Christ’s holy face.

And thus He judges you. ²Accept His Word for what you are, for He bears witness to your beautiful creation, and the Mind Whose Thought created your reality. ³What can the body mean to Him Who knows the glory of the Father and the Son? ⁴What whispers of the ego can He hear? ⁵What could convince Him that your sins are real? ⁶Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. ⁷His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth.

He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. ²He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle face of Christ in all of them. ³You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings, and teach the single lesson that they all contain.

He will select the elements in them which represent the truth, and disregard those aspects which reflect but idle dreams. ²And He will reinterpret all you see, and all occurrences, each circumstance, and every happening that seems to touch on you in any way from His one frame of reference, wholly unified and sure. ³And you will see the love beyond the hate, the constancy in change, the pure in sin, and only Heaven’s blessing on the world.

Such is your resurrection, for your life is not a part of anything you see. ²It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness, within the Holy, holy as Itself. ³In everyone and everything His Voice would speak to you of nothing but your Self and your Creator, Who is one with Him. ⁴So will you see the holy face of Christ in everything, and hear in everything no sound except the echo of God’s Voice.

We practice wordlessly today, except at the beginning of the time we spend with God. ²We introduce these times with but a single, slow repeating of the thought with which the day begins. ³And then we watch our thoughts, appealing silently to Him Who sees the elements of truth in them. ⁴Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back again as clean ideas that do not contradict the Will of God.

Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son, as proof of His eternal Love. ²And as each thought is thus transformed, it takes on healing power from the Mind which saw the truth in it, and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. ³All the threads of fantasy are gone. ⁴And what remains is unified into a perfect Thought that offers its perfection everywhere.

Spend fifteen minutes thus when you awake, and gladly give another fifteen more before you go to sleep. ²Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified. ³So are you taught to teach the Son of God the holy lesson of his sanctity. ⁴No one can fail to listen, when you hear the Voice for God give honor to God’s Son. ⁵And everyone will share the thoughts with you which He has retranslated in your mind.

Such is your Eastertide. ²And so you lay the gift of snow-white lilies on the world, replacing witnesses to sin and death. ³Through your transfiguration is the world redeemed, and joyfully released from guilt. ⁴Now do we lift our resurrected minds in gladness and in gratitude to Him Who has restored our sanity to us.

And we will hourly remember Him Who is salvation and deliverance. ²As we give thanks, the world unites with us and happily accepts our holy thoughts, which Heaven has corrected and made pure. ³Now has our ministry begun at last, to carry round the world the joyous news that truth has no illusions, and the peace of God, through us, belongs to everyone. (https://acim.org)

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