Library of Christ Mind Teachings
ACIM Original Edition
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7 Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? In
no fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely. Nothing you see here,
sleeping or waking, comes near to such loveliness. And nothing will you
value like unto this nor hold so dear. Nothing that you remember that
made your heart seem to sing with joy has ever brought you even a little
part of the happiness this sight will bring you. For you will see the
Son of God. You will behold the beauty which the Holy Spirit loves to
look upon and which He thanks the Father for. He was created to see this
for you until you learn to see it for yourself. And all His teaching
leads to seeing it and giving thanks with Him.
8 This loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the real world, bright and
clean and new with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is
hidden here, for everything has been forgiven, and there are no
fantasies to hide the truth. The bridge between that world and this is
so little and so easy to cross that you could not believe it is the
meeting place of worlds so different. Yet this little bridge is the
strongest thing that touches on this world at all. This little step, so
small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity
and beyond all ugliness into beauty that will enchant you and will never
cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection.
9 This step, the smallest ever taken by anything, is still the greatest
accomplishment of all in God’s plan of Atonement. All else is learned,
but this is given, complete and wholly perfect. No one but Him Who
planned salvation could complete it thus. The real world, in its
loveliness, you learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone, and no one
and nothing remains still bound by them, and by your own forgiveness,
you are free to see. Yet what you see is only what you have made, with
the blessing of your forgiveness on it. And with this final blessing of
God’s Son upon himself, the real perception, born of the new
perspective he has learned, has served its purpose.
10 The stars will disappear in light, and the sun which opened up the
world to beauty will vanish. Perception will be meaningless when it has
been perfected, for everything that has been used for learning will have
no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no
differences, no variations which made perception possible will occur.
The perception of the real world will be so short that you will barely
have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly
when you have reached the real world and have been made ready for Him.
11 The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the
old, the world you see without forgiveness. The Great Transformer of
perception will undertake with you the careful searching of the mind
that made this world and uncover to you the seeming reasons for your
making it. In the light of the real reason which He brings, as you
follow Him, He will show you that there is no reason here at all. Each
spot His reason touches grows alive with beauty, and what seemed ugly
in the darkness of your lack of reason is suddenly released to
loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity could be
without a hidden spark of beauty which gentleness could release.
12 All this beauty will rise to bless your sight as you look upon the
world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally transforms vision
and lets you see the real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos
and removing all illusions which had twisted your perception and fixed
it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder and a blade
of grass a sign of God’s perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of
God is lifted easily into his home. And there he knows that he has
always rested there in peace. Even salvation will become a dream and
vanish from his mind. For salvation is the end of dreams and with the
closing of the dream will have no meaning. Who awake in Heaven could
dream that there could ever be need of salvation?
13 How much do you want salvation? It will give you the real world,
trembling with readiness to be given you. The eagerness of the Holy
Spirit to give you this is so intense He would not wait, although He
waits in patience. Meet His patience with your impatience at delay in
meeting Him. Go out in gladness to meet with your Redeemer and walk with
him in trust out of this world and into the real world of beauty and
forgiveness.