Library of Christ Mind Teachings
ACIM Original Edition
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1 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.
2 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.
3 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.
4 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.
5 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.
6 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.
7 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.
8 This can be taught and must be taught by all who would
achieve it. It requires but the recognition that the world cannot 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.
9 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.
10 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.
11 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.