Library of Christ Mind Teachings
ACIM Original Edition
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1 Seek you no further. You will not find peace except the
peace of God. Accept this fact, and save yourself the agony of yet more
bitter disappointments, bleak despair, and sense of icy hopelessness and
doubt. Seek you no further. There is nothing else for you to find except
the peace of God, unless you seek for misery and pain.
2 This is the final point to which each one must come at
last, to lay aside all hope of finding happiness where there is none, of
being saved by what can only hurt, of making peace of chaos, joy of
pain, and Heaven out of hell. Attempt no more to win through losing, nor
to die to live. You cannot but be asking for defeat.
3 Yet you can ask as easily for love, for happiness, and for
eternal life in peace that has no ending. Ask for this, and you can only
win. To ask for what you have already must succeed. To ask that what is
false be true can only fail. Forgive yourself for vain imaginings, and
seek no longer what you cannot find. For what could be more foolish than
to seek and seek and seek again for hell, when you have but to look with
open eyes to find that Heaven lies before you, through a door that opens
easily to welcome you?
4 Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign
places and in alien forms which have no meaning to you, though you
sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You
are a stranger here. But it is given you to find the means whereby the
world no longer seems to be a prison house for you or anyone.
5 Freedom is given you where you beheld but chains and iron
doors. For you must change your mind about the purpose of the world if
you would find escape. You will be bound till all the world is seen by
you as blessed and everyone made free of your mistakes and honored as he
is. You made him not; no more yourself. And as you free the one, the
other is accepted as he is.
6 What does forgiveness do? In truth it has no function and
does nothing, for it is unknown in Heaven. It is only hell where it is
needed and where it must serve a mighty function. Is not the escape of
God’s beloved Son from evil dreams that he imagines, yet believes are
true, a worthy purpose? Who could hope for more while there appears to
be a choice to make between success and failure, love and fear?
7 There is no peace except the peace of God because He has
one Son, who cannot make a world in opposition to God’s Will and to his
own, which is the same as His. What could he hope to find in such a
world? It cannot have reality because it never was created. Is it here
that he would seek for peace? Or must he see that, as he looks on it,
the world can but deceive? Yet can he learn to look on it another way
and find the peace of God.
8 Peace is the bridge that everyone will cross to leave this
world behind. But peace begins within the world perceived as different
and leading from this fresh perception to the gate of Heaven and the way
beyond. Peace is the answer to conflicting goals, to senseless journeys,
frantic, vain pursuits, and meaningless endeavors. Now the way is easy,
sloping gently toward the bridge where freedom lies within the peace of
God.
9 Let us not lose our way again today. We go to Heaven, and
the path is straight. Only if we attempt to wander can there be delay
and needless wasted time on thorny byways. God alone is sure, and He
will guide our footsteps. He will not desert His Son in need, nor let
him stray forever from his home. The Father calls; the Son will hear.
And that is all there is to what appears to be a world apart from God
where bodies have reality.
10 Now is there silence. Seek no further. You have come to
where the road is carpeted with leaves of false desires, fallen from the
trees of hopelessness you sought before. Now are they underfoot. And you
look up and on toward Heaven, with the body’s eyes but serving for an
instant longer now. Peace is already recognized at last, and you can
feel its soft embrace surround your heart and mind with comfort and with
love.
11 Today we seek no idols. Peace cannot be found in them. The
peace of God is ours, and only this will we accept and want. Peace be to
us today. For we have found a simple, happy way to leave the world of
ambiguity and to replace our shifting goals and solitary dreams with
single purpose and companionship. For peace is union if it be of God. We
seek no further. We are close to home and draw still nearer every time
we say:
12 There is no peace except the peace of God,
And I am glad and thankful it is so.