A Course in Miracles Lesson 138

Heaven is a decision I must make.

In the body there is nothing to do. No hill to climb, no race to run, no job to finish. But in the mind there is a decision and the decision is to know ourselves as we are in Creation. Any other choice brings only illusions in which we can wander a long time, lost and unhappy and confused.

Lesson 138 reminds us of our responsibility to decide, and makes clear what we are deciding for: Heaven, which is the memory of oneness brought to light in the world of separation, and thus proving that separation is an illusion, and all its effects illusions too.

How, one might ask, do we make this choice?

But “how” questions are just delusions piled upon a delusion. How can what is not real undo what is not real? A thousand choices seem to appear before us, requiring our judgment and active choice, but in truth, there is only decision and even that one is only a seeming choice. Creation has no opposite; there is nothing to choose between.

Here in the context of separation, our work is to learn how to desire only Heaven. When we want only what God gives us in Creation, then the illusion of choice will be clear to us, and we will be home.

Therefore, ask: what stands between you and oneness, between you and the Christ, between you and creation? What blocks the light? What hinders the flow of Love?

One by one, we raise those fears and insecurities and doubts into the light of understanding and inquiry. If we think we aren’t good enough, if we think we are better than others, if we think we can have both Heaven and Hell . . . all of it. All of it raised up with the Holy Spirit to be evaluated in truth, and kept if it brings us joy, and let go if it brings us anything else.

The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as is the ending of the fear of hell, when it is raised from its protective shield of unawareness, and is brought to light . . . who can fail to make a choice between alternatives when only one is seen as valuable; the other as a wholly worthless thing, a but imagined source of guilt and pain? (W-pI.183.10:1, 3).

Who, the course asks, hesitates when this is their choice (W-pI.138.10:4)?

And it is just this evaluation we are learning how to make. We are learning how to discern between what is true and what is false, and to value only what is true, and therefore to be no longer troubled by what is false.

We recognize we make a conscous choice between what has existence and what has nothing but an appearance of the truth. Its pseudo-being, brought to what is real, is flimsy and transparent in the light . . . Now it is recognized as but a foolish, trivial mistake (W-pI.138.11:2-3, 5).

Today’s lesson is a reaffirmation of our commitment to learning, and a reawakening of our willingness to question everything, and keep nothing that would obscure in us the Light of truth.

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