1,2,3, dl 2

You are all aware, at least at times, that there are treasures that lie within you. What was once regarded as treasure, such as a talent that was in need of developing, when realized, is often disregarded thereafter as a treasure and becomes instead something regarded as an ability and later as simply part of your identity. This is what we are going to explore in this treatise. A treasure that you do not as yet recognize is going to be recognized. Once recognized it will begin to be regarded as an ability. And finally, through experience, it will become your identity. We will begin by discussing the nature of treasure.

1.2 Treasure is most often seen in one of two ways — as something valuable to be sought and found or as something found that is kept secure and cherished.

1.3 Treasure in the first sense is, first and foremost, something that you believe exists and have defined as being of value. As this treatise is not concerned with material treasure, we will not explore the dimensions of physical treasure except to say that the feelings that cause one to think that any physical thing is capable of being a treasure, or being treasured, are of the ego. We will instead assume that you have moved beyond these ego concerns and explore the realm of internal treasures.

1.4 Those of you who have moved beyond the realm of the ego, in your fear of returning to it, often turn away from internal treasures that you believe, when realized, might feed
the ego. Despite many observations within this Course regarding desire, you may still fear your desire. Despite many exhortations that your purpose here is to be who you are, you may have determined that exploring your internal treasure is now unnecessary. You may well be feeling a sense of relief in having learned that who you are right now is a being of perfection, and you may find in this a somewhat peaceful resting place to dwell in for a time. You may find that despite having learned much about the need to leave judgment behind, you judge your desire to be other than you are now, including any desires related to those internal treasures you once hoped to have become abilities. You think this willingness to accept who you are now is what this course has led you to and evidence of your accomplishment. You may view this as license to stay as you are and to cease striving for more.

1.5 This resting place is indeed hallowed ground and an earned respite, a demarcation even between the old way and the new way of living. But it is not the end that is sought. No matter how peaceful this place of rest may at first seem, it will soon become stagnant and unsatisfying. Left in such a place without further instruction, you would soon return to your old ideas of heaven and see peace as a state of being for those too weary to fully live. Done with the adventures of living, you would deem yourself no longer interested in the hunt for buried treasure and see it not.

1.6 This place is not life but neither is it death, for even death is not an eternal resting place in the sense that you have imagined it. Even rest, once truly learned, is simply rest. It is not a resting place, a place to stop along the journey of life anymore than it is a place at which life stops and death reigns. It is not a point at which you arrive, never to depart. Rest, when truly learned, is a state of being in which struggle has ceased and peace has triumphed over chaos, love has triumphed over fear.
1.7 You may still see but two choices: peace or struggle. But with such an attitude, you would soon be struggling to maintain your peace. There is another choice, and it lies within.

1.8 The treasure that lies within that you do not yet fully recognize is that of unity. As you have learned much of unity within the context of this course, unity, like rest, may have come to be viewed as a place at which you can arrive. Like peace, it may feel like a bubble of protection, something that sets you apart from life and the chaos that seems to reign there. You must realize that you think in terms of “place” because you think in terms of “form.” Even I have often used the idea of place as a teaching aid. But you are ready now to begin to think without the need for form.

1.9 Even the desires you may have once identified as hoping to develop into abilities, are given a structure and form in your thinking of them. A desire to paint, in your thoughts becomes a completed painting that you hang upon your wall. The time of painting becomes a place. A room or studio is envisioned in which all the tools of the artist’s trade are available. An aspiring pianist imagines a grand piano and performances in a magnificent concert hall or a little spinet that will grace a living room and invite friends and family to gather round. A writer sees a book in print, a runner wins a race, a tennis player becomes a champion. These are all scenes of things and places, or in other words, of the external, of form.

1.10 Thinking without form is a harbinger of unity. Form is a product of the separation. Thought “forms” are the product of the separation. Unity is not a place or a thing but the realm of the one heart and one mind: the realm of the formless and timeless, but also the realm of connectedness, of what binds all that lives in creation with the Creator.
1.11 You are the creator, but a creator who creates with thought unlike to any thoughts you have had before. Your thoughts of a grand piano will never create a grand piano. What kind of thoughts, then, would create a pianist?

1.12 Thoughts joined in unity. Thoughts joined in unity can be likened to thinking without thought. They can be likened to imagination. They can be likened to love.


1.13 Ego desires cause one to think of a grand piano. Thoughts joined in unity hear music. Ego desires cause one to think of an elaborately framed painting. Thoughts joined in unity see beauty. You are used to thinking that if you do not have a tangible goal, such as that of music lessons or the purchase of a piano, you will never reach the goals associated with those tangible steps. Thoughts joined in unity create without goals or planning, without effort or struggle. This does not make an instrument unnecessary for a musician or mean that a painter will not eventually put a brush to a canvas, but it does mean that the treasure exists without these “things” and that the treasure is already a fully realized creation. The treasure already is and it is already valuable and available.

1.14 This is a first step in the change in thinking that needs to occur. It is an elementary step and one easily accomplished with but a bit of willingness. This change in thinking in regards to treasures you do recognize will pave the way for recognition of treasures you heretofore have not recognized.
chapter 2
To Hear the Call

2.1 Why would we begin a Treatise on Unity by talking of treasure? To pave the way for talking of calling. What is it in you that recognizes talents that lie fully realized within? The practical mind is not the source of such imagination. The practical mind makes of imagination a fantasy. It is the heart that sees with true imagination, the heart that speaks to you in terms that are consistent with the idea you currently hold of hearing a call or having a calling.

2.2 Having a calling is spoken of in lofty terms. Few outside of those who feel they have a calling for something beyond their ordinary, limited, view of the themselves use this phrase. But many recognize that they have a calling even unto things the world considers mundane.

2.3 How does a farmer explain that she or he cannot be other than a farmer? Rising and setting with the sun is in their blood, in the very nature of who they are. Being one with the land is essential to them.

2.4 What bravery it takes in today’s world to follow a calling to teach. To set aside other careers that offer far more prestige and economic gain to instead be a sharer of knowledge, a shaper of minds.

2.5 What overriding kindness calls one to take care of another’s body, to be a healer?
2.6 How does one explain a joy that is like no other and that comes from the simple act of caring for a child, preparing a meal, bringing grace and order to a home?

2.7 This list of different callings could be endless, and each could be considered unexplainable. Those who seek an explanation before following a calling, who look for reasons of a practical nature, who would seek guarantees of the rightness and outcome of following such a call, seek for proof they have already been given. The call itself is proof. It is proof of the heart’s ability to be heard. Of the heart’s ability to recognize the unseen and to imagine the existence of that which will reveal its true nature and its joy.

2.8 All of you are capable of hearing the truth of what the heart would tell you. You are just as capable of believing in that truth as of doubting it. All that prevents you from believing in truth is a mind and heart acting in separation rather than in union.

2.9 You think that what prevents you from being who you are is far broader than this simple idea of hearing and following a calling would indicate. You think what prevents you from being who you are is far broader than a division between mind and heart. Some of you would say you feel no calling or that you feel many. Others would cite practical reasons for doing other than what they feel called to do. All of these ideas illustrate your belief that something other than your own willingness is necessary. Only in your own willingness does anything exist, because only in your willingness is the power of creation expressed.
chapter 3
To Answer the Call


3.1 Your life is already an act of creation. It was created. All of it. It exists, fully realized within you. Your work here is to express it. You are far more than your life here. You created your life here in union with the one mind and one heart, in union, in other words, with God. Everything you have ever wanted to be is. Everything you have ever thought or imagined is and is reflected in the world you see. The only difference between the life you are living and the life you want lies in your willingness to express who you are.

3.2 There would be no need for form if there had been no desire for expression. Life is the desire to express outwardly what exists within. What I refer to so often here as being within, as if “within” is a place in which something resides, is unity and it is the place where being resides. It is the place or realm of one heart and one mind. It is the place where everything already exists fully realized. It is like a trunk full of treasure. Like a menu of possibilities. All you must do is wholeheartedly recognize the treasure you have already chosen to bring to the world. Your heart speaks to you of this treasure and guides you to open the trunk and release it to the world — to your world — to the human world. In the realm of unity where your being resides this is already accomplished. Your link between the realm of unity and the realm of physicality is your heart. Your heart tells you of the already accomplished and bids you to express it with your physicality, thus uniting the two realms through expression.
3.3 Your mind exists in unity. Your heart exists where you think you are, providing the means for union between where you think you are and where your being actually resides. Remember always that your heart is where the Christ in you abides and that the Christ is your identity. Remember that it is the Christ in you who learns and raises learning to the holiest of levels. It is the Christ in you who learns to walk the earth as child of God, as who you really are.

3.4 This was stated early in A Course of Love and is returned to now for a specific reason. While the truth that it is the Christ in you who learns may have been given little attention as you began your learning, it cannot now be ignored. Now you have realized your learning. You have begun to see the changes that your learning is capable of bringing to your life. You have felt the peace and love of the embrace. You know that you are experiencing something real and learning something that is of relevance even within the daily life you currently move through. Now you must fully recognize the distinction between the ego-self that previously was the self of learning and experience, and the Christ Self that is now the Self of learning and experience. You must take on the mantle of your new identity, your new Self.

3.5 It is this recognition that you are now acting and living in the world as your Christ Self rather than as your ego-self that will aid you in expression. Without expression, the return to unity that has been accomplished will not be realized.

3.6 If you still balk at the idea that the Christ could be in need of learning, then your idea of the Christ is still based on an old way of thinking, as are your ideas of learning.

3.7 Learning and accomplishment are not linear as you have perceived them to be. If we return to the idea of talents this may be easier to explain. If the ability to create beautiful music already exists within you, you do not have to learn what
beautiful music is, only how to express it. If you see beauty within, you do not have to learn what beauty is, only how to express it. Expression and creation are not synonymous. Creation is a continuous and on-going expansion of the same thought of love that brought life into existence. The seeds of creation exist in everything and provide for continuing creation. The seeds of all that you can express exist within you, in the creation that is you. The power of creation is released through your choice, your willingness to express that aspect of creation. It is quite literally true that the seeds of much of creation lie dormant within you, already accomplished but awaiting expression in this realm of physicality.

3.8 In this same way, then, Christ can be seen as the seed of your identity. Christ is the continuous and on-going expansion of the same thought of love that brought life into existence. Christ is your identity in the broadest sense imaginable. Christ is your identity within the unity that is creation.