13.14.15,del 3er

Now that we have established the consistency of our former purpose: establishing your identity, and our new purpose: the miracle that will allow you to exist as who you are in human form, we may proceed unencumbered by any doubt you might have had concerning whether or not you would desire the new goal toward which we work.

13.2 We proceed by further defining the temptations of the human experience. In A Treatise on the Art of Thought, we spoke of these temptations in regard to extremes of the human experience, saying that these extremes that draw you from the Peace of God, draw you from the state in which you are aware of who you are, and cause you to be aware only of a self of human experience or a personal self. While you may still feel a connection to God during such times, you will not be dwelling within the Peace of God. Your Self and God will be but memories to you while your reality remains that of the physical experience and the personal self. In such times you can conceive only of a God outside of yourself and trust not in the benevolence of the experience, whether it be an extreme experience of pain or of pleasure. You begin to fear that pleasure will end or that pain will not end. Once fear has entered, doubt and guilt are never far behind.

13.3 These temptations will concern you less and less as we uncover their true meaning by looking beyond the experiences themselves to the cause.
13.4 Broad brush-strokes have been made now, giving you the beginnings of a vision of a life in physical form that will not include the very temptations we are beginning to lay out. Because you have made these things that would but seem to tempt you, you have believed in them and their ability to affect you. You have unlearned many of these lessons and need not repeat unlearning that has been accomplished. The new learning that lies ahead of you now is simply learning in accordance with the new thought system of the truth, accepting the truth and leaving illusion behind. The new thought system is simple to learn. What is of love is truth. What is of fear is illusion. The temptation is to see love where it is not and to not see fear where it is. But your ability to distinguish between love and fear as cause is all that is important now as you will create the new according to what you believe to be the truth and translate into ideas.

13.5 Remember now that pleasure and pain, as perceived by the body, are from the same source. That source has not been the body, but your beliefs about your body and your self. You have believed pleasure to come at a cost, the cost of pain. You have believed in the laws of man, laws that were made to perpetuate the idea that you must pay for everything or earn everything that you would care to make your own, and then that you must protect what you have against those who would take it away.

13.6 This is a simple place to start because each of you is tempted to hang on to this idea despite all that it has cost you. To replace this idea with the idea of there being no loss but only gain under the laws of love, is to resist the temptation of requiring yourself to pay for what you gain.

13.7 I say this is a simple place to start because you can put this new idea into practice today and every day by simply refusing the temptation to believe in concepts such as earning and paying. How you implement this idea will be your choice. But the idea that you do not have to earn your way nor pay your way must be birthed and lived by. While most of you will immediately think of your survival needs, this is far from the only area in which the idea of earning or paying your way can be found. This old idea is consistent with all beliefs of an “if this then that” nature. You might start practicing this idea by repeating these words to yourself:

13.8 “I am safe and nothing that I do or do not do will threaten my safety.”

13.9 As you say these words you will realize that you do believe in them. You believe, but you cannot imagine the truth of these words really being represented in the life you live here. This you must now do. You must represent the truth of these words with your life.

13.10 You are not, however, meant to test these words with foolish acts. To do so would be to act as if this were magic rather than the truth. To act as if this is the truth is what you are called to do. You may even begin with something as simple as choosing one thing a day that you will change to reflect the fact that you have accepted this new idea. Choose an act that will cause you no fear to begin with. For instance, you might tell yourself something such as this: “I have an idea that if I sleep as long as I feel I need to sleep in the morning, I will awaken refreshed and ready for my day and no dire consequences will befall me from this action.” Another act might be as simple as allowing yourself to freely spend a small amount of money each day that you ordinarily would not spend, always with the idea in mind that this will not affect your budget in any negative respect.

13.11 While these examples may seem so simple that you regard them as little more than the self-help kind of advice I have said this course would not provide, they are but aids to help you in the development of your own ideas. If you remember that all of your ideas are to be based on love, you will not fail to birth ideas of consequence.

13.12 The second aspect of this lesson will then be regarding your ideas about the consequences that seem to result from whatever action your ideas have suggested. You must birth the idea of having no reason to fear these consequences, no matter what they may be. You must, in truth, birth the idea of benevolence and abundance.

13.13 Notice that the simple examples I gave were examples of action. Ideas can certainly be birthed without the need for action, but one of the factors that distinguishes an idea from a belief is a requirement of action. That action, while not necessarily physical, is the action of giving birth. Realize that you believe in many things that did not originate with your self. But it is not until you have your own ideas about those beliefs that you own those beliefs in terms of making them your beliefs. To believe without forming your own ideas about your beliefs is to be in danger of succumbing to false beliefs.

13.14 To form your own ideas is to be creative. Forming your own ideas happens in relationship. Taking action on your ideas forms a relationship between your physical form and your Self, as your physical self represents, in form, the thought or image produced within the Self. Ideas, in the context in which we are speaking of them here, are thoughts or images originating from the Self and being represented by the personal self. It is only in this way that the personal self will be able to represent the Self in truth.
chapter 14
Not Other Than Who You Are


14.1 The death of the ego thought system has made way for the birth of the thought system of the truth. The thought system of the ego was based on fear. In this time of translation from one thought system to the other, the most subtle and yet significant change is the change from the foundation of fear: the basis of the ego thought system, to a foundation of love: the basis of the thought system of truth. While the foundation of fear, like the ego, will have left you now, a pattern of behaving fearfully may still remain and, as such, be a deterrent to new ideas and to action. As long as these patterns of fear remain as deterrents to action, you will not experience the freedom of living from the new thought system. The new thought system will still exist within your mind and heart, as nothing can now take this memory from you; but to experience the new thought system as thought alone will not bring about the changes you would so desire to have come about within your physical experience. You may live a more peaceful and meaningful life, but you will not become the savior I ask you to be, or the architects of the new world of heaven on earth that I call you to create.

14.2 Let me attempt to make the difference between having a new thought system and living by a new thought system more clear. Because you now are translating the thought system of the ego into the thought system of the truth, you will begin to believe in such things as benevolence and abundance. What this means is that you will slowly translate all ideas of scarcity into ideas of abundance, all ideas of blame into ideas of benevolence. Thus you might, after this period of translation, rather than cursing your station in life and feeling badly that
you do not enjoy the health, wealth, or stature of some others, accept your current status and begin to feel more peace and joy within it. If you are not well, you may cope more easily with your discomfort. If you are not financially secure, you may congratulate yourself on desiring less and be more content living a simple life. If you have felt a lack of respect, you may feel that what others think of you matters not and enjoy a heightened self-concept. While these would all be worthy aims they are not the goal toward which we work. These would be the consequences of new beliefs that are held but not lived. Soon these fragile states would be threatened by some situation or person, and judgment would return to label what is happening as “bad.” A “god” outside of the self would soon be called upon to intercede. Blame would be placed. A return to equanimity would soon prevail, for those dwelling in the house of truth would not long abide with such illusions, but the pattern of the old would not be broken. Suffering and strife would still seem to be possible. You would merely look back after the interlude had passed and see the truth, realizing that a lesson had been learned and becoming aware that for a while you but flirted with illusion. This flirting with illusion is like unto the temptations of the human experience and would not occur were the temptations gone from you.

14.3 It should be becoming clear to you by now that although you now dwell in the house of truth you are capable of bringing with you old patterns of behavior. Once the translation from the old thought system to the new is complete, this will no longer happen. But the translation cannot be completed if you refuse to live by what you know…if you refuse to live as who you are.

14.4 You are quite capable of seeing the truth and still acting as if you see it not. This has been done for generation upon generation and may still happen if you do not heed these instructions.

14.5 I am, however, the bringer of Good News. Now I will repeat to you a piece of good news you may have forgotten: You would not be other than who you are. This is a key idea that will help you immeasurably in leaving behind patterns of behavior based on the old thought system of fear. Despite the foundation of fear upon which your old thought system was based, you still would not be other than who you are. What this means to the learning stage you are at now is that you but think you are discontent with much of your life. As you begin to dwell in the house of truth and see with the eyes of love, you will see far less about the life you lead that you would change than you would imagine. You fear where all your new ideas might take you, and for some great changes may surely await. Yet those who will be visited by great change are but those who desire it, and even these will find that great changes will not cause them to be other than who they are. There is nothing wrong with who you are!

14.6 As you see newly with the eyes of love, you will be much more likely to see love everywhere within the life you currently live than to see the need to change your life completely in order to find love! You who are worried about the risks you may be required to take, worry not! The changes that come to you will be chosen changes. You will lose nothing you would keep.

14.7 This is precisely why you must choose not to keep the life of discomfort caused by perceived illness, the life of scarcity caused by perceived lack, the lack of stature caused by perceived disrespect. It is only by your choice that you will keep these things and only by your choice that these things will leave you.

14.8 It is only your old uncertainty that will make you fear the matter of choice that lies before you. This choice is not the choice of continuous decision making but simply the choice to live by the truth of the new thought system. If you but let go the old, and with it the patterns of behavior caused by fear, the new will reveal to you all that you would keep and all that you would leave behind. What you would keep is of love. What you would leave behind is of illusion.

14.9 You will clearly see all of the choices that throughout your life have been made in love and made of you a person you would not be other than. You will also clearly see all of the choices that throughout your life were caused by fear and how little consequence they had in truth. These fearful choices took nothing from you nor from others.

14.10 If there are things that you, at this point, still hold to yourself and call unforgivable, now is the time to let them go. If you have read the paragraph above and feel it is fine for some others not to regret their choices but not for you, I ask you to trust in my assurance that this is not so. You must choose to leave this blaming of yourself behind, no matter what it is for which you feel you have need to blame yourself. You would not be here if you had not already felt regret and sorrow for the hurts you have caused others. Whatever actions you have not previously brought to love to be seen in a new light, are now revealed in the light of truth.

14.11 We have spoken already of historical causes for vengeance and blame. The suffering that has been chosen has been mighty. The choice now is not a choice to explore the why behind it or to look for remedies for the past. The choice now is whether you want suffering to continue or want to abolish it for all time. If you are holding onto regrets you are holding on to blame. If you are holding onto blame you are holding onto bitterness. If these regrets and blame have to do with your self you may not feel as if you have the right to let them go. If you do not feel as if you have the right to let them go, you are choosing to remain embittered and choosing to be punished for your “sins.” While this is what you continue to choose, this is what will continue to be evidenced in your world. This is the only act you can choose worthy of being called selfishness. Be self “less” rather than selfish now and allow the self that you would blame to pass away into the illusion from which it came. Remember that bitterness, like the ego, has existed in all. If your brother or sister would not give up bitterness in order to usher in a world of peace, would you not think this a selfish act?

14.12 Atonement, or correction, is not of you but of God. You might think of this in terms of nature and look upon nature’s ability to correct itself. You are a part of nature. Your body can correct or heal itself, and so can your mind and heart…if they are allowed to do so. A time-bound consciousness that hangs onto the past as if it were the truth, does not allow correction to take place. The past is no more and neither the present nor the future can be built upon it. This is why we have spent so much time unlearning and why we continue with lessons of forgetting.

14.13 Resurrection or rebirth must be total to be at all. Can you not see why you cannot hang onto the past? The new cannot have historical precedents. This is why you have been assured that what you are called to is a life so new that you cannot even imagine it. Imagine not the past and make for yourself no cause to prolong it. The past is but a starting point for the future. Just as we talked of the consequences of blame and how you are unaware of all that proceeds from the idea of blame, so too is it with the past. Like a story yet to be written, that which follows the first page will be based upon the first page.

14.14 We are writing a new first page, a new Genesis. It begins now. It begins with the rebirth of a Self of love. It begins with the birth of Christ in you and in your willingness to live in the world as the Christ-Self.
chapter 15
the New Beginning


15.1 Some of you have had more experience with new beginnings than others. For most mature adults, some form of new beginning has taken place or been offered. Those within the relationship of marriage have often had occasion to choose to forgive the past and to begin again to build a new relationship. Others, in a similar relationship, might have chosen to let the past go and enter into new relationships. Parents have welcomed home errant children to give them the chance to begin again. At all stages of life new friendships are formed and the relationship with each new friend provides for a new beginning. Some begin anew through changes in locale and employment. Each new school year of the young provides a fresh start. Deaths of loved ones and the births of new family members form new configurations in a life. Nature begins anew each spring.

15.2 What hampers new beginnings of all kinds within the human experience are ideas that things cannot be different than they once were. The only true departure from this idea has concerned the occasions of birth and death. This is something we will return to, but first let us look at other types of new beginnings and all that would hamper them from taking place.

15.3 New beginnings do not occur outside of relationship. The idea of special relationship is one that hampers new beginnings. Special relationships of all types are based upon expectations — expectations of certain behavior — and expectations of continued special treatment within the relationship. Even, and sometimes especially, what is
considered poor behavior can come to be an expectation difficult to deviate from within the special relationship. But whether the expectation is of special treatment or poor behavior matters not. It is the expectation of a “known” set of criteria concerning the relationship, a set of criteria based upon the past, that is most often what prevents new beginnings from truly being new.

15.4 Often new beginnings are offered or considered “in spite of” circumstances of the past that would seem to make them foolish. There is always something that is expected to change. This idea is countered internally by the idea that at some basic level, human beings do not change. You cannot imagine those you are in relationship with being other than who they are. This is consistent with the truth. Who anyone is, however, is not contingent upon who they have represented themselves to be in the past.

15.5 When attempting to give oneself or another a new beginning, you often act “as if” you believe a new beginning is possible, even while awaiting the lapse that will surely prove to you that the new beginning is but an act and that nothing has really changed. A student who failed to learn the prior year, while eager and confident in being able to succeed in the current year, will continue to be plagued by memories of failure. The alcoholic can approach each day with faith while keeping fresh memories of past abuse or humiliation in the hopes that they will discourage a repeat of the old behavior. The loved one of an alcoholic can similarly approach each day with faith even while suspiciously looking for signs that faith is unwarranted. The criminal is not expected to be rehabilitated despite the efforts of the system and the hopes of their loved ones.

15.6 Everyone believes they carry the baggage of the past, not only their own but that of all the special relationships in which they have been involved. To have a special relationship with someone who has failed at offered new beginnings becomes a failure for all involved. Each sets their own criteria for success or failure and their own timing for the accomplishment of the same. Some would see six months of change as the basis for trust in the new. For others six years would not be enough.

15.7 You must now birth the idea that human beings do indeed change. While you have known instinctively that there is a core, a center to each that is unchangeable, you must now give up the idea that this core or center has been represented by the past. You must forget the idea that the future cannot be different than the past.

15.8 With the death of the ego, special relationships too have breathed their last. As I said before, these will but seem to be remedial lessons. What they are, in truth, are aids to help you birth the new ideas that will break the patterns of old.

15.9 The new beginning you are called to now is a new beginning that, like all the others you have offered or attempted, will take place in relationship. The difference is that this new beginning will take place in holy, rather than special, relationship.

15.10 The holy relationship has been accomplished by the joining of the mind and heart in unity. The holy relationship is with the Self, the Self that abides in unity with all within the house of truth. This relationship makes the Self one with all and so brings the holiness of the Self to all.

15.11 There are no impediments to this new beginning save for the finalizing of the translation of the thought system of the ego to the thought system of the truth. It is impossible to learn the new with the thought system of the old; it is impossible to learn the truth through the same methods that have been used in the past to learn illusion. This Course teaches that love cannot be learned. I have said here that love, peace, and truth are interchangeable ideas within the new thought system. Truth, like love, is not something that you can learn. The good news is that you have no need to learn the truth. The truth exists within you and you are now aware of its reality.

15.12 How then, do you access and live within this new reality, this new beginning? Through living by the truth.

15.13 These treatises are no longer concerned with course work as the work of this course has been accomplished in you. These treatises are simply concerned with assisting you with living what you have learned. Learning was needed in order to return you to your Self. Despite whatever method you feel you used to learn what you have learned, what this course did was by-pass the way of learning of the ego and call upon the Christ in you to learn anew. That learning put an end to the old. Living what you have learned will usher in the new.

15.14 These examples of your former ideas about new beginnings have simply been used to demonstrate why you cannot approach this new beginning as you have those of the past. What will assist you most as the translation of the old thought system for the new continues are the beliefs that you adopted with the assistance of the Treatise on Unity:

15.15 You are accomplished.
Giving and receiving are one in truth.
There is no loss but only gain within
the laws of love.
Special relationships have been replaced by
holy relationship.

15.16 What we are adding now to these beliefs is the idea that these beliefs can be represented in form. These beliefs can, with the help of the new thought system, change the very nature of the self described by the words human being. This calls for still more forgetting as you must consciously let go of all of your ideas of the limitations inherent in your concept of what it means to be a human being.

15.17 While you would not be other than who you are, who you are is not limited to the concept of human being nor to the laws of man. If you continue to act as if you are still the same being that you have represented yourself to be in the past, you will not be living by the truth but by illusion.

15.18 Illusion is the “truth” by which you have lived. The total replacement of illusion with the truth is what the new thought system will accomplish. Obviously, this replacement must be total. The means for making this total replacement are in your hands but you are hardly empty-handed. The truth goes with you as does the love and peace of God.