22

Although the entire purpose of these treatises is to answer the question of what to do with what you have learned, chances are that this is still the primary question in your mind and heart. While you may be beginning to form ideas of what it means to live by the truth, these ideas may not seem to have much relevance or relationship to the life you currently live. While you may be happy to learn you are not called to evangelize or even to a leadership role, you know that you are called to something, and think that you as yet know not what that something is. You think that to be asked to simply “live” by the truth could not possibly be enough. You would like to know in what direction living by the truth will take you, for surely your life must change. The very precepts put forth within this course, precepts that say that the internal affects the external, seem as evidence that you will no longer be allowed the “separate” life, or private life that you have lived.

22.2 Surely there are already those called to represent not only their true Selves but this Course to the world. If this had not been the case, you would not be taking this Course. It would not be available and it would not be known to you. So even while I have said that no one is called to leadership and while I have surely meant this and do not call for leaders to amass followers, I do not mean to dissuade any of you who feel a call to represent this Course and the teachings of this Course with your lives and work. Those who feel this call are surely needed. And each of you will find the sharing of this Course to be among the easiest of ways to share what you have learned. You will almost certainly feel eagerness to share it and joy
whenever and wherever you are able to do so. But some of you will find that you do no more than mention this course as the one, or one of the many teachings that have led you to the truth.

22.3 You are a beautiful representation of the truth and cannot be otherwise. You may bring this beauty to any number of walks of life, to what you currently do or to something you have always dreamt of doing. Wherever you go, whatever you do, the truth will go with you. You need no uniform nor title nor specific role for this to be the case.

22.4 Since your personal self was always meant to represent the truth of who you are, the seeds of who you are, are planted there, right within the self you have always been. There has always been within you, however, a creative tension between accepting who you are and becoming who you want to be. This tension will continue if you are unable to integrate two precepts of this course of learning into your new reality. One is the often-repeated injunction to resign as your own teacher. The other is the ability to cease all acts of comparison.

22.5 The injunction that you resign as your own teacher originated in A Course in Miracles and was furthered here. Along with this resignation is the concept of receiving rather than planning. Your feeling that a specific role is required of you, or that you have a specific thing to do that you need to be aware of, are functions of the pattern of the planning process that once so ruled your mind. To be willing to receive instead of plan is to break the pattern of planning.

22.6 Receiving is not an inactive state, nor one familiar to most of you. You cannot “work” at being receptive. I also do not ask you to “work” to break the pattern of planning but I do ask you to let it go and to replace it with observation.

22.7 Observation is the active state of reception, a state not confined to receiving, but a state of giving and receiving as one. Observation, as I am speaking of it and teaching it, makes you one with what you observe. Being one with what you observe causes you to know the proper response. It is in responding properly that you will know what to do.

22.8 Plans will only interfere with your response to what you are given to observe. The act of observation that you are able to do with your eyes closed is the observation of what is. This will relate to the future pattern of creating that we will speak of more in the next treatise.

22.9 You are impatient now to get on to the next level, the level of something new, the level that will engage you in something “to do,” the level that will give an outlet for the excitement that has been building within you. You are ready to be done with the concerns of the personal self, and your attention has begun to wander from this topic even as it is being concluded.

22.10 This has been necessary so that the realization will come to you that you are ready to leave the personal self and the concerns of the personal self behind. You have needed to become bored with what has been, tired of the way things were, uninterested in matters of a personal nature. This very readiness is what I now call your attention to as I complete this treatise with lessons concerning observation of your new Self.

22.11 The ability to cease all acts of comparison will arise out of this observation of your new Self, for you cannot observe your new Self without observing the truth that has always existed. The truth that has always existed is our oneness, and what you will observe about your new Self you will observe about all. We will be one body, one Self. No comparison will be possible. You will realize that differences but lie in expression and representation of the truth, never in the truth itself.

22.12 I return you now to what I spoke of earlier as creative tension, the tension that exists between accepting what is and desiring what will be. Linking the words creative and tension is caused by the dualistic world that you have lived in, where a lag time exists between what is, and what will be. You may have, upon reading those words, thought that this creative tension would not necessarily be a good thing to give up. You do not know how to reach beyond what was for what will be without this tension. You do not yet believe in what is.

22.13 Observation, both of yourself and of what you desire, is an act that takes place in the here and now that is and brings what is into existence. You believe that what does not appear to exist with you in the here and now is not, and thus place it in a separate category, a category that only exists in the dualistic world of illusion where here and now is separate from what will be. In the new world, the world where truth reigns, there is no cause for tension for there is no world of illusion where what is, is separate from what will be.


22.14 Observation of what you desire, what we have referred to as “closed eyes” observation, can be likened to prayer and thus to the miracle. This is the very miracle that closes the door of duality and seals out the world where what is is separated from what will be by your effort and the time that it will take you to, through your effort, create the desired outcome. Observation of what you desire is observation of what is, for your desire is of God and what you desire now, contrary to what you would have desired in the early stages of this course, is the Will of God. What you desire now is the Will of God because it is your true desire, your will and God’s joined as one.

22.15 Thus the creative tension can be taken from the creative act of observation without a loss of any kind. The creative tension existed not only as a product of the duality of time, but also as a product of distrust. It was a tension that existed between desire and accomplishment, the tension that told you that you might be able to achieve what you desire but that you also might not. Realize that this game of chance is a pattern of the old thought system that needs to be replaced by certainty. If you have enjoyed the game of chance, play a real game and have fun doing it. Do not bring this attitude into your new thought system or your new life. If you are tired of the old, be willing to be done with the old.

22.16 And so we conclude with this note of impatience with the old and the observation, the final observation, of the personal self. You have created your personal self, and only you can look upon this personal self with the vision of creation, creating the personal self anew, seeing within it all that will serve the new, and only what will serve the new.

22.17 Observe the personal self with one last act of love and devotion, and in so doing transform the personal self into a representation of the truth. Realize that what we have called “closed eyes” observation is really the observation of a Self beyond the personal self. To call forth observance is to call forth the sight of your true Self. To call forth the sight of your true Self is to call forth your true Self into observable form. Calling the true Self forth into observable form is the end of the old and the beginning of the new.

22.18 Embrace the new as the new embraces you. The new is but the truth that has always existed. Go forth and live the truth with impatience only for the truth. Hold this impatience to your Self as eagerness for the final lessons, lessons on creation of the new.