7,8,9,del 3er

As you have seen by now, we have moved from talking of beliefs in the Treatise on Unity, to speaking here of ideas. God’s thought of you is an idea of absolute truth. Your existence derives from this idea and this truth. The ego’s existence derived from your idea of a separated self, a thought, or idea, of absolute untruth. The ego’s thought system then formed beliefs that supported the initial idea of the separation. Where is there a corresponding belief system that formed around the idea of God?

7.2 A belief system is not needed for the truth. Thus you can see that the beliefs put forth in the Treatise on Unity are necessary only to return you to the truth. Since there are no beliefs that represent the truth of who you are and who God is, we speak now of ideas or thoughts. If you believe that God created you with a thought or idea, then you can begin to see the power of thought. If you can believe that you created the ego with a thought or an idea, you can see where the power of thought is your power as well as God’s.

7.3 While there is no need for a belief system and no belief system that can represent the truth, you have been told that you can represent the truth here. You cannot do this with beliefs but you can do this with ideas. Ideas leave not their source and thus your inaccurate ideas about yourself have their cause within you, as does your ability to change this cause and its effects.

7.4 You are who you are and remain endlessly who you are, even here within the human experience. This is the idea that is
beyond compare as you are beyond compare and the truth is beyond compare. This is the only idea that holds true meaning and so all meaning is found within it. Thus we start with this idea.

7.5 The only thing within the human experience that made you incapable of representing who you are in truth was the ego. The only thing within the human experience that deprived the human experience of meaning was the ego. With the ego gone, you are perfectly capable of representing the truth of who you are, and of returning to an existence that is meaningful.

7.6 You have formerly been capable of representing who you are only within illusion, for this was the abode in which you resided. Illusion has been to you like a house with many doors. You have chosen many doors to the same house and but thought them to offer different things, only to find that the house you entered was still the same house, the house of illusion. You took yourself into these many rooms and in some you were even capable of representing your true Self. This representation of the true Self within the house of illusion was like an explosion happening there. For a moment, the floorboards shook, the walls quaked, the lights dimmed. All those within the house became aware of something happening there. All attention turned toward the explosion but its source could not be found.

7.7 In the aftermath of the explosion, the representation of the true Self settled like dust, and all the attention fell upon it. A great scrambling ensued as the recognition dawned on those who looked, that treasures were to be found there. One found art and another religion, one found poetry and another music, one seized upon a single thought and through its extrapolation founded one science or another. In all of the excitement the matter of the source of the explosion was dismissed.

7.8 Thus has been the best of what you call life within the illusion.

7.9 Now you have seized upon even this idea and called it not treasure but theory and related it to the origins of the universe itself, and still you see not the source. There is a reason for this. The reason is that the Source cannot be found within the house of illusion. The Source can only be found from within the house of truth.

7.10 The house of truth is within you and we have just unlocked its doors.
chapter 8
the House of Truth


8.1 The Kingdom of God is the House of Truth. Or better said, the House of Truth has been called the Kingdom of God. I remind you, once again, that what you have called things are but representations too and that we move now beyond representations to meaning so that what you represent will move beyond representations to the truth. Realize here the subtle difference between a symbol that represents the truth, and the truth, for this is what we work toward. Symbols are needed only in the house of illusion, just as are beliefs. The most enlightened among you have beautifully symbolized or represented the truth within the house of illusion. These symbols or representations have been of great service and have caused the very explosions that have rocked your faulty foundation. To work toward being a representation of such great power is still a worthy goal and many of you have reached this power. You can see why this power has been necessary and continues to be necessary. But to stop at this dismantling power is not enough. To stop at this dismantling power would be to leave the world in its present condition and your brothers and sisters scrambling in the dust. The work that is upon you now is that of replacing the house of illusion once and for all with the house of truth. The work that is upon you now is that of revelation of the Source.

8.2 If the Source of Truth is within you, then it is your own revelation toward which we work. Never forget that establishing your identity has been the only aim of this entire course of study. Realize how often you have forgotten this
despite the many repetitions of our aim and you will be more aware of your resistance and your need to let it go.

8.3 This resistance is the reason you have been taken on such a long journey before we ever once talked of an idea as crucial as that of bitterness. Bitterness has been a source of resistance as strong as that of the ego and more deeply felt. Bitterness is to your heart what the ego has been to your mind. Bitterness has to do with your feelings more so than your thoughts. The ego but played upon these feelings, using them as building blocks for its thought system. As long as you carry this bitterness within you, you will remain in the house of illusion for your feelings are as real to you as have been the thoughts of your ego-mind. While anything other than the truth remains real to you, your house of illusion will remain a real structure, a structure that keeps you from the truth as surely as would iron bars keep you within its rooms.

8.4 Although at this moment it may be hard for you to conceive of the idea of bitterness as something that you are attached to, I want you to think of attachments for a time and see how bitterness does indeed fit into this category. Bitterness is an idea intrinsically tied to the personal self and the experience of the personal self. Whether you believe the personal self is comprised of the one identity you now hold or the identity of many past lives, the identity you hold in this time and this place still believes in its own history and that of those who came before it. These beliefs hold the seeds of bitterness, the angst you feel toward God, and toward brothers and sisters both alive and dead.

8.5 These are the beliefs that would say that you, and all of those who came before you, have been falsely made to suffer, a suffering for which you see no rationale. Those who believe in past lives have also often adopted beliefs regarding choice and believe that choices for suffering were made for some greater good or to repay debts of the past. The only choice that has been made is that of attachment to the human form. The choice that hasn’t been made is the choice to leave it behind. The choice that has been made is to believe in a savior who could have, but did not, keep you from this suffering. The choice that has not been made is the choice to believe in the Christ-self who is the only savior, rather than the ego-self, which is all you have needed saving from.

8.6 What happens when you believe that the choice to suffer, as well as the choice to leave suffering behind, has always been found within? Who then are you to be angry with for all that has occurred? Do you blame yourself and your ancestors for the history, both ancient and recent, that you think you would have given anything to change? Do you look upon the ill and blame them for their illness? Do you not look upon all suffering and feel bitter at your own inability to relieve it? And do you not attempt to see it not and then blame yourself for looking the other way?

8.7 As was said in A Course of Love, the idea of suffering is what has gone so wrong within God’s creation. As was said in A Treatise on the Art of Thought, the idea of love can replace the idea of suffering, but it is chosen not because of the suffering that seems to make no sense of love. Bitterness is the cause of this inability to make a new choice and what keeps the cycle of suffering in motion.

8.8 Remaining attached to bitterness is a reflection of the disbelief that one person, and surely not you, can make a difference. If you could relieve the world of suffering you would, but to try and fail is too heartbreaking. Why should you not be bitter when you and all of those you love will surely suffer and eventually die? Why should you not be bitter when you believe you are powerless? How difficult it is to believe that you need not change the world but only your own self. How difficult to imagine that this one change could bring about all the changes you would imagine even an army of angels could not bring about. While such a thought remains inconceivable to you it will not come to be.

8.9 As the representations of the true self within the house of illusion caused explosions and a fall-out of treasure, the representation of the true Self within the house of truth will cause the creation of the new.

8.10 Your ancestors could not have imagined all that the explosions in the house of illusion have wrought. Treasures that you now enjoy would have seemed like miracles to them.

8.11 Within the fallout of treasure, what was looked for was found. If what was looked for were means of making life easier, why not the idea of machinery and tools that would seem to make it so? If what was looked for was a means of finding simple pleasures in a harsh world, why not ideas of entertainment that would seem to provide them. People suffering from disease: why not cures for those diseases?

8.12 People have looked for what they have imagined it was possible to find. Why would you look for an end to suffering if you felt this was impossible? Much better to look for cures and treatments than for an end to what but seemed endless. Could suffering really have gone on for countless ages simply due to your inability to birth the idea of an end to suffering?

8.13 Has not a part of you always known that suffering does not have to be, even while you have accepted that it is? Let us now put an end to this acceptance through the birth of a new idea.

chapter 9
To Dwell in the House of Truth

9.1 This idea is an idea of love. It is an idea that makes perfect sense and it is its very sense that makes it seem meaningless in a world gone mad. It is an idea that says only that which comes from love is real. It is an idea that says only that which fits within the laws of love is reality. It is an idea that says all that love would not create does not exist. It is an idea that says that if you live from love and within love’s laws you will create only love. It is an idea that accepts that this can be done and can be done by you in the here and now. To accept these ideas without accepting their ability to be applied is to change your beliefs without changing your ideas. This many have done. This you surely do not want to do.

9.2 While you cannot see, right now, the chain of events that will make these ideas of love into a new reality, you can trust that it will be there spreading out like a web, much as did the ego’s ideas of separation. These ideas are not learned ideas, and so they will not take time to spread through learning, as did the ego’s ideas.

9.3 Ideas of love, or the truth, are joined in unity and exist in relationship. All of the ideas within the house of illusion were contained within it and held together by the learned ideas of the ego thought-system. Now you must imagine yourself walking outside of the doors of this house of illusion and finding a completely new reality beyond its walls. You might think, at first, that you are in a place so foreign that you must immediately begin to learn again, starting with the smallest building blocks of knowledge, as if learning a new alphabet. Yet you soon will find that this new reality is known to you and
requires no new learning at all. You will be tempted, at first, to see things that are like onto those within the house of illusion and call them what you called them once before. But here you will find yourself gently corrected and, when this correction is given, you will not doubt it but will remember that it is the truth you but had forgotten.

9.4 You will see that the house of illusion was just a structure built within the universe of truth and that the universe of truth contains everything within its benevolent embrace. No one stands beyond the embrace of love and you will be glad to see that those who remain within the house of illusion cannot escape love’s presence.

9.5 You will be tempted, nonetheless, to re-enter the house of illusion, if only to grasp the hands of those you love and gently tug them through its doors. You will be able to take note of the explosions happening within and will want to return to add your own to those going on inside, thinking that with the force of one more, maybe the walls will finally come tumbling down and those inside be held within illusion no more. This was the work of many who came before you but the time of such work for you has passed. Many remain to shake the walls of illusion. Few stand beyond it to beckon to those within.

9.6 The paradise that is the truth seems to lie far beyond the house of illusion in the valley of death. Survivors of near death experiences have eased the fears of many but made many more long for life after death rather than life. You who have followed me beyond the walls of the house of illusion are now called to begin the act of revealing and creating anew the life of heaven on earth.

9.7 This is the pilgrimage I set you on, as real as those who in the time of Moses journeyed through the desert to the promised land. That journey remained metaphorical because it did not pass beyond the arena of beliefs into the arena of ideas. The Israelites believed in a promised land but they did not dwell in it. You are called to dwell in the promised land, the House of Truth.