Lesson 138
Heaven is the decision I must make.
In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are alternatives to choose between. We think that all things have an opposite, and what we want we choose. If Heaven exists there must be hell as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we perceive, and what we think is real.
Creation knows no opposite. But here is opposition part of being “real.” It is this strange perception of the truth that makes the choice of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. It is not really thus. Yet what is true in God’s creation cannot enter here until it is reflected in some form the world can understand. Truth cannot come where it could only be perceived with fear. For this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions. Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come.
Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. Decision lets one of conflicting goals become the aim of effort and expenditure of time. Without decision, time is but a waste and effort dissipated. It is spent for nothing in return, and time goes by without results. There is no sense of gain, for nothing is accomplished; nothing learned.
You need to be reminded that you think a thousand choices are confronting you, when there is really only one to make. And even this but seems to be a choice. Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. You make but one. And when that one is made, you will perceive it was no choice at all. For truth is true, and nothing else is true. There is no opposite to choose instead. There is no contradiction to the truth.
Choosing depends on learning. And the truth cannot be learned, but only recognized. In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is known. But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this course. Ours are teaching goals, to be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you. Decisions are the outcome of your learning, for they rest on what you have accepted as the truth of what you are, and what your needs must be.
In this insanely complicated world, Heaven appears to take the form of choice, rather than merely being what it is. Of all the choices you have tried to make this is the simplest, most definitive and prototype of all the rest, the one which settles all decisions. If you could decide the rest, this one remains unsolved. But when you solve this one, the others are resolved with it, for all decisions but conceal this one by taking different forms. Here is the final and the only choice in which is truth accepted or denied.
So we begin today considering the choice that time was made to help us make. Such is its holy purpose, now transformed from the intent you gave it; that it be a means for demonstrating hell is real, hope changes to despair, and life itself must in the end be overcome by death. In death alone are opposites resolved, for ending opposition is to die. And thus salvation must be seen as death, for life is seen as conflict. To resolve the conflict is to end your life as well.
These mad beliefs can gain unconscious hold of great intensity, and grip the mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas about its own protection. It must be saved from salvation, threatened to be safe, and magically armored against truth. And these decisions are made unaware, to keep them safely undisturbed; apart from question and from reason and from doubt.
Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding, to be judged again, this time with Heaven’s help. And all mistakes in judgment that the mind had made before are open to correction, as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed, because their nothingness is recognized.
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 decide between the clearly seen and the unrecognized? Yet 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? Who hesitates to make a choice like this? And shall we hesitate to choose today?
We make the choice for Heaven as we wake, and spend five minutes making sure that we have made the one decision that is sane. We recognize we make a conscious 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. It holds no terror now, for what was made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate, demands obscurity for fear to be invested there. Now it is recognized as but a foolish, trivial mistake.
Before we close our eyes in sleep tonight, we reaffirm the choice that we have made each hour in between. And now we give the last five minutes of our waking day to the decision with which we awoke. As every hour passed, we have declared our choice again, in a brief quiet time devoted to maintaining sanity. And finally, we close the day with this, acknowledging we chose but what we want:
Heaven is the decision I must make.
I make it now, and will not change my mind,
because it is the only thing I want.
INITIAL INSIGHT: Truth cannot come where it could only be perceived with fear. For this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions. Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come.
Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites.
Only in the illusion do we have choices to make. In Reality, nothing conflicts with anything else so there are no choices to make. I used to think that the ability to choose among options was a wonderful freedom, but as my mind has become clearer, I see that this is not true. It seems I have to choose how I feel about what someone said to me and how much of my money I can afford to spend on entertainment and which toothpaste to buy. The range and number of decisions are overwhelming. And leads to conflict and I learned to recognize that conflict is really another word for hell. There is no peace in conflict.
But what we made with the ego the Holy Spirit will use to release us from the ego. So now we can use choice in a way that is freeing. We can choose God in every situation and we will come to know real freedom. Here is an example of how this works. Someone I care about seemed to be rude and disrespectful the other day. I had a decision to make. Would I take this personally, as if it meant something about me? Would I in some way try to manipulate that person’s behavior to something more acceptable to me or demand an apology? Or would I choose to be happy and to love the situation just as it was? In other words, would I choose the ego or choose God. It is so much simpler when I choose God, and the outcome so much more peaceful. This is what I did and this is how I remove fear from my mind and make it welcome to truth.
And when that one is made, you will perceive it was no choice at all. For truth is true, and nothing else is true.
Through my practice, this is what I learned. I can choose Heaven every time. So now, I never have to decide how I am going to approach a rude person. I simply choose Love. It’s a no-brainer. Why would I do anything else? When someone I love very much was in serious trouble, the ego-mind was going nuts trying to come up with something that it could hook me with. The ego’s approach to everything is fear which also appears as anger, guilt, and other negative feelings. Each time, I chose Heaven. It kept the situation from becoming something worse than it was. Heaven seems to be a choice we make each time and that is how we do it for a while, but eventually, we begin to choose Heaven so often that it becomes all we choose.
DAILY APPLICATION: Choice is how we made our world and so now it is necessary that we use what we made to extricate ourselves from it. So, we make a “seeming” choice between what exists and what does not exist. This is too abstract for the mind caught in the web of separation where choices are deliberately infinite and designed to keep us from the only choice there is.
The way I do this is to use whatever is before me at this moment to practice choosing God. I do this over and over until I begin to realize that no matter the form it seems to take, I am making the same choice. It looks like I am choosing to forgive my brother, then it looks like I am forgiving myself for what I projected on my brother, then finally it looks like I am forgiving the idea that there could ever be anything to forgive.
I seem to be stuck in a situation that is unpleasant and so I forgive the situation, and the scapegoat I have chosen to blame for the situation, then I forgive myself for creating the situation, and finally, I forgive the idea the situation could ever exist. I feel physically ill and I forgive the illness, then myself for creating illness through my thoughts, I forgive the thoughts, I forgive the idea there could be illness or a body to experience the illness.
What I have learned is that love is all there is and peace is all I want. I have learned that no other outcome is of interest to me. I have learned that I can have this outcome simply by disregarding any thought or action that does not bring me closer to love and peace. It is really that simple. For now, I still make choices but that will end soon.
INSIGHTS FROM HOLY SPIRIT: I feel you moving me forward, Holy Spirit. I love this because all I’m doing is remembering to ask for help. I have no other part and I don’t know where I am going, so I know it is you who is directing me.
GRATITUDE: Than you, Holy Spirit.