I will not value what is valueless.
You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. …There are no satisfactions in the world.
Today we list the real criteria by which to test all things you think you want. …it is wise to learn the laws you set in motion when you choose, and what alternatives you choose between.
Each choice you make brings everything to you or nothing. Therefore, if you learn the tests by which you can distinguish everything from nothing, you will make the better choice.
First, if you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is valueless. A temporary value is without all value. Time can never take away a value that is real.
[Test 2] Next, if you choose to take a thing away from someone else, you will have nothing left. This is because, when you deny his right to everything [God’s changeless Love], you have denied your own.
[Test 3]Your next consideration is the one on which the others rest. Why is the choice you make of value to you? What attracts your mind to it? What purpose does it serve?
He who would still preserve the ego’s goals and serve them as his own makes no mistakes, according to the dictates of [the ego]. This guidance teaches it is error to believe that sins are but mistakes, for who would suffer for his sins if this were so?
[Test 4] If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed the ego’s goals to come between the real alternatives. And thus you do not realize there are but two, and the alternative you think you chose seems fearful, and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is.
Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything [all of God’s Love] and claim It as their own.” (A Course in Miracles Workbook Lesson 133, W-pI.133.2:1-2,5;3:1,5:5-6:3;7:1-2;10:3-4;11:2-3;13:1. See also ACIM Lesson 133 Insights.)
Everything in the physical world is constantly changing. The physical universe is considered to be at least billions of years old. Yet astronomers know that the source of light from a distant star may no longer exist. Nothing in the physical universe lasts forever.
Because only the oneness of God’s Love is real, anything that is not His Love is unreal and is therefore nothing. If we attempt to keep some of His Love for ourselves alone or to take Love from a brother (judge him as unworthy), we deny Love from ourselves.
The ego belief in separation denies the oneness of Love. Judgment and guilt are the means to make separation seem real. The ego is always trying to justify guilt. Guilt demands punishment, so the ego perceives Love as a threat of punishment rather than the Source of healing that would end all guilt and return us to the awareness of Love’s eternal presence. As we lay down the nothingness of the ego’s belief in separation and open our minds to the Holy Spirit’s lessons in Love, we gain everything. We reach Heaven.
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