Failure is all about you while you seek for goals that cannot be achieved. You
look for permanence in the impermanent; for love where there is none; for safety
in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death.
Who could succeed where contradiction is the setting of his searching, and the
place to which he comes to find stability?
Goals which are meaningless are not attained. There is no way to reach them, for
the means by which you strive for them are meaningless as they are. Who can use
such senseless means and hope through them to gain in anything? Where can they
lead? And what could they achieve that offers any hope of being real?
Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness,
and while you seek for life you ask for death. You look for safety and security
while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you
made.
Yet searching is inevitable here. For this you came, and you will surely do the
thing you came for. But the world can not dictate the goal for which you search
unless you give it power to do so. Otherwise, you still are free to choose a
goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one which comes
to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a
heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want.
Be glad that search you must. Be glad as well to learn you search for Heaven,
and must find the goal you really want. No-one can fail to want this goal, and
reach it in the end. God's Son cannot seek vainly, though he try to force
delay, deceive himself, and think that it is hell he seeks. When he is wrong he
finds correction, when he wanders off he is led back to his appointed task.
No-one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His
perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. You will find Heaven. Everything you seek
but this will fall away, yet not because it has been taken from you. It will go
because you do not want it. You will reach the goal you really want as certainly
as God created you in sinlessness.
Why wait for Heaven? It is here today. Time is the great illusion it is past or
in the future. Yet this cannot be if it is where God wills His Son to be. How
could the Will of God be in the past or yet to happen? What He wills is now,
without a past and wholly futureless. It is as far removed from time as is a
tiny candle from a distant star, or what you chose from what you really want.
Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its
ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its
tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and
attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad
effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's
opposite in every way.
God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two. How could it be
His Son could be in hell when God Himself established him in Heaven? Could he
lose what the Eternal Will has given him to be his home forever? Let us not try
longer to impose an alien will upon His single purpose. He is here because He
wills to be, and what He wills is present now beyond the reach of time.
Today we will not choose a paradox in place of truth. How could the Son of God
make time to take away the Will of God? He thus denies himself, and contradicts
what has no opposite. He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven, and believes
that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find.
Leave foolish thoughts like these behind today, and turn your mind to true ideas
instead.
No-one can fail who asks to reach the truth, and it is truth we ask to reach
today. We will devote ten minutes to this goal three times today, and we will
ask to see the rising of the real world to replace the foolish images that we
held dear, with true ideas arising in the place of thoughts which have no
meaning, no effect, and neither source nor substance in the truth.
This we acknowledge as we start upon our practice periods. Begin with this:
"I ask to see a different world, and think A different kind of thought from those I made. The world I seek I did not make alone, The thoughts I want to think are not my own."
For several minutes watch your mind and
see, although your eyes are closed, the senseless world you think is real.
Review the thoughts as well which are compatible with such a world, and which
you think are true. Then let them go, and sink below them to the holy place
where they can enter not. There is a door beneath them in your mind which you
could not completely lock to hide what lies beyond.
Seek for that door and find it. But before you try to open it, remind yourself
no-one can fail who asks to reach the truth, and it is this request you make
today. Nothing but this has any meaning now; no other goal is valued now nor
sought; nothing before this door you really want, and only what lies past it do
you seek.
Put out your hand and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent
to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes and you are
standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you
see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize
the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite
forget in wandering away in dreams.
You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you that you
might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it
to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to
His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness,
for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all
your searching here and all the seeking of the world, which ends together as you pass
beyond the door.
Remember often that today should be a time of special gladness, and refrain from
dismal thoughts and meaningless laments. Salvation's time has come. Today is
set by Heaven Itself to be a time of grace for you and for the world. If you
forget this happy fact, remind yourself with this:
"Today I seek and find all that I want. My single purpose offers it to me. No-one can fail who asks to reach the truth."
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