Day 138

Today's Lesson:

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 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.

We need to be reminded that we think a thousand choices are confronting us, 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. We make but one. And when that one is made, we 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 us. Decisions are the outcome of our learning, for they rest on what we have accepted as the truth of what we are, and what our 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 we have tried to make this is the simplest, most definitive and prototype of all the rest, the one which settles all decisions. If we could decide the rest, this one remains unsolved. But when we 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.

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.

Miracles I'm noticing:

When it is broken down as clearly as today's lesson is, it seems easy to decide what it is we want. We want Heaven. But when people are asked that simple question: "What do you want?" so often they can't come up with an answer. It's too broad a question. And all our past baggage keeps us from feeling we deserve to have anything - or that past baggage makes us feel entitled to have everything without doing anything to earn it.

But maybe we don't have to do anything to earn Heaven - we merely have to make the choice to accept it. The text for today talks about our function in Heaven being creating. If we don't choose Heaven, we end up with our earthly function which is destruction, according to the ego, which also says that we have no function in Heaven. The ego would destroy us here and bury us here, leaving us as nothing and with nothing. When it is feeling overtly savage, the ego offers us hell instead of nothing. Gee - that doesn't sound like a tough decision to me.

Today's text says that we as ego really are "hell-bent" on proving that we (ego) are right and we will give up everything Heaven offers in order to be right about our view of reality. We have made up our own definition of Heaven and to our ego minds Heaven is the threat because it would mean that everything we have made up is wrong.

But wouldn't it be more desirable to have been wrong and gain the true meaning of Heaven? On earth there are so many times I can remember in my work where people would choose their present circumstances - miserable as they are - over any opportunity for things to be better if they made some changes because the unknown was scarier to to them than the current conditions which, although miserable, were known to them.

It reminds me of a quote by King Whitney, Jr.:

To the fearful [change] is threatening, because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring, because the challenge exists to make things better.

I see many people in the fearful mindset, especially as it relates to work. The text today tells us that the ego invests heavily in the past, and believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful. Its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past, and thus avoiding the present. This means that we must pay for the past in the future, and the future is created by the past, making them continuous without an intervening present. The ego tries to preserve its image of the past by responding as if it were the present. If we all followed the ego's dictates, we would react to everyone as if they were someone else, and this prevents us from recognizing them as they truly are - right now, in the present. And we receive messages from them - right now in the present - out of our own past because we are forbidding ourselves to let the past go.

No wonder we have so much judgment in the present!

The Spirit teaches us that we always meet ourselves, and the encounter is holy because we are. The ego teaches that we always encounter our past, and because we saw that past through unholy eyes, the future cannot be anything but the past, and the present has no meaning.

All we have is NOW, and we can make new decisions and choices NOW to ensure a completely different future. If we can begin to see our function in time as one of healing, we will emphasize the only aspect of time in which healing can occur - that's in the present. Healing cannot be accomplished in the past. It must be accomplished in the present to release the future. And - we still get to be right!! :)

Choosing Heaven is something each of us can do every day in every minute. And that will release the future to be what it is - which is more amazing that we could ever dream up in our ego minds. That's certainly a miracle!