Sometimes in teaching there is benefit, particularly after you have gone
through what seems theoretical and quite remote from what the student
has already learned, to bring him back to practical concerns. This we
will do today. We will not speak of lofty, world-encompassing ideas, but
dwell instead on benefits to you.
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. This course
does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. It does not
try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world
contains.
There are no satisfactions in the world. Today we list the real criteria
by which to test all things you think you want. Unless they meet these
sound requirements, they are not worth desiring at all, for they can but
replace what offers more.
The laws which govern choice you cannot make, no more than you can make
alternatives from which to choose. The choosing you can do; indeed you
must. But it is wise to learn the laws you set in motion when you
choose, and what alternatives you choose between. We have already
stressed there are but two, however many there appear to be.
The range is set, and this we cannot change. It would be most ungenerous
to you to let alternatives be limitless, and thus delay your final
choice until you had considered all of them in time, and not been
brought so clearly to the place where there is but one choice that must
be made.
Another kindly and related law is that there is no compromise in what
your choice must bring. It cannot give you just a little, for there is
no inbetween. 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. What fades and dies was never
there, and makes no offering to him who chooses it. He is deceived by
nothing in a form he thinks he likes.
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, you have denied your own. You therefore will not recognize
the things you really have, denying they are there. Who seeks to take
away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. Yet loss must
offer loss and nothing more.
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? Here it is easiest of all to be deceived, for
what the ego wants it fails to recognize. It does not even tell the
truth as it perceives it, for it needs to keep the halo which it uses to
protect its goals from tarnish and from rust, that you may see how
innocent it is.
Yet is its camouflage a thin veneer which could deceive but those who
are content to be deceived. Its goals are obvious to anyone who cares to
look for them. Here is deception doubled, for the one who is deceived
will not perceive that he has merely failed to gain. He will believe
that he has served the ego’s hidden goals. And though he tries to keep
its halo clear within his vision, yet must he perceive its tarnished
edges and its rusted core.
His ineffectual mistakes appear as sins to him because he looks upon the
tarnished as his own; the rust a sign of deep unworthiness within
himself. He who would still preserve the ego’s goals and serve them as
his own makes no mistakes according to the dictates of his guide. This
guidance teaches it is error to believe that sins are but mistakes, for
who would suffer for his sins if this were so?
And so we come to the criterion for choice which is the hardest to
believe, because its obviousness is overlaid with many levels of
obscurity. 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.
All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at
all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain.
Choosing is easy just because of this. Complexity is nothing but a
screen of smoke which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be
difficult.
What is the gain to you in learning this? It is far more than merely
letting you make choices easily and without pain. Heaven Itself is
reached by empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find
everything and claim it as their own. We will attempt to reach this state
today, with self-deception laid aside, and with an honest willingness to
value but the truly valuable and the real.
Our two extended practice periods of fifteen minutes will begin with
this:
“I will not value what is valueless,
And only what has value do I seek,
For only that do I desire to find.”
And then receive what waits for everyone who reaches, unencumbered, to
the gate of Heaven, which swings open as he comes. Should you begin to
let yourself collect some needless burdens, or believe you see some
difficult decisions facing you, be quick to answer with this simple
thought:
“I will not value what is valueless,
For what is valuable belongs to me.”