ACIM ~ Lesson 130. It is impossible to see two worlds.

Lesson 130. It is impossible to see two worlds.

(1) Perception is consistent. What you see reflects your thinking. And your
thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see. Your values are
determiners of this, for what you value you must want to see, believing what you
see is really there. No one can see a world his mind has not accorded value. And
no one can fail to look upon what he believes he wants.

(2) Yet who can really hate and love at once? Who can desire what he does not
want to have reality? And who can choose to see a world of which he is afraid?
Fear must make blind, for this its weapon is: that which you fear to see you
cannot see. Love and perception thus go hand in hand, but fear obscures in
darkness what is there.

(3) What, then, can fear project upon the world? What can be seen in darkness
that is real? Truth is eclipsed by fear, and what remains is but imagined. Yet
what can be real in blind imaginings of panic born? What would you want that
this is shown to you? What would you wish to keep in such a dream?

(4) Fear has made everything you think you see. All separation, all
distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world.
They are not there. Love's enemy has made them up. Yet love can have no enemy,
and so they have no cause, no being and no consequence. They can be valued, but
remain unreal. They can be sought, but they can not be found. Today we will not
seek for them, nor waste this day in seeking what can not be found.

(5) It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. Seek
for the one; the other disappears. But one remains. They are the range of choice
beyond which your decision cannot go. The real and the unreal are all there are
to choose between, and nothing more than these.

(6) Today we will attempt no compromise where none is possible. The world you
see is proof you have already made a choice as all-embracing as its opposite.
What we would learn today is more than just the lesson that you cannot see two
worlds. It also teaches that the one you see is quite consistent from the point
of view from which you see it. It is all a piece because it stems from one
emotion, and reflects its source in everything you see.

(7) Six times today, in thanks and gratitude, we gladly give five minutes to the
thought that ends all compromise and doubt, and go beyond them all as one. We
will not make a thousand meaningless distinctions, nor attempt to bring with us
a little part of unreality, as we devote our minds to finding only what is real.

(8) Begin your searching for the other world by asking for a strength beyond
your own, and recognizing what it is you seek. You do not want illusions. And
you come to these five minutes emptying your hands of all the petty treasures of
this world. You wait for God to help you, as you say:

It is impossible to see two worlds.
Let me accept the strength God offers me
and see no value in this world,
that I may find my freedom and deliverance.

(9) God will be there. For you have called upon the great unfailing power which
will take this giant step with you in gratitude. Nor will you fail to see His
thanks expressed in tangible perception and in truth. You will not doubt what
you will look upon, for though it is perception, it is not the kind of seeing
that your eyes alone have ever seen before. And you will know God's strength
upheld you as you made this choice.

(10) Dismiss temptation easily today whenever it arises, merely by remembering
the limits of your choice. The unreal or the real, the false or true is what you
see and only what you see. Perception is consistent with your choice, and hell
or Heaven comes to you as one.

(11) Accept a little part of hell as real, and you have damned your eyes and
cursed your sight, and what you will behold is hell indeed. Yet the release of
Heaven still remains within your range of choice, to take the place of
everything that hell would show to you. All you need say to any part of hell,
whatever form it takes, is simply this:

It is impossible to see two worlds.
I seek my freedom and deliverance,
and this is not a part of what I want.


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Excerpted commentary from Kenneth Wapnick's  book set "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles"
 http://www.facim.org
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Lesson 130. "It is impossible to see two worlds."

*In this final lesson of the series, Jesus once again emphasizes our power to
decide, making it clear that what we see outside is not outside at all, but is
simply a shadow or reflection of what we first made real in the mind. This
lesson, therefore, elaborates on the principle projection makes perception: we
see within first, choosing either the ego's darkness of sin or the Holy Spirit's
light of forgiveness; we then look out and perceive either a shadow of guilt or
reflection of love. Thus the problem is never what we perceive outside, but the
teacher we have chosen inside. That decision is the subject matter of this
lesson.*

(1:1-3) "Perception is consistent. What you see reflects your thinking. And your
thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see."

*It is not what we perceive outside that is consistent, because it always
changes. Jesus' point is that our perception is consistent with our thoughts, as
they are consistent with the teacher we have chosen -- our choice of what we
want to see. We find the same idea in "The Characteristics of God's Teachers"
under the subsection "Honesty," where Jesus defines honesty as consistent with
what we think (M-4.II). Thus honesty is not defined by form, the truth of the
form of our words, but by its consistency with the content -- what we have made
real in our minds: Jesus' love or the ego's hate.*

(1:4) "Your values are determiners of this, for what you value you must want to
see, believing what you see is really there."

*What underlies our values is valuing our individual self: we want to prove the
separation from God is real and that we exist. Since that is our value, we
choose the ego as our teacher. Remember, at the beginning we, as one Son, were
presented with two choices regarding the tiny, mad idea: to see it through the
eyes of the ego or the Holy Spirit. We valued our separation, so we chose the
former. From there we chose the ego's thought system of guilt and hate to
protect its existence, and this gave rise to a perceptual universe of
materiality. On the other hand, if we choose to value the perfect Oneness of
God's Love, we choose Jesus as our teacher, and everything will shift
accordingly. When that shift is total, we are in the world.*

(1:5-6) "No one can see a world his mind has not accorded value. And no one can
fail to look upon what he believes he wants."

*If I want separation, individuality, and specialness, that is what I will
perceive in the world. If I want to return home to disappear into the Heart of
God, when I look out on the world I will ultimately realize there is nothing
there. That is the experience of the real world, the place of truth in our minds
that is outside the world's dream. Looking at the dream from outside means I
take nothing here seriously because I know it is illusory. I understand the
dream's purpose, and since I no longer share it, I no longer share the belief in
its reality. You may recall this statement from the Sermon on the Mount:

"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matthew 6:21).

It is cited five times in A Course in Miracles, and forms the basis for this
passage. Early in the text, for example, we read:

"Remember that where your heart is, there is your treasure also. You believe
in what you value." (T-2.II.1:5-6).

What you believe, we see: "And no one can fail to look upon what he believes he
wants." That is why Jesus places such emphasis in his course on purpose. Our
chosen purpose, based on belief, determines what we want, which in turn
determines what we see: projection makes perception.*

(2:1) "Yet who can really hate and love at once?"

*Recall that dissociation is a psychological term that describes how we
maintain two mutually exclusive thoughts simultaneously:

"Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of
belief which cannot coexist are both maintained." (T-14.VII.4:3).

The ego has us believe we can hate and love at the same time. I spit off the
love in my right mind and hide it, identifying only with the ego's hate. When I
bring them to the same place, however -- illusion brought to truth -- the
darkness of our hate must disappear:

"If they are brought together, their joint acceptance becomes impossible.
But if one is kept in darkness from the other, their separation seems to keep
them both alive and equal in their reality." (T-14.VII.4:4-5).

Jesus speaks here of our need to make a choice. I cannot choose both love and
hate, and that is the ego's fear: if we choose love, hate is gone, and with it
goes the self that was conceived in hate and nourished by guilt.:

"Their joining thus becomes the source of fear, for if they meet, acceptance
must be withdrawn from one of them. You cannot have them both, for each denies
the other. Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each in a separate place can
be endowed with firm belief. Bring them together, and the fact of their complete
incompatibility is instantly apparent. One will go, because the other is seen in
the same place." (T-14.VII.4:6-10).

Thus we choose to live in the darkness of hate and judgment, fear and guilt. In
this way, the individual and special self is guaranteed existence, preserved by
the bodily shadows of separation and protected from the light of forgiveness at
the expense of our living oneness:

"The world you see is based on "sacrifice" of oneness. It is a picture of
complete disunity and total lack of joining. Around each entity is built a wall
so seeming solid that it looks as if what is inside can never reach without, and
what is out can never reach and join with what is locked away within the wall.
Each part must sacrifice the other part, to keep itself complete. For if they
joined each one would lose its own identity, and by their separation are their
selves maintained." (T-26.1.2).

Jesus continues to explain this strange thought system of fear that strives to
keep our individual self intact, separate from our Self.*

(2:2-3) "Who can desire what he does not want to have reality? And who can
choose to see a world of which he is afraid?"

*If I fear the real world because of the threat to my individuality, I will not
see it, for I see only what the ego programmed my eyes, ears, and brain to see,
make real, and understand. We are afraid of Jesus' love because it proves our
specialness is a lie, and so we see only the specialness of separate interests.
Projection makes perception is the principle that underlies our understanding
the seemingly real experiences in the perceptual world.*

(2:4-5) "Fear must make blind, for this its weapon is: that which you fear to
see you cannot see. Love and perception thus go hand in hand, but fear obscures
in darkness what is there."

*The Love of God is in my mind, represented by the Holy Spirit's Atonement
principle. The ego is afraid of my choosing the Holy Spirit as my Teacher, and
so it keeps the love hidden, holding it in darkness with individuality and guilt
as the cover. The ego teaches me I should be afraid of my guilt, its clever
subterfuge. However, I really fear choosing love, and thus fear makes me blind.
Typically in A Course in Miracles guilt is described as the blinding agent:

"Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt within you, you
will not see the light. And by projecting it the world seems dark, and shrouded
in your guilt. You throw a dark veil over it, and cannot see it because you
cannot look within." (T-13.IX.7:1-3).

Thus do guilt and fear tell us not to look within, for if did we would see our
sinfulness. We look only without, in self-preservation, and inevitably perceive
a world that is real to us. In truth, however, if we looked within we would
realize there was nothing there -- <literally!> The following passage is perhaps
the clearest expression in A Course in Miracles of the ego's reason for keeping
us mindless and in a bodily state of fear. Its reasons are truly groundless, for
there is nothing within the mind that can hurt us. Indeed, there is nothing
within the mind except the light of Heaven's Love:

"Loudly the ego tells you not to look inward, for if you do your eyes will
light on sin, and God will strike you blind. This you believe, and so you do not
look. Yet this is not the ego's hidden fear, nor yours who serve it ... Beneath
your fear to look within because of sin is yet another fear, and one which makes
the ego tremble."
"What if you looked within and saw no sin? This "fearful" question is one
the ego never asks. And you who ask it now are threatening the ego's whole
defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is your friend."
(T-21.IV.2:3-5,8;3:1-3).

A Course in Miracles' purpose is to help us pose that very question to the ego,
for in it rests our salvation and return from the darkness to the light.*

(3:1-2) "What, then, can fear project upon the world? What can be seen in
darkness that is real?"

*What fear projects onto the world is nothingness, because it projects the
thought system of the ego -- separation, individuality, guilt, attack,
suffering, and death -- which is inherently nothing. The ego tells us its
thoughts are real, and within them is our identity, safely protected by our
friends. At the same time we are told these "friends" are so horrible we cannot
look at them, at the risk of annihilation. We again see dissociation at work: on
the one hand, we welcome sin, guilt, and fear as our self; on the other hand, we
flee from their "sharp-pointed, bony fingers" of death (W-pI.189.5:4). Thus we
need to deny these thoughts, projecting them away from our minds so we would see
them outside. Yet all we are truly seeing is the shadow of our guilt, which is
inherently nothing. Hallucinating would be a more proper term for this
perceptual phenomenon of seeing what is not there:

"What if you recognized this world is an hallucination? What if you really
understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk
about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are
wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you accepted this? And
would you see it?" (T-20.VIII.7:3-7).

"What can be seen in darkness that is real?" Nothing. What alone is real is the
light, which patiently awaits removal of the covers of guilt that keep it
hidden.*


(3:3) "Truth is eclipsed by fear, and what remains is but imagined."

*Truth is not destroyed by fear; but is hidden by it. Analogously, when the sun
goes behind the moon during an eclipse, the sun is not destroyed; it is just not
visible for those few moments. Thus, we do not see love because of the mind's
fear and its subsequent projection onto the world. But the fact that we think we
see fear does not make it real, for it remains but an effete product of our
insane imagination, as the following passage describes:

"When you made visible what is not true, what is true became invisible to
you. Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit sees it with
perfect clarity. It is invisible to you because you are looking at something
else. Yet it is no more up to you to decide what is visible and what is
invisible, than it is up to you to decide what reality is. What can be seen is
what the Holy Spirit sees. The definition of reality is God's, not yours."
(T-12.VIII.3:1-6).

It is only the ego's arrogance that causes it to believe something is there
simply because it "sees" it. It is only our insanity that enables us to believe
what the ego tells us is our reality, as we have already seen:

"Ask not this transient stranger [ the ego ] , "What am I? " He is the only
thing in all the universe that does not know. Yet it is he you ask, and it is to
his answer that you would adjust. This one wild thought, fierce in its
arrogance, and yet so tiny and so meaningless it slips unnoticed through the
universe of truth, becomes your guide. To it you turn to ask the meaning of the
universe. And of the one blind thing in all the seeing universe of truth you
ask, "How shall I look upon the Son of God?" (T-20.III.7:5-10).

Yet despite our fears and imagined reality, the truth remains safely within,
awaiting the return of our sanity.*

(4:1) "Fear has made everything you think you see."

*Our body's eyes see it; but what they see is not there. In fact, our body's
eyes do not see at all. Eyes blinded by fear's darkened veils of guilt cannot
see, unlike vision's light:

"Vision depends on light. You cannot see in darkness. Yet in darkness, in
the private world of sleep, you see in dreams although your eyes are closed. And
it is here that what you see you made. But let the darkness go and all you made
you will no longer see, for sight of it depends upon denying vision ... Dreams
disappear when light has come and you can see."
"Do not seek vision through your eyes, for you made your way of seeing that
you might see in darkness, and in this you are deceived. Beyond this darkness,
and yet still within you, is the vision of Christ, Who looks on all in light.
Your "vision" comes from fear, as His from love." (T-13.V.8:1-5,9;9:1-3).

We know what we see comes from fear if we have made differences real, for vision
sees only the sameness that reflects the unity of the Sonship:*

(5) "It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. Seek
for the one; the other disappears. But one remains. They are the range of choice
beyond which your decision cannot go. The real and the unreal are all there are
to choose between, and nothing more than these."

*This is the law of the split mind: the decision maker must decide between the
ego and the Holy Spirit. It cannot choose both of them, nor choose neither of
them. One or the other must always be chosen.

" ... you cannot make decisions by yourself. The only question really is
with what you choose to make them. That is really all. The first rule, then, is
not coercion, but a simple statement of a simple fact. You will not make
decisions by yourself whatever you decide. For they are made with idols or with
God. And you ask help of anti-Christ or Christ, and which you choose will join
with you and tell you what to do." (T-30.I.14:3-9).

This lesson's paragraph reflects this same idea. We choose between truth and
illusion, the real and the unreal. Once we see the conflict between these two
worlds, the solution is easy:

"The way out of conflict between two opposing thought systems is clearly to
choose one and relinquish the other. If you identify with your thought system,
and you cannot escape this, and if you accept two thought systems which are in
complete disagreement, peace of mind is impossible. If you teach both, which you
will surely do as long as you accept both, you are teaching conflict and
learning it ... There can be no conflict between sanity and insanity. Only one
is true, and therefore only one is real." (T-6.V-B.51-3;6:1-2).*

(6:1) "Today we will attempt no compromise where none is possible."

*The ego's compromise, as we will see near the end of the lesson, brings a
little bit of hell to Heaven, or vice versa. It is the attempt to bring God into
the world, saying truth, happiness, and hope exist here. This makes the world
real compromising Heaven's non-dualistic reality that contains no separation,
distinctions, or differences. That is why, as noted earlier, Jesus teaches that
salvation is without compromise. He speaks here specifically within the context
of forgiveness, but the general principle certainly holds:

"Salvation is no compromise of any kind. To compromise is to accept but
part of what you want; to take a little and give up the rest. Salvation gives up
nothing. It is complete for everyone ... for compromise is the belief salvation
is impossible.... This course is easy just because it makes no compromise." 
(T-23.III.1-4,6,4:1).

When we believe something here has value, or when we hope for a brighter outcome
-- even if it is something as noble as world peace, or as pure as family health
and happiness -- we are trying to effect this compromise. And it will never
work. Our hopes will fail because true hope lies only in inviting Jesus to look
with us at the ego's hopelessness, thereby letting it go.*

(6:2-5) "The world you see is proof you have already made a choice as
all-embracing as its opposite. What we would learn today is more than just the
lesson that you cannot see two worlds. It also teaches that the one you see is
quite consistent from the point of view from which you see it. It is all a piece
because it stems from one emotion, and reflects its source in everything you
see."

*Jesus is reflecting the principle ideas leave not their source. The way we
learn which teacher we have chosen in our minds is by paying attention to the
world we made. If it is a world of specialness, pain and loss, good and evil,
that is proof -- since ideas leave not their source -- we have chosen the ego.
The world's only value is to reflect back to us the mind's choice. As I have
said, Lesson 193 tells us that if pain is real in our perception, we have chosen
the wrong teacher (W-pI.193.7). This is because pain comes from separation,
distinctions, and differences, our having made the body real. The lesson is not
just that we cannot see two worlds, but that the world we see is consistent with
the teacher we have chosen in our minds: ideas leave not their source. Our
having understood this, the world can serve a different purpose.*

(7:1) "Six times today, in thanks and gratitude, we gladly give five minutes to
the thought that ends all compromise and doubt, and go beyond them all as one."

*Our gratitude is not for pain and suffering, but for the teacher within our
minds who helps us understand where they come from. Whatever the circumstance in
our lives, we are grateful because of the lessons we can learn from our teacher.
Under Jesus' gentle guidance we come to see that every situation, however
different in form, contains the single lesson that will save us from our pain.
For this opportunity to be healed, we gladly give thanks.

Notice that Jesus is still talking about thirty minutes. In the previous lessons
it was ten minutes, three times a day; now it is five minutes, six times a day.
His purpose is to have us become increasingly mindful, and to think of the
lessons more and more frequently. It is tempting, once we leave our homes in the
morning, to step into the world and forget everything else. It seems so
pressing. As Wordsworth said: "The world is too much with us." If we "gladly
give five minutes to the thought that ends all compromise and doubt, and go
beyond them all as one," we will come to realize that all problems in the world
are but one problem, and this recognition allows us to choose its one solution.*

(8) "Begin your searching for the other world by asking for a strength beyond
your own, and recognizing what it is you seek. You do not want illusions. And
you come to these five minutes emptying your hands of all the petty treasures of
this world. You wait for God to help you, as you say:

It is impossible to see two worlds.
Let me accept the strength God offers me
and see no value in this world,
that I may find my freedom and deliverance."

*Our focus is on giving up the pettiness we have chosen in place of the
magnitude of God. Again, we need to be aware of what we are settling for,
remembering that our problem is not that we ask for too much, but for too little
(T-26.VII.11:7). It is the true strength of Christ's eagle that we seek, not the
weakness of the ego's sparrow (M-4.1.2:2). Thus we bring to this strength our
petty treasures, there to empty our hands and allow the Love of God to fill us.
Our meaningless worldly values of specialness, brought to the value of the real
world, are quickly replaced by true freedom and deliverance.*

(9:1-3) "God will be there. For you have called upon the great unfailing power
which will take this giant step with you in gratitude. Nor will you fail to see
His thanks expressed in tangible perception and in truth."

*This is the reflection of the real world. As long as we believe we are here, we
cannot know truth as it really is: abstract, non-specific, and transcendent. Yet
we can perceive truth's reflection in the form of forgiveness: seeing another's
interests as our own. The reflection itself is not holy, for holiness belongs
only to what it symbolizes. Jesus makes this point early in the text when he
discusses vision, a reflection of Heaven's knowledge:

"True vision is the natural perception of spiritual sight, but it is still a
correction rather than a fact. Spiritual sight is symbolic, and therefore not a
device for knowing. It is, however, a means of right perception, which brings it
into the proper domain of the miracle. A "vision of God" would be a miracle
rather than a revelation. The fact that perception is involved at all removes
the experience from the realm of knowledge. That is why visions, however holy,
do not last." (T.3.III.4.)

Thus we want to keep in mind that in the end it is God and His Love we want, not
the specific forms in which They are reflected. Jesus emphasizes this point in
the next paragraph.*

(10:1) "Dismiss temptation easily today whenever it arises, merely by
remembering the limits of your choice."

*We are again asked to be mindful of anything in our personal worlds that might
tempt us to forget what we know to be the truth. Always keep in mind this
pregnant sentence from the text:

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form." (T.22.III.6.7).

Asking Jesus for help means wanting to go beyond the form of specialness to
its thought in our minds. That is what this aforementioned sentence means from
the text's final section:

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it
occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must
die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel."
(T.31.VIII.1.1-2).

We want to move beyond the temptation to see the body as real, to the mind that
is the only home of choice. It is therefore our only hope for meaningful change.
The real world is thus attained, not by deeds, but by a simple change of mind as
we shift from guilt to holiness, the unreal to the real, the false to the true,
as we now see:*

(10:2-3) "The unreal or the real, the false or true is what you see and only
what you see. Perception is consistent with your choice, and hell or Heaven
comes to you as one."

*It is one or the other, and you need to be vigilant for how you seek to blend
the two by bringing the Holy Spirit into the world. Rather, you want to bring
your world to the mind, where He is. The worldly situation does not have to be
rectified or healed; the mind's faulty perception is the problem. Perception
begins with a thought of separation, and it is this that needs to be healed: the
choice for hell over Heaven. It is instructive to recognize that the ego is a
100 percent thought system of hate, and the Holy Spirit a 100 percent thought
system of love. There is no in between, which is the meaning of Jesus' words
that hell and Heaven come to us as one, echoed in the manual:

"Do not forget that sacrifice is total. There are no half sacrifices. You
cannot give up Heaven partially. You cannot be a little bit in hell. The Word of
God has no exceptions. It is this that makes it holy and beyond the world."
(M.13.7.1-6).

The simplicity of this choice makes salvation simple, and therein lies our hope
and the mind's true power.*


(11:1) "Accept a little part of hell as real, and you have damned your eyes and
cursed your sight, and what you will behold is hell indeed."

*This has nothing to do with the outer form. I "accept a little bit of hell as
real" when I accept the ego thought system as real. Whatever I see outside is a
shadow of this hell, regardless of how pretty or appealing its form: illusion is
illusion; hate is hate. What we choose to believe in is what we will perceive,
and what we perceive is what we believe to be real. Our choice for Heaven
becomes meaningful only when we recognize our prior choice for hell, and
actively choose against it. Thus does our curse of God and ourselves become a
blessing:

"An ancient miracle has come to bless and to replace an ancient enmity that
came to kill." (T.26.IX.8.5)*

(11:2-5) "Yet the release of Heaven still remains within your range of choice,
to take the place of everything that hell would show to you. All you need say to
any part of hell, whatever form it takes, is simply this:

It is impossible to see two worlds.
I seek my freedom and deliverance,
and this is not a part of what I want."

*We close with the awareness that there is a part of us that wants to be in
hell. It is that wish alone that makes us unhappy, not what anyone says or does.
If we are truly serious about wanting the peace of God, we will be serious about
looking at the personal hell we cherish and bring into our world. Fortunately,
we can always choose again, and in that choice are we and the Sonship made
free.*