The Vision of Sinlessness

Chapter 20 – 8. The Vision of Sinlessness

Vision will come to you at first in glimpses, but they will be enough to
show you what is given you who see your brother sinless. Truth is restored
to you through your desire, as it was lost to you through your desire for
something else. Open the holy place that you closed off by valuing the
“something else,” and what was never lost will quietly return. It has been
saved for you. Vision would not be necessary had judgment not been made.
 
Desire now its whole undoing, and it is done for you.
 
Do you not want to know your own Identity? Would you not happily
exchange your doubts for certainty? Would you not willingly be free of
misery, and learn again of joy? Your holy relationship offers all this to you.
As it was given you, so will be its effects. And as its holy purpose was not
made by you, the means by which its happy end is yours is also not of you.
 
Rejoice in what is yours but for the asking, and think not that you need
make either means or end. All this is given you who would but see your
brother sinless. All this is given, waiting on your desire but to receive it.
 
Vision is freely given to those who ask to see.
 
Your brother’s sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the
Holy Spirit’s vision and to rejoice in along with him. For peace will come to
all who ask for it with real desire and sincerity of purpose, shared with the
Holy Spirit and at one with him on what salvation is. Be willing, then, to
see your brother sinless, that Christ may rise before your vision and give
you joy. And place no value on your brother’s body, which holds him to
illusions of what he is. It is his desire to see his sinlessness, as it is yours.
 
And bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what you
have made of him.
 
The Holy Spirit guarantees that what God willed and gave you shall be
yours. This is your purpose now, and the vision that makes it yours is ready
to be given. You have the vision that enables you to see the body not. And
as you look upon your brother, you will see an altar to your Father, holy as
Heaven, glowing with radiant purity and sparkling with the shining lilies
you laid upon it. What can you value more than this? Why do you think the
body is a better home, a safer shelter for God’s Son? Why would you rather
look on it than on the truth? How can the engine of destruction be preferred,
and chosen to replace the holy home the Holy Spirit offers, where he will
dwell with you?
 
The body is the sign of weakness, vulnerability and loss of power. Can such
a savior help you? Would you turn in your distress and need for help unto
the helpless? Is the pitifully little the perfect choice to call upon for
strength? Judgment will seem to make your savior weak. Yet it is you who
need his strength. There is no problem, no event or situation, no perplexity
that vision will not solve. All is redeemed when looked upon with vision.
For this is not your sight, and brings with it the laws beloved of him whose
sight it is.
 
Everything looked upon with vision falls gently into place, according to the
laws brought to it by his calm and certain sight. The end for everything he
looks upon is always sure. For it will meet his purpose, seen in unadjusted
form and suited perfectly to meet it. Destructiveness becomes benign, and
sin is turned to blessing under his gentle gaze. What can the body’s eyes
perceive, with power to correct? Its eyes adjust to sin, unable to overlook it
in any form and seeing it everywhere, in everything. Look through its eyes,
and everything will stand condemned before you. All that could save you,
you will never see. Your holy relationship, the source of your salvation, will
be deprived of meaning, and its most holy purpose bereft of means for its
accomplishment.
 
Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of
death in your imagination. But vision sets all things right, bringing them
gently within the kindly sway of Heaven’s laws. 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?
 
Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This
is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not and they are gone. And all
you need to do is recognize that you did this. Once you accept this simple
fact and take unto yourself the power you gave them, you are released from
them. One thing is sure; hallucinations serve a purpose, and when that
purpose is no longer held they disappear. Therefore, the question never is
whether you want them, but always, do you want the purpose that they
serve? This world seems to hold out many purposes, each different and with
different values. Yet they are all the same. Again there is no order; only a
seeming hierarchy of values.
 
Only two purposes are possible. And one is sin, the other holiness. Nothing
is in between, and which you choose determines what you see. For what
you see is merely how you elect to meet your goal. Hallucinations serve to
meet the goal of madness. They are the means by which the outside world,
projected from within, adjusts to sin and seems to witness to its reality. It
still is true that nothing is without. Yet upon nothing are all projections
made. For it is the projection that gives the “nothing” all the meaning that it
holds.
 
What has no meaning cannot be perceived. And meaning always looks
within to find itself, and then looks out. All meaning that you give the
world outside must thus reflect the sight you saw within; or better, if you
saw at all or merely judged against. Vision is the means by which the Holy
Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild
hallucinations that show you all the fearful outcomes of imagined sin into
the calm and reassuring sights with which he would replace them. These
gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. They
are his substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the
ego’s purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They step away from
sin, reminding you that it is not reality which frightens you, and that the
errors which you made can be corrected.
 
When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and seen it change to
sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence
and death, and watched them change to quiet views of gardens under open
skies, with clear, life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing
brooks that never waste away; who need persuade you to accept the gift of
vision? And after vision, who is there who could refuse what must come
after? Think but an instant just on this; you can behold the holiness God
gave his Son. And never need you think that there is something else for you
to see.