Lesson 313. Now let a new perception come to me.
(1) Father, there is a vision which beholds all things as sinless, so that fear has gone, and where it was is love invited in. And love will come wherever it is asked. This vision is Your gift. The eyes of Christ look on a world forgiven. In His sight are all its sins forgiven, for He sees no sin in anything He looks upon. Now let His true perception come to me, that I may waken from the dream of sin and look within upon my sinlessness, which You have kept completely undefiled upon the altar to Your holy Son, the Self with which I would identify.
(2) Let us today behold each other in the sight of Christ. How beautiful we are! How holy and how loving! Brother, come and join with me today. We save the world when we have joined. For in our vision it becomes as holy as the light in us.
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Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the following site: ~ M. Street.
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Lesson 313. "Now let a new perception come to me."
This is another important lesson, which follows the two preceding ones. Recall that we begin with a negative judgment about ourselves, which leads us to make up a negative world perceived outside ourselves. We eventually realize there must be another way, because ours is making us too unhappy. We thus pray: "Now let a new perception come to me." This is not meant to invoke a magical perception that comes to us, for we come to it. The source of this new perception -- Christ's vision -- is our right minds. We are the ones who wandered away by choosing against it; therefore, we are the ones who must return and choose again.
(1:1-5) "Father, there is a vision which beholds all things as sinless, so that fear has gone, and where it was is love invited in. And love will come wherever it is asked. This vision is Your gift. The eyes of Christ look on a world forgiven. In His sight are all its sins forgiven, for He sees no sin in anything He looks upon."
Love and fear are mutually exclusive, and cannot be present simultaneously. The same is true of forgiveness and judgment. Asking Jesus for help means looking through his forgiving eyes at love's reflection, and in that vision we are forgiven and healed, and the world along with us.
(1:6) "Now let His true perception come to me, that I may waken from the dream of sin and look within upon my sinlessness, which You have kept completely undefiled upon the altar to Your holy Son, the Self with which I would identify."
The holy altar is our minds. Our inherent sinlessness has been kept pure and undefiled through the Holy Spirit's Presence, reminding us that reality is unchanged, our insane beliefs to the contrary. The key phrase in this passage is "look within." We cannot see our sinlessness until we first look at the image of evil, darkness and sin we believe is there. Only then do we realize this image is a thin veil that barely contains the light of sinlessness behind it. However, we must first look at the darkness within, choosing to do so by asking Jesus' help to look differently on the special relationships we made to be the repository of sin.
(2:1-4) "Let us today behold each other in the sight of Christ. How beautiful we are! How holy and how loving! Brother, come and join with me today."
If you want this vision, you must let Jesus teach you to see Christ's light in everyone -- not only to certain holy people -- but in everyone you have condemned and judged against. How beautiful the Sonship becomes when it is seen as it really is -- <one> !
(2:5-6) "We save the world when we have joined. For in our vision it becomes as holy as the light in us."
*Jesus' concept of saving the world cannot be understood from the body's perspective, but only from outside the dream where we realize God has one Son, and that the world that seemed to arise from his mind has never left its source. If that mind believes it is separated, the separated world will seem real. Yet when the mind is healed, there is no separation and the world is saved from our belief in it. Again, this makes no sense from the perspective of the world, unless we adopt the megalomaniacal position that we changed our minds and the world is saved because of <us>. However, this <us> is part of the world and the crucifixion of God's Son. The world's salvation occurs only when we are beyond the dream with Jesus, leaving our crucified self behind.
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10. What Is the Last Judgment?
(1) Christ's Second Coming gives the Son of God this gift: to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgment is in which perception ends. At first you see a world that has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.
(2) The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless.
(3) You who believed that God's Last Judgment would condemn the world to hell along with you, accept this holy truth: God's Judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God's saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering, return to peace, security and happiness, and union with your own Identity.
(4) God's Final Judgment is as merciful as every step in His appointed plan to bless His Son, and call him to return to the eternal peace He shares with him. Be not afraid of love. For it alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dream of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks you give it welcome. And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free.
(5) This is God's Final Judgment: "You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am your Father and you are My Son.
