A Course In Miracle Workbook For Dummies LESSON 152 The power of decision is my own. W-152.1. No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision to suffer loss. 2 No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state of pain for himself. 3 No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. 4 And no one dies without his own consent to die. 5 Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. 6 Here in your own wishes and decisions is your world, complete in all details. 7 Here in your own wishes and decisions is your world s whole reality for you. 8 And it is only here in your own wishes and decisions salvation is. W-152.2. You may believe that this position that in your own wishes and decisions is your world s whole reality is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. 2 Yet can truth have exceptions? 3 If you have the gift of everything, can loss be real? 4 Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? 5 Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where love and perfect holiness abide? 6 Truth must be all-inclusive, if truth is to be the truth at all. 7 Accept no opposites and no exceptions to truth, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. W-152.3. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true. 2 The statement that the truth is true, and nothing else is true you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of that statement. 3 Without the first part that the truth is true, the second part that nothing else is true has no meaning. 4 But without the second part that nothing else is true, is the first part about truth no longer true. 5 Truth cannot have an opposite. 6 That truth cannot have an opposite can not be too often said and thought about. 7 For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false. 8 And if truth can have an opposite and the false be true, truth has lost its meaning. 9 Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false. W-152.4. The idea that truth can have no opposites is the simplest of distinctions, yet the most obscure. 2 But not because the idea that truth can have no opposites is a difficult distinction to perceive. 3 The idea that truth can have no opposites is concealed behind a vast array of choices that do not appear to be entirely your own. 4 And thus the truth appears to have some aspects that belie consistency, but do not seem to be but contradictions introduced by your own egoic mind. W-152.5. As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with transitory states by definition false. 2 And these false transitory states include all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind; in all awareness and in all response. 3 This is the allinclusiveness definition of truth which sets the truth apart from falsehood, and the false kept separate from the truth, as what truth is. W-152.6. Is it not strange that you believe to think you made the world you see is arrogance? 2 God made not the world you see. 3 Of this that God did not create the world you see you can be sure. 4 What can God know of the ephemeral, the sinful and the guilty, the
afraid, the suffering and lonely, and the mind that lives within a body that must die? 5 You but accuse God of insanity, to think God made a world where such things like sin, guilt, separation and fear seem to have reality. 6 God is not mad. 7 Yet only madness makes a world like this that you perceive to be your provisional reality. W-152.7. To think that God made chaos, contradicts God s own Will, invented opposites to truth, and suffers death to triumph over life; all this is arrogance. 2 Humility would see at once these things like suffering pain and death are not of God. 3 And can you see what God created not? 4 To think you can see what God did not create is merely to believe you can perceive what God willed not to be. 5 And what could be more arrogant than to believe you can perceive what God willed not to be? W-152.8. Let us today be truly humble, and accept what we have made as what it is which is a false world that arose from our own false perception and decisions. 2 The power of decision is our own. 3 Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think your ego s little s self s decisions made will disappear. 4 What rises to awareness then will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now. 5 And the real world of your big S Self will take the place of egoic self-deceptions made but to usurp the altar to the Father and the Son. W-152.9. Today we practice true humility, abandoning the false pretense by which the ego seeks to prove truth arrogant. 2 Only the ego can be arrogant. 3 But truth is humble in acknowledging truth s mightiness, truth s changelessness and truth s eternal wholeness. Truth s humility is all-encompassing. Truth is God's perfect gift to God s beloved Son. 4 We lay aside the ego s arrogance which says that we are sinners, guilty and afraid, ashamed of what we are; and lift our hearts in true humility instead to God Who has created us immaculate, like to God, Himself, in power and in love. W-152.10. The power of decision is our own. 2 And we accept of God that which we are, our big S Self, and humbly recognize the Son of God. 3 To recognize God's Son implies as well that all egoic self-concepts of sin, limitation, separation and fear have been laid aside, and recognized as false. 4 The arrogance of your ego s self-concept of your little s self has been perceived. 5 And in humility the radiance of God's Son, his big S Self s gentleness, his perfect sinlessness, his Father's Love, his right to Heaven and release from hell, are joyously accepted as our own. W-152.11. Now do we join in glad acknowledgment that lies are false, and only truth is true. 2 We think of truth alone as we arise, and spend five minutes practicing truth s ways, encouraging our frightened egoic minds with this: 3 The power of decision is my own. 4 This day I will accept myself as what my Father's Will created me to be, my big S Self. 5 Then will we wait in silence, giving up all egoic self-deceptions, as we humbly ask our big S Self that He reveal Himself to us. 6 And the Holy Spirit Who never left will come again to our awareness, grateful to restore the Son s home to God, as the Son s home was meant to be.
W-152.12. In patience wait for the Holy Spirit throughout the day, and hourly invite the Holy Spirit with the words with which the day began, that the power of decision is my own while concluding it with this same invitation to your big S Self. 2 God's Voice will answer, for the Holy Spirit speaks for you and for your Father. 3 The Holy Spirit will substitute the peace of God for all your frantic egoic thoughts, the truth of God for your ego s self-deceptions of sin, limitation, separation and fear, and God's Son for your illusions of your ego s little s self. Notes to Lesson #152 The power of decision is my own. This is a pivotal lesson in the course because it provides four definitions which once again are quite surprising and unusual, yet their implications are profound. These four definitions hold the key to controlling and ultimately overcoming all fears in your life. This lesson defines truth, salvation, decision and thinking. All four words are used in our everyday language and we claim to understand what these words mean. Yet, because of their unusual definition used in this course, these four words can lead to a great deal of misunderstanding and confusion. Let s tackle all four of these key words and their meanings as defined in this lesson. Truth is defined as what is true is true and that nothing else is true. On the surface, that seems like a strange yet, obvious definition for truth. Everybody is well aware that what is true is true. Yet, it is the second half of this definition that states nothing else is true that we fail to realize and whose implications we choose to ignore. The second half of the statement that nothing else is true states that truth can have no opposite. What is false cannot be true. It is our belief that what is false can be true that is the source of all our problems. Why? Because of this error in misunderstanding what truth means, we confuse a make-believe world of our own mind s imagination with the reality of what God created, as God created it. If what is not true is true as well as what is actually true, then part of truth is false. If an original statement is false and a second statement acknowledges that this first statement is not true, we assume the second statement is true. Yet, ACIM makes an important distinction that this is not the case. When I use the words not true, I am confusing the issue of the non-reality of the false by using imprecise language. The correct language would be to say that the first statement is false, which is the recognition that the false has no reality. We fall into the language trap that assumes the words not true are equivalent to the word false. This gives rise to the idea that the false can be true and the truth can sometimes be false.
The false has no reality and therefore, how can you define what is nothing? When you define something that does not exist, you give an illusion the appearance of being real. Because of confusing the false with reality, your mind can quickly jump to the false conclusion that what appears to be real must have the ability to change what does really exist. This belief that the false can change the truth is the source of all our fears. Our mind has made fear real and now our mind has entrapped itself into a fear-based thought system. Our mind has forgotten that the false is but an illusion that only exists within our mind s imagination. Because our mind s beliefs gave reality to the false, we are the creator of the false and therefore, our mind has the power to end the illusion by changing its beliefs that what is false can be real. Although the law of attraction is beyond the scope of this class, this failure to understand the idea that the true is true and nothing else is true is why so many people do not believe that the law of attraction really works. The law of attraction says that what you place your attention on, you attract. This law claims the universe is like a genie that promptly fulfills all your wishes. This notion that you always get what you want, obviously does not appear to be correct on the surface because people claim they do not wish to be sick, have poor relationships, suffer or be in poverty. The disbelievers of the law of attraction claim that if all their experiences were based on their own wishes and they did not want to be sick but suffered a major illness, the law of attraction must be false. And so they dismiss the law of attraction as bogus and the masses continue to believe they are victims of outside forces that are beyond their control. The reason for the apparent failure of the law of attraction is their failure to realize that nothing else is true. They mistake the idea that placing their attention on not being sick is the same as placing their attention on being healthy. Being healthy and not being sick is not the same thing and involve different vibrational frequencies. Here is an analogy to help explain this problem. First recall that time is the belief that opposites exist. Time is the game board for the belief that both love and fear are equally real. With that caveat, let s get back to the analogy. There is a bar magnet for health and there is a bar magnet for sickness. These are two separate magnets. When you place your attention on not being sick, you have place your attention on the bar magnet of sickness. Your mind has tuned your vibrational tuning fork to sickness and so that is what you attract. If you had understood that nothing else is true, you would have realized you needed to place your attention on health if you are to experience being healthy. In a world of opposites, good health and not being sick are not the same thing. If nothing else is true, the not true cannot have any reality. The belief in the existence of the not true, ACIM explains can only appear real within a delusional mind that believes that truth could have an opposite that is just as real as what is true.
This is impossible. The false can only appear to exist in the delusional mind that believes truth has an opposite. The not true is a pretend world that can only be experienced within your own mind s imagination, which becomes your own private world of individuated perception or provisional reality. The idea that truth has an opposite can be stated as the belief that the false can be true and that the true can be false. Truth just is and nothing else is real. This gets us to the next strange definition that is provided in this lesson. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. This definition is simple yet, surprising. Normally, we would associate salvation with some type of blissful state or removal of the consequences of our sins and our return to heaven. Instead, salvation is simply defined as our recognition of the truth, which ultimately would lead us to the realization that we remain as God created us, perfect, whole and complete. With salvation, we finally understand that the false is not real and our egoic mind cannot change what God created. Our provisional reality that we experience in the world of perception is a mere illusion that has no ability to change God s Will or God s creations. We always will remain as God created us, perfect, whole and complete, part of the One Self. The recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true means that this world that we perceive as our provisional reality is not real and has not been created by God. The ego s dream world of perception has no ability to change the truth that only what God created is real, changeless and eternal. The third definition has to deal with decision. Decision is the belief that there is something that is not true and therefore, we can experience the false. It is the belief that truth has an opposite and that the opposite of truth is as real as truth itself. The belief that the false exists is only an illusion because truth has no opposites. In time there is only one decision that we need to make and that is the recognition that the true is true and nothing else is true which has been defined as salvation. This means that salvation is one decision away. Salvation is simply the acceptance of the truth or the Atonement for yourself. The power of decision is your own because the power of decision is your belief that the false can exist and has the ability to change the truth of what God created as God created it. The power of decision only appears to exist within the delusional mind that believes the false is real. The power of decision is not an attribute of God. God is truth and truth just is. Nothing opposes truth for nothing else is real. In time, it appears that we have a decision to make because we believe that the false is real. In reality, a decision for the false is no decision because to choose the false is a decision to choose nothingness. Since nothingness cannot change what is real, a decision for nothingness has
no effect and therefore, is ultimately no decision. There is only one choice available, which is truth because truth has no opposites. The fourth term that is defined is thinking. To think is to claim that you do not know. Thinking comes from the belief that there is both truth and truth s opposite. The ego is arrogant and believes that it can think because it claims it does not know the truth of who you really are. The power of decision entails thinking which is the illusion of not knowing. The power of decision is your claim that you could not know what you really are and that you could have an existence other than as God created you. So what are the implications of these four terms and their strange definitions? Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. Truth has no opposites. Everything you perceive is because you choose it because you want that outcome. There are no exceptions. It is your choice that is reflected in your provisional reality. Your provisional reality is the illusion that you could be something other than what God created. Arrogance is to claim God created your provisional reality, which implies that God would have allowed evil to exist in your world. Evil contradicts God s Will and therefore, cannot be real. God did not create your world of perception, you did. Your ego s world can only be birthed by a delusional mind that believes sin, guilt and fear to be real. Truth has no opposites. The ego tries to confuse us by claiming that there are some choices over which we have no control. The ego claims there are exception to the rule that your provisional reality reflects your own thinking. To think you see evil is to contradict God s changeless Will, which is the height of arrogance. True humility rests on the fact that you must always remain as God created you. Your ego can deny this truth, but its denial cannot change this truth. Egoic arrogance says sin, guilt and fear are real. Salvation is the recognition of the truth that you have the freedom to be or imagine anything that you want but that your imagination cannot change the truth or make the false real. Question : Here is a statement I would like you to consider. In this world, we all commit suicide but some disguise it better than others. Do you believe this is true? Why or why not? Copyright 2014 by Thomas R. Wakechild