Today I learn to give as I receive.
1. What has been given you? ²The knowledge that you are a mind, in Mind and purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid, because you were created out of love. ³Nor have you left your Source, remaining as you were created. ⁴This was given you as knowledge which you cannot lose. ⁵It was given as well to every living thing, for by that knowledge only does it live.
2. You have received all this. ²No one who walks the world but has received it. ³It is not this knowledge which you give, for that is what creation gave. ⁴All this cannot be learned. ⁵What, then, are you to learn to give today? ⁶Our lesson yesterday evoked a theme found early in the text. ⁷Experience cannot be shared directly, in the way that vision can. ⁸The revelation that the Father and the Son are one will come in time to every mind. ⁹Yet is that time determined by the mind itself, not taught.
3. The time is set already. ²It appears to be quite arbitrary. ³Yet there is no step along the road that anyone takes but by chance. ⁴It has already been taken by him, although he has not yet embarked on it. ⁵For time but seems to go in one direction. ⁶We but undertake a journey that is over. ⁷Yet it seems to have a future still unknown to us.
4. Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic. ²Yet there is a plan behind appearances that does not change. ³The script is written. ⁴When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. ⁵For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by.
5. A teacher does not give experience, because he did not learn it. ²It revealed itself to him at its appointed time. ³But vision is his gift. ⁴This he can give directly, for Christ’s knowledge is not lost, because He has a vision He can give to anyone who asks. ⁵The Father’s Will and His are joined in knowledge. ⁶Yet there is a vision which the Holy Spirit sees because the Mind of Christ beholds it too.
6. Here is the joining of the world of doubt and shadows made with the intangible. ²Here is a quiet place within the world made holy by forgiveness and by love. ³Here are all contradictions reconciled, for here the journey ends. ⁴Experience—unlearned, untaught, unseen—is merely there. ⁵This is beyond our goal, for it transcends what needs to be accomplished. ⁶Our concern is with Christ’s vision. ⁷This we can attain.
7. Christ’s vision has one law. ²It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. ³It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. ⁴It sees no separation. ⁵And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees.
8. This can be taught; and must be taught by all who would achieve it. ²It requires but the recognition that the world can not give anything that faintly can compare with this in value; nor set up a goal that does not merely disappear when this has been perceived. ³And this you give today: See no one as a body. ⁴Greet him as the Son of God he is, acknowledging that he is one with you in holiness.
9. Thus are his sins forgiven him, for Christ has vision that has power to overlook them all. ²In His forgiveness are they gone. ³Unseen by One they merely disappear, because a vision of the holiness that lies beyond them comes to take their place. ⁴It matters not what form they took, nor how enormous they appeared to be, nor who seemed to be hurt by them. ⁵They are no more. ⁶And all effects they seemed to have are gone with them, undone and never to be done.
10. Thus do you learn to give as you receive. ²And thus Christ’s vision looks on you as well. ³This lesson is not difficult to learn, if you remember in your brother you but see yourself. ⁴If he be lost in sin, so must you be; if you see light in him, your sins have been forgiven by yourself. ⁵Each brother whom you meet today provides another chance to let Christ’s vision shine on you, and offer you the peace of God.
11. It matters not when revelation comes, for that is not of time. ²Yet time has still one gift to give, in which true knowledge is reflected in a way so accurate its image shares its unseen holiness; its likeness shines with its immortal love. ³We practice seeing with the eyes of Christ today. ⁴And by the holy gifts we give, Christ’s vision looks upon ourselves as well. (
