PART I
LESSON 158.
Today I learn to give as I receive.
W-158.1. What has been given you? 2 The knowledge that you are a mind, in Mind and purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid, because you were created out of love. 3 Nor have you left your Source, remaining as you were created. 4 This was given you as knowledge which you cannot lose. 5 It was given as well to every living thing, for by that knowledge only does it live.
W-158.2. You have received all this. 2 No one who walks the world but has received it. 3 It is not this knowledge which you give, for that is what creation gave. 4 All this cannot be learned. 5 What, then, are you to learn to give today? 6 Our lesson yesterday evoked a theme found early in the text. 7 Experience cannot be shared directly, in the way that vision can. 8 The revelation that the Father and the Son are one will come in time to every mind. 9 Yet is that time determined by the mind itself, not taught.
W-158.3. The time is set already. 2 It appears to be quite arbitrary. 3 Yet there is no step along the road that anyone takes but by chance. 4 It has already been taken by him, although he has not yet embarked on it. 5 For time but seems to go in one direction. 6 We but undertake a journey that is over. 7 Yet it seems to have a future still unknown to us.
W-158.4. Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic. 2 Yet there is a plan behind appearances that does not change. 3 The script is written. 4 When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. 5 For 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.
W-158.5. A teacher does not give experience, because he did not learn it. 2 It revealed itself to him at its appointed time. 3 But vision is his gift. 4 This he can give directly, for Christ's knowledge is not lost, because He has a vision He can give to anyone who asks. 5 The Father's Will and His are joined in knowledge. 6 Yet there is a vision which the Holy Spirit sees because the Mind of Christ beholds it too.
W-158.6. Here is the joining of the world of doubt and shadows made with the intangible. 2 Here is a quiet place within the world made holy by forgiveness and by love. 3 Here are all contradictions reconciled, for here the journey ends. 4 Experience'd0unlearned, untaught, unseen'd0is merely there. 5 This is beyond our goal, for it transcends what needs to be accomplished. 6 Our concern is with Christ's vision. 7 This we can attain.
W-158.7. Christ's vision has one law. 2 It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. 3 It 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. 4 It sees no separation. 5 And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees.
W-158.8. This can be taught; and must be taught by all who would achieve it. 2 It 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. 3 And this you give today: See no one as a body. 4 Greet him as the Son of God he is, acknowledging that he is one with you in holiness.
W-158.9. Thus are his sins forgiven him, for Christ has vision that has power to overlook them all. 2 In His forgiveness are they gone. 3 Unseen by One they merely disappear, because a vision of the holiness that lies beyond them comes to take their place. 4 It matters not what form they took, nor how enormous they appeared to be, nor who seemed to be hurt by them. 5 They are no more. 6 And all effects they seemed to have are gone with them, undone and never to be done.
W-158.10. Thus do you learn to give as you receive. 2 And thus Christ's vision looks on you as well. 3 This lesson is not difficult to learn, if you remember in your brother you but see yourself. 4 If he be lost in sin, so must you be; if you see light in him, your sins have been forgiven by yourself. 5 Each brother whom you meet today provides another chance to let Christ's vision shine on you, and offer you the peace of God.
W-158.11. It matters not when revelation comes, for that is not of time. 2 Yet 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. 3 We practice seeing with the eyes of Christ today. 4 And by the holy gifts we give, Christ's vision looks upon ourselves as well.