PART I
LESSON 160.
I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.
W-160.1. Fear is a stranger to the ways of love. 2 Identify with fear, and you will be a stranger to yourself. 3 And thus you are unknown to you. 4 What is your Self remains an alien to the part of you which thinks that it is real, but different from yourself. 5 Who could be sane in such a circumstance? 6 Who but a madman could believe he is what he is not, and judge against himself?
W-160.2. There is a stranger in our midst, who comes from an idea so foreign to the truth he speaks a different language, looks upon a world truth does not know, and understands what truth regards as senseless. 2 Stranger yet, he does not recognize to whom he comes, and yet maintains his home belongs to him, while he is alien now who is at home. 3 And yet, how easy it would be to say, "This is my home. 4 Here I belong, and will not leave because a madman says I must."
W-160.3. What reason is there for not saying this? 2 What could the reason be except that you had asked this stranger in to take your place, and let you be a stranger to yourself? 3 No one would let himself be dispossessed so needlessly, unless he thought there were another home more suited to his tastes.
W-160.4. Who is the stranger? 2 Is it fear or you who are unsuited to the home which God provided for His Son? 3 Is fear His Own, created in His likeness? 4 Is it fear that love completes, and is completed by? 5 There is no home can shelter love and fear. 6 They cannot coexist. 7 If you are real, then fear must be illusion. 8 And if fear is real, then you do not exist at all.
W-160.5. How simply, then, the question is resolved. 2 Who fears has but denied himself and said, "I am the stranger here. 3 And so I leave my home to one more like me than myself, and give him all I thought belonged to me." 4 Now is he exiled of necessity, not knowing who he is, uncertain of all things but this; that he is not himself, and that his home has been denied to him.
W-160.6. What does he search for now? 2 What can he find? 3 A stranger to himself can find no home wherever he may look, for he has made return impossible. 4 His way is lost, except a miracle will search him out and show him that he is no stranger now. 5 The miracle will come. 6 For in his home his Self remains. 7 It asked no stranger in, and took no alien thought to be Itself. 8 And It will call Its Own unto Itself in recognition of what is Its Own.
W-160.7. Who is the stranger? 2 Is he not the one your Self calls not? 3 You are unable now to recognize this stranger in your midst, for you have given him your rightful place. 4 Yet is your Self as certain of Its Own as God is of His Son. 5 He cannot be confused about creation. 6 He is sure of what belongs to Him. 7 No stranger can be interposed between His knowledge and His Son's reality. 8 He does not know of strangers. 9 He is certain of His Son.
W-160.8. God's certainty suffices. 2 Who He knows to be His Son belongs where He has set His Son forever. 3 He has answered you who ask, "Who is the stranger?" 4 Hear His Voice assure you, quietly and sure, that you are not a stranger to your Father, nor is your Creator stranger made to you. 5 Whom God has joined remain forever one, at home in Him, no stranger to Himself.
W-160.9. Today we offer thanks that Christ has come to search the world for what belongs to Him. 2 His vision sees no strangers, but beholds His Own and joyously unites with them. 3 They see Him as a stranger, for they do not recognize themselves. 4 Yet as they give Him welcome, they remember. 5 And He leads them gently home again, where they belong.
W-160.10. Not one does Christ forget. 2 Not one He fails to give you to remember, that your home may be complete and perfect as it was established. 3 He has not forgotten you. 4 But you will not remember Him until you look on all as He does. 5 Who denies his brother is denying Him, and thus refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come.