PART I
LESSON 165.
Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.
W-165.1. What makes this world seem real except your own denial of the truth that lies beyond? 2 What but your thoughts of misery and death obscure the perfect happiness and the eternal life your Father wills for you? 3 And what could hide what cannot be concealed except illusion? 4 What could keep from you what you already have except your choice to see it not, denying it is there?
W-165.2. The Thought of God created you. 2 It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from it an instant. 3 It belongs to you. 4 By it you live. 5 It is your Source of life, holding you one with it, and everything is one with you because it left you not. 6 The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. 7 Eternity and everlasting life shine in your mind, because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you.
W-165.3. Who would deny his safety and his peace, his joy, his healing and his peace of mind, his quiet rest, his calm awakening, if he but recognized where they abide? 2 Would he not instantly prepare to go where they are found, abandoning all else as worthless in comparison with them? 3 And having found them, would he not make sure they stay with him, and he remain with them?
W-165.4. Deny not Heaven. 2 It is yours today, but for the asking. 3 Nor need you perceive how great the gift, how changed your mind will be before it comes to you. 4 Ask to receive, and it is given you. 5 Conviction lies within it. 6 Till you welcome it as yours, uncertainty remains. 7 Yet God is fair. 8 Sureness is not required to receive what only your acceptance can bestow.
W-165.5. Ask with desire. 2 You need not be sure that you request the only thing you want. 3 But when you have received, you will be sure you have the treasure you have always sought. 4 What would you then exchange for it? 5 What would induce you now to let it fade away from your ecstatic vision? 6 For this sight proves that you have exchanged your blindness for the seeing eyes of Christ; your mind has come to lay aside denial, and accept the Thought of God as your inheritance.
W-165.6. Now is all doubting past, the journey's end made certain, and salvation given you. 2 Now is Christ's power in your mind, to heal as you were healed. 3 For now you are among the saviors of the world. 4 Your destiny lies there and nowhere else. 5 Would God consent to let His Son remain forever starved by his denial of the nourishment he needs to live? 6 Abundance dwells in him, and deprivation cannot cut him off from God's sustaining Love and from his home.
W-165.7. Practice today in hope. 2 For hope indeed is justified. 3 Your doubts are meaningless, for God is certain. 4 And the Thought of Him is never absent. 5 Sureness must abide within you who are host to Him. 6 This course removes all doubts which you have interposed between Him and your certainty of Him.
W-165.8. We count on God, and not upon ourselves, to give us certainty. 2 And in His Name we practice as His Word directs we do. 3 His sureness lies beyond our every doubt. 4 His Love remains beyond our every fear. 5 The Thought of Him is still beyond all dreams and in our minds, according to His Will.