OrEd-T-21.3-Responsibility For Sight
13. Little is asked of us to learn this course. It is the same small willingness we need to have our whole relationship transformed to joy, the little gift we offer to the Holy Spirit for which He gives us everything, the very little salvation rests on, the tiny change of mind by which the crucifixion is changed to resurrection. And being true, it is so simple that it cannot fail to be completely understood. Rejected yes, but not ambiguous. If we choose against it now, it will not be because it is obscure, but rather that this little cost seemed in our judgment to be too much to pay for peace.
14. There is one thing that we need to do for all to be given us---vision, happiness, release from pain, complete escape from sin. Here is the power of salvation. Say this, and mean it, with no exceptions:
15/16. I am responsible for what I see. I chose the feelings I experience, and decided on the goal I would achieve. I asked for and received everything that seems to happen to me. I will deceive myself no longer that I am helpless in the face of what is done to me. All the effects of my mistakes will disappear, as I acknowledge that I have been mistaken .
17. It is impossible the Son of God be driven by events outside of him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were not his choice. His power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which he seems to find himself by chance or accident. No accident nor chance is possible within the universe as God created it, and there is nothing outside it. If I suffer, I decided sin was my goal. Be happy, and I gave the power of decision to Him Who must decide for God for me. This is the little gift I offer to the Holy Spirit, and even this He gave to me to give myself. By this gift I am given the power to release my savior that he may give salvation to me.
18. I will not begrudge the acceptance of responsibility for sight. Withhold it, and I keep the world as I see it now. Accept it, and everything I see changes with it. Never was so much given for so little. In the holy instant this exchange is effected and maintained. Here the world I do not want is brought to the one I do. And here the one I do want is given me because I want it. However, the power and strength of my wanting must first be recognized and accepted. I must perceive that my wanting is strong enough to make a world. If the wanting is willing to see that it was wrong, it can accept correction and let the world go.
19. The world I see is the witness that I was right. I trained the world in its testimony, and as the world gave witness back to me, I listened and convinced myself that what it saw was true. This witness is insane. I did this to myself. See this, and I will also see how circular the reasoning on which my "seeing" rests. This was not given to me. This was my gift to myself and to my brother. I will be willing to have it taken from him and be replaced with truth. And as I look upon the change in him, it will be given to see the change in myself.
20. Perhaps I do not see the need for me to accept responsibility for the world I see. Looking closer, it is the whole exchange of separation for salvation. The ego is an idea that it is possible things should happen to the Son of God without the Will of his Creator, and without his will that cannot be separate from God's.
21. This is the mad idea I have enshrined upon my altars and which I worship. This is the Son of God's replacement for his will, a mad revolt against what must forever be. The world is the statement that he has the power to make God powerless and to take power for himself, leaving himself without what God has willed for him. This mad idea is strong indeed, and anything which threatens it seems to attack my faith, for faith is invested here. I will not think that I am faithless, for my belief and trust in this is strong indeed!
