OrEd-T-21.8-Perception and Wishes.2
76. I have already answered the first three questions, but not the last. For this one still seems fearful and unlike the rest. Yet reason would assure me they are all the same. We said this year would emphasize the sameness of things that are the same. This final question, which is the last I need decide, still seems to hold a threat that the rest do not. And this imagined difference attests to my belief that truth may be the enemy I yet may find. This seems to be the last remaining hope of finding sin and not accepting power.
77. I will not forget that the choice of truth or sin, power or helplessness, is the choice of whether to attack or heal. For healing comes of power, and attack comes of helplessness. Whom I attack I cannot want to heal. And whom I would have healed must be the one I choose to be protected from attack. This decision is the choice to see him through the body's eyes, or let him be revealed to me through vision. How this decision leads to its effects is not my problem. But what I want to see must be my choice. This is a course in cause and not effect.
78. Let me consider my answer to the last question carefully, and let reason tell me that it is answered in the other three. As I look on the effects of sin in any form, all I need do is ask myself,
79. Is this what I wish to see? Do I want this?
80. This one decision is the condition for what occurs. It is irrelevant how it happens, but not why it happens. I have control of this. And if I choose to see a world in which I am not helpless, a world with no enemy, the means to see it will be given me.
81. Reason will tell me why the last question is so important. It is the same as the other three except in time. The others are decisions which can be made, unmade, and made again. But truth is constant and implies a state where vacillations are impossible. I can desire a world I rule that does not rule me, and change my mind. I can desire to exchange my helplessness for power, and lose this desire as a little glint of sin still attracts me. And I can want to see a sinless world, then let an "enemy" tempt me to use the body's eyes, and change what I desire.
82. In content, all the questions are the same. Each question asks if I am willing to exchange the ego's world of sin for what the Holy Spirit sees, denying sin, and seeing the real world. Yet, the last question adds the wish for constancy in my desire to see the real world, so this desire becomes the only one I have. By answering the final question "yes," I add sincerity to the decisions I have already made. I have then renounced the option to change my mind again. When this is what I want, the rest are truly answered.
83. No one decides against his happiness, unless he doesn't see that he does it. I am not sure that the first three questions have been answered. Because, if they had, it would not be necessary that they be asked so often. Until the last decision has been made, the answer to the first three is both "yes" and "no." And if I see my happiness as ever changing, now this, now that, and now an elusive shadow attached to nothing, I do decide against my happiness.
84. The power of the Son of God's desire is proof that whoever sees himself as helpless, is wrong. Desire what I will, and I will look on it and think it real. Every thought has the power to release, or kill. And no thought can leave the thinker's mind, or leave him unaffected. Elusive happiness of changing form, happiness that shifts with time and place, is an illusion which has no meaning. Happiness must be constant, because happiness is attained by giving up the wish for the inconstant. Joy cannot be perceived except through constant vision. And constant vision can only be given to those who wish for constancy.
