LESSON 151.
All things are echoes of the Voice for God.
W-pI.151.1. No one can judge on partial evidence. 2 That is not judgment. 3 It is merely an opinion based on ignorance and doubt. 4 Its seeming certainty is but a cloak for the uncertainty it would conceal. 5 It needs irrational defense because it is irrational. 6 And its defense seems strong, convincing, and without a doubt because of all the doubting underneath.
- When I'm looking at the world, I have partial evidence
- In other words, I do not have a full basis for judgement
W-pI.151.2. You do not seem to doubt the world you see. 2 You do not really question what is shown you through the body's eyes. 3 Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. 4 That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger, when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! 5 Why would you trust them so implicitly? 6 Why but because of underlying doubt, which you would hide with show of certainty?
- I trust appearance
- Even though appearances deceive
W-pI.151.3. How can you judge? 2 Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. 3 Yet witness never falser was than this. 4 But how else do you judge the world you see? 5 You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. 6 You think your fingers touch reality, and close upon the truth. 7 This is awareness that you understand, and think more real than what is witnessed to by the eternal Voice for God Himself.
- I take the material to be reality
- I ignore the spiritual (the metaphysical: that which is invisible, unseen)
W-pI.151.4. Can this be judgment? 2 You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you. 3 You cannot judge. 4 You merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false. 5 It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt.
- I must not attempt to judge
- Because I should not?
- No, because I cannot: I lack the capability
W-pI.151.6. Hear not its [the ego's] voice. 2 The witnesses it sends to prove to you its evil is your own are false, and speak with certainty of what they do not know. 3 Your faith in them is blind because you would not share the doubts their lord can not completely vanquish. 4 You believe to doubt his vassals is to doubt yourself.
- The inner voice that generates apathy, gloom, fear, or ire is the ego
- Instruction: do not listen to it!
W-pI.151.7. Yet you must learn to doubt their evidence will clear the way to recognize yourself, and let the Voice for God alone be Judge of what is worthy of your own belief. 2 He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body's mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers' touch reports of him. 3 He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God's Son. 4 He recognizes only what God loves, and in the holy light of what He sees do all the ego's dreams of what you are vanish before the splendor He beholds.
- Instruction: trust God's voice instead!
W-pI.151.10. He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. 2 He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle face of Christ in all of them. 3 You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings, and teach the single lesson that they all contain.
W-pI.151.11. He will select the elements in them which represent the truth, and disregard those aspects which reflect but idle dreams. 2 And He will reinterpret all you see, and all occurrences, each circumstance, and every happening that seems to touch on you in any way from His one frame of reference, wholly unified and sure. 3 And you will see the love beyond the hate, the constancy in change, the pure in sin, and only Heaven's blessing on the world.
- Instruction: let God's voice replace falsehood with truth
- Result: an altered vision
W-pI.151.13. We practice wordlessly today, except at the beginning of the time we spend with God. 2 We introduce these times with but a single, slow repeating of the thought with which the day begins. 3 And then we watch our thoughts, appealing silently to Him Who sees the elements of truth in them. 4 Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back again as clean ideas that do not contradict the Will of God.
- Instruction:
- Watch thoughts
- Appeal to God
- Recognise that God sees where truth lies
- Let God take the thoughts ...
- ... remove falsehood (dreams) ...
- ... return only the truth