ACIM Lessons

1. Sin is insanity. ²It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. ³And being mad, it sees illusions where the truth should be, and where it really is. ⁴Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? ⁵What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? ⁶What would they hear or reach to grasp? ⁷What would they sense at all? ⁸To sense is not to know. ⁹And truth can be but filled with knowledge, and with nothing else.

2. The body is the instrument the mind made in its efforts to deceive itself. ²Its purpose is to strive. ³Yet can the goal of striving change. ⁴And now the body serves a different aim for striving. ⁵What it seeks for now is chosen by the aim the mind has taken as replacement for the goal of self-deception. ⁶Truth can be its aim as well as lies. ⁷The senses then will seek instead for witnesses to what is true.

3. Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined, issuing from thoughts that are untrue. ²They are the “proof” that what has no reality is real. ³Sin “proves” God’s Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; eternal life must die. ⁴And God Himself has lost the Son He loves, with but corruption to complete Himself, His Will forever overcome by death, love slain by hate, and peace to be no more.

4. A madman’s dreams are frightening, and sin appears indeed to terrify. ²And yet what sin perceives is but a childish game. ³The Son of God may play he has become a body, prey to evil and to guilt, with but a little life that ends in death. ⁴But all the while his Father shines on him, and loves him with an everlasting Love which his pretenses cannot change at all.

5. How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? ²Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children’s toys? ³How soon will you be ready to come home? ⁴Perhaps today? ⁵There is no sin. ⁶Creation is unchanged. ⁷Would you still hold return to Heaven back? ⁸How long, O holy Son of God, how long?