A Course in Miracles
Recognizing the Spirit
Chapter 31–VI
You see the flesh or recognize the spirit. There is no compromise between the two. If one is real
the other must be false, for what is real denies its opposite. There is no choice in vision but this
one. What you decide in this determines all you see and think is real and hold as true. On this
one choice does all your world depend, for here have you established what you are, as flesh or
spirit in your own belief. If you choose flesh, you never will escape the body as your own reality,
for you have chosen that you want it so. But choose the spirit, and all Heaven bends to touch
your eyes and bless your holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more except to heal
and comfort and to bless.
Salvation is undoing. If you choose to see the body, you behold a world of separation, unrelated
things, and happenings that make no sense at all. This one appears and disappears in death;
that one is doomed to suffering and loss. And no one is exactly as he was an instant previous,
nor will he be the same as he is now an instant hence. Who could have trust where so much
change is seen, for who is worthy if he be but dust? Salvation is undoing of all this. For
constancy arises in the sight of those whose eyes salvation has released from looking at the cost
of keeping guilt, because they chose to let it go instead.
Salvation does not ask that you behold the spirit and perceive the body not. It merely asks that
this should be your choice. For you can see the body without help, but do not understand how
to behold a world apart from it. It is your world salvation will undo, and let you see another
world your eyes could never find. Be not concerned how this could ever be. You do not
understand how what you see arose to meet your sight. For if you did, it would be gone. The veil
of ignorance is drawn across the evil and the good, and must be passed that both may
disappear, so that perception finds no hiding place. How is this done? It is not done at all. What
could there be within the universe that God created that must still be done?
Only in arrogance could you conceive that you must make the way to Heaven plain. The means
are given you by which to see the world that will replace the one you made. Your will be done!
In Heaven as on earth this is forever true. It matters not where you believe you are, nor what you
think the truth about yourself must really be. It makes no difference what you look upon, nor
what you choose to feel or think or wish. For God Himself has said, “Your will be done.” And it is
done to you accordingly.
You who believe that you can choose to see the Son of God as you would have him be, forget
not that no concept of yourself will stand against the truth of what you are. Undoing truth
would be impossible. But concepts are not difficult to change. One vision. clearly seen, that does
not fit the picture as it was perceived before will change the world for eyes that learn to see,
because the concept of the self has changed.
Are you invulnerable? Then the world is harmless in your sight. Do you forgive? Then is the
world forgiving, for you have forgiven it its trespasses, and so it looks on you with eyes that see
as yours. Are you a body? So is all the world perceived as treacherous, and out to kill. Are you a
spirit, deathless, and without the promise of corruption and the stain of sin upon you? So the
world is seen as stable, fully worthy of your trust; a happy place to rest in for a while, where
nothing need be feared, but only loved. Who is unwelcome to the kind in heart? And what could
hurt the truly innocent?
Your will be done, you holy child of God. It does not matter if you think you are in earth or
Heaven. What your Father wills of you can never change. The truth in you remains as radiant as
a star, as pure as light, as innocent as love itself. And you are worthy that your will be done!
— A Course in Miracles, Chapter 31–VI
