LESSON 158 Today I learn to give as I receive.

1. 1What has been given you? 2The knowledge that you are a mind, in Mind and purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid, because you were created out of love. 3Nor have you left your Source, remaining as you were created. 4This was given you as knowledge which you cannot lose. 5It was given as well to every living thing, for by that knowledge only does it live.

2. 1You have received all this. 2No one who walks the world but has received it. 3It is not this knowledge which you give, for that is what creation gave. 4All this cannot be learned. 5What, then, are you to learn to give today? 6Our lesson yesterday evoked a theme found early in the text. 7Experience cannot be shared directly, in the way that vision can. 8The revelation that the Father and the Son are one will come in time to every mind. 9Yet is that time determined by the mind itself, not taught.

3. 1The time is set already. 2It appears to be quite arbitrary. 3Yet there is no step along the road that anyone takes but by chance. 4It has already been taken by him, although he has not yet embarked on it. 5For time but seems to go in one direction. 6We but undertake a journey that is over. 7Yet it seems to have a future still unknown to us.

4. 1Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which fig­ures come and go as if by magic. 2Yet there is a plan behind appearances that does not change. 3The script is written. 4When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. 5For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by.

5. 1A teacher does not give experience, because he did not learn it. 2It revealed itself to him at its appointed time. 3But vision is his gift. 4This he can give directly, for Christ’s knowledge is not lost, because He has a vision He can give to anyone who asks. 5The Father’s Will and His are joined in knowledge. 6Yet there is a vision which the Holy Spirit sees because the Mind of Christ beholds it too.

6. 1Here is the joining of the world of doubt and shadows made with the intangible. 2Here is a quiet place within the world made holy by forgiveness and by love. 3Here are all contradictions rec­onciled, for here the journey ends. 4Experience—unlearned, untaught, unseen—is merely there. 5This is beyond our goal, for it transcends what needs to be accomplished. 6Our concern is with Christ’s vision. 7This we can attain.

7. 1Christ’s vision has one law. 2It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. 3It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. 4It sees no separation. 5And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees.

8. 1This can be taught; and must be taught by all who would achieve it. 2It requires but the recognition that the world can not give anything that faintly can compare with this in value; nor set up a goal that does not merely disappear when this has been perceived. 3And this you give today: See no one as a body. 4Greet him as the Son of God he is, acknowledging that he is one with you in holiness.

9. 1Thus are his sins forgiven him, for Christ has vision that has power to overlook them all. 2In His forgiveness are they gone. 3Unseen by One they merely disappear, because a vision of the holiness that lies beyond them comes to take their place. 4It matters not what form they took, nor how enormous they appeared to be, nor who seemed to be hurt by them. 5They are no more. 6And all effects they seemed to have are gone with them, undone and never to be done.

10. 1Thus do you learn to give as you receive. 2And thus Christ’s vision looks on you as well. 3This lesson is not difficult to learn, if you remember in your brother you but see yourself. 4If he be lost in sin, so must you be; if you see light in him, your sins have been forgiven by yourself. 5Each brother whom you meet today pro­vides another chance to let Christ’s vision shine on you, and offer you the peace of God.

11. 1It matters not when revelation comes, for that is not of time. 2Yet time has still one gift to give, in which true knowledge is reflected in a way so accurate its image shares its unseen holi­ness; its likeness shines with its immortal love. 3We practice see­ing with the eyes of Christ today. 4And by the holy gifts we give, Christ’s vision looks upon ourselves as well.