A Course
In Miracles

Authorized Online Edition
Workbook For Students

 
 

LESSON 160

I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.

1. 1Fear is a stranger to the ways of love. 2Identify with fear, and you will be a stranger to yourself. 3And thus you are unknown to you. 4What is your Self remains an alien to the part of you which thinks that it is real, but different from yourself. 5Who could be sane in such a circumstance? 6Who but a madman could believe he is what he is not, and judge against himself?

2. 1There is a stranger in our midst, who comes from an idea so foreign to the truth he speaks a different language, looks upon a world truth does not know, and understands what truth regards as senseless. 2Stranger yet, he does not recognize to whom he comes, and yet maintains his home belongs to him, while he is alien now who is at home. 3And yet, how easy it would be to say, “This is my home. 4Here I belong, and will not leave because a madman says I must.”

3. 1What reason is there for not saying this? 2What could the rea­son be except that you had asked this stranger in to take your place, and let you be a stranger to yourself? 3No one would let himself be dispossessed so needlessly, unless he thought there were another home more suited to his tastes.

4. 1Who is the stranger? 2Is it fear or you who are unsuited to the home which God provided for His Son? 3Is fear His Own, created in His likeness? 4Is it fear that love completes, and is completed by? 5There is no home can shelter love and fear. 6They cannot coexist. 7If you are real, then fear must be illusion. 8And if fear is real, then you do not exist at all.

5. 1How simply, then, the question is resolved. 2Who fears has but denied himself and said, “I am the stranger here. 3And so I leave my home to one more like me than myself, and give him all I thought belonged to me.” 4Now is he exiled of necessity, not knowing who he is, uncertain of all things but this; that he is not himself, and that his home has been denied to him.

6. 1What does he search for now? 2What can he find? 3A stranger to himself can find no home wherever he may look, for he has made return impossible. 4His way is lost, except a miracle will search him out and show him that he is no stranger now. 5The miracle will come. 6For in his home his Self remains. 7It asked no stranger in, and took no alien thought to be Itself. 8And It will call Its Own unto Itself in recognition of what is Its Own.

7. 1Who is the stranger? 2Is he not the one your Self calls not? 3You are unable now to recognize this stranger in your midst, for you have given him your rightful place. 4Yet is your Self as certain of Its Own as God is of His Son. 5He cannot be confused about cre­ation. 6He is sure of what belongs to Him. 7No stranger can be interposed between His knowledge and His Son’s reality. 8He does not know of strangers. 9He is certain of His Son.

8. 1God’s certainty suffices. 2Whom He knows to be His Son belongs where He has set His Son forever. 3He has answered you who ask, “Who is the stranger?” 4Hear His Voice assure you, qui­etly and sure, that you are not a stranger to your Father, nor is your Creator stranger made to you. 5Whom God has joined remain forever one, at home in Him, no stranger to Himself.

9. 1Today we offer thanks that Christ has come to search the world for what belongs to Him. 2His vision sees no strangers, but beholds His Own and joyously unites with them. 3They see Him as a stranger, for they do not recognize themselves. 4Yet as they give Him welcome, they remember. 5And He leads them gently home again, where they belong.

10. 1Not one does Christ forget. 2Not one He fails to give you to remember, that your home may be complete and perfect as it was established. 3He has not forgotten you. 4But you will not remember Him until you look on all as He does. 5Who denies his brother is denying Him, and thus refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come.