Christ's Vision

"Christ's Vision has One Law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It 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. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the Light It sees." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook 158, 7:1-5

What is the Christ? What is Christ's Vision? How can we possibly identify with a perception so lofty that it seems ridiculous in our everyday life? ACIM tells us that when Jeshua ben Joseph became completely identified with and as the Perfect Son of God, he modeled what all of us must be. Not become. What we must BE. "Jesus... led the way for you to follow Him. He leads you back to God because He saw the road before Him, and He followed it. He made a clear distinction, still obscure to you, between the false and True. He offered you a final demonstration that it is impossible to kill God's Son; nor can His Life in any way be changed by sin and evil, malice, fear, or death." (A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers, Page 87, 3:1-5)

We are told both in the Bible and in ACIM that the Son of God has the Power to forgive sins on earth. In other words, we have the ability to forgive every little story of life apart from God. Every person (including ourselves!), every situation, every event, every emotion attached to person, place or thing... these are the dream forms that weave in and out of this illusion we call the life. And these are the forms that must be forgiven, and returned to Oneness. The larger Vision of Oneness is Christ's Vision... where in all things we begin to see only "the Perfect Son of God, His One Creation and His Happiness, forever like HimSelf and One with Him." (A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers, Page 87, 3:1)

Sins that have been forgiven are the illusions that haunt us no more. We see they were only a story of a world, and had no real effects at all. The blame of others, the guilt we feel for our own actions or words, the need to please or pacify, the need to punish or seek vengeance... all of these are illusions of experience that keep us lost in dreams. We insist on imagining we are an effect of certain dreams, while dreaming we can make ourselves powerful in certain other dreams. We insist on trying to keep ourselves safe and happy through our own distorted dreaming. Yet the Son of God has Power to forgive all sins on earth. We can let all the striving and struggling and stories go. And in great Joy we finally realize that "all our sins have been forgiven because they carried no effects at all. They were but dreams."

The Vision of Christ, seeing only the face of Christ everywhere, is the sign of healed perception and true forgiveness. A seemingly impossible goal that is completely possible in each Holy Instant we forgive our illusions.

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But True Perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. A world forgiven cannot last." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers, Page 85, 4:1-2, 5:1