Beauty

"Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you?  In no fantasy 
have you ever seen anything so lovely.  Nothing you see here, sleeping or waking, 
comes near to such loveliness.  And nothing will you value like unto this, nor 
hold so dear.  Nothing that you remember that made your heart sing with joy has 
ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you. 
For you will see the Son of God.  You will behold the beauty the Holy Spirit loves 
to look upon, and which he thanks the Father for.  He was created to see this for 
you, until you learned to see it for yourself.  And all his teaching leads to 
seeing it and giving thanks with him.

This loveliness is not a fantasy.  It is the real world, bright and clean and new, 
with everything sparkling under the open sun.  Nothing is hidden here, for 
everything has been forgiven and there are no fantasies to hide the truth.  The 
bridge between that world and this is so little and so easy to cross, that you 
could not believe it is the meeting place of worlds so different.  Yet this little 
bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world at all.  This little 
step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, 
beyond all ugliness into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to 
cause you wonderment at its perfection.

This step, the smallest ever taken, is still the greatest accomplishment of all in 
God's plan of Atonement.  All else is learned, but this is given, complete and 
wholly perfect.  No one but him who planned salvation could complete it thus.  The 
real world, in its loveliness, you learn to reach.  Fantasies are all undone, and 
no one and nothing remain still bound by them, and by your own forgiveness you are 
free to see.  Yet what you see is only what you made, with the blessing of your 
forgiveness on it.  And with this final blessing of God's Son upon himself, the 
real perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose.

The stars will disappear in light, and the sun that opened up the world to beauty 
will vanish.  Perception will be meaningless when it has been perfected, for 
everything that has been used for learning will have no function.  Nothing will 
ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made 
perception possible will still occur.  The perception of the real world will be so 
short that you will barely have time to thank God for it.  For God will take the 
last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world and have been made ready 
for him.

The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old, the 
world you see without forgiveness.  The great Transformer of perception will 
undertake with you the careful searching of the mind that made this world, and 
uncover to you the seeming reasons for your making it.  In the light of the real 
reason that he brings, as you follow him, he will show you that there is no reason 
here at all.  Each spot his reason touches grows alive with beauty, and what 
seemed ugly in the darkness of your lack of reason is suddenly released to 
loveliness.  Not even what the Son of God made in insanity could be without a 
hidden spark of beauty that gentleness could release.

All this beauty will rise to bless your sight as you look upon the world with 
forgiving eyes.  For forgiveness literally transforms vision, and lets you see the 
real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos, removing all illusions that 
had twisted your perception and fixed it on the past.  The smallest leaf becomes a 
thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection.

 From the forgiven world the Son of God is lifted easily into his home.  And there 
he knows that he has always rested there in peace.  Even salvation will become a 
dream, and vanish from his mind.  For salvation is the end of dreams, and with the 
closing of the dream will have no meaning.  Who, awake in Heaven, could dream that 
there could ever be need of salvation?  How much do you want salvation?  It will 
give you the real world, trembling with readiness to be given you.  The eagerness 
of the Holy Spirit to give you this is so intense he would not wait, although he 
waits in patience.  Meet his patience with your impatience at delay in meeting 
him.  Go out in gladness to meet with your Redeemer, and walk with him in trust 
out of this world, and into the real world of beauty and forgiveness."

Jesus Christ
A Course in Miracles
Chapter 17, Forgiveness and the Holy Relationship;
Section 2, "The Forgiven World"
https://tinyurl.com/A-Course-In-Miracles-pdf