CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION TO MIRACLES
This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only
the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean
that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you
may elect what you want to take at a given time.
The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love,
for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however,
at removing the blocks to the awareness of loves Presence,
Which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is
fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this
way:
Nothing real can be threatened
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the Peace of God.
______________________
Principles of Miracles
1. There is no order of difficulty among miracles. One is
not harder or bigger than another. They are all the
same. All expressions of love are maximal.
2. Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that
matters is their Source, Which is far beyond human evaluation.
3. Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The
real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense,
everything that comes from love is a miracle.
4. All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life.
His Voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told
all you need to know.
5. Miracles are habits and should be involuntary. They
should not be under conscious control. Consciously selected
miracles can be misguided.
6. Miracles are natural. When they do NOT occur something
has gone wrong.
7. Miracles are everyones right, but purification is
necessary first.
8. Miracles are healing because they supply a lack in that
they are performed by those who temporarily have more for
those who temporarily have less.
9. Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of
love, which are ALWAYS miraculous in the true sense, the
exchange reverses the physical laws. They bring MORE love both
to the giver AND the receiver.
10. The use of miracles as spectacles to INDUCE belief is
wrong; or, better, is a misunderstanding of their purpose.
They are really used FOR and BY believers.
11. Prayer is the medium of miracles. Prayer is the natural
communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer
love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.
12. Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent lower-
order or higher-order reality. This is the basic distinction
between intellectualizing and thinking. One makes the physical
and the other creates the spiritual, and we believe in what we
make or create.
13. Miracles are both beginnings and endings. They thus
alter the temporal order. They are always affirmations of
rebirth, which seem to go back, but really go forward. They
undo the past in the present, and thus release the future.
14. Miracles bear witness to truth. They are convincing
because they arise from conviction. Without conviction they
deteriorate into magic, which is mindless, and therefore
destructive; or rather, the uncreative use of mind.
15. Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of
time is to enable man to learn to use it constructively. Time
is thus a teaching device, and a means to an end. It will
cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning.
16. Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating that it
is more blessed to give than to receive. They simultaneously
increase the strength of the giver and supply strength to the
receiver.
17. Miracles are the transcendence of the body. They are
sudden shifts into invisibility, away from a sense of lower-
order reality. That is why they heal.
18. A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service one
individual can render another. It is a way of loving your
neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his
neighbors inestimable worth simultaneously.
19. Miracles make minds one in God. They depend on
cooperation, because the Sonship is the sum of all the Souls
God created. Miracles therefore rest on the laws of eternity,
not of time.
20. Miracles reawaken the awareness that the Spirit, not
the body, is the altar of truth. This is the recognition that
leads to the healing power of the miracle.
21. Miracles are natural expressions of total forgiveness.
Through miracles, man accepts Gods forgiveness by extending
it to others.
22. Miracles are associated with fear only because of the
fallacious belief that darkness can HIDE. Man believes that
what he cannot see does not exist, and his physical eyes
cannot see in the dark. This is a very primitive solution, and
has led to a denial of the Spiritual eye. * The escape from
darkness involves two stages:
A. The recognition that darkness CANNOT hide. This step
usually entails fear.
B. The recognition that there is nothing you WANT to
hide, even if you COULD.
This step brings ESCAPE from fear.
(*The term Spiritual eye is later replaced by the Holy
Spirit and the physical eye becomes the ego. The emphasis on
the two ways of seeing, however, remains throughout.)
23. Miracles rearrange perception, and place the levels of
perception in true perspective. This heals at ALL levels,
because sickness comes from confusing the levels.
When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not
only be willing to enter into communion, but will also
understand peace and joy. Your commitment is not yet total,
and that is why you still have more to learn than to teach.
When your equilibrium stabilizes, you will be able to teach as
much as you learn, which will give you the proper balance.
Meanwhile, remember that no effort is wasted, for unless you
remember this, you cannot avail yourselves of MY efforts,
which ARE limitless. Only eternity is real. Why not use the
illusion of time constructively?
24. Miracles enable man to heal the sick and raise the dead
because he made sickness and death himself, and can abolish
both. YOU are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness
of your Creator. Everything else is only your own nightmare,
and does not exist. Only the Creations of Light are real.
25. Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of
forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. This
process works all the time, and in all the dimensions of time.
I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I
undertook to begin. When you offer a miracle unto any of my
brothers, you do it unto YOURSELF and me. The reason YOU come
before ME is that I do not need miracles for my own Atonement,
but I stand at the end in case you fail temporarily. The
purpose of my part in the Atonement is the cancelling out of
all lacks of love which men could not otherwise correct. The
word sin should be changed to lack of love, because
sin is a man-made word with threat connotations which he
made up himself. No REAL threat is involved anywhere. Nothing
is gained by frightening yourselves, and it is very
destructive to do so.
26. Miracles represent FREEDOM from fear. Atoning
really means undoing. The undoing of fear is an essential
part of the Atonement value of miracles.
The purpose of the Atonement is to restore EVERYTHING to
you; or rather, to restore it to your AWARENESS. You were
GIVEN everything when you were created, just as everyone was.
When you have been restored to the recognition of your
original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement
yourself. As you share MY inability to tolerate lack of love
in yourself and others, you MUST join the Great Crusade to
correct it. The slogan for the Crusade is Listen, learn, and
DO; Listen to my voice, learn to undo error, and DO
something to correct it.
The power to work miracles BELONGS to you. I will provide
the opportunities to do them, but YOU must be ready and
willing, since you are already able. Doing them will bring
conviction in the ability, since conviction really comes
through accomplishment. The ability is the potential; the
achievement is its expression; and the Atonement is the
Purpose.
27. A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me
to ALL my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to
forgive.
The disciples were specifically told to be physicians of
the Lord and to heal others. They were also told to HEAL
THEMSELVES, and were promised that I would never leave them or
forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the
Children of God, because they have professed me. Heaven and
earth shall pass away simply means that they will not
continue to exist as separate states. My word, which is the
Resurrection and the Light, shall not pass away because Light
is eternal. YOU are the work of God, and His work is wholly
lovable and wholly loving. This is how a man MUST think of
himself in his heart, because this is what he IS.
28. Miracles are a means of organizing different levels of
consciousness.
Miracles come from the below or subconscious level.
Revelations come from the above or superconscious level. The
conscious level is in between, and reacts to either sub- or
superconscious impulses in varying ratios. Consciousness is
the level which engages in the world, and is capable of
responding to both. Having no impulses from itself, and being
primarily a mechanism for inducing response, it can be very
wrong.
Revelation induces complete but temporary suspension of
doubt and fear. It represents the original form of
communication between God and His Souls, involving an
extremely personal sense of closeness to Creation, which man
tries to find in physical relationships. Physical closeness
CANNOT achieve this. The subconscious impulses properly induce
miracles, which are genuinely interpersonal, and result in
real closeness to others. This can be misunderstood by a
PERSONALLY willful consciousness as impulses toward physical
gratification.
Revelation unites Souls directly with God. Miracles unite
minds directly with each other. Neither emanates from
consciousness, but both are EXPERIENCED there. This is
essential, since consciousness is the state which induces
action, though it does NOT inspire it. Man is free to believe
what he chooses, and what he DOES attests to what he believes.
The deeper levels of the subconscious ALWAYS contain the
impulse to miracles, but man is free to fill its more
superficial levels, which are closer to consciousness, with
the impulses of this world, and to identify himself with them.
This results in DENYING himself access to the miracle level
underneath. In his actions, then, his relationships also
become superficial, and miracle-inspired relating becomes
impossible.
29. Miracles are a way of EARNING release from fear.
Revelation induces a state in which fear has ALREADY been
abolished. Miracles are thus a means, and revelation is an
end. Miracles do not depend on revelation; they INDUCE it.
Revelation is intensely personal, and cannot actually be
translated into conscious content at all. That is why any
attempt to describe it in words is usually incomprehensible.
Revelation induces ONLY experience. Miracles, on the other
hand, induce ACTION. Miracles are more useful now, because of
their interpersonal nature. In this phase of learning, working
miracles is more important because freedom from fear cannot be
thrust upon you.
30. Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by
honoring His Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal
because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-
identification. By perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the
levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the
Spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly.
31. Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. Man should
thank God for what he really is. The Children of God are very
holy, and the miracle honors their holiness.
Gods Creations never lose their holiness, although it can
be hidden. The miracle uncovers it, and brings it into the
light where it belongs. Holiness can never be really hidden in
darkness, but man can deceive himself about it. This illusion
makes him fearful, because he knows in his heart it IS an
illusion, and he exerts enormous efforts to establish its
reality. The miracle sets reality where it belongs. Eternal
reality belongs only to the Soul, and the miracle acknowledges
only the truth. It thus dispels mans illusions about himself,
and puts him in communion with himself AND God.
32. Christ inspires all miracles, which are really
intercessions. They intercede for mans holiness, and make his
perceptions holy. By placing him beyond the physical laws,
they raise him into the sphere of celestial order. In THIS
order, man IS perfect.
The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind
NEEDS Atonement. The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ
by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This
establishes the proper function of the mind, and corrects its
errors.
33. Miracles honor man BECAUSE he is lovable. They dispel
illusions about him, and perceive the Light in him. They thus
atone for his errors by freeing him from his own nightmares.
They release him from a prison in which he has imprisoned
HIMSELF, and by freeing his mind from illusions, they restore
his sanity. Mans mind CAN be possessed by illusions, but his
Spirit is eternally free. If a mind perceives without love it
perceives an empty shell, and is unaware of the Spirit within
it. But the Atonement restores the Soul to its proper place.
The mind that serves the Spirit is invulnerable.
34. Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning
for lack, they establish perfect protection. The strength of
the Soul leaves no room for intrusions. The forgiven are
filled with the Soul, and they forgive in return. It is the
duty of the released to release their brothers.
The forgiven ARE the means of Atonement. Those released by
Christ must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the
Plan of the Atonement. Miracles are the way in which minds
which serve the Spirit unite with Christ for the salvation, or
release, of all Gods Creations.
35. Miracles are expressions of love, but it does NOT
follow that they will always have observable effects. I am the
only one who can perform miracles indiscriminately, because I
AM the Atonement. You have a ROLE in the Atonement, which I
will dictate TO you. Ask ME which miracles you should perform.
This spares you exhaustion, because you will act under direct
communication.
36. Christ-controlled miracles are part of the Atonement,
but Christ-guidance is personal. The impersonal nature of
miracles is an essential ingredient, because this enables ME
to control their distribution. Christ-guidance leads to the
highly PERSONAL experience of Revelation. This is why it
involves PERSONAL choice. A guide does NOT control, but he
DOES direct, leaving the following up to you. Lead us not
into temptation means guide us out of our own errors.
Take up thy cross and follow me means recognize your
errors and choose to abandon them by following my guidance.
Remember that error cannot really threaten truth, which can
ALWAYS withstand it. ONLY the error is really vulnerable. You
are free to establish your kingdom where you see fit, but the
right choice is inevitable if you remember this:
The Soul is in a state of grace forever.
Mans reality is ONLY his Soul.
Therefore man is in a state of grace forever.
Atonement undoes all errors in this respect, and thus
uproots the REAL source of fear. Whenever Gods reassurances
are experienced as threat, it is ALWAYS because you are
defending misplaced and misdirected loyalty. That is what
projection always involves. Error is lack of love. When man
projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to
the extent that he reinforces errors they have ALREADY made.
This makes them vulnerable to the distortions of others, since
their OWN perception of themselves is distorted. The miracle
worker can ONLY bless, and thus undoes their distortions, and
frees them from prison.
37. Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality
contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus
permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal
boundaries. As a result, the doers perceptions are aligned
with truth as God created it.
38. A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false
thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous
perception, and reorganizing it properly. This places man
under the Atonement principle, where his perception is healed.
Until this has occurred, revelation of the Divine order is
impossible.
39. The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles because
what It perceives IS true. It perceives both the Creations of
God and the creations of man. Among the creations of man, It
can also separate the true from the false by Its ability to
perceive totally, rather than selectively. It thus becomes the
proper instrument for reality testing, which always involves
the necessary distinction between the false and the true.
40. The miracle dissolves error because the Spiritual eye
identifies error as false, or unreal. This is the same as
saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically
disappears.
Darkness is lack of light, as sin is lack of love. It has
no unique properties of its own. It is an example of the
scarcity fallacy, from which ONLY error can proceed. Truth
is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that
they have everything have no need for driven behavior of ANY
kind.
41. The miracle acknowledges all men as your brothers and
mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God in
them. The specialness of Gods Sons does NOT stem from
exclusion, but from inclusion. ALL my brothers are special. If
they believe they are deprived of anything, their perception
becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God,
or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships. Ultimately,
every member of the family of God must return. The miracle
calls him to return, because it blesses and honors him even
though he may be absent in spirit.
God is not mocked is not a warning, but a reassurance
on this point. God WOULD be mocked if any of His Creations
lacked holiness. The Creation IS whole, and the mark of
wholeness is holiness.
42. Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. It
thus corrects, or atones for, the faulty perception of lack
anywhere.
Here we begin to make the fundamental distinction between
miracles and projection. The stimulus MUST precede the
response, and will also determine the kind of response that is
evoked. Behavior IS response, so that the question response
to what? becomes crucial. Since stimuli are identified
through perception, you first perceive the stimulus and then
behave accordingly. It follows, then, that:
As ye perceive
So shall ye behave.
The Golden Rule asks you to behave toward others as you
would have them behave toward you. This means that the
perception of BOTH must be accurate. The Golden Rule is the
rule for appropriate behavior. You cannot behave appropriately
unless you perceive accurately, because appropriate behavior
DEPENDS on lack of level confusion. The presence of level
confusion ALWAYS results in variable reality testing, and
therefore in variability in behavioral appropriateness. Since
you and your neighbor are equal members of the same family, as
you perceive both, so you will behave toward both. The way to
perceive for Golden Rule behavior is to look out from the
perception of your OWN holiness, and perceive the holiness of
others.
The emptiness engendered by fear should be replaced by
love, because love and its absence are in the same dimension,
and correction cannot be undertaken except WITHIN a dimension.
Otherwise, there has been a confusion of levels. Death is a
human affirmation of a belief in fate, or level confusion.
That is why the Bible says, There IS no death, and why I
demonstrated that death does not exist. I came to fulfill the
law by REINTERPRETING it. The law itself, if properly
understood, offers only protection to man. It is those who
have not yet changed their minds who entered the
hellfire concept into it.
I assure you that I will witness for anyone who lets me,
and to whatever extent he permits it. YOUR witnessing
demonstrates YOUR belief, and thus strengthens it. Those who
witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that
they have abandoned the belief in deprivation in favor of the
abundance they have learned BELONGS to them.
43. A MAJOR contribution of miracles is their strength in
releasing man from his misplaced sense of isolation,
deprivation and lack.
Miracles are affirmations of Sonship, which is a state of
completion and abundance. Whatever is true and real is
eternal, and CANNOT change or BE changed. The Soul is
therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the
mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The ONLY limit
which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two
masters.
The mind, if it elects to do so, becomes a medium by which
the Soul creates along the line of its own Creation. If it
does not freely elect to do so, it retains its creative
POTENTIAL, but places itself under tyrannous rather than
genuinely authoritative control. As a result it imprisons,
because such are the dictates of tyrants. To change your mind
means to place it at the disposal of TRUE Authority.
The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has chosen to be
led by Christ in His service. The abundance of Christ is the
natural result of choosing to follow Him. ALL shallow roots
must be uprooted, because they are not deep enough to sustain
you. The illusion that shallow roots can be DEEPENED, and thus
made to hold, is one of the distortions on which the REVERSAL
of the Golden Rule rests. As these false underpinnings are
given up, the equilibrium is temporarily experienced as
unstable. However, the fact is that NOTHING is less stable
than an orientation that is upside down. Nor can anything
which holds it that way be really conducive to greater
stability.
44. Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind. By
being one, this state of mind goes out to ANYONE, even without
the awareness of the miracle worker himself. The impersonal
nature of miracles is because the Atonement itself is one,
uniting all creations with their Creator.
45. The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of
Christ, and the acceptance of His Atonement. The mind is then
in a state of grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to
the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the
stranger, he becomes your brother.
46. A miracle is never lost. It touches many people you do
not even know, and sometimes produces undreamed of changes in
forces of which you are not even aware. That is not your
concern. The miracle will always bless YOU.
The miracles you are NOT asked to perform have not lost
their value. They are still expressions of your own state of
grace, but the ACTION aspect of the miracle should be Christ-
controlled because of His complete awareness of the Whole
Plan. The impersonal nature of miracle-mindedness ensures YOUR
grace, but only Christ is in a position to know where grace
can be BESTOWED.
47. Miracle-mindedness means miracle-readiness. Readiness
means that you should always keep your perceptions straight,
so that you will ALWAYS be ready, willing and able. These are
the essentials for listen, learn and do. You must be READY
to listen, WILLING to learn, and ABLE to do. Only the last is
involuntary, because it is the APPLICATION of miracles which
must be Christ-controlled. The other two, which are the
VOLUNTARY aspects of miracle-mindedness, ARE up to you.
48. Awe is an inappropriate response to miracles.
Revelation is literally unspeakable because it is an
experience of unspeakable love. Awe should be reserved for
revelation, to which it is perfectly and correctly applicable.
It is NOT appropriate for miracles because a state of awe is
worshipful. It implies that one of a lesser order stands
before a greater one. This is the case ONLY when a Soul stands
before its Creator. Souls are perfect creations, and
experience awe only in the Presence of the Creator of
perfection.
The miracle, on the other hand, is a sign of love among
equals. Equals cannot be in awe of one another because awe
implies inequality. It is therefore an inappropriate reaction
to me. An elder brother is entitled to respect for his greater
experience, and a reasonable amount of obedience for his
greater wisdom. He is also entitled to love because he IS a
brother, and also to devotion if he is devoted. It is only my
devotion that entitles me to yours. There is nothing about me
that YOU cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from
God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have
NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness,
which is only a POTENTIAL in you.
No man cometh unto the Father but by me is among the
most misunderstood statements in the Bible. It does NOT mean
that I am in any way separate or different from you EXCEPT IN
TIME, which does not really exist at all. Actually, the
quotation is more meaningful if it is considered on a vertical
rather than a horizontal axis. Regarded along the vertical,
man stands below me and I stand below God. In the process of
rising up, I AM higher. This is because, without me, the
distance between God and man would be too great for you to
encompass.
I bridge the distance as an elder brother to man on the one
hand, and as a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my
brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I can
render complete only to the extent to which I can SHARE it.
This may appear to contradict the statement I and my Father
are one, but there are still separate parts in the
statement, in recognition that the Father is greater. (The
original statement was are of one kind .) The Holy Spirit is
the Bringer of Revelations. Revelations are INDIRECTLY
inspired by me, because I am close to the Holy Spirit, and
alert to the revelation-readiness of my brothers. I can thus
BRING down to them more than they can DRAW down to themselves.
49. The Holy Spirit is the Highest Communication Medium.
Miracles do not involve this type of communication because
they are TEMPORARY communication devices. When man returns to
his original form of communication with God, the need for
miracles is over. The Holy Spirit mediates higher to lower
communication, keeping the direct channel from God to man open
for revelation. Revelation is not reciprocal. It is always
FROM God TO man. The miracle IS reciprocal because it involves
equality.
50. The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need
for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane, the
recognition of the true equality of all the members of the
Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the
sudden shifts from horizontal to vertical perception which the
miracle entails introduces an interval from which the doer and
the receiver BOTH emerge much farther along in time than they
would otherwise have been.
The miracle thus has the unique property of shortening time
by rendering the space of time it occupies unnecessary. There
is NO relationship between the time a miracle TAKES and the
time it COVERS. It substitutes for learning that might have
taken thousands of years. It does this by the underlying
recognition of perfect equality and holiness between the doer
and the receiver on which the miracle rests.
We said before that the miracle abolishes time. It does
this by a process of COLLAPSING it, and thus abolishing
certain INTERVALS within it. It does this, however, WITHIN the
larger temporal sequence. It establishes an out-of-pattern
time interval which is NOT under the usual laws of time. Only
in this sense is it timeless. By collapsing time it literally
saves time, much as daylight saving time does. It rearranges
the distribution of light.
51. The miracle is the only device which man has at his
immediate disposal for controlling time. Only revelation
TRANSCENDS time, having nothing to do with time at all.
The miracle is much like the body, in that both are
learning aids which aim at facilitating a state in which they
are unnecessary. When the Souls original state of direct
communication is reached, neither the body nor the miracle
serves any purpose. While he believes he is in a body,
however, man can choose between loveless and miraculous
channels of expression. He can make an empty shell, but he
CANNOT express nothing at all. He can wait, delay, paralyze
himself, reduce his creativity to almost nothing, and even
introduce a developmental arrest or even a regression. But he
CANNOT abolish his creativity. He can destroy his medium of
communication, but NOT his potential.
Man was NOT created by his own free will alone. Only what
HE creates is his to decide. The basic decision of the
miracle-minded is not to wait on time any longer than is
necessary. Time can waste as well as be wasted. The miracle-
worker, therefore, accepts the time-control factor gladly,
because he recognizes that every collapse of time brings all
men closer to the ultimate RELEASE from time, in which the Son
and the Father ARE one.
Equality does not imply homogeneity NOW. When everyone
recognizes that he has everything, individual contributions to
the Sonship will no longer be necessary. When the Atonement
has been completed, ALL talents will be shared by ALL the Sons
of God. God is NOT partial. All His children have His total
Love, and ALL his gifts are freely given to everyone alike.
Except ye become as little children means that, unless you
fully recognize your complete dependence on God, you cannot
know the real power of the Son in his true relationship with
the Father.
You who want peace can find it only by complete
forgiveness. You never really WANTED peace before, so there
was no point in being told how to achieve it. No learning is
acquired by anyone unless he wants to learn it, and believes
in some way that he NEEDS it. While the concept of lack does
not exist in the Creation of God, it is VERY apparent in the
creations of man. It is, in fact, the essential difference. A
need implies lack by definition. It involves the recognition
that you would be better off in a state which is somehow
different from the one you are in.
Until the separation, which is a better term than the
fall, nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs
at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have
experienced them. After the separation, needs became the most
powerful source of motivation for human action. All behavior
is essentially motivated by needs, but behavior itself is not
a Divine attribute. The body is the mechanism for behavior.
The belief that he COULD be better off is the reason why man
has this mechanism at his disposal.
Each one acts according to the particular hierarchy of
needs he establishes for himself. His hierarchy, in turn,
depends on his perception of what he IS; that is, what he
LACKS. A sense of separation from God is the ONLY lack he
really needs to correct. This sense of separation would never
have occurred if he had not distorted his perception of truth,
and thus perceived HIMSELF as lacking. The concept of ANY sort
of need hierarchy arose because, having made this fundamental
error, he had already fragmented himself into levels with
different needs. As he integrates HE becomes one, and his
needs become one accordingly.
Unified need produces unified action because it produces a
lack of ambivalence. The concept of a need hierarchy, a
corollary to the original error that man can be separated from
God, requires correction at its own level, before the error of
perceiving levels at all can be corrected. Man cannot behave
effectively while he operates at split levels. However, while
he does, correction must be introduced from the bottom UP.
This is because he now operates in space, where concepts such
as up and down are meaningful. Ultimately, space is as
meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time
BELIEF.
The physical world exists only because man can use it to
correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. He
can never control the effects of fear himself because he MADE
fear, and believes in what he made. In attitude, then, though
NOT in content, he resembles his own Creator, Who has perfect
faith in His creations BECAUSE He created them. Belief in a
creation produces its existence. That is why a man can believe
in what no-one else thinks is true. It is true for him because
it was made BY him.
Every aspect of fear proceeds from upside-down perception.
The more truly creative devote their efforts to correcting
perceptual distortions. The neurotic devotes his to
compromise. The psychotic tries to escape by establishing the
certain truth of his own errors. It is most difficult to free
him by ordinary means, because he is more consistent in his
own denial of truth. The miracle, however, makes no such
distinctions. It corrects errors BECAUSE they are errors.
Thus, the next point to remember about miracles is:
52. The miracle makes NO distinction among degrees of
misperception. It is a device for perception-correction,
effective quite apart from either the degree or the direction
of the error. This is its TRUE indiscriminateness.
Christ-controlled miracles are selective ONLY in the sense
that they are directed towards those who can use them for
THEMSELVES. Since this makes it inevitable that they will
extend them to others, a strong chain of Atonement is welded.
However, Christ-control takes no account at all of the
magnitude of the miracle itself, because the concept of size
exists in a plane that is itself unreal. Since the miracle
aims at RESTORING the awareness of reality it would hardly be
useful if it were bound by the laws which govern the error it
aims to correct. Only man makes this kind of mistake. It is an
example of the foolish consistency which his own false beliefs
have engendered.
The power and strength of mans creative will must be
understood before the real meaning of denial can be
appreciated and relinquished. It is NOT mere negation. It is a
positive miscreation. While the miscreation is NECESSARILY
believed in by its maker, it does not exist at all at the
level of true creation.
53. The miracle compares what man has made with the higher
level creation, accepting what is IN ACCORD as true and
rejecting the DISCORD as false. ALL aspects of fear are untrue
because they do not exist at the higher creative level, and
therefore do not exist at all. To whatever extent a man is
willing to submit his beliefs to this test, to that extent are
perceptions corrected.
In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle
proceeds along the following lines;
If perfect love casts out fear
And if fear exists,
Then there is NOT perfect love.
But
Only perfect love REALLY exists.
If there IS fear,
It creates a state which does not exist.
Believe this, and you WILL be free. Only God can establish
this solution and THIS faith IS His gift.
Distortions of Miracle Impulses
You are involved in unconscious distortions which are
producing a dense cover over miracle impulses, and which make
it hard for them to reach consciousness. The nature of any
interpersonal relationship is limited or defined by what you
want it to DO. Relating is a way of achieving an outcome. The
danger of defenses lies in their propensity for holding
misperceptions rigidly in place. All actions which stem from
reverse thinking are literally the behavioral expressions of
those who know not what they do. A rigid orientation can be
extremely reliable, even if it is upside-down. In fact, the
more consistently upside-down it is, the MORE reliable it is.
However, validity is still the ultimate goal, which
reliability can only serve. Hostility, triumph, vengeance,
self-debasement, and all kinds of expressions of lack of love
are often very clearly seen in the fantasies which accompany
them. But it is a PROFOUND error to imagine that because these
fantasies are so frequent, or occur so reliably, that this
implies validity. Remember that while validity implies
reliability, the relationship is NOT reversible. You can be
wholly reliable and ENTIRELY wrong. While a reliable
instrument DOES measure something, what USE is it unless you
discover what the something is? This course, then, will
concentrate on validity, and let reliability fall naturally
into place.
The confusion of miracle impulses with physical impulses is
a major source of perceptual distortion because it INDUCES,
rather than straightens out, the basic level confusion which
underlies the perception of all those who seek happiness with
the instruments of this world. Inappropriate physical impulses
(or misdirected miracle impulses) result in conscious guilt if
expressed and depression if denied. ALL real pleasure comes
from doing Gods Will. This is because NOT doing It is a
denial of self. DENIAL of error results in projection.
CORRECTION of error brings release. Lead us not into
temptation means do not let us deceive ourselves into
believing that we can relate in peace to God or to our
brothers with ANYTHING external.
Child of God, you were created to create the good, the
beautiful, and the holy. Do not lose sight of this. The love
of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through
one body to another because the real vision is still so dim.
Everyone can use his body best by enlarging mans perception
so he can see the REAL vision. THIS vision is invisible to the
physical eye. The ultimate purpose of the body is to render
itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real
reason for its creation.
Fantasies of any kind are distorted forms of thinking
because they ALWAYS involve twisting perception into
unreality. Fantasy is a debased form of vision. Vision and
revelation are closely related, while fantasy and projection
are more closely associated because both attempt to control
external reality according to false internal needs. Twist
reality in ANY way, and you are perceiving destructively.
Reality was lost through usurpation, which in turn produced
tyranny. I told you that you are now restored to your former
role in the plan of Atonement, but you must still choose
freely to devote yourselves to the greater restoration. As
long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release
is not complete. COMPLETE restoration of the Sonship is the
only true goal of the miracle-minded.
NO fantasies are true. They are distortions of perception,
by definition. They are a means of making false associations,
and obtaining pleasure from them. Man can do this only because
he IS creative. But although he can perceive false
associations, he can never make them real EXCEPT TO HIMSELF.
Man believes in what he creates. If he creates miracles, he
will be equally strong in his belief in THEM. The strength of
HIS conviction will then sustain the belief of the miracle
receiver. And fantasies become totally unnecessary as the
wholly satisfying nature of reality becomes apparent to both.
CHAPTER 2
THE ILLUSION OF SEPARATION
This section deals with a fundamental misuse of knowledge,
referred to in the Bible as the cause of the fall, or
separation. There are some definitions which I asked you to
take from the dictionary which will be helpful here. They are
somewhat unusual, since they are not the first definitions
which are given. Nevertheless, the fact that each of them does
appear in the dictionary should be reassuring.
Project (verb): to extend forward or out.
Project (noun): a plan in the mind.
World: a natural grand division.
We will refer later to projection as related to both mental
health and mental illness. We have already observed that man
can create an empty shell, but he cannot create nothing at
all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of
projection.
The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden
in the Bible, was not an actual garden at all. It was merely a
mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal
account, it is noteworthy that the pre-separation state was
essentially one in which man needed nothing. The tree of
knowledge is also an overly literal figure. These concepts
need to be clarified before the real meaning of the
separation, or the detour into fear, can be fully
understood.
To project, as defined above, is a fundamental
attribute of God, which He gave to His Son. In the Creation,
God projected His Creative Ability from Himself to the Souls
He created, and He also imbued them with the same loving will
to create. The Soul has not only been fully created, but has
also been created perfect. There is NO emptiness in it.
Because of its likeness to its Creator, it is creative. No
Child of God can lose this ability because it is inherent in
what he IS, but he CAN use it inappropriately. Whenever
projection is used inappropriately, it ALWAYS implies that
some emptiness or lack exists, and that it is in mans ability
to put his OWN ideas there INSTEAD of truth.
If you consider carefully what this entails, the following
will become quite apparent:
First, the assumption is implicit that what God created can
be CHANGED by the mind of man.
Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered
imperfect, or wanting, is accepted.
Third, the belief that man can distort the Creations of
God, INCLUDING HIMSELF, is accepted.
Fourth, the idea that, since man can create himself, the
direction of his own creation is up to HIM is implied.
These related distortions represent a picture of what
actually occurred in the separation. None of this existed
before, nor does it actually exist now. The world WAS made as
a natural grand division, or a projecting outward of God.
That is why everything that He created is like Him.
Projection, as undertaken by God, is very similar to the kind
of inner radiance which the Children of the Father inherit
from Him. It is important to note that the term project
outward necessarily implies that the REAL source of
projection is internal. This is as true of the Son as of the
Father.
The world, in the original connotation of the term included
both the proper Creation of man by God AND the proper creation
by man in his right mind. The latter required the endowment of
man by God with free will, because ALL loving creation is
freely given. Nothing in these statements implies any sort of
level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous
line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order.
When the lies of the serpent were introduced, they were
specifically called lies because they are not true. When
man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to
continue to believe what is not true unless he chooses to do
so. All of his miscreations can literally disappear in the
twinkling of an eye, because they are merely visual
misperceptions. Mans Spiritual eye can sleep, but a sleeping
eye can still see. What is seen in dreams seems to be very
real. The Bible mentions that a deep sleep fell upon Adam,
and nowhere is there any reference to his waking up.
The history of man in the world as he sees it has not yet
been marked by any genuine or comprehensive reawakening or
rebirth. This is impossible as long as man projects in the
spirit of miscreation. It still remains within him, however,
to project as God projected His Own Spirit to him. In reality,
this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was given him
for his own joy in creating the perfect.
All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception
that man has the ability to USURP the power of God. It can
only be emphasized that he neither CAN nor HAS BEEN able to do
this. In this fact lies the real justification for his escape
from fear. The escape is brought about by his acceptance of
the Atonement, which places him in a position to realize that
his own errors never really occurred. When the deep sleep
fell upon Adam, he was in a condition to experience nightmares
BECAUSE he was asleep. If a light is suddenly turned on while
someone is dreaming a fearful dream, he may initially
interpret the light itself as a part of his own dream, and be
afraid of it. However, when he awakens, the light is correctly
perceived as the RELEASE from the dream, which is no longer
accorded reality.
It is quite apparent that this release does NOT depend on
the kind of knowledge which is nothing more than deceiving
lies. The knowledge which illuminates rather than obscures is
the knowledge which not only SETS you free, but which also
shows you clearly that you ARE free. Whatever lies you may
believe are of no concern to the miracle, which can heal ANY
of them with equal ease. It makes NO distinctions among
misperceptions. Its SOLE concern is to distinguish between
truth on the one hand, and ALL kinds of errors on the other.
Some miracles may SEEM to be of greater magnitude than others.
But remember the first point in this course; that there is NO
order of difficulty in miracles.
In reality, you are perfectly unaffected by ALL expressions
of lack of love. These can be either from yourself AND others,
or from yourself TO others, or from others to YOU. Peace is an
attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental
illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is
INNER peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love
from without, and capable, through your own miracles, of
correcting the external conditions which proceed from lack of
love in others.
The Reinterpretation of Defenses
When you are afraid of ANYTHING, you are acknowledging its
power to hurt you. Remember that where your heart is, there is
your treasure also. This means that you believe in what you
VALUE. If you are afraid, you are VALUING WRONGLY. Human
understanding will inevitably value wrongly, and, by endowing
all human thoughts with equal power, will inevitably DESTROY
peace. That is why the Bible speaks of The peace of God
which PASSETH (human) understanding. THIS peace is totally
incapable of being shaken by human errors of ANY kind. It
denies the ability of ANYTHING which is not of God to affect
you in ANY way.
This is the PROPER use of denial. It is not used to HIDE
anything, but to CORRECT error. It brings ALL error into the
light, and since error and darkness are the same, it corrects
error automatically. True denial is a powerful protective
device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt
you. This kind of denial is not a concealment device, but a
correction device. The right mind of the mentally healthy
DEPENDS on it. You can do ANYTHING I ask. I have asked you to
perform miracles, and have made it clear that miracles are
NATURAL, CORRECTIVE, HEALING, AND UNIVERSAL. There is nothing
good they cannot do, but they cannot be performed in the
spirit of doubt.
God and the Souls He created are COMPLETELY dependent on
each other. The creation of the Soul has already been
perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not. God
created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created
them perfectly. He gave them His peace so they could not be
shaken, and would be unable to be deceived. Whenever you are
afraid, you ARE deceived. Your mind is NOT serving the Soul.
This literally starves the Soul by denying its daily bread.
God offers ONLY mercy. YOUR words should reflect only mercy
because that is what you have received, and that is what you
should GIVE.
Justice is a temporary expedient, or an attempt to teach
man the meaning of mercy. Its judgmental side arises only
because man is capable of INjustice, if that is what his mind
creates. You are afraid of Gods Will because you have used
your own will, which He created in the likeness of His Own, to
MISCREATE. What you do NOT realize is that the mind can
miscreate ONLY when it is NOT free. An imprisoned mind is not
free, by definition. It is possessed, or held back, by ITSELF.
Its will is therefore limited, and is not free to assert
itself. The real meaning of are of one kind, which was
mentioned before, is are of one mind or will. When the Will
of the Sonship and the Father are One, their perfect accord IS
Heaven.
Denial of error is a powerful defense of truth. You will
note that we have been shifting the emphasis from the negative
to the positive use of denial. As we have already stated,
denial is not a purely negative device; it results in positive
miscreation. That is the way the mentally ill DO employ it.
But remember a very early thought of your own; Never
underestimate the power of denial. In the service of the
right mind, the denial of ERROR frees the mind and
reestablishes the freedom of the will. When the will is REALLY
free, it CANNOT miscreate because it recognizes ONLY truth.
False projection arises out of false denial, NOT out of its
proper use. My own role in the Atonement is one of TRUE
projection; I can project to YOU the affirmation of truth. If
you project error to me, or to yourself, you are interfering
with the process. MY use of projection, which can also be
yours, is NOT based on faulty denial. It DOES involve,
however, the very powerful use of the denial of errors. The
miracle worker is one who accepts my kind of denial and
projection, unites his own inherent abilities to deny and
project with mine, and imposes them back on himself and
others. This establishes the total LACK of threat anywhere.
Together we can then work for the real time of peace, which is
eternal.
The improper use of defenses is quite widely recognized,
but their proper use had not been sufficiently understood as
yet. They can INDEED create mans perception, both of himself
and of the world. They can distort or correct, depending on
what you use them FOR.
Denial should be directed only to error, and projection
should be reserved only for truth. You should truly give as
you have truly received. The Golden Rule can work effectively
only on this basis.
Intellectualization is a term which stems from the mind-
brain confusion. Right-mindedness is the device which
defends the RIGHT mind, and gives it control over the body.
Intellectualization implies a split, while right-
mindedness involves healing.
Withdrawal is properly employed in the service of
withdrawing from the meaningless. It is NOT a device for
escape, but for consolidation. There IS only one mind.
Dissociation is quite similar. You SHOULD split off or
dissociate yourself from error, but only in defense of
integration.
Detachment is essentially a weaker form of dissociation.
Flight can be undertaken in whatever direction you choose,
but note that the concept itself implies flight FROM
something. Flight from error is perfectly appropriate.
Distantiation can be properly used as a way of putting
distance between yourself and what you SHOULD fly from.
Regression is an effort to return to your own original
state. It can thus be utilized to RESTORE, rather than to go
back to the LESS mature.
Sublimation should be a redirection of effort to the
sublime.
There are many other so-called dynamic concepts which
are profound errors due essentially to the misuse of defenses.
Among them is the concept of different levels of aspiration,
which actually result from level confusion. However, the main
point to be understood from this section is that you can
defend truth as well as error, and, in fact, much better.
The means are easier to clarify after the value of the goal
itself is firmly established. Everyone defends his own
treasure. You do not have to tell him to do so, because he
will do it automatically. The real questions still remain.
WHAT do you treasure, and HOW MUCH do you treasure it? Once
you have learned to consider these two questions, and to bring
them into ALL your actions as the true criteria for behavior,
I will have little difficulty in clarifying the means. You
have not learned to be consistent about this as yet. I have
therefore concentrated on showing you that the means ARE
available whenever you ASK. You can, however, save a lot of
time if you do not extend this step unduly. The correct focus
will shorten it immeasurably.
The Atonement is the ONLY defense which cannot be used
destructively. That is because, while everyone must eventually
join it, it is NOT a device which was generated by man. The
Atonement PRINCIPLE was in effect long before the Atonement
itself began. The principle was love, and the Atonement itself
was an ACT of love. Acts were not necessary before the
separation, because the time-space belief did not exist. It
was only after the separation that the defense of Atonement,
and the necessary conditions for its fulfillment, were
planned.
It became increasingly apparent that all of the defenses
which man can choose to use constructively OR destructively
were not enough to save him. It was therefore decided that he
needed a defense which was so splendid that he could not
misuse it, although he COULD refuse it. His choice could not,
however, turn it into a weapon of attack, which is the
inherent characteristic of all other defenses. The Atonement
thus becomes the ONLY defense which is NOT a two-edged sword.
The Atonement actually began long before the crucifixion.
Many Souls offered their efforts on behalf of the separated
ones, but they could not withstand the strength of the attack
and had to be brought back. Angels came, too, but their
protection did not suffice, because the separated ones were
not interested in peace. They had already split their minds,
and were bent on further dividing, rather than reintegrating.
The levels they introduced into their minds turned against
each other, and they established differences, divisions,
cleavages, dispersions, and all the other concepts related to
the increasing splits which they produced.
Not being in their right minds, they turned their defenses
from protection to assault, and acted literally insanely. It
was essential to introduce a split-proof device which could be
used ONLY to heal, if it were used at all. The Atonement was
built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on
the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning
complete. The Atonement IS the final lesson. Learning itself,
like the classrooms in which it occurs, is temporary. The
ability to learn has no value when change of understanding is
no longer necessary. The eternally creative have nothing to
learn. Only after the separation was it necessary to direct
the creative forces to learning, because changed behavior had
become mandatory.
Men can learn to improve their behavior, and can also learn
to become better and better learners. This serves to bring
them into closer and closer accord with the Sonship, but the
Sonship Itself is a perfect Creation, and perfection is NOT a
matter of degree. Only while there are different degrees is
learning meaningful. The evolution of man is merely a
process by which he proceeds from one degree to the next. He
corrects his previous missteps by stepping forward. This
represents a process which is actually incomprehensible in
temporal terms, because he RETURNS as he goes forward.
The Atonement is the device by which he can free himself
from the past as he goes ahead. It UNDOES his past errors,
thus making it unnecessary for him to keep retracing his steps
without advancing to his return. In this sense the Atonement
saves time, but, like the miracle which serves it, does NOT
abolish it. As long as there is need for Atonement there is
need for time. But the Atonement, as a completed plan, does
have a unique relationship TO time. Until the Atonement is
finished, its various phases will proceed IN time, but the
whole Atonement stands at times end. At this point, the
bridge of the return has been built.
The Atonement is a TOTAL commitment. You still think this
is associated with loss. This is the same mistake ALL the
separated ones make, in one way or another. They cannot
believe that a defense which cannot attack IS the best
defense. This is what is meant by the meek shall inherit the
earth. They will literally take it over because of their
strength. A two-way defense is inherently weak precisely
BECAUSE it has two edges, and can turn against the self very
unexpectedly. This tendency cannot be controlled EXCEPT by
miracles.
The miracle turns the defense of Atonement to the
protection of the inner self, which, as it becomes more and
more secure, assumes its natural talent of protecting others.
The inner self knows itself as both a brother AND a Son. You
know that when defenses are disrupted there is a period of
real disorientation, accompanied by fear, guilt, and usually
vacillations between anxiety and depression. This course is
different in that defenses are NOT being disrupted but
REINTERPRETED, even though you may experience it as the same
thing. In the reinterpretation of defenses, only their use for
ATTACK is lost. Since this means they can be used only ONE
way, they become much stronger and much more dependable. They
no longer oppose the Atonement, but greatly facilitate it.
The Atonement can only be accepted WITHIN you. You have
perceived it largely as EXTERNAL thus far, and that is why
your experience of it has been minimal. The reinterpretation
of defenses is essential in releasing the INNER light. Since
the separation, mans defenses have been used almost entirely
to defend himself AGAINST the Atonement, and thus maintain the
separation. They themselves generally see this as a need to
protect the BODY. The many body fantasies with which mens
minds are engaged arise from the distorted belief that the
body can be used as a means for attaining atonement.
Perceiving the body as a temple is only the first step in
correcting this kind of distortion. It alters part of the
misperception, but not all of it. It DOES recognize, however,
that the concept of Atonement in physical terms is not
appropriate. However, the next step is to realize that a
temple is not a building at all. Its REAL holiness lies in the
INNER altar, around which the building is built. The
inappropriate emphasis men have put on beautiful church
buildings is a sign of their FEAR of Atonement, and their
unwillingness to reach the altar itself. The REAL beauty of
the temple cannot be seen with the physical eye. The Spiritual
eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all because
It has perfect sight. It CAN, however, see the altar with
PERFECT clarity.
For perfect effectiveness, the Atonement belongs at the
center of the inner altar, where it undoes the separation and
restores the wholeness of the mind. Before the separation the
mind was invulnerable to fear, because fear did not exist.
Both the separation AND the fear are miscreations of the mind,
which must be undone. This is what is meant by the
restoration of the temple. It does not mean the restoration
of the building, but the opening of the altar to receive the
Atonement. This heals the separation, and places WITHIN man
the one defense against ALL separation mind-errors which can
make him perfectly invulnerable.
The acceptance of the Atonement by everyone is only a
matter of time. In fact, both time AND matter were created for
this purpose. This appears to contradict free will because of
the inevitability of the final decision. If you review the
idea carefully, however, you will realize that this is not
true. Everything is limited in some way by the manner of its
creation. Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous
procrastination. But it cannot depart entirely from its
Creator, Who set the limits on its ability to miscreate by
virtue of its own REAL purpose.
The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the
extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can
be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually everyone
begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a
better way. As this recognition becomes more firmly
established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This
ultimately reawakens the Spiritual eye, simultaneously
weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating
investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually
experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very
acute. But the outcome is as certain as God.
The Spiritual eye literally CANNOT SEE error and merely
looks for Atonement. All the solutions which the physical eyes
seek dissolve in Its sight. The Spiritual eye, which looks
within, recognizes immediately that the altar has been
defiled, and needs to be repaired and protected. Perfectly
aware of the RIGHT defense, It passes over all others, looking
past error to truth. Because of the real strength of ITS
vision, It pulls the will into Its service and impels the mind
to concur. This reestablishes the true power of the will, and
makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay. The mind then
realizes with increasing certainty that delay is only a way of
increasing unnecessary pain which it need not tolerate at all.
The pain threshold drops accordingly, and the mind becomes
increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as
very minor intrusions of discomfort.
The Children of God are ENTITLED to perfect comfort, which
comes from a sense of perfect trust. Until they achieve this,
they waste themselves and their true creative powers on
useless attempts to make themselves more comfortable by
inappropriate means. But the real means is ALREADY provided,
and does not involve any effort at all on their part. Their
egocentricity usually misperceives this as personally
insulting, an interpretation which obviously arises from their
misperception of themselves. Egocentricity and communion
CANNOT coexist. Even the terms are contradictory.
The Atonement is the only gift that is worthy of being
offered to the altar of God. This is because of the
inestimable value of the altar itself. It was created perfect,
and is entirely worthy of receiving perfection. God IS lonely
without His Souls and THEY are lonely without Him. Men must
learn to perceive the world as a means of HEALING the
separation. The Atonement is the GUARANTEE that they will
ultimately succeed.
Healing as Release from Fear
The emphasis will now be on healing. The miracle is the
means, the Atonement is the principle, and healing is the
result. Those who speak of a miracle of healing are
combining two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing is
NOT a miracle. The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a
REMEDY, while any type of healing is a result. The KIND of
error to which Atonement is applied is irrelevant.
Essentially, ALL healing is the release from fear. To
undertake this, you CANNOT be fearful yourself. You do not
understand healing because of your OWN fear.
A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at ALL
levels. Illness, which is really not-right-mindedness, is
the result of level confusion in the sense that it always
entails the belief that what is amiss in one level can
adversely affect another. We have constantly referred to
miracles as the means of correcting level confusion, and all
mistakes must be corrected at the level on which they occur.
Only the MIND is capable of error. The body can ACT
erroneously, but this is only because it is responding to mis-
thought. The body cannot create, and the belief that it CAN, a
fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms.
All physical illness represents a belief in magic. The
whole distortion which created magic rests on the belief that
there is a creative ability in matter which the mind cannot
control. This error can take two forms; it can be believed
that the mind can miscreate IN the body, or that the body can
miscreate in the mind. If it is understood that the mind,
which is the ONLY level of creation, cannot create beyond
itself, neither type of confusion need occur.
The reason only the mind can create is more obvious than
may be immediately apparent. The Soul HAS BEEN created. The
body is a learning device for the mind. Learning devices are
not lessons in themselves. Their purpose is merely to
facilitate the thinking of the learner. The most that a faulty
use of a learning device can do is to fail to facilitate
learning. It has no power in itself to introduce actual
learning errors.
The body, if properly understood, shares the
invulnerability of the Atonement to two-edged application.
This is not because the body is a miracle, but because it is
not INHERENTLY open to misinterpretation. The body is merely a
fact in human experience. Its abilities can be, and frequently
are, overevaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny
its existence. Those who do so are engaging in a particularly
unworthy form of denial. The term unworthy here implies
simply that it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying
the unmindful. If one denies this unfortunate aspect of the
minds power, one is also denying the power itself.
All material means which man accepts as remedies for bodily
ills are merely restatements of magic principles. It was the
first level of the error to believe that the body created its
own illness. It is a second misstep to attempt to heal it
through non-creative agents. It does not follow, however, that
the use of these very weak corrective devices are evil.
Sometimes the illness has a sufficiently great hold over a
mind to render a person inaccessible to Atonement. In this
case it may be wise to utilize a compromise approach to mind
AND body, in which something from the OUTSIDE is temporarily
given healing belief.
This is because the LAST thing that can help the non-right-
minded, or the sick, is an INCREASE in fear. They are already
IN a fear-weakened state. If they are inappropriately exposed
to an undiluted miracle, they may be precipitated into
panic. This is particularly likely to occur when upside-down
perception has induced the belief that miracles are
frightening.
The value of the Atonement does not lie in the manner in
which it is expressed. In fact, if it is truly used, it will
inevitably BE expressed in whatever way is most helpful to the
receiver. This means that a miracle, to attain its full
efficacy, MUST be expressed in a language which the recipient
can understand WITHOUT fear. It does not follow, by any means,
that this is the highest level of communication of which he is
capable. It DOES mean, however, that it is the highest level
of communication of which he is capable NOW. The whole aim of
the miracle is to RAISE the level of communication, not to
impose regression in the improper sense upon it.
Before miracle workers are ready to undertake their
function in this world, it is essential that they fully
understand the FEAR OF RELEASE. Otherwise, they may
unwittingly foster the belief that release is imprisonment, a
belief that is very prevalent. This misperception arose from
the underlying misbelief that harm can be limited to the body.
This was because of the much greater fear that the mind can
hurt itself. Neither error is really meaningful, because the
miscreations of the mind do not really exist. THIS recognition
is a far better protective device than ANY form of level
confusion because it introduces correction at the level of the
error.
It is essential to remember that ONLY the mind can create.
Implicit in this is the corollary that correction belongs at
the THOUGHT level. To repeat an earlier statement and to
extend it somewhat, the Soul is already perfect, and therefore
does not require correction. The body does not really exist
except as a learning device for the mind. This learning device
is NOT subject to errors of its own because it was created,
but is NOT creating. It should be obvious, then, that
correcting the creator, or inducing it to give up its
miscreations, is the only application of creative ability
which is truly meaningful.
Magic is essentially mindless, or the miscreative use of
the mind. Physical medications are forms of spells. Those
who are AFRAID to use the mind to heal should not attempt to
do so. The very fact that they ARE afraid has made them
vulnerable to miscreation. They are therefore likely to
misunderstand any healing they might induce, and, because
egocentricity and fear usually occur together, may be unable
to accept the real Source of the healing. Under these
conditions, it is safer for them to rely TEMPORARILY on
physical healing devices, because they cannot misperceive them
as their own creations. As long as their sense of
vulnerability persists, they should be preserved from even
attempting miracles.
We have already said that the miracle is an expression of
miracle-mindedness. Miracle-mindedness merely means right-
mindedness in the sense that we are now using it. The right-
minded neither exalt nor depreciate the mind of the miracle
worker OR the miracle receiver. However, as a creative act,
the miracle need not await the right-mindedness of the
receiver. In fact, its purpose is to RESTORE him to his right
mind. It is essential, however, that the miracle WORKER be in
his right mind, or he will be unable to reestablish right-
mindedness in someone else.
The healer who relies on his OWN readiness is endangering
his understanding. He is perfectly safe as long as he is
completely unconcerned about HIS readiness, but maintains a
consistent trust in MINE. If your miracle working propensities
are not functioning properly, it is ALWAYS because fear has
intruded on your right-mindedness, and has literally upset it
(or turned it upside-down). All forms of not-right-mindedness
are the result of refusal to accept the Atonement FOR
YOURSELF. If the miracle worker DOES accept it, he places
himself in a position to recognize that those who need to be
healed are simply those who have not realized that right-
mindedness IS healing.
The SOLE responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept
the Atonement for himself. This means that he recognizes that
mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE
healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, his mind can
ONLY heal. By denying his mind any destructive potential, and
reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed
himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of
others. The message he then gives to others is the truth that
THEIR minds are similarly constructive, and that THEIR
miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the miracle
worker releases the mind from overevaluating its own learning
device (the body), and restores the mind to its true position
as the learner.
It should be emphasized again that the body does not learn,
any more than it creates. As a learning device it merely
follows the learner, but if it is falsely endowed with self-
initiative, it becomes a serious obstruction to the very
learning it should facilitate. ONLY the mind is capable of
illumination. The Soul is already illuminated, and the body in
itself is too dense. The mind, however, can bring ITS
illumination TO the body by recognizing that density is the
opposite of intelligence, and therefore unamenable to
independent learning. It is, however, easily brought into
alignment with a mind which has learned to look beyond density
toward light.
Corrective learning always begins with the awakening of the
Spiritual eye, and the turning away from the belief in
physical sight. The reason this so often entails fear is
because man is afraid of what his Spiritual eye will see. We
said before that the Spiritual eye cannot see error, and is
capable only of looking beyond it to the defense of Atonement.
There is no doubt that the Spiritual eye DOES produce extreme
discomfort by what It sees. Yet what man forgets is that the
discomfort is NOT the final outcome of Its perception. When
the Spiritual eye is permitted to look upon the defilement of
the altar, it also looks IMMEDIATELY toward the Atonement.
NOTHING the Spiritual eye perceives can induce fear.
EVERYTHING that results from accurate spiritual awareness is
merely channelized toward correction. Discomfort is aroused
only to bring the NEED for correction forcibly into awareness.
What the physical eye sees is NOT corrective, nor can it be
corrected by ANY device which can be seen physically. As long
as a man believes in what his physical sight tells him, ALL
his corrective behavior will be misdirected. The REAL vision
is obscured because man cannot endure to see his own defiled
altar. But since the altar HAS been defiled, his state becomes
doubly dangerous unless it IS perceived.
The fear of healing arises, in the end, from an
unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is
necessary. Man is not willing to look on what he has done TO
HIMSELF. Healing is an ability lent to man after the
separation, before which it was completely unnecessary. Like
all aspects of the space-time belief, healing ability is
temporary. However, as long as time persists, healing is
needed as a means for human protection. This is because
healing rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving
the perfection of another even if he cannot perceive it
himself.
Most of the loftier concepts of which man is capable now
are time-dependent. Charity is really a weaker reflection of a
much more powerful love-encompassment which is FAR beyond any
form of charity that man can conceive of as yet. Charity is
essential to right-mindedness in the limited sense in which
right-mindedness can now be attained. Charity is a way of
looking at another AS IF he had already gone far beyond his
actual accomplishments in time. Since his own thinking is
faulty he cannot see the Atonement for himself, or he would
have no need for charity. The charity which is accorded him is
both an acknowledgment that he IS weak and a recognition that
he COULD BE stronger.
The way in which both of these perceptions are stated
clearly implies their dependence on time, making it quite
apparent that charity lies within the human limitations,
though toward its higher levels. We said before that only
revelation transcends time. The miracle, as an expression of
true human charity, can only shorten time at most. It must be
understood, however, that whenever a man offers a miracle to
another, he is shortening the suffering of BOTH. This
introduces a correction into the whole record which corrects
retroactively as well as progressively.
Fear as Lack of Love
You believe that being afraid is involuntary; something
beyond your control. Yet I have told you several times that
only CONSTRUCTIVE acts should be involuntary. We have said
that Christ-control can take over everything that does NOT
matter, while Christ-guidance can direct everything that DOES,
if you so choose. Fear cannot be Christ-controlled, but it CAN
be self-controlled. It PREVENTS me from controlling it. The
correction is therefore a matter of YOUR will, because its
presence shows that you have raised the UNIMPORTANT to a
higher level than it warrants. You have thus brought it under
YOUR will, where it does not belong. This means that YOU feel
responsible for it. The level confusion here is obvious.
The reason I cannot control fear for you is that you are
attempting to raise to the mind level the proper content of
lower-order reality. I do not foster level confusion, but YOU
can choose to correct it. You would not tolerate insane
BEHAVIOR on your part, and would hardly advance the excuse
that you could not help it. Why should you tolerate insane
THINKING? There is a confusion here which you would do well to
look at clearly. YOU believe that you are responsible for what
you DO, but NOT for what you THINK. The truth is that you ARE
responsible for what you think because it is only at this
level that you CAN exercise choice.
What you do COMES FROM what you think. You cannot separate
yourself from the truth by giving autonomy to behavior.
This is controlled by me automatically, as soon as you place
what you think under my guidance. Whenever you are afraid, it
is a sure sign that you have allowed your mind to miscreate,
or have NOT allowed me to guide it. It is pointless to believe
that controlling the OUTCOME of mis-thought can result in
healing. When you are fearful you have willed wrongly. This is
why you feel responsible for it. You must change your MIND,
not your behavior, and this IS a matter of will.
You do not need guidance EXCEPT at the mind level.
Correction belongs ONLY at the level where creation is
possible. The term does not mean anything at the symptom
level, where it cannot work. The correction of fear IS your
responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are
implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for help in
the conditions which have brought the fear about. These
conditions ALWAYS entail a separated mind willingness. At that
level, you CAN help it. You are much too tolerant of mind
wandering, thus passively condoning its miscreations. The
particular result does not matter, but the fundamental error
DOES. The correction is always the same. Before you will to do
anything, ask me if your will is in accord with mine. If you
are sure that it is, there will BE no fear.
Fear is always a sign of strain, which arises whenever the
WILL to do conflicts with WHAT you do. This situation arises
in two ways;
1. You can will to do conflicting things, either
simultaneously or successively. This produces conflicted
behavior, which is intolerable to yourself because the part of
the will that wants to do something ELSE is outraged.
2. You can BEHAVE as you think you should, but without
entirely WILLING to do so. This produces consistent behavior,
but entails great strain WITHIN the self. In both cases, the
will and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in a
situation in which you are doing what you do NOT will. This
arouses a sense of coercion, which usually produces rage. The
rage then invades the mind, and projection in the wrong sense
is likely to follow. Depression or anxiety is virtually
certain.
Remember that whenever there is fear, it is because you
have NOT MADE UP YOUR MIND. Your will is split, and your
behavior inevitably becomes erratic. Correcting at the
behavioral level can shift the error from the first to the
second type of strain described above, but will NOT obliterate
the fear. It is possible to reach a state in which you bring
your will under my guidance without much conscious effort, but
this implies habit patterns which you have not developed
dependably as yet. God cannot ask MORE than you will. The
strength to DO comes from your own undivided WILL to do. There
is NO strain in doing Gods Will as soon as you recognize that
it is also your OWN.
The lesson here is quite simple, but particularly apt to be
overlooked. I will therefore repeat it, urging you to listen.
Only your MIND can produce fear. It does so whenever it is
conflicted in what it wills, thus producing inevitable strain
because willing and doing become discordant. This cannot be
corrected by better DOING, but it CAN be corrected by higher
WILLING.
The Correction for Lack of Love
The first corrective step is KNOW FIRST that this is an
[expression of] fear. Then say to yourself that you must
somehow have willed not to love [or] the fear which arises
from behavior-will conflict could not have arisen, [then the]
whole process is nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps
in the [larger] process of accepting the Atonement as THE
remedy. These steps can be summarized as follows:
1. Know first that this is fear.
2. Fear arises from lack of love.
3. The ONLY remedy for lack of love is perfect love.
4. Perfect love is the Atonement. We have emphasized that
the miracle, or the EXPRESSION of [Atonement] is always a sign
of real respect FROM the worthy TO the worthy. This [worth is]
re-established by the Atonement. It is obvious, then, that
when you [are afraid] you have placed yourself in a position
where you NEED Atonement, [because you] have done something
loveless, having willed without love. This is [precisely] the
situation for which the Atonement was offered. The need for
the [remedy inspired] its creation. As long as you recognize
only the need for the [remedy, you] will remain fearful.
However, as soon as you REMEDY it, you have also [abolished]
the fear. This is how true healing occurs.
Everyone experiences fear, and no-one enjoys it. Yet it
would [take] very little right-thinking to realize why fear
occurs. Very few people appreciate the real power of the mind,
and no-one remains fully aware of [it all] the time. However,
if anyone hopes to spare himself from fear, there [are some]
things he must realize, and realize fully. The mind is a very
powerful [ ___ ] and it never loses its creative force. It
never sleeps. Every instant [it is] creating, and ALWAYS as
you will. Many of your ordinary expressions reflect this. For
example, when you say, Dont give it a thought, you imply
that [if] you do not think about something, it will have no
effect on you. And [this is] true enough.
On the other hand, many other expressions clearly
illustrate the prevailing LACK of awareness of thought-power.
For example, you say, Just an idle thought, and mean that
the thought has no effect. You also speak of some actions as
thoughtless, implying that if the person had thought, he
would not behave as he did. While expressions like think
big give some recognition to the power of thought, they
still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow
when you say it, because you do not really think that you
will.
It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine
into a power surge that can literally move mountains. It
appears at first glance that to believe such power about
yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason
why you do not believe it. People PREFER to believe that their
thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally
AFRAID of them. Many psychotherapists attempt to help people
who are afraid, say, of their death wishes by depreciating the
power of the wish. They even try to free the patient by
persuading him that he can think whatever he wants without any
REAL effect at all.
There is a real dilemma here which only the truly right-
minded can escape. Death wishes do not kill in the physical
sense, but they DO kill spiritual awareness. ALL destructive
thinking is dangerous. Given a death wish, a man has no choice
except to ACT upon the thought, or behave CONTRARY to it. He
thus chooses only between homicide and fear. The other
possibility is that he depreciates the power of his thought.
This is the usual psychoanalytic approach. It DOES allay
guilt, but at the cost of rendering thinking impotent. If you
believe that what you think is ineffectual you may cease to be
overly afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it.
The world is full of examples of how man has depreciated
himself because he is afraid of his own thoughts. In some
forms of insanity thoughts are glorified, but this is only
because the underlying depreciation was too effective for
tolerance. The truth is that there ARE no idle thoughts.
ALL thinking produces form at some level. The reason people
are afraid of ESP and so often react against it is because
they KNOW that thoughts can hurt them. Their own thoughts have
made them vulnerable.
You who constantly complain about fear still persist in
creating it. I told you before that you cannot ask ME to
release you from fear because I KNOW it does not exist, but
YOU do not. If I merely intervened between your thoughts and
their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause
and effect, the most fundamental law there is in this world. I
would hardly help if I depreciated the power of your own
thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of
this course. It is much more helpful to remind you that you do
not guard your thoughts carefully except for a small part of
the day, and somewhat inconsistently even then. You may feel
at this point that it would take a miracle to enable you to do
this, which is perfectly true.
Men are not used to miraculous thinking, but they can be
TRAINED to think that way. All miracle workers need that kind
of training. I cannot let them leave their minds unguarded or
they will not be able to help me. Miracle working entails a
full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance
of miscreation. Otherwise a miracle will be necessary to set
the mind ITSELF straight, a circular process which would
hardly foster the time collapse for which the miracle was
intended. Nor would it induce the healthy respect for true
cause and effect which every miracle worker must have.
Both miracles AND fear come from thoughts, and if you were
not free to choose one, you would also not be free to choose
the other. By choosing the miracle you HAVE rejected fear. You
have been afraid of God, of me, of yourselves, and of
practically everyone you know at one time or another. This is
because you have misperceived or miscreated us, and believe in
what you have made. You would never have done this if you were
not afraid of your own thoughts. The vulnerable are
essentially miscreators because they misperceive creation.
You persist in believing that, when you do not consciously
watch your mind, it is unmindful. It is time, however, to
consider the whole world of the unconscious or unwatched
mind. This may well frighten you because it is the SOURCE of
fear. The unwatched mind is responsible for the whole content
of the unconscious which lies ABOVE the miracle level. All
psychoanalytic theorists have made some contribution in this
connection, but none of them has seen it in its true entirety.
They have all made one common error in that they attempted to
uncover unconscious CONTENT. You cannot understand unconscious
activity in these terms because content is applicable ONLY
to the more superficial unconscious levels, to which the
individual himself contributes. This is the level at which he
can readily introduce fear, and usually does.
When man miscreates he is in pain. The cause and effect
principle here is temporarily a real expeditor. Actually,
Cause is a term properly belonging to God, and Effect,
which should also be capitalized, is His Son. This entails a
set of Cause and Effect relationships which are totally
different from those which man introduced into his own
miscreations. The fundamental opponents in the real basic
conflict are Creation and miscreation. ALL FEAR is implicit in
the second, just as all LOVE is inherent in the first. Because
of this difference, the basic conflict IS one between love and
fear.
It has already been said that man believes he CANNOT
control fear because he himself created it. His belief in it
seems to render it out of his control by definition. Yet any
attempt to resolve the basic conflict through the concept of
MASTERY of fear is meaningless. In fact, it asserts the POWER
of fear by the simple assumption that it NEED be mastered. The
essential resolution rests entirely on the mastery of LOVE. In
the interim, the SENSE of conflict is inevitable, since man
has placed himself in a strangely illogical position. He
believes in the power of what does not exist.
Two concepts which CANNOT coexist are nothing and
everything. To whatever extent one is believed in, the
other HAS BEEN denied. In the conflict fear is really nothing,
and love is everything. This is because whenever light enters
darkness, the darkness IS abolished. What man believes IS true
for him. In this sense the separation HAS occurred, and to
deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate
on error is merely a further misuse of defenses. The true
corrective procedure is to recognize error temporarily, but
ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory.
This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be
accepted WITHOUT delay.
It should be emphasized, however, that ultimately there IS
no compromise possible between everything and nothing. Time is
essentially a device by which all compromise in this respect
can be given up. It seems to be abolished by degrees because
time itself involves a concept of intervals which do not
really exist. The faulty use of creation made this necessary
as a corrective device. And God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him
shall not perish, but have eternal life needs only one
slight correction to be entirely meaningful in this context.
It should read, He gave it TO His only begotten Son.
It should especially be noted that God has only ONE Son. If
all the Souls God created ARE His Sons, then every Soul MUST
be an integral part of the whole Sonship. You do not find the
concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to
understand. You should, therefore, not have too much trouble
in understanding this. The Sonship in its Oneness DOES
transcend the sum of its parts. However, this is obscured as
long as any of its parts are missing. That is why the conflict
cannot ultimately be resolved until ALL the parts of the
Sonship have returned. Only then can the meaning of wholeness,
in the true sense, be fully understood.
Any part of the Sonship can believe in error or
incompleteness, if he so elects. However, if he does so, he is
believing in the existence of nothingness. The correction of
this error is the Atonement. We have already briefly spoken
about readiness, but there are some additional points which
might be helpful here. Readiness is nothing more than the
PREREQUISITE for accomplishment. The two should not be
confused. As soon as a state of readiness occurs, there is
usually some will to accomplish, but this is by no means
necessarily undivided. The state does not imply more than a
POTENTIAL for a shift of will.
Confidence cannot develop fully until mastery has been
accomplished. We have already attempted to correct the
fundamental error that fear can be mastered, and have
emphasized that only LOVE can be mastered. You have attested
only to your readiness. Mastery of love involved a much more
complete confidence than either of you has attained. However,
the readiness at least is an indication that you believe this
is possible. That is only the beginning of confidence. In case
this be misunderstood to imply that an enormous amount of time
will be necessary between readiness and mastery, let me remind
you that time and space are under my control.
One of the chief ways in which man can correct his magic-
miracle confusion is to remember that he did not create
himself. He is apt to forget this when he becomes egocentric,
and this places him in a position where the belief in magic in
some form is virtually inevitable. His will to create was
given him by his own Creator, Who was expressing the same Will
in His Creation. Since creative ability rests in the mind,
everything that man creates is necessarily a matter of will.
It also follows that whatever he creates is real in his own
sight, but not necessarily in the Sight of God. This basic
distinction leads us directly into the real meaning of the
Last Judgment.
The Meaning of the Last Judgment
The Last Judgment is one of the greatest threat concepts in
mans perception. This is only because he does not understand
it. Judgment is not an essential attribute of God. Man brought
judgment into being only because of the separation. After the
separation, however, there WAS a place for judgment as one of
the many learning devices which had to be built into the
overall plan. Just as the separation occurred over many
millions of years, the Last Judgment will extend over a
similarly long period, and perhaps an even longer one. Its
length depends, however, on the effectiveness of the present
speed-up.
We have frequently noted that the miracle is a device for
shortening but not abolishing time. If a sufficient number of
people become truly miracle-minded quickly, the shortening
process can be almost immeasurable. It is essential, however,
that these individuals free themselves from fear sooner than
would ordinarily be the case, because they must emerge from
the conflict if they are to bring peace to other minds.
The Last Judgment is generally thought of as a procedure
undertaken by God. Actually it will be undertaken by man, with
my help. It is a Final Healing, rather than a meting out of
punishment, however much man may think that punishment is
deserved. Punishment is a concept in TOTAL opposition to
right-mindedness. The aim of the Last Judgment is to RESTORE
right-mindedness to man.
The Last Judgment might be called a process of right
evaluation. It simply means that finally all men will come to
understand what is worthy and what is not. After this, their
ability to choose can be directed reasonably. Until this
distinction is made, however, the vacillations between free
and imprisoned will cannot BUT continue. The first step toward
freedom MUST entail a sorting out of the false from the true.
This is a process of division only in the constructive sense,
and reflects the true meaning of the Apocalypse. Man will
ultimately look upon his own creations and will to preserve
only what is good, just as God Himself looked upon what He had
created and knew that it WAS good.
At this point, the will can begin to look with love on its
own creations because of their great worthiness. The mind will
inevitably disown its miscreations which, without the minds
belief, will no longer exist. The term Last Judgment is
frightening not only because it has been falsely projected
onto God, but also because of the association of last with
death. This is an outstanding example of upside-down
perception. Actually, if the meaning of the Last Judgment is
objectively examined, it is quite apparent that it is really
the doorway to life.
No-one who lives in fear is really alive. His own last
judgment cannot be directed toward himself because he is not
his own creation. He can, however, apply it meaningfully and
at ANY time to everything he has created, and retain in his
memory ONLY what is good. This is what his right-mindedness
cannot BUT dictate. The purpose of time is solely to give
him time to achieve this judgment. It is his own perfect
judgment of his own creations. When everything he retains is
loveable, there IS no reason for fear to remain with him. This
IS his part in the Atonement.
CHAPTER 3
RETRAINING THE MIND
This is a course in MIND TRAINING. All learning involves
attention and study at some level. Some of the later parts of
the course rest too heavily on these earlier sections not to
require their study. You will also need them for preparation.
Without this, you may become much too fearful when the
unexpected DOES occur to make constructive use of it. However,
as you study these earlier sections, you will begin to see
some of their implications, which will be amplified
considerably later on.
The reason a solid foundation is necessary is because of
the confusion between fear and awe to which we have already
referred, and which so many people hold. You will remember
that we said that awe is inappropriate in connection with the
Sons of God because you should not experience awe in the
presence of your equals. However, it was also emphasized that
awe IS a proper reaction in the presence of your Creator. I
have been careful to clarify my own role in the Atonement,
without either over- or understating it. I have also tried to
do the same in connection with yours. I have stressed that awe
is NOT an appropriate reaction to me because of our inherent
equality.
Some of the later steps in this course, however, DO involve
a more direct approach to God Himself. It would be most unwise
to start on these steps without careful preparation, or awe
will be confused with fear, and the experience will be more
traumatic that beatific. Healing is of God in the end. The
means are being carefully explained to you. Revelation may
occasionally REVEAL the end to you, but to reach it the means
are needed.
Special Principles for Miracle Workers
1. The miracle abolishes the need for lower-order concerns.
Since it is an out-of-pattern time interval, the ordinary
considerations of time and space do not apply. When YOU
perform a miracle, I will arrange both time and space to
adjust to it.
2. Clear distinction between what HAS BEEN created and what
IS BEING created is essential. ALL forms of correction (or
healing) rest on this FUNDAMENTAL correction in level
perception.
3. Another way of stating the above point is: Never
confuse right with wrong-mindedness. Responding to ANY form of
miscreation with anything EXCEPT A DESIRE TO HEAL (or a
miracle) is an expression of this confusion.
4. The miracle is always a DENIAL of this error and an
affirmation of the truth. Only right-mindedness CAN create in
a way that has any real effect. Pragmatically, what has no
real effect has no real existence. Its effect, then, is
emptiness. Being without substantial content, it lends itself
to projection in the improper sense.
5. The level-adjustment power of the miracle induces the
right perception for healing. Until this has occurred healing
cannot be understood. Forgiveness is an empty gesture unless
it entails correction. Without this, it is essentially
judgmental rather than healing.
6. Miraculous forgiveness is ONLY correction. It has NO
element of judgment at all. Father forgive them for they
know not what they do in no way evaluates WHAT they do. It
is strictly limited to an appeal to God to heal their minds.
There is no reference to the outcome of their misthought. THAT
does not matter.
7. The biblical injunction Be of one mind is the
statement for revelation-readiness. My OWN injunction Do
this in remembrance of me is the request for cooperation
from miracle-workers. It should be noted that the two
statements are not in the same order of reality. The latter
involves a time awareness, since to remember implies recalling
the past in the present. Time is under MY direction, but
Timelessness belongs to God alone. In time we exist for and
with each other. In Timelessness we coexist with God.
Atonement without Sacrifice
There is another point which must be perfectly clear before
any residual fear which may still be associated with miracles
becomes entirely groundless. The crucifixion did NOT establish
the Atonement. The Resurrection did. This is a point which
many very sincere Christians have misunderstood. No-one who is
free of the scarcity-error could POSSIBLY make this mistake.
If the crucifixion is seen from an upside-down point of view,
it DOES appear as if God permitted, and even encouraged, one
of his Sons to suffer BECAUSE he was good. Many ministers
preach this every day.
This particularly unfortunate interpretation, which arose
out of the combined misprojections of a large number of my
would-be followers, has led many people to be bitterly afraid
of God. This particularly anti-religious concept enters into
many religions, and this is neither by chance nor by
coincidence. Yet the real Christian would have to pause and
ask, How could this be? Is it likely that God Himself would
be capable of the kind of thinking which His own words have
clearly stated is unworthy of man?
The best defense, as always, is not to attack anothers
position, but rather to protect the truth. It is unwise to
accept ANY concept, if you have to turn a whole frame of
reference around in order to justify it. This procedure is
painful in its minor applications, and genuinely tragic on a
mass basis. Persecution is a frequent result, undertaken to
justify the terrible misperception that God Himself persecuted
His own Son on behalf of salvation. The very words are
meaningless.
It has been particularly difficult to overcome this
because, although the error itself is no harder to overcome
than any other error, men were unwilling to give this one up
because of its prominent escape value. In milder forms, a
parent says, This hurts me more than it hurts you, and
feels exonerated in beating a child. Can you believe that the
Father REALLY thinks this way? It is so essential that ALL
such thinking be dispelled that we must be very sure that
NOTHING of this kind remains in your mind. I was NOT punished
because YOU were bad. The wholly benign lesson the Atonement
teaches is lost if it is tainted with this kind of distortion
in ANY form.
Vengeance is Mine sayeth the Lord is a strictly karmic
viewpoint. It is a real misperception of truth, by which man
assigns his own evil past to God. The evil conscience
from the past has nothing to do with God. He did not create it
and He does not maintain it. God does NOT believe in karmic
retribution. His Divine Mind does not create that way. HE does
not hold the evil deeds of a man even against himself. Is it
likely, then, that He would hold against anyone the evil that
ANOTHER did?
Be very sure that you recognize how utterly impossible this
assumption really is, and how ENTIRELY it arises from
misprojection. This kind of error is responsible for a host of
related errors, including the belief that God rejected man,
and forced him out of the Garden of Eden. It is also
responsible for the fact that you may believe, from time to
time, that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort to
use words that are almost impossible to distort, but man is
very inventive when it comes to twisting symbols around.
God Himself is NOT symbolic; He is FACT. The Atonement,
too, is totally without symbolism. It is perfectly clear
because it exists in light. Only mans attempts to shroud it
in darkness have made it inaccessible to the unwilling and
ambiguous to the partly willing. The Atonement itself radiates
nothing but truth. It therefore epitomizes harmlessness and
sheds ONLY blessing. It could not do this if it arose from
anything but perfect innocence. Innocence is wisdom because it
is unaware of evil, which does not exist. It is, however,
PERFECTLY aware of EVERYTHING that is true.
The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy
truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil because light
abolishes ALL forms of darkness. The Atonement is thus the
perfect lesson. It is the final demonstration that all of the
other lessons which I taught are true. Man is released from
ALL errors if he believes in this. The deductive approach to
teaching accepts the generalization which is applicable to ALL
single instances, rather than building up the generalization
after analyzing numerous single instances separately. If you
can accept the ONE generalization NOW, there will be no need
to learn from many smaller lessons.
NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his
Spirit into the hands of his Father. By doing this, the mind
awakens from its sleep and remembers its Creator. All sense of
separation disappears, and level confusion vanishes. The Son
of God IS part of the Holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is
ONE. There is no confusion within Its levels because they are
of One Mind and One Will. This Single Purpose creates perfect
integration and establishes the peace of God. Yet this Vision
can be perceived only by the truly innocent.
Because their hearts are pure, the innocent defend true
perception instead of defending themselves AGAINST it.
Understanding the lesson of the Atonement, they are without
the will to attack, and therefore they see truly. This is what
the Bible means when it says, When He shall appear (or be
perceived) we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He
IS.
Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. It arises
solely from fear. This is particularly unfortunate because
frightened people are apt to be vicious. Sacrificing another
in ANY way is a clearcut violation of Gods Own injunction
that man should be merciful even as his Father in Heaven. It
has been hard for many Christians to realize that this
commandment (or assignment) also applies to THEMSELVES. Good
teachers never terrorize their students. To terrorize is to
attack, and this results in rejection of what the teacher
offers. The result is learning failure.
I have been correctly referred to as The Lamb of God who
taketh away the sins of the world. Those who represent the
lamb as blood-stained, an all-too-widespread error, do NOT
understand the meaning of the symbol. Correctly understood, it
is a very simple parable which merely speaks of my innocence.
The lion and the lamb lying down together refers to the fact
that strength and innocence are NOT in conflict, but naturally
live in peace. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall
see God is another way of saying the same thing.
There has been some human controversy about the nature of
seeing in relation to the integrative powers of the brain.
Correctly understood, the issue revolves around the question
of whether the body or the mind can see (or understand). This
is not really open to question at all. The body is not capable
of understanding, and only the mind can perceive ANYTHING. A
pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its strength. It cannot
attack the body because it recognizes exactly what the body
IS. This is what a sane mind in a sane body really means.
It does NOT confuse destruction with innocence because it
associates innocence with strength, NOT with weakness.
Innocence is INCAPABLE of sacrificing anything, because the
innocent mind HAS everything and strives only to PROTECT its
wholeness. This is why it CANNOT misproject. It can only honor
man, because honor is the natural greeting of the truly loved
to others who are like them. The lamb taketh away the sins of
the world only in the sense that the state of innocence, or
grace, is one in which the meaning of the Atonement is
perfectly apparent. The innocence of God is the true state of
mind of His Son. In this state, mans mind DOES see God in the
sense that he sees Him as He is, and realizes that the
Atonement, NOT sacrifice, is the ONLY appropriate gift to His
Own altar, where nothing except true perfection belongs. The
understanding of the innocent is TRUTH. That is why their
altars are truly radiant.
Miracles as Accurate Perception
We have repeatedly stated that the basic concepts referred
to in this course are NOT matters of degree. Certain
fundamental concepts CANNOT be meaningfully understood in
terms of coexisting polarities. It is impossible to conceive
of light and darkness, or everything and nothing, as joint
possibilities. They are all true OR all false. It is essential
that you realize that behavior is erratic until a firm
commitment to one or the other is made.
A firm commitment to darkness or nothingness is impossible.
No-one has ever lived who has not experienced SOME light and
SOME thing. This makes everyone really unable to deny truth
totally, even if he generally deceives himself in this
connection. That is why those who live largely in darkness and
emptiness never find any lasting solace. Innocence is NOT a
partial attribute. It is not a real defense UNTIL it is total.
When it is partial, it is characterized by the same erratic
nature that holds for other two-edged defenses.
The partly innocent are apt to be quite stupid at times. It
is not until their innocence becomes a genuine viewpoint which
is universal in its application that it becomes wisdom.
Innocent (or true) perception means that you NEVER misperceive
and ALWAYS see truly. More simply, it means that you never see
what does not really exist. When you lack confidence in what
someone will do, you are attesting to your belief that he is
not in his right mind. This is hardly a miracle-based frame of
reference. It also has the disastrous effect of denying the
creative power of the miracle.
The miracle perceives everything AS IT IS. If nothing but
the truth exists (and this is really a redundant statement
because what is not true CANNOT exist), right-minded seeing
cannot see anything BUT perfection. We have said many times
that ONLY what God creates, or what man creates with the same
will, has any real existence. This, then, is all the innocent
can see. They do not suffer from the distortions of the
separated ones. The way to correct all such distortions is to
withdraw your FAITH from them, and invest it ONLY in what is
true.
You CANNOT validate the invalid. I would suggest that you
voluntarily give up all such attempts, because they can only
be frantic. If you are willing to validate what IS true in
everything you perceive, you will make it true for YOU. Truth
overcomes ALL error. This means that if you perceive truly,
you are cancelling out misperceptions in yourself AND in
others simultaneously. Because you see them as they are, you
offer them your own validation of THEIR truth. This is the
healing which the miracle actively fosters.
Perception versus Knowledge
We have been emphasizing perception and have said very
little about cognition as yet, because you are confused about
the difference between them. The reason we have dealt so
little with cognition is because you must get your perceptions
straightened out before you can KNOW anything. To know is to
be certain. Uncertainty merely means that you do NOT know.
Knowledge is power BECAUSE it is certain, and certainty is
strength. Perception is merely temporary. It is an attribute
of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or
love. Misperceptions produce fear, and true perceptions
produce love. NEITHER produces certainty, because ALL
perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge.
True perception is the BASIS for knowledge, but KNOWING is
the affirmation of truth. All your difficulties ultimately
stem from the fact that you do not recognize or KNOW
yourselves, each other, or God. To recognize means to know
again, implying that you knew before. You can see in many
ways, because perception involves different interpretations,
and this means that it is not whole. The miracle is a way of
perceiving, NOT of knowing. It is the right answer to a
question, and you do not ask questions at all when you know.
Questioning illusions is the first step in undoing them.
The miracle, or the right answer, corrects them. Since
perceptions CHANGE, their dependence on time is obvious. They
are subject to transitory states, and this necessarily implies
variability. How you perceive at any given time determines
what you DO, and action MUST occur in time. Knowledge is
timeless because certainty is NOT questionable. You KNOW when
you have CEASED to ask questions.
The questioning mind perceives itself in time, and
therefore looks for FUTURE answers. The unquestioning mind is
closed because it believes the future and present will be the
same. This establishes an unchanged state, or stasis. It is
usually an attempt to counteract an underlying fear that the
future will be WORSE than the present, and this fear inhibits
the tendency to question at all.
Visions are the natural perception of the Spiritual eye,
but they are still corrections. The Spiritual eye is symbolic,
and therefore not a device for knowing. It IS, however, a
means of right perception, which brings it into the proper
domain of the miracle. Properly speaking, a vision of God
is a miracle rather than a revelation. The fact that
perception is involved at all removes the experience from the
realm of knowledge. That is why visions do not last.
The Bible instructs you to KNOW yourself, or BE
CERTAIN. Certainty is ALWAYS of God. When you love someone,
you have perceived him as he is, and this makes it possible
for you to KNOW him. However, it is not until you RECOGNIZE
him that you CAN know him. While you ask questions about God,
you are clearly implying that you do NOT know Him. Certainty
does not require action. When you say that you are ACTING on
the basis of knowledge, you are really confusing perception
and cognition. Knowledge brings the mental strength for
creative THINKING, but NOT for right DOING. Perception,
miracles and doing are closely related. Knowledge is the
result of revelation, and induces only thought. Perception
involves the body even in its most spiritualized form.
Knowledge comes from the altar within, and is timeless because
it is certain. To perceive the truth is NOT the same as
knowing it.
If you attack error in one another, you will hurt yourself.
You cannot RECOGNIZE each other when you attack. Attack is
ALWAYS made on a stranger. You are MAKING him a stranger by
misperceiving him, so that you CANNOT know him. It is BECAUSE
you have made him a stranger that you are afraid of him.
PERCEIVE him correctly so that you can KNOW him. Right
perception is necessary before God can communicate directly to
His own altars, which He has established in His Sons. There He
can communicate His certainty, and HIS knowledge will bring
peace WITHOUT question.
God is not a stranger to His Sons, and His Sons are not
strangers to each other. Knowledge preceded both perception
and time, and will ultimately replace them. That is the real
meaning of the Biblical description of God as Alpha and
Omega, the Beginning and the End. It also explains the
quotation, Before Abraham was I AM. Perception can and must
be stabilized, but knowledge IS stable. Fear God and keep
his commandments should read KNOW God and accept His
certainty. There are no strangers in His Creation. To create
as He created, you can create only what you KNOW and accept as
yours. God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He
created them BY knowing them. He recognized them perfectly.
When they do not recognize each other, they do not recognize
Him.
Conflict and the Ego
The abilities man now possesses are only shadows of his
real strengths. All of his functions are equivocal and open to
question or doubt. This is because he is not certain how he
will USE them. He is therefore incapable of knowledge, being
uncertain. He is also incapable of knowledge because he can
perceive lovelessly. He cannot create surely because his
perception deceives. Perception did not exist until the
separation had introduced degrees, aspects and intervals. The
Soul has no levels, and ALL conflict arises from the concept
of levels. Only the Levels of the Trinity are capable of
Unity. The levels which man created by the separation cannot
BUT conflict. This is because they are essentially meaningless
to each other.
Freud realized this perfectly, and that is why he conceived
the different levels in his view of the psyche as forever
irreconcilable. They were conflict-prone by definition because
they wanted different things and obeyed different principles.
In OUR picture of the psyche, there is an unconscious level
which properly consists ONLY of the miracle ability, and which
should be under MY direction. There is also a conscious level,
which perceives or is aware of impulses from both the
unconscious and the superconscious. Consciousness is thus the
level of perception, but NOT of knowledge. Again, to perceive
is NOT to know.
Consciousness was the first split that man introduced into
himself. He became a PERCEIVER, rather than a creator in the
true sense. Consciousness is correctly identified as the
domain of the ego. The ego is a man-made attempt to perceive
himself as he WISHED to be, rather than as he IS. This is an
example of the created-creator confusion we have spoken of
before. Yet man can only KNOW himself as he IS because that is
all he can be SURE of. Everything else IS open to question.
The ego is the questioning compartment in the post-
separation psyche which man created for himself. It is capable
of asking valid questions but NOT of perceiving valid answers,
because these are cognitive and cannot BE perceived. The
endless speculation about the meaning of mind has led to
considerable confusion because the mind IS confused. Only One-
Mindedness is without confusion. A separated or divided mind
MUST be confused; it is uncertain by definition. It HAS to be
in conflict because it is out of accord with itself.
Intrapersonal conflict arises from the same basis as
interpersonal conflict. One part of the psyche perceives
another part as on a different level, and does not understand
it. This makes the parts strangers to each other, without
recognition. This is the essence of the fear-prone condition,
in which attack is ALWAYS possible. Man has every reason to
feel afraid, as he perceives himself. This is why he cannot
escape from fear until he KNOWS that he did not and could not
create himself. He can NEVER make his misperceptions valid.
His creation is beyond his own error, and that is why he must
eventually choose to heal the separation.
Right-mindedness is not to be confused with the KNOWING
mind because it is applicable only to right perception. You
can be right-minded or wrong-minded, and even this is subject
to degrees, a fact which clearly demonstrates a lack of
association with knowledge. The term right-mindedness is
properly used as the CORRECTION for wrong-mindedness, and
applies to the state of mind which induces accurate
perception. It is miraculous because it HEALS misperception,
and this is indeed a miracle in view of how man perceives
himself.
Perception ALWAYS involves some misuse of will because it
involves the mind in areas of uncertainty. The mind is very
active because it has will-power. When it willed the
separation, it willed to perceive. Until then, it willed ONLY
to know. Afterwards it willed ambiguously, and the only way
OUT of ambiguity IS clear perception. The mind returns to its
proper function only when it WILLS TO KNOW. This places it in
the Souls service, where perception is meaningless. The
superconscious is the level of the mind which wills this.
The mind chose to divide itself when it willed to create
both its own levels AND the ability to perceive, but it could
not entirely separate itself from the Soul because it is FROM
the Soul that it derives its whole power to create. Even in
miscreation will is affirming its source, or it would merely
cease to be. This is impossible because it is part of the
Soul, which God created and which is therefore eternal.
The ability to perceive made the body possible because you
must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something. This is why
perception involves an exchange or translation, which
knowledge does not need. The interpretive function of
perception, actually a distorted form of creation, then
permitted man to interpret the body as HIMSELF, which, though
depressing, was an attempt to escape from the conflict he had
induced. The superconscious, which KNOWS, could not be
reconciled with this loss of power because it is incapable of
darkness. This is why it became almost inaccessible to the
mind and entirely inaccessible to the body.
Thereafter, the superconscious was perceived as a threat,
because light does abolish darkness merely by establishing the
fact that it is not there. The truth will ALWAYS overcome
error in this sense. This is not an ACTIVE process of
destruction at all. We have already emphasized that knowledge
does not DO ANYTHING. It can be PERCEIVED as an attacker, but
it CANNOT attack. What man perceives as its attack is merely
his own vague recognition of the fact that it can always be
REMEMBERED, never having been destroyed.
God and the Souls He created remain in surety, and
therefore KNOW that no miscreation exists. Truth cannot deal
with unwilling error, because it does not will to be blocked
out. I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge,
and as a man, I did not attempt to COUNTERACT error with
knowledge so much as to CORRECT error from the bottom up. I
demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body AND the power
of the mind. By uniting my will with that of my Creator, I
naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose.
I cannot unite your will with Gods FOR you, but I CAN
erase all misperceptions from your mind if you will bring it
under my guidance. ONLY your misperceptions stand in your own
way. Without them your choice is certain. Sane perception
INDUCES sane choosing. The Atonement was an act based on true
perception. I cannot choose for you, but I CAN help you make
your own right choice. Many are called but few are chosen
should read, ALL are called but few choose to listen.
Therefore, they do not choose RIGHT.
The chosen ones are merely those who choose right
SOONER. This is the real meaning of the celestial speed-up.
Strong wills can do this NOW, and you WILL find rest for your
Souls. God knows you only in peace, and this IS your reality.
The Loss of Certainty
We said before that the abilities which man possesses are
only shadows of his real strengths, and that the intrusion of
the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was
introduced only AFTER the separation. No-one has been sure of
anything since. You will also remember, however, that I made
it clear that the Resurrection was the means for the RETURN to
knowledge, which was accomplished by the union of my will with
the Fathers. We can now make a distinction which will greatly
facilitate clarity in our subsequent statements.
Since the separation, the words create and make have
been greatly confused. When you make something, you make it
out of a sense of lack or need. Anything that is made is made
for a specific purpose, and has no true generalizability. When
you make something to fill a perceived lack, which is
obviously why you would want to make anything, you are tacitly
implying that you believe in separation. Knowing, as we have
frequently observed, does not lead to doing at all.
The confusion between your own creation and what YOU create
is so profound that it has become literally impossible for you
to know anything. Knowledge is always stable, and it is quite
evident that human beings are not. Nevertheless, they ARE
perfectly stable as God created them. In this sense, when
their behavior is unstable they are DISAGREEING with Gods
Idea of the Creation. Man can do this if he chooses, but he
would hardly WANT to do it if he were in his right mind. The
problem that bothers you most is the fundamental question
which man continually asks of himself, but which cannot
properly be directed to himself at all. He keeps asking
himself what he IS. This implies that the answer is not only
one which he knows, but is also one which is up to him to
supply.
Man CANNOT perceive himself correctly. He has no image. The
word image is always perception-related, and NOT a product
of learning. Images are symbolic, and stand for something
else. The current emphasis on changing your image merely
recognizes the power of perception, but it also implies that
there is nothing to KNOW. Knowing is NOT open to
interpretation. It is possible to interpret meaning, but
this is always open to error because it refers to the
PERCEPTION of meaning. Such wholly needless complexities are
the result of mans attempt to regard himself as both
separated and unseparated at the same time. It is impossible
to undertake a confusion as fundamental as this without
engaging in further confusion.
Methodologically mans mind has been very creative, but, as
always occurs when method and content are separated, it has
not been utilized for anything but an attempt to escape a
fundamental and entirely inescapable impasse. This kind of
thinking cannot result in a creative outcome, although it has
resulted in considerable ingenuity. It is noteworthy, however,
that this ingenuity has almost totally divorced him from
knowledge. Knowledge does not REQUIRE ingenuity. When we say
the truth shall set you free, we mean that all this kind of
thinking is a waste of time, but that you ARE free of the need
to engage in it if you are willing to let it go.
Prayer is a way of asking for something. Prayer is the
medium of miracles, but the only meaningful prayer is for
forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven HAVE
everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted, prayer in the
usual sense becomes utterly meaningless. Essentially, a prayer
for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that we may be
able to RECOGNIZE something we already have. In electing to
perceive instead of to know, man placed himself in a position
where he could resemble his Father ONLY by miraculously
perceiving. He has lost the knowledge that he HIMSELF is a
miracle. Miraculous creation was his Source, and also his real
function.
God created man in his Own image and likeness is
correct in meaning, but the words are open to considerable
misinterpretation. This is avoided, however, if image is
understood to mean thought and likeness is taken as
of a like quality. God DID create the Soul in His Own
Thought, and of a quality like to His Own. There IS nothing
else. Perception, on the other hand, is impossible WITHOUT a
belief in more and less. Perception at every level
involves selectivity, and is incapable of organization without
it. In all types of perception there is a continual process of
accepting and rejecting, or organizing and reorganizing, of
shifting and changing focus. Evaluation is an essential part
of perception because judgments MUST be made for selection.
What happens to perceptions if there ARE no judgments and
there is nothing but perfect equality? Perception becomes
impossible. Truth can only be KNOWN. All of it is equally
true, and knowing any part of it IS to know all of it. Only
perception involves partial awareness. Knowledge transcends
ALL the laws which govern perception because partial knowledge
is impossible. It is all One and HAS no separate parts. You
who are really one with it need but know YOURSELF, and your
knowledge is complete. To know Gods Miracle is to know Him.
Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation.
Correct perception OF EACH OTHER is necessary, because minds
have willed to see themselves as separate. Each Soul knows God
completely. That IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact
that each One has this power completely is a fact that is
entirely alien to human thinking, in which if anyone has
everything, there is nothing LEFT. Gods Miracles are as total
as His Thoughts because they ARE His Thoughts.
As long as perception lasts prayer has a place. Since
perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally
accepted the Atonement and given themselves over to truth.
Perception IS a separated state, and a perceiver DOES need
healing. Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those
who know. God and His Miracles ARE inseparable. How beautiful
indeed are the Thoughts of God Who live in His Light! Your
worth is beyond perception because it is beyond doubt. Do not
perceive yourself in different lights. KNOW yourself in the
One Light where the miracle that is you is perfectly clear.
Judgment and the Authority Problem
We have already discussed the Last Judgment in some though
insufficient detail. After the Last Judgment there will be no
more. This is symbolic only in the sense that everyone is much
better off WITHOUT judgment. When the Bible says Judge not
that ye be not judged it merely means that if you judge the
reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging
your own. The choice to judge rather than to know was the
cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which
perception, but NOT cognition, rests. We have discussed this
before in terms of the selectivity of perception, pointing out
that evaluation is its obvious prerequisite.
Judgment ALWAYS involves rejection. It is NOT an ability
which emphasizes only the positive aspects of what is judged,
whether it be in or out of the self. However, what has been
perceived and rejected, or judged and found wanting,
remains in the unconscious because it HAS been perceived. One
of the illusions from which man suffers is the belief that
what he judged against has no effect. This cannot be true
unless he also believes that what he judged against does not
exist. He evidently does NOT believe this, or he would not
have judged against it. It does not matter, in the end,
whether you judge right or wrong. Either way, you are placing
your belief in the unreal. This cannot be avoided in any type
of judgment, because it implies the belief that reality is
yours to choose FROM.
You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace
that comes from meeting yourselves and your brothers totally
without judgment. When you recognize what you and your
brothers ARE, you will realize that judging them in ANY way is
without meaning. In fact, their meaning is lost to you
precisely BECAUSE you are judging them. All uncertainty comes
from a totally fallacious belief that you are under the
coercion of judgment. You do not need judgment to organize
your life, and you certainly do not need it to organize
yourselves. In the presence of knowledge ALL judgment is
automatically suspended, and this is the process which enables
recognition to REPLACE perception.
Man is very fearful of everything he has perceived but has
refused to accept. He believes that, because he has refused to
accept it, he has lost control over it. This is why he sees it
in nightmares, or in pleasant disguises in what seem to be his
happier dreams. Nothing that you have refused to accept can be
brought into awareness. It does NOT follow that it is
dangerous, but it DOES follow that you have MADE it dangerous.
When you feel tired, it is merely because you have judged
yourself as capable of being tired. When you laugh at someone,
it is because you have judged him as debased. When you laugh
at yourself you are singularly likely to laugh at others, if
only because you cannot tolerate the idea of being more
debased than they are. All of this does make you feel tired
because it is essentially disheartening. You are not REALLY
capable of being tired, but you are VERY capable of wearying
yourselves. The strain of constant judgment is virtually
intolerable. It is a curious thing that any ability which is
so debilitating should be so deeply cherished.
Yet, if you wish to be the author of reality, which is
totally impossible anyway, you WILL insist on holding on to
judgment. You will also use the term with considerable fear,
believing that judgment will someday be used against YOU. To
whatever extent it IS used against you, it is due only to your
belief in its efficacy as a weapon of defense for your own
authority. The issue of authority is really a question of
authorship. When an individual has an authority problem, it
is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself,
projects his delusion onto others, and then perceives the
situation as one in which people are literally fighting him
for his authorship. This is the fundamental error of all those
who believe they have usurped the power of God.
The belief is very frightening to THEM, but hardly troubles
God. He is, however, eager to undo it, NOT to punish His
children, but ONLY because He knows that it makes them
unhappy. Souls were GIVEN their true Authorship, but men
preferred to be anonymous when they chose to separate
themselves from their Author. The word authority has been
one of their most fearful symbols ever since. Authority has
been used for great cruelty because, being uncertain of their
true Authorship, men believe that their creation was
anonymous. This has left them in a position where it SOUNDS
meaningful to consider the possibility that they must have
created themselves.
The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in
the minds of men that some have even doubted whether they
really exist at all. Despite the apparent contradiction in
this position, it is in one sense more tenable than the view
that they created themselves. At least it acknowledges the
fact that SOME true authorship is necessary for existence.
Only those who give over all desire to reject can KNOW that
their own rejection is impossible. You have NOT usurped the
power of God, but you HAVE lost it. Fortunately, when you lose
something, it does not mean that the something has gone. It
merely means that you do not know where it is. Existence does
not depend on your ability to identify it, nor even to place
it. It is perfectly possible to look on reality without
judgment, and merely KNOW that it is there.
Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free
to refuse to ACCEPT his inheritance, but he is NOT free to
establish what his inheritance IS. The problem which everyone
must decide is the fundamental question of authorship. All
fear comes ultimately and sometimes by way of very devious
routes, from the denial of Authorship. The offense is never to
God, but only to those who deny Him. To deny His Authorship is
to deny themselves the reason for their own peace, so that
they see themselves only in pieces. This strange perception IS
the authority problem.
There is no man who does not feel that he is imprisoned in
some way. If this is the result of his own free will, he must
regard his will as if it were NOT free, or the obviously
circular reasoning involved in his position would be quite
apparent. Free will MUST lead to freedom. Judgment ALWAYS
imprisons, because it separates segments of reality according
to the highly unstable scales of desire. Wishes are not facts
by definition. To wish is to imply that willing is not
sufficient. Yet no-one believes that what is wished is as real
as what is willed. Instead of Seek ye first the Kingdom of
Heaven say, WILL ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, and you
have said, I know what I am, and I will to accept my own
inheritance.
Creating versus the Self-Image
Every system of thought must have a starting point. It
begins with either a making or a creating, a difference which
we have discussed already. Their resemblance lies in their
power as FOUNDATIONS. Their difference lies in what rests upon
them. Both are cornerstones for systems of belief by which men
live. It is a mistake to believe that a thought system which
is based on lies is weak. NOTHING made by a child of God is
without power. It is essential to realize this, because
otherwise you will not understand why you have so much trouble
with this course, and will be unable to escape from the
prisons which you have made for yourselves.
You cannot resolve the authority problem by depreciating
the power of your minds. To do so is to deceive yourself, and
this will hurt you because you KNOW the strength of the mind.
You also know that you CANNOT weaken it, any more than you can
weaken God. The devil is a frightening concept because he
is thought of as extremely powerful and extremely active. He
is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for
possession of the Souls He created. He deceives by lies, and
builds kingdoms of his own, in which everything is in direct
opposition to God. Yet he ATTRACTS men rather than repels
them, and they are seen as willing to sell him their Souls
in return for gifts they RECOGNIZE are of no real worth.
This makes absolutely no sense. The whole picture is one in
which man acts in a way he HIMSELF realizes is self-
destructive, but which he does not choose to correct, and
therefore perceives the cause as beyond his control. We have
discussed the fall, or separation, before, but its meaning
must be clearly understood without symbols. The separation is
not symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of
thought that is real enough in time, though NOT in eternity.
All beliefs are real to the believer.
The fruit of only ONE tree was forbidden to man in his
symbolic garden. But GOD could not have forbidden it, or it
could not have BEEN eaten. If God knows His children, and I
assure you that He does, would He have put them in a position
where their own destruction was possible? The tree which
was forbidden was named the tree of knowledge. Yet God
created knowledge, and gave it freely to His creations. The
symbolism here has been given many interpretations, but you
may be sure that ANY interpretation which sees either God OR
His creations as capable of destroying their own Purpose is in
error.
Eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic
expression for incorporating into the self the ability for
self-creating. This is the ONLY sense in which God and His
Souls are NOT co-creators. The belief that they ARE is
implicit in the self concept, a concept now made acceptable
by its WEAKNESS, and explained by a tendency of the self to
create an IMAGE of itself. Its fear aspect is often ascribed
to fear of retaliation by a father figure, a particularly
curious idea in view of the fact that no-one uses the term to
refer to the physical father. It refers to an IMAGE of a
father in relation to an IMAGE of the self.
Images are perceived, NOT known. Knowledge cannot deceive,
but perception CAN. Man can perceive himself as self-creating,
but he cannot do more than BELIEVE it. He CANNOT make it true.
And, as we said before, when you finally perceive correctly,
you can only be glad that you cannot. But until then, the
belief that you CAN is the central foundation stone in your
thought system, and all your defenses are used to attack ideas
which might bring it to light. You still believe you are
images of your own creation. Your minds are split with your
Souls on this point, and there is NO resolution while you
believe the one thing that is literally inconceivable. That is
why you CANNOT create, and are filled with fear about what you
make.
The mind can make the belief in separation VERY real and
VERY fearful, and this belief is the devil. It is powerful,
active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God because
it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the
power of this denial. Look at your lives, and see what the
devil has made. But KNOW that this making will surely dissolve
in the light of truth, because its FOUNDATION is a lie.
Your creation by God is the ONLY foundation which cannot be
shaken because the light is IN it. Your starting point is
truth, and you must return to this Beginning. Much has been
perceived since then, but nothing else has happened. That is
why your Souls are still in peace, even though your minds are
in conflict. You have not yet gone back far enough, and that
is why you become so fearful. As you approach the Beginning,
you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought system
upon you, as if it were the fear of death. There IS no death,
but there IS a belief in death.
The Bible says that the branch that bears no fruit will be
cut off and will wither away. Be glad! The light WILL shine
from the true Foundation of Life, and your own thought system
WILL stand corrected. It CANNOT stand otherwise. You who fear
salvation are WILLING death. Life and death, light and
darkness, knowledge and perception are irreconcilable. To
believe that they can be reconciled is to believe that God and
man can NOT. Only the Oneness of knowledge is conflictless.
Your kingdom is not of this world because it was given you
from BEYOND this world. Only IN this world is the idea of an
authority problem meaningful. The world is not left by death
but by truth, and truth CAN be known by all those for whom the
Kingdom was created, and for whom it waits.
CHAPTER 4
THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL
The Bible says that you should go with a brother twice as
far as he asks. It certainly does not suggest that you set him
back on his journey. Devotion to a brother cannot set YOU
back, either. It can lead ONLY to mutual progress. The result
of genuine devotion is inspiration, a word which, properly
understood, is the opposite of fatigue. To be fatigued is to
be DIS-spirited, but to be inspired is to be in the spirit. To
be egocentric IS to be dispirited, but to be self-centered in
the right sense is to be inspired, or in the Soul. The truly
inspired are enlightened, and cannot abide in darkness.
You can speak from the Soul or from the ego, precisely as
you choose. If you speak from the Soul, you have chosen to
be still and know that I am God. These words are inspired
because they come from knowledge. If you speak from the ego,
you are disclaiming knowledge instead of affirming it, and are
thus dispiriting yourself. Do not embark on foolish journeys,
because they are indeed in vain. The ego may desire them, but
the Soul cannot embark on them because it is forever unwilling
to depart from its Foundation.
The journey to the cross should be the last foolish journey
for every mind. Do not dwell upon it, but dismiss it as
accomplished. If you can accept it as your OWN last foolish
journey, you are also free to join my Resurrection. Human
living has indeed been needlessly wasted in a repetition
compulsion. It re-enacts the separation, the loss of power,
the foolish journey of the ego in an attempt at reparation,
and finally, the crucifixion of the body, or death.
Repetition compulsions can be endless unless they are given
up by an act of will. Do not make the pathetic human error of
clinging to the old rugged cross. The only message of the
crucifixion was that we can OVERCOME the cross. Unless you do
so, you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose.
But this is not the Gospel I intended to offer you. We have
another journey to undertake, and if you will read these
lessons carefully, they will help to prepare you to undertake
it.
Right Teaching and Right Learning
We have spoken of many different human symptoms, and at
this level there is almost endless variation. There is,
however, only ONE cause of all of them. The authority problem
IS the root of all evil. Money is but one of its many
reflections, and is a reasonably representative example of the
kind of thinking which stems from it. The idea of buying and
selling implies precisely the kind of exchange that the Soul
cannot understand at all, because its Supply is always
abundant and all its demands are fully met.
Every symptom which the ego has made involves a
contradiction in terms. This is because the mind is split
between the ego and the Soul, so that WHATEVER the ego makes
is incomplete and contradictory. This untenable position is
the result of the authority problem which, because it accepts
the one inconceivable thought as its premise, can only produce
ideas which are inconceivable. The term profess is used
quite frequently in the Bible. To profess is to identify with
an idea, and offer the idea to others to be their own. The
idea does not lessen; it becomes STRONGER.
A good teacher clarifies his own ideas, and strengthens
them by teaching them. Teacher and pupil are alike in the
learning process. They are in the same order of learning, and
unless they SHARE their lessons, they will lack conviction. A
good teacher must believe in the ideas which he professes, but
he must meet another condition; he must also believe in the
students to whom he offers his ideas. Many stand guard over
their ideas because they want to protect their thought systems
as they are, and learning means change. Change is always
fearful to the separated ones, because they cannot conceive of
it as a change towards HEALING the separation. They ALWAYS
perceive it as a change towards further separation, because
the separation was their first experience of change.
You believe that, if you allow no change to enter into your
ego, your Soul will find peace. This profound confusion is
possible only if one maintains that the same thought system
can stand on two foundations. NOTHING can reach the Soul from
the ego, and nothing FROM the Soul can strengthen the ego, or
reduce the conflict within it. The ego IS a contradiction.
Mans self and Gods Self ARE in opposition. They are opposed
in creation, in will, and in outcome. They are fundamentally
irreconcilable because the Soul cannot perceive and the ego
cannot know. They are therefore NOT IN COMMUNICATION, and can
never BE in communication. Nevertheless, the ego can learn
because its maker can be misguided, but CANNOT make the
totally lifeless out of the life-given. The Soul need not be
taught, but the ego MUST.
The ultimate reason why learning is perceived as
frightening is because learning DOES lead to the
relinquishment (NOT destruction) of the ego to the Light of
the Soul. This is the change the ego MUST fear because it does
not share my charity. My lesson was like yours, and because I
learned it I can teach it. I never attack your egos, but I DO
try to teach you how their thought system arose. When I remind
you of your TRUE creation, your egos cannot BUT respond with
fear.
Teaching and learning are your greatest strengths now
because you MUST change your mind and help others change
theirs. It is pointless to refuse to tolerate change because
you believe you can demonstrate that, by doing so, the
separation has not occurred. The dreamer who doubts the
reality of his dream while he is still dreaming is not really
healing the level-split. You HAVE dreamed of a separated ego,
and you HAVE believed in a world which rests upon it. This is
very real to you. You cannot undo this by doing nothing and
NOT changing.
If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian of your
thought system and open it to me, I will correct it very
gently and lead you home. Every good teacher hopes to give his
students so much of his own thinking that they will one day no
longer need him. This is the one real goal of the parent,
teacher and therapist. This goal will not be achieved by those
who believe that they will LOSE their child or pupil or
patient if they succeed. It is IMPOSSIBLE to convince the ego
of this because it goes against all of its own laws. But
remember that laws are set up to protect the continuity of the
system in which the law-maker BELIEVES.
It is natural enough for the ego to try to protect itself,
once you have made it, but it is NOT natural for YOU to want
to obey its laws unless YOU believe in them. The ego cannot
make this choice because of the nature of its origin. YOU can
because of the nature of YOURS. Egos can clash in any
situation, but Souls cannot clash at all. If you perceive a
teacher as merely a larger ego, you WILL be afraid, because
to ENLARGE an ego IS to increase separation anxiety. I will
teach with you and live with you if you will think with me,
but my goal will always be to absolve you finally from the
NEED for a teacher.
This is the OPPOSITE of the ego-oriented teachers goal. He
is concerned with the effect of HIS ego on OTHER egos, and
therefore interprets their interaction as a means of ego
preservation. I would not be able to devote myself to teaching
if I believed this, and YOU will not be a devoted teacher as
long as YOU maintain it. I am constantly being perceived as a
teacher either to be exalted or rejected, but I do not accept
either perception for myself.
Your worth is NOT established by your teaching OR your
learning. Your worth was established by God. As long as you
dispute this EVERYTHING you do will be fearful, particularly
any situation which lends itself to the superiority-
inferiority fallacy. Teachers must be patient, and repeat
their lessons until they are learned. I am willing to do this
because I have no right to set your learning limits for you.
Once again, NOTHING you do or think or wish or make is
necessary to establish your worth. This point is not debatable
except in delusions. Your ego is NEVER at stake because God
did NOT create it. Your Soul is never at stake because He DID.
ANY confusion on this point is a delusion and no form of
devotion is possible as long as this delusion lasts.
The ego tries to exploit ALL situations into forms of
praise for itself in order to overcome its doubts. It will be
doubtful forever, or rather, as long as you believe in it. You
who made it CANNOT trust it because you KNOW it is not real.
The only SANE solution is not to try to change reality, which
is indeed a fearful attempt, but to see it as it IS. YOU are
part of reality, which stands unchanged beyond the reach of
your ego, but within easy reach of your Soul. When you are
afraid, be still and KNOW that God is real and YOU are His
beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. Do not let your ego
dispute this, because the ego cannot know what is as far
beyond its reach as you are.
God is NOT the author of fear. YOU are. You have chosen,
therefore, to create unlike Him, and you have made fear for
yourselves. You are not at peace because you are not
fulfilling your function. God gave you a very lofty
responsibility which you are not meeting. You KNOW this, and
you are afraid. In fact, your egos have chosen to be afraid
INSTEAD of meeting it. When you awaken, you will not be able
to understand this because it is literally incredible. DO NOT
BELIEVE THE INCREDIBLE NOW. Any attempt to increase its
believableness is merely to postpone the inevitable.
The word inevitable is fearful to the ego, but joyous
to the Soul. God IS inevitable, and you CANNOT avoid Him any
more that He can avoid YOU. The ego is afraid of the Souls
joy because, once you have experienced it, you will withdraw
all protection from the ego, and become totally without the
investment in fear. Your investment is great now because fear
is a witness to the separation, and your ego rejoices when you
witness to it. Leave it behind! Do not listen to it, and do
not preserve it. Listen only to God, Who is as incapable of
deception as are the Souls He created.
Release yourselves and release others. Do not present a
false and unworthy picture of yourself to others, and do not
accept such a picture of them yourselves. The ego has built a
shabby and unsheltering home for you because it cannot build
otherwise. Do not try to make this impoverished house stand.
ITS weakness is YOUR strength. Only God could make a home that
is worthy of His creations, who have chosen to leave it empty
by their own dispossession. Yet His home will stand forever,
and is ready for you when you choose to enter it. Of this you
can be wholly certain. God is as incapable of creating the
perishable as the ego is of making the eternal.
Of your egos you can do nothing to save yourselves or
others, but of your Souls you can do everything for the
salvation of both. Humility is a lesson for the ego, NOT for
the Soul. The Soul is beyond humility because it recognizes
its radiance, and gladly sheds its light everywhere. The meek
shall inherit the earth because their egos are humble and this
gives them better perception. The Kingdom of Heaven is the
RIGHT of the Soul, whose beauty and dignity are far beyond
doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the
Love of God for His creations, who are wholly worthy of Him
and ONLY of Him. Nothing else is sufficiently worthy to be a
gift for a creation of God Himself.
I will substitute for your ego if you wish, but NEVER for
your Soul. A father can safely leave a child with an elder
brother who has shown himself responsible, but this involves
no confusion about the childs origin. The brother can protect
the childs body and his ego, which are VERY closely related,
but he does not confuse HIMSELF with the father because he
does this, although the child may. I can be entrusted with
your body and your ego simply because this enables you NOT to
be concerned with them, and lets ME teach you their
unimportance. I could not understand their importance to YOU
if I had not once been tempted to believe in them myself.
Let us undertake to learn this lesson together, so we can
be free of them together. I need devoted teachers who share my
aim of healing the mind. The Soul is far beyond the need of
your protection OR mine. Remember this:
In this world you NEED not have tribulation BECAUSE I have
overcome the world.
THAT is why you should be of good cheer.
The Ego and False Autonomy
You have asked lately how the mind could ever have made the
ego. This is a perfectly reasonable question; in fact, the
best question you could ask. There is, however, no point in
giving an historical answer because the past does not matter
in human terms, and history would not exist if the same errors
were not being repeated in the present. Abstract thought
applies to knowledge because knowledge is completely
impersonal, and examples are irrelevant to its understanding.
Perception, however, is always specific, and therefore quite
concrete.
Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject
to enormous variation because of its instability, and one for
everyone he perceives, which is equally variable. Their
interaction is a process which literally alters both, because
they were not made either BY or WITH the unalterable. It is
particularly important to realize that this alteration can and
does occur as readily when the interaction takes place IN THE
MIND as when it involves physical presence. THINKING about
another ego is as effective in changing relative perception as
is physical interaction. There could be no better example of
the fact that the ego is an idea, though not a reality-based
thought.
Your own present state is a good example of how the mind
made the ego. You DO have knowledge at times, but when you
throw it away it is as if you never had it. This willfulness
is so apparent that one need only perceive it to see that it
DOES happen. If it can occur that way in the present, why is
it surprising that it occurred that way in the past?
Psychology rests on the principle of the continuity of
behavior. Surprise is a reasonable response to the unfamiliar,
but hardly to something that has occurred with such
persistence. I am using your present state of how the mind CAN
work, provided you fully recognize that it NEED not work that
way. Why are you surprised that something happened in the dim
past when it is so clearly happening right now?
You forget the love that animals have for their own
offspring, and the need they feel to protect them. This is
because they regard them as part of themselves. No-one disowns
something he regards as a very real part of himself. Man
reacts to his ego much as God does to His Souls; with love,
protection and great charity. The reaction of man to the self
he made is not at all surprising. In fact it duplicates, in
many ways, how he will one day react to his REAL creations,
which are as timeless as he is. The question is not HOW man
responds to his ego, but what he believes he IS.
Belief is an ego function, and as long as your origin is
open to belief at all, you ARE regarding it from an ego
viewpoint. When teaching is no longer necessary, you will
merely KNOW God. Belief that there IS another way is the
loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable. That is
because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is NOT
the self. Undermining the egos thought system MUST be
perceived as painful, even though this is anything but true.
Babies scream in rage if you take away a knife or scissors,
even though they may well harm themselves if you do not. The
speed-up has placed you in the same position.
You are NOT prepared, and in this sense you ARE babies. You
have no sense of real self-preservation, and are very likely
to decide that you need precisely what would hurt you most.
Whether you know it now or not, however, you HAVE willed to
cooperate in a concerted and very commendable effort to become
both harmLESS and helpFUL, two attributes which MUST go
together. Your attitudes, even toward this, are necessarily
conflicted because ALL attitudes are ego-based. This will not
last. Be patient awhile, and remember that the outcome is as
certain as God.
Only those who have a real and lasting sense of abundance
CAN be truly charitable. This is quite obvious when you
consider the concepts involved. To the ego, to give anything
implies that you will do without it. When you associate giving
with sacrifice, then, you give only because you believe that
you are somehow getting something better, so that you can do
without the thing you give. Giving to get is an inescapable
law of the ego, which ALWAYS evaluates itself in relation to
other egos, and is therefore continually preoccupied with the
scarcity principle which gave rise to it. This is the meaning
of Freuds reality principle, since Freud thought of the
ego as very weak and deprived, capable of functioning ONLY as
a thing in need.
The reality principle of the ego is not real at all.
The ego is forced to perceive the reality of other egos
because it cannot establish the reality of ITSELF. In fact,
its whole perception of other egos AS real is only an attempt
to convince itself that IT is real. Self esteem, in ego
terms, means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself
into accepting its reality, and is therefore temporarily less
predatory. This self esteem is ALWAYS vulnerable to stress,
a term which actually refers to a condition in which the
delusion of the egos reality is threatened. This produces
either ego deflation or ego inflation, resulting in either
withdrawal or attack.
The ego literally lives by comparisons. This means that
equality is beyond its grasp, and charity becomes impossible.
The ego NEVER gives out of abundance, because it was made as a
SUBSTITUTE for it. That is why the concept of getting arose
in the egos thought system. All appetites are getting
mechanisms, representing the egos need to confirm itself.
This is as true of bodily appetites as it is of the so-called
higher ego needs. Bodily appetites are NOT physical in
origin. The ego regards the body as its home and DOES try to
satisfy itself through the body, but the IDEA that this is
possible is a decision of the ego, which is completely
confused about what is REALLY possible. This accounts for its
erratic nature.
The ego believes it is completely on its own, which is
merely another way of describing how it originated. This is
such a fearful state that it can only turn to other egos and
try to unite with them in a feeble attempt at identification,
or attack them in an equally feeble show of strength. It is
NOT free, however, to consider the validity of the premise
itself because this premise is its FOUNDATION. The ego IS the
belief of the mind that it is completely on its own. Its
ceaseless attempts to gain the Souls acknowledgement, and
thus to establish its own existence, are utterly useless.
The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does
not attack it; it merely cannot conceive of it at all. While
the ego is equally unaware of the Soul, it DOES perceive
itself as rejected by something which is greater than
itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms MUST be a
delusion. The creations of God do not create myths, although
the creative efforts of man CAN turn to mythology. It can do
so, however, only under one condition; what man then makes is
no longer creative. Myths are entirely perceptions, and are so
ambiguous in form and so characteristically good and evil in
nature that the most benevolent of them is not without fearful
components, if only by innuendo.
Myths and magic are closely associated in that myths are
usually related to the ego origins, and magic to the powers
which the ego ascribes to itself. Every mythological system
includes some account of the creation, and associates this
with its particular perception of magic. The battle for
survival is nothing more than the egos struggle to preserve
itself and its interpretation of its own beginning. This
beginning is always associated with physical birth, because
no-one maintains that the ego existed before that point in
time. The religiously ego-oriented believe that the Soul
existed before and will continue to exist afterwards, after a
temporary lapse in ego life. Some actually believe that the
Soul will be punished for this lapse, even though in reality,
it could not possibly know anything about it.
The term salvation does NOT apply to the Soul, which is
not in danger, and does not need to be salvaged. Salvation is
nothing more than right-mindedness, which is not the One-
Mindedness of the Soul, but which must be accomplished before
the One-Mindedness can be restored. Right-mindedness dictates
the next step automatically because right perception is
uniformly without attack, so that wrong-mindedness is
obliterated. The ego cannot survive without judgment, and is
laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only ONE direction
in which it can move. The direction which the mind will take
is always automatic, because it cannot BUT be dictated by the
thought system to which the mind adheres.
Every thought system has internal consistency, and this
provides the basis for the continuity of behavior. However,
this is a matter of reliability, and not validity. Reliable
behavior is a meaningful perception, as far as ego thinking
goes. However, valid behavior is an expression which is
inherently contradictory, because validity is an END and
behavior is a MEANS. These cannot be combined logically
because, when an end has been attained, the means for its
attainment are no longer meaningful.
A hypothesis is either false or true, to be accepted or
rejected accordingly. If it is shown to be true it becomes a
fact, after which no-one attempts to evaluate it unless its
status AS fact is questioned. EVERY idea to which the ego has
accorded the status of fact is questionable, because facts are
in the realm of knowledge.
Confusing realms of discourse is a thinking error which
philosophers have recognized for centuries. Psychologists are
generally quite deficient in this respect, as are many
theologians. Data from one realm of discourse do not mean
anything in another because they can be understood only WITHIN
the thought system of which they are a part. That is why
psychologists are concentrating increasingly on the ego, in an
attempt to unify their clearly unrelated data. It need hardly
be said that an attempt to relate the unrelated CANNOT
succeed.
The more recent ecological emphases are but another
ingenious way of trying to impose order on chaos. We have
already credited the ego with considerable ingenuity, though
not with creativeness. It should, however, be remembered that
inventiveness is really wasted effort, even in its most
ingenious forms. We do not have to explain ANYTHING. This is
why we need not trouble ourselves with inventiveness. The
highly specific nature of invention is not worthy of the
abstract creativity of Gods creations.
Love without Conflict
You have never understood what the Kingdom of Heaven is
within you means. The reason you have not understood it is
because it is NOT understandable to the ego, which interprets
it as if something outside is inside, and this does not mean
anything. The word within is unnecessary. The Kingdom of
Heaven IS you. What else BUT you did the Creator create, and
what else BUT you is His Kingdom? This is the whole message of
the Atonement, a message, which, in its totality, transcends
the sum of its parts. Christmas is not a time; it is a state
of mind. The Christ Mind wills from the Soul, NOT from the
ego, and the Christ Mind IS yours.
You, too, have a kingdom which your Soul created. It has
NOT ceased to create because your ego has set you on the road
of perception. Your Souls creations are no more fatherless
than YOU are. Your ego and your Soul will never be co-
creators, but your Soul and YOUR Creator will ALWAYS be. Be
confident that your creations are as safe as you are.
The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected
and the ego will NOT prevail against it, Amen.
That was written in that form because it is a good thing to
use as a kind of a prayer in moments of temptation. It is a
Declaration of Independence. You will find it very helpful if
you understand it fully.
In its characteristically upside-down way, the ego has
taken the impulses from the superconscious and perceives them
as if they arise in the unconscious. The ego judges what is to
be accepted, and the impulses from the superconscious are
unacceptable to it because they clearly point to the
nonexistence of the ego itself. The ego therefore experiences
threat, and not only censors but also reinterprets the data.
However, as Freud correctly pointed out, what you have
repressed can retain a very active life BEYOND your awareness.
Repression thus operates to conceal not only the baser
impulses but also the most lofty ones from awareness because
BOTH are threatening to the ego and, being concerned primarily
with its own preservation in the face of threat, the ego
perceives them AS THE SAME. The threat-value of the lofty is
actually much greater to the ego because the pull of God
Himself can hardly be equated with the pull of human
appetites. By perceiving them AS the same, the ego attempts to
save itself from being swept away, as it would surely BE in
the presence of knowledge.
The upper level of the unconscious thus contains the Call
of God as well as the call of the body. That is why the basic
conflict between love and fear is unconscious; the ego cannot
tolerate either, and represses both by resorting to
inhibition. Society depends on inhibiting the latter, but
SALVATION depends on DISinhibiting the former. The reason you
need MY help is because you have repressed your own Guide, and
therefore need guidance. My role is to separate the true from
the false in your unconscious, so it can break through the
barriers the ego has set up, and shine into your minds.
Against our united strength the ego CANNOT prevail.
It should be apparent to you by now why the ego regards the
Soul as its enemy. The ego arose from the separation, and
its continued existence depends on YOUR continuing belief in
the separation. Having reduced the Soul impulses to the
unconscious, the ego has to offer you some sort of reward for
maintaining this belief. All it CAN offer is a sense of
temporary existence, which begins with its OWN beginning and
ends with its OWN ending. It tells you this life is YOUR
existence because it IS its own. Against this sense of
temporary existence the Soul offers you the knowledge of
permanence and unshakable BEING. No-one who has experienced
the revelation of THIS can ever fully believe in the ego
again. How can its meager offering to you prevail against the
glorious gift of God?
You who identify WITH your egos cannot believe that God
loves you. YOU do not love what you have made, and what you
made does not love YOU. Being made out of the denial of the
Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own maker. You cannot
conceive of the real relationship which exists between God and
His Souls because of the hatred you have for the self YOU have
made. You project onto your OWN idea of yourself the will to
separate, which conflicts with the love you feel for what you
made BECAUSE you made it. No human love is without this
ambivalence, and since no ego has experienced love WITHOUT
ambivalence, the concept is beyond its understanding.
Love will enter immediately into ANY mind which truly wants
it, but it MUST want it truly. This means that it wants it
WITHOUT ambivalence, and this kind of wanting is wholly
without the egos drive to get. There is a kind of
experience which is so different from anything the ego can
offer that you will never recover. The word recover is used
quite literally here, you will never be able to cover or
hide again. It is necessary to repeat here that your belief in
darkness and in hiding IS why the Light cannot enter. The
Bible gives many references to the immeasurable gifts which
are FOR you, but for which YOU must ask. This is not a
condition as the ego sets conditions. It is the glorious
condition of what you ARE.
No force except your own will is strong enough or worthy
enough to guide you. In this you are as free as God, and must
remain so forever. You can never be bound except in honor, and
that is always voluntary. Let us ask the Father in my name to
keep you mindful of His Love for you and yours for Him. He has
never failed to answer this request because it asks only for
what He has already willed. Those who call truly are ALWAYS
answered. Thou shalt have no other gods before Him because
there ARE none.
It has never really entered your mind to give up every idea
you ever had that OPPOSES knowledge. You retain thousands of
little scraps of meanness which prevent the Holy One from
entering. Light cannot penetrate through the walls you make to
block it, and it is forever unwilling to destroy what you have
made. No-one can see THROUGH a wall, but I can step around it.
Watch your minds for the scraps of meanness, or you will be
unable to ask me to do so. I can help you only as our Father
created us. I will love you and honor you and maintain
complete respect for what you have made, but I will neither
honor it nor love it unless it is true.
I will never forsake you, any more than God will, but I
MUST wait as long as you choose to forsake yourself. Because I
wait in love and not in impatience you will surely ask me
truly. I will come in response to a single unequivocal call.
Watch carefully and see what it is you are really asking for.
Be very honest with yourself about this, for we must hide
nothing from each other. If you will really try to do this,
you have taken the first step toward preparing your mind for
the Holy One to enter. We will prepare for this together, for
once He has come you will be ready to help me make other minds
ready for Him. How long will you deny Him His Kingdom?
In your own unconscious, deeply repressed by the ego, is
the declaration of your release. GOD HAS GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING.
This is the one fact that means the ego does not exist, and
which therefore makes it profoundly afraid. In the egos
language, remember, to have and to be are different,
but they are identical to the Soul. The Soul knows that you
both HAVE everything and ARE everything. Any distinction in
this respect is meaningful only when the idea of getting,
which implies a lack, has ALREADY been accepted. That is why
we made no distinction before between HAVING the Kingdom of
God and BEING the Kingdom of God.
The calm being of Gods Kingdom, which in your sane mind is
perfectly conscious, is ruthlessly banished from the part of
the mind which the ego rules. The ego is desperate because it
opposes literally invincible odds, whether you are asleep or
awake. Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to
exert to protect your ego, and how little you have been
willing to expend to protect your higher mind. Who but the
insane would undertake to believe what is not true, and then
protect this belief at the COST of truth?
The Escape from Fear
If you cannot hear the Voice of God, it is because you do
not choose to listen. The fact that you DO listen to the voice
of your ego is demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings
and your behavior. Your attitudes are obviously conflicted,
your feelings have a narrow range on the negative side but are
never purely joyous, and your behavior is either strained or
unpredictable. Yet this is what you WANT. This is what you are
fighting to keep and what you are vigilant to save. Your minds
are filled with schemes to save the face of your egos, and you
do not seek the Face of God. The glass in which the ego seeks
to see its face is dark indeed. How can it maintain the trick
of its existence except with mirrors? But where YOU look to
find yourself is up to you.
We have said that you cannot change your mind by changing
your behavior, but we have also said, and many times before,
that you CAN change your mind. When your mood tells you that
you have chosen wrongly, and this is so whenever you are not
joyous, then KNOW this need not be. In every case you have
thought wrongly about some Soul that God created, and are
perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass. Think
honestly what you have thought that God would NOT have
thought, and what you have NOT thought that God would have you
think. Search sincerely for what you have done and left undone
accordingly, and then change your minds TO THINK WITH GODS.
This may seem hard to you, but it is much easier than
trying to think AGAINST It. Your mind IS one with Gods.
Denying this and thinking otherwise has held your ego
together, but has literally split your mind. As a loving
brother, I am deeply concerned with your mind, and urge you to
follow my example as you look at yourselves and at each other,
and see in both the glorious creations of a glorious Father.
When you are sad, KNOW THAT THIS NEED NOT BE. Depression
ALWAYS arises ultimately from a sense of being deprived of
something you want and do not have. KNOW you are deprived of
nothing except by your own decisions, and then decide
otherwise.
When you are anxious, KNOW that all anxiety comes from the
capriciousness of the ego, AND NEED NOT BE. You can be as
vigilant AGAINST the egos dictates as FOR them.
When you feel guilty, KNOW that the ego has indeed violated
the laws of God, but YOU have not. Leave the sins of the ego
to me. That is what Atonement is for. But until you change
your mind about those your ego has hurt, the Atonement cannot
release you. As long as you feel guilty your ego is in command
because only the ego CAN experience guilt. THIS NEED NOT BE.
Watch your mind for the temptations of the ego, and do not
be deceived by it. KNOW it offers you nothing. When you have
given up this voluntary dispiriting, you will see how your
mind can focus and rise above fatigue and heal. Yet you are
not sufficiently vigilant AGAINST the demands of the ego to
disengage yourself. THIS NEED NOT BE.
The habit of engaging WITH God and His creations is easily
made if you actively refuse to let your minds slip away. The
problem is NOT one of concentration; it is the belief that no-
one, including yourself, is WORTH consistent effort. Side with
me CONSISTENTLY against this deception, and do not permit this
shabby belief to pull you back. The disheartened are useless
to themselves and to me, but only the ego can BE disheartened.
Have you REALLY considered how many opportunities you have to
gladden yourselves, and how many of them you have refused?
There is no limit to the power of a Son of God, but he himself
can limit the expression of his power as much as he chooses.
Your mind and mine can unite in shining your ego away, and
releasing the strength of God into everything you think and
will and do. Do not settle for anything LESS than this, and
refuse to accept anything BUT this as your goal. Watch your
minds carefully for ANY beliefs that hinder its
accomplishment, and step away from them. Judge how well you
have done this by your own feelings, for this is the one RIGHT
use of judgment. Judgment, like any other defense, can be used
to attack or protect, to hurt or to heal. The ego SHOULD be
brought to your judgment and found wanting there. Without your
own allegiance, protection and love, it cannot exist. Judge
your ego truly and you MUST withdraw allegiance, protection
and love from it.
You are mirrors of truth in which God Himself shines in
perfect Light. To the egos dark glass you need but say, I
will not look there because I KNOW these images are not
true. Then let the Holy One shine on you in peace, knowing
that this and ONLY this must be. His Mind shone on you in your
creation and brought YOUR mind into being. His Mind still
shines on you, and must shine THROUGH you. Your ego cannot
prevent HIM from shining on you, but it CAN prevent you from
letting Him shine THROUGH you.
The first coming of Christ is just another name for the
creation, for Christ is the Son of God. The SECOND coming of
Christ means nothing more than the end of the egos rule over
part of the minds of men, and the healing of the mind. I was
created like you in the first, and I have called you to join
with me in the second. If you will think over your lives you
will see how carefully the preparations were made. I am in
charge of the Second Coming, and my judgment, which is used
only for protection, cannot be wrong because it NEVER attacks.
YOURS is so distorted that you believe I was mistaken in
choosing you. I assure you this is a mistake of your egos. Do
NOT mistake it for humility.
Your egos are trying to convince you that THEY are real and
I am not, because if I am real, I am no more real that YOU
are. That knowledge, and I assure you that it IS knowledge,
means that Christ must come into your minds and heal them.
Although I am NOT attacking your egos, I AM working with your
higher mind whether you are asleep or awake, just as your ego
does with your lower mind. I am your vigilance in this because
you are too confused to recognize your own hope. I was NOT
mistaken. Your minds WILL elect to join with mine, and
together we are invincible.
You will yet come together in my name and your sanity will
be restored. I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an
eternal attribute of everything that the living God created.
Why do you believe it is harder for me to inspire the
dispirited, or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe
that there is an order of difficulty in miracles; YOU do. I
have called, and you will answer. I KNOW that miracles are
natural because they are expressions of love. My calling you
is as natural as your answer, and as inevitable.
The Ego-Body Illusion
ALL things work together for good. There are NO exceptions
except in the egos judgment. Control is a central factor in
what the ego permits into consciousness, and one to which it
devotes its maximum vigilance. This is NOT the way a balanced
mind holds together. ITS control is unconscious. The ego is
further off balance by keeping its primary MOTIVATION
unconscious, and raising control rather than sensible judgment
to predominance. The ego has every reason to do this,
according to the thought system which gave rise to it, and
which it serves. Sane judgment would inevitably judge AGAINST
the ego, and must be obliterated BY the ego in the interest of
its self-preservation.
A major source of the egos off-balanced state is its lack
of discrimination between impulses from God and from the body.
Any thought system which makes this confusion MUST be insane.
Yet this demented state is ESSENTIAL to the ego, which judges
only in terms of threat or non-threat TO ITSELF. In one sense
the egos fear of the idea of God is at least logical, since
this idea DOES dispel the ego. Fear of dissolution from the
Higher Source, then, makes SOME sense in ego-terms. But fear
of the body, with which the ego identifies so closely, is more
blatantly senseless.
The body is the egos home by its own election. It is the
only identification with which the ego feels safe because the
bodys vulnerability is its own best argument that you CANNOT
be of God. This is the belief that the ego sponsors eagerly.
Yet the ego hates the body because it does not accept the idea
that the body is GOOD enough to be its home. Here is where the
mind becomes actually dazed. Being told by the ego that it is
really part of the body and that the body is its protector,
the mind is also constantly informed that the body can NOT
protect it. This, of course, is not only accurate but
perfectly obvious.
Therefore the mind asks, Where can I go for protection?
to which the ego replies, Turn to me. The mind, and not
without cause, reminds the ego that it has itself insisted
that it IS identified with the body, so there is no point in
turning to it for protection. The ego has no real answer to
this because there IS none, but it DOES have a typical
solution. It obliterates the QUESTION from the minds
awareness. Once unconscious, the question can and does produce
uneasiness, but it cannot be answered because it cannot be
ASKED. This is the question which MUST be asked: Where am I
to go for protection? Even the insane ask it unconsciously,
but it requires real sanity to ask it consciously.
When the Bible says, Seek and ye shall find, it does
not mean that you should seek blindly and desperately for
something you would not recognize. Meaningful seeking is
consciously undertaken, consciously organized, and consciously
directed. The goal must be formulated clearly AND KEPT IN
MIND. As a teacher with some experience, let me remind you
that learning and WANTING to learn are inseparable. All
learners learn best when they believe that what they are
trying to learn is of VALUE to them. However, values in this
world are hierarchical, and not everything you may want to
learn has lasting value.
Indeed, many of the things you want to learn are chosen
BECAUSE their value will not last. The ego thinks it is an
advantage not to commit itself to ANYTHING that is eternal
because the eternal MUST come from God. Eternalness is the one
function which the ego has tried to develop, but has
systematically failed. It may surprise you to learn that had
the ego wished to do so it could have made the eternal
because, as a product of the mind, it IS endowed with the
power of its own creator. However, the DECISION to do this,
rather than the ability to do it, is what the ego cannot
tolerate. That is because the decision, from which the ability
would naturally develop, would necessarily involve accurate
perception, a state of clarity which the ego, fearful of being
judged truly, MUST avoid.
The results of this dilemma are peculiar, but no more so
than the dilemma itself. The ego has reacted
characteristically here as elsewhere because mental illness,
which is ALWAYS a form of ego involvement, is not a matter of
reliability as much as of validity. The ego compromises with
the issue of the eternal, just as it does with all issues that
touch on the real question in any way. By compromising in
connection with all TANGENTIAL questions, it hopes to hide the
real question AND KEEP IT OUT OF MIND. The egos
characteristic busyness with non-essentials is for precisely
that purpose.
Consider the alchemists age-old attempts to turn base
metal into gold. The one question which the alchemist did not
permit himself to ask was, What FOR? He could not ask this,
because it would immediately become apparent that there was no
sense in his efforts even if he succeeded. If gold became more
plentiful its value would decrease, and his own purpose would
be defeated. The ego has countenanced some strange compromises
with the idea of the eternal, making many odd attempts to
relate the concept to the UNimportant, in an effort to satisfy
the mind without jeopardizing itself. Thus, it has permitted
minds to devote themselves to the possibility of perpetual
MOTION, but NOT to perpetual thoughts.
Ideational preoccupations with problems set up to be
incapable of solution are also favorite ego devices for
impeding the strong-willed from making real learning progress.
The problems of squaring the circle and carrying pi to
infinity are good examples. A more recent ego attempt is
particularly noteworthy. The idea of preserving the BODY by
suspension, thus giving it the kind of limited immortality
which the ego can tolerate, is among its more recent appeals
to the mind. It is noticeable, however, that in all these
diversionary tactics, the one question which is NEVER asked by
those who pursue them is, What FOR?
This is the question which YOU must learn to ask, in
connection with EVERYTHING your mind wishes to undertake. What
is the purpose? Whatever it is, you cannot doubt that it will
channelize your efforts automatically. When you make a
decision of purpose, then, you have made a decision about your
future effort, a decision which will remain in effect unless
you change the DECISION.
Psychologists are in a good position to realize that the
ego is capable of making and accepting as real some very
distorted associations. The confusion of sex with aggression,
and the resulting behavior which is perceived as the same for
both, serves as an example. This is understandable to the
psychologist, and does not produce surprise. The lack of
surprise, however, is NOT a sign of understanding. It is a
symptom of the psychologists ability to accept as reasonable
a compromise which is clearly senseless; to attribute it to
the mental illness of the patient, rather than his own, and to
limit his questions about both the patient AND himself to the
trivial.
Such relatively minor confusions of the ego are not among
its more profound misassociations, although they do reflect
them. Your egos have been blocking the more important
questions which your minds SHOULD ask. You do not understand a
patient while you yourselves are willing to limit the
questions you raise about HIS mind, because you are also
accepting these limits for YOURS. This makes you unable to
heal him AND yourselves. Be always unwilling to adapt to ANY
situation in which miracle-mindedness is unthinkable. That
state in itself is enough to demonstrate that the perception
is wrong.
The Constant State
It cannot be emphasized too often that correcting
perception is merely a temporary expedient. It is necessary to
do so only because misperception is a block to knowledge,
while accurate perception is a stepping-stone TOWARDS it. The
whole value of right perception lies in the inevitable
judgment which it entails that it IS unnecessary. This removes
the block entirely. You may ask how this is possible as long
as you appear to be living in this world, and since this is a
sensible question, it has a sensible answer. You must be
careful, however, that you really understand the question.
What IS the you who are living in this world?
Immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it
ever was or ever will be, because it implies NO CHANGE AT ALL.
It is not a continuum, nor is it understood by being compared
to an opposite. Knowledge never involves comparisons. That is
its essential difference from everything else the mind can
grasp. A little knowledge is not dangerous except to the
ego. Vaguely it senses threat, and being unable to realize
that a little knowledge is a meaningless phrase since
all and a little in this context are the same, the ego
decides that since all is impossible, the fear does not lie
there. A little, however, is a scarcity concept, and THIS
the ego understands well. A little, then, is perceived as
the real threat.
The essential thing to remember is that the ego DOES NOT
RECOGNIZE the real source of its perceived threat, and if YOU
associate yourself with the ego, YOU do not perceive the whole
situation as it is. Only your allegiance to it gives the ego
ANY power over you. We have spoken of the ego as if it were a
separate thing acting on its own. This was necessary to
persuade you that you cannot dismiss it lightly, and must
realize how much of your thinking is ego-directed. We cannot
safely let it go at that, however, or you will regard
yourselves as necessarily conflicted as long as you are here,
or more properly, as long as you BELIEVE that you are here.
The ego is nothing more than a PART of your belief about
yourselves. Your other life has continued without
interruption, and has been and always will be totally
unaffected by your attempts to disassociate. The ratio of
repression and dissociation varies with the individual ego-
illusion, but dissociation is always involved, or you would
not believe that you ARE here. In learning to escape from the
illusions you have made, your great debt to each other is
something you must never forget. It is exactly the same debt
that you owe to me. Whenever you react egotistically towards
each other, you are throwing away the graciousness of your
indebtedness, and the holy perception it would produce.
The term holy can be used here because, as you learn
how much you ARE indebted to the whole Sonship, which INCLUDES
me, you come as close to knowledge as perception ever can. The
gap is then so small that knowledge can easily flow across it,
and obliterate it forever. You have very little trust in me as
yet, but it will increase as you turn more and more often to
me INSTEAD of your egos for guidance. The results will
convince you increasingly that your choice in turning to me is
the only sane one you can make. No-one who has learned from
experience that one choice brings peace and joy, while another
brings chaos and disaster, needs much conditioning.
The ego cannot withstand the conditioning process because
the process itself DEMONSTRATES that there is another way.
Conditioning by rewards has always been more effective than
conditioning by pain because pain is an ego-illusion, and can
never induce more than a temporary effect. The rewards of God,
however, are immediately recognized as eternal. Since this
recognition is made by you and NOT the ego, the recognition
ITSELF establishes that you and your ego CANNOT be identical.
You may believe that you have already accepted the difference,
but you are by no means convinced as yet. The very fact that
you are preoccupied with the idea of escaping FROM the ego
shows this.
You CANNOT escape from the ego by humbling it or
controlling it or punishing it. Remember that the ego and the
Soul DO NOT KNOW each other. The separated mind cannot
maintain the separation EXCEPT by dissociating. Having done
this, it utilizes repression against all truly natural
impulses, not because the EGO is a separate thing, but because
you want to believe that YOU are. The ego is a device for
maintaining this belief, but it is still only your willingness
to use the device that enables it to endure.
My trust in you is greater than yours in me at the moment,
but it will not always be that way. Your mission is very
simple. You have been chosen to live so as to demonstrate that
you are NOT an ego. I repeat that I do not choose Gods
channels wrongly. The Holy One shares my trust, and always
approves my Atonement decisions because my will is never out
of accord with His. I have told you before that I am in charge
of the whole Atonement. This is ONLY because I completed my
part in it as a man, and can now complete it through other
men. My chosen receiving and sending channels cannot fail
because I will lend them MY strength as long as theirs is
wanting.
I will go with you to the Holy One, and through MY
perception HE can bridge the little gap. Your gratitude to
EACH OTHER is the only gift I want. I will bring it to God for
you, knowing that to know your brother IS to know God. A
little knowledge is an all-encompassing thing. If you are
grateful to each other, you are grateful to God for what He
created. Through your gratitude you can come to know each
other, and one moment of real recognition makes all men your
brothers, because they are all of your Father. Love does not
conquer all things, but it DOES set all things right. Because
you are all the Kingdom of God, I can lead you back to your
own creations, which you do not yet know. What has been
dissociated is still there.
As you come closer to a brother you DO approach me, and as
you withdraw from him, I become distant to you. Your giant
step forward was to insist on a collaborative venture. This
does not go against the true spirit of meditation; it is
inherent in it. Meditation is a collaborative venture with
God. It CANNOT be undertaken successfully by those who
disengage themselves from the Sonship, because they are
disengaging themselves from me. God will come to you ONLY as
you will give Him to your brothers. Learn first of them, and
you will be ready to hear God as you hear them. That is
because the function of love is one.
How can you teach someone the value of something he has
deliberately thrown away? He must have thrown it away because
he did not value it. You can only show him how miserable he is
without it, and bring it near very slowly, so he can learn how
his misery lessens as he approaches it. This conditions him to
associate his misery with its absence, and to associate the
opposite of misery with its presence. It gradually becomes
desirable, as he changes his mind about its worth.
I am conditioning you to associate misery with the ego and
joy with the Soul. You have conditioned yourselves the other
way around. A far greater reward, however, will break through
any conditioning, if it is repeatedly offered whenever the old
habit pattern is broken. You are still free to choose, but can
you really WANT the rewards of the ego in the presence of the
rewards of God?
Creation and Communication
It should be clear by now that, while the content of any
particular ego-illusion does not matter, it is usually more
helpful to correct it in a specific context. Ego-illusions are
QUITE specific, although they frequently change, and although
the mind is naturally abstract. The mind nevertheless becomes
concrete voluntarily as soon as it splits. However, only PART
of it splits, so only PART of it is concrete. The concrete
part is the same part that believes in the ego because the ego
DEPENDS on the specific. It is the part that believes your
existence means you are SEPARATE.
Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without
the relationships that imply BEING. The ego is thus AGAINST
communication, except in so far as it is utilized to ESTABLISH
separateness rather than to abolish it. The communication
system of the ego is based on its own thought system, as is
everything else it dictates. Its communication is controlled
by its need to protect itself, and it will disrupt
communication when it experiences threat. While this is always
so, individual egos perceive different kinds of threat, which
are quite specific in their own judgment. For example,
although all forms of perceived demands may be classified, or
judged, by the ego as coercive communication which must be
disrupted, the response of breaking communication will
nevertheless be to a SPECIFIC person or persons.
The specificity of the egos thinking, then, results in a
spurious kind of generalization which is really not abstract
at all. It will respond in certain specific ways to ALL
stimuli which it perceives as related. In contrast, the Soul
reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and
does not respond at all to anything else. Nor does it make any
attempt to ESTABLISH what is true. It knows that what is true
is everything that God created. It is in complete and direct
communication with every aspect of creation because it is in
complete and direct communication with its Creator.
THIS communication IS the Will of God. Creation and
communication are synonymous. God created every mind by
communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as
a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will. Since only
beings of a like order can truly communicate, His creations
naturally communicate WITH Him and LIKE Him. This
communication is perfectly abstract in that its quality is
universal in application, and not subject to ANY judgment, ANY
exception, or ANY alteration. God created you BY this and FOR
this. The mind can distort its function, but it cannot endow
itself with functions it was not given. That is why the mind
cannot totally lose the ability to communicate, even though it
may refuse to utilize it on behalf of being.
Existence as well as being rests on communication.
Existence, however, is SPECIFIC in how, what, and with whom
communication is judged to be worth undertaking. Being is
completely without these distinctions. It is a state in which
the mind IS in communication with everything that is real,
including the Soul. To whatever extent you permit this state
to be curtailed, you are limiting your sense of your OWN
reality, which becomes total only by your recognizing ALL
reality in the glorious context of its REAL relationship to
you. This IS your reality. Do not desecrate it or recoil from
it. It is your real home, your real temple, and your real
Self.
God, Who encompasses ALL being, nevertheless created beings
who have everything individually, but who want to share it to
increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased
EXCEPT by sharing. That is why God Himself created you. Divine
Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what
creation MEANS. How, what and to whom are irrelevant
because real creation gives everything, since it can create
ONLY like itself. Remember that in being there is no
difference between having and being, as there is in
existence. In the state of being, the mind gives everything
always.
The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God.
This hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He
is. He has no ego with which to accept such thanks, and no
perception with which to judge such offerings. But unless you
take your part in the creation, His joy is not complete
because YOURS is incomplete. And THIS He does know. He knows
it in His own Being and Its experience of His Sons
experience. The constant GOING OUT of His Love is blocked when
His channels are closed, and He IS lonely when the minds He
created do not communicate fully with Him.
God HAS kept your kingdom for you, but He cannot share His
joy with you until you know it with your whole mind. Even
revelation is not enough, because it is communication FROM
God. It is not enough until it is SHARED. God does not need
revelation returned to Him, which would clearly be impossible,
but He DOES want revelation brought to others. This cannot be
done with the actual revelation because its content cannot be
expressed, and it is intensely personal to the mind which
receives it. It can, however, still be returned BY that mind
through its attitudes to OTHER minds which the knowledge from
the revelation brings.
God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly
helpful. This is impossible without being wholly harmless
because the two beliefs coexist. The truly helpful are
invulnerable because they are NOT protecting their egos, so
that nothing CAN hurt them. Their helpfulness IS their praise
of God, and He will return their praise of Him because they
are like Him, and they can rejoice together. God goes out to
them and through them, and there is great joy throughout the
Kingdom. Every mind that is changed adds to this joy with its
own individual willingness to share in it. The truly helpful
are Gods miracle workers, whom I direct until we are all
united in the joy of the Kingdom. I will direct you to
wherever you can be truly helpful, and to whoever can follow
my guidance through you.
True Rehabilitation
Every mind which is split needs rehabilitation. The medical
orientation to rehabilitation emphasizes the body, while the
vocational orientation stresses the ego. The team approach
generally leads more to confusion than to anything else
because it is too often misused as a way of exerting the egos
domination over other egos, rather than as a real experiment
in the cooperation of minds. Rehabilitation as a movement is
an improvement over the overt neglect of those in need of
help, but it is often little more than a painful attempt on
the part of the halt to lead the blind.
The ego is likely to fear broken bodies because it cannot
tolerate them. The ego cannot tolerate ego weakness either
without ambivalence because it is afraid of its own weakness
as well as the weakness of its chosen home. When it is
threatened, the ego blocks your natural impulse to help,
placing you under the strain of divided will. You may then be
tempted to withdraw to allow your ego to recover and to gain
enough strength to be helpful again on a basis limited enough
NOT to threaten your ego, but too limited to give YOU joy.
Those with broken bodies are often looked down on by the ego
because of its belief that nothing but a perfect body is
worthy as its OWN temple.
A mind that recoils from a hurt body is in great need of
rehabilitation itself. ALL symptoms of hurt need true
helpfulness, and whenever they are met with this, the mind
that so meets them heals ITSELF. Rehabilitation is an attitude
of praising God as He Himself knows praise. He offers praise
to you, and you must offer it to others. The chief handicaps
of the clinicians lie in their attitudes to those whom their
egos perceive as weakened and damaged. BY these evaluations,
they have weakened and damaged their own helpfulness, and have
thus set their own rehabilitation back. Rehabilitation is NOT
concerned either with the egos fight for control, or its need
to avoid and withdraw. You can do much on behalf of your own
rehabilitation AND that of others if, in a situation calling
for healing, you think of it this way:
I am here ONLY to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Christ, Who sent me.
I do NOT have to worry about what to say or what to
do
because He Who sent me will direct me.
I am content to be wherever He wishes,
knowing He goes there with me.
I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal.
CHAPTER 5
HEALING AND WHOLENESS
To heal is to make happy. I have told you before to think
how many opportunities you have to gladden yourselves, and how
many you have refused. This is exactly the same as telling you
that you have refused to heal yourselves. The light that
belongs to you is the light of joy. Radiance is not associated
with sorrow. Depression is often contagious, but although it
may affect those who come in contact with it, they do not
yield to the influence whole-heartedly. But joy calls forth an
integrated willingness to share in it, and thus promotes the
minds natural impulse TO RESPOND AS ONE.
Those who attempt to heal without being wholly joyous
themselves call forth different kinds of responses at the same
time, and thus deprive others of the joy of responding whole-
heartedly. To be whole-hearted, you MUST be happy. If fear and
love cannot coexist, and if it is impossible to be wholly
fearful and remain alive, then the only possible whole state
IS that of love. There is no difference between love and joy.
Therefore, the only possible whole state is the wholly joyous.
To heal or to make joyous is therefore the same as to
integrate and to MAKE ONE. That is why it makes no difference
to what part or by what part of the Sonship the healing is
done. EVERY part benefits, and benefits equally.
YOU are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of
your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in
return, out of gratitude. You do not have to know them
individually, or they you. The light is so strong that it
radiates throughout the Sonship, and returns thanks to the
Father for radiating His joy upon it. Only Gods holy children
are worthy to be channels of His beautiful joy, because only
they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it. It is
impossible for a Child of God to love his neighbor EXCEPT as
himself. That is why the healers prayer is:
Let me know this brother as I know myself.
Healing as Joining
Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive
their oneness and become glad. This gladness calls to every
part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and lets God Himself
go out into them and through them. Only the healed mind can
experience revelation with lasting effect because revelation
is an experience of pure joy. If you do not choose to be
wholly joyous, your mind cannot HAVE what it does not choose
to BE. Remember that the Soul knows no difference between
being and having. The higher mind thinks according to
the laws which the Soul obeys, and therefore honors only the
laws of God. To Him, getting is meaningless and giving is all.
Having everything, the Soul HOLDS everything BY giving it, and
thus creates as the Father created.
If you think about it, you will see that, while this kind
of thinking is totally alien to having THINGS, even to the
lower mind it is quite comprehensible in connection with
IDEAS. If you share a physical possession, you DO divide its
ownership. If you share an idea, however, you do NOT lessen
it. ALL of it is still yours, although all of it has been
given away. Further, if the person to whom you give it accepts
it as HIS, he reinforces it in YOUR mind, and thus INCREASES
it. If you can accept the concept that the world IS one of
ideas, the whole belief in the false association which the ego
makes between giving and LOSING is gone.
Let us start our process of re-awakening with just a few
simple concepts:
Thoughts INCREASE by being given away.
The more who believe in them, the STRONGER they
become.
EVERYTHING is an idea.
How, then, is it possible that giving and losing CAN
be meaningfully associated?
This is the invitation to the Holy Spirit. I told you that
I could reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you, but I
can bring Him to you ONLY at your own invitation. The Holy
Spirit is nothing more than your own right mind. He was also
mine. The Bible says, May the mind be in you that was also
in Christ Jesus, and uses this as a BLESSING. It is the
blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as
I thought, joining with me in Christ-thinking.
The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which
is symbolic. He is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the
Comforter, and the Guide. He is also described as something
separate, apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself
said, If I go I will send you another comforter, and He will
abide with you. The Holy Spirit is a difficult concept to
grasp precisely because it IS symbolic, and therefore open to
many different interpretations. As a man and as one of Gods
creations, my right thinking, which came from the Universal
Inspiration which IS the Holy Spirit, taught me first and
foremost that this Inspiration is for all. I could not have It
myself WITHOUT knowing this.
The word know is proper in this context, because the
Holy Inspiration is so close to knowledge that It calls it
forth; or better, allows it to come. We have spoken before of
the higher, or the true perception, which is so close to
truth that God Himself can flow across the little gap.
Knowledge is always ready to flow everywhere, but it cannot
oppose. Therefore, you can obstruct it, although you can never
lose it. The Holy Spirit is the Christ Mind Which senses the
knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with
the separation as a protection, inspiring the beginning of the
Atonement at the same time. Before that, there was no need for
healing, and no-one was comfortless.
The Mind of the Atonement
God honored even the miscreations of His Children because
they had made them, but He also blessed them with a way of
thinking that could raise their perceptions until they became
so lofty that they could reach almost back to Him. The Holy
Spirit is the Mind of the Atonement. It represents a state of
mind that comes close enough to One-Mindedness that transfer
to it is at last possible. Transfer depends on common elements
in the old learning and the new situation to which it is
transferred. Perception is not knowledge, but it can be
transferred TO knowledge, or CROSS OVER into it. It might even
be more helpful here to use the literal meaning of carried
over, since the last step is taken by God.
The Holy Spirit, the shared Inspiration of all the Sonship,
induces a kind of perception in which many elements are like
those in the Kingdom of Heaven itself.
First, its universality is perfectly clear, and no-one who
receives it could ever believe for one instant that sharing it
involves anything BUT gain.
Second, it is incapable of attack, and is therefore truly
open. This means that, although it does not engender
knowledge, it does not OBSTRUCT it in any way. There is a
point at which sufficient quantitative changes produce real
qualitative differences. The next point requires real
understanding because it is the point at which the shift
occurs;
Finally, it points the way BEYOND the healing which it
brings, and leads the mind beyond its own integration into the
paths of creation.
Healing is not creating; it is reparation. The Holy Spirit
promotes healing by looking BEYOND it, to what the Children of
God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have
BEEN healed. This alteration of the time sequence should be
quite familiar because it is very similar to the shift in time
perception which the miracle introduces. The Holy Spirit is
the MOTIVATION for miracle-mindedness; the will to HEAL the
separation by letting it go. This will is IN you because God
placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep,
you cannot obliterate it.
God Himself keeps this will alive by transmitting it from
His Mind to yours as long as there is time. It is partly His
and partly yours. The miracle itself is just this fusion or
union of will between Father and Son. The Holy Spirit is the
spirit of joy. He is the Call to return with which God blessed
the minds of His separated Sons. This is the vocation of the
mind. The mind had no calling until the separation because,
before that, it had only BEING, and would not have understood
the call to right thinking. The Holy Spirit was Gods Answer
to the separation, the means by which the Atonement could
repair until the whole mind returned to creating.
The Atonement and the separation began at the same time.
When man made the ego, God placed in him the call to joy. This
call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound.
That is why you can choose to listen to two voices within you.
One you made yourself, and that one is not of God. But the
other is given you BY God, Who asks you only to listen to it.
The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. His is the
Voice that calls you back to where you were before, and will
be again.
The Voice for God
It is possible, even in this world, to hear ONLY that voice
and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn.
It is the final lesson that I learned, and Gods Sons are as
equal as learners as they are as Souls. The Voice of the Holy
Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the
integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the
whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but
what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with
the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations, and keep them in
the light of joy.
You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief
in darkness enter your minds, and so you need a new light. The
Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let banish the idea
of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls
away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own.
Before the separation you did not need guidance. You KNEW as
you will know again, but as you do NOT know now. God does not
guide because he can share only perfect knowledge. Guidance is
evaluative because it implies that there is a RIGHT way and
also a WRONG way, one to be chosen and the other to be
avoided. By choosing one, you give up the other.
This IS a conflict state. It MEANS that knowledge has been
lost because knowledge is sure. God is not in you in a literal
sense; YOU are part of HIM. When you chose to leave Him, He
gave you a Voice to speak FOR Him because He could no longer
share His knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct
communication was broken because you had made another voice
through another will. The Holy Spirit calls you both to
remember and to forget. You have chosen to be in a state of
opposition, in which opposites are possible. As a result,
there ARE choices which you must make. In the holy state, the
will is free in the sense that its CREATIVE power is
unlimited, but choice itself is meaningless.
Freedom to choose is the same POWER as freedom to create,
but its APPLICATION is different. Choosing MEANS divided will.
The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. This way is in you
because there is also ANOTHER way. God did not leave His
Children comfortless, even though they chose to leave Him. The
voice they put in their minds was NOT the voice of His Will,
for which the Holy Spirit speaks. The call to return is
stronger than the call to depart, but it speaks in a different
way.
The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command because it is
incapable of arrogance. It does not demand because it does not
seek control. It does not overcome because it does not attack.
It merely REMINDS. It is compelling only because of what it
reminds you OF. It brings to your mind the OTHER way,
remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you have made
for yourselves. The Voice for God is always quiet because it
speaks of peace. Yet peace is stronger than war because it
heals. War is division, not increase. No-one gains from
strife.
What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and
lose his own Soul? That means that if he listens to the
wrong voice, he has LOST SIGHT of his Soul. He CANNOT lose it,
but he CAN not know it. It is therefore LOST TO HIM until he
chooses right. The Holy Spirit is your Guide in choosing. He
is the part of your mind which ALWAYS speaks for the right
choice because He speaks for God. He is your remaining
communication with God, which you can interrupt but cannot
destroy.
The Holy Spirit is the way in which Gods Will can be done
on earth as it is in Heaven. Both Heaven and earth are in YOU
because the call of both is in your will, and therefore in
your mind. The Voice for God comes from your own altars to
Him. These altars are not things; they are DEVOTIONS. Yet you
have other devotions now. Your divided devotion has given you
the two voices, and you must choose at which altar you will to
serve. The call you answer now IS an evaluation because it is
a DECISION. The decision itself is very simple. It is made on
the basis of which call is worth more to you.
My mind will always be like yours because we were created
as equals. It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in
Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the
same decision FOR YOURSELF. The will for this decision is the
will to SHARE it because the decision itself IS the decision
to share. It is MADE BY GIVING, and is therefore the ONE act
of mind that resembles true creation. You understand the role
of models in the learning process, and the importance of
the models you value and choose to follow in determining what
you will to learn. I am your model for decision. By deciding
for God I showed you that this decision CAN be made, and that
YOU can make it.
I promised you that the mind that made the decision for me
is also in YOU, and that you can let it change you just as it
changed me. This mind is unequivocal because it hears only ONE
voice and answers in only ONE way. You are the light of the
world with me. Rest does not come from sleeping but from
waking. The Holy Spirit is the call to awake and be glad. The
world is very tired because it IS the idea of weariness. Our
task is the joyous one of waking it to the Call for God.
Everyone will answer the Call of the Holy Spirit, or the
Sonship cannot be as one. What better vocation could there be
for any part of the Kingdom than to restore it to the perfect
integration that can make it whole?
Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you, and
teach your brothers to listen as I am teaching you. When you
are tempted by the wrong voice, call on me to remind you how
to heal by sharing my decision AND MAKING IT STRONGER. As we
share this goal we increase its power to attract the whole
Sonship, and to bring it back into the Oneness in which it was
created. Remember that yolk (sic) means join together
and burden means message. Let us reconsider the Biblical
statement my yolk (sic) is easy and my burden light in this
way; let us join together, for my message is Light.
I came into your minds because you had grown vaguely aware
of the fact that there IS another way, or another Voice.
Having given this invitation to the Holy Spirit, I could come
to provide the model for HOW TO THINK. Psychology has become
the study of BEHAVIOR, but no-one denies the basic law that
behavior is a response to MOTIVATION, and motivation is will.
I have enjoined you to behave as I behaved, but we must
respond to the same mind to do this. This mind is the Holy
Spirit, Whose will is for God always. He teaches you how to
keep me as the model for your thought, and to behave like me
as a result.
The power of our joint motivation is beyond belief but NOT
beyond accomplishment. What we can accomplish together HAS no
limits because the Call for God IS the call to the unlimited.
Child of God, my message is for YOU, to hear and give away as
you answer the Holy Spirit within you.
The Guide to Salvation
The way to learn to know your brother is by perceiving the
Holy Spirit in him. We have already said that the Holy Spirit
is the bridge or thought-transfer of perception to knowledge,
so we can use the terms as if they were related because, in
His mind, they ARE. The relationship MUST be in His mind
because, unless it were, the separation between the two ways
of thinking would not be open to healing. He is part of the
Holy Trinity because His mind is partly yours and also partly
Gods. This needs clarification, not in statement since we
have said it before, but in EXPERIENCE.
The Holy Spirit is the IDEA of healing. Being thought, the
idea GAINS AS IT IS SHARED. Being the Call FOR God, it is also
the idea OF God. Since YOU are part of God, it is also the
idea of YOURSELF, as well as of all the parts of God. The idea
of the Holy Spirit shares the property of other ideas because
it follows the laws of the Universe of which it is a part.
Therefore, it is strengthened by being given away. It
increases in YOU as you give it to your brothers. Since
thoughts do not have to be conscious to exist, your brother
does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit, either in
himself or in you, for this miracle to occur.
Your brother may have dissociated the Call for God, just as
YOU have. The dissociation is healed in BOTH of you as YOU
become aware of the Call for God in him, and thus acknowledge
its BEING. There are two ways of seeing your brother which are
diametrically opposed to each other. They must both be in YOUR
mind because YOU are the perceiver. They must also be in HIS
because you are perceiving HIM. See him through the Holy
Spirit in HIS mind, and you will recognize Him in YOURS. What
you acknowledge in your brother you ARE acknowledging in
yourself, and what you share you strengthen.
The Voice of the Holy Spirit IS weak in you. That is why
you MUST share it. It must be INCREASED in strength before YOU
can hear it. It is impossible to hear it in yourself while it
is so weak in your OWN mind. It is not weak in itself, but it
IS limited by your unwillingness to hear it. Will itself is an
idea, and is therefore strengthened by being shared. If you
make the mistake of looking for the Holy Spirit in yourself
alone, your meditations will frighten you because, by ADOPTING
the egos viewpoint, you are undertaking an ego-alien journey
with the ego as GUIDE. This is BOUND to produce fear.
Delay is of the ego because time is ITS concept. Delay is
obviously a time idea. Both time and delay are meaningless in
eternity. We have said before that the Holy Spirit is Gods
ANSWER to the ego. Everything of which the Holy Spirit reminds
you is in direct opposition to the egos notions because true
and false perceptions are THEMSELVES opposed. The Holy Spirit
has the task of UNDOING what the ego has made. He undoes it in
the same realm of discourse in which the ego itself operates,
or the mind would be unable to understand the change.
We have repeatedly emphasized that one level of the mind is
not understandable to another. So it is with the ego and the
Soul; with time and eternity. Eternity is an idea of God, so
the Soul understands it perfectly. Time is a belief of the
ego, so the lower mind, which IS the egos domain, accepts it
without question. The only aspect of time which is really
eternal is NOW. That is what we really mean when we say that
now is the only time. The literal nature of this statement
does not mean anything to the ego, which interprets it, at
best, to mean dont worry about the future. That is not
what it really means at all.
The Holy Spirit is the Mediator between the interpretations
of the ego and the knowledge of the Soul. His ability to deal
with symbols enables Him to work AGAINST the egos beliefs in
its own language. His equal ability to look BEYOND symbols
into eternity also enables Him to understand the laws of God,
for which He speaks. He can thus perform the function of
REINTERPRETING what the ego makes, NOT by destruction, but by
UNDERSTANDING. Understanding is light, and light leads to
knowledge. The Holy Spirit is IN light because He is in you
who ARE light, but you yourselves do not know this. It is
therefore the task of the Holy Spirit to re-interpret YOU on
behalf of God.
You cannot understand yourselves alone. This is because you
have no meaning APART from your rightful place in the Sonship,
and the rightful place of the Sonship in God. This is your
life, your eternity and YOURSELF. It is of this that the Holy
Spirit reminds you. It is this that the Holy Spirit SEES. This
vision invariably frightens the ego because it is so calm.
Peace is the egos greatest enemy because, according to ITS
interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its
survival. The ego becomes strong in strife. If you believe
there IS strife, you will react viciously because the idea of
danger has entered your mind. The idea itself IS an appeal to
the ego.
The Holy Spirit is as vigilant as the ego to the call of
danger, opposing it with His strength just as the ego WELCOMES
it with all its might. The Holy Spirit counters this welcome
by welcoming peace. Peace and eternity are as closely related
as are time and war. Perception as well as knowledge derives
meaning from relationships. Those which you accept are the
foundations of your beliefs. The separation is merely another
term for a split mind. It was not an act, but a THOUGHT.
Therefore, the idea of separation can be given away, just as
the idea of unity can. Either way, the idea will be
strengthened IN THE MIND OF THE GIVER.
The ego is the symbol of separation, just as the Holy
Spirit is the symbol of peace. What you perceive in others you
are strengthening in YOURSELF. You let your mind misperceive,
but the Holy Spirit lets your mind reinterpret its own
misperceptions. The Holy Spirit is the perfect teacher. He
uses only what your minds ALREADY understand to teach you that
you do NOT understand it. The Holy Spirit can deal with an
unwilling learner without going counter to his will because
part of his will IS still for God. Despite the egos attempts
to conceal this part it is still much stronger than the ego,
even though the ego does not recognize it. The Holy Spirit
recognizes it perfectly because it is His own dwelling place,
or the place in the mind where He is at home.
YOU are at home there, too, because it is a place of peace
and peace is of God. You who are part of God are not at home
EXCEPT in His peace. If peace is eternal, you are at home only
in eternity. The ego made the world as IT perceives it, but
the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETOR of what the ego made, sees
it only as a teaching device for bringing you home. The Holy
Spirit must perceive time and re-interpret it into the
timeless. The mind must be led into eternity THROUGH time
because, having made time, it is capable of perceiving its
opposite.
The Holy Spirit must work through opposites because He must
work with and for a mind that IS in opposition. Correct and
learn, and be open to learning. You have NOT made truth, but
truth can still set you free. Look as the Holy Spirit looks
and understand as He understands. His understanding looks back
to God in remembrance of me. He is in Holy Communion always,
and He is part of YOU. He is your Guide to salvation because
He holds the remembrance of things past and to come. He holds
this gladness gently in your minds, asking only that you
INCREASE it in His name by sharing it to increase His joy in
YOU.
Therapy and Teaching
You must have noticed how often I have used your own ideas
to help you. You have learned to be a loving, wise and very
understanding therapist EXCEPT FOR YOURSELF. That exception
has given you more than perception for others because of what
you saw in THEM, but LESS than knowledge of your real
relationships TO them because you did not accept them as PART
of you. Understanding IS beyond perception because it
introduces meaning. It is, however, below knowledge, even
though it can grow TOWARDS it. It is possible, with great
effort, to understand someone else to some extent and to be
quite helpful to him, but the effort is misdirected. The
misdirection is quite apparent; it is directed away from YOU.
This does not mean that it is LOST to you, but it DOES mean
that you are not aware of it. I have saved all your kindnesses
and every loving thought you have had. I have purified them of
the errors which hid their light, and have kept them for you
in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and
beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within YOU, and
we know what God creates is eternal. What fear has hidden
still is part of you.
Joining the Atonement, which I have repeatedly asked you to
do, is always a way OUT of fear. This does not mean that you
can safely fail to acknowledge anything that is true. However,
the Holy Spirit will not fail to help you re-interpret
everything that you perceive as fearful, and teach you that
ONLY what is loving IS true. Truth is beyond your ability to
destroy, but entirely within your grasp. It belongs to you
because you created it. It is yours because it is a part of
you, just as you are part of God because He created YOU.
The Atonement is the GUARANTEE of the safety of the
Kingdom. Nothing good is lost because it comes from the Holy
Spirit, the Voice for creation. Nothing that is NOT good was
ever created. And therefore CANNOT be protected. What the ego
makes it KEEPS TO ITSELF, and so it is without strength. Its
unshared existence does not die; it was merely never born.
Real birth is not a beginning; it is a CONTINUING. Everything
that can continue has BEEN born, but it can INCREASE as you
are willing to return the part of your mind that needs healing
to the higher part, and thus render your creating undivided.
As a therapist, you yourself tell your patients that the
real difference between neurotic and healthy guilt feelings
is that neurotic guilt feelings DO NOT HELP ANYONE. This
distinction is wise though incomplete. Let us make the
distinction a little sharper now. Neurotic guilt feelings are
a device of the ego for atoning without sharing, and for
asking pardon without change. The ego NEVER calls for REAL
Atonement, and cannot tolerate forgiveness, which IS change.
Your concept of healthy guilt feelings has merit, but
without the concept of the Atonement it lacks the healing
potential it holds. You made the distinction in terms of
feelings which led to a decision not to REPEAT the error,
which is only PART of healing. Your concept lacked the idea of
UNDOING it. What you were really advocating, then, was
adopting a policy of sharing without a real FOUNDATION. I have
come to GIVE you the foundation, so your own thoughts can make
you REALLY free. You have carried the burden of the ideas you
did not share and which were therefore too weak to increase,
but you did not recognize how to undo their existence BECAUSE
you had made them.
You CANNOT cancel out your past errors alone. They will NOT
disappear from your mind without remedy. The remedy is NOT of
your making, any more than YOU are. The Atonement cannot be
understood except as a PURE ACT OF SHARING. That is what is
meant when we said it is possible, even in this world, to
listen to ONE voice. If you are part of God and the Sonship is
one, you CANNOT be limited to the self the ego sees. Every
loving thought held in ANY part of the Sonship belongs to
every part. It is shared BECAUSE it is loving. Sharing is
Gods way of creating, and also YOURS. Your ego can keep you
in exile FROM the Kingdom, but in the Kingdom itself it has no
power.
You have become willing to receive my messages as I give
them without interference by the ego, so we can clarify an
earlier point. We said that you will one day teach as much as
you learn, and that will keep you in balance. The time is now
because you have LET it be now. You cannot learn EXCEPT by
teaching. I heard one voice because I had learned that
learning is attained BY teaching. I understood that I COULD
NOT ATONE FOR MYSELF ALONE. Listening to one voice means the
will to SHARE the voice in order to hear it yourself. The mind
that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to every mind
created by God because Gods Wholeness IS the wholeness of His
Son.
Turning the other cheek does NOT mean that you should
submit to violence without protest. It means that you cannot
BE hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything EXCEPT
your wholeness. Show him that he CANNOT hurt you and hold
nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. Teaching
is done in many ways, by formal means, by guidance, and
above all BY EXAMPLE. Teaching is therapy because it means the
SHARING of ideas, and the awareness that to share them is to
STRENGTHEN them. The union of the Sonship IS its protection.
The ego cannot prevail against the Kingdom BECAUSE it is
united, and the ego fades away and is undone in the presence
of the attraction of the parts of the Sonship which hear the
call of the Holy Spirit to be as One.
I cannot forget my need to teach what I have learned, which
arose in me BECAUSE I learned it. I call upon you to teach
what you have learned because, by so doing, YOU can depend on
it. Make it dependable in my name because my name is the name
of Gods Son. What I learned I give you freely, and the mind
which was in me rejoices as YOU choose to hear it. The Holy
Spirit atones in all of us by UNDOING, and thus lifts the
burden you have placed in your mind. By following Him, He
leads you back to God where you belong, and how can you find
this way except by taking your brother with you?
My part in the Atonement is not complete until YOU join it
and give it away. As you teach, so shall you learn. I will
never leave you or forsake you, because to forsake you would
be to forsake myself and God who created me. You will forsake
yourselves and God if you forsake ANY of your brothers. You
are more than your brothers keeper. In fact, you do not WANT
to keep him. You must learn to see him as he is, and KNOW that
he belongs to God as you do. How could you treat your brother
better than by rendering unto God the things which are Gods?
Ideas do not LEAVE the mind which thought them to have a
separate being, nor do separate thoughts conflict with one
another in space because they do not occupy space at all.
However, human ideas CAN conflict in content because they
occur at different levels, and include opposite thoughts at
the SAME level. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SHARE OPPOSING THOUGHTS.
The Holy Spirit does not LET you forsake your brothers.
Therefore, you can really share ONLY the parts of your
thoughts which are of Him, and which He also keeps for YOU.
And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. All the rest remains
with you until He has re-interpreted them in the light of the
Kingdom, making them, too, worthy of being shared. When they
have been sufficiently purified He lets you give them away.
The will to share them IS their purification.
The Atonement gives you the power of a healed mind, but the
power to create is of God. Therefore, those who have been
forgiven must devote themselves first to healing because,
having RECEIVED the idea of healing, they must GIVE it to HOLD
it. The full power of creation cannot be expressed as long as
ANY of Gods ideas withhold it from the Kingdom. The joint
will of ALL the Sonship is the only creator that can create
like the Father, because only the complete can think
completely, and the thinking of God lacks nothing. Everything
you think that is not through the Holy Spirit IS lacking.
How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past, except
its beauty, is gone, and nothing is left except a blessing.
You can indeed depart in peace because I have loved you as I
loved myself. You go WITH my blessing and FOR my blessing.
Hold it and share it, that it may always be ours. I place the
peace of God in your heart and in your hands, to hold and
share. The heart is pure to hold it and the hands are strong
to give it. We cannot lose. My judgment is as strong as the
wisdom of God, in Whose Heart and Hands we have our being. His
quiet children are His blessed Sons. The Thoughts of God are
with you.
The Two Decisions
Perhaps some of our concepts will become clearer and more
personally meaningful if the egos use of guilt is clarified.
The ego has a purpose, just as the Holy Spirit has. The egos
purpose is FEAR, because ONLY the fearful can BE egotistic.
The egos logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit
because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side
with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But again, let us remember
that both are in YOU. In Heaven there is no guilt because the
Kingdom is attained through the Atonement, which releases you
to create. The word create is appropriate here because,
once what YOU have made is undone by the Holy Spirit, the
blessed residue is restored, and therefore continues in
creation.
What is truly blessed is incapable of giving rise to guilt,
and MUST give rise to joy. This makes it invulnerable to the
ego because its peace is unassailable. It is invulnerable to
disruption BECAUSE it is whole. Guilt is ALWAYS disruptive.
Anything that engenders fear is divisive because it obeys the
law of division. If the ego is the symbol of the separation,
it is also the symbol of guilt. Guilt is more than merely not
of God. It is the symbol of the ATTACK on God. This is a
totally meaningless concept EXCEPT to the ego, but do not
underestimate the power of the egos belief in it. This is the
belief from which ALL guilt really stems.
The ego IS the part of the mind which believes in division.
How can part of God detach itself WITHOUT believing it is
attacking Him? We spoke before of the authority problem as
involving the concept of USURPING Gods power. The ego
believes that this is what YOU did because it believes it IS
you. It follows, then, that if you identify WITH the ego, you
MUST perceive yourself as guilty. Whenever you respond to your
ego you WILL experience guilt, and you WILL fear punishment.
The ego is quite literally a fearful thought.
However ridiculous the idea of attacking God may be to the
SANE mind, never forget that the ego is NOT sane. It
represents a delusional system, and it speaks FOR it.
Listening to the egos voice MEANS that you believe it is
possible to attack God. You believe that a part of Him has
been torn away by YOU. The classic picture of fear of
retaliation FROM WITHOUT then follows because the severity of
the guilt is so acute that it MUST be projected. Although
Freud was wrong about the basic conflict itself, he was very
accurate in describing its effects.
Whatever you accept INTO your mind has reality for you. It
is, however, only your ACCEPTANCE of it that makes it real. If
you enthrone the ego in it, the fact that you have accepted it
or allowed it to enter MAKES it your reality. This is because
the mind, as God created it, IS capable of creating reality.
We said before that you must learn to think WITH God. To think
with Him is to think LIKE Him. This engenders joy, not guilt,
because it is natural. Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking
is UNnatural. Perverted thinking will ALWAYS be attended with
guilt because it IS the belief in sin.
The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love. It
perceives sin as a POSITIVE ACT OF ASSAULT. This is an
interpretation which is necessary to the egos survival
because, as soon as you regard sin as a LACK, you will
automatically attempt to remedy the situation. And you will
succeed. The ego regards this as doom, but YOU must learn to
regard it as freedom. The guiltless mind CANNOT suffer. Being
sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane
mind cannot conceive of illness because it cannot conceive of
attacking anyone or anything.
We said before that illness is a form of magic. It might be
better to say that it is a form of magical solution. The ego
believes that by punishing ITSELF it will mitigate the
punishment of God. Yet even in this it is arrogant. It
attributes to God a punishing intent, and then takes over this
intent as its OWN prerogative. It tries to usurp ALL the
functions of God as it perceives them because it recognizes
that only total allegiance can be trusted.
The ego cannot OPPOSE the laws of God any more than YOU
can, but it can INTERPRET them according to what it wants,
just as YOU can. That is why the question, What DO you
want? must be answered. You ARE answering it every minute
and every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment
which is anything BUT ineffectual. Its effects will follow
automatically UNTIL THE DECISION IS CHANGED. This is repeated
here because you have not learned it. But again, your decision
can be UNMADE as well as made. Remember, though, that the
ALTERNATIVES are unalterable.
The Holy Spirit, like the ego, is a decision. Together they
constitute all the alternatives which the mind can accept and
obey. The ego and the Holy Spirit are the ONLY choices open to
you. God created one, and so you CANNOT eradicate it. YOU made
the other, and so you CAN. ONLY what God creates is
irreversible and unchangeable. What YOU have made can always
be changed because, when you do not think LIKE God, you are
not really thinking at all. Delusional ideas are not real
thoughts, although you CAN believe in them. But you are wrong.
The function of thought comes FROM God and is IN God. As part
of His Thought, you cannot think APART from Him.
Irrational thought is a thought DISORDER. God Himself
orders your thought because your thought was created BY Him.
Guilt feelings are always a sign that you do not know this.
They also show that you believe you can think apart from God
AND WANT TO. Every thought disorder is attended by guilt at
its inception and maintained by guilt in its continuance.
Guilt is inescapable for those who believe they order their
own thought and must therefore obey its orders. This makes
them feel RESPONSIBLE for their mind errors, without
recognizing that, by ACCEPTING this responsibility, they are
really reacting irresponsibly. If the SOLE responsibility of
the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself, and
I assure you that it is, then the responsibility for what is
atoned FOR cannot BE yours.
The dilemma cannot be resolved except by accepting the
solution of UNDOING. You WOULD be responsible for the effects
of all your wrong thinking if it could not be undone. The
purpose of the Atonement is to save the past in purified form
only. If you accept the remedy for a thought disorder, and a
remedy whose efficacy is beyond doubt, how can its symptoms
remain? You have reason to question the validity of symptom
cure, but NO-ONE believes that the symptoms can remain if the
underlying CAUSE is removed.
Time and Eternity
The CONTINUING will to remain separated is the only
possible reason for continuing guilt feelings. We have said
this before, but we did not emphasize the destructive results
of this decision at that time. ANY decision of the mind will
affect both behavior AND experience. What you will, you
EXPECT. This is not delusional. Your mind DOES create your
future, and it can turn it back to full creation at any
minute, IF IT ACCEPTS THE ATONEMENT FIRST. It will also turn
back to full creation the instant it has done so. Having given
up its thought disorder, the proper ordering of thought
becomes quite apparent.
God in His knowledge is not waiting, but His Kingdom is
bereft while YOU wait. All the Sons of God are waiting for
your return, just as YOU are waiting for THEIRS. Delay does
not matter in eternity, but it IS tragic in time. You have
elected to be in time rather than eternity, and have therefore
changed your belief in your status. Yet your election is both
free and alterable. You do not belong in time. Your place is
ONLY in eternity, where God Himself placed you forever.
Guilt feelings are the PRESERVERS of time. They induce
fears of future retaliation or abandonment, and thus ensure
that the future will remain like the past. This is the egos
continuity, and gives it a false sense of security through the
belief that you cannot escape from it. But you can and MUST.
God offers you the continuity of eternity in exchange. When
you choose to make this exchange, you will simultaneously
exchange guilt for joy, viciousness for love, and pain for
peace. My role is only to unchain your will and make it free.
Your ego cannot accept this freedom, and will oppose your free
decision at every possible moment and in every possible way.
And as its maker you recognize what it can do because you GAVE
it the power to do it.
The mind does indeed know its power, because the mind does
indeed know God. Remember the Kingdom always, and remember
that you who are part of the Kingdom CANNOT be lost. The mind
that was in me IS in you, for God creates with perfect
fairness. Let the Holy Spirit remind you always of His
fairness, and let me teach you how to share it with your
brothers. How else can the chance to claim it for yourself be
given you? What you do not understand is that the two voices
speak for different interpretations of the same thing
simultaneously, or almost simultaneously, for the ego always
speaks first. Alternate interpretations were unnecessary until
the first one was made, and speaking itself was unnecessary
before the ego was made.
The ego speaks in judgment and the Holy Spirit reverses its
decisions, much as the Supreme Court has the power to reverse
the lower courts decisions about the laws of this world. The
egos decisions are ALWAYS wrong because they are based on a
complete fallacy which they were made to uphold. NOTHING the
ego perceives is interpreted correctly. Not only does it cite
Scripture for its purpose but it even interprets Scripture as
a witness for itself. The Bible is a fearful thing to the ego
because of its prejudiced judgment. Perceiving it as fearful,
it interprets it fearfully. Having made YOU afraid, you do not
appeal to the Higher Court because you believe its judgment
would be AGAINST you.
We need cite only a few examples to see how the egos
interpretations have misled you. A favorite ego quotation is
As ye sow, so shall ye reap. Another is Vengeance is
mine, sayeth the Lord. Still another is I will visit the
sins of the father unto the third and fourth generation, and
also The wicked shall perish. There are many others, but if
you will let the Holy Spirit re-interpret these in His own
light, they will suffice.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap merely means that what you
believe to be worth cultivating you will cultivate in
yourself. Your judgment of what is worthy MAKES it worthy for
you. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord is easily explained
if you remember that ideas increase only by being shared. This
quotation therefore emphasizes the fact that vengeance CANNOT
be shared. Give it therefore to the Holy Spirit, Who will undo
it in you because it does not belong in your mind, which is
part of God.
I will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and
fourth generation, as interpreted by the ego, is
particularly vicious. It is used, in fact, as an attempt to
guarantee its survival beyond itself. Actually, all the
quotation means is that the Holy Spirit, in later generations,
retains the power to interpret CORRECTLY what former
generations have thought, and thus release THEIR thoughts from
the ability to produce fear anywhere in the Sonship. The
wicked shall perish is merely a statement of fact, if the
word perish is properly understood. Every loveless thought
MUST be undone. Even the word undone is fearful to the ego,
which interprets I am undone as I am destroyed.
The ego will NOT be destroyed because it is part of your
thought, but because it is uncreative, and therefore
unsharing, it WILL be re-interpreted entirely, to release you
from fear. The part of your thought which you have given to
the ego will merely return to the Kingdom where your whole
mind BELONGS. The ego is a form of arrest, but arrest is
merely delay. It does NOT involve the concept of punishment,
although the ego welcomes that interpretation. You CAN delay
the completion of the Kingdom, but you CANNOT introduce the
concept of assault into it.
When I said, I am come as a light into the world, I
surely came to share the light with you. Remember the symbolic
reference we made before to the egos dark glass, and remember
also that we said, Do not look there. It is still true that
where you look to find yourself is up to you. The Higher
Court will NOT condemn you. It will merely dismiss the case
against you. There can BE no case against a Child of God, and
every witness to guilt in Gods creations is bearing false
witness to God Himself.
Appeal everything you believe gladly to Gods Own Higher
Court because it speaks for Him, and therefore speaks truly.
It will dismiss the case against you however carefully YOU
have built it. The case may be foolproof, but it is NOT God-
proof. The Voice for God will not hear it at all because He
can only witness truly. His verdict will always be Thine is
the Kingdom because He was GIVEN you to remind you of what
you are.
Your patience with each other is your patience with
yourselves. Is not a Child of God WORTH patience? I have shown
you infinite patience because my will IS that of our Father,
from Whom I learned of infinite patience. His Voice was in me
as it is in you, speaking for patience towards the Sonship in
the Name of its Creator. What you need to learn now is that
only infinite patience CAN produce immediate effects. This is
the way in which time is exchanged for eternity. Infinite
patience calls upon infinite love, and by producing results
NOW it renders time unnecessary.
To say that time is temporary is merely redundant. We have
repeatedly said that time is a learning device which will be
abolished when it is no longer useful. The Holy Spirit, Who
speaks for God in time, also knows that time is meaningless.
He reminds you of this in every passing moment of time because
it is His special function to return you to eternity, and
remain to bless YOUR creations there. He is the only blessing
you can truly give because He is so truly blessed, and because
He has been given you so freely by God, you must give Him as
you received Him.
The Eternal Fixation
The idea of set is among the better psychological
concepts. Actually, it is used quite frequently in the Bible
and also in this course under many different terms. For
example, God will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is
stayed (or set) on Him, a statement which means that Gods
peace is set in the Holy Spirit because it is fixed on God. It
is also fixed in you. You, then, ARE fixed in the peace of
God. The concept of Fixation is also a very helpful one
which Freud understood perfectly. Unfortunately, he lost his
understanding because he was afraid, and, as you know all too
well, fear is incompatible with good judgment. Fear distorts
thinking, and therefore DISorders thought.
Freuds system of thought was extremely ingenious because
Freud was extremely ingenuous,[sic] and a mind MUST endow its
thoughts with its own attributes. This is its inherent
strength, although it may misuse its power. Freud lost much of
the potential value of his thought system because he did NOT
include himself in it. This is a dissociated state because the
thinker cuts himself off from his thoughts. Freuds thought
was so conflicted that he could not have retained his sanity
as HE saw it WITHOUT dissociation. That is why the many
contradictions which are quite apparent in his thinking became
increasingly less apparent to HIM. A man who knows what
fixation really means and yet does not yield to it is terribly
afraid.
Fixation is the pull of God, on Whom your mind IS fixed
because of the Holy Spirits irrevocable set. Irrevocable
means cannot be called back or redirected. The irrevocable
nature of the Holy Spirits set is the basis for His
unequivocal Voice. The Holy Spirit NEVER changes His mind.
Clarity of thought CANNOT occur under conditions of
vacillation. Unless a mind is fixed in its purpose it is NOT
clear. Clarity literally means the state of light, and
enlightenment IS understanding. Enlightenment stands UNDER
perception because you have denied it as the REAL foundation
of thought. This is the basis for ALL delusional systems.
The concept of fixation, as Freud saw it, has a number of
learning advantages. First, it recognizes that man can be
fixated at a point in development which does NOT accord with a
point in time. This clearly could have been a means toward
real release from the time belief had Freud pursued it with an
open mind. Freud, however, suffered all his life from refusal
to allow eternity to dawn upon his mind and enlighten it
truly. As a result, he overlooked NOW entirely, and merely saw
the continuity of past and future.
Second, although Freud misinterpreted what the Holy Spirit
told him, or better, reminded him of, he was too honest to
deny more than was necessary to keep his fear in tolerable
bounds as he perceived the situation. Therefore, he emphasized
that the point in development at which the mind is fixated is
more real to ITSELF than the external reality with which it
disagrees. This, again, could have been a powerful RELEASE
mechanism had Freud not decided to involve it in a strong
DEFENSE system because he perceived it as an attack.
Third, although Freud interpreted fixation as involving
irrevocable danger points to which the mind could always
regress, the concept can also be interpreted as an irrevocable
call to sanity which the mind cannot LOSE. Freud himself could
not accept this interpretation, but throughout his thought
system, the threat of fixation remained, and could never be
eliminated by any living human being. Essentially, this was
the basis of Freuds pessimism, personally as well as
theoretically. He tried every means his very inventive mind
could devise to set up a form of therapy which could enable
the mind to escape from fixation forever, even though he KNEW
this was impossible.
This knowledge plagued Freuds belief in his own thought
system at every turn because he was both an honest man and a
healer. He was therefore only partially insane, and was unable
to relinquish the HOPE of release even though he could not
cope with it. The reason for this amount of detail is because
YOU are in the same position. You were eternally fixated on
God in your creation, and the pull of this fixation is so
strong that you will never overcome it. The reason is
perfectly clear. The fixation is on a level so high that it
cannot BE surmounted. You are ALWAYS being pulled back to your
Creator because you BELONG to Him.
Do you REALLY believe you can make a voice that can drown
out His? Do you REALLY believe that you can devise a thought
system which can separate you from His? Do you REALLY believe
that you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can?
You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast
your cares upon Him because He careth for YOU. You ARE His
care because He loves you. His Voice reminds you always that
all hope is yours BECAUSE of His care. You CANNOT choose to
escape His care because that is not His Will, but you CAN
choose to accept His care and use the infinite power OF His
care for all those He created BY it.
There have been many healers who did not heal themselves.
They have not moved mountains by their faith because their
faith was not whole. Some of them have healed the sick at
times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer
heals HIMSELF he does NOT believe that there is no order of
difficulty in miracles. He has not learned that EVERY mind God
created is equally worthy of being healed BECAUSE GOD CREATED
IT WHOLE. You are merely asked to return to God the mind as HE
created it. He asks you only for what He gave, knowing that
this giving will heal you. Sanity IS wholeness, and the sanity
of your brothers IS yours.
Why should you listen to the endless insane calls which you
think are made upon you when you KNOW the Voice of God Himself
is in you? God commended His Spirit to you, and asks that you
commend yours to Him. He wills to keep it in perfect peace
because you are of one mind and Spirit with Him. Excluding
yourself from the Atonement is the egos last-ditch defense of
its OWN existence. It reflects both the egos need to
separate, and your willingness to side with its separateness.
This willingness means THAT YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE HEALED.
But the time IS now. You have not been asked to work out
the plan of salvation yourselves because, as I told you
before, the remedy is NOT of your making. God Himself gave you
the perfect correction for everything you have made which is
NOT in accord with His holy Will. I have made His plan
perfectly explicit to you, and have also told you of your part
in His plan, and how urgent it is that you fulfill it. There
is time for delay, but there need not be. God weeps at the
sacrifice of His Children who believe they are lost to Him.
I have already told you that whenever you are not wholly
joyous it is because you have reacted with a lack of love to
some Soul which God created. Perceiving this as sin, you
become defensive because you EXPECT ATTACK. The decision to
react in this way, however, is YOURS, and can therefore be
undone. It CANNOT be undone by repentance in the usual sense,
because this implies guilt. If you allow yourself to feel
guilty you will RE-INFORCE the error rather than allow it to
be undone FOR you.
Decisions CANNOT be difficult. This is obvious if you
realize that you must ALREADY have made a decision NOT to be
wholly joyous if that is how you feel. Therefore, the first
step in the undoing is to recognize that you ACTIVELY DECIDED
WRONGLY, but can AS ACTIVELY DECIDE OTHERWISE. Be very firm
with yourselves in this, and keep yourselves fully aware of
the fact that the undoing process, which does NOT come from
you, is nevertheless WITHIN you because God placed it there.
YOUR part is merely to return your thinking to the point at
which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in
peace. Say to yourselves the following as sincerely as you
can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to
your slightest invitation:
I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.
I made the decision myself, but I can also decide
otherwise.
I WILL to decide otherwise because I WANT to be at peace.
I do NOT feel guilty because the Holy Spirit will undo
all the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET
HIM.
I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for
Me.
CHAPTER 6
ATTACK AND FEAR
The relationship of anger to attack is obvious, but the
inevitable association of anger and FEAR is not always so
clear. Anger ALWAYS involves PROJECTION OF SEPARATION, which
must ultimately be accepted as entirely ones own
responsibility. Anger cannot occur unless you believe that you
have been attacked; that your attack was justified; and that
YOU are in no way responsible. Given these three wholly
irrational premises, the equally irrational conclusion that a
brother is WORTHY of attack rather than of love follows. What
can be expected from insane premises except an insane
conclusion?
The way to undo an insane conclusion is to consider the
sanity of the premises on which it rests. You cannot BE
attacked; attack HAS no justification; and you ARE responsible
for what you believe. You have been asked to take me as your
model for learning, since an extreme example is a particularly
helpful learning device. Everyone teaches, and teaches all the
time. This is a responsibility which he inevitably assumes the
moment he accepts any premise at all, and no-one can organize
his life without ANY thought system. Once he has developed a
thought system of any kind, he lives by it AND TEACHES IT.
You have been chosen to teach the Atonement precisely
because you have been extreme examples of allegiance to your
thought systems, and therefore have developed the CAPACITY for
allegiance. It has indeed been misplaced, but it IS a form of
faith, which you yourselves have been willing to redirect. You
cannot doubt the strength of your devotion, when you consider
how faithfully you have observed it. It was quite evident that
you had already developed the ability to follow a better
model, if you could accept it.
The Message of the Crucifixion
For teaching purposes, let us consider the crucifixion
again. We have not dwelt on it before, because of its fearful
connotations. The only emphasis we laid upon it was that it
was NOT a form of punishment. Nothing, however, can be really
explained in negative terms only. There is a positive
interpretation of the crucifixion which is wholly devoid of
fear, and therefore wholly benign in what it teaches, if it is
properly understood. The crucifixion is nothing more than an
extreme example. Its value, like the value of any teaching
device, lies solely in the kind of learning it facilitates. It
can be, and has been, misunderstood. This is only because the
fearful are apt to perceive fearfully.
I have already told you that you can always call on me to
share my decision and thus MAKE IT STRONGER. I also told you
that the crucifixion was the last foolish journey that the
Sonship need take, and that it should mean RELEASE from fear
to anyone who understands it. While we emphasized only the
resurrection before, the purpose of the crucifixion and how it
actually LED to the resurrection was not clarified at that
time. Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to
your own lives, and if you will consider it WITHOUT fear, it
will help you understand your own role as teachers.
You have reacted for years AS IF you were being crucified.
This is a marked tendency of the separated ones, who always
refuse to consider what they have done TO THEMSELVES.
Projection means anger, anger fosters assault, and assault
promotes fear. The real meaning of the crucifixion lies in the
APPARENT intensity of the assault of some of the Sons of God
upon another. This, of course, is impossible, and must be
fully understood AS an impossibility. In fact, unless it IS
fully understood as only that, I cannot serve as a real model
for learning.
Assault can ultimately be made ONLY on the body. There is
little doubt that one BODY can assault another, and can even
destroy it. Yet if destruction ITSELF is impossible, then
anything that is destructible cannot be REAL. Therefore, its
destruction does NOT justify anger. To the extent to which you
believe that it DOES, you must be accepting false premises AND
TEACHING THEM TO OTHERS. The message which the crucifixion was
intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive ANY
form of assault in persecution because you cannot BE
persecuted. If you respond with anger you must be equating
yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding
yourself insanely.
I have made it perfectly clear that I am like you and you
are like me, but our fundamental equality can be demonstrated
only through joint DECISION. You are free to perceive
yourselves as persecuted if you choose. You might remember,
however, when you DO choose to react that way, that I WAS
persecuted as the world judges, and did NOT share this
evaluation for myself. And because I did not share it I did
not STRENGTHEN it. I therefore offered a DIFFERENT
interpretation of attack, and one which I DO want to share
with you. If you will BELIEVE it, you will help me to TEACH
it.
We have said before, As you teach so shall you learn.
If you react as if you are persecuted, you are TEACHING
persecution. This is not a lesson which the Sons of God should
WANT to teach if they are to realize their own salvation.
Rather teach your own perfect immunity, which IS the truth in
you, and KNOW that it cannot be assailed. Do not protect it
yourselves, or you have believed that it IS assailable. You
are not asked to BE crucified, which was part of my own
teaching contribution. You are merely asked to follow my
example in the face of much LESS extreme temptations to
misperceive, and NOT to accept them falsely as justifications
for anger.
There can BE no justification for the unjustifiable. Do not
believe there is, and do not TEACH that there is. Remember
always that what you believe, you WILL teach. Believe with me,
and we will become equal as teachers. YOUR resurrection is
your re-awakening. I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth
itself is merely the dawning on your minds of what is already
in them. God placed it there Himself, and so it is true
forever. I believed in it, and therefore made it forever true
for me. Help me to teach it to our brothers in the name of the
Kingdom of God, but first believe that it is true for YOU, or
you will teach amiss.
My brothers slept during the so-called agony in the
garden, but I could not be angry with them because I had
learned I could not BE abandoned. Peter swore he would never
deny me, but he did so three times. He did offer to defend me
with the sword, which I naturally refused, not being at all in
need of bodily protection. I AM sorry when my brothers do not
share my decision to hear only one voice, because it weakens
them as teachers AND as learners. Yet I know that they cannot
really betray themselves OR me, and that it is still on them
that I must build my church.
There is no choice in this because only you can BE the
foundation of Gods church. A church is where an altar is, and
the presence of the altar is what MAKES it a church. Any
church which does not inspire love has a hidden altar which is
not serving the purpose for which God intended it. I must
found His church on you because you who accept me as a model
are literally my disciples. Disciples are followers, but if
the model they follow has chosen to save them pain in all
respects, they are probably unwise NOT to follow him.
I elected, both for your sake AND mine, to demonstrate that
the most outrageous assault, as judged by the ego, did not
matter. As the world judges these things, but NOT as God KNOWS
them, I was betrayed, abandoned, beaten, torn, and finally
killed. It was perfectly clear that this was only because of
the projection of others, because I had not harmed anyone and
had healed many. We are still equal as learners, even though
we need not have equal experiences. The Holy Spirit is glad
when you can learn enough from mine to be re-awakened by them.
That was their only purpose, and that is the only way in which
I can be perceived as the Way, the Truth and the Light.
When you hear only one voice you are NEVER called on to
sacrifice. On the contrary, by enabling yourselves to hear the
Holy Spirit in others, you can learn from their experiences,
and gain from them WITHOUT experiencing them yourselves. That
is because the Holy Spirit is one, and anyone who listens is
inevitably led to demonstrate His way for all. You are not
persecuted, nor was I. You are not asked to REPEAT my
experiences because the Holy Spirit, Whom we SHARE, makes this
unnecessary. To USE my experiences constructively, however,
you must still follow my example in how to perceive them.
My brothers and yours are constantly engaged in justifying
the unjustifiable. My one lesson, which I must teach as I
learned, is that no perception which is out of accord with the
judgment of the Holy Spirit CAN be justified. I undertook to
show this was true in a very extreme case merely because it
would serve as a good teaching aid to those whose temptations
to give in to anger and assault would NOT be so extreme. I
will, with God, that none of His Sons should suffer.
Remember that the Holy Spirit is the communication link
between God the Father and His separated Sons. If you will
listen to His Voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt
or BE hurt, and that many need your blessing to help them hear
this for themselves. When you perceive ONLY this need in them,
and do not respond to ANY other, you will have learned of me,
and will be as eager to share your learning as I am. The
crucifixion CANNOT be shared because it is the symbol of
projection, but the resurrection is the symbol of SHARING
because the re-awakening of every Son of God is necessary to
enable the Sonship to know its wholeness. Only this IS
knowledge.
The message of the crucifixion is perfectly clear:
Teach ONLY love, for that is what you ARE.
If you interpret the crucifixion in any other way, you are
using it as a weapon for assault rather than as the call for
peace for which it was intended. The Apostles often
misunderstood it, and always for the same reason that makes
anyone misunderstand anything. Their own imperfect love made
them vulnerable to projection, and out of their own fear they
spoke of the wrath of God as His retaliatory weapon. Nor
could they speak of the crucifixion entirely without anger
because their own sense of guilt had MADE them angry.
There are two glaring examples of upside-down thinking in
the New Testament, whose whole gospel is ONLY the message of
love. These are not like the several slips into impatience
which I made. I had learned the Atonement prayer, which I also
came to teach, too well to engage in upside-down thinking
myself. If the Apostles had not felt guilty they never could
have quoted me as saying, I come not to bring peace but a
sword. This is clearly the exact opposite of everything I
taught.
Nor could they have described my reactions to Judas as they
did if they had really understood me. They would have realized
I COULD not have said, Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a
kiss? unless I BELIEVED in betrayal. The whole message of
the crucifixion was simply that I did NOT. The punishment
which I am said to have called forth upon Judas was a similar
reversal. Judas was my brother and a Son of God, as much a
part of the Sonship as myself. Was it likely that I would
condemn him when I was ready to demonstrate that condemnation
is impossible?
I am very grateful to the Apostles for their teaching and
fully aware of the extent of their devotion to me.
Nevertheless, as you read their teachings, remember that I
told them myself that there was much they would understand
later because they were NOT wholly ready to follow me at the
time. I emphasize this only because I do not want you to allow
ANY fear to enter into the thought system toward which I am
guiding you. I do NOT call for martyrs, but for TEACHERS. No-
one is punished for sins, and the Sons of God are not
sinners.
ANY concept of punishment involves the projection of
blame, and RE-INFORCES the idea that blame is justified. The
behavior that results is a LESSON IN BLAME, just as all
behavior teaches the beliefs which motivate it. The
crucifixion was a complex of behaviors arising out of clearly
opposed thought systems. As such, it was the perfect symbol of
conflict between the ego and the Son of God. The conflict is
just as real now, and its lessons, too, have equal reality
WHEN THEY ARE LEARNED. I do not need gratitude any more than I
needed protection, but YOU need to develop your weakened
ability to BE grateful, or you cannot appreciate God. HE does
not need your appreciation, but YOU do.
You cannot love what you do not appreciate, and FEAR MAKES
APPRECIATION IMPOSSIBLE. Whenever you are afraid of what you
are you do NOT appreciate it, and will therefore reject it. As
a result, you will TEACH REJECTION. The power of the Sons of
God is operating all the time because they were created as
creators. Their influence on EACH OTHER is without limit, and
MUST be used for their joint salvation. Each one must learn to
teach that all forms of rejection are utterly meaningless. The
separation IS the notion of rejection. As long as you TEACH
this, you still believe it. This is NOT as God thinks, and you
must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again.
The Uses of Projection
Any split in will MUST involve a rejection of part of it,
and this IS the belief in separation. The wholeness of God,
which IS His peace, cannot be appreciated EXCEPT by a whole
mind, which recognizes the wholeness of Gods creation, and BY
this recognition, knows its Creator. Exclusion and separation
are synonymous, as are separation and dissociation. We have
said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and
also that, once it had occurred, projection became its main
defense, or the device that KEEPS IT GOING. The reason,
however, may not be as clear as you think.
In the egos use of projection, to which we are obviously
referring, what you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT
BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are EXCLUDING yourself by the very
statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from the one
on whom you project. Since you have also judged AGAINST what
you project, you continue to attack it because you have
already attacked it BY projecting it. By doing this
unconsciously, you try to keep the fact that you must have
attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine
that you have made yourself safe.
Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It re-inforces your belief
in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is TO KEEP THE
SEPARATION GOING. It is SOLELY a device of the ego to make you
feel DIFFERENT from your brothers, and separated from them.
The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it
makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring your
equality with them still further. Projection and attack are
inevitably related because projection is ALWAYS a means of
justifying attack. Anger without projection is impossible.
The ego uses projection ONLY to distort your perception
both of yourself AND your brothers. The process begins by
excluding something THAT exists in you which you do not want,
and leads directly to excluding you from your brothers. We
have learned, however, that there is another use of
projection. Every ability of the ego has a better counterpart
because its abilities are directed by the mind, which has a
better Voice. The Holy Spirit as well as the ego utilizes
projection, but since their goals are opposed, so is the
result.
The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving YOU as perfect.
KNOWING this perfection is shared, He recognizes it in others,
thus strengthening it in both. Instead of anger this arouses
love for both BECAUSE IT ESTABLISHES INCLUSION. Perceiving
equality, the Holy Spirit perceives equal needs. This invites
Atonement automatically because Atonement IS the one need
which, in this world, IS universal. To perceive yourself this
way is the ONLY way in which you can find happiness in the
world. That is because it is the acknowledgement that you are
NOT in this world, for the world IS unhappy.
How else can you find joy in a joyless place EXCEPT by
realizing that you are NOT there? You cannot be anywhere that
God did not put you, and God created you as part of Him. That
is both WHERE you are and WHAT you are. It is COMPLETELY
unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change it now
or ever. It is forever true. It is not a belief, but a FACT.
Anything that God created is as true as He is. Its truth lies
only in its perfect inclusion in Him Who alone IS perfect. To
deny this in any way is to deny yourself AND Him, since it is
impossible to accept one WITHOUT the other.
The perfect equality of the Holy Spirits perception is the
counterpart of the perfect equality of Gods knowing. The
egos perception HAS no counterpart in God, but the Holy
Spirit remains the bridge between perception and knowledge. By
enabling you to use perception in a way that PARALLELS
knowledge, you will ultimately meet it and KNOW it. The ego
would prefer to believe that this meeting is impossible, yet
it is YOUR perception which the Holy Spirit guides. You might
remember that the human eye perceives parallel lines AS IF
they meet in the distance, which is the same as in the future,
if time and space are one dimension. Your perception WILL end
where it began. EVERYTHING meets in God because everything was
created BY Him and IN Him.
God created His Sons by extending His thought and retaining
the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts
are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each
other because they [exist] neither partially nor in part. The
Holy Spirit enables you TO PERCEIVE THIS WHOLENESS NOW. You
can no more pray for yourselves alone than you can find joy
for yourself alone. Prayer is the re-statement of INCLUSION,
directed by the Holy Spirit under the laws of God. God created
you to create. You cannot EXTEND His Kingdom until you know of
its wholeness.
Thoughts begin in the mind of the thinker, from which they
reach outward. This is as true of Gods Thinking as it is of
yours. Because your minds are split, you can also perceive as
well as think. Yet perception can not escape from the basic
laws of mind. You perceive FROM your mind and extend your
perceptions outward. Although perception of any kind is
unnecessary, YOU made it, and the Holy Spirit can therefore
use it well. He can INSPIRE perception and lead it toward God
by making it [PARALLEL His] way of thinking, and thus
guarantee their ultimate meeting. This convergence SEEMS to be
far in the future only because your mind is not in perfect
alignment with the idea, and therefore DOES NOT WANT IT NOW.
The Holy Spirit USES time, but does NOT believe in it.
Coming from God He uses everything for good, but He does not
BELIEVE in what is not true. Since the Holy Spirit is IN your
minds, your minds must also be able to believe only what is
true. The Holy Spirit can speak only for this, because he
speaks for God. He tells you to return your whole mind to God
because IT HAS NEVER LEFT HIM. If it has never left Him you
need only perceive it as it is to BE returned. The full
awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition THAT THE
SEPARATION NEVER OCCURRED. The ego cannot prevail against this
because it is an explicit statement that the EGO never
occurred.
The ego CAN accept the idea that return is necessary
because it can so easily make the idea seem so difficult. Yet
the Holy Spirit tells you that even return is unnecessary
because what never happened cannot _______ ANY problem. It
does NOT follow, however, that YOU cannot make the idea of
return necessary AND difficult. It is surely clear, however,
that the perfect NEED nothing, and CANNOT experience
perfection as a difficult accomplishment because that is what
they ARE.
This is the way in which you MUST perceive Gods creations,
bringing all of your perceptions into the one parallel line
which the Holy Spirit sees. This line is the direct line of
communication with God, and lets your mind converge with HIS.
There is no conflict anywhere in this perception because it
means that ALL perception is guided by the Holy Spirit, Whose
mind is fixed on God. ONLY the Holy Spirit can resolve
conflict because ONLY the Holy Spirit is conflict-free. He
perceives ONLY what is true in your mind, and extends outward
ONLY to what is true in other minds.
The difference between the egos use of projection and
projection as the Holy Spirit uses it is very simple. The ego
projects to EXCLUDE, and therefore to deceive. The Holy Spirit
projects by RECOGNIZING HIMSELF in every mind, and thus
perceives them as ONE. Nothing conflicts in this perception
because what the Holy Spirit perceives IS the same. Wherever
He looks He sees Himself, and because He is united, He offers
the whole Kingdom always. This is the one message God gave TO
Him, and for which He must speak because that is what He IS.
The peace of God lies in that message, and so the peace of God
lies in YOU.
The great peace of the Kingdom shines in your mind forever,
but it must shine OUTWARD to make YOU aware of it. The Holy
Spirit was given you with perfect impartiality, and only by
perceiving Him impartially can you perceive Him at all. The
ego is legion, but the Holy Spirit is One. No darkness abides
anywhere in the Kingdom, but your part is only to allow no
darkness to abide in your OWN mind. This alignment with Light
is unlimited because it is in alignment with the Light of the
world. Each of us IS the Light of the world, and by joining
our minds IN this Light, we proclaim the Kingdom of God
together and AS ONE.
The Relinquishment of Attack
We have used many words as synonymous which are not
ordinarily regarded as the same. We began with having and
being, and more recently have used others. Hearing and being
are examples, to which we can also add teaching and being,
learning and being, and, above all, PROJECTING and being. This
is because, as we have said before, every idea begins in the
mind of the thinker and extends outward. Therefore, what
extends FROM the mind IS STILL IN IT, and from what it extends
it knows ITSELF. That is its natural talent. The word knows
is correct here, even though the ego does NOT know, and is not
concerned with being at all.
The Holy Spirit still holds knowledge safe through His
impartial perception. By attacking nothing, He presents no
barrier at all to the communication of God. Thus, being is
never threatened. Your Godlike mind can never BE defiled. The
ego never was and never will be part of it, but THROUGH the
ego you can hear and teach and learn WHAT IS NOT TRUE. From
this, which YOU have made, you have taught yourselves to
believe that you ARE NOT what you ARE. You CANNOT teach what
you have not learned, and what you teach you strengthen in
yourselves BECAUSE you are sharing it. Every lesson you teach,
YOU are learning.
That is why you must teach only ONE lesson. If you are to
be conflict-free yourselves, you must learn ONLY from the Holy
Spirit, and teach ONLY by Him. You ARE only love, but when you
denied this you made what you ARE something you must LEARN. We
said before that the message of the crucifixion was, Teach
only love, for that is what you ARE. This is the ONE lesson
which is perfectly unified because it is the only lesson which
IS one. Only BY teaching it can you learn it. As you teach
so will you learn. If that is true, and it is true indeed,
you must never forget that what you teach is teaching YOU.
What you project you BELIEVE.
The only REAL safety lies in projecting only the Holy
Spirit, because as you see His gentleness in others, your OWN
mind perceives ITSELF as totally harmless. Once it can accept
this fully, it does NOT see the need to PROTECT ITSELF. The
protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is
perfectly safe forever. The perfectly safe are wholly benign.
They bless because they know they ARE blessed. Without anxiety
the mind is wholly kind, and because it PROJECTS beneficence,
it IS beneficent.
Safety is THE COMPLETE RELINQUISHMENT OF ATTACK. No
compromise is possible in this. Teach attack in ANY form, and
YOU HAVE LEARNED IT AND IT WILL HURT YOU. Yet your learning is
not immortal, and you can unlearn it by NOT TEACHING IT. Since
you cannot NOT teach, your salvation lies in teaching the
exact OPPOSITE of everything the ego believes. This is how YOU
will learn the truth that will set you free, and keep you so
as others learn it of YOU. The only way to HAVE peace is to
TEACH peace. By learning it through projection, it becomes a
part of what you KNOW because you cannot teach what you have
dissociated.
Only thus can you win back the knowledge that you threw
away. An idea which you SHARE you must HAVE. It awakens in you
through the conviction of teaching. Remember that if teaching
is being and learning is being, teaching is learning.
EVERYTHING you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and
learn that love is yours, and YOU are love.
The Only Answer
Remember that the Holy Spirit is the ANSWER, NOT the
question. The ego always speaks first because it is
capricious, and does NOT mean its maker well. That is because
it believes, and correctly, that its maker may withdraw his
support from it at any moment. If it meant you well it would
be glad, as the Holy Spirit will be glad when He has brought
you home, and you no longer need His guidance. The ego does
not regard itself as PART of you. Herein lies its primary
perceptual error, the foundation of its whole thought system.
When God created you, He made you part of Him. That is why
attack WITHIN the Kingdom is impossible. YOU made the ego
without love, and so it does not love YOU. You could not
remain WITHIN the Kingdom without love, and since the Kingdom
IS love, you believe that you are WITHOUT it. This enables the
ego to regard itself as separate and OUTSIDE its maker, thus
speaking for the part of your mind that believes YOU are
separate and outside the Mind of God. The ego, then, raised
the first question that was ever asked, but one which it can
never answer. That question, What are you? was the
beginning of doubt.
The ego has never answered ANY questions since, although it
has raised a great many. The most inventive activities of the
ego have never done more than OBSCURE THE QUESTION because you
HAVE the answer, and THE EGO IS AFRAID OF YOU. You cannot
understand the conflict until you fully understand one basic
fact that the ego does NOT know. The Holy Spirit does not
speak first, BUT HE ALWAYS ANSWERS. Everyone has called upon
Him for help at one time or another and in one way or another
AND HAS BEEN ANSWERED. Since the Holy Spirit answers truly, He
answers FOR ALL TIME, which means that everyone has the answer
NOW.
The ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit, but it DOES believe
that part of the same mind that made it is AGAINST it. It
interprets this as a justification for ATTACKING its maker. It
believes that the best defense IS attack, and WANTS YOU TO
BELIEVE IT. Unless you DO believe it you will not side with
it, and the ego feels badly in need of allies, though NOT of
brothers. Perceiving something alien to itself in your mind,
the ego turns to the body, NOT the mind, as its ally because
the body is NOT part of you. This makes the body the egos
friend. It is an alliance frankly based on separation. If you
SIDE with this alliance you WILL be afraid, because you are
siding with an alliance of fear.
The ego and the body conspire AGAINST your minds, and
because the ego realizes that its enemy CAN end them both
merely by knowing they are NOT part of him, they join in the
attack together. This is perhaps the strangest perception of
all, if you consider what it really involves. The ego, which
is NOT real, attempts to persuade the mind, which IS real,
that the mind is its own learning device, and that the
learning device is more real than IT is. No-one in his right
mind could POSSIBLY believe this, and no-one in his right mind
DOES believe it.
Hear, then, the ONE answer of the Holy Spirit to ALL the
questions which the ego raises. You are a Child of God, a
priceless part of His Kingdom, which He created as part of
Him. Nothing else exists and ONLY this is real. You have
chosen a sleep in which you have had bad dreams, but the sleep
is not real, and God calls you to awake. There will be nothing
left of your dream when you hear Him because you WILL be
awake. Your dreams have contained many of the egos symbols,
and they have confused you. Yet that was only because you were
asleep AND DID NOT KNOW. When you awake you will see the truth
around you and in you, and you will no longer believe in
dreams because they will have no reality for you.
Yet the Kingdom and all that you have created there will
have great reality for you because they are beautiful and
true. In the Kingdom, where you are and what you are is
perfectly certain. There is no doubt there because the first
question was never asked. Having finally been wholly answered,
IT HAS NEVER BEEN. Being alone lives in the Kingdom, where
everything lives in God without question. The time that was
spent on questioning in the dream has given way to creation
and to its eternity.
YOU are as certain as God because you are as true as He is,
but what was once quite certain in your minds has become only
the ABILITY for certainty. The introduction of abilities into
being was the beginning of UNcertainty because abilities are
potentials, NOT accomplishments. Your abilities are totally
useless in the presence of Gods accomplishments, and also of
yours. Accomplishments are results which HAVE BEEN achieved.
When they are perfect, abilities are meaningless. It is
curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In fact, it is
impossible. You must remember, however, that when you put
yourselves in an impossible situation, you believed that the
impossible WAS possible.
Abilities must be DEVELOPED, or you cannot use them. This
is not true of anything that God created, but it is the
kindest solution possible to what YOU have made. In an
impossible situation you can develop your abilities to the
point where they can GET YOU OUT OF IT. You have a Guide to
how to develop them, but you have no COMMANDER except
yourself. This leaves YOU in charge of the Kingdom, with both
a Guide to FIND it and a means to KEEP it. You have a model to
follow who will STRENGTHEN your command, and never detract
from it in any way. You therefore retain the central place in
your perceived enslavement, a fact which ITSELF demonstrates
that you are NOT enslaved.
You are in an impossible situation only because you thought
it was possible to be in one. You WOULD be in an impossible
situation if God showed you your perfection and PROVED to you
that you were wrong. This would demonstrate that the perfect
were inadequate to bring THEMSELVES to the awareness of their
perfection, and thus side with the belief that those who have
everything need help and are therefore helpless. This is the
kind of reasoning which the ego engages in, but God, Who
KNOWS that His creations are perfect, does NOT insult them.
This would be as impossible as the egos notion that IT has
insulted HIM.
That is why the Holy Spirit NEVER commands. To command is
to assume INequality, which the Holy Spirit demonstrates does
not exist. Fidelity to premises is a law of mind, and
everything God created is faithful to His laws. Fidelity to
other laws is also possible, however, not because the laws are
true, but because YOU MADE THEM. What would be gained if God
proved to you that you have thought insanely? Can God lose His
own certainty? We have frequently stated that what you teach
you ARE. Would you have God teach you that you have sinned? If
He confronted the self you made with the truth He created for
you, what could you be but afraid? You would doubt your
sanity, which is the one thing in which you can FIND the
sanity He gave you.
God does not teach. To teach is to imply a lack which God
KNOWS is not there. God is not conflicted. Teaching aims at
change, but God created only the changeless. The separation
was not a loss of perfection, but a failure in communication.
A harsh and strident form of communication arose as the egos
voice. It could not shatter the peace of God, but it COULD
shatter YOURS. God did not blot it out, because to eradicate
it would be to attack it. Being questioned, He did not
question. He merely gave the Answer. His Answer is your
Teacher.
To Have, Give All to All
Like any good teacher, the Holy Spirit does know more than
you do NOW, but He teaches only to make you EQUAL with Him.
This is because you had already taught wrongly, having
believed what was not true. YOU DID NOT BELIEVE IN YOUR OWN
PERFECTION. Could God teach you that you had made a split
mind, when He knows your mind only as whole? What God DOES
know is that His communication channels are not open to Him,
so that He cannot impart His joy, and know that His Children
are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in time,
but in eternity. Gods extending outward, though not His
completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate
with Him as one. So He thought, My Children sleep, and must
be awakened.
How can you wake children better and more kindly than by a
gentle Voice that will not frighten them, but will merely
remind them that the night is over and the Light has come? You
do not inform them that the nightmares which frightened them
so badly were not real because children BELIEVE in magic. You
merely reassure them that they are safe NOW. Then you train
them to RECOGNIZE THE DIFFERENCE between sleeping and waking,
so that they will understand they need not be afraid of
dreams. Then, when bad dreams come, they will call on the
light THEMSELVES to dispel them.
A wise teacher teaches through approach, NOT avoidance. He
does NOT emphasize what you must avoid to escape from harm so
much as what you need to learn to have joy. This is true even
of the worlds teachers. Consider the confusion a child would
experience if he were told, Do not do THIS because it might
hurt you and make you unsafe, but if you do THAT you will
escape from harm and be safe, and then you will not be
afraid. All of this could be included in only three words:
Do ONLY that! This simple statement is perfectly clear,
easily understood, and very easily remembered.
The Holy Spirit NEVER itemizes errors because He does not
frighten children, and those who lack wisdom ARE children. Yet
He ALWAYS answers their call, and His dependability makes THEM
more certain. Children DO confuse fantasy and reality, and
they ARE frightened because they do not know the difference.
The Holy Spirit makes NO distinction among dreams. He merely
shines them away. His Light is ALWAYS the call to awake,
whatever you have been dreaming. Nothing lasting lies in
dreams, and the Holy Spirit, shining with the Light from God
Himself, speaks only for what lasts forever.
When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you
will know that YOU will last forever. Many think this is
accomplished through death, but NOTHING is accomplished
through death because death IS nothing. EVERYTHING is
accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and IN the
Mind. The body neither lives nor dies because it cannot
contain you who ARE life. If we share the same mind, you can
overcome death BECAUSE I DID. Death is an attempt to resolve
conflict by not willing at all. Like any other impossible
solution which the ego attempts, IT WILL NOT WORK.
God did not make the body because it is destructible, and
therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of what
you THINK you are. It is clearly a separation device, and
therefore does not exist. The Holy Spirit, as always, takes
what you have made and translates it into a learning device
FOR you. Again as always, He re-interprets what the ego uses
as an argument FOR separation into a demonstration AGAINST it.
If the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the
mind, then the mind must be STRONGER. Every miracle
demonstrates this.
We have said that the Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION for
miracles. This is because He always tells you that ONLY the
mind is real since ONLY the mind CAN BE SHARED. The body IS
separate, and therefore CANNOT be part of you. To be of one
mind IS meaningful, but to be of one BODY is meaningless. By
the laws of mind, then, the BODY is meaningless. To the Holy
Spirit THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES. This is
FAMILIAR enough to you by now, but it has not yet become
believable. Therefore, you do not understand it and cannot USE
it.
We have too much to accomplish on behalf of the Kingdom to
let this crucial concept slip away. It is a real foundation
stone of the thought system I teach and want YOU to teach. You
cannot perform miracles without believing it because it is a
belief in perfect equality. Only one equal gift CAN be offered
to the equal Sons of God, and that is FULL APPRECIATION.
Nothing more and nothing less. Without a range an order of
difficulty IS meaningless, and there must BE no range in what
you offer to each other.
The Holy Spirit, Who leads to God, translates communication
into being, just as He ultimately translates perception into
knowledge. The ego uses the body for attack, for pleasure, and
for pride. The insanity of this perception makes it a fearful
one indeed. The Holy Spirit sees the body ONLY as a means of
COMMUNICATION, and because communicating is sharing, it
becomes communion. You might argue that fear as well as love
can be communicated, and therefore can be shared. Yet this is
not so real as it sounds. Those who communicate fear are
promoting attack and attack always BREAKS communication,
making it impossible.
Egos DO join together in temporary allegiance, but always
for WHAT EACH ONE CAN GET SEPARATELY. The Holy Spirit
communicates only WHAT EACH ONE CAN GIVE TO ALL. He never
takes anything back because He wants YOU to keep it.
Therefore, His teaching begins with the lesson:
To HAVE, GIVE all TO all.
This is a very preliminary step, and the only one you must
take for yourself. It is not even necessary that you COMPLETE
the step yourself, but it IS necessary that you turn in that
direction. Having chosen to go that way, you place YOURSELF in
charge of the journey, where you and ONLY you must remain.
This step APPEARS to exacerbate conflict rather than
resolve it because it is the BEGINNING step in reversing your
perception, and turning it right-side up. This conflicts with
the upside-down perception which you have not yet abandoned,
or the change in direction would not have been necessary. Some
people remain at this step for a very long time, experiencing
VERY acute conflict. At this point many try to accept the
CONFLICT, rather than take the next step towards its
resolution. Having taken the first step, however, they WILL be
helped. Once they have chosen what they CANNOT complete alone,
THEY ARE NO LONGER ALONE.
To Have Peace, Teach Peace to Learn It
All the separated ones have a basic fear of retaliation and
abandonment. This is because they BELIEVE in attack and
rejection, so this is what they perceive and teach and LEARN.
These insane concepts are clearly the result of their own
dissociation and projection. What you teach you are, but it is
quite apparent that you can teach wrongly, and therefore TEACH
YOURSELVES WRONG. Many thought that I was attacking them, even
though it was quite apparent that I was not. An insane learner
learns strange lessons.
What you must understand is that, when you do not SHARE a
thought system, you ARE weakening it. Those who BELIEVE in it
therefore perceive this as an attack ON THEM. This is because
everyone identifies HIMSELF with his thought system, and EVERY
thought system centers on WHAT YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE. If the
center of the thought system is true, only truth extends from
it. But if a lie is at its center, only DECEPTION proceeds
from it. All good teachers realize that only fundamental
change will last, but they do not BEGIN at that level.
Strengthening MOTIVATION for change is their first and
foremost goal. It is also their last and final one.
Increasing motivation for change IN THE LEARNER is all that
a teacher NEED do to guarantee change. This is because a
change in motivation IS a change of mind, and this will
inevitably produce fundamental change because the mind IS
fundamental. The first step in the reversal or undoing
process, then, is the undoing of the GETTING concept.
Accordingly, the Holy Spirits first lesson was To HAVE,
GIVE all TO all. We said that this is apt to increase
conflict temporarily, and we can clarify this still further
now.
At this point, the equality of having and being is
not yet perceived. Until it IS, having appears to be the
OPPOSITE of being. Therefore, the first lesson SEEMS to
contain a contradiction, since it is being learned BY A
CONFLICTED MIND. This MEANS conflicting motivation, and so the
lesson CANNOT be learned consistently as yet. Further, the
mind of the learner projects its own split, and thus does NOT
perceive consistent minds in others, making him suspicious of
THEIR motivation. This is the real reason why, in many
respects, the first lesson is the hardest to learn. Still
strongly aware of the ego in himself, and responding primarily
to the ego in others, he is being taught to react to both as
if what he DOES believe is NOT true.
Upside-down as always, the ego perceives the first lesson
as insane. In fact, this is its only alternative here, since
the other one, which would be much LESS acceptable to it,
would obviously be that IT is insane. The egos judgment,
then, is predetermined by what it IS, though no more so than
is any other product of thought. The fundamental change will
still occur with the change of mind IN THE THINKER. Meanwhile,
the increasing clarity of the Holy Spirits Voice makes it
impossible for the learner NOT to listen. For a time, then, he
IS receiving conflicting messages, AND ACCEPTING BOTH. This is
the classic double bind in communication.
The way OUT of conflict between two opposing thought
systems is clearly TO CHOOSE ONE and RELINQUISH THE OTHER. If
you IDENTIFY with your thought system, and you cannot escape
this, and if you accept two thought systems which are in
COMPLETE disagreement, peace of mind IS impossible. If you
TEACH both, which you will surely do as long as you ACCEPT
both, you are teaching conflict and LEARNING it. Yet you DO
want peace, or you would not have called upon the Voice for
peace to help you. His LESSON is not insane; the CONFLICT is.
There can BE no conflict between sanity and insanity. Only
one is true, and therefore only one is REAL. The ego tries to
persuade you that it is up to YOU to decide which voice is
true, but the Holy Spirit teaches you that truth was created
by God, and YOUR decision CANNOT change it. As you begin to
realize the quiet power of the Holy Spirits Voice AND ITS
PERFECT CONSISTENCY, it MUST dawn on your minds that you are
trying to undo a decision which was made irrevocably FOR you.
That is why we suggested before that there was help in
reminding yourselves to allow the Holy Spirit to decide for
God for YOU.
You are NOT asked to make insane decisions, although you
are free to THINK you are. It MUST, however, be insane to
believe that IT IS UP TO YOU to decide what Gods creations
ARE. The Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is.
Therefore, His second lesson is:
To HAVE peace, TEACH peace to LEARN it.
This is still a preliminary step, since having and
being are still not equated. It is, however, more advanced
than the first step, which is really only a thought REVERSAL.
The second step is a positive affirmation of WHAT YOU WANT.
This, then, is a step in the direction OUT of conflict, since
it means that alternatives have been considered, and ONE has
been chosen as MORE DESIRABLE.
Nevertheless, the evaluation more desirable still
implies that the desirable has DEGREES. Therefore, although
this step is essential for the ultimate decision, it is
clearly NOT the final one. It is clear, at this point, that
the lack of order of difficulty in miracles has not yet been
accepted, because nothing is difficult that is WHOLLY DESIRED.
To desire wholly is to CREATE, and creating CANNOT be
difficult if God Himself created you AS a creator. The second
step, then, is still perceptual, although it is a giant step
toward the unified perception which parallels Gods knowing.
As you take this step and HOLD THIS DIRECTION, you will be
pushing toward the center of your thought system, where the
FUNDAMENTAL change will occur. You are only beginning this
step now, but you have started on this way by realizing that
ONLY ONE WAY IS POSSIBLE. You do not yet realize this
consistently and so your progress is intermittent, but the
second step is easier than the first because it FOLLOWS. The
very fact that you have accepted THAT is a demonstration of
your growing awareness that the Holy Spirit WILL lead you on.
Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom
For your own salvation you must be critical, since your
salvation IS critical to the whole Sonship. We said before
that the Holy Spirit is evaluative, and MUST be. Yet His
evaluation does not extend BEYOND you, or you would share it.
In YOUR mind, and your mind ONLY, He sorts out the true from
the false, and teaches you to judge every thought that you
allow to enter your mind in the light of what God PUT there.
Whatever is IN ACCORD with this light He retains, to
strengthen the Kingdom in YOU. What is PARTLY in accord with
truth He accepts and purifies. But what is OUT OF ACCORD
entirely He rejects by judging AGAINST. This is how He keeps
the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified.
What you must remember, however, is that what the Holy
Spirit rejects the ego ACCEPTS. This is because they are in
fundamental disagreement about everything, being in
fundamental disagreement about WHAT YOU ARE. The egos beliefs
on this crucial issue vary, and that is why it promotes
different moods. The Holy Spirit NEVER varies on this point,
and so the ONE mood He engenders is joy. He PROTECTS it by
rejecting everything that does NOT foster joy, and so He alone
can keep you wholly joyous.
The Holy Spirit does not teach your mind to be critical of
other minds because He does not want you to teach errors AND
LEARN THEM YOURSELVES. He would hardly be consistent if He
allowed you to STRENGTHEN what you must learn to AVOID. In the
mind of the THINKER, then, He IS judgmental, but only in order
to unify the mind so it can perceive WITHOUT judgment. This
enables the mind to TEACH WITHOUT judgment, and therefore to
learn to BE without judgment. The undoing is necessary only in
YOUR mind, so that you cannot project falsely. God Himself has
established what you can project with perfect safety.
Therefore, the Holy Spirits third lesson is:
Be vigilant ONLY for God and HIS Kingdom.
This is a major step toward FUNDAMENTAL change. Yet it is
still a lesson in thought reversal, since it implies that
there is something you must be vigilant AGAINST. It has
advanced far from the first lesson which was PRIMARILY a
reversal, and also from the second which was essentially the
identification of what is MORE desirable. THIS step, which
follows from the second as the second follows from the first,
emphasizes the DICHOTOMY between the desirable and the
undesirable. It therefore makes the ULTIMATE choice
inevitable.
While the first step seems to INCREASE conflict and the
second step still entails it to some extent, this one calls
for CONSISTENT EFFORT AGAINST IT. We said already that you can
be as vigilant AGAINST the ego as FOR it. This lesson teaches
not only that you CAN be, but that you MUST be. It does not
concern itself with order of difficulty, but with CLEARCUT
PRIORITY FOR VIGILANCE. This step is unequivocal in that it
teaches there must be NO exceptions, although it does not deny
that the temptation to MAKE exceptions will occur. Here, then,
your consistency is called on DESPITE chaos. Yet chaos and
consistency CANNOT coexist for long, since they are mutually
exclusive.
As long as you must be vigilant against anything, however,
you are not recognizing this mutual exclusiveness, and are
holding the belief that you can CHOOSE EITHER ONE. By teaching
WHAT to choose, the Holy Spirit will ultimately be able to
teach you that YOU NEED NOT CHOOSE AT ALL. This will finally
liberate your will FROM choice, and direct it towards creation
WITHIN the Kingdom. Choosing through the Holy Spirit will lead
you TO the Kingdom. You create by what you ARE, but this is
what you must learn. The way to learn it is inherent in the
third step, which brings together the lessons implied in the
others, and goes beyond them towards real integration.
If you allow yourselves to have in your minds ONLY what God
put there, you ARE acknowledging your mind as God created it.
Therefore, you are accepting it AS IT IS. Since it IS whole,
you are teaching peace BECAUSE you believe in it. The final
step will still be taken FOR you by God, but by the third
step, the Holy Spirit has PREPARED you for God. He is GETTING
YOU READY for the translation of having into being by the very
nature of the steps you must take with Him.
You learn first that having rests on GIVING, and NOT on
getting. Next you learn that you learn what you TEACH, and
that you WANT TO LEARN PEACE. This is the CONDITION for
identifying with the Kingdom, since it is the condition OF the
Kingdom. You have believed that you are WITHOUT the Kingdom,
and have therefore excluded yourself FROM it in your belief.
It is therefore essential to teach you that you must be
INCLUDED, and that the BELIEF that you are NOT is the ONLY
thing that you must exclude.
The third step is thus one of PROTECTION for your minds,
allowing you to identify ONLY with the center, where God
placed the altar to Himself. We have already said that altars
are beliefs, but God and His creations are BEYOND belief
because they are beyond question. The Voice for God speaks
only for BELIEF beyond question, which is the preparation for
BEING without question. As long as belief in God and His
Kingdom is assailed by ANY doubts in your minds, His perfect
accomplishment is NOT apparent to you. This is why you must be
vigilant ON GODS BEHALF. The ego speaks AGAINST His creation,
and therefore DOES engender doubt. You cannot go BEYOND belief
until you believe fully.
Transfer, which IS extension, is a measure of learning
because it is its MEASURABLE RESULT. This, however, does not
mean that what it transfers TO is measurable. On the contrary,
unless it transfers to the whole Sonship, which is
immeasurable because it was created BY the Immeasurable, the
learning itself MUST be incomplete. To teach the whole Sonship
WITHOUT EXCEPTION demonstrates that you PERCEIVE its
wholeness, and have learned that it IS one. Now you must be
vigilant to HOLD its oneness in your minds because, if you let
doubt enter, you will LOSE awareness of its wholeness AND WILL
BE UNABLE TO TEACH IT.
The wholeness of the Kingdom does NOT depend on your
perception, but your AWARENESS of its wholeness DOES. It is
only your awareness which NEEDS protection, since your being
cannot BE assailed. Yet a real sense of being CANNOT be yours
while you are doubtful of what you ARE. THIS IS WHY VIGILANCE
IS ESSENTIAL. Doubts about being must not enter your mind, or
you CANNOT know what you are with certainty. Certainty is OF
God for YOU. Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it IS
necessary against ILLUSIONS.
Truth is WITHOUT illusions, and therefore WITHIN the
Kingdom. Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS illusion, but you
must learn to accept truth because you threw it away. You
therefore saw yourself AS IF you were without it. By making
another kingdom which you VALUED, you did not keep ONLY the
Kingdom of God in your minds, and thus placed part of your
mind OUTSIDE it. What you have made has thus divided your
will, and given you a sick mind which MUST be healed. Your
vigilance AGAINST this sickness IS the way to heal it. Once
your mind is healed, it radiates health and thereby TEACHES
healing. This establishes you as a teacher who teaches like
me. Vigilance was required of me as much as of you, but
remember that those who will to teach the same thing must be
in agreement about what they believe.
The third step, then, is a statement of what you WANT to
believe, and entails a willingness TO RELINQUISH EVERYTHING
ELSE. I told you that you were just beginning the second step,
but I also told you that the third one FOLLOWS it. The Holy
Spirit WILL enable you to go on, if you follow Him. Your
vigilance is the sign that you WANT Him to guide you.
Vigilance DOES require effort, but only to teach you that
effort ITSELF is unnecessary. You have exerted great effort to
preserve what you made BECAUSE it was not true. Therefore, you
must now turn your effort AGAINST it. Only this can cancel out
the NEED for effort, and call upon the BEING which you both
HAVE and ARE. THIS recognition is wholly WITHOUT effort, since
it is ALREADY true and NEEDS no protection. It is in the
perfect safety of God. Therefore inclusion is total and
creation is without limit.
CHAPTER 7
THE CONSISTENCY OF THE KINGDOM
The creative power of both God and His creations is
limitless, but they are not in reciprocal relationship. You DO
communicate fully with God, as He does with you. This is an
ongoing process in which you share, and BECAUSE you share it,
you are inspired to create LIKE God. Yet in creation you are
not in reciprocal relation to God, since He created YOU, but
You did NOT create Him. We have already said that only in this
respect your creative power differs from His. Even in this
world there is a parallel. Parents give birth to children, but
children do not give birth to parents. They DO, however, give
birth to THEIR children and thus give birth AS their parents
do.
If you created God and He created you, the Kingdom could
not increase through its own creative thought. Creation would
therefore be limited, and you would not be co-creators with
God. As Gods creative Thought proceeds from Him to you, so
must your creative thought proceed from you to YOUR creations.
Only in this way can all creative power extend outward. Gods
accomplishments are not yours. But yours are LIKE His. HE
created the Sonship, and you INCREASE it. You have the power
to ADD to the Kingdom, but not to add to the CREATOR of the
Kingdom. You claim this power when you become vigilant only
for God and His Kingdom. BY ACCEPTING this power as yours, you
have learned to be what you are.
Your creations belong in you, as you belong in God. You are
part of God, as your sons are part of His Sons. To create is
to love. Love extends outward simply because it cannot be
contained. Being limitless, IT DOES NOT STOP. It creates
forever, but not in time. Gods creations have always been,
because HE has always been. YOUR creations have always been,
because you can create only as God creates. Eternity is yours
because He created you eternal.
Bargaining versus Healing
The ego demands reciprocal rights, because it is
competitive rather than loving. It is always willing to make a
deal, but it cannot understand that to be LIKE another
means that NO deals are possible. To gain you must give, not
bargain. To bargain is to limit giving, and this is not Gods
Will. To will with God is to create like Him. God does not
limit His gifts in any way. YOU are His gifts, and so your
gifts must be like His. Your gifts TO the Kingdom must be like
His Gifts to YOU.
I gave ONLY love to the Kingdom because I believed that was
what I WAS. What you believe you are DETERMINES your gifts,
and if God created you by extending Himself AS you, you can
only extend YOURSELF as He did. Only joy increases forever,
since joy and eternity are inseparable. God extends outward
beyond limits and beyond time, and you, who are co-creators
with Him, extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit.
Eternity is the indelible stamp of creation. The eternal are
in peace and joy forever.
To think like God is to share His CERTAINTY of what you
are, and to CREATE like Him is to share the perfect Love He
shares with YOU. To this the Holy Spirit leads you, that your
joy may be complete because the Kingdom of God is whole. We
have said that the last step in the re-awakening of knowledge
is taken by God. This is true, but it is hard to explain in
words, because words are symbols, and nothing that is true
NEEDS to be explained. However, the Holy Spirit has the task
of translating the useLESS into the useFUL, the meaningLESS
into the meaningFUL, and the temporary into the timeless. He
CAN, therefore, tell you something about this last step,
although this one you must know yourself, since BY it you know
what you are. This IS your being.
God does not TAKE steps because His accomplishments are not
gradual. He does not teach because His creations are
changeless. He does nothing LAST because He created FIRST and
FOR ALWAYS. It must be understood that the word first as
applied to Him is NOT a time concept. He is first in the sense
that He is the first in the Holy Trinity Itself. He is the
Prime Creator because He created His co-creators. BECAUSE He
did, time applies neither to Him NOR to what He created. The
last step that God will take was therefore true in the
beginning, is true now, and will be true forever.
What is timeless is ALWAYS there because its BEING is
eternally changeless. It does not change by increase because
it was forever created TO increase. If you perceive it as NOT
increasing, you do not know what it IS. You also do not know
what created it, or Who HE is. God does not REVEAL this to you
because it was never hidden. His Light was never obscured
because it is His Will to SHARE it. How can what is fully
shared be withheld, and THEN revealed?
To heal is the only kind of thinking in this world that
resembles the Thought of God, and because of the elements
which they share, can transfer TO IT. When a brother perceives
himself as sick, he is perceiving himself as NOT WHOLE, and
therefore IN NEED. If you, too, see him this way, you are
seeing him as if he were absent from the Kingdom or separated
from it, thus making the Kingdom itself obscure to BOTH of
you. Sickness and separation are not of God, but the Kingdom
is. If you obscure the Kingdom, you are perceiving what is NOT
OF GOD.
The Laws of Mind
To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother AND
yourself by sharing the Holy Spirit with him. This placed
(sic) you BOTH within the Kingdom, and restores its wholeness
in your minds. This parallels creation because it UNIFIES BY
INCREASING and INTEGRATES BY EXTENDING. What you project you
believe. This is an immutable law of the mind in this world as
well as in the Kingdom. However, the content is different in
this world, because the thoughts it governs are very different
from the thoughts in the Kingdom. Laws must be adapted to
circumstances, if they are to maintain order.
The outstanding characteristic of the laws of mind as they
operate in this world is that by obeying them and I assure
you that you MUST obey them you can arrive at diametrically
opposed results. This is because the laws have adapted to the
circumstances of this world, in which diametrically opposed
outcomes ARE believed in. The laws of mind govern thoughts,
and you DO respond to two conflicting voices. You have heard
many arguments on behalf of the freedoms, which would
indeed have been freedom if man had not chosen to FIGHT for
them. That is why they perceive the freedoms as many,
instead of as one. Yet the argument that underlies the defense
of freedom is perfectly valid. Because it is true it should
not be FOUGHT for, but it SHOULD be sided WITH.
Those who are against freedom believe that its outcome will
HURT them, which CANNOT be true. But those who are FOR
freedom, even if they are misguided in how to defend it, are
siding with the one thing in this world which IS true.
Whenever anyone can listen fairly to both sides of ANY issue,
he will make the right decision. This is because he HAS the
answer. Conflict can SEEM to be interpersonal, but it MUST be
intrapersonal first.
The term intrapersonal is an ego term, because
personal implies of ONE person, and NOT of others.
Interpersonal has a similar error, in that it refers to
something that exists among different or SEPARATE people. When
we spoke before of the extremely PERSONAL nature of
revelation, we followed this statement immediately with a
description of the inevitable outcomes of the revelation in
terms of SHARING. A person conceives of himself as separate
largely because he perceives OF himself as bounded by a body.
ONLY if he perceives himself as a MIND can this be overcome.
Then he is free to use terms like intramental and
intermental WITHOUT seeing them as different or conflicting
because minds CAN be in perfect accord.
OUTSIDE the Kingdom, the law which prevails INSIDE it is
adapted to what you project you BELIEVE. This is its
TEACHING form, since outside the Kingdom teaching is mandatory
because LEARNING is essential. This form of the law clearly
implies that you will learn what YOU are from what you have
projected onto others, and therefore believe THEY are. IN the
Kingdom there is no teaching OR learning because there is no
BELIEF. There is only CERTAINTY. God and His Sons, in the
surety of being, KNOW that what you project you ARE. That form
of the law is not adapted at all, being the Law of Creation.
God Himself created the law by creating BY it. And His Sons,
who create like Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the
increase of the Kingdom depends on it, just as their own
creation did.
Laws must be communicated if they are to be helpful. In
effect, they must be TRANSLATED for those who speak a
different language. Nevertheless, a good translator, although
he must alter the FORM of what he translates, NEVER changes
the meaning. In fact, his whole purpose is to change the form
SO THAT the original meaning is retained. The Holy Spirit is
the TRANSLATOR of the Laws of God to those who do NOT
understand them. You could not do this yourselves because
conflicted minds CANNOT be faithful to one meaning, and will
therefore CHANGE THE MEANING TO PRESERVE THE FORM.
The Holy Spirits purpose in translating is naturally
EXACTLY the opposite. He translates only to PRESERVE the
original meaning in ALL respects and in ALL languages.
Therefore, He opposes differences in form as meaningful,
emphasizing always that THESE DIFFERENCES DO NOT MATTER. The
meaning of His message is ALWAYS the same, and ONLY the
meaning matters. Gods Law of Creation in perfect form does
not involve the USE of truth to convince His Sons OF truth.
The EXTENSION of truth, which IS the Law of the Kingdom, rests
only on the knowledge of what truth IS. This is your
inheritance and requires no learning at all, but when you
DISinherited yourselves, you BECAME learners.
No-one questions the intimate connection of learning and
memory. Learning is impossible WITHOUT memory since it cannot
be consistent UNLESS it is remembered. That is why the Holy
Spirit IS a lesson in remembering. We said before that He
teaches remembering and forgetting, but the forgetting aspect
is only TO MAKE THE REMEMBERING CONSISTENT. You forget in
order to REMEMBER BETTER. You will NOT understand His
translations while you listen to two ways of perceiving them.
Therefore, you must forget, or relinquish, one to UNDERSTAND
the other. This is the only way you CAN learn consistency, so
that you can finally BE consistent.
What can the perfect consistency of the Kingdom mean to the
confused? It is apparent that confusion INTERFERES with
meaning, and therefore PREVENTS THE LEARNER FROM APPRECIATING
it. There is NO confusion in the Kingdom, because there is
only ONE meaning. This meaning comes from God and IS God.
Because it is also YOU, you share it and EXTEND it as your
Creator did. This needs no translation because it is perfectly
understood, but it DOES need extension because it MEANS
extension. Communication is perfectly direct and perfectly
united. It is totally without strain because nothing
discordant EVER enters. That is why it IS the Kingdom of God.
It belongs to Him, and is therefore LIKE Him. That is its
reality, and nothing CAN assail it.
The Unified Curriculum
To heal is to liberate totally. We once said there is no
order of difficulty in miracles because they are ALL maximal
expressions of love. This has no range at all. The non-maximal
only APPEARS to have a range. This is because it SEEMS to be
meaningful to measure it FROM the maximum, and identify its
position by HOW MUCH it is NOT there. Actually, this does not
mean anything. It is like negative numbers in that the concept
can be used theoretically, but it has no application
practically. It is true that if you put three apples on the
table and then take them away, the three apples are not there.
But it is NOT true that the table is now minus three apples.
If there is NOTHING on the table, it does not matter what WAS
there in terms of amount. The nothing is neither greater
nor less because of what is absent.
That is why all and nothing are dichotomous, WITHOUT
a range. This is perfectly clear in considering psychological
tests of maximal performance. You cannot interpret the results
AT ALL unless you assume either MAXIMAL motivation or NO
motivation at all. Only in these two conditions can you
validly compare responses, and you MUST assume the former
because, if the latter were true, the subject would not do
ANYTHING. Given VARIABLE motivation he WILL do something, but
YOU cannot understand WHAT IT IS.
The results of such tests are evaluated relatively ASSUMING
maximal motivation, but this is because we are dealing with
ABILITIES, where degree of development is meaningful. This
does NOT mean that what the ability is used FOR is necessarily
either limited OR divided. Yet one thing is certain; abilities
are POTENTIALS for learning, and you will apply them to what
you WANT to learn. Learning is EFFORT, and effort means WILL.
We have used the term abilities in the plural because
abilities began with the ego, which perceived them as
POTENTIALS FOR EXCELLING. This is how the ego STILL perceives
them and uses them.
The ego does not WANT to teach everyone all it has learned,
because that would DEFEAT its purpose. Therefore, it does not
REALLY learn at all. The Holy Spirit teaches you to use what
the ego has made to teach the OPPOSITE of what the ego has
learned. The KIND of learning is as irrelevant as is the
particular ability which was applied TO the learning. You
could not have a better example of the Holy Spirits unified
purpose than this course. The Holy Spirit has taken very
diversified areas of YOUR learning, and has applied them to a
UNIFIED curriculum. The fact that this was NOT the egos
reason for learning is totally irrelevant.
YOU made the effort to learn, and the Holy Spirit has a
unified goal for ALL effort. He ADAPTS the egos potentials
for excelling to potentials for EQUALIZING. This makes them
USELESS for the egos purpose, but VERY useful for His. If
different abilities are applied long enough to one goal, the
abilities THEMSELVES become unified. This is because they are
channelized in one direction, or in one WAY. Ultimately, then,
they all contribute to ONE RESULT, and by so doing, their
similarity rather than their differences is emphasized. You
can EXCEL in many DIFFERENT ways, but you can EQUALIZE in ONE
WAY ONLY. Equality is NOT a variable state, by definition.
That it why you will be able to perform ALL aspects of your
work with ease when you have learned THIS course. To the ego
there appears to be no connection because the EGO is
discontinuous. Yet the Holy Spirit teaches ONE lesson, and
applies it to ALL individuals in ALL situations. Being
conflict-free, He maximizes ALL efforts and ALL results. By
teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches
you that ALL POWER IS YOURS. Its application does not matter.
It is ALWAYS maximal. Your vigilance does not ESTABLISH it as
yours, but it DOES enable you to use it ALWAYS and in ALL
WAYS.
When I said, I am with you always, I meant it
literally. I am not absent to ANYONE, in ANY situation.
BECAUSE I am always with you, YOU are the Way and the Truth
and the Light. You did not make this power any more than I
did. It was created to BE shared, and therefore cannot be
meaningfully perceived as belonging to anyone AT THE EXPENSE
of another. Such a perception makes it meaningless by
eliminating or overlooking its REAL and ONLY meaning.
The Recognition of Truth
Gods meaning waits in the Kingdom because that is where He
placed it. It does not wait in time. It merely RESTS in the
Kingdom because it BELONGS there, as You do. How can you, who
ARE Gods meaning, perceive yourselves as absent FROM it? You
can see yourselves as separated from your meaning only BY
EXPERIENCING YOURSELF AS UNREAL. This is why the ego is
insane; it teaches that you are NOT what you ARE. This is so
contradictory that it is clearly impossible. It is therefore a
lesson which you CANNOT REALLY LEARN, and therefore, CANNOT
REALLY TEACH. Yet you ARE always teaching. You MUST,
therefore, be teaching something ELSE as well, even though the
ego DOES NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS.
The ego, then IS always being undone, and DOES suspect your
motives. Your mind CANNOT be unified in allegiance to the ego,
because the mind does NOT belong to it. Yet what is
treacherous to the ego IS faithful to peace. The egos
enemy is therefore YOUR friend. We said before that the
egos friend is not part of you, since the ego perceives
itself as at war, and therefore in need of allies. YOU, who
are NOT at war, must look for brothers and RECOGNIZE all whom
you see AS brothers, because ONLY equals are at peace.
Because Gods equal Sons have everything, they CANNOT
compete. Yet if they perceive ANY of their brothers as
anything other than their perfect equals, the idea of
competition HAS entered their minds. Do not underestimate your
need to be vigilant AGAINST this idea, because ALL your
conflicts come from it. It is the belief that conflicting
interests are possible, and therefore you have accepted the
impossible as TRUE. How is that different from saying that you
are perceiving YOURSELF as unreal?
To be IN the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention
ON it. As long as you believe that you can attend to what is
NOT true, you are accepting conflict as your CHOICE. Is it
REALLY a choice? It SEEMS to be, but seeming and reality are
hardly the same. You who ARE the Kingdom are not concerned
with seeming. Reality is yours because you ARE reality. This
is how having and being are ultimately reconciled, not in the
Kingdom, but IN YOUR MINDS. The altar there is the ONLY
reality. The altar is perfectly clear in thought because it is
a reflection of PERFECT Thought. It sees only brothers because
it sees ONLY in its own Light.
God has lit your minds Himself, and keeps your minds lit by
His Light because His Light is what your minds ARE. This is
TOTALLY beyond question, and when you questioned it, you WERE
answered. The answer merely UNDOES the question by
establishing the fact that to question reality is to question
meaninglessly. That is why the Holy Spirit NEVER questions.
His sole function is to UNDO the questionable, and thus lead
to CERTAINTY. The certain are perfectly calm because they are
not in doubt. They do not raise questions because nothing
questionable ENTERS their minds. This holds them in perfect
serenity because this is what they share, KNOWING what they
are.
As has so often been said, healing is both an art and a
science. It is an art because it depends on inspiration in the
sense that we have already used the term. Inspiration is the
opposite of dispiriting, and therefore means to make joyous.
The dispirited are depressed because they believe that they
are literally without the Spirit, which is an illusion. You
do not PUT the Spirit in them by inspiring them because that
would be magic, and therefore would not be real healing. You
DO, however, recognize the Spirit that is ALREADY there, and
thereby REAWAKEN it. This is why the healer is part of the
resurrection and the LIFE. The Spirit is not asleep in the
minds of the sick, but the part of the mind that can perceive
it and be glad IS.
Healing is also a science because it obeys the laws of God,
Whose laws are true. BECAUSE they are true they are perfectly
dependable, and therefore universal in application. The REAL
aim of science is neither prediction nor control, but ONLY
understanding. This is because it does NOT establish the laws
it seeks; CANNOT discover them through prediction; and has NO
control over them at all. Science is nothing more than an
approach to WHAT ALREADY IS. Like inspiration it can be
misunderstood as magic, and WILL be whenever it is undertaken
as SEPARATE from what already is, and perceived as a means for
ESTABLISHING it. To believe this is possible is to believe YOU
CAN DO IT. This can only be the voice of the ego.
Truth can only be RECOGNIZED, and NEED only be recognized.
Inspiration is of the Spirit, and certainty is of God
according to His laws. Both, therefore, come from the same
Source, since inspiration comes from the Voice FOR God and
certainty comes from the laws OF God. Healing does not come
DIRECTLY from God, Who knows His creations as perfectly whole.
Yet healing is still OF God because it proceeds from His Voice
and from His laws. It is their result, in a state of mind
which does NOT know Him. The STATE is unknown to Him and
therefore does not exist, but those who sleep ARE STUPEFIED,
or better, UNAWARE. BECAUSE they are unaware, they do NOT
know.
The Holy Spirit must work THROUGH you to teach you He is IN
you. This is an intermediary step toward the knowledge that
you are in God because you are part of Him. The miracles which
the Holy Spirit inspires can have no order of difficulty
because every part of creation is of ONE order. This is Gods
WILL AND YOURS. The laws of God ESTABLISH this, and the Holy
Spirit reminds you OF it. When you heal, you are REMEMBERING
the laws of God and forgetting the laws of the ego. We said
before that forgetting is merely a way of remembering BETTER.
It is therefore NOT the opposite of remembering, when it is
properly perceived. Perceived IMPROPERLY, it induces a
perception of CONFLICT with something ELSE, as all incorrect
perception does. PROPERLY perceived, it can be used as a way
OUT of conflict, as all proper perception can.
ALL abilities, then should be given over to the Holy Spirit
WHO KNOWS HOW TO USE THEM PROPERLY. He can use them ONLY for
healing because He knows you ONLY as whole. BY healing you
learn of wholeness, and by learning of wholeness you learn to
remember God. You HAVE forgotten Him, but the Holy Spirit
still knows that your forgetting must be translated into a way
of REMEMBERING, and NOT perceived as a separate ability which
opposes an opposite. That is the way in which the ego tries to
use ALL abilities, since its goal is always to make you
believe that YOU are in opposition.
The egos goal is as unified as the Holy Spirits, and it
is because of this that their goals can NEVER be reconciled in
ANY way or to ANY extent. The ego ALWAYS seeks to divide and
separate. The Holy Spirit ALWAYS seeks to unify and heal. As
you heal you ARE healed because the Holy Spirit sees no order
of healing. Healing is the way to UNDO the belief in
differences, being the ONLY way of perceiving the Sonship
without this belief. This perception is therefore IN accord
with the laws of God even in a state of mind which is OUT of
accord with His. The strength of right perception is so great
that it brings the mind INTO accord with His because it yields
to His pull, which is in all of you.
To OPPOSE the pull or the Will of God is not an ability but
a real DELUSION. The ego believes that it HAS this ability,
and can offer it to you as a gift. YOU DO NOT WANT IT. It is
NOT a gift. It is NOTHING AT ALL. God has given you a gift
which you both have and are. When you do not use it, you do
not know you HAVE it. By NOT knowing this, you do not know
what you are. Healing, then, is a way of APPROACHING knowledge
by thinking IN ACCORDANCE with the laws of God, and
recognizing their UNIVERSALITY. Without this recognition, you
have made the laws themselves meaningless to you. Yet the LAWS
are not meaningless since all meaning is contained BY them and
IN them.
Seek ye FIRST the Kingdom of Heaven because that is where
the laws of God operate truly, and they can operate ONLY
truly, since they are the laws of Truth. But seek this ONLY
because you can FIND nothing else. There IS nothing else. God
is all in all in a very literal sense. All being is in Him Who
IS all Being. YOU are therefore in Him since YOUR being IS
His. Healing is a way of forgetting the sense of danger the
ego has induced in YOU by NOT recognizing its existence in
your brothers. This strengthens the Holy Spirit in BOTH of you
because it is a REFUSAL to acknowledge fear. Love needs only
this invitation. It comes freely to ALL the Sonship, being
what the Sonship IS. By your awakening TO it, you are merely
forgetting what you are NOT. This enables you to remember what
you ARE.
Healing and the Changelessness of Mind
The body is nothing more than a framework for developing
abilities. It is therefore a means for developing POTENTIALS,
which is quite apart from what the potential is used FOR. THAT
is a DECISION. The effects of the egos decision in this
matter are so apparent that they need no elaboration here, but
the Holy Spirits decision to use the body ONLY for
communication has such a direct connection with healing that
it DOES need clarification. The unhealed healer OBVIOUSLY does
not understand his own vocation.
ONLY minds communicate. Since the ego CANNOT obliterate the
impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to
create, the ego can only teach you that the BODY can both
communicate AND create, and therefore does not NEED the mind.
The ego thus tries to teach you that the body can ACT like the
mind, and is therefore self-sufficient. Yet we have learned
that behavior is NOT the level for either teaching OR
learning. This must be so, since you CAN act in accordance
with what you do NOT believe. To do this, however, will weaken
you as teachers AND learners because, as has been repeatedly
emphasized you teach what you DO believe. An inconsistent
lesson will be poorly taught AND POORLY LEARNED. If you teach
both sickness AND healing you are both a poor teacher AND a
poor learner.
Healing is the one ability which everyone can develop and
MUST develop, if he is to be healed. Healing is the Holy
Spirits form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows. He
recognizes no other because he does not accept the egos
confusion of mind and body. Minds can communicate, but they
CANNOT hurt. The body in the service of the ego can hurt other
BODIES, but this cannot occur unless the body has ALREADY been
confused with the mind. This fact, too, can be used either for
healing or for magic, but you must remember that magic is
ALWAYS the belief that healing is HARMFUL. This is its totally
insane premise, and so it proceeds accordingly.
Healing only STRENGTHENS. Magic ALWAYS tries to weaken.
Healing perceives NOTHING in the healer that everyone else
does not SHARE with him. Magic ALWAYS sees something
special in the healer, which he believes he can offer as a
gift to someone who does NOT have it. He may believe that the
gift comes FROM God to Him, but it is quite evident that he
does not understand God if he thinks he has something that
others LACK. You might well ask, then, why some healing CAN
result from this kind of thinking, and there is a reason for
this:
However misguided the magical healer may be, he is ALSO
trying to help. He is conflicted and unstable, but AT TIMES he
is offering something to the Sonship, and the only thing the
Sonship can ACCEPT is healing. When the so-called healing
works, then, the impulse to help and to BE helped have
coincided. This is coincidental, because the healer may NOT be
experiencing himself as truly helpful at the time, but the
belief that he IS, in the mind of another, helps HIM.
The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and healing that
is of Him ALWAYS works. Unless the healer ALWAYS heals by Him,
the results WILL vary. Yet healing itself IS consistence,
since ONLY consistence is conflict-free, and only the
conflict-free ARE whole. By accepting exceptions and
acknowledging that he can sometimes heal and sometimes not,
the healer is OBVIOUSLY accepting inconsistency. He is
therefore IN conflict and TEACHING conflict. Can anything of
God NOT be for all and for always?
Love is incapable of ANY exceptions. Only if there is fear
does the IDEA of exceptions seem to be meaningful. Exceptions
are fearful because they are made BY fear. The fearful
healer is a contradiction in terms, and is therefore a
concept which ONLY a conflicted mind could possibly perceive
as meaningful. Fear does NOT gladden. Healing DOES. Fear
ALWAYS makes exceptions. Healing NEVER does. Fear produces
dissociation because it induces SEPARATION. Healing ALWAYS
produces harmony because it proceeds from integration.
Healing is predictable because it can be counted on.
EVERYTHING that is of God can be counted on, because
everything of God is wholly REAL. Healing can be counted on
BECAUSE it is inspired by His Voice, and is in accord with His
laws. Yet if healing IS consistence, it cannot be
inconsistently understood. Understanding MEANS consistence
because GOD means consistence. Since that is HIS meaning, it
is also YOURS. Your meaning cannot BE out of accord with His
because your whole meaning, and your ONLY meaning, comes FROM
His and is LIKE His. God cannot be out of accord with HIMSELF,
and YOU cannot be out of accord with Him. You cannot separate
your SELF from your Creator, Who created you by sharing HIS
Being WITH you.
The unhealed healer wants gratitude FROM his brothers, but
he is not grateful TO them. This is because he thinks he is
GIVING something TO them and is NOT receiving something
equally desirable in return. His TEACHING is limited because
he is LEARNING so little. His healing lesson is limited by his
own ingratitude, which is a lesson in SICKNESS. Learning is
constant, and so vital in its power for change that a Son of
God can recognize his power in one instant, and change the
world in the next. That is because, by changing HIS mind, he
has changed the most powerful device that was ever created FOR
change.
This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as
GOD created it, but you think that you HAVE changed it as long
as you learn through the ego. This DOES place you in a
position of needing to learn a lesson which seems
contradictory; you must learn to change your mind ABOUT your
mind. Only by this can you learn that it IS changeless. When
you heal, that is exactly what you ARE learning. You are
recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by realizing
that he COULD not have changed his mind. That is how you
perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is ONLY the Holy Spirit in
him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he CAN,
or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does
not know what his self IS.
If YOU see only the changeless in him, you have not really
changed him at all. By changing YOUR mind about his FOR him,
you help him UNDO the change his ego thinks it has made in
him. As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two ways.
One way shows you an image, or better, an idol, which you may
worship out of fear, but which you will never love. The other
shows you only truth, which you will love because you will
UNDERSTAND it. Understanding is APPRECIATION, because what you
understand you can IDENTIFY with, and by making it part of
YOU, you have accepted it with love.
That is how God Himself created YOU; in understanding, in
appreciation, and in love. The ego is totally unable to
understand this because it does NOT understand what it makes;
it does NOT appreciate it, and it does NOT love it. It
incorporates to TAKE AWAY. It literally believes that every
time it deprives someone of something, IT has increased. We
have spoken often of the increase of the Kingdom by YOUR
creations, which can only be created as YOU were. The whole
glory and perfect joy that IS the Kingdom lies in you to give.
Do you not WANT to give it?
You CANNOT forget the Father because I am with you, and I
cannot forget Him. To forget ME is to forget yourself and Him
who created you. Our brothers ARE forgetful. That is why they
need your remembrance of me, and Him who created me. Through
this remembrance you can change their minds about THEMSELVES,
as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that
you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can
enlighten yours. I do not want to share my BODY in communion
because that is to share nothing. Yet I do want to share my
MIND with you because we ARE of one Mind, and that MIND IS
ours.
See ONLY this MIND everywhere, because only this IS
everywhere and in everything. It IS everything because it
encompasses all things within ITSELF. Blessed are you who
perceive only this, because you perceive only what is true.
Come therefore unto me, and learn of the truth in YOU. The
Mind we share is shared by all our brothers, and as we see
them truly, they WILL be healed. Let YOUR mind shine with mine
upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them, make them
aware of the light in THEM.
This light will shine back upon YOU and on the whole
Sonship because this is your proper gift to God. He will
accept it and give it to the Sonship because it is acceptable
to Him, and therefore to His Sons. This is the true communion
of the Spirit Who sees the altar of God in everyone, and by
bringing it to YOUR appreciation, calls upon you to love God
AND His creations. You can appreciate the Sonship ONLY as one.
This is part of the law of creation, and therefore governs ALL
thought.
From Vigilance to Peace
Although you can LOVE the Sonship only as one, you can
PERCEIVE it as fragmented. It is impossible, however, for you
to see something in PART of it that you will not attribute to
ALL of it. That is why attack is NEVER discrete, and why
attack must be relinquished ENTIRELY. If it is NOT
relinquished entirely, it is not relinquished at all. Fear and
love are equally reciprocal. They make or create depending on
whether the ego or the Holy Spirit begets or inspires them,
but they WILL return to the mind of the thinker, and they WILL
affect his total perception. That includes his perception of
God, of His creations, and of his own. He will not appreciate
ANY of them if he regards them fearfully. He will appreciate
ALL of them if he regards them with love.
The mind that accepts attack CANNOT love. That is because
it believes that it can DESTROY love, and therefore does not
understand what love IS. If it does not understand what love
is, it CANNOT perceive itself as loving. This loses the
awareness of being; induces feelings of unreality; and results
in utter confusion. Your own thinking has done this because of
its power, but your own thinking can also save you FROM this
because its power is NOT of your making. Your ability to
DIRECT your thinking as you will is PART of its power. If you
do not believe you can do this, you have DENIED the power of
your thought, and thus rendered it powerless in your BELIEF.
The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is
enormous, but it stems from the power of the mind which the
ego DENIES. This means that the ego ATTACKS what is PRESERVING
it, and this MUST be a source of extreme anxiety. That is why
the ego NEVER knows what it is doing. It is perfectly logical,
but clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source which is
totally inimical to its existence FOR its existence. Fearful
of perceiving the POWER of this source, it is forced to
depreciate it. This threatens its OWN existence, a state which
it finds intolerable.
Remaining logical but still insane, the ego resolves this
completely insane dilemma in a completely insane way. It does
not perceive ITS existence as threatened by projecting the
threat onto YOU, and perceiving your BEING as nonexistent.
This ensures ITS continuance, if you side with it, by
guaranteeing that you will not know your OWN safety. The ego
cannot afford to know ANYTHING. Knowledge is total, and the
ego does not BELIEVE in totality. This unbelief is its origin,
and while the ego does not love YOU, it IS faithful to its own
antecedents, begetting as it was begotten.
Mind ALWAYS reproduces as it was produced. Produced by
fear, the ego reproduces fear. This is its allegiance, and
this allegiance makes it treacherous to love BECAUSE you are
love. Love is your power, which the ego must deny. It must
also deny everything which this power gives you because it
gives you EVERYTHING. No-one who has everything WANTS the ego.
Its own maker, then, does not want it. Rejection is therefore
the only decision which the ego could possibly encounter, if
the mind which made it knew ITSELF. And if it recognized ANY
part of the Sonship it WOULD know itself.
The ego therefore opposes ALL appreciation, ALL
recognition, ALL sane perception and ALL knowledge. It
perceives their threat as total because it senses the fact
that ALL commitments the mind makes ARE total. Forced,
therefore, to detach itself from you who ARE mind, it is
willing to attach itself to ANYTHING else. But there IS
nothing else. It does not follow that the mind cannot make
illusions, but it DOES follow that, if it makes illusions, it
will believe in them, because that is HOW it made them.
The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them
merely because He cannot perceive them at all. They therefore
do not exist for Him. He resolves the APPARENT conflict which
they engender by perceiving CONFLICT as meaningless. We said
before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as
it is, and it IS meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want
you to UNDERSTAND conflict; He wants you to realize that
BECAUSE conflict is meaningless, it cannot BE understood. We
have already said that understanding brings appreciation, and
appreciation brings love. Nothing else CAN be understood
because nothing else is REAL, and therefore nothing else HAS
meaning.
If you will keep in mind what the Holy Spirit offers you,
you cannot be vigilant for anything BUT God and His Kingdom.
The only reason you find this difficult is because you think
there IS something else. Belief does not require vigilance
UNLESS it is conflicted. If it is, there ARE conflicting
components within it which have engendered a state of war, and
vigilance therefore has become essential. Vigilance has no
place at all in peace. It is necessary against beliefs which
are NOT true, and would never have been called upon by the
Holy Spirit if you had NOT believed the untrue. You cannot
deny that when you believe something, you have MADE it true
for YOU.
When you believe what God does not KNOW, your thought seems
to CONTRADICT His, and this makes it appear AS IF you are
attacking Him. We have repeatedly emphasized that the ego DOES
believe it can attack God, and tries to persuade you that YOU
have done this. If the mind CANNOT attack, the ego proceeds
perfectly logically to the position that you cannot BE mind.
By not seeing you as you ARE, it can see ITSELF as it WANTS to
be. Aware of its weakness the ego wants your allegiance, but
not as you really are. The ego therefore wants to engage your
mind in its OWN delusional system because otherwise the light
of YOUR understanding would dispel it.
The ego wants no part of truth because the truth is that
the EGO is not true. IF truth is total the untrue CANNOT
exist. Commitment to either must be TOTAL, since they cannot
co-exist in your minds WITHOUT splitting them. If they cannot
co-exist in peace, and if you WANT peace, you must give up the
idea of conflict ENTIRELY and for ALL TIME. While you believe
that two totally contradictory thought systems SHARE truth,
your need for vigilance is apparent. Your minds ARE dividing
their allegiance between two kingdoms, and you are totally
committed to neither.
Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond
question except by you, when you are thinking insanely. What
you are is not established by your perception, and is not
influenced BY it at all. All perceived problems in
identification at any level are NOT problems of fact. They are
problems of UNDERSTANDING, since they MEAN that you believe
what you can understand IS up to you to decide. The ego
believes this totally, being FULLY committed to it. It is not
true. The ego therefore is totally committed to untruth,
perceiving in total contradiction to the Holy Spirit and to
the knowledge of God.
You can be perceived with meaning ONLY by the Holy Spirit
because your being IS the knowledge of God. Any belief that
you accept which is apart from this will obscure Gods Voice
in you, and will therefore obscure God TO you. Unless you
perceive His creation truly you cannot know the Creator, since
God and His creation are not separate. The Oneness of the
Creator and the creation is your wholeness, your sanity, and
your limitless power. This limitless power is Gods gift to
you because it is what you ARE. If you dissociate your mind
from it, you are perceiving the most powerful force in the
universe as if it were weak because you do not believe YOU are
part of it.
Perceived WITHOUT your part in it Gods creation IS
perceived as weak, and those who see themselves as weakened DO
attack. The attack must be blind, however, because there is
nothing TO attack. Therefore, they make up images, perceive
them as unworthy, and attack them for their unworthiness. That
is all the world of the ego is. NOTHING. It has no meaning. It
does not exist. Do not try to understand it because, if you
do, you are believing that it can BE understood, and is
therefore capable of being appreciated and loved. That would
justify it, and it cannot BE justified. You cannot make the
meaningless meaningful. This can ONLY be an insane attempt.
Allowing insanity to enter your minds means that you have
not judged sanity as WHOLLY DESIRABLE. If you WANT something
else you will MAKE something else, but because it IS something
else it will attack your thought system and divide your
allegiance. You cannot create in this divided state, and you
must be vigilant AGAINST this divided state because only peace
can BE extended. Your divided minds are blocking the extension
of the Kingdom, and its extension IS your joy. If you do not
extend the Kingdom, you are not thinking with your Creator and
creating as He created.
In this depressing state the Holy Spirit reminds you gently
that you are sad because you are not fulfilling your function
as co-creators with God, and are therefore depriving
yourselves of joy. This is not Gods Will, but YOURS. If your
will is out of accord with Gods, you are willing without
meaning. Yet because Gods Will is unchangeable, no REAL
conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirits
perfectly consistent teaching.
Creation, NOT separation, is your will BECAUSE it is Gods,
and nothing that opposes this means anything at all. Being a
perfect accomplishment, the Sonship can only accomplish
perfectly, extending the joy in which it was created, and
identifying itself with both its Creator and its creations,
KNOWING they are One.
The Total Commitment
Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother YOU will feel
deprived. This is because denial is as total as love. It is as
impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in
part. Nor is it possible to love it totally AT TIMES. You
cannot be TOTALLY committed SOMETIMES. Remember a very early
lesson; Never underestimate the power of denial. It has no
power in itself, but you can give it the power of YOUR mind,
whose power is without limit of any kind. If you use it to
deny reality, reality IS gone for you. REALITY CANNOT BE
PARTLY APPRECIATED. That is why denying any part of it means
you have lost awareness of ALL of it.
That is the negative side of the law, as it operates in
this world. Yet denial is a defense, and so it is as capable
of being used positively as it is of being used destructively.
Used negatively it WILL be destructive because it will be used
for attack, but in the service of the Holy Spirit, the law
requires you to recognize only PART of reality to appreciate
ALL of it. Mind is too powerful to be subject to exclusion.
You will NEVER be able to exclude yourself from what you
project.
When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an
opportunity to bless him. His need is YOURS. You NEED the
blessing you can offer him. There is no way for you to have it
EXCEPT by giving it. This is the law of God, and it has NO
exceptions. What you deny you LACK, not because it IS lacking,
but because you have denied it in another, and are therefore
not aware of it in YOU. Every response you make is determined
by what you THINK you are, and what you WANT to be IS what you
think you are. Therefore, what you want to be determines every
response you make.
You do not need Gods blessing, since that you have
forever, but you DO need YOURS. The picture you see of
yourselves is deprived, unloving and very vulnerable. You
CANNOT love this. Yet you can very easily escape from it, or
better, leave it behind. You are not THERE, and that is not
YOU. Do not see this picture in anyone, or you have accepted
it AS you. ALL illusions about the Sonship are dispelled
together, as they were MADE together. Teach no-one that he is
what YOU would NOT want to be. Your brother is the mirror in
which you will see the image of yourself, as long as
perception lasts. And perception WILL last until the Sonship
knows itself as whole.
You made perception, and it must last as long as you WANT
it. Illusions are investments. They will last as long as you
value them. Values are relative, but they are powerful because
they are mental judgments. The only way to dispel illusions is
to withdraw ALL investment from them, and they will have no
life for you because you have put them OUT OF YOUR MIND. While
you include them IN it, you are GIVING life to them. Except
there is nothing there to receive your gift.
The gift of life IS yours to give, because it was given
YOU. You are unaware of your gift BECAUSE you do not give it.
You cannot make nothing live, since it cannot BE enlivened.
Therefore, you are not extending the gift you both have and
are, and so you do not know your being. ALL confusion comes
from not extending life, since that is NOT the Will of your
Creator. You can do nothing apart from Him, and you DO do
nothing apart from Him. Keep His way to remember yourselves,
and teach His way, lest you forget yourselves. Give only honor
to the Sons of the Living God, and count yourselves among them
gladly.
ONLY honor is a fitting gift for those whom God Himself
created worthy of honor, and whom He honors. Give them the
appreciation which God accords them always, because they are
His beloved Sons in whom He is well pleased. You cannot BE
apart from them because you are not apart from Him. Rest in
His Love, and protect your rest by loving. But love EVERYTHING
He created, of which you are a part, or you cannot learn of
His peace, and accept His gift for YOURSELF and AS yourself.
You cannot know your own perfection until you have honored all
those who were created LIKE you.
One Child of God is the ONLY teacher sufficiently worthy to
teach another. One Teacher is in all your minds, and He
teaches the same lesson to all. He always teaches you the
inestimable worth of EVERY Son of God, teaching it with
infinite patience born of the infinite Love for which he
speaks. Every attack is a call for His patience since ONLY His
patience can translate attack into blessing. Those who attack
do not KNOW they are blessed. They attack because they believe
they are DEPRIVED. Give, therefore, of YOUR abundance, and
teach your brothers THEIRS. Do not share their delusions of
scarcity, or you will perceive YOURSELF as lacking.
Attack could never promote attack unless you perceived it
as a means of depriving you of something you WANT. Yet you
cannot LOSE anything unless YOU did not value it, and
therefore did not WANT it. This makes you feel DEPRIVED of it,
and by projecting your own rejection, you believe that others
are taking it FROM you. One MUST be fearful, if he believes
that his brother is attacking him to tear the Kingdom of
Heaven from him. This is the ultimate basis for ALL of the
egos projection.
Being the part of your mind which does not believe it is
responsible for ITSELF, and being without allegiance to God,
the ego is incapable of trust. Projecting its insane belief
that YOU have been treacherous to YOUR Creator, it believes
that your brothers, who are as incapable of this as YOU are,
are out to take God FROM you. Whenever a brother attacks
another, this IS what he believes. Projection ALWAYS sees your
will in others. If you will to separate yourself from God,
that IS what you will think others are doing TO you.
You ARE the Will of God. Do not accept anything else AS
your will, or you are denying what you are. Deny this and you
WILL attack, believing you have BEEN attacked. But see the
Love of God in you, and you will see It everywhere because it
IS everywhere. See His abundance in everyone, and you will
know that you are in Him WITH them. They are part of you, as
you are part of God. YOU are as lonely without understanding
this as God Himself is lonely when His Sons do not know Him.
The peace of God IS understanding this. There is only one way
OUT of the worlds thinking, just as there was only one way
INTO it. Understand totally by understanding TOTALITY.
Perceive ANY part of the egos thought system as wholly
insane, wholly delusional and wholly undesirable, and you have
correctly evaluated ALL of it. This correction enables you to
perceive ANY part of creation as wholly real, wholly perfect,
and WHOLLY DESIRABLE. Wanting this ONLY, you will HAVE this
only, and giving this only, you will BE only this. The gifts
you offer to the ego are ALWAYS experienced as sacrifices, but
the gifts you offer to the Kingdom are gifts to YOU. They will
always be treasured by God because they belong to His beloved
Sons, who belong to Him. All power and glory are yours BECAUSE
the Kingdom is His.
The Defense of Conflict
We once said that without projection there can be no anger,
but it is also true that without projection there can be no
love. Projection is a fundamental law of the mind, and
therefore one which ALWAYS operates. It is the law by which
you create and were created. It is the law which unifies the
Kingdom, and keeps it in the Mind of God. To the ego, the law
is perceived as a way of getting RID of something it does NOT
want. To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing
by which you GIVE what you value in order to keep it in your
OWN mind.
Projection, to the Holy Spirit, is the law of extension. To
the ego, it is the law of deprivation. It therefore produces
abundance or scarcity, depending on how you choose to apply
it. This choice IS up to you, but it is NOT up to you to
decide whether or not you will UTILIZE projection. Every mind
MUST project because that is how it lives, and every mind IS
life. The egos use of projection must be fully understood
before its inevitable association between projection and anger
can be finally undone.
The ego ALWAYS tries to preserve conflict. It is very
ingenious in devising ways which SEEM to diminish conflict
because it does NOT want you to find conflict so intolerable
that you will INSIST on giving it up. Therefore, the ego tries
to persuade you that IT can free you of conflict, lest you
give the EGO up and free YOURSELF. The ego, using its own
warped version of the laws of God, utilizes the power of the
mind ONLY to defeat the minds real purpose. It projects
conflict FROM your mind to OTHER minds, in an attempt to
persuade you that you have gotten RID of it. This has several
fallacies which may not be so apparent.
Strictly speaking, conflict cannot BE projected precisely
BECAUSE it cannot be fully shared. Any attempt to keep PART of
it and get rid of another part does not really mean ANYTHING.
Remember that a conflicted teacher is a poor teacher AND A
POOR LEARNER. His lessons are confused, and their transfer
value is severely limited BY his confusion. A second fallacy
is the idea the you can get RID of something you do not want
by giving it away. GIVING it is how you KEEP it. The belief
that by giving it OUT you have excluded it from WITHIN is a
complete distortion of the power of extension.
That is why those who project from the ego are vigilant for
their OWN safety. They ARE afraid that their projections will
return and hurt them. They DO believe they have blotted their
projections from their OWN minds, but they also believe their
projections are trying to creep back INTO them. That is
because the projections have NOT left their minds, and this,
in turn, forces them to engage in compulsive activity in order
NOT to recognize this. You CANNOT perpetuate an illusion about
another WITHOUT perpetuating it about yourself. There is no
way out of this because it is IMPOSSIBLE to fragment the mind.
To fragment is to break into pieces, and mind CANNOT attack
or BE attacked. The belief that it CAN, a fallacy which the
ego ALWAYS makes, underlies its whole use of projection. It
does not understand what mind IS, and therefore does not
understand what YOU are. Yet its existence is dependent on
your mind because the ego IS your belief. The ego is therefore
a confusion in identification which never had a consistent
model, and never developed consistently. It is the distorted
product of the misapplication of the laws of God, by distorted
minds which are misusing their own power.
DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THE EGO. It DOES depend on your mind,
and as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel it by
withdrawing belief FROM it. DO not project the responsibility
for your belief in it onto anyone ELSE, or you will PRESERVE
the belief. When you are willing to accept sole responsibility
for the egos existence YOURSELF you will have laid aside all
anger and all attack, because they COME from an attempt to
project responsibility for your OWN errors. But having
ACCEPTED the errors as yours, DO NOT KEEP THEM. Give them over
quickly to the Holy Spirit to be undone completely, so that
ALL their effects will vanish from your minds, and from the
Sonship AS A WHOLE.
The Holy Spirit will teach you to perceive BEYOND belief
because truth is beyond belief, and His perception IS true.
The ego can be completely forgotten at ANY time because it was
always a belief that is totally incredible. No-one can KEEP a
belief he has judged to be unbelievable. The more you learn
about the ego, the more you realize that it cannot BE
believed. The incredible cannot be understood because it IS
unbelievable. The utter meaninglessness of all perception that
comes from the unbelievable must be apparent, but it is not
RECOGNIZED as beyond belief because it was made BY belief.
The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the
ego is unbelievable and will forever BE unbelievable. You who
made the ego by believing the unbelievable cannot make this
judgment alone. By accepting the Atonement for YOURSELF, you
are deciding against the belief that you can BE alone, thus
dispelling the idea of separation, and affirming your true
identification with the whole Kingdom as literally PART of
you. This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyond
belief. Your wholeness has no limits because being is in
infinity.
The Extension of the Kingdom
Only YOU can limit your creative power, but God wills to
release it. He no more wills you to deprive yourself of your
creations than He wills to deprive Himself of His. Do not
withhold your gifts to the Sonship, or you withhold yourself
from God. Selfishness is of the ego, but self-fullness is of
the Soul because that is how God created it. The Holy Spirit
is the part of the mind that lies between the ego and the
Soul, mediating between them ALWAYS in favor of the Soul. To
the ego this is partiality, and it therefore responds as if it
were the part that is being sided AGAINST. TO the Soul this is
truth, because it knows its fullness, and cannot conceive of
any part from which it is excluded.
The Soul KNOWS that the consciousness of all its brothers
is included in its own, as IT is included in God. The power of
the whole Sonship AND of its Creator is therefore the Souls
own fullness, rendering its creations equally whole and equal
in perfection. The ego cannot prevail against a totality which
includes God, and any totality MUST include God. Everything He
created is given all His power because it is part of Him and
shares His Being with Him. Creating is the opposite of loss,
as blessing is the opposite of sacrifice. Being MUST be
extended. That is how it retains the knowledge of ITSELF.
The Soul yearns to share its being as ITS Creator did.
Created BY sharing, its will is to create. It does not wish to
CONTAIN God but to EXTEND His Being. The extension of Gods
Being is the Souls ONLY function. Its fullness cannot be
contained, any more than can the fullness of its Creator.
Fullness IS extension. The egos whole thought system blocks
extension, and thus blocks your only function. It therefore
blocks your joy, and that is why you perceive yourselves as
unfulfilled. Unless you create you ARE unfulfilled, but God
does not know of unfulfillment, and therefore you MUST create.
YOU may not know your own creations, but this can no more
interfere with their reality than your unawareness of your
Soul can interfere with its being.
The Kingdom is forever extending because it is in the Mind
of God. You do not KNOW your joy because you do not know your
own self-fullness. Exclude ANY part of the Kingdom from
yourself, and you are NOT whole. A split mind cannot perceive
its fullness, and needs the miracle of its wholeness to dawn
upon it and heal it. This reawakens the wholeness in it, and
restores it to the Kingdom because of its ACCEPTANCE of
wholeness. The full appreciation of its self-fullness makes
selfishness impossible and extension inevitable. That is why
there is perfect peace in the Kingdom. Every Soul IS
fulfilling its function, and only complete fulfillment IS
peace.
Insanity APPEARS to add to reality, but no-one would claim
that what it adds is true. Insanity is therefore the NON-
extension of truth, which blocks joy because it blocks
creation, and thus blocks self-fulfillment. The unfulfilled
MUST be depressed because their self-fullness is unknown to
them. Your creations are protected FOR you because the Holy
Spirit, Who is in your mind, knows of them and can bring them
INTO your awareness whenever you will let Him. They are there
as part of your own being because your fulfillment INCLUDES
them. The creations of every Son of God are yours since every
creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as
a whole.
You have NOT failed to add to the inheritance of the Sons
of God, and thus have not failed to secure it for yourselves.
If it was the Will of God to give it to you, He gave it
forever. If it was His Will that you have it forever, He gave
you the means for keeping it, AND YOU HAVE DONE SO. Disobeying
Gods Will is meaningful only to the insane. In truth it is
impossible. Your self-fullness is as boundless as Gods. Like
His, it extends forever and in perfect peace. Its radiance is
so intense that it creates in perfect joy, and only the whole
can be born of its wholeness.
Be confident that you have never lost your identity and the
extensions which maintain it in wholeness and peace. Miracles
are an EXPRESSION of this confidence. They are reflections
both of your own proper identification with your brothers, and
of your own awareness that your identification IS maintained
by extension. The miracle is a LESSON IN TOTAL PERCEPTION. By
including ANY part of totality in the lesson, you HAVE
included the whole. You have said that, when you write of the
Kingdom and your creations which belong in it, you are
describing WHAT YOU DO NOT KNOW. That is true in a sense, but
no more true than your failure to acknowledge the whole result
of the egos premises. The Kingdom is the result of premises,
just as this world is.
You HAVE carried the egos reasoning to its logical
conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING. Yet you
do not really BELIEVE this, or you could not possibly maintain
it. If you really saw this result, you could not WANT it. The
only reason why you could possibly want ANY part of it is
because you do NOT see the whole of it. You are willing to
look at the egos premises, but NOT at their logical outcome.
Is it not possible that you have done the same thing with the
premises of God?
Your creations ARE the logical outcome of His premises. His
thinking has established them FOR you. They are therefore
there, EXACTLY where they belong. They belong in your mind as
part of your identification with His, but your state of mind
and your recognition of what is IN your mind depends, at any
given moment, on what you believe ABOUT your mind. Whatever
these beliefs may be, they are the premises which will
determine what you accept INTO your mind. It is surely clear
that you can both accept into your mind what is not really
there, and deny what IS. Neither of these possibilities
requires further elaboration here, but both are clearly
indefensible, even if you elect to defend them.
Yet the function which God Himself gave your minds through
His you may deny, but you cannot prevent. It is the logical
outcome of what you ARE. The ability to see a logical outcome
depends on the WILLINGNESS to see it, but its truth has
nothing to do with your willingness at all. Truth is GODS
Will. SHARE His Will, and you share what He knows. DENY His
Will as yours, and you are denying His Kingdom AND yours. The
Holy Spirit will direct you only so as to avoid pain. The
undoing of pain must obviously avoid pain. Surely no-one would
object to this goal IF HE RECOGNIZED IT. The problem is not
whether what the Holy Spirit says is true, but whether you
want to LISTEN to what He says.
The Confusion of Strength and Weakness
You no more recognize what is painful than you know what is
joyful, and are, in fact, very apt to confuse the two. The
Holy Spirits main function is to teach you TO TELL THEM
APART. However strange it may seem that this is necessary, it
obviously IS. The reason is equally obvious. What is joyful to
you IS painful to the ego, and as long as you are in doubt
about what YOU are, you will be confused about joy and pain.
This confusion is the cause of the whole idea of sacrifice.
Obey the Holy Spirit and you WILL be giving up the ego. But
you will be sacrificing NOTHING. On the contrary, you will be
gaining EVERYTHING. If you believed this, there would BE no
conflict.
That is why you need to DEMONSTRATE the obvious to
yourselves. It is NOT obvious to you. You believe that doing
the OPPOSITE of Gods WILL can be better for you. You also
believe that it is possible to DO the opposite of Gods WILL.
Therefore, you believe that an impossible choice is open to
you, and one which is both very fearful AND very desirable.
Yet God WILLS. He does NOT wish. YOUR will is as powerful as
His because it IS His. The egos wishes do not mean anything,
because the ego wishes for the impossible. You can WISH for
the impossible, but you can WILL only with God. This is the
egos weakness, and YOUR strength.
The Holy Spirit ALWAYS sides with you and with your
strength. As long as you avoid His guidance in any way, you
WANT to be weak. Yet weakness IS frightening. What else, then,
can this decision mean except that you WANT to be fearful? The
Holy Spirit NEVER asks for sacrifice, but the ego ALWAYS does.
When you are confused about this VERY clear distinction in
motivation, it can ONLY be due to projection. Projection of
this kind IS a confusion in motivation, and GIVEN this
confusion, trust becomes impossible.
No-one obeys gladly a guide he does not trust, but this
does not mean that the GUIDE is untrustworthy. In this case,
it ALWAYS means that the FOLLOWER is. However, this, too, is
merely a matter of his own belief. Believing that HE can
betray, he believes that everything can betray HIM. Yet this
is only because he has ELECTED TO FOLLOW FALSE GUIDANCE.
Unable to follow this guidance WITHOUT fear, he associates
fear WITH guidance, and refuses to follow ANY guidance at all.
The Holy Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as YOU are. God
Himself trusts you, and therefore your trustworthiness IS
beyond question. It will always remain beyond question,
however much YOU may question it.
We said before that you ARE the Will of God. His Will is
not an idle wish, and your identification WITH His Will is not
optional since it IS what you are. Sharing His Will with me is
not really open to choice, though it may seem to be. The whole
separation lies in this fallacy. The only way OUT of the
fallacy is to decide that you do not have to decide ANYTHING.
Everything has been given you by GODS decision. That IS His
Will, and you can NOT undo it. Even the relinquishment of your
false decision-making prerogative, which the ego guards so
jealously, is not accomplished by your wish. It was
accomplished FOR you by the Will of God, Who has not left you
comfortless. His Voice WILL teach you how to distinguish
between pain and joy, and WILL lead you out of the confusion
which you have made. There IS no confusion in the mind of a
Son of God, whose will MUST be the Will of the Father because
the Fathers Will IS His Son.
Miracles are IN ACCORD with the Will of God, Whose Will you
do not know, because you are confused about what YOU will.
This means that you are confused about what you are. If you
ARE Gods Will and do not ACCEPT His WILL, you ARE denying
joy. The miracle is therefore a lesson in WHAT JOY IS. Being a
lesson in sharing, it is a lesson in love, which IS joy. Every
miracle is thus a lesson in truth, and by offering truth you
are learning the difference between pain and joy.
The State of Grace
The Holy Spirit will ALWAYS guide you truly, because YOUR
joy is HIS. This is His Will for everyone, because He speaks
for the Kingdom of God, which IS joy. Following Him is
therefore the easiest thing in the world, and the only thing
that IS easy, because it is not of the world, and is therefore
NATURAL. The world GOES AGAINST your nature, being out of
accord with Gods laws. The world perceives orders of
difficulty in everything. This is because the ego perceives
nothing as wholly desirable. By demonstrating to yourselves
that there IS no order of difficulty in miracles, you will
convince yourselves that, in your NATURAL state, there is no
difficulty because it is a state of grace.
Grace is the NATURAL state of every Son of God. When he is
NOT in a state of grace, he is out of his natural environment
and does not function well. Everything he does becomes a
strain, because he was not created for the environment that he
has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT
to HIM. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy
ONLY when he knows he is with God. That is the only
environment in which he will not experience strain, because
that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that
is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond anything he
can make.
Consider the kingdom YOU have made, and judge its worth
fairly. Is it worthy to be a home for a Child of God? Does it
protect his peace, and shine love upon him? Does it keep his
heart untouched by fear, and allow him to give always, without
any sense of loss? Does it teach him that this giving IS his
joy, and that God Himself thanks him for his giving? That is
the ONLY environment in which you can be happy. You cannot
make it, any more than you can make yourselves. It has been
created FOR you, as you were created for it. God watches over
His Children and denies them nothing. Yet when they deny Him
they do not know this, because they deny THEMSELVES
everything.
You who could give the Love of God to everything you see
and touch and remember are literally denying Heaven to
yourselves. I call upon you again to remember that I have
chosen you to teach the Kingdom TO the Kingdom. There are no
exceptions to this lesson because the lack of exceptions IS
the lesson. Every Son who returns to the Kingdom with this
lesson in his heart has healed the Sonship and given thanks to
God. Everyone who learns this lesson has become the perfect
teacher because he has learned it of the Holy Spirit, Who
wants to teach him everything He knows. When a mind HAS only
light, it KNOWS only light. Its own radiance shines all around
it, and extends out into the darkness of other minds,
transforming them into majesty.
The Majesty of God is there, for you to recognize and
appreciate and KNOW. Perceiving the Majesty of God AS your
brother is to accept your OWN inheritance. God gives only
equally. If you recognize His gift in anyone else, you have
acknowledged what He has given YOU. Nothing is so easy to
perceive as truth. This is the perception which is immediate,
clear and natural. You have trained yourselves NOT to see it,
and this has been very difficult for you. OUT of your natural
environment you may well ask, What is truth? since truth IS
the environment by which and for which you were created.
You do not know yourselves because you do not know YOUR
Creator. You do not know your creations because you do not
know your brothers, who created them WITH you. We said before
that only the whole Sonship is worthy to be co-creator with
God because only the whole Sonship can create LIKE Him.
Whenever you heal a brother by recognizing his worth, you are
acknowledging HIS power to create AND YOURS. He cannot have
lost what YOU recognize, and YOU must have the glory you see
in him. He is a co-creator with God with YOU. Deny HIS
creative power, and you are denying yours AND THAT OF GOD WHO
CREATED YOU. You cannot deny part of truth. You do not know
your creations because you do not know their creator. You do
not know yourselves because you do not know YOURS.
Your creations cannot establish your reality, any more than
you can establish Gods. But you can KNOW both. Being is known
by sharing. BECAUSE God shared His Being with you, you can
know Him. But you must also know all He created, to know what
THEY have shared. Without your Father, you will not know your
fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their
children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father.
Know, then, the Sons of God, and you will know ALL creation.
CHAPTER 8
THE JOURNEY BACK
You are hampered in your progress by your demands to know
what you do NOT know. This is actually a way of holding on to
deprivation. You cannot reasonably object to following
instructions in a course FOR knowing on the grounds that you
do NOT know. The need for the course is implicit in your
objection. Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this
course. PEACE is. As the prerequisite for knowledge, peace
MUST be learned. This is only because those who are in
conflict are NOT peaceful, and peace is the CONDITION of
knowledge, because it is the condition of the Kingdom.
Knowledge will be restored when you meet its conditions.
This is not a bargain made by God, Who makes NO bargains. It
is merely the result of your misuse of His laws on behalf of a
will that is not His. Knowledge IS His Will. If you are
OPPOSING His Will, how can you have knowledge? I have told you
what knowledge offers you, but it is clear that you do not
regard this as wholly desirable. If you did, you would hardly
be willing to throw it away so readily, when the ego asks for
your allegiance. The distraction of the ego seems to interfere
with your learning, but the ego HAS no power to distract you,
unless you GIVE it the power.
The egos voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect it
to say I am not real. Hallucinations ARE inaccurate
perceptions of reality. Yet you are not asked to dispel them
alone. You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their
results to YOU. If you do not want them on the basis of loss
of peace, they will be removed from your mind FOR you. Every
response to the ego is a call to war, and war DOES deprive you
of peace. Yet in this war there is no opponent. THIS is the
reinterpretation of reality which you must make to secure
peace, and the only one you need EVER make.
The Direction of the Curriculum
Those whom you perceive as opponents are PART of your
peace, which YOU are giving up by attacking them. How can you
HAVE what you give up? You SHARE to have, but you do not give
it up yourself. When you give up peace, you are EXCLUDING
yourself from it. This is a condition which is so alien to the
Kingdom that you cannot understand the state which prevails
within it. Your past learning must have taught you the wrong
things, simply because it has not made you happy. On this
basis alone, its value should be questioned.
If learning aims at change, and that is ALWAYS its purpose,
are you satisfied with the changes YOUR learning has brought
you? Dissatisfaction with learning outcomes must be a sign of
learning failure, since it means that you did not get what you
WANT. The curriculum of the Atonement is the opposite of the
curriculum you have established for yourselves, BUT SO IS ITS
OUTCOME. If the outcome of yours has made you unhappy, and if
you WANT a different one, a change in the curriculum is
obviously necessary.
The first change that must be introduced is a change in
DIRECTION. A meaningful curriculum CANNOT be inconsistent. If
it is planned by two teachers, each believing in diametrically
opposed ideas, it cannot BE integrated. If it is carried out
by these two teachers simultaneously, each one merely
INTERFERES with the other. This leads to fluctuation, but NOT
to change. The volatile HAVE NO direction. They cannot choose
one, because they cannot relinquish the other even if the
other does not exist. Their conflicted curriculum teaches them
ALL directions exist, and gives them no rationale for choice.
The total senselessness of such a curriculum must be fully
recognized before a real change in direction becomes possible.
You CANNOT learn simultaneously from two teachers who are in
TOTAL disagreement about everything. Their joint curriculum
presents an impossible learning task. They are teaching you
ENTIRELY different things in ENTIRELY different ways, which
might be possible, except for the crucial fact that both are
TEACHING YOU ABOUT YOURSELF. Your reality is unaffected by
both, but if you LISTEN to both, your mind will be split about
what your reality IS.
The Rationale for Choice
There IS a rationale for choice. Only one Teacher KNOWS
what your reality is. If learning that is the PURPOSE of the
curriculum, you must learn it of Him. The ego does not KNOW
what it is trying to teach. It is trying to teach you what you
are WITHOUT knowing it. The ego is expert only in confusion.
It does not understand anything else. As a teacher, then, it
is totally confused and TOTALLY CONFUSING. Even if you could
disregard the Holy Spirit entirely, which is quite impossible,
you could learn nothing from the ego because the ego KNOWS
nothing.
Is there ANY possible reason for choosing a teacher such as
this? Does the total disregard of anything it teaches make
anything BUT sense? Is THIS the teacher to whom a Son of God
should turn to find HIMSELF? The ego has never given you a
sensible answer to ANYTHING. Simply on the grounds of your own
experience with the egos teaching, should not this alone
disqualify it as your future teacher? Yet the ego has done
more harm to your learning than this alone. Learning is joyful
if it leads you along your natural path, and facilitates the
development of what you HAVE. When you are taught AGAINST your
nature, however, you will LOSE by your learning because your
learning will imprison you. Your will is IN your nature, and
therefore CANNOT go against it.
The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is
free because you will not LISTEN to it. It is NOT your will to
be imprisoned BECAUSE your will is free. That is why the ego
is the DENIAL of free will. It is NEVER God Who coerces you
because He SHARES His Will with you. His Voice teaches ONLY
His Will, but that is not the Holy Spirits lesson because
that is what you ARE. The LESSON is that your will and Gods
cannot be out of accord BECAUSE they are one. This is the
undoing of EVERYTHING the ego tries to teach. It is not, then,
only the direction of the curriculum which must be
unconflicted, but also the CONTENT.
The ego wants to teach you that you want to OPPOSE Gods
Will. This UNNATURAL lesson cannot BE learned, but the ATTEMPT
to learn it is a violation of your own freedom, and makes you
afraid of your will BECAUSE it is free. The Holy Spirit
opposes ANY imprisoning of the will of a Son of God, KNOWING
that the will of the Son IS the Fathers. The Holy Spirit
leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how
to disregard, or look beyond, EVERYTHING that would hold you
back.
We said before that the Holy Spirit teaches you the
difference between pain and joy. That is the same as saying
that He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and
freedom. YOU cannot make this distinction WITHOUT Him. That is
because you have taught yourself that imprisonment IS freedom.
Believing them to be the same, how CAN you tell them apart?
Can you ask the part of your mind that taught you to believe
they ARE the same to teach you the DIFFERENCE between them?
The Holy Spirits teaching takes only ONE direction and has
only ONE goal. His direction is freedom and His goal is God.
Yet he cannot conceive of God without YOU because it is not
Gods Will to BE without you. When you have learned that your
will IS Gods, you could no more will to be without Him than
He could will to be without YOU. This IS freedom and this IS
joy. Deny yourself this and you ARE denying God His Kingdom
because He created you FOR this. When we said, All power and
glory are yours because the Kingdom is His, this is what we
meant:
The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory
lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in
peace. It has no boundaries because Its extension is
unlimited, and It encompasses all things because It created
all things. By creating all things It made them part of
Itself. YOU are the Will of God because this is how you were
created. Because your Creator creates ONLY like Himself, you
ARE like Him. You are part of Him Who IS all power and glory,
and are therefore as unlimited as He is.
To what else EXCEPT all power and glory can the Holy Spirit
appeal to restore Gods Kingdom? His appeal, then, is merely
to what the Kingdom IS, and for its own acknowledgment of what
it is. When you acknowledge this, you bring the acknowledgment
automatically to everyone because you HAVE acknowledged
everyone. By YOUR recognition you awaken THEIRS, and through
theirs YOURS is extended. Awakening runs easily and gladly
through the Kingdom, in answer to the Call of God. This is the
natural response of every Son of God to the Voice of his
Creator, because it is the Voice for HIS creations and for HIS
own extension.
The Holy Encounter
Glory be to God in the highest, and to YOU because He has
so willed it. Ask and it shall be given you because it has
already BEEN given. Ask for light and learn that you ARE
light. If you want understanding and enlightenment you WILL
learn it, because your will to learn it is your decision to
listen to the Teacher Who KNOWS of light, and can therefore
TEACH it to you. There is no limit on your learning because
there is no limit on your MINDS. There is no limit on His will
to teach because He was created TO teach. KNOWING His function
perfectly He wills to fulfill it perfectly, because that is
His joy and YOURS.
To fulfill the Will of God perfectly is the only joy and
peace that can be fully known because it is the only function
that can be fully EXPERIENCED. When this is accomplished,
then, there IS no other experience. Yet the WISH for other
experience will block its accomplishment because Gods Will
cannot be forced upon you, being an experience of total
WILLINGNESS. The Holy Spirit knows how to teach this, but YOU
do not. That is why you need Him and why God GAVE Him to you.
Only HIS teaching will release your will to Gods, uniting it
with His power and glory, and establishing them as YOURS. You
share them as God shares them because this is the natural
outcome of their being.
The Will of the Father and of the Son are One together BY
THEIR EXTENSION. Their extension is the RESULT of their
Oneness, holding their unity together by extending their JOINT
will. This is perfect creation by the perfectly created in
union with the Perfect Creator. The Father MUST give
fatherhood to His Son because His own Fatherhood must be
extended outward. You who belong in God have the holy function
of extending His Fatherhood by placing NO limits upon It. Let
the Holy Spirit teach you HOW to do this, for you will know
what it MEANS of God Himself.
When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As
you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will
treat yourself. As you think of him you will think of
yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself
or lose sight of yourself. Whenever two Sons of God meet, they
are given another chance at salvation. Do not leave anyone
without giving salvation TO him and receiving it yourself. For
I am always there with you, in remembrance of YOU.
The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you
choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn.
Everyone is looking for himself, and for the power and glory
he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone, you have
another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in
him BECAUSE they are yours. The ego tries to find them in
YOURSELF because it does not know where to look. The Holy
Spirit teaches you that, if you look ONLY at yourself, you
CANNOT find yourself because that is not what you ARE.
Whenever you are with a brother, you are learning what you
are because you are TEACHING what you are. He will respond
either with pain or with joy, depending on which teacher YOU
are following. HE will be imprisoned or released according to
your decision, AND SO WILL YOU. Never forget your
responsibility to him because it is your responsibility to
YOURSELF. Give him HIS place in the Kingdom, and you will have
YOURS. The Kingdom CANNOT be found alone, and you who ARE the
Kingdom cannot find YOURSELVES alone.
To achieve the goal of the curriculum, then, you CANNOT
listen to the ego. ITS purpose is to DEFEAT its own goal. The
ego does not know this because it does not know anything. But
YOU can know this, and you WILL know it if you are willing to
look at what the ego has made of YOU. This IS your
responsibility because, once you have really done this, you
WILL accept the Atonement for yourself. What other choice
could you make? Having made this choice, you will begin to
learn and understand why you have believed that, when you met
someone else, you had thought that he WAS someone else. And
every holy encounter in which YOU enter fully will teach you
THIS IS NOT SO.
You can encounter ONLY part of yourself because you are
part of God, Who IS everything. His power and glory are
everywhere, and you CANNOT be excluded from them. The ego
teaches that your strength is in you ALONE. The Holy Spirit
teaches that ALL strength is in God and THEREFORE in you. God
wills NO-ONE suffer. He does not will anyone to suffer for a
wrong decision, INCLUDING you. That is why He has given you
the means for UNDOING it. Through His power and glory all your
wrong decisions are undone COMPLETELY releasing you AND your
brothers from EVERY imprisoning thought ANY part of the
Sonship has accepted. Wrong decisions have no power BECAUSE
they are not true. The imprisonment which they SEEM to produce
is no more true than THEY are.
Power and glory belong to God alone. So do YOU. God gives
WHATEVER belongs to Him because He gives of Himself, and
EVERYTHING belongs to Him. Giving of YOUR self is the function
He gave you. Fulfilling it perfectly will teach you what you
HAVE of Him, and this will teach you what you ARE in Him. You
CANNOT be powerless to do this because this IS your power.
Glory is Gods gift to you because that is what HE is. See
this glory everywhere to learn what YOU are.
The Light of the World
If Gods Will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you
experience ONLY this you must be refusing to ACKNOWLEDGE His
Will. His Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever.
When you are not at peace, it can only be because you do not
believe you ARE in Him. Yet He is all in all. His peace is
complete, and you MUST be included in it. His laws govern you
because they govern EVERYTHING. You cannot exempt yourself
from His laws, although you can disobey them. Yet if you do,
and ONLY if you do, you WILL feel lonely and helpless because
you are denying yourself everything.
I am come as a light into a world that DOES deny itself
everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself FROM
everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation,
maintained by fear of the same loneliness which IS its
illusion. I have told you that I am with you always, even to
the end of the world. That is WHY I am the light of the world.
If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, THE
LONELINESS IS GONE. You CANNOT maintain the illusion of
loneliness if you are NOT alone. My purpose, then, IS to
overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must
dispel it because of what it IS.
Light does not attack darkness, but it DOES shine it away.
If my light goes with you everywhere, YOU shine it away WITH
me. The light becomes OURS, and you cannot abide in darkness
any more than darkness can abide wherever you go. The
remembrance of me IS the remembrance of yourself and of Him
Who sent me to you. You were in darkness until Gods Will was
done completely by ANY part of the Sonship. When this was
done, it was perfectly accomplished by ALL. How else could it
BE perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to unite the
will of the Sonship with the Will of the Father by being aware
of the Fathers Will myself. This is the awareness I came to
give you, and your problem in accepting it IS the problem of
this world. Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I AM
the salvation of the world.
The world must despise and reject me because the world IS
the belief that love is impossible. YOUR reactions to me are
the reactions of the world to God. If you will accept the fact
that I am with you, you are DENYING the world and ACCEPTING
God. My will is His, and YOUR will to hear me is the decision
to hear His Voice and abide in His Will. As God sent me to
you, so will I send you to others. And I will go to them WITH
you, so we can teach them peace and union.
Do you not think the world NEEDS peace as much as you do?
Do you not want to GIVE it to the world as much as you want to
RECEIVE it? For unless you do, you will NOT receive it. If you
will to have it of me, you MUST give it. Rehabilitation does
not come from anyone else. You can have guidance from without,
but you must ACCEPT it from within. The guidance must be what
YOU want, or it will be meaningless to you. That is why
rehabilitation is a collaborative venture.
I can tell you what to do, but this will not help you
unless you collaborate by believing that I KNOW what to do.
Only then will your mind choose to follow me. Without YOUR
will you cannot BE rehabilitated. MOTIVATION to be healed is
the crucial factor in rehabilitation. Without this, you are
deciding AGAINST healing, and your veto of my will for you
MAKES HEALING IMPOSSIBLE. If healing IS our joint will, unless
our wills ARE joined you CANNOT be healed. This is obvious
when you consider what healing is FOR. Healing is the way in
which the separation is overcome. Separation is overcome by
UNION. It cannot be overcome by separating.
The WILL to unite must be unequivocal, or the will ITSELF
is divided or not whole. Your will is the means by which you
determine your own condition because will is the MECHANISM of
decision. It is the power by which you separate or join, and
experience pain or joy accordingly. My will cannot OVERCOME
yours, because yours is as powerful as mine. If it were not
so, the Sons of God would be unequal. All things are possible
through our JOINT will, but my will alone cannot help you.
Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go
against it. I cannot will what God does NOT will. I can offer
you my will to make YOURS invincible by this sharing, but I
cannot OPPOSE yours without competing with it, and thereby
violating Gods Will for you.
Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God
created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I
can only acknowledge in honor of HIS. If you want to be like
me I will help you, knowing that we ARE alike. If you want to
be different, I will wait until you change your mind. I can
TEACH you, but only you can choose to LISTEN to my teaching.
How else can it be, if Gods Kingdom IS freedom? Freedom
cannot be learned by tyranny of any kind, and the perfect
equality of ALL Gods Sons cannot be recognized through the
dominion of one will over another. Gods Sons are equal in
will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the ONLY
lesson I came to teach, knowing that it is true.
When your will is NOT mine, it is not our Fathers. This
means that you have imprisoned YOURS, and have not LET it be
free. Of yourselves you can do nothing, because of yourselves
you ARE nothing. I am nothing without the Father, and YOU are
nothing without ME because, by denying the Father, you deny
YOURSELF. I will ALWAYS remember you, and in MY remembrance of
you lies your remembrance of YOURSELF. In our remembrance of
EACH OTHER lies our remembrance of God. And in this
remembrance lies your freedom because your freedom IS in Him.
Join, then, with me in praise of Him AND you whom He created.
This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with
ALL His creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is
acceptable to Him. BECAUSE it is acceptable to Him it is the
gift of freedom, which IS His Will for all His Sons. By
OFFERING freedom YOU will be free.
Freedom is the only gift you can offer to Gods Sons, being
an ACKNOWLEDGMENT of what THEY are and what HE is. Freedom is
creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do
NOT love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison anyone,
including YOURSELF, you do not love him, and you cannot
identify WITH him. When you imprison yourself, you are losing
sight of your true identification with me and with the Father.
Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son. It
CANNOT be with one and not the other. If you are part of one,
you must be part of the other because they ARE One.
The Holy Trinity is holy BECAUSE It is One. If you exclude
YOURSELF from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity
as separated. You must be included IN It, because It IS
everything. Unless you take your place in It and fulfill your
function as PART of It, It is as bereft as YOU are. No part of
It can be imprisoned if Its truth is to be known. Can you be
separated from your identification and be at peace?
Dissociation is not a solution; it is a DELUSION. The
delusional believe that truth will assail them, and so they do
not SEE it because they PREFER the delusion. Judging truth as
something they do NOT want, they perceive deception and block
knowledge.
Help them by offering them YOUR unified will on their
behalf, as I am offering you mine on YOURS. Alone we can do
nothing, but TOGETHER, our wills fuse into something whose
power is far beyond the power of its separate parts. By NOT
BEING SEPARATE, the Will of God is established IN ours and AS
ours. This Will is invincible BECAUSE it is undivided. The
undivided will of the Sonship is the perfect creator, being
wholly in the likeness of God, Whose Will it IS. YOU cannot be
exempt from it, if you are to understand what IT is and what
YOU are. By separating your will FROM mine, you are exempting
yourself from the Will of God which IS yourself.
Yet to heal is still to make whole. Therefore, to heal is
to UNITE with those who are like you because perceiving this
likeness IS to recognize the Father. If YOUR perfection is in
Him and ONLY in Him, how can you KNOW it without recognizing
Him? The recognition of God IS the recognition of yourself.
There IS no separation of God and His creation. You will learn
this as you learn that there is no separation of YOUR will and
MINE. Let the Love of God shine upon you by your acceptance of
me. MY reality is yours AND His. By joining your will with
mine you are signifying your awareness that the Will of God is
one.
Gods Oneness and ours are not separate because His Oneness
ENCOMPASSES ours. To join with me is to restore His power to
you BECAUSE we are sharing it. I offer you only the
RECOGNITION of His power in you, but in that lies ALL truth.
As WE unite, we unite with Him. Glory be to the union of God
and His holy Sons! All glory lies in them BECAUSE they are
united. The miracles we do bear witness to the Will of the
Father for His Son, and to our joy in uniting WITH His Will
for us.
When you unite with me, you are uniting WITHOUT the ego
because I have renounced the ego in myself, and therefore
CANNOT unite with yours. OUR union is therefore the way to
renounce the ego in YOURSELF. The truth in both of us is
BEYOND the ego. By willing that, you HAVE gone beyond it
toward truth. Our success in transcending the ego is
guaranteed by God, and I can share this confidence for both of
us and ALL of us. I bring Gods peace back to all His children
because I received it of Him for us all. Nothing can prevail
against our united wills because nothing can prevail against
Gods. Would you know the Will of God for YOU? Ask it of me
who knows it FOR you, and you will find it. I will deny you
nothing, as God denies ME nothing.
Ours is simply the journey back to God, Who is our home.
Whenever fear intrudes anywhere along the road to peace, it is
ALWAYS because the ego has attempted to join the journey with
us, and CANNOT DO SO. Sensing defeat and angered by it, the
ego regards itself as rejected and becomes retaliative. You
are invulnerable to its retaliation BECAUSE I AM WITH YOU. On
this journey you have chosen me as your companion INSTEAD of
the ego. Do not try to hold on to both, or you will try to go
in different directions, and will lose the way.
The egos way is not mine, but it is also NOT YOURS. The
Holy Spirit has ONE direction for ALL minds, and the one He
taught me is YOURS. Let us not lose sight of His direction
through illusions, for only illusions of another direction can
obscure the one for which Gods Voice speaks in all of us.
Never accord the ego the power to interfere with the journey
because it HAS none, since the journey is the way to what is
true. Leave ALL deception behind, and reach beyond all
attempts of the ego to hold you back. I go before you because
I AM beyond the ego. Reach, therefore, for my hand because you
WANT to transcend the ego. My will will NEVER be wanting, and
if you WANT to share it, you WILL. I give it willingly and
gladly because I need you as much as you need me.
The Power of Joint Decision
WE are the joint will of the Sonship, whose wholeness is
for all. We begin the journey back by setting out TOGETHER,
and gather in our brothers as we CONTINUE together. Every gain
in our strength is offered for all, so they, too, can lay
aside their weakness and add their strength to us. Gods
welcome waits for us all, and He will welcome us as I am
welcoming you. Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the
world has to offer. The world can add nothing to the power and
the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it CAN blind the Sons
to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world
and know God. Only one is true.
I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is
not yours. If it were, you would have destroyed yourselves.
Yet God did not will the destruction of His creations, having
created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from
yourselves but from your ILLUSIONS of yourselves. He has saved
you FOR yourselves. Let us glorify Him Whom the world denies,
for over His Kingdom it has no power. No-one created by God
can find joy in anything EXCEPT the eternal. That is not
because he is deprived of anything else, but because nothing
else is WORTHY of him. What God and His Sons create IS
eternal, and in this and this only is their joy.
Listen to the story of the prodigal son, and learn what
Gods treasure is and YOURS: This son of a loving father left
his home and thought he squandered everything for nothing of
any value, although he did not know its worthlessness at the
time. He was ashamed to return to his father, because he
thought he had hurt him. Yet when he came home, the father
welcomed him with joy because only the son himself WAS his
fathers treasure. He WANTED nothing else.
God wants only His Son because His Son is His only
treasure. You want YOUR creations as He wants HIS. Your
creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in
gratitude for YOUR creation. They do not leave you any more
than you have left YOUR Creator, but they EXTEND your creation
as God extended Himself to YOU. Can the creations of God
Himself take joy in what is not real? And what IS real except
the creations of God and those which are created like His?
YOUR creations love you as your Soul loves your Father for the
gift of creation. There IS no other gift which is eternal, and
therefore there is no other gift which is TRUE.
How, then, can you ACCEPT anything else or GIVE anything
else, and expect joy in return? And what else but joy would
you WANT? You made neither yourself nor your function. You
made only the DECISION to be unworthy of both. Yet you could
not make YOURSELF unworthy, because you are the treasure of
God. What HE values IS valuable. There can BE no question of
its worth because its value lies in Gods sharing Himself with
it and ESTABLISHING its value forever.
YOUR function is to add to Gods treasure by creating
YOURS. His Will TO you is His Will FOR you. He would not
withhold creation from you because HIS joy is in it. You
cannot find joy EXCEPT as God does. HIS joy lay in creating
YOU, and He extends His Fatherhood to you so that you can
extend yourself as He did. You do not understand this because
you do not understand HIM. No-one who does not know his
function can understand it, and no-one CAN know his function
unless he knows who he IS. Creation is the Will of God. His
Will created you to create. Your will was not created separate
from His, and so it wills as HE wills.
An unwilling will does not mean anything, being a
contradiction in terms which actually leaves nothing. When you
THINK you are unwilling to will with God, YOU ARE NOT
THINKING. Gods Will is thought. It cannot be contradicted BY
thought. God does not contradict HIMSELF, and His Sons, who
are like Him, cannot contradict themselves OR Him. Yet their
thought is so powerful that they can even imprison the minds
of Gods Sons, IF THEY SO CHOOSE. This choice DOES make the
Sons function unknown to HIM, but NEVER to his Creator. And
BECAUSE it is not unknown to his Creator, it is forever
knowable to him.
There is no question but one you should ever ask of
yourself; Do I WANT to know my Fathers Will for me? He
will not hide it. He has revealed it to me because I asked it
of Him, and learned of what He had already given. Our function
is to function together because, APART from each other, we
cannot function at all. The whole power of Gods Son lies in
all of us, but not in any of us alone. God would not have us
be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He
created His Son, and gave him the power to create with Him.
Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of
God Himself, and therefore as holy as He is. Through our
creations we extend our love, and thus increase the joy of the
Holy Trinity. You do not understand this for a very simple
reason. You who are Gods own treasure do not regard
yourselves as valuable. Given this belief, you cannot
understand ANYTHING. I share with God the knowledge of the
value HE puts upon you. My devotion to you is of Him, being
born of my knowledge of myself AND Him. We cannot BE
separated. Whom God has joined cannot be separated, and God
has joined all His Sons with Himself. Can you be separated
from your life and your being?
The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the
knowledge of WHERE you are always, and WHAT you are forever.
It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never
changed. Truth can only be EXPERIENCED. It cannot be
described, and it cannot be explained. I can make you aware of
the CONDITIONS of truth, but the experience is of God.
Together we can meet its conditions, but truth will dawn upon
you of itself.
What God has willed for you IS yours. He has given His Will
to His treasure, whose treasure It is. Your heart lies where
your treasure is, as His does. You who are beloved of God are
wholly blessed. Learn this of me, and free the holy will of
all those who are as blessed as YOU are.
Communication and the Ego-Body Equation
Attack is ALWAYS physical. When attack in any form enters
your mind, you are EQUATING yourself with a body. This is the
egos INTERPRETATION of the body. You do not have to attack
physically to accept this interpretation. You are accepting it
simply by the belief that attack can GET you something you
want. If you did not believe this, the idea of attack would
have no appeal for you. When you equate yourself with a body
you will ALWAYS experience depression. When a Child of God
thinks of himself in this way he is belittling himself and
seeing his brothers as similarly belittled. Since he can find
himself ONLY in them, he has cut himself off from salvation.
Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body only as a
means of communication. Being the communication link between
God and His separated Sons, the Holy Spirit interprets
everything YOU have made in the light of what HE is. The ego
SEPARATES through the body. The Holy Spirit REACHES THROUGH it
to others. You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy
Spirit does because you do not interpret their bodies and
yours solely as a means of joining their MINDS and uniting
them with yours and mine. This interpretation of the body will
change your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has
NONE.
If you use the body for attack, it IS harmful to you. If
you use it only to reach the minds of those who believe they
are bodies, and teach them THROUGH the body that this is not
so, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is
in both of you. If you use the body for this and ONLY for
this, you CANNOT use it for attack. In the service of uniting,
it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value
until communion IS. This is Gods way of making unlimited what
you have limited. The Holy Spirit does not see the body as you
do because He knows the ONLY reality anything can have is the
service it can render God on behalf of the function He has
given it.
Communication ENDS separation. Attack PROMOTES it. The body
is beautiful or ugly, holy or savage, helpful or harmful,
according to the use to which it is put. And in the body of
another you will SEE the use to which you have put yours. If
the body becomes for you a means which you give to the Holy
Spirit to use on behalf of union of the Sonship, you will not
see anything physical except as what it is. Use it for truth,
and you will see it truly. MISUSE it, and you WILL
misunderstand it because you have already done so by misusing
it. Interpret ANYTHING apart from the Holy Spirit, and you
will mistrust it. This will lead you to hatred and attack AND
LOSS OF PEACE.
Yet all loss comes only from your own misunderstanding.
Loss of ANY kind is impossible. When you look upon a brother
as a physical entity, HIS power and glory are lost TO YOU, and
so are YOURS. You HAVE attacked him, but you MUST have
attacked yourself first. Do not see him this way for your OWN
salvation, which must bring him HIS. Do not allow him to
belittle himself in YOUR mind, but give him freedom from his
belief in littleness, and thus escape from YOURS. As part of
you, HE is holy. As part of me, YOU are. To communicate with
part of God Himself is to reach beyond the Kingdom to its
Creator, through His Voice Which He has established as part of
YOU.
Rejoice, then, that of yourselves you can do nothing. You
are not OF yourselves. He of Whom you ARE has willed your
power and glory FOR you, with which you can perfectly
accomplish His holy Will for you, when you so will it
yourself. He has not withdrawn His gifts from you, but YOU
have withdrawn them from Him. Let no Son of God remain hidden
for His Names sake, because His Name is YOURS.
Remember that the Bible says, The Word (or thought) was
made flesh. Strictly speaking this is impossible, since it
seems to involve the translation of one order of reality into
another. Different orders of reality merely APPEAR to exist,
just as different orders of miracles do. Thought cannot be
made into flesh except by belief, since thought is NOT
physical. Yet thought IS communication, for which the body CAN
be used. This is the only NATURAL use to which it CAN be put.
To use the body unnaturally is to lose sight of the Holy
Spirits purpose, and thus to confuse the goal of His
curriculum.
There is nothing so frustrating to a learner as to be
placed in a curriculum which he cannot learn. His sense of
adequacy suffers, and he MUST become depressed. Being faced
with an impossible learning situation, regardless of why it is
impossible, is the most depressing thing in the world. In
fact, it is ultimately WHY the world is depressing. The Holy
Spirits curriculum is NEVER depressing because it is a
curriculum of joy. Whenever the reaction to learning is
depression, it is only because the goal of the curriculum has
been lost sight of.
In the world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its
purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions which bear
little or no relationship to each other, so that it appears to
be ruled by chaos. Guided by the ego, it IS. Guided by the
Holy Spirit, it is NOT. It becomes only a means by which the
part of the mind you have separated from your Soul can reach
beyond its distortions, and RETURN to the Soul. The egos
temple thus becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, where
devotion to Him replaces devotion to the ego. In this sense
the body DOES become a temple to God, because His Voice abides
in it by directing the use to which it is put.
Healing is the result of using the body SOLELY for
communication. Since this is natural, it heals by making
whole, which is ALSO natural. ALL mind is whole, and the
belief that part of it is physical, or NOT mind, is a
fragmented (or sick) interpretation. Mind CANNOT be made
physical, but it CAN be made manifest THROUGH the physical if
it uses the body to go BEYOND itself. By reaching OUT, the
mind extends itself. It does not STOP at the body, for if it
does, it is blocked in its purpose. A mind which has been
blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack because
it has TURNED against itself.
The removal of the blocks, then, is the ONLY way to
guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal
expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body, but
not IN it. If the mind believes the body is its GOAL, it WILL
distort its perception of the body, and by blocking its own
extension beyond it, will induce illness by fostering
SEPARATION. Perceiving the body as a SEPARATE entity cannot
BUT foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of
communication will LOSE its usefulness if it is used for
anything else. To use a medium of communication as a medium of
ATTACK is an obvious confusion in purpose.
To communicate is to join, and to attack is to separate.
How can you do both simultaneously with the SAME thing, and
not suffer? Perception of the body can be unified only by ONE
purpose. This releases the mind from the temptation to see the
body in many lights, and gives it over ENTIRELY to the One
Light in which it can be really understood at all. To confuse
a learning device with a curriculum GOAL is a fundamental
confusion. Learning can hardly be arrested at its own aids
with hope of understanding either the aids OR the learnings
real purpose. Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-
establishment of the power of the mind in it. This can be
accomplished ONLY if the mind extends to other minds, and does
not ARREST itself in its extension.
The arrest of the minds extension is the cause of ALL
illness because ONLY extension is the minds function. The
opposite of joy is depression. When your learning promotes
depression INSTEAD of joy, you CANNOT be listening to Gods
joyous Teacher, and you MUST be learning amiss. To see a body
as anything except a means of pure extension is to limit your
mind and HURT YOURSELF. Health is therefore nothing more than
united purpose. If the body is brought under the purpose of
the mind, the body becomes whole because the MINDS purpose IS
one. Attack can only be an ASSUMED purpose of the body,
because APART from the mind the body HAS NO PURPOSE AT ALL.
You are NOT limited by the body, and thought CANNOT be made
flesh. Yet mind can be manifested through the body if it goes
beyond it and DOES NOT INTERPRET IT AS LIMITATION. Whenever
you see another as limited TO or BY the body, you are imposing
this limit ON yourself. Are you willing to ACCEPT this, when
your whole purpose for learning should be to ESCAPE from
limitations? To conceive of the body as a means of attack of
any kind and to entertain even the possibility that joy could
POSSIBLY result, is a clear-cut indication of a poor learner.
He has accepted a learning goal in obvious contradiction to
the unified purpose of the curriculum, and is interfering with
his ability to accept its purpose as his OWN.
Joy is unified purpose, and unified purpose is ONLY Gods.
When yours is unified, it IS His. Interfere with His purpose,
and you NEED salvation. You have condemned yourself, but
condemnation is NOT of God. Therefore, it is not true. No more
are any of the RESULTS of your condemnation. When you see a
brother as a body, you are condemning him BECAUSE you have
condemned yourself. Yet if all condemnation is unreal, and it
MUST be unreal since it is a form of attack, then it can HAVE
no results.
Do not allow yourselves to suffer from the results of what
is not true. Free your minds from the belief that this is
POSSIBLE. In its complete impossibility, and your full
awareness OF its complete impossibility, lie your only hope
for release. But what other hope would you want? Freedom from
illusions lies only in not BELIEVING them. There IS no attack,
but there IS unlimited communication, and therefore unlimited
power and wholeness. The power of wholeness is extension. Do
not arrest your thought in this world, and you will open your
mind to creation in God.
The Body as Means or End
Attitudes toward the body are attitudes toward ATTACK. The
egos definitions of EVERYTHING are childish, and always based
on what it believes a thing is FOR. This is because it is
incapable of true generalizations, and equates what it sees
with the function IT ascribes to it. It does NOT equate it
with what it IS. To the ego, the body is to ATTACK with.
Equating YOU with the body, it teaches that YOU are to attack
with because this is what it believes. The body, then, is not
the source of its own health. The bodys condition lies solely
in your interpretation of its function.
The reason why definitions in terms of function are
inferior is that they may well be inaccurate. Functions are
part of being since they arise from it, but the relationship
is not reciprocal. The whole DOES define the part, but the
part does NOT define the whole. This is as true of knowledge
as it is of perception. The reason to KNOW in part is to know
ENTIRELY is because of the fundamental DIFFERENCE between
knowledge and perception. In perception the whole is built up
of parts, which CAN separate and reassemble in different
constellations. Knowledge never changes, so ITS constellation
is permanent. The only areas in which part-whole relationships
have ANY meaning are those in which change is possible. There
IS no difference between the whole and the part where change
is impossible.
The body exists in a world which SEEMS to contain two
voices which are fighting for its possession. In this
perceived constellation, the body is regarded as capable of
shifting its control from one to the other, making the concept
of both health AND sickness possible. The ego makes a
fundamental confusion between means and ends as it always
does. Regarding the body as an end, the ego has no REAL use
for it because it is NOT an end. You must have noticed an
outstanding characteristic of every end that the ego has
accepted as its own. When you have achieved it, IT HAS NOT
SATISFIED YOU. This is why the ego is forced to shift from one
end to another without ceasing, so that YOU will continue to
hope that it can yet offer you something.
It has been particularly difficult to overcome the egos
belief in the body as an end because this is synonymous with
the belief in ATTACK as an end. The ego has a real INVESTMENT
in sickness. If you are sick, how can you OBJECT to the egos
firm belief that you are NOT invulnerable? This is a
particularly appealing argument from the egos point of view
because it obscures the obvious ATTACK which underlies the
sickness. If you accepted THIS and also decided AGAINST
attack, you could not give this false witness to the egos
stand.
It is hard to perceive sickness AS a false witness, because
you do not realize that it IS entirely out of keeping with
what you want. This witness, then, APPEARS to be innocent and
trustworthy because you have not seriously cross-examined him.
If you did, you would not consider sickness such a strong
witness on behalf of the egos views. A more honest statement
would be as follows:
Those who WANT the ego are predisposed to defend it.
Therefore, their choice of witnesses should be suspect from
the beginning. The ego does not call upon witnesses who would
disagree with its case, NOR DOES THE HOLY Spirit. We have said
that judgment IS the function of the Holy Spirit, and one
which He is perfectly equipped to fulfill. The ego, as a
judge, gives anything BUT an impartial judgment. When the ego
calls on a witness, it has ALREADY made the witness an ally.
It is still true that the body has no function of itself
because it is NOT an end. The ego, however, establishes it AS
an end because, as such, it will lose its TRUE function. This
is the purpose of everything the ego does. Its sole aim is to
lose sight of the function of EVERYTHING. A sick body does not
make any SENSE. It COULD not make sense because sickness is
not what the body is FOR. Sickness is meaningful only if the
two basic premises on which the egos interpretation of the
body rests are true. Specifically, these are that the body is
for attack, and that you ARE a body. Without these premises,
sickness is completely inconceivable.
Sickness is a way of demonstrating that YOU CAN BE HURT. It
is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your
extreme need to depend on EXTERNAL guidance. The ego uses this
as its best argument for your need for ITS guidance. It
dictates endless prescriptions for AVOIDING catastrophic
outcomes. The Holy Spirit, perfectly aware of the same data,
does not bother to analyze them at all. If the data are
meaningless there is no point in considering them. The
function of truth is to collect data which are TRUE. There is
no point in trying to make sense out of meaningless data. ANY
way you handle them results in nothing. The more complicated
the results become, the harder it may be to recognize their
nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine all possible
outcomes to which premises give rise to judge them truly.
A learning device is NOT a teacher. IT cannot tell you how
YOU feel. YOU do not know how you feel because you have
ACCEPTED the egos confusion, and YOU think that a learning
device CAN tell you how you feel. Sickness is merely another
example of your insistence on asking the guidance of a teacher
WHO DOES NOT KNOW THE ANSWER. The ego is INCAPABLE of knowing
how you feel. When we said that the ego does not know
ANYTHING, we said the one thing about the ego that IS wholly
true. But there IS a corollary; if knowledge is being and the
ego has no knowledge, then the ego has no BEING.
You might well ask how the voice of something which does
not exist can be so insistent. Have you seriously considered
the distorting power of something you WANT, even if it is NOT
true? You have had many instances of how what you want can
distort what you see and hear. No-one can doubt the egos
skill in building up false cases. Nor can anyone doubt your
willingness to listen until YOU will not to tolerate anything
EXCEPT truth. When YOU lay the ego aside, it will be gone. The
Holy Spirits Voice is as loud as your willingness to listen.
It cannot be louder without violating your will, which the
Holy Spirit seeks to free, but NEVER to command.
The Holy Spirit teaches you to use your body ONLY to reach
your brothers, so He can teach His message THROUGH you. This
will heal them and THEREFORE heal YOU. Everything used in
accordance with its function as the Holy Spirit sees it CANNOT
be sick. Everything used otherwise IS. Do not allow the body
to be a mirror of a split mind. Do not let it be an image of
your own perception of littleness. Do not let it reflect your
will to attack. Health is the natural state of anything whose
interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, Who perceives no
attack on anything. Health is the result of relinquishing ALL
attempts to use the body lovelessly. Health is the beginning
of the proper perspective on life under the guidance of the
one Teacher Who knows what life IS, being the Voice for Life
Itself.
Healing as Corrected Perception
We once said that the Holy Spirit is the ANSWER. He is the
Answer to everything, because He knows what the answer to
everything IS. The ego does not know what a real question is,
although it asks an endless number. Yet YOU can learn this as
you learn to question the value of the ego, and thus establish
your ability to evaluate its questions. When the ego tempts
you to sickness, do not ask the Holy Spirit to heal the BODY,
for this would merely be to accept the egos belief that the
body is the proper aim for healing. Ask, rather, that the Holy
Spirit teach you the right PERCEPTION of the body, for
perception alone can be distorted. ONLY perception can be
sick, because only perception can be WRONG.
Wrong perception is DISTORTED willing, which wants things
to be as they are not. The REALITY of everything is totally
harmless, because total harmlessness is the CONDITION of its
reality. It is also the condition of your AWARENESS of its
reality. You do not have to seek reality. It will seek YOU and
find you, when you meet its conditions. Its conditions are
part of what it IS. And this part only is up to you. The rest
is of Itself. You need do so little, because it is so powerful
that your little part will bring the whole TO you. Accept,
then, your little part, and LET the whole be yours.
Wholeness heals because it is of the mind. ALL forms of
sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the
FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce
UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a
pathetic way of trying NOT to know by rendering the faculties
for knowing ineffectual. Rest in peace is a blessing for
the living, not the dead, because rest comes from WAKING, not
from sleeping. Sleep is withdrawing; waking is joining. Dreams
are ILLUSIONS of joining, taking on the egos distortions
about what joining means if you are sleeping under its
guidance. Yet the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep, and can
use dreams on behalf of WAKING, if you will let Him.
How you wake is the sign of how you have used sleep. To
whom did you give it? Under which teacher did you place it?
Whenever you wake dispiritedly, it was NOT of the Holy Spirit.
ONLY when you awaken joyously have you utilized sleep
according to the Holy Spirits purpose. You can indeed be
drugged by sleep, but this is always because you have
MISUSED it on behalf of sickness. Sleep is no more a form of
death than death is a form of unconsciousness. UNCONSCIOUSNESS
IS IMPOSSIBLE. You can rest in peace only BECAUSE you are
awake.
Healing is release from the fear of waking and the
substitution of the will to wake. The WILL TO WAKE is the will
to love, since ALL healing involves replacing fear with love.
The Holy Spirit cannot distinguish among degrees of error, for
if He taught that one form of sickness is more serious than
another, He would be teaching that one error can be MORE REAL
than another. His function is to distinguish ONLY between the
false and the true, REPLACING the false with the true.
The ego, which always WEAKENS the will, wants to SEPARATE
the body from the mind. This is an attempt to DESTROY it, yet
the ego actually believes that it is PROTECTING it. This is
because the ego believes that MIND IS DANGEROUS, and that to
MAKE MINDLESS is to heal. But to make mindless is impossible,
since it would mean to make nothing out of what God created.
The ego DESPISES weakness, even though it makes every effort
to INDUCE it. The ego WANTS only what it hates. To the ego
this is perfectly sensible. Believing in the power of attack,
the ego WANTS attack.
You have surely begun to realize that this is a very
practical course, which means EXACTLY what it says. So does
the Bible, if it is properly understood. There has been a
marked tendency on the part of many of the Bibles followers,
and also its translators, to be entirely literal about fear
and ITS effects, but NOT about love and ITS results. Thus,
hellfire means burning, but raising the dead becomes
allegorical. Actually, it is PARTICULARLY the references to
the outcomes of love which SHOULD be taken literally because
the Bible is ABOUT love, being about God.
The Bible enjoins you to be perfect, to heal ALL errors, to
take no thought of the body AS SEPARATE, and to accomplish all
things in my name. This is not my name alone, for ours is a
shared identification. The Name of Gods Son is one, and you
are enjoined to do the works of love because we SHARE this
oneness. Our minds are whole BECAUSE they are one. If you are
sick you are withdrawing from me. Yet you cannot withdraw from
me alone. You can only withdraw from yourself AND me.
I would not ask you to do the things you cannot do, and it
is impossible that I could do things you cannot do. Given
this, and given this QUITE literally, there can be nothing
which prevents you from doing EXACTLY what I ask, and
everything which argues FOR your doing it. I give you no
limits because God lays none upon you. When you limit YOURSELF
we are NOT of one mind, and that IS sickness. Yet sickness is
not of the body, but of the MIND. ALL forms of dysfunction are
merely signs that the mind has split, and does not accept a
unified purpose.
The unification of PURPOSE, then, is the Holy Spirits ONLY
way of healing. This is because it is the only level at which
healing means anything. The re-establishing of meaning in a
chaotic thought system IS the only way to heal it. We have
said that your task is only to meet the conditions FOR
meaning, since meaning itself is of God. Yet your RETURN to
meaning is essential to HIS because your meaning is PART of
His. Your healing, then, is part of HIS health since it is
part of His Wholeness. He cannot LOSE this, but YOU can not
KNOW it. Yet it is still His Will for you, and His Will MUST
stand forever and in all things.
The Acceptance of Reality
Fear of the Will of God is one of the strangest beliefs
that the human mind has ever made. This could not possibly
have occurred unless the mind were ALREADY profoundly split,
making it possible for the mind to be AFRAID of what it really
is. It is apparent that reality cannot threaten anything
EXCEPT illusions, since reality can only uphold truth. The
very fact that the Will of God, which is what you ARE, is
perceived as fearful to you demonstrates that you ARE afraid
of what you are. It is not, then, the Will of God of which you
are afraid, but YOURS. Your will is NOT the egos, and that is
WHY the ego is against you. What seems to be the fear of God
is really only the fear OF YOUR OWN REALITY.
It is impossible to learn anything consistently in a state
of panic. If the purpose of this course is to help you learn
what you are, and if you have already DECIDED that what you
are is fearful, then it MUST follow that you will NOT learn
this course. Yet you might remember that the reason FOR the
course is that you do NOT know who you are. If you do not know
your reality, how would you know whether it is fearful or not?
The association of truth and fear, which would be highly
artificial at most, is particularly inappropriate in the minds
of those who do not know what truth IS. All that this kind of
association means is that you are arbitrarily endowing
something quite beyond your awareness with something you DO
NOT WANT. It is evident, then, that you are judging something
of which you are totally UNAWARE. You have set this strange
situation up so that it is completely impossible to escape
from it WITHOUT a Guide Who DOES know what your reality is.
The purpose of this Guide is merely to remind you of what you
WANT. He is not attempting to force an alien will UPON you. He
is merely making every possible effort, within the limits you
impose on Him, to RE-ESTABLISH your own will in your
consciousness.
You have IMPRISONED your will in your UNCONSCIOUS, where it
remains available but cannot help you. When we said that the
Holy Spirits function is to sort out the true from the false
in your unconscious, we meant that He has the power to look
into what YOU have hidden and perceive the Will of God there.
His perception of this Will can make it real to YOU because He
is in your mind, and therefore He IS your reality. If, then,
His perception of your mind brings its reality to YOU, He IS
teaching you what you are.
The only source of fear in this whole process can ONLY be
what you think you LOSE. Yet it is only what the Holy Spirit
sees that you can possibly HAVE. We have emphasized many times
that the Holy Spirit will never call upon you to sacrifice
ANYTHING. But if you ask the sacrifice of reality OF yourself,
the Holy Spirit MUST remind you that this is not Gods Will
BECAUSE it is not yours. There is NO DIFFERENCE between your
will and Gods. If you did not have split minds, you would
recognize that willing is salvation BECAUSE it is
communication. It is impossible to communicate in alien
tongues. You and your Creator can communicate through creation
because that, and ONLY that, IS your joint Will.
Divided wills do not communicate because they speak for
different things TO THE SAME MIND. This loses the ability to
communicate simply because confused communication does not
mean ANYTHING. A message cannot be said to be communicated
UNLESS it makes sense. How sensible can your messages be when
you ask for what you do NOT want? Yet as long as you are
AFRAID of your will, this is precisely what you WILL ask for.
You may insist that the Holy Spirit does not answer you, but
it might be wiser to consider the kind of ASKER you are.
You do NOT ask only for what you want. This is SOLELY
because you are afraid you might RECEIVE it, AND YOU WOULD.
That is really why you persist in asking the teacher who could
not possibly TEACH you your will. Of him you can NEVER learn
it, and this gives you the illusion of safety. Yet you cannot
be safe FROM truth, but only IN it. Reality is the ONLY
safety. Your will is your salvation BECAUSE it is the same as
Gods. The separation is nothing more than the belief that it
is DIFFERENT.
No mind can believe that its will is STRONGER than Gods.
If, then, a mind believes that ITS will is different from His,
it can only decide either that there IS no God or that GODS
WILL IS FEARFUL. The former accounts for the atheist and the
latter for the martyr. Martyrdom takes many forms, the
category including all doctrines which holds that God demands
sacrifices of ANY kind. Either basic type of insane decision
will induce panic because the atheist believes he is alone,
and the martyr believes that God is crucifying him. Both
really fear abandonment and retaliation, but the atheist is
more reactive against abandonment, and the martyr against
retaliation.
The atheist maintains that God has left him, but he does
not care. He will, however, become very fearful, and hence
very angry, if anyone suggests that God has NOT left him. The
martyr, on the other hand, is more aware of guilt, and
believing that punishment is inevitable, attempts to teach
himself to LIKE it. The truth is, very simply, that no-one
wants EITHER abandonment OR retaliation. Many people SEEK
both, but it is still true that they do not WANT them. Can you
ask the Holy Spirit for gifts such as these, and actually
expect to RECEIVE them? He cannot make you want something you
do NOT want. When you ask the Universal Giver for what you do
not want, you are asking for what CANNOT be given BECAUSE IT
WAS NEVER CREATED. It was never created because it was never
your will for YOU.
Ultimately everyone must remember the Will of God, because
ultimately everyone must recognize HIMSELF. This recognition
IS the recognition that HIS WILL AND GODS ARE ONE. In the
presence of truth there are NO unbelievers and NO sacrifices.
In the security of reality, fear is totally meaningless. To
deny what IS can only SEEM to be fearful. Fear cannot be real
without a cause, and God is the ONLY Cause. God is Love, and
you DO want Him. This IS your will. Ask for this and you WILL
be answered because you will be asking only for what BELONGS
to you.
When you ask the Holy Spirit for what would hurt you, He
cannot answer because NOTHING can hurt you, AND SO YOU ARE
ASKING FOR NOTHING. ANY desire which stems from the ego IS a
desire for nothing, and to ask for it is NOT A REQUEST. It is
merely a denial in the FORM of a request. The Holy Spirit is
not concerned with form at all, being aware only of MEANING.
The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for ANYTHING because there
is COMPLETE COMMUNICATION FAILURE between them. Yet YOU can
ask for EVERYTHING of the Holy Spirit because YOUR requests
are real, being of your will. Would the Holy Spirit deny the
Will of God? And could He fail to recognize it in His Sons?
The energy which you withdraw from creation you expend on
fear. This is not because your energy is limited, but because
YOU HAVE LIMITED IT. You do not recognize the enormous waste
of energy which you expend in denying truth. What would you
say of someone who persisted in attempting the impossible,
believing that to ACHIEVE it is SUCCESS? The belief that you
MUST have the impossible in order to be happy is totally at
variance with the principle of creation. God COULD not will
that happiness DEPENDED on what you could never HAVE.
The fact that God is Love does not require belief, but it
DOES require acceptance. It is indeed possible for you to DENY
facts, although it is impossible for you to CHANGE them. If
you hold your hands over your eyes, you will NOT see because
you are interfering with the laws of seeing. If you deny love,
you will NOT know it because your cooperation is THE LAW OF
ITS BEING. You cannot change laws you did not make, and the
laws of happiness were created FOR you, not BY you.
Attempts of any kind to deny what IS are fearful, and if
they are strong, they WILL induce panic. Willing AGAINST
reality, though impossible, can be MADE into a very persistent
goal EVEN THOUGH YOU DO NOT WANT IT. But consider the result
of this strange decision. You are DEVOTING your mind to what
you do not want. How real can this DEVOTION be? If you do not
want it, it was never created. If it was never created, it is
nothing. Can you REALLY devote yourself to nothing?
God in His devotion to you created you devoted to
EVERYTHING, and GAVE you what you are devoted to. Otherwise,
you would not have been created perfect. Reality IS
everything, and therefore you have everything BECAUSE you are
real. You cannot make the unreal because the ABSENCE of
reality is fearful, and fear cannot BE created. As long as you
believe that fear is possible, YOU WILL NOT CREATE. Opposing
orders of reality MAKE REALITY MEANINGLESS, and reality IS
meaning.
Remember, then, that Gods Will is ALREADY possible, and
nothing else will EVER be. This is the simple acceptance of
reality because only this IS real. You cannot DISTORT reality
and KNOW WHAT IT IS. And if you DO distort reality, you will
experience anxiety, depression and ultimately panic because
you are trying to MAKE yourself unreal. When you feel these
things, do not try to look BEYOND yourself for truth, for
truth can only be WITHIN you. Say, therefore,
Christ is in me and where He is God MUST be,
for Christ is PART of Him.
The Answer to Prayer
Everyone who has ever tried to use prayer to request
something has experienced what appears to be failure. This is
not only true in connection with specific things which might
be harmful, but also in connection with requests which are
strictly in line with this course. The latter, in particular,
might be incorrectly interpreted as proof that the course
does not mean what it says. You must remember, however, that
the course does state, and repeatedly, that its purpose is the
ESCAPE from fear.
Let us suppose, then, that what you request of the Holy
Spirit IS what you really want, but you are still AFRAID of
it. Should this be the case, your ATTAINMENT of it would no
longer BE what you want, even if IT is. This accounts for why
certain SPECIFIC forms of healing are not achieved, even
though the state of healing IS. It frequently happens that an
individual asks for physical healing because he is fearful of
BODILY harm. At the same time, however, if he WERE healed
physically, the threat to his thought system would be
considerably MORE fearful to him than its physical expression.
In this case he is not really asking for RELEASE from fear,
but for the removal of a symptom which HE has selected. This
request is, therefore, NOT for healing at all.
The Bible emphasizes that ALL prayers are answered, and
this must be true if no effort is wasted. The very fact that
one has asked the Holy Spirit for ANYTHING will ensure a
response. Yet it is equally certain that NO response given by
the Holy Spirit will EVER be one which would increase fear. It
is possible that His answer will not be heard at all. It is
IMPOSSIBLE, however, that it will be lost. There are many
answers which you have already received, but have not yet
HEARD. I assure you that they are waiting for you. It is
indeed true that no effort is wasted.
If you would know your prayers are answered, never doubt a
Son of God. Do not question him and do not confound him, for
your faith in him is your faith in YOURSELF. If you would know
God and His Answer, believe in me whose faith in you cannot be
shaken. Can you ask of the Holy Spirit truly, and doubt your
brother? Believe his words are true because of the truth which
is IN him. You will unite with the truth in him, and his words
will BE true. As you hear HIM you will hear ME. LISTENING to
truth is the only way you can hear it now and finally KNOW it.
The message your brother gives you is UP TO YOU. What does
he say to you? What would you HAVE him say? Your decision
ABOUT him determines the message you receive. Remember that
the Holy Spirit is in him, and His Voice speaks to you THROUGH
him. What can so holy a brother tell you EXCEPT truth? But are
you LISTENING to it? Your brother may not know who he is, but
there is a light in his mind which DOES know. This light can
shine into yours, making HIS words true and making YOU able to
hear them. His words ARE the Holy Spirits answer to you. Is
your faith in him strong enough to let you hear?
Salvation is of your brother. The Holy Spirit extends from
your mind to his, and answers YOU. You cannot hear the Voice
for God in yourself alone because you are NOT alone. And His
answer is only for what you ARE. You will not know the trust I
have in you unless you EXTEND it. You will not trust the
guidance of the Holy Spirit, or believe that it is for you
unless you hear it in others. It MUST be for your brother
BECAUSE it is for you. Would God have created a Voice for you
alone? Could you hear His answer EXCEPT as He answers ALL of
Gods Sons? Hear of your brother what you would have me hear
of you, for you would not want ME to be deceived.
I love you for the truth in you, as God does. Your
deceptions may deceive YOU, but they CANNOT deceive ME.
Knowing what you are, I CANNOT doubt you. I hear only the Holy
Spirit in you, Who speaks to me through YOU. If you would hear
ME, hear my brothers in whom Gods Voice speaks. The answer to
ALL prayers lies in them. You will be answered as you hear the
answer in EVERYONE. Do not listen to anything else or you will
not hear truth.
Believe in your brothers BECAUSE I believe in you, and you
will learn that my belief in you is justified. Believe in me
BY believing in them, for the sake of what God gave them. They
WILL answer you, if you learn to ask truth of them. Do not ask
for blessings without blessing them, for only in this way can
you learn how blessed YOU are. By following this way, you ARE
looking for the truth in you. This is not going BEYOND
yourself but TOWARD yourself. Hear only Gods Answer in His
Sons, and you ARE answered.
To disbelieve is to side against, or to ATTACK. To believe
is to accept, and to SIDE WITH. To believe is not to be
credulous, but to accept and APPRECIATE. What you do not
believe you do not appreciate, and you CANNOT be grateful for
what you do not value. There is a price you will pay for
judgment because judgment IS the setting of a price. And as
you set it you WILL pay it.
If paying is equated with GETTING, you will set the price
low but demand a high RETURN. You will have forgotten,
however, that your return is in proportion to your judgment of
worth. If paying is associated with GIVING, it cannot BE
perceived as loss, and the RECIPROCAL relationship of giving
and receiving will be recognized. The price will then be set
high because of the value of the return. The price for GETTING
is to lose sight of value, making it inevitable that you will
NOT value what you receive. Valuing it little, you will not
appreciate it and will not WANT it.
Never forget, then, that YOU have set the value on what you
receive, and have priced it by what you give. To believe that
it is possible to get much for little is to believe that you
can bargain with God. Gods laws are ALWAYS fair and perfectly
consistent. BY giving you receive. But to receive is to
ACCEPT, not to get. It is impossible not to HAVE, but it IS
possible not to KNOW you have. The recognition of having is
the willingness for GIVING, and ONLY by this willingness can
you recognize what you have. What you give is therefore the
value you put on what you have, being the exact measure of the
value you put upon it. And this, in turn, is the measure of
how much you WANT it.
You can ASK of the Holy Spirit, then, only by giving TO
Him, and you can GIVE to Him only where you SEE Him. If you
see Him in everyone, consider how much you will be ASKING of
Him, and HOW MUCH YOU WILL RECEIVE. He will deny you nothing
because you have denied HIM nothing, and so you can share
everything. This is the way, and the ONLY way, to have His
answer because His answer is all you CAN ask for and want.
Say, then, to everyone,
Because I will to know myself,
I see you as Gods Son and my brother.
CHAPTER 9
THE CORRECTION OF ERROR
The alertness of the ego to the errors which other egos
make is not the kind of vigilance the Holy Spirit would have
you maintain. Egos are critical in terms of the kind of
sense they stand for. THEY understand this kind of sense,
because it IS sensible to them. To the Holy Spirit, it makes
no sense at all. To the ego, it is kind and right and good to
point out errors and correct them. This makes perfect sense
to the ego, which is totally unaware of what errors ARE and
what correction IS.
Errors ARE of the ego, and correction of errors of any kind
lies solely in the RELINQUISHMENT of the ego. When you correct
a brother, you are telling him that he is wrong. He may be
making no sense at the time, and it is certain that, if he is
speaking from the ego, he WILL be making no sense. But your
task is still to tell him he is RIGHT. You do not tell him
this verbally, if he is speaking foolishly, because he needs
correction at ANOTHER level, since his error IS at another
level. HE is still right, because he is a Son of God. His ego
is always wrong, no matter WHAT it says or does.
If you point out the errors of your brothers ego, you must
be seeing through YOURS, because the Holy Spirit does not
perceive his errors. This must be true if there is no
communication at all between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The
ego makes no sense, and the Holy Spirit does not attempt to
understand anything that arises from it. Since He does not
understand it, He does not JUDGE it, knowing that nothing it
engenders means anything.
Sanity and Perception
When you react AT ALL to errors, you are not listening to
the Holy Spirit. He has merely disregarded them, and if you
attend to them, you are not hearing HIM. If you do not hear
Him, you ARE listening to your ego, and making as little sense
as the brother whose errors you perceive. This cannot be
correction. Yet it is more than merely lack of correction for
him. It is the giving up of correction in YOURSELF.
When a brother behaves insanely, you can heal him only by
perceiving the SANITY in him. If you perceive his errors and
ACCEPT them, you are accepting YOURS. If you want to give
yours over to the Holy Spirit, you must do this with his.
Unless this becomes the one way in which you handle ALL
errors, you cannot understand how all errors are UNDONE. How
is this different from telling you that what you teach you
learn? Your brother is as right as you are, and if you think
he is wrong you are condemning yourself.
YOU cannot correct YOURSELF. Is it possible, then, for you
to correct another? Yet you CAN see him truly because it is
possible for you to see YOURSELF truly. It is not up to you to
change him, but merely to accept him as he IS. His errors do
not come from the truth that is in him, and only this truth is
yours. His errors cannot change this, and can have no effect
at all on the truth in YOU. To perceive errors in anyone, and
to react to them as if they were real, is to MAKE them real to
you. You will not escape paying the price for this, not
because you are being punished for it, but because you are
following the wrong guide, and will lose your way.
Your brothers errors are not of him, any more than yours
are of YOU. Accept his errors as real, and you have attacked
YOURSELF. If you would find your way and keep it, see only
truth beside you, for you walk together. The Holy Spirit in
you forgives all things in you AND in your brother. HIS errors
are forgiven WITH yours. Atonement is no more separate than
love. Atonement cannot be separate because it COMES from love.
ANY attempt you make to correct a brother means that you
believe correction by YOU is possible, and this can ONLY be
the arrogance of the ego. Correction is of God, Who does not
know of arrogance. The Holy Spirit forgives everything BECAUSE
God created everything.
Do not undertake HIS function or you will forget YOURS.
Accept ONLY the function of healing in time because that is
what time is FOR. God GAVE you the function to create in
eternity. You do not need to learn this, but you DO need to
learn to WANT this, and for this all learning was made. This
is the Holy Spirits good use of an ability which you do not
NEED, but which you HAVE made. Give it to Him! You do not know
how to use it. He will teach you how to see yourself without
condemnation by learning how to look on EVERYTHING without it.
Condemnation will then not be real to you, and all your errors
WILL be forgiven.
Atonement as a Lesson in Sharing
Atonement is for all because it is the way to UNDO the
belief that anything is for you alone. To forgive is to
OVERLOOK. Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your
perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your
perception holds. Accept as true only what your brother IS, if
you would know yourself. Perceive what he is NOT, and you
cannot know what you are BECAUSE you see him falsely. Remember
always that your identity is shared, and that its sharing IS
its reality.
You have a part to play in the Atonement, but the plan of
the Atonement IS beyond you. You do not know how to overlook
errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further
error to think either that you do NOT make them, or that you
can correct them WITHOUT a Guide to correction. And if you do
not FOLLOW this Guide, your errors will NOT be corrected. The
plan is not yours BECAUSE of your limited ideas of what you
are. This limitation is where ALL errors arise. The way to
undo them, therefore, is not OF you but FOR you.
The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you
because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT. The Holy Spirit
merely reminds you of what is your natural ability. By
reinterpreting the ability to attack, which you DID make, into
the ability to SHARE, He translates what you have made into
what God created. If you would accomplish this THROUGH Him,
you cannot look on your abilities through the eyes of the ego,
or you will judge them as IT does. All their harmfulness lies
in its judgment. All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of
the Holy Spirit.
The ego, too, has a plan of forgiveness because you are
ASKING for one, though not of the right teacher. The egos
plan, of course, MAKES NO SENSE and WILL NOT WORK. By
following it you will merely place yourself in an impossible
situation, to which the ego ALWAYS leads you. The egos plan
is to have you see error clearly FIRST, and THEN overlook it.
Yet how can you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it
clearly you HAVE made it real and CANNOT overlook it.
This is where the ego is forced to appeal to mysteries,
and begins to insist that you must accept the meaningless to
save yourself. Many have tried to do this in my name,
forgetting that my words make PERFECT sense because they come
from God. They are as sensible now as they ever were because
they speak of ideas which are eternal. Forgiveness that is
learned of me does NOT use fear to UNDO fear. Nor does it make
real the UNREAL and then destroy it.
Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking
beyond error from the beginning, and thus KEEPING it unreal
for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your
minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that YOU must undo what
you have made in order to be forgiven. What has no effect does
not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are
TOTALLY non-existent. By steadily and consistently cancelling
out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE and in ALL respects, He
teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES it. Follow His
teaching in forgiveness, then, because forgiveness IS His
function, and He knows how to fulfill it perfectly. That is
what we meant when we once said that miracles are natural, and
when they do NOT occur something has gone wrong.
Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow
the Holy Spirits plan of salvation, in recognition of the
fact that you do NOT know what it is. His work is NOT your
function, and unless you accept this, you cannot learn what
YOUR function is. The confusion of functions is so typical of
the ego that you should be quite familiar with it by now. The
ego believes that ALL functions belong to it, even though it
has no idea what they ARE. This is more than mere confusion.
It is a particularly dangerous combination of grandiosity AND
confusion which makes it likely that the ego will attack
anyone and anything for no reason at all. This is exactly what
the ego DOES. It is TOTALLY unpredictable in its responses
because it has no idea of WHAT it perceives.
If one has no idea of what is happening, how appropriately
can you EXPECT him to react? You might still ask yourself,
regardless of how you can ACCOUNT for the reactions, whether
they place the ego in a very sound position as the guide for
YOURS. It seems absurd to have to emphasize repeatedly that
the egos qualifications as a guide are singularly
unfortunate, and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a
teacher of salvation. Yet this question, ridiculous as it
seems, is really the crucial issue in the whole separation
fantasy. Anyone who elects a totally insane guide MUST be
totally insane himself.
It is not true that you do not know the guide is insane.
YOU know it because I know it, and you HAVE judged it by the
same standard as I have. The ego literally lives on borrowed
time, and its days are numbered. Do not fear the Last
Judgment, but welcome it and do not wait, for the egos time
is borrowed from YOUR eternity. This IS the Second Coming,
which was made FOR you as the First was created. The Second
Coming is merely the return of SENSE. Can this POSSIBLY be
fearful?
What can be fearful but fantasy, and no-one turns to
fantasy unless he despairs of finding satisfaction in reality.
Yet it is certain that he will NEVER find satisfaction in
fantasy, so that his only hope is to CHANGE HIS MIND ABOUT
REALITY. Only if the decision that reality is fearful is WRONG
can God be right. And I assure you that God IS right. Be glad,
then, that you HAVE been wrong, but this was only because you
did not know who you were. Had you remembered, you could no
more have been wrong than God can. The impossible can happen
ONLY in fantasy. When you search for reality in fantasies you
will not find it. The symbols of fantasy are of the ego, and
of THESE you will find many. But do not look for meaning in
them. They have no more meaning than the fantasies into which
they are woven.
Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful, pretty or ugly, but
no-one calls them TRUE. Children may believe them, and so, for
a while, the tales ARE true for them. Yet when reality dawns
the fantasies are gone. REALITY has not gone in the meanwhile.
The Second Coming is the AWARENESS of reality, not its RETURN.
Behold, my children, reality is here. It belongs to you and me
and God, and is perfectly satisfying to all of us. ONLY this
awareness heals, because it is the awareness of truth.
The Unhealed Healer
The egos plan for forgiveness is far more widely used than
Gods. This is because it is undertaken by unhealed healers,
and is therefore of the ego. Let us consider the unhealed
healer more carefully now. By definition, he is trying to GIVE
what he has not RECEIVED. If he is a theologian, he may begin
with the premise, I am a miserable sinner and so are you.
If he is a psychotherapist, he is more likely to start with
the equally incredible idea that HE really believes in attack
and so does the patient, but it does not matter in either
case.
We have repeatedly stated that beliefs of the ego cannot be
shared, and this is WHY they are unreal. How, then, can
uncovering them MAKE them real? Every healer who searches
fantasies for truth MUST be unhealed because he does not KNOW
where to look for truth, and therefore does not have the
answer to the problem of healing. There is an advantage to
bringing nightmares into awareness, but ONLY to teach that
they are not real, and that ANYTHING they contain is
meaningless. The unhealed healer cannot do this because he
does not BELIEVE IT.
All unhealed healers follow the egos plan for forgiveness
in one form or another. If they are theologians, they are
likely to condemn themselves, teach condemnation, and advocate
a very fearful solution. Projecting condemnation onto God,
they make Him appear retaliative and fear His retribution.
What they have done is merely to IDENTIFY with the ego, and by
perceiving clearly what IT does, condemn themselves because of
this profound confusion. It is understandable that there was
been a revolt against this concept, but to revolt AGAINST it
is still to BELIEVE in it. The FORM of the revolt, then, is
different, but NOT the content.
The newer forms of the egos plan are as unhelpful as the
older ones, because form does not matter to the Holy Spirit,
and therefore does not matter at all. According to the newer
forms of the egos plan, the therapist interprets the egos
symbols in the nightmare, and then uses them to prove that the
NIGHTMARE is real. Having MADE it real, he then attempts to
dispel its effects by depreciating the importance OF THE
DREAMER. This WOULD be a healing approach if the dreamer were
properly identified as unreal. Yet if the dreamer is equated
with the MIND, the minds corrective power through the Holy
Spirit is DENIED.
It is noteworthy that this is a contradiction even in the
egos terms, and one which it usually DOES note, even in its
confusion. If the way to counteract fear is to REDUCE the
importance of the fearer, how can this build ego STRENGTH?
These perfectly self-evident inconsistencies account for why,
except in certain stylized verbal accounts, no-one can EXPLAIN
what happens in psychotherapy. Nothing real DOES. Nothing real
has happened to the unhealed healer, and he learns from his
own teaching.
BECAUSE his ego is involved, it always attempts to gain
some support from the situation. Seeking to get something for
HIMSELF the unhealed healer does not know how to GIVE, and
consequently cannot share. He cannot correct because he is not
working CORRECTIVELY. He believes that it is up to him to
teach the patient what is REAL, but he does not know it
himself. What, then, SHOULD happen? When God said, Let there
be light there WAS light. Can you find light by analyzing
darkness as the psychotherapist does, or like the theologian
by acknowledging darkness in yourself and looking for a
distant light to remove it while EMPHASIZING the distance?
Healing is NOT mysterious. Nothing will occur unless you
understand it since light IS understanding. A miserable
sinner cannot be healed without magic, nor can an
unimportant mind esteem itself without magic. Both forms of
the egos approach, then, must arrive at an impasse, the
characteristic impossible situation to which the ego ALWAYS
leads. It CAN be helpful to point out to a patient where he is
heading, but the point is lost unless he can change his
direction. The therapist cannot do this for him, but he also
cannot do this for HIMSELF.
The ONLY meaningful contribution the therapist can make is
to present an example of one whose direction has been changed
FOR him, and who no longer believes in nightmares of ANY kind.
The light in HIS mind will therefore ANSWER the questioner,
who must decide with God that there IS light because he SEES
it. And by HIS acknowledgment the THERAPIST knows it is there.
That is how perception ultimately is translated into
knowledge. The miracle worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and
translates HIS perception into sureness by continually
extending it and accepting its acknowledgment. Its EFFECTS
assure him it is there.
The therapist does not heal; HE LETS HEALING BE. He can
point to darkness, but he cannot bring light of HIMSELF, for
light is not of him. Yet, being FOR him, it must also be for
his patient. The Holy Spirit is the ONLY Therapist. He makes
healing perfectly clear in ANY situation in which he is the
Guide. The human therapist can only let Him FULFILL His
function. He needs no help for this. He will tell you EXACTLY
what to do to help ANYONE He sends to you for help, and will
speak to him through you, if you do not INTERFERE. Remember
that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the WRONG
choice will NOT help. But remember also that the RIGHT one
WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God.
As you awaken other minds to the Holy Spirit through Him,
and NOT yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying
the laws of this world, but that the laws you are obeying
WORK. The good is what works is a sound though insufficient
statement. ONLY the good CAN work. Nothing else works at all.
This course is a guide to behavior. Being a very direct and
very simple learning situation, it provides the Guide Who
TELLS you what to do. If you do it, you will SEE that it
works. Its RESULTS are more convincing than its words. They
will convince you that the words are true. By following the
right Guide you will learn the simplest of all lessons,
By their fruits ye shall know them,
and THEY shall know THEMSELVES .
The Awareness of the Holy Spirit
How can you become increasingly aware of the Holy Spirit in
you EXCEPT by His effects? You cannot see Him with your eyes,
nor hear Him with your ears. How, then, can you perceive Him
at all? If you inspire joy, and others react to you WITH joy,
even though you are not experiencing joy yourself, there MUST
be something in you that is capable of producing it. If it IS
in you and CAN produce joy, and if you see that it DOES
produce joy in others, you MUST be dissociating it in
yourself.
It seems to you that the Holy Spirit does NOT produce joy
consistently in you ONLY because you do not consistently
AROUSE joy in others. Their reactions to you ARE your
evaluations of His consistency. When you are inconsistent you
will not always GIVE RISE to joy, and so you will not always
RECOGNIZE His consistency. What you offer to your brother you
offer to Him, because He cannot go BEYOND your offering in His
giving. This is not because He limits His giving, but simply
because you have limited your RECEIVING. The will to receive
is the will to accept.
If your brothers ARE part of you, will you ACCEPT them?
Only they can teach you what you are, and your learning is the
result of what you taught them. What you call upon in them you
call upon in YOURSELF. And as you call upon it in them it
becomes real to YOU. God has but one Son, knowing them all AS
one. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less
than He is. Would you know what this means? If what you do to
my brother you do to me, and if you do everything for yourself
because we are PART of you, everything WE do belongs to you as
well. Every Soul God created IS part of you, and shares His
glory WITH you. His Glory belongs to Him, but it is equally
YOURS. You cannot, then, be LESS glorious than He is.
God is more than you only because He CREATED you, but not
even this would He keep from you. Therefore you CAN create as
He did, and your dissociation will NOT alter this. Neither
Gods Light NOR YOURS is dimmed because you do not see.
Because the Sonship MUST create as one, you remember creation
whenever you recognize PART of creation. Each part you
remember adds to YOUR wholeness because each part IS whole.
Wholeness is indivisible, but you cannot learn of your
wholeness until you see it EVERYWHERE. You can KNOW yourself
only as God knows His Son, for knowledge is shared WITH God.
When You awake in Him you will know your magnitude by
accepting His limitlessness as YOURS, but meanwhile you will
judge it as you judge your brothers, and will accept it as
you accept THEIRS.
You are not yet awake, but you can learn HOW to awaken.
Very simply the Holy Spirit teaches you to awaken others. As
you see them waken you will learn what waking MEANS, and
because you have willed to wake them, their gratitude and
their appreciation of what you have given them will teach YOU
its value. THEY will become the witnesses to your reality, as
YOU were created witnesses to Gods. Yet when the Sonship
comes together and ACCEPTS its oneness, it will be known by
its creations, who witness to its reality as the Son does to
the Father.
Miracles have no place in eternity because they are
reparative. Yet while you still need healing, your miracles
are the only witnesses to your reality which you can
RECOGNIZE. You cannot perform a miracle for YOURSELF because
miracles are a way of GIVING acceptance AND receiving it. In
time the giving comes first, though they are simultaneous in
eternity, where they cannot BE separated. When you have
learned that they ARE the same, the need for time is over.
Eternity is ONE time, its only dimension being always.
This cannot mean anything to you, however, until you remember
Gods open arms and finally know His open Mind. Like Him, YOU
are always, in His Mind and with a mind like His. In YOUR
open mind are YOUR creations, in perfect communication born of
perfect understanding. Could you but accept one of them, you
would not want ANYTHING the world has to offer. Everything
else would be totally meaningless. Gods meaning is incomplete
without you, and you are incomplete without your creations.
Accept your brother in this world and accept NOTHING ELSE, for
in him you will find your creations because he created them
WITH you. You will never know that you are co-creator with God
until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with YOU.
Salvation and Gods Will
Gods Will is your salvation. Would He not have given you
the means to find it? If He wills you to HAVE it, He must have
made it possible and very easy to obtain it. Your brothers are
everywhere. You do not have to seek far for salvation. Every
minute and every second gives you a chance to save YOURSELF.
Do not lose these chances, not because they will not return,
but because delay of joy is needless. God wills you perfect
happiness NOW. Is it possible that this is not also YOUR will?
And is it possible that this is not ALSO the will of your
brothers?
Consider, then, that in this joint will you ARE all united,
and in this ONLY. There will be disagreement on anything else,
but NOT on this. This, then, is where peace ABIDES. And YOU
abide in peace when you so decide. Yet you cannot abide in
peace unless you accept the Atonement because the Atonement IS
the way to peace. The reason is very simple, and so obvious
that it is often overlooked. That is because the ego is AFRAID
of the obvious, since obviousness is the essential
characteristic of reality. Yet YOU cannot overlook it unless
you are NOT LOOKING.
It is PERFECTLY obvious that, if the Holy Spirit looks with
love on ALL He perceives, He looks with love on YOU. His
evaluation of you is based on His knowledge of what you are,
and so He evaluates you truly. And this evaluation MUST be in
your mind because He is. The ego is also in your mind because
you have ACCEPTED it there. ITS evaluation of you, however, is
the exact opposite of the Holy Spirits because the ego does
NOT love you. It is unaware of what you are, and wholly
mistrustful of EVERYTHING it perceives because its own
perceptions are so shifting. The ego is therefore capable of
suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst. That is its
range. It cannot exceed it because of its uncertainty. And it
can never go BEYOND it because it can never BE certain.
You, then, have two CONFLICTING evaluations of yourself in
your minds, and they CANNOT both be true. You do not yet
realize how COMPLETELY different these evaluations are because
you do not understand how lofty the Holy Spirits perception
of you really is. He is not deceived by anything you do
because he never forgets what you ARE. The ego is deceived by
everything you do, even when you respond to the Holy Spirit,
because at such times its confusion INCREASES. The ego is,
therefore, particularly likely to attack you when you react
lovingly because it has evaluated you as UNLOVING, and you are
going AGAINST its judgment.
The ego will begin to ATTACK your motives as soon as they
become clearly out of accord with its perception of you. This
is when it will shift abruptly from suspiciousness to
viciousness, since its uncertainty is increased. Yet it is
surely pointless to attack in return. What can this mean
except that you are AGREEING with the egos evaluation of what
you are? If you are willing to see yourself as unloving, you
will NOT be happy. You are condemning yourself, and MUST
therefore regard yourself as inadequate. Would you look to the
ego to help you escape from a sense of inadequacy it has
PRODUCED, and must MAINTAIN for its existence? Can you ESCAPE
from its evaluation of you by using its methods for keeping
this picture INTACT?
You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from WITHIN it.
Its own range precludes this. You can only go BEYOND it, look
back from a point where SANITY exists, AND SEE THE CONTRAST.
Only BY this contrast can insanity be judged as insane. With
the grandeur of God in you, you have chosen to be little and
to lament your littleness. WITHIN the system which dictated
this choice the lament IS inevitable. Your littleness is taken
for granted there, and you do NOT ask, Who granted it? The
question is meaningless within the egos thought system
because it opens the WHOLE thought system to question.
We said before that the ego does not know what a real
question is. Lack of knowledge of any kind is always
associated with UNWILLINGNESS to know, and produces a total
lack of knowledge simply because knowledge IS total. Not to
question your littleness, therefore, is to deny ALL knowledge
and keep the egos WHOLE thought system intact. You cannot
retain PART of a thought system because it can be questioned
ONLY at its foundation. And this must be questioned from
beyond it because WITHIN it its foundation DOES stand. The
Holy Spirit judges against the reality of the egos thought
system merely because He knows its FOUNDATION is not true.
Therefore, nothing that arises from it means anything. The
Holy Spirit judges every belief you hold in terms of where it
comes from. If it comes from God, He knows it to be true. If
it does not, He knows that it is meaningless.
Whenever you question your value, say:
God Himself is incomplete without me.
Remember this when the ego speaks, and you will not hear it.
The truth about you is so lofty that nothing unworthy of God
is worthy of you. Choose, then, what you want in these terms,
and accept nothing that you would not offer to God as wholly
fitting for Him, for you do not WANT anything else. Return
your part of Him, and He will give you all of Himself in
exchange for your return of what belongs to Him and renders
Him complete.
Grandeur versus Grandiosity
Grandeur is of God, and ONLY of Him. Therefore, it is in
you. Whenever you become aware of it, however dimly, you
abandon the ego automatically because, in the presence of the
grandeur of God, the meaninglessness of the ego becomes
perfectly apparent. Though it does not understand this, the
ego believes that its enemy has struck, and attempts to
offer gifts to induce you to return to its protection.
SELF-inflation of the ego is its alternative to the grandeur
of God. Which will you choose?
Grandiosity is ALWAYS a cover for despair. It is without
hope because it is not real. It is an attempt to counteract
your littleness, based on the belief that the littleness is
REAL. Without this belief grandiosity is meaningless, and you
could not possibly want it. The essence of grandiosity is
competitiveness, because it ALWAYS involves attack. It is a
delusional attempt to OUTDO, but NOT to undo. We said before
that the ego vacillates between suspiciousness and
viciousness. It remains suspicious as long as you despair of
yourself. It shifts to viciousness whenever you will not
tolerate self-abasement and seek relief. Then it offers you
the illusion of attack as a solution.
The ego does not know the difference between grandeur and
grandiosity because it does not know the difference between
miracle impulses and ego-alien beliefs of its own. We once
said that the ego IS aware of threat, but does not make
distinctions between two entirely different kinds of threat to
its existence. Its own profound sense of vulnerability renders
it incapable of judgment EXCEPT in terms of attack. When it
experiences threat, its only decision is whether to attack
NOW, or to withdraw to attack later. If you accept its offer
of grandiosity, it will attack immediately. If you do not, it
will wait.
The ego is immobilized in the presence of Gods grandeur
because HIS grandeur establishes YOUR freedom. Even the
faintest hint of your reality literally drives the ego from
your mind because of complete lack of investment in it.
Grandeur is totally WITHOUT illusions, and because it is real,
it is compellingly convincing. Yet the conviction of reality
will not remain with you unless you do not allow the ego to
attack it. The ego will make every effort to recover and
mobilize its energies AGAINST your release. It will tell you
that you are insane, and argue that grandeur CANNOT be a real
part of you because of the littleness in which IT believes.
Yet your grandeur is not delusional BECAUSE you did not
make it. You have made grandiosity and are afraid of it
because it is a form of attack, but your grandeur is of God,
Who created it out of His Love. From your grandeur you can
only bless because your grandeur is your ABUNDANCE. By
blessing you hold it in your minds, protecting it from
illusions and keeping yourself in the Mind of God. Remember
always that you cannot be anywhere EXCEPT in the Mind of God.
When you forget this, you WILL despair and you WILL attack.
The ego depends SOLELY on your willingness to tolerate it.
If you are willing to look upon your grandeur you CANNOT
despair, and therefore you cannot WANT the ego. Your grandeur
is Gods ANSWER to the ego because it is true. Littleness and
grandeur cannot co-exist, nor is it possible for them to
alternate in your awareness. Littleness and grandiosity can
and MUST alternate in your awareness since both are untrue,
and are therefore on the same level. Being the level of shift
it is experienced as shifting, and extremes are its essential
characteristic.
Truth and littleness are DENIALS of each other because
grandeur IS truth. Truth does not vacillate; it is ALWAYS
true. When grandeur slips away from you, you have replaced it
with something YOU have made. Perhaps it is the belief in
littleness; perhaps it is the belief in grandiosity. Yet it
MUST be insane because it is NOT true. Your grandeur will
NEVER deceive you, but your illusions ALWAYS will. Illusions
ARE deceptions. You cannot triumph, but you ARE exalted. And
in your exalted state you seek others like you and rejoice
with them.
It is easy to distinguish grandeur from grandiosity because
love is returned, but pride is not. Pride will not produce
miracles, and therefore will deprive you of your true
witnesses to your reality. Truth is not obscure nor hidden,
but its obviousness to YOU lies in the joy you bring to its
witnesses, who SHOW it to you. They attest to your grandeur,
but they cannot attest to pride because pride is not shared.
God WANTS you to behold what He created because it is His joy.
Can your grandeur be arrogant when God Himself witnesses to
it? And what can be real that HAS no witnesses? What good can
come of it? And if no good can come of it, the Holy Spirit
cannot use it. What He cannot transform to the Will of God
does not exist at all. Grandiosity is delusional because it is
used to REPLACE your grandeur. Yet what God has created cannot
BE replaced. God is incomplete without you because His
grandeur is total, and you cannot be missing from it.
You are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God. No-one
else can fill your part of It, and while you leave your part
of It empty, your eternal place merely waits for your return.
God, through His Voice, reminds you of It, and God Himself
keeps your extensions safe within It. Yet You do not know them
until you return to them. You CANNOT replace the Kingdom, and
you cannot replace YOURSELF. God, Who KNOWS your value, would
not have it so, and so it is NOT so. Your value is in GODS
Mind, and therefore not in yours alone. To accept yourself as
God created you cannot be arrogance because it is the DENIAL
of arrogance. To accept your littleness IS arrogant because it
means that you believe YOUR evaluation of yourself is TRUER
than Gods.
Yet if truth is indivisible your evaluation of yourself
must BE Gods. You did not establish your value, and it NEEDS
no defense. Nothing can attack it or prevail over it. It does
not vary. It merely IS. Ask the Holy Spirit WHAT it is and He
will tell you, but do not be afraid of His answer, for it
comes from God. It IS an exalted answer because of its Source,
but the Source is true and so is Its answer. Listen and do not
question what you hear, for God does not deceive. He would
have you replace the egos belief in littleness with His own
exalted answer to the question of your being, so that you can
cease to question it and KNOW it for what it IS.
The Inclusiveness of Creation
Nothing beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving
because nothing IS beyond you. Time and eternity are both in
your minds, and WILL conflict until you perceive time solely
as a means to REGAIN eternity. You cannot do this as long as
you believe that ANYTHING which happens to you is caused by
factors OUTSIDE yourself. You must learn that time is solely
at YOUR disposal, and that nothing in the world can take this
responsibility from you. You can VIOLATE Gods laws in your
imagination, but you cannot ESCAPE from them. They were
established for your protection, and are as inviolate as your
safety.
God created nothing beside you and nothing beside you
exists, for you are part of Him. What except Him CAN exist?
Nothing BEYOND Him can happen because nothing EXCEPT Him is
real. Your creations add to Him as YOU do, but nothing is
added that is different because everything has always BEEN.
What can upset you except the ephemeral, and how can the
ephemeral be real if you are Gods ONLY creation and He
created you eternal? Your holy will establishes EVERYTHING
that happens to you. EVERY response you make to EVERYTHING you
perceive is up to you because your will determines your
perception of it.
God does not change His Mind about YOU, for He is not
uncertain of HIMSELF. And what He knows CAN be known because
He does not know only for Himself. He created you for Himself,
but He gave you the power to create for YOUR self so you could
be like him. That is WHY your will is holy. Can anything
exceed the Love of God? Can anything, then, exceed YOUR will?
Nothing can reach you from beyond it because, being in God,
YOU encompass everything. Believe this, and you WILL realize
how much is up to you. When anything threatens your peace of
mind, ask yourself,
Has God changed His Mind about me?
Then ACCEPT His decision, for it is indeed changeless, and
refuse to change your mind about YOURSELF. God will never
decide AGAINST you, or He would be deciding against Himself.
The reason you do not know YOUR creations is simply that
you would decide against them as long as your minds are split,
and to attack what you have created is impossible. But
remember that it is AS IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD. The law of creation
is that you love your creations as yourself because they ARE
part of you. Everything that was created is therefore
perfectly safe because the laws of God protect it by His Love.
Any part of your mind that does not know this has banished
itself from knowledge because it has not met its conditions.
Who could have done this but you? Recognize this gladly,
for in this recognition lies the realization that your
banishment is NOT of God, and therefore does not exist. You
are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable
of awakening to reality. Is it your will to do so? You know,
from your own experience, that what you see in dreams you
think is real as long as you are asleep. Yet the instant you
waken you KNOW that everything that SEEMED to happen did not
happen at all. You do not think this mysterious, even though
all the laws of what you awakened TO were violated while you
slept. Is it not possible that you merely shifted from one
dream to another, without REALLY wakening?
Would you bother to reconcile what happened in conflicting
dreams, or would you dismiss both together if you discovered
that reality is in accord with neither? You do not remember
being awake. When you hear the Holy Spirit you merely feel
better because loving seems POSSIBLE to you, but you do NOT
remember yet that it once was so. And it is in this
remembering that you will know it can be so again. What is
possible has not yet been accomplished. Yet what has once been
is so NOW, if it is eternal. When you remember, you will know
what you remember IS eternal, and therefore IS now.
You will remember everything the instant you DESIRE IT
WHOLLY, for if to desire wholly is to create, you will have
willed away the separation, returning your mind simultaneously
to your Creator and your creations. Knowing THEM you will have
no wish to sleep, but only the will to waken and be glad.
Dreams will be impossible because you will WANT only truth,
and being at last your will it will be yours.
The Decision to Forget
Unless you KNOW something you CANNOT dissociate it.
Knowledge therefore PRECEDES dissociation, and dissociation is
nothing more than a DECISION TO FORGET. What has been
forgotten then appears to be fearful, but ONLY because the
dissociation was an ATTACK on truth. You are fearful BECAUSE
you have forgotten. And you have REPLACED your knowledge by an
awareness of dreams because you are AFRAID of your
dissociation, NOT of what you have dissociated. Even in this
worlds therapy, when dissociated material is ACCEPTED it
ceases to be fearful, for the laws of mind always hold.
Yet to give up the dissociation of REALITY brings more than
merely lack of fear. In THIS decision lie joy and peace and
the glory of creation. Offer the Holy Spirit only your will to
remember, for He retains the knowledge of God and of yourself
FOR you, waiting for your acceptance. Give up gladly
EVERYTHING that would stand in the way of your remembering,
for God is in your memory, and His Voice will tell you that
you are part of Him when you are willing to remember Him and
know your own reality again. Let nothing in this world delay
your remembering of Him, for in this remembering is the
knowledge of YOURSELF.
To remember is merely to restore to your mind WHAT IS
ALREADY THERE. You do not MAKE what you remember; you merely
accept again what has been made but was rejected. The ability
to accept truth in this world is the perceptual counterpart of
creating in the Kingdom. God will do His part if you will do
yours, and HIS return in exchange for yours is the exchange of
knowledge FOR perception. NOTHING is beyond His Will for you.
But signify your will to remember Him, and behold! He will
give you everything but for the asking.
When you attack you are denying YOURSELF. You are
specifically teaching yourself that you are NOT what you are.
Your denial of reality precludes the ACCEPTANCE of Gods gift
because you have accepted something ELSE in its place. If you
understand that the misuse of defenses always constitutes an
attack on truth, and truth is God, you will realize why this
is ALWAYS fearful. If you further recognize that you are PART
of God, you will understand why it is that you always attack
yourself FIRST.
If you realized the complete havoc this makes of your peace
of mind, you could not make such an insane decision. You make
it only because you still believe that it can GET you
something you WANT. It follows, then, that you want something
OTHER than peace of mind, but you have not considered what it
must be. Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly
clear, if you will LOOK at it. By deciding AGAINST your
reality, you have made yourself vigilant AGAINST God and His
Kingdom. And it is THIS vigilance that makes you afraid to
remember Him.
You have NOT attacked God and you DO love Him. Can you
change your reality? No-one can will to destroy himself. When
you think you are attacking your self, it is a sure sign that
you hate what you THINK you are. And this, and ONLY this, can
BE attacked by you. What you THINK you are can be hateful, and
what this strange image makes you do can be very destructive.
Yet the destruction is no more real than the image, although
those who make idols DO worship them. The idols are nothing,
but their worshippers are the Sons of God in sickness.
God would have them released from their sickness and
returned to His Mind. He will not LIMIT your power to help
them because He has GIVEN it to you. Do not be afraid of it
because it is your salvation. What Comforter can there be for
the sick Children of God except His power through YOU?
Remember that it does not matter WHERE in the Sonship He is
accepted. He is ALWAYS accepted for all, and when YOUR mind
receives Him the remembrance of Him awakens throughout the
Sonship. Heal your brothers simply by accepting God FOR them.
Your minds are not separate, and God has only one channel
for healing because He has but one Son. His remaining
communication link with all His Children joins them together,
and them to Him. To be aware of this is to heal them because
it is the awareness that no-one is separate, and so no-one is
sick. To believe that a Son of God CAN be sick is to believe
that part of God can suffer. Love CANNOT suffer because it can
not attack. The remembrance of love therefore brings
invulnerability with it.
Do not side with sickness in the presence of a Son of God
even if HE believes in it, for YOUR acceptance of God in him
ACKNOWLEDGES the Love of God which he has forgotten. Your
recognition of him as PART of God teaches him the truth about
himself, which HE is denying. Would you STRENGTHEN his denial
of God, and thus lose sight of YOURSELF? Or would you remind
him of his wholeness, and remember your Creator WITH him? To
believe a Son of God is sick is to worship the same idol he
does. God created love, NOT idolatry. All forms of idolatry
are caricatures of creation, taught by sick minds which are
too divided to know that creation SHARES power and NEVER
usurps it. Sickness is idolatry because it is the belief that
power can be taken FROM you. Yet this is impossible because
you are part of God, Who IS all power.
A sick god MUST be an idol, made in the image of what its
maker thinks HE is. And that is exactly what the ego DOES
perceive in a Son of God; a sick god, self-created, self-
sufficient, very vicious, and very vulnerable. Is THIS the
idol you would worship? Is THIS the image you would be
vigilant to SAVE? Look calmly at the logical conclusion of the
egos thought system, and judge whether its offering is really
what you want, for this IS what it offers you. To OBTAIN this
you are willing to attack the Divinity of your brothers, and
thus lose sight of YOURS. And you are willing to keep it
hidden and to protect this idol, which you think will save you
from the dangers which the idol itself STANDS FOR, but which
do not exist.
There are no idolaters in the Kingdom, but there is great
appreciation for every Soul which God created because of the
calm knowledge that each one is part of Him. Gods Son knows
no idols, but he DOES know His Father. Health in this world is
the counterpart of value in Heaven. It is not my merit that I
contribute to you but my love, for you do not value
yourselves. When you do not value yourself you become sick,
but MY value of you can heal you because the value of Gods
Son is one. When I said, My peace I give unto you, I meant
it. Peace came from God through me to YOU. It was for you
although you did not ask.
When a brother is sick it is because he is NOT asking for
peace, and therefore does not know he HAS it. The ACCEPTANCE
of peace is the denial of illusion, and sickness IS an
illusion. Yet every Son of God has the power to deny illusions
ANYWHERE in the Kingdom merely by denying them completely in
himself. I can heal you because I KNOW you. I know your value
FOR you, and it is this value that makes you whole. A whole
mind is not idolatrous, and does not know of conflicting laws.
I will heal you merely because I have only ONE message, and it
is true. Your faith in it will make you whole when you have
faith in me.
I do not bring Gods message with deception, and you will
learn this as you learn that you always receive as much as you
ACCEPT. You could accept peace NOW for everyone you meet, and
offer them perfect freedom from ALL illusions because YOU
heard. But have no other gods before Him, or you will NOT
hear. God is not jealous of the gods you make, but YOU are.
You would save them and serve them because you believe that
they made YOU. You think they are your father because you are
projecting onto them the fearful fact that YOU made them to
REPLACE God. Yet when they seem to speak to you remember that
nothing CAN replace God, and whatever replacements you have
attempted ARE nothing.
Very simply, then, you may BELIEVE you are afraid of
nothingness, but you are really afraid of NOTHING. And in THAT
awareness you are healed. You WILL hear the god you listen to.
You MADE the god of sickness, and BY making him, you made
yourself able to hear him. Yet you did not create him because
he is NOT the Will of the Father. He is therefore not eternal,
and will be UNMADE for you the instant you signify your
willingness to accept ONLY the eternal. If God has but one
Son, there is but one God. You share reality with Him BECAUSE
reality is not divided. To accept other gods before Him is to
place other images before YOURSELF.
You do not realize how much you listen to your gods, and
how vigilant you are on their behalf. Yet they exist only
BECAUSE you honor them. Place honor where it is due, and peace
will be yours. It is your inheritance from your REAL Father.
You cannot make your Father, and the father you made did not
make you. Honor is not due to illusions, for to honor them is
to honor nothing. Yet fear is not due them either, for nothing
cannot be fearful. You have chosen to fear love BECAUSE of its
perfect harmlessness, and because of this fear, you have been
willing to give up your own perfect helpfulness and your own
perfect Help.
Only at the altar of God will you find peace. And this
altar is in you because God put it there. His Voice still
calls you to return, and He will be heard when you place no
other gods before Him. You can give up the god of sickness for
your brothers; in fact, you would HAVE to do so if you give
him up for yourself. For if you see him anywhere, you have
accepted him. And if you accept him, you WILL bow down and
worship him, because he was made as Gods replacement. He is
the belief that you can CHOOSE which god is real. Although it
is perfectly clear that this has nothing to do with reality,
it is equally clear that it has EVERYTHING to do with reality
as you perceive it.
Magic versus Miracles
ALL magic is a form of reconciling the irreconcilable. All
religion is the recognition that the irreconcilable cannot BE
reconciled. Sickness and perfection ARE irreconcilable. If God
created you perfect, you ARE perfect. If you believe you can
be sick, you have placed other gods before Him. God is not at
war with the god of sickness you made, but YOU are. He is the
symbol of willing AGAINST God, and you are afraid of him
BECAUSE he cannot be reconciled with Gods Will. If you attack
him, you will make him real to you. But if you refuse to
worship him in whatever form he may appear to you and wherever
you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness
out of which he was made.
Reality can dawn only on an unclouded mind. It is always
there to be accepted, but its acceptance depends on your
willingness to HAVE it. To know reality must involve the
willingness to judge UNREALITY for what it is. This is the
RIGHT use of selective perception. To overlook nothingness is
merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to
evaluate it truly, TO LET IT GO. Knowledge cannot dawn on a
mind full of illusions, because truth and illusions are
irreconcilable. Truth is whole, and CANNOT be known by part of
a mind.
The Sonship cannot be perceived as PARTLY sick because to
perceive it that way is not to perceive it at all. If the
Sonship is one, it is one in ALL respects. Oneness CANNOT be
divided. If you perceive other gods your mind is split, and
you will not be able to LIMIT the split because the split IS
the sign that you have removed part of your mind from Gods
Will, and this means it is out of control. To be out of
control is to be out of REASON, and the mind DOES become
unreasonable without reason. This is merely a matter of
definition. By DEFINING the mind wrongly, you perceive it as
FUNCTIONING wrongly.
Gods laws will keep your minds at peace because peace is
His Will, and His laws are established to uphold it. His are
the laws of freedom, but yours are the laws of bondage. Since
freedom and bondage are irreconcilable, their laws cannot BE
understood together. The laws of God work only for your good,
and there ARE no other laws beside His. Everything else is
merely lawless, and therefore chaotic. Yet God Himself has
protected everything He created BY His laws. Therefore,
everything that is not under them does not exist. Laws of
chaos are meaningless by definition. Creation is perfectly
lawful, and the chaotic is without meaning because it is
without GOD. You have given your peace to the gods you made,
but they are not there to take it from you, and you are not
able to give it to them.
You are NOT free to give up freedom, but only to DENY it.
You CANNOT do what God did not intend because what He did not
intend DOES NOT HAPPEN. Your gods do not BRING chaos; you are
ENDOWING them with chaos and accepting it of them. All this
has never been. Nothing but the laws of God has ever operated,
and nothing except His Will will ever be. You were created
through His laws and by His Will, and the manner of your
creation established you AS creators. What you have made is so
unworthy of you that you could hardly want it if you were
willing to see it AS IT IS. You will see nothing at all. And
your vision will automatically look beyond it to what is in
you and all around you. Reality cannot break through the
obstructions you interpose, but it WILL envelop you completely
when you let them go.
When you have experienced the protection of God the making
of idols becomes inconceivable. There are no strange images in
the Mind of God, and what is not in His Mind cannot be in
yours because you are of ONE Mind, and that Mind belongs to
HIM. It is yours BECAUSE it belongs to Him, for ownership is
sharing to Him. And if it is so for Him, it is so for you. His
definitions ARE His laws, for by them He established the
universe as what it is. No false gods you attempt to interpose
between yourself and your reality affect truth at all. Peace
is yours because God created you. And He created nothing else.
The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside
all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise.
It is an act of faith because it is the recognition that his
brother can do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his
mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining.
Because the miracle worker has heard Him he strengthens His
Voice in a sick brother by weakening his BELIEF in sickness,
which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into
another because all the lamps of God were lit by the same
spark. It is everywhere and it is eternal.
In many only the spark remains, for the great rays are
obscured. Yet God has kept the spark alive so that the rays
can never be completely forgotten. If you but see the little
spark you will learn of the greater light, for the rays are
there unseen. Perceiving the spark will heal, but knowing the
light will create. Yet in the returning the little light must
be acknowledged first, for the separation was a descent from
magnitude to littleness. But the spark is still as pure as the
great light because it is the remaining call of creation. Put
all your faith in it, and God Himself will answer you.
The Denial of God
The rituals of the god of sickness are strange and very
demanding. Joy is never permitted, for depression is the sign
of allegiance to him. Depression means that you have foresworn
God. Men are afraid of blasphemy, but they do not know what it
means. They do not realize that to deny God is to deny their
OWN identity, and in this sense the wages of sin IS death. The
sense is very literal; denial of Life perceives its opposite,
as ALL forms of denial replace what IS with what is NOT. No-
one can really do this, but that you can THINK you can and
believe you HAVE is beyond dispute.
Do not forget, however, that to deny God will inevitably
result in projection, and you will believe that others AND NOT
YOURSELF have done this to you. You will receive the message
you give because it is the message you WANT. You may believe
that you judge your brothers by the messages they give YOU,
but YOU have judged THEM by the message you give to THEM. Do
not attribute your denial of joy to them, or you cannot see
the spark in them that could bring joy to YOU. It is the
DENIAL of the spark that brings depression, and whenever you
see your brothers WITHOUT it, you ARE denying God.
Allegiance to the denial of God is the egos religion. The
god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health because
health is in direct opposition to its own survival. But
consider what this means to YOU. UNLESS you are sick you
cannot keep the gods you made, for only in sickness could you
possibly WANT them. Blasphemy, then, is SELF-destructive, NOT
God-destructive. It means that you are willing NOT to know
yourself IN ORDER to be sick. This is the offering which your
god demands because, having made him out of YOUR insanity, he
is an insane idea. He has many forms, but although he may seem
like many different things he is but one idea; the denial of
God.
Sickness and death entered the mind of Gods Son AGAINST
His Will. The attack on God made His Son think he was
fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of
depression. This was his alternative to joy because he would
not accept the fact that, although he was a creator, he had
been created. Yet the Son IS helpless without the Father, Who
alone is his Help. We said before that of yourselves you can
do nothing, but you are not OF yourselves. If you were, what
you have made would be true, and you could NEVER escape.
It is BECAUSE you did not make yourselves that you need be
troubled by nothing. Your gods are nothing because your Father
did not create them. You cannot make creators who are unlike
your Creator any more than He could have created a Son who was
unlike Him. If creation is sharing it cannot create what is
unlike itself. It can share only what it IS. Depression is
isolation, and so it could not have BEEN created.
Son of God, you have not sinned, but you HAVE been much
mistaken. Yet this can be corrected, and God will help you,
KNOWING that you could not sin against Him. You denied Him
BECAUSE you loved Him, knowing that, if you RECOGNIZED your
love for Him you COULD not deny Him. Your denial of Him
therefore means that you love Him, and that you know HE loves
YOU. Remember that what you deny you MUST have known. And if
you accept denial, you can accept its UNDOING.
Your Father has not denied you. He does not retaliate, but
He DOES call to you to return. When you think He has not
answered your call, YOU have not answered HIS. He calls to you
from every part of the Sonship because of His Love for His
Son. If you HEAR His message He has answered you, and you will
learn of Him if you hear aright. The Love of God is in
everything He created, for His Son is everywhere. Look with
peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing into your
heart in gratitude for your gift to Him.
Do not look to the god of sickness for healing but only to
the God of love, for healing is the ACKNOWLEDGMENT of Him.
When you acknowledge Him you will KNOW that He has never
ceased to acknowledge YOU, and that in His acknowledgment of
you lies your Being. You are not sick and you cannot die. But
you CAN confuse yourself with things that do. Remember,
though, that to do this IS blasphemy, for it means that you
are looking without love on God and His creation, from which
he cannot BE separated. Only the eternal can be loved, for
love does not die. What is of God is His forever, and you ARE
of God. Would He allow Himself to suffer? And would He offer
His Son anything that is not acceptable to Him?
If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be
incapable of suffering. Yet to do this, you must acknowledge
Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished
otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your
Father IS the acknowledgment of yourself as you are. Your
Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain,
and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him you
bring sin, pain and suffering into your OWN mind because of
the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds,
but it can also deny what it creates because it is free.
You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and
how much God, in His Love, would not have it so. Yet He would
not interfere with you because He would not know His Son if he
were not free. To interfere with you would be to attack
Himself, and God is not insane. When you denied Him, YOU were
insane. Would you have Him SHARE your insanity? God will never
cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love
Him. That was the condition of His Sons creation, fixed
forever in the Mind of God. To know that is sanity. To deny it
is insanity. God gave Himself to you in your creation, and His
gifts are eternal. Would you deny yourself to Him?
Out of your gifts to Him the Kingdom will be restored to
His Son. His Son removed himself FROM His gift by refusing to
accept what had been created for him, and what he himself had
created in the Name of his Father. Heaven waits for his
return, for it was created as the dwelling place of Gods Son.
You are not at home anywhere else, or in any other condition.
Do not deny yourself the joy which was created for you for the
misery you have made for yourselves. God has given you the
means for undoing what you have made. Listen, and you WILL
learn what you are.
If God knows His Children as wholly sinless, it is
blasphemous to perceive them as guilty. If God knows His
Children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive
suffering anywhere. If God knows His children to be wholly
joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed. All of these
illusions, and the many other forms which blasphemy may take,
are REFUSALS to accept creation as it is. If God created His
Son perfect, that is how you must learn to see him to learn of
his reality. And as PART of the Sonship, that is how you must
see YOURSELF to learn of YOURS.
Do not perceive ANYTHING God did not create, or you are
denying HIM. His is the ONLY Fatherhood, and it is yours only
because HE has given it to you. Your gifts to yourself are
meaningless, but your gifts to YOUR creations are like His
because they are given in His Name. That is why your creations
are as real as His. Yet the real Fatherhood must be
acknowledged if the real Son is to be known. You believe that
the sick things which you have made are your real creations
because you believe that the sick images you perceive ARE the
Sons of God.
Only if you accept the Fatherhood of God will you have
ANYTHING because His Fatherhood GAVE you everything. That is
why to deny Him IS to deny yourself. Arrogance is the denial
of love because love SHARES and arrogance WITHHOLDS. As long
as both appear to you to be desirable, the concept of choice,
which is NOT of God, will remain with you. While this is not
true in eternity, it IS true in time, so that, while time
lasts in YOUR minds, there WILL be choices. Time ITSELF was
your choice.
If you would remember eternity, you must learn to look ONLY
on the eternal. If you allow yourselves to become preoccupied
with the temporal, you ARE living in time. As always, your
choice is determined by what you value. Time and eternity
cannot both be real because they contradict each other. If you
will accept only what is timeless as real, you will begin to
understand eternity, and make it yours.
CHAPTER 10
GOD AND THE EGO
Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the
evidence on both sides fairly, you will realize that this must
be true. Neither God nor the ego proposes a partial thought
system. Each is internally consistent, but they are
diametrically opposed in all respects, so that partial
allegiance is impossible. Remember, too, that their results
are as different as their foundations, and their fundamentally
irreconcilable natures CANNOT be reconciled by your
vacillations. Nothing alive is fatherless, for life is
creation. Therefore, your decision is always an answer to the
question, Who is my father? And you will be faithful to the
father you choose.
Yet what would you say to someone who really believed this
question involves conflict? If YOU made the ego, how can the
ego have made you? The authority problem remains the only
source of perceived conflict, because the ego was made out of
the wish of Gods Son to father Him. The ego, then, is nothing
more than a delusional system, in which you made your own
father. Make no mistake about this. It sounds insane when it
is stated with perfect honesty, but the ego never looks upon
what it does with perfect honesty. Yet that IS its insane
premise, which is carefully hidden in the dark cornerstone of
its thought system. And either the ego, which you made, IS
your father, or its whole thought system will not stand.
Projection versus Extension
You have made by projection, but God has created by
extension. The cornerstone of Gods creation is YOU, for His
thought system is light. Remember the rays that are there
unseen. The more you approach the center of His thought
system, the clearer the light becomes. The closer you come to
the egos thought system, the darker and more obscure becomes
the way. Yet even the little spark in your mind is enough to
lighten it. Bring this light fearlessly with you, and hold it
up to the foundation of the egos thought system bravely. Be
willing to judge it with perfect honesty. Open the dark
cornerstone of terror on which it rests, and bring it out into
the light. There you will see that it rests on
meaninglessness, and that everything of which you have been
afraid was based on nothing.
My brother, you are part of God and part of me. When you
have at last looked at the egos foundation without shrinking,
you will also have looked upon OURS. I come to you from our
Father to offer you everything again. Do not refuse it in
order to keep a dark cornerstone hidden, for ITS protection
will not save you. I GIVE you the lamp and I will go WITH you.
You will not take this journey alone. I will lead you to your
true Father, Who hath need of you, as I have. Will you not
answer the call of love with joy?
You have learned your need of healing. Would you bring
anything ELSE to the Sonship, recognizing your need of healing
for yourself? For in this lies the beginning of knowledge; the
foundation on which God will help you build again the thought
system which you share with HIM. Not one stone you place upon
it but will be blessed by Him, for you will be restoring the
holy dwelling place of His Son, where He wills His Son to be
and where he IS. In whatever part of the mind of Gods Son you
restore this reality, you restore it to YOURSELF. For you
dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself
did not will to be alone.
To be alone is to be separated from infinity, but how can
this be if infinity has no end? No-one can be BEYOND the
limitless because what has no limits must be everywhere. There
are no beginnings and no endings in God, Whose universe is
Himself. Can you exclude yourself from the universe, or from
God Who IS the universe? I and my Father are one with YOU, for
you are part of US. Do you really believe that part of God can
be missing or lost to Him?
If you were not part of God, His Will would not be unified.
Is this conceivable? Can part of His Mind contain nothing? If
your place in His Mind cannot be filled by anyone EXCEPT you,
and your filling it WAS your creation, WITHOUT you there would
be an empty place in Gods Mind. Extension cannot be blocked
and it HAS no voids. It continues forever, however much it is
denied. Your denial of its reality arrests it in time, but NOT
in eternity. That is why your creations have not ceased to be
extended, and why so much is waiting for your return.
Waiting is possible ONLY in time, but time has no meaning.
You who made delay can leave time behind simply by recognizing
that neither beginnings nor endings were created by the
Eternal, Who placed no limits on His creation, nor upon those
who create like Him. You do not know this simply because you
have tried to limit what HE created, and so you believe that
ALL creation is limited. How, then, could you know your
creations, having DENIED infinity? The laws of the universe do
not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for YOU. If
you believe YOU are absent from God, you WILL believe that He
is absent from YOU.
Infinity is meaningless WITHOUT you, and YOU are
meaningless without God. There IS no end to God and His Son,
for we ARE the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not
childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a
Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your
unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you YOURS.
See His creations as HIS Son, for yours were created in honor
of Him. The universe of love does not stop because you do not
see it, and your closed eyes have not lost the ability to see.
Look upon the glory of His creation, and you will learn what
God has KEPT for you.
God has given you a place in His Mind which is yours
forever. Yet you could keep it only by GIVING it, as it was
given YOU. Could YOU be alone there, if it was given you
because God did not will to be alone? Gods Mind cannot BE
lessened. It can ONLY be increased, and everything He creates
has the function of creating. Love does not limit, and what it
creates is not limited. To give without limit is Gods Will
for you because only this can bring you the joy which is His,
and which He wills to SHARE with you. Your love is as
boundless as His because it IS His.
Could any part of God be WITHOUT His Love, and could any
part of His Love be contained? God is your heritage because
His one gift is Himself. How can you give except like Him, if
you would know His gift to YOU? Give, then, without limit and
without end, to learn how much HE has given YOU. Your ability
to ACCEPT Him depends on your willingness to give as He gives.
Your fatherhood and your Father ARE One. God willed to create,
and your will is His. It follows, then, that YOU will to
create, since your will follows from His. And being an
extension of His Will, yours must be the same.
Yet what you will you do not know. This is not strange when
you realize that to deny is to NOT know. Gods Will is that
you are His Son. By denying this you denied your OWN will, and
therefore do NOT know what it is. The reason you must ask what
Gods Will is in everything is merely because It IS yours. You
do not know what it is, but the Holy Spirit remembers it FOR
you. Ask Him, therefore, what Gods Will is for you, and He
will tell you YOURS. It cannot be too often repeated that you
do NOT know it. Whenever what the Holy Spirit tells you
appears to be coercive, it is only because you do not
RECOGNIZE your own will.
The projection of the ego makes it appear as if Gods Will
is OUTSIDE yourself, and therefore NOT yours. In this
interpretation, it IS possible for Gods Will and yours to
conflict. God, then, may SEEM to demand of you what you do not
want to give, and thus deprive you of what you want. Would
God, Who wants ONLY your will, be capable of this? Your will
is His Life, which He has given to you. Even in time you
cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He
created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will
for His Son, and His Sons will for HIMSELF. Gods Son cannot
will death for himself because His Father is Life, and His Son
is like Him. Creation is your will BECAUSE it is His.
You cannot be happy unless you do what you will truly, and
you cannot change this because it is immutable. It is
immutable by Gods Will AND YOURS, for otherwise His Will
would not have been extended. You are afraid to know Gods
Will because you believe it is NOT yours. This belief is your
whole sickness and your whole fear. Every symptom of sickness
and fear arises here because this is the belief that makes you
WANT not to know. Believing this, you hide in darkness,
denying that the Light is in you.
You are asked to trust the Holy Spirit only because He
speaks for YOU. He is the Voice for God, but never forget that
God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you; He
does not thrust It UPON you. Always remember that what He
gives He holds, so that nothing He gives can contradict Him.
You who share His Life must share it to know it, for sharing
IS knowing. Blessed are you who learn that to hear the Will of
your Father is to know your OWN. For it is YOUR will to be
like Him, Whose Will it is that it be so. Gods Will is that
His Son be one, and united with Him in His Oneness. That is
why healing is the beginning of the recognition that your will
IS His.
The Willingness for Healing
If sickness is separation, the will to heal and be healed
is the first step toward RECOGNIZING what you truly want.
Every attack is a step away from this, and every healing
thought brings it closer. The Son of God HAS both Father and
Son because he IS both Father and Son. To unite having and
being is only to unite your will with His, for He wills you
Himself. And you will yourself to Him because, in your perfect
understanding of Him, you KNOW there is but One Will. Yet when
you attack any part of God and His Kingdom, your understanding
is not perfect, and what you will is therefore lost to you.
Healing thus becomes a lesson in UNDERSTANDING, and the
more you practice it, the better teacher AND LEARNER you
become. If you have denied truth, what better witnesses to its
reality could you have than those who have been healed by it?
But be sure to count yourself among them, for in your
willingness to join them is YOUR healing accomplished. Every
miracle which you accomplish speaks to you of the Fatherhood
of God. Every healing thought which you accept, either from
your brother or in your own mind, teaches you that you are
Gods Son. In every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you
perceive it, lies the denial of Gods Fatherhood and your
Sonship.
And denial is as total as love. You cannot deny part of
yourself, because the remainder will seem to be unintegrated,
and therefore without meaning. And being without meaning to
you, you will not understand it. To deny meaning MUST be to
fail to understand. You can heal only yourself, for only Gods
Son NEEDS healing. He needs it because he does not understand
himself, and therefore knows not what he does. Having
forgotten his will, he does not know what he wants.
Healing is a sign that he wants TO MAKE WHOLE. And this
willingness opens his OWN ears to the Voice of the Holy
Spirit, Whose message IS wholeness. He will enable you to go
far beyond the healing YOU would undertake, for beside your
small willingness to make whole He will lay His Own COMPLETE
Will and make YOURS whole. What can the Son of God NOT
accomplish with the Fatherhood of God in him? And yet the
invitation must come from you, for you have surely learned
that whom you invite as your guest WILL abide with you.
The Holy Spirit cannot speak to an unwelcoming host because
He will NOT BE HEARD. The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice
grows faint in alien company. He needs your protection, but
only because your care is a sign that you WANT Him. Think like
Him ever so slightly, and the little spark becomes a blazing
light that fills your mind so that He becomes your ONLY Guest.
Whenever you ask the ego to enter, you lessen His welcome. He
will remain, but YOU have allied yourself AGAINST Him.
Whatever journey you choose to take, He will go with you,
waiting. You can safely trust His patience, for He cannot
leave a part of God. Yet you need far more than patience.
You will never rest until you know your function AND
FULFILL IT, for only in this can your will and your Fathers
be wholly joined. To HAVE Him is to be LIKE Him, and He has
given Himself to you. You who have God MUST be as God, for HIS
function became YOURS with His gift. Invite this knowledge
back into your minds, and let nothing that will obscure it
enter. The Guest Whom God sent you will teach you how to do
this, if you but recognize the little spark and are willing to
LET IT GROW. YOUR willingness need not be perfect because His
IS. If you will merely offer Him a little place, He will
lighten it so much that you will gladly extend it. And by THIS
extending, you will begin to remember creation.
Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God? You will
accept only whom YOU invite. You are free to determine who
shall be your guest, and how long he shall remain with you.
Yet this is not REAL freedom, for it still depends on how you
see it. The Holy Spirit is THERE although He cannot help you
without your invitation, and the ego is nothing whether you
invite it in or not. Real freedom depends on welcoming
REALITY, and of your guests only He is real. Know, then, Who
abides with you merely by recognizing what is there ALREADY,
and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the
Comforter of God is in you.
From Darkness to Light
When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your
Comforter will rest you, but YOU cannot. You do not know HOW,
for if you did you could never have grown weary. Unless you
have hurt yourselves you could never suffer in ANY way, for
that is not Gods Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He
knows no attack and His peace surrounds you silently. God is
very quiet, for there is no conflict in Him. Conflict is the
root of all evil, for being blind it does not see whom it
attacks. Yet it ALWAYS attacks the Son of God, and the Son of
God is YOU.
Gods Son is indeed in need of comfort, for he knows not
what he does, believing his will is not his own. The Kingdom
is his, and yet he wanders homelessly. At home in God he is
lonely, and amid all his brothers he is friendless. Would God
LET this be real if He did not will to be alone Himself? And
if your will is His, it cannot be true of you BECAUSE it is
not true of Him. Oh, my children, if you knew what God wills
for you your joy would be complete! And what He wills HAS
happened, for it was ALWAYS true.
When the light comes and you have said, Gods Will is
mine, you will see such beauty that you will KNOW it is not
of you. Out of your joy you will create beauty in His Name,
for YOUR joy could no more be contained than His. The bleak
little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will
be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven and into
the Presence of God. I cannot tell you what this will be like,
for your hearts are not ready. Yet I CAN tell you, and remind
you often, that what God wills for Himself He wills for YOU,
and what He wills for you IS yours.
The way is not hard, but it IS very different. Yours is the
way of pain, of which God knows nothing. THAT way is hard
indeed, and very lonely. Fear and grief are your guests, and
they go with you and abide with you on the way. But the dark
journey is not the way of Gods Son. Walk in light and do not
see the dark companions, for they are not fit companions for
the Son of God, who was created OF Light and IN Light. The
Great Light always surrounds you and shines out FROM you. How
can you see the dark companions in a Light such as this? If
you see THEM it is only because you are DENYING the Light. But
deny THEM instead, for the Light is here and the way is clear.
God hides nothing from His Son, even though His Son would
hide himself. Yet the Son of God cannot hide his glory, for
God wills him to be glorious, and gave him the Light that
shines in him. You will never lose your way for God leads you.
When you wander you but undertake a journey which is not real.
The dark companions, the dark way, are all illusions. Turn
toward the Light, for the little spark in you is part of a
Light so great that It can sweep you out of all darkness
forever. For your Father IS your Creator, and you ARE like
Him.
The Children of Light cannot abide in darkness, for
darkness is not in them. Do not be deceived by the dark
comforters, and never let them enter the mind of Gods Son,
for they have no place in His temple. When you are tempted to
deny Him, remember that there ARE no other gods that you can
place before Him, and accept His Will for you in peace. For
you CANNOT accept it otherwise.
Only Gods Comforter CAN comfort you. In the quiet of His
temple, He waits to give you the peace that is yours. GIVE His
peace that you may enter the temple and find it waiting for
you. But be holy in the Presence of God, or you will not know
that you are there. For what is unlike God cannot enter His
Mind because it was not His Thought, and therefore does not
belong to Him. And YOUR minds must be as pure as His, if you
would know what belongs to YOU. Guard carefully His temple,
for He Himself dwells there, and abides in peace. You cannot
enter Gods Presence with the dark companions beside you, but
you also cannot enter alone.
ALL your brothers must enter WITH you, for until you have
accepted them YOU cannot enter. For you cannot understand
Wholeness unless YOU are whole, and no part of the Son can be
excluded if he would know the Wholeness of his Father. In your
mind you can accept the whole Sonship, and bless it with the
Light your Father gave it. Then you will be worthy to dwell in
the temple WITH Him because it is YOUR will not to be alone.
God blessed His Son forever. If you will bless him in time,
you will BE in eternity. Time cannot separate you from God if
you use it on BEHALF of the eternal.
The Inheritance of Gods Son
Never forget that the Sonship is your salvation for the
Sonship is your Soul. As Gods creation it is yours, and
belonging to you, it is His. Your Soul does not need
salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation IS. You
are not saved FROM anything, but you are saved FOR glory.
Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator that
you might EXTEND it. Yet if you hate part of your own Soul ALL
your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what
God created as YOURSELF without love. And since what He
created is part of Him, you are denying Him His place in His
own altar.
Could you try to make God homeless and know that YOU are at
home? Can the Son deny the Father WITHOUT believing that the
Father has denied HIM? Gods laws hold only for your
protection, and they never hold in vain. What you experience
when you deny your Father is still for your protection, for
the power of your will cannot be lessened without the
intervention of God AGAINST it, and any limitation on your
power is not the Will of God. Therefore, look ONLY to the
power that God gave to save you, remembering that it is yours
BECAUSE it is His, and join with your brothers in His peace.
The peace of your Soul lies in its limitlessness. Limit the
peace you share, and your own Soul MUST be unknown to you.
Every altar to God is part of your Soul because the Light He
created is One with Him. Would you cut off a brother from the
Light that is yours? You would not do so if you realized that
you can only darken your OWN mind. As you bring HIM back, so
will YOUR mind return. That is the law of God, for the
protection of the wholeness of His Son.
ONLY YOU CAN DEPRIVE YOURSELF OF ANYTHING. Do not oppose
this realization, for it is truly the beginning of the dawn of
light. Remember also that the denial of this simple fact takes
many forms, and these you must learn to recognize, and to
oppose steadfastly and WITHOUT EXCEPTION. This is a crucial
step in the re-awakening. The beginning phases of this
reversal are often quite painful, for as blame is withdrawn
from without there is a strong tendency to harbor it within.
It is difficult, at first, to realize that this is EXACTLY the
same thing, for there IS no distinction between within and
without.
If your brothers are part of you and you blame THEM for
your deprivation, you ARE blaming yourself. And you cannot
blame yourself WITHOUT blaming them. That is why blame must be
undone, NOT re-allocated. Lay it to yourself and you cannot
KNOW yourself, for ONLY the ego blames at all. Self-blame is
therefore ego identification, and as strong an ego defense as
blaming others. YOU CANNOT ENTER GODS PRESENCE IF YOU ATTACK
HIS SON. When His Son lifts his voice in praise of his
Creator, he WILL hear the Voice of his Father. Yet the Creator
cannot be praised WITHOUT His Son, for their glory is shared,
and they are glorified together.
Christ is at Gods altar, waiting to welcome His Son. But
come wholly without condemnation, for otherwise you will
believe that the door is barred and you cannot enter. The door
is NOT barred, and it is impossible for you to be unable to
enter the place where God would have you be. But love yourself
with the Love of Christ, for so does your Father love you. You
can REFUSE to enter, but you CANNOT bar the door which Christ
holds open. Come unto me who holds it open FOR you, for while
I live it cannot be shut, and I live forever. God is my life
AND YOURS, and nothing is denied by God to His Son.
At Gods altar Christ waits for the restoration of Himself
in YOU. God knows His Son as wholly blameless as Himself, and
He is approached through the appreciation of His Son. Christ
waits for your acceptance of Him as YOURSELF, and of His
Wholeness as YOURS. For Christ is the Son of God who lives in
his Creator and shines with His glory. Christ is the extension
of the Love and the Loveliness of God, as perfect as his
Creator, and at peace with Him.
Blessed is the Son of God, whose radiance is of his Father,
and whose glory he wills to share as his Father shares it with
him. There is no condemnation in the Son for there is no
condemnation in the Father. Sharing the perfect Love of the
Father the Son must share what belongs to Him, for otherwise
he will not know the Father OR the Son. Peace be unto you who
rest in God and in whom the whole Sonship rests.
The Dynamics of the Ego
No-one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them,
for NOT looking is the way they are PROTECTED. There is no
need to shrink from illusions, for they cannot be dangerous.
We are ready to look more closely at the egos thought system
because, together, we have the lamp that will dispel it, and
since you realize you do not WANT it YOU must be ready. Let us
be very calm in doing this, for we are merely looking honestly
for truth. The dynamics of the ego will be our lesson for a
while, for we must look first at this to look beyond it since
you HAVE made it real. We will UNDO this error quietly
together, and then look beyond it to truth.
What is healing but the removal of all that STANDS IN THE
WAY of knowledge? And how else can one dispel illusions EXCEPT
by looking at them directly, WITHOUT protecting them? Be not
afraid, therefore, for what you will be looking at IS the
source of fear, but you have surely learned by now that FEAR
is not real. We have accepted the fact already that its
EFFECTS can be dispelled merely by denying their reality. The
next step is obviously to recognize that what has no effects
DOES NOT EXIST. Laws do not operate in a vacuum, and what
leads to nothing HAS NOT HAPPENED. If reality is recognized by
its EXTENSION, what extends to nothing cannot BE real.
Do not be afraid, then, to look upon fear, for it cannot BE
seen. Clarity undoes confusion by definition, and to look upon
darkness through light MUST dispel it. Let us begin this
lesson in ego dynamics by understanding that the term
itself does not mean anything. In fact, it contains exactly
the contradiction in terms which MAKES it meaningless.
Dynamics implies the power to DO something, and the whole
separation FALLACY lies in the belief that the ego has the
power to do ANYTHING. The ego is fearful to you BECAUSE you
believe this. Yet the truth is very simple; ALL POWER IS OF
GOD. What is NOT of Him has no power to do ANYTHING.
When we look at the ego, then, we are not considering
dynamics, but delusions. We can surely regard a delusional
system without fear, for it cannot have any effects if its
source is not true. Fear becomes more obviously inappropriate
if one recognizes the egos GOAL, which is so clearly
senseless that any effort exerted on its behalf is NECESSARILY
expended on nothing. The egos goal is quite explicitly ego
AUTONOMY. From the beginning, then, its PURPOSE is to be
separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power
EXCEPT its own. This is WHY it is the symbol of separation.
Every idea has a purpose, and its purpose is always the
natural extension of what it IS. Everything that stems from
the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the
way to undo its RESULTS is merely to recognize that their
SOURCE is not natural, being out of accord with your TRUE
nature. We once said that to will contrary to God is wishful
thinking, and not real willing. His Will is One because the
extension of His Will cannot be unlike Itself. The real
conflict you experience, then, is between the egos idle
wishes and the Will of God, Which you share. Can this BE a
real conflict?
Yours is the independence of creation, NOT of autonomy.
Your whole creative function lies in your complete DEPENDENCE
on God, Whose function He shares with YOU. By HIS willingness
to share it, He became as dependent on you as you are on HIM.
Do not ascribe the egos arrogance to Him Who wills not to be
independent of YOU. He has INCLUDED you in His Autonomy. Can
YOU believe that autonomy is meaningful APART from Him? The
belief in EGO autonomy is costing you the knowledge of your
dependence on God IN WHICH YOUR FREEDOM LIES. The ego sees ALL
dependency as threatening, and has twisted even your longing
for God into a means of establishing ITSELF. But do not be
deceived by ITS interpretation of your conflict.
The ego ALWAYS attacks on behalf of separation. Believing
it has the power to do this it does nothing else, because its
goal of autonomy IS nothing else. The ego is totally confused
about reality, but it does NOT lose sight of its goal. It is
much more vigilant than YOU are because it is perfectly
certain of its purpose. YOU are confused because you do NOT
know YOURS.
What you must learn to recognize is that the LAST thing the
ego wishes you to realize is that YOU ARE AFRAID OF IT. For if
the ego gives rise to fear it is DIMINISHING your independence
and WEAKENING your power. Yet its one claim to your allegiance
is that it can GIVE power to you. Without this belief you
would not listen to it at all. How, then, can its existence
continue if you realize that, BY accepting it, you ARE
belittling yourself and DEPRIVING yourself of power?
The ego can and does allow you to regard yourself as
supercilious, unbelieving, light-hearted, distant,
emotionally shallow, callous, uninvolved, and even desperate,
but NOT REALLY AFRAID. MINIMIZING fear, but NOT its undoing,
is the egos constant effort, and is indeed the skill at which
it is very ingenious. How can it preach separation WITHOUT
upholding it through fear, and would you listen to it if you
recognized this IS what it is doing?
YOUR recognition that whatever seems to separate you from
God is ONLY fear, regardless of the form it takes and quite
apart from how the EGO wants you to experience it, is
therefore the basic ego threat. Its dream of autonomy is
shaken to its foundation by this awareness. For though you may
countenance a false idea of independence, you will NOT accept
the cost of fear IF YOU RECOGNIZE IT. Yet this IS the cost,
and the ego CANNOT minimize it. For if you overlook love you
are overlooking YOURSELF, and you MUST fear unreality BECAUSE
you have denied yourself. By believing that you have
successfully ATTACKED truth, you are believing that attack has
POWER. Very simply, then, you have become afraid of YOURSELF.
And no-one wills to learn what he believes would destroy him.
If the egos goal of autonomy could be accomplished Gods
purpose could be defeated, and this IS impossible. Only by
learning what fear IS can you finally learn to distinguish the
possible from the impossible and the false from the true.
According to the egos teaching, ITS goal can be accomplished,
and Gods purpose can NOT. According to the Holy Spirits
teaching, ONLY Gods purpose is accomplishment, and it is
ALREADY accomplished.
God is as dependent on you as you are on Him because His
autonomy ENCOMPASSES yours, and is therefore incomplete
WITHOUT it. You can only establish your autonomy by
identifying WITH Him, and fulfilling your function AS IT
EXISTS IN TRUTH. The ego believes that to accomplish ITS goal
is happiness. But it is given YOU to know that Gods function
IS yours, and happiness cannot be found apart from your JOINT
will. Recognize only that the egos goal, which you have
pursued quite diligently, has merely brought you FEAR, and it
becomes difficult to maintain that fear IS happiness.
UPHELD by fear, this IS what the ego would have you
believe. Yet Gods Son is not insane, and CANNOT believe it.
Let him but RECOGNIZE it, and he will NOT accept it. For only
the insane would choose fear IN PLACE of love, and only the
insane could believe that love can be gained by attack. But
the sane know that only attack could produce FEAR, from which
the Love of God completely protects them.
The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit ACCEPTS. The appreciation
of wholeness comes ONLY through acceptance, for to analyze
means to separate out. The attempt to understand totality by
breaking it up is clearly the characteristically contradictory
approach of the ego to everything. Never forget that the ego
believes that power, understanding and TRUTH lie in
separation, and to ESTABLISH this belief it MUST attack.
Unaware that the belief cannot BE established, and obsessed
with the conviction that separation IS salvation, the ego
attacks everything it perceives by breaking it up into small
and disconnected parts, without meaningful relationships, and
thus without meaning. The ego will ALWAYS substitute chaos for
meaning, for if separation is salvation, harmony is threat.
The egos interpretation of the laws of perception are, and
would HAVE to be, the exact opposite of the Holy Spirits. The
ego focuses on ERROR, and overlooks TRUTH. It makes real EVERY
mistake it perceives, and with characteristically circular
reasoning concludes that BECAUSE of the mistake, consistent
truth must be meaningless. The next step, then, is obvious. If
consistent truth is meaningless, INCONSISTENCY must be true if
truth has meaning. Holding error clearly in mind, and
protecting what it has made real, the ego proceeds to the next
step in its thought system; that error is real and TRUTH IS
ERROR.
The ego makes no attempt to understand this, and it is
clearly NOT understandable, but the ego does make EVERY
attempt to DEMONSTRATE IT, and this it does constantly.
Analyzing to attack meaning, the ego DOES succeed in
overlooking it, and is left with a series of fragmented
perceptions which it unifies on behalf of ITSELF. This, then,
becomes the universe it perceives. And it is this universe
which, in turn, becomes its demonstration of its own reality.
Do not underestimate the appeal of the egos demonstrations
to those who would listen. Selective perception chooses its
witnesses carefully, and its witnesses ARE consistent. The
case for insanity IS strong to the insane. For reasoning ends
at its beginning, and no thought system transcends its source.
Yet reasoning without meaning CANNOT demonstrate anything, and
those who are convinced by it MUST be deluded. Can the ego
teach truly when it OVERLOOKS truth? Can it perceive what it
has DENIED? Its witnesses DO attest to its denial, but hardly
to what it has denied! The ego looks straight at the Father
and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son.
Would YOU remember the Father? Accept His Son and you WILL
remember Him. Nothing can demonstrate that His Son is
unworthy, for nothing can prove that a lie is true. What you
see of His Son through the eyes of the ego is a demonstration
that His Son does not exist, yet where the Son is the Father
MUST be. Accept what God does NOT deny, and HE will
demonstrate its truth. The witnesses for God stand in His
Light and behold what HE created. Their silence is the sign
that they have beheld Gods Son, and in the Presence of Christ
they need demonstrate nothing, for Christ speaks to them of
Himself and of His Father. They are silent because Christ
speaks to them, and it is His words that THEY speak.
Every brother you meet becomes a witness for Christ or for
the ego, depending on what you perceive in him. Everyone
convinces you of what you WANT to perceive, and of the reality
of the kingdom you have chosen for your vigilance. Everything
you perceive is a witness to the thought system you WANT to be
true. Every brother has the power to release you IF YOU WILL
TO BE FREE. You cannot accept false witness of HIM unless you
have evoked false witnesses AGAINST him. If HE speaks not of
Christ to you, YOU spoke not of Christ to him. You hear but
your OWN voice, and if Christ speaks THROUGH you, YOU will
hear Him.
Experience and Perception
It is impossible not to believe what you see, but it is
equally impossible to see what you do NOT believe. Perceptions
are built up on the basis of experience, and experience leads
to beliefs. It is not until beliefs are fixed that perceptions
stabilize. In effect, then, what you believe you DO see. That
is what I meant when I said, Blessed are ye who have not
seen and still believe, for those who believe in the
resurrection WILL see it. The resurrection is the complete
triumph of Christ over the ego, not by attack, but by
transcendence. For Christ DOES rise above the ego and all its
works, and ascends to the Father and HIS Kingdom.
Would you join in the resurrection or the crucifixion?
Would you condemn your brothers or free them? Would you
transcend YOUR prison and ascend to the Father? For these
questions are all the same, and are answered together. There
has been much confusion about what perception means, because
the same word is used both for awareness and for the
INTERPRETATION of awareness. Yet you cannot BE aware without
interpretation, and what you perceive IS your interpretation.
This course is perfectly clear. You do not see it clearly
because you are interpreting AGAINST it, and therefore do not
BELIEVE it. And if belief determines perception, you do NOT
perceive what it means and therefore do not ACCEPT it.
Yet different experiences lead to different beliefs, and
experience teaches. I am leading you to a new kind of
experience which you will become less and less willing to
deny. Learning of Christ is easy, for to perceive with Him
involves no strain at all. HIS perceptions are your NATURAL
awareness, and it is only distortions which YOU introduce that
tire you. Let the Christ in you interpret FOR you, and do not
try to limit what you see by narrow little beliefs which are
unworthy of Gods Son. For until Christ comes into His Own,
the Son of God WILL see himself as fatherless.
I am YOUR resurrection and YOUR life. You live in me
because you live in God. And everyone lives in YOU, as YOU
live in everyone. Can you, then, perceive unworthiness in a
brother and NOT perceive it in yourself? And can you perceive
it in yourself and NOT perceive it in God? Believe in the
resurrection because it has BEEN accomplished, and it has been
accomplished IN YOU. This is as true now as it will ever be,
for the resurrection is the Will of God, Which knows no time
and no exceptions. But make no exceptions yourself, or you
will not perceive what has been accomplished FOR you. For we
ascend unto the Father together, as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be, for such is the nature of Gods Son
as His Father created him.
Do not underestimate the power of the devotion of Gods
Son, nor the power of the god he worships over him. For he
places HIMSELF at the altar of his god, whether it be the god
he made or the God Who created him. That is why his slavery is
as complete as his freedom, for he will obey ONLY the god he
accepts. The god of the crucifixion demands that he crucify,
and his worshippers obey. In his name they crucify THEMSELVES,
believing that the power of the Son of God is born of
sacrifice and pain. The God of the resurrection demands
NOTHING, for He does not will to take away. He does not
require obedience, for obedience implies submission. He would
only have you learn your OWN will and follow it, not in the
spirit of sacrifice and submission, but in the gladness of
freedom.
Resurrection must compel your allegiance gladly because it
is the symbol of joy. Its whole compelling power lies in the
fact that it represents what YOU want to be. The freedom to
leave behind everything that hurts you and humbles you and
frightens you cannot be thrust upon you, but it CAN be offered
you through the grace of God. And you can ACCEPT it by His
grace, for God IS gracious to His Son, accepting him without
question as His Own. Who, then, is YOUR own? The Father has
given you all that is His, and He Himself is yours WITH them.
Guard them in their resurrection, for otherwise you will not
awake in God, safely surrounded by what is yours forever.
You will not find peace until you have removed the nails
from the hands of Gods Son and taken the last thorn from his
forehead. The Love of God surrounds His Son whom the god of
the crucifixion condemns. Teach not that I died in vain. Teach
rather that I did NOT die by demonstrating that I live IN YOU.
For the UNDOING of the crucifixion of Gods Son is the work of
the redemption, in which everyone has a part of equal value.
God does not judge His blameless Son. Having given HIMSELF to
him, how could it be otherwise?
You have nailed YOURSELF to a cross and placed a crown of
thorns upon your OWN head. Yet you CANNOT crucify Gods Son,
for the Will of God cannot die. His Son HAS BEEN redeemed from
his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to death whom God
has given eternal life. The dream of crucifixion still lies
heavy on your eyes, but what you see in dreams is not reality.
While you perceive the Son of God as crucified you are asleep.
And as long as you believe that YOU can crucify him you are
only having nightmares. You who are beginning to wake are
still aware of dreams and have not yet forgotten them. The
forgetting of dreams and the awareness of Christ comes with
the awakening of others to SHARE your redemption.
You will awaken to your OWN call, for the Call to awake is
WITHIN you. If I live in you, you ARE awake. Yet you must see
the works I do through you, or you will not perceive that I
have done them UNTO you. Do not set limits on what you believe
I can do through you, or you will not accept what I can do FOR
you. For it is done ALREADY, and unless you give all that you
have received, you will not know that your Redeemer liveth and
that YOU have awakened WITH Him. Redemption is recognized ONLY
by sharing it.
Gods Son IS saved. Bring only THIS awareness to the
Sonship, and you will have a part in the redemption as
valuable as mine. For your part must be LIKE mine if you learn
it of me. If you believe that YOURS is limited, YOU are
limiting MINE. There is no order of difficulty in miracles
because all of Gods Sons are of equal value, and their
equality is their Oneness. The whole power of God is in every
part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His Will is either
great or small. What does not exist has NO size and NO
measure. To God ALL things are possible. And to Christ it is
given to be LIKE the Father.
The Problem and the Answer
The world as YOU perceive it cannot have been created by
the Father, for the world is NOT as you see it. God created
ONLY the eternal, and everything you see is perishable.
Therefore, there must be another world which you do NOT see.
The Bible speaks of a NEW Heaven and a NEW earth, yet this
cannot be literally true, for the eternal are not RE-created.
To perceive ANEW is merely to perceive AGAIN, implying that
before, or in the interval, you were not perceiving AT ALL.
What, then, is the world that awaits your perception when you
SEE it?
Every loving thought that the Son of God ever had is
eternal. Those which his mind perceived in this world are the
worlds ONLY reality. They are still perceptions because he
still believes that he is separate. Yet they are eternal
because they are loving. And being loving, they are like the
Father, and therefore cannot die. The real world can ACTUALLY
BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to
perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil,
you are accepting both the false AND the true AND MAKING NO
DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM.
The ego sees SOME good, but never ONLY good. That is why
its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness
entirely for that you could not accept, but it always adds
something that is NOT real to the real, THUS CONFUSING
ILLUSION AND REALITY. For perceptions cannot be partly true.
If you believe in truth AND illusion you cannot tell WHICH is
true. To establish your PERSONAL autonomy you tried to create
unlike your Father, believing what you made to be capable of
BEING unlike Him. Yet everything in what you have made that IS
true IS like Him. Only this is the real world, and perceiving
ONLY this will lead you to the real Heaven because it will
make you capable of UNDERSTANDING it.
The perception of goodness is not knowledge, but the denial
of the OPPOSITE of goodness enables you to perceive a
condition in which opposites do not exist. And this IS the
condition of knowledge. WITHOUT this awareness you have not
met its conditions, and until you do you will not know that it
is yours already. You have made many ideas which you have
placed between yourselves and your Creator, and these beliefs
are the world as you perceive it. Truth is not absent here,
but it IS obscure. You do not know the difference between what
you have made and what God created, and so you do not know the
difference between what you have made and what YOU have
created.
To believe that you can perceive the real world is to
believe that you can know yourself. You can know God because
it is His Will to BE known. The real world is all that the
Holy Spirit has saved for you out of what you have made, and
to perceive only this is salvation because it is the
recognition that reality is ONLY what is true. This is a very
simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in
the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true
is necessary. BUT DO YOU BELIEVE IT? When you have perceived
the real world, you will recognize that you did NOT believe
it. Yet the swiftness with which your new and ONLY real
perception will be translated into knowledge will leave you
only an instant to realize that this judgment is true.
And then everything you made will be forgotten, the good
and bad, the false and the true. For as Heaven and earth
become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight.
The end of the world is not its destruction but its
TRANSLATION into Heaven. The re-interpretation of the world is
the transfer of ALL perception to knowledge. The Bible tells
you to become as little children. Little children recognize
that they do not understand what they perceive, and so they
ASK what it means. Do not make the mistake of believing that
YOU understand what you perceive, for its meaning is lost to
you. Yet the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if
you will LET Him interpret it for you, He will restore what
you have thrown away. As long as you think YOU know its
meaning, you will see no need to ask it of Him.
You do not know the meaning of ANYTHING you perceive. NOT
ONE THOUGHT YOU HOLD IS WHOLLY TRUE. The recognition of this
is your firm beginning. You are not misguided; you have
accepted no guide at all. Instruction in perception is your
great need, for you understand nothing. Recognize this but do
not ACCEPT it, for understanding is your inheritance.
Perceptions are learned, and you are not without a Teacher.
Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your
willingness to question EVERYTHING you have learned of
yourself, for you who have learned amiss should not be your
own teachers.
No-one can withhold truth except from himself. Yet God will
not refuse the answer He GAVE you. Ask, then, for what is
yours but which you did not make, and do not defend yourself
AGAINST truth. YOU made the problem which God has answered.
Ask yourselves, therefore, but one simple question,
Do I want the problem or do I want the answer?
Decide for the answer and you will have it, for you will see
it as it is, and it is yours already.
You complain that this course is not sufficiently specific
for you to understand it and USE it. Yet it has been VERY
specific, and you have NOT done what it specifically
advocates. This is not a course in the play of ideas, but in
their PRACTICAL APPLICATION. Nothing could be more specific
than to be told very clearly that if you ask you WILL receive.
The Holy Spirit will answer EVERY specific problem as long as
you believe that problems ARE specific. His answer is both
many and one, as long as you believe that the One IS many.
Realize that you are AFRAID of His specificity, for fear of
what you think it will DEMAND of you. Yet only by asking will
you learn that nothing that is of God demands ANYTHING of you.
God GIVES; He does NOT take.
You are refusing to ask because you believe that asking is
TAKING, and you do NOT perceive it as sharing. The Holy Spirit
will give you only what is yours, and will take NOTHING in
return. For what is yours IS everything, and you share it with
God. This IS its reality. Would the Holy Spirit, Who wills
only to RESTORE, be capable of misinterpreting the question
you must ask to learn His answer?
You HAVE heard the answer, but you have misunderstood the
QUESTION. You have believed that to ask for guidance of the
Holy Spirit is to ask for DEPRIVATION. Little children of God,
you do not understand your Father. You believe in a world that
takes because you believe that you can GET by taking. And BY
that perception you have lost sight of the real world. You are
afraid of the world as YOU see it, but the real world is still
yours for the asking. Do not deny it to yourself, for it can
ONLY free you. Nothing of God will enslave His Son, whom He
created free and whose freedom is protected by His Being.
Blessed are you who will ask the truth of God without fear,
for only thus can you learn that His answer IS the release
from fear. Beautiful Child of God, you are asking only for
what I promised you. Do you believe I would deceive you? The
Kingdom of Heaven IS within you. Believe that the truth is in
me, for I KNOW that it is in YOU. Gods Sons have nothing
which they do not share. Ask for truth of any Son of God, and
you have asked it of me. No-one of us but has the answer in
him, to give to anyone who asks it of him. Ask anything of
Gods Son and His Father will answer you, for Christ is not
deceived in His Father and His Father is not deceived in Him.
Do not, then, be deceived in your brother, and see only his
loving thoughts as his reality, for by denying that HIS mind
is split you will heal YOURS. Accept him as his Father accepts
him and heal him unto Christ, for Christ is his healing AND
yours. Christ is the Son of God Who is in no way separate from
His Father, Whose EVERY thought is as loving as the Thought of
His Father by which He was created. Be not deceived in Gods
Son, for thereby you MUST be deceived in yourself. And being
deceived in yourself you ARE deceived in your Father, in Whom
no deceit is possible.
In the real world there is no sickness, for there is no
separation and no division. Only loving thoughts are
recognized, and because no-one is WITHOUT your help the Help
of God goes with YOU everywhere. As you become willing to
ACCEPT this Help by ASKING for it, you will give it because
you WANT it. Nothing will be beyond your healing power because
nothing will be denied your simple request. What problems will
not disappear in the presence of Gods answer? Ask, then, to
learn of the reality of your brother because this is what you
WILL perceive in him, and you will see YOUR beauty reflected
in him.
Do not accept your brothers variable perception of
himself, for his split mind is yours, and you will not accept
YOUR healing without his. For you share the real world as you
share Heaven, and his healing IS yours. To love yourself is to
HEAL yourself, and you cannot perceive part of you as sick and
achieve your OWN goal. Brother, we heal together as we live
together and love together. Be not deceived in Gods Son, for
he is one with himself and One with his Father. Love him who
is beloved of His Father, and you will learn of the Fathers
Love for YOU.
If you perceive offense in a brother pluck the offense from
your mind, for you are offended by Christ, and are deceived in
Him. HEAL in Christ and be not offended by Him, for there IS
no offense in Him. If what you perceive offends you, you are
offended in YOURSELF and are condemning Gods Son whom God
condemneth not. Let the Holy Spirit remove ALL offense of
Gods Son against himself and perceive no-one but through His
guidance, for He would save you from ALL condemnation. Accept
His healing power and use it for all He sends you, for He
wills to heal the Son of God in whom He is not deceived.
Children perceive terrifying ghosts and monsters and
dragons and they are terrified. Yet if they ask someone they
trust for the REAL meaning of what they perceive, and are
willing to let their interpretations go in FAVOR of reality,
their fear goes with them. When a child is helped to translate
his ghost into a curtain, his monster into a shadow and
his dragon into a dream he is no longer afraid, and laughs
happily at his own fear. You, my children, are afraid of your
brothers and of your Father and of YOURSELVES. But you are
merely DECEIVED in them.
Ask what they ARE of the Teacher of Reality, and hearing
His answer, you too will laugh at your fears and replace them
with peace. For fear lies not in reality, but in the minds of
children who do not understand reality. It is only their LACK
of understanding which frightens them, and when they learn to
perceive truly they are not afraid. And because of this they
will ask for truth again when they are frightened. It is not
the REALITY of your brothers or your Father or yourself which
frightens you. You do not know what they ARE, and so you
perceive them as ghosts and monsters and dragons. ASK of their
reality from the One Who knows it, and He will TELL you what
they are. For you do not understand them, and because you are
deceived by what you see, you NEED reality to dispel your
fears.
Would you not exchange your fears for truth if the exchange
is yours for the asking? For if God is not deceived in you,
you can be deceived only in YOURSELF. Yet you can learn the
truth of yourself of the Holy Spirit, Who will teach you that,
as part of God, deceit in YOU is impossible. When you perceive
yourself without deceit, you will accept the real world in
place of the false one you have made. And then your Father
will lean down to you and take the last step for you by
raising you unto Himself.
CHAPTER 11
GODS PLAN FOR SALVATION
You have been told not to make error real, and the way to
do this is very simple. If you WANT to believe in error, you
would HAVE to make it real, because it is not true. But truth
is real in its own right, and to believe in truth, YOU DO NOT
HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. Understand that you do not respond to
stimuli, but to stimuli AS YOU INTERPRET THEM. Your
interpretation thus becomes the justification for the
response. That is why analyzing the motives of others is
hazardous to YOU. If you decide that someone is really trying
to attack you or desert you or enslave you, you will respond
AS IF he had actually done so, because you have made his error
REAL to you. To interpret error is to give it power, and
having done this, you WILL overlook truth.
The analysis of ego-motivation is very complicated, very
obscuring, and NEVER without the risk of your own ego-
involvement. The whole process represents a clearcut attempt
to demonstrate your OWN ability to understand what you
perceive. This is shown by the fact that you react to your
interpretations AS IF they were correct, and control your
reactions behaviorally, but not emotionally. This is quite
evidently a mental split, in which you have attacked the
integrity of your mind, and pitted one level within it against
another.
The Judgment of the Holy Spirit
There is but one interpretation of all motivation that
makes any sense. And because it is the Holy Spirits judgment,
it requires no effort at all on your part. Every loving
thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and
help. That is what it is, regardless of the form it takes. Can
anyone be justified in responding with anger to a plea for
help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to
give it to him, for this and ONLY this is what he is asking
for. Offer him anything else, and you are assuming the right
to attack his reality by interpreting it as YOU see fit.
Perhaps the danger of this to your own mind is not yet
fully apparent to you, but this by no means signifies that it
is not perfectly clear. If you maintain that an appeal for
help is something else you will REACT to something else, and
your response will be inappropriate to reality as IT is, but
NOT to your perception of it. This is poor reality testing by
definition. There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing
ALL calls for help as exactly what they are except your own
perceived NEED to attack. It is only THIS that makes you
willing to engage in endless battles with reality, in which
you DENY the reality of the need for healing by making IT
unreal. You would not do this except for your UNWILLINGNESS to
perceive reality, which you withhold from YOURSELF.
It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you
do not understand. No-one with a personal investment is a
reliable witness, for truth to him has become what he WANTS it
to be. If you are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help as
what it IS, it is because you are unwilling to GIVE help AND
TO RECEIVE IT. The analysis of the egos real motivation is
the modern equivalent of the inquisition, for in both a
brothers errors are uncovered and he is then attacked FOR
HIS OWN GOOD. What can this be BUT projection? For HIS errors
lay in the minds of his interpreters, for which they punished
HIM.
Whenever you fail to recognize a call for help you are
REFUSING help. Would you maintain that you do not NEED it? Yet
this IS what you are maintaining when you refuse to recognize
a brothers appeal, for only by ANSWERING his appeal can YOU
be helped. Deny him your help and you will not perceive Gods
answer to YOU. The Holy Spirit does not need your help in
interpreting motivation, but you DO need HIS. Only
APPRECIATION is an appropriate response to your brother.
Gratitude is due him for both his loving thoughts and his
appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing love into
YOUR awareness if you perceive them truly. And ALL your sense
of strain comes from your attempts NOT to do just this.
How simple, then, is Gods plan for salvation. There is but
ONE response to reality, for reality evokes no conflict at
all. There is but ONE Teacher of reality, Who understands what
it IS. He does not change His Mind about reality because
REALITY does not change. Although YOUR interpretations of
reality are meaningless in your divided state, His remain
consistently true. He GIVES them to you because they are FOR
you. Do not attempt to help a brother in YOUR way, for you
cannot help yourselves. But hear his call for the help of God,
and you will recognize your OWN need for the Father.
Your interpretations (sic) of your brothers need is your
interpretation of YOURS. By GIVING help you are ASKING for it,
and if you perceive but one need in yourself you WILL be
healed. For you will recognize Gods answer as you want it to
be, and if you want it in truth it will be truly yours. Every
appeal you answer in the Name of Christ brings the remembrance
of your Father closer to YOUR awareness. For the sake of YOUR
need, then, hear every call for help as what it is, so God can
answer YOU.
By applying the Holy Spirits interpretation of the
reactions of others more and more consistently, you will gain
an increasing awareness that HIS criteria are equally
applicable to YOU. For to RECOGNIZE fear is not enough to
escape from it, although the recognition is necessary to
demonstrate the need for escape. The Holy Spirit must still
TRANSLATE it into truth. If you were LEFT with the fear,
having recognized it, you would have taken a step AWAY from
reality, not TOWARDS it. Yet we have repeatedly emphasized the
need to recognize fear and face it WITHOUT disguise as a
crucial step in the undoing of the ego. Consider how well the
Holy Spirits interpretation of the motives of others will
serve you then.
Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others
and to regard everything else as an appeal for help, He has
taught you that FEAR is an appeal for help. This is what
recognizing it REALLY means. If you do not PROTECT it, HE will
re-interpret it. That is the ultimate value TO YOU in learning
to perceive attack as a call for love. We have learned surely
that fear and attack are inevitably associated. If ONLY attack
produces fear, and if you see attack as the call for help that
it IS, the unreality of fear MUST dawn upon you. For fear IS a
call for love, in unconscious recognition of what has been
denied.
The Mechanism of Miracles
Fear is a symptom of your deep sense of loss. If when you
perceive it in others you learn to SUPPLY the loss, the basic
CAUSE of fear is removed. Thereby you teach yourself that fear
does not exist IN YOU, for you have IN YOURSELF the means for
removing it, and have demonstrated this by GIVING it. Fear and
love are the only emotions of which you are capable. One is
false for it was made out of denial, and denial depends on the
real belief in what is denied for its OWN existence.
By interpreting fear correctly AS A POSITIVE AFFIRMATION OF
THE UNDERLYING BELIEF IT MASKS, you are undermining its
perceived usefulness by rendering it useless. Defenses which
do not work at all are AUTOMATICALLY discarded. If you raise
what fear conceals to CLEAR-CUT, UNEQUIVOCAL PREDOMINANCE,
fear becomes meaningless. You have denied its power to conceal
love, which was its only purpose. The mask which YOU have
drawn across the face of love has disappeared.
If you would look upon love, which IS the worlds reality,
how could you do better than to recognize, in every defense
AGAINST it, the underlying appeal FOR it? And how could you
better learn of its reality than by answering the appeal for
it by GIVING it? The Holy Spirits interpretation of fear DOES
dispel it, for the awareness of truth cannot BE denied. Thus
does the Holy Spirit replace fear with love and translate
error into truth. And thus will YOU learn of Him how to
replace your dream of separation with the fact of unity. For
the separation is only the DENIAL of union, and correctly
interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that union is
true.
Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth.
If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do
NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love
that would heal them, but which they are denying to
themselves. If they knew the truth about themselves they could
not BE sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes TO
DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for
the truth is in them. Yet, having OBSCURED it, the light in
ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs because that light IS
theirs.
The light in them shines as brightly REGARDLESS of the
density of the fog that obscures it. If YOU give no power to
the fog to obscure the light it HAS none, for it has power
only because the Son of God gave power to it. He must HIMSELF
withdraw that power, remembering that ALL power is of God. YOU
CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your
brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But
YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone.
THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of
your brother as the healing of yourself is thus the way to
remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and Gods
answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember.
Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer
your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself.
Whatever the sickness, there is but ONE remedy. You will be
made whole as you MAKE whole, for to perceive in sickness the
appeal for health is to recognize in hatred the call for love.
And to give a brother what he REALLY wants is to offer it unto
yourself, for your Father wills you to know your brother AS
yourself. Answer HIS call for love and YOURS is answered.
Healing is the love of Christ for His Father and for HIMSELF.
Remember what we said about the frightening perceptions of
little children, which terrify them because they do not
understand them. If they ask for enlightenment and ACCEPT it
their fears vanish, but if they HIDE their nightmares they
will KEEP them. It is easy to help an uncertain child, for he
recognizes that he does not know what his perceptions mean.
Yet you believe that you DO know. Little children, you are
hiding your heads under the covers of the heavy blankets you
have laid upon yourselves. You are hiding your nightmares in
the darkness of your own certainty, and refusing to open your
eyes AND LOOK AT THEM.
Let us not save nightmares, for they are not fitting
offerings for Christ, and so they are not fit gifts for YOU.
Take off the covers and look at what you are afraid of. Only
the ANTICIPATION will frighten you, for the reality of
nothingness cannot BE frightening. Let us not delay this, for
your dream of hatred will not leave you without help, and help
is here. Learn to be quiet in the midst of turmoil, for
quietness is the end of strife and this is the journey to
peace. Look straight at every image that rises to delay you,
for the goal is inevitable because it is eternal. The goal of
love is but your right, and it belongs to you DESPITE your
preference.
YOU STILL WANT WHAT GOD WILLS, and no nightmare can defeat
a Child of God in his purpose. For your purpose was given you
by God, and you must accomplish it BECAUSE it is His Will.
Awake and remember your purpose, for it is YOUR will to do so.
What has been accomplished for you MUST be yours. Do not let
your hatred stand in the way of love, for NOTHING can
withstand the love of Christ for His Father, or His Fathers
Love for Him.
A little while and you WILL see me, for I am not hidden
because YOU are hiding. I will awaken you as surely as I
awakened myself, for I awoke FOR you. In MY resurrection is
YOUR release. Our mission is to escape CRUCIFIXION, not
redemption. Trust in my help for I did not walk alone, and I
will walk with you as our Father walked with me. Did you not
know that I walked with Him in peace? And does not that mean
that peace goes with US on the journey?
There is no fear in perfect love. We will but be making
perfect to you what is ALREADY perfect IN you. You do not fear
the UNKNOWN but the KNOWN. You will not fail in your mission
because I failed not in mine. Give me but a little trust in
the name of the COMPLETE trust I have in you, and we will
easily accomplish the goal of perfection together. For
perfection IS, and cannot BE denied. To deny the denial of
perfection is not so difficult as the denial of truth, and
what we can accomplish together MUST be believed when you SEE
it as accomplished.
You who have tried to banish love have not succeeded, but
you who choose to banish fear WILL succeed. The Lord is with
you, but you know it not. Yet your Redeemer liveth, and
abideth in you in the peace out of which He was created. Would
you not exchange THIS awareness for the awareness of your
fear? When we have overcome fear, not by hiding it, not by
minimizing it, not by denying its full import in any way, this
IS what you will really see. You cannot lay aside the obstacle
to real vision without looking upon it, for to lay aside means
to judge AGAINST. If YOU will look the Holy Spirit will judge,
and will judge truly. He cannot shine away what YOU keep
hidden, for you have not offered it to Him, and He cannot take
it FROM you.
We are therefore embarking on an organized, well-structured
and carefully planned program aimed at learning how to offer
to the Holy Spirit everything you do NOT want. HE knows what
to do with it. You do NOT know how to use what He knows.
Whatever is revealed to Him that is not of God is gone. Yet
you must reveal it to YOURSELF in perfect willingness, for
otherwise His knowledge remains useless to you. Surely He will
not fail to help you, since help is His ONLY purpose. Do you
not have greater reason for fearing the world as YOU perceive
it than for looking at the cause of fear, and letting it go
forever?
The Investment in Reality
I once asked if you were willing to sell all you have and
give to the poor and follow me. This is what I meant: If you
had no investment in anything in this world, you could teach
the poor where their treasure IS. The poor are merely those
who have invested wrongly, and they are poor indeed! Because
they are in need it is given you to help them, since YOU are
among them. Consider how perfectly your lesson would be
learned if you were unwilling to SHARE their poverty. For
poverty is lack, and there is but ONE lack since there is but
ONE need.
Suppose a brother insists on having you do something you
think you do not want to do. The very fact of his insistence
should tell you that he believes salvation lies in it. If you
insist on refusing and experience a quick response of
opposition, you are believing that YOUR salvation lies in NOT
doing it. You, then, are making the same mistake that he is,
and are making his error real to BOTH of you. Insistence means
investment, and what you invest in is ALWAYS related to your
notion of salvation. The question is always two-fold; first,
WHAT is to be saved, and second, HOW can it be saved?
Whenever you become angry with a brother, for WHATEVER
reason, you are believing that the EGO is to be saved, and to
be saved by ATTACK. If HE attacks you are agreeing with this
belief, and if YOU attack you are reinforcing it. REMEMBER
THAT THOSE WHO ATTACK ARE POOR. Their poverty asks for gifts,
NOT for further impoverishment. You who could help them are
surely acting destructively if you accept their poverty as
YOURS. If you had not invested as THEY had, it would never
occur to you to overlook their need.
Recognize WHAT DOES NOT MATTER, and if your brothers ask
you for something outrageous, do it BECAUSE it does not
matter. Refuse, and your opposition establishes that it DOES
matter to you. It is only YOU, therefore, who have made the
request outrageous, for nothing can BE asked of you, and every
request of a brother is for YOU. Why would you insist in
DENYING him? For to do so is to deny yourself and impoverish
both. HE is asking for salvation, as YOU are. Poverty is of
the ego, and NEVER of God. No outrageous request can be
made of one who recognizes what is valuable and wants to
accept nothing else.
Salvation is for the mind, and it is attained through
peace. This is the ONLY thing that can be saved and the ONLY
way to save it. Any response OTHER than love arises from a
confusion about the what and the how of salvation, and
this is the ONLY answer. Never lose sight of this, and never
allow yourself to believe, even for an instant, that there IS
another answer. For you will surely place yourself among the
poor, who do not understand that they dwell in abundance and
that salvation is come.
To identify with the ego is to attack yourself and MAKE
yourself poor. That is why everyone who identifies with the
ego feels deprived. What he EXPERIENCES then is depression or
anger, but what he DID is to exchange his self-love for self-
hate, making him AFRAID of himself. He does NOT realize this.
Even if he is fully aware of anxiety he does not perceive its
source as his own EGO IDENTIFICATION, and he ALWAYS tries to
handle it by making some sort of insane arrangement with
the world. He always perceives this world as OUTSIDE himself,
for this is crucial to his adjustment. He does not realize
that he MAKES this world, for there IS no world outside of
him.
If only the loving thoughts of Gods Son are the worlds
reality, the real world MUST be in his mind. His insane
thoughts, too, must be in his mind, but an internal conflict
of this magnitude he cannot tolerate. A split mind IS
endangered, and the recognition that it encompasses completely
opposed thoughts within itself IS intolerable. Therefore the
mind projects the split, NOT the reality. Everything you
perceive as the outside world is merely your attempt to
maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that
identification is salvation. Yet consider what has happened,
for thoughts DO have consequences to the thinker.
You are AT ODDS with the world as you perceive it because
you think IT is antagonistic to YOU. This is a necessary
consequence of what you have done. You have projected outward
what IS antagonistic to what is inward, and therefore you
would HAVE to perceive it this way. That is why you must
realize that your hatred is IN your mind and NOT outside it
before you can get rid of it; and why you must get rid of it
BEFORE you can perceive the world as it really is.
We once said that God so loved the world that He gave it to
His only-begotten Son. God DOES love the real world, and those
who perceive ITS reality cannot SEE the world of death. For
death is NOT of the real world, in which everything is
eternal. God gave you the real world in exchange for the one
you made out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of
death. For if you could REALLY separate yourselves from the
Mind of God you WOULD die, and the world you perceive IS a
world of separation.
You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father.
Yet He would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. You still
could not will against Him, and that is why you have no
control over the world you made. It is not a world of will
because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him, and
this desire is NOT will. The world you made is therefore
totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless laws,
and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what
you do NOT want, projected from your mind because you were
afraid of it.
Yet this world is ONLY in the mind of its maker, along with
his REAL salvation. Do not believe it is outside of yourself,
for only by recognizing WHERE it is will you gain control over
it. For you DO have control over your mind, since the mind is
the mechanism of decision. If you will recognize that ALL
attack which you perceive is in your own mind AND NOWHERE
ELSE, you will at last have placed its source, and where it
began it must end. For in this same place also lies salvation.
The altar of God where Christ abideth is there.
You have defiled the altar but NOT the world. Yet Christ
has placed the Atonement on the altar FOR you. Bring your
perceptions of the world to this altar, for it is the altar to
truth. There you will see your vision changed, and there you
will learn to see truly. From this place, where God and His
Son dwell in peace and where you are welcome, you will look
out in peace and behold the world truly. Yet to find the
place, you must relinquish your investment in the world as YOU
have projected it, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the
real world to you from the altar of God.
Seeking and Finding
The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is
always its central teaching. It never PUTS it this way; on the
contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation is
intensely engaged in the search for love. Yet the ego, though
encouraging the search very actively, makes one proviso; do
not FIND it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as:
Seek and do NOT find. This is the one promise the ego holds
out to you, and the one promise it will KEEP. For the ego
pursues its goal with fanatic insistence, and its reality
testing, though severely impaired, is completely consistent.
The search which the ego undertakes is therefore bound to
be defeated. And since it also teaches that it is YOUR
identification, its guidance leads you to a journey which must
end in perceived SELF-defeat. For the ego CANNOT love, and in
its frantic search for love, it is seeking what it is AFRAID
to find. The search is inevitable because the ego is part of
your mind, and because of its source, the ego is not wholly
split off, or it could not be believed at all. For it is YOUR
mind that believes in it, and gives existence to it. Yet it is
also your mind that has the power to DENY the egos existence,
and you will surely do so when you realize exactly what the
journey is on which the ego sets you.
It is surely obvious that no-one wants to find what would
UTTERLY defeat him. Being unable to love, the ego would be
totally inadequate in loves presence, for it could not
respond at all. You would HAVE to abandon the egos guidance,
for it would be quite apparent that it had not taught you the
response pattern you NEED. The ego will therefore DISTORT
love, and teach you that love calls forth the responses which
the ego CAN teach. Follow its teaching, then, and you will
SEARCH for love, but will not RECOGNIZE it.
Do you realize that the ego must set you on a journey which
cannot BUT lead to a sense of futility and depression? To seek
and NOT to find is hardly joyous. Is this the promise YOU
would keep? The Holy Spirit offers you another promise, and
one that will lead to joy. For HIS promise is always, Seek
and you will FIND, and under His guidance you cannot BE
defeated. His is the journey to ACCOMPLISHMENT, and the goal
He sets before you He will GIVE you. For He will never deceive
Gods Son, whom He loves with the Love of the Father.
You WILL undertake a journey because you are NOT at home in
this world. And you WILL search for your home whether you know
where it is or not. If you believe it is outside yourself the
search will be futile, for you will be seeking it where it is
not. You do not know how to look within yourself, for you do
not BELIEVE your home is there. Yet the Holy Spirit knows it
FOR you, and He will guide you TO your home because that is
His mission. As He fulfills HIS mission He will teach you
YOURS, for your mission is the same as His. By guiding your
BROTHERS home you are but following Him.
Behold the Guide your Father gave you that you might learn
you have eternal life. For death is not your Fathers Will nor
yours, and whatever is true IS the Will of the Father. You pay
no price for life for that was given you, but you DO pay a
price for death, and a very heavy one. If death is your
treasure, you will sell everything else to purchase it. And
you will believe that you HAVE purchased it BECAUSE you have
sold everything else. Yet you CANNOT sell the Kingdom of
Heaven. Your inheritance can neither be bought NOR sold. There
can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole,
and all his extensions are like Him.
The Atonement was not the price of your wholeness, but it
WAS the price of your AWARENESS of your wholeness. For what
you chose to sell had to be kept for you, since you could
not buy it back. Yet YOU must invest in it, not with money,
but WITH YOUR SPIRIT. For Spirit is will, and will IS the
price of the Kingdom. Your inheritance awaits only the
recognition that you have BEEN redeemed. The Holy Spirit
guides you into life eternal, but YOU must relinquish your
investment in death, or you will not SEE life though it is all
around you.
The Sane Curriculum
Only love is strong because it is UNDIVIDED. The strong do
not attack because they see no need to do so. BEFORE the idea
of attack can enter your mind you must have PERCEIVED yourself
as weak. Because you had attacked yourself and believed that
the attack was EFFECTIVE, you behold yourself as weakened. No
longer perceiving yourself and all your brothers as equal, and
regarding yourself as WEAKER, you attempt to equalize the
situation YOU have made. You use attack to do so because you
believe that attack was successful in weakening YOU.
That is why the recognition of your OWN invulnerability is
so important in the restoration of your sanity. For if you
accept your invulnerability, you are recognizing that attack
HAS no effect. Although you have attacked yourself, and very
brutally, you will demonstrate that NOTHING HAPPENED.
Therefore, by attacking you have not done ANYTHING. Once you
realize this there is no longer any SENSE in attack, for it
manifestly DOES NOT WORK, and CANNOT protect you. Yet the
recognition of your invulnerability has more than negative
value. If your attacks on yourself have FAILED to weaken you
YOU ARE STILL STRONG. You therefore have no need to
equalize the situation to establish your strength.
You will never realize the utter uselessness of attack
EXCEPT by recognizing that your attack on YOURSELF had no
effects. For others DO react to attack if they perceive it,
and if you are trying to attack THEM you will be unable to
avoid interpreting this as re-inforcement. The ONLY place
where you can cancel out all re-inforcement is in YOURSELF.
For YOU are always the first point of your attack, and if THIS
has never been it HAS no consequences.
The Holy Spirits love is your strength, for yours is
divided and therefore not real. You could not trust your own
love when you have ATTACKED it. You cannot learn of perfect
love with a split mind because a split mind had MADE itself a
poor learner. You tried to make the separation eternal because
you wanted to retain the characteristics of creation with your
own CONTENT. Yet creation is NOT of you, and poor learners
need special teaching. You have learning handicaps in a very
literal sense.
There are areas in your learning skills which are so
impaired that you can progress only under constant, clear-cut
direction, provided by a Teacher Who can TRANSCEND your
limited resources. He BECOMES your Resource, because of
YOURSELF you CANNOT learn. The learning situation in which you
placed yourself IS impossible, and in this situation you
clearly require a special Teacher and a special curriculum.
Poor learners are not good choices for teachers, either for
themselves or for anyone else. You would hardly turn to THEM
to establish the curriculum by which they can ESCAPE from
their limitations. If they understood what is beyond them they
would not BE handicapped.
You do not know the meaning of love, and that IS your
handicap. Do not attempt to teach yourselves what you do not
understand, and do not try to set up curriculum goals where
yours have clearly failed. YOUR learning goal has been NOT to
learn, and this CANNOT lead to successful learning. You cannot
transfer what you have not learned, and the impairment of the
ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure. Would you
ask those who have FAILED to learn what learning aids are FOR?
THEY DO NOT KNOW. For if they could interpret the aids
correctly they would have learned from them.
We have said that the egos rule is, Seek and do NOT
find. Translated into curricular terms, this is the same as
saying, TRY to learn but do NOT succeed. The result of this
curriculum goal is obvious. Every legitimate teaching aid,
every real instruction, and every sensible guide to learning
WILL BE MISINTERPRETED. For they are all for learning
facilitation, which this strange curriculum goal is AGAINST.
If you are trying to learn how NOT to learn, and are using the
aim of teaching to DEFEAT itself, what can you expect BUT
confusion? The curriculum does not make SENSE.
This kind of learning has so weakened your mind that
you CANNOT love, for the curriculum you have chosen is AGAINST
love, and amounts to a course in HOW TO ATTACK YOURSELF. A
necessary minor, supplementing this major curriculum goal, is
learning how NOT to overcome the split which made this goal
believable. And you can NOT overcome it, for all YOUR learning
is on its BEHALF. Yet your will speaks against your learning
as your learning speaks against your will, and so you fight
AGAINST learning and succeed, for that IS your will. But you
do not realize, even yet, that there IS something you DO will
to learn, and that you can learn it because it IS your will to
do so.
You who have tried to learn what you do NOT will should
take heart, for although the curriculum you set yourself is
depressing indeed, it is merely ridiculous, if you look at it.
Is it POSSIBLE that the way to achieve a goal is NOT to attain
it? Resign NOW as your own teachers. THIS resignation will NOT
lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest
appraisal of what you have taught yourselves, and of the
learning outcomes which have resulted. Under the proper
learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor
understand, you will become excellent learners AND teachers.
But it is not so yet, and will not BE so until the whole
learning situation, as YOU have set it up, is reversed.
Your learning POTENTIAL, properly understood, is limitless
because it will lead you to God. You can TEACH the way to Him
AND learn it, if you follow the Teacher Who knows it, and His
curriculum for learning it. The curriculum is totally
unambiguous because the goal is NOT divided, and the means and
the end are in COMPLETE accord. You need offer only UNDIVIDED
ATTENTION. Everything else will be GIVEN you. For it is YOUR
will to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the will of Gods
Son. His learning is as unlimited as HE is.
The Vision of Christ
The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world
and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you
CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for
OF ITSELF it profits nothing. To invest in something without
profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is
high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the
cost to YOU is enormous. For this investment costs you the
worlds reality by denying YOURS, and gives you nothing in
return. You CANNOT sell your Soul, but you CAN sell your
AWARENESS of it. You cannot perceive your Soul, but you will
not KNOW it while you perceive anything ELSE as more valuable.
The Holy Spirit is your strength because He perceives
nothing BUT your Soul as you. He is perfectly aware that you
do NOT know yourselves, and perfectly aware of how to teach
you what you are. BECAUSE He loves you, He will gladly teach
you what He loves, for He wills to share it. Remembering you
always, He cannot let you forget your worth. For the Father
never ceases to remind Him of His Son, and He never ceases to
remind His Son of the Father. God is in your memory BECAUSE of
Him. You chose to forget your Father but you did not WILL to
do so, and therefore you can decide otherwise. As it was MY
decision, so is it YOURS.
You do not WANT the world. The only thing of value in it is
whatever part of it you look upon with love. This gives it the
only reality it will ever have. Its value is NOT in itself,
but yours IS in you. As self-value comes from self-EXTENSION,
so does the PERCEPTION of self-value come from the projection
of loving thoughts outward. Make the world real unto YOURSELF,
for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and so it
BELONGS to you.
Correction is for all who cannot see. To open the eyes of
the blind is the Holy Spirits mission, for He knows that they
have not lost their vision, but merely sleep. He would awaken
them from the sleep of forgetting to the remembering of God.
Christs eyes are open, and He will look upon whatever you see
with love if you accept His vision as yours.
The Holy Spirit keeps the vision of Christ for every Son of
God who sleeps. In His sight the Son of God is perfect, and He
longs to share His vision with you. He will show you the real
world because God gave you Heaven. Through Him your Father
calls His Son to remember. The awakening of His Son begins
with his investment in the REAL world, and by this he will
learn to re-invest in HIMSELF. For reality is one with the
Father AND the Son, and the Holy Spirit blesses the real world
in Their Name.
When you have seen this real world, as you will surely do,
you WILL remember us. Yet you must learn the cost of sleeping,
and REFUSE to pay it. Only then will you decide to awaken. And
then the real world will spring to your sight, for Christ has
never slept. He is waiting to be seen, for He has never lost
sight of YOU. He looks quietly on the real world, which He
would share with you because He knows of the Fathers Love for
Him. And knowing this, He would give you what is yours. In
perfect peace He waits for you at His Fathers altar, holding
out the Fathers Love to you in the quiet light of the Holy
Spirits blessing. For the Holy Spirit will lead everyone home
to his Father, where Christ waits as his Self.
Every Child of God is one in Christ, for his Being is in
Christ as Christs is in God. Christs love for you is His
love for His Father, which He knows because He knows His
Fathers Love for Him. When the Holy Spirit has at last led
you to Christ at the altar to His Father, perception fuses
into knowledge because perception has become so holy that its
transfer to holiness is merely its natural extension. Love
transfers to love without any interference, for the situations
are identical. As you perceive more and more common elements
in ALL situations, the transfer of your training under the
Holy Spirits guidance increases and becomes generalized.
Gradually you learn to apply it to everyone and everything,
for its applicability IS universal. When this has been
accomplished, perception and knowledge have become so similar
that they share the unification of the laws of God.
What is one cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial
of the separation IS the re-instatement of knowledge. At the
altar of God, the holy perception of Gods Son becomes so
enlightened that light streams into it, and the Spirit of
Gods Son shines in the Mind of the Father and becomes One
with It. Very gently does God shine upon Himself, loving the
extension of Himself which is His Son. The world has no
purpose as it blends into the Purpose of God. For the real
world has slipped quietly into Heaven, where everything
eternal in it has always been. There the Redeemer and the
redeemed join in perfect love of God and of each other. Heaven
is your home, and being in God it must ALSO be in you.
The Guide for Miracles
Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the
right guidance, for learning is invisible, and what has been
learned can be recognized only by its RESULTS. Its
generalization is demonstrated as you use it in more and more
situations. You will recognize that you have learned there is
no order of difficulty in miracles when you have applied them
to ALL situations. There IS no situation to which miracles do
not apply, and by applying them to all situations you will
gain the real world. For in this holy perception you will be
made whole, and the Atonement will radiate from YOUR
acceptance of it for YOURSELF to everyone the Holy Spirit
sends you for your blessing. In every Child of God His
blessing lies, and in YOUR blessing of the Children of God is
His blessing to YOU.
Everyone in the world must play his part in the redemption
of the world, to recognize that the world HAS BEEN redeemed.
You cannot see the invisible. Yet if you see its effects you
KNOW it must be there. By perceiving what it DOES, you
recognize its being. And by WHAT it does, you learn what it
IS. You cannot SEE your abilities, but you gain confidence in
their existence as they enable you to ACT. And the RESULTS of
your actions you CAN see.
The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the RESULTS
of His Presence, and through them you will learn that He is
there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world,
for miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges
it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of
prediction and control is transcended, for what the Holy
Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them.
Perceiving His results, you will understand WHERE He must be,
and finally KNOW what He is.
You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His
manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is
there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence.
What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the
witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you
cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you as its
presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do the Holy Spirits
work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in
Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God
shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit
shares His with you on earth.
As long as you believe you have two functions, so long will
you need correction. For this belief is the DESTRUCTION of
peace, a goal in direct opposition to the Holy Spirits
purpose. You see what you EXPECT, and you expect what you
INVITE. Your perception is the result of your invitation,
coming to you as you sent for it. Whose manifestations would
you see? Of whose presence would you be convinced? For you
will believe in what you MANIFEST, and as you look out so will
you see in. Two ways of looking at the world are in your mind,
and your perception will reflect the guidance you chose.
I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see
me it will be because you have invited Him. For He WILL send
you His witnesses if you will but look upon them. Remember
always that you see what you seek, for what you seek you WILL
find. The ego finds what IT seeks, and ONLY that. It does not
find love, for that is NOT what it is seeking. Yet seeking and
finding are the same, and if you seek for two goals you will
find them, but you will RECOGNIZE NEITHER. For you will think
they are the same because you WANT them both. The mind always
strives for integration, and if it is split and wants to KEEP
the split, it will believe it has one goal by MAKING it one.
We said before that WHAT you project is up to you, but it
is NOT up to you WHETHER to project, for projection is a law
of mind. Perception IS projection, and you look in BEFORE you
look out. As you look in you choose the guide for seeing, and
THEN you look out and behold his witnesses. This is WHY you
find what you seek. What you want in YOURSELF you will make
manifest by projection, and you will accept it FROM the world
because you put it there BY wanting it.
When you think you are projecting what you do NOT want, it
is still because you DO want it. This leads directly to
dissociation, for it represents the acceptance of two goals,
each perceived in a DIFFERENT place, separated from each other
BECAUSE you made them different. The mind then sees a divided
world OUTSIDE itself, but not WITHIN. This gives it an
illusion of integrity, and enables it to believe that it is
pursuing one goal. As long as you perceive the world as split,
YOU are not healed. For to be healed is to pursue one goal
because you have ACCEPTED only one, and WANT but one.
When you want ONLY love you will see nothing else. The
contradictory nature of the witnesses you perceive is merely
the reflection of your conflicting invitations. You have
looked upon your minds and accepted opposition there, having
SOUGHT it there. But do not then believe that the witnesses
for opposition are true, for they attest only to YOUR decision
about reality, returning to you the message you GAVE them.
Love is recognized by its messengers. If you make love
manifest, its messengers will come to you because you INVITED
them.
The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a
prisoner of this world. YOU CAN DECIDE TO SEE IT RIGHT. What
YOU made of it is NOT its reality, for its reality is only
what you GAVE it. You cannot really give anything but love to
anyone or anything, nor can you really RECEIVE anything else
from them. If you think you have received anything else, it is
because you have looked within and thought you saw the power
to give something else WITHIN YOURSELF. It was only this
decision that determined what you found, for it was the
decision of what you SOUGHT.
You are afraid of me because you looked within and are
afraid of what you saw. Yet you could not have seen reality,
for the reality of your mind is the loveliest of Gods
creations. Coming only from God, its power and grandeur could
only bring you peace IF YOU REALLY LOOKED UPON IT. If you are
afraid, it is because you saw something THAT IS NOT THERE. Yet
in that same place you could have looked upon me and all your
brothers, in the perfect safety of the Mind Which created us.
For we are there in the peace of the Father, who wills to
project His peace through YOU.
When you have accepted your mission to PROJECT peace you
will FIND it, for by MAKING IT MANIFEST you will SEE it. Its
holy witnesses will surround you because you CALLED upon them
and they will come to you. I have heard your call and I have
answered it, but you will not look upon me nor HEAR the answer
which you sought. That is because you do not yet want ONLY
that. Yet as I become more real to you, you will learn that
you DO want only that. And you will see me as you look within,
and we will look upon the world as God created it together.
Through the eyes of Christ ONLY the real world exists and can
BE seen. As you decide so will you see. And all that you see
but witnesses to your decision.
When you look within and see me, it will be because you
have decided to manifest truth. And as you manifest it you
will see it both without AND within, for you will see it
without BECAUSE you saw it first within. Everything you behold
without is a judgment of what you beheld within. If it is YOUR
judgment it will be wrong, for judgment is not your function.
If it is the judgment of the Holy Spirit it will be right, for
judgment IS His function. You share His function only by
judging as HE does, reserving no judgment at all unto
yourselves. For you will judge AGAINST yourselves, but HE will
judge FOR you.
Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react
unfavorably to what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy
and have condemned yourself to death. The death penalty is the
egos ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you are a
criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you are deserving
of life. The death penalty never leaves the egos mind, for
that is what it always reserves for you in the end. Wanting to
kill you as the final expression of its feeling for you, it
lets you live but to await death. It will torment you while
you live, but its hatred is not satisfied until you die. For
your destruction is the one end toward which it works, and the
only end with which it will be satisfied.
The ego is not a traitor to God to Whom treachery is
impossible, but it IS a traitor to you who believe YOU have
been treacherous to your Father. That is why the UNDOING of
guilt is an essential part of the Holy Spirits teaching. For
as long as you feel guilty you are listening to the voice of
the ego, which tells you that you HAVE been treacherous to God
and therefore DESERVE death. You will think that death comes
from God and NOT from the ego because, by confusing yourself
WITH the ego, you believe that YOU want death. And from what
you want God does NOT save you.
When you are tempted to yield to the desire for death
REMEMBER THAT I DID NOT DIE. You will realize that this is
true when you look within and SEE me. Would I have overcome
death for myself alone? And would eternal life have been given
me of the Father UNLESS he had also given it to you? When you
learn to make ME manifest YOU will never see death. For you
will have looked upon the deathless in YOURSELF, and you will
see only the eternal as you look out upon a world that CANNOT
die.
Reality and Redemption
Do you REALLY believe that you can kill the Son of God? The
Father has hidden His Son safely within Himself and kept him
far away from your destructive thoughts, but YOU know neither
the Father nor the Son because of them. You attack the real
world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you
are surprised that you cannot see it. If you seek love in
order to attack it you will NEVER find it. For if love is
sharing, how can you find it except through ITSELF? Offer it
and it will come to you because it is drawn to itself. But
offer attack and it will remain hidden, for it can live only
in peace.
Gods Son is as safe as his Father, for the Son knows his
Fathers protection and CANNOT fear. His Fathers Love holds
him in perfect peace, and needing nothing, he ASKS for
nothing. Yet he is far from you whose Self he is, for you
chose to attack him, and he disappeared from your sight into
his Father. HE did not change, but YOU did. For a split mind
and all its works were not created by the Father, and could
not live in the knowledge of Him.
When you made what is NOT true visible, what IS true became
invisible. Yet it cannot be invisible in ITSELF, for the Holy
Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. It is invisible to you
because you are looking at something ELSE. Yet it is no more
up to you to decide what is visible and what is invisible than
it is up to you to decide what reality is. What can be seen is
what the HOLY SPIRIT sees. The definition of reality is Gods,
not yours. HE created it, and HE knows what it is. You who
knew have forgotten, and unless He had given you a way to
remember you would have condemned yourselves to oblivion.
Because of your Fathers Love you can NEVER forget Him, for
no-one can forget what God Himself placed in his memory. You
can DENY it, but you cannot LOSE it. A Voice will answer every
question you ask, and a Vision will correct the perception of
everything you see. For what you have made invisible is the
ONLY truth, and what you have not heard is the ONLY answer.
God would reunite you with yourself, and did not abandon you
in your seeming distress. You are waiting only for Him and do
not know it. Yet His memory shines in your minds and cannot BE
obliterated. It is no more past than future, being forever
always.
You have but to ask for this memory and you WILL remember.
Yet the memory of God cannot shine in a mind which has MADE it
invisible and wants to KEEP it so. For the memory of God can
dawn only in a mind that wills to remember, and that has
relinquished the insane desire to control reality. You who
cannot even control yourselves should hardly aspire to control
the universe. But look upon what you have made of it, and
rejoice that it is not so. Son of God, be not content with
nothing! What is not real cannot BE seen and HAS no value. God
could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son
receive it. You were redeemed the instant you thought you had
deserted Him.
Everything you made has never been, and is invisible
because the Holy Spirit does not see it. Yet what He DOES see
is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is
healed. You have made the invisible the only truth that this
world holds. Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing and
FOUND nothing. By making nothing REAL to you, you have SEEN
it. BUT IT IS NOT THERE. And Christ is invisible to you
because of what you have made visible to YOURSELVES. Yet it
does not matter how much distance you have tried to interpose
between your awareness and truth. Gods Son CAN be seen
because his vision is shared. The Holy Spirit looks upon him,
and sees nothing else in YOU. What is invisible to you is
perfect in His sight, and encompasses ALL of it. He has
remembered you because He forgot not the Father.
You looked upon the unreal and found despair. Yet by
seeking the unreal, what else COULD you find? The unreal world
IS a thing of despair, for it can never be. And you who share
Gods Being with Him could never be content without reality.
What God did not give you has no power over you, and the
attraction of love for love remains irresistible. For it is
the function of love to unite all things unto itself, and to
hold all things together by extending its wholeness.
The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for
the world YOU made and which YOU see. But take it from the
hand of Christ and look upon it. Its reality will make
everything else invisible, for beholding it is TOTAL
perception. And as you look upon it, you will remember that it
was always so. Nothingness will become invisible, for you will
at last have seen truly. Redeemed perception is easily
translated into knowledge, for ONLY perception is capable of
error, and perception has never been. Being corrected it gives
place to knowledge, which is forever the ONLY reality. The
Atonement is but the way back to what was never lost. Your
Father could not cease to love His Son.
Guiltlessness and Invulnerability
If you did not feel guilty you COULD not attack, for
condemnation is the root of attack. It is the judgment of one
mind by another as UNWORTHY of love and DESERVING of
punishment. But herein lies the split. For the mind that
judges perceives itself as SEPARATE from the mind being
judged, believing that by punishing another IT will escape
punishment. All this is but the delusional attempt of the mind
to deny itself and ESCAPE THE PENALTY OF DENIAL. It is not an
attempt to RELINQUISH denial, but to HOLD ON to it. For it is
guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt
that has driven you insane.
The acceptance of guilt into the mind of Gods Son was the
beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the
Atonement is its end. The world you see is the delusional
system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this
world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is
the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to
govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it
through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by
suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death.
Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline
if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert
and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps
the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and
gasp and are laid in the ground and seem to be no more. Not
one of them but has thought that God is cruel.
If this WERE the real world God WOULD be cruel. For no
father could subject his children to this as the price of
salvation and BE loving. LOVE DOES NOT KILL TO SAVE. If it
did, attack WOULD be salvation, and this is the EGOS
interpretation, NOT Gods. Only the world of guilt could
demand this, for only the guilty could CONCEIVE of it. Adams
sin could have touched none of you had you not believed
that it was the FATHER Who drove him out of paradise. For in
that belief the knowledge of the Father was lost, since only
those who do NOT understand Him COULD believe it.
This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of Gods Son.
And until you realize that Gods Son cannot BE crucified, this
is the world you will see. Yet you will not realize this until
you accept the eternal fact that Gods Son is NOT GUILTY. He
DESERVES only love because he has GIVEN only love. He cannot
BE condemned because he has never condemned. The Atonement is
the final lesson he need learn, for it teaches him that, never
having sinned, he has no NEED of salvation.
Long ago we said that the Holy Spirit shares the goal of
all good teachers, whose ultimate aim is to make themselves
unnecessary by teaching their pupils all they know. The Holy
Spirit wills ONLY this, for sharing the Fathers Love for His
Son, He wills to remove ALL guilt from his mind that he may
remember his Father in peace. For peace and guilt are
antithetical, and the Father can be remembered ONLY in peace.
Love and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to DENY
the other. Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the
denial of the blamelessness of Gods Son.
In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God
HAS sinned. How could you SEE him, then? By making him
invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of
guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the
blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was
and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and Gods
Son IS without guilt. As you look upon yourselves and judge
what you do honestly, as you have been asked to do, you may be
tempted to wonder how you CAN be guiltless. Yet consider this:
You are not guiltless in time, but in ETERNITY. You HAVE
sinned in the past, but there IS no past. Always has NO
direction. Time seems to go in one direction, but when you
reach its end it will roll up like a long carpet which has
spread along the past behind you and will disappear. As long
as you believe the Son of God is guilty you will walk along
this carpet, believing that it leads to death. And the journey
will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it IS.
The journey which the Son of God has set himself is foolish
indeed, but the journey on which his Father sets him is one of
release and joy. The Father is NOT cruel, and His Son CANNOT
hurt himself. The retaliation he fears and which he SEES will
never touch him, for although he believes in it the Holy
Spirit KNOWS it is not true. The Holy Spirit stands at the END
of time, where YOU must be because He is WITH you. He has
ALWAYS undone everything unworthy of the Son of God, for such
was His mission, given Him by God. And what God gives has
ALWAYS been.
You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless.
He has always sought his guiltlessness, and he has FOUND it.
For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made,
and the way to find release is not denied him. Being IN him,
he HAS found it. WHEN he finds it is only a matter of time,
and time is but an illusion. For the Son of God is guiltless
NOW, and the brightness of his purity shines untouched forever
in Gods Mind. Gods Son will ALWAYS be as he was created.
Deny YOUR world and judge him not, for his eternal
guiltlessness is in the Mind of his Father, and protects him
forever.
When you have accepted the Atonement for yourselves, you
will realize that there IS no guilt in Gods Son. And ONLY as
you look upon him as guiltless can you understand his oneness.
For the idea of guilt brings a belief in condemnation of one
by another, projecting separation in place of unity. You can
condemn only YOURSELF, and by so doing you cannot know that
you ARE Gods Son. You have denied the condition of his Being,
which is his perfect blamelessness. Out of Love he was
created, and in Love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always
followed him, for he has always extended the Love of his
Father.
As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you,
you will realize that there IS no journey, but only an
awakening. The Son of God, who sleepeth not, has kept faith
with his Father FOR you. There is no road to travel on, and no
time to travel through. For God waits not for His Son in time,
being forever unwilling to be without him. And so it has
always been. Let the holiness of Gods Son shine away the
cloud of guilt that darkens your mind, and by accepting his
purity as yours, learn of him that it IS yours.
You are invulnerable BECAUSE you are guiltless. You can
hold on to the past ONLY through guilt. For guilt establishes
that you will be punished for what you have done, and thus
depends on one-dimensional time, proceeding from past to
future. No-one who believes this can understand what ALWAYS
means. And therefore guilt MUST deprive you of the
appreciation of eternity. You are immortal BECAUSE you are
eternal, and always MUST be now. Guilt, then, is a way of
holding past and future in your minds to ensure the egos
continuity. For if what has been WILL be punished, the egos
continuity is guaranteed. Yet the guarantee of your continuity
is Gods, not the egos. And immortality is the opposite of
time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant.
Accepting the Atonement teaches you what immortality IS,
for by accepting your guiltlessness you learn that the past
has never been, and so the future is needless. The future, in
time, is always associated with expiation, and ONLY guilt
could induce a sense of NEED for expiation. Accepting the
guiltlessness of the Son of God as YOURS is therefore Gods
way of reminding you of His Son, and what he is in truth. For
God has never condemned His Son, and being guiltless he IS
eternal.
You cannot dispel guilt by making it real and THEN atoning
for it. This is the egos plan, which it offers INSTEAD of
dispelling it. The ego believes in atonement through ATTACK,
being fully committed to the insane notion that attack IS
salvation. And you who cherish guilt must ALSO believe it, for
how else but by identifying WITH the ego could you hold dear
what you do not want?
The ego teaches you to attack yourself BECAUSE you are
guilty, and this must INCREASE the guilt, for guilt is the
RESULT of attack. In the egos teaching, then, there IS no
escape from guilt. For attack makes guilt real, and if it is
real there IS no way to overcome it. The Holy Spirit dispels
it simply through the calm recognition that it has never been.
As He looks upon the guiltless Son of God, he KNOWS this is
true. And being true for YOU you CANNOT attack yourself, for
without guilt attack is impossible. You, then, ARE saved
because Gods Son is guiltless. And being wholly pure, you ARE
invulnerable.
CHAPTER 12
THE PROBLEM OF GUILT
The ultimate purpose of projection as the ego uses it is
ALWAYS to get rid of guilt. Yet, characteristically, the ego
attempts to get rid of guilt from ITS viewpoint only, for much
as the ego wants to retain guilt, YOU find it intolerable,
since guilt stands in the way of your remembering God, Whose
pull is so strong that you CANNOT resist it. On this issue,
then, the deepest split of all occurs, for if you are to
retain guilt, as the ego insists, YOU CANNOT BE YOU. Only by
persuading you that IT is you could the ego possibly induce
you to project guilt, and thereby KEEP it in your mind.
Yet consider how strange a solution the egos arrangement
is. You project guilt to get rid of it, but you are actually
merely concealing it. You DO experience guilt feelings, but
you have no idea why. On the contrary, you associate them with
a wierd assortment of ego ideals, which the ego claims you
have failed. Yet you have no idea that you are failing the Son
of God by seeing him as guilty. Believing you are no longer
you, you do not realize that you are failing YOURSELF.
Crucifixion By Guilt
The darkest of your hidden cornerstones holds your belief
in guilt from your awareness. For in that dark and secret
place is the realization that you have betrayed Gods Son by
condemning him to death. You do not even suspect this
murderous but insane idea lies hidden there, for the egos
destructive urge is so intense that nothing short of the
crucifixion of Gods Son can ultimately satisfy it. It does
not know who the Son of God is, because it is blind. Yet let
it perceive guiltlessness anywhere, and it will try to destroy
it, because it is afraid.
Much of the egos strange behavior is directly attributable
to its definition of guilt. To the ego, THE GUILTLESS ARE
GUILTY. Those who do not attack are its enemies, because,
by not valuing its interpretation of salvation, they are in an
excellent position TO LET IT GO. They have approached the
darkest and deepest cornerstone in the egos foundation, and
while the ego can withstand your raising all else to question,
it guards this one secret with its life, for its existence
DOES depend on keeping this secret. So it is this secret that
we must look upon calmly, for the ego cannot protect you
against truth, and in ITS presence the ego is dispelled.
In the calm light of truth, let us recognize that you
believe you HAVE crucified Gods Son. You have not admitted to
this terrible secret because you STILL wish to crucify him
if you could FIND him. Yet the wish has hidden him from you
because it is very fearful, and you are AFRAID to find him.
You have handled this wish to kill YOURSELF by NOT KNOWING who
you are, and identifying with something ELSE. You have
projected guilt blindly and indiscriminately, but you have NOT
uncovered its source. For the ego DOES want to kill you, and
if you identify WITH it you must believe ITS goal is YOURS.
We once said that the crucifixion is the symbol of the ego.
When it was confronted with the REAL guiltlessness of Gods
Son it DID attempt to kill him, and the reason it gave was
that guiltlessness is blasphemous to God. To the ego THE EGO
is god, and guiltlessness MUST be interpreted as the final
guilt which fully justifies murder. You do not yet understand
that all your fear of this course stems ultimately from this
interpretation, but if you will consider your reactions to it,
you will become increasingly convinced that this is so.
This course has explicitly stated that its goal for you is
happiness and peace. Yet you are AFRAID of it. You have been
told again and again that it will make you free, yet you react
as if it is trying to imprison you. Most of the time you
dismiss it, but you do NOT dismiss the EGOS thought system.
You have SEEN its results and you STILL lack faith in it. You
MUST, then, believe that by NOT learning the course you are
PROTECTING yourself. And you do not realize that it is only
your guiltlessness which CAN protect you.
The Atonement has always been interpreted as the release
from guilt, and this is correct if it is understood. Yet even
when I have interpreted it FOR you you have rejected it and
have NOT accepted it for yourself. You have recognized the
futility of the ego and its offerings, but though you do not
want the ego you do not look upon the alternative with
gladness. You are AFRAID of redemption, and you believe it
will kill you. Make no mistake about the depth of your fear.
For you believe that, in the presence of truth, you will turn
on yourself and destroy yourself.
Little children, this is not so. Your guilty secret is
nothing, and if you will but bring it to the light the Light
will dispel it. And then no dark cloud will remain between you
and the remembrance of your Father, for you will remember His
guiltless Son, who did not die because he is immortal. And you
will see that you were redeemed WITH him, and have never been
separated FROM him. In this understanding lies your
remembering, for it is the recognition of love WITHOUT fear.
There will be great joy in Heaven on your home-coming, and the
joy will be YOURS. For the redeemed son of man IS the
guiltless Son of God, and to recognize him IS your redemption.
The Fear of Redemption
You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your
hatred and realize its full extent. You may also think that it
would be easy enough for the Holy Spirit to show it to you and
dispel it WITHOUT the need for you to raise it to awareness
yourself. Yet there is one more complication which you have
interposed between yourself and the Atonement which you do not
yet realize. We have said that no-one will countenance fear if
he RECOGNIZES it. Yet in your disordered state, you are NOT
afraid of fear. You do not like it, but it is not your desire
to attack which REALLY frightens you. You are not seriously
disturbed by your hostility. You keep it hidden because you
are MORE afraid of what it covers.
You could look even upon the egos darkest cornerstone
without fear if you did not believe that, WITHOUT the ego, you
would find within yourself something you fear even more. You
are NOT afraid of crucifixion. Your real terror is of
REDEMPTION. Under the egos dark foundation is the memory of
God, and it is of THIS that you are really afraid. For this
memory would INSTANTLY restore you to your proper place, and
it is this place that you have sought to LEAVE.
Your fear of attack is nothing compared to your fear of
love. You would be willing to look even upon your savage wish
to kill Gods Son if you did not believe that it SAVES you
from love. For this wish CAUSED the separation. You have
protected it because you do not WANT the separation healed,
and you realize that, by REMOVING the dark cloud that obscures
it, your love for your Father would impel you to answer His
call and leap into Heaven. You believe that attack is
salvation to prevent you from THIS. For still deeper than the
egos foundation, and much stronger than it will ever be, is
your intense and burning love of God, and His for you. This is
what you REALLY want to hide.
In honesty, is it not harder for you to say I love than
I hate? You associate love with weakness and hatred with
strength, and your own REAL power seems to you as your real
WEAKNESS. For you could not control your joyous response to
the call of love if you heard it, and the whole world you
think you control WOULD vanish. The Holy Spirit, then, seems
to be attacking your fortress, for you would shut out God, and
He does not will to BE excluded.
You have built your whole insane belief system because you
think you would be helpless in Gods Presence, and you would
SAVE yourself from His Love because you think It would crush
you into nothingness. You are afraid It would sweep you away
from yourself, and make you little. For you believe that
magnitude lies in defiance, and that attack is grandeur. You
think you have made a world which God would destroy; and by
loving Him, which you DO, you would throw this world away,
which you WOULD. Therefore, you have used the world to COVER
your love, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the
egos foundation, the closer you come to the Love that is
hidden there. AND IT IS THIS THAT FRIGHTENS YOU.
You can accept insanity because you made it, but you cannot
accept love because you did NOT. You would rather be slaves of
the crucifixion than Sons of God in redemption. For your
INDIVIDUAL death is more valued than your living oneness, and
what is GIVEN you is not so dear as what YOU made. You are
more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter
where it is not welcome. But hatred can, for it enters of ITS
will and cares not for yours.
The reason you must look upon your delusions and not keep
them hidden is that they do NOT rest on their own foundation.
In concealment they appear to do so, and thus they SEEM to be
self-sustained. This is the fundamental illusion on which they
rest. For BENEATH them, and concealed as long as THEY are
hidden, is the loving mind that THOUGHT it made them in anger.
And the pain in this mind is so apparent, when it is
uncovered, that its need of healing cannot BE denied. Not all
the tricks and games you offer it can heal it, for here is the
REAL crucifixion of Gods Son.
And yet he is NOT crucified. Here is both his pain AND his
healing, for the Holy Spirits vision is merciful and His
remedy is quick. Do not HIDE suffering from His sight, but
bring it gladly to Him. Lay before His eternal sanity ALL your
hurt, and LET Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain
hidden from His light, and search your minds carefully for any
thoughts which you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every
little thought which you have kept to hurt you, and cleanse it
of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.
Beneath all your grandiosity, which you hold so dear, is
your real call for help. For you call for love to your Father
as your Father calls you to Himself. In that place which you
have hidden you will only to unite with the Father, in loving
remembrance of Him. You will find this place of truth as you
see it in your brothers, for though they may deceive
themselves, like you they long for the grandeur that is in
them. And perceiving it you will welcome it, and it will be
YOURS. For grandeur is the RIGHT of Gods Son, and NO
illusions can satisfy him or save him from what he IS. Only
his love is real, and he will be content ONLY with his
reality.
Save him from his illusions that you may accept the
magnitude of your Father in peace and joy. But exempt no-one
from your love, or you will be hiding a dark place in your
mind where the Holy Spirit is not welcome. And you will exempt
YOURSELF from His healing power, for by not offering total
love you will not be healed completely. Healing must be as
complete as fear, for love cannot enter where there is one
spot of fear to mar its welcome.
You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in
your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for
special favor. And God did not give it, for the request was
alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father Who truly
loved His Son. Therefore you made of Him an unloving father,
demanding of Him what only such a father could give. And the
peace of Gods Son was shattered, for he no longer understood
his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he
fear his REAL Father, having attacked his own glorious
equality with Him.
In peace he needed nothing and asked for nothing. In war he
DEMANDED everything and FOUND nothing. For how could the
gentleness of love respond to his demands EXCEPT by departing
in peace and returning to the Father? If the Son did not wish
to remain in peace, he could not remain at all. For a darkened
mind cannot live in the light, and it must seek a place of
darkness where it can believe it is where it is not. God did
not allow this to happen. Yet you DEMANDED that it happen, and
therefore believed that it was so.
To single out is to make alone, and thus MAKE
LONELY. God did not do this to you. Could He set you apart,
KNOWING that your peace lies in His Oneness? He denied you
only your request for pain, for suffering is not of His
creation. Having GIVEN you creation, He could not take it FROM
you. He could but answer your insane request with a sane
answer which would abide with you in your insanity. For His
answer is the reference point BEYOND illusions, from which you
can look back on them and SEE them as insane. But seek THIS
place and you WILL find it, for love is in you and will lead
you there.
Healing and Time
And now the reason why you are afraid of this course should
be apparent. For this is a course on love because it is about
YOU. You have been told that your function in this world is
healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. The ego
teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that
you have no function at all in Heaven. It would thus destroy
you here and bury you here, leaving you no inheritance except
the dust out of which it thinks you were made. As long as it
is reasonably satisfied with you, as its reasoning goes, it
offers you oblivion. When it becomes overtly savage, it offers
you hell.
Yet neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as
Heaven. For your definition of Heaven IS hell and oblivion,
and the REAL Heaven is the greatest threat you think you could
experience. For hell and oblivion are ideas which YOU made up,
and you are bent on demonstrating their reality to establish
YOURS. If THEIR reality is questioned, you believe that YOURS
is. For you believe that ATTACK is your reality, and that your
destruction is the final proof that you were RIGHT.
Under the circumstances, would it not be more DESIRABLE to
have been wrong, even apart from the fact that you WERE wrong?
While it could perhaps be argued that death suggests there WAS
life, no-one would claim that it proves there IS life. Even
the past life which death might indicate could only have been
futile if it must come to this, and NEEDS this to prove that
it was. You question Heaven, but you do not question THIS. You
could heal and be healed if you DID question it. And even
though you know not Heaven, might it not be more desirable
than death? You have been as selective in your questioning as
in your perception. An open mind is more honest than this.
The ego has a very strange notion of time, and it is with
this notion that your questioning might well begin. The ego
invests heavily in the past, and in the end believes that the
past is the ONLY aspect of time that is meaningful. You will
remember that we said its emphasis on guilt enables it to
ensure its continuity by making the future LIKE the past, and
thus avoiding the present. By the notion of PAYING for the
past in the future the past becomes the DETERMINER of the
future, making them continuous WITHOUT an intervening present.
For the ego uses the present ONLY as a brief transition to the
future, in which it brings the past TO the future by
interpreting the present in PAST terms.
NOW has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds
it of past hurts, and it reacts to the present as if it WERE
the past. The ego cannot tolerate RELEASE from the past, and
although the past is no more, the ego tries to preserve its
image by responding AS IF it were present. Thus it dictates
reactions to those you meet now from a PAST reference point,
obscuring their present reality. In effect, if you follow the
egos dictates, you will react to your brothers as though they
were someone ELSE, and this will surely prevent you from
perceiving them as they ARE. And you will receive messages
from them out of your OWN past because, by making it real in
the present, you are forbidding yourself to LET IT GO. You
thus deny yourself the message of release that every brother
offers you NOW.
The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you
must ESCAPE. For they are not real, and have no hold over you
unless you bring them WITH you. They carry the spots of pain
in your minds, directing you to attack in the present in
retaliation for a past that is no more. And this decision is
one of FUTURE pain. Unless you learn that past pain is
delusional, you are choosing a future of illusions and losing
the endless opportunities which you could find for release in
the present. The ego would PRESERVE your nightmares, and
PREVENT you from awakening and understanding that they ARE
past.
Would you RECOGNIZE a holy encounter if you are merely
perceiving it as a meeting with your own past? For you are
meeting no-one, and the SHARING of salvation, which MAKES the
encounter holy, is excluded from your sight. The Holy Spirit
teaches that you always meet YOURSELF, and the encounter is
holy because YOU are. The ego teaches that you always
encounter your past, and because your dreams WERE not holy the
future CANNOT be, and the present is without meaning. It is
evident that the Holy Spirits perception of time is the exact
opposite of the egos. The reason is equally clear, for they
perceive the goal of time as diametrically opposed.
The Holy Spirit interprets times purpose as rendering the
need for it unnecessary. Thus does He regard the function of
time as temporary, serving only His teaching function, which
is temporary by definition. HIS emphasis is therefore on the
only aspect of time which CAN extend to the infinite, for NOW
is the closest approximation of eternity which this world
offers. It is in the REALITY of now, without past OR future,
that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. For
only now is HERE, and IT presents the opportunities for the
holy encounters in which salvation can be found.
The ego, on the other hand, regards the function of time as
one of extending itself IN PLACE of eternity, for, like the
Holy Spirit, the ego interprets the goal of time as its own.
The continuity of past and future, under ITS direction, is the
only purpose the ego perceives in time, and it closes over the
present so that no gap in its OWN continuity can occur. ITS
continuity, then, would KEEP you in time, while the Holy
Spirit would release you FROM it. It is HIS interpretation of
the means of salvation which you must learn to accept, if you
would share His goal of salvation for you.
You, too, will interpret the function of time as you
interpret yours. If you accept your function in the world of
time as healing, you will emphasize ONLY the aspect of time in
which healing can occur. For healing CANNOT be accomplished in
the past, and MUST be accomplished in the present to release
the FUTURE. This interpretation ties the future to the
PRESENT, and extends the present rather than the past. But if
you interpret your function as destruction, you will lose
sight of the present and hold on to the past to ENSURE a
destructive future. And time WILL be as you interpret it, for
of itself it is NOTHING.
The Two Emotions
We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear.
One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered BY
the eternal TO the eternal. In this exchange it is extended,
for it INCREASES as it is given. The other has many forms, for
the content of individual illusions differs greatly. Yet they
have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made
of sights which are NOT seen and sounds which are NOT heard.
They make up a private world which CANNOT be shared. For they
are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no
meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for
only he perceives them.
Each one peoples his world with figures from his individual
past, and it is because of this that private worlds DO differ.
Yet the figures that he sees were NEVER real, for they are
made up only of HIS reactions to his brothers, and do not
include their reactions to HIM. Therefore he does not SEE that
he made them, and that they are not whole. For these figures
have no witnesses, being perceived in one separate mind only.
It is THROUGH these strange and shadowy figures that the
insane relate to their insane world. For they see ONLY those
who remind them of these images, and it is to THEM that they
relate. Thus do they communicate with those who are not there,
and it is THEY who answer them. And no-one hears their answer
save him who called upon them, and he alone believes they
answered him. Projection makes perception and you CANNOT see
beyond it. Again and again have men attacked each other
because they saw in them a shadow figure in their OWN private
world. And thus it is that you MUST attack yourself first, for
what you attack is NOT in others. Its only reality is in your
OWN mind, and by attacking others you are literally attacking
what is NOT THERE.
The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not
recognize that they have condemned THEMSELVES. They do not
wish to die, yet they will not let condemnation GO. And so
they separate into their private worlds, where everything is
disordered, and where what is within appears to be without.
Yet what IS within they do not see, for the REALITY of their
brothers they CANNOT see.
You have but two emotions, yet in your private world you
react to each of them as though it were the OTHER. For love
cannot abide in a world apart, where when it comes it is not
recognized. If you see your own hatred AS your brother, you
are not seeing HIM. Everyone draws nigh unto what he loves,
and recoils from what he fears. And you react with fear to
love, and draw away from it. Yet fear ATTRACTS you, and
believing it IS love, you call it to yourself. Your private
world is filled with the figures of fear you have invited into
it, and all the love your brothers offer you YOU DO NOT SEE.
As you look with open eyes upon your world, it MUST occur to
you that you have withdrawn into insanity.
You see what is not there, and you hear what is soundless.
Your behavioral manifestations of emotions are the OPPOSITE of
what the emotions are. You communicate with no-one, and you
are as isolated from reality as if you were alone in all the
universe. In your madness you overlook reality COMPLETELY, and
you see only your OWN split mind everywhere you look. God
calls you and you do not hear, for you are preoccupied with
your own voice. And the vision of Christ is not in your sight,
for you look upon yourself ALONE.
Little children, would you offer THIS to your Father? For
if you offer it to yourself you ARE offering it to Him. And He
will NOT return it, for it is unworthy of you because it is
unworthy of Him. Yet He WOULD release you from it and set you
free. His sane answer tells you that what you have offered
yourself is not true, but HIS offering to you has never
changed. You who know not what you do CAN learn what insanity
is, and look beyond it. It is given you to learn how to DENY
insanity, and come forth from your private world in peace.
You will see all that you denied in your brothers BECAUSE
you denied it in yourself. For you will love them, and by
drawing nigh unto them you will draw them to yourself,
perceiving them as witnesses to your reality which you share
with God. I am with THEM as I am with YOU, and we will draw
them from their private worlds, for as we are united so would
we unite with them. The Father welcomes all of us in gladness,
and gladness is what WE should offer HIM. For every Son of God
is given you to whom God gave HIMSELF. And it is God Whom you
must offer them, to recognize His gift to YOU.
Vision depends on light, and you cannot see in darkness.
Yet in the darkness, in the private world of sleep, you SEE in
dreams although your eyes are closed. And it is here that what
you see you MADE. But let the darkness go and all you made you
will no longer see, for sight of it depends upon DENYING
vision. Yet from denying vision it does not follow that you
CANNOT see. But this is what denial DOES, for by it you ACCEPT
insanity, believing you can make a private world and rule your
OWN perceptions. Yet for this light MUST be excluded. Dreams
disappear when light has come and you can SEE.
Do not seek vision through YOUR eyes, for you MADE your way
of seeing that you might see in darkness, and in this you are
deceived. BEYOND this darkness, and yet still WITHIN you, is
the vision of Christ, Who looks on all in light. Your vision
comes from fear, as His from love. And He sees FOR you as your
witness to the real world. He is the Holy Spirits
manifestation, looking always on the real world, and calling
forth its witnesses and drawing them unto YOU. For He loves
what He sees within you, and He would EXTEND it. And He will
not return unto the Father until He has extended your
perception even unto Him. And there perception is no more, for
He has returned you to the Father with Him.
You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was
given you. Each is a WAY OF SEEING, and different worlds arise
from their different visions. See through the vision that is
given you, for through Christs vision He beholds Himself. And
seeing what He is, He knows His Father. Beyond your darkest
dreams He sees Gods guiltless Son within you, shining in
perfect radiance which is undimmed by your dreams. And this
YOU will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift
of love to you, given Him of the Father FOR you.
The Holy Spirit is the light in which Christ stands
revealed. And all who would behold Him can see Him, for they
have ASKED for light. Nor will they see Him ALONE, for He is
no more alone than they are. Because they saw the Son they
have risen in Him to the Father. And all this will they
understand because they looked within and saw beyond the
darkness the Christ in them, and RECOGNIZED Him. In the sanity
of His vision they looked upon themselves with love, seeing
themselves as the Holy Spirit sees them. And WITH this vision
of the truth in them came all the beauty of the world to shine
upon them.
Finding the Present
To perceive truly is to be aware of ALL reality through the
awareness of your own. But for this NO illusions can rise to
meet your sight, for ALL reality leaves no room for ANY error.
This means that you perceive a brother only as you see him
NOW. His past has NO reality in the present, and you CANNOT
see it. YOUR past reactions to him are ALSO not there, and if
it is to them that you react NOW, you see but an image of him
which you made and cherish INSTEAD of him. In your questioning
of illusions, ask yourself if it is REALLY sane to perceive
what WAS NOW. If you remember the past as you look upon your
brother, you will be unable to perceive the reality that is
NOW.
You consider it natural to use your past experience as
the reference point from which to JUDGE the present. Yet this
is UNNATURAL because it is delusional. When you have learned
to look upon everyone with NO REFERENCE AT ALL to the past,
either his or yours as you perceived it, you will be able to
learn from what you see NOW. For the past can cast no shadow
to darken the present UNLESS YOU ARE AFRAID OF LIGHT. And only
if you are would you choose to bring this darkness WITH you,
and by holding it in your minds, see it as a dark cloud that
shrouds your brothers and conceals their reality from your
sight.
THIS DARKNESS IS IN YOU. The Christ revealed to you NOW has
no past for He is changeless, and in HIS changelessness lies
YOUR release. For if He is as He was created, there is no
guilt in Him. No cloud of guilt has risen to obscure Him, and
He stands revealed in everyone you meet because you see Him
through HIMSELF. To be born again is to LET THE PAST GO and
look without condemnation upon the present. For the cloud
which obscures Gods Son to you IS the past, and if you would
have it past AND GONE, you must not see it NOW. If you see it
now in your delusions it has NOT gone from you, although it is
not there.
Time can release as well as imprison, depending on whose
interpretation of it you use. Past, present and future are not
continuous unless you FORCE continuity on them. You can
PERCEIVE them as continuous, and make them so for YOU. But do
not be deceived and then believe that this is how it IS, for
to believe that reality is what you would HAVE it be according
to your use for it IS delusional. You would destroy times
continuity by breaking it into past, present and future FOR
YOUR OWN PURPOSES. You would anticipate the future on the
basis of your past experience and plan for it accordingly. Yet
by doing so you are ALIGNING past and future, and not allowing
the miracle, which could intervene BETWEEN them, to free you
to be born again.
The miracle enables you to see your brother WITHOUT his
past, and so perceive HIM as born again. His errors ARE all
past, and by perceiving him without them you are RELEASING
him. And since his past is YOURS, you SHARE in this release.
Let no dark cloud out of YOUR past obscure him from you, for
truth lies ONLY in the present, and you will find it if you
seek it there. You have looked for it where it is NOT, and
therefore have not found it. Learn, then, to seek it where it
IS, and it will dawn on eyes that see. Your past was made in
anger, and if you use it to attack the present you will not
SEE the freedom that the present holds. Judgment and
condemnation are BEHIND you, and unless you bring them WITH
you, you will see that you ARE free of them.
Look lovingly upon the present, for it holds the ONLY
things that are forever true. All healing lies within it
because ITS continuity is real. It extends to all aspects of
consciousness AT THE SAME TIME, and thus enables them to reach
EACH OTHER. The present is before time was, and will be when
time is no more. In it is everything that is eternal, and they
are one. Their continuity is timeless and their communication
is unbroken, for they are not separated by the past. Only the
past CAN separate, and IT is nowhere.
The present offers you your brothers in the light that
would unite you with them and free you FROM the past. Would
you, then, hold the past AGAINST them? For if you do, you are
choosing to remain in the darkness that is not there, and
refusing to accept the light that is offered you. For the
light of perfect vision is freely given as it is freely
received, and can be accepted only WITHOUT LIMIT. In this one,
still dimension of time, which does not change and where there
is no sight of what you were, you look at Christ and call His
witnesses to shine on you BECAUSE YOU CALLED THEM FORTH. And
THEY will not deny the truth in you because you looked for it
in them and FOUND it there.
Now is the time of salvation, for now is the RELEASE from
time. Reach out to all your brothers, and touch them with the
touch of Christ. In timeless union with them is YOUR
continuity, unbroken because it is wholly shared. Gods
guiltless Son is ONLY light. There is no darkness in him
anywhere, for he is whole. Call all your brothers to witness
to his wholeness, as I am calling you to join with me. Every
voice has a part in the song of redemption, the hymn of
gladness and thanksgiving for the light to the Creator of
light. The holy light that shines forth from Gods Son is the
witness that his light is of his Father.
Shine on your brothers in remembrance of your Creator, for
you will remember Him as you call forth the witnesses to His
creation. Those whom you heal bear witness to YOUR healing,
for in their wholeness you will see your own. And as your
hymns of praise and gladness rise to your Creator, He will
return your thanks in His clear answer to your call. For it
can never be that His Son called upon Him and remained
unanswered. His call to you is but your call to Him. And IN
Him you are answered by His peace.
Children of Light, you know not that the light is in you.
Yet you will find it through its witnesses, for having GIVEN
light to them they will RETURN it. Everyone you see in light
brings YOUR light closer to your OWN awareness. Love always
leads to love. The sick, who ask for love, are grateful for
it, and in their joy they shine with holy thanks. And this
they offer you who GAVE them joy. They are your guides to joy,
for having received it of you they would keep it. You have
established them as guides to peace, for you have made it
manifest in them. And SEEING it, its beauty calls YOU home.
There is a light which this world cannot give. Yet YOU can
give it, as it was given you. And as you give it, it shines
forth to call you from the world and follow it. For this light
will attract you as nothing in this world can do. And you will
lay aside the world and find another. This other world is
bright with love which YOU have given it. And here will
everything remind you of your Father and his Holy Son. Light
is unlimited, and spreads across this world in quiet joy. All
those you brought with you will shine on you, and you will
shine on them in gratitude because they brought you here. Your
light will join with theirs in power so compelling that it
will draw the others out of darkness as you look on them.
Awakening unto Christ is following the laws of love of your
free will, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them.
The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and
willingness is signified by GIVING. Those who accept love of
you become your willing witnesses to the love you gave them,
and it is THEY who hold it out to YOU. In sleep you are alone,
and your awareness is narrowed to yourself. And that is why
the nightmares come. You dream of isolation BECAUSE your eyes
are closed. You do not SEE your brothers, and in the darkness
you cannot look upon the light you gave to them.
And yet the laws of love are not suspended because you
sleep. And you have followed them through all your nightmares,
and have been faithful in your giving, for you were NOT alone.
Even in sleep has Christ protected you, ensuring the real
world for you when you wake. In YOUR name He has given FOR
you, and given YOU the gifts He gave. Gods Son is still as
loving as his Father. Continuous WITH his Father, he has no
past apart from Him. So he has never ceased to be his Fathers
witness AND HIS OWN. Although he slept, Christs vision did
not leave him. And so it is that he can call unto himself the
witnesses that teach him that he never slept.
Attainment of the Real World
Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell
yourself,
The real world is not like this. It has no
buildings, and there are no streets where people
walk alone and separate. There are no stores where
people buy an endless list of things they do not
need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night
comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens
and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there
but shines, and shines forever.
The world YOU see must be DENIED, for sight of it is
costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH
WORLDS, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing
and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible
BECAUSE you have denied the other. Both are not true, yet
either one will seem as real to you as the amount to which you
hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same because
their real attraction to you is unequal.
You do not really want the world you see, for it has
disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have
never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere,
and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault
of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it.
Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return
to dust even as you made it. This aching world has not the
power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it
that, and so although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot
find in IT the road that leads away from it into another
world.
Yet the real world has the power to touch you even here
BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to
you. Love ALWAYS answers, being unable to deny a call for
help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it from
every part of this strange world you made but do not want. The
only effort you need make to give this world away in glad
exchange for what you did not make is willingness to learn THE
ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE.
You HAVE been wrong about the world because you have
misjudged YOURSELF. From such a twisted reference point what
COULD you see? All vision starts WITH THE PERCEIVER, who
judges what is true and what is false. And what he judges
false HE DOES NOT SEE. You who would judge reality CANNOT see
it, for whenever judgment enters reality has slipped away. The
out of mind is out of sight because what is denied is there,
but is not RECOGNIZED. Christ is still there, although you
know Him not. His Being does not depend upon your recognition.
He lives within you in the quiet present, and waits for you to
leave the past behind and enter into the world He holds out to
you in love.
No-one in this distracted world but has seen some glimpses
of the other world about him. Yet while he still lays value on
his own, he will DENY the vision of the other world,
maintaining that he loves what he loves not, and following not
the road that love points out. Love leads so gladly! And as
you follow Him, you will rejoice that you have found His
company, and learned of Him the joyful journey home. You wait
but for YOURSELF. To give this sad world over and exchange
your errors for the peace of God is but YOUR will. And Christ
will ALWAYS offer you the Will of God, in recognition that you
share it with Him.
It is Gods Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself,
and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain
as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything. The world
about him shines with love because God placed him in Himself
where pain is not, and love surrounds him without end or flaw.
Disturbance of his peace can never be. In perfect sanity he
looks on love, for it is all about him and within him. He MUST
deny the world of pain the instant he perceives the arms of
love around him. And from this point of safety he looks
quietly about him, and recognizes that the world is one with
him.
The peace of God passeth your understanding ONLY in the
past. Yet here it IS, and you can understand it NOW. God loves
His Son forever, and His Son RETURNS his Fathers Love
forever. The real world is the way that leads you to
remembrance of this one thing that is wholly true and wholly
YOURS. For all else you have lent yourself in time, and it
will fade. But this one thing is ALWAYS yours, being the gift
of God unto His Son. Your ONE reality was given you, and by it
God created you as one with Him.
You will first dream of peace, and then awaken to it. Your
first exchange of what you made for what you want is the
exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these
lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the
world of dreams where ALL perception is. Knowledge needs no
correction. Yet the dreams of love lead UNTO knowledge. In
them you see nothing fearful, and because of this they are the
welcome that you OFFER knowledge. Love waits on welcome, NOT
on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always
was. Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad
response is your awakening to what you have not lost. Praise,
then, the Father for the perfect sanity of His most holy Son.
Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. In
Heaven this is so, for what could you need in eternity? In
YOUR world you DO need things because it is a world of
scarcity in which you find yourself BECAUSE you are lacking.
Yet CAN you find yourself in such a world? Without the Holy
Spirit the answer would be no. Yet because of Him the answer
is a joyous YES! As Mediator between the two worlds, He knows
what you have need of and what will not hurt you. Ownership is
a dangerous concept if it is left to you. The ego wants to
HAVE things for salvation, for possession is its law.
Possession for its OWN sake is the egos fundamental creed, a
basic cornerstone in the churches that it builds unto itself.
And at ITS altar it demands you lay ALL of the things it bids
you get, leaving you no joy in them.
Everything that the ego tells you that you need will hurt
you. For although the ego urges you again and again to GET, it
leaves you nothing, for what you get it will DEMAND of you.
And even from the very hands that grasped it, it will be
wrenched and hurled into the dust. For where the ego sees
salvation it sees SEPARATION, and so you lose whatever you
have gotten in its name. Therefore ask not of yourselves what
you need, for YOU DO NOT KNOW, and your advice unto yourself
WILL hurt you. For what you think you need will merely serve
to tighten up your world AGAINST the light, and render you
unwilling to question the value that this world can really
hold for you.
Only the Holy Spirit KNOWS what you need. For He will give
you all things that do not block the way to light. And what
else COULD you need? In time, He gives you all the things that
you need have, and will renew them as long as you have need of
them. He will take nothing from you as long as you have ANY
need of it. And yet He knows that everything you need is
temporary, and will but last until you step aside from ALL
your needs, and learn that all of them HAVE BEEN fulfilled.
Therefore He has no investment in the things that He supplies
except to make certain that you will not use them on behalf of
lingering in time. He knows that you are not at home there,
and He wills no delay to wait upon your joyous home-coming.
Leave, then, your needs to Him. He will supply them with no
emphasis at all upon them. What comes to you of Him comes
safely, for He will ensure it never can become a dark spot,
hidden in your mind, and kept to hurt you. Under His guidance
you will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is
ever on the journeys end, which is His goal. Gods Son is not
a traveller through OUTER worlds. However holy his perception
may become, no world outside himself holds his inheritance.
Within himself he HAS no needs, for light needs nothing but to
shine in peace, and from itself to let the rays extend in
quiet to infinity.
Whenever you are tempted to undertake a foolish journey
that would lead AWAY from light, remember what you really
want, and say,
The Holy Spirit leads me unto Christ,
and where else would I go?
What need have I but to awake in Him?
Then follow Him in joy, with faith that He will lead you
safely through all dangers to your peace of mind that this
world sets before you. Kneel not before the altars to
sacrifice, and seek not what you will surely lose. Content
yourselves with what you will as surely KEEP, and be not
restless, for you undertake a quiet journey to the peace of
God, where He would have you be in quietness.
In me you have already overcome EVERY temptation that would
hold you back. We walk together on the way to quietness that
is the gift of God. Hold me dear, for what except your
brothers CAN you need? We will restore to you the peace of
mind that we must find TOGETHER. The Holy Spirit will teach
you to awaken unto us and to yourself. This is the only REAL
need to be fulfilled in time. Salvation FROM the world lies
only here. My peace I GIVE you. TAKE it of me in glad exchange
for all the world has offered but to take away. And we will
spread it like a veil of light across the worlds sad face, in
which we hide our brothers FROM the world, and it from them.
We cannot sing redemptions hymn alone. My task is not
completed until I have lifted every voice with mine. And yet
it is NOT mine, for as it is my gift to you, so was it the
Fathers gift to me, given me through His Spirit. The sound of
it will banish sorrow from the mind of Gods most holy Son,
where it cannot abide. Healing in time IS needed, for joy
cannot establish its eternal reign where sorrow dwells. You
dwell not here, but in eternity. You travel but in dreams
while safe at home. Give thanks to every part of you that you
have taught how to REMEMBER you. Thus does the Son of God give
thanks unto his Father for his purity.
CHAPTER 13
FROM PERCEPTION TO KNOWLEDGE
All therapy is release from the past. That is why the Holy
Spirit is the only therapist. He teaches that the past does
not exist, a fact which belongs to the sphere of knowledge,
and which therefore no-one in the world knows. It would indeed
be impossible to BE in the world with this knowledge. For the
mind that knows this unequivocally knows also that it dwells
in eternity, and utilizes no perception at all. It therefore
does not consider where it is, because the concept where
does not mean anything to it. It knows that it is EVERYWHERE,
just as it HAS EVERYTHING, and FOREVER.
The very real difference between perception and knowledge
becomes quite apparent if you consider this: There is nothing
partial about knowledge. Every aspect is whole, and therefore
no aspect is separate. YOU are an aspect of knowledge, being
in the Mind of God, Who KNOWS you. All knowledge must be
yours, for in you IS all knowledge. Perception, at its
loftiest, is never complete. Even the perception of the Holy
Spirit, as perfect as perception can be, is without meaning in
Heaven. Perception can reach everywhere under His guidance,
for the vision of Christ beholds everything in light. Yet no
perception, however holy, will last forever.
The Role of Healing
Perfect perception, then, has many elements in common with
knowledge, making transfer to it possible. Yet the last step
must be taken by God, because the last step in your
redemption, which seems to be in the future, was accomplished
by God in your creation. The separation has not interrupted
it. Creation cannot BE interrupted. The separation is merely a
faulty formulation of reality, with no effect at all. The
miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here.
Aspects of reality can still be seen, and they will replace
aspects of UNreality. Aspects of reality can be seen in
everything and everywhere. Yet only God can gather them
together by crowning them as one with the final gift of
eternity.
Apart from the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit has no
function. He is not separate from either, being in the mind of
both and knowing that Mind is one. He is a Thought of God, and
God has given Him to you because He has no Thoughts He does
not share. His message speaks of timelessness in time, and
that is why Christs vision looks on everything with love. Yet
even Christs vision is not His reality. The golden aspects of
reality which spring to light under His loving gaze are
partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies BEYOND them.
This is the miracle of creation; THAT IT IS ONE FOREVER.
Every miracle you offer to the Son of God is but the true
perception of one aspect of the whole. Though every aspect IS
the whole, you cannot know this until you see that every
aspect is the SAME, perceived in the SAME light and THEREFORE
one. Everyone seen WITHOUT the past thus brings you nearer to
the end of time by bringing healed and healing sight into the
darkness, and enabling the world to see. For light must come
into the darkened world to make Christs vision possible even
here. Help Him to give His gift of light to all who think they
wander in the darkness, and let Him gather them into His quiet
sight that makes them one.
They are all the same; all beautiful and equal in their
holiness. And He will offer them unto His Father as they were
offered unto Him. There is ONE miracle, as there is ONE
reality. And every miracle you do contains them all, as every
aspect of reality you see blends quietly into the One Reality
of God. The only miracle that ever was is Gods most holy Son,
created in the One Reality that is his Father. Christs vision
is His gift to you. His Being is His Fathers gift to Him.
Be you content with healing, for Christs gift you CAN
bestow, and your Fathers gift you CANNOT lose. Offer Christs
gift to everyone and everywhere, for miracles, offered the Son
of God through the Holy Spirit, attune you to reality. The
Holy Spirit knows your part in the redemption, and who are
seeking you and where to find them. Knowledge is far beyond
your individual concern. You who are part of it and all of it
need only realize that it is of the Father, NOT of you. Your
role in the redemption leads you to it by re-establishing its
oneness in your minds.
When you have seen your brothers as yourself you will be
RELEASED to knowledge, having learned to free yourself of Him
Who knows of freedom. Unite with me under the holy banner of
His teaching, and as we grow in strength the power of Gods
Son will move in us, and we will leave no-one untouched and
no-one left alone. And suddenly time will be over, and we will
all unite in the eternity of God the Father. The holy light
you saw outside yourself, in every miracle you offered to your
brothers, will be RETURNED to you. And KNOWING that the light
is IN you, your creations will be there with you, as you are
in your Father.
As miracles in this world join you to your brothers, so do
your creations establish your fatherhood in Heaven. YOU are
the witnesses to the Fatherhood of God, and He has given you
the power to create the witnesses to your fatherhood in
Heaven. The miracle which God created is perfect, as are the
miracles which YOU created in His Name. They need no healing,
nor do you, when you know THEM.
Yet in this world your perfection is unwitnessed. God knows
it but YOU do not, and so you do not share His witness to it.
Nor do you witness unto Him, for reality is witnessed to as
one. God waits your witness to His Son and to Himself. The
miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven and to Him.
They witness to what you do not know, and as they reach the
gates of Heaven God will open them. For never would He leave
His own beloved Son outside them and beyond Himself.
The Shadow of Guilt
Guilt remains the only thing that hides the Father, for
guilt is the attack upon His Son. The guilty ALWAYS condemn,
and having done so they WILL condemn, linking the future to
the past as is the egos law. Fidelity unto this law lets no
light in, for it DEMANDS fidelity to darkness and FORBIDS
awakening. The egos laws are strict, and breaches are
severely punished. Therefore give no obedience to its laws,
for they are laws of punishment. And those who follow them
believe that they are guilty and so they MUST condemn. Between
the future and the past the laws of God must intervene, if you
would free yourselves. Atonement stands between them, like a
lamp that shines so brightly that the chain of darkness in
which you bound yourselves will disappear.
Release from guilt is the egos whole undoing. MAKE NO-ONE
FEARFUL, for his guilt is yours, and by obeying the egos
harsh commandments you bring its condemnation of yourself,
and you will not escape the punishment it offers those who
obey it. The ego rewards fidelity to it with pain, for faith
in it IS pain. And faith can be rewarded only in terms of the
belief in which the faith was placed. Faith MAKES the power of
belief, and where it is invested determines its reward. For
faith is ALWAYS given what is treasured, and what is treasured
IS returned to you.
The world can give you only what you gave it, for being
nothing but your own projection, it HAS no meaning apart from
what you found in it and placed your faith in. Be faithful
unto darkness and you will NOT see, because your faith will be
rewarded as you GAVE it. You will accept your treasure, and if
you place your faith in the past the future WILL be like it.
Whatever you hold as dear you think is YOURS. The power of
your VALUING will make it so.
Atonement brings a re-evaluation of everything you cherish,
for it is the means by which the Holy Spirit can separate the
false and the true, which you have accepted into your minds
WITHOUT DISTINCTION. Therefore, YOU cannot value one without
the other, and guilt has become as true FOR YOU as innocence.
You do not believe the Son of God is guiltless because you see
the past and see HIM not. When you condemn a brother, you are
saying, I who was guilty choose to REMAIN so. You have
denied HIS freedom, and by so doing you have denied the
witness unto YOURS. You could as easily have FREED him from
the past, and lifted from his mind the cloud of guilt that
binds him to it. And in HIS freedom would have been your OWN.
Lay not his guilt upon him, for his guilt lies in his
secret that he thinks that he has done this unto YOU. Would
you, then, teach him that he is RIGHT in his delusion? The
idea that the guiltless Son of God can attack himself and MAKE
himself guilty is insane. In ANY form, in ANYONE, BELIEVE THIS
NOT. For sin and condemnation are the same, and the belief in
one is faith in the other, calling for punishment INSTEAD of
love. NOTHING can justify insanity, and to call for punishment
upon yourself MUST be insane.
See no-one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth
of guiltlessness unto YOURSELF. In every condemnation that you
offer the Son of God lies the conviction of your OWN guilt. If
you would have the Holy Spirit make you free of it, accept His
offer of Atonement for all your brothers. For so you learn
that it is true for YOU. Remember always that it is impossible
to condemn the Son of God IN PART. Those whom you see as
guilty become the witnesses to guilt in YOU, and you will SEE
it there, for it IS there until it is undone. Guilt is ALWAYS
in your own mind, which has condemned ITSELF. Project it not,
for while you do it cannot BE undone. With everyone whom you
release from guilt great is the joy in Heaven, where the
witnesses to your fatherhood rejoice.
Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guilt
within you, you will NOT see the light. And by projecting it
the WORLD seems dark, and shrouded in your guilt. You throw a
dark veil over it, and cannot see it BECAUSE YOU CANNOT LOOK
WITHIN. You are afraid of what you would see there, but it is
NOT there. THE THING YOU FEAR IS GONE. If you would look
within you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and
in peace upon the altar to your Father.
Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is
black with guilt within you, and bids you NOT to look.
Instead, it bids you look upon your brothers AND SEE THE GUILT
IN THEM. Yet this you cannot do without remaining blind. For
those who see their brothers in the dark, and guilty in the
dark in which they shroud them, are too afraid to look upon
the light within. Within you is not what YOU believe is there,
and what you put your faith in.
Within you is the holy sign of perfect faith your Father
has in you. He does not value you as you do. He knows Himself,
and knows the truth in YOU. He knows THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE,
for He knows not of differences. Can YOU see guilt where God
KNOWS there is perfect innocence? You can DENY His knowledge,
but you cannot CHANGE it. Look, then, upon the light He placed
within you, and learn that what you feared was there HAS BEEN
replaced with love.
Release and Restoration
You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the
source of pain where it is not. The doubtful service of
displacement is to hide the REAL source of your guilt, and
KEEP from your awareness the full perception THAT IT IS
INSANE. Displacement always is maintained by the illusion that
the source, from which attention is diverted, must be TRUE.
AND MUST BE FEARFUL, or you would not have displaced the guilt
onto what you believed to be LESS fearful. You are therefore
willing, with little opposition, to look upon all sorts of
sources underneath awareness, provided that they are not
the deeper source to which they bear no real relationship at
all.
Insane ideas HAVE no real relationships, for that is WHY
they are insane. No real relationship can rest on guilt, or
even hold one spot of it to mar its purity. For all
relationships which guilt has touched are used but to avoid
the person AND the guilt. What strange relationships you have
made for this strange purpose! And you forgot that real
relationships are holy, and cannot be used by YOU at all. They
are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which MAKES
them pure. For by pre-empting for your OWN ends what you
should have given to HIM, he cannot use them unto YOUR
release. No-one who would unite in ANY way with ANYONE for his
OWN salvation will find it in that strange relationship. It is
not shared, and so it is not real.
In any union with a brother in which you seek to lay your
guilt upon him, or share it with him, or perceive his own, you
WILL feel guilty. Nor will you find satisfaction and peace
with him because your union with him is NOT real. You will see
guilt in that relationship because you PUT it there. It is
inevitable that those who suffer guilt WILL attempt to
displace it because they DO believe in it. Yet, though they
suffer, they will not look within and let it GO. They cannot
know they love, and cannot understand what loving IS. Their
main concern is to perceive the source of guilt outside
themselves, BEYOND their own control.
When you maintain that you are guilty but the source lies
in the PAST, you are NOT looking inward. The past is not IN
you. Your wierd associations to it have no meaning in the
present. Yet you let them stand between you and your brothers,
with whom you find no REAL relationships at all. Can you
expect to use your brothers as a means to solve the past,
and still to see them as they really are? Salvation is not
found by those who use their brothers to resolve problems
which are not there. You wanted not salvation in the past.
Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to
find salvation NOW?
Determine, then, to be not as you were. Use no relationship
to hold you to the past, but with each one each day be born
again. A minute, even less, will be enough to free you from
the past, and give your mind in peace over to the Atonement.
When everyone is welcome to you as you would have yourself be
welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. For you
will have accepted the Atonement, which shone within you all
the while you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and
see it.
As long as you believe that guilt is justified in ANY way,
in ANYONE, WHATEVER he may do, you will not look within, where
you would ALWAYS find Atonement. The end of guilt will never
come as long as you believe there is a REASON for it. For you
must learn that guilt is ALWAYS totally insane, and HAS no
reason. The Holy Spirit seeks not to dispel reality. If GUILT
were real ATONEMENT would not be. The purpose of Atonement is
to dispel illusions, not to establish them as real and THEN
forgive them.
The Holy Spirit does not keep illusions in your mind to
frighten you, and show them to you fearfully to demonstrate
what He has saved you FROM. What He has saved you from is
GONE. Give no reality to guilt, and see NO reason for it. The
Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do, and has always
done so. He has seen separation, but knows of union. He
teaches healing but He also knows of creation. He would have
you see and teach as He does, and through Him. Yet what He
knows you do not know, though it is yours.
NOW it is given you to heal and teach, to make what will be
NOW. As yet it is NOT now. The Son of God believes that he is
lost in guilt, alone in a dark world where pain is pressing
everywhere upon him from WITHOUT. When he has looked within
and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his
Father loves him. And it will seem incredible that he has ever
thought his Father loved him not, and looked upon him as
condemned. The moment that you realize guilt is INSANE, WHOLLY
unjustified and WHOLLY without reason, you will not fear to
look upon the Atonement and accept it wholly.
You who have been unmerciful unto yourselves do not
remember your Fathers Love. And looking without mercy upon
your brothers, you do not remember how much You love HIM. Yet
it is forever true. In shining peace within you is the perfect
purity in which you were created. Fear not to look upon the
lovely truth in you. Look THROUGH the cloud of guilt that dims
your vision, and look PAST darkness to the holy place where
you will see the light. The altar to your Father is as pure as
He Who raised it to Himself. Nothing can keep from you what
Christ would have you see. His will is like His Fathers, and
He offers mercy to every Child of God, as He would have YOU
do.
RELEASE from guilt as you would BE released. There is no
other way to look within, and see the light of love shining as
steadily and as surely as God Himself has always loved His
Son. AND AS HIS SON LOVES HIM. There is no fear in love, for
love is guiltless. You who have always loved your Father can
have no fear, for ANY reason, to look within and see your
holiness. You cannot BE as you believed you were. Your guilt
is without reason because it is not in the Mind of God, where
YOU are. And this IS reason, which the Holy Spirit would
RESTORE to you. He would remove only illusions. All else He
would have you see. And in Christs vision He would show you
the perfect purity that is forever within Gods Son.
You cannot enter into REAL relationships with any of Gods
Sons unless you love them all and EQUALLY. Love is not
special. If you single out PART of the Sonship for your love,
you are imposing guilt on ALL your relationships, and making
them unreal. You can love ONLY as God loves. Seek not to love
unlike Him, for there IS no love apart from His. Until you
recognize that this is true you will have no idea what love is
like. No-one who condemns a brother can see himself as
guiltless in the peace of God. If he IS guiltless and in peace
and sees it not, he IS delusional, and has not looked upon
himself. To him I say,
Behold the Son of God and look upon his purity and
be still. In quiet look upon his holiness, and offer
thanks unto his Father that no guilt has ever
touched him.
No illusion that you have ever held against him has touched
his innocence in any way. His shining purity, wholly untouched
by guilt and wholly loving, is bright within you. Let us look
upon him together and love him. For in our love of him is your
guiltlessness. But look upon yourself, and gladness and
appreciation for what you see will banish guilt forever. I
thank You, Father, for the purity of Your most holy Son, whom
You have created guiltless forever.
Like you my faith and my belief are centered on what I
treasure. The difference is that I love ONLY what God loves
with me, and because of this, I treasure you beyond the value
that you set on yourselves, even unto the worth that God has
placed upon you. I love all that He created, and all my faith
and my belief I offer unto it. My faith in you is strong as
all the love I give my Father. My trust in you is without
limit, and without the fear that you will hear me not. I thank
the Father for your loveliness, and for the many gifts that
you will let me offer to the Kingdom in honor of its wholeness
which is of God.
Praise be unto you who make the Father One with His Own
Son. Alone we are all lowly, but together we shine with
brightness so intense that none of us alone can even think on
it. Before the glorious radiance of the Kingdom guilt melts
away, and transformed into kindness, will never more be what
it was. Every reaction that you experience will be so purified
that it is fitting as a hymn of praise unto your Father. See
only praise of Him in what He has created, for He will never
cease His praise of YOU. United in this praise we stand before
the gates of Heaven, where we will surely enter in our
blamelessness. God loves you. Could I, then, lack faith in you
and love Him perfectly?
Forgetfulness and sleep and even death become the egos
best advice for how to deal with the perceived and harsh
intrusion of guilt on peace. Yet no-one sees himself in
conflict, and ravaged by a cruel war, unless he believes that
BOTH opponents in the war are real. Believing this he must
escape, for such a war would surely end his peace of mind, and
so destroy him. Yet if he could but realize the war is between
forces that are real and UNREAL powers, he could look upon
himself and SEE his freedom. No-one finds himself ravaged and
torn in endless battles which he HIMSELF perceives as wholly
without meaning.
God would not have His Son embattled, and so His Sons
imagined enemy, which he made, is TOTALLY unreal. You are
but trying to escape a bitter war from which you HAVE escaped.
The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom rising
unto Heaven. Gladness and joy belong to God for your release
because you made it not. Yet as you made not freedom, so you
made not a war that could ENDANGER freedom. Nothing
destructive ever was or will be. The war, the guilt, the past
are gone as one into the unreality from which they came.
The Guarantee of Heaven
When we are all united in Heaven, you will value NOTHING
that you value here. For nothing that you value here you value
wholly, and so you do not value it at all. Value is where God
placed it, and the value of what God esteems cannot BE judged,
for it has been ESTABLISHED. It is WHOLLY of value. It can
merely be appreciated or not. To value it partially is not to
KNOW its value. In Heaven is everything God valued, and
nothing else. Heaven is perfectly unambiguous. Everything is
clear and bright, and calls forth ONE response. There is no
darkness, and there is no contrast. There is no variation.
There is no interruption. There is a sense of peace so deep
that no dream in this world has ever brought even a dim
imagining of what it is.
Nothing in this world can give this peace, for nothing in
this world is wholly shared. Perfect perception can merely
show you what is CAPABLE of being wholly shared. It can also
show you the RESULTS of sharing, while you still remember the
results of NOT sharing. The Holy Spirit points quietly to the
contrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the
difference for you, allowing Him to demonstrate which MUST be
true. He has perfect faith in your final judgment because He
knows that He will make it FOR you. To doubt this would be to
doubt that His mission will be fulfilled. How is this
possible, when His mission is of God?
You whose minds are darkened by doubt and guilt, remember
this: God gave the Holy Spirit to you, and gave Him the
mission to remove all doubt and every trace of guilt that His
dear Son has laid upon himself. It is IMPOSSIBLE that this
mission fail. Nothing can prevent what God would have
accomplished from accomplishment. Whatever your reactions to
the Holy Spirits Voice may be, whatever voice you choose to
listen to, whatever strange thoughts may occur to you, Gods
Will IS done. You WILL find the peace in which He has
established you because He does not change His Mind. He is
invariable as the peace in which you dwell, and of which the
Holy Spirit reminds you.
You will not remember change and shift in Heaven. You have
need of contrast only here. Contrast and differences are
necessary teaching aids, for by them you learn what to avoid
and what to seek. When you have learned this you will find the
answer that makes the need for ANY differences disappear.
Truth comes of its own will unto its own. When you have
learned that you BELONG to truth, it will flow lightly over
you without a difference of any kind. For you will need no
contrast to help you realize that this is what you want, and
ONLY this. Fear not the Holy Spirit will fail in what your
Father has given Him to do. The Will of God can fail in
NOTHING.
Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be
sufficient: God wills you be in Heaven, and nothing can keep
YOU from it or IT from you. Your wildest misperceptions, your
wierd imaginings, your blackest nightmares all mean nothing.
They will not prevail against the peace God wills for you. The
Holy Spirit will restore your sanity because insanity is NOT
the Will of God. If that suffices Him, it is enough for you.
You will not keep what God would have removed because it
breaks communication with you with whom He would communicate.
His voice WILL be heard.
The communication link which God Himself placed within you,
joining your minds with His, CANNOT be broken. You may believe
you WANT it broken, and this belief DOES interfere with the
deep peace in which the sweet and constant communication which
God would share with you is known. Yet His channels of
reaching out cannot be wholly closed and separated from Him.
Peace will be yours because His peace still flows to you from
Him Whose Will IS peace. You have it NOW. The Holy Spirit will
teach you how to USE it, and by projecting it to learn that it
is in you.
God willed you Heaven, and will ALWAYS will you nothing
else. The Holy Spirit knows ONLY of His Will. There is no
chance that Heaven will not be yours, for God is sure, and
what He wills is sure as He is. You will learn salvation
because you will learn HOW TO SAVE. It will not be possible to
exempt yourself from what the Holy Spirit wills to teach you.
Salvation is as sure as God. His certainty suffices. Learn
that even the darkest nightmare that disturbed the mind of
Gods sleeping Son holds no power over him. He WILL learn the
lesson of awaking. God watches over him and light surrounds
him.
Can Gods Son lose himself in dreams when God has placed
WITHIN him the glad call to waken and be glad? He cannot
separate HIMSELF from what is IN him. His sleep will not
withstand the call to wake. The mission of redemption will be
fulfilled as surely as the creation will remain unchanged
throughout eternity. You do not have to know that Heaven is
yours to make it so. It IS so. Yet the Will of God must be
accepted as YOUR will, to know it.
The Holy Spirit cannot fail to undo FOR you everything you
have learned that teaches you what is not true must be
reconciled with truth. This is the reconciliation which the
ego would substitute for your reconciliation unto sanity and
unto peace. The Holy Spirit has a very different kind of
reconciliation in His Mind for you, and one which He WILL
effect as surely as the ego will NOT effect what it attempts.
Failure is of the ego, NOT of God. From Him you CANNOT
wander, and there is no possibility that the plan the Holy
Spirit offers to everyone, for the salvation OF everyone, will
not be perfectly accomplished. You WILL be released, and you
will not remember anything you made that was not created FOR
you and BY you in return. For how can you remember what was
NEVER true, or NOT remember what has always been? It is this
reconciliation with truth, and ONLY truth, in which the peace
of Heaven lies.
The Testimony of Miracles
Yes, you are blessed indeed. Yet in this world you do not
know it. But you have the means for learning it and seeing it
quite clearly. The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily and as
well as does the ego, except that His conclusions are NOT
insane. They take a direction exactly opposite, pointing as
clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death.
We have followed much of the egos logic, and have seen its
logical conclusions. And having seen them, we have realized
that they can not be seen but in illusions, for there alone
their seeming clearness SEEMS to be clearly seen. Let us now
turn away from them, and follow the simple logic by which the
Holy Spirit teaches you the simple conclusions that speak for
truth, and ONLY truth.
If you are blessed and do not know it, you need to LEARN it
must be so. The knowledge is not taught, but its CONDITIONS
must be acquired, for it is they that have been thrown away.
You CAN learn to bless, and CANNOT give what you have not. If,
then, you OFFER blessing, it MUST have come first to yourself.
And you must also have ACCEPTED it as yours, for how else
could you give it away?
That is why your miracles offer YOU the testimony that you
are blessed. If what you offer IS complete forgiveness, you
MUST have let guilt go, accepting the Atonement for yourself
and learning you are guiltless. How could you learn what has
been done for you, but which you do not know, unless you do
what you would HAVE to do if it HAD been done unto you?
INdirect proof of truth is needed in a world made of denial
and without direction. You will perceive the need for this if
you will realize that to deny is the decision NOT to know. The
logic of the world MUST therefore lead to nothing, for its
GOAL is nothing.
If you decide to have and give and BE nothing except a
dream, you MUST direct your thoughts unto oblivion. And if you
have and give and are EVERYTHING, and all this has been
DENIED, your thought system is closed off, and wholly
separated from the truth. This IS an insane world, and do not
underestimate the actual extent of its insanity. There is no
area of your perception that it has not touched, and your
dream IS sacred to you. That is why God placed the Holy Spirit
IN you, where you placed the dream.
Seeing is always OUTWARD. Were your thoughts wholly of YOU,
the thought system which you made would be forever dark. The
thoughts which the mind of Gods Son projects have all the
power that he gives to them. The thoughts he shares with God
are BEYOND his belief, but those he made ARE his beliefs. And
it is THESE, and NOT the truth, that he has chosen to defend
and love. They will not be taken from him. But they can be
GIVEN UP by him, for the Source of their undoing is IN him.
There is nothing IN the world to teach him that the logic of
the world is totally insane, and leads to nothing. Yet in him
who made this insane logic there is One Who KNOWS it leads to
nothing, for He knows everything.
Any direction which will lead you where the Holy Spirit
leads you not goes nowhere. Anything you deny which He knows
to be true you have denied YOURSELF, and He must therefore
teach you NOT to deny it. Undoing IS indirect, as doing is.
You were created only to CREATE, neither to see NOR do. These
are but indirect expressions of the will to live, which has
been blocked by the capricious and unholy whim of death and
murder that your Father shared not with you. You have set
yourselves the task of sharing what can not BE shared. And
while you think it possible to LEARN to do this, you will not
believe all that IS possible to learn to do.
The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching by
showing you what you can NEVER learn. His MESSAGE is not
indirect, but He must introduce the simple truth into a
thought system which has become so twisted and so complex that
you cannot SEE that it means nothing. HE merely looks at its
foundation and dismisses it. But YOU who cannot undo what you
have made cannot see THROUGH it. It deceives you because you
chose to deceive yourselves. Those who choose to BE deceived
will merely attack direct approaches, which would seem but to
encroach upon deception and strike at it.
The Happy Learner
The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission
can be happily accomplished. You who are steadfastly devoted
to misery must first recognize that you ARE miserable and NOT
happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for
you believe that misery IS happiness. This has so confused you
that you have undertaken to learn to do what you can NEVER do,
believing that UNLESS you learn it, you will not be happy. You
do not realize that the foundation on which this most peculiar
learning goal depends means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It DOES make
sense to you.
Have faith in nothing, and you will FIND the treasure
that you sought. Yet you will add another burden to your mind,
ALREADY burdened or you would not have sought another. You
will believe that nothing is OF VALUE, and WILL value it. A
little piece of glass, a speck of dust, a body or a war are
one to you. For if you value ONE thing made of nothing, you
HAVE believed that nothing can be precious, and that you can
learn how to make the untrue TRUE.
The Holy Spirit, SEEING where you are but KNOWING you are
elsewhere, begins His lesson in simplicity with the
fundamental teaching that TRUTH IS TRUE. This is the hardest
lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the ONLY one.
Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds. Consider all
the distortions you have made of nothing; all the strange
forms and feelings and actions and reactions that you have
woven out of it. Nothing is so alien to you as the simple
truth, and nothing are you less inclined to listen to. The
contrast between what is true and what is not is PERFECTLY
apparent, yet you do not see it.
The simple and the obvious are not apparent to those who
would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they
are kings with golden crowns because of them. All this the
Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that all this is not
true. To these unhappy learners who would teach themselves
nothing and delude themselves into believing that it is NOT
nothing, the Holy Spirit says, with steadfast quietness:
The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing
else is real, and everything beside it is not there.
Let Me make the one distinction for you which you
cannot make but need to LEARN. Your faith in nothing
IS deceiving you. Offer your faith to Me, and I will
place it gently in the holy place where it belongs.
You will find NO deception there, but only the
simple truth. And you will love it because you will
UNDERSTAND it.
Like you, the Holy Spirit did not MAKE truth. Like God, He
KNOWS it to be true. He brings the light of truth into the
darkness, and LETS it shine on you. And as it shines, your
brothers see it, and realizing that this light is not what you
have made, they see in you more than YOU see. They will be
happy learners of the lesson which this light brings to them
because it teaches them RELEASE from nothing and from all the
works of nothing. The heavy chains which seem to bind them
unto despair they do not see as nothing until you bring the
light to them. And THEN they see the chains have disappeared,
and so they MUST have been nothing. And YOU will see it with
them. BECAUSE you taught them gladness and release, they will
become YOUR teachers in release and gladness.
When you teach anyone that truth is true, you learn it WITH
him. And so you learn that what seemed hardest was the
easiest. Learn to be happy learners. You will NEVER learn how
to make nothing everything. Yet see that this HAS been your
goal, and RECOGNIZE how foolish it has been. Be glad it is
undone, for when you look at it in simple honesty, it IS
undone. We said before, Be not content with nothing, for
you HAVE believed that nothing could content you. IT IS NOT
SO.
If you would be a happy learner, you must give EVERYTHING
that you have learned over to the Holy Spirit to be UNLEARNED
for you. And then begin to learn the joyous lessons that come
quickly on the firm foundation that truth is true. For what is
builded there IS true, and BUILT on truth. The universe of
learning will open up before you in all its gracious
simplicity. With truth before you, you will not look back.
The happy learner meets the conditions of learning here, as
he also meets the conditions of knowledge in the Kingdom. All
this lies in the Holy Spirits plan to free you from the past,
and open up the way to freedom for you. For truth IS true.
What else could ever be, or ever was? This simple lesson holds
the key to the dark door which you believe is locked forever.
You MADE this door of nothing, and behind it IS nothing. The
key is only the light which shines away the shapes and forms
and fears of nothing. Accept this key to freedom from the
hands of Christ Who gives it to you, that you may join Him in
the holy task of bringing light to darkness. For, like your
brothers, you do not realize the light has come, and FREED you
from the sleep of darkness.
Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them
how to be FREE of darkness. The light in you will waken them,
and they will not leave YOU asleep. The vision of Christ is
given the very instant that it is perceived. Where everything
is clear it is all holy. The quietness of its simplicity is so
compelling that you will realize it is IMPOSSIBLE to deny the
simple truth. For there IS nothing else. God is everywhere,
and His Son is in Him with everything. Can he sing the dirge
of sorrow when THIS is true?
The Decision for Guiltlessness
Learning will be commensurate with motivation, and the
interference in your motivation for learning is exactly the
same as that which interferes with ALL your thinking. The
happy learner cannot FEEL GUILTY about learning. This is so
essential to learning that it should never be forgotten. The
guiltless learner learns so easily because his thoughts are
free. Yet this entails the recognition that guilt is
INTERFERENCE, NOT salvation, and serves no useful function at
all.
You are accustomed to using guiltlessness merely to offset
the pain of guilt, and do not look upon it as having value IN
ITSELF. You believe that guilt and guiltlessness are BOTH of
value, each representing an escape from what the other does
not offer you. You do not want either alone, for without both
you do not see yourselves as whole and therefore happy. Yet
you are whole ONLY in your guiltlessness, and only in your
guiltlessness CAN you be happy. There IS no conflict here. To
wish for guilt in ANY way, in ANY form, will lose appreciation
of the value of your guiltlessness, and push it from your
sight.
There is no compromise that you can make with guilt, and
escape the pain which ONLY guiltlessness allays. Learning is
living here, as creating is Being in Heaven. Whenever the pain
of guilt SEEMS to attract you, remember that, if you yield to
it, you are deciding AGAINST your happiness, and will not
learn HOW to be happy. Say, therefore, to yourself, gently,
but with the conviction born of the love of God and of His
Son,
What I experience I will make manifest.
If I am guiltless I have nothing to fear.
I choose to testify to my ACCEPTANCE of the
Atonement, NOT for its rejection.
I would accept my guiltlessness by making it
manifest and SHARING it.
Let me bring peace to Gods Son from his Father.
Each day, each hour and minute, even every second, you are
deciding between the crucifixion and the resurrection; between
the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego is the choice for guilt;
the Holy Spirit the decision for guiltlessness. The power of
decision is all that is yours. What you can decide BETWEEN is
fixed, because there are no alternatives except truth and
illusion. And there is no overlap between them, because they
are opposites which CANNOT be reconciled and CANNOT both be
true. You are guilty OR guiltless, bound OR free, happy OR
unhappy.
The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness,
freedom and joy. It is not a cause, but an EFFECT. It is the
natural result of choosing right, attesting to your happiness
that comes from choosing to be free of guilt. Everyone you
offer healing to returns it. Everyone you attack keeps it and
cherishes it by holding it against you. Whether he does this
or does it not will make no difference; you will THINK he
does. It is impossible to offer what you do not want without
this penalty. The cost of giving IS receiving. Either it is a
penalty from which you suffer, or the happy purchase of a
treasure to hold dear.
No penalty is ever asked of Gods Son except BY himself and
OF himself. Every chance given him to heal is another
opportunity to replace darkness with light and fear with love.
If he refuses it, he binds himself to darkness because he did
not choose to free his brother, and enter light with him. By
GIVING power to nothing, he threw away the joyous opportunity
to learn that nothing HAS no power. And by NOT dispelling
darkness he became afraid of darkness AND of light. The joy of
learning that darkness has no power over the Son of God is the
happy lesson the Holy Spirit teaches, and would have YOU teach
with Him. It is HIS joy to teach it, as it will be YOURS.
The way to teach this simple lesson is merely this:
Guiltlessness IS invulnerability. Therefore, make your
invulnerability manifest to everyone, and teach him that,
WHATEVER he may try to do to you, your perfect freedom from
the belief that you can be harmed shows him HE is guiltless.
He can do NOTHING that can hurt you, and by refusing to allow
him to THINK he can, you teach him that the Atonement, which
you have accepted for YOURSELF, is also HIS. There IS nothing
to forgive. No-one can hurt the Son of God. His guilt is
wholly without cause, and being without cause CANNOT exist.
God is the ONLY Cause, and guilt is not of Him. Teach no-
one he has hurt you, for if you do, you teach yourself that
what is not of God HAS power over you. THE CAUSELESS CANNOT
BE. Do not attest to it, and do not foster belief in it in any
mind. Remember always that MIND is one and CAUSE is one. You
will learn communication with this oneness ONLY when you learn
to DENY the causeless, and accept the Cause of God as YOURS.
The power that God has given to His Son IS his, and nothing
else can His Son see or choose to look upon without imposing
on himself the penalty of guilt IN PLACE of all the happy
teaching the Holy Spirit would gladly offer him.
Whenever you decide to make decisions for yourself, you are
thinking destructively, and the decision WILL be wrong. It
will hurt you because of the concept of decision which led to
it. It is not true that you can make decisions BY yourself or
FOR yourself alone. No thought of Gods Son CAN be separate or
isolated in its effects. Every decision is made for the WHOLE
Sonship, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation
larger than anything you ever dreamed of. Those who accept the
Atonement ARE invulnerable. But those who believe they are
guilty WILL respond to guilt, because they think it is
salvation, and will not refuse to see it and side with it. And
they will fail to understand the simple fact that what they do
not want MUST hurt them.
All this arises because they do not believe that what they
want is GOOD. Yet will was given them BECAUSE it is holy, and
will bring to them ALL that they need, coming as naturally as
peace that knows no limits. There is nothing their wills will
not provide that offers them ANYTHING of value. Yet because
they do not understand their will, the Holy Spirit quietly
understands it FOR them, and GIVES them what they will without
effort, strain, or the impossible burden of deciding what they
want and need alone.
It will never happen that you will have to make decisions
for yourself. You are not bereft of help, and Help that KNOWS
the answer. Would you be content with little, which is all
that you alone can offer yourself, when He Who gives you
everything will simply OFFER it to you? He will never ask what
you have done to make you worthy of the gift of God. Ask it
not therefore of yourselves. Instead, accept His answer, for
He KNOWS that you are worthy of everything God wills for you.
Do not try to escape the gift of God which He so freely and so
gladly offers you. He offers you but what God gave Him FOR
you. You need not decide whether or not you are deserving of
it. God knows you ARE.
Would you deny the truth of Gods decision, and place your
pitiful appraisal of yourself in place of His calm and
unswerving value of His Son? NOTHING can shake Gods
conviction of the perfect purity of everything that He
created, for it IS wholly pure. Do not decide against it, for
being of Him it MUST be true. Peace abides in every mind that
quietly accepts the plan which God has set for his Atonement,
relinquishing his OWN. You know not of salvation, for you do
not understand it. Make no decisions about what it is or where
it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit everything, and leave ALL
decisions to His gentle counsel.
The One Who knows the plan of God which God would have you
follow can teach you what it IS. Only HIS wisdom is capable of
guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone
but signifies that you would define what salvation IS, and
what you would be saved FROM. The Holy Spirit knows that ALL
salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other enemy,
and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son
of God the Holy Spirit is your ONLY friend. He is the strong
protector of your innocence which sets you free. And it is HIS
decision to undo everything that would obscure your innocence
from your unclouded mind.
Let Him, therefore, be the ONLY Guide that you would follow
to salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it.
WITH Him you will not fail to learn what God wills for you IS
your will. WITHOUT His guidance you will think you know alone,
and will decide AGAINST your peace as surely as you made the
wrong decision in ever thinking that salvation lay in you
alone. Salvation is of Him to Whom God gave it for you. He has
not forgotten it. Forget Him not, and He will make every
decision for you, for your salvation and the peace of God in
you.
Seek not to appraise the worth of Gods Son whom He created
holy, for to do so is to evaluate his Father, and judge
AGAINST Him. And you WILL feel guilty for this imagined crime,
which no-one in this world or Heaven could possibly commit.
Gods Spirit teaches only that the sin of self-replacement
on the throne of God is NOT a source of guilt. What cannot
happen can have NO effects to fear. Be quiet in your faith in
Him Who loves you and would lead you out of insanity. Madness
may be your choice, but NOT your reality. Never forget the
Love of God, Who HAS remembered you. For it is quite
impossible that He could ever let His Son drop from His Loving
Mind wherein he was created, and where his abode was fixed in
perfect peace forever.
Say to the Holy Spirit only, Decide for me, and it is
done. For His decisions are reflections of what God KNOWS
about you, and in this light error of ANY kind becomes
impossible. Why would you struggle so frantically to
anticipate all that you CANNOT know when all knowledge lies
behind every decision which the Holy Spirit makes FOR you?
Learn of His wisdom and His love, and teach His answer to
everyone who struggles in the dark. For you decide for them
AND for yourself.
How gracious is it to decide all things through Him Whose
equal love is given equally to all alike! He leaves you no-one
OUTSIDE yourself, alone WITHOUT you. And so He gives you what
is yours because your Father would have you share it with Him.
In everything be led by Him, and do not reconsider. Trust Him
to answer quickly, surely, and with love for everyone who will
be touched in any way by the decision. And everyone WILL be.
Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for
deciding what can bring ONLY good to everyone? Would you KNOW
this?
You taught yourselves the most unnatural habit of NOT
communicating with your Creator. Yet you remain in close
communication with Him, and with everything that is within
Him, as it is within yourself. UNLEARN isolation through His
loving guidance, and learn of all the happy communication that
you have thrown away but could not lose.
Whenever you are in doubt what you should do, think of His
Presence in you, and tell yourself this, and ONLY this:
He leadeth me, and knows the way, which I know
not.
Yet He will never KEEP from me what He would have me
LEARN.
And so I trust Him to communicate to me all that He
knows FOR me.
Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your
guiltlessness which is ALREADY there.
The Way of Salvation
When you accept a brothers guiltlessness, you will see the
Atonement in him. For by proclaiming it in him you make it
YOURS, and you WILL see what you sought. You will not see the
symbol of your brothers guiltlessness shining within him
while you still believe it is not there. HIS guiltlessness is
YOUR Atonement. Grant it to him, and you will see the truth of
what you have acknowledged. Yet truth is offered FIRST to be
received, even as God gave it first to His Son. The first in
time means nothing, but the First in eternity is God the
Father, Who is both First and One. Beyond the First there is
no other, for there is no order, no second or third, and
nothing BUT the First.
You who belong to the First Cause, created by Him like unto
Himself and part of Him, are more than merely guiltless. The
state of guiltlessness is only the condition in which what is
not there has been removed from the disordered mind that
thought it WAS. This state, and only this, must YOU attain
with God beside you. For until you do, you will still think
that you are separate from Him. You can feel His Presence next
to you, but CANNOT know that you are one with Him. This need
not be taught. Learning applies only to the condition in which
it happens OF ITSELF.
When you have let all that obscured the truth in your most
holy mind be undone for you and stand in grace before your
Father, He will give Himself to you as He has always done.
Giving Himself is all He knows, and so it is all knowledge.
For what He knows not cannot be, and therefore cannot be
given. Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been
accomplished. Ask, rather, to learn how to FORGIVE, and
restore what always was to your unforgiving mind. Atonement
becomes real and visible to them that USE it. On earth this is
your only function, and you must learn that it is all you WANT
to learn.
You WILL feel guilty till you learn this. For, in the end,
whatever form it takes, your guilt arises from your failure to
fulfill your function in Gods Mind with all of YOURS. Can you
escape this guilt by failing to fulfill your function here?
You need not understand creation to do what must be done
before that knowledge would be meaningful to you. God breaks
no barriers; neither did He MAKE them. When YOU release them
they are gone. God will not fail, nor ever has in anything.
Decide that God is right and YOU are wrong about yourself.
He created you out of Himself, but still within Him. He KNOWS
what you are. Remember that there is no second to Him. There
cannot, therefore, be anyone without His Holiness, nor anyone
unworthy of His perfect Love. Fail not in your function of
loving in a loveless place made out of darkness and deceit,
for thus are darkness and deceit undone. Fail not YOURSELF,
but instead, offer to God AND YOU His blameless Son. For this
small gift of appreciation for His Love, God will Himself
exchange your gift for His.
Before you make ANY decisions for yourself, remember that
you have decided AGAINST your function in Heaven, and consider
carefully whether you WANT to make decisions here. Your
function here is only to decide AGAINST deciding what you
want, in recognition that you do not KNOW. How, then, can you
decide what you should do? Leave all decisions to the One Who
speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it. So will
He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon
yourself by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him
guilt instead of love. Give up this frantic and insane
attempt, which cheats you of the joy of living with your God
and Father, and awaking gladly to His Love and Holiness which
join together as the truth in you, making you One with Him.
When you have learned how to decide WITH God, all decisions
become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort,
and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried
along a quiet path in summer. Only your own volition seems to
make deciding hard. The Holy Spirit will not delay at all in
answering your EVERY question what to do. He KNOWS. And He
will TELL you and then do it FOR you. You who are tired might
consider whether this is not more restful than sleep. For you
can bring your guilt into sleeping, but not into this.
CHAPTER 14
BRINGING ILLUSIONS TO TRUTH
Unless you are guiltless you cannot know God, Whose Will is
that you know Him. Therefore, you MUST be guiltless. Yet if
you do not accept the necessary conditions for knowing Him you
have denied Him, and do not recognize Him, though He is all
around you. He cannot be known without His Son, whose
guiltlessness is the condition for knowing Him. Accepting His
Son as guilty is denial of the Father so complete that
knowledge is swept away from recognition in the very mind
where God Himself has placed it. If you would but listen, and
learn how impossible this is! Do not endow Him with attributes
You understand. You made Him not and anything you understand
is not of Him.
Your task is not to make reality. It is here without your
making, but not without YOU. You who have thrown your selves
away and valued God so little, hear me speak for Him and for
yourselves. You cannot understand how much your Father loves
you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world
to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with
which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt, apart
from Him, that resembles it ever so faintly. You cannot even
give a blessing in perfect gentleness. Would you know of One
Who gives forever, and Who knows of nothing EXCEPT giving?
The Children of Heaven live in the light of the blessing of
their Father, because they KNOW that they are sinless. The
Atonement was established as the means of restoring
guiltlessness to the mind which has denied it, and thus denied
Heaven to Itself. Atonement teaches you the true condition of
the Son of God. It does not teach you what you are, or what
your Father is. The Holy Spirit, Who remembers this for you,
merely teaches you how to remove the blocks that stand between
you and what you know. His memory is YOURS. If you remember
what YOU have made, you are remembering nothing. Remembrance
of reality is in Him, and THEREFORE in you.
Guilt and Guiltlessness
The guiltless and the guilty are totally incapable of
understanding one another. Each perceives the other as like
himself, making them unable to communicate because each sees
the other UNLIKE the way he sees HIMSELF. God can communicate
ONLY to the Holy Spirit in your mind because only He shares
the knowledge of what you are with God. And only the Holy
Spirit can ANSWER God for you, for only He knows what God IS.
Everything else that you have placed within your mind CANNOT
exist, for what is not in communication with the Mind of God
has never been. Communication with God is life. Nothing
without it IS at all.
The only part of your mind that has reality is the part
which links you still with God. Would you have ALL of it
transformed into a radiant message of Gods Love, to share
with all the lonely ones who denied Him with you? GOD MAKES
THIS POSSIBLE. Would you deny His yearning to be known? You
yearn for Him as He for you. This is forever changeless.
Accept, then, the immutable. Leave the world of death behind,
and return quietly to Heaven. There is NOTHING of value here,
and EVERYTHING of value there. Listen to the Holy Spirit, and
to God through Him. He speaks of you to YOU. There IS no guilt
in you, for God is blessed in His Son as the Son is blessed in
Him.
Each one of you has a special part to play in the
Atonement, but the message given to each to share is always
the same; GODS SON IS GUILTLESS. Each one teaches the message
differently, and learns it differently. Yet until he teaches
it and learns it, he will suffer the pain of dim awareness
that his true function remains unfulfilled in him. The burden
of guilt is heavy, but God would not have you bound by it. His
plan for your awaking is as perfect as yours is fallible. You
know not what you do, but He Who knows is with you. His
gentleness is yours, and all the love you share with God He
holds in trust for you. He would teach you nothing except how
to be happy.
Blessed Son of a wholly blessing Father, joy was created
for YOU. Who can condemn whom God has blessed? There is
nothing in the Mind of God that does not share his shining
innocence. Creation is the natural extension of perfect
purity. Your only calling here is to devote yourself, with
active willingness, to the denial of guilt in ALL its forms.
To accuse is NOT TO UNDERSTAND. The happy learners of the
Atonement become the teachers of the innocence that is the
right of all that God created. Deny them not what is their
due, for you will not withhold it from them alone.
The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of Gods Son,
given him in his creation. Do not try to steal it from him, or
you will ASK for guilt and WILL experience it. Protect his
purity from every thought that would steal it away and keep it
from his sight. Bring innocence to light, in answer to the
call of the Atonement. Never allow purity to remain hidden,
but shine away the heavy veils of guilt within which the Son
of God has hidden himself from his own sight. We are all
joined in the Atonement here, and nothing else can unite us in
this world. So will the world of separation slip away, and
full communication be restored between the Father and the Son.
The miracle acknowledges the guiltlessness which MUST have
been denied to produce NEED of healing. Do not withhold this
glad acknowledgment, for hope of happiness and release from
suffering of every kind lie in it. Who is there but wishes to
be free of pain? He may not yet have learned HOW to exchange
his guilt for innocence, nor realize that only in this
exchange can freedom from pain be his. Yet those who have
failed to learn need TEACHING, NOT attack. To attack those who
have need of teaching is to fail to learn from them.
Teachers of innocence, each in his own way, have joined
together, taking their part in the unified curriculum of the
Atonement. There is no unity of learning goals apart from
this. There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has ONE
aim however it is taught. Each effort made on its behalf is
offered for the single purpose of RELEASE from guilt, to the
eternal glory of God and His creation. And every teaching that
points to this points straight to Heaven, and to the peace of
God. There is no pain, no trial, no fear that teaching this
can fail to overcome. The power of God Himself supports this
teaching, and GUARANTEES its limitless results.
Join your own efforts to the power that CANNOT fail and
MUST result in peace. No-one can be untouched by teaching such
as this. You will not see yourself beyond the power of God if
you teach only this. You will not be exempt from the effects
of this most holy lesson, which seeks but to restore what is
the right of Gods creation. From everyone whom you accord
release from guilt you will inevitably learn YOUR innocence.
The circle of Atonement HAS no end. And you will find ever-
increasing confidence in your safe inclusion in what is for
all in everyone you bring within its safety and its perfect
peace.
Peace, then, be unto everyone who becomes a teacher of
peace. For peace is the acknowledgment of perfect purity from
which no-one is excluded. Within its holy circle is everyone
whom God created as His Son. Joy is its unifying attribute,
with no-one left outside to suffer guilt alone. The power of
God draws everyone to its safe embrace of love and union.
Stand quietly within this circle, and attract all tortured
minds to join with you in the safety of its peace and
holiness. Abide with me within it, as teachers of Atonement,
NOT of guilt.
Blessed are you who teach with me. Our power comes not of
us, but of our Father. In guiltlessness we know Him, as He
knows us guiltless. I stand within the circle, calling you to
peace. Teach peace with me, and stand with me on holy ground.
Remember for everyone your Fathers power that He has given
him. Believe not that you cannot teach His perfect peace.
Stand not outside, but join with me within. Fail not the only
purpose to which my teaching calls you. Restore to God His Son
as He created him by teaching him his innocence.
The crucifixion has no part in the Atonement. Only the
resurrection became my part in it. That is the symbol of the
release from guilt by guiltlessness. Whom you perceive as
guilty you would crucify. Yet you RESTORE guiltlessness to
whomever you see as guiltless. Crucifixion is ALWAYS the egos
aim. It sees AS GUILTY, and by its condemnation it would kill.
The Holy Spirit sees only guiltlessness, and in His gentleness
He would release from fear, and re-establish the reign of
love. The power of love is in His gentleness, which is of God
and therefore cannot crucify nor suffer crucifixion. The
temple you restore becomes YOUR altar, for it was re-built
through you. And everything you give to God IS yours. Thus He
creates, and thus must YOU restore.
Each one you see you place within the holy circle of
Atonement or leave outside, judging him fit for crucifixion or
for redemption. If you bring him INTO the circle of purity,
you will rest there with him. If you leave him WITHOUT, you
join him there. Judge not except in quietness which is not of
you. Refuse to accept anyone as WITHOUT the blessing of
Atonement, and bring him INTO it by blessing him. Holiness
must be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it
holy. Come gladly to the holy circle, and look out in peace on
all who think they are outside. Cast no-one out, for this is
what he seeks along with you. Come, let us join him in the
holy place of peace, which is for all of us, united as one
within the Cause of peace.
Out of the Darkness
The journey that we undertake together is the exchange of
dark for light, of ignorance for understanding. Nothing you
understand is fearful. It is only in darkness and in ignorance
that you perceive the frightening, and you shrink away from it
to further darkness. And yet it is only the hidden that can
terrify, not for what it IS, but for its hiddenness. The
obscure is frightening BECAUSE you do not understand its
meaning. If you did, it would be clear and you would be no
longer in the dark. Nothing has HIDDEN value, for what is
hidden cannot be shared, and so its value is unknown. The
hidden is KEPT APART, but value always lies in joint
appreciation. What is concealed cannot be loved, and so it
MUST be feared.
The quiet light in which the Holy Spirit dwells within you
is merely perfect openness, in which nothing is hidden, and
therefore nothing is fearful. Attack will ALWAYS yield to love
if it is BROUGHT to love, not hidden FROM it. There is no
darkness that the light of love will not dispel, unless it is
concealed from loves beneficence. What is kept APART from
love cannot share its healing power because it has been
separated off and kept in darkness. The sentinels of darkness
watch over it carefully, and you who made these guardians of
illusion out of nothing are now afraid of them.
Would you CONTINUE to give imagined power to these strange
ideas of safety? They are neither safe nor unsafe. They do not
protect; neither do they attack. They do nothing at all, BEING
nothing at all. As guardians of darkness and of ignorance,
look to them only for fear, for what they keep obscure IS
fearful. But let them go, and what was fearful will be so no
longer. Without protection of obscurity ONLY the light of love
remains, for only this HAS meaning and CAN live in light.
Everything else MUST disappear.
Death yields to life simply because destruction is not
TRUE. The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because,
when they are brought TOGETHER, the truth of one MUST make the
falsity of its opposite perfectly clear. Keep not guilt and
guiltlessness apart, for your belief that you can have them
BOTH is meaningless. All you have done by keeping them apart
is lose their meaning by confusing them with each other. And
so you do not realize that only one means anything, and the
other is wholly without sense of ANY kind.
You have interpreted the separation as a means which you
have made for breaking your communication with your Father.
The Holy Spirit re-interprets it as a means of re-establishing
what has not been broken but HAS been made obscure. All things
you made have use to Him, for His most holy purpose. He KNOWS
you are not separate from God, but He perceives much in your
mind that lets you THINK you are. All this, and nothing else,
would He separate from you. The power of decision, which you
made IN PLACE of the power of creation, He would teach you how
to use on your BEHALF. You who made it to crucify yourselves
must learn of Him how to apply it to the holy cause of
restoration.
You who speak in dark and devious symbols do not understand
the language you have made. It HAS no meaning, for its purpose
is not communication, but rather, the DISRUPTION of
communication. If the purpose of language IS communication,
how can this tongue mean anything? Yet even this strange and
twisted effort to communicate through NOT communicating holds
enough of love to MAKE it meaningful, if its interpreter is
NOT its maker. You who made it are but expressing conflict,
from which the Holy Spirit would release you. Leave what you
would communicate to Him. He will interpret it to you with
perfect clarity, for He knows with Whom you ARE in perfect
communication.
You know not what you say, and so you know not what is said
to you. Yet your Interpreter perceives the meaning in your
alien language. He will not attempt to communicate the
meaningless. But He WILL separate out all that has meaning,
dropping off the rest and offering your true communication to
those who would communicate as truly with you. You speak two
languages at once, and this MUST lead to unintelligibility.
Yet if one means nothing and the other everything, only that
one is possible for purposes of communication. The other but
INTERFERES with it.
The Holy Spirits function is ENTIRELY communication. He
therefore must remove whatever interferes with it in order to
RESTORE it. Therefore, keep no source of interference from His
sight, for He will not attack your sentinels. But bring them
to Him, and let His gentleness teach you that, in the light,
they are not fearful, and CANNOT serve to guard the dark doors
behind which nothing at all is carefully concealed. We must
open all doors and let the light come streaming through. There
are no hidden chambers in Gods temple. Its gates are open
wide to greet His Son. No-one can fail to come where God has
called him if he close not the door himself upon his Fathers
welcome.
Perception without Deceit
What do you WANT? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance
are yours, but not both. Opposites must be brought together,
and not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind,
and they are reconciled by union as YOU are. In union,
everything that is not real MUST disappear, for truth IS
union. As darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades
away when knowledge dawns. Perception is the medium by which
ignorance is brought to knowledge. Yet the perception must be
without deceit, for otherwise it becomes the messenger of
ignorance rather than a helper in the search for truth.
The search for truth is but the honest searching out of
everything that interferes with truth. Truth IS. It can be
neither lost nor sought nor found. It is there, wherever YOU
are, being WITHIN you. Yet it CAN be recognized or
unrecognized, real or false to YOU. If you hide it, it becomes
unreal to you BECAUSE you hid it and surrounded it with fear.
Under each cornerstone of fear on which you have erected your
insane system of belief the truth lies hidden. Yet you cannot
know this, for by hiding truth in fear you see no reason to
believe the MORE you look at fear the LESS you see it, and the
clearer what it CONCEALS becomes.
It is not possible to convince the unknowing that they
know. From their point of view, it is not true. Yet it IS true
because GOD knows it. These are clearly opposite viewpoints of
what the unknowing are. To God unknowing is impossible. It
is therefore not a point of view at all, but merely a belief
in something that does not exist. It is only this belief that
the unknowing have, and by it they are wrong about themselves.
They have DEFINED themselves as they were not created. Their
creation was not a point of view, but rather a certainty.
Uncertainty brought to certainty does not retain ANY
conviction of reality.
You must have noticed that the emphasis has been on
bringing what is undesirable TO the desirable; what you do NOT
want to what you DO. You will realize that salvation must come
to you this way if you consider what dissociation is.
Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two
systems of belief which cannot coexist are both MAINTAINED. It
has BEEN recognized that, if they were brought TOGETHER, their
joint acceptance would become impossible. But if one is kept
in darkness from the other, their SEPARATION seems to keep
them both alive, and equal in their reality. Their joining
thus becomes the source of fear, for if they meet, acceptance
MUST be withdrawn from one of them.
You CANNOT have them both, for each denies the other.
Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each in a SEPARATE
place can be endowed with firm belief. Bring them TOGETHER,
and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly
apparent. One will go BECAUSE the other is seen in the same
place. Light cannot enter darkness when a mind believes in
darkness, and will not LET it go. Truth does not struggle
against ignorance, and love does not attack fear. What needs
no protection does not defend itself. Defense is of YOUR
making. God knows it not. The Holy Spirit uses defenses on
BEHALF of truth only because you made them AGAINST it. His
perception of them, according to His purpose, merely changes
them into a call FOR what you have ATTACKED with them.
Defenses, like everything you made, must be gently turned
to your own good, translated by the Holy Spirit from means of
self-destruction to means of preservation and release. His
task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. Therefore,
to Him, it is so easy that it was accomplished the instant it
was given Him for you. Do not delay yourselves in your return
to peace by wondering how He can fulfill what God has given
Him to do. Leave that to Him Who knows. You are not asked to
do mighty tasks yourself. You are merely asked to do the
little He suggests you do, trusting Him only to the small
extent of believing that, if He asks it, you CAN do it. You
will SEE how easily all that He asks can be accomplished.
The Holy Spirit asks of you but this; bring to Him every
secret you have locked away from Him. Open every door to Him,
and bid Him enter the darkness and lighten it away. At your
request He enters gladly. He brings the light to darkness if
you make the darkness OPEN to Him. But what you hide He cannot
look upon. For He sees for YOU, and unless you look WITH Him
He cannot see. The vision of Christ is not for Him alone, but
for Him with YOU. Bring, therefore, all your dark and secret
thoughts to Him, and look upon them WITH Him. He holds the
light, and you the darkness. They CANNOT coexist when both of
you together look on them. His judgment MUST prevail, and He
will GIVE it to you as you join your perception to His.
Joining with Him in seeing is the way in which you learn to
share with Him the interpretation of perception that leads to
knowledge.
You cannot see alone. Sharing perception with Him Whom God
has given you teaches you how to RECOGNIZE what you see. It is
the recognition that nothing you see means ANYTHING alone.
Seeing with Him will show you that all meaning, including
YOURS, comes not from double vision, but from the gentle
fusing of everything into ONE meaning, ONE emotion and ONE
purpose. God has One Purpose which He shares with you. The
single vision which the Holy Spirit offers you will bring this
Oneness to your mind with clarity and brightness so intense
you could not wish, for all the world, not to accept what God
would have you have. Behold your will, accepting it as His,
with all His Love as yours. All honor to you through Him, and
through Him unto God.
In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you,
and the power He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All this
lies hidden in every darkened place shrouded in guilt, and in
the dark denial of innocence. Behind the dark doors which you
have closed lies nothing, because nothing CAN obscure the gift
of God. It is the closing of the doors that interferes with
recognition of the power of God that shines in you. Banish not
power from your mind, but let all that would hide your glory
be brought to the judgment of the Holy Spirit, and there
undone. Whom He would save for glory IS saved for it. He has
promised the Father that through Him you would be released
from littleness to glory. To what He promised God He is wholly
faithful, for He shared with God the promise that was given
Him to share with YOU.
He shares it still, for YOU. Everything that promises
otherwise, great or small, however much or little valued, He
will replace with the ONE promise given unto Him to lay upon
the altar to your Father and His Son. No altar stands to God
WITHOUT His Son. And nothing brought there that is not equally
worthy of both but will be replaced by gifts wholly acceptable
to Father AND to Son. Can you offer guilt to God? You cannot,
then, offer it to His Son. For they are not apart, and gifts
to one ARE offered to the other.
You know not God because you know not this. And yet you DO
know God and ALSO this. All this is safe within you, where the
Holy Spirit shines. He shines not in division, but in the
meeting place where God, united with His Son, speaks to His
Son through Him. Communication between what cannot be divided
CANNOT cease. The holy meeting place of the unseparated Father
and His Son lies in the Holy Spirit and in YOU. All
interference in the communication that God Himself wills with
His Son is quite impossible here. Unbroken and uninterrupted
love flows constantly between the Father and the Son, as BOTH
would have it be. And so it IS.
Let your minds wander not through darkened corridors, away
from lights center. You may choose to lead yourselves astray,
but you can only be brought TOGETHER by the Guide appointed
for you. He will surely lead you to where God and His Son
await your recognition. They are joined in giving you the gift
of oneness, before which ALL separation vanishes. Unite with
what you ARE. You CANNOT join with anything except reality.
Gods glory and His Sons belong to you in truth. They HAVE no
opposite, and nothing else CAN you bestow upon yourselves.
There is no substitute for truth. And truth will make this
plain to you as you are brought into the place where you must
MEET with truth. And there you must be led, through gentle
understanding which can lead you nowhere else. Where God is,
there are YOU. Such IS the truth. Nothing can change the
knowledge given you by God into unknowingness. Everything God
created knows its Creator. For this is how creation is
accomplished by the Creator and by His creations. In the holy
meeting place are joined the Father and His creations, and the
creations of His Son with Them together. There is one link
which joins them all together, holding them in the Oneness out
of which creation happens.
The link with which the Father joins Himself to those He
gives the power to create like Him can NEVER be dissolved.
Heaven itself is union with all of creation, and with its One
Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God for you. Lay no
gifts other than this upon your altars, for nothing can
coexist beside it. Here your meager offerings are brought
together with the gift of God, and only what is worthy of the
Father will be accepted by the Son, for whom it was intended.
To whom God gives Himself He IS given. Your little gifts will
vanish on the altar where He has placed His Own.
The Recognition of Holiness
The Atonement does not MAKE holy. You were CREATED holy. It
merely brings unholiness TO holiness; or what you MADE to what
you ARE. The bringing together of truth and illusion, of the
ego to God, is the Holy Spirits only function. Keep not your
making from your Father, for hiding it has cost you knowledge
of Him and of yourselves. The knowledge is safe, but wherein
is YOUR safety apart from it? The making of time to TAKE THE
PLACE of timelessness lay in the decision to be not as you
were. Thus, truth was made past, and the present was dedicated
to illusion. And the past, too, was changed and interposed
between what always was and NOW. The past which YOU remember
NEVER was, and represents only the denial of what ALWAYS was.
Bringing the ego to God is but to bring error to truth,
where it stands corrected because it is the OPPOSITE of what
it meets, and is undone because the contradiction can no
longer stand. How long can contradiction stand when its
impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in
light is not attacked. It merely vanishes because it is not
true. Different realities are meaningless, for reality must be
one. It CANNOT change with time or mood or chance. Its
changelessness is what MAKES it real. This cannot BE undone.
Undoing is for unreality. And this reality WILL do for you.
Merely by being what it is does truth release you from
everything that it is NOT. The Atonement is so gentle you need
but whisper to it, and all its power will rush to your
assistance and support. You are not frail with God beside you.
Yet without Him you are nothing. The Atonement offers you God.
The gift which you refused is held by Him in you. His Spirit
holds it there for you. God has not left His altar, though His
worshippers placed other gods upon it. The temple still is
holy, for the Presence that dwells within it IS holiness.
In the temple holiness waits quietly for the return of them
that love it. The Presence knows they will return to purity
and to grace. The graciousness of God will take them gently
in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss with the
immortal assurance of their Fathers Love. There, fear of
death will be replaced with joy of living. For God is Life,
and they ABIDE in Life. The Presence of holiness lives in
everything that lives, for holiness CREATED life, and leaves
not what It created holy as Itself.
In this world you can become a spotless mirror, in which
the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you to all
around you. You can reflect Heaven HERE. Yet no reflections of
the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold
Gods reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God
or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of
all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God
will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection of
Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in
light. In darkness they are obscure, and their meaning seems
to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in
themselves.
The reflection of God NEEDS no interpretation. It is CLEAR.
Clean but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from
what the mirror holds out for everyone to see no-one can FAIL
to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is
holding to the mirror that is in him. He recognizes it because
he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to
look to find it. Let him, then, see it in YOU and SHARE it
with you.
Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of
healing that the reflection of God, shining in you, can bring
to all the world, you could not wait to make the mirror of
your mind clean to receive the image of the holiness that
heals the world. The image of holiness which shines in your
mind is not obscure, and will not change. Its meaning to those
who look upon it is not obscure, for everyone perceives it as
the SAME. All bring their different problems to its healing
light, but all their problems are met ONLY with healing there.
The response of holiness to ANY form of error is always the
same. There is no contradiction in what holiness calls forth.
Its ONE response is healing, without regard for what is
brought to it. Those who have learned to offer only healing
because of the reflection of holiness in them are ready at
last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but
rather the actual condition of what was but reflected to them
here. God is no image, and His creations, as part of Him, hold
Him in them in truth. They do not merely REFLECT truth, for
they ARE truth.
The Shift to Miracles
When no perception stands between God and His creations, or
between His Children and their own, the knowledge of creation
must continue forever. The reflections which you accept into
the mirror of your minds in time but bring eternity nearer or
farther. But eternity itself is beyond ALL time. Reach out of
time and touch it, with the help of its reflection in you. And
you will turn from time to holiness as surely as the
reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside.
Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to
Heaven. For the reflection of truth draws everyone TO truth,
and as they enter into it they leave all reflections behind.
In Heaven reality is shared, and not reflected. By sharing
its reflection here, its truth becomes the only perception the
Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of his Father dawns
on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but
his own reality. You on earth have no conception of
limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of
limits. In this world, it is not true that anything without
order of difficulty can occur. The miracle, therefore, has a
unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who
brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle is
the ONE thing you can do that transcends order, being based
not on differences, but on equality.
Miracles are not in competition, and the number of them
that you can do is limitless. They can be simultaneous and
legion. This is not difficult to understand, once you conceive
of them as possible at all. What IS more difficult to grasp is
the lack of order of difficulty which stamps the miracle as
something that must come from elsewhere, not from here. From
the worlds viewpoint, this is impossible. You have
experienced lack of competition among your thoughts, which,
even though they may conflict, can occur to you together and
in great numbers. You are so used to this that it can cause
you little surprise.
Yet you are also used to classifying some of your thoughts
as more important, larger or better, wiser or more productive
and valuable than others. And this is true about the thoughts
which cross the mind of those who think they live apart. For
some are reflections of Heaven, while others are motivated by
the ego, which but SEEMS to think. The result is a weaving,
changing pattern which never rests, and is never still. It
shifts unceasingly across the mirror of your mind, and the
reflections of Heaven last but a moment, and grow dim as
darkness blots them out. Where there was light darkness
removes it in an instant, and alternating patterns of light
and darkness sweep constantly across your minds.
The little sanity which still remains is held together by a
sense of order which YOU establish. Yet the very fact that you
can DO this and bring ANY order into chaos shows you that you
are not an ego, and that more than an ego MUST be in you. For
the ego IS chaos, and if it were all of you no order at all
would be possible. Yet though the order which you impose upon
your minds limits the ego, it ALSO limits YOU. To order is to
judge, and to arrange BY judgment. It will seem difficult for
you to learn that you have no basis AT ALL for ordering your
thoughts. This lesson the Holy Spirit teaches by giving you
shining examples to show you that your way of ordering is
wrong, but that a better way is offered you.
The miracle offers exactly the same response to every call
for help. It does not judge the call. It merely recognizes
what it IS, and answers accordingly. It does not consider
which call is louder or greater or more important. You may
wonder how you who are still bound to judgment can be asked to
do that which requires no judgment of your own. The answer is
very simple. The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders
miracles. The miracle itself is but the witness that you have
the power of God in you. That is the reason why the miracle
gives equal blessing to all who share in it, and that is also
why EVERYONE shares in it. The power of God is limitless. And
being always maximal, it offers EVERYTHING to EVERY call from
ANYONE. There IS no order of difficulty here. A call for help
is given help.
The only judgment involved at all is the Holy Spirits ONE
division into two categories; one of love, and the other the
call for love. YOU cannot safely make this division, for you
are much too confused either to recognize love, or to believe
that everything else is nothing but a need for love. You are
too bound to form, and not to content. What you consider
content is not content at all. It is merely form, and nothing
else. For you do not respond to what a brother REALLY offers
you, but only to the particular perception of his offering by
which the ego judges it.
The ego is incapable of understanding content, and is
totally unconcerned with it. To the ego, if the form is
acceptable the content MUST be. Otherwise, it will attack the
form. You who believe you understand something of the dynamics
of the mind, let me assure you that you know nothing of it at
all. For of yourselves you COULD not know of it. The study of
the ego is NOT the study of the mind. In fact, the ego enjoys
the study of itself, and thoroughly approves the undertakings
of students who would analyze it, approving its importance.
Yet they but study form with meaningless content. For their
teacher is senseless, though careful to conceal this fact
behind a lot of words which sound impressive, but which lack
any consistent sense when they are put TOGETHER.
This is characteristic of the egos judgments. Separately,
they seem to hold, but put them together, and the system of
thought which arises from joining them is incoherent and
utterly chaotic. For form is not enough for meaning, and the
underlying lack of content makes a cohesive system impossible.
Separation therefore remains the egos chosen condition. For
no-one alone can judge the ego truly. Yet when two or more
JOIN TOGETHER in searching for truth, the ego can no longer
defend its lack of content. The fact of union TELLS them it is
not true.
It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For
remembering Him means you are NOT alone, and willing to
remember it. Take no thought for yourself, for no thought you
hold IS for yourself. If you would remember your Father, let
the Holy Spirit order your thoughts, and give only the answer
with which He answers you. Everyone seeks for love as you do,
and knows it not unless he joins with you in seeking it. If
you undertake the search together, you bring with you a light
so powerful that what you see is GIVEN meaning. The lonely
journey fails because it has excluded what it would FIND.
As God communicates to the Holy Spirit in you, so does the
Holy Spirit translate His communications THROUGH you so YOU
can understand them. God has no secret communications, for
everything of Him is perfectly open, and freely accessible to
all, being FOR all. Nothing lives in secret, and what you
would hide from the Holy Spirit is nothing. Every
interpretation YOU would lay upon a brother is senseless. Let
the Holy Spirit SHOW him to you, and teach you both his love
and need for love. Neither his mind NOR YOURS holds more than
these two orders of thought.
The miracle is the recognition that this is true. Where
there is love, your brother must give it to you because of
what it IS. But where there is NEED for love, YOU must give it
because of what YOU are. Long ago we said this course will
teach you what you are, restoring to you your identity. We
have already learned that this identity is shared. The miracle
becomes the MEANS of sharing it. By supplying your identity
wherever it is NOT recognized, YOU will recognize it. And God
Himself, Who wills to be with His Son forever, will bless each
recognition of His Son with all the love He holds for him. Nor
will the power of ALL His Love be absent from any miracle you
offer to His Son. How, then, can there be any order of
difficulty among them?
The Test of Truth
Yet the essential thing is learning that YOU DO NOT KNOW.
Knowledge is power, and all power is of God. You who have
tried to keep power for yourselves have lost it. You still
have the power, but you have interposed so much between it and
your AWARENESS of it that you cannot use it. Everything you
have taught yourselves has made your power more and more
obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is nor WHERE. You have
made a semblance of power and a show of strength so pitiful
that it MUST fail you. For power is not a seeming strength,
and truth is beyond semblance of any kind. Yet all that stands
between you and the power of God in you is but your learning
of the false, and your attempts to undo the true.
Be willing, then, for all of it to be undone, and be glad
that you are not bound to it forever. For you have taught
yourselves how to imprison the Son of God, a lesson so
unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even
dream of it. Can God learn how NOT to be God? And can His Son,
given all power by Him, learn to be powerless? What have you
taught yourselves that you can possibly prefer to keep, in
place of what you HAVE and what you ARE?
Atonement teaches you how to escape forever from everything
that you have taught yourselves in the past by showing you
only what you are NOW. Learning HAS BEEN accomplished before
its effects are manifest. Learning is therefore in the past,
but its influence determines the present by giving it whatever
meaning it holds for you. YOUR learning gives the present no
meaning at all. Nothing you have ever learned can help you
understand the present, or teach you how to undo the past.
Your past IS what you have taught yourselves. LET IT ALL GO.
Do not attempt to understand any event, or anything, or anyone
in its light, for the light of darkness by which you try to
see can ONLY obscure.
Put no confidence at all in darkness to illuminate your
understanding, for if you do you contradict the light, and
thereby THINK you see the darkness. Yet darkness cannot BE
seen, for it is nothing more than a condition in which seeing
becomes impossible. You who have not yet brought all of the
darkness you have taught yourselves unto the light in you can
hardly judge the truth and value of this course. Yet God did
not abandon you. And so you have another lesson sent from Him,
ALREADY learned for every Child of light by Him to Whom God
gave it. This lesson shines with Gods glory, for in it lies
His power, which He shares so gladly with His Son.
Learn of His happiness, which is YOURS. But to accomplish
this, all your dark lessons must be brought willingly to
truth, and joyously laid down by hands open to receive, not
closed to take. Every dark lesson that you bring to Him Who
teaches light He will accept from you, because you do not want
it. And He will gladly EXCHANGE each one for the bright lesson
He has learned for you. Never believe that any lesson you have
learned APART from Him means anything.
You have one test, as sure as God, by which to recognize if
what you learned is true. If you are wholly free of fear of
any kind, and if all those who meet, or even think of you,
share in your perfect peace, then you can be sure that you
have learned Gods lesson, and not yours. Unless all this is
true there ARE dark lessons in your minds which hurt and
hinder you, and everyone around you. The ABSENCE of perfect
peace means but ONE thing: You THINK you do not will for Gods
Son what His Father wills for him. Every dark lesson teaches
this, in one form or another. And each bright lesson, with
which the Holy Spirit will replace the dark ones you do not
accept and hide, teaches you that you will WITH the Father
unto His Son.
Do not be concerned how you can learn a lesson so
completely different from everything you have taught
yourselves. How would you know? Your part is very simple. You
need only recognize that everything you learned you do not
WANT. Ask to be TAUGHT, and do not use your experiences to
confirm what YOU have learned. When your peace is threatened,
or disturbed in any way, say to yourself,
I do not know what anything, INCLUDING THIS, means.
And so I do not know how to respond to it.
And I will not use my own past learning as
the light to guide me now.
By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not
know, the Guide Whom God has given you will speak to you. He
will take His rightful place in your awareness the instant YOU
abandon it, and offer it to Him.
YOU cannot be your guide to miracles, for it is you who
made them necessary. And BECAUSE you did, the means on which
you can depend for miracles has been provided FOR you. Gods
Son can make no needs His Father will not meet, if he but turn
to Him ever so little. Yet He cannot compel His Son to turn to
Him, and remain Himself. It is impossible that God lose His
Identity, for if He did, you would lose YOURS. And being
yours, He cannot change Himself, for your Identity IS
changeless. The miracle acknowledges His changelessness by
seeing His Son as he always was, and not as he would make
himself. The miracle brings the effects which ONLY
guiltlessness can bring, and thus establishes the fact that
guiltlessness must BE.
How can you, so firmly bound to guilt and committed so to
remain, establish for yourself your guiltlessness? That is
impossible. But be sure that you are willing to acknowledge
that it IS impossible. It is only because you think that you
can run some little part, or deal with certain aspects of your
lives alone, that the guidance of the Holy Spirit is limited.
Thus would you make HIM undependable, and use this fancied
undependability as an excuse for keeping certain dark lessons
from Him. And by so limiting the guidance that you would
ACCEPT, you are unable to depend on miracles to answer all
your problems for you.
Do you think that what the Holy Spirit would have you GIVE
He would WITHHOLD from you? You have NO problems which He
cannot solve by offering you a miracle. Miracles are for YOU.
And every fear or pain or trial you have HAS BEEN undone. He
has brought all of them to light, having accepted them INSTEAD
of you, and recognized they never were. There are no dark
lessons He has not ALREADY lightened for you. The lessons you
would teach yourselves He has corrected already. They do not
exist in His Mind at all. For the past binds Him not, and
therefore binds not you. He does not see time as you do. And
each miracle He offers you corrects your use of time, and
makes it His.
He Who has freed you from the past would teach you ARE free
of it. He would but have you accept His accomplishments as
YOURS because He did them FOR you. And because He did, they
ARE yours. He has made you free of what you made. You can deny
Him, but you CANNOT call on Him in vain. He ALWAYS gives what
He has made IN PLACE of you. He would establish His bright
teaching so firmly in your mind that no dark lessons of guilt
can abide in what He has established as holy by His Presence.
Thank God that He is there and works through you. And all His
works are yours. He offers you a miracle with every one you
let Him do through you.
Gods Son will ALWAYS be indivisible. As we are held as one
in God, so do we learn as one in Him. Gods Teacher is as like
to His Creator as is His Son, and through His Teacher does God
proclaim His Oneness AND His Sons. Listen in silence, and do
not raise your voice against Him. For He teaches the miracle
of oneness, and before His lesson division disappears. Teach
like Him here, and you will remember that you have ALWAYS
created like your Father. The miracle of creation has never
ceased, having the holy stamp of immortality upon it. This is
the Will of God for all creation, and all creation joins in
willing this.
Those who remember always that they know nothing, but who
have become willing to learn EVERYTHING, will learn it. But
whenever they trust themselves, they will NOT learn. They have
destroyed their motivation for learning by thinking they
ALREADY know. Think not you understand anything until you pass
the test of perfect peace, for peace and understanding go
together, and never can be found alone. Each brings the other
WITH it, for it is the law of God they be not separate. They
are cause and effect, each to the other, so where one is
absent the other CANNOT be.
Only those who see they cannot know UNLESS the effects of
understanding are with them can really learn at all. And for
this, it must be peace they WANT, and nothing else. Whenever
you think YOU know, peace will depart from you because you
have abandoned the Teacher of Peace. Whenever you fully
realize that you know NOT peace will return, for you will have
invited Him to do so by abandoning the ego on behalf of Him.
Call not upon the ego for anything. It is only THIS that you
need do. The Holy Spirit will, of HIMSELF, fill every mind
that so makes room for Him.
If you want peace you must abandon the teacher of attack.
The Teacher of peace will NEVER abandon you. You can desert
Him, but He will never reciprocate, for His faith in you IS
His understanding. It is as firm as is His faith in His
Creator, and He knows that faith in His Creator MUST encompass
faith in His creation. In this consistency lies His holiness,
which He cannot abandon, for it is not His Will to do so. With
your perfection ever in His sight, He gives the gift of peace
to everyone who perceives the need for peace, and who would
have it. Make way for peace, and it will come. For
understanding is in you, and from it peace MUST come.
The power of God, from which they both arise, is yours as
surely as it is His. You think you know Him not only because,
alone, it is impossible to know Him. Yet see the mighty works
that He will do through you, and you must be convinced you did
them through Him. It is impossible to deny the Source of
effects so powerful they COULD not be of you. Leave room for
Him, and you will find yourself so filled with power that
NOTHING will prevail against your peace. And this will be the
test by which you recognize that you have understood.
CHAPTER 15
THE PURPOSE OF TIME
Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries,
no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all
the time? Yet that is what time is FOR; to learn just that and
nothing more. Gods Teacher cannot be satisfied with His
teaching until it constitutes ALL your learning. He has not
fulfilled His teaching function until you have become such a
consistent learner that you learn ONLY of Him. When this has
happened, you will no longer need a teacher or time in which
to learn.
One source of perceived discouragement from which you
suffer is your belief that this takes time, and that the
results of the Holy Spirits teaching are far in the future.
This is not so. For the Holy Spirit USES time in His Own way,
and is not bound by it. And all the waste that time seems to
bring with it is due but to your identification with the ego,
which uses time to support its belief in destruction. The ego,
like the Holy Spirit, uses time to convince you of the
inevitability of the goal and end of teaching. To the ego the
goal is death, which IS its end. But to the Holy Spirit the
goal is life, which HAS no end.
The Uses of Time
The ego is an ally of time, but not a friend. For it is as
mistrustful of death as it is of life, and what it wants for
you it cannot tolerate. The ego wants YOU dead, but NOT
itself. The outcome of its strange religion must therefore be
the conviction that it can pursue you beyond the grave. And
out of its unwillingness for you to find peace even in the
death it wants for you, it offers you immortality in hell. It
speaks to you of Heaven, but assures you that Heaven is not
for you. How can the guilty hope for Heaven? The belief in
hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. Their
nightmares and their fears are all associated with it.
The ego teaches that hell is in the FUTURE, for this is
what all its teaching is directed to. Hell is its GOAL. For,
although the ego aims at death and dissolution as an end, it
does not BELIEVE it. The goal of death, which it craves for
you, leaves it unsatisfied. No-one who follows the egos
teaching is without the fear of death. Yet if death were
thought of merely as an end to pain, would it be FEARED? We
have seen this strange paradox in the egos thought system
before, but never so clearly as here. For the ego must seem to
KEEP fear from you to keep your allegiance. Yet it must
ENGENDER fear in order to maintain ITSELF.
Again the ego tries, and all too frequently succeeds, in
doing both, by using dissociation for holding its
contradictory aims together so that they SEEM to be
reconciled. The ego teaches thus: Death is the end as far as
hope of Heaven goes. Yet because you and itself cannot be
separated, and because it cannot conceive of its OWN death, it
will pursue you still, because guilt is eternal. Such is the
egos version of immortality. And it is this the egos version
of time supports.
The ego teaches that Heaven is here and now because the
FUTURE is hell. Even when it attacks so savagely that it tries
to take the life of someone who hears it temporarily as the
ONLY voice, it speaks of hell even to him. For it tells him
hell is HERE, and bids him leap from hell into oblivion. The
only time the ego allows anyone to look upon with some amount
of equanimity is the past. And even there, its only value is
that it is no more.
How bleak and despairing is the egos use of time! And how
terrifying! For underneath its fanatical insistence that the
past and future be the same is hidden a far more insidious
threat to peace. The ego does not advertise its final threat,
for it would have its worshippers still believe that it can
offer the ESCAPE from it. But the belief in guilt MUST lead to
the belief in hell, AND ALWAYS DOES. The only way in which the
ego allows the fear of hell to be experienced is to bring hell
HERE, but always as a foretaste of the future. For no-one who
considers himself as deserving hell can believe that
punishment will end in peace.
The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There IS no hell. Hell is
only what the ego has made of the PRESENT. The belief in hell
is what prevents you from UNDERSTANDING the present, because
you are AFRAID of it. The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to
Heaven as the ego drives to hell. For the Holy Spirit, Who
knows ONLY the present, uses it to undo the fear by which the
ego would make the present useless. There is NO escape from
fear in the egos use of time. For time, according to its
teaching, is nothing but a teaching device for COMPOUNDING
guilt until it becomes all-encompassing, and demands vengeance
forever.
The Holy Spirit would undo all of this NOW. Fear is NOT of
the present, but only of the past and future, which do not
exist. There is no fear in the present when each instant
stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow
reaching out into the future. Each instant is a clean,
untarnished birth, in which the Son of God emerges from the
past into the present. And the present extends forever. It is
so beautiful and so clean and free of guilt that nothing but
happiness is there. No darkness is remembered, and immortality
and joy are NOW.
This lesson takes NO time. For what is time without a past
and future? It HAS taken time to misguide you so completely,
but it takes no time at all to be what you ARE. Begin to
practice the Holy Spirits use of time as a teaching aid to
happiness and peace. Take this very instant, NOW, and think of
it as ALL THERE IS of time. Nothing can reach you here out of
the past, and it is here that you are COMPLETELY absolved,
COMPLETELY free, and WHOLLY without condemnation. From this
holy instant wherein holiness was born again you will go forth
in time without fear, and with no sense of change WITH time.
Time is inconceivable without change, yet holiness does not
change. Learn from this instant more than merely hell does not
exist. In this redeeming instant lies Heaven. And Heaven will
not change, for the birth into the holy present is SALVATION
from change. Change is an illusion, taught by those who could
not see themselves as guiltless. There is no change in Heaven
because there is no change in God. In the holy instant in
which you see yourself as bright with freedom, you WILL
remember God. For remembering Him IS to remember freedom.
Whenever you are tempted to be dispirited by the thought of
how long it would take to change your mind so completely, ask
yourself, How long is an instant? Could you not give so
short a time to the Holy Spirit for your salvation? He asks no
more, for He has no need of more. It takes far longer to teach
you how to be willing to give Him this than for Him to use
this tiny instant to offer you the whole of Heaven. In
exchange for this instant, He stands ready to give you the
remembrance of eternity.
You will never give this holy instant to the Holy Spirit on
behalf of your release while you are unwilling to give it to
your brothers on behalf of THEIRS. For the instant of holiness
is shared, and cannot be yours alone. Remember, then, when you
are tempted to attack a brother, that HIS instant of release
is YOURS. Miracles are the instants of release you offer, and
will RECEIVE. They attest to your willingness to BE released,
and to offer time to the Holy Spirit for His use of it. How
long is an instant? It is as short for your brother as it is
for you. Practice giving this blessed instant of freedom to
all who are enslaved by time, and thus make time their friend
FOR them. The Holy Spirit gives their blessed instant to YOU
through your giving it. As you give it, He offers it to YOU.
Be not unwilling to give what you would receive of Him, for
you join with Him in giving. In the crystal cleanness of the
release you give is your INSTANTANEOUS escape from guilt. You
MUST be holy if you offer holiness. How long is an instant? As
long as it takes to re-establish perfect sanity, perfect
peace, and perfect love for everyone, for God, and for
YOURSELF. As long as it takes to remember immortality, and
your immortal creations who share it with you. As long as it
takes to exchange hell for Heaven. Long enough to transcend
all of the egos making, and ascend unto your Father.
Time is your friend, if you leave it to the Holy Spirit to
use. He needs but very little to restore Gods whole power to
you. He Who transcends time for you understands what time is
FOR. Holiness lies not in time, but in eternity. There never
was an instant in which Gods Son could lose his purity. His
changeless state is beyond time, for his purity remains
forever beyond attack and without variability. Time stands
still in his holiness, and changes not. And so it is no longer
time at all. For, caught in the single instant of the eternal
sanctity of Gods creation, it is transformed into forever.
GIVE the eternal instant, that eternity may be remembered FOR
you, in that shining instant of perfect release. Offer the
miracle of the holy instant through the Holy Spirit, and leave
His giving it to you to Him.
Time and Eternity
The Atonement is IN time, but not FOR time. Being in you,
it is eternal. What holds rememberance of God cannot be bound
by time. No more are you. For unless God is bound, you CANNOT
be. An instant offered to the Holy Spirit is offered to God on
your behalf, and in that instant you will awaken gently in
Him. In the blessed instant, you will let go all your past
learning, and the Holy Spirit will quickly offer you the whole
lesson of peace. What can take time, when all the obstacles to
learning it have been removed? Truth is so far beyond time
that all of it happens at once. For as it was created one, so
its oneness depends not on time at all.
Do not be concerned with time, and fear not the instant of
holiness which will remove ALL fear. For the instant of peace
is eternal BECAUSE it is wholly without fear. It WILL come,
being the lesson God gives you, through the Teacher He has
appointed to translate time into eternity. Blessed is Gods
Teacher, Whose joy it is to teach Gods holy Son his holiness.
His joy is not contained in time. His teaching is for you
because His joy is YOURS. Through Him you stand before Gods
altar, where He gently translates hell into Heaven. For it is
only in Heaven that God would have you be.
How long can it take to be where God would have you? For
you ARE where you have forever been and will forever be. All
that you have, you have forever. The blessed instant reaches
out to encompass time, as God extends Himself to encompass
you. You who have spent days, hours, and even years in
chaining your brothers to your egos in an attempt to support
it, and uphold its weakness, do not perceive the Source of
STRENGTH. In the holy instant you will unchain ALL your
brothers, and refuse to support either THEIR weakness or your
OWN.
You do not realize how much you have misused your brothers
by seeing them as sources of ego support. As a result, they
witness TO the ego in your perception, and SEEM to provide
reasons for not letting it go. Yet they are far stronger and
much more compelling witnesses for the Holy Spirit. And they
support His STRENGTH. It is, therefore, your choice whether
they support the ego or the Holy Spirit in YOU. And you will
know which you have chosen by THEIR reactions. A Son of God
who has been released through the Holy Spirit in a brother, if
the release is COMPLETE, is ALWAYS recognized. He cannot BE
denied. As long as you remain uncertain, it can be only
because you have not given complete release. And because of
this, you have not given one single instant COMPLETELY to the
Holy Spirit. For when you have, you will be SURE you have. You
will be sure because the witness to Him will speak so clearly
of Him that you will hear and UNDERSTAND.
You will doubt until you hear ONE witness whom you have
wholly released through the Holy Spirit. And then you will
doubt no more. The holy instant has not yet happened to you.
Yet it will, and you will recognize it with perfect certainty.
No gift of God is recognized in any other way. You can
practice the mechanics of the holy instant, and will learn
much from doing so. Yet its shining and glittering brilliance,
which will literally blind you to this world by its own
vision, you cannot supply. And here it is, ALL in this
instant, complete, accomplished, and given WHOLLY.
Start now to practice your little part in separating out
the holy instant. You will receive very specific instructions
as you go along. To learn to separate out this single second,
and begin to experience it as timeless, is to begin to
experience yourself as NOT separate. Fear not that you will
not be given help in this. Gods Teacher and His lesson will
support your strength. It is only your weakness that will
depart from you in this practice, for it is the practice of
the power of God in you. Use it but for one instant, and you
will never deny it again. Who can deny the Presence of what
the universe bows to, in appreciation and gladness? Before the
recognition of the universe which witnesses to It, your doubts
MUST disappear.
Littleness versus Magnitude
Be not content with littleness, but be sure you understand
what littleness is, and why you could never BE content with
it. Littleness is the offering you gave YOURSELF. You offered
this in place of magnitude, and you ACCEPTED it. Everything in
this world is little because it is a world made out of
littleness, in the strange belief that littleness can content
you. When you strive for anything in this world with the
belief that it will bring you peace, you are belittling
yourself, and blinding yourself to glory. Littleness and glory
are the choices open to your striving and your vigilance. You
will always choose one at the EXPENSE of the other.
Yet what you do not realize, each time you choose, is that
your choice is your evaluation of YOURSELF. Choose littleness
and you will not have peace, for you will have judged yourself
unworthy of it. And whatever you offer as a substitute is much
too poor a gift to satisfy you. It is essential that you
accept the fact, and accept it gladly, that there is no form
of littleness that can EVER content you. You are free to try
as many as you wish, but all you will be doing is to delay
your homecoming. For you will be content only in magnitude,
which is your home.
There is a deep responsibility you owe yourself, and one
which you must learn to remember all the time. The lesson will
seem hard at first, but you will learn to love it when you
realize that it is true, and constitutes a tribute to your
power. You who have sought and found littleness, remember
this: Every decision which you make stems from what you think
you ARE, and represents the value that you PUT upon yourself.
Believe the little can content you, and by limiting yourself,
you will not be satisfied. For your function is NOT little,
and it is only by finding your function and fulfilling it that
you can escape from littleness.
There is no doubt about what your function is, for the Holy
Spirit KNOWS what it is. There is no doubt about its
magnitude, for it reaches you through Him FROM Magnitude. You
do not have to strive for it, because you HAVE it. All your
striving must be directed AGAINST littleness, for it DOES
require vigilance to protect your magnitude in this world. To
hold your magnitude in perfect awareness in a world of
littleness is a task the little cannot undertake. Yet it is
asked of you, in tribute to your magnitude and NOT your
littleness. Nor is it asked of you alone.
The power of God will support every effort you make on
behalf of His dear Son. Search for the little, and you deny
yourself His power. God is not willing that His Son be content
with less than everything. For He is not content without His
Son, and His Son cannot be content with less than His Father
has given him. We asked you once before, Would you be
hostage to the ego or host to God? Let this question be
asked you by the Holy Spirit in you every time you make a
decision. For every decision you make DOES answer this, and
invites sorrow or joy accordingly.
When God gave Himself to you in your creation, He
established you as host to Him forever. He has not left you,
and you have not left Him. All your attempts to deny His
magnitude, and make His Son hostage to the ego, cannot make
little whom God has joined with Him. Every decision you make
is for Heaven or for hell, and will bring you awareness of
what you decided FOR. The Holy Spirit can hold your magnitude,
clean of all littleness, clearly and in perfect safety in your
minds, untouched by every little gift the world of littleness
would offer you. But for this, you cannot side AGAINST Him in
what He wills for you.
Decide for God through Him. For littleness, and the belief
that you can be content with littleness, are the decisions you
have made about yourself. The power and the glory that lie in
you from God are for all who, like you, perceive themselves as
little, and have deceived themselves into believing that
littleness can be blown up by them into a sense of magnitude
that can content them. Neither give littleness, nor accept it.
All honor is due the host of God. Your littleness deceives
you, but your magnitude is of Him Who dwells in you, and in
Whom you dwell. Touch no-one, then, with littleness in the
Name of Christ, eternal Host unto His Father. In this season
(Christmas), which celebrates the birth of holiness into this
world, join with me who decided for holiness for YOU. It is
our task TOGETHER to restore the awareness of magnitude to the
host whom God appointed for Himself. It is beyond all your
littleness to give the gift of God, but NOT beyond YOU. For
God would give Himself through you. He reaches from you to
everyone, and beyond everyone to His Sons creations, but
without leaving you. Far beyond your little world, but still
in you, He extends forever. Yet He brings all his extensions
to you, as host to Him.
Is it a sacrifice to leave littleness behind, and wander
not in vain? It is not sacrifice to wake to glory. But it IS a
sacrifice to accept anything LESS than glory. Learn that you
MUST be worthy of the Prince of Peace, born in you in honor of
Him Whose host you are. You know not what love means because
you have sought to purchase it with little gifts, thus valuing
it too little to be able to understand its magnitude. Love is
NOT little, and love dwells in you, for you are host to Him.
Before the greatness that lives in you, your poor appreciation
of yourself and all the little offerings you have given slip
into nothingness. Holy Child of God, when will you learn that
ONLY holiness can content you and give you peace?
Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more
than I did. It is BECAUSE I learned for you that you can learn
of me. I would but teach you what is yours, so that together
we can replace the shabby littleness that binds the host of
God to guilt and weakness with the glad awareness of the glory
that is in him. My birth in you is your awakening to grandeur.
Welcome me not into a manger, but into the altar to holiness,
where holiness abides in perfect peace. My Kingdom is not of
this world because it is in YOU. And you are of your Father.
Let us join in honoring you, who must remain forever beyond
littleness.
Decide with me, who have decided to abide with you. I will
as my Father wills, knowing His Will is constant, and at peace
forever with Itself. You will be content with nothing BUT His
Will. Accept no less, remembering that everything I learned is
yours. What my Father loves I love as He does, and I can no
more accept it as what it is not than He can. And no more can
YOU. When you have learned to accept what you are, you will
make no more gifts to offer to yourselves, for you will know
you are complete, in need of nothing, and unable to accept
ANYTHING for yourself. But you will gladly give, HAVING
received. The host of God needs not seek to find anything.
If you are wholly willing to leave salvation to the plan of
God, and unwilling to attempt to grasp for peace yourself,
salvation will be GIVEN you. Yet think not you can substitute
your plan for His. Rather, join with me in His, that we may
release all those who would be bound, proclaiming together
that the Son of God is host to Him. Thus will we let no-one
forget what YOU would remember. And thus will you remember it.
Call forth in everyone only the remembrance of God, and of
the Heaven that is in him. For where you would help your
brother be, there will you think YOU are. Hear not his call
for hell and littleness, but only his call for Heaven and
greatness. Forget not that his call is yours, and answer him
with me. Gods power is forever on the side of His host, for
it protects only the peace in which He dwells. Lay not
littleness before His holy altar, which rises above the stars
and reaches even to Heaven because of what is given it.
Practicing the Holy Instant
This course is not beyond IMMEDIATE learning, unless you
prefer to believe that what God wills takes time. And this
means only that you would RATHER delay the recognition that
His Will is so. The holy instant is THIS one and EVERY one.
The one you WANT it to be it IS. The one you would not have it
be is lost to you. YOU must decide on when it is. Delay it
not. For beyond the past and future, in which you will not
find it, it stands in shimmering readiness for your
acceptance. Yet you cannot bring it into glad awareness while
you do not want it, for it holds the whole release from
littleness.
Your practice must therefore rest upon your willingness to
let all littleness go. The instant in which magnitude will
dawn upon you is but as far away as your DESIRE for it. As
long as you desire it not, and cherish littleness instead, by
so much is it far from you. By so much as you want it will you
bring it nearer. Think not that you can find salvation in your
own way and HAVE it. Give over EVERY plan that you have made
for your salvation in exchange for Gods. His will content
you, and there is nothing else that can bring you peace. For
peace is of God, and of no-one beside Him.
Be humble before Him, and yet great IN Him. And value no
plan of the ego before the plan of God. For you leave empty
your place in His plan, which you must fulfill if you would
join with me, by your decision to join in any plan BUT His. I
call you to fulfill your holy part in the plan that He has
given to the world for its release from littleness. God would
have His host abide in perfect freedom. Every allegiance to a
plan of salvation that is apart from Him diminishes the value
of His Will for you in your own minds. And yet it is your mind
that IS the host to Him.
Would you learn how perfect and immaculate is the holy
altar on which your Father has placed Himself? This you will
recognize in the holy instant in which you willingly and
gladly give over every plan but His. For there lies peace,
perfectly clear because you have been willing to meet its
conditions. You can claim the holy instant any time and
anywhere you want it. In your practice, try to give over every
plan you have accepted for finding magnitude in littleness. IT
IS NOT THERE. Use the holy instant only to recognize that you
alone CANNOT know where it is, and can only deceive yourself.
I stand within the holy instant, as clear as you would have
me. And the extent to which you learn to be willing to accept
me is the measure of the time in which the holy instant will
be yours. I call to you to make the holy instant yours at
once, for the release from littleness in the mind of the host
of God depends on willingness, and NOT on time. The reason why
this course is simple is that TRUTH is simple. Complexity is
of the ego, and is nothing more than the egos attempt to
obscure the obvious.
You could live forever in the holy instant, BEGINNING NOW
and reaching to eternity, but for a very simple reason. Do not
obscure the simplicity of this reason, for if you do, it will
be only because you prefer not to recognize it, and not to let
it go. The simple reason, simply stated, is this: The holy
instant is a time in which you receive and GIVE perfect
communication. This means, however, that it is a time in which
your mind is OPEN, both to receive and give. It is the
recognition that all minds ARE in communication. It therefore
seeks to CHANGE nothing, but merely to ACCEPT everything.
How can you do this when you would prefer to have PRIVATE
thoughts, and KEEP them? The only way you could do THAT is to
DENY the perfect communication that makes the holy instant
what it is. You believe that it is possible to harbor thoughts
you would not share, and that salvation lies in keeping your
thoughts to yourself ALONE. For in private thoughts, known
only to yourself, you think you find a way to keep what you
would HAVE alone, and share what YOU would share. And then you
wonder why it is that you are not in full communication with
those around you, and with God Who surrounds ALL of you
together.
Every thought you would keep hidden shuts communication off
because you would HAVE it so. It is impossible to recognize
perfect communication while BREAKING communication holds value
to you. Ask yourselves honestly, Would I WANT to have
perfect communication, and am I wholly willing to let
everything that interferes with it go forever? If the answer
is no, then the Holy Spirits readiness to give it to you is
not enough to make it yours, for you are not ready to SHARE it
with Him. And it cannot come into a mind that has decided to
oppose it. For the holy instant is given and received with
EQUAL willingness, being the acceptance of the single Will
that governs ALL thought.
The necessary condition for the holy instant does NOT
require that you have no thoughts which are not pure. But it
DOES require that you have none that you would KEEP. Innocence
is not of your making. It is given you the instant you would
HAVE it. Yet it would not be Atonement if there were no NEED
for Atonement. You will not be able to accept perfect
communication as long as you would HIDE it from yourself. For
what you would hide IS hidden from you.
In your practice, then, try only to be vigilant against
deception, and seek not to protect the thoughts you would keep
unto yourself. Let the Holy Spirits purity shine them away,
and bring all your awareness to the readiness for purity He
offers you. Thus will He make you ready to acknowledge that
you ARE host to God, and hostage to no-one and nothing.
The Holy Instant and Special Relationships
The holy instant is the Holy Spirits most useful learning
device for teaching you loves meaning. For its purpose is to
suspend judgment ENTIRELY. Judgment always rests on the past,
for past experience is the basis on which you judge. Judgment
becomes impossible without the past, for without it you do not
understand anything. You would make no attempt to judge,
because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not know
what anything MEANS. You are afraid of this because you
believe that, WITHOUT the ego, all would be chaos. Yet I
assure you that, without the ego, all would be LOVE.
The past is the EGOS chief learning device, for it is in
the past that you learned to define your own needs, and
acquired methods for meeting them on your own terms. We said
before that to limit love to PART of the Sonship is to bring
guilt into your relationships, and thus make them unreal. If
you seek to separate out certain aspects of the totality, and
look to them to meet your imagined needs, you are attempting
to use separation to SAVE you. How, then, could guilt NOT
enter? For separation IS the source of guilt, and to appeal to
it for salvation is to believe you are alone. To be alone IS
to be guilty. For to experience yourself as alone is to deny
the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to attack
reality.
You cannot love parts of reality and understand what love
means. If you would love unlike to God, Who KNOWS no special
love, how CAN you understand it? To believe that SPECIAL
relationships, with SPECIAL love, can offer you salvation is
the belief that separation IS salvation. For it is the
complete EQUALITY of the Atonement in which salvation lies.
How can you decide that special aspects of the Sonship can
give you more than others? The PAST has taught you this. Yet
the holy instant teaches you it is not so.
Because of guilt, ALL special relationships have some
elements of fear in them. And this is why they shift and
change so frequently. They are not based on changeless love
alone. And love, where fear has entered, cannot be depended on
because it is not perfect. In His function as Interpretor of
what you have made, the Holy Spirit USES special
relationships, which YOU have chosen to support the ego, as a
learning experience which points to truth. Under His teaching,
EVERY relationship becomes a lesson in love.
The Holy Spirit knows no-one is special. Yet He also
perceives that you have MADE special relationships, which He
would purify, and not let you destroy. However unholy the
reason why you made them may be, He can translate them into
holiness by removing as much fear as you will let Him. You can
place any relationship under His care, and be sure that it
will not result in pain, if you offer Him your willingness to
have it serve no need but His. All the guilt in it arises from
YOUR use of it. All the love from His. Do not, then, be afraid
to let go your imagined needs, which would destroy the
relationship. Your ONLY need is His.
Any relationship which you would substitute for another has
not been offered to the Holy Spirit for His use. There IS no
substitute for love. If you would attempt to substitute one
aspect of love for another, you have placed LESS value on one
and MORE on the other. You have not only SEPARATED them, but
you have also judged against BOTH. Yet you had judged against
yourself first, or you would never have imagined that you
needed them as they were not. Unless you had seen yourself as
WITHOUT love, you could not have judged them so like you in
lack.
The egos use of relationships is so fragmented that it
frequently goes even farther; one part of one aspect suits its
purposes, while it prefers different parts of another aspect.
Thus does it assemble reality to its own capricious liking,
offering for your seeking a picture whose likeness does not
exist. For there is nothing in Heaven or earth that it
resembles, and so, however much you seek for its reality, you
cannot find it because it is not real.
Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and
although this is not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how
to bring a touch of Heaven to them here. In the holy instant
no-one is special, for your personal needs intrude on no-one
to make them different. Without the values from the past you
WOULD see them all the same, and like YOURSELF. Nor would you
see any separation between yourself and them. In the holy
instant, you see in each relationship what it WILL be when you
perceive only the present.
God knows you NOW. He remembers nothing, having ALWAYS
known you exactly as He knows you now. The holy instant
parallels His knowing by bringing ALL perception out of the
past, thus removing the frame of reference you have built by
which to judge your brothers. Once this is gone, the Holy
Spirit substitutes His frame of reference for it. His frame of
reference is simply God. The Holy Spirits timelessness lies
only here. For in the holy instant, free of the past, you see
that love is in you, and you have no need to look WITHOUT and
snatch it guiltily from where you thought it was.
ALL your relationships are blessed in the holy instant,
because the blessing is not limited. In the holy instant, the
Sonship gains AS ONE. And united in your blessing, it BECOMES
one to you. The meaning of love is the meaning God gave to it.
Give to it any meaning APART from His, and it is impossible to
understand it. Every brother God loves as He loves you;
neither less nor more. He needs them all equally, and so do
YOU. In time, you have been told to offer miracles as Christ
directs, and let the Holy Spirit bring to you those who are
seeking you. Yet in the holy instant, you unite directly with
God, and ALL your brothers join in Christ. Those who are
joined in Christ are in no way separate. For Christ is the
Self the Sonship shares, as God shares His Self with Christ.
Think you that you can judge the Self of God? God has
created It BEYOND judgment, out of His need to extend His
Love. With Love in you, you have no need EXCEPT to extend it.
In the holy instant there is no conflict of needs, for there
is only ONE. For the holy instant reaches to eternity, and to
the Mind of God. And it is only there love HAS meaning, and
only there CAN it be understood.
It is impossible to use one relationship at the expense of
another, and NOT suffer guilt. And it is equally impossible to
condemn part of a relationship and find peace WITHIN it. Under
the Holy Spirits teaching, ALL relationships are seen as
total commitments, yet they do not conflict with one another
in any way. Perfect faith in each one, for its ability to
satisfy you COMPLETELY, arises only from perfect faith in
YOURSELF. And this you cannot have, while guilt remains. And
there WILL be guilt as long as you accept the possibility, and
CHERISH it, that you can make a brother what he is not because
YOU would have him so.
You have so little faith in yourself because you are
unwilling to accept the fact that perfect love is in YOU. And
so you seek without for what you cannot FIND without. I offer
you my perfect faith in you, in place of all your doubt. But
forget not that my faith must be as perfect in all your
brothers as it is in you, or it would be a limited gift to
YOU. In the holy instant, we share our faith in Gods Son
because we recognize, together, that he is wholly worthy of
it, and in our appreciation of his worth, we CANNOT doubt his
holiness. And so we love him.
The Holy Instant and the Laws of God
All separation vanishes as holiness is shared. For holiness
is power, and by sharing it, it GAINS in strength. If you seek
for satisfaction in gratifying your needs as YOU perceive
them, you must believe that strength comes from another, and
what YOU gain HE LOSES. Someone must ALWAYS lose, if you
perceive yourself as weak. Yet there is another interpretation
of relationships which transcends the concept of loss of power
completely.
You do not find it difficult to believe that, when another
calls on God for love, YOUR call remains as strong. Nor do you
think that, by Gods answer to him, YOUR hope of answer is
diminished. On the contrary, you are far more inclined to
regard his success as witness to the possibility of YOURS.
That is because you recognize, however dimly, that God is an
IDEA, and so your faith in Him is STRENGTHENED by sharing.
What you find difficult to accept is the fact that, like your
Father, YOU are an idea. And like Him, you can give yourself
completely, WHOLLY without loss and ONLY with gain.
Herein lies peace, for here there IS no conflict. In the
world of scarcity love has no meaning, and peace is
impossible. For gain and loss are BOTH accepted, and so no-one
is aware that perfect love is in him. In the holy instant, you
recognize the IDEA of love in you, and unite this idea with
the Mind that thought It, and could not RELINQUISH it. By
holding it within Itself, there WAS no loss. The holy instant
thus becomes a lesson in how to hold all of your brothers in
your mind, experiencing not loss, but COMPLETION. From this,
it follows you can ONLY give. And this IS love, for this alone
is natural, under the laws of God.
In the holy instant the laws of God prevail, and only they
have meaning. The laws of this world cease to hold any meaning
at all. When the Son of God accepts the laws of God as what he
gladly wills, it is impossible that he be bound, or limited in
any way. In this instant, he is as free as God would have him
be. For the instant he REFUSES to be bound, he is NOT bound.
In the holy instant, nothing happens that has not always
been. Only the veil that has been drawn ACROSS reality is
lifted. Nothing has changed. Yet the AWARENESS of
changelessness comes swiftly as the veil of time is pushed
aside. No-one who has not yet experienced the lifting of the
veil, and felt himself drawn irresistibly into the light
behind it, can have faith in love WITHOUT fear. Yet the Holy
Spirit GIVES you this faith, because He offered it to me and I
ACCEPTED it. Fear not the holy instant will be denied you, for
I denied it not. And through me the Holy Spirit gave it unto
you, as YOU will give it. Let no need that you perceive
obscure your need of this. For in the holy instant, you will
recognize the only need the aspects of the Son of God share
equally, and by this recognition you will join with me in
OFFERING what is needed.
It is through US that peace will come. Join me in the IDEA
of peace, for in ideas minds CAN communicate. If you would
give YOURSELF as your Father gives His Self, you will learn to
understand Selfhood. And therein is loves meaning understood.
But remember that understanding is of the MIND, and ONLY of
the mind. Knowledge is therefore of the mind, and its
conditions are in the mind with it. If you were not only an
idea, and NOTHING ELSE, you could not be in full communication
with all that ever was. Yet as long as you PREFER to be
something else, or would attempt to be nothing else and
something else TOGETHER, the language of communication, which
you know perfectly, you will not remember.
In the holy instant God is remembered, and the language of
communication with all your brothers is remembered with Him.
For communication is remembered TOGETHER as is truth. There is
no exclusion in the holy instant because the past is gone, and
with it goes the whole BASIS for exclusion. Without its source
exclusion vanishes. And this permits YOUR Source, and that of
all your brothers, to replace it in your awareness. God and
the power of God will take their rightful place in you, and
you will experience the full communication of ideas with
ideas. Through your ability to do this you will learn what you
MUST be, for you will begin to understand what your Creator
is, and what His creation is along with Him.
The Holy Instant and Communication
Beyond the poor attraction of the special love
relationship, and ALWAYS obscured by it, is the powerful
attraction of the Father for His Son. There is no other love
that can satisfy you, because there IS no other love. This is
the ONLY love that is fully given and fully returned. Being
complete, it asks nothing. Being wholly pure, everyone joined
in it HAS everything. This is not the basis for ANY
relationship in which the ego enters. For every relationship
on which the ego embarks IS special. The ego establishes
relationships only to GET something. And it would keep the
giver bound to itself through guilt.
It is impossible for the ego to enter into any relationship
without anger, for the ego believes that anger makes FRIENDS.
This is not its statement, but it IS its purpose. For the ego
really BELIEVES that it can get and keep BY MAKING GUILTY.
This is its ONE attraction; an attraction so weak that it
would have no hold at all, except that no-one RECOGNIZES it.
For the ego always SEEMS to attract through love, and has no
attraction at all to anyone who perceives that it attracts
through GUILT.
The sick attraction of guilt must be recognized for what it
IS. For having been made real to you, it is essential to look
at it clearly, and by withdrawing your INVESTMENT in it, to
learn to let it go. No-one would choose to let go what he
believes has value. Yet the attraction of guilt has value to
you only because you have NOT looked at what it is, and have
judged it completely in the dark. As we bring it to light,
your only question will be why it was you EVER wanted it. You
have nothing to lose by looking open-eyed at this, for
ugliness such as this belongs not in your holy mind. The host
of God CAN have no real investment here.
We said before that the ego attempts to maintain and
increase guilt, but in such a way that you do not recognize
what it would do to YOU. For it is the egos fundamental
doctrine that what you do to others YOU HAVE ESCAPED. The ego
wishes NO-ONE well. Yet its survival depends on your belief
that YOU are exempt from its evil intentions. It counsels,
therefore, that if you are host to IT, it will enable you to
direct the anger that it holds outward, thus PROTECTING you.
And thus it embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of
special relationships, forged out of anger, and dedicated to
but one insane belief; that the more anger you invest OUTSIDE
yourself, the safer YOU become.
It is this chain that binds the Son of God to guilt, and it
is this chain the Holy Spirit would remove from his holy mind.
For the chain of savagery belongs not around the chosen host
of God, who CANNOT make himself host to the ego. In the name
of his release, and in the Name of Him Who would release him,
let us look more closely at the relationships which the ego
contrives, and let the Holy Spirit judge them truly. For it is
certain that, if you will LOOK at them, you will offer them
gladly to Him. What HE can make of them you do not know, but
you will become willing to find out, if you are willing,
first, to perceive what YOU have made of them.
In one way or another, every relationship which the ego
makes is based on the idea that by SACRIFICING itself, it
becomes BIGGER. The sacrifice, which it regards as
purification, is actually the root of its bitter resentment.
For it would much prefer to attack directly, and avoid
delaying what it REALLY wants. Yet the ego acknowledges
reality as it sees it, and recognizes that no-one could
interpret DIRECT attack as love. Yet to make guilty IS direct
attack, but does not SEEM to be. For the guilty EXPECT attack,
and having ASKED for it, they are ATTRACTED to it.
In these insane relationships, the attraction of what you
do not want seems to be much stronger than the attraction of
what you DO. For each one thinks that he has sacrificed
something to the other, and HATES him for it. Yet this is what
he thinks he WANTS. He is not in love with the other at all.
He merely believes he is in love with SACRIFICE. And for this
sacrifice, which he demanded of HIMSELF, he demands the OTHER
accept the guilt, and sacrifice himself as well. Forgiveness
becomes impossible, for the ego believes that to forgive
another is to LOSE him. For it is only by attack WITHOUT
forgiveness that the ego can ensure the guilt which holds all
its relationships together.
Yet they only SEEM to be together. For relationships, to
the ego, mean only that BODIES are together. It is always
physical closeness that the ego demands, and it does not
object where the MIND goes or what IT thinks, for this seems
unimportant. As long as the body is there to receive its
sacrifice, it is content. To the ego, the mind is private, and
only the BODY can be shared. Ideas are basically of no
concern, except as they draw the body of another closer or
farther. And it is in these terms that it evaluates ideas as
good or bad. What makes another guilty and HOLDS him through
guilt is good. What RELEASES him from guilt is bad,
because he would no longer believe that bodies communicate,
and so he would be gone.
Suffering and sacrifice are the gifts with which the ego
would bless all unions. And those who are united at its
altar ACCEPT suffering and sacrifice as the price of union. In
their angry alliances, born of the fear of loneliness and yet
dedicated to the CONTINUANCE of loneliness, they seek relief
from guilt by increasing it in the OTHER. For they believe
that this decreases it in THEM. The other seems always to be
attacking and wounding them, perhaps in little ways, perhaps
unconsciously, yet never without demand of sacrifice. The
fury of those joined at the egos altar far exceeds your
awareness of it. For what the ego REALLY wants you do not
realize.
Whenever you are angry, you can be sure that you have
formed a special relationship which the ego has blessed,
for anger IS its blessing. Anger takes many forms, but it
cannot long deceive those who will learn that love brings no
guilt at all, and what brings guilt cannot be love, and MUST
be anger. ALL anger is nothing more than an attempt to make
someone feel guilty, and this attempt is the ONLY basis which
the ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only
need the ego has, and as long as you identify with it, guilt
will REMAIN attractive to you.
Yet remember this; to be with a body is NOT communication.
And if you think it is, you will feel guilty about
communication, and will be AFRAID to hear the Holy Spirit,
recognizing in His Voice your OWN need to communicate. The
Holy Spirit CANNOT teach through fear. And how can He
communicate with you, while you believe that to communicate is
to make yourself ALONE? It is clearly insane to believe that
by communicating you will be abandoned. And yet you DO believe
it. For you think that your minds must be kept private or you
will LOSE them, and if your BODIES are together your minds
remain your own. The union of bodies thus becomes the way in
which you would keep MINDS apart. For bodies cannot forgive.
They can only do as the mind directs.
The illusion of the autonomy of the body and ITS ability to
overcome loneliness is but the working of the egos plan to
establish its OWN autonomy. As long as you believe that to be
with a body is companionship, you will be compelled to attempt
to keep your brother in his body, held there by guilt. And you
will see SAFETY in guilt and DANGER in communication. For the
ego will ALWAYS teach that loneliness is solved by guilt, and
that communication is the CAUSE of loneliness. And despite the
evident insanity of this lesson, you have LEARNED it.
Forgiveness lies in communication as surely as damnation
lies in guilt. It is the Holy Spirits teaching function to
instruct those who believe that communication is damnation
that communication is SALVATION. And He will do so, for the
power of God in Him AND you is joined in REAL relationship, so
holy and so strong that it can overcome even THIS without
fear. It is through the holy instant that what seems
impossible is ACCOMPLISHED, making it evident that it is NOT
impossible. In the holy instant guilt holds NO attraction,
since communication has been restored. And guilt, whose ONLY
purpose is to disrupt communication, has no function here.
Here there is no concealment, and no private thoughts. The
willingness to communicate attracts communication TO it, and
overcomes loneliness completely. There is complete forgiveness
here, for there is no desire to exclude anyone from your
completion, in sudden recognition of the value of his part in
it. In the protection of YOUR wholeness, all are invited and
made welcome. And you understand that your completion is
Gods, Whose only need is to have YOU be complete. For your
completion makes you His in your awareness. And here it is
that you experience yourself as you were created, and as you
ARE.
The Holy Instant and Real Relationships
The holy instant does not replace the need for learning,
for the Holy Spirit must not leave you as your Teacher until
the holy instant has extended far beyond time. For a teaching
assignment such as His, He must use everything in this world
for your release. He must side with every sign or token of
your willingness to learn of Him what the truth must be. He is
swift to utilize whatever you offer Him on behalf of this. His
concern and care for you are limitless. In the face of your
FEAR of forgiveness, which He perceives as clearly as He knows
forgiveness is RELEASE, He will teach you to remember that
forgiveness is not loss, but your SALVATION. And that in
COMPLETE forgiveness, in which you recognize that there is
nothing to forgive, YOU are absolved completely.
Hear him gladly, and learn of Him that you have need of no
special relationships at all. You but seek in them what you
have thrown away. And through them you will never learn the
value of what you have cast aside, but what you still desire
with all your hearts. Let us join together in making the holy
instant all that there is, by desiring that it BE all that
there is. Gods Son has such great need of your willingness to
strive for this that you cannot conceive of need so great.
Behold the only need that God and His Son share, and will to
meet together. You are not alone in this. The will of your
creations call to you, to share your will with them. Turn,
then, in peace from guilt to God and them.
Relate only with what will NEVER leave you, and what YOU
can never leave. The loneliness of Gods Son is the loneliness
of his Father. Refuse not the awareness of your completion,
and seek not to restore it to yourselves. Fear not to give
redemption over to your Redeemers Love. He will not fail you,
for He comes from One Who CANNOT fail. Accept YOUR sense of
failure as nothing more than a mistake in who you are. For the
holy host of God is beyond failure, and nothing that he wills
can BE denied. You are forever in a relationship so holy that
it calls to everyone to escape from loneliness, and join you
in your love. And where you are must everyone seek, and FIND
you there.
Think but an instant on this: God gave the Sonship to you,
to ensure your perfect creation. This was His Gift, for as He
withheld Himself not from you, He withheld not His creation.
Nothing that ever was created but is yours. Your relationships
are with the universe. And this universe, being of God, is far
beyond the petty sum of all the separate bodies YOU perceive.
For all its parts are joined in God through Christ, where they
become like to their Father. For Christ knows of no separation
from His Father, Who is His One relationship, in which He
gives as His Father gives to Him.
The Holy Spirit is Gods attempt to free you of what He
does not understand. And because of the Source of the attempt,
it will SUCCEED. The Holy Spirit asks you to respond as God
does, for He would teach you what YOU do not understand. God
would respond to EVERY need, whatever form it takes. And so He
has kept this channel open to receive His communication to
you, and yours to Him. God does not understand your problem in
communication, for He does not share it with you. It is only
you who believe that it IS understandable.
The Holy Spirit knows that it is not understandable, and
yet He understands it because you have MADE it. In Him alone
lies the awareness of what God cannot know, and what you do
not understand. It is His holy function to accept them both,
and by removing every element of disagreement, to join them
into one. He will do this BECAUSE it is His function. Leave,
then, what seems to you to be impossible to Him Who knows it
MUST be possible because it is the Will of God. And let Him
Whose teaching is ONLY of God teach you the ONLY meaning of
relationships. For God created the only relationship which has
meaning, and that is His relationship with YOU.
As the ego would limit your perception of your brothers to
the body, so would the Holy Spirit release your vision and let
you see the great rays shining from them, so unlimited that
they reach to God. It is this shift in vision which is
accomplished in the holy instant. Yet it is needful for you to
learn just what this shift entails, so you will become willing
to make it permanent. Given this willingness it will not leave
you, for it IS permanent. For once you have accepted it as the
only perception you WANT, it is translated into knowledge by
the part which God Himself plays in the Atonement, for it is
the only step in it He understands. Therefore, in this there
will be no delay when you are ready for it. God is ready NOW,
but YOU are not.
Our task is but to continue, as fast as possible, the
necessary process of looking straight at all the interference,
and seeing it EXACTLY as it is. For it is impossible to
recognize as wholly WITHOUT gratification what you think you
WANT. The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the
symbol of the separation. And both are nothing more than
attempts to limit communication, and thereby to make it
impossible. For communication must be unlimited in order to
have meaning, and DEPRIVED of meaning it will not satisfy you
completely. Yet it remains the only means by which you can
establish real relationships.
Real relationships HAVE no limits, having been established
by God. In the holy instant, where the great rays REPLACE the
body in awareness, the recognition of relationships without
limits is given you. But to see this, it is necessary to give
up every use the ego has for the body, and to accept the fact
that the ego has NO purpose you would share with it. For the
ego would limit everyone to a body for ITS purposes, and while
you think it HAS a purpose, you will choose to utilize the
means by which IT tries to turn its purpose into
accomplishment. This will never BE accomplished. Yet you have
surely recognized that the ego, whose goals are altogether
unattainable, will strive for them with all its might, and
will do so with the strength which YOU have given it.
It is impossible to divide your strength between Heaven and
hell, God and the ego, and release your power unto creation,
which is the only purpose for which it was given you. Love
would ALWAYS give increase. Limits are demanded by the ego,
representing its demands to make little and ineffectual. Limit
your vision of a brother to his body, which you WILL do as
long as you would not release him from it, and you have denied
his gift to YOU. His body CANNOT give it. And seek it not
through YOURS. Yet your minds are ALREADY continuous, and
their union need only be accepted, and the loneliness in
Heaven is gone.
If you would but let the Holy Spirit tell you of the Love
of God for you, and the need your creations have to be with
you forever, you would experience the attraction of the
eternal. No-one can hear Him speak of this and long remain
willing to linger here. For it IS your will to be in Heaven,
where you are complete and quiet, in such sure and loving
relationships that ANY limit is impossible. Would you not
exchange your little relationships for this? For the body IS
little and limited, and only those whom you would see WITHOUT
the limits the ego would impose on them can offer you the gift
of freedom.
You have no conception of the limits you have placed on
your perception, and no idea of all the loveliness that you
could see. But this you must remember; the attraction of guilt
OPPOSES the attraction of God. His attraction for you remains
unlimited, but because your power, being His, is as great as
His, you can turn away from love. What you invest in guilt you
withdraw from God. And your sight grows weak and dim and
limited, for you have attempted to separate the Father from
the Son, and limit their communication. Seek not Atonement in
FURTHER separation. And limit not your vision of Gods Son to
what INTERFERES with his release, and what the Holy Spirit
must UNDO to set him free. For his belief in limits HAS
imprisoned him.
When the body ceases to attract you, and when you place no
value on it as a means for getting ANYTHING, then there will
be no interference in communication, and your thoughts will be
as free as Gods. As you let the Holy Spirit teach you how to
use the body ONLY for purposes of communication, and renounce
its use for separation and attack which the ego sees in it,
you will learn you have no need of a body at all. In the holy
instant there ARE no bodies, and you experience only the
attraction of God. Accepting it as undivided you join Him
wholly, in an instant. The reality of this relationship
becomes the only truth that you could ever WANT. All truth IS
here.
The Time of Christ
It IS in your power, in TIME, to delay the perfect union of
the Father and the Son. For in this world, the attraction of
guilt DOES stand between them. Neither time nor season means
anything in eternity. But here, it is the Holy Spirits
function to use them both, though not as the ego uses them.
This is the season when you would celebrate my birth into the
world. Yet you know not how to do it. Let the Holy Spirit
teach you, and let me celebrate YOUR birth through Him. The
only gift I can accept of you is the gift I GAVE to you.
Release ME as I will YOUR release. The time of Christ we
celebrate TOGETHER, for it has no meaning if we are apart.
The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. For in this
liberating instant no guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and
his unlimited power is thus restored to him. What other gift
can you offer me, when only this I will to offer YOU? And to
see me is to see me in everyone, and offer everyone the gift
you offer me. I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice as God
is, and every sacrifice you ask of yourself you ask of me.
Learn NOW that sacrifice of any kind is nothing but a
limitation imposed on giving. And by this limitation you have
limited acceptance of the gift I offer YOU.
We who are one CANNOT give separately. When you are willing
to accept OUR relationship as real, guilt will hold NO
attraction for you. For in our union you will accept ALL of
our brothers. The gift of union is the only gift that I was
born to give. Give it to me, that YOU may have it. The time of
Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered
to everyone. And by YOUR acceptance of it, you have OFFERED it
to everyone. It IS in your power to make this season holy, for
it is in your power to make the time of Christ be NOW.
It is possible to do this all at once because there is but
ONE shift in perception that is necessary, for you made but
ONE mistake. It seems like many, but it is all the same. For
though the ego takes many forms, it is ALWAYS the same idea.
What is not love is ALWAYS fear, and nothing else. It is not
necessary to follow fear through all the circuitous routes by
which it burrows underground and hides in darkness, to emerge
in forms quite different from what it is. Yet it IS necessary
to examine each one as long as you would retain the PRINCIPLE
which governs all of them. When you are willing to regard
them, not as separate, but as different manifestations of the
SAME idea, and one you do not WANT, they go together. The idea
is simply this; you believe that it is possible to be host to
the ego or hostage to God. This is the choice you think you
have, and the decision which you believe that you must make.
You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the
fact that sacrifice gets NOTHING. Sacrifice is so essential to
your thought system that salvation APART from sacrifice means
nothing to you. Your confusion of sacrifice and love is so
profound that you cannot conceive of love WITHOUT sacrifice.
And it is this that you must look upon; sacrifice is ATTACK,
not love. If you would accept but this ONE idea, your fear of
love would vanish. Guilt CANNOT last when the idea of
sacrifice has been removed. For if there is sacrifice, as you
are convinced, someone must pay and someone must get. And the
only question which remains to be decided is HOW MUCH is the
price for getting WHAT.
As host to the ego, you believe that you can give ALL your
guilt away WHATEVER you think, and purchase peace. And the
payment does not seem to be YOURS. While it is obvious that
the ego DOES demand payment, it never seems to be demanding it
of YOU. For you are unwilling to recognize that the ego, which
you invited, is treacherous only to those who think they are
its host. The ego will never let you perceive this, since this
recognition would make it homeless. For when this recognition
dawns clearly, you will not be deceived by ANY form the ego
takes to protect itself from your sight.
Each form will be recognized as but a cover for the one
idea that hides behind them all; that love demands sacrifice,
and is therefore inseparable from attack and fear. And that
guilt is the PRICE of love, which must be paid BY fear. How
fearful, then, has God become to you, and how great a
sacrifice do you believe His Love demands! For total love
would demand total sacrifice. And so the ego seems to demand
less of you than God, and of the two is judged as the lesser
of two evils, one to be feared a little, but the other to be
destroyed. For you see love as DESTRUCTIVE, and your only
question is who is to be destroyed, you or another? You seek
to answer this question in your special relationships, in
which you are both destroyer and destroyed in part, but with
the idea of being able to be neither completely. And this you
think saves you from God, Whose total Love would completely
destroy you.
You think that everyone OUTSIDE yourself demands your
sacrifice, but you do not see that ONLY you demand sacrifice,
and ONLY of yourself. Yet the demand of sacrifice is so savage
and so fearful that you CANNOT accept it where it is. But the
REAL price of not accepting this has been so great that you
have given God away rather than look at it. For if God would
demand total sacrifice of you, you thought it safer to project
Him outward and AWAY from you, and not be host to Him. To Him
you ascribed the egos treachery, inviting it to take His
place to PROTECT you from Him. And you do not recognize that
it is what YOU invited in that would destroy you, and DOES
demand total sacrifice of you. No partial sacrifice will
appease this savage guest, for it is an invader who but SEEMS
to offer kindness, but always to make the sacrifice complete.
You will not succeed in being partial hostage to the ego,
for it keeps no bargains, and would leave you nothing. You
will have to choose between TOTAL freedom and TOTAL bondage,
for there are no alternatives but these. You have tried many
compromises in the attempt to avoid recognizing the one
decision which must be made. And yet it is the recognition of
the decision, JUST AS IT IS, that makes the decision so easy!
Salvation is simple being of God, and therefore very easy to
understand. Do not try to project it from you and see it
OUTSIDE yourself. In you are both the question and the answer;
the demand for sacrifice and the peace of God.
The End of Sacrifice
Fear not to recognize the whole idea of sacrifice as SOLELY
of your making. And seek not safety by attempting to protect
yourself from where it is not. Your brothers and your Father
have become very fearful to you. And you would bargain with
them for a few special relationships in which you think you
see some scraps of safety. Do not try longer to keep apart
your thoughts and the Thought that has been given you. When
they are brought together and perceived where they ARE, the
choice between them is nothing more than a gentle awakening,
and as simple as opening your eyes to daylight when you have
no more need of sleep.
The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See
it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and
accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come. He comes
demanding NOTHING. No sacrifice of any kind, of anyone, is
asked by Him. In His Presence, the whole idea of sacrifice
loses all meaning. For He is Host to God. And you need but
invite Him in Who is there ALREADY, by recognizing that His
Host is One, and no thought alien to His Oneness can abide
with Him there. Love must be total to give Him welcome, for
the Presence of holiness CREATES the holiness which surrounds
it. No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of
Christ, for the Host is as holy as the Perfect Innocence which
He protects, and Whose power protects Him.
This Christmas, give the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING that would
hurt you. LET yourself be healed completely that you may join
with Him in healing, and let us celebrate our release together
by releasing everyone with us. Leave nothing behind, for
release is total, and when you have accepted it with me you
will GIVE it with me. All pain and sacrifice and littleness
will disappear in our relationship, which is as innocent as
our relationship with our Father, and as powerful. Pain will
be brought to us and disappear in our presence, and without
pain there can BE no sacrifice. And without sacrifice there
love MUST be.
You who believe that sacrifice IS love must learn that
sacrifice is SEPARATION from love. For sacrifice brings guilt
as surely as love brings peace. Guilt is the CONDITION of
sacrifice, as peace is the condition for the awareness of your
relationship with God. Through guilt you exclude your Father
and your brothers from yourself. Through peace you invite them
back, and realize that they are where your invitation bids
them be. What you excluded from yourself seems fearful, for
you endowed it with fear and tried to cast it out, though it
was part of you. Who can perceive part of himself as
loathsome, and live within himself in peace? And who can try
to resolve the perceived conflict of Heaven and hell in him by
casting Heaven out and giving it the attributes of hell,
without experiencing himself as incomplete and lonely?
As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long
will you perceive yourself as lonely and deprived. And so long
will you also perceive yourself as a victim of sacrifice,
justified in sacrificing others. For who could thrust Heaven
and its Creator aside WITHOUT a sense of sacrifice and loss?
And who can suffer sacrifice and loss without attempting to
RESTORE himself? Yet how could you accomplish this yourselves,
when the basis of your attempts is the belief in the REALITY
of the deprivation? For deprivation breeds attack, being the
belief that attack IS justified. And as long as you would
retain the deprivation, attack becomes salvation and sacrifice
becomes love.
So is it that, in all your seeking for love, you seek for
sacrifice and FIND it. Yet you find not love. It is impossible
to deny what love is, and still RECOGNIZE it. The meaning of
love lies in what you have cast OUTSIDE yourself, and it has
no meaning at all apart from you. It is what you preferred to
KEEP that has no meaning. While all that you would keep AWAY
holds all the meaning of the universe, and holds the universe
together in its meaning. For unless the universe were joined
in YOU it would be apart from God, and to be without Him IS to
be without meaning.
In the holy instant the condition of love is met, for minds
are joined without the bodys interference, and where there is
communication, there is peace. The Prince of Peace was born to
re-establish the condition of love by teaching that
communication remains unbroken even if the body is destroyed,
provided that you see not the body as the NECESSARY means of
communication. And if you understand this lesson, you will
realize that to sacrifice the body is to sacrifice NOTHING,
and communication, which MUST be of the mind, cannot BE
sacrificed. Where, then, IS sacrifice?
The lesson I was born to teach, and still would teach to
all my brothers, is that sacrifice is nowhere and love is
everywhere. For communication embraces EVERYTHING, and in the
peace it re-establishes love comes of itself. Let no despair
darken the joy of Christmas, for the time of Christ is
meaningless apart from joy. Let us join in celebrating peace
by demanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so will you offer me
the love I offer you. What can be more joyous than to perceive
we are deprived of NOTHING? Such is the message of the time of
Christ, which I give you that YOU may give it, and return it
to the Father, Who gave it to me. For in the time of Christ
communication is restored, and He joins us in the celebration
of His Sons creation.
God offers thanks to the holy host who would receive Him,
and let Him enter and abide where He would be. And by your
welcome does He welcome you into Himself, for what is
contained in you who welcome Him is RETURNED to Him. And we
but celebrate His Wholeness as we welcome Him into ourselves.
Those who receive the Father are One with Him, being host to
Him Who created them. And by allowing Him to enter, the
remembrance of the Father enters with Him, and with Him they
remember the only relationship they ever had, and ever WANT TO
HAVE.
This is the weekend in which a new year will be born from
the time of Christ. I have perfect faith in you to do all that
you would accomplish. Nothing will be lacking, and you will
make complete, and NOT destroy. Say and understand this:
I give you to the Holy Spirit as part of myself.
I know that you will be released, unless I want to
use you to imprison MYSELF.
In the name of MY freedom I will your release,
Because I recognize that we will be released
TOGETHER.
So will the year begin in joy and freedom. There is much to
do, and we have been long delayed. Accept the holy instant as
this year is born, and take your place, so long left
unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening. Make this year different
by making it all the SAME. And let ALL your relationships be
made holy FOR you. This is our will. Amen.
CHAPTER 16
THE FORGIVENESS OF ILLUSIONS
To empathize does not mean to join in SUFFERING, for that
is what you must REFUSE to understand. That is the EGOS
interpretation of empathy, and is always used to form a
special relationship in which the suffering is shared. The
capacity to empathize is very useful to the Holy Spirit,
provided you let Him use it in His way. He does not understand
suffering, and would have you teach it is not UNDERSTANDABLE.
When He relates through you, He does not relate through the
ego to another ego. He does not join in pain, knowing that
healing pain is not accomplished by delusional attempts to
enter into it, and lighten it by sharing the delusion.
The clearest proof that empathy as the ego uses it is
destructive lies in the fact that it is applied only to
certain types of problems, and in certain people. These it
selects OUT, and joins WITH. And it never joins except to
strengthen ITSELF. Make no mistake about this maneuver; the
ego always empathizes to WEAKEN, and to weaken is ALWAYS to
attack. You do not know what empathizing means. Yet of this
you may be sure; if you will merely sit quietly by and let the
Holy Spirit relate through you, you will empathize with
STRENGTH, and BOTH of you will gain in strength, and not in
weakness.
Your part is only to remember this; you do not want
anything YOU value to come of the relationship. You will
neither to hurt it nor to heal it in your own way. You do not
know what healing is. All you have learned of empathy is from
the PAST. And there is nothing from the past that you would
share, for there is nothing there that you would KEEP. Do not
use empathy to make the past real, and so perpetuate it. Step
gently aside, and let the healing be done FOR you. Keep but
one thought in mind, and do not lose sight of it, however
tempted you may be to judge any situation, and to determine
your response by judging it. Focus your mind only on this:
I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon
my Guest.
I have invited Him, and He is here.
I need do nothing except NOT TO INTERFERE.
True Empathy
True empathy is of Him Who knows what it is. You will learn
His interpretation of it if you let Him use your capacity for
STRENGTH, and NOT for weakness. He will not desert you, but be
sure that YOU desert not HIM. Humility is strength in this
sense only; to recognize and accept the fact that you do NOT
know is to recognize and accept the fact that He DOES know.
You are not sure that He will do His part because you have
never yet done YOURS completely. You will not know how to
respond to what you do not understand. Be tempted not in this,
and yield not to the egos triumphant use of empathy for ITS
glory.
The triumph of weakness is not what you would offer to a
brother. And yet you know no triumph BUT this. This is not
knowledge, and the form of empathy that would bring this about
is so distorted that it would imprison what it would release.
The unredeemed cannot redeem, yet they HAVE a Redeemer.
Attempt to teach Him not. YOU are the learner; He the Teacher.
Do not confuse your role with His, for this will never bring
peace to anyone. Offer your empathy to Him, for it is his
perception and his strength that you would share. And let Him
offer you His strength and His perception, to be shared
through you.
The meaning of love is lost in any relationship which looks
to weakness, and hopes to find love there. The power of love,
which is its meaning, lies in the strength of God, which
hovers over it and blesses it silently by enveloping it in
healing wings. LET this be, and do not try to substitute YOUR
miracle for this. We once said that if a brother asks a
foolish thing of you to do it. But be certain that this does
not mean to do a foolish thing that would hurt either him OR
you, for what would hurt one WILL hurt the other. Foolish
requests are foolish for the simple reason that they conflict,
because they contain an element of specialness. Only the Holy
Spirit recognizes foolish needs as well as real ones. And He
will teach you how to meet both without losing either.
YOU will attempt to do this only in secrecy. And you will
think that, by meeting the needs of one you do not jeopardize
another because you keep them separate, and secret from each
other. That is not the way, for it leads not to light and
truth. No needs will long be left unmet if you leave them all
to Him Whose FUNCTION is to meet them. That is HIS function,
and NOT yours. He will not meet them secretly, for He would
share everything you give through Him. And that is WHY He
gives it.
What you give through Him is for the whole Sonship, NOT for
part of it. Leave Him His function, for He will fulfill it if
you but ask Him to enter your relationships, and bless them
FOR you.
The Magnitude of Holiness
You still think holiness is difficult because you cannot
see how it can be extended to include everyone. And you have
learned that it MUST include everyone to BE holy. Concern
yourselves not with the extension of holiness, for the nature
of miracles you do not understand. Nor do YOU do them. It is
their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that
demonstrates you did NOT do them. Why should you worry how the
miracle extends to all the Sonship when you do not understand
the miracle itself? One attribute is no more difficult to
understand than is the whole. If miracles ARE at all, their
attributes would HAVE to be miraculous, being part of them.
There is a tendency to fragment, and then to be concerned
about the truth of just a little part of the whole. And this
is but a way of avoiding, or LOOKING AWAY from the whole, to
what you think you might be better able to understand. For
this is but another way in which you would still try to keep
understanding to YOURSELF. A better and FAR more helpful way
to think of miracles is this: You do not understand them,
either in part OR whole. Yet you have done them. Therefore,
your understanding cannot be necessary. Yet it is still
impossible to accomplish what you do not understand. And so
there must be something in you that DOES understand.
To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural because what you
have done to hurt your minds has made them so UNNATURAL that
they do not remember what is natural to them. And when you are
TOLD about it, you cannot understand it. The recognition of
the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is
PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way God thinks, and what is
natural to Him is natural to you. Wholly natural perception
would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles
is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what
miracles mean. And if you could understand their meaning,
their attributes could hardly cause you perplexity.
You HAVE done miracles, but it is quite apparent that you
have not done them alone. You have succeeded whenever you have
reached another mind and JOINED with it. When two minds join
as one and share one idea equally, the first link in the
awareness of the Sonship as one has been made. When you have
made this joining, as the Holy Spirit bids you, and have
offered it to Him to use as He knows how, His natural
perception of your gift enables HIM to understand it, and YOU
to use His understanding on your behalf. It is impossible to
convince you of the reality of what has clearly BEEN
accomplished through your willingness as long as you believe
that YOU must understand it, or else it is not real.
You think your lack of understanding is a LOSS to you, and
so you are unwilling to believe that what has happened is
true. But can you REALLY believe that all that has happened,
even though you do NOT understand it, has NOT happened? Yet
this IS your position. You would have perfect faith in the
Holy Spirit, and in the effects of His teaching, if you were
not afraid to ACKNOWLEDGE what He taught you. For this
acknowledgement means that what has happened you do not
understand, but that you are willing to accept it BECAUSE it
has happened.
How can faith in reality be yours while you are bent on
making it unreal? And are you REALLY safer in maintaining the
unreality of what has happened than you would be in joyously
accepting it for what it is, and giving thanks for it? Honor
the truth that has been given you, and be glad you do not
understand it. Miracles are natural to God, and to the One Who
speaks for Him. For His task is to translate the miracle into
the knowledge which it represents, and which is lost to you.
Let His understanding of the miracle be enough for you, and do
not turn away from all the witnesses that He has given you to
His reality.
No evidence will convince you of the truth of what you do
not want. Yet your relationship with Him IS real, and HAS been
demonstrated. Regard this not with fear, but with rejoicing.
The One you called upon IS with you. Bid Him welcome, and
honor His witnesses, who bring you the glad tidings He has
come. It is true, just as you fear, that to acknowledge Him IS
to deny all that you think you know. But it was never true.
What gain is there to you in clinging to it, and denying the
evidence for truth? For you have come too near to truth to
renounce it now, and you WILL yield to its compelling
attraction. You can delay this now but only a little while.
The host of God has called to you, and you HAVE heard. Never
again will you be wholly willing not to listen.
This is a year of joy, in which your listening will
increase, and peace will grow with its increase. The power of
holiness and the WEAKNESS of attack have BOTH been brought
into awareness. And this has been accomplished in minds firmly
convinced that holiness is weakness, and attack is power.
Should not this be a sufficient miracle to teach you that your
Teacher is NOT of you? But remember also that, whenever you
have listened to His interpretation, the results have brought
you joy. Would you prefer the results of YOUR interpretation,
considering honestly what they have been? God wills you
better. Could you not look with greater charity on whom God
loves with perfect love?
Do not interpret AGAINST Gods Love, for you have many
witnesses which speak of It so clearly that only the blind and
deaf could fail to see and hear them. This year, determine not
to deny what has been given you by God, for that is the only
reason He has called to you. His Voice has spoken clearly, and
yet you have so little faith in what you heard because you
have preferred to place still greater faith in the disaster
YOU have made. Today, let us resolve TOGETHER to accept the
joyful tidings that disaster is not real, and that reality is
not disaster.
Reality is safe and sure, and wholly kind to everyone and
everything. There is no greater love than to accept this, and
be glad. For love asks only that you be HAPPY, and will give
you everything that makes for happiness. You have never given
any problem to the Holy Spirit He has not solved for you, nor
will you ever do so. You have never tried to solve anything
yourself and been successful. Is it not time you brought these
facts TOGETHER, and made SENSE of them?
This is the year for the APPLICATION of the ideas which
have been given you. For the ideas are mighty forces, to be
used and not held idly by. They have already proved their
power sufficiently for you to place your faith in them, and
not in their denial. This year invest in truth, and let it
work in peace. Have faith in what has faith in you. Think what
you have REALLY seen and heard, and RECOGNIZE it. Can you be
alone with witnesses like these?
The Reward of Teaching
You have taught well, and yet you have not learned how to
ACCEPT the comfort of your teaching. If you will consider what
you have taught, and how alien it is to what you thought you
knew, you will be compelled to recognize that your Teacher
came from beyond your thought system, and so could look upon
it fairly, and perceive it was untrue. And He must have done
so from the basis of a very different thought system, and one
with NOTHING in common with yours. For certainly what He has
taught, and what you have taught through Him, have nothing in
common with what you taught before He came. And the results
have been to bring peace where there was pain, and suffering
has disappeared, to be replaced by joy.
You have taught freedom, but you have not learned how to be
free. We once said, By their fruits ye shall know them, and
they shall know themselves. For it is certain that you judge
yourself according to your teaching. The egos teaching
produces immediate results because its decisions are
immediately accepted as YOUR choice. And this acceptance means
that you are willing to judge yourself accordingly. Cause and
effect are very clear in the egos thought system because all
your learning has been directed towards ESTABLISHING the
relationship between them. And would you not have faith in
what you have so diligently taught yourself to believe? Yet
remember how much care you have exerted in choosing its
witnesses, and in avoiding those which spoke for the cause of
truth and ITS effects.
Does not the fact that you have not learned what you have
taught show you that you do not perceive the Sonship as one?
And does it not also show you that you do not regard YOURSELF
as one? For it is impossible to teach successfully wholly
WITHOUT conviction, and it is equally impossible that
conviction be OUTSIDE of you. You could never have taught
freedom unless you DID believe in it. And it must be that what
you taught came from YOURSELF. And yet, this Self you clearly
do not KNOW, and do not recognize It even though It functions.
What functions must be THERE. And it is only if you deny what
it has DONE that you could possibly deny its presence.
This is a course in how to know yourself. You HAVE taught
what you are, but have not let what you are teach YOU. You
have been very careful to avoid the obvious, and not to see
the REAL cause and effect relationship that is perfectly
apparent. Yet within you is EVERYTHING you taught. What can it
be that has NOT learned it? It must be this that is REALLY
outside yourself, not by your own projection, but in TRUTH.
And it is this that you have taken in that is NOT you. What
you accept into your minds does not REALLY change them.
Illusions are but beliefs in what is not there. And the
seeming conflict between truth and illusion can only be
resolved by separating yourself from the ILLUSION, and NOT
from truth.
Your teaching has already done this, for the Holy Spirit is
part of YOU. Created by God, He left neither God nor His
creation. He is both God AND you, as you are God and Him
together. For Gods answer to the separation added more to you
than you tried to take away. He protected both your creations
and you together, keeping one with you what you would exclude.
And they will take the place of what you took in to replace
them. They are quite real, as part of the Self you do not
know. And they communicate to you through the Holy Spirit, and
their power and gratitude to you for their creation they offer
gladly to your teaching of yourself, who is their home. You
who are host to God are also host to them. For nothing real
has ever left the mind of its creator. And what is not real
was never THERE.
You are not two selves in conflict. What is beyond God? If
you who hold Him and whom He holds ARE the universe, all else
must be OUTSIDE, where NOTHING is. You have taught this, and
from far off in the universe, yet not beyond yourself, the
witnesses to your teaching have gathered to help you learn.
Their gratitude has joined with yours and Gods to strengthen
your faith in what you taught. For what you taught is true.
Alone, you stand outside your teaching and APART from it. But
WITH them you must learn that you but taught YOURSELF, and
learned from the conviction you shared with them.
This year you will begin to learn, and make learning
commensurate with teaching. You have chosen this by your own
willingness to teach. Though you seemed to suffer for it, the
joy of teaching will yet be yours. For the joy of teaching is
in the LEARNER, who offers it to the teacher in gratitude, and
shares it with him. As you learn, your gratitude to your Self,
Who teaches you what He is, will grow and help you honor Him.
And you will learn His power and strength and purity, and love
Him as His Father does. His Kingdom has no limits and no end,
and there is nothing in Him that is not perfect and eternal.
All this is YOU, and nothing outside of this IS you.
To your most holy Self all praise is due for what you are,
and for what He is Who created you as you are. Sooner or later
must everyone bridge the gap which he imagines exists between
his selves. Each one builds this bridge, which carries him
ACROSS the gap as soon as he is willing to expend some little
effort on behalf of bridging it. His little efforts are
powerfully supplemented by the strength of Heaven, and by the
united will of all who make Heaven what it is, being joined
within it. And so the one who would cross over is literally
transported there.
Your bridge is builded stronger than you think, and your
foot is planted firmly on it. Have no fear that the attraction
of those who stand on the other side and wait for you will not
draw you safely across. For you WILL come where you would be,
and where your Self awaits you.
Illusion and Reality of Love
Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship,
for freedom lies in looking at it. It would be impossible not
to know the meaning of love, except for this. For the special
love relationship, in which the meaning of love is LOST, is
undertaken solely to offset the hate, but NOT to let it go.
Your salvation will rise clearly before your open eyes as you
look on this. You cannot LIMIT hate. The special love
relationship will not offset it, but will merely drive it
underground and out of sight. It is essential to bring it INTO
sight, and to make no attempt to hide it. For it is the
attempt to balance hate with love that MAKES love meaningless
to you. The extent of the split that lies in this you do not
realize. And UNTIL you do, the split will remain unrecognized,
and therefore unhealed.
The symbols of hate against the symbols of love play out a
conflict which does not exist. For symbols stand for something
ELSE, and the symbol of love is without meaning if love is
everything. You will go through this last undoing quite
unharmed, and will at last emerge as yourself. This is the
last step in the readiness for God. Be not unwilling now, you
are too near, and you will cross the bridge in perfect safety,
translated quietly from war to peace. For the illusion of love
will NEVER satisfy, but its reality, which awaits you on the
other side, will give you everything.
The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the
destructive effects of hate by finding a haven in the storm of
guilt. It makes no attempt to rise ABOVE the storm, into the
sunlight. On the contrary, it emphasizes guilt OUTSIDE the
haven by attempting to build barricades against it, and keep
within them. The special love relationship is not perceived as
a value in itself, but as a place of safety from which hatred
is split off, and kept apart. The special love partner is
acceptable only as long as he serves this purpose. Hatred can
enter, and indeed is welcome in SOME aspects of the
relationship, but it is still held together by the illusion of
love. If the illusion goes, the relationship is broken or
becomes unsatisfying on the grounds of disillusionment.
Love is NOT an illusion. It is a fact. Where
disillusionment is possible, there was not love but hate. For
hate IS an illusion, and what can change was NEVER love. It is
certain that those who select certain ones as partners in any
aspect of living, and use them for any purpose which they
would not share with others, are trying to LIVE with guilt
rather than DIE of it. This is the choice they see. And love,
to them, is only an escape from death. They seek it
desperately, but not in the peace in which it would gladly
come quietly TO them. And when they find the fear of death is
still upon them, the love relationship LOSES the illusion that
it is what it is not. For then the barricades against it are
broken, fear rushes in and hatred triumphs.
There are no triumphs of love. Only hate is concerned with
the triumph of love at all. The illusion of love CAN
triumph over the illusion of hate, but always at the price of
making BOTH illusions. As long as the illusion of hatred
lasts, so long will love be an illusion to you. And then the
only choice which remains possible is which illusion you
prefer. There IS no conflict in the choice between truth and
illusion. Seen in THESE terms, no one would hesitate. But
conflict enters the instant the choice seems to be one between
ILLUSIONS, for this choice does not matter. Where one choice
is as dangerous as the other, the decision MUST be one of
despair.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and
find ALL of the barriers within yourself which you have built
AGAINST it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but
it IS necessary to seek for what is false. Every illusion is
one of fear, whatever form it takes. And the attempt to escape
from one illusion into another MUST fail. If you seek love
outside yourself, you can be certain that you perceive hatred
within and are AFRAID of it. Yet peace will never come from
the illusion of love, but ONLY from its reality.
Recognize this, for it is true, and truth MUST be
recognized if it is to be distinguished from illusion: The
special love relationship is an attempt to bring love into
fear, and make it REAL in fear. In fundamental violation of
loves condition, the special love relationship would
accomplish the impossible. How but in illusion COULD this be
done? It is essential that we look very closely at exactly
what it is you think you can do to solve the dilemma which
seems very real to you, but which does not exist. You have
come very close to truth, and only this stands between you and
the bridge that leads you into it.
Heaven waits silently, and your creations are holding out
their hands to help you cross, and welcome them. For it is
THEY you SEEK. You seek but for your own completion, and it is
they who render you complete. The special love relationship is
but a shabby substitute for what makes you whole in truth, NOT
in illusion. Your relationship with them is without guilt, and
this enables you to look on all your brothers with gratitude,
because your creations were created in union WITH them.
Acceptance of your creations is the acceptance of the oneness
of creation, without which you could never BE complete. No
specialness can offer you what God has given, and what you are
joined with Him in giving.
Across the bridge is your completion, for you will be
wholly in God, willing for nothing special, but only to be
wholly like unto Him, completing Him by YOUR completion. Fear
not to cross to the abode of peace and perfect holiness. Only
there is the completion of God and of His Son established
forever. Seek not for this in the bleak world of illusion,
where nothing is certain, and where everything fails to
satisfy. In the Name of God, be wholly willing to abandon ALL
illusions. In any relationship in which you are wholly willing
to accept completion, and ONLY this, there is God completed,
and His Son with Him.
The bridge that leads to union in yourself MUST lead to
knowledge, for it was built with God beside you, and will lead
you straight to Him, where your completion rests, wholly
compatible with His. Every illusion which you accept into your
mind by judging it to be attainable removes your own sense of
completion, and thus denies the Wholeness of your Father.
Every fantasy, be it of love or hate, deprives you of
knowledge, for fantasies are the veil behind which truth is
hidden. To lift the veil which seems so dark and heavy, it is
only needful to value truth beyond ALL fantasy, and to be
entirely unwilling to settle for illusion IN PLACE of truth.
Would you not go THROUGH fear to love? For such the journey
seems to be. Love calls, but hate would have you stay. Hear
not the call of hate, and see no fantasies. See in the call of
hate, and in every fantasy that rises to delay you, but the
call for help which rises ceaselessly from you to your
Creator. Would He not answer you whose completion is His? He
loves you, wholly without illusion, as you must love. For love
IS wholly without illusion, and therefore wholly without fear.
Whom God remembers MUST be whole. And God has never forgotten
what makes HIM whole. In your completion lies the memory of
His Wholeness, and His gratitude to you for His completion. In
His link with you lie both His inability to forget, and your
ability to remember. In Him are joined your willingness to
love, and all the Love of God, Who forgot you not.
Your Father can no more forget the truth in you than you
can fail to remember it. The Holy Spirit is the bridge to Him,
made from your willingness to unite with Him, and created by
His joy in union with you. The journey that seemed to be
endless is almost complete, for what IS endless is very near.
You have almost recognized it. Turn with me firmly away from
all illusions NOW, and let nothing stand in the way of truth.
We will take the last foolish journey AWAY from truth
together, and then together we go straight to God, in joyous
answer to His call for His completion.
If special relationships of any kind would hinder Gods
completion, CAN they have value to you? What would interfere
with God MUST interfere with you. Only in time does
interference in Gods completion seem to be possible. The
bridge that He would carry you across lifts you from time into
eternity. Waken from time, and answer fearlessly the call of
Him Who gave eternity to you in your creation. On this side of
the bridge to timelessness you understand nothing. But as you
step lightly across it, upheld BY timelessness, you are
directed straight to the Heart of God. At Its center, and ONLY
there, you are safe forever, because you are COMPLETE forever.
There is no veil the Love of God in us together cannot lift.
The way to truth is open. Follow it with me.
Specialness and Guilt
In looking at the special relationship, it is necessary
first to realize that it involves a great amount of pain.
Anxiety, despair, guilt and attack all enter into it, broken
into by periods in which they SEEM to be gone. All these must
be understood for what they are. Whatever form they take, they
are always an attack on the self to make the OTHER guilty. We
have spoken of this before, but there are some aspects of what
is really being attempted that we have not touched upon.
Very simply, the attempt to make guilty is ALWAYS directed
against God. For the ego would have you see Him, and Him
ALONE, as guilty, leaving the Sonship open to attack, and
unprotected from it. The special love relationship is the
egos chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven. It does not
APPEAR to be a weapon, but if you consider HOW you value it
and WHY, you will realize what it must be. The special love
relationship is the egos most boasted gift, and one which has
the most appeal to those unwilling to relinquish guilt. The
dynamics of the ego are clearest here, for counting on the
attraction of this offering, the fantasies which center around
it are often quite open. Here they are usually judged to be
acceptable, and even natural. No one considers it bizarre to
love and hate together, and even those who believe that hate
is sin merely feel guilty, and do not correct it.
This IS the natural condition of the separation, and
those who learn that it is not natural at all seem to be the
UNNATURAL ones. For this world IS the opposite of Heaven,
being MADE to be its opposite, and everything here takes a
direction exactly opposite of what is true. In Heaven, where
the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here,
where the illusion of love is accepted in loves place, love
is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION.
It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish
for special love from God, that the egos hatred triumphs. For
the special relationship is the RENUNCIATION of the love of
God, and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness
which He denied. It is essential to the preservation of the
ego that you believe this specialness is not hell, but Heaven.
For the ego would never have you see that separation can ONLY
be loss, being the one condition in which Heaven CANNOT be.
To everyone Heaven is completion. There can be no
disagreement on this, because both the ego and the Holy Spirit
accept it. They are, however, in COMPLETE disagreement on what
completion IS, and HOW it is accomplished. The Holy Spirit
knows that completion lies first in union, and then in the
extension of union. To the ego, completion lies in triumph,
and in the extension of the victory even to the final
triumph over God. In this it sees the ultimate freedom of the
self, for nothing would remain to interfere with IT. This IS
its idea of Heaven. From this it follows that union, which is
a condition in which the ego CANNOT interfere, MUST be hell.
The special relationship is a strange and unnatural ego
device for joining hell and Heaven, and making them
indistinguishable. And the attempt to find the imagined
best of both worlds has merely led to fantasies of both,
and to the inability to perceive either one as it is. The
special relationship is the triumph of this confusion. It is a
kind of union from which union is EXCLUDED, and the basis for
the ATTEMPT at union rests on exclusion. What better example
could there be of the egos maxim, Seek but do not find?
Most curious of all is the concept of the self which the
ego fosters in the special relationship. This self seeks
the relationship to make itself complete. Yet when it FINDS
the special relationship in which it thinks it can accomplish
this, it gives itself AWAY, and tries to trade itself for
the self of another. This is not union, for there is no
increase and no extension. Each partner tries to sacrifice the
self he does not want for one he thinks he would prefer. And
he feels guilty for the sin of taking, and of giving
nothing of value in return. For how much value CAN he place
upon a self that he would give away to get a better one?
The better self the ego seeks is always one that is
MORE special. And whoever seems to possess a special self is
loved for what can be taken FROM him. Where both partners
see this special self in each other, the ego sees a union
made in Heaven. For neither one will recognize that he has
asked for hell, and so he will not interfere with the egos
illusion of Heaven, which it offered him to INTERFERE with
Heaven. Yet if all illusions are of fear, and they CAN be of
nothing else, the illusion of Heaven is nothing more than an
attractive form of fear, in which the guilt is buried deep,
and rises in the form of love.
The appeal of hell lies only in the terrible attraction of
guilt, which the ego holds out to those who place their faith
in littleness. The conviction of littleness lies in EVERY
special relationship, for only the deprived could VALUE
specialness. The demand for specialness, and the perception of
the giving of specialness as an act of love, would make love
HATEFUL. And the real purpose of the special relationship, in
strict accordance with the egos goals, is to destroy reality
and substitute illusion. For the ego is ITSELF an illusion,
and only illusions CAN be the witnesses to its reality.
If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over
God, would you WANT it? Let us not think of its fearful
nature, nor of the guilt it must entail, nor of the sadness
and the loneliness. For these are only attributes of the whole
religion of the separation, and of the total context in which
it is thought to occur. The central theme in its litany to
sacrifice is that God must die so YOU can live. And it is this
theme which is acted out in the special relationship. Through
the death of YOUR self, you think you can attack another self,
and snatch it from the other to replace the self which you
despise. And you despise it because you do not think it offers
the specialness which you demand. And HATING it, you have made
it little and unworthy because you are AFRAID of it.
How can you grant unlimited power to what you think you
have attacked? So fearful has the truth become to you that
UNLESS it is weak and little, you would not dare to look upon
it. You think it safer to endow the little self which you have
made with power you WRESTED from truth, triumphing over it and
leaving it helpless. See how EXACTLY is this ritual enacted in
the special relationship. An altar is erected in between two
separate people on which each seeks to kill his self, and on
his body raise another self which takes its power from his
death. Over and over and over this ritual is enacted. And it
is NEVER completed, nor ever WILL be completed. For the ritual
of completion CANNOT complete, and life arises not from death,
nor Heaven from hell.
Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to
seek for love in ritual, remember love is CONTENT, and not
form of ANY kind. The special relationship is a RITUAL of
form, aimed at the raising of the form to take the place of
God at the EXPENSE of content. There IS no meaning in the
form, and there will never be. The special relationship must
be recognized for what it is; a senseless ritual, in which
strength is extracted from the death of God, and invested in
His killer as the sign that form has triumphed over content,
and love has lost its meaning. Would you WANT this to be
possible, even apart from its evident impossibility? For if it
WERE possible, you would have made YOURSELF helpless. God is
not angry. He merely could not let this happen. You CANNOT
change His Mind.
No rituals that you have set up, in which the dance of
death delights you, can bring death to the eternal. Nor can
your chosen substitute for the Wholeness of God have any
influence at all upon It. See in the special relationship
nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods
before Him, and by worshipping them, to obscure THEIR tininess
and His GREATNESS. In the name of your completion, you do not
WANT this. For every idol which you raise to place before Him
stands before YOU, in place of what you ARE.
Salvation lies in the simple fact that illusions are not
fearful because they are not TRUE. They but seem to be fearful
to the extent to which you fail to recognize them for what
they are, and you WILL fail to do this to the extent to which
you WANT them to be true. And to the same extent you are
DENYING truth, and so are making yourself unable to make the
simple choice between truth and illusion; God and fantasy.
Remember this, and you will have no difficulty in perceiving
the decision as just what it IS, and nothing more.
The core of the separation delusion lies simply in the
FANTASY of destruction of loves meaning. And unless loves
meaning is RESTORED to you, you cannot know yourself who SHARE
its meaning. Separation is only the decision NOT to know
yourself. Its whole thought system is a carefully contrived
learning experience, designed to lead AWAY from truth and into
fantasy. Yet for every learning that would hurt you, God
offers you correction and complete escape from ALL its
consequences. The decision whether or not to listen to this
course and follow it is but the choice between truth and
illusion. For here is truth, SEPARATED from illusion, and not
confused with it at all.
How simple does this choice become when it is perceived as
only what it is. For ONLY fantasies made confusion in choosing
possible, and they are totally unreal. This year is thus the
time to make the easiest decision that ever confronted you,
and also the ONLY one. You will cross the bridge into reality
simply because you will recognize that God is on the other
side and nothing AT ALL is here. It is impossible NOT to make
the natural decision as this is realized.
The Bridge to the Real World
The search for the special relationship is the sign that
you equate yourself with the ego, and not with God. For the
special relationship has value ONLY to the ego. To the ego
UNLESS a relationship has special value it has NO meaning, and
it perceives ALL love as special. Yet this CANNOT be natural,
for it is unlike the relationship of God and His Son, and all
relationships that are unlike this One MUST be unnatural. For
God created love as He would have it be, and gave it as it IS.
Love has no meaning except as its Creator defined it by His
Will. It is impossible to define it otherwise and UNDERSTAND
it.
Love is FREEDOM. To look for it by placing yourself in
bondage is to SEPARATE yourself from it. For the love of God,
no longer seek for union in separation, nor for freedom in
bondage! As you release, so will you be released. Forget this
not, or love will be unable to find you and comfort you. There
is a way in which the Holy Spirit asks your help, if you would
have His. The holy instant is His most helpful tool in
protecting you from the attraction of guilt, the real lure in
the special relationship. You do not recognize that this IS
its real appeal, for the ego has taught you that FREEDOM lies
in it. Yet the closer you look at the special relationship,
the more apparent it becomes that it MUST foster guilt and
therefore MUST imprison.
The special relationship is totally without meaning without
a body. And if you value it, you must ALSO value the body. And
what you value you WILL keep. The special relationship is a
device for limiting YOUR self to a body, and for limiting your
perception of others to THEIRS. The great rays would establish
the total LACK of value of the special relationship, if they
were seen. For in seeing them, the body would disappear
because its VALUE would be lost. And so your whole investment
in seeing it would be withdrawn from it. You see the world you
VALUE.
On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate
bodies, seeking to join each other in separate unions, and to
become one by losing. When TWO individuals seek to become one,
they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would deny
his power, for the SEPARATE union excludes the universe. Far
more is left outside than would be taken in. For God is left
without, and NOTHING taken in. If ONE such union were made in
perfect faith, the universe WOULD enter into it. Yet the
special relationship which the ego seeks does not include even
one whole individual. For the ego wants but PART of him, and
sees ONLY this part and nothing else.
Across the bridge, it is so different! For a time the body
is still seen, but not exclusively, as it is seen here. For
the little spark which holds the great rays within it is ALSO
visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness.
Once you have crossed the bridge, the value of the body is so
diminished in your sight, that you will see no need at all to
magnify it. For you will realize that the only value which the
body has is to enable you to bring your brothers to the bridge
WITH you, and to be released TOGETHER there.
The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in your
perspective of reality. On this side, everything you see is
grossly distorted and completely out of perspective. What is
little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and
powerful cut down to littleness. In the transition there is a
period of confusion, in which a sense of actual disorientation
seems to occur. But fear it not, for it means nothing more
than that you have been willing to let go your hold on the
distorted frame of reference which seemed to hold your world
together. This frame of reference is built around the special
relationship. WITHOUT this illusion, there can BE no meaning
you would still seek here.
Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled
into reality. Time is kind, and if you use it FOR reality, it
will keep gentle pace with you in your transition. The urgency
is only in dislodging your minds from their fixed position
here. This will not leave you homeless, and without a frame of
reference. The period of disorientation, which precedes the
actual transition, is far shorter than the time it took to fix
your minds so firmly on illusions. Delay will hurt you now
more than before, only because you realize it IS delay, and
that escape from pain is really possible. Find hope and
comfort, rather than despair, in this: You could no longer
find even the ILLUSION of love in any special relationship
here. For you are no longer wholly insane, and you would
recognize the guilt of self-betrayal for what it IS.
Nothing you seek to strengthen in the special relationship
is REALLY part of you. And you cannot keep part of the thought
system which taught you it was real, and understand the
Thought that REALLY knows what you are. You HAVE allowed the
Thought of your reality to enter your minds, and because you
invited it, it WILL abide with you. Your love for it will not
allow you to betray yourself, and you could not enter into a
relationship where it could not go with you, for you would not
BE apart from it.
Be glad you have escaped the mockery of salvation which the
ego offered you, and look not back with longing on the
travesty it made of your relationships. Now no one need
suffer, for you have come too far to yield to the illusion of
the beauty and holiness of guilt. Only the wholly insane could
look on death and suffering, sickness and despair, and see it
thus. What guilt has wrought is ugly, fearful and very
dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there. And be
you thankful that there IS a place where truth and beauty wait
for you. Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits
you for the simple willingness to give up nothing BECAUSE it
is nothing.
The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will
be the understanding of where Heaven IS. From here, it seems
to be outside and across the bridge. Yet as you cross to join
it, it will join with YOU and become one with you. And you
will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this you gave
up NOTHING! The joy of Heaven, which has no limit, is
increased with each light that returns to take its rightful
place within it. Wait no longer, for the love of God and YOU.
And may the holy instant speed you on the way, as it will
surely do if you but let it come to you.
The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever
your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still
attracts you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there
let Him release you. He needs only your willingness to SHARE
His perspective to give it to you completely. And your
willingness need not be complete because HIS is perfect. It is
His task to atone for your unwillingness by His perfect faith,
and it is His faith you share with Him there. Out of your
recognition of your unwillingness for your release, His
PERFECT willingness is given you. Call upon Him, for Heaven is
at His call. And LET Him call on Heaven FOR you.
The End of Illusions
It is impossible to let the past go without relinquishing
the special relationship. For the special relationship is an
attempt to RE-ENACT the past and CHANGE it. Imagined slights,
remembered pain, past disappointments, perceived injustices
and deprivations all enter into the special relationship,
which becomes a way in which you seek to restore your wounded
self-esteem. What basis would you have for choosing a special
partner WITHOUT the past? Every such choice is made because of
something evil in the past, to which you cling, and for
which must someone else atone.
The special relationship TAKES VENGEANCE on the past. By
seeking to remove suffering in the past, it OVERLOOKS the
present in its preoccupation with the past and its total
commitment to it. NO special relationship is experienced in
the present. Shades of the past envelop it, and make it what
it is. It HAS no meaning in the present, and if it means
nothing NOW, it cannot have any real meaning at all. How can
you change the past EXCEPT in fantasy? And who can give you
what you think the past deprived you of? The past is nothing.
Do not seek to lay the blame for deprivation on it, for the
past is gone. You cannot really NOT let go what has ALREADY
gone. It must be, therefore, that you are maintaining the
illusion that it has NOT gone because you think it serves some
purpose that you want FULFILLED. And it must also be that this
purpose could NOT be fulfilled in the present, but ONLY in the
past.
Do not underestimate the intensity of the egos drive for
vengeance on the past. It is completely savage and completely
insane. For the ego remembers everything that you have done
which offended it, and seeks retribution of YOU. The fantasies
it brings to the special relationships it chooses in which to
act out its hate are fantasies of YOUR destruction. For the
ego holds the past AGAINST you, and in your ESCAPE from the
past, it sees itself deprived of the vengeance it believes
that you so justly merit. Yet without your alliance in your
own destruction, the ego could not hold you to the past.
In the special relationship, you are ALLOWING your
destruction to be. That this is insane is obvious. But what is
less obvious to you is that the PRESENT is useless to you
while you pursue the egos goal as its ally. The past is gone;
seek not to preserve it in the special relationship which
binds you to it, and would teach you that salvation is past,
and that you must return TO the past to find salvation. There
is no fantasy which does not contain the dream of retribution
for the past. Would you act out the dream, or let it go?
In the special relationship, it does not SEEM to be an
acting out of vengeance which you seek. And even when the
hatred and the savagery break briefly through into awareness,
the illusion of love is not profoundly shaken. Yet the one
thing which the ego never allows to reach awareness is that
the special relationship is the acting out of vengeance on
YOURSELF. But what else COULD it be? In seeking the special
relationship, you look not for glory in YOURSELF. You have
denied that it is THERE, and the relationship becomes your
SUBSTITUTE for it. And vengeance becomes your substitute for
Atonement, and the ESCAPE from vengeance becomes your LOSS.
Against the egos insane notion of salvation the Holy
Spirit gently lays the holy instant. We said before that the
Holy Spirit must teach through comparisons, and uses opposites
to point to truth. The holy instant is the OPPOSITE of the
egos fixed belief in salvation through vengeance for the
past. In the holy instant, it is accepted that the past is
gone, and with its passing the drive for vengeance has been
uprooted, and has disappeared. The stillness and the peace of
NOW enfolds you in perfect gentleness. Everything is gone
except the truth.
For a time, you may attempt to bring illusions into the
holy instant to hinder your full awareness of the COMPLETE
difference, in all respects, between your experience of truth
and illusion. Yet you will not attempt this long. In the holy
instant, the power of the Holy Spirit will prevail because you
JOINED Him. The illusions you bring with you will weaken the
experience of Him for a while, and will prevent you from
keeping the experience in your mind. Yet the holy instant IS
eternal, and your illusions of time will not prevent the
timeless from being what it is, nor you from experiencing it
as it is.
What God has given you is truly given, and will be truly
RECEIVED. For Gods gifts HAVE no reality apart from your
receiving them. YOUR receiving completes His GIVING. You will
receive BECAUSE it is His Will to give. He gave the holy
instant to be given you, and it is impossible that you receive
it not BECAUSE He gave it. When He willed that His Son be
free, His Son WAS free. In the holy instant is His reminder
that His Son will always be EXACTLY as he was created. And
everything the Holy Spirit teaches you is to remind you that
you HAVE received what God has given you.
There is nothing you can hold against reality. All that
must be forgiven are the illusions you have held against your
brothers. Their reality HAS no past, and only illusions can BE
forgiven. God holds nothing against anyone, for He is
incapable of illusions of ANY kind. Release your brothers from
the slavery of their illusions by forgiving them for the
illusions which YOU perceive in them. Thus will you learn that
YOU have been forgiven, for it is YOU who offered them
illusions. In the holy instant this is done for you IN TIME,
to bring to you the true condition of Heaven.
Remember that you always choose between truth and illusion;
between the REAL Atonement which would heal and the egos
atonement which would destroy. The power of God and all His
Love, without limit, will support you as you seek only your
place in the plan of Atonement arising from His Love. Be an
ally of God and not the ego in seeking how Atonement can come
to you. His help suffices, for His Messenger understands how
to restore the Kingdom to you, and to place ALL your
investment in salvation in your relationship with Him.
Seek and FIND His message in the holy instant, where all
illusions are forgiven. From there the miracle extends to
bless everyone and to resolve all problems, be they perceived
as great or small, possible or impossible. There is nothing
that will not give place to Him and to His majesty. To join in
close relationship with Him is to accept relationships as
REAL, and through their reality to give over all illusions for
the reality of your relationship with God. Praise be to your
relationship with Him, and to no other. The truth lies here,
and nowhere else. You choose this or NOTHING.
Forgive us our illusions, Father, and help us to accept
our true relationship with You, in which there are no
illusions, and where none can ever enter. Our holiness is
Yours. What can there be in us that NEEDS forgiveness when
Yours is perfect? The sleep of forgetfulness is only the
unwillingness to remember Your forgiveness and Your Love. Let
us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Son
of God is not Your Will. And let us receive only what YOU have
given, and accept but this into the minds which You created,
and which You love. Amen.
CHAPTER 17
FORGIVENESS AND HEALING
The betrayal of the Son of God lies only in illusions, and
all his sins are but his own imagining. His reality is
forever sinless. He need not be forgiven but AWAKENED. In his
dreams he HAS betrayed himself, his brothers and his God. Yet
what is done in dreams has not been REALLY done. It is
impossible to convince the dreamer that this is so, for dreams
are what they are BECAUSE of their illusion of reality. Only
in waking is the full release from them, for only then does it
become perfectly apparent that they had no effect on reality
at all, and did not change it. Fantasies CHANGE reality. That
is their PURPOSE. They cannot do so in reality, but they CAN
do so in the mind that would have reality different.
It is, then, only your wish to change reality that is
fearful, because by your wish you think you have ACCOMPLISHED
what you wish. This strange position, in a sense, acknowledges
your power. Yet by distorting it, and devoting it to evil,
it also makes it unreal. You cannot be faithful to two masters
who ask of you conflicting things. What you use in fantasy you
DENY to truth. Yet what you GIVE to truth to use for you is
safe from fantasy.
Fantasy and Distorted Perception
When you maintain that there must be order of difficulty in
miracles, all you mean is that there are some things you would
withhold from truth. You believe that truth cannot deal with
them only because you would KEEP them from truth. Very simply,
your lack of faith in the power that heals all pain arises
from your wish to retain some aspects of reality for fantasy.
If you but realized what this must do to your appreciation of
the whole! What you reserve unto yourself, you TAKE AWAY from
Him Who would release you. Unless you give it back, it is
inevitable that your perspective on reality be warped and
uncorrected.
As long as you would have it so, so long will the illusion
of order of difficulty in miracles remain with you. For you
have ESTABLISHED this order in reality by giving some of it to
one teacher, and some to another. And so you learn to deal
with part of truth in one way, and in another way the other
part. To fragment truth is to destroy it by rendering it
meaningless. Orders of reality is a perspective without
understanding, a frame of reference for reality to which it
cannot really BE compared at all.
Think you that you can bring truth to fantasy, and learn
what truth means from the perspective of illusions? Truth HAS
no meaning in illusion. The frame of reference for its meaning
must be ITSELF. When you try to bring truth to illusions, you
are trying to make illusions REAL, and keep them by JUSTIFYING
your belief in them. But to give illusions to truth is to
enable truth to teach that the ILLUSIONS are unreal, and thus
enable you to escape from them. Reserve not one idea aside
from truth, or you establish orders of reality which must
imprison you. There IS no order in reality because EVERYTHING
there is true.
Be willing, then, to give all you have held outside the
truth to Him Who KNOWS the truth, and in Whom all is brought
to truth. Be not concerned with anything except your
WILLINGNESS to have this be accomplished. HE will accomplish
it; NOT you. But forget not this: When you become disturbed
and lose your peace of mind because ANOTHER is attempting to
solve his problems through fantasy, you are refusing to
forgive YOURSELF for just this same attempt. And you are
holding BOTH of you away from truth and from salvation. As you
forgive him, you restore to truth what was denied by BOTH of
you. And you will see forgiveness where you have GIVEN it.
The Forgiven World
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
seem to 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 which the Holy
Spirit loves to look upon, and which He thanks the Father for.
He was created to see this for YOU, until you learn 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, and 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 by anything, is still
the greatest accomplishment of all in Gods 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
remains still bound by them, and by your OWN forgiveness you
are free to see. Yet what you see is only what you have made,
with the blessing of your forgiveness on it. And with this
final blessing of Gods 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 which 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 which made perception possible will 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 which 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 which
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, and removing all illusions
which 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 Gods 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.
Shadows of the Past
To forgive is merely to remember only the LOVING thoughts
you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All the
rest must be forgotten. Forgiveness is a selective
remembering, based not on YOUR selection. For the shadow
figures you would make immortal are enemies of reality. Be
willing to forgive the Son of God for what he did NOT do. The
shadow figures are the witnesses you bring with you to
demonstrate he did what he did NOT. Because you brought them,
you will hear them. And you who kept them by your OWN
selection do not understand how they came into your minds, and
what their purpose is.
They represent the evil that you THINK was done to you. You
bring them with you only that you may return evil for evil,
hoping that their witness will enable you to think guiltily of
another and NOT harm yourself. They speak so clearly for the
separation that no-one not obsessed with KEEPING separation
could hear them. They offer you the reasons why you should
enter into unholy alliances which support the egos goals, and
make your relationships the witness to its power. It is these
shadow figures which would make the EGO holy in your sight,
and teach you what you do to keep IT safe is really love.
The shadow figures ALWAYS speak for vengeance, and all
relationships into which they enter are totally insane.
Without exception, these relationships have, as their PURPOSE,
the exclusion of the truth about the other, and of YOURSELF.
This is why you see in BOTH what is not there, and make of
both the slaves of vengeance. And why whatever reminds you of
your past grievances, no matter how distorted the associations
by which you arrive at the rememberance may be, attracts you,
and seems to you to go by the name of love. And finally, why
all such relationships become the attempt at union through the
BODY, for ONLY bodies can be seen as means for vengeance. That
bodies are central to all unholy relationships is evident.
Your OWN experience has taught you this. But what you do not
realize are ALL the reasons which go to make the relationship
unholy. For unholiness seeks to REINFORCE itself, as holiness
does, by gathering to itself what it perceives as like itself.
In the unholy relationship, it is not the body of the OTHER
with which union is attempted, but the bodies of those who are
not THERE. Even the body of the other, already a severely
limited perception of him, is not the central focus as it is,
or in entirety. What can be used for fantasies of vengeance,
and what can be most readily associated with those on whom
vengeance is REALLY sought, are centered on and separated OFF,
as being the only parts of value. Every step taken in the
making, the maintaining and the breaking off of the unholy
relationship is a move toward further fragmentation and
unreality. The shadow figures enter more and more, and the one
in whom they seem to be DECREASES in importance.
Time is indeed unkind to the unholy relationship. For time
IS cruel in the egos hands, as it is kind when used for
gentleness. The attraction of the unholy relationship begins
to fade and to be questioned almost at once. Once it is
formed, doubt MUST enter in because its purpose IS impossible.
The only such relationships which retain the fantasies that
center on them are those which have been dreamed of, but have
not been made at all. Where no reality has entered, there is
nothing to intrude upon the dream of happiness. Yet consider
what this means; the MORE reality that enters into the unholy
relationship, the LESS SATISFYING it becomes. And the more the
FANTASIES can encompass, the GREATER the satisfaction seems to
be.
The ideal of the unholy relationship thus becomes one
in which the reality of the other does not enter AT ALL to
spoil the dream. And the less the other REALLY brings to
it, the better it becomes. Thus, the attempt at union
becomes a way of excluding even the one with whom the union
was sought. For it was formed to get him OUT of it, and join
with fantasies in uninterrupted bliss. How can the Holy
Spirit bring His interpretation of the body as a means of
communication into relationships whose only purpose is
SEPARATION from reality? What forgiveness IS enables Him to do
so.
If ALL but loving thoughts has been forgotten, what remains
IS eternal. And the transformed past is made like the PRESENT.
No longer does the past conflict with NOW. THIS continuity
EXTENDS the present by increasing its reality and its VALUE in
your perception of it. In these loving thoughts is the spark
of beauty hidden in the ugliness of the unholy relationship in
which the hatred is remembered, yet THERE to come alive as the
relationship is given to Him Who gives it life and beauty.
That is why Atonement centers on the past, which is the SOURCE
of separation, and where it must be undone. For separation
must be corrected where it was MADE. The ego seeks to
resolve its problems, not at their source, but where they
were NOT made. And thus it seeks to guarantee there WILL be no
solution.
The Holy Spirit wills only to make His resolutions complete
and perfect, and so He seeks and FINDS the source of problems
where it IS, and there undoes it. And with each step in His
undoing is the SEPARATION more and more undone, and union
brought closer. He is not at all confused by any reasons
for separation. ALL He perceives in separation is that it must
be UNDONE. Let Him uncover the hidden spark of beauty in your
relationships, and SHOW it to you. Its loveliness will so
attract you that you will be unwilling ever to lose the sight
of it again. And you will let it transform the relationship so
you can see it more and more. For you will WANT it more and
more, and become increasingly unwilling to let it be hidden
from you. And you will learn to seek for, and ESTABLISH,
conditions in which this beauty can be seen.
All this you will do gladly, if you but let Him hold the
spark before you, to light your way and make it clear to you.
Gods Son is one. Whom God has joined as one, the ego CANNOT
break apart. The spark of holiness MUST be safe, however
hidden it may be, in every relationship. For the Creator of
the one relationship has left no part of it without Himself.
This is the ONLY part of the relationship the Holy Spirit
sees because He knows that ONLY this is true. You have made
the relationship unreal, and therefore unholy, by seeing it
WHERE it is not and AS it is not. Give the past to Him Who can
change your mind about it FOR you. But first, be sure you
fully realize what YOU have made the past to represent, and
why.
In brief, the past is now your justification for entering
into a continuing, unholy alliance with the ego AGAINST the
present. For the present IS forgiveness. Therefore, the
relationships which the unholy alliance dictates are not
perceived nor felt as NOW. Yet the frame of reference to which
the present is referred for meaning is an ILLUSION of the
past, in which those elements which fit the purpose of the
unholy alliance are retained and all the rest let go. And what
is thus let go is all the truth the past could ever offer to
the present as witnesses for its reality, while what is kept
but witnesses to the reality of dreams.
It is still up to you to choose to be willing to join with
truth or illusion. But remember that to choose ONE is to let
the other GO. Which one you choose, you will endow with beauty
and reality because the choice DEPENDS on which you value
more. The spark of beauty or the veil of ugliness, the real
world or the world of guilt and fear, truth or illusion,
freedom or slavery, it is all the same. For you can never
choose EXCEPT between God and the ego. Thought systems are but
true or false, and all their attributes come simply from what
they ARE. Only the Thoughts of God are true. And all that
follows from Them comes from what They are, and is as true as
is the holy Source from which They came.
My holy brothers, I would enter into all your
relationships, and step between you and your fantasies. Let MY
relationship to you be real to you, and let me bring reality
to your perception of your brothers. They were not created to
enable you to hurt yourselves through them. They were created
to CREATE with you. This is the truth that I would interpose
between you and your goal of madness. Be not separate from me,
and let not the holy purpose of Atonement be lost to you in
dreams of vengeance. Relationships in which such dreams are
cherished have EXCLUDED me. Let me enter in the Name of God,
and bring you peace that you may offer peace to me.
Perception and the Two Worlds
God established His relationship with you to make you
happy, and nothing you do which does not share His purpose can
be real. The purpose God ascribed to anything is its only
function. Because of His reason for creating His relationship
with you, the function of relationships became forever to
make happy. AND NOTHING ELSE. To fulfill this function, you
relate to your creations as God to His. For nothing God
created is apart from happiness, and nothing God created but
would EXTEND happiness as its Creator did. Whatever fulfills
this function not CANNOT be real.
In this world, it is impossible to create. Yet it IS
possible to make happy. We have said, repeatedly, that the
Holy Spirit would not DEPRIVE you of your special
relationships, but would TRANSFORM them. And by that all that
is meant is that He will restore to them the function given
them by God. The function you have given them is clearly NOT
to make happy. But the holy relationship shares Gods purpose,
rather than aiming to make a substitute for it. Every special
relationship which YOU have made is a substitute for Gods
Will, and glorifies yours instead of His because of the
delusion that they are DIFFERENT.
You have made very real relationships even in this world
which you do not recognize, simply because you have raised
their substitutes to such predominance that, when truth calls
to you, as it does constantly, you answer with a substitute.
Every special relationship which you have ever undertaken has,
as its fundamental purpose, the aim of occupying your minds so
completely that you will not HEAR the call of truth. In a
sense, the special relationship was the egos answer to the
creation of the Holy Spirit, Who was Gods answer to the
separation. For although the ego did not understand what had
been created, it WAS aware of threat.
The whole defense system which the ego evolved to protect
the separation from the Holy Spirit was in response to the
gift with which God blessed it, and by His blessing enabled it
to be healed. This blessing holds, within ITSELF, the truth
about everything. And the truth is that the Holy Spirit is in
close relationship with you because, in Him, is your
relationship with God restored to you. The relationship with
Him has NEVER been broken, because the Holy Spirit has not
been separate from anyone since the separation. And through
Him have all your holy relationships been carefully preserved,
to serve Gods purpose for you.
The ego is hyperalert to threat, and the part of your mind
into which the ego was accepted is very anxious to preserve
its reason, as it sees it. It does not realize that it is
totally insane. And you must realize just what this means, if
YOU would be restored to sanity. The insane protect their
thought systems, but they do so INSANELY. And ALL their
defenses are as insane as what they are supposed to protect.
The separation has NOTHING in it, no part, no reason, and
no attribute that is NOT insane. And its protection is part
of it, as insane as the whole. The special relationship, which
is its chief defense, MUST therefore be insane.
You have but little difficulty now in realizing that the
thought system which the special relationship protects is but
a system of delusions. You recognize, at least in general
terms, that the ego is insane. Yet the special relationship
still seems to you somehow to be different. Yet we have
looked at it far closer than at many other aspects of the
egos thought system which you have been more willing to let
go. While this one remains, you will NOT let the others go.
For this one is NOT different. Retain this one, and you HAVE
retained the whole.
It is essential to realize that all defenses DO what they
would DEFEND. The underlying basis for their effectiveness is
that they OFFER what they defend. What they defend is placed
IN them for safe-keeping, and as they operate, they BRING it
to you. Every defense operates by giving gifts, and the gift
is ALWAYS a miniature of the thought system the defense
protects, set in a golden frame. The frame is very elaborate,
all set with jewels, and deeply carved and polished. Its
purpose is to be of value IN ITSELF, and to divert your
attention from what it encloses. But the frame WITHOUT the
picture, you cannot have. Defenses operate to make you think
you CAN.
The special relationship has the most imposing and
deceptive frame of all the defenses the ego uses. Its thought
system is offered here, surrounded by a frame so heavy and so
elaborate that the picture is almost obliterated by its
imposing structure. Into the frame are woven all sorts of
fanciful and fragmented illusions of love, set with dreams of
sacrifice and self-aggrandizement, and interlaced with gilded
threads of self-destruction. The glitter of blood shines like
rubies, and the tears are faceted like diamonds and gleam in
the dim light in which the offering is made.
Look at the PICTURE. Do not let the frame distract you.
This gift is given you for your damnation, and if you take it
you will believe that you ARE damned. You CANNOT have the
frame without the picture. What you value is the FRAME, for
there you see no conflict. Yet the frame is only the wrapping
for the gift of conflict. The frame is NOT the gift. Be not
deceived by the most superficial aspects of this thought
system, for these aspects enclose the whole, complete in EVERY
aspect. Death lies in this glittering gift. Let not your gaze
dwell on the hypnotic gleaming of the frame. Look at the
PICTURE, and realize that DEATH is offered you.
That is why the holy instant is so important in the defense
of truth. The truth itself NEEDS no defense, but you DO need
defense against your own acceptance of the gift of death. When
you who are truth accept an idea so dangerous TO truth, you
threaten truth with destruction. And your defense must now be
undertaken, to keep truth WHOLE. The power of Heaven, the Love
of God, the tears of Christ and the joy of His eternal Spirit
are marshalled to defend you from your own attack. For you
attack Them, being PART of Them, and They must save you, for
They love Themselves.
The holy instant is a miniature of Heaven, sent you FROM
Heaven. It is a picture, too, set in a frame. Yet if you
accept THIS gift, you will not see the frame at all, because
the gift can only be accepted through your willingness to
focus ALL your attention on the PICTURE. The holy instant is a
miniature of eternity. It is a picture of timelessness, set in
a frame of time. If you focus on the picture, you will realize
that it was only the frame that made you think it WAS a
picture. Without the frame, the picture is seen as what it
REPRESENTS. For as the whole thought system of the ego lies in
its gifts, so the whole of Heaven lies in this instant,
borrowed from eternity, and set in time for you.
Two gifts are offered you. Each is complete, and cannot be
partially accepted. Each is a picture of all that you can
have, seen VERY differently. You cannot compare their value by
comparing a picture to a frame. It must be the pictures only
that you compare, or the comparison is wholly without meaning.
Remember that it is the picture that is the gift. And only on
this basis are you REALLY free to choose. Look at the
pictures. BOTH of them. One is a tiny picture, hard to see at
all beneath the heavy shadows of its enormous and
disproportionate enclosure. The other is lightly framed and
hung in light, lovely to look upon for what it IS.
You who have tried so hard, and are STILL trying, to fit
the better picture into the wrong frame and so combine what
cannot BE combined, accept this and be glad: These pictures
are each framed perfectly for what they represent. One is
framed to be out of focus, and not seen. The other is framed
for perfect clarity. The picture of darkness and of death
grows less convincing as you search it out amid its wrappings.
As each senseless stone which seems to shine in darkness from
the frame is exposed to light, it becomes dull and lifeless,
and ceases to distract you from the picture. And finally, you
look upon the picture itself, seeing at last that, unprotected
by the frame, it HAS no meaning.
The other picture is lightly framed, for time cannot
contain eternity. There IS no distraction here. The picture of
Heaven and eternity grows MORE convincing as you look at it.
And now, by REAL comparison, a transformation of both pictures
can at last occur. And each is given its rightful place, when
both are seen in relation to each other. The dark picture,
brought to light, is not perceived as fearful, but the fact
that it is just a PICTURE is brought home at last. And what
you see there you will recognize as what it is; a picture of
what you THOUGHT was real, and nothing more. For beyond this
picture, you will see nothing.
The picture of light, in clearcut and unmistakable
contrast, is transformed INTO what lies beyond the picture. As
you look on this, you realize that it is NOT a picture, but a
REALITY. This is no figured representation of a thought
system, but the Thought Itself. What IT represents is THERE.
The frame fades gently, and God rises to your remembrance,
offering you the whole of creation in exchange for your little
picture, wholly without value and entirely deprived of
meaning.
As God ascends into His rightful place and you to yours,
you will experience again the MEANING of relationship, and
know it to be true. Let us ascend in peace together to the
Father, by giving HIM ascendance in our minds. We will gain
EVERYTHING by giving Him the power and the glory, and keeping
no illusions of where they are. They are in US, through HIS
ascendance. What He has given is HIS. It shines in every part
of Him, as in the whole. The whole reality of your
relationship with Him lies in OUR relationship to one another.
The holy instant shines alike on all relationships, for in it
they ARE one. For here is only healing, ALREADY complete and
perfect. For here is God, and where He is only the perfect and
complete CAN be.
The Healed Relationship
The holy relationship is the expression of the holy instant
in living in this world. Like everything about salvation, the
holy instant is a practical device, witnessed to by its
results. The holy instant NEVER fails. The experience of it is
ALWAYS felt. Yet without expression, it is not REMEMBERED. The
holy relationship is a constant reminder of the experience in
which the relationship became what it is. And as the unholy
relationship is a continuing hymn of hate in praise of ITS
maker, so is the holy relationship a happy song of praise to
the Redeemer of relationships.
The holy relationship, a major step toward the perception
of the real world, is learned. It is the old, unholy
relationship, transformed and seen anew. The holy relationship
is a phenomenal teaching accomplishment. In all its aspects,
as it begins, develops and becomes accomplished, it represents
the REVERSAL of the unholy relationship. Be comforted in this;
the only difficult phase is the beginning. For here, the goal
of the relationship is abruptly shifted to the exact opposite
of what it was. This is the first result of offering the
relationship to the Holy Spirit, to use for HIS purposes.
This invitation is accepted immediately, and the Holy
Spirit wastes no time in introducing the practical results of
asking Him to enter. AT ONCE His goal replaces yours. This is
accomplished very rapidly, but it makes the relationship seem
disturbed, disjunctive and even quite distressing. The reason
is quite clear. For the relationship as it IS is out of line
with its own goal, and clearly unsuited to the purpose which
has been accepted for it. In its unholy condition, YOUR goal
was all that seemed to give it meaning. Now it seems to make
no sense. Many relationships have been broken off at this
point, and the pursuit of the old goal re-established in
another relationship. For once the unholy relationship has
ACCEPTED the goal of holiness, it can never again be what it
was.
The temptation of the ego becomes extremely intense with
this shift in goals. For the relationship has not, as yet,
been changed sufficiently to make its former goal completely
without attraction, and its structure is threatened by the
recognition of its inappropriateness for meeting its new
purpose. The conflict between the goal and the structure of
the relationship is so apparent that they CANNOT co-exist. Yet
now, the goal will NOT be changed. Set firmly in the unholy
relationship, there IS no course except to CHANGE the
relationship to fit the goal. Until this happy solution is
seen and accepted as the ONLY way out of the conflict, the
relationship seems to be severely strained.
It would not be kinder to shift the goal more slowly, for
the contrast would be obscured, and the ego given time to re-
interpret each slow step according to its liking. Only a
radical shift in purpose could induce a complete change of
mind about what the whole relationship is FOR. As this change
develops and is finally accomplished, it grows increasingly
beneficent and joyous. But at the beginning, the situation is
experienced as very precarious. A relationship, undertaken by
two individuals for their unholy purposes, suddenly has
HOLINESS for its goal. As these two contemplate their
relationship from the point of view of this new purpose, they
are inevitably appalled. Their perception of the relationship
may even become quite disorganized. And yet, the former
organization of their perception no longer serves the purpose
they have agreed to meet.
This is the time for FAITH. You LET this goal be set for
you. That was an act of faith. Do not abandon faith, now that
the rewards of faith are being introduced. If you believed the
Holy Spirit was there to ACCEPT the relationship, why would
you now not still believe that He is there to purify what He
has taken under His guidance? Have faith in each other in what
but SEEMS to be a trying time. The goal IS set. And your
relationship has sanity as its purpose. For now you find
yourselves in an insane relationship, RECOGNIZED as such in
the light of its goal.
Now the ego counsels thus; substitute for this ANOTHER
relationship to which your former goal was quite appropriate.
You can escape from your distress only by getting rid of each
other. You need not part entirely if you choose not to do so.
But you must exclude major areas of fantasy from each other,
to save your sanity. Hear not this now! Have faith in Him Who
answered you. He heard. Has He not been very explicit in His
answer? You are not now wholly insane. Can you DENY that He
has given you a most explicit statement? Now He asks for faith
a little longer, even in bewilderment. For this will go, and
you will see the justification for your faith emerge, to bring
you shining conviction. Abandon Him not now, nor each other.
This relationship HAS BEEN reborn as holy.
Accept with gladness what you do not understand, and let it
be explained to you as you perceive its purpose work in it to
MAKE it holy. You will find many opportunities to blame each
other for the failure of your relationship, for it will
seem, at times, to have NO purpose. A sense of aimlessness
will come to haunt you, and to remind you of all the ways you
once sought for satisfaction, and thought you found it. Forget
not now the misery you REALLY found, and do not now breathe
life into your failing egos. For your relationship has NOT
been disrupted. It has been SAVED.
You are very new in the ways of salvation, and think you
have lost your way. YOUR way IS lost, but think not this is
LOSS. In your newness, remember that you have started again,
TOGETHER. And take each others hand, to walk together along a
road far more familiar than you now believe. Is it not certain
that you will remember a goal unchanged throughout eternity?
For you have chosen but the goal of God, from which your true
intent was NEVER absent.
Throughout the Sonship is the song of freedom heard, in
joyous echo of your choice. You have joined with many in the
holy instant, and they have joined with you. Think not your
choice will leave you comfortless, for God Himself has blessed
your holy relationship. Join in His blessing, and withhold not
yours upon it. For all it needs now IS your blessing, that you
may see that in it rests salvation. Condemn salvation not, for
it HAS come to you. And welcome it together, for it has come
to JOIN you together in a relationship in which all the
Sonship is together blessed.
You undertook, together, to invite the Holy Spirit into
your relationship. He could not have entered otherwise.
Although you may have made many mistakes since then, you have
also made enormous efforts to help Him do His work. And He has
not been lacking in appreciation for all you have done for
Him. Nor does He see the mistakes at all. Have you been
similarly grateful to each other? Have you consistently
appreciated the good efforts, and overlooked mistakes? Or has
your appreciation flickered and grown dim in what seemed to be
the light of the mistakes? You are now entering upon a
campaign to blame each other for the discomfort of the
situation in which you find yourselves. And by this lack of
thanks and gratitude, you make yourselves unable to EXPRESS
the holy instant, and thus you lose sight of it.
The experience of an instant, however compelling it may be,
is easily forgotten if you allow time to close over it. It
must be kept shining and gracious in your awareness of time,
but not concealed within it. The instant remains. But where
are YOU? To give thanks to each other is to appreciate the
holy instant, and thus enable its results to be accepted and
SHARED. To ATTACK each other is not to lose the instant, but
to make it powerless in its EFFECTS. You HAVE received the
holy instant, but you have established a condition in which
you cannot USE it. As a result, you do not realize that it is
with you still. And by cutting yourself off from its
expression, you have denied yourself its benefit. You
reinforce this every time you attack each other, for the
attack must blind you to YOURSELF. And it is impossible to
deny yourself, and recognize what has been given and received
by you.
You stand together in the holy presence of truth itself.
Here is the goal, together WITH you. Think you not the goal
itself will gladly arrange the means for its accomplishment?
It is just this same discrepancy between the purpose that has
been accepted and the means as they stand now which seems to
make you suffer, but which makes Heaven glad. If Heaven were
OUTSIDE you, you could not share in its gladness. Yet because
it is within, the gladness, too, is yours. You ARE joined in
purpose, but remain still separate and divided on the means.
Yet the goal is fixed, firm and unalterable, and the means
will surely fall in place BECAUSE the goal is sure. And you
will share the gladness of the Sonship that it is so. As you
begin to recognize and accept the gifts you have so freely
given to each other, you will also accept the effects of the
holy instant, and use them to correct all your mistakes and
free you from their results. And learning this, you will have
also learned how to release ALL the Sonship, and offer it in
gladness and thanksgiving to Him Who gave you YOUR release,
and Who would extend it THROUGH you.
Practical Forgiveness
The practical application of the Holy Spirits purpose is
extremely simple, but it IS unequivocal. In fact, in order to
be simple it MUST be unequivocal. The simple is merely what is
easily understood, and for this it is apparent that it must be
clear. The setting of the Holy Spirits goal is general. Now
He will work with you to make it specific. There are certain
very specific guidelines He provides for any situation, but
remember that you do not yet realize their universal
application. Therefore, it is essential, at this point, to use
them in each situation separately, until you can more safely
look BEYOND each situation, in an understanding far broader
than you now possess.
In any situation in which you are uncertain, the first
thing to consider, very simply, is, What do I want to come
of this? What is it FOR? The clarification of the goal
belongs at the BEGINNING, for it is this which will determine
the outcome. In the egos procedure, this is reversed. The
SITUATION becomes the determiner of the outcome, which can be
anything. The reason for this disorganized approach is
evident. The ego does not know what it WANTS to come of it. It
is aware of what it does NOT want, but only that. It has no
positive goal at all.
Without a clearcut, positive goal, set at the outset, the
situation just seems to happen, and makes no sense until it
has ALREADY happened. THEN you look back at it, and try to
piece together what it must have meant. And you will be WRONG.
Not only is your judgment in the past, but you have no idea
what SHOULD happen. No goal was set with which to bring the
means in line. And now the only judgment left to make is
whether or not the ego likes it; is it acceptable, or does it
call for vengeance? The absence of a criterion for outcome,
set IN ADVANCE, makes understanding doubtful and evaluation
impossible.
The value of deciding in advance what you WANT to happen is
simply that you will perceive the situation as a means to MAKE
it happen. You will therefore make every effort to overlook
what interferes with the accomplishment of your objective, and
concentrate on everything which helps you meet it. It is quite
noticeable that this approach has brought you closer to the
Holy Spirits sorting out of truth and falsity. The true
becomes what can be used to meet the goal. The false becomes
the useless from this point of view. The situation now has
meaning, but only because the GOAL has made it meaningful.
The goal of truth has further practical advantages. If the
situation is used for truth and sanity, its outcome MUST be
peace. And this is quite apart from what the outcome IS. If
peace is the condition of truth and sanity, and cannot be
WITHOUT them, where peace is THEY must be. Truth comes of
itself. If you experience peace, it is because the truth has
come to you, and you will see the outcome truly, for deception
cannot prevail against you. And you will recognize the outcome
BECAUSE you are at peace. Here again, you see the opposite of
the egos way of looking, for the ego believes the SITUATION
brings the experience. The Holy Spirit knows that the
situation is as the goal determines it, and is experienced
ACCORDING TO the goal.
The goal of truth requires faith. Faith is implicit in the
acceptance of the Holy Spirits purpose, and this faith is
all-inclusive. Where the goal of truth is set, there faith
MUST be. The Holy Spirit sees the situation as a WHOLE. The
goal establishes the fact that everyone involved in it will
play his part in its accomplishment. This is inevitable. No-
one will fail in anything. This seems to ask for faith beyond
you, and beyond what you can give. Yet this is so only from
the viewpoint of the ego, for the ego believes in solving
conflict through fragmentation, and does NOT perceive the
situation as a whole. Therefore, it seeks to split off
segments of the situation and deal with them SEPARATELY, for
it has faith in separation, and not in wholeness.
Confronted with any aspect of the situation which seems to
be difficult, the ego will attempt to take this aspect
elsewhere, and resolve it there. And it will seem to be
successful, except that this attempt conflicts with unity, and
MUST obscure the goal of truth. And peace will not be
experienced except in fantasy. Truth has not come, because
faith has been denied, being withheld from where it rightfully
belonged. Thus do you lose the understanding of the situation
the goal of truth would bring. For fantasy solutions bring but
the illusion of experience, and the illusion of peace is not
the condition in which the truth can enter.
The substitutes for aspects of the situation are the
witnesses to your lack of faith. They demonstrate that you did
not believe that the situation and the PROBLEM were in the
same place. The problem WAS the lack of faith, and it is this
you demonstrate when you remove it from its source and place
it elsewhere. As a result, you do not see the PROBLEM. Had you
not lacked the faith it could be solved, the problem would be
gone. And the situation would have been meaningful to you,
because the interference in the way of understanding would
have been removed. To remove the problem elsewhere is to KEEP
it. For you remove yourself FROM it, and make it unsolvable.
The Need for Faith
There is no problem in any situation that faith will not
solve. There is no shift in any aspect of the problem but will
make solution impossible. For if you shift part of the problem
elsewhere, the meaning of the problem MUST be lost, and the
solution to the problem is inherent in its meaning. Is it not
possible that all your problems HAVE been solved, but you have
removed yourself from the solution? Yet faith must be where
something has been done, and where you SEE it done. A
situation is a relationship, being the joining of thoughts. If
problems are perceived, it is because the thoughts are judged
to be in conflict. But if the goal is truth, this is
impossible. Some idea of bodies must have entered, for minds
cannot attack.
The thought of bodies is the sign of faithlessness, for
bodies cannot solve anything. And it is their intrusion on the
relationship, an error in your thoughts ABOUT the situation,
which then becomes the justification for your lack of faith.
You WILL make this error, but be not at all concerned with
that. The error does not matter. Faithlessness brought to
faith will never interfere with truth. But faithlessness used
AGAINST truth will always destroy faith. If you lack faith,
ask that it be restored where it was LOST, and seek not to
have it made up to you elsewhere, as if you had been unjustly
deprived of it.
Only what YOU have not given can be lacking in ANY
situation. But remember this; the goal of holiness was set for
your relationship, and NOT by you. You did not set it because
holiness cannot be seen EXCEPT through faith, and your
relationship was not holy BECAUSE your faith in one another
was so limited and little. Your faith must grow to meet the
goal that has been set. The goals reality will call this
forth, for you will see that peace and faith will not come
separately. What situation CAN you be in without faith, and
remain faithful to each other?
Every situation in which you find yourself is but a means
to meet the purpose set for your relationship. See it as
something else, and you ARE faithless. Use not your
faithlessness. Let it enter and look upon it calmly, but do
not USE it. Faithlessness is the servant of illusion, and
wholly faithful to its master. Use it, and it will carry you
straight to illusions. Be tempted not by what it offers you.
It interferes, not with the goal, but with the value of the
goal to YOU. Accept not the illusion of peace it offers, but
look upon its offering and recognize it IS illusion.
The goal of illusion is as closely tied to faithlessness as
faith to truth. If you lack faith in anyone to fulfill, and
PERFECTLY, his part in any situation dedicated in advance to
truth, YOUR dedication is divided. And so you have been
faithless to each other, and used your faithlessness AGAINST
each other. No relationship is holy unless its holiness goes
with it everywhere. As holiness and faith go hand in hand, so
must its faith go everywhere with it. The goals reality will
call forth and ACCOMPLISH every miracle needed for its
fulfillment. Nothing too small or too enormous, too weak or
too compelling, but will be gently turned to its use and
purpose. The universe will serve it gladly, as it serves the
universe. But do not INTERFERE.
The power set in you in whom the Holy Spirits goal has
been established is so far beyond your little conception of
the infinite that you have no idea how great the strength that
goes with you. And you can use THIS in perfect safety. Yet for
all its might, so great it reaches past the stars and to the
universe that lies beyond them, your little faithlessness can
make it useless, if you would use the faithlessness instead.
Yet think on this, and learn the CAUSE of faithlessness:
You think you hold against the other what he has done to you.
But what you really blame him for is what YOU did to HIM. It
is not HIS past but YOURS you hold against him. And you lack
faith in him because of what YOU were. Yet you are as innocent
of what you were as he is. What never was is causeless, and is
not THERE to interfere with truth. There IS no cause for
faithlessness, but there IS a Cause for faith. That Cause has
entered any situation which shares Its purpose. The light of
truth shines from the center of the situation, and touches
everyone to whom the situations purpose calls. It calls to
EVERYONE. There is no situation which does not involve your
WHOLE relationship, in every aspect and complete in every
part. You can leave nothing of yourself outside it, and keep
the situation holy. For it shares the purpose of your whole
relationship, and derives its meaning from it.
Enter each situation with the faith that you give to each
other, or you ARE faithless to your own relationship. Your
faith will call the others to share your purpose, as this same
purpose called forth the faith in YOU. And you will see the
means you once employed to lead you to illusions transformed
to means for truth. When the Holy Spirit changed the purpose
of your relationship by exchanging yours for His, the goal He
placed there was extended to every situation in which you
enter, or will EVER enter. And every situation was thus made
free of the past, which would have made it purposeless.
You call for faith because of Him Who walks with you in
EVERY situation. You are no longer wholly insane, nor no
longer alone. For loneliness in God MUST be a dream. You whose
relationship shares the Holy Spirits goal are set apart from
loneliness because the truth has come. Its call for faith is
strong. Use not your faithlessness against it, for it calls
you to salvation and to peace.
The Conditions of Forgiveness
The holy instant is nothing more than a special case, or an
extreme example, of what every situation is MEANT to be. The
meaning which the Holy Spirits purpose has given it is also
given to every situation. It calls forth just the same
suspension of faithlessness, withheld and left unused, that
faith might answer to the call of truth. The holy instant is
the shining example, the clear and unequivocal demonstration
of the meaning of every relationship and every situation, seen
as a WHOLE. Faith has accepted every aspect of the situation,
and faithlessness has not forced any exclusion on it. It is a
situation of perfect peace simply because you have let it be
what it IS.
This simple courtesy is all the Holy Spirit asks of you.
Let truth be what it is. Do not intrude upon it, do not attack
it, do not interrupt its coming. Let it encompass every
situation, and bring you peace. Not even faith is asked of
you, for truth asks nothing. Let it enter, and it will call
forth and SECURE for you the faith you need for peace. But
rise you not against it, for against your opposition it CANNOT
come.
Would you not WANT to make a holy instant of every
situation? For such is the gift of faith, freely given
wherever faithlessness is laid aside, unused. And then the
power of the Holy Spirits purpose is free to use instead.
This power INSTANTLY transforms all situations into one sure
and continuous means for establishing His purpose, and
demonstrating its reality. What has been demonstrated has
called for faith, and has been GIVEN it. Now it becomes a
fact, from which faith can no longer BE withheld. The strain
of refusing faith to truth is enormous, and far greater than
you realize. But to answer truth with faith entails no strain
at all.
To you who have acknowledged the call of your Redeemer, the
strain of not responding to His call seems to be greater than
before. This is not so. Before, the strain was there but you
attributed it to something else, believing that the
something else produced it. This was NEVER true. For what
the something else produced was sorrow and depression,
sickness and pain, darkness and dim imaginings of terror, cold
fantasies of fear and fiery dreams of hell. And it was nothing
but the intolerable strain of refusing to give faith to truth,
and see its evident reality.
Such was the crucifixion of the Son of God. His
faithlessness did this to him. Think carefully before you let
yourself use faithlessness against him. For he is risen, and
you have accepted the cause of his awakening as yours. You
have assumed your part in his redemption, and you are now
fully responsible to him. Fail him not now, for it has been
given you to realize what your lack of faith in him must mean
to YOU. His salvation IS your only purpose. See only this in
every situation, and it will be a means for BRINGING only
this.
When you accepted truth as the goal for your relationship,
you became givers of peace as surely as your Father gave peace
to you. For the goal of peace cannot be accepted apart from
its conditions, and you HAD faith in it, for no-one accepts
what he does not believe is real. Your purpose has not
changed, and WILL not change, for you accepted what can NEVER
change. And nothing that it needs to be forever changeless can
you now withhold from it. Your release is certain. Give as you
have received. And demonstrate that you have risen far beyond
ANY situation that could hold you back, and keep you separate
from Him Whose call you answered.
CHAPTER 18
THE DREAM AND THE REALITY
To substitute is to ACCEPT INSTEAD. If you would but
consider exactly what this entails, you would perceive at once
how much at variance this is with the goal the Holy Spirit has
given you and would accomplish FOR you. To substitute is to
CHOOSE BETWEEN, renouncing one in favor of the other. For this
special purpose, one is judged more valuable and the other is
replaced by him. The relationship in which the substitution
occurred is thus fragmented, and its purpose split
accordingly. To fragment is to exclude, and substitution is
the strongest defense the ego has for separation.
The Holy Spirit never uses substitutes. Where the ego
perceives one person as a replacement for another, the Holy
Spirit sees them joined and indivisible. He does not judge
between them, knowing they are one. Being united, they are one
because they are the SAME. Substitution is clearly a process
in which they are perceived as different. One would unite; the
other separate. Nothing can come between what God has joined
and what the Holy Spirit sees as one. But everything SEEMS to
come between the fragmented relationships the ego sponsors to
destroy.
The one emotion in which substitution is impossible is
love. Fear involves substitution by definition, for it is
loves replacement. Fear is both a fragmented and a
fragmenting emotion. It seems to take many forms, and each
seems to require a different form of acting out for
satisfaction. While this appears to introduce quite variable
behavior, a far more serious effect lies in the fragmented
perception from which the behavior stems. No-one is SEEN
COMPLETE. The body is emphasized, with special emphasis on
certain parts, and used as the standard for comparison for
either acceptance or rejection of suitability for acting out a
special form of fear.
Substitution as a Defense
You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution.
It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of
illusion for truth; of fragmentation for wholeness. It has
become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over
and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once
was one, and still is what it was. That one error, which
brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to
death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it.
Everything you see reflects it, and every special relationship
which you have ever made is part of it.
You have expressed surprise at hearing how very different
is reality from what you see. You do not realize the magnitude
of that one error. It was so vast and so completely incredible
that from it a world of total unreality HAD to emerge. What
else COULD come of it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful
enough, as you begin to look at them. But nothing you have
seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error,
which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge
into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force
you to further substitutions.
That was the first projection of error outward. The world
arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was
projected and drawn between you and the truth. For truth
extends INWARD, where the idea of loss is meaningless, and
only increase is conceivable. Do you really think it strange
that a world in which everything is backwards and upside-down
arose from this? For truth brought to THIS could only remain
within in quiet, and take no part in all the mad projection by
which this world was made. Call it not sin but madness, for
such it was, and so it still remains. Invest it not with
guilt, for guilt implies it was accomplished in reality. And
above all, be not AFRAID of it. When you seem to see some
twisted form of the original error rise to frighten you, say
only, God is not fear, but love, and it will disappear.
The truth will SAVE you. It has not left you, to go out
into the mad world and so depart from you. Inward is sanity;
insanity is OUTSIDE you. You but BELIEVE it is the other way;
that truth is outside, and error and guilt within. Your
little, senseless substitutions, touched with insanity and
swirling lightly off on a mad course like feathers dancing
insanely in the wind, have NO substance. They fuse and merge
and separate, in shifting and totally meaningless patterns
which need not be judged at all. To judge them individually is
pointless. Their tiny differences in form are no real
differences at all. NONE of them matters. THAT they have in
common, and nothing else. Yet what else is NECESSARY to make
them all the same?
Let them all go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning
till they disappear from sight, far, far outside you. And turn
you to the stately calm within, where in holy stillness dwells
the living God you never left, and Who never left you. The
Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand, and retraces with
you your mad journey outside yourself, leading you gently back
to the truth and safety within. He brings all your insane
projections and you wild substitutions which you have placed
outside you to the truth. Thus He reverses the course of
insanity, and restores you to reason.
In your relationship, where He has taken charge of
everything at your request, He has set the course inward, to
the truth you share. In the mad world outside you, nothing can
be shared but only substituted, and sharing and substituting
have nothing in common in reality. Within yourselves you love
each other with a perfect love. Here is holy ground, in which
no substitution can enter, and where only the truth about each
other can abide. Here you are joined in God, as much together
as you are with Him. The original error has not entered here,
nor ever will. Here is the radiant truth, to which the Holy
Spirit has committed your relationship. Let Him bring it here,
where YOU would have it be. Give Him but a little faith in
each other, to help him show you that no substitute you made
for Heaven can keep you from it. In you there IS no
separation, and no substitute can keep you from each other.
Your reality was Gods creation, and HAS no substitute.
You are so firmly joined in truth that only God is there.
And He would never accept something else instead of you. He
loves you both, equally and as one. And as He loves you, so
you ARE. You are not joined together in illusions, but in the
Thought so holy and so perfect that illusions cannot remain to
darken the holy place in which you stand together. God is with
you, my brothers. Let us join in Him in peace and gratitude,
and accept His gift as our most holy and perfect reality,
which we share in Him.
Heaven is restored to all the Sonship through your
relationship, for in it lies the Sonship, whole and beautiful,
safe in your love. Heaven has entered quietly, for all
illusions have been gently brought unto the truth in you, and
love has shined upon you, blessing your relationship with
truth. God and His whole creation have entered it together.
How lovely and how holy is your relationship, with the truth
shining upon it! Heaven beholds it, and rejoices that you have
let it come to you. The universe within you stands with you,
together. And Heaven looks with love on what is joined in it,
along with its Creator.
Whom God has called should hear no substitutes. Their call
is but an echo of the original error which shattered Heaven.
And what became of peace in those who heard? Return with me to
Heaven, walking together out of this world and through another
to the loveliness and joy the other holds within it. Would you
still further weaken and break apart what is already broken
and hopeless? Is it here that you would look for happiness? Or
would you not prefer to heal what has been broken, and join in
making whole what has been ravaged by separation and disease?
You have been called, together, to the most holy function
that this world contains. It is the only one which has no
limits, and reaches out to every broken fragment of the
Sonship with healing and uniting comfort. This is offered YOU,
in your holy relationship. Accept it here, and you will give
as you have accepted. The peace of God is given you with the
glowing purpose in which you join. The holy light that brought
you together must extend, as YOU accepted it.
The Basis of the Dream
Does not a world that seems quite real arise in dreams? Yet
think what this world is. It is clearly NOT the world you saw
before you slept. Rather, it is a distortion of the world,
planned solely around what you would have preferred. Here, you
are free to make over whatever seemed to attack you, and
change it into a tribute to your ego, which was outraged by
the attack. This would not BE your wish unless you saw
yourself as one with the ego, which always looks upon itself,
and therefore on you, as under attack and highly vulnerable to
it.
Dreams are chaotic BECAUSE they are governed by your
conflicting wishes, and therefore they have no CONCERN with
what is true. They are the best example you could have of how
perception can be utilized to substitute illusions for truth.
You do not take them seriously on awaking because the fact
that reality is so outrageously violated in them becomes
apparent. Yet they are a way of looking at the world, and
changing it to suit the ego better. They provide striking
examples, both of the egos inability to tolerate reality, and
your willingness to CHANGE reality on its behalf.
You do not find the differences between what you see in
sleep and on awaking disturbing. You recognize that what you
see on waking is blotted out in dreams. Yet on awakening, you
do not expect it to be gone. In dreams, YOU arrange
everything. People become what you would have them be, and
what they do YOU order. No limit on substitution is laid upon
you. For a time, it seems as if the world were given you, to
make it what you will. You do not realize that you are
ATTACKING it, trying to triumph over it and make it serve you.
Dreams are perceptual temper tantrums, in which you
literally scream, I want it THUS! And thus it seems to be.
And yet, the dream cannot escape its origin. Anger and fear
pervade it, and in an instant, the illusion of satisfaction is
invaded by the illusion of terror. For the dream of your
ability to control reality by substituting a world which you
prefer IS terrifying. Your attempts to blot out reality are
very fearful, but this you are not willing to accept. And so
you substitute the fantasy that REALITY is fearful, not what
you would DO to it. And thus is guilt made real.
Dreams show you that you HAVE the power to make a world as
you would have it be, and that because you WANT it you SEE IT.
And while you see it, you do not doubt that it is real. Yet
here is a world, clearly within your mind, that seems to be
OUTSIDE. You do not respond to it as though you made it, nor
do you realize that the emotions which the dream produce MUST
come from you. It is the figures in the dream and what THEY do
that seem to make the dream. You do not realize that you are
making them act out for YOU, for if you did, the guilt would
not be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would be gone.
In dreams these features are not obscure. You seem to waken,
and the dream is gone. Yet what you fail to recognize is that
what caused the dream has not gone with it.
Your wish to make another world that is not real REMAINS
with you. And what you seem to wake to is but another form of
this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in
dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different
forms, and that is all. Their CONTENT is the same. They are
your protest against reality, and your fixed and insane idea
that you can change it. In your waking dreams, the special
relationship is your determination to keep your hold on
unreality, and to prevent yourself from waking. And while you
see more value in sleeping than in waking, you will not let go
of it.
The Holy Spirit, ever practical in His wisdom, accepts your
dreams, and uses them as means for waking. YOU would have used
them to remain asleep. We once said that the first change,
before dreams disappear, is that your dreams of fear are
changed to happy dreams. That is what the Holy Spirit does in
your special relationship. He does not destroy it, nor snatch
it away from you. Your special relationship will remain, not
as a source of pain and guilt, but as a source of joy and
freedom. It will not be for you alone, for therein lay its
misery. As its unholiness kept it a thing apart, its holiness
will become an offering to everyone.
Your special relationship will be a means for undoing guilt
in everyone blessed through your holy relationship. It will be
a happy dream, and one which you will share with all who come
within your sight. Through it, the blessing which the Holy
Spirit has laid upon it will be extended. Think not that He
has forgotten anyone in the purpose He has given you. And
think not that He has forgotten you to whom He gave the gift.
He uses everyone who calls on Him as means for the salvation
of everyone. And He will waken everyone through you who
offered your relationship to Him. If you but recognized His
gratitude! Or mine through His! For we are joined as in one
purpose, being of one mind with Him.
Let not the dream take hold to close your eyes. It is not
strange that dreams can make a world that is unreal. The WISH
to make it is incredible. Your relationship has become one in
which the wish has been removed, because its purpose has been
changed from one of dreams to one of truth. You are not sure
of this because you think it may be THIS that is the dream.
You are so used to choosing between dreams you do not see that
you have made, at last, the choice between the truth and ALL
illusions.
Yet Heaven is sure. This is no dream. Its coming means that
you have chosen truth, and it has come because you have been
willing to let your special relationship meet its conditions.
In your relationship, the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real
world; the world of happy dreams, from which awaking is so
easy and so natural. For as your sleeping and your waking
dreams represent the same wishes in your mind, so do the real
world and the truth of Heaven join in the Will of God. The
dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality. For this
dream comes from your will joined with the Will of God. And
what this Will would have accomplished has never NOT been
done.
Light in the Dream
You who have spent your lives in bringing truth to
illusion, reality to fantasy, have walked the way of dreams.
For you have gone from waking to sleeping, and on and on to a
yet deeper sleep. Each dream has led to other dreams, and
every fantasy which seemed to bring a light into the darkness
but made the darkness deeper. Your GOAL was darkness, in which
no ray of light could enter. And you sought a blackness so
complete that you could hide from truth forever, in complete
insanity. What you forgot was simply that God cannot destroy
Himself. The light is IN you. Darkness can cover it, but
CANNOT put it out.
As the light comes nearer you will rush to darkness,
shrinking from the truth, sometimes retreating to the lesser
forms of fear, and sometimes to stark terror. But you WILL
advance because your goal IS the advance from fear to truth.
You KNOW this. The goal which you accepted IS the goal of
knowledge, for which you signified your willingness. Fear
seems to live in darkness, and when you are afraid you have
stepped back. Let us then join quickly in an instant of light,
and it will be enough to remind you that your goal IS light.
Truth has rushed to meet you since you called upon it.
If you knew Who walks beside you on this way which you have
chosen, fear would be impossible. You do not know because the
journey into darkness has been long and cruel, and you have
gone deep into it. A little flicker of your eyelids, closed so
long, has not yet been sufficient to give you confidence in
yourselves, so long despised. You go toward love still hating
it, and terribly afraid of its judgment upon you. And you do
not realize that you are not afraid of love, but only of what
you have made of it. You are advancing to loves meaning, and
away from all illusions in which you have surrounded it. When
you retreat to the illusion your fear increases, for there is
little doubt that what you think it means IS fearful. Yet what
is that to us who travel surely and very swiftly AWAY from
fear?
You who hold each others hand also hold mine, for when you
joined each other you were not alone. Do you believe that I
would leave you in the darkness you agreed to leave with ME?
In your relationship is this worlds light. And fear MUST
disappear before you now. Be tempted not to snatch away the
gift of faith you offered to each other. You will succeed only
in frightening yourselves. The gift is given forever, for God
Himself received it. You CANNOT take it back. You have
accepted God. The holiness of your relationship is established
in Heaven. You do not understand what you accepted, but
remember that your understanding is not necessary. All that
was necessary was merely the WISH to understand. That wish was
the desire to be holy. The will of God is granted you. For you
desire the only thing you ever had, or ever were.
Each instant that we spend together will teach you that
this goal is possible, and will strengthen your desire to
reach it. And in your desire lies its accomplishment. Your
desire is now in complete accord with all the power of the
Holy Spirits Will. No little, faltering footsteps that you
may take can separate your desire from His Will and from His
strength. I hold your hand as surely as you agreed to take
each others. You will not separate for I stand with you, and
walk with you in your advance to truth. And where we go we
carry God with us.
In your relationship, you have joined with me in bringing
Heaven to the Son of God, who hid in darkness. You have been
willing to bring the darkness to light, and this willingness
has given strength to everyone who would remain in darkness.
Those who would see WILL see. And they will join with me in
carrying their light into the darkness, when the darkness in
them is offered to the light, and is removed forever. My need
for you, joined with me in the holy light of your
relationship, is YOUR need for salvation. Would I not give you
what you gave to me? For when you joined each other, you
answered me.
You who are now the bringers of salvation have the function
of bringing light to darkness. The darkness in you HAS been
brought to light. Carry it back to darkness, from the holy
instant to which you brought it. We are made whole in our
desire to make whole. Let not time worry you, for all the fear
that you experience is really past. Time has been re-adjusted
to help us do, together, what your separate pasts would
hinder. You have gone past fear, for no two minds can join in
the desire for love without loves joining THEM.
Not one light in Heaven but goes with you. Not one ray that
shines forever in the Mind of God but shines on you. Heaven is
joined with you in your advance to Heaven. When such great
light has joined with you to give the little spark of your
desire the power of God Himself, CAN you remain in darkness?
You are coming home together, after a long and meaningless
journey which you undertook apart, and which led nowhere. You
have found each other, and will light each others way. And
from this light will the great rays extend back into darkness
and forward unto God, to shine away the past and so make room
for His eternal Presence, in Which everything is radiant in
the light.
The Little Willingness
The holy instant is the result of your determination to be
holy. It is the ANSWER. The desire and the willingness to let
it come precedes its coming. You prepare your minds for it
only to the extent of recognizing that you want it above all
else. It is not necessary that you do more; indeed, it is
necessary that you realize that you CANNOT do more. Do not
attempt to give the Holy Spirit what He does not ask, or you
will add the ego unto Him, and confuse the two. He asks but
little. It is HE Who adds the greatness and the might. He
joins with you to make the holy instant far greater than you
can understand. It is your realization that you need do so
little that enables Him to give so much.
Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But
trust implicitly your willingness, whatever else may enter.
Concentrate only on this, and be not disturbed that shadows
surround it. That is why you came. If you could come without
them, you would not NEED the holy instant. Come to it not in
arrogance, assuming that you must achieve the state its coming
brings with it. The miracle of the holy instant lies in your
willingness to let it be what it is. And in your willingness
for this lies also your acceptance of yourself as YOU were
meant to be.
Humility will never ask that you remain content with
littleness. But it DOES require that you be NOT content with
less than greatness which comes not of you. Your difficulty
with the holy instant arises from your fixed conviction that
you are not worthy of it. And what is this but the
determination to be as you would MAKE yourself? God did not
create His dwelling-place unworthy of Him. And if you believe
He cannot enter where He wills to be, you must be INTERFERING
with His Will. You do not need the strength of willingness to
come from YOU, but only from HIS Will.
The holy instant does not come from your little willingness
alone. It is always the result of your small willingness
combined with the unlimited power of Gods Will. You have been
wrong in thinking that it is needful to PREPARE yourself for
Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for
holiness, and NOT believe that it is up to you to establish
the conditions for peace. GOD has established them. They do
not wait upon your willingness for what they are. Your
willingness is needed only to make it possible to TEACH you
what they are. If you maintain you are unworthy of learning
this, you are interfering with the lesson by believing that
you make the LEARNER different. You did not make the learner,
nor CAN you make him different. Would you first make a miracle
yourself, and then expect one to be made FOR you?
YOU merely ask the question. The answer is GIVEN. Seek not
to answer it, but merely RECEIVE the answer as it is given. In
preparing for the holy instant, do not attempt to make
yourself holy to be ready to receive it. That is but to
confuse your role with Gods. Atonement cannot come to those
who think that THEY must first atone, but only to those who
offer it nothing more than simple willingness to make way for
it. Purification is of God alone, and therefore for you.
Rather than seek to prepare yourself for Him, try to think
thus:
I who am host to God AM worthy of Him.
He Who established His dwelling-place in me
created it as He would have it be.
It is not needful that I make it ready for Him,
But only that I do not interfere with His plan to
restore to
me my own awareness of my readiness, which is
eternal.
I need add nothing to His plan.
But to receive it, I must be willing not to
substitute my own in place of it.
And that is all. Add more, and you will merely TAKE AWAY the
little that is asked. Remember you made guilt, and that your
plan for the escape from guilt has been to bring Atonement TO
it, and make salvation fearful. And it is only fear that you
will add, if you prepare YOURSELF for love. The preparation
for the holy instant belongs to Him Who gives it. Release
yourselves to Him Whose function is release. Do not assume His
function for Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may
learn how little is your part, and how great is His.
It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so
natural. You make it difficult, because you insist there must
be more that you need do. And it is very hard for you to
realize that it is not personally insulting that your
contribution and the Holy Spirits are so extremely
disproportionate. You are still convinced YOUR understanding
is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it
is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing.
Salvation is easy just BECAUSE it asks nothing that you cannot
give RIGHT NOW.
Forget not that it has been your decision to make
everything that IS natural and easy for you impossible. What
you believe to be impossible will BE, if God so wills it, but
you will remain quite unaware of it. If you believe the holy
instant is difficult for you, it is because you have become
the arbiter of what is possible, and remain unwilling to give
place to One Who KNOWS. The whole belief in orders of
difficulty in miracles is centered on this. Everything God
wills is not only possible, but has already HAPPENED. And that
is why the past has gone. It NEVER happened in reality. Only
in your minds, which thought it did, is its undoing needful.
The Happy Dream
Prepare you NOW for the undoing of what never was. If you
already understood the difference between truth and illusion,
the Atonement would have no meaning. The holy instant, your
holy relationship, the Holy Spirits teaching, and all the
means by which salvation is accomplished, would have no
purpose. For they are all but aspects of the plan to change
your dreams of fear to happy dreams, from which you waken
easily to knowledge. Put yourself not in charge of this, for
you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of
your greatest advances you have judged as failures, and some
of your deepest retreats you have evaluated as success.
Never approach the holy instant after YOU have tried to
remove all fear and hatred from your mind. That is ITS
function. Never attempt to overlook your guilt BEFORE you ask
the Holy Spirits help. That is HIS function. Your part is
only to offer Him a little willingness to LET Him remove all
fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven. On your little faith,
joined with His understanding, HE will build your part in the
Atonement, and make sure that you fulfill it easily. And with
Him, YOU will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of
faith, and rising even to Heaven. Nor will you use it to
ascend to Heaven alone.
Through your holy relationship, reborn and blessed in every
holy instant which you do not arrange, thousands will rise to
Heaven with you. Can YOU plan for this? Or could you prepare
YOURSELVES for such a function? Yet it is possible, because
God wills it. Nor will He change His Mind about it. The means
and purpose BOTH belong to Him. You have accepted one; the
other will be provided. A purpose such as this, without the
means, is inconceivable. He will provide the means to ANYONE
who shares His purpose.
Happy dreams come true, NOT because they are dreams, but
only because they are HAPPY. And so they must be loving. Their
message is, Thy Will be done, and not, I want it
otherwise. The alignment of means and purpose is an
undertaking impossible for you to understand. You do not even
realize you HAVE accepted the Holy Spirits purpose as your
own, and you would merely bring unholy means to its
accomplishment. The little faith it needed to change the
purpose is all that is required to receive the means and USE
them.
It is no dream to love your brother as yourself. Nor is
your holy relationship a dream. All that remains of dreams
within it is that it is still a SPECIAL relationship. Yet it
is very useful to the Holy Spirit, Who HAS a special function
here. It will become the happy dream through which He can
spread joy to thousands on thousands who believe that love is
fear, not happiness. Let Him fulfill the function that He gave
to your relationship by accepting it FOR you, and nothing will
be wanting that would make of it what He would have it be.
When you feel the holiness of your relationship is
threatened by anything, stop instantly and offer the Holy
Spirit your willingness, IN SPITE of fear, to let Him exchange
this instant for the holy one which you would rather have. He
will never fail in this. But forget not that your relationship
is one, and so it must be that whatever threatens the peace of
one is an equal threat to the other. The power of joining and
its blessing lie in the fact that it is now impossible for
either of you to experience fear alone, or to attempt to deal
with it alone. Never believe that this is necessary, or even
possible. Yet just as this is impossible, so is it equally
impossible that the holy instant come to either of you WITHOUT
the other. And it will come to BOTH at the request of either.
Which ever is saner at the time when the threat is
perceived should remember how deep is his indebtedness to the
other, and how much gratitude is due him, and be glad that he
can pay his debt by bringing happiness to both. Let him
remember this, and say:
I desire this holy instant for myself
That I may share it with my brother, whom I love.
It is not possible that I can have it without him, or he
without me.
Yet it is wholly possible for us to share it NOW.
And so I choose this instant as the one to offer to the
Holy Spirit,
That His blessing may descend on us, and keep us BOTH in
peace.
Dreams and the Body
There is NOTHING outside you. That is what you must
ultimately learn, for it is the realization that the Kingdom
of Heaven is restored to you. For God created only this, and
He did not depart from it, nor leave it separate from Himself.
The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling-place of the Son of God,
who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven
is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of
perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else;
nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within.
What could God give but knowledge of Himself? What else IS
there to give? The belief that you could give and GET
something else, something OUTSIDE yourself, has cost you the
awareness of Heaven, and the loss of your identity. And you
have done a stranger thing than you yet realize. You have
displaced your guilt to your bodies from your minds. Yet a
body CANNOT be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. You
who think you hate your bodies deceive yourselves. You hate
your MINDS, for guilt has entered into them, and they would
remain separate, which they cannot do.
Minds ARE joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the
mind the properties of the body does separation seem to be
possible. And it is MIND that seems to be fragmented and
private and alone. Its guilt, which KEEPS it separate, is
projected to the body, which suffers and dies because it is
attacked to hold the separation in the mind, and let it NOT
KNOW its identity. Mind cannot attack, but it CAN make
fantasies and direct the body to act them out. Yet it is never
what the body does that seems to satisfy. Unless the mind
believes the body is actually acting out its fantasies, it
will attack the body by increasing the projection of its guilt
upon it.
In this, the mind is clearly delusional. It cannot attack,
but it maintains it CAN, and uses what it does to hurt the
body to PROVE it can. The mind cannot attack, but it CAN
deceive itself. And this is all it does when it believes it
has attacked the body. It can project its guilt, but it will
not LOSE it through projection. And though it clearly can
misperceive the function of the body, it cannot change its
function from what the Holy Spirit establishes it to be. The
body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it, and
can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made,
and using it to save him from illusions.
Would you not have the instruments of separation re-
interpreted as means for salvation, and used for purposes of
love? Would you not welcome and support the shift from
fantasies of vengeance to release from them? Your perception
of the body can clearly be sick, but project not this upon the
body. For your wish to make destructive what cannot destroy
can have no real effect at all. And what God created is only
what He would have it be, being His Will. You CANNOT make His
Will destructive. You can make fantasies in which your will
conflicts with His, but that is all.
It is insane to use the body as the scapegoat for guilt,
directing its attack and blaming it for what you wished it to
do. It is IMPOSSIBLE to act out fantasies. For it is still the
FANTASIES you want, and they have nothing to do with what the
body does. IT does not dream of them, and they but make it a
liability where it could be an asset. For fantasies have made
your body your enemy, weak, vulnerable and treacherous,
worthy of the hate which you invest in it. How has this served
you? You have IDENTIFIED with this thing you hate, the
instrument of vengeance and the perceived source of your
guilt. You have done this to a thing that has no meaning,
proclaiming it to be the dwelling-place of the Son of God, and
turning it against him.
This is the host of God that YOU have made. And neither God
nor His most holy Son can enter an abode which harbors hate,
and where you have sown the seeds of vengeance, violence and
death. This thing you made to serve your guilt stands between
you and other minds. The minds ARE joined, but you do not
identify with them. You see yourself locked in a separate
prison, removed and unreachable, incapable of reaching out as
being reached. You hate this prison you have made, and would
destroy it. But you would not escape from it, leaving it
unharmed, without your guilt upon it.
Yet only thus CAN you escape. The home of vengeance is not
yours; the place you set aside to house your hate is not a
prison, but an illusion of YOURSELF. The body is a limit
imposed on the universal communication which is an eternal
property of mind. But the communication is INTERNAL. Mind
reaches to ITSELF. It does not go OUT. Within itself it has no
limits, and there is nothing outside it. It encompasses you
entirely; you within it, and it within you. There is nothing
else, anywhere or ever.
The body is outside you, and but SEEMS to surround you,
shutting you off from others, and keeping you apart from them.
It is not there. There IS no barrier between God and His Son,
nor can His Son be separated from himself except in illusions.
This is not his reality, though he believes it is. Yet this
could only be if God were wrong. God would have had to create
differently, and to have separated Himself from His Son to
make this possible. He would have had to create different
things, and to establish different ORDERS of reality, only
SOME of which were love. Yet love must be forever like itself,
changeless forever, and forever without alternative. And so it
is. You cannot put a barrier around yourself because God
placed none between Himself and you.
You can stretch out your hand and reach to Heaven. You
whose hands are joined have begun to reach beyond the body,
but NOT outside yourselves, to reach your shared identity
TOGETHER. Could this be OUTSIDE you? Where God is NOT? Is HE a
body, and did He create you as He is not, and where He cannot
be? You are surrounded only by HIM. What limit can there be on
you whom He encompasses? Everyone has experienced what he
would call a sense of being transported beyond himself. This
feeling of liberation far exceeds the dream of freedom
sometimes experienced in special relationships. It is a sense
of actual ESCAPE from limitations.
If you will consider what this transportation really
entails, you will realize that it is a sudden unawareness of
the body, and a joining of yourself and something else in
which your mind enlarges to encompass it. It becomes part of
you, as you unite with it. And both become whole, as neither
is perceived as separate. What really happens is that you have
given up the illusion of a limited awareness, and lost your
fear of union. The love that instantly replaces it EXTENDS to
what has freed you, and unites with it. And while this lasts,
you are not uncertain of your identity, and would not limit
it. You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no questions
of reality, but merely accepting it. You have accepted this
INSTEAD of the body, and have let yourself be one with
something beyond it, simply by not letting your mind be
LIMITED by it.
This can occur regardless of the physical distance which
seems to be between you and what you join; of your respective
positions in space; and of your differences in size and
seeming quality. Time is not relevant; it can occur with
something past, present or anticipated. The something can
be anything and anywhere; a sound, a sight, a thought, a
memory, and even a general idea without specific reference.
Yet in every case, you joined it without reservation because
you love it, and would be with it. And so you rush to meet it,
letting your limits melt away, suspending all the laws your
body obeys, and gently setting them aside.
There is no violence at all in this escape. The body is not
attacked, but simply properly PERCEIVED. It does not limit
you, merely because you would not have it so. You are not
really lifted out of it; it cannot CONTAIN you. You go
where you would be, gaining, not losing, a sense of self. In
these instants of release from physical restrictions, you
experience much of what happens in the holy instant; the
lifting of the barriers of time and space, the sudden
experience of peace and joy, and, above all, the lack of
awareness of the body, and of the questioning whether or not
all this is possible.
It is possible because you WANT it. The sudden expansion of
the self which takes place with your desire for it is the
irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to
be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of
limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind and
freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be
yourself in peace. Not through destruction, not through a
breaking out, but merely by a quiet melting in. For
peace will join you there simply because you have been willing
to let go the limits you have placed upon love, and joined it
where it is and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call
to BE at peace.
I Need Do Nothing
You still have too much faith in the body as a source of
strength. What plans do you make that do not involve its
comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way? This makes it
an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this ALWAYS
means you still find sin attractive. No-one accepts Atonement
for himself who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus
not met your ONE responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by
those who prefer pain and destruction.
You have made much progress and are really trying to make
still more, but there is one thing you have never done; not
for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body. It has
faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet completely
disappeared. You are not asked to let this happen for more
than an instant, yet it is in this instant that the miracle of
Atonement happens. Afterwards, you will see the body again,
but never quite the same. And every instant that you spend
WITHOUT awareness of it gives you a different view of it when
you return.
At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is
always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just
NOW. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls
it entirely, for sin is never present. In any single instant,
the attraction of guilt would be experienced as pain and
nothing else, and would be avoided. It has no attraction NOW.
Its whole attraction is imaginary, and therefore MUST be
thought of in the past or in the future.
It is impossible to accept the holy instant without
reservation unless, just for an instant, you are willing to
see NO past or future. You cannot prepare for it WITHOUT
placing it in the future. Release is given you the instant you
desire it. Many have spent a lifetime in preparation, and have
indeed achieved their instants of success. This course does
not attempt to teach more than they learned in time, but it
does aim at SAVING time. You are attempting to follow a very
long road to the goal you have accepted. It is extremely
difficult to reach Atonement by fighting against sin. Nor is a
lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed
at detachment from the body necessary. All such attempts will
ultimately succeed because of their purpose. Yet the means are
tedious and very time consuming, for all of them look to the
FUTURE for release from a state of present unworthiness and
inadequacy.
Your way will be different, not in purpose, but in means. A
holy relationship is a means of SAVING TIME. One instant spent
TOGETHER restores the universe to BOTH of you. You ARE
prepared. Now you need but to remember you need do NOTHING. It
would be far more profitable now merely to concentrate on this
than to consider what you SHOULD do. When peace comes at last
to those who wrestle with temptation and fight against the
giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind
given to contemplation, or when the goal is finally achieved
by anyone, it ALWAYS comes with just one happy realization;
I need do nothing.
Here is the ultimate release which everyone will one day
find in his own way, at his own time. We do not need this
time. Time has been saved for you because you are together.
This is the special means this course is using to save you
time. You are not making use of the course if you insist on
using means which have served others well, neglecting what was
made for YOU. Save time for me by only this ONE preparation,
and practice doing nothing else. I need do nothing is a
statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty. Believe it
for just one instant, and you will accomplish more than is
given to a century of contemplation, or of struggle against
temptation.
To DO anything involves the body. And if you recognize you
NEED do nothing, you have withdrawn the bodys value from your
mind. Here is the quick and open door through which you slip
past centuries of effort, and escape from time. This is the
way in which sin loses all attraction RIGHT NOW. For here is
time denied, and past and future gone. Who need do nothing has
no need for time. To do nothing is to rest, and make a place
within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand
attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes, and there
abides. He will remain when you forget, and the bodys
activities return to occupy your conscious mind.
Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you
can return. And you will be more aware of this quiet center of
the storm than all its raging activity. This quiet center, in
which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in
the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For from
this center will you be directed how to use the body
sinlessly. It is this center, from which the body is absent,
that will keep it so in your awareness of it.
The Purpose of the Body
It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem
limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in
limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the
unlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical, for it
was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves within a
body know yourself as an IDEA? Everything you recognize you
identify with externals, something outside itself. You cannot
even think of God without a body, or some form you think you
recognize.
The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to
its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur which surrounds
you. God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there.
Limits on love will always seem to shut Him out, and to keep
you apart from Him. The body is a tiny fence around a little
part of a glorious and complete idea. It draws a circle,
infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven
splintered from the whole, proclaiming that within it is your
kingdom, where God can enter not.
Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And to
defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against
the universe. This fragment of your mind is such a tiny part
of it that, could you but appreciate the whole, you would see
instantly that it is like the smallest sunbeam to the sun, or
like the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. In its
amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it IS the
sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the
ocean. Think how alone and frightened is this little thought,
this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart against the
universe. The sun becomes the sunbeams enemy which would
devour it, and the ocean terrifies the little ripple and wants
to swallow it.
Yet neither sun nor ocean is even aware of all this strange
and meaningless activity. They merely continue, unaware that
they are feared and hated by a tiny segment of themselves.
Even that segment is not lost to them, for it could not
survive APART from them. And what it thinks it is in no way
changes its total dependence on them for its being. Its whole
existence still remains in them. Without the sun the sunbeam
would be gone; the ripple without the ocean is inconceivable.
Such is the strange position in which those in a world
inhabited by bodies seem to be. Each body seems to house a
separate mind, a disconnected thought, living alone and in no
way joined to the Thought by which it was created. Each tiny
fragment seems to be self-contained, needing each other for
some things, but by no means totally dependent on their one
Creator for everything, and needing the whole to give them any
meaning, for by themselves they DO mean nothing. Nor HAVE they
any life apart and by themselves.
Like to the sun and ocean your Self continues, unmindful
that this tiny part regards itself AS you. It is not missing;
it could not exist if it were separate, nor would the whole be
whole without it. It is not a separate kingdom, ruled by an
idea of separation from the rest. Nor does a fence surround
it, preventing it from joining with the rest, and keeping it
apart from its Creator. This little aspect is no different
from the whole, being continuous with it and at one with it.
It leads no separate life because its life IS the oneness in
which its being was created.
Do not accept this little, fenced-off aspect as yourself.
The sun and ocean are as nothing beside what you are. The
sunbeam sparkles only in the sunlight, and the ripple dances
as it rests upon the ocean. Yet in neither sun nor ocean is
the power that rests in you. Would you remain within your tiny
kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all he surveys, who
looks on nothing, yet who would still die to defend it? This
little self is not your kingdom. Arched high above it and
surrounding it with love is the glorious whole, which offers
all its happiness and deep content to every part. The little
aspect which you think you set apart is no exception.
Love knows no bodies, and reaches to everything created
like itself. Its total lack of limit IS its meaning. It is
completely impartial in its giving, encompassing only to
preserve and keep complete what it would give. In your tiny
kingdom you have so little! Should it not, then, be there that
you would call on love to enter? Look at the desert, dry and
unproductive, scorched and joyless, which makes up your little
kingdom. And realize the life and joy which love would bring
to it from where it comes, and where it would return with you.
The Thought of God surrounds your little kingdom, waiting
at the barrier you built to come inside and shine upon the
barren ground. See how life springs up everywhere! The desert
becomes a garden, green and deep and quiet, offering rest to
those who lost their way and wander in the dust. Give them a
place of refuge, prepared by love for them where once a desert
was. And everyone you welcome will bring love with him from
Heaven for you. They enter one by one into this holy place,
but they will not depart as they had come, alone. The love
they brought with them will stay with them, as it will stay
with YOU. And under its beneficence, your little garden will
expand, and reach out to everyone who thirsts for living
water, but has grown too weary to go on alone.
Go out and find them, for they bring your Self with them.
And lead them gently to your quiet garden, and receive their
blessing there. So will it grow and stretch across the desert,
leaving no lonely little kingdoms locked away from love, and
leaving YOU inside. And you will recognize yourself, and see
your little garden gently transformed into the Kingdom of
Heaven, with all the love of its Creator shining upon it. The
holy instant is your invitation to love, to enter into your
bleak and joyless kingdom, and to transform it into a garden
of peace and welcome.
Loves answer is inevitable. It will come because you came
without the body, and interposed no barriers which would
interfere with its glad coming. In the holy instant, you ask
of love only what it offers everyone, neither less nor more.
ASKING for everything, you will RECEIVE it. And your shining
Self will lift the tiny aspect which you tried to hide from
Heaven straight INTO Heaven. No part of love calls on the
whole in vain. No Son of God remains outside His Fatherhood.
Be sure of this; love has entered your special
relationship, and entered fully at your weak request. You do
not recognize that love has come because you have not yet let
go of all the barriers you hold against each other. And you
will not be able to give love welcome separately. You could no
more know God alone than He knows you without your brother.
But, TOGETHER, you could no more be unaware of love than love
could know you not, or fail to recognize itself in you.
You have reached the end of an ancient journey, not
realizing yet that it is over. You are still worn and tired,
and the deserts dust still seems to cloud your eyes and keep
you sightless. Yet He Whom you welcomed has come to you, and
would welcome YOU. He has waited long to give you this.
Receive it now of Him, for He would have you know Him. Only a
little wall of dust still stands between you. Blow on it
lightly and with happy laughter and it will fall away, and
walk into the garden love has prepared for BOTH of you.
The Delusional Thought System
You have been told to bring the darkness to the light, and
guilt to holiness. And you have also been told that error must
be corrected at its source. Therefore, it is the tiny part of
yourself, the little thought that seems split off and
separate, which the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in
Gods keeping, and NEEDS no guide. Yet this wild and
delusional thought needs help because, in its delusions, it
thinks it is the Son of God, whole and omnipotent, sole ruler
of the kingdom it set apart to tyrannize by madness into
obedience and slavery.
This is the little part of you you think you stole from
Heaven. Give it back to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but
YOU have lost sight of Heaven. Let the Holy Spirit remove it
from the withered kingdom in which you set it off, surrounded
by darkness, guarded by attack, and reinforced by hate. Within
its barricades is still a tiny segment of the Son of God,
complete and holy, serene and unaware of what you think
surrounds it. Be you not separate, for the One Who DOES
surround it has brought union to you, returning your little
offering of darkness to the eternal Light.
How is this done? It is extremely simple, being based on
what this little kingdom really is. The barren sands, the
darkness and the lifelessness are seen only through the bodys
eyes. Its vision IS distorted, and the messages it transmits
to you who made it to LIMIT your awareness ARE little and
limited, and so fragmented they are meaningless. From the
world of bodies, made by insanity, insane messages seem to be
returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear
witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. For YOU sent
forth these messengers to bring this back to you.
Everything these messages relay to you is quite external.
There are no messages which speak of what lies underneath, for
it is not the body that COULD speak of this. Its eyes perceive
it not; its senses remain quite unaware of it; its tongue
cannot relay its messages. Yet God can bring you there, if you
are willing to follow the Holy Spirit through seeming terror,
trusting Him not to abandon you and leave you there. For it is
not His purpose to frighten you, but only YOURS. You are
severely tempted to abandon Him at the outside ring of fear,
but He would lead you safely through and far beyond.
The circle of fear lies just below the level the body sees,
and seems to be the whole foundation on which the world is
based. Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts,
all the insane attacks, the fury, vengeance and betrayal that
were made to keep the guilt in place, so that the world could
rise from it and keep it hidden. Its shadow rises to the
surface, enough to hold its most external manifestations in
darkness, and to bring despair and loneliness to it and keep
it joyless. Yet its intensity is veiled by its heavy
coverings, and kept apart from what was made to keep it
hidden. The body cannot see this, for the body arose from this
for its protection, which must always depend on keeping it NOT
seen. The bodys eyes will never look on it. Yet they will see
what it dictates.
The body will remain guilts messenger, and will act as it
directs as long as you believe that guilt is real. For the
reality of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy
and opaque, impenetrable, and a real foundation for the egos
thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent
until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a
fragile veil before the light.
This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor which
looks like rock, is like a bank of low dark clouds that seems
to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance
is wholly an illusion. It gives way softly to the mountain
tops which rise above it, and has no power at all to hold back
anyone willing to climb above it and see the sun. It is not
strong enough to stop a buttons fall, nor hold a feather. Try
but to touch it and it disappears; attempt to grasp it and
your hands hold nothing.
Yet in this cloud bank it is easy to see a whole world
rising. A solid mountain range, a lake, a city, all rise in
your imagination, and from the clouds the messengers of your
perception return to you, assuring you that it is all there.
Figures stand out and move about, actions seem real, and forms
appear and shift from loveliness to the grotesque. And back
and forth they go, as long as you would play the game of
childrens make believe. Yet however long you play it, and
regardless of how much imagination you bring to it, you do not
confuse it with the world below, nor seek to make it real.
So should it be with the dark clouds of guilt, no more
impenetrable and no more substantial. You will not bruise
yourself against them in traveling through. Let your Guide
TEACH you their unsubstantial nature as He leads you past
them, for beneath them is a world of light whereon they cast
no shadows. Their shadows lie upon the world beyond them,
still further from the light. Yet from them TO the light their
shadows cannot fall.
This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real
world where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here, the world
outside is seen anew, without the shadow of guilt upon it.
Here are you forgiven, for here you have forgiven everyone.
Here is the new perception, where everything is bright and
shining with innocence, washed in the waters of forgiveness,
and cleansed of every evil thought you had laid upon it. Here
there is no attack upon the Son of God, and you are welcome.
Here is your innocence, waiting to clothe you and protect you,
and make you ready for the final step in the journey inward.
Here are the dark and heavy garments of guilt laid by, and
gently replaced by purity and love.
Yet even forgiveness is not the end. Forgiveness DOES make
lovely, but it does not create. It is the source of healing,
but it is the messenger of love, and not its Source. Here you
are led that God Himself can take the final step unhindered,
for here does nothing interfere with love, letting it be
itself. A step beyond this holy place, a step still further
inward but the one YOU cannot take, transports you to
something completely different. Here is the Source of light;
nothing perceived, forgiven nor transformed. But merely KNOWN.
The Passing of the Dream
This course will LEAD to knowledge, but knowledge itself is
still beyond the scope of our curriculum. Nor is there any
need for us to try to speak of what must forever lie beyond
words. We need remember only that whoever attains the real
world, beyond which learning cannot go, WILL go beyond it, but
in a different way. Where learning ends there God begins, for
learning ends before Him Who is complete where He begins, and
where there IS no end. It is not for us to dwell on what
CANNOT be attained. There is too much to learn. The readiness
for knowledge still must be attained.
Love is not learned. Its meaning lies in itself. And
learning ends when you have recognized all it is NOT. That is
the interference; that is what needs to be undone. Love is not
learned because there never was a time in which you knew it
not. Learning is useless in the Presence of your Creator,
Whose acknowledgement of you and yours of Him so far transcend
all learning that everything you learned is meaningless,
replaced forever by the knowledge of love and its one meaning.
Your relationship has been uprooted from the world of
shadows, and its unholy purpose has been safely brought
through the barriers of guilt, washed with forgiveness, and
set shining and firmly rooted in the world of light. From
there, it calls to you to follow the course it took, lifted
high above the darkness, and gently placed before the gates of
Heaven. The holy instant in which you were united is but the
messenger of love, sent from beyond forgiveness to remind you
of all that lies beyond it. Yet it is through forgiveness that
it will BE remembered.
And when the memory of God has come to you in the holy
place of forgiveness, you will remember nothing else, and
memory will be as useless as learning, for your only purpose
will be creating. Yet this you cannot know until every
perception has been cleansed and purified, and finally removed
forever. Forgiveness removes only the UNTRUE, lifting the
shadows from the world, and carrying it, safe and sure within
its gentleness, to the bright world of new and clean
perception. There is your purpose NOW. And it is there that
peace awaits you.
CHAPTER 19
BEYOND THE BODY
We said before that, when a situation has been dedicated
wholly to truth, peace is inevitable. Its attainment is the
criterion by which the wholeness of the dedication can be
safely assumed. Yet we also said that peace without faith will
NEVER be attained, for what is wholly dedicated to truth as
its only goal is brought to truth BY faith. This faith
encompasses everyone involved, for only thus the situation is
perceived as meaningful and as a whole. And everyone must be
involved in it, or else your faith is limited, and your
dedication incomplete.
Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity
to heal the Son of God. And he is healed BECAUSE you offered
faith to him, giving him to the Holy Spirit and releasing him
from every demand your ego would make of him. Thus do you see
him free, and in this vision does the Holy Spirit share. And
since He shares it He has given it, and so He heals through
YOU. It is this joining Him in a united purpose which makes
this purpose real because you make it WHOLE. And this IS
healing. The body is healed, because you came without it and
joined the Mind in which all healing rests.
Healing and the Mind
The body cannot heal, because it cannot make itself sick.
It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends entirely
on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose which the mind
would use it FOR. And it is obvious that a segment of the mind
CAN see itself as separated from the Universal Purpose. When
this occurs, the body becomes its weapon, used AGAINST this
Purpose to demonstrate the fact that separation has
occurred. The body thus becomes the instrument of illusion,
acting accordingly; seeing what is not there, hearing what
truth has never said, and behaving insanely, being imprisoned
BY insanity.
Do not overlook our earlier statement that faithlessness
leads straight to illusions. For faithlessness is the
perception of a brother as a body, and the body cannot be used
for purposes of union. If, then, you see your brother AS a
body, you have established a condition in which uniting with
him becomes impossible. Your faithlessness to him has
separated you from him, and kept you BOTH apart from being
healed. Your faithlessness has thus opposed the Holy Spirits
purpose, and brought illusions, centered on the BODY, to stand
between you. And the body WILL seem to be sick, for you have
made of it an enemy of healing, and the opposite of truth.
It cannot be difficult to realize that faith must be the
opposite of faithlessness. Yet the difference in how they
operate is less apparent, though it follows directly from the
fundamental difference in what they are. Faithlessness would
always limit and attack; faith would remove all limitations
and make whole. Faithlessness would interpose illusions
between the Son of God and his Creator; faith would remove all
obstacles that seem to rise between them. Faithlessness is
wholly dedicated to illusions; faith wholly to truth. Partial
dedication is impossible. Truth is the ABSENCE of illusion;
illusion the ABSENCE of truth.
Both cannot BE together, nor perceived in the same place.
To dedicate yourself to both is to set up a goal forever
impossible to attain, for part of it is sought through the
body, thought of as a means for seeking out reality through
attack, while the other part would heal, and therefore calls
upon the mind and NOT the body. The inevitable compromise is
the belief that the BODY must be healed, and NOT the mind. For
this divided goal has given both an equal reality, which could
be possible only if the mind is limited to the body, and
divided into little parts of seeming wholeness, but without
connection. This will not harm the body, but it WILL keep the
delusional thought system in the MIND.
Here, then, is healing needed. And it is here that healing
IS. For God gave healing not APART from sickness, nor
established remedy where sickness cannot be. They are
TOGETHER, and when they are SEEN together, all attempts to
keep both truth and illusion in the mind, where both MUST be,
are recognized as dedication to ILLUSION; and given up when
brought to truth, and seen as totally unreconcilable with
truth, in any respect or in any way.
Truth and illusion have NO connection. This will remain
forever true, however much you seek to connect them. But
illusions are ALWAYS connected, as is truth. Each is united, a
complete thought system, but totally disconnected to each
other. Where there is no overlap, there separation must be
complete. And to perceive this is to recognize where
separation IS, and where it must be healed. The result of an
idea is never separate from its source. The IDEA of separation
produced the body, and remains connected to it, making it sick
because of its identification with it. You think you are
protecting the body by hiding this connection, for this
concealment seems to keep your identification safe from the
attack of truth.
If you but understood how much this strange concealment has
hurt your mind, and how confused your own identification has
become because of it! You do not see how great the devastation
wrought by your faithlessness. For faithlessness is an attack
which seems to be justified by its RESULTS. For by withholding
faith, you see what IS unworthy of it, and cannot look beyond
the barrier to what is joined with you.
To have faith is to heal. It is the sign that you have
accepted the Atonement for yourself, and would therefore share
it. By faith, you offer the gift of freedom from the past,
which YOU received. You do not use anything your brother has
done before to condemn him NOW. You freely choose to overlook
his errors, looking past all barriers between your self and
his, and seeing them as one. And in that one you see your
faith is fully justified. There IS no justification for
faithlessness, but faith is ALWAYS justified.
Faith is the opposite of fear, as much a part of love as
fear is of attack. Faith is the acknowledgment of union. It is
the gracious acknowledgment of everyone as a Son of your most
loving Father, loved by Him like you, and therefore loved by
you as yourself. It is His Love that joins you, and for His
Love you would keep no-one separate from YOURS. Each one
appears just as he is perceived in the holy instant, united in
your purpose to be released from guilt. You saw the Christ in
him, and he was healed because you looked on what makes faith
forever justified in everyone.
Faith is the gift of God, through Him Whom God has given
you. Faithlessness looks upon the Son of God, and judges him
unworthy of forgiveness. But through the eyes of faith, the
Son of God is seen ALREADY forgiven, free of all the guilt he
laid upon himself. Faith sees him only NOW because it looks
not to the past to judge him, but would see in him only what
it would see in YOU. It sees not through the bodys eyes, nor
looks to bodies for its justification. It is the messenger of
the new perception, sent forth to gather witnesses unto its
coming, and to return their messages to you. Faith is as
easily exchanged for knowledge as is the real world. For faith
arises from the Holy Spirits perception, and is the sign you
share it with Him. Faith is a gift you offer to the Son of God
through Him, and wholly acceptable to his Father as to him.
And therefore offered YOU.
Your holy relationship, with its new purpose, offers you
faith to give unto each other. Your faithlessness had driven
you apart, and so you did not recognize salvation in each
other. Yet faith UNITES you in the holiness you see, not
through the bodys eyes, but in the sight of Him Who joined
you, and in Whom YOU are united. Grace is not given to a body,
but to a MIND. And the mind that receives it looks instantly
beyond the body, and sees the holy place where it was healed.
THERE is the altar where the grace was given, in which it
stands. Do you, then, offer grace and blessing to each other,
for you stand at the same altar, where grace was laid for BOTH
of you. And be you healed by grace together, that YOU may heal
through faith.
In the holy instant, you stand before the altar God has
raised unto Himself and BOTH of you. Lay faithlessness aside,
and come to it together. There will you see the miracle of
your relationship as it was made again through faith. And
there it is that you will realize that there is nothing faith
cannot forgive. No error interferes with its calm sight, which
brings the miracle of healing with equal ease to ALL of them.
For what the messengers of love are sent to do THEY DO,
returning the glad tidings that it was done to you who stand
together before the altar from which they were sent forth.
As faithlessness will keep your little kingdoms barren and
separate, so will faith help the Holy Spirit prepare the
ground for the most holy garden which He would make of it. For
faith brings peace, and so it calls on truth to enter and make
lovely what has already been prepared for loveliness. Truth
follows faith and peace, completing the process of making
lovely which they begin. For faith is still a learning goal,
no longer needed when the lesson has been learned. Yet truth
will stay forever.
Let, then, your dedication be to the eternal, and learn how
NOT to interfere with it and make it slave to time. For what
you think you do to the eternal you do to YOU. Whom God
created as His Son is slave to nothing, being lord of all
along with his Creator. You can enslave a body, but an IDEA is
free, incapable of being kept in prison, or limited in any way
except by the mind that thought it. For it remains joined to
its source, which is its jailor or its liberator, according to
which it chooses as its purpose for itself.
Sin versus Error
It is essential that error be not confused with sin,
and it is this distinction which makes salvation possible. For
error can be corrected, and the wrong made right. But sin,
were it possible, would be irreversible. The belief in sin is
necessarily based on the firm conviction that MINDS, not
bodies, can attack. And thus the mind IS guilty, and will
forever so remain unless a mind not part of it can give it
absolution. Sin calls for punishment as error for correction,
and the belief that punishment IS correction is clearly
insane.
Sin is not an error, for sin entails an arrogance which the
idea of error lacks. To sin would be to violate reality, and
to SUCCEED. Sin is the proclamation that attack is real and
guilt is justified. It assumes the Son of God is guilty, and
has thus succeeded in losing his innocence, and making himself
what God created not. Thus is creation seen as not eternal,
and the Will of God open to opposition and defeat. Sin is the
grand illusion underlying all the egos grandiosity. For by
it, God Himself is changed and rendered incomplete.
The Son of God can be mistaken; he can deceive himself; he
can even turn the power of his mind against himself. But he
CANNOT sin. There is nothing he can do that would REALLY
change his reality in any way, nor make him really guilty.
That is what sin would do, for such is its purpose. Yet for
all the wild insanity inherent in the whole idea of sin, it is
IMPOSSIBLE. For the wages of sin IS death, and how can the
immortal die?
A major tenet in the egos insane religion is that sin is
not error but TRUTH, and it is INNOCENCE that would deceive.
Purity is seen as arrogance, and the acceptance of the self as
sinful is perceived as holiness. And it is this doctrine which
replaces the reality of the Son of God as his Father created
him, and willed that he be forever. Is this humility? Or is
it, rather, an attempt to wrest creation AWAY from truth, and
keep it separate?
Any attempt to re-interpret sin as error is always
indefensible to the ego. The idea of sin is wholly sacrosanct
to its thought system, and quite unapproachable except through
reverence and awe. It is the most holy concept in the egos
system; lovely and powerful, wholly true, and necessarily
protected with every defense at its disposal. For here lies
its best defense, which all the others serve. Here is its
armor, its protection, and the fundamental purpose of the
special relationship in its interpretation.
It can indeed be said the ego made its world on sin. Only
in such a world could everything be upside-down. This is the
strange illusion which makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy
and impenetrable. The solidness this worlds foundation seems
to have is found in this. For sin has changed creation from an
Idea of God to an ideal the ego wants; a world IT rules, made
up of bodies, mindless and capable of complete corruption and
decay. If this is a mistake, it can be undone easily by truth.
Any mistake can be corrected, if truth be left to judge it.
But if the mistake is given the STATUS of truth, to what can
it be brought? The holiness of sin is kept in place by just
this strange device. As truth it is inviolate, and everything
is brought to IT for judgment. As a mistake, IT must be
brought to truth. It is impossible to have faith in sin, for
sin IS faithlessness. Yet it IS possible to have faith that a
mistake can be corrected.
There is no stone in all the egos embattled citadel more
heavily defended than the idea that sin is real; the natural
expression of what the Son of God has made himself to be, and
what he IS. To the ego, this is NO MISTAKE. For this IS its
reality; this is the truth from which escape will always be
impossible. This is his past, his present and his future. For
he has somehow managed to corrupt his Father, and changed His
Mind completely. Mourn, then, the death of God, Whom sin has
killed! And this would be the egos wish, which in its madness
it thinks it has ACCOMPLISHED.
Would you not RATHER that all this be nothing more than a
mistake, entirely correctable, and so easily escaped from that
its whole correction is like walking through a mist into the
sun? For that is all it is. Perhaps you would be tempted to
agree with the ego that it is far better to be sinful than
mistaken. Yet think you carefully before you allow yourself to
make this choice. Approach it not lightly, for it IS the
choice of hell or Heaven.
The Unreality of Sin
The attraction of guilt is found in sin, not error. Sin
will be repeated BECAUSE of this attraction. Fear can become
so acute that the sin is denied the acting out, but while the
guilt remains attractive the mind will suffer, and not let go
of the idea of sin. For guilt still calls to it, and the mind
hears it and yearns for it, making itself a willing captive to
its sick appeal. Sin is an idea of evil that CANNOT be
corrected, and will be forever desirable. As an essential part
of what the ego thinks you are, you will ALWAYS want it. And
only an avenger, with a mind unlike your own, could stamp it
out through fear.
The ego does not think it possible that love, not fear, is
really called upon by sin, and always ANSWERS. For the ego
brings sin to FEAR, demanding punishment. Yet punishment is
but another form of guilts protection for what is deserving
punishment must have been really DONE. Punishment is always
the great preserver of sin; treating it with respect, and
honoring its enormity. For what you think is real you WANT,
and will not let it go. An error, on the other hand, is not
attractive. What you see clearly as a mistake you WANT
corrected.
Sometimes a sin can be repeated over and over, with
obviously distressing results, but without the loss of its
appeal. And suddenly, you change its status from a sin to a
mistake. Now you will not repeat it; you will merely stop and
let it go, unless the guilt REMAINS. For then you will but
change the FORM of sin, granting that it was an error, but
keeping it uncorrectable. This is not really a change in your
perception, for it is SIN that calls for punishment, not
error. The Holy Spirit CANNOT punish sin. Mistakes He
recognizes, and would correct them all as God entrusted Him to
do. But sin He knows not, nor can He recognize mistakes which
cannot be corrected. For a mistake which cannot be corrected
is meaningless to Him.
Mistakes are FOR correction, and they call for nothing
else. What calls for punishment must call for nothing. Every
mistake MUST be a call for love. What, then, is sin? What
could it be but a mistake you would keep hidden; a call for
help that you would keep unheard and thus unanswered? In time,
the Holy Spirit clearly sees the Son of God can make mistakes.
On this you share His vision. Yet you do not share His
recognition of the difference between time and eternity. And
when correction is completed, time IS eternity.
Time is like a downward spiral which seems to travel down
from a long, unbroken line along another plane, but which in
no way breaks the line, or interferes with its smooth
continuousness. Along the spiral, it seems as if the line must
have been broken. Yet at the line, its wholeness is apparent.
Everything seen from the spiral is misperceived, but as you
approach the line, you realize that it was not affected by the
drop into another plane at all. Yet from the plane, the line
seems discontinuous. And this is but an error in perception,
which can be easily corrected in the MIND, although the bodys
eyes will see no change. The eyes see many things the mind
corrects, and you respond, not to the eyes illusions, but to
the minds CORRECTIONS.
You see the line as broken, and as you shift to different
aspects of the spiral, the line looks different. Yet in your
mind is One Who knows it is unbroken, and forever changeless.
This One can teach you how to look on time differently and see
BEYOND it, but not while you believe in sin. In error, yes,
for this can be corrected by the mind. But sin is the belief
that your perception is unchangeable, and that the mind must
accept as true what it is told through it. If it does not
obey, the mind is judged insane. The only power which could
change perception is thus kept impotent, held to the body by
the FEAR of changed perception which its Teacher, Who is one
with it, would bring.
When you are tempted to believe that sin is real, remember
this: If sin is real, both God and you are not. If creation is
extension, the Creator must have extended Himself, and it is
impossible that what is part of Him is totally unlike the
rest. If sin is real, God must be at war with Himself. He must
be split, and torn between good and evil; partly sane and
partially insane. For He must have created what wills to
destroy Him, and has the POWER to do so. Is it not easier to
believe that YOU have been mistaken than to believe in this?
While you believe that your reality or your brothers is
bounded by a body, you will believe in sin. While you believe
that bodies can unite, you will find guilt attractive, and
believe that sin is precious. For the belief that bodies limit
mind leads to a perception of the world in which the proof of
separation seems to be everywhere. And God and His creations
seem to be split apart and overthrown. For sin would PROVE
what God created holy could not prevail against it, nor remain
itself before the power of sin. Sin is perceived as MIGHTIER
than God, before which God Himself must bow, and offer His
creation to its conqueror. Is this humility or madness?
If sin were real, it would forever be beyond the hope of
healing. For there would be a power beyond Gods, capable of
making another will which could attack His Will and OVERCOME
It; and give His Son a will apart from His, and STRONGER. And
each part of Gods fragmented creation would have a different
will, opposed to His, and in eternal opposition to Him and to
each other. Your holy relationship has, as its purpose now,
the goal of proving this is impossible. Heaven has smiled upon
it, and the belief in sin has been uprooted in its smile of
love. You see it still because you do not realize that its
FOUNDATION has gone. Its source has been removed, and so it
can be cherished but a little while before it vanishes. Only
the habit of LOOKING for it still remains.
And yet you look with Heavens smile upon your lips, and
Heavens blessing on your sight. You will not see it long. For
in the new perception, the mind corrects it when it seems to
be seen, and it becomes invisible. And errors are quickly
recognized and quickly given to correction, to be healed, not
hidden. You will be healed of sin and all its ravages the
instant that you give it no power over each other. And you
will help each other overcome mistakes by joyously releasing
one another from the belief in sin.
In the holy instant, you will see the smile of Heaven
shining on BOTH of you. And you will shine upon each other, in
glad acknowledgment of the grace that has been given you. For
sin will not prevail against a union Heaven has smiled upon.
Your perception was healed in the holy instant Heaven gave
you. Forget what you have seen, and raise your eyes in faith
to what you NOW can see. The barriers to Heaven will disappear
before your holy sight, for you who were sightless have been
given vision, and you can see. Look not for what has been
removed, but for the glory that has been restored for you to
see.
Look upon your Redeemer, and behold what He would show you
in each other, and let not sin arise again to blind your eyes.
For sin would keep you separate, but your Redeemer would have
you look upon each other as yourself. Your relationship is now
a temple of healing; a place where all the weary ones can come
and find rest. Here is the rest that waits for all, after the
journey. And it is brought nearer to all by your relationship.
As this peace extends from deep inside yourselves to
embrace all the Sonship and give it rest, it will encounter
many obstacles. Some of them you will try to impose. Others
will seem to arise from elsewhere; from your brothers, and
from various aspects of the world outside. Yet peace will
gently cover them, extending past completely unhindered. The
extension of the Holy Spirits purpose from your relationship
to others, to bring them gently in, will quietly extend to
every aspect of your lives, surrounding both of you with
glowing happiness and the calm awareness of complete
protection. And you will carry its message of love and safety
and freedom to everyone who draws nigh unto your temple, where
healing waits for him.
You will not wait to give him this, for you will call to
him and he will answer you, recognizing in your call the Call
of God. And you will draw him in and give him rest, as it was
given you. All this will you do. Yet the peace which already
lies deeply within must first expand, and flow across the
obstacles you placed before it. This will you do, for nothing
undertaken with the Holy Spirit remains unfinished. You can
indeed be sure of nothing you see outside you, but of this you
CAN be sure: The Holy Spirit asks that you offer Him a
resting-place where you will rest in Him. He answered you, and
entered your relationship. Would you not now return His
graciousness, and enter into a relationship with Him? For it
is He Who offered your relationship the gift of holiness,
without which it would have been forever impossible to
appreciate each other.
The gratitude you owe to Him He asks but that YOU receive
for Him. And when you look with gentle graciousness upon each
other, you ARE beholding Him. For you are looking where He IS,
and not apart from Him. You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but
you CAN see your brothers truly. And the light in them will
show you all that you need to see. When the peace in you has
been extended to encompass everyone, the Holy Spirits
function here will be accomplished. What need is there for
seeing, then? When God has taken the last step Himself, the
Holy Spirit will gather all your thanks and gratitude which
you have offered Him, and lay them gently before His Creator
in the name of His most holy Son. And the Father will accept
them in His Name. What need is there of seeing, in the
presence of His gratitude?
Obstacles to Peace
I. The Desire to Get Rid of It
The first obstacle that peace must flow across is your
desire to get RID of it. For it cannot extend unless you KEEP
it. You are the center from which it radiates outward, to call
the others in. You are its home; its tranquil dwelling-place,
from which it gently reaches out, but never leaving YOU. If
you would make it homeless, how can it abide within the Son of
God? If it would spread across the whole creation, it must
begin with you, and FROM you reach to everyone who calls, and
bring him rest by joining you.
Why would you want peace homeless? What do you think that
it must dispossess, to dwell with you? What seems to be the
cost you are so unwilling to pay? The little barrier of sand
still stands between you. Would you reinforce it NOW? You are
not asked to let it go for yourselves alone. Christ asks it of
you for Himself. He would bring peace to everyone, and how can
He do this EXCEPT through you? Would you let a little bank of
sand, a wall of dust, a tiny seeming barrier, stand between
your brothers and salvation? And yet, it IS this little
remnant of attack you cherish still against each other that is
the first obstacle the peace in you encounters in its going
forth. This little wall of hatred would still oppose the Will
of God, and keep It limited.
The Holy Spirits purpose rests in peace within you. Yet
you are still unwilling to let it join you wholly. You still
oppose the Will of God, just by a little. And that little is a
limit you would place upon the whole. Gods Will is One, not
many. It has no opposition, for there is none beside It. What
you would still contain behind your little barrier and keep
separate from each other seems mightier than the universe, for
it would hold back the universe and its Creator. This little
wall would hide the purpose of Heaven, and keep it FROM
Heaven.
Would you thrust salvation away from the GIVER of
salvation? For such have you become. Peace could no more
depart from you than from God. Fear not this little obstacle.
It cannot contain the Will of God. Peace WILL flow across it,
and join you without hindrance. Salvation cannot BE withheld
from you. It is your PURPOSE. You CANNOT will apart from this.
You have no purpose apart from each other, nor apart from the
one you asked the Holy Spirit to share with you. The little
wall will fall away so quietly beneath the wings of peace! For
peace will send its messengers from you to all the world. And
barriers will fall away before their coming as easily as those
which you would interpose will be surmounted.
To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount
your little wall. For in the miracle of your relationship,
without this barrier, is EVERY miracle contained. There is no
order of difficulty in miracles, for they are all the SAME.
Each is a gentle winning over from the appeal of guilt to the
appeal of love. How can this FAIL to be accomplished, wherever
it is undertaken? Guilt can raise no real barriers against it.
And all that seems to stand between you must fall away because
of the appeal you answered. For from you who answered, He Who
answered you would call. His home is in your holy
relationship. Do not attempt to stand between Him and His holy
purpose, for it is yours. But let Him quietly extend the
miracle of your relationship to everyone contained in it as it
was given.
There is a hush in Heaven, a happy expectancy, a little
pause of gladness in acknowledgment of the journeys end. For
Heaven knows you well, as you know Heaven. No illusions stand
between you now. Look not upon the little wall of shadows. The
sun has risen OVER it. How can a shadow keep you from the sun?
No more can you be kept by shadows from the light in which
illusions end. Every miracle is but the end of an illusion.
Such was the journey; such its ending. And in the goal of
truth which you accepted must ALL illusions end.
The little, insane wish to get rid of Him Whom you invited
in and push Him out MUST produce conflict. As you look upon
the world, this little wish, uprooted and floating aimlessly,
can land and settle briefly upon anything, for it HAS no
purpose now. Before the Holy Spirit entered to abide with you,
it seemed to have a MIGHTY purpose; the fixed and unchangeable
dedication to sin and its results. Now it is aimless,
wandering pointlessly, causing no more than tiny interruptions
in loves appeal.
This feather of a wish, this tiny illusion, this
microscopic remnant of the belief in sin, is all that remains
of what once seemed to be the world. It is no longer an
unrelenting barrier to peace. Its pointless wandering makes
its results appear to be more erratic and unpredictable than
before. Yet what COULD be more unstable than a tightly-
organized delusional system? Its seeming stability is its
pervasive WEAKNESS, which extends to everything. The
variability which the little remnant induces merely indicates
its limited results.
How mighty can a little feather be before the great wings
of truth? Can it oppose an eagles flight, or hinder the
advance of summer? Can it interfere with the effects of
summers sun upon a garden covered by the snow? See but how
easily this little whisp (sic) is lifted up and carried away,
never to return, and part with it in gladness, not regret. For
it is nothing in itself, and stood for nothing when you had
greater faith in its protection. Would you not rather greet
the summer sun than fix your gaze upon a disappearing
snowflake, and shiver in remembrance of the winters cold?
The Attraction of Guilt
The attraction of guilt produces fear of love, for love
would never look on guilt at all. It is the nature of love to
look upon only the truth, for there it sees itself, with which
it would unite in holy union and completion. As love must look
past fear, so must fear see love not. For love contains the
end of guilt, as surely as fear depends on it. Overlooking
guilt completely, it sees no fear. Being wholly without
attack, it COULD not be afraid. Fear is attracted to what love
sees not, and each believes that what the other looks upon
does not exist. Fear looks on guilt with just the same
devotion that love looks on itself. And each has messengers
which they send forth, and which return to them with messages
written in the language in which their going forth was asked.
Loves messengers are gently sent, and return with messages
of love and gentleness. The messengers of fear are harshly
ordered to seek out guilt, and cherish every scrap of evil and
of sin which they can find, losing none of them on pain of
death, and laying them respectfully before their lord and
master. Perception cannot obey two masters, each asking for
messages of different things in different languages. What fear
would feed upon, love overlooks. What fear demands, love
cannot even see.
The fierce attraction which guilt holds for fear is wholly
absent from loves gentle perception. What love would look
upon is meaningless to fear, and quite invisible.
Relationships in this world are the result of how the world is
seen. And this depends on which emotion was called on to send
its messengers to look upon it, and return with word of what
they saw. Fears messengers are trained through terror, and
they tremble when their master calls upon them to serve him.
For fear is merciless even to its friends. Its messengers
steal guiltily away in hungry search of guilt, for they are
kept cold and starving, and made very vicious by their master,
who allows them to feast only upon what they return to him. No
little shred of guilt escapes their hungry eyes. And in their
savage search for sin, they pounce on any living thing they
see, and carry it screaming to their master, to be devoured.
Send not these savage messengers into the world, to feast
upon it, and to prey upon reality. For they will bring you
word of bones and skin and flesh. They have been taught to
seek for the corruptible, and to return with gorges filled
with things decayed and rotted. To them such things are
beautiful because they seem to allay their savage pangs of
hunger. For they are frantic with the pain of fear, and would
avert the punishment of him who sends them forth by offering
him what they hold dear.
The Holy Spirit has given you loves messengers to send
instead of those you trained through fear. They are as eager
to return to you what they hold dear as are the others. If you
send them forth, they will see only the blameless and the
beautiful, the gentle and the kind. They will be as careful to
let no little act of charity, no tiny expression of
forgiveness, no little breath of love escape their notice. And
they will return with all the happy things they found, to
share them lovingly with you. Be not afraid of THEM. They
offer you salvation. Theirs are the messages of safety, for
they see the world as kind.
If you send forth only the messengers the Holy Spirit gives
you, WANTING no messages but theirs, you will see fear no
more. The world will be transformed before your sight,
cleansed of all guilt and softly brushed with beauty. The
world contains no fear which you laid not upon it. And none
you cannot ask loves messengers to remove from it, and see it
still. The Holy Spirit has given you His messengers to send to
each other, and return to each with what love sees. They have
been given to replace the hungry dogs of fear you sent
instead. And they go forth to signify the END of fear.
Love, too, would set a feast before you, on a table covered
with a spotless cloth, set in a quiet garden where no sound
but singing and a softly joyous whispering is ever heard. This
is a feast which honors your holy relationship, and at which
everyone is welcomed as an honored guest. And in a holy
instant grace is said by everyone together, as they join in
gentleness before the table of communion. And I will join you
there, as long ago I promised and promise still. For in your
new relationship am I made welcome. And where I am made
welcome, there I AM.
I am made welcome in the state of grace, which means you
have at last forgiven me. For I became the symbol of your sin,
and so I had to die instead of you. To the ego sin MEANS
death, and so Atonement is achieved through murder. Salvation
is looked upon as a way by which the Son of God was killed
instead of YOU.
Yet would I offer you my body, you whom I love, KNOWING its
littleness? Or would I teach that bodies cannot keep us apart?
Mine was no greater value than yours; no better means for
communication of salvation, but NOT its Source. No-one can die
for anyone, and death does not atone for sin. Yet you can LIVE
to show it is not real. The body DOES appear to be the symbol
of sin, while you believe that it can get you what you want.
While you believe that it can give you pleasure, you will also
believe that it can bring you pain.
To think you could be satisfied and happy with so little is
to hurt yourself, and to limit the happiness that you would
have, calls upon pain to fill your meager store and make your
lives complete. This IS completion, as the ego sees it. For
guilt creeps in where happiness has been removed, and
substitutes for it. Communion is another kind of completion,
which goes beyond guilt, because it goes beyond the body.
Obstacles to Peace
II. The Belief the Body is Valuable for What it Offers
We said that peace must first surmount the obstacle of your
desire to get rid of it. Where the attraction of guilt holds
sway, peace is not WANTED. The second obstacle that peace must
flow across, and closely related to the first, is the belief
that the body is valuable for what it offers. For here is the
attraction of guilt made manifest in the body, and SEEN in it.
This the value that you think peace would rob you of. This
is what you believe that it would dispossess, and leave you
homeless. And it is this for which you would deny a home to
peace. This sacrifice you feel to be too great to make, too
much to ask of you.
Is it a sacrifice, or a release? What has the body really
given you that justifies your strange belief that in it lies
salvation? Do you not see that this is the belief in death?
Here is the focus of the perception of Atonement as murder.
Here is the source of the idea that love is fear. The Holy
Spirits messengers are sent far beyond the body, calling the
mind to join in holy communion and be at peace. Such is the
message that I gave them for you.
It is only the messengers of fear that see the body, for
they look for what can suffer. Is it a sacrifice to be REMOVED
from what can suffer? The Holy Spirit does not demand you
sacrifice the hope of the bodys pleasure; it HAS no hope of
pleasure. But neither can it bring you fear of pain. Pain is
the only sacrifice the Holy Spirit asks, and this He WOULD
remove.
Peace is extended from you only to the eternal, and it
reaches out from the eternal in YOU. It flows across all else.
The second obstacle is no more solid than the first. For you
will neither to get rid of peace NOR limit it. What are these
obstacles which you would interpose between peace and its
going forth but barriers you place between your will and its
accomplishment? You WANT communion, not the feast of fear. You
WANT salvation, not the pain of guilt. And you want your
Father, NOT a little mound of clay, to be your home. In your
holy relationship is your Fathers Son. He has not lost
communion with Him, nor with himself. When you agreed to join
each other, you acknowledged this is so. This has no cost, but
it has RELEASE from cost.
You have paid very dearly for your illusions, and nothing
you have paid for brought you peace. Are you not GLAD that
Heaven cannot be sacrificed, and sacrifice cannot be asked of
you? There IS no obstacle which you can place before our
union, for in your holy relationship I am there already. We
will surmount all obstacles together, for we stand within the
gates, and not outside. How easily the gates are opened from
within, to let peace through to bless the tired world! Can it
be difficult for us to walk past barriers together, when you
have joined the limitless? The end of guilt is in your hands
to give. Would you stop now to look for guilt in each other?
Let me be to you the symbol of the END of guilt, and look
upon each other as you would look on me. Forgive me all the
sins you think the Son of God committed. And in the light of
your forgiveness, he will remember who he is, and forget what
never was. I ask for your forgiveness, for if you are guilty,
so must I be. But if I surmounted guilt and overcame the
world, YOU were with me. Would you see in me the symbol of
guilt, or of the END of guilt, remembering that what I signify
to you you see within YOURSELF?
From your holy relationship truth proclaims the truth, and
love looks on itself. Salvation flows from deep within the
home you offered to my Father and to me. And we are there
together, in the quiet communion in which the Father and the
Son are joined. Oh come ye faithful to the holy union of the
Father and Son in you! And keep you not apart from what is
offered you, in gratitude for giving peace its home in Heaven.
Send forth to all the world the joyous message of the end of
guilt, and all the world will answer. Think of your happiness
as everyone offers you witness of the end of sin, and shows
you that its power is gone forever. Where can guilt be, when
the belief in sin is gone? And where is death, when its great
advocate is heard no more?
Forgive me your illusions, and release me from punishment
for what I have not done. So will you learn the freedom that I
taught by teaching freedom to each other, and so releasing me.
I am within your holy relationship, yet you would imprison me
behind the obstacles you raise to freedom, and bar my way to
you. Yet it is not possible to keep away One Who is there
already. And in Him it IS possible that our communion, where
we are joined already, will be the focus of the new perception
that will bring light to all the world, contained in YOU.
Pleasure and Pain
Your little part is but to give the Holy Spirit the whole
IDEA of sacrifice. And to accept the peace He gave instead,
without the limits which would hold its extension back, and so
would limit YOUR awareness of it. For what He gives must be
extended, if you would have its limitless power, and use it
for the Son of Gods release. It is not this you would be rid
of, and having it you CANNOT limit it. If peace is homeless,
so are you and so am I. And He Who is our home is homeless
WITH us. Is this your will? Would you forever be a wanderer in
search of peace? Would you invest your hope of peace and
happiness in what MUST fail?
Faith in the eternal is always justified, for the eternal
is forever kind, infinite in its patience, and wholly loving.
It will accept you wholly, and give you peace. Yet it can
unite only with what ALREADY is at peace in you, immortal as
itself. The body can bring you neither peace nor turmoil;
neither pain nor joy. It is a means, and not an end. It has NO
purpose of itself, but only what is given to it. The body will
seem to be whatever is the means for reaching the goal that
you assign to it. Peace and guilt are both conditions of the
mind, to be attained. And these conditions are the home of the
emotion which called them forth, and therefore is compatible
with them. But think you which it is that is compatible with
YOU.
Here is your choice, and it IS free. But all that lies in
it WILL come with it, and what you think you are can never be
apart from it. The body is the great seeming betrayer of
faith. In it lies disillusionment and the seeds of
faithlessness, but only if you ask of it what it cannot give.
Can your mistake be reasonable grounds for depression and
disillusionment, and for retaliative attack on what you think
has failed you? Use not your error as the justification for
your faithlessness. You have not sinned, but you have been
mistaken in what is faithful. And the correction of your
mistake will GIVE you grounds for faith.
It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body and
NOT find pain. It is essential that this relationship be
understood, for it is one the ego sees as PROOF of sin. It is
not really punitive at all. It is but the inevitable result of
equating yourself with the body, which is the INVITATION to
pain. For it invites fear to enter, and become your purpose.
The attraction of guilt MUST enter with it, and whatever fear
directs the body to do is therefore painful. It will share the
pain of ALL illusions, and the illusion of pleasure will be
the SAME as pain.
Is not this inevitable? Under fears orders, the body will
pursue guilt, serving its master whose attraction to guilt
maintains the whole illusion of its existence. This, then, IS
the attraction of pain. Ruled by this perception, the body
becomes the servant of pain, seeking it dutifully, and obeying
the idea that pain is pleasure. It is this idea that underlies
all of the egos heavy investment in the body. And it is this
insane relationship which it keeps hidden, and yet feeds upon.
To YOU it teaches that the bodys pleasure is happiness. Yet
to ITSELF it whispers, It is death.
Why should the body be anything to you? Certainly what it
is made of is not precious. And just as certainly, it has no
feeling. It transmits to you the feelings that you WANT. Like
any communication medium, the body receives and sends the
messages that it is given. It has no feeling for them. All of
the feeling with which they are invested is given by the
sender and the receiver. The ego and the Holy Spirit both
recognize this, and both also recognize that here the sender
and receiver are the SAME. The Holy Spirit tells you this with
joy. The ego hides it, for it would keep you unaware of it.
Who would send messages of hatred and attack if he but
understood he sends them to HIMSELF? Who would accuse, make
guilty and condemn HIMSELF?
The egos messages are always sent AWAY from you, in the
belief that for your message of attack and guilt will someone
other than yourself suffer. And even if you suffer, yet
someone else will suffer more. The great deceiver recognizes
that this is not so, but as the enemy of peace, it urges
you to send out all your messages of hate and free YOURSELF.
And to convince you this is possible, it bids the body search
for pain in attack upon another, calling it pleasure and
offering it to you as freedom FROM attack.
Hear not its madness, and believe not the impossible is
true. Forget not that the ego has dedicated the body to the
goal of sin, and places in it all its faith that this can be
accomplished. Its sad disciples chant the bodys praise
continually, in solemn celebration of the egos rule. Not one
but must believe that yielding to the attraction of guilt is
the ESCAPE from pain. Not one but must regard the body as
himself, without which he would die, and yet within which is
his death equally inevitable.
It is not given to the egos disciples to realize that they
have dedicated THEMSELVES to death. Freedom is offered them,
but they have not accepted it, and what is offered must also
be received, to be truly given. For the Holy Spirit, too, is a
communication medium, receiving from the Father and offering
His messages unto the Son. Like the ego, the Holy Spirit is
both the sender and the receiver. For what is sent through Him
RETURNS to Him, seeking itself along the way, and finding what
it seeks. So does the ego find the death IT seeks, returning
it to YOU.
Obstacles to Peace
III. The Attraction of Death
To you, in whose special relationship the Holy Spirit
entered, it is given to release and be released from the
dedication to death. For it was offered you, and you ACCEPTED.
Yet you must learn still more about this strange devotion, for
it contains the third of the obstacles which peace must flow
across. No-one can die unless he chooses death. What SEEMS to
be the fear of death is really its ATTRACTION. Guilt, too, is
feared and fearful. Yet it could have no hold at all except on
those who are attracted to it and seek it out. And so it is
with death. Made by the ego, its dark shadow falls across all
living things, because the ego is the enemy of life.
And yet a shadow cannot kill. What is a shadow to the
living? They but walk past and it is gone. But what of those
whose dedication it is NOT to live; the black-draped
sinners, the egos mournful chorus, plodding so heavily
away from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow
procession which honors their grim master, lord of death?
Touch any one of them with the gentle hands of forgiveness,
and watch the chains fall away, along with yours. See him
throw aside the black robe he was wearing to his funeral, and
hear him laugh at death. The sentence sin would lay upon him
he can escape through your forgiveness.
This is no arrogance. It is the Will of God. What is
impossible to you who chose His Will as yours? What is death
to you? YOUR dedication is not to death, nor to its master.
When you accepted the Holy Spirits purpose in place of the
egos, you renounced death, exchanging it for life. We know
that an idea leaves not its source. And death is the result of
the thought we call the ego, as surely as life is the result
of the Thought of God.
The Incorruptible Body
From the ego came sin and guilt and death, in opposition to
life and innocence, and to the Will of God Himself. Where can
such opposition lie but in the sick minds of the insane,
dedicated to madness and set against the peace of Heaven. One
thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills
not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin nor its
results. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march
not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they live.
They are not following It; they are OPPOSING It.
And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body
which THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a
sacrifice to sin, offered to sin to feed upon and keep itself
alive; a thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by
every mourner who looks upon it as himself. You who believe
you have condemned the Son of God to this ARE arrogant. But
you who would release him are but honoring the Will of his
Creator. The arrogance of sin, the pride of guilt, the
sepulchre of separation, all are part of your unrecognized
dedication to death. The glitter of guilt you laid upon the
body would kill it. For what the ego loves it kills for its
obedience. But what obeys it not it CANNOT kill.
You have another dedication which would keep the body
incorruptible and perfect as long as it is useful for your
holy purpose. The body no more dies than it can feel. It does
NOTHING. Of itself, it is neither corruptible nor
incorruptible. It IS nothing. It is the result of a tiny, mad
idea of corruption which can be CORRECTED. For God has
answered this insane idea with His Own, an answer which left
Him not, and therefore brings the Creator to the awareness of
every mind which heard His answer and ACCEPTED it.
You who are dedicated to the incorruptible have been given,
through your acceptance, the power to RELEASE from corruption.
What better way to teach the first and fundamental principle
in a course on miracles than by showing you the one which
seems to be the hardest can be accomplished first? The body
can but serve your purpose. As you look upon it, so will it
seem to be. Death, were it true, would be the final and
complete disruption of communication which is the egos goal.
Those who fear death see not how often and how loudly they
call to it, and bid it come to save them from communication.
For death is seen as safety, the great dark saviour from the
light of truth, the answer to the Answer, the silencer of the
Voice that speaks for God. Yet the retreat to death is not the
end of conflict. Only GODS answer is its end. The obstacle of
your seeming love for death that peace must flow across seems
to be very great. For in it lies hidden all the egos secrets,
all its strange devices for deception, all its sick ideas and
wierd imaginings. Here is the final end of union, the triumph
of the egos making over creation, the victory of lifelessness
on Life Itself.
Under the dusty edge of its distorted world the ego would
lay the Son of God, slain by its orders, proof in his decay
that God Himself is powerless before the egos might, unable
to protect the life that He created against the egos savage
wish to kill. My brothers, Children of our Father, this is a
DREAM of death. There is no funeral, no dark altars, no grim
commandments nor twisted rituals of condemnation to which the
body leads you. Ask not release of IT. But free it from the
merciless and unrelenting orders YOU laid upon it, and forgive
it what YOU ordered it to do. In its exaltation you commanded
it to die, for only death COULD conquer life. And what but
insanity could look upon the defeat of God, and think it real?
The fear of death will go as its appeal is yielded to
loves REAL attraction. The end of sin, which nestles quietly
in the safety of your relationship, protected by your union,
ready to grow into a mighty force for God, is very near. The
infancy of salvation is carefully guarded by love, preserved
from every thought that would attack it, and quietly made
ready to fulfill the mighty task for which it was given you.
Your newborn purpose is nursed by angels, cherished by the
Holy Spirit, and protected by God Himself. It needs not your
protection; IT is YOURS. For it is deathless, and within it
lies the end of death.
What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack
the guiltless? What fear can enter and disturb the peace of
sinlessness? What has been given you, even in its infancy, is
in full communication with God and you. In its tiny hands it
holds, in perfect safety, every miracle you will perform, held
out to you. The miracle of life is ageless, born in time but
nourished in eternity. Behold this infant, to whom you gave a
resting-place by your forgiveness of each other, and see in it
the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn. And
everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, not to the
cross, but to the Resurrection and the Life.
When anything seems to you to be a source of fear, when any
situation strikes you with terror and makes your body tremble
and the cold sweat of fear comes over it, remember it is
always for ONE reason; the ego has perceived it as a symbol of
fear, a sign of sin and death. Remember, then, that neither
sign nor symbol should be confused with source, for they must
stand for something OTHER than themselves. Their meaning
cannot lie in them, but must be sought in what they REPRESENT.
And they may thus mean everything or nothing, according to the
truth or falsity of the idea which they reflect. Confronted
with such seeming uncertainty of meaning, judge it not.
Remember the holy presence of the One given to you to be the
Source of judgment. Give it to Him to judge for you, and say:
Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me.
Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it
for destruction.
Teach me how NOT to make of it an obstacle to peace,
But let You use it FOR me, to facilitate its coming.
Obstacles to Peace
IV. The Fear of God
What would you see without the fear of death? What would
you feel and think if death held no attraction for you? Very
simply, you would remember your Father. The Creator of life,
the Source of everything that lives, the Father of the
universe and of the universe of universes, and of everything
that lies even beyond them would you remember. And as this
memory rises in your mind, peace must still surmount a final
obstacle, after which is salvation completed, and the Son of
God entirely restored to sanity. For here your world DOES end.
The fourth obstacle to be surmounted hangs like a heavy
veil before the face of Christ. Yet as His face rises beyond
it, shining with joy because He is in His Fathers Love, peace
will lightly brush the veil aside and run to meet Him, and to
join with Him at last. For this dark veil, which seems to make
the face of Christ Himself like to a lepers, and the bright
rays of His Fathers Love which light His face with glory
appear as streams of blood, fades in the blazing light beyond
it when the fear of death is gone.
This is the darkest veil, upheld by the belief in death,
and protected by its attraction. The dedication to death and
to its sovereignty is but the solemn vow, the promise made in
secret to the ego never to lift this veil, not to approach it,
nor even to suspect that it is there. This is the secret
bargain made with the ego to keep what lies beyond the veil
forever blotted out and unremembered. Here is your promise
never to allow union to call you out of separation; the great
amnesia in which the memory of God seems quite forgotten; the
cleavage of your Self from you; THE FEAR OF GOD, the final
step in your dissociation.
See how the belief in death would seem to save you. For
if this is gone, what can you fear but LIFE? It is the
attraction of death that makes life seem to be ugly, cruel and
tyrannical. You are no more afraid of death than of the ego.
These are your chosen FRIENDS. For in your secret alliance
with them, you have agreed never to let the fear of God be
lifted, so you could look upon the face of Christ, and join
Him in His Father.
Every obstacle that peace must flow across is surmounted in
just the same way; the fear that raised it yields to the love
beneath, and so the fear is gone. And so it is with this. The
desire to get rid of peace and drive the Holy Spirit from you
fades in the presence of the quiet recognition that you love
Him. The exaltation of the body is given up in favor of the
Spirit, which you love as you could NEVER love the body. And
the appeal of death is lost forever as loves attraction stirs
and calls to you. From beyond each of the obstacles to love,
Love Itself has called, and each has been surmounted by the
power of the attraction of what lies beyond. Your WANTING fear
seemed to be holding them in place. Yet when you heard the
voice of love beyond them, you answered and they disappeared.
And now you stand in terror before what you swore never to
look upon. Your eyes look down, remembering your promise to
your friends. The loveliness of sin, the delicate
appeal of guilt, the holy waxen image of death, and the
fear of vengeance of the ego you swore in blood not to desert,
all rise and bid you not to raise your eyes. For you realize
that if you look on this and LET the veil be lifted, THEY will
be gone forever. All of your friends, your protectors
and your home will vanish. Nothing that you remember now
will you remember.
It seems to you the world will utterly abandon you if you
but raise your eyes. Yet all that will occur is you will leave
the world forever. This is the re-establishment of YOUR will.
Look upon it, open-eyed, and you will nevermore believe that
you are at the mercy of things beyond you, forces you cannot
control, and thoughts that come to you against your will. It
IS your will to look on this. No mad desire, no trivial
impulse to forget again, no stab of fear nor the cold sweat of
seeming death can stand against your will. For what attracts
you from beyond the veil is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated
from it and completely One.
The Lifting of the Veil
Forget not that you came this far TOGETHER. And it was
surely not the ego that led you here. No obstacle to peace can
be surmounted through ITS help. IT does not open up its
secrets, and bid you look on them and go beyond them. IT would
not have you see its weakness, and learn it has no power to
keep you from the truth. The Guide Who brought you here
REMAINS with you, and when you raise your eyes, you will be
READY to look on terror with no fear at all. But first, lift
up your eyes and look upon each other in innocence born of
complete forgiveness of each others illusions, and through
the eyes of faith, which sees them not.
No-one can look upon the fear of God unterrified unless he
has accepted the Atonement, and learned illusions are not
real. No-one can stand before this obstacle alone, for he
could not have reached thus far UNLESS his brother walked
beside him. And no-one would dare to look on it without
complete forgiveness of his brother in his heart. Stand you
here a while, and tremble not. You will be ready. Let us join
together in a holy instant, here in this place where the
purpose GIVEN in a holy instant has led you. And let us join
in faith that He Who brought us here together will offer you
the innocence you need, and that you will accept it for my
love and His.
Nor is it possible to look on this too soon. This is the
place to which everyone must come when he is ready. Once he
has found his brother he IS ready. Yet merely to reach the
place is not enough. A journey without a purpose is still
meaningless, and even when it is over it seems to make no
sense. How can you KNOW that it is over unless you realize its
purpose IS accomplished? Here, with the journeys end before
you, you SEE its purpose. And it is here you choose whether to
look upon it or wander on, only to return and make the choice
again.
To look upon the fear of God DOES need some preparation.
Only the sane can look on stark insanity and raving madness
with pity and compassion, but not with fear. For only if they
share in it does it seem fearful, and you DO share in it until
you look upon each other with perfect faith and love and
tenderness. Before complete forgiveness you still stand
unforgiving. You are afraid of God BECAUSE you fear each
other. Those you do not forgive YOU FEAR. And no-one reaches
love with fear beside him.
This brother who stands beside you still seems to be a
stranger. You do not know him, and your interpretation of him
is very fearful. And you attack him still, to keep what seems
to be YOURSELF unharmed. Yet in his hands is your salvation.
You see his madness, which you hate because you SHARE it. And
all the pity and forgiveness that would heal it gives way to
fear. Brothers, you NEED forgiveness of each other, for you
will share in madness or in Heaven together. And you will
raise your eyes in faith together, or not at all.
Beside each of you is one who offers you the chalice of
Atonement, for the Holy Spirit is in him. Would you hold his
sins against him, or accept his gift to you? Is this giver of
salvation your friend or enemy? Choose which he is,
remembering that you will receive of him according to your
choice. He has in him the power to forgive your sins, as you
for him. Neither can give it to himself alone. And yet your
Saviour stands beside each one. Let him be what he is, and
seek not to make of love an enemy.
Behold your Friend, the Christ Who stands beside you. How
holy and how beautiful He is! You thought He sinned because
you cast the veil of sin upon Him to hide His loveliness. Yet
still He holds forgiveness out to you, to share His holiness.
This enemy, this stranger still offers you salvation as
His Friend. The enemies of Christ, the worshippers of sin,
know not Whom they attack. This is your brother, crucified by
sin, and waiting for release from pain. Would you not offer
him forgiveness, when only he can offer it to YOU? For his
redemption he will give you yours as surely as God created
every living thing and loves it. And he will give it truly,
for it will be both offered and received.
There is no grace of Heaven that you cannot offer to each
other, and receive from your most holy Friend. Let him
withhold it not, for by receiving it you offer it to him.
Redemption has been given you to give each other, and thus
receive it. Whom you forgive is free, and what you give you
share. Forgive the sins your brother thinks he has committed,
and all the guilt you think you see in him.
Here is the holy place of resurrection, to which we come
again; to which we will return until redemption is
accomplished and RECEIVED. Think who your brother is, before
you would condemn him. And offer thanks to God that he is
holy, and has been given the gift of holiness for YOU. Join
him in gladness, and remove all trace of guilt from his
disturbed and tortured mind. Help him to lift the heavy burden
of sin you laid upon him and he accepted as his own, and toss
it lightly and with happy laughter away from him. Press it not
like thorns against his brow, nor nail him to it unredeemed
and hopeless.
Give each other faith, for faith and hope and mercy are
yours to give. Into the hands that give the gift is given.
Look on your brother, and see in him the gift of God you would
receive. It is almost Easter, the time of resurrection. Let us
give redemption to each other and SHARE in it, that we may
rise as one in resurrection, and not separate in death. Behold
the gift of freedom that I gave the Holy Spirit for BOTH of
you. And be you free together, as you offer to the Holy Spirit
this same gift. And giving it receive it of Him in return for
what you gave. He leadeth you and me together, that we might
meet here in this holy place, and make the same decision.
Free your brother here, as I freed you. Give him the self-
same gift, nor look upon him with condemnation of any kind.
See him as guiltless as I look on you, and overlook the sins
he thinks he sees within himself. Offer each other freedom and
complete release from sin, here in the garden of seeming agony
and death. So will we prepare together the way unto the
resurrection of Gods Son, and let him rise again to glad
remembrance of his Father, Who knows no sin, no death, but
only life eternal.
Together we will disappear into the Presence beyond the
veil, not to be lost but FOUND; not to be seen but KNOWN. And
knowing, nothing in the plan God has established for salvation
will be left undone. This is the journeys purpose, without
which IS the journey meaningless. Here is the peace of God,
given to you eternally by Him. Here is the rest and quiet that
you seek, the reason for the journey from its beginning.
Heaven is the gift you owe each other, the debt of gratitude
you offer to the Son of God in thanks for what he is, and what
his Father created him to be.
Think carefully how you would look upon the giver of this
gift, for as you look on him, so will the gift itself appear
to be. As he is seen as either the giver of guilt or of
salvation, so will his offering be seen, and so received. The
crucified give pain because they are in pain. But the redeemed
give joy because they have been HEALED of pain. Everyone gives
as he receives, but he must choose what it will BE that he
receives. And he will recognize his choice by what he gives,
and what is given him. Nor is it given anything in hell or
Heaven to interfere with his decision.
You came this far because the journey WAS your choice. And
no-one undertakes to do what he believes is meaningless. What
you had faith in still is faithful, and watches over you in
faith so gentle yet so strong that it would lift you far
BEYOND the veil, and place the Son of God safely within the
sure protection of his Father. Here is the only purpose that
gives this world and the long journey through this world
whatever meaning lies in them. Beyond this, they ARE
meaningless. You stand together, still without conviction they
HAVE a purpose. Yet it is given you to see this purpose in
your holy Friend, and recognize it is your own.
CHAPTER 20
THE PROMISE OF THE RESURRECTION
This is Palm Sunday, the celebration of victory and the
acceptance of the truth. Let us not spend this holy week
brooding on the crucifixion of Gods Son, but happily in the
celebration of his release. For Easter is the sign of peace,
not pain. A slain Christ has no meaning. But a RISEN Christ
becomes the symbol of the Son of Gods forgiveness on himself;
the sign he looks upon himself as healed and whole.
Holy Week
This week begins with palms and ends with lilies, the white
and holy sign the Son of God is innocent. Let no dark sign of
crucifixion intervene between the journey and its purpose;
between the acceptance of the truth and its expression. This
week we celebrate life, not death. And we honor the perfect
purity of the Son of God, and not his sins. Offer each other
the gift of lilies, not the crown of thorns; the gift of love
and not the gift of fear. You stand beside each other,
thorns in one hand and lilies in the other, uncertain which to
give. Join now with me and throw away the thorns, offering the
lilies to replace them. This Easter, I would have the gift of
your forgiveness offered by you to me, and returned by me to
you.
We CANNOT be united in crucifixion and in death. Nor can
the resurrection be complete till your forgiveness rests on
Christ along with mine. A week is short, and yet this holy
week is the symbol of the whole journey the Son of God has
undertaken. He started with the sign of victory, the promise
of the resurrection, already given him. Let him not wander
into the temptation of crucifixion, and delay him there. Help
him to go in peace beyond it, with the light of his own
innocence lighting his way to his redemption and release. Hold
him not back with thorns and nails, when his redemption is so
near. But let the whiteness of your shining gift of lilies
speed him on his way to resurrection.
If you see glimpses of the face of Christ behind the veil,
looking between the snow white petals of the lilies you have
received and given as your gift, you will behold each others
face and RECOGNIZE it. I was a stranger and you took me in,
not knowing who I was. Yet for your gift of lilies you WILL
know. In your forgiveness of this stranger, alien to you and
yet your ancient Friend, lie his release and your redemption
with him. The time of Easter is a time of joy, and not of
mourning. Look on your risen Friend, and celebrate his
holiness along with me. For Easter is the time of YOUR
salvation, along with mine.
Thorns and Lilies
Look upon all the trinkets made to hang upon the body, or
to cover it, or for its use. See all the useless things made
for its eyes to see. Think on the many offerings made for its
pleasure, and remember all these were made to make seem lovely
what you hate. Would you employ this hated thing to draw your
brother to you, and to attract his bodys eyes? Learn you but
offer him a crown of thorns, not recognizing it for what it
is, and trying to justify your own interpretation of its value
by his acceptance. Yet still the gift proclaims his
worthlessness to you, as his acceptance and delight
acknowledges the lack of value he places on himself.
Gifts are not made through bodies, if they be truly given
and received. For bodies can neither offer nor accept; hold
out nor take. Only the mind can value, and only the mind
decides on what it would receive and give. And every gift it
offers depends on what it WANTS. It will adorn its chosen home
most carefully, making it ready to receive the gifts it wants
by offering them to those who come unto its chosen home, or
those it would attract to it. And there they will exchange
their gifts, offering and receiving what their minds judge to
be worthy of them.
Each gift is an evaluation of the receiver and the GIVER.
No-one but sees his chosen home an altar to himself. No-one
but seeks to draw to it the worshippers of what he placed upon
it, making it worthy of their devotion. And each has set a
light upon his altar, that they may see what he has placed
upon it, and take it for their own. Here is the value that you
lay upon your brother and on yourself. Here is your gift to
BOTH; your judgment on the Son of God for what he is. Forget
not that it is your Saviour to whom the gift is offered. Offer
him thorns and YOU are crucified. Offer him lilies and it is
YOURSELF you free.
I have great need for lilies, for the Son of God has not
forgiven me. And can I offer him forgiveness, when he offers
thorns to me? For he who offers thorns to anyone is against me
still, and who is whole without him? Be you his friend for me,
that I may be forgiven, and you may look upon the Son of God
as whole. But look you first upon the altar in your chosen
home, and see what you have laid upon it to offer me. If it be
thorns whose points gleam sharply in a blood-red light, the
body is your chosen home, and it is separation that you offer
me. And yet the thorns are gone. Look you still closer at them
now, and you will see your altar is no longer what it was.
You look still with the bodys eyes, and they CAN see but
thorns. Yet you have asked for and received ANOTHER sight.
Those who accept the Holy Spirits purpose as their own share
also His vision. And what enables Him to see His purpose shine
forth from every altar now is yours as well as His. He sees no
strangers, only dearly loved and loving friends. He sees no
thorns but only lilies, gleaming in the gentle glow of peace
that shines on everything He looks upon and loves.
This Easter, look with different eyes upon each other. You
HAVE forgiven me. And yet I cannot use your gift of lilies
while YOU see them not. Nor can you use what I have given
unless you share it. The Holy Spirits vision is no idle gift,
no plaything to be tossed about a while, and laid aside.
Listen and hear this carefully, nor think it but a dream; a
careless thought to play with, or a toy you would pick up from
time to time, and then put by. For if you do, so will it be to
you:
You have the vision now to look past ALL illusions. It has
been given you to see no thorns, no strangers, and no
obstacles to peace. The fear of God is nothing to you now. Who
is afraid to look upon illusions, knowing his Saviour stands
beside him? With him, your vision has become the greatest
power for the undoing of illusion that God Himself could give.
For what God gave the Holy Spirit, you have received. The Son
of God looks unto you for his release. For you have asked for,
and been given, the strength to look upon this final obstacle,
and see no thorns nor nails to crucify the Son of God, and
crown him king of death. Your chosen home is on the other
side, beyond the veil. It has been carefully prepared for you,
and it is ready to receive you now. You will not see it with
the bodys eyes. Yet all you need you have.
Your home has called to you since time began, nor have you
ever failed entirely to hear. You heard, but knew not HOW to
look, nor WHERE. And now you know. In you the knowledge lies,
ready to be unveiled and freed from all the terror that kept
it hidden. There IS no fear in love. The song of Easter is the
glad refrain the Son of God was NEVER crucified. Let us lift
up our eyes together, not in fear, but faith. And there WILL
be no fear in us, for in our vision will be no illusions; only
a pathway to the open door of Heaven, the home we share in
quietness, and where we live in gentleness and peace, as one
together.
Would you not have your holy brother lead you there? His
innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light
and sure protection, and shining from the holy altar within
him where you laid the lilies of forgiveness. Let him be to
you the Saviour from illusions, and look on him with the new
vision that looks upon the lilies and brings YOU joy. We go
beyond the veil of fear, lighting each others way. The
holiness that leads us is WITHIN us, as is our home. So will
we find what we were meant to find by Him Who leads us.
This is the way to Heaven and to the peace of Easter, in
which we join in glad awareness that the Son of God is risen
from the past, and has awakened to the present. Now is he
free, unlimited in his communion with all that is within him.
Now are the lilies of his innocence untouched by guilt, and
perfectly protected from the cold chill of fear and withering
blight of sin alike. Your gift has saved him from the thorns
and nails, and his strong arm is free to guide you safely
through them, and beyond. Walk with him now rejoicing, for the
Saviour from illusions has come to greet you, and lead you
home with him.
Here is your Saviour and your Friend, released from
crucifixion through your vision, and free to lead you now
where HE would be. He will not leave you, nor forsake the
Saviour from his pain. And gladly will you walk the way of
innocence together, singing as you behold the open door of
Heaven, and recognize the home that called to you. Give
joyously to one another the freedom and the strength to lead
you there. And come before each others holy altar where the
strength and freedom wait, to offer and receive the bright
awareness that leads you home. The lamp is lit in both of you
for one another. And by the hands that gave it to each other
shall both of you be led past fear to love.
Sin as an Adjustment
The belief in sin is an ADJUSTMENT. And an adjustment is a
CHANGE; a shift in perception, or a belief that what was so
before has been made different. Every adjustment is therefore
a distortion, and calls upon defenses to uphold it against
reality. Knowledge requires NO adjustment, and, in fact, is
lost if any shift or change is undertaken. For this reduces it
at once to mere perception; a way of LOOKING in which
certainty is lost, and doubt has entered. To this impaired
condition ARE adjustments necessary, because they are not
true. Who need adjust to truth, which calls on only what he
is, to understand?
Adjustments of any kind are of the ego. For it is the egos
fixed belief that all relationships DEPEND upon adjustments to
make of them what it would have them be. Direct relationships,
in which there are no interferences, are ALWAYS seen as
dangerous. The ego is the self-appointed mediator of all
relationships, making whatever adjustments it deems necessary,
and interposing them between those who would meet, to keep
them separate and prevent their union. It is this studied
interference which makes it difficult for you to recognize
your holy relationship for what it is.
The holy do not interfere with truth. They are not afraid
of it, for it is within the truth they recognized their
holiness, and rejoiced at what they saw. They looked on it
directly, without attempting to adjust themselves to it, or it
to them. And so they saw that it was IN them, not deciding
first where they would HAVE it be. Their looking merely asked
a question, and it was what they SAW that answered them. YOU
make the world and THEN adjust to it, and it to you. Nor is
there any difference between yourself and it in your
perception, which made them BOTH.
A simple question yet remains, and needs an answer. Do you
LIKE what you have made? a world of murder and attack,
through which you thread your timid way through constant
dangers, alone and frightened, hoping at most that death will
wait a little longer before it overtakes you and you
disappear? YOU MADE THIS UP. It is a picture of what you think
YOU are; of how you see YOURSELF. A murderer IS frightened,
and those who kill FEAR death. All these are but the fearful
thoughts of those who would adjust themselves to a world made
fearful by their adjustments. And they look out in sorrow from
what is sad within, and see the sadness THERE.
Have you not wondered what the world is REALLY like; how it
would look through HAPPY eyes? The world you see is but a
judgment on yourself. It is not there at all. Yet judgment
lays a sentence on it, justifies it, and makes it REAL. Such
is the world you see; a judgment on yourself, and made by YOU.
This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the
ego, whose image it is and which it loves, and placed outside
you in the world. And to this world must you adjust, as long
as you believe this picture is outside, and has you at its
mercy. This world IS merciless, and were it outside you, you
should indeed be fearful. Yet it was you who MADE it
merciless, and now if mercilessness seems to look back at you,
it can be CORRECTED.
Who in a holy relationship can long remain unholy? The
world the holy see is one with them, just as the world the ego
looks upon is like itself. The world the holy see is beautiful
because they see their innocence in it. They did not tell it
what it was; they did not make adjustments to fit their
orders. They gently questioned it and whispered, What are
you? And He Who watches over all perception answered. Take
not the judgment of the world as answer to the question,
What am I?
The world BELIEVES in sin, but the belief that made it as
you see it is not outside you. Seek not to make the Son of God
ADJUST to his insanity. There IS a stranger in him, who
wandered carelessly into the home of truth, and who will
wander off. He came without a purpose, but he will not remain
before the shining light the Holy Spirit offered, and you
accepted. For there the stranger is made homeless and YOU are
welcome.
Ask not this transient stranger, What am I? He is the
only thing in all the universe that does not know. Yet it is
he you asked, and it is to his answer that you would adjust.
This one wild thought, fierce in its arrogance, and yet so
tiny and so meaningless it slips unnoticed through the
universe of truth, becomes your guide. To it you turn to ask
the meaning of the universe. And of the one blind thing in all
the seeing universe of truth you ask, How shall I look upon
the Son of God?
Does one ask judgment of what is totally BEREFT of
judgment? And if you have, would you BELIEVE the answer, and
adjust to it as if it were the truth? The world you look on is
the answer that it gave you, and YOU have given it power to
adjust the world to MAKE its answer true. You asked this puff
of madness for the meaning of your unholy relationship, and
adjusted it according to its insane answer. How happy did it
make you? Did you meet with joy, to bless the Son of God, and
give him thanks for all the happiness which he held out to
you? Did you recognize each other as the eternal gift of God
to you? Did you see the holiness that shone in both of you, to
bless the other? That is the purpose of your HOLY
relationship. Ask not the means of its attainment of the one
thing that still would have it be unholy. Give it NO power to
adjust the means and end.
Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and
emaciated, weak and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down
in darkness they remember not the light, do not leap up in joy
the instant they are made free. It takes a while for them to
understand what freedom IS. You groped but feebly in the dust
and found each others hand, uncertain whether to let it go,
or to take hold on life so long forgotten. Strengthen your
hold, and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom
the meaning of your freedom lies. He seemed to be crucified
beside you. And yet his holiness remained untouched and
perfect, and with him beside you, you shall this day enter
with him to Paradise, and know the peace of God.
Such is my will for both of you, and for each of you for
one another, and for himself. Here there is only holiness and
joining without limit. For what is Heaven but union, direct
and perfect, and without the veil of fear upon it? Here are we
one, looking with perfect gentleness upon each other, and on
ourselves. Here all thoughts of any separation between us
becomes impossible. You who were prisoners in separation are
now made free in Paradise. And here would I unite with you, my
friends, my brothers and my Self. Your gift unto each other
has given me the certainty our union will be soon.
Share, then, this faith with me, and know that it is
justified. There is no fear in perfect love BECAUSE it knows
no sin, and it must look on others as on itself. Looking with
charity within, what can it fear WITHOUT? The innocent see
safety, and the pure in heart see God within His Son, and look
unto the Son to lead them to the Father. And where else would
they go but where they will to be? Each of you now will lead
the other to the Father as surely as God created His Son holy,
and kept him so. In your brother is the light of Gods eternal
promise of your immortality. See HIM as sinless, and there can
BE no fear in you.
Entering the Ark
Nothing can hurt you unless you give it the power to do so.
For you give power as the laws of this world interpret giving;
as you give you LOSE. It is not up to you to give power at
all. Power is of God, given by Him, and re-awakened by the
Holy Spirit, Who knows that as you give you GAIN. He gives no
power to sin, and therefore it HAS none; nor to its results as
this world sees them, sickness and death and misery and
pain. These things have not occurred because the Holy Spirit
sees them not, and gives no power to their seeming source.
Thus would He keep you free of them. Being without illusion of
what you are, the Holy Spirit merely gives everything to God,
Who has already given and received all that is true. The
untrue He has neither received NOR given.
Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien,
and can no more enter than can their source. And therein lies
your need to see your brother sinless. In him is Heaven. See
sin in him instead, and Heaven is lost to you. But see him as
he is, and what is yours shines from him to you. Your Saviour
gives you only love, but what you would RECEIVE of him is up
to you. It lies in him to overlook all your mistakes, and
therein lies his OWN salvation. And so it is with yours. It is
the re-awakening of the laws of God in minds that have
established other laws, and given them power to enforce what
God created not.
YOUR insane laws were made to guarantee that you would make
mistakes, and give them power over you by accepting their
results as your just due. What could this be but madness? And
is it this that you would see within your Saviour from
insanity? He is as free from this as you are, and in the
freedom that you see in him, you see your own. For this you
SHARE. What God has given follows His laws, and His alone. Nor
is it possible for those who follow them to suffer the results
of any other source.
Those who choose freedom will experience only its results.
Their power is of God, and they will give it only to what God
has given, to share with them. Nothing but this can touch
them, for they see only this, sharing their power according to
the Will of God. And thus their freedom is established and
maintained. It is upheld through all temptation to imprison
and to be imprisoned. It is of them who learned of freedom
that you should ask what freedom is. Ask not the sparrow how
the eagle soars, for those with little wings have not accepted
for themselves the power to share with you.
The sinless give as they received. See, then, the power of
sinlessness within your brother, and share with him the power
of the release from sin you offered him. To each who walks
this earth in seeming solitude is a Saviour given, whose
special function here is to release him, and so to free
himself. In the world of separation each is appointed
separately, though they are all the same. Yet those who KNOW
that they are all the same need not salvation. And each one
finds his Saviour when he is ready to look upon the face of
Christ, and see Him sinless.
The plan is not of you, nor need you be concerned with
anything except the part that has been given you to learn. For
He Who knows the rest will see to it without your help. But
think not that He does not need your part to help Him with the
rest. For in your part lies ALL of it, without which is no
part complete, nor is the whole completed without your part.
The ark of peace is entered two by two, yet the beginning of
another world goes with them. Each holy relationship must
enter here, to learn its special function in the Holy Spirits
plan, now that it shares His purpose. And as this purpose is
fulfilled, a new world rises in which sin can enter not, and
where the Son of God can enter without fear, and where he
rests a while, to forget imprisonment and to remember freedom.
How can he enter, to rest and to remember, without YOU? Except
you be there, he is not complete. And it is his completion
that he remembers there.
This is the purpose given you. Think not that your
forgiveness of each other serves but you two alone. For the
whole new world rests in the hands of every two who enter here
to rest. And as they rest, the face of Christ shines on them,
and they remember the laws of God, forgetting all the rest,
and yearning only to have His laws perfectly fulfilled in them
and all their brothers. Think you when this has been achieved
that you will rest WITHOUT them? You could no more leave one
of them outside than I could leave you and forget part of
myself.
You may wonder how you can be at peace when, while you are
in time, there is so much that must be done before the way to
peace is open. Perhaps this seems impossible to you. But ask
yourself if it is possible that God would have a plan for your
salvation that does NOT work. Once you accept His plan as the
one function that you would fulfill, there will be nothing
else the Holy Spirit will not arrange for you WITHOUT your
effort.
He will go before you making straight your path, and
leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to
bar your way. Nothing you need will be denied you. Not one
seeming difficulty but will melt away before you reach it. You
need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except
the only purpose that you would fulfill. As that was given
you, so will its fulfillment be. Gods guarantee will hold
against all obstacles, for it rests on certainty and not
contingency. It rests on YOU. And what can be more certain
than a Son of God?
Heralds of Eternity
In this world, Gods Son comes closest to himself in a holy
relationship. There he begins to find the certainty his Father
has in him. And there he finds his function of restoring his
Fathers laws to what was held outside them, and finding what
was lost. Only in time can ANYTHING be lost, and NEVER lost
forever. So do the parts of Gods Son gradually join in time,
and with each joining is the end of time brought nearer. Each
miracle of joining is a mighty herald of eternity. No-one who
has a single purpose, unified and sure, can be afraid. No-one
who shares his purpose with him can NOT be one with him.
Each herald of eternity sings of the end of sin and fear.
Each speaks in time of what is far beyond it. Two voices
raised together call to the hearts of everyone, and let them
beat as one. And in that single heart beat is the unity of
love proclaimed and given welcome. Peace to your holy
relationship, which has the power to hold the unity of the Son
of God together. You give to one another for everyone, and in
your gift is everyone made glad. Forget not Who has given you
the gifts you give, and through your not forgetting this will
you remember Who gave the gifts to Him to give to you.
It is impossible to overestimate your brothers value. Only
the ego does this, but all IT means is that it wants the other
for itself, and therefore values him too LITTLE. What is
inestimable clearly cannot BE evaluated. Do you recognize the
fear that rises from the meaningless attempt to judge what
lies so far beyond your judgment you cannot even see it? Judge
not what is invisible to you or you will NEVER see it, but
wait in patience for its coming. It will be given you to see
your brothers worth when all you want for him is peace. And
what you want for him you will receive.
How can you estimate the worth of him who offers peace to
you? What would you WANT except his offering? His worth has
been established by his Father, and you will recognize it as
you receive his Fathers gift through him. What is in him will
shine so brightly in your grateful vision that you will merely
love him, and be glad. You will not think to judge him, for
who would see the face of Christ and yet insist that judgment
still has meaning? For this insistence is of those who do NOT
see. Vision or judgment is your choice, but never both of
these.
Your brothers body is as little use to you as it is to
him. When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches it HAS no
function, for minds need not the body to communicate. The
sight that sees the body has no use which serves the purpose
of a holy relationship. And while you look upon each other
thus, the means and end have not been brought in line. Why
should it take so many holy instants to let this be
accomplished, when one would do? There IS but one. The little
breath of eternity that runs through time like golden light is
all the same; nothing before it, nothing afterwards.
YOU look upon each holy instant as a different point in
time. IT never changes. All that it ever held, or will ever
hold, is here right NOW. The past takes nothing from it, and
the future will add no more. Here, then, is everything. Here
is the loveliness of your relationship, with means and end in
perfect harmony ALREADY. Here is the perfect faith that you
will one day offer to each other ALREADY offered you. And here
the limitless forgiveness you will give each other ALREADY
given; the face of Christ you yet will look upon ALREADY seen.
Can you evaluate the giver of a gift like this? Would you
exchange this gift for any other? This gift returns the laws
of God to your remembrance. And merely by remembering them,
the laws that held you prisoner to pain and death MUST be
forgotten. This is no gift your brothers body offers you. The
veil that hides the gift hides him as well. He IS the gift,
and yet he knows it not. No more do you. And yet, have faith
that He Who sees the gift in both of you will offer and
receive it for you both. And through His vision will you see
it, and through His understanding recognize it and love it as
your own.
Be comforted, and feel the Holy Spirit watching over you in
love and perfect confidence in what He sees. He KNOWS the Son
of God, and shares his Fathers certainty the universe rests
in his gentle hands in safety and in peace. Let us consider
now what he must learn, to share his Fathers confidence in
him. What is he, that the Creator of the universe should offer
it to him, and know it rests in safety? He looks upon himself
not as his Father knows him. And yet it is impossible the
confidence of God should be misplaced.
The Temple of the Holy Spirit
The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his
relationship with his Creator. If it were elsewhere it would
rest upon contingency, but there IS nothing else. And this is
wholly loving and forever. Yet has the Son of God invented an
unholy relationship between him and his Father. His real
relationship is one of perfect union and unbroken continuity.
The one he made is partial, self-centered, broken into
fragments and full of fear. The one created by his Father is
wholly self-encompassing and self-extending. The one he made
is wholly self-destructive and self-limiting.
Nothing can show the contrast better than the experience of
both a holy and an unholy relationship. The first is based on
love, and rests on it serene and undisturbed. The body does
not intrude upon it. Any relationship in which the body enters
is based not on love, but on idolatry. Love wishes to be
known, completely understood and shared. It has no secrets;
nothing that it would keep apart and hide. It walks in
sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome and in
sincerity so simple and so obvious it cannot BE misunderstood.
But idols do not share.
Idols accept, but never make return. They can be loved, but
cannot love. They do not understand what they are offered, and
any relationship in which they enter has lost its meaning.
They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight and happy in the
bodys darkness, where they can hide and keep their secrets
hidden along with them. And they have NO relationships, for
no-one else is welcome there. They smile on no-one, and those
who smile on them they do not see.
Love has no darkened temples where mysteries are kept
obscure and hidden from the sun. It does not seek for power,
but for relationships. The body is the egos chosen weapon for
seeking power THROUGH relationships. And its relationships
MUST be unholy, for what they are it does not even see. It
wants them solely for the offerings on which its idols thrive.
The rest it merely throws away, for all that it could offer is
seen as valueless. Homeless, the ego seeks as many bodies as
it can collect to place its idols in, and so establish them as
temples to itself.
The Holy Spirits temple is not a body, but a relationship.
The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret
room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless
enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. Here the
unholy relationship escapes reality, and seeks for crumbs to
keep itself alive. Here it would drag its brothers, holding
them here in its idolatry. Here it is safe, for here love
cannot enter. The Holy Spirit does not build His temples where
love can never be. Would He Who sees the face of Christ choose
as His home the only place in all the universe where it can
NOT be seen?
You CANNOT make the body the Holy Spirits temple, and it
will NEVER be the seat of love. It is the home of the
idolator, and of loves condemnation. For here is love made
fearful and hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshipped
here are shrouded in mystery, and kept apart from those who
worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no relationships
and no return. Here is the mystery of separation perceived
in awe and held in reverence. What God would have NOT be is
here kept safe from Him. But what you do not realize is
what you fear within your brother, and would not see in him,
is what makes God seem fearful to you, and kept unknown.
Idolators will always be afraid of love, for nothing so
severely threatens them as loves approach. Let love draw near
them and overlook the body, as it will surely do, and they
retreat in fear, feeling the seeming firm foundation of their
temple begin to shake and loosen. Brothers, you tremble with
them. Yet what you fear is but the herald of escape. This
place of darkness is not your home. Your temple is not
threatened. You are idolators no longer. The Holy Spirits
purpose lies safe in your relationship, and not your bodies.
You have ESCAPED the body. Where you are the body cannot
enter, for the Holy Spirit has set HIS temple there.
There is no order in relationships. They either ARE or not.
An unholy relationship is NO relationship. It is a state of
isolation, which seems to be what it is not. No more than
that. The instant that the mad idea of making your
relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, all your
relationships were made meaningless. In that unholy instant
time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea, and give
it the illusion of reality. And so it seemed to have a home
that held together for a little while in time, and vanished.
For what could house this mad idea against reality BUT for an
instant?
Idols MUST disappear, and leave no trace behind their
going. The unholy instant of their seeming power is frail as
is a snowflake, but without its loveliness. Is this the
substitute you WANT for the eternal blessing of the holy
instant and its unlimited beneficence? Is the malevolence of
the unholy relationship, so seeming powerful and so bitterly
misunderstood, and so invested in a false attraction, your
preference to the holy instant, which offers you peace and
understanding? Then lay aside the body and quietly transcend
it, rising to welcome what you REALLY want. And from His holy
temple, look you not back on what you have awakened from. For
no illusions CAN attract the minds that have transcended them,
and left them far behind.
The holy relationship reflects the true relationship the
Son of God has with his Father in reality. The Holy Spirit
rests within it in the certainty it will endure forever. Its
firm foundation is eternally upheld by truth, and love shines
on it with the gentle smile and tender blessing it offers to
its own. Here the unholy instant is exchanged in gladness for
the holy one of safe return. Here is the way to true
relationships held gently open, through which you walk
together, leaving the body thankfully behind, and resting in
the Everlasting Arms. Loves arms are open to receive you, and
give you peace forever.
The body is the egos idol; the belief in sin made flesh
and then projected outward. This produces what seems to be a
wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny
spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an
instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its
master. And this unholy instant seems to be life; an instant
of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water and set
uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop
briefly by, to offer his devotion to deaths idols, and then
pass on. And here he is more dead than living. Yet it is also
here he makes his choice again between idolatry and love.
Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying
tribute to the body, or let himself be given freedom from it.
Here he can accept the holy instant, offered him to replace
the unholy one he chose before. And here can he learn
relationships are his SALVATION, and not his doom. You who are
learning this may still be fearful, but you are not
immobilized. The holy instant is of greater value now to you
than its unholy seeming counterpart, and you have learned you
really WANT but one. This is no time for sadness. Perhaps
confusion, but hardly discouragement.
You have a REAL relationship, and it HAS meaning. It is as
like your real relationship with God as equal things are like
unto each other. Idolatry is past and meaningless. Perhaps you
fear each other a little yet; perhaps a shadow of the fear of
God remains with you. Yet what is that to those who have been
given one true relationship BEYOND the body? Can they be long
held back from looking on the face of Christ? And can they
long withhold the memory of their relationship with their
Father from themselves, and keep remembrance of His Love apart
from their awareness?
The Consistency of Means and End
We have said much about discrepancies of means and end, and
how these must be brought in line before your holy
relationship can bring you only joy. But we have also said the
means to meet the Holy Spirits goal will come from the same
Source as does His purpose. Being so simple and direct, this
course has nothing in it that is not consistent. The seeming
inconsistencies, or parts you find more difficult than others,
are merely indications of areas where means and end are still
discrepant. And this produces great discomfort. This need not
be. This course requires almost nothing of you. It is
impossible to imagine one that asks so little, or could offer
more.
The period of discomfort that follows the sudden change in
a relationship from sin to holiness should now be almost over.
To the extent you still experience it, you are refusing to
leave the means to Him Who changed the purpose. You recognize
you want the goal. Are you not also willing to accept the
means? If you are not, let us admit that YOU are inconsistent.
A purpose is ATTAINED by means, and if you want a purpose, you
MUST be willing to want the means as well. How can one be
sincere and say, I want this above all else, and yet I do
not want to learn the means to get it?
To obtain the goal, the Holy Spirit indeed asked little. He
asks no more to give the means as well. The means are second
to the goal. And when you hesitate, it is because the PURPOSE
frightens you, and NOT the means. Remember this, for otherwise
you will make the error of believing the means are difficult.
Yet how can they be difficult if they are merely GIVEN you?
They guarantee the goal, and they are perfectly in line with
it. Before we look at them a little closer, remember that if
you think they are impossible, your wanting of the PURPOSE has
been shaken. For if a goal is possible to reach, the means to
do so must be possible as well.
It IS impossible to see your brother as sinless, and yet to
look upon him as a body. Is this not perfectly consistent with
the goal of holiness? For holiness is merely the result of
letting the effects of sin be lifted, so what was always true
is recognized. To see a sinless BODY is impossible, for
holiness is positive, and the body is merely neutral. It is
not sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it
is, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes
of Christ OR of the ego. Either must be an error, for both
would place the attributes where they cannot be. And both must
be undone for purposes of truth.
The body IS the means by which the ego tries to make the
unholy relationship seem real. The unholy instant IS the time
of bodies. But the PURPOSE here is sin. It cannot be attained
BUT in illusion, and so the illusion of a brother as a body is
quite in keeping with the purpose of unholiness. Because of
this consistency, the means remain unquestioned while the end
is cherished. Vision adapts to wish, for sight is always
secondary to desire. And if you see the body, you have chosen
judgment and not vision. For vision, like relationships, has
no order. You either SEE or not.
Who sees a brothers body has laid a judgment on him, and
sees him not. He does not really see him as sinful; he does
not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is invisible.
He can but be imagined in the darkness, and it is here that
the illusions you hold about him are not held up to his
reality. Here are illusions and reality kept separated. Here
are illusions never brought to truth, and always hidden from
it. And here, in darkness, is your brothers reality imagined
as a body, in unholy relationships with other bodies, serving
the cause of sin an instant before he dies.
There is indeed a difference between this vain imagining
and vision. The difference lies not in them, but in their
purpose. Both are but means, each one appropriate to the end
for which it is employed. Neither can serve the purpose of the
other, for each one is a choice of purpose, employed on its
behalf. Either is meaningless without the end for which it was
intended, nor is it valued as a separate thing apart from the
intention. The means seem real because the GOAL is valued. And
judgment has no value UNLESS the goal is sin.
The body cannot be looked upon except through judgment. To
see the body is the sign that you lack vision, and have denied
the means the Holy Spirit offers you to serve HIS purpose. How
can a holy relationship achieve its purpose through the means
of sin? Judgment you taught yourself; vision is learned from
Him Who would UNDO your teaching. His vision cannot see the
body because it cannot look on sin. And thus it leads you to
reality. Your holy brother, sight of whom is your release, is
no illusion. Attempt to see him not in darkness, for your
imaginings about him WILL seem real there. You closed your
eyes to shut him out. Such was your purpose, and while this
purpose seems to have any meaning, the means for its
attainment will be evaluated as worth the seeing, and so you
will not see.
Your question should not be, How can I see my brother
without the body? Ask only, Do I REALLY wish to see him
sinless? And as you ask, forget not that his sinlessness is
YOUR escape from fear. Salvation is the Holy Spirits goal.
The means is vision. For what the seeing look upon IS sinless.
No-one who loves can judge, and what he sees is free of
condemnation. And what he sees he did not make, for it was
given him to see, as was the vision which made his seeing
possible.
The Vision of Sinlessness
Vision will come to you at first in glimpses, but they will
be enough to show you what is given you who see your brother
sinless. Truth is restored to you through your desire, as it
was lost to you through your desire for something else. Open
the holy place which you closed off by valuing the something
else, and what was never lost will quietly return. It has
been saved for you. Vision would not be necessary had judgment
not been made. Desire now its whole undoing, and it is done
for you.
Do you not WANT to know your own identity? Would you not
happily exchange your doubts for certainty? Would you not
willingly be free of misery, and learn again of joy? Your holy
relationship offers all this to you. As it was given you, so
will be its effects. And as its holy purpose was not made by
you, the means by which its happy end is yours is also not of
you. Rejoice in what is yours but for the asking, and think
not that you need make either means or end. All this is given
you who would but see your brother sinless. All this is given,
waiting on your desire but to receive it. Vision is freely
given to those who ask to see.
Your brothers sinlessness is given you in shining light,
to look on with the Holy Spirits vision, and to rejoice in
along with Him. For peace will come to all who ask for it with
real desire and sincerity of purpose, shared with the Holy
Spirit and at one with Him on what salvation IS. Be willing,
then, to see your brother sinless, that Christ may rise before
your vision and give you joy. And place no value on your
brothers body, which holds him to illusions of what he is. It
is HIS desire to see his sinlessness, as it is YOURS. And
bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what
you have made of him.
The Holy Spirit guarantees that what God willed and gave
you shall be yours. This is your purpose now, and the vision
that makes it yours is ready to be given. You have the vision
which enables each one to see the body not. And as you look
upon each other, you will see an altar to your Father, holy as
Heaven, glowing with radiant purity and sparkling with the
shining lilies you laid upon it. What can you value more than
this? Why do you think the body is a better home, a safer
shelter for Gods Son? Why would you rather look on it than on
the truth? How can the engine of destruction be PREFERRED, and
chosen to replace the holy home the Holy Spirit offers, where
He will dwell with you?
The body is the sign of weakness, vulnerability and loss of
power. Can such a saviour HELP you? Would you turn in your
distress and need for help unto the helpless? Is the pitifully
little the perfect choice to call upon for strength? Judgment
WILL seem to make your Saviour weak. Yet it is YOU who need
his strength. There is no problem, no event or situation, no
perplexity that vision will not solve. All is redeemed when
looked upon with vision. For this is not YOUR sight, and
brings with it the laws beloved of Him Whose sight it IS.
Everything looked upon with vision falls gently into place,
according to the laws brought to it by His calm and certain
sight. The end for everything He looks upon is always sure.
For it will meet His purpose, seen in unadjusted form, and
suited perfectly to meet it. Destructiveness becomes benign,
and sin is turned to blessing under His gentle gaze. What can
the bodys eyes perceive, with power to CORRECT? Its eyes
ADJUST to sin, unable to overlook it in any form, and seeing
it everywhere, in everything. Look through its eyes, and
everything will stand condemned before you. All that could
save you, you will never see. Your holy relationship, the
source of your salvation, will be deprived of meaning, and its
most holy purpose bereft of means for its accomplishment.
Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play
the idle game of death in your imagination. But vision sets
all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway
of Heavens laws. What if you recognized this world is an
hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up?
What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it,
to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are
wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you
ACCEPTED this? And would you SEE it?
Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what
they ARE. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not
and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize YOU did
this. Once you accept this simple fact, and take unto yourself
the power you gave them, YOU are released from them. One thing
is sure; hallucinations serve a purpose, and when that purpose
is no longer held, they disappear. Therefore, the question
never is whether you want THEM, but always, do you want the
purpose which they serve? This world seems to hold out many
purposes, each different and with different values. Yet they
are all the same. Again there is no order, but a seeming
hierarchy of values.
Only two purposes are possible. And one is sin, the other
holiness. Nothing is in between, and which you choose
determines what you see. For what you see is merely how you
elect to meet your goal. Hallucinations serve to meet the goal
of madness. They are the means by which the outside world,
projected from within, adjusts to sin and seems to witness to
its reality. It still is true that nothing is without. Yet
upon nothing are ALL projections made. For it is the
projection which gives the nothing all the meaning that it
holds.
What has no meaning cannot BE perceived. And meaning always
looks within to find itself, and THEN looks out. All meaning
that you give the world outside must thus reflect the sight
you saw within; or better, if you saw at all or merely judged
against. Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit
translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild
hallucinations that show you all the fearful outcomes of
imagined sin, into the calm and reassuring sights with which
He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are
looked on happily, and heard with joy. They are His
substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds
the egos purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They
step away from sin, reminding you that it is not reality which
frightens you, and that the errors which you made can be
corrected.
When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and seen it
change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked
on scenes of violence and death, and watched them change to
quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear, life-
giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks
that never waste away; who need persuade you to accept the
gift of vision? And after vision, who is there who could
refuse what MUST come after? Think but an instant just on
this; you can behold the holiness God gave His Son. And never
need you think that there is something else for you to see.
CHAPTER 21
THE INNER PICTURE
Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you
gave it, nothing more than that. But though it is no more than
that, it is not less. Therefore, to you it is important. It is
the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an
inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive.
Therefore, seek not to change the world, but will to change
your mind ABOUT the world. Perception is a RESULT, not a
cause. And that is why order of difficulty in miracles is
meaningless. Everything looked upon with vision is healed and
holy. Nothing perceived without it means anything. And where
there is no meaning, there is chaos.
Damnation is your judgment on yourself, and this you WILL
project upon the world. See it as damned, and all you see is
what you did to hurt the Son of God. If you behold disaster
and catastrophe, you tried to crucify him. If you see holiness
and hope, you joined the Will of God to set him free. There is
no choice that lies between these two decisions. And you WILL
see the witness to the choice you made, and learn from this to
RECOGNIZE which one you chose.
The Imagined World
Never forget the world the sightless see must be
imagined, for what it really looks like is unknown to them.
They must infer what could be seen from evidence forever
indirect; and reconstruct their inferences as they stumble and
fall because of what they did not recognize, or walk unharmed
through open doorways which they thought were closed. And so
it is with you. You do not see. Your cues for inference are
wrong, and so you stumble and fall down upon the stones you
did not recognize, but fail to be aware you CAN go through the
doors you thought were closed, but which stand open before
unseeing eyes, waiting to welcome you.
How foolish it is to attempt to judge what could be seen
instead. It is not necessary to imagine what the world must
look like. It must be seen, before you recognize it for what
it is. You can be shown which doors are open, and you can see
where safety lies; and which way leads to darkness, which to
light. Judgment will ALWAYS give you false directions, but
vision SHOWS you where to go. Why should you guess?
There is no need to learn through pain. And gentle lessons
are acquired joyously, and are remembered gladly. What gives
you happiness you WANT to learn and not forget. It is not this
you would deny. YOUR question is whether the means by which
this course is learned will BRING to you the joy it promises.
If you believed it would, the learning of it would be no
problem. You are not happy learners yet because you still
remain uncertain that vision gives you MORE than judgment
does, and you have learned that BOTH you cannot have.
The blind become accustomed to their world by their
adjustments to it. They think they know their way about in it.
They learned it, not through joyous lessons, but through the
stern necessity of limits they believed they could not
overcome. And still believing this, they hold those lessons
dear, and cling to them BECAUSE they cannot see. They do not
understand the lessons KEEP them blind. This they do not
believe. And so they keep the world they learned to see in
their imagination, believing that their choice is that or
nothing. They hate the world they learned through pain. And
everything they think is in it serves to remind them that they
are incomplete and bitterly deprived.
Thus they DEFINE their life and where they live, adjusting
to it as they think they must, afraid to lose the little that
they have. And so it is with all who see the body as all they
have and all their brothers have. They try to reach each
other, and they fail, and fail again. And they adjust to
loneliness, believing that to keep the body is to save the
little that they have. Listen, and try to think if you
remember what we will speak of now.
Listen, perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not
quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether
unfamiliar, like a song whose name is long forgotten, and the
circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered. Not
the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little whisp
(sic) of melody, attached not to a person or a place or
anything particular. But you remember, from just this little
part, how lovely was the song, how wonderful the setting where
you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and
listened with you.
The notes are nothing. Yet you have kept them with you, not
for themselves, but as a soft reminder of what would make you
weep if you remembered how dear it was to you. You could
remember, yet you are afraid, believing you would lose the
world you learned since then. And yet you know that nothing in
the world you learned is half so dear as this. Listen, and see
if you remember an ancient song you knew so long ago, and held
more dear than any melody you taught yourself to cherish
since.
Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything
you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light
that stretches as you look into a great and shining circle.
And all the circle fills with light before your eyes. The
edges of the circle disappear, and what is in it is no longer
contained at all. The light expands and covers everything,
extending to infinity forever shining, and with no break or
limit anywhere. Within it everything is joined in perfect
continuity. Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could
be outside, for there is nowhere that this light is not.
This is the vision of the Son of God, whom you know well.
Here is the sight of him who knows his Father. Here is the
memory of what you are; a part of this, with all of it within,
and joined to all as surely as all is joined in you. Accept
the vision which can show you THIS, and not the body. You know
the ancient song, and know it well. Nothing will ever be as
dear to you as is this ancient hymn the Son of God sings to
his Father still.
And now the blind can see, for that same song they sing in
honor of their Creator gives praise to them as well. The
blindness which they made will not withstand the memory of
this song. And they will look upon the vision of the Son of
God, remembering who he is they sing of. What is a miracle but
this remembering? And who is there in whom this memory lies
not? The light in one awakens it in all. And when you see it
in each other, you ARE remembering for everyone.
The Responsibility for Sight
We have repeated how little is asked of you to learn this
course. It is the same small willingness you need to have your
whole relationship transformed to joy; the little gift you
offer to the Holy Spirit for which He gives you everything;
the very little on which salvation rests; the tiny change of
mind by which the crucifixion is changed to resurrection. And
being true, it is so simple that it cannot fail to be
completely understood. Rejected yes, but NOT ambiguous. And if
you choose against it now, it will not be because it is
obscure, but rather that this little cost seemed, in your
judgment, to be too much to pay for peace.
This is the only thing that you need do for vision,
happiness, release from pain and the complete escape from sin,
all to be given you. Say only this, but mean it with no
reservations, for here the power of salvation lies:
I AM responsible for what I see.
I chose the feelings I experience,
and I decided on the goal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me
I asked for, and received as I had asked.
Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the
face of what is done to you. Acknowledge but that you have
been MISTAKEN, and all effects of your mistakes will
disappear.
It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events
outside of him. It is impossible that the happenings that come
to him were not his choice. His power of decision is the
determiner of every situation in which he seems to find
himself by chance or accident. No accident nor chance is
possible within the universe as God created it, outside of
which is nothing. Suffer, and you decided sin was your goal.
Be happy, and you gave the power of decision to Him Who must
decide for God for you. This is the little gift you offer to
the Holy Spirit, and even this He gave to you to give
yourself. For by this gift is given you the power to release
your Saviour, that he may give salvation unto you.
Begrudge not then this little offering. Withhold it, and
you keep the world as now you see it. Give it away, and
everything you see goes with it. Never was so much given for
so little. In the holy instant is this exchange effected and
maintained. Here is the world you do not want brought to the
one you do. And here the one you do is given you BECAUSE you
want it. Yet for this, the power of your wanting must first be
recognized. You must accept its STRENGTH, and not its
weakness. You must perceive that what is strong enough to make
a world can let it go, and can accept correction if it is
willing to see that it was wrong.
The world you see is but the idle witness that you were
right. This witness is insane. You trained it in its
testimony, and as it gave it back to you, you listened and
convinced yourself that what it saw was true. You did this to
YOURSELF. See only this, and you will also see how circular
the reasoning on which your seeing rests. This was not
given you. This was your gift to you and to your brother. Be
willing, then, to have it taken from him and be replaced with
truth. And as you look upon the change in him, it will be
given you to see it in yourself.
Perhaps you do not see the need for you to give this little
offering. Look closer, then, at what it IS. And, very simply,
see in it the whole exchange of separation for salvation. All
that the ego is, is an idea that it is possible that things
should happen to the Son of God WITHOUT his will; and thus
without the Will of his Creator, Whose Will cannot BE separate
from his own.
This is the Son of Gods REPLACEMENT for his will, a mad
revolt against what must forever be. This is the statement
that he has the power to make God powerless, and so to take it
for himself, and leave himself without what God has willed for
him. This is the mad idea you have enshrined upon your altars,
and which you worship. And anything which threatens this seems
to attack your faith, for here is it invested. Think not that
you are faithless, for your belief and trust in this is strong
indeed.
The Holy Spirit can give you faith in holiness and vision
to see it easily enough. But you have not left open and
unoccupied the altar where the gifts belong. Where THEY should
be, you have set up your idols to something else. This other
will, which seems to tell you what must happen, you gave
reality. And what would show you otherwise must therefore seem
unreal. All that is asked of you is to make room for truth.
You are not asked to make or do what lies beyond your
understanding. All you are asked to do is LET IT IN; only to
stop your interference with what will happen of itself; simply
to recognize again the presence of what you thought you gave
away.
Be willing, for an instant, to leave your altars free of
what you placed upon them, and what is really there you CANNOT
fail to see. The holy instant is not an instant of creation,
but of recognition. For recognition comes of vision and
suspended judgment. Then only it is possible to look within
and see what MUST be there, plainly in sight, and wholly
independent of inference and judgment. Undoing is not your
task, but it IS up to you to welcome it or not. Faith and
desire go hand in hand, for everyone believes in what he
wants.
We have already said that wishful thinking is how the ego
deals with what it wants, to make it so. There is no better
demonstration of the power of wanting, and therefore of faith,
to make its goals seem real and possible. Faith in the unreal
leads to adjustments of reality to make it fit the goal of
madness. The goal of sin induces the perception of a fearful
world to justify its purpose. What you desire you WILL see.
And if its reality is false, you will uphold it by not
realizing all the adjustments you have introduced, to make it
so.
When vision is denied, confusion of cause and effect
becomes inevitable. The purpose now becomes to keep obscure
the cause of the effect, and make effect appear to be a CAUSE.
This seeming independence of effect enables it to be regarded
as standing by itself, and capable of serving as a cause of
the events and feelings its maker thinks it causes. Long ago,
we spoke of your desire to create your own Creator, and be
father and not son to Him. This is the same desire. The Son is
the effect, whose Cause he would deny. And so he seems to BE
the cause, producing real effects. Nothing can have effects
without a cause, and to confuse the two is merely to fail to
understand them both.
It is as needful that you recognize you made the world you
see as that you recognize that you did not create yourself.
THEY ARE THE SAME MISTAKE. Nothing created not by your Creator
has any influence over you. And if you think what you have
made can tell you what you see and feel, and place your faith
in its ability to do so, you are denying your Creator, and
believing that you made yourself. For if you think the world
you made has power to make you what it wills, you ARE
confusing Son and Father; effect and Source.
The Sons creations are like his Fathers. Yet in creating
them, the Son does not delude himself that he is independent
of his Source. His union with It is the Source of his
creating. APART from this he has no power to create, and what
he makes is meaningless. It changes nothing in creation,
depends entirely upon the madness of its maker, and cannot
serve to justify the madness. Your brother thinks he made the
world with you. Thus he denies creation. With you, he thinks
the world he made made him. Thus he DENIES he made it.
Yet the truth is you were both created by a loving Father,
Who created you together and as one. See what proves
otherwise, and you deny your whole reality. But grant that
everything which seems to stand between you, keeping you from
each other and separate from your Father, you made in secret,
and the instant of release has come to you. All its effects
are gone because its source has been uncovered. It is its
seeming independence of its source that kept you prisoner.
This is the same delusion that you are independent of the
Source by which you were created, and have never left.
Faith, Belief and Vision
All special relationships have sin as their goal. For they
are bargains with reality, toward which the seeming union is
adjusted. Forget not this; to bargain is to set a limit, and
any brother with whom you have a limited relationship YOU
HATE. You may attempt to keep the bargain in the name of
fairness, sometimes demanding payment of yourself, perhaps
more often of the other. Thus in the fairness you attempt
to ease the guilt that comes from the accepted purpose of the
relationship. And that is why the Holy Spirit must change its
purpose to make it useful to HIM and harmless unto YOU.
If you accept this change, you have accepted the idea of
making room for truth. The SOURCE of sin is gone. You may
imagine that you still experience its effects, but it is not
your purpose, and you no longer WANT it. No-one allows a
purpose to be replaced while he desires it, for nothing is so
cherished and protected as is a goal the mind accepts. This it
will follow, grimly or happily, but always with faith and with
the persistence that faith inevitably brings. The power of
faith is NEVER recognized if it is placed in sin. But it is
ALWAYS recognized if it is placed in love.
Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains?
This is indeed a little feat for such a power. For faith can
keep the Son of God in chains as long as he believes he IS in
chains. And when he is released from them, it will be simply
because he no longer believes in them, withdrawing faith that
they can hold him, and placing it in his freedom instead. It
is impossible to place equal faith in opposite directions.
What faith you give to sin you TAKE AWAY from holiness. And
what you offer holiness has been REMOVED from sin.
Faith and belief and vision are the means by which the goal
of holiness is reached. Through them the Holy Spirit leads you
to the real world, and away from all illusions where your
faith was laid. This is His direction, the only one He ever
sees. And when you wander, He reminds you there IS but one.
His faith and His belief and vision are all for you. And when
you have accepted them completely instead of yours, you will
have need of them no longer. For faith and vision and belief
are meaningful only BEFORE the state of certainty is reached.
In Heaven they are unknown. Yet Heaven is reached through
them.
It is impossible that the Son of God lack faith, but he can
choose where he would have it BE. Faithlessness in not a LACK
of faith, but faith in NOTHING. Faith given to illusions does
not lack power, for by it does the Son of God believe that he
is powerless. Thus is he faithless to himself, but strong in
faith in his illusions ABOUT himself. For faith, perception
and belief YOU made as means for losing certainty and finding
sin. This mad direction was your choice, and by your faith in
what you chose, you made what you desired.
The Holy Spirit has a use for all the means for sin by
which you sought to find it. But as He uses them, they lead
AWAY from sin, because His purpose lies in the opposite
direction. He sees the MEANS you use, but not the PURPOSE for
which you made them. He would not take them from you, for He
sees their value as a means for what HE wills for you. You
made perception that you might choose among your brothers, and
seek for sin with them. The Holy Spirit sees perception as a
means to teach you that the vision of a holy relationship is
all you WANT to see. Then will you give your faith to
holiness, desiring and believing in it BECAUSE of your desire.
Faith and belief become attached to vision, as all the
means that once served sin are redirected now toward holiness.
For what you think is sin is LIMITATION, and whom you try to
limit to the body you hate because you fear. In your refusal
to forgive him, you would condemn him to the body because the
means for sin are dear to you. And so the body has your faith
and your belief. But holiness would set your brother free,
removing hatred by removing fear, not as a symptom, but at its
source.
Those who would free their brothers from the body can HAVE
no fear. They have renounced the means for sin by choosing to
let all limitations be removed. Desiring to look upon their
brothers in holiness, the power of belief and faith goes far
beyond the body, SUPPORTING vision, not obstructing it. But
first they chose to recognize how much their faith had limited
their understanding of the world, desiring to place its power
elsewhere should another point of view be given them. The
miracles which follow this decision are also born of faith.
For all who choose to look away from sin are given vision, and
are led to holiness.
Those who believe in sin MUST think the Holy Spirit asks
for sacrifice, for this is how they think THEIR purpose is
accomplished. Brothers, the Holy Spirit knows that sacrifice
brings NOTHING. He makes no bargains. And if you seek to limit
Him, you will hate Him because you are afraid. The gift that
He has given you is more than anything that stands this side
of Heaven. The instant for its recognition is at hand. Join
your awareness to what has been ALREADY joined. The faith you
give each other can accomplish this. For He Who loves the
world is seeing it for you, without one spot of sin upon it,
and in the innocence which makes the sight of it as beautiful
as Heaven.
Your faith in sacrifice has given it great power in your
sight; except you do not realize you cannot see BECAUSE of it.
For sacrifice must be exacted of a body, and by another body.
The mind could neither ask it nor receive it of itself. And no
more could the body. The intention is in the mind, which tries
to use the body to carry out the means for sin in which the
MIND believes. Thus is the joining of mind and body an
inescapable belief of those who value sin. And so is sacrifice
invariably a means for limitation, and thus for hate.
Think you the Holy Spirit is concerned with THIS? He gives
not what it is His purpose to lead you FROM. You think He
would deprive you for your good. But good and
deprivation are opposites, and cannot meaningfully join in
any way. It is like saying that the moon and sun are one
because they come with night and day, and so they MUST be
joined. Yet sight of one is but the sign the other has
disappeared from sight. Nor is it possible that what gives
light be one with what depends on darkness to be seen. Neither
demands the sacrifice of the other. Yet on the ABSENCE of the
other does each depend.
The body was made to be a sacrifice to sin, and in the
darkness so it still is seen. Yet in the light of vision it is
looked upon quite differently. You CAN have faith in it to
serve the Holy Spirits goal, and give it power to serve as
means to help the blind to see. But in their seeing they look
PAST it, as do you. The faith and the belief you gave it
BELONGS beyond. You gave perception and belief and faith from
mind to body. Let them now be given back to what produced
them, and can use them still to save itself from what it made.
The Fear to Look Within
The Holy Spirit will NEVER teach you that you are sinful.
Errors He will correct, but this makes no-one fearful. You are
indeed afraid to look within, and see the sin you think is
there. This you would not be fearful to admit. Fear in
association with sin the ego deems quite appropriate, and
smiles approvingly. It has no fear to let you feel ashamed. It
doubts not your belief and faith in sin. Its temples do not
shake because of this. Your faith that sin is there but
witnesses to your desire that it BE there to see. This merely
seems to be the source of fear.
Remember that the ego is not alone. Its rule IS tempered,
and its unknown enemy, Whom it cannot even see, it fears.
Loudly the ego tells you not to look inward, for if you do
your eyes will light on sin, and God will strike you blind.
This you believe, and so you do not look. Yet this is not the
egos hidden fear, nor yours who serve it. Loudly indeed the
ego claims it is; TOO loudly and TOO often. For underneath
this constant shout and frantic proclamation, the ego is not
certain it is so. Beneath your fear to look within because of
sin is yet another fear, and one which makes the ego tremble.
What if you looked within and saw NO sin? This fearful
question is one the ego NEVER asks. And you who ask it now are
threatening the egos whole defensive system too seriously for
it to bother to pretend it is your friend. Those who have
joined their brothers HAVE detached themselves from their
belief that their identity lies in the ego. A holy
relationship is one in which you join with what is part of you
in TRUTH. And your belief in sin has been ALREADY shaken, nor
are you now entirely unwilling to look within and see it not.
Your liberation still is only partial; still limited and
incomplete, yet born within you. Not wholly mad, you have been
willing to look on much of your insanity, and recognize its
madness. Your faith is moving inward, past insanity and on to
reason. And what your reason tells you now, the ego would not
hear. The Holy Spirits purpose was accepted by the part of
your mind the ego knows not of. No more did YOU. And yet this
part, with which you now identify, is not afraid to look upon
itself. It KNOWS no sin. How, otherwise, could it have been
willing to see the Holy Spirits purpose as its own?
This part has seen your brother, and recognized him
perfectly since time began. And it desired nothing but to join
with him and to be free again, as once it was. It has been
waiting for the birth of freedom; the acceptance of release to
come to you. And now you recognize that it was not the ego
that joined the Holy Spirits purpose, and so there MUST be
something else. Think not that THIS is madness. For this your
REASON tells you, and it follows perfectly from what you have
already learned.
There is no inconsistency in what the Holy Spirit teaches.
This is the reasoning of the SANE. You have perceived the
egos madness, and not been made afraid because you did not
choose to share in it. At times it still deceives you. Yet in
your saner moments, its ranting strikes no terror in your
hearts. For you have realized that all the gifts it would
withdraw from you, in rage at your presumptuous wish to
look within, you do not WANT. A few remaining trinkets still
seem to shine and catch your eye. Yet you would not sell
Heaven to have them.
And now the ego IS afraid. Yet what it hears in terror, the
other part hears as the sweetest music; the song it longed to
hear since first the ego came into your minds. The egos
weakness is its strength. The song of freedom, which sings the
praises of another world, brings to it hope of peace. For it
REMEMBERS Heaven, and now it sees that Heaven has come to
earth at last, from which the egos rule has kept it out so
long. Heaven has come because it found a home in your
relationship on earth. And earth can hold no longer what has
been given Heaven as its own.
Look gently on each other, and remember the egos weakness
is revealed in both your sight. What it would keep apart has
met and joined, and looks upon the ego unafraid. Little
children, innocent of sin, follow in gladness the way to
certainty. Be not held back by fears insane insistence that
sureness lies in doubt. This has no meaning. What matters it
to you how loudly it is proclaimed? The senseless is not made
meaningful by repetition and by clamor. The quiet way is open.
Follow it happily, and question not what must be so.
Reason and Perception
Perception selects, and makes the world you see. It
literally picks it out as the mind directs. The laws of size
and shape and brightness would hold, perhaps, if other things
were equal. They are NOT equal. For what you look for you are
far more likely to discover than what you would prefer to
overlook. The still small Voice for God is not drowned out by
all the egos raucous screams and senseless ravings to those
who WANT to hear it. Perception is a CHOICE, and not a fact.
But on this choice depends far more than you may realize as
yet. For on the voice you choose to hear, and on the sights
you choose to see, depends entirely your whole belief in what
you ARE. Perception is a witness but to this, and NEVER to
reality. Yet it can show you the conditions in which awareness
of reality is possible, or those where it could never be.
Reality needs no cooperation from you to be itself. But
your awareness of it needs your help because it is your
choice. Listen to what the ego says and see what it directs
you see, and it is sure that you will see yourself as tiny,
vulnerable and afraid. You will experience depression, a sense
of worthlessness, and feelings of impermanence and unreality.
You will believe that you are helpless prey to forces far
beyond your own control, and far more powerful than you. And
you will think the world you made directs your destiny. For
this will be your FAITH. But never believe because it is your
faith it makes reality.
There is another vision and another Voice in which your
freedom lies, awaiting but your choice. And if you place your
faith in them, you will perceive another Self in you. This
other Self sees miracles as natural. They are as simple and
natural to It as breathing to the body. They are the obvious
response to calls for help, the only one It makes. Miracles
seem unnatural to the ego because it does not understand how
separate minds can influence each other. Nor COULD they do so.
But minds cannot BE separate. This other Self is perfectly
aware of this. And thus It recognizes that miracles do not
affect anothers mind, only Its Own. There IS no other.
You do not realize the whole extent to which the idea of
separation has interfered with reason. Reason lies in the
other Self you have cut off from your awareness. And nothing
you have allowed to stay in it is capable of reason. How can
the segment of the mind devoid of reason understand what
reason is, or grasp the information it would give? All sorts
of questions may arise in it, but if the basic question stems
from reason, it will not ask it. Like all that stems from
reason, the basic question is obvious, simple, and remains
unasked. But think not reason could not answer it.
Gods plan for your salvation could not have been
established without your will and your consent. It must have
been accepted by the Son of God, for what God wills for him he
MUST receive. For God wills not apart from him, nor does the
Will of God wait upon time to be accomplished. Therefore, what
joined the Will of God must be in you NOW, being eternal. You
must have set aside a place in which the Holy Spirit can
abide, and where He IS. He must have been there since the need
for Him arose, and was fulfilled in the same instant. Such
would your reason tell you, if you listened. Yet such is
clearly not the egos reasoning. Its alien nature to the
ego is proof you will not find the answer there. Yet if it
must be so, it must exist. And if it exists for you, and has
your freedom as the purpose given it, you must be free to FIND
it.
Gods plan is simple; never circular and never self-
defeating. He has no Thoughts except the self-EXTENDING, and
in this your will must be included. Thus, there must be a part
of you that knows His Will and shares It. It is not meaningful
to ask if what must be is so. But it IS meaningful to ask why
you are UNAWARE of what is so, for this must have an answer if
the plan of God for your salvation is complete. And it must BE
complete because its Source knows not of incompletion. Where
would the answer be but in the Source? And where are YOU but
there, where this same answer is? Your identity, as much a
true effect of this same Source as is the answer, must
therefore be together and the same.
Oh yes, you know this, and more than this alone. Yet any
part of knowledge threatens dissociation as much as all of it.
And all of it WILL come with any part. Here is the part you
can accept. What reason points to you can see because the
witnesses on its behalf are clear. Only the totally insane can
disregard them, and you have gone past this. Reason is a means
which serves the Holy Spirits purpose in its own right. It is
not re-interpreted and re-directed from the goal of sin, as
are the others. For reason is beyond the egos range of means.
Faith and perception and belief can be misplaced, and serve
the great deceivers needs as well as truth. But reason has no
place at all in madness, nor can it be adjusted to fit its
end. Faith and belief are strong in madness, guiding
perception toward what the mind has valued. But reason enters
not at all in this. For the perception would fall away at
once, if reason were applied. There IS no reason in insanity,
for it depends entirely on reasons absence. The ego never
uses it because it does not realize that it exists. The
partially insane have access to it, and only they have need of
it. Knowledge does not depend on it, and madness keeps it out.
The part of mind where reason lies was dedicated, by your
will in union with your Fathers, to the undoing of insanity.
Here was the Holy Spirits purpose accepted and accomplished,
both at once. Reason is alien to insanity, and those who use
it have gained a means which CANNOT be applied to sin.
Knowledge is far beyond attainment of any kind. But reason can
serve to open doors you closed against it.
You have come very close to this. Faith and belief have
shifted, and you have asked the question which the ego will
NEVER ask. Does not your reason tell you now the question must
have come from something that you do not know, but must belong
to you? Faith and belief, upheld by reason, cannot fail to
lead to changed perception. And in this change is room made
way for vision. Vision extends beyond itself, as does the
purpose which it serves and all the means for its
accomplishment.
Reason and Correction
Reason cannot see sin but CAN see errors, and leads to
their correction. It does not value them, but their
correction. Reason will also tell you when you think you sin,
you call for help. Yet if you will not accept the help you
call for, you will not believe that it is yours to give. And
so you will not give it, thus MAINTAINING the belief. For
uncorrected error of any kind deceives you about the power
that is in you to MAKE correction. If it can correct, and you
allow it not to do so, you deny it to yourself and to your
brother. And if he shares this same belief, you both will
think that you are damned. This you could spare him and
YOURSELF. For reason would not make way for correction in you
alone.
Correction cannot be accepted or refused by you WITHOUT
your brother. Sin would maintain it can. Yet reason tells you
that you cannot see your brother or yourself as sinful, and
still perceive the other innocent. Who looks upon himself as
guilty and sees a sinless world? And who can see a sinful
world and look upon himself apart from it? Sin would maintain
you must be separate. But reason tells you that this must be
wrong. If you are joined, how could it be that you have
private thoughts? And how could thoughts that enter into what
but seems like yours alone have no effect at all on what IS
yours? If minds are joined, this is impossible.
No-one can think but for himself, as God thinks not without
His Son. Only were both in bodies could this be. Nor could one
mind think only for itself unless the body WERE the mind. For
only bodies can be separate, and therefore unreal. The home of
madness cannot be the home of reason. Yet it is easy to leave
the home of madness if you see reason. You do not leave
insanity by going somewhere else. You leave it simply by
accepting reason where madness was. Madness and reason see the
same things, but it is certain that they look upon them
differently.
Madness is an attack on reason that drives it out of mind,
and takes its place. Reason does not attack, but takes the
place of madness quietly, replacing madness if it be the will
of the insane to listen to it. But the insane know not their
will. For they believe they see the body, and let their
madness tell them it is real. Reason would be incapable of
this. And if you would defend the body against your reason,
you will not understand the body or yourself.
The body does not separate you from your brother, and if
you think it does, you are insane. But madness has a purpose,
and believes it also has the means to make its purpose real.
To see the body as a barrier between what reason tells you
MUST be joined must be insane. Nor could you see it, if you
heard the voice of reason. What can there be that stands
between what is continuous? And if there is nothing in
between, how can what enters part be kept away from other
parts? Reason would tell you this. But think what you must
recognize, if it be so.
If you choose sin instead of healing, you would condemn the
Son of God to what can never be corrected. You tell him, by
your choice, that he is damned; separate from you and from his
Father forever, and without a hope of safe return. You teach
him this, and you will learn of him EXACTLY what you taught.
For you can teach him only that he is as you would have him,
and what you choose he be is but your choice for YOU. Yet
think not this is fearful. That you are joined to him is but a
fact, not an interpretation. How can a fact be fearful unless
it disagrees with what you hold more dear than truth? Reason
will tell you that this fact is your RELEASE. Neither your
brother nor yourself can be attacked alone. But neither can
accept a miracle instead WITHOUT the other being blessed by
it, and healed of pain.
Reason, like love, would reassure you, and seeks not to
frighten you. The power to heal the Son of God is given you
because he MUST be one with you. You ARE responsible for how
he sees himself. And reason tells you it is given you to
change his whole mind, which is one with you, in just an
instant. And any instant serves to bring complete correction
of his errors, and make him whole. The instant that you choose
to let YOURSELF be healed, in that same instant is his whole
salvation seen as complete with yours. Reason is given you to
understand that this is so. For reason, kind as is the purpose
for which it is the means, leads steadily away from madness
toward the goal of truth. And here you will lay down the
burden of denying truth. THIS is the burden that is terrible,
and not the truth.
That you are joined is your salvation; the gift of Heaven,
not the gift of fear. Does Heaven seem to be a burden to you?
In madness, yes. And yet what madness sees must be dispelled
by reason. Reason assures you Heaven is what you WANT, and ALL
you want. Listen to Him Who speaks with reason, and brings
your reason into line with His. Be willing to let reason be
the means by which He would direct you how to leave insanity
behind. Hide not behind insanity, in order to escape from
reason. What madness would conceal, the Holy Spirit still
holds out for everyone to look upon with gladness.
You ARE your brothers Saviour. He is YOURS. Reason speaks
happily indeed of this. This gracious plan was given love by
Love. And what Love plans is like Itself in this: Being
united, It would have you learn what YOU must be. And being
one with It, it must be given you to give what It has given,
and gives still. Spend but an instant in the glad acceptance
of what is given you to give your brother, and learn with him
what has been given BOTH of you. To give is no more blessed
than to receive. But neither is it less.
The Son of God is ALWAYS blessed as one. And as his
gratitude goes out to you who blessed him, reason will tell
you that it cannot be you stand apart from blessing. The
gratitude he offers you reminds you of the thanks your Father
gives you for completing Him. And here alone does reason tell
you that you can understand what you must be. Your Father is
as close to you as is your brother. Yet what is there that
could be nearer you than is your Self?
The power that you have over the Son of God is not a threat
to his reality. It but ATTESTS to it. Where could his freedom
lie but in himself, if he be free already? And who could bind
him but himself, if he deny his freedom? God is not mocked; no
more His Son can be imprisoned save by his own desire. And it
is by his own desire that he is freed. Such is his strength,
and not his weakness. He IS at his own mercy. And where he
chooses to be merciful, there is he free. But where he chooses
to condemn instead, there is he held a prisoner, waiting in
chains his pardon on himself to set him free.
Perception and Wishes
Do you not see that all your misery comes from the strange
belief that you are powerless? Being helpless is the COST of
sin. Helplessness is sins condition; the one requirement that
it demands to be believed. Only the helpless COULD believe in
it. Enormity has no appeal save to the little. And only those
who first believe that they ARE little could see attraction
there. Treachery to the Son of God is the defense of those who
do not identify with him. And you are for him or against him;
either you love him or attack him, protect his unity or see
him shattered and slain by your attack.
No-one believes the Son of God is powerless. And those who
see themselves as helpless MUST believe that they are not the
Son of God. What can they be EXCEPT his enemy? And what can
they do but envy him his power, and by their envy make
themselves afraid of it? These are the dark ones, silent and
afraid, alone and not communicating, fearful the power of the
Son of God will strike them dead, and raising up their
helplessness against him. They join the army of the powerless,
to wage their war of vengeance, bitterness and spite on him,
to make him one with them. Because they do not know that they
ARE one with him, they know not whom they hate. They are
indeed a sorry army, each one as likely to attack his brother
or turn upon himself as to remember they thought they had a
common cause.
Frantic and loud and strong the dark ones seem to be. Yet
they know not their enemy, except they HATE him. In hatred
they have come together, but have not joined each other. For
had they done so, hatred would be impossible. The army of the
powerless must be disbanded in the presence of strength. Those
who are strong are NEVER treacherous, because they have no
need to dream of power and to act out their dream. How would
an army act in dreams? Any way at all. It could be seen
attacking anyone with anything. Dreams have no reason in them.
A flower turns into a poisoned spear, a child becomes a giant
and a mouse roars like a lion. And love is turned to hate as
easily. This is no army, but a madhouse. What seems to be a
planned attack is bedlam.
The army of the powerless is weak indeed. It has no weapons
and it has no enemy. Yes, it can overrun the world and SEEK an
enemy. But it can never find what is not there. Yes, it can
DREAM it found an enemy, but this will shift even as it
attacks, so that it runs at once to find another, and never
comes to rest in victory. And as it runs, it turns against
itself, thinking it caught a glimpse of the great enemy which
always eludes its murderous attack by turning into something
else. How treacherous does this enemy appear, who changes so
it is impossible even to recognize him!
Yet hate must have a target. There can be no faith in sin
without an enemy. Who that believes in sin would DARE believe
he has no enemy? Could he admit that no-one made him
powerless? Reason would surely bid him seek no longer what is
not there to find. Yet first he must be willing to perceive a
world where it is not. It is not necessary that he understand
HOW he can see it. Nor should he try. For if he focuses on
what he cannot understand, he will but emphasize his
helplessness, and let sin tell him that his enemy must be
HIMSELF. But let him only ask himself these questions, which
he must decide to have it done for him:
Do I DESIRE a world I rule instead of one which rules
me?
Do I DESIRE a world where I am powerful instead of
helpless?
Do I DESIRE a world in which I have no enemies and
cannot sin?
And do I want to see what I denied BECAUSE it is the
truth?
You have already answered the first three questions, but
not yet the last. For this one still seems fearful, and unlike
the others. Yet reason would assure you they are all the same.
We said this year would emphasize the sameness of things that
ARE the same. This final question, which is indeed the last
you need decide, still seems to hold a threat the rest have
lost for you. And this imagined difference attests to your
belief that truth may be the enemy you yet may find. Here,
then, would seem to be the last remaining hope of finding sin,
and not accepting power.
Forget not that the choice of truth or sin, power or
helplessness, is the choice of whether to attack or heal. For
healing comes of power, and attack of helplessness. Whom you
attack you CANNOT want to heal. And whom you would have healed
must be the one you chose to be PROTECTED from attack. And
what is this decision but the choice whether to see him
through the bodys eyes, or let him be revealed to you through
vision? HOW this decision leads to its effects is not your
problem. But what you WANT to see MUST be your choice. This is
a course in CAUSE, and not effect.
Consider carefully your answer to the last question you
have left unanswered still. And let your reason tell you that
it must BE answered, and IS answered in the other three. And
then it will be clear to you that, as you look on the effects
of sin in any form, all you need do is simply ask yourself,
Is this what I would see? Do I WANT this?
This is your ONE decision; this the condition for what
occurs. It is irrelevant to HOW it happens, but not to WHY.
You HAVE control of this. And if you choose to see a world
without an enemy, in which you are not helpless, the means to
see it WILL be given you.
Why is the final question so important? Reason will tell
you why. It is the same as are the other three except in TIME.
The others are decisions which can be made and then unmade and
made again. But truth is constant, and implies a state where
vacillations are impossible. You can desire a world you rule
which rules you not, and change your mind. You can desire to
exchange your helplessness for power, and lose this same
desire as a little glint of sin attracts you. And you can want
to see a sinless world, and let an enemy tempt you to use
the bodys eyes and change what you desire.
In content all the questions ARE the same. For each one
asks if you are willing to exchange the world of sin for what
the Holy Spirit sees, since it is this the world of sin
denies. And therefore those who look on sin are seeing the
denial of the real world. Yet the last question adds the wish
for CONSTANCY in your desire to see the real world, so the
desire becomes the ONLY one you have. By answering the final
question yes, you add sincerity to the decisions you have
already made to all the rest. For only then have you renounced
the option to change your mind again. When it is this you do
NOT want, the rest ARE wholly answered.
Why do you think you are unsure the others HAVE been
answered? Could it be necessary they be asked so often, if
they had? Until the last decision has been made, the answer is
both yes and no. For you have answered yes without
perceiving that yes MUST mean not no. No-one decides
against his happiness, but he may do so if he does not see he
does it. And if he sees his happiness as ever changing, now
this, now that, and now an elusive shadow attached to nothing,
he DOES decide against it.
Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing form that
shifts with time and place, is an illusion which has no
meaning. Happiness MUST be constant, because it is attained by
giving up the wish for the INconstant. Joy cannot be perceived
EXCEPT through constant vision. And constant vision can be
given only those who WISH for constancy. The power of the Son
of Gods desire remains the proof that he is wrong who sees
himself as helpless. Desire what you will, and you WILL look
on it and think it real. No thought but has the power to
release or kill. And none can leave the thinkers mind, or
leave him unaffected.
The Inner Shift
Are thoughts, then, dangerous? To bodies, YES! The thoughts
that seem to kill are those which teach the thinker that he
CAN be killed. And so he dies BECAUSE of what he learned. He
goes from life to death, the final proof he valued the
inconstant more than constancy. Surely he THOUGHT he wanted
happiness. Yet he did not desire it BECAUSE it was the truth,
and therefore MUST be constant.
The constancy of joy is a condition quite alien to your
understanding. Yet if you could even imagine what it must be,
you would desire it, although you understand it not.
The constancy of happiness has no exceptions; no change of
any kind. It is unshakable as is the Love of God for His
creation. Sure in its vision as its Creator is in what He
knows, it looks on everything and sees it is the same. It sees
not the ephemeral, for it desires that everything be like
itself, and sees it so. Nothing has power to confound its
constancy because its own desire cannot be shaken. It comes as
surely unto those who see the final question is necessary to
the rest, as peace must come to those who choose to heal and
not to judge.
Reason will tell you that you CANNOT ask for happiness
inconstantly. For if what you desire you receive, and
happiness is constant, then you need ask for it but ONCE to
have it ALWAYS. And if you do not have it always, being what
it is, you did not ask for it. For no-one fails to ask for his
desire of something he believes holds out some promise of the
power of giving it. He may be wrong in what he asks, where,
and of what. Yet he WILL ask because desire is a request, an
asking for, and made by one whom God Himself will never fail
to answer. God has already given him all that he REALLY wants.
Yet what he is uncertain of, God CANNOT give. For he does not
desire it while he remains uncertain, and Gods giving must be
incomplete unless it is received.
You who complete Gods Will and are His happiness, whose
will is powerful as His, a power that is not lost in your
illusions, think carefully why it should be you have not yet
decided how you would answer the final question. Your answer
to the others has made it possible to help you be but
partially insane. And yet it is the final one that really asks
if you are willing to be WHOLLY sane.
What is the holy instant but Gods appeal to you to
recognize what He has given you? Here is the great appeal to
reason; the awareness of what is always there to see, the
happiness that could be always yours. Here is the constant
peace you could experience forever. Here is what denial has
denied REVEALED to you. For here the final question is ALREADY
answered, and what you ask for given. Here is the future NOW,
for time is powerless because of your desire for what will
never change. For you have asked that nothing stand between
the holiness of your relationship and your AWARENESS of its
holiness.
CHAPTER 22
SALVATION AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP
Take pity on yourselves, so long enslaved. Rejoice whom God
hath joined have come together, and need no longer look on sin
apart. No two can look on sin together, for they could never
see it in the same place and time. Sin is a strictly
individual perception, seen in the other, yet believed by each
to be within himself. And each one seems to make a different
error, and one the other cannot understand. Brothers, it IS
the same, made by the same, and forgiven for its maker in the
same way.
The holiness of your relationship forgives you both,
undoing the effects of what you both believed and saw. And
with their going is the NEED for sin gone with them. Who has
need for sin? Only the lonely and alone, who see their
brothers different from themselves. It is this difference,
seen but not real, that makes the need for sin, not real but
seen, seem justified. And all this would be real, if sin were
so. For an unholy relationship is based on differences, where
each one thinks the other has what he has not. They come
together, each to complete himself and rob the other. They
stay until they think theres nothing left to steal, and then
move on. And so they wander through a world of strangers,
unlike themselves, living with their bodies perhaps under a
common roof that shelters neither; in the same room and yet a
world apart.
A holy relationship starts from a different premise. Each
one has looked within and seen no lack. Accepting his
completion, he would extend it by joining with another, whole
as himself. He sees no difference between these selves, for
differences are only of the body. Therefore, he looks on
nothing he would take. He denies not his own reality BECAUSE
it is the truth. Just under Heaven does he stand, but close
enough not to return to earth. For this relationship has
Heavens holiness. How far from home can a relationship so
like to Heaven be?
Think what a holy relationship can teach! Here is belief in
differences undone. Here is the faith in differences shifted
to sameness. And reason now can lead you to the logical
conclusion of your union. It must extend, as you extended when
you joined. It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached
out beyond the body to LET yourselves be joined. And now the
sameness which you saw extends, and finally removes all sense
of differences, so that the sameness that lies beneath them
all becomes apparent. Here is the golden circle where you
recognize the Son of God. For what is born into a holy
relationship can NEVER end.
The Message of the Holy Relationship
Let reason take another step. If you attack whom God would
heal and hate the one He loves, then you and your Creator HAVE
a different will. Yet if you ARE His Will, what you must then
believe is that you are not YOURSELF. You can indeed believe
this, and you DO. And you HAVE faith in this, and see much
evidence on its behalf. And where, you wonder, does your
strange uneasiness, your sense of being disconnected, and your
haunting fear of lack of meaning in yourself arise? It is as
though you wandered in without a plan of any kind except to
wander off, for only that seems certain.
Yet we have heard a very similar description earlier, but
it was not of YOU. And yet this strange idea which it DOES
accurately describe, you THINK is you. Reason would tell you
that the world you see through eyes which are not yours MUST
make no sense to you. To whom would vision such as this send
back its messages? Surely not you, whose sight is wholly
independent of the eyes which look upon the world. If this is
not your vision, what can it show to you? The brain cannot
interpret what YOUR vision sees. This you would understand.
The brain interprets to the body, of which it is a part. But
what it says YOU cannot understand. Yet you have listened to
it. And long and hard you tried to understand its messages.
You did not realize it is impossible to understand what fails
entirely to reach you.
You have received no messages at all you understand. For
you have listened to what can never communicate at all. Think,
then, what happened. Denying what you are, and firm in faith
that you are something else, this something else which you
have made to be yourself BECAME your sight. Yet it must be the
something else which sees, and as NOT you, EXPLAINS its
sight to you. YOUR vision would, of course, render this quite
unnecessary. Yet if your eyes are closed, and you have called
upon this thing to lead you, asking it to explain to you the
world it sees, you have no reason not to listen, nor to
suspect that what it tells you is not true. Reason would tell
you it cannot be true BECAUSE you do not understand it. God
has no secrets. He does not lead you through a world of
misery, waiting to tell you, at the journeys end, why He did
this to you.
What could be secret from Gods Will? Yet you believe that
YOU have secrets. What could your secrets be except ANOTHER
will that is your own, apart from His? Reason would tell you
that this is no secret that need be hidden as a sin. But a
mistake indeed! Let not your fear of sin protect it from
correction, for the attraction of guilt is only fear. Here is
the one emotion that you made, whatever it may seem to be.
This is the emotion of secrecy, of private thoughts, and of
the body. This is the one emotion that opposes love, and
always leads to sight of differences and loss of sameness.
Here is the one emotion that keeps you blind, dependent on the
self you think you made to lead you through the world it made
for you.
Your sight was given you, along with everything that you
can understand. You will perceive no difficulty in
understanding what this vision tells you, for everyone sees
only what he thinks he IS. And what your sight would show you,
you will understand BECAUSE it is the truth. Only your vision
can convey to you what YOU can see. It reaches you directly,
without a need to be interpreted to you. What needs
interpretation MUST be alien. Nor will it ever be made
understandable by an interpreter you cannot understand.
Of all the messages you have received and failed to
understand, this course alone is OPEN to your understanding
and CAN be understood. This is YOUR language. You do not
understand it yet only because your whole communication is
like a babys. The sounds a baby makes and what he hears are
highly unreliable, meaning different things to him at
different times. Neither the sounds he hears nor sights he
sees are stable yet. But what he hears and does not understand
will be his native tongue, through which he will communicate
with those around him, and they with him. And the strange,
shifting ones he sees about him will become to him his
comforters, and he will recognize his home, and see them there
with him.
So in each holy relationship is the ability to communicate
instead of separate reborn. Yet a holy relationship, so
recently reborn itself from an unholy relationship and yet
more ancient than the old illusion that it has replaced, IS
like a baby now in its rebirth. Yet in this infant is your
vision returned to you, and he will speak the language both of
you can understand. He is not nurtured by the something
else you thought was you. He was not given there, nor was
received by anything except yourself. For no two people can
unite except through Christ, Whose vision sees them one.
Think what is given you, my holy brothers. This child will
teach you what you do not understand, and make it plain. For
his will be no alien tongue. He will need no interpreter to
you, for it was you who taught him what he knows BECAUSE you
knew it. He could not come to anyone but you, never to
something else. Where Christ has entered no-one is alone,
for never could He find a home in separate ones. Yet must He
be reborn into His ancient home, so seeming new and yet as old
as He, a tiny newcomer, dependent on the holiness of your
relationship to let Him live.
Be certain God did not entrust His Son to the unworthy.
Nothing but what is part of Him is worthy of being joined. Nor
is it possible that anything not part of Him CAN join.
Communication must have been restored to those that join, for
this they could not do through bodies. What, then, has joined
them? Reason will tell you that they must have seen each other
through a vision not of the body, and communicated in a
language the body does not speak. Nor could it be a fearful
sight or sound that drew them gently into one. Rather, in each
the other saw a perfect shelter where his Self could be reborn
in safety and in peace. Such did his reason tell him; such he
believed BECAUSE it was the truth.
Here is the first direct perception that you have made. You
made it through awareness older than perception, and yet
reborn in just an instant. For what is time to what was always
so? Think what that instant brought; the recognition that the
something else you thought was you is an illusion. And
truth came instantly to show you where your Self must be. It
is DENIAL of illusions that calls on truth, for to deny
illusions is to recognize that fear is meaningless. Into the
holy home where fear is powerless love enters thankfully,
grateful that it is one with you who joined to let it enter.
Christ comes to what is like Himself; the same, not
different. For He is always drawn unto Himself. What is as
like Him as a holy relationship? And what draws you together
draws Him to you. Here are His sweetness and His gentle
innocence protected from attack. And here can He return in
confidence, for faith in one another is always faith in Him.
You are indeed correct in looking on each other as His chosen
home, for here you will with Him and with His Father. This is
your Fathers Will for you, and yours with His. And who is
drawn to Christ is drawn to God as surely as both are drawn to
every holy relationship, the home prepared for them as earth
is turned to Heaven.
Your Brothers Sinlessness
The opposite of illusions is not disillusionment, but
truth. Only to the ego, to which truth is meaningless, do they
appear to be the only alternatives, and different from each
other. In truth they are the same. Both bring the same amount
of misery, though each one seems to be the way to lose the
misery the other brings. Every illusion carries pain and
suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which
it hides its nothingness. Yet in these dark and heavy garments
are those who seek illusions covered, and hidden from the joy
of truth.
Truth is the opposite of illusions because it offers joy.
What else but joy could be the opposite of misery? To leave
one kind of misery and seek another is hardly an escape. To
change illusions is to make no change. The search for joy in
misery is senseless, for how could joy be found in misery? All
that is possible in the dark world of misery is to select some
aspects out of it, see them as different, and define the
difference as joy. Yet to perceive a difference where none
exists will surely fail to MAKE a difference.
Illusions carry only guilt and suffering, sickness and
death, to their believers. The form in which they are accepted
is irrelevant. No form of misery, in reasons eyes, can be
confused with joy. Joy is eternal. You can be sure indeed that
any seeming happiness that does not last is really fear. Joy
does not turn to sorrow, for the eternal cannot change. But
sorrow CAN be turned to joy, for time gives way to the
eternal. Only the timeless must remain unchanged, but
everything in time can change with time. Yet if the change be
real and not imagined, illusions must give way to truth, and
not to other dreams that are but equally unreal. This is no
difference.
Reason will tell you that the only way to escape from
misery is to recognize it, AND GO THE OTHER WAY. Truth is the
same and misery the same, but they ARE different from each
other in every way, in every instance, and without exception.
To believe that one exception can exist is to confuse what is
the same with what is different. ONE illusion cherished and
defended against the truth makes ALL truth meaningless, and
ALL illusions real. Such is the power of belief. It cannot
compromise. And faith in innocence is faith in sin if the
belief excludes one living thing, and holds it out, apart from
its forgiveness.
Both reason and the ego will tell you this, but what they
MAKE of it is not the same. The ego will assure you now that
it is impossible for you to see no guilt in anyone. And if
this vision is the ONLY means by which escape from guilt can
be attained, then the belief in sin must be eternal. Yet
reason looks on this another way, for reason sees the SOURCE
of an idea as what will make it true or false. This must be
so, if the idea is LIKE its source. Therefore, says reason, if
escape from guilt was given to the Holy Spirit as His purpose,
and by One to Whom nothing He wills CAN be impossible, the
means for its attainment are MORE than possible. They MUST be
there, and you must HAVE them.
This is a crucial period in this course, for here the
separation of you and the ego must be made complete. For if
you HAVE the means to let the Holy Spirits purpose be
accomplished, they can be USED. And THROUGH their use will you
gain faith in them. Yet to the ego this must be impossible,
and no-one undertakes to do what holds no hope of ever being
done. YOU know what your Creator wills is possible, but what
you made believes it is not so. Now must you choose between
yourself and an ILLUSION of yourself. NOT both, but ONE. There
is no point in trying to avoid this one decision. It MUST be
made. Faith and belief can fall to either side, but reason
tells you that misery lies only on one side, and joy upon the
other.
Forsake not now each other. For you who are the same will
not decide alone nor differently. Either you give each other
life or death; either you are each others Saviour or his
judge, offering him sanctuary or condemnation. This course
will be believed entirely or not at all. For it is wholly true
or wholly false, and cannot be but partially believed. And you
will either escape from misery entirely or not at all. Reason
will tell you that there is no middle ground where you can
pause uncertainly, waiting to choose between the joy of Heaven
and the misery of hell. Until you choose Heaven, you ARE in
hell and misery.
There is no part of Heaven you can take and weave into
illusions. Nor is there one illusion you can enter Heaven
with. A Saviour cannot be a judge, nor mercy condemnation. And
vision cannot damn, but only bless. Whose function is to save,
will save. HOW He will do it is beyond your understanding, but
WHEN must be your choice. For time you made, and time you CAN
command. You are no more a slave to time than to the world you
made.
Let us look closer at the whole illusion that what you made
has power to enslave its maker. This is the same belief that
caused the separation. It is the meaningless idea that
thoughts can leave the thinkers mind, be different from it,
and IN OPPOSITION to it. If this were true, thoughts would not
be the minds extensions, but its enemies. And here we see
again another form of the same fundamental illusion we have
seen many times before. Only if it were possible the Son of
God could leave his Fathers Mind, make himself different, and
oppose His Will, would it be possible that the self he made,
and all it made, should be his master.
Behold the great projection, but look on it with the
decision that it must be healed, and not with fear. Nothing
you made has any power over you unless you still would be
apart from your Creator, and with a will opposed to His. For
only if you would believe His Son could be His enemy does it
seem possible that what YOU made is yours. You would condemn
His joy to misery, and make Him different. And all the misery
you made has been your own. Are you not GLAD to learn it is
not true? Is it not welcome news to hear not one of the
illusions that you made replaced the truth?
Only YOUR thoughts have been impossible. Salvation CANNOT
be. It IS impossible to look upon your Saviour as your enemy,
and recognize him. Yet it IS possible to recognize him for
what he is, if God would have it so. What God has given to
your holy relationship is THERE. For what He gave the Holy
Spirit to give to you HE GAVE. Would you not look upon the
Saviour that has been given you? And would you not exchange,
in gratitude, the function of an executioner you gave him for
the one he has in truth? Receive of him what God has given him
for you, not what you tried to give yourself.
Beyond the bodies that you interposed between you, and
shining in the golden light which reaches it from the bright,
endless circle that extends forever, is your holy
relationship, beloved of God Himself. How still it rests, in
time and yet beyond, immortal yet on earth. How great the
power that lies in it. Time waits upon its will, and earth
will be as it would have it be. Here is no separate will, nor
the desire that ANYTHING be separate. Its will has no
exceptions, and what it wills is true. Every illusion brought
to its forgiveness is gently overlooked and disappears. For at
its center Christ has been reborn, to light His home with
vision that overlooks the world. Would you not have this holy
home be yours as well? No misery is here, but only joy.
All you need do to dwell in quiet here with Christ is share
His vision. Quickly and gladly is His vision given to anyone
who is but willing to see his brother sinless. And no-one can
remain beyond this willingness, if you would be released
entirely from all effects of sin. Would you have partial
forgiveness for yourself? Can you reach Heaven while a single
sin still tempts you to remain in misery? Heaven is the home
of perfect purity, and God created it for YOU. Look on your
holy brother, sinless as yourself, and let him lead you there.
Reason and the Holy Relationship
The introduction of reason into the egos thought system is
the beginning of its undoing. For reason and the ego are
contradictory. Nor is it possible for them to co-exist in your
awareness. And reasons goal is to make plain, and therefore
obvious. You can SEE reason. This is not a play on words, for
here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is
sense, quite literally. If it is not the bodys sight, it MUST
be understood. For it is PLAIN, and what is obvious is not
ambiguous. It CAN be understood. And here do reason and the
ego separate, to go their different ways.
The egos whole continuance depends on its belief you
cannot learn this course. Share this belief, and reason will
be unable to see your errors and make way for their
correction. For reason sees THROUGH errors, telling you what
you thought was real is not. Reason can see the difference
between sin and mistakes because it WANTS correction.
Therefore, it tells you what you thought was uncorrectable CAN
be corrected, and thus it must have been an error. The egos
opposition to correction leads to its fixed belief in sin, and
disregard of errors. It looks on NOTHING that can be
corrected. Thus does the ego damn, and reason save.
Reason is not salvation in itself, but it makes way for
peace, and brings you to a state of mind in which salvation
can be given you. Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate,
locked and without a key, across the road to peace. No-one who
looks on it without the help of reason would try to pass it.
The bodys eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would
be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet reason sees through it
easily BECAUSE it is an error. The form it takes cannot
conceal its emptiness from reasons eyes.
ONLY the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it does
not recognize, and does not know if it is there or not.
Everything which the bodys eyes can see is a mistake, an
error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole,
without the meaning that the whole would give. And yet
mistakes, regardless of their form, can be corrected. Sin is
but error in a special form the ego venerates. It would
preserve all errors, and make them sins. For here is its own
stability, its heavy anchor in the shifting world it made; the
rock on which its church is built, and where its worshippers
are bound to bodies, and believe the bodys freedom is their
own.
Reason will tell you that the form of error is not what
makes it a mistake. If what the form CONCEALS is a mistake,
the form cannot prevent correction. The bodys eyes see ONLY
form. They cannot see beyond what they were MADE to see. And
they were made to look on error, and not see past it. Theirs
is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only
illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and
stopping at the outside form of nothing. To this distorted
form of vision, the outside of everything, the wall that
stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. Yet how can
sight which stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall,
see truly? It is held back by form, having been made to
guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived.
These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see. For the idea
they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that
sees through them. What was its makers GOAL but not to see?
For this the bodys eyes are perfect means, but not for
SEEING. See how the bodys eyes rest on externals, and cannot
go beyond. Watch how they stop at nothingness, unable to go
beyond the form to meaning. Nothing so blinding as perception
of form. For sight of form means understanding has been
obscured.
Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they can
deceive. You can change form BECAUSE it is not true. It could
not be reality BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you
that if form is not reality, it must be an illusion, and is
not THERE to see. And if you see it you must be mistaken, for
you are seeing what can NOT be real as if it WERE. What cannot
see beyond what is not there MUST be distorted perception, and
must perceive illusions as the truth. Could it, then,
RECOGNIZE the truth?
Let not the FORM of his mistakes keep you from him whose
holiness is yours. Let not the vision of his holiness, the
sight of which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from
you by what the bodys eyes can see. Let your awareness of
your brother not be blocked by your perception of his sins,
and of his body. What is there in him that you would attack
except what you associate with his body, which YOU believe can
sin? Beyond his errors is HIS holiness and YOUR salvation. You
gave him not his holiness, but tried to see your sins in him
to save yourself. And yet, his holiness IS your forgiveness.
Can YOU be saved by making sinful the one whose holiness is
your salvation?
A holy relationship, however newly born, must value
holiness above all else. Unholy values will produce confusion,
and in AWARENESS. In an unholy relationship, each one is
valued because he seems to justify the others sin. He sees
within the other what impels him to sin against his will. And
thus he lays his sins upon the other, and is attracted to him
to PERPETUATE his sins. And so it must become impossible for
each to see himself as CAUSING sin by his desire to have sin
real. Yet reason sees a holy relationship as what it is; a
common state of mind, where both give errors gladly to
correction that both may happily be healed as one.
The Branching of the Road
When you come to the place where the branch in the road is
quite apparent, you cannot go ahead. You MUST go either one
way or the other. For now if you go straight ahead, the way
you went before you reached the branch, you will go NOWHERE.
The whole purpose of coming this far was to decide which
branch you will take NOW. The way you came no longer matters.
It can no longer serve. No-one who reaches this far CAN make
the wrong decision, but he CAN delay. And there is no part of
the journey that seems more hopeless and futile than standing
where the road branches, and not deciding on which way to go.
It is but the first few steps along the right way that seem
hard, for you HAVE chosen, although you still may think you
can go back and make the other choice. This is not so. A
choice made with the power of Heaven to uphold it cannot BE
undone. Your way IS decided. There will be nothing you will
not be told, if you acknowledge this.
And so you stand, here in this holy place, before the veil
of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ. LET it
be lifted! Raise it together, for it is but a veil that stands
between you. Either alone will see it as a solid block, nor
realize how thin the drapery that separates you now. Yet it is
almost over in your awareness, and peace has reached you even
here, before the veil. Think what will happen after! The love
of Christ will light your faces, and shine from them into a
darkened world that NEEDS the light. And from this holy place
He will return with you, not leaving it nor you. You will
become His messengers, returning Him unto Himself.
Think of the loveliness that you will see, who walk with
Him! And think how beautiful will each of you look to the
other! How happy you will be to be together, after such a long
and lonely journey where you walked alone. The gates of
Heaven, open now for you, will you now open to the sorrowful.
And none who looks upon the Christ in you but will rejoice.
How beautiful the sight you saw beyond the veil, which you
will bring to light the tired eyes of those as weary now as
once you were. How thankful will they be to see you come among
them, offering Christs forgiveness to dispel their faith in
sin.
Every mistake you make the other will gently have corrected
for you, for in his sight your loveliness is his salvation,
which he would protect from harm. And each will be the others
strong protector from everything that seems to rise between
you. So shall you walk the world with me, whose message has
not yet been given to everyone. For you are here to let it be
RECEIVED. Gods offer still is open, yet it waits acceptance.
From you who have accepted it is it received. Into your joined
hands is it safely given, for you who share it have become its
willing guardians and protectors.
To all who share the Love of God the grace is given to be
the givers of what they have received. And so they learn that
it is theirs forever. All barriers disappear before their
coming, as every obstacle was finally surmounted which seemed
to rise and block their way before. This veil you lift
together opens the way to truth to more than you. Those who
would let illusions be lifted from their minds are this
worlds Saviours, walking the world with their Redeemer, and
carrying His message of hope and freedom and release from
suffering to everyone who needs a miracle to save him.
How easy is it to offer this miracle to everyone! No-one
who has received it for himself could find it difficult. For
by receiving it, he learned it was not given him alone. Such
is the function of a holy relationship; to receive together,
and give as you received. Standing before the veil, it still
seems difficult. But hold out your joined hands and touch this
heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your
fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And
only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self you
share.
Weakness and Defensiveness
How does one overcome illusions? Surely not by force or
anger, nor by opposing them in any way. Merely by letting
reason tell you that they CONTRADICT reality. They go against
what must be true. The opposition comes from them, and not
reality. Reality opposes nothing. What merely IS needs no
defense, and offers none. Only illusions need defense because
of weakness. And how can it be difficult to walk the way of
truth, when only weakness interferes? YOU are the strong ones
in this seeming conflict. And you need no defense. Everything
that needs defense you do not want, for anything that needs
defense will WEAKEN you.
Consider what the ego wants defenses FOR. Always to justify
what goes against the truth, flies in the face of reason, and
makes no sense. Can this BE justified? What can this be except
an invitation to insanity, to save you from the truth? And
what would you be saved from but what you fear? Belief in sin
needs great defense, and at enormous cost. All that the Holy
Spirit offers must be defended against, and sacrificed. For
sin is carved into a block out of your peace, and laid between
you and its return. Yet how can peace be so fragmented? It is
still whole, and nothing has been taken from it.
See how the means and the material of evil dreams are
nothing. In truth you stand together, with nothing in between.
God holds your hands, and what can separate whom He has joined
as one with Him? It is your Father Whom you would defend
against. Yet it remains impossible to keep love out. God rests
with you in quiet, undefended and wholly undefending, for in
this quiet state alone is strength and power. Here can no
weakness enter, for here is no attack, and therefore no
illusions. Love rests in certainty. Only uncertainty can be
defensive. And all uncertainty is doubt about YOURSELF.
How weak is fear; how little and how meaningless! How
insignificant before the quiet strength of those whom love has
joined! This is your enemy, a frightened mouse that would
attack the universe. How likely is it that it will succeed?
Can it be difficult to disregard its feeble squeaks that tell
of its omnipotence, and would drown out the hymn of praise to
its Creator which every heart throughout the universe forever
sings as one? Which is the stronger? Is it this tiny mouse or
everything that God created? You are not joined together by
this mouse, but by the Will of God. And can a mouse betray
whom God has joined?
If you but recognized how little stands between you and
your awareness of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions
it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity and
firmness of foundation. Yes, to the bodys eyes it looks like
an enormous solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet within
you there is a Force which no illusions can resist. This body
only seems to be immovable; this Force is irresistible in
truth. What, then, must happen when they come together? Can
the illusion of immovability be long defended from what is
quietly past (sic) through and gone beyond?
Forget not, when you feel the need arise to be defensive
about anything, you have identified yourself with an illusion.
And therefore feel that you are weak because you are alone.
This is the cost of ALL illusions. Not one but rests on the
belief that you are separate. Not one that does not seem to
stand, heavy and solid and immovable, between you and your
brother. And not one that truth cannot pass over lightly, and
so easily that you must be convinced, in spite of what you
thought it was, that it is nothing. If you forgive each other,
this MUST happen. For it is your unwillingness to overlook
what seems to stand between you that makes it look
impenetrable, and defends the illusion of its immovability.
Freedom and the Holy Spirit
Do you want freedom of the body or of the mind? For both
you cannot have. Which do you value? Which is your goal? For
one you see as means; the other, end. And one must serve the
other and lead to its predominance, increasing its importance
by diminishing its own. Means serve the end, and as the end is
reached the value of the means decreases, eclipsed entirely
when they are recognized as functionless. No-one but yearns
for freedom, and tries to find it. Yet he will seek for it
where he believes it is, and can be found. He will believe it
possible of mind or body, and he will make the other serve his
choice as means to find it.
Where freedom of the body has been chosen, the mind is used
as means whose value lies in its ability to contrive ways to
achieve the bodys freedom. Yet freedom of the body has no
meaning, and so the mind is dedicated to serve illusions. This
is a situation so contradictory and so impossible that anyone
who chooses this has no idea of what IS valuable. Yet even in
this confusion, so profound it cannot be described, the Holy
Spirit waits in gentle patience, as certain of the outcome as
He is sure of His Creators Love. He knows this mad decision
was made by one as dear to His Creator as love is to itself.
Be not disturbed at all to think how He can change the role
of means and end so easily in what God loves, and would have
free forever. But be you rather grateful that YOU can be the
means to serve His end. This is the only service which leads
to freedom. To serve this end, the body must be perceived as
sinless, because the GOAL is sinlessness. The lack of
contradiction makes the soft transition from means to end as
easy as is the shift from hate to gratitude before forgiving
eyes. You WILL be sanctified by one another, using your bodies
only to serve the sinless. And it WILL be impossible for you
to hate what serves what you would heal.
This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in
strength, and blazing with a light far brighter than the sun
which lights the sky you see, is chosen of your Father as a
means for His Own plan. Be thankful that it serves yours not
at all. Nothing entrusted to it can be misused, and nothing
given it but will be used. This holy relationship has the
power to heal all pain, regardless of its form. Neither of you
alone can serve at all. Only in your joint will does healing
lie. For here YOUR healing is, and here will you accept
Atonement. And in your healing is the Sonship healed BECAUSE
your wills are joined.
Before a holy relationship there is no sin. The form of
error is no longer seen, and reason, joined with love, looks
quietly on all confusion, observing merely, This was a
mistake. And then the same Atonement you accepted in your
relationship corrects the error, and lays a part of Heaven in
its place. How blessed are you who let this gift be given!
Each part of Heaven that you bring is given YOU. And every
empty place in Heaven that you fill again with the Eternal
Light you bring shines now on YOU. The means of sinlessness
can know no fear because they carry only love with them.
Children of peace, the light HAS come to you. The light you
bring you do not recognize, and yet you will remember. Who can
deny himself the vision that he brings to others? And who
would fail to recognize a gift he let be laid in Heaven
through himself? The gentle service that you give the Holy
Spirit is service to yourself. You who are now His means must
love all that He loves. And what you bring is your
rememberance of everything that is eternal. No trace of
anything in time can long remain in minds that serve the
timeless. And no illusion can disturb the peace of a
relationship which has become the means of peace.
When you have looked upon each other with complete
forgiveness, from which no error is excluded and nothing kept
hidden, what mistake can there be anywhere you cannot
overlook? What form of suffering could block your sight,
preventing you from seeing past it? And what illusion could
there be you will not recognize as a mistake; a shadow through
which you walk completely undismayed? God would let nothing
interfere with those whose wills are His, and serve it
willingly. And COULD rememberance of what they are be long
delayed?
You will see your value through each others eyes, and each
one is released as he beholds his Saviour in place of the
attacker who he thought was there. Through this releasing is
the world released. This is your part in bringing peace. For
you have asked what is your function here, and have been
answered. Seek not to change it, nor to substitute another
goal. Accept this one and serve it willingly, for what the
Holy Spirit does with the gifts you give each other, to whom
He offers them, and where and when, is up to Him. He will
bestow them where they are received and welcomed. He will use
every one of them for peace. Nor will one little smile or
willingness to overlook the tiniest mistake be lost to anyone.
What can it be but universal blessing to look on what your
Father loves with charity? Extension of forgiveness is the
Holy Spirits function. Leave this to Him. Let your concern be
only that you give to Him that which can BE extended. Save no
dark secrets that He cannot use, but offer Him the tiny gifts
He can extend forever. He will take each one and make of it a
potent force for peace. He will withhold no blessing from it,
or limit it in any way. He will join to it all the power that
God has given Him, to make each little gift of love a source
of healing for everyone. Each little gift you offer to the
other lights up the world. Be not concerned with darkness;
look away from it, and toward each other. And let the darkness
be dispelled by Him Who knows the light, and lays it gently in
each quiet smile of faith and confidence with which you bless
each other.
On your learning depends the welfare of the world. And it
is only arrogance that would deny the power of your will.
Think you the Will of God is powerless? Is this humility? You
do not see what this belief has done. You see yourself as
vulnerable, frail and easily destroyed, and at the mercy of
countless attackers more powerful than you. Let us look
straight at how this error came about, for here lies buried
the heavy anchor that seems to keep the fear of God in place,
unmovable and solid as a rock. While this remains, so will it
seem to be.
Who can attack the Son of God and NOT attack his Father?
How can Gods Son be weak and frail and easily destroyed
UNLESS his Father is? You do not see that every sin and every
condemnation which you perceive and justify IS an attack upon
your Father. And that is why it has not happened, nor COULD be
real. You do not see that this is your attempt because you
think the Father and the Son are separate. And you MUST think
that they are separate, because of fear. For it seems safer to
attack another or yourself than to attack the great Creator of
the universe, Whose power you KNOW.
If you were one with God and RECOGNIZED this oneness, you
would know His power is YOURS. But you will not remember this
while you believe attack of any kind means anything. It is
unjustified in any form BECAUSE it has no meaning. The only
way it could be justified is if each one of you were separate
from the other, and all were separate from your Creator. For
only then would it be possible to attack a part of the
creation without the whole, the Son without the Father; and to
attack another without yourself, or hurt yourself without the
other feeling pain. And this belief you WANT. Yet wherein lies
its value except in the desire to attack in safety? Attack is
neither safe nor dangerous. It is IMPOSSIBLE. And this is so
BECAUSE the universe is one. You would not choose attack on
its reality if it were not essential to attack to see it
separated from its maker. And thus it seems as if love could
attack, and become fearful.
Only the DIFFERENT can attack. So you conclude BECAUSE you
can attack you MUST be different. Yet does the Holy Spirit
explain this differently. BECAUSE you are not different, you
CANNOT attack. Either position is a logical conclusion, if
only the different can attack. Either could be maintained, but
never both. The only question to be answered to decide which
must be true is whether you ARE different. From the position
of what you understand, you seem to be, and therefore can
attack. Of the alternatives, this seems more natural and more
in line with your experience. And therefore it is necessary
that you have other experiences, more in line with truth, to
teach you what IS natural and true.
This is the function of your holy relationship. For what
one thinks the other will experience with him. What can this
mean EXCEPT your minds are one? Look not with fear upon this
happy fact, and think not that it lays a heavy burden on you.
For when you have accepted it with gladness, you will realize
that your relationship is a reflection of the union of the
Creator and His Son. From loving minds there IS no separation.
And every thought in one brings gladness to the other BECAUSE
they are the same. Joy is unlimited because each shining
thought of love extends its being, and creates more of itself.
There is no difference anywhere in it, for every thought is
like itself.
The light that joins you shines throughout the universe,
and because it joins you, so it makes you one with your
Creator. And in Him is all creation joined. Would you regret
you cannot fear alone, when your relationship can also teach
the power of love is there, which makes all fear impossible?
Do not attempt to keep a little of the ego with this gift. For
it was given you to be USED, and not obscured. What teaches
you you cannot separate DENIES the ego. Let truth decide if
you be different or the same, and teach you which IS true.
CHAPTER 23
THE WAR AGAINST YOURSELF
Do you not see the opposite of frailty and weakness is
sinlessness? Innocence is strength, and nothing else is
strong. The sinless cannot fear, for sin of any kind is
weakness. The show of strength attack would use to cover
frailty conceals it not, for how can the unreal be hidden? No-
one is strong who has an enemy, and no-one can attack unless
he thinks he has. Belief in enemies is therefore the belief in
weakness, and what is weak is NOT the Will of God. Being
opposed to It, it is Its enemy. And God is feared as an
OPPOSING will.
How strange indeed becomes this war against yourself! You
will believe that everything you use for sin can hurt you, and
become your enemy. And you will fight against it, and try to
weaken it because of this; and you will think that you
succeeded, and attack again. It is as certain you will fear
what you attack as it is sure that you will love what you
perceive as sinless. He walks in peace who travels sinlessly
along the way love shows him. For love walks with him there,
protecting him from fear. And he will see only the sinless,
who can not attack.
Walk you in glory, with your head held high, and fear no
evil. The innocent are safe because they share their
innocence. Nothing they see is harmful, for their awareness of
the truth releases everything from the illusion of
harmfulness. And what seemed harmful now stands shining in
their innocence, released from sin and fear, and happily
returned to love. They share the strength of love BECAUSE they
looked on innocence. And every error disappeared because they
saw it not. Who looks for glory finds it where it IS. Where
could it be but in the innocent?
Let not the little interferers pull you to littleness.
There CAN be no attraction of guilt in innocence. Think what a
happy world you walk, with truth beside you! Do not give up
this world of freedom for a little sigh of seeming sin, nor
for a tiny stirring of guilts attraction. Would you, for all
these meaningless distractions, lay Heaven aside? Your destiny
and purpose are far beyond them, in the clean place where
littleness does not exist. Your purpose is at variance with
littleness of any kind. And so it is at variance with sin.
Let us not let littleness lead Gods Son into temptation.
His glory is BEYOND it, measureless and timeless as eternity.
Do not let time intrude upon your sight of him. Leave him not
frightened and alone in his temptation, but help him rise
above it and perceive the light of which he is a part. Your
innocence will light the way to his, and so is yours
protected, and KEPT in your awareness. For who can know his
glory, and perceive the little and the weak about him? Who can
walk trembling in a fearful world, and realize that Heavens
glory shines on him?
Nothing around you but is part of you. Look on it lovingly,
and see the light of Heaven in it. So will you come to
understand all that is given you. In kind forgiveness will the
world sparkle and shine, and everything you once thought
sinful now will be re-interpreted as part of Heaven. How
beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through
a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence
bestows upon it! What can you value more than this? For here
is your salvation and your freedom. And it must be complete if
YOU would recognize it.
The Irreconcilable Beliefs
The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It cannot come
where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself
remembers not eternal gentleness. The means of war are not the
means of peace, and what the warlike would remember is not
love. War is impossible unless belief in victory is cherished.
Conflict within you must imply that you believe the ego has
the power to BE victorious. Why else would you identify with
it? Surely you realize the ego is at war with God. Certain it
is it has no enemy. Yet just as certain is its fixed belief it
HAS an enemy that it must overcome and WILL succeed.
Do you not realize a war against yourself would BE a war on
God? Is victory conceivable? And if it were, is this a victory
that you would WANT? The death of God, if it were possible,
would be YOUR death. Is this a VICTORY? The ego ALWAYS marches
to defeat, because it thinks that triumph over you is
possible. And God thinks otherwise. This is no war; only the
mad belief the Will of God can be attacked and overthrown. You
may IDENTIFY with this belief, but never will it be more than
madness. And fear will reign in madness, and will seem to have
replaced love there. This is the conflicts PURPOSE. And to
those who think that it is possible, the means seem real.
Be certain that it is impossible God and the ego, or
yourself and it, will EVER meet. You SEEM to meet, and make
your strange alliances on grounds that have no meaning. For
your beliefs converge upon the body, the egos chosen home,
which you believe is YOURS. You meet at a mistake; an error in
your self-appraisal. The ego joins with an illusion of
yourself you SHARE with it. And yet illusions cannot join.
They are the same, and they are nothing. Their joining lies in
nothingness; two are as meaningless as one, or as a thousand.
The ego joins with nothing, BEING nothing. The victory it
seeks is meaningless as is itself.
Brothers, the war against yourself is almost over. The
journeys end is at the place of peace. Would you not now
accept the peace offered you here? This enemy you fought as
an intruder on your peace is here transformed, before your
sight, into the giver of your peace. Your enemy was God
Himself, to Whom all conflict, triumph and attack of any kind
are all unknown. He loves you perfectly, completely and
eternally. The Son of God at war with his Creator is a
condition as ridiculous as nature roaring at the wind in
anger, and proclaiming that it is part of itself no more.
Could nature possibly establish this, and make it true? Nor
IS it up to you to say what shall be part of you, and what is
kept apart. The war against yourself was undertaken to teach
the Son of God that he is not himself, and not his Fathers
Son. For this, the memory of his Father MUST be forgotten. It
IS forgotten in the bodys life, and if you think you are a
body, you will believe you HAVE forgotten it. Yet truth can
never be forgotten by ITSELF, and you have NOT forgotten what
you are. Only a strange illusion of yourself, a wish to
triumph over what you are, remembers not.
The war against yourself is but the battle of two
illusions, struggling to make them different from each other,
in the belief the one which conquers will be true. There IS no
conflict between them and the TRUTH. Nor ARE they different
from each other. Both are not true. And so it matters not what
form they take. What made them is insane, and they remain part
of what made them. Madness holds out no menace to reality, and
has no influence upon it. Illusions CANNOT triumph over truth,
nor can they threaten it in any way. And the reality which
they deny is not a part of them.
What YOU remember IS a part of you. For you MUST be as God
created you. Truth does not fight against illusions, nor do
illusions fight against the truth. Illusions battle only with
themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment. But truth is
indivisible, and far beyond their little reach. You will
remember what you know when you have learned you cannot BE in
conflict. One illusion about yourself can battle with another,
yet the war of two illusions is a state where NOTHING happens.
There is no victor and there is no victory. And truth stands
radiant, apart from conflict, untouched and quiet in the peace
of God.
Conflict must be between TWO forces. It cannot exist
between one power and nothingness. There is nothing you could
attack that is not part of you. And BY attacking it, you make
two illusions of yourself, in conflict with each other. And
this occurs whenever you look on anything that God created
with anything but love. Conflict is fearful, for it is the
BIRTH of fear. Yet what is born of nothing cannot win reality
through battle. Why would you fill your world with conflicts
with yourself? Let all this madness be undone for you, and
turn in peace to the rememberance of God, still shining in
your quiet mind.
See how the conflict of illusions disappears when it is
brought to truth! For it seems real only as long as it is seen
as war between conflicting TRUTHS, the conqueror to be the
truer, the more real, and vanquisher of the illusion that was
less real, made an illusion by defeat. Thus, conflict is the
choice BETWEEN illusions, one to be crowned as real, the other
vanquished and despised. Here will the Father NEVER be
remembered. Yet no illusion can invade His home, and drive Him
out of what He loves forever. And what He loves must be
forever quiet and at peace BECAUSE it is His home. And you who
are beloved of Him are no illusions, being as true and holy as
Himself.
The stillness of your certainty of Him and of yourself is
home to both of you, who dwell as one and not apart. Open the
door of His most holy home, and let forgiveness sweep away all
trace of the belief in sin that keeps God homeless and His Son
with Him. You are not strangers in the house of God. Welcome
your brother to the home where God has set him in serenity and
peace, and dwells with him. Illusions have no place where love
abides, protecting you from everything that is not true. You
dwell in peace as limitless as its Creator, and everything is
given those who would remember Him. Over His home the Holy
Spirit watches, sure that its peace can never be disturbed.
How can the resting-place of God turn on itself, and seek
to overcome the One Who dwells there? And think what happens
when the house of God perceives itself divided. The altar
disappears, the light grows dim, the temple of the Holy One
becomes a house of sin. And nothing is remembered except
illusions. Illusions can conflict because their forms are
different. And they do battle only to establish which form is
true.
Illusion meets illusion; truth, itself. The meeting of
illusions leads to war. Peace, looking on itself, extends
itself. War is the condition in which fear is born, and grows,
and seeks to dominate. Peace is the state where love abides,
and seeks to share itself. Conflict and peace are opposites.
Where one abides the other cannot be; where either goes the
other disappears. So is the memory of God obscured in minds
that have become illusionss battleground. Yet far beyond this
senseless war it shines, ready to be remembered when you side
with peace.
The Laws of Chaos
The laws of chaos can be brought to light, though never
understood. Chaotic laws are hardly meaningful, and therefore
out of reasons sphere. Yet they appear to constitute an
obstacle to reason and to truth. Let us, then, look upon them
calmly, that we may look beyond them, understanding what they
are, not what they would maintain. It is essential it be
understood what they are for, because it is their purpose to
make meaningless, and to attack the truth. Here are the laws
that rule the world you made. And yet they govern nothing, and
need not be broken; merely looked upon and gone beyond.
The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for
everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that
each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which
set him off from others. This principle evolves from the
belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are more
valuable, and therefore true. Each one establishes this for
himself, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another
values. And this is justified because the values differ, and
those who hold them seem to be unlike, and therefore enemies.
Think how this seems to interfere with the first principle
of miracles. For this establishes degrees of truth among
illusions, making it appear that some of them are harder to
overcome than others. If it were realized that they are all
the same and equally untrue, it would be easy, then, to
understand that miracles apply to ALL of them. Errors of any
kind can be corrected BECAUSE they are untrue. When brought to
truth instead of to EACH OTHER, they merely disappear. No part
of nothing can be more resistant to the truth than can
another.
The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper of
sin, is that each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack
and death. This principle, closely related to the first, is
the demand that errors call for punishment, and not
correction. For the destruction of the one who makes the error
places him beyond correction, and beyond forgiveness. What he
has done is thus interpreted as an irrevocable sentence upon
himself, which God Himself is powerless to overcome. Sin
cannot be remitted, being the belief the Son of God can make
mistakes for which his own destruction becomes inevitable.
Think what this seems to do to the relationship between the
Father and the Son. Now it appears that they can never be one
again. For ONE must always be condemned, and by the OTHER. Now
are they different, and ENEMIES. And their relationship is one
of opposition, just as the separate aspects of the Son meet
only to conflict, but not to join. One becomes weak, the other
strong by his defeat. And fear of God and of each other now
appears as sensible, made real by what the Son of God has done
both to himself and his Creator. The arrogance on which the
laws of chaos stand could not be more apparent than emerges
here.
Here is a principle which would define what the Creator of
reality must be; what He must think and what He must believe;
and how He must respond, believing it. It is not seen as even
necessary that He be asked about the truth of what has been
established for His belief. His Son can tell Him this, and He
has but the choice whether to take his word for it or be
mistaken. This leads directly to the third preposterous belief
that seems to make chaos eternal. For if God cannot BE
mistaken, then He MUST accept his Sons belief in what he is,
and hate him for it.
See how the fear of God is reinforced by this third
principle. Now it becomes impossible to turn to Him for help
in misery. For now He has become the enemy Who CAUSED it,
and to Whom appeal is useless. Nor can salvation lie within
the Son, whose every aspect seems to be at war with Him, and
justified in its attack. And now is conflict made inevitable,
and beyond the help of God. And now salvation must remain
impossible, because the Saviour has become the enemy.
There can be no release and no escape. Atonement thus
becomes a myth, and vengeance, not forgiveness, is the Will of
God. From where all this begins, there is no sight of help
that can succeed. Only destruction can BE the outcome. And God
Himself seems to be siding with it, to overcome His Son. Think
not the ego will enable you to find escape from what it WANTS.
That is the function of this course, which does not value what
the ego cherishes.
The ego values only what it TAKES. This leads to the fourth
law of chaos, which, if the others are accepted, must be true.
This seeming law is the belief you HAVE what you have taken.
By this, anothers loss becomes your gain, and thus it fails
to recognize that you can never take away save from YOURSELF.
Yet all the other laws must lead to this. For enemies do not
give willingly to one another, nor would they seek to share
the things they value. And what your enemies would keep from
you must be worth having, just because they keep it hidden
from your sight.
All of the mechanisms of madness are seen emerging here:
The enemy, made strong by keeping hidden the valuable
inheritance which should be yours; your justified position,
and attack for what has been withheld; and the inevitable loss
the enemy must suffer, to save yourself. Thus do the guilty
ones protest their innocence. Were they not forced into
this foul attack by the unscrupulous behaviour of the enemy,
they would respond with only kindness. But in a savage world
the kind cannot survive, so they must take or else be taken
from.
And now there is a vague unanswered question, not yet
explained. What is this precious thing, this priceless
pearl, this hidden secret treasure, to be wrested in righteous
wrath from this most treacherous and cunning enemy? It must be
what you want but never found. And now you understand the
reason why you found it not. For it was taken from you by this
enemy, and hidden where you would not think to look. He hid it
in his body, making it the cover for his guilt, the hiding
place for what belongs to you. Now must his body be destroyed
and sacrificed, that you may HAVE that which belongs to you.
His treachery demands his death, that YOU may live. And you
attack only in self-defense.
But what is it you want that NEEDS his death? Can you be
sure your murderous attack is justified unless you know what
it is FOR? And here a final principle of chaos comes to the
rescue. It holds there is a SUBSTITUTE for love. This is the
magic that will cure all of your pain; the missing factor
in your madness that makes it sane. This is the reason why
you must attack. Here is what makes your vengeance justified.
Behold, unveiled, the egos secret gift, torn from your
brothers body, hidden there in malice and in hatred for the
one to whom the gift belongs. He would deprive you of the
secret ingredient which would give meaning to your life. The
substitute for love, born of your enmity to one another, must
be salvation. It has no substitute, and there is only one. And
all your relationships have but the purpose of seizing it, and
making it your own.
Never is your possession made complete. And never will your
brother cease his attack on you for what you stole. Nor will
God end His vengeance upon both, for in His madness He must
have this substitute for love, and kill you both. You who
believe you walk in sanity, with feet on solid ground, and
through a world where meaning can be found, consider this:
These ARE the principles which make the ground beneath your
feet seem solid. And it IS here you look for meaning. These
are the laws you made for your salvation. They hold in place
the substitute for Heaven which you prefer. This is their
purpose; they were made for this. There is no point in asking
what they mean. That is apparent. The means of madness must be
insane. Are you as certain that you realize the GOAL is
madness?
No-one WANTS madness, nor does anyone cling to his madness
if he sees that this is what it IS. What protects madness is
the belief that it is TRUE. It is the function of insanity to
take the PLACE of truth. It must be seen as truth to be
believed. And if it is the truth, then must its opposite,
which was the truth before, be madness now. Such a reversal,
completely turned around, with madness sanity, illusions true,
attack a kindness, hatred love and murder benediction, is the
goal the laws of chaos serve. These are the means by which the
laws of God appear to be reversed. Here do the laws of sin
appear to hold love captive, and let sin go free.
These do not SEEM to be the goals of chaos, for by the
great reversal, they appear to be the laws of ORDER. How could
it not be so? Chaos is lawlessness, and HAS no laws. To be
believed, its seeming laws must be perceived as real. Their
goal of madness must be seen as sanity. And fear, with ashen
lips and sightless eyes, blinded and terrible to look upon, is
lifted to the throne of love, its dying conqueror, its
substitute, the saviour from salvation. How lovely do the laws
of fear make death appear! Give thanks unto the hero on loves
throne, who saved the Son of God for fear and death!
And yet, how can it be that laws like these can be
believed? There is a strange device that makes it possible.
Nor is it unfamiliar; we have seen how it appears to function
many times before. In truth it does NOT function, yet in
dreams, where only shadows play the major roles, it seems most
powerful. No law of chaos could compel belief but for the
emphasis on FORM and disregard of CONTENT. No-one who thinks
that one of them is true SEES what it says. Some forms it
takes seem to have meaning, and that is all.
How can some forms of murder NOT mean death? Can an attack
in ANY form be love? What FORM of condemnation is a blessing?
Who makes his Saviour powerless and FINDS salvation? Let not
the form of the attack on him deceive you. You CANNOT seek to
harm him and be saved. Who can find safety from attack by
turning on himself? How can it matter WHAT the form this
madness takes? It is a judgment that defeats itself,
condemning what it says it wants to save. Be not deceived when
madness takes a form you think is lovely. What is intent on
your destruction is NOT your friend.
You would maintain, and think it true, that you do not
believe these senseless laws, nor act upon them. And when you
look at what they SAY, they cannot BE believed. Brothers, you
DO believe them. For how else could you perceive the form they
take, with content such as this? Can ANY form of this be
tenable? Yet you believe them FOR the form they take, and do
not RECOGNIZE the content. It never changes. Can you paint
rosy lips upon a skeleton, dress it in loveliness, pet it and
pamper it, and make it LIVE? And can you be content with an
ILLUSION that you are living?
There IS not life outside of Heaven. Where God created
life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, life
is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like
death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in
their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is
impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside
of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless,
impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an
eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their
content is NEVER true.
The laws of chaos govern all illusions. Their forms
conflict, making it seem quite possible to value some above
the others. Yet each one rests as surely on the belief the
laws of chaos are the laws of order as do the others. Each one
upholds these laws completely, offering a certain witness that
these laws are true. The seeming gentler forms of the attack
are no less certain in their witnessing, or their results.
Certain it is illusions will bring fear because of the beliefs
that they imply, not for their form. And lack of faith in
love, in ANY form, attests to chaos as reality.
From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos MUST follow. It
is because it follows that it seems to be a logical
conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to
chaos DO follow neatly from their starting point. Each is a
different form in the progression of truths reversal, leading
still deeper into terror, and away from truth. Think not one
step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is
easier. The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. And
where your thinking starts, there must it end.
Brothers, take not one step in the descent to hell. For
having taken one, you will not recognize the rest for what
they are. And they WILL follow. Attack in any form has placed
your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads from Heaven.
Yet any instant it is possible to have all this undone. How
can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven or the way
to hell? Quite easily. How do you feel? Is peace in your
awareness? Are you certain which way you go? And are you sure
the goal of Heaven CAN be reached? If not, you walk alone.
Ask, then, your Friend to join with you, and GIVE you
certainty of where you go.
Salvation Without Compromise
Is it not true you do not recognize some of the forms
attack can take? If it is true attack in any form will hurt
you, and will do so just as much as in another form which you
DO recognize, then it must follow that you do not always
recognize the source of pain. Attack in ANY form is equally
destructive. Its purpose does not change. Its sole intent is
murder, and what form of murder serves to cover the massive
guilt and frantic fear of punishment the murderer must feel?
He may deny he is a murderer, and justify his savagery with
smiles as he attacks. Yet he will suffer, and will look on his
intent in nightmares where the smiles are gone, and where the
purpose rises to meet his horrified awareness and pursue him
still. For no-one thinks of murder and escapes the guilt the
THOUGHT entails. If the intent is death, what matter the form
it takes?
Is death in any form, however lovely and charitable it may
seem to be, a blessing and a sign the Voice for God speaks
through you to your brother? The wrapping does not make the
gift you give. An empty box, however beautiful and gently
given, still contains nothing. And neither the receiver nor
the giver is long deceived. Withhold forgiveness from your
brother, and you attack him. You give him nothing, and receive
of him but what you gave.
Salvation is no compromise of any kind. To compromise is to
accept but part of what you want; to take a little, and give
up the rest. Salvation gives up nothing. It is complete for
everyone. Let the idea of compromise but enter, and the
awareness of salvations purpose is lost, because it is not
recognized. It is denied where compromise has been accepted
for compromise is the belief salvation is impossible. It would
maintain you can attack a little, love a little, and know the
DIFFERENCE. Thus it would teach a little of the same can still
be different, and yet the same remain intact, as one. Does
this make sense? Can it BE understood?
This course is easy just because it makes no compromise.
Yet it seems difficult to those who still believe that
compromise is possible. They do not see that, if it is,
salvation is ATTACK. Yet it is certain the belief that
salvation is impossible cannot uphold a quiet, calm assurance
it has come. Forgiveness cannot be withheld a little. Nor is
it possible to attack for this and love for that, and
understand forgiveness. Would you not WANT to recognize
assault upon your peace in any form, if only thus does it
become impossible that YOU lose sight of it? It can be kept
shining before your vision, forever clear and never out of
sight, if you defend it not.
Those who believe that peace can BE defended, and that
attack is justified on its behalf, cannot perceive it lies
within them. How could they know? Could they accept
forgiveness side by side with the belief that murder takes
some forms by which their peace is saved? Would they be
willing to accept the fact their savage purpose is directed
against themselves? No-one unites with enemies, nor is at one
with them in purpose. And no-one compromises with an enemy but
hates him still, for what he kept from him.
Mistake not truce for peace, nor compromise for the escape
from conflict. To be released from conflict means that it is
OVER. The door is open; you have LEFT the battleground. You
have not lingered there in cowering hope, because the guns are
still an instant, and the fear that haunts the place of death
is not apparent, that it will not return. There IS no safety
in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from
above, and not be touched. But from within it, you can find NO
safety. Not one tree left standing still will shelter you. Not
one illusion of protection stands against the faith in murder.
Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to
communicate and the unnatural intent to murder and to die.
Think you the FORM that murder takes can offer safety? Can
guilt be ABSENT from a battlefield?
The Fear of Life
The fear of God is fear of LIFE, and not of death. Yet He
remains the only place of safety. In Him is no attack, and no
illusion in any form stalks Heaven. Heaven is wholly true. No
difference enters, and what is all the same cannot conflict.
You are not asked to fight against your wish to murder. But
you ARE asked to realize the form it takes conceals the same
intent. And it is THIS you fear, and not the form. What is not
love is murder. What is not loving MUST be an attack. Every
illusion is an assault on truth, and every one does violence
to the idea of love because it seems to be of EQUAL truth.
What can be equal to the truth, yet different? Murder and
love are incompatible. Yet if they both are true, then must
they be the same, and indistinguishable from one another. So
will they be to those who see Gods Son a body. For it is not
the body that is like the Sons Creator. And what is lifeless
cannot BE the Son of Life. How can a body be extended to hold
the universe? Can it create, and BE what it creates? And can
it offer its creations all that it is, and never suffer loss?
God does not share His function with a body. He gave the
function to create unto His Son because it is His Own. It is
not sinful to believe the function of the Son is murder, but
it IS insanity. What is the same can HAVE no different
function. Creation is the means for Gods extension, and what
is His must be His Sons as well. Either the Father AND the
Son are murderers, or neither is. Life makes not death,
creating like itself.
The lovely light of your relationship is like the love of
God. It cannot yet assume the holy function God gave His Son,
for your forgiveness of one another is not complete as yet,
and so it cannot be extended to all creation. Each form of
murder and attack that still attracts you, and that you do not
recognize for what it is, limits the healing and the miracles
you have the power to extend to all. Yet does the Holy Spirit
understand how to increase your little gifts, and make them
mighty. Also He understands how your relationship is raised
above the battleground, in it no more. This is your part; to
realize that murder in ANY form is not your will. The
OVERLOOKING of the battleground is now your purpose.
Be lifted up, and from a higher place look down upon it.
From there will your perspective be quite different. Here in
the midst of it, it DOES seem real. Here you have CHOSEN to be
part of it. Here murder IS your choice. Yet from above, the
choice is miracles instead of murder. And the perspective
coming from this choice shows you the battle is not real, and
easily escaped. Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is
meaningless. And it is over when you realize that it never was
begun. How can a battle be perceived as nothingness when you
engage in it? How can the truth of miracles be recognized if
murder is your choice?
When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind
darkened and murderous, remember you CAN see the battle from
above. Even in forms you do not recognize, the signs you know.
There is a stab of pain, a twinge of guilt, and above all, a
loss of peace. This you know well. When it occurs, leave not
your place on high, but quickly choose a miracle INSTEAD of
murder. And God Himself and all the lights of Heaven will
gently lean to you, and hold you up. For you have chosen to
remain where He would have you, and NO illusion can attack the
peace of God together with His Son.
See no-one from the battleground, for there you look on him
from nowhere. You have no reference-point from where to look,
where meaning can be given what you see. For only bodies could
attack and murder, and if this is your purpose, then you must
be one with them. Only a purpose unifies, and those who share
a purpose have a mind as one. The body HAS no purpose, and
must be solitary. From below, it cannot be surmounted. From
above, the limits it exerts on those in battle still are gone,
and not perceived. The body stands between the Father and the
Heaven He created for His Son BECAUSE it has no purpose.
Think what is given those who share their Fathers purpose,
and who know that it is theirs! They want for nothing. Sorrow
of any kind is inconceivable. Only the light they love is in
awareness, and only love shines upon them forever. It is their
past, their present and their future always the same,
eternally complete and wholly shared. They know it is
impossible their happiness could ever suffer change of any
kind. Perhaps you think the battleground can offer something
that you can win. Can it be anything that offers you a perfect
calmness, and a sense of love so deep and quiet that no touch
of doubt can ever mar your certainty? And that will last
forever?
Those with the strength of God in their awareness could
never think of battle. What could they gain but LOSS of their
perfection? For everything fought for on the battleground is
of the body; something it seems to offer or to own. No-one who
knows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor
could he value the bodys offerings. The senselessness of
conquest is quite apparent from the quiet sphere above the
battleground. What can conflict with everything? And what is
there that offers less yet could be wanted more? Who with the
Love of God upholding him could find the choice of miracles or
murder hard to make?
CHAPTER 24
SPECIALNESS AND SEPARATION
Forget not that the motivation for this course is the
attainment and the keeping of the state of peace. Given this
state the mind is quiet, and the condition in which God is
remembered is attained. It is not necessary to tell Him what
to do. He will not fail. Where He can enter, there He is
already. And can it be He cannot enter where He wills to be?
Peace will be yours BECAUSE it is His Will. Can you believe a
shadow can hold back the Will that holds the universe secure?
God does not wait upon illusions to let Him be Himself. No
more His Son. They ARE. And what illusion that idly seems to
drift between them has the power to defeat what is Their Will?
To learn this course requires willingness to question every
value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure
but it will jeopardize your learning. No belief is neutral.
Every one has the power to dictate each decision you make. For
a decision is a conclusion based on everything that you
believe. It is the OUTCOME of belief, and follows it as surely
as does suffering follow guilt and freedom sinlessness. There
IS no substitute for peace. What God creates HAS no
alternative. The truth arises from what He KNOWS. And your
decisions come from your beliefs as certainly as all creation
rose in His Mind BECAUSE of what He knows.
Specialness as a Substitute for Love
Love is extension. To withhold the smallest gift is not to
know loves purpose. Love offers everything forever. Hold back
but one belief, one offering, and love is gone, because you
asked a substitute to take its place. And now must war, the
substitute for peace, come with the one alternative that you
can choose for love. Your choosing it has given it all the
reality it seems to have.
Beliefs will never openly attack each other, because
conflicting outcomes are impossible. But an unrecognized
belief is a decision to war in secret, where the results of
conflict are kept unknown and never brought to reason, to be
considered sensible or not. And many senseless outcomes have
been reached, and meaningless decisions have been made and
kept hidden, to become beliefs now given power to direct all
subsequent decisions. Mistake you not the power of these
hidden warriors to disrupt your peace. For it IS at their
mercy while you decide to leave it there. The secret enemies
of peace, your least decision to choose attack instead of
love, unrecognized and swift to challenge you to combat and to
violence far more inclusive than you think, are there by your
election. Do not deny their presence nor their terrible
results. All that can be denied is their REALITY, but not
their outcome.
All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, to be
defended though unrecognized, is faith in specialness. This
takes many forms, but always clashes with the reality of Gods
creation, and with the grandeur which He gave His Son. What
else could justify attack? For who could hate someone whose
Self is his, and whom He knows? Only the special could have
enemies, for they are different and not the same. And
difference of any kind imposes orders of reality, and a need
to judge that cannot be escaped.
What God created cannot be attacked, for there is nothing
in the universe unlike itself. But what is different CALLS for
judgment, and this must come from someone better, someone
incapable of being like what he condemns, above it, sinless
by comparison with it. And thus does specialness become a
means and end at once. For specialness not only sets apart,
but serves as grounds from which attack on those who seem
beneath the special one is natural and just. The
special ones feel weak and frail BECAUSE of differences, for
what would make them special IS their enemy. Yet they protect
its enmity, and call it friend. On its behalf they fight
against the universe, for nothing in the world they value
more.
Specialness is the great dictator of the wrong decisions.
Here is the grand illusion of what you are, and what your
brother is. And here is what must make the body dear, and
worth preserving. Specialness must be DEFENDED. Illusions CAN
attack it, and they DO. For what your brother must become to
KEEP your specialness IS an illusion. He who is worse than
you must be attacked, so that your specialness can live on his
defeat. For specialness is triumph, and its victory is his
defeat and shame. How can he live, with all your sins upon
him? And who must be his conqueror but you?
Would it be possible for you to hate your brother if you
were like him? Could you attack him if you realized you
journey with him, to a goal that is the same? Would you not
help him reach it, in every way you could, if his attainment
of it were perceived as yours? You ARE his enemy in
specialness; his friend in a shared purpose. Specialness can
never share, for it depends on goals that you alone can reach.
And he must never reach them, or your goal is jeopardized. Can
love have meaning where the goal is triumph? And what decision
can be made for this that will not hurt you? Your brother is
your friend BECAUSE his Father created him like you. There IS
no difference. You have been given to each other that love
might be extended, not cut off from one another. What you KEEP
is lost to you. God gave you both Himself, and to remember
this is now the only purpose that you share. And so it is the
only one you HAVE.
Could you attack each other if you chose to see no
specialness of any kind between you? Look fairly at whatever
makes you give each other only partial welcome, or would let
you think that you are better off apart. Is it not always your
belief your specialness is LIMITED by your relationship? And
is not this the enemy that makes you both illusions to each
other?
The fear of God, and of each other, comes from each
unrecognized belief in specialness. For each demands the other
bow to it AGAINST his will. And God Himself must honor it, or
suffer vengeance. Every twinge of malice, or stab of hate, or
wish to separate arises here. For here the purpose which you
share becomes obscured from both of you. You would oppose this
course because it teaches you you are ALIKE. You have no
purpose that is not the same, and none your Father does not
share with you. For your relationship has been made clean of
special goals. And would you now DEFEAT the goal of holiness
that Heaven gave it? What perspective can the special have
that does not change with every seeming blow, each slight, or
fancied judgment on itself?
Those who are special MUST defend illusions against the
truth. For what is specialness but an attack upon the Will of
God? You love your brother not while it is this you would
defend against him. This is what HE attacks, and YOU protect.
Here is the ground of battle which you wage against him. Here
must he be your enemy, and not your friend. Never can there be
peace among the different. He is your friend BECAUSE you are
the same.
The Treachery of Specialness
Comparison must be an ego device, for love makes none.
Specialness ALWAYS makes comparisons. It is established by a
lack seen in another, and maintained by searching for, and
keeping clear in sight, all lacks it can perceive. This does
it seek, and this it looks upon. And always whom it thus
diminishes would be your Saviour, had you not chosen to make
of him a tiny measure of your specialness instead. Against the
littleness you see in him you stand as tall and stately, clean
and honest, pure and unsullied, by comparison with what you
see. Nor do you understand it is YOURSELF that you diminish
thus.
Pursuit of specialness is always at the cost of peace. Who
can attack his Saviour and cut him down, yet RECOGNIZE his
strong support? Who can detract from his omnipotence, yet
SHARE his power? And who can use him as the guage of
littleness, and be RELEASED from limits? You have a function
in salvation. Its pursuit will bring you joy. But the pursuit
of specialness MUST bring you pain. Here is a goal that would
defeat salvation, and thus run counter to the Will of God. To
value specialness is to esteem an alien will to which
illusions of yourself are dearer than the truth.
Specialness is the idea of sin made real. Sin is impossible
even to imagine without this base. For sin arose from it, out
of nothingness; an evil flower with no roots at all. Here is
the self-made saviour, the creator who creates unlike
the Father, and which made His Son like to itself, and not
like unto Him. His special sons are many, NEVER one, each
one in exile from himself, and Him of Whom they are a part.
Nor do they love the Oneness Which created them as one with
Him. They chose their specialness instead of Heaven and
instead of peace, and wrapped it carefully in sin, to keep it
safe from truth.
You are NOT special. If you think you are, and would defend
your specialness against the truth of what you REALLY are, how
can you know the truth? What answer that the Holy Spirit gives
can reach you, when it is your specialness to which you
listen, and which asks and answers? Its tiny answer, soundless
in the melody which pours from God to you eternally in loving
praise of what you are, is all you listen to. And that vast
song of honor and of love for what you are seems silent and
unheard before its mightiness. You strain your ears to hear
its soundless voice, and yet the Call of God Himself is
soundless to you.
You can defend your specialness, but never will you hear
the Voice for God beside it. They speak a different language
and they fall on different ears. To every special one a
different message, and one with different meaning, is the
truth. Yet how can truth be different to each one? The special
messages the special hear convince them they are different and
apart; each in his special sins and safe from love, which
does not see his specialness at all. Christs vision is their
enemy, for it sees not what they would look upon, and it
would show them that the specialness they think they see IS an
illusion. What would they see instead?
The shining radiance of the Son of God, so like his Father
that the memory of Him springs instantly to mind. And with
this memory, the Son remembers his own creations, as like to
him as he is to his Father. And all the world he made, and all
his specialness, and all the sins he held in its defense
against himself, will vanish as his mind accepts the truth
about himself, as it returns to take their place. This is the
only cost of truth: You will no longer see what never was,
nor hear what makes no sound. Is it a sacrifice to give up
nothing, and to receive the Love of God forever?
You who have chained your Saviour to your specialness, and
given it his place, remember this: He has not lost the power
to forgive you all the sins you think you placed between him
and the function of salvation given him for you. Nor will you
change his function, any more than you can change the truth in
him and in yourself. But be you certain that the truth is just
the same in both. It gives no different messages, and has ONE
meaning. And it is one you BOTH can understand, and one which
brings release to BOTH of you. Here stands your brother, with
the key to Heaven in his hand, held out to you. Let not the
dream of specialness remain between you. What is one is joined
in truth.
Think of the loveliness that you will see within yourself,
when you have looked on him as on a friend. He IS the enemy of
specialness, but only friend to what is real in you. Not one
attack you thought you made on him has taken from him the gift
that God would have him give to you. His need to give it is as
great as yours to have it. Let him forgive you all your
specialness, and make you whole in mind and one with him. He
waits for your forgiveness only that he may return it unto
you. It is not God Who has condemned His Son. But only you, to
save his specialness and kill his Self.
You have come far along the way of truth; too far to falter
now. Just one step more, and every vestige of the fear of God
will melt away in love. Your brothers specialness and yours
ARE enemies, and bound in hate to kill each other and deny
they are the same. Yet it is not illusions which have reached
this final obstacle that seems to make God and His Heaven so
remote that they cannot be reached. Here in this holy place
does truth stand waiting to receive you both in silent
blessing, and in peace so real and so encompassing that
nothing stands outside. Leave all illusions of yourself
outside this place, to which you come in hope and honesty.
Here is your Saviour FROM your specialness. He is in need
of your acceptance of himself as part of you, as you for his.
You are alike to God as God is to Himself. He is not special,
for He would not keep one part of what He is unto Himself, not
given to His Son but kept for Him alone. And it is this you
fear, for if He is not special, then He willed His Son be like
Him, and your brother IS like you. Not special, but possessed
of everything INCLUDING you.
Give him but what he has, remembering God gave Himself to
both of you in equal love, that both might share the universe
with Him Who chose that love could never be divided, and kept
separate from what it is and must forever be. You ARE your
brothers; part of love was not denied to him. But can it be
that YOU have lost because HE is complete? What has been given
him makes YOU complete, as it does him. Gods Love gave you to
him and him to you because He gave Himself. What is the same
as God is one with Him. And only specialness could make the
truth of God and you AS one seem anything but Heaven, and the
hope of peace at last in sight.
Specialness is the seal of treachery upon the gift of love.
Whatever serves its purpose must be given to kill. No gift
that bears its seal but offers treachery to giver AND
receiver. Not one glance from eyes it veils but looks on sight
of death. Not one believer in its potency but seeks for
bargains and for compromise that would establish sin loves
substitute, and serve it faithfully. And no relationship that
holds its purpose dear but clings to murder as safetys
weapon, and the great defender of all illusions from the
threat of love.
The hope of specialness makes it seem possible God made the
body as the prison-house which keeps His Son from Him. For it
demands a special place God cannot enter, and a hiding-place
where none is welcome but your tiny self. Nothing is sacred
here but unto you, and you alone, apart and separate from all
your brothers; safe from all intrusions of sanity upon
illusions; safe from God, and safe for conflict everlasting.
Here are the gates of hell you closed upon yourself, to rule
in madness and in loneliness your special kingdom, apart from
God, away from truth and from salvation.
The key you threw away God gave your brother, whose holy
hands would offer it to you when you were ready to accept His
plan for your salvation in place of yours. How could this
readiness be reached save through the sight of all your
misery, and the awareness that your plan has failed, and will
forever fail to bring you peace and joy of any kind? Through
this despair you travel now, yet it is but ILLUSION of
despair. The death of specialness is not YOUR death, but your
awaking into life eternal. You but emerge from an illusion of
what you are to the acceptance of yourself as God created you.
The Forgiveness of Specialness
Forgiveness is the end of specialness. Only illusions can
be forgiven, and then they disappear. Forgiveness is release
from ALL illusions, and that is why it is impossible but
partly to forgive. No-one who clings to one illusion can see
himself as sinless, for he holds one error to himself as
lovely still. And so he calls it unforgiveable, and makes
it sin. How can he then GIVE his forgiveness wholly, when he
would not receive it for himself? For it is sure he would
receive it wholly the instant that he gave it so. And thus his
secret guilt would disappear, forgiven by himself.
Whatever form of specialness you cherish, you have made
sin. Inviolate it stands, strongly defended with all your puny
might against the Will of God. And thus it stands against
yourself; YOUR enemy, not Gods. So does it seem to split you
off from God, and make you separate from Him as its defender.
You would protect what God created not. And yet, this idol
that seems to GIVE you power has taken it away. For you have
given your brothers birthright to it, leaving him alone and
unforgiven, and yourself in sin beside him, both in misery,
before the idol that can save you not.
It is not YOU that is so vulnerable and open to attack that
just a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a
circumstance that suits you not, or an event that you did not
anticipate upsets your world, and hurls it into chaos. Truth
is not frail. Illusions leave it perfectly unmoved. But
specialness is NOT the truth in you. IT can be thrown off
balance by anything. What rests on nothing NEVER can be
stable. However large and overblown it seems to be, it still
must rock and turn and whirl about with every breeze.
Without foundation nothing is secure. Would God have left
His Son in such a state, where safety has no meaning? No, His
Son is safe, resting on Him. It is your specialness that is
attacked by everything that walks and breathes, or creeps or
crawls, or even lives at all. Nothing is safe from its attack,
and it is safe from nothing. It will forever more be
unforgiving, for that is what it IS; a secret vow that what
God wants for you will never be, and that you will oppose His
Will forever. Nor is it possible the two can ever be the same
while specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between
them, and makes them enemies.
God asks for your forgiveness. He would have no separation,
like an alien will, rise between what He wills for you and
what you will. They ARE the same, for neither one wills
specialness. How could they will the death of love itself? Yet
they are powerless to make attack upon illusions. They are not
bodies; as one Mind they wait for all illusions to be brought
to them, and left behind. Salvation challenges not even death.
And God Himself, Who knows that death is not your will, must
say, Thy will be done because YOU think it IS.
Forgive the great Creator of the universe, the Source of
life, of love and holiness, the perfect Father of a perfect
Son, for your illusions of your specialness. Here is the hell
you chose to be your home. He chose not this for you. Ask not
He enter this. The way is barred to love and to salvation. Yet
if you would release your brother from the depths of hell, you
have forgiven Him Whose Will it is you rest forever in the
arms of peace, in perfect safety, and without the heat and
malice of one thought of specialness to mar your rest. Forgive
the Holy One the specialness He could not give, and which you
made instead.
The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of
loveliness they do not see. Freedom and peace and joy stand
there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to
come forth and waken from their dream of death. Yet they hear
nothing. They are lost in dreams of specialness. They hate the
call that would awaken them, and they curse God because He did
not make their dream reality. Curse God and die, but not by
Him Who made not death; but only in the dream. Open your eyes
a little; see the Saviour God gave to you that you might look
on him, and give him back his birthright. It is YOURS.
The slaves of specialness will yet be free. Such is the
Will of God, and of His Son. Would God condemn HIMSELF to hell
and to damnation? And do YOU will that this be done unto your
Saviour? God calls to you from him to join His Will to save
you BOTH from hell. Look on the print of nails upon his hands
that he holds out for your forgiveness. God asks your mercy on
His Son and on Himself. Deny them not. They ask of you but
that your will be done. They seek your love that you may love
yourself. Love not your specialness instead of them. The print
of nails are on your hands as well. Forgive your Father it was
not His Will that you be crucified.
Specialness and Salvation
Specialness is a lack of trust in anyone except yourself.
Faith is invested in yourself alone. Everything else becomes
your enemy; feared and attacked, deadly and dangerous, hated
and worthy only of destruction. Whatever gentleness it offers
is but deception, but its hate is real. In danger of
destruction it must kill, and you are drawn to it to kill it
first. And such is guilts attraction. Here is death enthroned
as saviour; crucifixion is now redemption, and salvation can
only mean destruction of the world, except yourself.
What could the purpose of the body BE but specialness? And
it is this that makes it frail and helpless in its own
defense. It was conceived to make YOU frail and helpless. The
goal of separation is its curse. Yet bodies HAVE no goal.
Purpose is of the MIND. And minds can change as they desire.
What they are, and all their attributes, they CANNOT change.
But what they hold as purpose CAN be changed, and body states
must shift accordingly. Of itself the body can do nothing. See
it as means to hurt, and it is hurt. See it as means to heal,
and it is healed.
You can but hurt YOURSELF. This has been oft repeated, but
is difficult to grasp as yet. To minds intent on specialness
it is impossible. Yet to those who wish to heal and not attack
it is quite obvious. The purpose of attack is in the MIND, and
its effects are felt but where it IS. Nor is mind limited; so
must it be that harmful purpose hurts the mind as one. Nothing
could make LESS sense to specialness. Nothing could make MORE
sense to miracles. For miracles are merely change of purpose
from hurt to healing.
This shift in purpose DOES endanger specialness, but
only in the sense that all illusions are threatened by the
truth. They will NOT stand before it. Yet what comfort has
ever been in them, that you would keep the gift your Father
asks from Him, and give it there instead? Given to HIM, the
universe is yours. Offered to THEM, no gifts can be returned.
What you have given specialness has left you bankrupt, and
your treasure house barren and empty, with an open door
inviting everything that would disturb your peace to enter and
destroy.
Long ago we said consider not the means by which salvation
is attained. nor how to reach it. But DO consider, and
consider well, whether it is your wish that you might see your
brother sinless. To specialness the answer must be no. A
sinless brother IS its enemy, while sin, if it were possible,
would be its friend. Your brothers sins would justify itself,
and give it meaning that the truth denies. All that is real
proclaims his sinlessness. All that is false proclaims his
sins as real. If HE is sinful, then is YOUR reality not real,
but just a dream of specialness which lasts an instant,
crumbling into dust.
Do not defend this senseless dream, in which God is bereft
of what He loves, and you remain beyond salvation. Only this
is certain in this shifting world which has no meaning in
reality: When peace is not with you entirely, and when you
suffer pain of any kind, you have beheld some sin within your
brother, and have REJOICED at what you thought was there. Your
specialness seemed safe because of it. And thus you saved what
YOU appointed to be your saviour, and crucified the one whom
God has given you instead. So are you bound with him, for you
ARE one. And so is specialness his enemy, and YOURS as
well.
The Resolution of the Dream
The Christ in you is very still. He looks on what He loves,
and knows it as Himself. And thus does He rejoice at what He
sees, because He knows that it is one with Him and with His
Father. Specialness, too, takes joy in what it sees, although
it is not true. Yet what you seek for IS a source of joy as
you conceive it. What you wish is true for you. Nor is it
possible that you can wish for something and lack faith that
it is so. Wishing MAKES real, as surely as does will create.
The power of a wish upholds illusions as strongly as does love
extend itself. Except that one deludes; the other heals.
There is no dream of specialness, however hidden or
disguised the form, however lovely it may seem to be, however
much it delicately offers the hope of peace and the escape
from pain, in which you suffer not your condemnation. In
dreams, effect and cause are interchanged, for here the maker
of the dream believes that what he made is happening to him.
He does not realize he picked a thread from here, a scrap from
there, and wove a picture out of nothing. For the parts do not
belong together, and the whole contributes nothing to the
parts to give them meaning.
Where could your peace arise BUT from forgiveness? The
Christ in you looks only on the truth, and sees no
condemnation that could NEED forgiveness. He is at peace
BECAUSE He sees no sin. Identify with Him, and what has He
that you have not? He is your eyes, your ears, your hands,
your feet. How gentle are the sights He sees, the sounds He
hears. How beautiful His hand that holds His brothers, and
how lovingly He walks beside him, showing him what can be seen
and heard, and where he will see nothing, and there is no
sound to hear.
Yet let your specialness direct his way, and YOU will
follow. And BOTH will walk in danger, each intent, in the dark
forest of the sightless, unlit but by the shifting tiny gleams
that spark an instant from the fireflies of sin and then go
out, to lead the other to a nameless precipice, and hurl him
over it. For what can specialness delight in but to kill? What
does it seek for but the sight of death? Where does it lead
but to destruction? Yet think not that it looked upon your
brother first, nor hated him before it hated you. The sin its
eyes behold in him and love to look upon it saw in YOU, and
looks on still with joy. Yet IS it joy to look upon decay and
madness, and believe this crumbling thing, with flesh already
loosened from the bone and sightless holes for eyes, is like
yourself?
Rejoice you HAVE no eyes with which to see; no ears to
listen, and no hands to hold nor feet to guide. Be glad that
only Christ can lend you His, while you have need of them.
They are illusions, too, as much as yours. And yet because
they serve a different purpose, the strength their purpose
holds is given them. And what they see and hear and hold and
lead is given light, that you may lead as you were led.
The Christ in you is very still. He knows where you are
going, and He leads you there in gentleness and blessing all
the way. His love for God replaces all the fear you thought
you saw within yourself. His holiness shows you Himself in him
whose hand you hold, and whom you lead to Him. And what you
see is like yourself. For what but Christ is there to see and
hear and love and follow home? He looked upon you first, but
recognized that you were not complete. And so He sought for
your completion in each living thing that He beholds and
loves. And seeks it still, that each might offer you the Love
of God.
Yet is He quiet, for He knows that love is in you now, and
safely held in you by that same hand that holds your brothers
in your own. Christs hand holds all His brothers in Himself.
He gives them vision for their sightless eyes, and sings to
them of Heaven, that their ears may hear no more the sound of
battle and of death. He reaches through them, holding out His
hand, that everyone may bless all living things, and see their
holiness. And He rejoices that these sights are yours, to look
upon with Him and share His joy. His perfect lack of
specialness He offers you, that you may save all living things
from death, receiving from each one the gift of life that your
forgiveness offers to your Self. The sight of Christ is all
there is to see. The song of Christ is all there is to hear.
The hand of Christ is all there is to hold. There IS no
journey but to walk with Him.
You who would be content with specialness, and seek
salvation in a war with love, consider this: The holy Lord of
Heaven has Himself come down to you, to offer you your own
completion. What is His is yours because in your completion is
His Own. He Who willed not to be without His Son could never
will that you be brotherless. And would He give a brother unto
you except he be as perfect as yourself, and just as like to
Him in holiness as YOU must be?
There must be doubt before there can be conflict. And every
doubt must be about yourself. Christ has no doubt, and from
His certainty His quiet comes. He will exchange His certainty
for all your doubts, if you agree that He is one with you, and
that this Oneness is endless, timeless, and within your grasp
BECAUSE your hands are HIS. He is within you, yet He walks
beside you and before, leading the way that He must go to find
Himself complete. His quietness becomes your certainty. And
where is doubt when certainty has come?
Salvation from Fear
Before your brothers holiness the world is still, and
peace descends on it in gentleness and blessing so complete
that not one trace of conflict still remains to haunt you in
the darkness of the night. He is your Saviour from the dreams
of fear. He is the healing of your sense of sacrifice, and
fear that what you have will scatter with the wind, and turn
to dust. In him is your assurance God is here, and with you
NOW. While he is what he is, you can be sure that God is
knowable, and WILL be known to you. For He could never leave
His own creation. And the sign that this is so lies in your
brother, offered you that all you doubts about yourself may
disappear before his holiness. See in him Gods creation. For
in him, his Father waits for your acknowledgment that He
created you as part of Him.
Without you there would be a lack in God, a Heaven
incomplete, a Son without a Father. There could be no universe
and no reality. For what God wills is whole, and part of Him
because His Will is One. Nothing alive that is not part of
Him, and nothing IS but is alive in Him. Your brothers
holiness shows you that God is One with him and you; that what
he has is yours BECAUSE you are not separate from him nor from
his Father.
Nothing is lost to you in all the universe. Nothing that
God created has He failed to lay before you lovingly, as yours
forever. And no thought within His Mind is absent from your
own. It is His Will you share His Love for you, and look upon
yourself as lovingly as He conceived of you before the world
began, and as He knows you still. God changes not His Mind
about His Son with passing circumstance which has no meaning
in eternity where He abides, and you with Him. Your brother IS
as He created him. And it is this that saves you from a world
that He created not.
Forget not that the healing of Gods Son is all the world
is FOR. That is the only purpose the Holy Spirit sees in it,
and thus the only one it has. Until you see the healing of the
Son as all you wish to be accomplished by the world, by time
and all appearances, you will not know the Father nor
yourself. For you will use the world for what is not its
purpose, and will not escape its laws of violence and death.
Yet it is given you to be beyond its laws in ALL respects, in
EVERY way and EVERY circumstance; in ALL temptation to
perceive what is not there, and ALL belief Gods Son can
suffer pain because he sees himself as he is not.
Look on your brother, and behold in him the whole reversal
of the laws that seem to rule this world. See in his freedom
YOURS, for such it is. Let not his specialness obscure the
truth in him, for not one law of death you bind him to will
YOU escape. And not one sin you see in him but keeps you BOTH
in hell. Yet will his perfect sinlessness RELEASE you both,
for holiness is quite impartial, with one judgment made for
all it looks upon. And that is made, not of itself, but
through the Voice that speaks for God in everything that lives
and shares His Being.
It is HIS sinlessness that eyes which see can look upon. It
is HIS loveliness they see in everything. And it is HE they
look for everywhere, and find no sight nor place nor time
where He is not. Within your brothers holiness, the perfect
frame for your salvation and the worlds, is set the shining
memory of Him in Whom your brother lives, and you along with
him. Let not your eyes be blinded by the veil of specialness
that hides the face of Christ from him, and you as well. And
let the fear of God no longer hold the vision you were meant
to see from you. Your brothers body shows not Christ to you.
He IS set forth within his holiness.
Choose, then, his body or his holiness as what you WANT to
see, and which you choose is yours to look upon. Yet will you
choose in countless situations, and through time which seems
to have no end, until the truth be your decision. For eternity
is not regained by still one more denial of Christ in him. And
where is your salvation, if he is but a body? Where is your
peace but in his holiness? And where is God Himself but in
that part of Him He set forever in your brothers holiness,
that you might see the truth about yourself, set forth at last
in terms you recognized and understood?
Your brothers holiness is sacrament and benediction unto
you. His errors cannot withhold Gods blessing from himself,
nor you who see him truly. His mistakes can cause delay, which
it is given you to take from him, that both may end a journey
that has never been begun, and needs no end. What never was is
not a part of you. Yet you will THINK it is until you realize
that it is not a part of him who stands beside you. He is the
mirror of yourself, wherein you see the judgment you have laid
on both of you. The Christ in you beholds his holiness. Your
specialness looks on his body, and beholds him not.
See him as what he IS, that your deliverance may not be
long. A senseless wandering, without a purpose and without
accomplishment of any kind, is all the other choice can offer
you. Futility of function not fulfilled will haunt you while
your brother lies asleep, till what has been assigned to you
is done, and he is risen from the past. He who condemned
himself, and you as well, is given you to save from
condemnation, along with you. And BOTH shall see Gods glory
in His Son, whom you mistook as flesh, and bound to laws that
have no power over him at all.
Would you not gladly realize these laws are not for you?
Then see him not as prisoner to them. It cannot be what
governs part of God holds not for all the rest. You place
yourself under the laws you see as ruling him. Think, then,
how great the Love of God for you must be, that He has given
you a part of Him to save from pain and give you happiness.
And never doubt but that your specialness will disappear
before the Will of God, Who loves each part of Him with equal
love. The Christ in you CAN see your brother truly. Would YOU
decide against the holiness He sees?
Specialness is the function which you gave yourself. It
stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in
need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body.
In its eyes, you are a separate universe, with all the power
to hold itself complete within itself, with every entry shut
against intrusion, and every window barred against the light.
Always attacked and always furious, with anger always fully
justified, you have pursued this goal with vigilance you never
thought to yield, and effort that you never thought to cease.
And all this grim determination was for this; you wanted
specialness to be the TRUTH.
Now you are merely asked that you pursue another goal with
far less vigilance; with little effort and with little time,
and with the power of God maintaining it, and promising
success. Yet of the two, it is THIS one you find more
difficult. The sacrifice of self you understand, nor do you
deem this cost too heavy. But a tiny willingness, a nod to
God, a greeting to the Christ in you, you find a burden
wearisome and tedious, too heavy to be borne. Yet to the
dedication to the truth as God established it no sacrifice is
asked, no strain called forth, and all the power of Heaven and
the might of truth itself is given to provide the means, and
GUARANTEE the goals accomplishment.
You who believe it easier to see your brothers body than
his holiness, be sure you understand what made this judgment.
Here is the voice of specialness heard clearly, judging
against the Christ, and setting forth for you the purpose that
you can attain, and what you cannot do. Forget not that this
judgment must apply to what you do with IT as your ally. For
what you do through Christ it does not know. To Him this
judgment makes no sense at all, for only what His Father wills
is possible, and there is no alternative for Him to see. Out
of His lack of conflict comes your peace. And from His purpose
comes the means for effortless accomplishment and rest.
The Meeting-Place
How bitterly does everyone tied to this world defend the
specialness he wants to be the truth! His wish is law unto
him, and he obeys. Nothing his specialness demands does he
withhold. Nothing it needs does he deny to what he loves. And
while it calls to him he hears no other Voice. No effort is
too great, no cost too much, no price too dear to save his
specialness from the least slight, the tiniest attack, the
whispered doubt, the hint of threat, or anything but deepest
reverence. This is your son, beloved of you as you are to your
Father. Yet it stands in place of your creations, who ARE son
to you, that you might SHARE the Fatherhood of God, not snatch
it from Him. What is this son that you have made to be your
strength? What is this child of earth on whom such love is
lavished? What is this parody of Gods creation that takes the
place of yours? And where are THEY, now that the host of God
has found another son which he prefers to them?
The memory of God shines not alone. What is within your
brother still contains all of creation, everything created and
creating, born and unborn as yet, still in the future or
apparently gone by. What is in him is changeless, and your
changelessness is recognized in its acknowledgment. The
holiness in you belongs to him. And by your seeing it in him,
returns to you. All of the tribute you have given specialness
belongs to him, and thus returns to you. All of the love and
care, the strong protection, the thought by day and night, the
deep concern, the powerful conviction this is you, belong to
him. Nothing you gave to specialness but is his due. And
nothing due him is not due to you.
How can you know your worth while specialness claims you
instead? How can you fail to know it in his holiness? Seek not
to make your specialness the truth, for if it were you would
be lost indeed. Be thankful, rather, it is given you to see
his holiness BECAUSE it is the truth. And what is true in him
must be as true in you.
Ask yourself this: Can YOU protect the mind? The body, yes,
a little; not from time, but temporarily. And much you think
you save, you hurt. What would you save it FOR? For in that
choice lie both its health and harm. Save it for show, as bait
to catch another fish, to house your specialness in better
style, or weave a frame of loveliness around your hate, and
you condemn it to decay and death. And if you see this purpose
in your brothers, such is your condemnation of your own.
Weave, rather, then, a frame of holiness around him, that the
truth may shine on him, and give you safety from decay.
The Father keeps what He created safe. You cannot touch it
with the false ideas you made, because it was created not by
you. Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. What is
immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no
effect. Only the purpose that you see in it has meaning, and
if that is true, its safety rests secure. If not, it has no
purpose, and is means for nothing. Whatever is perceived as
means for truth shares in its holiness, and rests in light as
safely as itself. Nor will that light go out when it is gone.
Its holy purpose gave it immortality, setting another light in
Heaven, where your creations recognize a gift from you, a sign
that you have not forgotten them.
The test of everything on earth is simply this; What is
it FOR? The answer makes it what it is for you. It has no
meaning of itself, yet you can give reality to it, according
to the purpose which you serve. Here you are but means, along
with it. God is a Means as well as End. In Heaven, means and
end are one, and one with him. This is the state of true
creation, found not within time, but in eternity. To no-one
here is this describable. Nor is there any way to learn what
this condition means. Not till you go past learning to the
Given; not till you make again a holy home for your creations
is it understood.
A co-creator with the Father must have a Son. Yet must this
Son have been created like Himself. A perfect being, all-
encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing
taken from; not born of size nor weight nor time, nor held to
limits or uncertainties of any kind. Here do the means and end
unite as one, nor does this one have any end at all. All this
is true, and yet it has no meaning to anyone who still retains
one unlearned lesson in his memory, one thought with purpose
still uncertain, or one wish with a divided aim.
This course makes no attempt to teach what cannot easily be
learned. Its scope does not exceed your own, except to say
that what is yours will come to you when you are ready. Here
are the means and purpose separate because they were so made
and so perceived. And therefore do we deal with them as if
they were. It is essential it be kept in mind that all
perception still is upside down until its purpose has been
understood. Perception does not SEEM to be a means. And it is
this that makes it hard to grasp the whole extent to which it
must depend on what you see it FOR. Perception seems to TEACH
you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what YOU taught. It
is the outward picture of a wish; an image that you WANTED to
be true.
Look at yourself, and you will see a body. Look at this
body in a different light and it looks different. And without
a light it seems that it is gone. Yet you are reassured that
it is there because you still can feel it with your hands, and
hear it move. Here is an image that you want to be yourself.
It is the means to make your wish come true. It gives the eyes
with which you look on it, the hands that feel it, and the
ears with which you listened to the sounds it makes. It PROVES
its own reality to you.
Thus is the body made a theory of yourself, with no
provisions made for evidence beyond itself, and no escape
within its sight. Its course is sure, when seen through its
own eyes. It grows and withers, flourishes and dies. And you
cannot conceive of you apart from it. You brand it sinful, and
you hate its acts, judging it evil. Yet your specialness
whispers, Here is my own beloved son, in whom I am well
pleased. Thus does the son become the means to serve his
fathers purpose. Not identical, not even like, but still a
means to offer to the father what he WANTS. Such is the
travesty on Gods creation. For as His Sons creation gave HIM
joy and witness to His Love and shared His purpose, so does
the body testify to the idea that made it, and speak for its
reality and truth.
And thus are two sons made, and both appear to walk this
earth without a meeting-place and no encounter. One do you see
outside yourself, your own beloved son. The other rests
within, His Fathers Son, within your brother as he is in you.
Their difference does not lie in how they look, nor where they
go, nor even what they do. They have a different PURPOSE. It
is this that joins them to their like, and separates each from
all aspects with a different purpose. The Son of God retains
His Fathers Will. The son of man perceives an alien will, and
wishes it were so. And thus does his perception serve his wish
by giving it appearances of truth. Yet can perception serve
another goal. It is not bound to specialness but by your
choice. And it IS given you to make a different choice, and
use perception for a different purpose. And what you see will
serve that purpose well, and PROVE its own reality to you.
CHAPTER 25
THE REMEDY
The Christ in you inhabits not a body. Yet He is in you.
And thus it must be that YOU are not within a body. What is
within you cannot be outside. And it is certain that you
cannot be apart from what is at the very center of your life.
What gives you life cannot be housed in death. No more can
you. Christ is within a frame of holiness whose only purpose
is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not,
that He may call to them to come to Him, and see Him where
they thought their bodies were. Then will their bodies melt
away, that they may frame His holiness in them.
No-one who carries Christ in him can fail to recognize Him
everywhere. EXCEPT in bodies. And as long as they believe THEY
are in bodies, where they think they are He cannot be. And so
they carry Him unknowingly, and do not make Him manifest. And
thus they do not recognize Him where He is. The son of man is
not the risen Christ. Yet does the Son of God abide exactly
where he is, and walks with him within his holiness, as plain
to see as is his specialness set forth within his body.
The body NEEDS no healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a
body is sick indeed! And it is here that Christ sets forth the
remedy. His purpose folds the body in His light, and fills it
with the holiness that shines from Him. And nothing that the
body says or does but makes Him manifest. To those who know
Him not it carries Him in gentleness and love, to heal their
minds. Such is the mission that your brother has for you. And
such it must be that your mission is for him.
The Appointed Task
It cannot be that it is hard to do the task that Christ
appointed you to do, since it is He Who does it. And in the
doing of it will you learn the body merely seems to be the
means to do it. For the Mind is His. And so it must be yours.
His holiness directs the body through the mind at one with
Him. And you are manifest unto your holy brother, as he to
you. Here is the meeting of the holy Christ unto Himself; nor
any differences perceived to stand between the aspects of His
holiness, which meet and join and raise Him to His Father,
whole and pure and worthy of His everlasting Love.
How can you manifest the Christ in you except to look on
holiness, and see Him there? Perception tells you YOU are
manifest in what you see. Behold the body, and you will
believe that you are there. And every body that you look upon
reminds you of yourself; your sinfulness, your evil, and,
above all, your death. And would you not despise the one who
tells you this, and seek his death instead? The message and
the messenger are one. And you MUST see your brother as
yourself. Framed in his body you will see your sinfulness,
wherein you stand condemned. Set in his holiness, the Christ
in him proclaims HIMSELF as you.
Perception is a choice of what you want yourself to be; the
world you want to live in, and the state in which you think
your mind will be content and satisfied. It chooses where you
think your safety lies, at your decision. It reveals yourself
to you as you would have you be. And always is it faithful to
your purpose, from which it never separates, nor gives the
slightest witness unto anything the purpose in your mind
upholdeth not. Perception is a part of what it is your purpose
to behold, for means and end are never separate. And thus you
learn what seems to have a life apart has none.
YOU are the means for God; not separate, nor with a life
apart from His. His Life is manifest in you who are His Son.
Each aspect of Himself is framed in holiness and perfect
purity, in love celestial and so complete it wishes only that
it may release all that it looks upon unto itself. Its
radiance shines through each body that it looks upon, and
brushes all its darkness into light merely by looking past it
TO the light. The veil is lifted through its gentleness, and
nothing hides the face of Christ from its beholders. And both
of you stand there, before Him now, to let Him draw aside the
veil that seems to keep you separate and apart.
Since you BELIEVE that you are separate, Heaven presents
itself to you as separate, too. Not that it is in truth, but
that the link that has been given you to join the truth may
reach to you through what you understand. Father and Son and
Holy Spirit are as One, as all your brothers join as one in
truth. Christ and His Father never have been separate, and
Christ abides within your understanding, in the part of you
that shares His Fathers Will. The Holy Spirit links the other
part, the tiny mad desire to be separate, different and
special, to the Christ, to make the oneness clear to what is
REALLY one. In this world, this is not understood, but CAN be
taught.
The Holy Spirit serves Christs purpose in your mind, so
that the aim of specialness can be corrected where the error
lies. Because His purpose still is one with both the Father
and the Son, He knows the Will of God and what YOU really
will. But this is understood by mind perceived as one, aware
that it is one, and so EXPERIENCED. It is the Holy Spirits
function to teach you HOW this oneness is experienced, WHAT
you must do that it can be experienced, and WHERE you should
go to do it.
All this takes note of time and place as if they were
discrete, for while you think that part of you is separate,
the concept of a oneness joined as one is meaningless. It is
apparent that a mind so split could never be the teacher of a
Oneness Which unites all things within Itself. And so What IS
within this mind, and DOES unite all things together, must be
its Teacher. Yet must It use the language which this mind can
understand in the condition in which it thinks it is. And It
must use all learning to transfer illusions to the truth,
taking all false ideas of what you are, and leading you beyond
them to the truth that IS beyond them. All this can very
simply be reduced to this:
What is the same can NOT be different,
And what is one can NOT have separate parts.
The Savior from the Dark
Is it not evident that what the bodys eyes perceive fills
you with fear? Perhaps you think you find a hope of
satisfaction there. Perhaps you fancy to attain some peace and
satisfaction in the world as you perceive it. Yet it must be
evident the outcome does not change. Despite your hopes and
fancies, ALWAYS does despair result. And there is no
exception, nor will there ever be. The only value that the
past can hold is that you learn it gave you no rewards which
you would want to keep. For only thus will you be willing to
relinquish it, and have it gone forever.
Is it not strange that you should cherish still some hope
of satisfaction from the world you see? In no respect, at any
time or place, has anything but fear and guilt been your
reward. How long is needed for you to realize the chance of
change in THIS respect is hardly worth delaying change that
might result in better outcome? For one thing is sure; the way
you see, and long have seen, gives no support to base your
future hopes, and no suggestions of success at all. To place
your hopes where no hope lies MUST make you hopeless. Yet is
this hopelessness your choice, while you would seek for hope
where none is ever found.
Is it not also true that you have found some hope APART
from this; some glimmering, inconstant, wavering, yet dimly
seen, that hopefulness is warranted on grounds that are not in
this world? And yet your hope that they may still be here
prevents you still from giving up the hopeless and unrewarding
task you set yourself. Can it make sense to hold the fixed
belief that there is reason to uphold pursuit of what has
always failed on grounds that it will suddenly succeed, and
bring what it has never brought before?
Its past HAS failed. Be glad that it is gone within your
mind, to darken what is there. Take not the form for content,
for the form is but a MEANS for content. And the frame is but
a means to hold the picture up, so that it can be seen. A
frame that hides the picture has no purpose. It cannot BE a
frame if it is what you see. Without the picture is the frame
without its meaning. Its PURPOSE is to set the picture off,
and not itself.
Who hangs an empty frame upon a wall, and stands before it,
deep in reverence, as if a masterpiece were there to see? Yet
if you see your brother as a body, it IS but this you do. The
masterpiece that God has set within this frame is all there is
to see. The body holds it for a while, without obscuring it in
any way. Yet what God has created needs no frame, for what He
has created He supports, and frames within Himself. His
masterpiece He offers you to see. And would you rather see the
frame INSTEAD of this? And see the picture not at all?
The Holy Spirit is the frame God set around the part of Him
that you would see as separate. Yet its frame is joined to its
Creator, one with Him and with His masterpiece. This is its
purpose, and you do not make the frame into the picture when
you choose to see it in its place. The frame that God has
given it but serves His purpose, not yours apart from His. It
is your SEPARATE purpose that obscures the picture, and
cherishes the frame instead of it. Yet God has set His
masterpiece within a frame that will endure forever, when
yours has crumbled into dust. But think you not the picture is
destroyed in any way. What God creates is safe from all
corruption, unchanged and perfect in eternity.
Accept Gods frame instead of yours, and you will see the
masterpiece. Look at its loveliness, and understand the Mind
that thought it, not in flesh and bones, but in a frame as
lovely as Itself. Its holiness lights up the sinlessness the
frame of darkness hides, and casts a veil of light across the
pictures face, which but reflects the light that shines from
it to its Creator. Think not this face was ever darkened
because you saw it in a frame of death. God kept it safe that
you might look on it, and see the holiness that He has given
it.
Within the darkness see the Saviour FROM the dark, and
understand your brother as his Fathers Mind shows him to you.
He will step forth from darkness as you look on him, and you
will see the dark no more. The darkness touched him not, nor
you who brought him forth for you to look upon. His
sinlessness but pictures yours. His gentleness becomes your
strength, and both will gladly look within, and see the
holiness that must be there BECAUSE of what you looked upon in
him. He is the frame in which your holiness is set, and what
God gave him must be given you. However much he overlooks the
masterpiece in him, and sees only a frame of darkness, it is
still your only function to behold in him what he sees not.
And in this seeing is the vision shared that looks on Christ
INSTEAD of seeing death.
How could the Lord of Heaven not be glad if you appreciate
His masterpiece? What could He do but offer thanks to you who
love His Son as He does? Would He not make known to you His
Love, if you but share His praise of what He loves? God
cherishes creation as the perfect Father that He is. And so
His joy is made complete when any part of Him joins in His
praise, to share His joy. This brother is His perfect gift to
you. And He is glad and thankful when you thank His perfect
Son for being what he is. And all His thanks and gladness
shine on you who would complete His joy, along with Him. And
thus is YOURS completed. Not one ray of darkness can be seen
by those who will to make their Fathers happiness complete,
and theirs along with His. The gratitude of God Himself is
freely offered to everyone who shares His purpose. It is not
His Will to be alone. And neither is it yours.
Forgive your brother, and you cannot separate yourself from
him, nor from his Father. You NEED no forgiveness, for the
wholly pure have never sinned. Give, then, what He has given
you, that you may see His Son as one, and thank his Father as
He thanks you. Nor believe that all His praise is given not to
you. For what you give is His, and giving it, you learn to
understand His gift to you. And give the Holy Spirit what He
offers unto the Father and the Son alike. Nothing has power
over you except His Will and yours, who but extend His Will.
It was for this you were created, and your brother with you,
and at one with you.
You are the same as God Himself is One, and not divided in
His Will. And you must have one purpose, since He gave the
same to both of you. His Will is brought together as you join
in will, that you be made complete by offering completion to
your brother. See not in him the sinfulness he sees, but give
him honor that you may esteem yourself and him. To each of you
is given the power of salvation, that escape from darkness
into light be yours to share; that you may see as one what
never has been separate, nor apart from all Gods Love as
given equally.
The Fundamental Law of Perception
To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will
you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the
extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to
that extent will you perceive attack cannot BE justified. This
is in strict accord with visions fundamental law: You see
what you believe is there, and you believe it there because
you WANT it there. Perception has no other law than this. The
rest but stems from this, to hold it up and offer it support.
This is perceptions form, adapted to this world, of Gods
more basic law; that love creates itself, and nothing BUT
itself.
Gods laws do not obtain directly to a world perception
rules, for such a world could not have been created by the
Mind to which perception has no meaning. Yet are His laws
reflected everywhere. Not that the world where this reflection
is is real at all. Only because His Son believes it is, and
from His Sons belief He could not let Himself be separate
entirely. He could not enter His Sons insanity with him, but
He could be sure His sanity went there with him, so he could
not be lost forever in the madness of his wish.
Perception rests on choosing; knowledge does not. Knowledge
has but one law because it has but One Creator. But this world
has two who made it, and they do not see it as the same. To
each it has a different purpose, and to each it is a perfect
means to serve the goal for which it is perceived. For
specialness, it is the perfect frame to set it off; the
perfect battleground to wage its wars, the perfect shelter for
the illusions which it would make real. Not one but it upholds
in its perception; not one but can be fully justified.
There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous
Corrector of the mad belief that anything could be established
and maintained without some link that kept it still within the
laws of God; not as the law itself upholds the universe as God
created it, but in some form adapted to the need the Son of
God believes he has. Corrected error is the errors end. And
thus has God protected still His Son, even in error. There is
another purpose in the world that error made, because it has
another Maker Who can reconcile its goal with His Creators
purpose. In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but
justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness.
Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete
forgiveness.
Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that
shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness
to put it out of mind, where it must be, and light the body up
INSTEAD of it. The lamps of Heaven are not for it to choose to
see them where it will. If it elects to see them elsewhere
from their home, as if they lit a place where they could never
be, and YOU agree, then must the Maker of the world correct
your error, lest you remain in darkness, where the lamps are
not. Everyone here has entered darkness, yet no-one has
entered it alone. For he has come with Heavens Help within
him, ready to lead him OUT of darkness into light at any time.
The time he chooses CAN be any time, for help is there,
awaiting but his choice. And when he chooses to avail himself
of what is given him, then will he see each situation that he
thought before was means to justify his anger turned to an
event which justifies his love. He will hear plainly that the
calls to war he heard before are really calls to peace. He
will perceive that where he gave attack is but another altar
where he can, with equal ease and far more happiness, bestow
forgiveness. And he will reinterpret all temptation as just
another chance to bring him joy. How can a misperception be a
sin? Let all your brothers errors be to you nothing except a
chance for you to see the workings of the Helper given you to
see the world He made, instead of yours.
What, then, IS justified? What do you WANT? For these two
questions are the same. And when you see them AS the same,
your choice is made. For it is seeing them as one that brings
release from the belief there ARE two ways to see. This world
has much to offer to your peace, and many chances to extend
your own forgiveness. Such its purpose is, to those who WANT
to see peace and forgiveness descend on them, and offer them
the light.
The Maker of the world of gentleness has perfect power to
offset the world of violence and hate that seems to stand
between you and His gentleness. It is not there in His
forgiving eyes. And therefore it need not be there in yours.
Sin is the fixed belief perception CANNOT change. What has
been damned is damned and damned forever, being forever
unforgivable. If, then, it IS forgiven, sins perception must
have been wrong. And thus is change made possible. The Holy
Spirit, too, sees what He sees as far beyond the chance of
change. But on His vision sin cannot encroach, for sin has
been CORRECTED by His sight. And thus it must have been an
error, not a sin. For what it claimed could never be, has
been. Sin is attacked by punishment, and so preserved. But to
forgive it is to change its state from error into truth.
The Son of God could never sin, but he CAN wish for what
would hurt him. And he HAS the power to think he can be hurt.
What could this be except a misperception of himself? Is this
a sin or a mistake, forgivable or not? Does he need help or
condemnation? Is it your purpose that he be saved or damned?
Forgetting not that what he is to you will make this choice
YOUR future? For you make it NOW, the instant when all time
becomes a means to reach a goal. Make, then, your choice. But
recognize that IN this choice the purpose of the world you see
is chosen, and WILL be justified.
The Joining of Minds
Minds that are joined, and RECOGNIZE they are, can feel no
guilt. For they cannot attack, and they rejoice that this is
so, seeing their safety in this happy fact. Their joy is in
the innocence they see. And thus they seek for it, because it
is their purpose to behold it and rejoice. Everyone seeks for
what will bring him joy, as he defines it. It is not the aim,
as such, that varies. Yet it is the way in which the aim is
SEEN that makes the choice of means inevitable, and beyond the
hope of change unless the aim is changed. And then the means
are chosen once again, as what will bring rejoicing is defined
another way, and sought for differently.
Perceptions basic law could thus be said, You will
rejoice at what you see because you SEE it to rejoice. And
while you think that suffering and sin will bring you joy, so
long will they be there for you to see. Nothing is harmful or
beneficent apart from what you wish. It is your wish that
makes it what it is in its effects on you. Because you CHOSE
it as a means to gain these same effects, believing them to be
the bringers of rejoicing and of joy. Even in Heaven does this
law obtain. The Son of God creates to bring him joy, sharing
his Fathers purpose in his own creation, that his joy might
be increased, and Gods along with his.
You makers of a world that is not so, take rest and comfort
in another world where peace abides. This world you bring with
you to all the weary eyes and tired hearts that look on sin
and beat its sad refrain. From you can come their rest. From
you can rise a world they will rejoice to look upon, and where
their hearts are glad. In you there is a vision which extends
to all of them, and covers them in gentleness and light. And
in this widening world of light the darkness that they thought
was there is pushed away, until it is but distant shadows, far
away, not long to be remembered as the sun shines them to
nothingness. And all their evil thoughts and sinful
hopes, their dreams of guilt and merciless revenge, and every
wish to hurt and kill and die, will disappear before the sun
you bring.
Would you not do this for the love of God? And for
YOURSELF? For think what it would do for you. Your evil
thoughts that haunt you now will seem increasingly remote and
far away from you. And they go farther and farther off,
because the sun in you has risen that they may be pushed away
before the light. They linger for a while, a LITTLE while, in
twisted forms too far away for recognition, and are gone
forever. And in the sunlight you will stand in quiet, in
innocence, and wholly unafraid. And from you will the rest you
found extend, so that your peace can never fall away and leave
you homeless. Those who offer peace to everyone have found a
home in Heaven the world cannot destroy. For it is large
enough to hold the world within its peace.
In you is all of Heaven. Every leaf that falls is given
life in you. Each bird that ever sang will sing again in you.
And every flower that ever bloomed has saved its perfume and
its loveliness for you. What aim can supersede the Will of God
and of His Son, that Heaven be restored to him for whom it was
created as his only home? Nothing before and nothing after it.
No other place, no other state nor time. Nothing beyond nor
nearer. Nothing else. In any form. This can you bring to all
the world, and all the thoughts that entered it and were
mistaken for a little while. How better could your own
mistakes be brought to truth than by your willingness to bring
the light of Heaven with you, as you walk beyond the world of
darkness into light?
The State of Sinlessness
The state of sinlessness is merely this: The whole desire
to attack is gone, and so there is no reason to perceive the
Son of God as other than he is. The need for guilt is gone
because it has no purpose, and is meaningless without the goal
of sin. Attack and sin are bound as one illusion, each the
cause and aim and justifier of the other. Each is meaningless
alone, but seems to draw a meaning from the other. Each
depends upon the other for whatever sense it seems to have.
And no-one could believe in one unless the other were the
truth, for each attests the other MUST be true.
Attack makes Christ your enemy, and God along with Him.
Must you not be afraid, with enemies like these? And must
you not be fearful of YOURSELF? For you have hurt yourself,
and made your Self your enemy. And now you must believe you
are not you, but something alien to yourself and something
else, a something to be feared instead of loved. Who
would attack whatever he perceives as wholly innocent? And
who, BECAUSE he wishes to attack, can fail to think it must be
guilty to deserve the wish and leave him innocent? And who
would see the Son of God as innocent, and wish him dead?
Christ stands before you both, each time you look on one
another. He has not gone because your eyes are closed. But
what is there to see by searching for your Saviour, seeing Him
through sightless eyes?
It is not Christ you see by looking thus. It is the
enemy, confused with Christ, you look upon. And hate
because there is no sin in him for you to see. Nor do you hear
his plaintive call, unchanged in content in whatever form the
call is made, that you unite with him, and join with him in
innocence and peace. And yet, beneath the egos senseless
shrieks, such IS the call that God has given him, that you
might hear in him His Call to you, and answer by returning
unto God what is His Own.
The Son of God asks only this of you; that you return to
him what is his due, that you may SHARE in it with him. Alone
does neither have it. So must it remain useless to both.
Together, it will give to each an equal strength to save the
other, and save himself along with him. Forgiven by you, your
Saviour offers you salvation. Condemned by you, he offers
death to you. In everyone you see but the reflection of what
you chose to have him be to you. If you decide against his
proper function, the only one he has in truth, you are
depriving him of all the joy he would have found, if he
fulfilled the role God gave to him. But think not Heaven is
lost to him alone. Nor can it be regained unless the way is
shown to him through you, that you may find it, walking by his
side.
It is no sacrifice that he be saved, for by his freedom
will you gain your own. To let his function be fulfilled is
but the means to let yours be. And so you walk toward Heaven
or toward hell, but not alone. How beautiful his sinlessness
will be when you perceive it! And how great will be your joy,
when he is free to offer you the gift of sight God gave to him
for you! He has no need but this; that you allow him freedom
to complete the task God gave to him. Remembering but this;
that what he does you do, along with him. And as you see him,
so do you define the function he will have for you, until you
see him differently and LET him be what God appointed that he
be to you.
Against the hatred that the Son of God may cherish toward
himself is God believed to be without the power to save what
He created from the pain of hell. But in the love he shows
himself is God made free to LET His Will be done. In each of
you, you see the picture of your own belief in what the Will
of God must be for you. In your forgiveness will you
understand His Love for you; through your attack believe He
hates you, thinking Heaven must be hell. Look once again upon
your brother, not without the understanding that he is the way
to Heaven or to hell, as you perceive him. But forget not
this; the role you give to him is given YOU, and you WILL walk
the way you pointed out to him because it is your judgment on
yourself.
The Special Function
The grace of God rests gently on forgiving eyes, and
everything they look on speaks of Him to the beholder. He can
see no evil; nothing in the world to fear, and no-one who is
different from himself. And as he loves them, so he looks upon
himself with love and gentleness. He would no more condemn
himself for his mistakes than damn another. He is not an
arbiter of vengeance, nor a punisher of sin. The kindness of
his sight rests on himself with all the tenderness it offers
others. For he would only heal and only bless. And being in
accord with what God wills, he has the power to heal and bless
all those he looks on with the grace of God upon his sight.
Eyes become used to darkness, and the light of brilliant
day seems painful to the eyes grown long accustomed to the dim
effects perceived at twilight. And they turn away from
sunlight, and the clarity it brings to what they look upon.
Dimness seems better; easier to see, and better recognized.
Somehow, the vague and more obscure seems easier to look upon;
less painful to the eyes than what is wholly clear and
unambiguous. Yet this is not what eyes are FOR. And who can
say that he prefers the darkness, and maintain he WANTS to
see? The WISH to see calls down the grace of God upon your
eyes, and brings the gift of light that makes sight possible.
Will you behold your brother? God is glad to have you look
on him. He does not will your Saviour be unrecognized by you.
Nor does He will that he remain without the function that He
gave to him. Let him no more be lonely, for the lonely ones
are those who see no function in the world for them to fill;
no place where they are needed, and no aim which only they can
perfectly fulfill.
Such is the Holy Spirits kind perception of specialness;
His use of what you made, to heal instead of harm. To each He
gives a special function in salvation he alone can fill; a
part for only him. Nor is the plan complete until he finds his
special function, and fulfills the part assigned to him, to
make himself complete within a world where incompletion rules.
Here, where the laws of God do not prevail in perfect form,
can he yet do ONE perfect thing, and make ONE perfect choice.
And by this act of special faithfulness to one perceived as
other than himself, he learns the gift was given to himself,
and so they MUST be one. Forgiveness is the only function
meaningful in time. It is the means the Holy Spirit uses to
translate specialness from sin into salvation. Forgiveness is
for all. But when it rests on all it is complete, and every
function of this world completed with it. Then is time no
more.
Yet while in time, there is still much to do. And each must
do what is allotted him, for on his part does ALL the plan
depend. He HAS a special part in time, for so he chose, and
choosing it, he made it for himself. His wish was not denied,
but changed in form, to let it serve his brother AND himself,
and thus become a means to save instead of lose. Salvation is
no more than a reminder this world is not your home; its laws
are not imposed on you, its values are not yours. And this is
seen and understood as each one takes his part in its undoing,
as he did in making it. He has the means for either, as he
always did. The specialness he chose to hurt himself did God
appoint to be the means for his salvation, from the very
instant that the choice was made. His special sin was made his
special grace. His special hate became his special love.
The Holy Spirit NEEDS your special function, that His may
be fulfilled. Think not you lack a special value here. You
wanted it, and it IS given you. All that you made can serve
salvation easily and well. The Son of God can make no choice
the Holy Spirit cannot employ on his behalf, and NOT against
himself. Only in darkness does your specialness appear to be
attack. In light, you see it as your SPECIAL FUNCTION in the
plan to save the Son of God from ALL attack, and let him
understand that he is safe, as he has always been, and will
remain in time and in eternity alike. This is the function
given each of you for one another. Take it gently, then, from
one anothers hand, and let salvation be perfectly fulfilled
in both of you. Do this ONE thing, that everything be given
you.
Commuting the Sentence
And if the Holy Spirit can commute each sentence that you
laid upon yourself into a blessing, then it cannot be a sin.
Sin is the one thing in all the world that CANNOT change. It
is immutable. And on its changelessness the world depends. The
magic of the world can seem to hide the pain of sin from
sinners, and deceive with glitter and with guile. Yet each one
knows the cost of sin is death. And so it IS. For sin is a
REQUEST for death, a wish to make this worlds foundation sure
as love, dependable as Heaven, and as strong as God Himself.
The world IS safe from love to everyone who thinks sin
possible. Nor WILL it change. Yet IS it possible what God
created not should share the attributes of His creation, when
it opposes it in every way?
It CANNOT be the sinners wish for death is just as
strong as is Gods Will for life. Nor can the basis of a world
He did not make be firm and sure as Heaven. How could it be
that hell and Heaven are the same? And is it possible that
what He did not will cannot be changed? What is immutable
besides His Will? And what can share Its attributes except
Itself? What wish can rise against His Will, and be immutable?
If you could realize NOTHING is changeless but the Will of
God, this course would not be difficult for you. For it is
this that you do not believe. Yet there is nothing else you
COULD believe, if you but looked at what it really is.
Let us go back to what we said before, and think of it more
carefully. It must be so that either God is mad, or is this
world a place of madness. Not one Thought of His makes any
sense at all within this world. And nothing that the world
believes as true has any meaning in His Mind at all. What
makes no sense and has no meaning IS insanity. And what is
madness CANNOT be the truth. If one belief so deeply valued
here were true, then every Thought God ever had is an
illusion. And if but one Thought of His is true, then all
beliefs the world gives any meaning to are false, and make no
sense at all. This IS the choice you make. Do not attempt to
see it differently, nor twist it into something it is not. For
only this decision CAN you make. The rest is up to God, and
not to you.
To justify one value that the world upholds is to deny your
Fathers sanity and YOURS. For God and His beloved Son do not
think differently. And it is the agreement of their thought
that makes the Son a co-creator with the Mind Whose Thought
created him. And if he chooses to believe one thought opposed
to truth, he has decided he is not his Fathers Son because
the Son is mad, and sanity must lie apart from both the Father
AND the Son. This you BELIEVE. Think not that this belief
depends upon the form it takes. Who thinks the world is sane
in ANY way, is justified in ANYTHING it thinks, or is
maintained by ANY form of reason, believes this to be true.
Sin is not real BECAUSE the Father and the Son are not insane.
This world is meaningless BECAUSE it rests on sin. Who could
create the changeless, if it does not rest on truth?
The Holy Spirit has the power to change the whole
foundation of the world you see to something else; a basis not
insane, on which a sane perception can be based, another world
perceived. And one in which nothing is contradicted that would
lead the Son of God to sanity and joy. Nothing attests to
death and cruelty, to separation and to differences. For here
is everything perceived as one, and no-one loses that each one
may gain.
Test everything that you believe against this ONE
requirement. And understand that everything that meets this
one demand is worthy of your faith. But nothing else. What is
not love is sin, and either one perceives the other as insane
and meaningless. Love is the basis for a world perceived as
wholly mad to sinners, who believe theirs is the way to
sanity. But sin is equally insane within the sight of love,
whose gentle eyes would look beyond the madness, and rest
peacefully on truth. Each sees a world immutable, as each
defines the changeless and eternal truth of what you are. And
each reflects a view of what the Father and the Son must be,
to make that viewpoint meaningful and sane.
Your special function is the special form in which the fact
that God is not insane appears most sensible and meaningful to
you. The content is the same. The form is suited to your
special needs, and to the special time and place in which you
think you find yourself, and where you can be free of place
and time, and all that you believe must limit you. The Son of
God cannot be bound by time nor place, nor anything God did
not will. Yet if His Will is seen as madness, then the form of
sanity which makes it most acceptable to those who are insane
requires special choice. Nor can this choice be made BY the
insane, whose problem is their choices are not free, and made
with reason in the light of sense.
It WOULD be madness to entrust salvation to the insane.
Because He is NOT mad has God appointed One as sane as He to
raise a saner world to meet the sight of everyone who chose
insanity as his salvation. To this One is given the choice of
form most suitable to him; one which will not attack the world
he sees, but enter into it in quietness, and SHOW him he is
mad. This One but points to an alternative, ANOTHER way of
looking at what he has seen before, and recognizes as the
world in which he lives, and thought he understood before.
Now MUST he question this, because the form of the
alternative is one which he cannot deny, nor overlook, nor
fail completely to perceive at all. To each his special
function is designed to be perceived as possible, and more and
more desired, as it PROVES to him that it is an alternative he
really WANTS. From this position does his sinfulness, and all
the sin he sees within the world, offer him less and less.
Until he comes to understand it COST him his sanity, and
stands between him and whatever hope he has of BEING sane. Nor
is he left without escape from madness, for he has a special
part in everyones escape. He can no more be left outside,
without a special function in the hope of peace, than could
the Father overlook His Son, and pass him by in careless
thoughtlessness.
What is dependable EXCEPT Gods Love? And where does sanity
abide EXCEPT in Him? The One Who speaks for Him can show you
this, in the alternative He chose especially for you. It is
Gods Will that you remember this, and so emerge from deepest
mourning into perfect joy. Accept the function that has been
assigned to you in Gods Own plan to show His Sons that hell
and Heaven are different, NOT the same. And that in Heaven
THEY are all the same, without the differences which would
have made a hell of Heaven and a heaven of hell, had such
insanity been possible.
The whole belief that someone loses but reflects the
underlying tenet God must be insane. For in this world it
seems that one must gain BECAUSE another lost. If THIS were
true, then God is mad indeed! But what is this belief except a
form of the more basic tenet, Sin is real, and rules the
world ? For every little gain must someone lose, and pay
exact amount in blood and suffering. For otherwise would evil
triumph, and destruction be the total cost of any gain at all.
You who believe that God is mad, look carefully at this, and
understand that it must be that either God or THIS must be
insane, but hardly both.
Salvation is rebirth of the idea no-one CAN lose for anyone
to gain. And everyone MUST gain, if anyone would be a gainer.
Here is sanity restored. And on this single rock of truth can
faith in Gods eternal saneness rest in perfect confidence and
perfect peace. Reason is satisfied, for all insane beliefs can
be corrected here. And sin MUST be impossible, if THIS is
true. This is the rock on which salvation rests, the vantage
point from which the Holy Spirit gives meaning and direction
to the plan in which your special function has a part. For
here your special function is made whole because it shares the
FUNCTION of the whole.
Remember all temptation is but this; a mad belief that
Gods insanity would make you sane, and give you what you
want. That either God or you must lose to madness because your
aims can NOT be reconciled. Death demands life, but life is
not maintained at any cost. No-one can suffer for the Will of
God to be fulfilled. Salvation is His Will BECAUSE you share
it. Not for you alone, but for the Self which is the Son of
God. He CANNOT lose, for if he could, the loss would be his
Fathers, and in Him no loss is possible. And this is sane
BECAUSE it is the truth.
The Principle of Salvation
The Holy Spirit can use all that you give to Him for your
salvation. But He cannot use what you withhold, for He cannot
take it from you without your willingness. For if He did, you
would believe He wrested it from you against your will. And so
you would not learn it IS your will to be without it. You need
not give it to Him wholly willingly, for if you could, you had
no need of Him. But this He needs; that you prefer He take it
than that you keep it for yourself alone, and recognize that
what brings loss to no-one you would not know. This much is
necessary to add to the idea no-one can lose for you to gain.
And nothing more.
Here is the only principle salvation needs. Nor is it
necessary that your faith in it be strong, unswerving, and
without attack from all beliefs opposed to it. You HAVE no
fixed allegiance. But remember salvation is not needed by the
saved. You are not called upon to do what one divided still
against himself would find impossible. Have little faith that
wisdom could be found in such a state of mind. But be you
thankful that only little faith is ASKED of you. What BUT a
little faith remains to those who still believe in sin? What
could they know of Heaven and the justice of the saved?
There is a kind of justice in salvation of which the world
knows nothing. To the world, justice and VENGEANCE are the
same, for sinners see justice only as their punishment,
perhaps sustained by someone else, but not escaped. The laws
of sin DEMAND a victim. Who it may be makes little difference.
But death must be the cost and must be paid. This is not
justice, but insanity. Yet how could justice be defined
without insanity where love means hate, and death is seen as
victory and triumph over eternity and timelessness and life?
You who know not of justice still can ask, and learn the
answer. Justice looks on all in the same way. It is not just
that one should lack for what another has. For that is
vengeance in whatever form it takes. Justice demands NO
sacrifice, for any sacrifice is made that sin may be preserved
and kept. It is a payment offered for the cost of sin, but not
the total cost. The rest is taken from another, to be laid
beside your little payment, to atone for all that you would
keep, and not give up. So is the victim seen as partly you,
with someone else by far the greater part. And in the total
cost, the greater his the less is yours. And justice, being
blind, is satisfied by being paid, it matters not by whom. Can
this BE justice? God knows not of this. But justice DOES He
know, and knows it well. For He is wholly fair to everyone.
Vengeance is alien to Gods Mind BECAUSE He knows of
justice. To be just is to be fair, and NOT be vengeful.
Fairness and vengeance are impossible, for each one
contradicts the other and denies that it is real. It is
impossible for you to share the Holy Spirits justice with a
mind that can conceive of specialness at all. Yet how could He
be just if He condemns a sinner for the crimes he did not do,
but THINKS he did? And where would justice be if He demanded
of the ones obsessed with the idea of punishment that they lay
it aside, unaided, and perceive it is not true? It is
extremely hard for those who still believe sin meaningful to
understand the Holy Spirits justice.
They MUST believe He shares their own confusion, and cannot
avoid the vengeance that their own belief in justice must
entail. And so they fear the Holy Spirit, and perceive the
wrath of God in Him. Nor can they trust Him not to strike
them dead with lightening bolts torn from the fires of
Heaven by Gods Own angry hand. They DO believe that Heaven is
hell and ARE afraid of love. And deep suspicion and the chill
of fear comes over them when they are told that they have
never sinned. Their world depends on sins stability. And they
perceive the threat of what God knows as justice to be more
destructive to themselves and to their world than vengeance,
which they understand and love.
So do they think the loss of sin a curse. And flee the Holy
Spirit as if He were a messenger from hell, sent from above,
in treachery and guile, to work Gods vengeance on them in the
guise of a deliverer and friend. What could He be to them
except a devil dressed to deceive, within an angels cloak.
And what escape has He for them except a door to hell that
seems to look like Heavens gate?
Yet justice cannot punish those who ask for punishment, but
have a Judge Who knows that they are wholly innocent in truth.
In justice, He is bound to set them free, and give them all
the honor they deserve, and have denied themselves because
they are not fair, and cannot understand that they are
innocent. Love is not understandable to sinners because they
think that justice is split off from love, and stands for
something else.
And thus is love perceived as weak, and vengeance strong.
For love has LOST when judgment left its side, and is too weak
to save from punishment. But vengeance without love has GAINED
in strength by being separate and apart from love. And what
but vengeance now can help and save, while love stands feebly
by, with helpless hands, bereft of justice and vitality, and
powerless to save? What can Love ask of you who think that all
of this is true? Could He, in justice and in love believe, in
your confusion, you have much to give? You are not asked to
trust Him far. No further than what you see He offers you, and
what you recognize you could not give yourself.
In Gods Own justice does He recognize all you deserve, but
understands as well that you cannot accept it for yourself. It
is His special function to hold out to you the gifts the
innocent DESERVE. And every one that you accept brings joy to
Him as well as you. He knows that Heaven is richer made by
each one you accept. And God rejoices as His Son receives what
loving justice knows to be his due. For love and justice are
NOT different. BECAUSE they are the same does mercy stand at
Gods right Hand, and gives the Son of God the power to
forgive HIMSELF of sin.
To him who merits everything, how can it be that anything
be kept from him? For that would be injustice, and unfair
indeed to all the holiness that is in him, however much he
recognize it not. God knows of no injustice. He would not
allow His Son be judged by those who seek his death, and could
not see his worth at all. What honest witnesses could they
call forth, to speak on his behalf? And who would come to
plead for him, and not against his life? No justice would be
given him by you. Yet God ensured that justice WOULD be done
unto the Son He loves, and would protect from all unfairness
you might seek to offer, believing vengeance IS his proper
due.
As specialness cares not who pays the cost of sin, so it be
paid, the Holy Spirit heeds not who looks on innocence at
last, provided it is seen and recognized. For just ONE witness
is enough, if he sees truly. Simple justice asks no more. Of
each one does the Holy Spirit ask if he will be that one, so
justice may return to love, and there be satisfied. Each
special function He allots is but for this; that each one
learn that love and justice are not separate. And both are
strengthened by their union with each other. Without love is
justice prejudiced and weak. And love without justice is
impossible. For love is fair, and cannot chasten without
cause. What cause can BE to warrant an attack upon the
innocent? In justice, then, does love correct mistakes, but
not in vengeance. For that would be unjust to innocence.
You can be perfect witness to the power of love AND
justice, if you understand it is impossible the Son of God
could merit vengeance. You need not perceive, in every
circumstance, that this is true. Nor need you look to your
experience within the world, which is but shadows of all that
is REALLY happening within yourself. The understanding which
you need comes not of you, but from a larger Self, so great
and holy that He could not doubt His innocence. Your special
function is a call to Him, that He may smile on you whose
sinlessness He shares. HIS understanding will be YOURS. And so
the Holy Spirits special function has been fulfilled. Gods
Son has found a witness unto his sinlessness, and not his sin.
How little need you give the Holy Spirit, that simple justice
may be given you!
Without impartiality there is no justice. How can
specialness be just? Judge not because you cannot, not because
you are a miserable sinner, too. How can the special REALLY
understand that justice is the same for everyone? To take from
one to give another must be an injustice to them both, since
they are equal in the Holy Spirits sight. Their Father gave
the same inheritance to both. Who would have more or less is
not aware that he has everything. He is no judge of what must
be anothers due, because he thinks HE is deprived. And so
must he be envious, and try to take away from whom he judges.
He is not impartial, and cannot fairly see anothers rights
because his own have been obscured to him.
You have the RIGHT to all the universe; to perfect peace,
complete deliverance from all effects of sin, and to the life
eternal, joyous and complete in every way, as God appointed
for His holy Son. This is the only justice Heaven knows, and
all the Holy Spirit brings to earth. Your special function
shows you nothing else but perfect justice CAN prevail for
you. And you are safe from vengeance in all forms. The world
deceives, but it cannot replace Gods justice with a version
of its own. For only love IS just, and CAN perceive what
justice must accord the Son of God. Let love decide, and never
fear that you, in your unfairness, will deprive yourself of
what Gods justice has allotted you.
The Justice of Heaven
What can it be but arrogance to think your little errors
cannot be undone by Heavens justice? And what could this mean
except that they are sins and not mistakes, forever
uncorrectable, and to be met with vengeance, not with justice?
Are you willing to be released from all effects of sin? You
cannot answer this until you see all that the answer must
entail. For if you answer yes, it means you will forego all
values of this world, in favor of the peace of Heaven. Not ONE
sin would you retain. And not ONE doubt that this is possible
will you hold dear, that sin be kept in place. You mean that
truth has greater value now than ALL illusions. And you
recognize that truth must be revealed to you, because you know
not what it is.
To give reluctantly is not to gain the gift, because you
are reluctant to ACCEPT it. It is saved for you until
reluctance to receive it disappears, and you are willing it be
given you. Gods justice warrants gratitude, not fear. Nothing
you give is lost to you or anyone, but cherished and preserved
in Heaven, where all of the treasures given to Gods Son are
kept for him, and offered anyone who but holds out his hand in
willingness they be received. Nor is the treasure less as it
is given out. Each gift but ADDS to the supply. For God is
fair. He does not fight against His Sons reluctance to
perceive salvation as a gift from Him. Yet would His justice
not be satisfied until it is received by everyone.
Be certain any answer to a problem the Holy Spirit solves
will always be one in which no-one loses. And this must be
true, because He asks no sacrifice of anyone. An answer which
demands the slightest loss to anyone has not resolved the
problem, but has added to it, and made it greater, harder to
resolve, and MORE unfair. It is impossible the Holy Spirit
could see unfairness as a resolution. To Him, what is unfair
must be corrected BECAUSE it is unfair. And every error is a
perception in which one, at least, is seen unfairly. Thus is
justice not accorded to the Son of God. When anyone is seen as
losing, he has been condemned. And punishment becomes his due,
instead of justice.
The sight of innocence makes punishment impossible, and
justice sure. The Holy Spirits perception leaves no ground
for an attack. Only a LOSS could justify attack, and loss of
any kind He cannot see. The world solves problems in another
way. It sees a resolution as a state in which it is decided
who shall win and who shall lose; how much the one shall take,
and how much can the loser still defend.
Yet does the problem still remain unsolved, for ONLY
justice can set up a state in which there is no loser; no-one
left unfairly treated and deprived, and thus with grounds for
vengeance. Problem solving cannot be vengeance, which, at
best, can bring another problem added to the first, in which
the murder is not obvious. The Holy Spirits problem solving
is the way in which the problem ENDS. It has been solved
BECAUSE it has been met with justice. Until it has it will
recur, because it has not yet been solved. The principle that
justice means no-one can lose is crucial to this course. For
miracles DEPEND on justice. Not as it is seen through this
worlds eyes, but as God knows it, and as knowledge is
reflected in the sight the Holy Spirit gives.
NO-ONE deserves to lose. And what would be unjust to him
cannot occur. Healing must be for everyone BECAUSE he does not
merit an attack of any kind. What order can there be in
miracles, unless someone deserves to suffer more, and others
less? And IS this justice to the wholly innocent? A miracle IS
justice. It is not a special gift to some, to be withheld from
others as less worthy, more condemned, and thus apart from
healing. Who is there who can be separate from salvation, if
its PURPOSE is the end of specialness? Where is salvations
justice if some errors are unforgivable, and warrant vengeance
in place of healing and return of peace?
Salvation cannot seek to help Gods Son be more unfair than
HE has sought to be. If miracles, the Holy Spirits gift, were
given specially to an elect and special group, and kept apart
from others as less deserving, then is He ALLY to specialness.
What He cannot perceive He bears no witness to. And everyone
is equally entitled to His gift of healing and deliverance and
peace. To give a problem to the Holy Spirit to solve for you
means that you WANT it solved. To keep it for yourself to
solve without His help is to decide it should remain
unsettled, unresolved, and lasting in its power of injustice
and attack. No-one CAN be unjust to you, unless you have
decided first to BE unjust. And then must problems rise to
block your way, and peace be scattered by the winds of hate.
Unless you think that all your brothers have an equal right
to miracles with you, you will not claim your right to them
because you were unjust to one with equal rights. Seek to
deny, and you WILL feel denied. Seek to deprive, and you HAVE
been deprived. A miracle can NEVER be received because another
could receive it NOT. Only forgiveness offers miracles. And
pardon must be just to everyone.
The little problems that you keep and hide become your
secret sins, because you did not choose to let them be removed
for you. And so they gather dust and grow, until they cover
everything that you perceive, and leave you fair to no-one.
Not one right do you believe you have. And bitterness, with
vengeance justified and mercy lost, condemns you as unworthy
of forgiveness. The unforgiven HAVE no mercy to bestow upon
another. That is why your sole responsibility must be to take
forgiveness for yourself. The miracle that you receive, you
GIVE. Each one becomes an illustration of the law on which
salvation rests; that justice must be done to all, if anyone
is to be healed. No-one can lose, and everyone MUST benefit.
Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish
when it is offered to everyone alike. It is received and given
equally. It is awareness that giving and receiving are the
same. Because it does not make the same unlike, it sees no
differences where none exist. And thus it is the same for
everyone, because it sees no differences in THEM. Its offering
is universal, and it teaches but one message:
What is Gods BELONGS to everyone, and IS his
due.
CHAPTER 26
THE TRANSITION
In the dynamics of attack is sacrifice a key idea. It
is the pivot upon which ALL compromise, ALL desperate attempts
to strike a bargain, and ALL conflicts achieve a seeming
balance. It is the symbol of the central theme that SOMEBODY
MUST LOSE. Its focus on the body is apparent, for it is always
an attempt to LIMIT LOSS. The body is itself a sacrifice; a
giving up of power in the name of saving just a little for
yourself. To see a brother in another body, separate from
yours, is the expression of a wish to see a little part of him
and sacrifice the rest. Look at the world, and you will see
nothing attached to anything beyond itself. All seeming
entities can come a little nearer, or go a little farther off,
but CANNOT join.
The Sacrifice of Oneness
The world you see is based on sacrifice of oneness. It
is a picture of a complete disunity and total lack of joining.
Around each entity is built a wall so seeming solid that it
looks as if what is inside can never reach without, and what
is out can never reach and join with what is locked away,
within the wall. Each part must sacrifice the other part, to
keep itself complete. For if they joined, each one would lose
its own identity, and by their separation are their selves
maintained.
The little that the body fences off BECOMES the self,
preserved through sacrifice of all the rest. And all the rest
must LOSE this little part, remaining incomplete to keep its
own identity intact. In this perception of yourself, the
bodys loss would be a sacrifice indeed. For sight of bodies
becomes the sign that sacrifice is limited, and something
still remains for you alone. And for this little to belong to
you, are limits placed on everything outside, just as they are
on everything you think is yours. For giving and receiving ARE
the same. And to accept the limits of a body is to impose
these limits on each brother whom you see. For you must see
him as you see yourself.
The body IS a loss, and CAN be made to sacrifice. And while
you see your brother as a body, apart from you and separate in
his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him AND you. What
greater sacrifice could be demanded than that Gods Son
perceive himself without his Father? And his Father be without
His Son? Yet every sacrifice demands that they be separate and
without the other. The memory of God MUST be denied if any
sacrifice is asked of anyone. What witness to the wholeness of
Gods Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however
much he witnesses to truth? He is INVISIBLE in such a world.
Nor can his song of union and of love be heard at all. Yet is
it given him to make the world recede before his song, and
sight of him replace the bodys eyes.
Those who would see the witnesses to truth instead of to
illusion merely ask that they might see a purpose in the world
that gives it sense, and makes it meaningful. Without your
special function HAS this world no meaning for you. Yet it can
become a treasure house as rich and limitless as Heaven
itself. No instant passes here in which your brothers
holiness cannot be seen, to add a limitless supply to every
meager scrap and tiny crumb of happiness that you allot
yourself.
You CAN lose sight of oneness, but can NOT make sacrifice
of its reality. Nor can you LOSE what you would sacrifice, nor
keep the Holy Spirit from His task of showing you that it has
not been lost. Hear, then, the song your brother sings to you.
And let the world recede, and take the rest his witness offers
on behalf of peace. But judge him not, for you will hear no
song of liberation for yourself, nor see what it is given him
to witness to, that you may see it and rejoice with him. Make
not his holiness a sacrifice to your belief in sin. You
sacrifice YOUR innocence with his, and die each time you see
in him a sin deserving death.
Yet every instant can you be reborn, and given life again.
His holiness gives life to you, who cannot die because his
sinlessness is known to God, and can no more be sacrificed by
you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees
it not. You who would make a sacrifice of life, and make your
eyes and ears bear witness to the death of God and of His holy
Son, think not that you have power to make of them what God
willed not they be. In Heaven, Gods Son is not imprisoned in
a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin.
And as he is in Heaven, so must he be eternally and
everywhere. He is the same forever. Born again each instant,
untouched by time, and far beyond the reach of any sacrifice
of life or death. For neither did he make, and only one was
given him, by One Who knows His gifts can never suffer
sacrifice and loss. Gods justice rests in gentleness upon His
Son, and keeps him safe from all injustice the world would lay
upon him. Could it be that YOU could make his sins reality,
and sacrifice his Fathers Will for him?
Condemn him not by seeing him within the rotting prison
where he sees himself. It is your special function to ensure
the door be opened, that he may come forth to shine on you,
and give you back the gift of freedom by receiving it of you.
What is the Holy Spirits special function but to release the
holy Son of God from the imprisonment he made to KEEP himself
from justice? Could your function be a task apart and separate
from His Own?
The Forms of Error
It is not difficult to understand the reasons why you do
not ask the Holy Spirit to solve ALL problems for you. He has
not greater difficulty in resolving some than others. Every
problem is the same to Him, because each one is solved in just
the SAME respect, and through the SAME approach. The aspects
which need solving do not change, whatever form the problem
seems to take. A problem can appear in many forms, and it will
do so while the problem lasts. It serves no purpose to attempt
to solve it in a special form. It will recur and then recur
again and yet again, until it has been answered for all time,
and will not rise again in any form. And only then are you
released from it.
The Holy Spirit offers you release from EVERY problem that
you think you have. They are the same to Him because each one,
regardless of the form it seems to take, is a demand that
someone suffer loss, and make a sacrifice that you might gain.
And when the situation is worked out so no-one loses, is the
problem gone, because it was an error in perception which now
has been corrected. One mistake is not more difficult for Him
to bring to truth than is another. For there IS but one
mistake; the whole idea that loss is possible, and could
result in gain for anyone. If this were true, then God would
be unfair; sin would be possible, attack be justified, and
vengeance fair.
This one mistake, in any form, has ONE correction. There IS
no loss; to think there is, is a mistake. You HAVE no
problems, though you think you have. And yet you could not
think so, if you saw them vanish one by one, without regard to
size, complexity, or place and time, or any attribute which
you perceive that makes each one seem different from the rest.
Think not the limits you impose on what you see can limit God
in any way.
The miracle of justice can correct ALL errors. Every
problem IS an error. It does injustice to the Son of God, and
therefore is not true. The Holy Spirit does not evaluate
injustices as great or small, or more or less. They have no
properties to Him. They are mistakes from which the Son of God
is suffering, but needlessly. And so He takes the thorns and
nails away. He does not pause to judge whether the hurt be
large or little. He makes but one judgment; that to hurt Gods
Son MUST be unfair, and therefore is not so.
You who believe it safe to give but some mistakes to be
corrected while you keep the others to yourself, remember
this: Justice is total. There is no such thing as partial
justice. If the Son of God is guilty then is he condemned, and
he deserves no mercy from the God of justice. But ask not God
to punish him because YOU find him guilty, and would have him
die. God offers you the means to see his innocence. Would it
be fair to punish him because you will not look at what is
there to see? Each time you keep a problem for yourself to
solve, or judge that it is one which has no resolution, you
have made it great, and past the hope of healing. You deny the
miracle of justice CAN be fair.
If God is just, then can there be no problems that justice
cannot solve. But you believe that some injustices are fair
and good, and necessary to preserve yourself. It is these
problems that you think are great, and cannot be resolved. For
there are those you WANT to suffer loss, and no-one whom you
wish to be preserved from sacrifice entirely. Consider once
again your special function. ONE is given you to see in him
his perfect sinlessness. And you will ask no sacrifice of him,
because you could not will he suffer loss. The miracle of
justice you call forth will rest on you as surely as on him.
Nor will the Holy Spirit be content until it is received by
everyone. For what you give to Him IS everyones, and by your
giving it can He ensure that everyone receives it equally.
Think, then, how great your own release will be, when you
are willing to receive correction for all your problems. You
will not keep one, for pain in any form you will not want. And
you will see each little hurt resolved before the Holy
Spirits gentle sight. For all of them ARE little in His
sight, and worth no more than just a tiny sigh before they
disappear, to be forever undone and unremembered. What seemed
once to be a special problem, a mistake without a remedy, or
an affliction without a cure, has been transformed into a
universal blessing. Sacrifice is gone. And in its place the
Love of God can be remembered, and will shine away all memory
of sacrifice and loss.
God cannot be remembered until justice is loved instead of
feared. He cannot be unjust to anyone or anything, because He
knows that everything that is belongs to Him, and will forever
be as He created it. Nothing He loves but must be sinless and
beyond attack. Your special function opens wide the door
beyond which is the memory of His Love kept perfectly intact
and undefiled. And all you need to do is but to wish that
Heaven be given you instead of hell, and every bolt and
barrier that seems to hold the door securely barred and locked
will merely fall away, and disappear. For it is not your
Fathers Will that you should offer or receive less than He
gave, when He created you in perfect love.
The Borderland
Complexity is not of God. How could it be, when all He
knows is one? He knows of ONE creation, ONE reality, ONE
truth, and but ONE Son. Nothing conflicts with oneness. How,
then, could there be complexity in Him? What is there to
decide? For it is conflict that makes choice possible. The
truth is simple; it is one, without an opposite. And how could
strife enter in its simple presence, and bring complexity
where oneness is? The truth makes no decisions, for there is
nothing to decide BETWEEN. And only if there were could
choosing be a necessary step in the advance toward oneness.
What is everything leaves room for nothing else.
Yet is this magnitude beyond the scope of this curriculum.
Nor is it necessary we dwell on anything that cannot be
immediately grasped. There is a borderland of thought which
stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and
when you reach it is apart from time. Here is the meeting-
place where thoughts are brought together; where conflicting
values meet, and all illusions are laid down beside the truth,
where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just
beyond the gate of Heaven. Here is every thought made pure and
wholly simple. Here is sin denied, and everything that IS
received instead.
This is the journeys end. We have referred to it as the
real world. And yet there is a contradiction here, in that the
words imply a limited reality, a partial truth, a segment of
the universe made true. This is because knowledge makes no
attack upon perception. They are brought together, and only
one continues past the gate where Oneness is. Salvation is a
borderland where place and time and choice have meaning still,
and yet it can be seen that they are temporary, out of place,
and every choice has been already made.
Nothing the Son of God believes can be destroyed. But what
is truth to him must be brought to the last comparison that he
will ever make, the last evaluation that will be possible, the
final judgment upon this world. It is the judgment of the
truth upon illusion, of knowledge on perception; it has no
meaning, and does not exist. This is not your decision. It is
but a simple statement of a simple fact. But in this world
there ARE no simple facts, because what is the same and what
is different remain unclear. The one essential thing to make a
choice at all is this distinction. And herein lies the
difference between the worlds. In this one, choice is made
impossible. In the real world is choosing simplified.
Salvation stops just short of Heaven, for only perception
needs salvation. Heaven was never lost, and so cannot be
saved. Yet who can make a choice between the wish for Heaven
and the wish for hell unless he recognizes they are NOT the
same? This difference is the learning goal this course has
set. It will not go beyond this aim. Its only purpose is to
teach what is the same and what is different, leaving room to
make the only choice which CAN be made.
There is no basis for choice in this complex and over
complicated world. For no-one understands what is the same,
and seems to choose where no choice really is. The real world
is the area of choice made real, not in the outcome, but in
the perception of ALTERNATIVES for choice. That there IS
choice is an illusion. Yet within this one lies the undoing of
EVERY illusion, not excepting this.
Is not this like your special function, where the
separation is undone by change of purpose in what once was
specialness, and now is union? ALL illusions are but one. And
in the recognition this is so, lies the ability to give up all
attempts to choose between them, and to MAKE them different.
There IS no conflict here. No sacrifice is possible in the
relinquishment of an illusion RECOGNIZED as such. Where all
reality has been withdrawn from what was never true, can it be
hard to give it up, and choose what MUST be true?
Where Sin Has Left
Forgiveness is this worlds equivalent of Heavens justice.
It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where
justice can be reflected from beyond the gate behind which
total lack of limits lies. Nothing in boundless love could
need forgiveness. And what is charity within the world gives
way to simple justice past the gate that opens into Heaven.
No-one forgives unless he has believed in sin, and still
believes that he has much to be forgiven. Forgiveness thus
becomes the means by which he learns he has done nothing to
forgive. Forgiveness always rests upon the one who offers it,
until he sees himself as needing it no more. And thus is he
returned to his real function of creating, which his
forgiveness offers him again.
Forgiveness turns the world of sin into a world of glory,
wonderful to see. Each flower shines in light, and every bird
sings of the joy of Heaven. There is no sadness and there is
no parting here, for everything is totally forgiven. And what
has been forgiven must join, for nothing stands between, to
keep them separate and apart. The sinless must perceive that
they are one, for nothing stands between to push the other
off. And in the space which sin left vacant do they join as
one, in gladness recognizing what is part of them has not been
kept apart and separate.
The holy place on which you stand is but the space that sin
has left. And here you see the face of Christ, arising in its
place. Who could behold the face of Christ, and not recall His
Father as He really is? Who could fear love, and stand upon
the ground where sin has left a place for Heavens altar to
rise and tower far above the world, and reach beyond the
universe to touch the heart of all creation? What is Heaven
but a song of gratitude and love and praise, by everything
created to the Source of its creation? The holiest of altars
is set where once sin was believed to be. And here does every
light of heaven come, to be rekindled and increased in joy.
For here is what was lost restored to them, and all their
radiance made whole again.
Forgiveness brings no little miracles to lay before the
gate of Heaven. Here the Son of God Himself comes to receive
each gift that brings him nearer to his home. Not one is lost,
and none is cherished more than any other. Each reminds him of
His Fathers Love as surely as the rest. And each one teaches
him that what he feared he loves the most. What BUT a miracle
could change his mind, so that he understands that love cannot
BE feared? What other miracle is there but this? And what else
NEED there be to make the space between you disappear?
Where sin once was perceived will rise a world which will
become an altar to the truth, and YOU will join the lights of
Heaven there, and sing their song of gratitude and praise. And
as they come to you to be complete, so will you go with them.
For no-one hears the song of Heaven and remains without a
voice that adds its power to the song, and makes it sweeter
still. And each one joins the singing at the altar which was
raised within the tiny spot that sin proclaimed to be its own.
And what was tiny then has soared into a magnitude of song in
which the universe has joined with but a single voice. This
tiny spot of sin that stands between you still is holding back
the happy opening of Heavens gate. How little is the
hindrance which withholds the wealth of Heaven from you! And
how great will be the joy in Heaven when you join the mighty
chorus to the Love of God!
The Little Hindrance
A little hindrance can seem large indeed to those who do
not understand that miracles are all the same. Yet teaching
that is what this course is FOR. This is its only purpose, for
only that is all there is to learn. And you can learn it many
different ways. All learning is a help or hindrance to the
gate of Heaven. Nothing in between is possible. There are two
teachers only, who point in different ways. And you will go
along the way your chosen teacher leads. There are but two
directions you can take, while time remains and choice is
meaningful. For never will another road be made except the way
to Heaven. You but choose whether to go TOWARD Heaven, or away
to nowhere. There IS nothing else to choose.
Nothing is ever lost but time, which in the end is
meaningless. For it is but a little hindrance to eternity,
quite meaningless to the real Teacher of the world. Yet since
you DO believe in it, why should you waste it going nowhere,
when it CAN be used to reach a goal as high as learning can
achieve? Think not the way to Heavens gate is difficult at
all. Nothing you undertake with certain purpose and high
resolve and happy confidence, holding each others hand and
keeping step to Heavens song, is difficult to do. But it is
hard indeed to wander off, alone and miserable, down a road
which leads to nothing, and which has no purpose.
God gave His Teacher to replace the one you made, not to
conflict with it. And what He would replace has been replaced.
Time lasted but an instant in your mind, with no effect upon
eternity. And so is all time passed, and everything exactly as
it was before the way to nothingness was made. The tiny tick
of time in which the first mistake was made, and all of them
within that one mistake, held also the CORRECTION for that
one, and all of them that came within the first. And in that
tiny instant time was gone, for that was all it ever was. What
God gave answer to IS answered and is gone.
To you who still believe you live in time and know not it
is gone, the Holy Spirit still guides you through the
infinitely small and senseless maze you still perceive in
time, though it has long since gone. You think you live in
what is past. Each thing you look upon you saw but for an
instant, long ago, before its unreality gave way to truth. Not
one illusion still remains unanswered in your mind.
Uncertainty was brought to certainty so long ago that it is
hard indeed to hold it to your heart, as if it were before you
still.
The tiny instant you would keep and make eternal, passed
away in Heaven too soon for anything to notice it had come.
What disappeared too quickly to affect the simple knowledge of
the Son of God can hardly still be there, for you to choose to
be your teacher. Only in the past, an ancient past, too
short to make a world in answer to creation, did this world
appear to rise. So very long ago, for such a tiny interval of
time, that not one note in Heavens song was missed.
Yet in each unforgiving act or thought, in every judgment,
and in all belief in sin, is that one instant still called
back, as if it could be made again in time. You keep an
ancient memory before your eyes. And he who lives in memories
alone is unaware of where he is. Is this a HINDRANCE to the
place whereon he stands? Is any echo from the past that he may
hear a fact in what is there to hear where he is now? And how
much can his own delusions about time and place affect [sic] a
change in where he really is?
The unforgiven is a voice that calls from out a past
forever more gone by. And everything which points to it as
real is but a wish that what is gone could be made real again,
and seen as here and now, in place of what is REALLY now and
here. Is this a hindrance to the truth the past is gone, and
cannot be returned to you? And do you WANT that fearful
instant kept, when Heaven seemed to disappear, and God was
feared and made a symbol of your hate?
Forget the time of terror that has been so long ago
corrected and undone. Can sin withstand the Will of God? Can
it be up to you to see the past, and put it in the present?
You can NOT go back. And everything that points the way in the
direction of the past but sets you on a mission whose
accomplishment can only be unreal. Such is the justice your
Ever-Loving Father has ensured must come to you. And from your
own unfairness to yourself has He protected you. You CANNOT
lose your way because there is no way but His, and nowhere can
you go except to Him.
Would God allow His Son to lose his way along a road long
since a memory of time gone by? A dreadful instant in a
distant past, now perfectly corrected, is of no concern nor
value. Let the dead and gone be peacefully forgotten.
Resurrection has come to take its place. And now you are a
part of resurrection, NOT of death. No past illusions have the
power to keep you in a place of death, a vault Gods Son
entered an instant, to be instantly restored unto His Fathers
perfect Love. And how can he be kept in chains long since
removed, and gone forever from his mind?
The Son that God created is as free as God created him. He
was reborn the instant that he chose to die instead of live.
And will you not forgive him now, because he made an error in
the past that God remembers not, and is not there? Now are you
shifting back and forth between the past and present.
Sometimes the past seems real, as if it were the present.
Voices from the past are heard, and then are doubted. You are
like to one who still hallucinates, but lacks conviction in
what he perceives. This is the borderland between the worlds,
the bridge between the past and present. Here the shadow of
the past remains, but still a present light is dimly
recognized. Once it is seen, this light can never be
forgotten. It must draw you from the past into the present,
where you really ARE.
The shadow voices do not change the laws of time or of
eternity. They come from what is past and gone, and hinder not
the true existence of the here and now. The real world is the
second part of the hallucination time and death are real, and
have existence which can BE perceived. This terrible illusion
was denied in but the time it took for God to give His answer
to illusion for all time and every circumstance. And then it
was no more, to be experienced as there.
Each day, and every minute in each day, and every instant
that each minute holds, you but relive the single instant when
the time of terror was replaced by love. And so you die each
day to live again, until you cross the gap between past and
present, which is not a gap at all. Such is each life; a
seeming interval from birth to death, and on to life again, a
repetition of an instant gone by long ago, which cannot BE
relived. And all of time is but the mad belief that what is
over is still here and now.
Forgive the past and let it go, for it IS gone. You stand
no longer on the ground that lies between the worlds. You have
gone on, and reached the world that lies at Heavens gate.
There is no hindrance to the Will of God, nor any need that
you repeat again a journey that was over long ago. Look gently
on each other, and behold the world in which perception of
your hate has been transformed into a world of love.
The Appointed Friend
Anything in this world that you believe is good and
valuable and worth striving for can hurt you, and will do so.
Not because it has the power to hurt, but just because you
have denied it is but an illusion, and made it real. And it IS
real to you. It is NOT nothing. And through its perceived
reality has entered all the world of sick illusions. All
belief in sin, in power of attack, in hurt and harm, in
sacrifice and death, has come to you. For no one can make ONE
illusion real, and still escape the rest. For who can choose
to keep the ones which he prefers, and find the safety that
the truth alone can give? Who can believe illusions are the
same, and still maintain that even one is best?
Lead not your little lives in solitude, with one illusion
as your only friend. This is no friendship worthy of Gods
Son, nor one with which he could remain content. Yet God has
given him a better Friend, in whom all power in earth and
Heaven rests. The one illusion that YOU think is friend
obscures HIS grace and majesty from you, and keeps his
friendship and forgiveness from your welcoming embrace.
Without him you ARE friendless. Seek not another friend to
take his place. There IS no other friend. What God appointed
has no substitute, for what illusion can replace the truth?
Who dwells with shadows is alone indeed, and loneliness is
not the Will of God. Would you allow one shadow to usurp the
throne that God appointed for your Friend, if you but realized
its emptiness has left YOURS empty and unoccupied? Make no
illusion friend, for if you do, it can but take the place of
him whom God has called your Friend. And it is he who is your
ONLY Friend in truth. He brings you gifts that are not of this
world, and only he to whom they have been given can make sure
that you receive them. He will place them on your throne, when
you make room for him on his.
Review of Principles
This is a course in miracles. And as such, the laws of
healing must be understood before the purpose of the course
can be accomplished. Let us review the principles that we have
covered, and arrange them in a way that summarizes all that
must occur for healing to be possible. For when it once is
possible it MUST occur. All sickness comes from separation.
When the separation is denied, it goes. For it IS gone as soon
as the idea which brought it has been healed, and been
replaced by sanity. Sickness and sin are seen as consequence
and cause, in a relationship kept hidden from awareness that
it may be carefully preserved from reasons light.
Guilt ASKS for punishment, and its request is granted. Not
in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions built on
sin. The Son of God perceives what he would see because
perception IS a wish fulfilled. Perception changes, made to
take the place of changeless knowledge. Yet is truth
unchanged. It cannot be perceived, but only known. What is
perceived takes many forms, but none has meaning. Brought to
truth, its senselessness is quite apparent. Kept apart from
truth, it seems to have a meaning and be real.
Perceptions laws are opposite to truth, and what is true
of knowledge is not true of anything that is apart from it.
Yet has God given answer to the world of sickness, which
applies to ALL its forms. Gods answer is eternal, though it
operates in time, where it is needed. Yet because it IS of
God, the laws of time do not affect its workings. It is in
this world, but not a part of it. For it is real, and dwells
where all reality must be. Ideas leave not their source, and
their effects but seem to be apart from them. Ideas are of the
mind. What is projected out, and seems to be external to the
mind, is not outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and
has not left its source.
Gods answer lies where the belief in sin must be, for only
there can its effects be utterly undone, and without cause.
Perceptions laws must be reversed because they ARE reversals
of the laws of truth. The laws of truth forever will be true,
and cannot BE reversed; yet can be SEEN as upside-down. And
this must be corrected where the illusion of reversal lies.
It is impossible that one illusion be less amenable to
truth than are the rest. But it IS possible that some are
given greater value, and less willingly offered to truth for
healing and for help. No illusion has any truth in it. Yet it
appears some are more true than others, although this clearly
makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can
show is preference, not reality. What relevance has preference
to the truth? Illusions are illusions, and are false. Your
preference gives them no reality. Not one is true in any way,
and all must yield with equal ease to what God gave as answer
to them all. Gods Will is One. And any wish that seems to go
against His Will has NO foundation in the truth.
Sin is not error, for it goes beyond correction to
impossibility. Yet the belief that it is real has made some
errors seem forever past the hope of healing, and the lasting
grounds for hell. If this were so, would Heaven be opposed by
its own opposite, as real as it. Then would Gods Will be
split in two, and all creation be subjected to the laws of two
opposing powers, until God becomes impatient, splits the world
apart, and relegates attack unto Himself. Thus has He lost His
Mind, proclaiming sin has taken His reality from Him, and
brought His Love at last to vengeance heels. For such an
insane picture, an insane defense can be expected, but can NOT
establish that the picture must be true.
Nothing gives meaning where no meaning is. And truth NEEDS
no defense to make it true. Illusions have no witnesses, and
no effects. Who looks on them is but deceived. Forgiveness is
the only function here, and serves to bring the joy this world
denies to every aspect of Gods Son where sin was thought to
rule. Perhaps you do not see the role forgiveness plays in
ending death, and all beliefs that rise from mists of guilt.
Sins are beliefs which you impose between your brother and
yourself. They limit you to time and place, and give a little
space to you, another little space to him. This separating off
is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly
separate and a thing apart. Yet what this symbol represents is
but your wish to BE apart and separate. Forgiveness takes AWAY
what stands between your brother and yourself. It is the wish
that you be joined with him, and NOT apart. We call it wish
because it still conceives of other choices, and has not yet
reached beyond the world of choice entirely.
Yet is this wish in line with Heavens state, and not in
opposition to Gods Will. Although it falls far short of
giving you your full inheritance, it DOES remove the obstacles
which you have placed between the Heaven where you are, and
recognition of where and what you are. Facts are unchanged.
Yet facts can be denied and thus unknown, though they were
known BEFORE they were denied.
Salvation, perfect and complete, asks but a little wish
that what is true be true; a little willingness to overlook
what is not there; a little sigh that speaks for Heaven as a
preference to this world which death and desolation seem to
rule. In joyous answer will creation rise within you, to
replace the world you see with Heaven, wholly perfect and
complete. What is forgiveness but a willingness that truth be
true? What can remain unhealed and broken from a Unity Which
holds all things within Itself? There IS no sin. And every
miracle is possible the instant that the Son of God perceives
his wishes and the Will of God are One.
What is the Will of God? He wills His Son have everything.
And this He guaranteed when He created him AS everything. It
is impossible that anything be lost, if what you HAVE is what
you ARE. This is the miracle by which creation became your
function, sharing it with God. It is not understood apart from
Him, and therefore has no meaning in this world.
Here does the Son of God ask not too much, but far too
little. He would sacrifice his own identity with everything,
to find a little treasure of his own. And this he cannot do
without a sense of isolation, loss and loneliness. This is the
treasure he has sought to find. And he could only be afraid of
it. Is fear a treasure? Can uncertainty be what you WANT? Or
is it a mistake about your will, and what you REALLY are? Let
us consider what the error is, so it can be corrected, not
protected.
Sin is belief attack can be projected outside the mind
where the belief arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas
CAN leave their source made real and meaningful. And from this
error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise. This world is
an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack.
Its failure lies in that you STILL feel guilty, though without
understanding WHY. Effects are seen as separate from their
source, and seem to be beyond you to control or to prevent.
What is thus KEPT apart can never join.
Cause and effect are one, not separate. God wills you learn
what always has been true; that he created you as part of Him,
and this must still be true BECAUSE ideas leave not their
source. Such is creations law; that each idea the mind
conceives but ADDS to its abundance, NEVER takes away. This is
as true of what is idly wished as what is truly willed,
because the mind can wish to be deceived, but cannot make it
be what it is not. And to believe ideas can leave their source
is to invite illusions to be true, WITHOUT SUCCESS. For never
will success be possible in trying to deceive the Son of God.
The miracle is possible when cause and consequence are
brought together, not kept separate. The healing of effect
without the cause can merely shift effects to other forms. And
this is NOT release. Gods Son could never be content with
less than full salvation, and escape from guilt. For otherwise
he still demands that he must make some sacrifice, and thus
denies that everything is his, unlimited by loss of any kind.
A tiny sacrifice is just the same in its effects as is the
whole idea of sacrifice. If loss in any form is possible, then
is Gods Son made incomplete and not himself. He has foresworn
his Father AND himself, and made them both his enemies in
hate.
Illusions serve the purpose they were made to serve. And
from their purpose, they derive whatever meaning that they
seem to have. God gave to all illusions that were made ANOTHER
purpose that would justify a miracle whatever form they took.
In every miracle all healing lies, for God gave answer to them
all as one. And what is one to Him must be the same. If you
believe what is the same is different you but deceive
yourself. What God calls one will be forever one, not
separate. His Kingdom IS united; thus it was created, and thus
will it ever be.
The miracle but calls your ancient name, which you will
recognize because the truth is in your memory. And to this
name your brother calls for his release and yours. Heaven is
shining on the Son of God. Deny him not, that you may be
released. Each instant is the Son of God reborn, until he
chooses not to die again. In every wish to hurt he chooses
death, instead of what his Father wills for him. Yet every
instant offers life to him, because his Father wills that he
should live.
In crucifixion is redemption laid, for healing is not
needed where there is no pain or suffering. Forgiveness is the
answer to attack of any kind. So is attack deprived of its
effects, and hate is answered in the name of love. To you to
whom it has been given to save the Son of God from crucifixion
and from hell and death, all glory be forever. For you have
power to save the Son of God because his Father willed that it
be so. And in your hands does all salvation lie, to be both
offered and received as one.
To use the power God has given you as He would have it used
is natural. It is not arrogant to be as He created you, or to
make use of what He gave to answer all His Sons mistakes, and
set him free. But it IS arrogant to lay aside the power that
He gave, and choose a little, senseless wish instead of what
He wills. The gift of God to you IS limitless. There is no
circumstance it cannot answer, and no problem which is not
resolved within its gracious light.
Abide in peace, where God would have you be. And be the
means whereby your brother finds the peace in which your
wishes are fulfilled. Let us unite in bringing blessing to the
world of sin and death. For what can save each one of us can
save us all. There is no difference among the Sons of God. The
Unity that specialness denies will save them all, for what is
one can have no specialness. And everything belongs to each of
them. No wishes lie between a brother and his own. To get from
one is to deprive them all. And yet to bless but one gives
blessing to them all as one.
Your ancient name belongs to everyone, as theirs to you.
Call on your brothers name and God will answer, for on Him
you call. Could He refuse to answer when He has ALREADY
answered all who call on Him? A miracle can make no change at
all. But it CAN make what always has been true be recognized
by those who know it not. And by this little gift of truth but
let to be itself; the Son of God allowed to be himself, and
all creation freed to call upon the Name of God as one.
The Immediacy of Salvation
The one remaining problem that you have is that you see an
interval between the time when you forgive, and will receive
the benefits of trust. This but reflects the little you would
keep between yourselves, that you might be a little separate.
For time and space are one illusion, which takes different
forms. If it has been projected beyond your minds, you think
of it as time. The nearer it is brought to where it is, the
more you think of it in terms of space.
There is a distance you would keep apart from one another,
and this space you see as time because you still believe you
are external to each other. This makes trust impossible. And
you cannot believe that trust would settle every problem NOW.
Thus do you think it safer to remain a little careful and a
little watchful of interests perceived as separate. From this
perception you cannot conceive of gaining what forgiveness
offers NOW. The interval you think lies in between the giving
and receiving of the gift seems to be one in which you
sacrifice and suffer loss. You see eventual salvation, not
immediate results.
Salvation IS immediate. Unless you so perceive it, you will
be afraid of it, believing that the risk of loss is great
between the time its purpose is made yours and its effects
will come to you. In this form is the error still obscured
that is the source of fear. Salvation WOULD wipe out the space
you see between you still, and let you instantly become as
one. And it is HERE you fear the loss would lie. Do not
project this fear to time, for time is not the enemy that you
perceive. Time is as neutral as the body is, except in terms
of what you see it FOR. If you would keep a little space
between you still, you want a little time in which forgiveness
is withheld a little while. This makes the interval between
the time in which forgiveness is withheld and given seem
dangerous, with terror justified.
Yet space between you is apparent NOW, and cannot be
perceived in future time. No more can it be overlooked except
within the present. Future loss is not your fear. But present
JOINING is your dread. Who can feel desolation except NOW? A
future cause as yet has no effects. And therefore must it be
that if you fear, there is a PRESENT cause. And it is THIS
that needs correction, not a future state.
The plans you make for safety all are laid within the
future, where you CANNOT plan. No purpose has been given it as
yet, and what will happen has as yet no cause. Who can predict
effects without a cause? And who could fear effects unless he
thought they HAD been caused, and judged disastrous NOW?
Belief in sin arouses fear, and like its cause, is looking
forward; looking back, but OVERLOOKING what is here and now.
Yet only here and now its cause must be, if its effects
already have been judged as fearful. And in overlooking this,
is it protected and kept separate from healing. For a miracle
is NOW. It stands already here, in present grace, within the
only interval of time which sin and fear have overlooked, but
which is all there IS to time. The working out of all
correction takes no time at all.
Yet the ACCEPTANCE of the working out can seem to take
forever. The change of purpose the Holy Spirit brought to your
relationship has in it all effects that you will see. They can
be looked at NOW. Why wait till they unfold in time, and fear
they may not come, although already there? You have been told
that everything brings good that comes from God. And yet it
seems as if this is not so. Good in disasters form is
difficult to credit in advance. Nor is there really sense in
this idea.
Why should the good appear in evils form? And is it not
deception if it does? Its cause is here, if it appears at all.
Why are not its effects apparent, then? Why in the future? And
you seek to be content with sighing, and with reasoning you
do not understand it now, but will some day. And then its
meaning will be clear. This is not reason, for it is unjust,
and clearly hints at punishment until the time of liberation
is at hand. Given a change of purpose for the good, there is
no reason for an interval in which disaster strikes, to be
perceived as good some day, but now in form of pain. This
is a sacrifice of NOW, which could not be the cost the Holy
Spirit asks for what he gave without a cost at all.
Yet this illusion has a cause which, though untrue, must be
already in your mind. And this illusion is but one effect
which it engenders, and one form in which its outcome is
perceived. This interval in time, when retribution is
perceived to be the form in which the good appears is but
one aspect of the little space that lies between you,
unforgiven still.
Be not content with future happiness. It has no meaning,
and is NOT your just reward. For you have cause for freedom
NOW. What profits freedom in a prisoners form? Why should
deliverance be disguised as death? Delay is senseless, and the
reasoning which would maintain effects of present cause
must be delayed until a future time is merely a denial of the
fact that consequence and cause must come as one. Look not to
time, but to the little space between you still, to be
delivered from. And do not let it be disguised as time, and so
preserved because its form is changed, and what it IS cannot
be recognized. The Holy Spirits purpose NOW is yours. Should
not His happiness be yours as well?
For They Have Come
Think but how holy you must be from whom the Voice for God
calls lovingly unto your brother, that you may awake in him
the Voice that answers to your call! And think how holy he
must be when in him sleeps your own salvation, with his
freedom joined! However much you wish he be condemned, God is
in him. And never will you know He is in you as well while you
attack His chosen home, and battle with His host. Regard him
gently. Look with loving eyes on him who carries Christ within
him, that you may behold His glory, and rejoice that Heaven is
not separate from you.
Is it too much to ask a little trust for him who carries
Christ to you, that you may be forgiven all your sins, and
left without a single one you cherish still? Forget not that a
shadow held between your brother and yourself obscures the
face of Christ and memory of God. And would you trade Them for
an ancient hate? The ground whereon you stand is holy ground
because of Them Who, standing there with you, have blessed it
with Their innocence and peace.
The blood of hatred fades to let the grass grow green
again, and let the flowers be all white and sparkling in the
summer sun. What was a place of death has now become a living
temple in a world of light. Because of Them. It is Their
Presence which has lifted holiness again to take its ancient
place upon an ancient throne. Because of Them have miracles
sprung up as grass and flowers on the barren ground which hate
had scorched and rendered desolate. What hate has wrought have
They undone. And now you stand on ground so holy Heaven leans
to join with it, and make it like itself. The shadow of an
ancient hate has gone, and all the blight and withering have
passed forever from the land where They have come.
What is a hundred or a thousand years to Them, or tens of
thousands? When They come, times purpose is fulfilled. What
never was passes to nothingness when They have come. What
hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up
every living thing and lifts it into Heaven, where the lights
grow ever brighter as each one comes home. The incomplete is
made complete again, and Heavens joy has been increased
because what is its own has been restored to it. The bloodied
earth is cleansed, and the insane have shed their garments of
insanity, to join Them on the ground whereon you stand.
Heaven is grateful for this gift of what has been withheld
so long. For They have come to gather in Their Own. What has
been locked is opened; what was held apart from light is given
up, that light may shine on it, and leave no space nor
distance lingering between the light of Heaven and the world.
The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient
hatred has become a present love. And They come quickly to the
living temple, where a home for Them has been set up. There is
no place in Heaven holier. And They have come to dwell within
the temple offered them, to be Their resting-place as well as
yours. What hatred has released to love becomes the brightest
light in Heavens radiance. And all the lights in Heaven
brighter grow, in gratitude for what has been restored.
Around you angels hover lovingly, to keep away all darkened
thoughts of sin, and keep the light where it has entered in.
Your footprints lighten up the world, for where you walk
forgiveness gladly goes with you. No-one on earth but offers
thanks to one who has restored his home, and sheltered him
from bitter winter and the freezing cold. And shall the Lord
of Heaven and His Son give less in gratitude for so much more?
Now is the temple of the Living God rebuilt as host again
to Him by Whom it was created. Where He dwells, His Son dwells
with Him, never separate. And They give thanks that They are
welcome made at last. Where stood a cross stands now the risen
Christ, and ancient scars are healed within His sight. An
ancient miracle has come to bless and to replace an ancient
enmity that came to kill. In gentle gratitude do God the
Father and the Son return to what is Theirs, and will forever
be. Now is the Holy Spirits purpose done. For They have come!
For They have come at last!
The Remaining Task
What, then, remains to be undone, for you to realize Their
Presence? Only this; you have a differential view of when
attack is justified, and when you think it is unfair, and not
to be allowed. When you perceive it as unfair, you think that
a response of anger now is just. And thus you see what is the
same as different. Confusion is not limited. If it occurs at
all, it will be total. And its presence, in whatever form,
will hide Their Presence. They are known with clarity, or not
at all. Confused perception will block knowledge. It is not a
question of the size of the confusion, or how much it
interferes. Its simple presence shuts the door to Theirs, and
keeps Them there unknown.
What does it mean if you perceive attack in certain forms
to be unfair to you? It means that there must be some forms in
which you think it FAIR. For otherwise, how could some be
evaluated as unfair? Some, then, are given meaning, and
perceived as sensible. And only some are seen as meaningless.
And this denies the fact that ALL are senseless; equally
without a cause or consequence, and cannot have effects of ANY
kind. Their Presence is obscured by any veil which stands
between Their shining innocence, and your awareness it is your
own, and EQUALLY belongs to every living thing along with you.
God limits not. And what is limited can NOT be Heaven. So it
MUST be hell.
Unfairness and attack are ONE mistake, so firmly joined
that where one is perceived, the other must be seen. You
cannot BE unfairly treated. The belief you are is but another
form of the idea you are deprived by someone not yourself.
Projection of the cause of sacrifice is at the root of
everything perceived to be unfair, and not your just deserts
[sic]. Yet it is YOU who ask this of yourself, in deep
injustice to the Son of God. You have no enemy except
yourself, and you are enemy indeed to him because you do not
know him AS yourself. What could be more unjust than that he
be deprived of what he IS, denied the right to be himself, and
asked to sacrifice his Fathers Love and yours, as not his
due?
Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly
treated. In this view, you seek to find an innocence which is
not Theirs but yours alone, and at the cost of someone elses
guilt. Can innocence be purchased by the giving of your guilt
to someone else? And IS this innocence, which your attack on
him attempts to get? Is it not retribution for your own attack
upon the Son of God you seek? Is it not safer to believe that
you are innocent of this, and victimized despite your
innocence? Whatever way the game of guilt is played, there
MUST be loss. Someone must lose his innocence that someone
else can take it from him, making it his own.
You think your brother is unfair to you because you think
that one must be unfair to make the other innocent. And in
this game do you perceive one purpose for your whole
relationship. And this you seek to add unto the purpose given
it. The Holy Spirits purpose is to let the Presence of your
holy Guests be known to you. And to this purpose nothing CAN
be added, for the world is purposeless except for this. To add
or take away from this ONE goal is but to take away all
purpose from the world and from yourself. And each unfairness
that the world appears to lay upon you YOU have laid on IT by
rendering it purposeless, without the function that the Holy
Spirit sees. And simple justice has been thus denied to every
living thing upon the earth.
What this injustice does to you who judge unfairly, and who
see as you have judged, you cannot calculate. The world grows
dim and threatening, and not a trace of all the happy sparkle
that salvation brought can you perceive, to lighten up your
way. And so you see yourself deprived of light, abandoned to
the dark, unfairly left without a purpose in a futile world.
The world is fair because the Holy Spirit has brought
injustice to the light within, and there has all unfairness
been resolved, and been replaced with justice and with love.
If you perceive injustice anywhere, you need but say:
By this do I deny the Presence of the Father and
the Son.
And I would rather know of Them than see injustice,
which Their Presence shines away.
CHAPTER 27
THE BODY AND THE DREAM
The wish to be unfairly treated is a compromise attempt
that would COMBINE attack and innocence. Who can combine the
wholly incompatible, and make a unity of what can never join?
Walk you the gentle way, and you will fear no evil and no
shadows in the night. But place no terror symbols on your
path, or you will weave a crown of thorns from which your
brother and yourself will not escape. You cannot crucify
yourself alone. And if you are unfairly treated, he must
suffer the unfairness that you see. You cannot sacrifice
yourself alone. For sacrifice is total. If it could occur at
all, it would entail the whole of Gods creation, and the
Father with the sacrifice of his beloved Son.
In your RELEASE from sacrifice is his made manifest, and
shown to be his own. But every pain you suffer do you see as
proof that he is guilty of attack. Thus would you make
yourself to be the sign that he has lost his innocence, and
need but look on you to realize that he has been condemned.
And what to you has been unfair will come to him in
righteousness. The unjust vengeance that you suffer now
belongs to him, and when it rests on him are YOU set free.
Wish not to make yourself a living symbol of his guilt, for
you will not escape the death you made for him. But in his
INNOCENCE you find your own.
The Picture of the Crucifixion
Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived,
unfairly treated or in need of anything, you but accuse your
brother of attack upon Gods Son. You hold a picture of your
crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ
in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing
off the gate, and damning him to hell. Yet this is writ in
hell and not in Heaven, where you are beyond attack, and prove
his INNOCENCE. The picture of yourself you offer him you show
YOURSELF, and give it all your faith. The Holy Spirit offers
you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is
no pain, and no reproach at all. And what was martyred to his
guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence.
The power of witness is beyond belief because it brings
conviction in its wake. The witness is believed because he
points beyond himself to what he represents. A sick and
suffering you but represents your brothers guilt; the witness
which you send lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which
you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture
YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are
merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill.
Death seems an easy price, if they can say, Behold me,
brother, at your hand I die. For sickness is the witness to
his guilt, and death would prove his errors must be sins.
Sickness is but a little death; a form of vengeance not
yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it
represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your
brother YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it
has shown to him have you believed, because it witnessed to
the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. Now in the
hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture
of a different you. It is a picture of a body still, for what
you REALLY are cannot be seen nor pictured. Yet this one has
not been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never
suffered pain at all. It witnesses to the eternal truth that
you cannot BE hurt, and points beyond itself to both your
innocence and his.
Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that every scar
is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in
love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with
healed eyes will look beyond it to the innocence that he
beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has never sinned;
that nothing which his madness bid him do was ever done, or
ever had effects of any kind. That no reproach he laid upon
his heart was ever justified, and no attack can ever touch him
with the poisoned and relentless sting of fear. Attest his
innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and
his health because it PROVES illusions are not true.
It is not will for life, but wish for death, that is the
motivation for this world. Its only purpose is to prove guilt
real. No worldly thought or act or feeling has a motivation
other than this one. These are the witnesses that are called
forth to be believed, and lend conviction to the system they
speak for and represent. And each has many voices, speaking to
your brother and yourself in different tongues. And yet to
both the message is the same. Adornment of the body seeks to
show how lovely are the witnesses for guilt. Concerns about
the body demonstrate how frail and vulnerable is your life;
how easily destroyed is what you love. Depression speaks of
death and vanity of real concern with anything at all. The
strongest witness to futility, which bolsters all the rest and
helps them paint the picture in which sin is justified, is
sickness in whatever form it takes.
The sick have reason for each one of their unnatural
desires and strange needs. For who could live a life so soon
cut short, and not esteem the worth of passing joys? What
pleasures could there be that will endure? Are not the frail
entitled to believe that every stolen scrap of pleasure is
their righteous payment for their little lives? Their death
will pay the price for all of them, if they enjoy their
benefits or not. The end of life must come, whatever way that
life be spent. And so take pleasure in the quickly passing and
ephemeral.
These are not sins, but witnesses unto the strange belief
that sin and death are real, and innocence and sin will end
alike within the termination of the grave. If this were true,
there WOULD be reason to remain content to seek for passing
joys, and cherish little pleasures where you can. Yet in this
picture is the body not perceived as neutral and without a
goal inherent in itself. For it becomes the symbol of
reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there
to see, so that the cause can never be denied.
Your function is to show your brother sin can HAVE no
cause. How futile must it be to see yourself a picture of the
proof that what your function is can never be! The Holy
Spirits picture changes not the body into something it is
not. It only takes away from it all signs of accusation and of
blamefulness. Pictured without a purpose, it is seen as
neither sick nor well, nor bad nor good. No grounds are
offered that it may be judged in any way at all. It has no
life, but neither is it dead. It stands apart from all
experience of fear or love. For now it witnesses to nothing
yet, its purpose being open, and the mind made free again to
choose what it is FOR. Now is it not condemned, but waiting
for a purpose to be given, that it may fulfill the function
that it will receive.
Into this empty space, from which the goal of sin has been
removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can
come, and perfect healing take the place of death. The body
can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a
breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the
fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its purpose. Then
will it send forth the message it received, and by its health
and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it
represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless
life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message
be, Behold me, brother, at your hand I live.
The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this; to
let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure
you knew its purpose was to foster guilt. For this insists
your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents.
This leaves no space in which a different view, another
purpose, can be given it. You do NOT know its purpose. You but
gave ILLUSIONS of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your
function from yourself. This thing without a purpose cannot
hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, its
purpose and your function both be reconciled at last, and seen
as one.
The Fear of Healing
Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a
bar to love, and damaged bodies are accusers. They stand
firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the
frail can have no trust, and that the damaged have no grounds
for peace. Who has been injured by his brother, and could love
and trust him still? He has attacked, and will attack again.
Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must
be protected from him. To forgive may be an act of charity,
but not his due. He may be pitied for his guilt, but not
exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but
add to all the guilt that he has really earned.
The unhealed CANNOT pardon. For they are the witnesses that
pardon is unfair. They would retain the consequences of the
guilt they overlook. Yet no-one can forgive a sin which he
believes is real. And what has consequences MUST be real
because what it has done is there to see. Forgiveness is not
pity, which but seeks to pardon what it knows to be the truth.
Good cannot BE returned for evil, for forgiveness does not
first establish sin and THEN forgive it. Who can say and mean,
My brother, you have injured me, and yet, because I am the
better of the two, I pardon you my hurt. His pardon and your
hurt cannot exist together. One denies the other, and MUST
make it false.
To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox which reason
cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you
deserves no pardon. And by giving it, you grant your brother
mercy, but retain the proof he is not really innocent. The
sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers and
themselves as well. For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns
can suffer. He holds not the proof of sin before his brothers
eyes. And thus he must have overlooked it, and removed it from
his own. Forgiveness cannot be for one and not the other. Who
forgives IS healed. And in his healing lies the proof that he
has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that
he still would hold against himself or any living thing.
Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your
brother AND yourself. You must attest his sins had no effect
on you, to demonstrate they were not real. How else could he
be guiltless? And how could his innocence be justified unless
his sins have no effect to warrant guilt? Sins are beyond
forgiveness just because they would entail effects which
cannot be undone and overlooked entirely. In their undoing
lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be
healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your
brother and yourself. A broken body shows the mind has not
been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is
without effect. What you would prove to him you will believe.
The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything
you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him.
Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered
pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute
testimony of his innocence. It is this testimony which can
speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is
his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing
less to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing
show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did not do.
And so is he convinced his innocence was never lost, and
healed along with you.
Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can
never BE undone. And hopelessness and death must disappear
before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power
far beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The
ancient calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto
his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever
hear. Brother, there IS no death. And this you learn when you
but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He
thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned.
Yet it is given you to show him, by your healing, that his
guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.
How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of
full deliverance from guilt upon your brother and yourself.
Your healing saves him pain as well as you, and you are healed
because you wished him well. This is the law the miracle
obeys; that healing sees no specialness at all. It does not
come from pity, but from love. And love would prove all
suffering is but a vain imagining, a foolish wish, with no
effects. Your health is a result of your desire to see your
brother with no blood upon his hands, nor guilt upon his heart
made heavy with the proof of sin. And what you wish IS given
you to see.
The cost of your serenity is his. This is the price
the Holy Spirit and the world interpret differently. The world
perceives it as a statement of the fact that your salvation
SACRIFICES his. The Holy Spirit KNOWS your healing is the
witness unto his, and cannot be apart from his at all. As long
as he consents to suffer, you will be unhealed. Yet you can
show him that his suffering is purposeless and wholly without
cause. Show him your healing, and he will consent no more to
suffer. For his innocence has been established in your sight
and his. And laughter will replace your sighs, because Gods
Son remembered that he IS Gods Son.
Who, then, fears healing? Only those to whom their
brothers sacrifice and pain are seen to represent their own
serenity. Their helplessness and weakness represents the
grounds on which they JUSTIFY his pain. The constant sting of
guilt he suffers serves to prove that he is slave, but they
are free. The constant pain they suffer demonstrates that they
are free BECAUSE they hold him bound. And sickness is desired
to prevent a shift of balance in the sacrifice. How could the
Holy Spirit be deterred an instant, even less, to reason with
an argument for sickness such as this? And need your healing
be delayed because you pause to listen to insanity?
Consider how this self perception must extend, and do not
overlook the fact that every thought extends because that is
its purpose, being what it really IS. From an idea of self as
two, there comes a necessary view of function split between
the two. And what you would correct is only half the error,
which you think is all of it. Your brothers sins become the
central target for correction, lest your errors and his own be
seen as one. Yours are mistakes, but his are sins, and not the
same as yours. His merit punishment, while yours, in fairness,
should be overlooked.
In this interpretation of correction, your own mistakes you
will not even see. The focus of correction has been placed
outside yourself, on one who cannot be a part of you while
this perception lasts. What is condemned can never be returned
to its accuser, who hated it, and hates it still. This is your
brother, focus of your hate, unworthy to be part of you, and
thus outside yourself; the other half, which is denied. And
only what is left without his presence is perceived as all of
you. To this remaining half the Holy Spirit must represent the
other half until you recognize it IS the other half. And this
He does by giving both of you a function that is one, not
different.
Correction is the function given BOTH, but neither one
alone. And when it is fulfilled as SHARED, it MUST correct
mistakes in both of you. It cannot leave mistakes in one
unhealed, and set the other free. That is divided purpose,
which cannot be shared, and so it cannot be the function which
the Holy Spirit sees as His. And you can rest assured that He
will not fulfill a function He cannot understand and recognize
as His. For only thus can He keep yours preserved intact,
despite your separate views of what your function is. If He
upheld divided function, you were lost indeed. His inability
to see His goal divided and distinct for each of you preserves
your Self from being made aware of any function other than Its
Own. And thus is healing given both of you.
Correction must be left to One Who knows correction and
forgiveness are the same. With half a mind, this is not
understood. Leave, then, correction to the Mind That IS
united, functioning as one because It is not split in purpose,
and conceives a single function as Its ONLY one. Here is the
function given It conceived to be Its Own, and not apart from
that Its Giver keeps BECAUSE it has been shared. In His
acceptance of this function lies the means whereby your mind
is unified. His single purpose unifies the halves of you which
you perceive as separate. And each forgives the other, that he
may accept his other half as part of him.
The Symbol of the Impossible
Power cannot oppose. For opposition would weaken it, and
weakened power is a contradiction in ideas. Weak strength is
meaningless, and power used to weaken is employed to limit.
And therefore it must be limited and weak, because that is its
purpose. Power is unopposed, to be itself. No weakness can
intrude on it without changing it into something it is not. To
weaken is to limit, and impose an opposite that contradicts
the concept which it attacks. And by this does it join to the
idea a something it is not, and make it unintelligible. Who
can understand a double concept, such as weakened-power or
as hateful-love?
You have decided that your brother is a symbol for a
hateful-love, a weakened-power, and above all, a
living-death. And so he has no meaning to you, for he
stands for what is meaningless. He represents a double
thought, where half is cancelled out by the remaining half.
Yet even this is quickly contradicted by the half it cancelled
out, and so they both are gone. And now he stands for nothing.
Symbols which but represent ideas that cannot be must stand
for empty space and nothingness. Yet nothingness and empty
space can NOT be interference. What CAN interfere with the
awareness of reality is the belief that there is something
THERE.
The picture of your brother that you see means nothing.
There is nothing to attack or to deny; love or hate, or to
endow with power or to see as weak. The picture has been
wholly cancelled out, because it symbolized a contradiction
which cancelled out the THOUGHT it represents. And thus the
picture has no cause at all. Who can perceive effect without a
cause? What can the causeless be but nothingness? The picture
of your brother that you see is wholly absent, and has never
been. Let, then, the empty space it occupies be RECOGNIZED as
vacant, and the time devoted to its seeing be perceived as
idly spent, a time unoccupied.
An empty space which is not seen as filled, an unused
interval of time not seen as spent and fully occupied, become
a silent invitation to the truth to enter, and to make itself
at home. No preparation can be made that would enhance the
invitations real appeal. For what you leave as vacant God
will fill, and where He is, there MUST the truth abide.
Unweakened power, with no opposite, is what creation IS. For
this there ARE no symbols. Nothing points beyond the truth,
for what can stand for more than everything? Yet true undoing
must be kind. And so the first replacement for your picture is
another picture, of another kind.
As nothingness cannot be pictured, so there is no symbol
for totality. Reality is ultimately known without a form,
unpictured and unseen. Forgiveness is not yet a power known as
wholly free of limits. Yet it sets no limits you have chosen
to impose. Forgiveness is the means by which the truth is
represented temporarily. It lets the Holy Spirit make exchange
of pictures possible until the time when aids are meaningless,
and learning done. No learning aid has use which can extend
beyond the goal of learning. When its aim has been
accomplished, it is functionless. Yet in the learning interval
it has a use which now you fear, but yet will love.
The picture of your brother given you to occupy the space
so lately left unoccupied and vacant will not need defense of
any kind. For you will give it overwhelming preference. Nor
delay an instant in deciding that it is the only one you want.
It does not stand for double concepts. Though it is but half
the picture, and is incomplete, within itself it is the same.
The other half of what it represents remains unknown, but is
not cancelled out. And thus is God left free to take the final
step Himself. And what will ultimately take the place of every
learning aid will merely BE. Forgiveness vanishes and symbols
fade, and nothing which the eyes have ever seen, or ears have
heard, remains to be perceived.
A Power wholly limitless has come, not to destroy, but to
receive Its Own. There is no choice of function anywhere. The
choice you fear to lose you never had. Yet only this appears
to interfere with power unlimited and single thoughts,
complete and happy, without opposite. You do not know the
peace of power which opposes nothing. Yet no other kind can be
at all. Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness, and
beyond the world of symbols and of limitations. He would
merely BE, and so He merely IS.
The Quiet Answer
In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem
quietly resolved. In conflict there can BE no answer and no
resolution, for its purpose is to make no resolution possible,
and to ensure no answer will be plain. A problem set in
conflict HAS no answer, for it is seen in different ways. And
what would be an answer from one point of view is not an
answer in another light. You ARE in conflict. Thus it must be
clear you cannot answer anything at all, for conflict has no
limited effects. Yet if God gave an answer, there must be a
way in which your problems are resolved, for what He wills
already has been done.
Thus it must be that time is not involved, and every
problem can be answered NOW. Yet it must also be that, in your
state of mind, solution is impossible. Therefore, God must
have given you a way of reaching to another state of mind, in
which the answer is already there. Such is the holy instant.
It is here that all your problems should be brought and LEFT.
Here they belong, for here their answer is. It must be
pointless to attempt to solve a problem where the answer
cannot be. Yet just as surely it must be resolved, if it is
brought to where the answer IS.
Attempt to solve no problems but within the holy instants
surety. For there the problem WILL be answered and resolved.
Outside, there will be no solution, for there is no answer
there that could be found. Nowhere outside a single, simple
question is ever asked. The world can only ask a double
question, with many answers, none of which will do. It does
not ask a question to be answered, but only to restate its
point of view. All questions asked within this world are but a
way of LOOKING, not a question asked. A question asked in hate
cannot be answered, because it is an answer in itself. A
double question asks and answers, both attesting the same
thing in different form.
The world asks but ONE question. It is this: Of these
illusions, which of them are true? Which ones establish peace
and offer joy? And which can bring escape from all the pain of
which this world is made? Whatever form the question takes,
its purpose is the same. It asks but to establish sin is real,
and answers in the form of preference. Which sin do you
prefer? That is the one which you should choose. The others
are not true. What can the body get that you would want the
most of all? It is your servant and your friend. But tell it
what you want, and it will serve you lovingly and well. And
this is not a question, for it tells you what you want, and
where to go for it. It leaves no room to question its beliefs,
except that what it states takes questions FORM.
A pseudo-question has no answer. It DICTATES the answer
even as it asks. Thus is all questioning within the world a
form of propaganda for itself. Just as the bodys witnesses
are but the senses from within itself, so are the answers to
the questions of the world contained within the questions.
Where answers represent the questions they add nothing new,
and nothing has been learned.
An honest question is a learning tool which asks for
something that you do NOT know. It does not set conditions for
response, but merely asks what the response should be. But no-
one in a conflict state is free to ask this question, for he
does not want an honest answer, where the conflict ends. Only
within the holy instant can an honest question honestly be
asked. And from the meaning of the question does the
meaningfulness of the answer come. Here is it possible to
separate your wishes from the answer, so it can be given you,
and also be RECEIVED. The answer is provided everywhere. Yet
it is only here it can be HEARD.
An honest answer asks no sacrifice because it answers
questions truly asked. The questions of the world but ask of
whom is sacrifice demanded, asking not if sacrifice is
meaningful at all. And so UNLESS the answer tells of whom
it will remain unrecognized, unheard, and thus the question is
preserved intact because it gave the answer to itself. The
holy instant is the interval in which the mind is still enough
to hear an answer which is not entailed within the question
asked. It offers something new and different from the
question. How could it be answered if it but repeats itself?
Therefore, attempt to solve no problems in a world from
which the answer has been barred. But bring the problem to the
only place which holds the answer lovingly for you. Here are
the answers which will solve your problems because they stand
apart from them, and see what CAN be answered; what the
question IS. Within the world the answers merely raise another
question, though they leave the first unanswered. In the holy
instant, you can bring the question to the answer, and receive
the answer that was made FOR you.
The Healing Example
The only way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends
without your help, but you ARE needed that it can begin.
Accept the miracle of healing, and it will go forth because of
what it IS. It is its nature to extend itself the instant it
is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and
RECEIVED. No-one can ask another to be healed. But he can let
HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has
received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not have?
And who can share what he denies himself? The Holy Spirit
speaks to YOU. He does not speak to someone else. Yet by your
listening, His Voice extends because you have ACCEPTED what He
says.
Health is the witness unto health. As long as it is
unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when
demonstrated has it been proved, and MUST compel belief. No-
one is healed through double messages. If you wish only to be
healed, you heal. Your SINGLE purpose makes this possible. But
if you are afraid of healing, then it cannot come through you.
The only thing that is required for a healing is a lack of
fear. The fearful are not healed, and cannot heal. This does
not mean the conflict must be gone forever from your mind. For
if it were, there were no need for healing then. But it DOES
mean, if only for an instant, you love without attack. An
instant is sufficient. Miracles wait not on time.
The holy instant is the miracles abiding-place. From
there, each one is born into this world as witness to a state
of mind which has transcended conflict, and has reached to
peace. It carries comfort from the place of peace into the
battle-ground, and demonstrates that war has no effects. For
all the hurt that war has sought to bring, the broken bodies
and the shattered limbs, the screaming dying and the silent
dead, are gently lifted up and comforted. There IS no sadness
where a miracle has come to heal. And nothing more than just
ONE instant of your love without attack is necessary, that all
this occur. In that one instant are you healed, and in that
single instant is all healing done.
What stands apart from you, when you accept the blessing
that the holy instant brings? Be not afraid of blessing, for
the One Who blesses you loves all the world, and leaves
nothing within the world that could be feared. But if you
shrink from blessing, will the world indeed seem fearful, for
you have withheld its peace and comfort, leaving it to die.
Would not a world so bitterly bereft be looked on as a
condemnation by the one who could have saved it, but stepped
back because he was afraid of being healed? The eyes of all
the dying bring reproach, and suffering whispers, What is
there to fear? Consider well its question. It is asked of
you on your behalf. A dying world asks only that you rest an
instant from attack upon yourself, that it be healed.
Come to the holy instant and be healed, for nothing that is
there received is left behind, on your returning to the world.
And being blessed, you will bring blessing. Life is given you
to give the dying world. And suffering eyes no longer will
accuse, but shine in thanks to you who blessing gave. The holy
instants radiance will light your eyes, and give them sight
to see beyond all suffering, and see Christs face instead.
Healing REPLACES suffering. Who looks on one cannot perceive
the other, for they cannot both be there. And what you see the
world will witness, and will witness TO.
Thus is your healing everything the world requires, that it
may be healed. It needs ONE lesson which has perfectly been
learned. And then, when you forget it, will the world remind
you gently of what you have taught. No reinforcement will its
thanks withhold from you who let yourself be healed that it
might live. It will call forth its witnesses to show the face
of Christ to you who brought the sight to them, by which they
witnessed it. The world of accusation is replaced by one in
which all eyes look lovingly upon the Friend who brought them
their release. And happily your brother will perceive the many
friends he thought were enemies.
Problems are not specific, but they take specific forms,
and these specific shapes make up the world. And no-one
understands the nature of his problem. If he did, it would be
there no more for him to see. Its very nature is that it is
NOT. And thus, while he perceives it, he can NOT perceive it
as it is. But healing is apparent in specific instances, and
generalizes to include them all. This is because they really
are the same, despite their different forms. All learning aims
at transfer, which becomes complete within two situations
which are seen as one, for ONLY common elements are there. Yet
this can only be attained by One Who does not see the
differences you see. The total transfer of your learning is
not made by you. But that it has been made in spite of all the
differences you see, convinces you that they could not be
real.
Your healing will extend, and will be brought to problems
that you thought were not your own. And it will also be
apparent that your many different problems will be solved, as
any one of them has been escaped. It cannot be their
differences which made this possible, for learning does not
jump from situations to their opposites, and bring the same
results. All healing must proceed in lawful manner, in accord
with laws which have been properly perceived, but never
violated. Fear you not the way that you perceive them. You are
wrong, but there is One within you Who is RIGHT.
Leave, then, the transfer of your learning to the One Who
really understands its laws, and Who will guarantee that they
remain unviolated and unlimited. Your part is merely to apply
what He has taught you to YOURSELF, and He will do the rest.
And thus the power of your learning will be proved to you by
all the many different witnesses it finds. Your brother first
among them will be seen, but thousands stand behind him, and
beyond each one there are a thousand more. Each one may seem
to have a problem which is different from the rest. Yet they
are solved together. And their common answer shows the
questions could not have been separate.
Peace be to you whom is healing offered. And you will learn
that peace is given you when you accept the healing for
yourself. Its total value need not be appraised by you to let
you understand that you have benefited from it. What occurred
within the instant which love entered in without attack will
stay with you forever. Your healing will be one of its
effects, as will your brothers. Everywhere you go will you
behold its multiplied effects. Yet all the witnesses that you
behold will be far less that all there really are. Infinity
cannot be understood by merely counting up its separate parts.
God thanks you for your healing, for He knows it is a gift of
love unto His Son, and therefore is it given unto Him.
The Purpose of Pain
Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud,
obscuring voice whose shrieks would silence what the Holy
Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness. Pain
compels attention, drawing it away from Him, and focusing upon
itself. Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are
means to make the body real. What shares a common purpose is
the same. This is the law of purpose, which unites all those
who share in it within itself. Pleasure and pain are equally
unreal, because their purpose cannot BE achieved. Thus are
they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a
meaning. And they share the lack of meaning which their
purpose has.
Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. For
either witness is the same, and carries but one message: You
are here, within this body, and you can be hurt. You can have
pleasure, too, but only at the cost of pain. These witnesses
are joined by many more. Each one seems different because it
has a different name, and so it seems to answer to a different
sound. Except for this, the witnesses of sin are all alike.
Call pleasure pain, and it will hurt. Call pain a pleasure,
and the pain behind the pleasure will be felt no more. Sins
witnesses but shift from name to name, as one steps forward
and another back. Yet which is foremost makes no difference.
Sins witnesses hear but the call of death.
This body, purposeless within itself, holds all your
memories and all your hopes. You use its eyes to see, its ears
to hear, and let it tell you what it is it feels. IT DOES NOT
KNOW. It tells you but the names you gave it to use, when YOU
call forth the witnesses to its reality. You cannot choose
among them which are real, for any one you choose is like the
rest. This name or that, but nothing more, you choose. You do
not make a witness true because you called him by truths
name. The truth is found in him if it is truth he REPRESENTS.
And otherwise he lies, if you should call him by the holy Name
of God Himself.
Gods Witness sees no witnesses AGAINST the body. Neither
does He harken to the witnesses by other names which speak in
other ways for its reality. He KNOWS it is not real. For
nothing could contain what you believe it holds within. Nor
could it tell a part of God Himself what it should feel, and
what its function is. Yet must He love whatever you hold dear.
And for each witness to the bodys death He sends a witness to
your life in Him Who knows no death. Each miracle He brings is
witness that the body is not real. Its pains and pleasures
does He heal alike, for ALL sins witnesses do His replace.
The miracle makes no distinctions in the names by which
sins witnesses are called. It merely proves that what they
represent has no effects. And this it proves because its own
effects have come to take their place. It matters not the name
by which you called your suffering. It is no longer there. The
One Who brings the miracle perceived them all as one, and
called by name of fear. As fear is witness unto death, so is
the miracle the witness unto life. It is a witness no-one can
deny, for it is the EFFECTS of life it brings. The dying live,
the dead arise, and pain has vanished. Yet a miracle speaks
not but for itself, but what it represents.
Love, too, has symbols in a world of sin. The miracle
forgives because it stands for what is past forgiveness, and
is true. How foolish and insane it is to think a miracle is
bound by laws which it came solely to undo! The laws of sin
have different witnesses, with different strengths. And they
attest to different sufferings. Yet to the One Who sends forth
miracles to bless the world, a tiny stab of pain, a little
worldly pleasure, and the throes of death itself, are but a
single sound; a call for healing, and a plaintive cry for help
within a world of misery. It is their SAMENESS that the
miracle attests. It is their sameness that it PROVES.
The laws which call them different are dissolved, and SHOWN
as powerless. The purpose of a miracle is to accomplish this.
And God Himself has guaranteed the strength of miracles for
what they witness to. Be witnesses unto the miracle, and not
the laws of sin. There is no need to suffer any more. But
there IS need that you be healed, because the suffering of the
world has made it deaf to its salvation and deliverance.
The resurrection of the world awaits your healing and your
happiness, that you may demonstrate the healing of the world.
The holy instant will replace all sin, if you but carry its
effects with you. And no-one will elect to suffer more. What
better function could you serve than this? Be healed that you
may heal, and suffer not the laws of sin to be applied to you.
And truth will be revealed to you who chose to let loves
symbols take the place of sin.
The Illusion of Suffering
Suffering is an emphasis upon all that the world has done
to injure you. Here is the worlds demented version of
salvation clearly shown. Like to a dream of punishment, in
which the dreamer is unconscious of what brought on the attack
against himself, he sees himself attacked unjustly, and by
something not himself. He is the victim of this something
else, a thing outside himself, for which he has no reason to
be held responsible. He must be innocent because he knows not
what he does, but what is done to him. Yet is his own attack
upon himself apparent still, for it is he who bears the
suffering. And he cannot escape because its source is seen
outside himself.
Now you are being shown you CAN escape. All that is needed
is you look upon the problem as it IS, and not the way that
you have set it up. How could there be another way to solve a
problem which is very simple, but has been obscured by heavy
clouds of complication, which were made to KEEP the problem
unresolved? Without the clouds, the problem will emerge in all
its primitive simplicity. The choice will not be difficult,
because the problem is absurd when clearly seen. No-one has
difficulty making up his mind to let a simple problem be
resolved if it is SEEN as hurting him, and also very easily
removed.
The reasoning by which the world is made, on which it
rests, by which it is maintained, is simply this: YOU are
the cause of what I do. Your presence JUSTIFIES my wrath, and
you exist and think APART from me. While you attack, I must be
innocent. And what I suffer from IS your attack. No-one who
looks upon this reasoning exactly as it is could fail to
see it does not follow, and it makes no sense. Yet it seems
sensible because it LOOKS as if the world were hurting you.
And so it seems as if there is no need to go beyond the
obvious in terms of cause.
There is INDEED a need. The worlds escape from
condemnation is a need which those within the world are joined
in sharing. Yet they do not recognize their common need. For
each one thinks that if he does his part, the condemnation of
the world will rest on him. And it is this that he perceives
to BE his part in its deliverance. Vengeance must have a
focus. Otherwise is the avengers knife in his own hand, and
pointed to himself. And he must see it in anothers hand, if
he would be a victim of attack he did not choose. And thus he
suffers from the wounds a knife he does not hold has made upon
himself. This is the PURPOSE of the world he sees. And looked
at thus, the world provides the means by which this purpose
seems to be fulfilled.
The means ATTEST the purpose, but are not themselves a
cause. Nor will the cause be changed by seeing it apart from
its effects. The cause PRODUCES the effects, which then bear
witness to the cause, and not themselves. Look, then, beyond
effects. It is not here the cause of suffering and sin must
lie. And dwell not on the suffering and sin, for they are but
reflections of their cause.
The part you play in salvaging the world from condemnation
is your OWN escape. Forget not that the witness to the world
of evil cannot speak except for what has seen a need for evil
in the world. And this is where your guilt was first beheld.
In separation from your brother was the first attack upon
yourself begun. And it is this the world bears witness to.
Seek not another cause, nor look among the mighty legions of
its witnesses for its undoing. They SUPPORT its claim on your
allegiance. What conceals the truth is not where you should
look to FIND the truth. The witnesses to sin all stand within
one little space. And it is HERE you find the cause of your
perspective on the world.
Once you were unaware of what the cause of everything the
world appeared to thrust upon you, uninvited and unasked, must
really be. Of one thing you were sure; of all the many causes
you perceived as bringing pain and suffering to you, your
guilt was not among them. Nor did you, in any way, request
them for yourself. This is how ALL illusions come about. The
one who makes them does not see himself as making them, and
their reality does not depend on him. Whatever cause they have
is something quite apart from him, and what he sees is
SEPARATE from his mind. He cannot doubt his dreams reality
because he does not see the part he plays in making them, and
making them seem real.
No-one can waken from a dream the world is dreaming FOR
him. He becomes a part of someone elses dream. He cannot
choose to waken from a dream he did not make. Helpless he
stands, a victim to a dream conceived and cherished by a
separate mind. Careless indeed of him this mind must be, as
thoughtless of his peace and happiness as is the weather, or
the time of day. It loves him not, but casts him as it will,
in any role that satisfies its dream. So little is his worth
that he is but a dancing shadow, leaping up and down according
to a senseless plot conceived within the idle dreaming of the
world.
This is the only picture you can see, the one alternative
that you can choose, the other possibility of cause, if you be
NOT the dreamer of your dreams. And this is what you choose,
if you deny the cause of suffering is in YOUR mind. Be glad
indeed it is, for thus are you the ONE decider of your destiny
in time. The choice is yours to make between a sleeping death
and dreams of evil or a happy wakening and joy of life. What
could you choose between BUT life or death, waking or
sleeping, peace or war, your dreams or your reality? Yet if
the choice is really given you, then you must see the causes
of the things you choose between exactly AS they are and WHERE
they are. What choices can be made between two states, but one
of which is clearly recognized? Who could be free to choose
between effects, when only one is seen as up to him?
An honest choice could never be perceived as one in which
the choice is split between a tiny you and an enormous world,
with different dreams about the truth in you. The gap between
reality and dreams lies not between the dreaming of the world
and what you dream in secret. THEY are one. The dreaming of
the world is but a part of your own dream you gave away, and
saw as if it were its start and ending, both. Yet was it
started by YOUR secret dream, which you do not perceive,
although it caused the part you see and do not doubt is real.
How could you doubt it while you lie asleep, and dream in
secret that its cause is real?
A brother separated from yourself, an ancient enemy, a
murderer who stalks you in the night and plots your death, yet
plans that it be lingering and slow; of this you dream. Yet
underneath this dream is yet another, in which you become the
murderer, the secret enemy, the scavenger and the destroyer of
your brother and the world alike. Here is the CAUSE of
suffering, the space between your dreams and your reality. The
little gap you do not even see, the birthplace of illusions
and of fear, the time of terror and of ancient hate, the
instant of disaster, all are here. Here is the CAUSE of
unreality. And it is here that it will be undone.
YOU are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No other cause
it has, nor ever will. Nothing more fearful than an idle dream
has terrified Gods Son, and made him think that he has lost
his innocence, denied his Father, and made war upon himself.
So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken
to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal
fear, unless a gentler dream preceded his awaking, and allowed
his calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice that calls
with love to waken him. God willed he waken gently, and with
joy. And gave him means to waken without fear. Accept the
dream He gave instead of yours. It is not difficult to change
a dream when once the dreamer has been recognized.
Rest in the Holy Spirit, and allow His gentle dreams to
take the place of those you dreamed in terror, and in fear of
death. He brings forgiving dreams, in which the choice is not
who is the murderer and who shall be the victim. In the dreams
He brings, there IS no murder and there IS no death. The dream
of guilt is fading from your sight, although your eyes are
closed. A smile has come to lighten up your sleeping face. The
sleep is peaceful now, for these are happy dreams.
Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you
in holy innocence. And from this dream, the Lord of Heaven
will Himself awaken His beloved Son. Dream of your brothers
kindnesses instead of dwelling in your dreams on his mistakes.
Select his thoughtfulness to dream about instead of counting
up the hurts he gave. Forgive him his illusions, and give
thanks to him for all the helpfulness he gave. And do not
brush aside his many gifts because he is not perfect in your
dreams.
He represents his Father, Whom you see as offering both
life and death to you. Brother, He gives but life. Yet what
you see as gifts your brother offers represent the gifts you
dream your Father gives to you. Let all your brothers gifts
be seen in light of charity and kindness offered you. And let
no pain disturb your dream of deep appreciation for his gifts
to you.
The Hero of the Dream
The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the
world. There is no dream without it, nor does it exist without
the dream in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen
and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream,
which tells the story of how it was made by other bodies, born
into the world outside the body, lives a little while, and
dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies dying like
itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for
other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its
main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to
look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful.
Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are
different, and can be told apart.
The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the
body seeks in many ways to prove it is autonomous and real. It
puts things on itself which it has bought with little metal
discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and
good. It works to get them, doing senseless things, and tosses
them away for senseless things it does not need, and does not
even want. It hires other bodies, that they may protect it,
and collect more senseless things that it can call its own. It
looks about for special bodies which can share its dream.
Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than
itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of
bodies that would hurt and torture it.
The bodys serial adventures, from the time of birth to
dying is the theme of every dream the world has ever had. The
hero of this dream will never change, nor will its purpose.
Though the dream itself takes many forms, and seems to show a
great variety of places and events wherein its hero finds
itself, the dream has but one purpose, taught in many ways.
This single lesson does it try to teach again, and still
again, and yet once more; that it is CAUSE and NOT effect. And
YOU are its effect, and CANNOT be its cause.
Thus are you not the dreamer, but the DREAM. And so you
wander idly in and out of places and events which IT
contrives. That this is all the body does is true, for it IS
but a figure in a dream. But who reacts to figures in a dream
unless he sees them as if they were real? The instant that he
sees them as they ARE, they have no more effects on him
because he understands he GAVE them their effects by causing
them, and making them seem real.
How willing are you to escape effects of all the dreams the
world has ever had? Is it your wish to let no dream appear to
be the cause of what it is you do? Then let us merely look
upon the dreams beginning, for the part you see is but the
second part, whose cause lies in the first. No-one asleep and
dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No-
one believes there really was a time when he knew nothing of a
body, and could never have conceived this world as real. He
would have seen at once that these ideas are one illusion, too
ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious
they now appear to be! And no-one can remember when they would
have met with laughter and with disbelief.
We CAN remember this, if we but look directly at their
cause. And we will see the grounds for laughter, not a cause
for fear. Let us return the dream he gave away unto the
dreamer, who perceives the dream as separate from himself, and
done to him. Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a
tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to
laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious
idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects.
Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that
time cannot intrude upon eternity. It IS a joke to think that
time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no
time.
A timelessness in which is time made real; a part of God
which can attack itself; a separate brother as an enemy; a
mind within a body, all are forms of circularity, whose ending
starts at its beginning, ending at its cause. The world you
see depicts exactly what you thought you did. Except that now
you think that what you did is being done to you. The guilt
for what you thought is being placed outside yourself, and on
a guilty world which dreams your dreams and thinks your
thoughts instead of you. It brings its vengeance, not your
own. It keeps you narrowly confined within a body, which it
punishes because of all the sinful things the body does within
its dream. You have no power to make the body stop its evil
deeds, because you did not make it, and cannot control its
actions or its purpose or its fate.
The world but demonstrates an ancient truth; you will
believe that others do to you EXACTLY what you think you did
to them. But once deluded into blaming them, you will not see
the cause of what they do because you WANT the guilt to rest
on them. How childish is this petulant device to keep your
innocence by pushing guilt outside yourself, but never letting
go! It is not easy to perceive the jest when all around you do
your eyes behold its heavy consequences, but without their
trifling cause. Without the cause do its effects seem serious
and sad indeed. Yet they but follow. And it is their CAUSE
which follows nothing, and is but a jest.
In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause,
and looks not to effects. How else could He correct your
error, who have overlooked the cause entirely? He bids you
bring each terrible effect to Him, that you may look together
on its foolish cause, and laugh with Him a while. YOU judge
effects, but HE has judged their cause. And by His judgment
are effects removed. Perhaps you come in tears, but hear Him
say, My brother, Holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in
which this could occur, and you will leave the holy instant
with your laughter and your brothers joined with His.
The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing
this unto yourself. No matter what the form of the attack,
this still is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of
attacker, still is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the
cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is still true.
For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew
that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious
as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you
failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson
learned will set you free from suffering, whatever form it
takes.
The Holy Spirit will repeat this one inclusive lesson of
deliverance until it has been learned, regardless of the form
of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to
Him He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this
one answer takes away the CAUSE of every form of sorrow and of
pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would
teach you but the single cause of all of them, no matter what
their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the
simple statement,
I have done this thing, and it is this I would
undo.
Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that
every one is like the rest. He sees no differences where none
exist, and He will teach you how each one is caused. None has
a different cause from all the rest, and all of them are
easily undone by but a single lesson truly learned. Salvation
is a secret you have kept but from yourself. The universe
proclaims it so. Yet to its witnesses you pay no heed at all.
For they attest the thing you do not WANT to know. They seem
to keep it secret from you. Yet you need but learn you choose
but NOT to listen, NOT to see. How differently will you
perceive the world when this is recognized! When you forgive
the world your guilt, YOU will be free of it. Its innocence
does NOT demand your guilt, nor does YOUR guiltlessness rest
on its sins.
This is the obvious; a secret kept from no-one but
yourself. And it is this that has maintained you separate from
the world, and kept your brother separate from you. Now need
you but to learn that BOTH of you are innocent or guilty. The
one thing that is impossible is that you be unlike each other;
that they BOTH be true. This is the only secret yet to learn.
And it will be no secret you are healed.
CHAPTER 28
THE UNDOING OF FEAR
The miracle does nothing. All it does is to UNDO. And thus
it cancels out the interference to what has been done. It does
not add, but merely takes away. And what it takes away is long
since gone, but being kept in memory, appears to have
immediate effects. This world was over long ago. The thoughts
that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them
and loved them for a little while. The miracle but shows the
past is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects.
Remembering a cause can but produce illusions of its presence,
not effects.
All the effects of guilt are here no more. For guilt is
over. In its passing went its consequences, left without a
cause. Why would you cling to it in memory if you did not
DESIRE its effects? Remembering is as selective as perception,
being its past tense. It is perception of the past as if it
were occurring now and still were there to see. Memory, like
perception, is a skill made up by you, to take the place of
what God gave in your creation. And like all the things you
made, it can be used to serve another purpose, and to be the
means for something else. It can be used to heal and not to
hurt, if you so wish it be.
Nothing employed for healing represents an effort to do
anything at all. It is a recognition that you have no needs
which mean that something must be done. It is an unselective
memory, which is not used to interfere with truth. All things
the Holy Spirit can employ for healing have been given Him,
without the content and the purposes for which they have been
made. They are but skills without an application. They AWAIT
their use. They have no dedication and no aim.
The Present Memory
The Holy Spirit can indeed make use of memory, for God
Himself is there. Yet this is not a memory of past events, but
only of a present state. You are so long accustomed to believe
that memory holds only what is past, that it is hard for you
to realize it is a skill that can remember NOW. The
limitations on remembering the world imposes on it are as vast
as those you let the world impose on you. There IS no link of
memory to the past. If you would have it there, then there it
is. But only your DESIRE made the link, and only you have held
it to a part of time where guilt appears to linger still.
The Holy Spirits use of memory is quite apart from time.
He does not seek to use it as a means to keep the past, but
rather as a way to let it GO. Memory holds the message it
receives, and does what it is given it to do. It does not
write the message, nor appoint what it is for. Like to the
body, it is purposeless within itself. And if it seems to
serve to cherish ancient hate, and offers you the pictures of
injustices and hurts which you were saving, this is what you
asked its message be, and this is what it is. Committed to its
vaults, the history of all the bodys past is hidden there.
All of the strange associations made to keep the past alive,
the present dead, are stored within it, waiting your command
that they be brought to you, and lived again. And thus do
their effects appear to be increased by time, which took away
their cause.
Yet time is but another phase of what does nothing. It
works hand in hand with all the other attributes with which
you seek to keep concealed the truth about yourself. Time
neither takes away nor can restore. And yet you make strange
use of it, as if the past had caused the present, which is but
a consequence in which no change can be made possible, because
its cause has gone. Yet change must have a cause that will
endure, or else it will not last. No change can be made in the
present, if its cause is past. Only the past is held in memory
as you make use of it, and so it is a way to hold the past
AGAINST the now.
Remember NOTHING that you taught yourself, for you were
badly taught. And who would keep a senseless lesson in his
mind, when he can learn and can preserve a better one? When
ancient memories of hate appear, remember that their cause is
gone. And so you cannot understand what they are for. Let not
the cause that you would give them now be what it was which
made them what they were, or seemed to be. Be glad that it is
gone, for this is what you would be pardoned from. And see,
instead, the new effects of cause accepted NOW, with
consequences HERE. They will surprise you with their
loveliness. The ancient new ideas they bring will be the happy
consequences of a cause so ancient that it far exceeds the
span of memory which your perception sees.
This is the Cause the Holy Spirit has remembered for you,
when you would forget. It is not past because He let It not be
unremembered. It has never changed because there never was a
time in which He did not keep It safely in your mind. Its
consequences will indeed seem new, because you thought that
you remembered not their Cause. Yet was It never absent from
your mind, for it was not your Fathers Will that He be
unremembered by His Son.
What YOU remember never was. It came from causelessness
which you confused with cause. It can deserve but laughter,
when you learn you have remembered consequences which were
causeless, and could NEVER be effects. The miracle reminds you
of a Cause forever present, perfectly untouched by time and
interference. Never changed from what It IS. And YOU are its
effects, as changeless and as perfect as Itself. Its memory
does not lie in the past, nor waits the future. It is not
revealed in miracles. They but remind you that It has not
gone. When you forgive It for your sins, It will no longer be
denied.
You who have sought to lay a judgment on your own Creator
cannot understand it is not He Who laid a judgment on His Son.
You would deny Him His effects, yet have they never been
denied. There was no time in which His Son could be condemned
for what was causeless, and against His Will. What your
remembering would witness to is but the fear of God. He has
not done the thing you fear. No more have you. And so your
innocence has not been lost. You need no healing to be healed.
In quietness, see in the miracle a lesson in allowing Cause to
have Its OWN effects, and doing nothing that would interfere.
The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an
instant, and is still. It reaches gently from that quiet time,
and from the mind it healed in quiet then, to other minds to
share its quietness. And they will join in doing nothing to
prevent its radiant extension back into the Mind Which caused
all minds to be. Born out of sharing, there can be no pause in
time to cause the miracle delay in hastening to all unquiet
minds, and bringing them an instants stillness, when the
memory of God returns to them. Their own remembering is quiet
now, and what has come to take its place will not be wholly
unremembered afterwards.
He to Whom time is given offers thanks for every quiet
instant given Him. For in that instant is His memory allowed
to offer all its treasures to the Son of God, for whom they
have been kept. How gladly does He offer them unto the one for
whom He has been given them! And His Creator shares His
thanks, because He would not be deprived of His effects. The
instants silence that His Son accepts gives welcome to
eternity and Him, and lets Them enter where They would abide.
For in that instant does the Son of God do nothing that would
make himself afraid.
How instantly the memory of God arises in the mind that has
no fear to keep the memory away. Its own remembering has gone.
There is no past to keep its fearful image in the way of glad
awakening to present peace. The trumpets of eternity resound
throughout the stillness, yet disturb it not. And what is now
remembered is not fear, but, rather, is the cause that fear
was made to render unremembered and undone. The stillness
speaks in gentle sounds of love the Son of God remembers from
before his own remembering came in between the present and the
past, to shut them out.
Now is the Son of God at last aware of present Cause and
Its benign effects. Now does he understand what he has made is
causeless, making no effects at all. He has done nothing. And
in seeing this, he understands he never had a need for doing
anything, and never did. His Cause IS Its effects. There never
was a cause beside It that could generate a different past or
future. Its effects are changelessly eternal, beyond fear, and
past the world of sin entirely.
What has been lost, to see the causeless not? And where is
sacrifice, when memory of God has come to take the place of
loss? What better way to close the little gap between
illusions and reality than to allow the memory of God to flow
across it, making it a bridge an instant will suffice to reach
beyond? For God has closed it with Himself. His memory has not
gone by, and left a stranded Son forever on a shore where he
can glimpse another shore which he can never reach. His Father
wills that he be lifted up, and gently carried over. HE has
built the bridge, and it is He Who will transport His Son
across it. Have no fear that He will fail in what He wills.
Nor that you be excluded from the Will that is for you.
Reversing Effect and Cause
Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet without
effects there is no cause. The cause a cause is MADE by its
effects; the Father is a father by His Son. Effects do not
create their cause, but they establish its causation. Thus,
the Son gives fatherhood to his Creator, and receives the gift
that he has given Him. It is BECAUSE he is Gods Son that he
must also be a father, who creates as God created him. The
circle of creation has no end. Its starting and its ending are
the same. But in itself it holds the universe of all creation,
without beginning and without an end.
Fatherhood IS creation. Love must be extended. Purity is
not confined. It is the nature of the innocent to be forever
uncontained, without a barrier or limitation. Thus is purity
not of the body. Nor can it be found where limitation is. The
body can be healed by its effects, which are as limitless as
is itself. Yet must all healing come about because the mind is
recognized as not within the body, and its innocence is quite
apart from it, and where ALL healing is. Where, then, is
healing? Only where its cause is given its effects. For
sickness is a meaningless attempt to give effects to
causelessness, and MAKE it be a cause.
Always in sickness does the Son of God attempt to make
himself his cause, and not allow himself to be his Fathers
Son. For this impossible desire, he does not believe that he
is Loves effect, and must be cause because of what he is. The
cause of healing is the only Cause of everything. It has but
ONE effect. And in that recognition, causelessness is given no
effects, and none are seen. A mind within a body, and a world
of other bodies, each with separate minds, are your
creations, you the other mind, creating with effects
unlike yourself. And as their father, you must be like
them. Nothing at all has happened but that you have put
yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an
alien to yourself, and but a part of someone elses dream.
The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who
the dreamer IS. It teaches you there is a choice of dreams
while you are still asleep, depending on the purpose of your
dreaming. Do you wish for dreams of healing, or for dreams of
death? A dream is like a memory in that it pictures what you
WANTED shown to you. An empty storehouse, with an open door,
holds all your shreds of memories and dreams. Yet if you are
the dreamer, you perceive this much at least; that YOU have
caused the dream, and can accept another dream as well. But
for this change in content of the dream, it must be realized
that it is you who dreamed the dreaming that you do not like.
It is but an effect which YOU have caused, and you would not
BE cause of this effect.
In dreams of murder and attack are you the victim in a
dying body slain. But in forgiving dreams is no-one asked to
be the victim and the sufferer. These are the happy dreams the
miracle exchanges for your own. It does not ask you make
another; only that you see you made the one you would exchange
for this. This world is causeless, as is every dream that
anyone has dreamed within the world. No plans are possible,
and no design exists that could be found and understood.
What else could be expected from a thing that has no cause?
Yet if it has no cause, it has no purpose. You may cause a
dream, but never will you give it real effects. For that would
change its cause, and it is this you cannot do. The dreamer of
a dream is not awake, but does not know he sleeps. He sees
illusions of himself as sick or well, depressed or happy, but
without a stable cause with guaranteed effects.
The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its
content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with
illusions. No-one is afraid of them when he perceives he made
them up. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see
that he was author of the dream, and not a figure in the
dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences which he dreams he
gave his brother. And it is but this the dream has put
together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have
been done. Thus does he fear his OWN attack, but sees it at
anothers hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects,
but not their cause. He authored not his own attack, and he is
innocent of what he caused. The miracle does nothing but to
show him that he has done nothing. What he fears is cause
without the consequences which would MAKE it cause. And so it
never was.
The separation started with the dream the Father was
deprived of His effects, and powerless to keep them, since He
was no longer their Creator. In the dream, the dreamer made
himself, but what he made has turned against him, taking on
the role of its creator, as the dreamer had. And as he hated
his Creator, so the figures in the dream have hated him. His
body is their slave, which they abuse because the motives he
has given it have they adopted as their own. And hate it for
the vengeance it would offer them. It is their vengeance on
the body which appears to prove the dreamer could not be the
maker of the dream. Effect and cause are first split off, and
then reversed, so that effect becomes a cause; the cause,
effect.
This is the separations final step, with which salvation,
which proceeds to go the OTHER way, begins. This final step is
an effect of what has gone before, appearing as a cause. The
miracle is the first step in giving back to cause the function
of causation, not effect. For this confusion has produced the
dream, and while it lasts, will wakening be feared. Nor will
the call to wakening be heard, because it seems to be the call
to fear.
Like every lesson which the Holy Spirit requests you learn,
the miracle is clear. It demonstrates what He would have you
learn, and shows you its effects are what you WANT. In His
forgiving dreams are the effects of yours undone, and hated
enemies perceived as friends, with merciful intent. Their
enmity is seen as causeless now, because they did not make it.
And you can accept the role of maker of their hate because you
SEE that it has no effects. Now are you freed from this much
of the dream; the world is neutral, and the bodies which still
seem to move about as separate things need not be feared. And
so they are not sick.
The miracle returns the cause of fear to you who made it.
But it also shows that, having no effects it is not cause,
because the function of causation is to have effects. And
where effects are gone, there IS no cause. Thus is the body
healed by miracles because they show the mind MADE sickness,
and employed the body to be victim, or effect, of what it
made. Yet half the lesson will not teach the whole. The
miracle is useless if you learn but that the body can be
healed, for this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. The
lesson is the MIND was sick that thought the body could be
sick; projecting out its guilt caused nothing, and had no
effects.
This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining
silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and
guilt. They are the dreams alternative, the choice to be the
dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the
dream. They are the glad effects of taking back the
consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released
because the mind acknowledges this is not done to me, but I
am doing this. And thus the mind is free to make another
choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to
change the course of every step in the descent to separation,
until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and
all the dreaming of the world undone.
The Agreement to Join
What waits in perfect certainty beyond salvation is not our
concern. For you have barely started to allow your first,
uncertain steps to be directed up the ladder separation led
you down. The miracle alone is your concern at present. Here
is where we must begin. And having started, will the way be
made serene and simple in the rising up to waking and the
ending of the dream. When you accept a miracle, you do not add
your dream of fear to one that is already being dreamed.
Without support, the dream will fade away without effects. For
it is YOUR support that strengthens it.
No mind is sick until another mind agrees that they are
separate. And thus it is their JOINT decision to be sick. If
you withhold agreement, and accept the part YOU play in making
sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without
your aid in letting it perceive itself as separate and apart
from you. Thus is the body not perceived as sick by both your
minds, from separate points of view. Uniting with a brothers
mind prevents the CAUSE of sickness and perceived effects.
Healing is the effect of minds which join, as sickness comes
from minds which separate.
The miracle does nothing just BECAUSE the minds are joined,
and cannot separate. Yet in the dreaming has this been
reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which are
separated and which cannot join. Do not allow your brother to
be sick, for if he is, have you abandoned him to his own dream
by sharing it with him. He has not seen the cause of sickness
where it is, and you have overlooked the gap between you,
where the sickness has been bred. Thus are you JOINED in
sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness
is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm
belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that
leads to Him. Fight not His coming with illusions, for it is
His coming that you want above all things that seem to glisten
in the dream.
The end of dreaming is the end of fear, and love was never
in the world of dreams. The gap IS little. Yet it holds the
seeds of pestilence and every form of ill, because it is a
wish to keep apart, and not to join. And thus it seems to give
a cause to sickness which is NOT its cause. The PURPOSE of the
gap is all the cause that sickness has. For it was made to
keep you separated, in a body which you see as if IT were the
cause of pain.
The cause of pain is separation, not the body, which is
only its effect. Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing
nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the empty
place between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by.
And covered just as fast, as water rushes in to close the gap,
and as the waves, in joining, cover it. Where is the gap
between the waves when they have joined, and covered up the
space which seemed to keep them separate for a little while?
Where are the grounds for sickness when the minds have joined
to close the little gap between them, where the seeds of
sickness seemed to grow?
God builds the bridge, but only in the space left clean and
vacant by the miracle. The seeds of sickness and the shame of
guilt He cannot bridge, for He cannot destroy the alien will
that He created not. Let its effects be gone, and clutch them
not with eager hands, to keep them for yourself. The miracle
will brush them all aside, and thus make room for Him Who
wills to come, and bridge His Sons returning to Himself.
Count, then, the silver miracles and golden dreams of
happiness as all the treasures you would keep within the
storehouse of the world. The door is open, not to thieves, but
to your starving brothers, who mistook for gold the shining of
a pebble, and who stored a heap of snow that shone like
silver. They have nothing left behind the open door. What is
the world except a little gap perceived to tear eternity
apart, and break it into days and months and years? And what
are you who live within the world except a picture of the Son
of God in broken pieces, each concealed within a separate and
uncertain bit of clay?
Be not afraid, but let your world be lit by miracles. And
where the gap was seen to stand between you, join your brother
there. And sickness will be seen WITHOUT a cause. The dream of
healing in forgiveness lies, and gently shows you that you
never sinned. The miracle would leave no proof of guilt to
bring you witness to what never was. And in your storehouse it
will make a place of welcome for your Father and your Self.
The door is open, that all those may come who would no longer
starve, and would enjoy the feast of plenty set before them
there. And they will meet with your invited Guests the miracle
has asked to come to you.
This is a feast unlike indeed to those the dreaming of the
world has shown. For here, the more that anyone receives, the
more is left for all the rest to share. The Guests have
brought unlimited supply with Them. And no-one is deprived or
can deprive. Here is a feast the Father lays before His Son,
and shares it equally with him. And in Their sharing there can
BE no gap in which abundance falters and grows thin. Here can
the lean years enter not, for time waits not upon this feast,
which has no end. For Love has set Its table in the space that
seemed to keep your Guests apart from you.
The Greater Joining
Accepting the Atonement for yourself means not to give
support to someones dream of sickness and of death. It means
that you share not his wish to separate, and let him turn
illusions on himself. Nor do you wish that they be turned,
instead, on you. Thus have they NO effects. And you are free
of dreams of pain because you let him be. Unless you help him,
you will suffer pain with him because that is your wish. And
you become a figure in his dream of pain, as he in yours. So
do you both become illusions and without identity. You could
be anyone or anything, depending on whose evil dream you
share. You can be sure of just one thing; that you are evil,
for you share in dreams of fear.
There is a way of finding certainty right HERE and NOW.
Refuse to be a part of fearful dreams whatever form they take,
for you WILL lose identity in them. You FIND yourself by not
accepting them as causing you, and giving you effects. You
stand apart from them, but not apart from him who dreams them.
Thus you separate the dreamer from the dream, and join in one,
but let the other GO. The dream is but illusion in the mind.
And with the mind you WOULD unite, but NEVER with the dream.
It is the dream you fear, and NOT the mind. You see them as
the same, because you think that YOU are but a dream. And what
is real and what is but illusion in yourself you do not know
and cannot tell apart.
Like you, your brother thinks he is a dream. Share not in
his illusion of himself, for your identity depends on his
reality. Think, rather, of him as a mind in which illusions
still persist, but as a mind which brother is to you. He is
not brother made by what he dreams, nor is his body, hero
of the dream, your brother. It is his REALITY that is your
brother, as is yours to him. Your mind and his are joined in
brotherhood. His body and his dreams but seem to make a little
gap, where yours have joined with his.
And yet, between your minds there IS no gap. To join his
dreams is thus to meet him not, because his dreams would
separate from you. Therefore, release him, merely by your
claim on brotherhood, and not on dreams of fear. Let him
acknowledge who he is, by not supporting his illusions by your
faith, for if you do, you will have faith in YOURS. With faith
in yours, HE will not be released, and YOU are kept in bondage
to his dream. And dreams of fear will haunt the little gap,
inhabited but by illusions which you have supported in each
others minds.
Be certain, if you do your part, he will do his, for he
will join you where you stand. Call not to him to meet you in
the gap between you, or you must believe that it is your
reality, as well as his. You CANNOT do his part, but this you
DO when you become a passive figure in his dream, instead of
dreamer of your own. Identity in dreams is meaningless because
the dreamer and the dream are one. Who SHARES a dream must BE
the dream he shares, because by sharing is a cause produced.
You share confusion, and you ARE confused, for in the gap
no stable self exists. What is the same seems different,
because what is the same appears to be unlike. His dreams are
yours because you LET them be. But if you took your own away
would he be free of them, and of his own as well. Your dreams
are witnesses to his, and his attest the truth of yours. Yet
if you see there IS no truth in yours, his dreams will go, and
he will understand what MADE the dream.
The Holy Spirit is in BOTH your minds, and He is One
because there is no gap that separates His Oneness from
Itself. The gap between your bodies matters not, for what is
joined in Him is ALWAYS one. No-one is sick if someone else
accepts his union with him. His desire to be a sick and
separated mind can not remain without a witness or a cause.
And BOTH are gone if someone wills to be united with him. He
has dreams that he was separated from his brother who, by
sharing not his dream, has left the space between them vacant.
And the Father comes to join His Son the Holy Spirit joined.
The Holy Spirits function is to take the broken picture of
the Son of God, and put the pieces into place again. This holy
picture, healed entirely, does He hold out to every separate
piece that thinks it is a picture in itself. To each he offers
his identity, which the whole picture represents, instead of
just a little, broken bit which he insisted was himself. And
when he sees THIS picture, he will recognize himself. If you
share not your brothers evil dream, this IS the picture that
the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of
all the seeds of sickness and of sin. And here the Father will
receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to himself.
I thank you, Father, knowing you will come to close each
little gap that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy
Son. Your holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of
them. And they ARE joined, because what is in one is in them
all. How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is
recognized as being part of the completed picture of Gods
Son! The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing.
For the whole is in each one. And every aspect of the Son of
God is just the same as every other part.
Join not your brothers dreams, but join with HIM, and
where you join His Son, the Father is. Who seeks for
substitutes when he perceives he has lost nothing? Who would
WANT to have the benefits of sickness when he has received
the simple happiness of health? What God has given cannot BE a
loss, and what is not of Him has no effects. What, then, would
you perceive within the gap? The seeds of sickness come from
the belief that there is JOY in separation, and its giving up
would be a SACRIFICE. But miracles are the result, when you do
not insist on seeing in the gap what is not there. Your
willingness to LET illusions go is all the Healer of Gods Son
requires. He will place the miracle of healing where the seeds
of sickness were. And there will be NO loss, but ONLY gain.
The Alternate to Dreams of Fear
What is a sense of sickness but a sense of limitation? Of a
splitting OFF and separating FROM? A gap perceived between
yourselves and what is seen as health? The good is seen
outside; the evil, in. And thus is sickness separating off the
self from good, and keeping evil in. God is the ALTERNATE to
dreams of fear. Who shares in them can NEVER share in Him. But
who withdraws his mind from sharing them IS sharing Him. There
is no other choice. Except you share it, nothing can exist.
And YOU exist because God shared His Will with you, that His
creation might create.
It is the SHARING of the evil dreams of hate and malice,
bitterness and death, of sin and suffering and pain and loss,
that makes them real. Unshared, they are perceived as
meaningless. The fear is gone from them because you did not
give them your support. Where fear has gone there love MUST
come, because there ARE but these alternatives. Where one
appears, the other disappears. And which you share becomes the
only one you have. You have the one which you accept, because
it is the only one you WISH to have. You share no evil dreams
if you forgive the dreamer, and perceive that he is not the
dream he made. And so he cannot be a part of yours, from which
you BOTH are free. Forgiveness separates the dreamer from the
evil dream, and thus releases him.
Remember if you share an evil dream, you will believe you
ARE the dream you share. And fearing it, you will not WANT to
know your own identity, because you think that IT is fearful.
And you WILL deny your Self, and walk upon an alien ground
which your Creator did not make, and where you seem to be a
something you are not. You WILL make war upon your Self, which
seems to be your enemy; and WILL attack your brother, as a
part of what you hate. There IS no compromise. You are your
Self or an illusion. What can be between illusion and the
truth? A middle ground, where you can be a thing that is not
you, must be a dream and cannot be the truth.
You have conceived a little gap between illusions and the
truth to be the place where all your safety lies, and where
your Self is safely hidden by what you have made. Here is a
world established that is sick, and this the world the bodys
eyes perceive. Here are the sounds it hears; the voices which
its ears were made to hear. Yet sights and sounds the body can
perceive are meaningless. It cannot see nor hear. It does not
know what seeing IS; what listening is FOR. It is as little
able to perceive as it can judge or understand or know. Its
eyes are blind; its ears are deaf. It cannot think, and so it
cannot have effects.
What is there God created to be sick? And what that He
created not can be? Let not your eyes behold a dream; your
ears bear witness to illusion. They were made to look upon a
world that is not there; to hear the voices that can make no
sound. Yet are there other sounds and other sights which CAN
be seen and heard and understood. For eyes and ears are senses
without sense, and what they see and hear they but report. It
is not they that hear and see, but YOU, who put together every
jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of evidence, and
make a witness to the world you want. Let not the bodys ears
and eyes perceive these countless fragments seen within the
gap which you imagined, and let them persuade their maker his
imaginings are real.
Creation proves reality because it shares the function all
creation shares. It is not made of little bits of glass, a
piece of wood, a thread or two perhaps, all put together to
attest its truth. Reality does not depend on this. There IS no
gap which separates the truth from dreams and from illusions.
Truth has left no room for them in any place or time. For it
fills every place and every time, and makes them wholly
indivisible.
You who believe there IS a little gap between you, do not
understand that it is here that you are kept as prisoners in a
world perceived to be existing here. The world you see does
not exist, because the place where you perceive it is not
real. The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty
pictures rise to cover it with vague, uncertain forms and
changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. Yet in the
gap is NOTHING. And there ARE no awesome secrets and no
darkened tombs where terror rises from the bones of death.
Look at the little gap, and you behold the innocence and
emptiness of sin that you will see within yourself, when you
have lost the fear of RECOGNIZING love.
The Secret Vows
Who punishes the body is insane. For here the little gap is
seen, and yet it is not here. It has not judged itself, nor
made itself to be what it is not. It does not seek to make of
pain a joy, and look for lasting pleasure in the dust. It does
not tell you what its purpose is, and cannot understand what
it is for. It does not victimize, because it has no will, no
preferences, and no doubts. It does not wonder what it is. And
so it has no need to be competitive. It CAN be victimized, but
CANNOT feel itself as victim. It accepts no role, but does
what it is told, without attack.
It is indeed a senseless point of view to hold responsible
for sight a thing that cannot see, and blame it for the sounds
you do not like, although it cannot hear. It suffers not the
punishment you give, because it has no feeling. It behaves in
ways you want, but never makes the choice. It is not born and
does not die. It can but follow aimlessly the path on which it
has been set. And if that path is changed, it walks as easily
another way. It takes no sides, and judges not the road it
travels. It perceives no gap, because it does not hate. It can
be USED for hate, but it cannot be hateful made thereby.
The thing you hate and fear and loathe and WANT, the body
does not know. You send it forth to seek for separation and to
be a separate thing. And THEN you hate it, not for what it is,
but for the uses you have made of it. You shrink from what it
sees and what it hears, and hate its frailty and littleness.
And you despise its acts, but not your own. It sees and acts
for YOU. It hears YOUR voice. And it is frail and little by
YOUR wish. It seems to punish you, and thus deserve your
hatred for the limitations which it brings to you. Yet you
have made of it a symbol for the limitations which you want
your MIND to have and see and KEEP.
The body REPRESENTS the gap between the little bit of mind
you call your own, and all the rest of what is REALLY yours.
You hate it, yet you think it IS your self, and that, without
it, would your self be lost. This is the secret vow which you
have made with every brother who would walk apart. This is the
secret oath you take again, whenever you perceive yourself
attacked. No-one can suffer if he does not see himself
attacked, and LOSING by attack. Unstated and unheard in
consciousness is every pledge to sickness. Yet it is a promise
to another to be hurt by him, and to attack him in return.
Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that IT will
suffer pain. It is the obvious effect of what was made in
secret, in agreement with anothers secret wish to be apart
from you, as you would be apart from him. Unless you BOTH
agree that is your wish, it can have no effects. Whoever says,
There IS no gap between my mind and yours has kept Gods
promise, not his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death.
And by his healing is his brother healed.
Let this be your agreement with each one; that you be one
with him, and not apart. And he will keep the promise that you
make with him, because it is the one which he has made to God,
as God has made to him. God keeps His promises; His Son keeps
his. In his creation did his Father say, You are beloved of
Me and I of you forever. Be you perfect as Myself, for you can
never be apart from Me. His Son remembers not that he
replied I will, though in that promise he was born. Yet God
reminds him of it every time he does not share a promise to be
sick, but lets his mind be healed and unified. His secret vows
are powerless before the Will of God, Whose promises he
shares. And what he substitutes is not his will, who has made
promise of himself to God.
The Beautiful Relationship
God asks for nothing, and His Son, like Him, need ask for
nothing. For there is no lack in him. An empty space, a little
gap, would be a lack. And it is only there that he could want
for something he has not. A space where God is not, a gap
between the Father and the Son is not the Will of either, who
have promised to be One. Gods promise is a promise to
HIMSELF, and there is no-one who could be untrue to what He
wills as part of what He IS. The promise that there is no gap
between Himself and what He is cannot be false. What will can
come between what MUST be One, and in Whose wholeness there
can BE no gap?
The beautiful relationship you have with all your brothers
is a part of you because it is a part of God Himself. Are you
not sick, if you deny yourself your wholeness and your health,
the Source of help, the Call to healing and the Call to heal?
Your Saviour waits for healing, and the world waits with him.
Nor are you apart from it. For healing will be one or not at
all, its oneness being where the healing lies. What could
correct for separation but its opposite? There is no middle
ground in any aspect of salvation. You accept it wholly or
accept it not. What is unseparated must be joined. And what is
joined cannot be separate.
Either there is a gap between you and your brother, or you
ARE as one. There is no in between, no other choice, and no
allegiance to be split between the two. A split allegiance is
but faithlessness to both, and merely sets you spinning round,
to grasp uncertainly at any straw that seems to hold some
promise of relief. Yet who can build his home upon a straw,
and count on it as shelter from the wind? The body can be made
a home like this, because it lacks foundation in the truth.
And yet, BECAUSE it does, it can be seen as NOT your home, but
merely as an aid to help you reach the home where God abides.
With THIS as purpose IS the body healed. It is not used to
witness to the dream of separation and disease. Nor is it idly
blamed for what it did not do. It serves to help the healing
of Gods Son, and for THIS purpose it cannot BE sick. It will
not join a purpose not your own, and you have CHOSEN that it
not be sick. All miracles are based upon this choice, and
given you the instant it is made. No forms of sickness are
immune, because the choice cannot be made in terms of form.
The choice of sickness SEEMS to be a form, yet it is one, as
is its opposite. And YOU are sick or well, accordingly.
But never you alone. This world is but the dream that you
can BE alone, and think without affecting those apart from
you. To be alone must mean you are apart, and if you are, you
cannot BUT be sick. This seems to prove that you must be
apart. Yet all it means is that you tried to keep a promise to
be true to faithlessness. Yet faithlessness IS sickness. It is
like the house set upon straw. It seems to be quite solid and
substantial in itself. Yet its stability cannot be judged
apart from its foundation. If it rests on straw, there is no
need to bar the door and lock the windows, and make fast the
bolts. The wind WILL topple it, and rain WILL come and carry
it into oblivion.
What is the sense in seeking to be safe in what was MADE
for danger and for fear? Why burden it with further locks and
chains and heavy anchors, when its weakness lies, not in
itself, but in the frailty of the little gap of nothingness
whereon it stands? What CAN be safe which rests upon a shadow?
Would you build your home upon what will collapse beneath a
feathers weight?
Your home is built upon your brothers health, upon his
happiness, his sinlessness, and everything his Father promised
him. No secret promise you have made instead has shaken the
Foundation of his home. The winds will blow upon it, and the
rain will beat against it, but with no effect. The world will
wash away, and yet this house will stand forever, for its
strength lies not within itself alone. It is an ark of safety,
resting on Gods promise that His Son is safe forever in
Himself. What gap can interpose itself between the safety of
this shelter and its Source? From here the body can be seen as
what it is, and neither less nor more in worth than the extent
to which it can be used to liberate Gods Son unto his home.
And with this holy purpose, is it made a home of holiness a
little while, because it shares your Fathers Will with You.
CHAPTER 29
THE AWAKENING
There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent.
There is nothing to be feared. There is no way in which a gap
could be conceived of in the wholeness that is His. The
compromise the least and littlest gap would represent in His
eternal Love is quite impossible. For it would mean His Love
could harbor just a hint of hate; His gentleness turn
sometimes to attack; and His eternal patience sometimes fail.
All this do you believe, when you perceive a gap between your
brother and yourself. How could you trust Him, then? For He
must be deceptive in His Love. Be wary, then; let Him not come
too close, and leave a gap between you and His Love, through
which you can escape if there be need for you to flee.
Here is the fear of God most plainly seen. For love IS
treacherous to those who fear, since fear and hate can never
be apart. No-one who hates but is afraid of love, and
therefore MUST he be afraid of God. Certain it is he knows not
what love means. He fears to love and loves to hate, and so he
thinks that love is fearful; hate is love. This is the
consequence the little gap must bring to those who cherish it,
and think that it is their salvation and their hope.
The fear of God! The greatest obstacle that peace must flow
across has not yet gone. The rest are past, but this one still
remains to block your path, and make the way to light seem
dark and fearful, perilous and bleak. You had decided that
your brother is your enemy. Sometimes a friend, perhaps,
provided that your separate interests made your friendship
possible a little while. But not without a gap between you,
lest he turn again into an enemy. A cautious friendship,
limited in scope and carefully restricted in amount, became
the treaty you had made with him. You shared a qualified
entente, in which a clause of separation was a point on which
you both agreed to keep intact. And violating this was thought
to be a breach of treaty not to be allowed.
The Closing of the Gap
The gap between you is not one of space between two
separate bodies. This but seems to be dividing off your
separate minds. It is the symbol of a promise made to meet
when you prefer, and separate until you both elect to meet
again. And then your bodies seem to get in touch, and signify
a meeting-place to join. But always is it possible to go your
separate ways. Conditional upon the right to separate will
you agree to meet from time to time, and keep apart in
intervals of separation, which protect you from the
sacrifice of love. The body SAVES you, for it gets away
from total sacrifice, and gives you time in which to build
again your separate selves, which you believe diminish as you
meet.
The body COULD not separate your minds unless you wanted it
to be a cause of separation and of distance seen between you.
Thus do you endow it with a power that lies not within itself.
And herein lies its power over YOU. For now you think that it
determines when you meet, and limits your ability to make
communion with each others mind. And now it tells you where
to go and how to go there, what is feasible for you to
undertake, and what you cannot do. It dictates what its health
can tolerate, and what will tire it and make it sick. And its
inherent weaknesses set up the limitations on what you
would do, and keep your purpose limited and weak.
The body WILL accommodate to this, if you would have it so.
It will allow but limited indulgences in love, with
intervals of hatred in between. And it will take command of
when to love and when to shrink more safely into fear. It
will be sick because you do not know what loving means. And so
you MUST misuse each circumstance and everyone you meet, and
see in them a purpose not your own.
It is not love that asks a sacrifice. But fear DEMANDS the
sacrifice of love, for in loves presence fear cannot abide.
For hate to be maintained love MUST be feared, and only
sometimes present; sometimes gone. Thus is love seen as
treacherous, because it seems to come and go uncertainly, and
offer no stability to you. You do not see how limited and weak
is your allegiance, and how frequently you have demanded that
love go away, and leave you quietly alone, in peace.
The body, innocent of any goal, is your excuse for variable
goals YOU hold, and force the body to maintain. You do not
fear its weakness, but its lack of strength OR weakness. Would
you recognize that nothing stands between you? Would you know
there IS no gap behind which you can hide? There is a shock
that comes to those who learn their Saviour is their enemy no
more. There is a wariness that is aroused by learning that the
body is not real. And there are overtones of seeming fear
around the happy message God is love.
Yet all that happens when the gap is gone is peace eternal.
Nothing more than that, and nothing less. Without the fear of
God, what could induce you to abandon Him? What toys or
trinkets in the gap could serve to hold you back an instant
from His love? Would you allow the body to say no to
Heavens calling, were you not afraid to find a loss of self
in finding God? Yet CAN your Self be lost by being found?
The Coming of the Guest
Why would you not perceive it as release from suffering to
learn that you are free? Why would you not acclaim the truth,
instead of looking on it as an enemy? Why does an easy path,
so clearly marked it is impossible to lose the way, seem
thorny, rough, and far too difficult for you to follow? Is it
not because you see it as the road to hell, instead of looking
on it as a simple way, without a sacrifice or any loss, to
find yourself in Heaven and in God? Until you realize you give
up nothing, until you understand there IS no loss, you will
have some regrets about the way that you have chosen. And you
will not see the many gains your choice has offered you. Yet
though you do not see them, they are there. Their CAUSE has
been effected, and they must be present were their cause has
entered in.
You have accepted healings cause, and so it must be you
are healed. And being healed, the power to heal must also now
be yours. The miracle is not a separate thing which happens
suddenly, as an effect without a cause. Nor is it, in itself,
a cause. But where its cause is must it be. Now is it caused,
though not as yet perceived. And its effects are there, though
not yet seen. Look inward now, and you will not behold a
reason for regret, but cause indeed for glad rejoicing and for
hope of peace.
It HAS been hopeless to attempt to find the hope of peace
upon a battleground. It HAS been futile to demand escape from
sin and pain of what was made to serve the function of
RETAINING sin and pain. For pain and sin are one illusion, as
are hate and fear, attack and guilt but one. Where they are
causeless their effects are gone, and love must come wherever
they are not. Why are you not rejoicing? You are free of pain
and sickness, misery and loss, and all effects of hatred and
attack. No more is pain your friend and guilt your god, and
you should welcome the effects of love.
Your Guest HAS come. You asked Him, and He came. You did
not hear Him enter, for you did not wholly welcome Him. And
yet His gifts came with Him. He has laid them at your feet,
and asks you now that you will look on them, and take them for
your own. He NEEDS your help in giving them to all who walk
apart, believing they are separate and alone. They will be
healed when you accept your gifts, because your Guest will
welcome everyone whose feet have touched the holy ground
whereon you stand, and where His gifts for them are laid.
You do not see how much you now can give, because of
everything you have received. Yet He Who entered in but waits
for YOU to come where you invited Him to be. There is no other
place where He can find His host, nor where His host can meet
with Him. And nowhere else His gifts of peace and joy, and all
the happiness His Presence brings, can be obtained. For they
are where He is Who brought them with Him, that they might be
yours. You cannot see your Guest, but you CAN see the gifts He
brought. And when you look on them, you will believe His
Presence must be there. For what you now can do could not be
done without the love and grace His Presence holds.
Such is the promise of the loving God; His Son have life
and every living thing be part of him, and nothing else have
life. What YOU have given life is not alive, and symbolizes
but your wish to be alive apart from life, alive in death,
with death perceived as life, and living, death. Confusion
follows on confusion here, for on confusion has this world
been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. Its basis
does not change, although it seems to be in constant change.
Yet what is that except the state confusion really means?
Stability to those who are confused is meaningless, and shift
and change become the law on which they predicate their lives.
The body does not change. It represents the larger dream
that change is possible. To change is to attain a state unlike
the one in which you found yourself before. There IS no change
in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. Yet here on earth it
has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing
things. And they reflect the teacher who is teaching them. The
body can APPEAR to change with time, with sickness or with
health, and with events that seem to alter it. Yet this but
means the mind remains unchanged in its belief of what the
purpose of the body is.
Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not.
Its nothingness is guarantee that it can NOT be sick. In your
demand that it be more than this lies the idea of sickness.
For it asks that God be less than all He really is. What,
then, becomes of you, for it IS you of whom the sacrifice is
asked? For He is told that part of Him belongs to Him no
longer. He must sacrifice your self, and in His sacrifice are
you made more, and He is lessened by the loss of you. And what
is gone from Him becomes your god, protecting you from being
part of Him.
The body that is asked to be a god will be attacked,
because its nothingness has not been recognized. And so it
seems to be a thing with power in itself. As something, it can
be perceived and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its
grasp as prisoner to itself. And it can fail to be what you
demanded that it be. And you will hate it for its littleness,
unmindful that the failure does not lie in that it is not more
than it should be, but only in your failure to perceive that
it is nothing. Yet its nothingness is your salvation, from
which you would flee.
As something is the body asked to be Gods enemy,
replacing what He is with littleness and limit and despair. It
is His loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing
you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate. For if He be
the sum of everything, then what is not in Him does not exist,
and His completion IS its nothingness. Your Saviour is not
dead, nor does he dwell in what was built as temple unto
death. He lives in God, and it is this that makes him Saviour
unto you, and ONLY this. His bodys nothingness releases yours
from sickness and from death. For what is yours cannot be more
nor less than what is his.
Gods Witnesses
Condemn your Saviour not because he thinks he is a body.
For beyond his dreams is his reality. But he must learn he is
a Saviour first, before he can remember what he is. And he
must save who would be saved. On saving you depends his
happiness. For who is Saviour but the one who GIVES salvation?
Thus he learns it must be his to give. Unless he gives, he
will not know he has, for giving is the PROOF of having. Only
those who think that God is lessened by their strength could
fail to understand this must be so. For who COULD give unless
he has, and who could lose by giving what must be INCREASED
thereby?
Think you the Father lost Himself when He created you? Was
He made weak because He shared His love? Was He made
incomplete by your perfection? Or are you the PROOF that He is
perfect and complete? Deny Him not His witness in the dream
His Son prefers to his reality. He must be Saviour FROM the
dream he made, that he be free of it. He must see someone else
as NOT a body, one with him without the wall the world has
built to keep apart all living things who know not that they
live. Within the dream of bodies and of death is yet one theme
of truth; no more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of
light created in the dark, where God still shines.
You cannot wake yourself. Yet you can LET yourself be
wakened. You can overlook your brothers dreams. So perfectly
can you forgive him his illusions, he becomes your Saviour
from your dreams. And as you see him shining in the space of
light where God abides within the darkness, you will see that
God Himself is where his body is. Before this light the body
disappears, as heavy shadows must give way to light. The
darkness cannot choose that it remain. The coming of the light
MEANS it is gone. In glory will you see your brother then, and
understand what REALLY fills the gap so long perceived as
keeping you apart.
There, in its place, Gods Witness has set forth the gentle
way of kindness to Gods Son. Whom you forgive is given power
to forgive you your illusions. By your gift of freedom is it
given unto you. Make way for love, which you did not create,
but which you CAN extend. On earth this means forgive your
brother, that the darkness may be lifted from your mind. When
light has come to him through your forgiveness, he will not
forget his Saviour, leaving him unsaved. For it was in YOUR
face he saw the light that he would keep beside him, as he
walks through darkness to the everlasting light.
How holy are you, that the Son of God can be your Saviour
in the midst of dreams of desolation and disaster. See how
eagerly he comes, and steps aside from heavy shadows that have
hidden him, and shines on you in gratitude and love. He is
himself, but not himself alone. And as his Father lost not
part of Him in your creation, so the light in him is brighter
still because you gave your light to him, to save him from the
dark. And now the light in you must be as bright as shines in
him. This is the spark that shines within the dream; that you
can help him waken, and be sure his waking eyes will rest on
you. And in his glad salvation YOU are saved.
Dream Roles
Do you believe that truth can be but SOME illusions? They
are dreams BECAUSE they are not true. Their equal lack of
truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which means that you
have understood that dreams are dreams; and that escape
depends, not on the dream, but only on awaking. Could it be
some dreams are kept, and others wakened from? The choice is
not between which dreams to keep, but only if you want to live
in dreams or to awaken from them. Thus it is the miracle does
not select some dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence.
You cannot dream some dreams and wake from some, for you are
either sleeping or awake. And dreaming goes with only one of
these.
The dreams you think you like would hold you back as much
as those in which the fear is seen. For EVERY dream is but a
dream of fear, no matter what the form it seems to take. The
fear is seen within, without, or both. Or it can be disguised
in pleasant form. But never is it absent from the dream, for
fear is the material of dreams from which they all are made.
Their form can change, but they cannot be made of something
else. The miracle were treacherous indeed if it allowed you
still to be afraid because you did not RECOGNIZE the fear. You
would not then be willing to awake, for which the miracle
prepares the way.
In simplest form, it can be said attack is a response to
function unfulfilled as YOU perceive the function. It can be
in you or someone else, but where it is perceived it will be
there it is attacked. Depression or assault must be the theme
of every dream, for they are made of fear. The thin disguise
of pleasure and of joy in which they may be wrapped but
slightly veils the heavy lump of fear which is their core. And
it is THIS the miracle perceives, and not the wrappings in
which it is bound.
When you are angry, is it not because someone has failed to
fill the function YOU allotted him? And does not this become
the reason your attack is justified? The dreams you think
you like are those in which the functions you have given have
been filled; the needs which you ascribe to you are met. It
does not matter if they be fulfilled, or merely wanted. It is
the idea that they EXIST from which the fears arise. Dreams
are not wanted more or less. They are desired or not. And each
one represents some function which you have assigned; some
goal which an event, or body, or a thing SHOULD represent, and
SHOULD achieve for you. If it succeeds, you think you like the
dream. If it should fail, you think the dream is sad. But
whether it succeeds or fails is not its core, but just the
flimsy covering.
How happy would your dreams become if you were NOT the one
who gave the proper role to every figure which the dream
contains. No-one can fail but your IDEA of him, and there is
no betrayal BUT of this. The core of dreams the Holy Spirit
gives is NEVER one of fear. The coverings may not appear to
change, but what they mean HAS changed, because they cover
something else. Perceptions are determined by their purpose,
in that they seem to BE what they are FOR. A shadow figure who
attacks becomes a brother giving you a chance to help, if this
becomes the function of the dream. And dreams of sadness thus
are turned to joy.
What IS your brother for? You do not know, because YOUR
function is obscure to you. Do not ascribe a role to him which
you imagine would bring happiness to you. And do not try to
hurt him when he fails to take the part which you assigned to
him, in what you dream your life was meant to be. He asks for
help in every dream he has, and you have help to give him if
you see the function of the dream as He perceives its
function, Who can utilize all dreams as means to serve the
function given Him. Because He loves the dreamer, not the
dream, each dream becomes an offering of love. For at its
center is His love for you, which lights whatever form it
takes with love.
The Changeless Dwelling-Place
There is a place in you where this whole world has been
forgotten; where no memory of sin and of illusion linger
still. There is a place in you which time has left, and echoes
of eternity are heard. There is a resting place so still no
sound except a hymn to Heaven rises up to gladden God the
Father and the Son. Where both abide are They remembered,
both. And where They are is Heaven and is peace. Think not
that you can change Their dwelling-place. For your identity
abides in Them, and where They are, forever must YOU be.
The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that
nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The
still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its
soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of
its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God
within. Here is the role the Holy Spirit gives to you who wait
upon the Son of God, and would behold him waken and be glad.
He is a part of you, and you of him, because he is his
Fathers Son, and not for any purpose you may see in him.
Nothing is asked of you but to accept the changeless and
eternal that abide in him, for your identity is there. The
peace in you can but be found in him. And every thought of
love you offer him but brings you nearer to your wakening to
peace eternal and to endless joy.
This sacred Son of God is like yourself; the mirror of his
Fathers love for you, the soft reminder of his Fathers love
by which he was created, and which still abides in him, as it
abides in you. Be very still, and hear Gods Voice in him, and
let It tell you what his function is. He was created that you
might be whole, for only the complete can be a part of Gods
completion, Which created you.
There is no gift the Father asks of you but that you see in
all creation but the shining glory of His gift to you. Behold
His Son, His perfect gift, in whom his Father shines forever,
and to whom is all creation given as his own. Because he has
it is it given you, and where it lies in him behold your
peace. The quiet that surrounds you dwells in him, and from
this quiet come the happy dreams in which your hands are
joined in innocence. These are not hands that grasp in dreams
of pain. They hold no sword, for they have left their hold on
every vain illusion of the world. And being empty, they
received, instead, a brothers hand in which completion lay.
If you but knew the glorious goal that lies beyond
forgiveness, you would not keep hold on any thought, however
light the touch of evil on it may appear to be. For you would
understand how great the cost of holding anything God did not
give in minds that can direct the hand to bless, and lead
Gods Son unto his Fathers house. Would you not WANT to be a
friend to him, created by his Father as His home? If God
esteems him worthy of Himself, would YOU attack him with the
hands of hate? Who would lay bloody hands on Heaven itself,
and hope to find its peace? Your brother thinks he holds the
hand of death. Believe him not. But learn, instead, how
blessed are you who can release him, just by offering him
yours.
A dream is given you in which he is your Saviour, not your
enemy in hate. A dream is given you in which you have forgiven
him for all his dreams of death; a dream of hope you share
with him, instead of dreaming evil separate dreams of hate.
Why does it seem so hard to share this dream? Because unless
the Holy Spirit gives the dream its function, it was made for
hate, and will continue in deaths services. Each form it
takes in some way calls for death. And those who serve the
lord of death have come to worship in a separated world, each
with his tiny spear and rusted sword, to keep his ancient
promises to die.
Such is the core of fear in every dream that has been kept
apart from use by Him Who sees a different function for a
dream. When dreams are shared, they lose the function of
attack and separation, even though it was for this that every
dream was made. Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains
without the hope of change and betterment, for here is not
where changelessness is found. Let us be glad indeed that this
is so, and seek not the eternal in this world. Forgiving
dreams are means to step aside from dreaming of a world
outside yourself. And leading finally beyond all dreams, unto
the peace of everlasting life.
Forgiveness and Peace
How willing are you to forgive your brother? How much do
you desire peace instead of endless strife and misery and
pain? These questions are the same, in different form.
Forgiveness IS your peace, for herein lies the end of
separation, and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and
death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss. This is the
sacrifice salvation asks, and gladly offers peace instead
of this.
Swear not to die, you holy Son of God! You make a bargain
that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot be killed. He is
immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is
the only thing in all the universe that MUST be one. What
seems eternal all will have an end. The stars will disappear,
and night and day will be no more. All things that come and
go, the tides, the seasons, and the lives of man; all things
that change with time, and bloom and fade, will not return.
Where time has set an end is not where the eternal is. Gods
Son can never change by what man made of him. He will be as he
was and as he is, for time appointed not his destiny, nor set
the hour of his birth and death. Forgiveness will not change
him. Yet time waits upon forgiveness that the things of time
may disappear because they have no use.
Nothing survives its purpose. If it be conceived to die,
then die it must unless it does not take this purpose as its
own. Change is the only thing that can be made a blessing
here, where purpose is not fixed, however changeless it
appears to be. Think not that you can set a goal unlike Gods
purpose for you, and establish it as changeless and eternal.
You can give yourself a purpose that you do not have. But you
can NOT remove the power to change your mind, and see another
purpose there. Change is the greatest gift God gave to all
that you would make eternal, to ensure that only Heaven would
not pass away.
You were not born to die. You cannot change, because your
function has been fixed by God. All other goals are set in
time and change that time might be preserved, excepting ONE.
Forgiveness does not aim at keeping time, but at its ending,
when it has no use. Its purpose ended, it is gone. And where
it once held seeming sway is now restored the function God
established for His Son in full awareness. Time can set no end
to its fulfillment, nor its changelessness. There is no death
because the living share the function their Creator gave to
them. Lifes function cannot be to die. It must be lifes
extension, that it be as one forever and forever, without end.
This world will bind your feet and tie your hands and kill
your body only if you think that it was made to crucify Gods
Son. For even though it was a dream of death, you need not let
it stand for this to you. Let THIS be changed, and nothing in
the world but must be changed as well. For nothing here but is
defined as what you see it for. How lovely is the world whose
purpose is forgiveness of Gods Son! How free from fear, how
filled with blessing and with happiness! And what a joyous
thing it is to dwell a little while in such a happy place! Nor
can it be forgot, in such a world, it IS a little while till
timelessness comes quietly to take the place of time.
The Lingering Illusion
Seek not outside yourself. For it will fail, and you will
weep each time an idol falls. Heaven cannot be found where it
is not, and there can be no peace excepting there. Each idol
that you worship when God calls will never answer in His
place. There IS no other answer you can substitute, and find
the happiness His answer brings. Seek not outside yourself.
For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what
you want, insisting where it must be found. What if it is not
there? Do you prefer that you be right or happy? Be you glad
that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer
elsewhere. You WILL fail. But it is given you to know the
truth, and not to seek for it outside yourself.
No-one who comes here but must still have hope, some
lingering illusion, or some dream that there is something
outside of himself that will bring happiness and peace to him.
If everything is in him, this cannot be so. And therefore, by
his coming, he denies the truth about himself, and seeks for
something MORE than everything, as if a part of it were
separated off, and found where all the rest of it is not. This
is the purpose he bestows upon the body; that it seek for what
he lacks, and give him what would make himself complete. And
thus he wanders aimlessly about, in search of something that
he cannot find, believing that he is what he is not.
The lingering illusion will impel him to seek out a
thousand idols, and to seek beyond them for a thousand more.
And each will fail him, all excepting one; for he will die,
and does not understand the idol that he seeks IS but his
death. Its form appears to be outside himself. Yet does he
seek to kill Gods Son within, and prove that he is victor
over him. This is the purpose every idol has, for this the
role that is assigned to it, and this the role that cannot BE
fulfilled.
Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the bodys
betterment is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring
about your death. For you believe that you can suffer lack,
and lack IS death. To sacrifice is to give up, and thus to be
without, and to have suffered loss. And by this giving up is
life renounced. Seek not outside yourself. The search implies
you are not whole within, and fear to look upon your
devastation, and prefer to seek outside yourself for what you
are.
Idols must fall BECAUSE they have no life, and what is
lifeless IS a sign of death. You came to die, and what would
you expect but to PERCEIVE the signs of death you seek? No
sadness and no suffering proclaims a message other than an
idol found that represents a parody of life which, in its
lifelessness, is really death, conceived as real and given
living form. Yet each must fail and crumble and decay, because
a form of death cannot be life, and what is sacrificed cannot
be whole.
All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within
from being known to you; and to maintain allegiance to the
dream that you must find what is outside yourself to be
complete and happy. It is vain to worship idols in the hope of
peace. God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No
idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside
yourself. Let us forget the purpose of the world the past has
given it. For otherwise, the future WILL be like the past, and
but a series of depressing dreams, in which all idols fail
you, one by one, and you see death and disappointment
everywhere.
To change all this, and open up a road of hope and of
release in what appeared to be an endless circle of despair,
you need but to decide you do not KNOW the purpose of the
world. You give it goals it does not have, and thus do you
decide what it is for. You try to see in it a place of idols
found outside yourself, with power to make complete what is
within by splitting what you are between the two. You CHOOSE
your dreams, for they are what you wish, perceived as if it
had been given you. Your idols do what you would have them do,
and have the power you ascribe to them. And you pursue them
vainly in the dream, because you want their power as your own.
Yet where are dreams, but in a mind asleep? And can a dream
succeed in making real the pictures it projects outside
itself? Save time, my brothers; learn what time is FOR. And
speed the end of idols in a world made sad and sick by seeing
idols there. Your holy minds are altars unto God, and where He
is no idols can abide. The fear of God is but the fear of loss
of idols. It is not the fear of loss of your reality. But you
have made of your reality an idol, which you must protect
against the light of truth. And all the world becomes the
means by which this idol can be saved. Salvation thus appears
to threaten life, and offer death.
It is not so. Salvation seeks to prove there IS no death,
and ONLY life exists. The sacrifice of death is NOTHING lost.
An idol CANNOT take the place of God. Let Him remind you of
His love for you, and do not seek to drown His Voice in chants
of deep despair to idols of yourself. Seek not outside your
Father for your hope. For hope of happiness is NOT despair.
Christ and Anti-Christ
What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are
unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are.
That is the only power which they have. Their PURPOSE is
obscure, and they are feared and worshipped, both, BECAUSE you
do not know what they are for, and why they have been made. An
idol is an image of your brother which you would value more
than what he IS. Idols are made that he may be replaced, no
matter what their form. And it is this which never is
perceived and recognized. Be it a body or a thing, a place, a
situation or a circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a
right demanded or achieved, it is the same.
Let not their form deceive you. Idols are but substitutes
for your reality. In some way, you believe they will complete
your little self, for safety in a world perceived as
dangerous, with forces massed against your confidence and
peace of mind. They have the power to supply your lacks, and
add the value which you do not have. No-one believes in idols
who has not enslaved himself to littleness and loss. And thus
must seek beyond his little self for strength to raise his
head, and stand apart from all the misery the world reflects.
This is the penalty for looking not within for certainty and
quiet calm which liberates you from the world, and lets you
stand apart, in quiet and in peace.
An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form
of anti-Christ, which constitutes a gap between the Christ and
what you see. An idol is a wish, made tangible and given form,
and thus perceived as real, and seen outside the mind. Yet it
is still a thought, and cannot leave the mind that is its
source. Nor is its form apart from the idea it represents. All
forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ. And fall before His
face like a dark veil which seems to shut you off from Him,
alone in darkness. Yet the light is there. A cloud does not
put out the sun. No more a veil can banish what it seems to
separate, nor darken by one whit the light itself.
This world of idols IS a veil across the face of Christ,
because its PURPOSE is to separate your brother from yourself.
A dark and fearful purpose, yet a thought without the power to
change one blade of grass from something living to a sign of
death. Its form is nowhere, for its source abides within your
mind, where God abideth not. Where is this place where what is
everywhere has been excluded, and been kept apart? What hand
could be held up to block Gods way? Whose voice could make
demand He enter not? The more-than-everything is not a
thing to make you tremble, and to quail in fear. Christs
enemy is nowhere. He can take no form in which he EVER will be
real.
What is an idol? Nothing! It must be believed before it
seems to come to life, and GIVEN power that it may be feared.
Its life and power are its believers gift, and this is what
the miracle restores to what HAS life and power worthy of the
gift of Heaven and eternal peace. The miracle does not restore
the truth, the light the veil between has not put out. It
merely lifts the veil, and LETS the truth shine unencumbered,
being what it is. It does not need belief to be itself, for it
HAS BEEN created, so it IS. An idol is ESTABLISHED by belief,
and when it is withdrawn, the idol dies.
This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power
past omnipotence, a place beyond the infinite, a time
transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set
by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and
shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the
deathless come to die, the all-encompassing to suffer loss,
the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the
changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all
living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as
perfect, sinless and as loving as his Father, come to hate a
little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die.
Where is an idol? Nowhere! Can there be a gap in what is
infinite, a place where time can interrupt eternity? A place
of darkness set where all is light, a dismal alcove separated
off from what is endless, HAS no place to be. An idol is
beyond where God has set all things forever, and has left no
room for anything to be EXCEPT His Will. Nothing and nowhere
must an idol be, while God is everything and everywhere.
What purpose has an idol, then? What is it FOR? This is the
only question which has many answers, each depending on the
one of whom the question has been asked. The world BELIEVES in
idols. No-one comes unless he worshipped them, and still
attempts to seek for one that yet might offer him a gift
reality does not contain. Each worshipper of idols harbors
hope his special deities will give him more than other men
possess. It MUST be more. It does not really matter more of
what; more beauty, more intelligence, more wealth, or even
more affliction and more pain. But MORE of something is an
idol FOR. And when one fails another takes its place, with
hope of finding more of something else. Be not deceived by
forms the something takes. An idol is a means for getting
MORE. And it is THIS that is against Gods Will.
God has not many sons, but only One. Who can have more, and
who be given less? In Heaven would the Son of God but laugh,
if idols could intrude upon his peace. It is for him the Holy
Spirit speaks, and tells you idols HAVE no purpose here. For
more than Heaven can you never have. If Heaven is within, why
would you seek for idols which would make of Heaven less, to
give you more than God bestowed upon your brother and on you,
as one with Him? God GAVE you all there is. And to be sure you
could not lose it, did He also give the same to every living
thing as well. And thus IS every living thing a part of you,
as of Himself. No idol can establish you as MORE than God. But
you will never be content with being LESS.
The Forgiving Dream
The slave of idols is a WILLING slave. For willing he must
be to let himself bow down in worship to what has no life, and
seek for power in the powerless. What happened to the holy Son
of God that this could be his wish; to let himself fall lower
than the stones upon the ground, and look to idols that they
raise him up? Hear, then, your story in the dream you made,
and ask yourself if it be not the truth that you believe that
it is NOT a dream: A dream of judgment came into the mind that
God created perfect as Himself. And in that dream was Heaven
changed to hell, and God made enemy unto His Son.
How can Gods Son awaken from the dream? It is a dream of
judgment. So must he judge not, and he WILL waken. For the
dream will seem to last while he is part of it. Judge not, for
he who judges WILL have need of idols, which will hold the
judgment off from resting on himself. Nor can he know the Self
he has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself a part
of evil dreams, where idols are your true identity, and
your salvation from the judgment laid in terror and in guilt
upon yourself.
All figures in the dream are idols, made to save you from
the dream. Yet they are PART of what they have been made to
save you FROM. Thus does an idol KEEP the dream alive and
terrible, for who could wish for one unless he were in terror
and despair? And this the idol represents, and so its worship
IS the worship of despair and terror, and the dream from which
they come. Judgment is an injustice to Gods Son, and it IS
justice that who judges him will not escape the penalty he
laid upon himself within the dream he made. God knows of
justice, not of penalty. But in the dream of judgment, you
attack and are condemned; and wish to be the slave of idols,
which are interposed between your judgment and the penalty it
brings.
There CAN be no salvation in the dream as you are dreaming
it. For idols must be part of it, to save you from what you
believe you have accomplished, and have done to make you
sinful, and put out the Light within you. Little children, It
is there. You do but dream, and idols are the toys you dream
you play with. Who has need of toys but children? They pretend
they rule the world, and give their toys the power to move
about, and talk and think and feel, and speak for THEM. Yet
everything their toys appear to do is in the minds of those
who play with them. But they are eager to forget that they
made up the dream in which their toys are real, nor recognize
their wishes are their own.
Nightmares are childish dreams. The toys have turned
against the child who thought he made them real. Yet CAN a
dream attack? Or CAN a toy grow large and dangerous and fierce
and wild? This does the child believe, because he fears his
thoughts, and gives them to the toys instead. And their
reality becomes his own, because they seem to SAVE him from
his thoughts. Yet do they keep his thoughts alive and real,
but seen outside himself, where they can turn against him for
his treachery to them. He thinks he NEEDS them that he may
escape his thoughts, because he thinks the thoughts are real.
And so he makes of anything a toy, to make his world remain
outside himself, and play that HE is but a part of IT.
There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone
forever. Seek not to retain the toys of children. Put them all
away, for you have need of them no more. The dream of judgment
is a childrens game, in which the child becomes the father,
powerful, but with the little wisdom of a child. What hurts
him is destroyed; what helps him, blessed. Except he judges
this as does a child, who does not know what hurts and what
will heal. And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of
all the chaos in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he
made. Yet is the real world unaffected by the world he thinks
is real. Nor have its laws been changed because he did not
understand.
The real world still is but a dream. Except the figures
have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray. It
is a dream in which no-one is used to substitute for something
else, nor interposed between the thoughts the mind conceives
and what it sees. No-one is used for something he is not, for
childish things have all been put away. And what was once a
dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is
joy, because that is the PURPOSE which it has. Only forgiving
dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms
which enter in the dream are now perceived as brothers, not in
judgment, but in love.
Forgiving dreams have little need to last. They are not
made to separate the mind from what it thinks. They do not
seek to prove the dream is being dreamed by someone else. And
in these dreams a melody is heard which everyone remembers,
though he has not heard it since before all time began.
Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the
song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the
holiness which never left the altar which abides forever deep
within the Son of God. And when he hears this song again, he
knows he never heard it not. And where is time, when dreams of
judgment have been put away?
Whenever you feel fear in any form, and you ARE fearful
if you do not feel a deep content, a certainty of help, a calm
assurance Heaven goes with you, be sure you made an idol,
and believe it will betray you. For beneath your hope that it
will save you, lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal and
uncertainty, so deep and bitter that the dream cannot conceal
completely all your sense of doom. Your self-betrayal MUST
result in fear, for fear IS judgment, leading surely to the
frantic search for idols and for death.
Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety, and
have not attacked yourself. So do your childish terrors melt
away, and dreams become a sign that you have made a new
beginning, not another try to worship idols, and to KEEP
attack. Forgiving dreams are kind to everyone who figures in
the dream. And so they bring the dreamer full release from
dreams of fear. He does not fear his judgment, for he has
judged no-one, nor has sought to be released through judgment
from what judgment must impose. And all the while he is
remembering what he forgot when judgment seemed to be the way
to SAVE him from its penalty.
CHAPTER 30
THE NEW BEGINNING
The new beginning now becomes the focus of the curriculum.
The goal is clear, but now you need specific methods for
attaining it. The speed by which it can be reached depends on
this one thing alone; your willingness to practice every step.
Each one will help a little every time it is attempted. And
together will these steps lead you from dreams of judgment to
forgiving dreams and out of pain and fear. They are not new to
you, but they are more ideas than rules of thought to you as
yet. So now we need to practice them awhile, until they are
the rules by which you live. We seek to make them habits now,
so you will have them ready for whatever need.
Rules for Decision
Decisions are continuous. You do not always know when you
are making them. But with a little practice with the ones you
recognize, a set begins to form which sees you through the
rest. It is not wise to let yourself become preoccupied with
every step you take. The proper set, adopted consciously each
time you wake, will put you well ahead. And if you find
resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. DO
NOT FIGHT YOURSELF. But think about the kind of day you want,
and tell yourself there IS a way in which this very day can
happen just like that. Then try again to have the day you
want.
1. The outlook starts with this:
Today I will make no decision by myself.
This means that you are choosing not to be the judge of
what to do. But it must also mean you will not judge the
situations where you will be called upon to make response. For
if you judge them, you have set the rules for how you should
react to them. And then another answer cannot but produce
confusion and uncertainty and fear.
This is your major problem now. You still make up your
mind, and THEN decide to ask what you should do. And what you
hear may not resolve the problem as YOU saw it first. This
leads to fear because it contradicts what you perceive, and so
you feel attacked. And therefore angry. There are rules by
which this will not happen. But it does occur at first, while
you are learning how to hear.
2. Throughout the day, at any time you think of it, and
have a quiet moment for reflection, tell yourself again the
kind of day you want; the feelings you would have, the things
you want to happen to you, and the things you would
experience, and say,
If I make no decision by myself,
This is the kind of day that will be GIVEN me.
These two procedures, practiced well, will serve to let you
be directed without fear, for opposition will not first arise
and then become a problem in itself.
But there will still be times when you have judged ALREADY.
Now the answer will provoke attack, unless you quickly
straighten out your mind to want an answer that will work. Be
certain this has happened if you feel yourself unwilling to
sit by, and ask to have the answer given you. This means you
HAVE decided by yourself, and cannot see the QUESTION. Now you
need a quick restorative before you ask.
3. Remember once again the day you want, and recognize
that something has occurred which is not part of it. Then
realize that you have asked a question by yourself, and must
have set an answer in your terms. Then say,
I have no question. I forgot what to decide.
This cancels out the terms which you have set, and lets the
ANSWER show you what the question must have really been.
Try to observe this rule without delay, despite your
opposition. For you have ALREADY gotten angry, and your fear
of being answered in a different way from what your version of
the questions asks will gain momentum, until you believe the
day you want is one in which you get YOUR answer to YOUR
question. And you will not get it, for it would destroy the
day by robbing you of what you REALLY want. This can be very
hard to realize, when once you have decided by yourself the
rules which promise you a happy day. Yet this decision still
can be undone, by simple methods which you can accept.
4. If you are so unwilling to receive you cannot even let
your question go, you can begin to change your mind with this:
At least I can decide I do not LIKE what I feel
now.
This much is obvious, and paves the way for the next easy
step.
5. Having decided that you do not like the way you feel,
what could be easier than to continue with,
And so I HOPE I have been wrong.
This works against the sense of opposition, and reminds you
that help is not being thrust upon you, but is something that
you want and that you need, because you do not like the way
you feel. This tiny opening will be enough to let you go ahead
with just a few more steps you need to let yourself be helped.
Now you have reached the turning-point, because it has
occurred to you that YOU will gain if what you have decided is
not so. Until this point is reached, you will believe your
happiness depends on being RIGHT. But this much reason have
you now attained; you would be better off if you were WRONG.
6. This tiny grain of wisdom will suffice to take you
further. You are not coerced, but merely hope to get a thing
you want. And you can say in perfect honesty,
I WANT another way to look at this.
Now you have changed your mind about the day, and have
remembered what you REALLY want. Its purpose has no longer
been obscured by the insane belief you want it for the goal of
being right when you are wrong. Thus is the readiness for
asking brought to your awareness, for you cannot be in
conflict when you ask for what you want, and see that it IS
this for which you ask.
7. This final step is but acknowledgment of lack of
opposition to be helped. It is a statement of an open mind,
not certain yet, but willing to be shown:
Perhaps there IS another way to look at this.
What can I LOSE by asking?
Thus you now can ask a question that makes sense, and so
the answer will make sense as well. Nor will you fight against
it, for you see that it is YOU who will be helped by it.
It must be clear that it is easier to have a happy day if
you prevent unhappiness from entering at all. But this takes
practice in the rules which will protect you from the ravages
of fear. When this has been achieved, the sorry dream of
judgment has forever been undone. But meanwhile, you have need
for practicing the rules for its undoing. Let us, then,
consider once again the very first of the decisions which are
offered here.
We said you can begin a happy day with the determination
not to make decisions by yourself. This seems to be a real
decision in itself. And yet, you CANNOT make decisions by
yourself. The only question really is with WHAT you choose to
make them. That is really all. The first rule, then, is not
coercion, but a simple statement of a simple fact. You will
not make decisions by yourself WHATEVER you decide. For they
are made with idols or with God. And you ask help of Christ or
anti-Christ, and which you choose will join with you, and tell
you what to do.
Your day is not at random. It is set by what you choose to
live it with, and how the friend whose counsel you have sought
perceives your happiness. You always ask advice before you can
decide on anything. Let THIS be understood, and you can see
there cannot be coercion here, nor grounds for opposition that
you may be free. There IS no freedom from what must occur. And
if you think there is, you must be wrong.
The second rule as well is but a fact. For you and your
advisor must agree on what you want before it can occur. It is
but this AGREEMENT which permits all things to happen. Nothing
can be caused without some form of union, be it with a dream
of judgment or the Voice for God. Decisions cause results
BECAUSE they are not made in isolation. They are made by you
and your advisor, for yourself, and for the world as well. The
day you want you offer to the world, for it will be what you
have asked for, and will reinforce the rules of your advisor
in the world. Whose kingdom is the world for you today? What
kind of day will you decide to have?
It needs but two who would have happiness this day to
promise it to all the world. It needs but two to understand
that they cannot decide alone, to guarantee the joy they asked
for will be wholly shared. For they have understood the basic
law that makes decision powerful, and gives it all effects
that it will ever have. It needs but two. These two are joined
before there CAN be a decision. Let this be the one reminder
that you keep in mind, and you will have the day you want, and
give it to the world by having it yourself. Your judgment has
been lifted from the world by your decision for a happy day.
And as you have received, so must you give.
Freedom of Will
Do you not understand that to oppose the Holy Spirit is to
fight YOURSELF? He tells you but YOUR will; He speaks for YOU.
In His Divinity is but your own. And all He knows is but your
knowledge, saved for you that you may do your will through
Him. God ASKS you do your will. He joins with YOU. He did not
set His kingdom up alone. And Heaven itself but represents
your will, where everything created is for you. No spark of
life but was created with your glad consent, as you would have
it be. And not one Thought that God has ever had but waited
for your blessing to be born. God is no enemy to you. He asks
no more than that He hear you call Him Friend.
How wonderful it is to do your will! For that is freedom.
There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedoms
name. Unless you do your will you are not free. And would God
leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? God but
ensured that you would never lose your will when He gave you
His perfect answer. Hear it now, that you may be reminded of
His love, and learn your will. God would not have His Son made
prisoner to what he does not want. He JOINS with you in
willing you be free. And to oppose Him is to make a choice
against YOURSELF, and choose that YOU be bound.
Look once again upon your enemy, the one you chose to hate
instead of love. For thus was hatred born into the world, and
thus the rule of fear established there. Now hear God speak to
you through Him Who is His Voice and yours as well, reminding
you that it is not your will to hate, and be a prisoner to
fear, a slave to death, a little creature with a little life.
Your will is boundless; it is not your will that it be bound.
What lies in you has joined with God Himself in all creations
birth. Remember He Who has created you, and through your will
created everything. Not one created thing but gives you
thanks, for it is by your will that it was born. No light of
Heaven shines except for you, for it was set in Heaven by your
will.
What cause have you for anger in a world which merely waits
your blessing to be free? If you be prisoner, then God Himself
could not be free. For what is done to him whom God so loves
is done to God Himself. Think not He wills to bind you, Who
has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He
would but keep your will forever and forever limitless.
This world awaits the freedom you will give when you have
recognized that YOU are free. But you will not forgive the
world until you have forgiven Him Who gave your will to you.
For it is BY your will the world is given freedom. Nor can you
be free apart from Him Whose holy Will you share. God turns to
you to ask the world be saved, for by your own salvation it is
healed. And no-one walks upon the earth but must depend on
your decision, that he learn death has no power over him
because he shares your freedom, as he shares your will. It IS
your will to heal him, and because you have decided WITH him,
he is healed. And now is God forgiven, for you chose to look
upon your brother as a friend.
Beyond All Idols
Idols are quite specific. But your will is universal, being
limitless. And so it has no form, nor is content for its
expression in the terms of form. Idols are limits. They are
the belief that there are forms which will bring happiness,
and that, BY limiting, is all attained. It is as if you said,
I have no need of everything. This little thing I want, and
it will be as everything to me. And this must fail to
satisfy, because it IS your will that everything be yours.
Decide for idols, and you ASK for loss. Decide for truth, and
everything IS yours.
It is not form you seek. What form can be a substitute for
God the Fathers love? What form can take the place of all the
love in the Divinity of God the Son? What idol can make two of
what is one? And CAN the limitless be limited? You do not WANT
an idol. It is not your will to have one. It will not bestow
on you the gift you seek. When you decide upon the form of
what you want, you lose the understanding of its purpose. So
you see your will within the idol, thus reducing it to a
specific form. Yet this could never BE your will, because what
shares in all creation cannot be content with small ideas and
little things.
Behind the search for every idol lies the yearning for
completion. Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited. To
seek a special person or a thing to add to you to make
yourself complete can only mean that you believe some form is
missing. And by finding this, you will achieve completion in a
form you like. This is the PURPOSE of an idol; that you will
not look beyond it, to the source of the belief that you ARE
incomplete. ONLY if you had sinned could this be so. For sin
is the idea you are alone, and separated off from what is
whole. And thus it would be necessary for the search for
wholeness to be made BEYOND the boundaries of limits on
yourself.
It never is the IDOL that you want. But what you think it
offers you you want indeed, and have the RIGHT to ask for. Nor
could it be possible it be denied. Your will to be complete is
but Gods will, and this is GIVEN you by being His. God knows
not form. He cannot answer you in terms which have no meaning.
And your will could not be satisfied with empty forms, made
but to fill a gap which is not there. It is not this you WANT.
Creation gives no separate person and no separate thing the
power to complete the Son of God. What idol can be called upon
to give the Son of God what he already has?
Completion is the FUNCTION of Gods Son. He has no need to
seek for it at all. Beyond all idols stands his holy will to
be but what he is. For more than whole is meaningless. If
there were change in him, if he could be reduced to any form
and limited to what is not in him, he would not be as God
created him. What idol can he need to be himself? For can he
give a part of him away? What is not whole cannot make whole.
But what is really asked for cannot BE denied. Your will IS
granted. Not in any form that would content you not, but in
the whole completely lovely Thought God holds of you.
Nothing that God knows not exists. And what He knows exists
forever, changelessly. For thoughts endure as long as does the
mind that thought of them. And in the Mind of God there is no
ending, nor a time in which His Thoughts were absent, or could
suffer change. Thoughts are not born and cannot die. They
share the attributes of their creator, nor have they a
separate life apart from his. The thoughts you think are in
your mind, as you are in the Mind Which thought of you. And so
there are no separate parts in what exists within Gods Mind.
It is forever one, eternally united and at peace.
Thoughts seem to come and go. Yet all this means is that
you are sometimes aware of them, and sometimes not. An
unremembered thought is born again to you when it returns to
your awareness. Yet it did not die when you forgot it. It was
always there, but you were unaware of it. The Thought God
holds of you is perfectly unchanged by your forgetting. It
will always be exactly as it was before the time when you
forgot, and will be just the same when you remember. And it is
the same within the interval when you forgot.
The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine
forever. They await not birth. They wait for welcome and
remembering. The Thought God holds of you is like a star,
unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven it is set
that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. Yet still
and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There
was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew
dimmer or less perfect ever was.
Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the
eternal sky which holds it safe, forever lifted up and
anchored sure. Its perfect purity does not depend on whether
it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly
holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as
earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which
keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for
idols cannot know this star is there.
Beyond all idols is the Thought God holds of you.
Completely unaffected by the turmoil and the terror of the
world; the dreams of birth and death that here are dreamed;
the myriad of forms that fear can take; quite undisturbed, the
Thought God holds of you remains exactly as it always was.
Surrounded by a stillness so complete no sound of battle comes
remotely near, it rests in certainty and perfect peace. Here
is your one reality kept safe, completely unaware of all the
world that worships idols, and that knows not God. In perfect
sureness of its changelessness, and of its rest in its eternal
home, the Thought God holds of you has never left the Mind of
its Creator, Whom it knows as its Creator knows that it is
there.
Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where
YOU are? Is your reality a thing apart from you, and in a
world which your reality knows nothing of? Outside you, there
is no eternal sky, no changeless star, and no reality. The
Mind of Heavens Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of
Father and Son joined in creation which can have no end. You
have not two realities, but one. Nor can you be AWARE of more
than one. An idol OR the Thought God holds of you is your
reality. Forget not, then, that idols must keep hidden what
you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your own. The star
shines still; the sky has never changed. But you, the holy Son
of God Himself, are unaware of your reality.
The Truth Behind Illusions
You WILL attack what does not satisfy, and thus you will
not see you made it up. You ALWAYS fight illusions. For the
truth behind them is so lovely and so still in loving
gentleness, were you aware of it you would forget
defensiveness entirely, and rush to its embrace. The truth
could never be attacked. And this you knew when you made
idols. They were made that this might be forgotten. You attack
but false ideas, and never truthful ones. All idols are the
false ideas you made to fill the gap you think arose between
yourself and what is true. And you attack them for the things
you think they represent. What lies beyond them cannot BE
attacked.
The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up
childrens toys. A child is frightened when a wooden head
springs up as a closed box is opened suddenly, or when a soft
and silent wooly bear begins to squeak as he takes hold of it.
The rules he made for boxes and for bears have failed him, and
have broken his control of what surrounds him. And he is
afraid because he thought the rules protected him. Now must he
learn the boxes and the bears did not deceive him, broke no
rules, nor mean his world is made chaotic and unsafe. HE was
mistaken. He misunderstood what made him safe, and thought
that it had left.
The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless
forms. And each one seems to break the rules you set for it.
It never WAS the thing you thought. It must appear to break
your rules for safety, since the rules were wrong. But YOU are
not endangered. You can laugh at popping heads and squeaking
toys, as does the child who learns they are no threat to him.
Yet while he likes to play with them, he still perceives them
as obeying rules he made for his enjoyment. So there still are
rules which they can seem to break, and frighten him. Yet IS
he at the mercy of his toys? And CAN they represent a threat
to him?
Reality observes the laws of God, and not the rules you
set. It is His laws which guarantee your safety. All illusions
that you believe about yourself obey NO laws. They seem to
dance a little while, according to the rules you set for them.
But then they fall, and cannot rise again. They are but toys,
my children. Do not grieve for them. Their dancing never
brought you joy. But neither were they things to frighten you,
nor make you safe if they obeyed your rules. They must be
neither cherished nor attacked, but merely looked upon as
childrens toys, without a single meaning of their own. See
one in them, and you will see them all. See none in them, and
they will touch you not.
Appearances deceive BECAUSE they are appearances, and not
reality. Dwell not on them in any form. They but obscure
reality, and they bring fear BECAUSE they hide the truth. Do
not attack what you have made to LET you be deceived, for thus
you prove that you HAVE been deceived. Attack HAS power to
make illusions real. Yet what it makes is nothing. Who could
be made fearful by a power that can have no real effects at
all? What could it be but an illusion, making things appear
like to itself? Look calmly at its toys, and understand that
they are idols which but dance to vain desires. Give them not
your worship, for they are not there. Yet this is equally
forgotten in attack. Gods Son needs no defense against his
dreams. His idols do not threaten him at all. His one mistake
is that he thinks them real. What can the power of illusions
DO?
Appearances can but deceive the mind that WANTS to be
deceived. And you can make a simple choice that will forever
place you far beyond deception. You need not concern yourself
with how this will be done, for this you cannot understand.
But you WILL understand that mighty changes have been quickly
brought about, when you decide one very simple thing; you do
not WANT whatever you believe an idol gives. For thus the Son
of God declares that he is free of idols. And thus IS he free.
Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be except a
happy dream? It asks you but that you forgive all things that
no-one ever did; to overlook what is not there; and not to
look upon the unreal as reality. You are but asked to let your
will be done, and seek no longer for the things you do not
want. And you are asked to let yourself be free of all the
dreams of what you never were, and seek no more to substitute
the strength of idle wishes for the Will of God.
Here does the dream of separation start to fade and
disappear. For here the gap that is not there begins to be
perceived without the toys of terror that you made. No more
than this is asked. Be glad indeed salvation asks so little,
not so much. It asks for NOTHING in reality. And even in
illusions it but asks forgiveness be the substitute for fear.
Such is the only rule for happy dreams. The gap is emptied of
the toys of fear, and then its unreality is plain. Dreams are
for NOTHING. And the Son of God can have no need of them. They
offer him no single thing that he could ever want. He is
delivered from illusions by his will, and but restored to what
he is. What could Gods plan for his salvation be, except a
means to give him to Himself?
The Only Purpose
The real world is the state of mind in which the only
purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. Fear is not
its goal, and the ESCAPE from guilt becomes its aim. The value
of forgiveness is perceived, and takes the place of idols,
which are sought no longer, for their gifts are not held
dear. No rules are idly set, and no demands are made of anyone
or anything to twist and fit into the dream of fear. Instead,
there is a wish to understand all things created as they
really are. And it is recognized that all things must be first
forgiven, and THEN understood.
Here, it is thought that understanding is ACQUIRED by
attack. There, it is clear that by attack is understanding
LOST. The folly of pursuing guilt as goal is fully recognized.
And idols are not wanted there, for guilt is understood as the
sole cause of pain in any form. No-one is tempted by its vain
appeal, for suffering and death have been perceived as things
not wanted, and not striven for. The possibility of freedom
has been grasped and welcomed, and the means by which it can
be gained can now be understood. The world becomes a place of
hope, because its only purpose is to be a place where hope of
happiness can be fulfilled. And no-one stands outside this
hope, because the world has been united in belief the purpose
of the world is one which all must share, if hope be more than
just a dream.
Not yet is Heaven quite remembered, for the purpose of
forgiveness still remains. Yet everyone is certain he will go
beyond forgiveness, and he but remains until it is made
perfect in himself. He has no wish for anything but this. And
fear has dropped away, because he is united in his purpose
with himself. There is a hope of happiness in him so sure and
constant he can barely stay, and wait a little longer with his
feet still touching earth. Yet is he glad to wait till every
hand is joined, and every heart made ready to arise and go
with him. For thus is HE made ready for the step in which is
all forgiveness left behind.
The final step is Gods, because it is but God Who could
create a perfect Son, and share His Fatherhood with him. No-
one outside of Heaven knows how this can be, for understanding
this is Heaven itself. Even the real world has a purpose still
beneath creation and eternity. But fear is gone, because its
purpose is forgiveness, not idolatry. And so is Heavens Son
prepared to be Himself, and to remember that the Son of God
knows everything his Father understands, and understands it
perfectly with Him.
The real world still falls short of this, for this is Gods
Own purpose; only His, and yet completely shared and perfectly
fulfilled. The real world is a state in which the mind has
learned how easily do idols go when they are still perceived,
but wanted not. How willingly the mind can let them go when it
has understood that idols are nothing and nowhere, and are
purposeless. For only then can guilt and sin be seen without a
purpose, and as meaningless.
Thus is the real worlds purpose gently brought into
awareness, to replace the goal of sin and guilt. And all that
stood between your image of yourself and what you are,
forgiveness washes joyfully away. Yet God need not create His
Son again, that what is his be given back to him. The gap
between your brother and yourself was never THERE. And what
the Son of God knew in creation he must know again.
When brothers join in purpose in the world of fear, they
stand already at the edge of the real world. Perhaps they
still look back, and think they see an idol that they want.
Yet has their path been surely set away from idols toward
reality. For when they joined their hands, it was Christs
hand they took, and they will look on Him Whose hand they
hold. The face of Christ is looked upon before the Father is
remembered. For He must be unremembered till His Son has
reached beyond forgiveness, to the love of God. Yet is the
love of Christ accepted first. And then will come the
knowledge They are One.
How light and easy is the step across the narrow boundaries
of the world of fear, when you have recognized Whose hand you
hold! Within your hand is everything you need to walk with
perfect confidence away from fear forever, and to go straight
on, and quickly reach the gate of Heaven itself. For He Whose
hand you hold was waiting but for you to join Him. Now that
you have come, would HE delay in showing you the way that He
must walk with you? His blessing lies on you as surely as His
Fathers love rests upon Him. His gratitude to you is past
your understanding, for you have enabled Him to rise from
chains, and go with you, together, to His Fathers house.
An ancient hate is passing from the world. And with it goes
all hatred and all fear. Look back no longer, for what lies
ahead is all you ever wanted in your hearts. Give up the
world! But not to sacrifice. You never WANTED it. What
happiness have you sought here that did not bring you pain?
What moment of content has not been bought at fearful price in
coins of suffering? Joy HAS no cost. It is your sacred right,
and what you pay for is not happiness. Be speeded on your way
by honesty, and let not your experiences here deceive in
retrospect. They were not free from bitter cost and joyless
consequence.
Do not look back except in honesty. And when an idol tempts
you, think of this:
There never was a time an idol brought
You anything except the gift of guilt.
Not one was bought except at cost of pain,
Nor was it ever paid by you alone.
Be merciful unto your brother, then. And do not choose an
idol thoughtlessly, remembering that he will pay the cost as
well as you. For he will be delayed when you look back, and
you will not perceive Whose loving hand you hold. Look
forward, then, and walk in confidence, with happy hearts that
beat in hope and do not pound in fear.
The Will of God forever lies in those whose hands are
joined. Until they joined, they thought He was their enemy.
But when they joined and shared a purpose, they were free to
learn their will is one. And thus the Will of God must reach
to their awareness. Nor can they forget for long that it is
but their own.
The Justification for Forgiveness
Anger is NEVER justified. Attack has NO foundation. It is
here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here
is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For
it is on this forgiveness rests, and is but natural. You are
not asked to offer pardon where attack is due, and would be
justified. For this would mean that you forgive a sin by
overlooking what is really there. This is not pardon. For it
would assume that, by responding in a way which is not
justified, your pardon will become the answer to attack that
has been made. And thus is pardon inappropriate, by being
granted where is it not due.
Pardon is ALWAYS justified. It has a SURE foundation. You
do not forgive the unforgivable, nor overlook a real attack
that calls for punishment. Salvation does not lie in being
asked to make unnatural responses which are inappropriate to
what is real. Instead, it merely asks that you respond
appropriately to what is not real by not perceiving what has
not occurred. If pardon were unjustified, you would be asked
to sacrifice your rights when you return forgiveness for
attack. But you are merely asked to see forgiveness as the
natural reaction to distress which rests on error, and thus
calls for help. Forgiveness is the ONLY sane response. It
KEEPS your rights from being sacrificed.
This understanding is the only change that lets the real
world rise to take the place of dreams of terror. Fear cannot
arise unless attack is justified, and if it had a real
foundation, pardon would have none. The real world is achieved
when you perceive the basis of forgiveness is quite real and
fully justified. While you regard it as a gift unwarranted, it
must UPHOLD the guilt you would forgive. Unjustified
forgiveness IS attack. And this is all the world can ever
give. It pardons sinners sometimes, but remains aware that
they have sinned. And so they do not merit the forgiveness
that it gives.
This is the false forgiveness which the world employs to
KEEP the sense of sin alive. And recognizing God is just, it
seems impossible His pardon could be real. Thus is the fear of
God the sure result of seeing pardon as unmerited. No-one who
sees himself as guilty can avoid the fear of God. But he is
saved from this dilemma if he can forgive. The mind must think
of its Creator as it looks upon itself. If you can see your
brother merits pardon, you have learned forgiveness is your
right as much as his. Nor will you think that God intends for
you a fearful judgment which your brother does not merit. For
it is the truth that you can merit neither more nor less than
he.
Forgiveness recognized as merited will heal. It gives the
miracle its strength to overlook illusions. This is how you
learn that you must be forgiven, too. There can be no
appearance that can NOT be overlooked. For if there were, it
would be necessary first there be some sin which stands beyond
forgiveness. There would be an error that is more than a
mistake; a special form of error which remains unchangeable,
eternal, and beyond correction or escape. There would be one
mistake which had the power to undo creation, and to make a
world which could replace it, and destroy the Will of God.
Only if this were possible could there be some appearances
which could withstand the miracle, and not be healed by it.
There is no surer proof idolatry is what you wish than a
belief there are some forms of sickness and of joylessness
forgiveness cannot heal. This means that you prefer to keep
some idols, and are not prepared, as yet, to let all idols go.
And thus you think that some appearances are real, and not
appearances at all. Be not deceived about the meaning of a
fixed belief that some appearances are harder to look past
than others are. It ALWAYS means you think forgiveness must be
limited. And you have set a goal of partial pardon and a
limited escape from guilt for YOU. What can this be except a
false forgiveness of yourself, and everyone who seems apart
from you?
It must be true the miracle can heal ALL forms of sickness,
or it cannot heal. Its purpose cannot be to judge which forms
are real, and which appearances are true. If one appearance
must remain apart from healing, one illusion must be part of
truth. And you could not escape all guilt, but only some of
it. You must forgive Gods Son ENTIRELY. Or you will keep an
image of yourself that is not whole, and will remain afraid to
look within, and find escape from every idol there. Salvation
rests on faith there CANNOT be some forms of guilt which you
cannot forgive. And so there cannot be appearances which have
replaced the truth about Gods Son.
Look on your brother with the willingness to see him as he
is. And do not keep a part of him outside your willingness
that he be healed. To heal is to make whole. And what is whole
can have no missing parts that have been kept outside.
Forgiveness rests on recognizing this, and being glad there
cannot be some forms of sickness which the miracle must lack
the power to heal.
Gods Son is perfect, or he cannot BE Gods Son. Nor will
you know him, if you think he does not merit the escape from
guilt in ALL its forms and ALL its consequence. There is no
way to think of him but this, if you would know the truth
about yourself:
I thank you, Father, for your perfect Son,
And in his glory will I see my own.
Here is the joyful statement that there are no forms of
evil which can overcome the Will of God; the glad
acknowledgment that guilt has not succeeded by your wish to
make illusions real. And what is this except a simple
statement of the truth?
Look on your brother with this hope in you, and you will
understand he could not make an error that could change the
truth in him. It is not difficult to overlook mistakes that
have been given no effects. But what you see as having power
to make an idol of the Son of God you will NOT pardon. For he
has become to you a graven image, and a sign of death. Is THIS
your Saviour? Is his Father wrong about His Son? Or have YOU
been deceived in him who has been given you to heal, for YOUR
salvation and deliverance?
The New Interpretation
Would God have left the meaning of the world to your
interpretation? If He had, it HAS no meaning. For it cannot be
that meaning changes constantly, and yet is true. The Holy
Spirit looks upon the world as with one purpose, changelessly
established. And no situation can affect its aim, but must be
in accord with it. For only if its aim could change with every
situation could each one be open to interpretation which is
different every time you think of it. You add an element into
the script you write for every minute in the day, and all that
happens now means something else. You take away another
element, and every meaning shifts accordingly.
What do your scripts reflect except your plans for what the
day SHOULD be? And thus you judge disaster and success,
advance, retreat, and gain and loss. These judgments all are
made according to the roles the script assigns. The fact they
have no meaning in themselves is demonstrated by the ease with
which these labels change with other judgments, made on
different aspects of experience. And then, in looking back,
you think you see another meaning in what went before. What
have you really done, except to show there WAS no meaning
there? But you assigned a meaning in the light of goals that
change, with every meaning shifting as they change.
Only a constant purpose can endow events with stable
meaning. But it must accord ONE meaning to them all. If they
are given different meanings, it must be that they reflect but
different purposes. And this is all the meaning that they
have. Can this BE meaning? Can confusion be what meaning
means? Perception cannot be in constant flux, and make
allowance for stability of meaning anywhere. Fear is a
judgment never justified. Its presence has no meaning but to
show you wrote a fearful script, and are afraid accordingly.
But not because the thing you fear has fearful meaning in
itself.
A common PURPOSE is the only means whereby perception can
be stabilized, and one interpretation given to the world and
all experiences here. In this shared purpose is one judgment
shared by everyone and everything you see. You do not have to
judge, for you have learned one meaning has been given
everything, and you are glad to see it everywhere. It cannot
change BECAUSE you would perceive it everywhere, unchanged by
circumstance. And so you OFFER it to all events, and let them
offer you stability.
Escape from judgment simply lies in this; all things have
but one purpose, which you share with all the world. And
nothing in the world can be opposed to it, for it belongs to
everything as it belongs to you. In single purpose is the end
of all ideas of sacrifice, which must assume a different
purpose for the one who gains and him who loses. There could
be no thought of sacrifice apart from this idea. And it is
this idea of different goals which makes perception shift and
meaning change. In one, united goal does this become
impossible, for your agreement makes interpretation stabilize
and last.
How can communication really be established while the
symbols which are used mean different things? The Holy
Spirits goal gives one interpretation, meaningful to you and
to your brother. Thus can you communicate with him, and he
with you. In symbols which you both can understand, the
sacrifice of meaning is undone. All sacrifice entails the loss
of your ability to see relationships among events. And looked
at separately, they HAVE no meaning. For there is no light by
which they can be seen and understood. They have no purpose.
And what they are for cannot be seen. In any thought of loss,
there IS no meaning. No-one has agreed with you on what it
means. It is a part of a distorted script, which cannot be
interpreted with meaning. It must be forever unintelligible.
This is not communication. Your dark dreams are but the
senseless, isolated scripts you write in sleep. Look not to
separate dreams for meaning. Only dreams of pardon can be
shared. They mean the same to both of you.
Do not interpret out of solitude, for what you see means
nothing. It will shift in what it stands for, and you will
believe the world is an uncertain place, in which you walk in
danger and uncertainty. It is but your INTERPRETATIONS which
are lacking in stability, for they are not in line with what
you really are. This is a state so seemingly unsafe that fear
MUST rise. Do not continue thus, my brothers. We have ONE
Interpreter. And through His use of symbols are we joined, so
that they mean the same to all of us. Our common language lets
us speak to all our brothers, and to understand with them
forgiveness has been given to us all, and thus we can
communicate again.
Changeless Reality
Appearances deceive, but can be changed. Reality is
changeless. It does not deceive at all, and if you fail to see
beyond appearances you ARE deceived. For everything you see
will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you
think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and
capable of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that
makes it real, and keeps it separate from ALL appearances. It
must transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change.
The miracle is means to demonstrate that all appearances
can change because they ARE appearances, and cannot have the
changelessness reality entails. The miracle attests salvation
from appearances by SHOWING they can change. Your brother has
a changelessness in him beyond appearance and deception, both.
It is obscured by changing views of him which you PERCEIVE as
his reality. The happy dream about him takes the form of the
appearance of his perfect health, his perfect freedom from all
forms of lack, and safety from disaster of all kinds. The
miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any
form, because it can so easily be CHANGED. This demonstrates
that it was NEVER real, and could not stem from his reality.
For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in
Heaven or on earth could ever alter. But appearances are shown
to be unreal BECAUSE they change.
What is temptation but a wish to make illusions real? It
does not seem to be the wish that no reality be so. Yet it is
an assertion that some forms of idols have a powerful appeal
which makes them harder to resist than those you would not
WANT to have reality. Temptation, then, is nothing more than
this; a prayer the miracle touch not some dreams, but keep
their unreality obscure, and give to them reality instead. And
Heaven gives no answer to the prayer, nor can a miracle be
given you to heal appearances you do not like. You have
established LIMITS. What you ask IS given you, but not of God
Who knows no limits. You have limited YOURSELF.
Reality is changeless. Miracles but show what you have
interposed between reality and your awareness is unreal, and
does not interfere at all. The cost of the belief there must
be some appearances beyond the hope of change is that the
miracle cannot come forth from you consistently. For you have
ASKED it be withheld from power to heal all dreams. There is
no miracle you cannot have when you DESIRE healing. But there
is no miracle that can be given you UNLESS you want it. Choose
what you would heal, and He Who gives all miracles has not
been given freedom to bestow His gifts upon Gods Son. When he
is tempted, he denies reality. And he becomes the willing
slave of what he chose instead.
BECAUSE reality is changeless is a miracle already there to
heal all things that change, and offer them to you to see in
happy form, devoid of fear. It will be given you to look upon
your brother thus. But not while you would have it otherwise
in some respects. For this but means you would not have him
healed and whole. The Christ in him is perfect. Is it this
that you would look upon? Then let there be no dreams about
him which you would prefer to seeing this. And you will see
the Christ in him because you LET Him come to you. And when He
has appeared to you, you will be certain you are like Him, for
He is the changeless in your brother AND in you.
This will you look upon when you decide there is not one
appearance you would hold in place of what your brother really
is. Let no temptation to prefer a dream allow uncertainty to
enter here. Be not made guilty and afraid when you are tempted
by a dream of what he is. But do not give it power to replace
the changeless in him in your sight of him. There is no false
appearance but will fade, if you request a miracle instead.
There is no pain from which he is not free, if you would have
him be but what he is. Why should you fear to see the Christ
in him? You but behold YOURSELF in what you see. As he is
healed are you made free of guilt, for his appearance IS your
own to you.
CHAPTER 31
THE SIMPLICITY OF SALVATION
How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true
is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has not
occurred, and can have no effects. And that is all. Can this
be hard to learn by anyone who WANTS it to be true? Only
unwillingness to learn it could make such an easy lesson
difficult. How hard is it to see that what is false can not be
true, and what is true can not be false? You can no longer say
that you perceive no differences in false and true. You have
been told exactly how to tell one from the other, and just
what to do if you become confused. Why, then, do you persist
in learning not such simple things?
There IS a reason. But confuse it not with difficulty in
the simple things salvation asks you learn. It teaches but the
very obvious. It merely goes from one apparent lesson to the
next, in easy steps which lead you gently from one to another,
with no strain at all. This cannot be confusing, yet you ARE
confused. For somehow you believe that what is totally
confused is easier to learn and understand. What you have
taught yourselves is such a giant learning feat it is indeed
incredible. But you accomplished it because you wanted to, and
did not pause in diligence to judge it hard to learn, or too
complex to grasp.
No-one who understands what you have learned, how carefully
you have learned it, and the pains to which you went to
practice and repeat the lessons endlessly, in every form you
could conceive of them, could ever doubt the power of your
learning skill. There is no greater power in the world. The
world was made by it, and even now depends on nothing else.
The lessons you have taught yourselves have been so
overlearned and fixed they rise like heavy curtains to obscure
the simple and the obvious. Say not you cannot learn THEM. For
your power to learn is strong enough to teach you that your
will is not your own, your thoughts do not belong to you, and
even you are someone else.
Who could maintain that lessons such as these are easy? Yet
you have learned more than this. You have continued, taking
every step, however difficult, without complaint, until a
world was built that suited you. And every lesson that makes
up the world arises from the first accomplishment of learning;
an enormity so great the Holy Spirits Voice seems small and
still before its magnitude. The world began with one strange
lesson, powerful enough to render God forgotten and His Son an
alien to himself, in exile from the home where God Himself
established him. You who have taught yourselves the Son of God
is guilty, say not that you cannot learn the simple things
salvation teaches you!
Learning is an ability you made, and gave yourselves. It
was not made to do the Will of God, but to uphold a wish that
It could be opposed, and that a will apart from It was yet
more real than It. And this has learning sought to
demonstrate, and you have learned what it was made to teach.
Now does your ancient overlearning stand implacable before the
Voice of truth, and teach you that Its lessons are not true;
too hard to learn, too difficult to see, and too opposed to
what is really true. Yet you WILL learn them, for their
learning is the only purpose for your learning skill the Holy
Spirit sees in all the world. His simple lessons in
forgiveness have a power mightier than yours, because they
call from God and from your Self to you.
Is this a LITTLE Voice, so small and still It cannot rise
above the senseless noise of sounds which have no meaning? God
willed not His Son forget Him. And the power of His Will is in
the Voice that speaks for Him. Which lesson will you learn?
What outcome is inevitable, sure as God, and far beyond all
doubt and question? Can it be your little learning, strange in
outcome, and incredible in difficulty will withstand the
simple lessons being taught to you in every moment of each
day, since time began and learning had been made?
The lessons to be learned are only two. Each has its
outcome in a different world. And each world follows surely
from its source. The certain outcome of the lesson that Gods
Son is guilty is the world you see. It IS a world of terror
and despair. Nor is there hope of happiness in it. There is no
plan for safety you can make that ever will succeed. There is
no joy that you can seek for here, and hope to find. Yet this
is not the only outcome which your learning can produce.
However much you may have overlearned your chosen task, the
lesson which reflects the love of God is stronger still. And
you WILL learn Gods Son is innocent, and see another world.
The outcome of the lesson that Gods Son is guiltless is a
world in which there is no fear, and everything is lit with
hope, and sparkles with a gentle friendliness. Nothing but
calls to you in soft appeal to be your friend, and let it join
with you. And never does a call remain unheard, misunderstood,
nor left unanswered in the selfsame tongue in which the call
was made. And you will understand it was this call that
everyone and everything within the world has ALWAYS made, but
you had not perceived it as it was. And now you see you were
mistaken. You had been deceived by forms the call was hidden
in. And so you did not hear it, and had lost a friend who
always wanted to be part of you. The soft, eternal calling of
each part of Gods creation to the whole is heard throughout
the world this second lesson brings.
There is no living thing which does not share the universal
will that it be whole, and that you do not leave its call
unheard. Without your answer is it left to die, as it is saved
from death when you have heard its calling as the ancient call
to life, and understood that it is but your own. The Christ in
you remembers God with all the certainty with which He knows
His love. But only if His Son is innocent can He be Love. For
God were fear indeed if he whom He created innocent could be a
slave to guilt. Gods perfect Son remembers his creation. But
in guilt he has forgotten what he really is.
The fear of God results as surely from the lesson that His
Son is guilty as Gods love must be remembered when he learns
his innocence. For hate must father fear, and look upon its
father as itself. How wrong are you who fail to hear the call
that echoes past each seeming call to death, that sings behind
each murderous attack, and pleads that love restore the dying
world! You do not understand Who calls to you beyond each form
of hate, each call to war. Yet you will recognize Him as you
give Him answer in the language that He calls. He will appear
when you have answered Him, and you will know in Him that God
IS Love.
What is temptation but a wish to make the wrong decision on
what you would learn, and have an outcome that you do not
want? It is the recognition that it is a state of mind
unwanted that becomes the means whereby the choice is
reassessed; another outcome seen to be preferred. You are
deceived if you believe you want disaster and disunity and
pain. Hear not the call for this within yourself. But listen,
rather, to the deeper call beyond it, that appeals for peace
and joy. And all the world will GIVE you joy and peace. For as
you hear, you answer. And behold! Your answer is the proof of
what you learned. Its outcome is the world you look upon.
Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever
learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception which we
hold of what things mean, and what their purpose is. Let us
remember not our own ideas of what the world is for. We do not
know. Let every image held of everyone be loosened from our
minds and swept away. Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any
thoughts of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of
anyone. Now do we know him not. But you ARE free to learn of
him, and learn of him anew. Now is he born again to you, and
you are born again to him, without the past that sentenced him
to die, and you with him. Now is he free to live, as you are
free, because an ancient learning passed away, and left a
place for truth to be reborn.
The Illusion of an Enemy
An ancient lesson is not overcome by the opposing of the
new and old. It is not vanquished that the truth be known, nor
fought against to lose to truths appeal. There is no battle
which must be prepared; no time to be expended, and no plans
that need be laid for bringing in the new. There IS an ancient
battle being waged AGAINST the truth, but truth does not
respond. Who could be hurt in such a war, unless he hurts
himself? He has no enemy in truth. And can he be assailed by
dreams?
Let us review again what seems to stand between you and the
truth of what you are. For there are steps in its
relinquishment. The first is a decision that YOU make. But
afterwards, the truth is GIVEN you. You would ESTABLISH truth.
And by your wish, you set two choices to be made each time you
think you must decide on anything. Neither is true. Nor are
they different. Yet must we see them both, before you can look
past them, to the one alternative that IS a different choice.
But not in dreams you made, that this might be obscured to
you.
What YOU would choose between is not a choice, and gives
but the illusion it is free, for it will have one outcome
either way. Thus is it really not a choice at all. The leader
and the follower emerge as separate roles, each seeming to
possess advantages you would not want to lose. So in their
fusion there appears to be the hope of satisfaction and of
peace. You see yourself divided into both these roles, forever
split between the two. And every friend or enemy becomes a
means to help you save yourself from this.
Perhaps you call it love. Perhaps you think that it is
murder justified at last. You hate the one you gave the
leaders role when you would have it, and you hate as well his
not assuming it, at times you want to let the follower in you
arise, and give away the role of leadership. And this is what
you made your brother FOR, and learned to think that this his
purpose IS. Unless he serves it, he has not fulfilled the
function that was given him by you. And thus he merits death,
because he has no purpose and no usefulness to you.
And what of him? What does he want of you? What could he
want, but what you want of him? Herein is life as easily as
death, for what you choose, you choose as well for him. Two
calls you make to him, as he to you. Between THESE two IS
choice, because from them there IS a different outcome. If he
be the leader or the follower to you, it matters not, for you
have chosen death. But if he calls for death or calls for
life; for hate or for forgiveness and for help, is not the
same in outcome. Hear the one, and you are separate from him,
and are lost. But hear the other, and you join with him, and
in your answer is salvation found. The voice you hear in him
is but your own. What does he ask you for? And listen well!
For he is asking what will come to you because you see an
image of YOURSELF, and hear YOUR voice requesting what you
WANT.
Before you answer, pause to think of this:
The answer that I give my brother is
What I am asking for. And what I learn
Of him is what I learn about myself.
Then let us wait an instant and be still, forgetting
everything we thought we heard; remembering how much we do not
know. This brother neither leads nor follows us, but walks
beside us on the selfsame road. He is like us, as near or far
away from what we want as we will let him be. We make no gains
he does not make with us, and we fall back if he does not
advance. Take not his hand in anger but in love, for in his
progress do you count your own. And we go separately along the
way unless you keep him safely by your side.
Because he is your equal in Gods love, you will be saved
from all appearances, and answer to the Christ Who calls to
you. Be still and listen. Think not ancient thoughts. Forget
the dismal lessons that you learned about this Son of God who
calls to you. Christ calls to all with equal tenderness,
seeing no leaders and no followers, and hearing but one answer
to them all. Because He hears one Voice, he cannot hear a
different answer from the one He gave when God appointed Him
His only Son.
Be very still an instant. Come without all thought of what
you ever learned before, and put aside all images you made.
The old will fall away before the new without your opposition
or intent. There will be no attack upon the things you thought
were precious, and in need of care. There will be no assault
upon your wish to hear a call that never has been made.
Nothing will hurt you in this holy place, to which you come to
listen silently, and learn the truth of what you really want.
No more than this will you be asked to learn. But as you hear
it, you will understand you need but come away without the
thoughts you did not want, and that were never true.
Forgive your brother all appearances, which are but ancient
lessons that you taught yourself about the sinfulness in YOU.
Hear but his call for mercy and release from all the fearful
images he holds of what he is, and of what you must be. He is
afraid to walk with you, and thinks perhaps a bit behind, a
bit ahead, would be a safer place for him to be. Can YOU make
progress if you think the same, advancing only when he would
step back, and falling back when he would go ahead? For so do
you forget the journeys goal, which is but to decide to walk
WITH him, so neither leads nor follows. Thus it is a way you
go TOGETHER, not alone. And in this choice is learnings
outcome changed, for Christ has been reborn to both of you.
An instant spent without your old ideas of who your great
Companion is and what he SHOULD be asking for, will be enough
to let this happen. And you will perceive his purpose is the
same as yours. He asks for what YOU want, and needs the same
as YOU. It takes, perhaps, a different form in him, but it is
not the form you answer to. He asks and you receive, for you
have come with but one purpose; that you both may learn you
love each other with a brothers love. And as a brother, must
his Father be the same as yours, as he is like yourself.
Together is your joint inheritance remembered and accepted
by you both. Alone it is denied to both of you. Is it not
clear that while you still insist on leading or on following,
you think you walk alone, with no-one by your side? This is
the road to nowhere, for the light cannot be given while you
walk alone, and so you cannot see which way you go. And thus
there is confusion, and a sense of endless doubting, as you
stagger back and forward in the darkness and alone. Yet these
are but appearances of what the journey is, and how it must be
made. For next to you is One Who holds the light before you,
so that every step is made in certainty and sureness of the
road. A blindfold can indeed obscure your sight, but cannot
make the way itself grow dark. And He Who travels with you HAS
the light.
The Self-Accused
Only the self-accused condemn. As you prepare to make a
choice that will result in different outcomes, there is first
one thing that must be overlearned. It must become a habit of
response so typical of everything you do that it becomes your
first response to all temptation, and to every situation that
occurs. Learn this, and learn it well, for it is here delay of
happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot realize.
You never hate your brother for his sins, but ONLY for your
own. Whatever form his sins appear to take it but obscures the
fact that you believe it to be yours, and therefore meriting a
just attack.
Why should his sins BE sins, if you did not believe they
could not be forgiven in you? Why are they real in him, if you
did not believe that they are your reality? And why do you
attack them everywhere except you hate yourself? Are YOU a
sin? You answer yes whenever you attack, for by attack do
you assert that you are guilty, and must give as you deserve.
And what can you deserve but what you ARE? If you did not
believe that you deserved attack, it never would occur to you
to GIVE attack to anyone at all. Why should you? What would be
the gain to you? What could the outcome be that you would
WANT? And how COULD murder bring you benefit?
Sins are in bodies. They are not perceived in minds. They
are not seen as purposes, but actions. Bodies act, and minds
do not. And therefore must the body be at fault for what it
does. It is not seen to be a passive thing, obeying your
commands, and doing nothing of itself at all. If you are sin
you ARE a body, for the mind acts not. And purpose must be in
the body, not the mind. The body must act on its own, and
motivate itself. If you are sin, you lock the mind within the
body, and you give its purpose to its prison-house, which acts
instead of it. A jailer does not follow orders, but ENFORCES
orders on the prisoner.
Yet is the BODY prisoner, and NOT the mind. The body thinks
no thoughts. It has no power to learn, to pardon, nor enslave.
It gives no orders that the mind need serve, nor sets
conditions that it must obey. It holds in prison but the
willing mind that would abide in it. It sickens at the bidding
of the mind that would become its prisoner. And it grows old
and dies, because that mind is sick within itself. Learning is
all that causes change. And so the body, where no learning can
occur, could never change unless the mind preferred the body
change in its appearances, to suit the purpose given by the
mind. For it CAN learn, and THERE is all change made.
The mind that thinks it is a sin has but one purpose; that
the body be the source of sin, and keep it in the prison-house
it chose and guards, and hold itself at bay, a sleeping
prisoner to the snarling dogs of hate and evil, sickness and
attack; of pain and age, of grief and suffering. Here are the
thoughts of sacrifice preserved, for here guilt rules, and
orders that the world be like itself; a place where nothing
can find mercy, or survive the ravages of fear except in
murder and in death. For here are you made sin, and sin cannot
abide the joyous and the free, for they are enemies which sin
must kill. In death is sin preserved, and those who think that
they are sin must die for what they think they are.
Let us be glad that you WILL see what you believe, and that
it has been given you to CHANGE what you believe. The body
will but follow. It can never lead you where you would not be.
It does not guard your sleep, nor interfere with your
awakening. Release your body from imprisonment, and you will
see no-one as prisoner to what you have escaped. You will not
want to hold in guilt your chosen enemies, nor keep in chains
to the illusion of a changing love the ones you think are
friends.
The innocent release in gratitude for THEIR release. And
what they see upholds their freedom from imprisonment and
death. Open your mind to change, and there will be no ancient
penalty exacted from your brother OR yourself. For God has
said there IS no sacrifice that can be asked; there IS no
sacrifice that can be made.
The Real Alternative
There is a tendency to think the world can offer
consolation and escape from problems which its purpose is to
KEEP. Why should this be? Because it is a place where choice
among illusions seems to be the ONLY choice. And you are in
control of outcomes of your choosing. Thus you think, within
the narrow band from birth to death, a little time is given
you to use for you alone; a time when everyone conflicts with
you, but you can choose which road will lead you out of
conflict, and away from difficulties which concern you not.
Yet they ARE your concern. How, then, can you escape from them
by leaving them behind? What must go with you, you will take
with you whatever road you choose to walk along.
REAL choice is no illusion. But the world has none to
offer. All its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness
and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not
escape from problems here. The world was made that problems
could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different
names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is
but the means to gain that end, for it is here that all its
roads will lead, however differently they seem to start;
however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for
there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death.
On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness
enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is
not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes.
There is no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you
would prefer to try them all, before you really learn they are
but one. The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large
in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see
how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing
this, because they saw no way except the pathways offered by
the world. And learning they led nowhere, lost their hope. And
yet this was the time they could have learned their greatest
lesson. All must reach this point, and go beyond it. It is
true indeed there is no choice at all within the world. But
this is not the lesson in itself. The lesson has a purpose,
and in THIS you come to understand what it is FOR.
Why would you seek to try another road, another person or
another place, when you have learned the way the lesson
starts, but do not yet perceive what it is for? Its purpose is
the ANSWER to the search that all must undertake who still
believe there is another answer to be found. Learn now,
without despair, there is no hope of answer in the world. But
do not judge the lesson which is but BEGUN with this. Seek not
another signpost in the world which seems to point to still
another road. No longer look for hope where there is none.
Make fast your learning NOW, and understand you but waste time
unless you go beyond what you have learned to what is yet to
learn. For from this lowest point will learning lead to
heights of happiness, in which you see the purpose of the
lesson shining clear, and perfectly within your learning
grasp.
Who would be willing to be turned away from all the
roadways of the world, unless he understood their real
futility? Is it not needful that he should begin with this, to
seek another way instead? For while he sees a choice where
there is none, what power of decision can he use? The great
release of power must begin with learning where it really has
a USE. And what decision has power if it be applied in
situations without choice?
The learning that the world can offer but one choice, no
matter what its form may be, is the beginning of acceptance
that there is a REAL alternative instead. To fight against
this step is to defeat your purpose here. You did not come to
learn to find a road the world does not contain. The search
for different pathways in the world is but the search for
different forms of truth. And this would KEEP the truth from
being reached.
Think not that happiness is ever found by following a road
AWAY from it. This makes no sense, and CANNOT be the way. To
you who seem to find this course to be too difficult to learn,
let me repeat that, to achieve a goal, you must proceed in its
direction, NOT away from it. And every road that leads the
other way will not advance the purpose to be found. If THIS
be difficult to understand, then IS this course impossible to
learn. But only then. For otherwise, it is a simple teaching
in the obvious.
There IS a choice which you have power to make when you
have seen the real alternatives. Until that point is reached
you HAVE no choice, and you can but decide how you would
choose the better to deceive yourself again. This course
attempts to teach no more than that the power of decision
cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the
SAME illusion and the SAME mistake. All choices in the world
depend on this; you choose between your brother and yourself,
and you will gain as much as he will lose, and what you lose
is what is given him. How utterly opposed to truth is this,
when what the lessons purpose is to teach is that what your
brother loses YOU have lost, and what he gains is what is
given YOU.
He has not left His Thoughts! But you forgot His Presence,
and remembered not His love. No pathway in the world can lead
to Him, nor any worldly goal is one with His. What road in all
the world will lead within, when every road was made to
separate the journey from the purpose it MUST have unless it
be but futile wandering? All roads that lead away from what
you are will lead you to confusion and despair. Yet has He
never left His Thoughts to die, without their Source forever
in themselves. He has not left His Thoughts! He could no more
depart from them than they could keep Him out. In unity with
Him do they abide, and in their Oneness both are kept
complete.
There IS no road that leads away from Him. A journey from
YOURSELF does not exist. How foolish and insane it is to think
that there could be a road with such an aim! Where could it
go? And how could you be made to travel on it, walking there
without your own reality at one with you? Forgive yourself
your madness, and forget all senseless journeys and all goal-
less aims. They have no meaning. You can not escape from what
you are. For God IS merciful, and did not let His Son abandon
Him. For what He is, be thankful, for in that is your escape
from madness and from death. Nowhere but where He is can YOU
be found. There IS no path that does not lead to Him.
Self Concept versus Self
The learning of the world is built upon a concept of the
self adjusted to the worlds reality. It fits it well. For
this an image is that suits a world of shadows and illusions.
Here it walks at home, where what it sees is one with it. The
building of a concept of the self is what the learning of the
world is FOR. This is its purpose; that you come without a
self, and make one as you go along. And by the time you reach
maturity, you have perfected it to meet the world on equal
terms, at one with its demands.
A CONCEPT of the self is made by YOU. It bears no likeness
to yourself at all. It is an idol, made to take the place of
your reality as Son of God. The concept of the self the world
would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is
made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can
recognize. The first presents the face of innocence, the
aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and
even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks,
at times with pity, on the suffering, and sometimes offers
solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world.
This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked, and
unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And
so this face is often wet with tears at the injustices the
world accords to those who would be generous and good. This
aspect never makes the first attack. But every day a hundred
little things make small assaults upon its innocence,
provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and
abuse.
The face of innocence the concept of the self so proudly
wears can tolerate attack in self-defense, for is it not a
well-known fact the world deals harshly with defenseless
innocence? No-one who makes a picture of himself omits this
face, for he has need of it. The other side, he does not WANT
to see. Yet it is here the learning of the world has set its
sights, for it is here the worlds reality is set, to see
to it the idol lasts.
Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the
concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a
terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face
which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive
the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this; I am the
thing you made of me, and as you look on me you stand
condemned, because of what I am. On this conception of the
self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the
pathways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on
them will not escape.
Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is
condemned eternally. For what you are has now become HIS sin.
For this is no forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter
what he does, for your accusing finger points to him,
unwavering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well,
but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of
innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and
yours preserved, and kept in darkness, where they cannot be
perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. You
can be neither blamed for what you are, nor can you change the
things it makes you do. And you are each the symbol of your
sins to one another, silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency,
condemning still your brother for the hated thing you are.
Concepts are learned. They are not natural. Apart from
learning they do not exist. They are not given, and they must
be made. Not one of them is true, and many come from feverish
imaginations, hot with hatred and distortions born of fear.
What is a concept but a thought to which its maker gives a
meaning of his own? Concepts maintain the world. But they can
not be used to demonstrate the world is real. For all of them
are made within the world, born in its shadow, growing in its
ways, and finally maturing in its thought. They are ideas
of idols, painted with the brushes of the world, which cannot
make a single picture representing truth.
A concept of the self is meaningless, for no-one here can
see what it is FOR, and therefore cannot picture what it IS.
Yet is all learning which the world directs begun and ended
with the single aim of teaching you this concept of yourself,
that you will choose to follow this worlds laws, and never
seek to go beyond its roads, nor realize the way you see
yourself. Now must the Holy Spirit find a way to help you see
this concept of the self must be undone, if any peace of mind
is to be given you. Nor can it be unlearned except by lessons
aimed to teach that you are something ELSE. For otherwise, you
would be asked to make exchange of what you now believe for
total loss of self, and greater terror would arise in you.
Thus are the Holy Spirits lesson plans arranged in easy
steps, that though there be some lack of ease at times and
some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but
just a re-translation of what seems to be the evidence on its
behalf. Let us consider, then, what proof there is that you
are what your brother made of you. For even though you do not
yet perceive that this is what you think, you surely learned
by now that you BEHAVE as if it were. Does HE react for YOU?
And did he know exactly what would happen? Could he see your
future and ordain, before it came, what you should do in every
circumstance? He must have made the world as well as you, to
have such prescience in the things to come.
That you are what your brother made of you seems most
unlikely. Even if he did, who gave the face of innocence to
you? Is this YOUR contribution? Who is, then, the you who
made it? And who is deceived by all your goodness, and attacks
it so? Let us forget the concepts foolishness, and merely
think of this; there are two parts to what you think yourself
to be. If one was generated by your brother, who was there to
make the other? And from whom must something be kept hidden?
If the world be evil, there is still no need to hide what YOU
are made of. Who is there to see? And what but is attacked
could NEED defense?
Perhaps the reason why this concept must be kept in
darkness is that, in the light, the one who would not think it
true is YOU. And what would happen to the world you know, if
all its underpinnings were removed? Your concept of the world
DEPENDS upon this concept of the self. And both would go, if
either one were ever raised to doubt. The Holy Spirit does not
seek to throw you into panic. So He merely asks if just a
LITTLE question might be raised.
There are alternatives about the thing that you must be.
You might, for instance, be the thing you chose to have your
BROTHER be. This shifts the concept of the self from what is
wholly passive, and at least makes way for active choice, and
some acknowledgment that interaction must have entered in.
There is some understanding that you chose for both of you,
and what he represents has meaning that was given it by you.
It also shows some glimmering of sight into perceptions law
that what you see reflects the state of the PERCEIVERS mind.
Yet who was it that did the choosing first? If you are what
you chose your brother be, alternatives were there to choose
among, and someone must have first decided on the one to
choose, and let the others go.
Although this step has gains, it does not yet approach a
basic question. Something must have gone BEFORE these concepts
of the self. And something must have done the learning which
gave rise to them. Nor can this be explained by either view.
The main advantage of the shifting to the second from the
first is that YOU somehow entered in the choice by your
decision. But this gain is paid in almost equal loss, for now
YOU stand accused of guilt for what your brother is. And you
must share his guilt, because you chose it for him in the
image of your own. While only he was treacherous before, now
must you be condemned along with him.
The concept of the self has always been the great
preoccupation of the world. And everyone believes that he must
find the answer to the riddle of himself. Salvation can be
seen as nothing more than the ESCAPE from concepts. It does
not concern itself with content of the mind, but with the
simple statement that it THINKS. And what can think has
choice, and CAN be shown that different thoughts have
different consequence. So it can learn that everything it
thinks reflects the deep confusion that it feels about how it
was made, and what it is. And vaguely does the concept of the
self appear to answer what it does not know.
Seek not your Self in symbols. There can BE no concept that
can stand for what you are. What matters it which concept you
accept while you perceive a self which interacts with evil,
and reacts to wicked things? Your concept of yourself will
still remain quite meaningless. And you will not perceive that
you can interact but with yourself. To see a guilty world is
but the sign your learning has been guided by the world, and
you behold it as you see yourself. The concept of the self
embraces all you look upon, and nothing is outside of this
perception. If you can be hurt by anything, you see a picture
of your secret wishes. Nothing more than this. And in your
suffering of any kind, you see your own concealed desire to
kill.
You will make many concepts of the self as learning goes
along. Each one will show the changes in your own
relationships, as your perception of yourself is changed.
There will be some confusion every time there is a shift, but
be you thankful that the learning of the world is loosening
its grasp upon your mind. And be sure and happy in the
confidence that it will go at last, and leave your mind at
peace. The role of the accuser will appear in many places and
in many forms. And each will seem to be accusing YOU. Yet have
no fear it will not be undone.
The world can teach no images of you unless you WANT to
learn them. There will come a time when images have all gone
by, and you will see you know not what you are. It is to this
unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and
unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth
revealed exactly as it IS. When every concept has been raised
to doubt and question, and been recognized as made on no
assumptions which would stand the light, then is the truth
left free to enter in its sanctuary, clean and free of guilt.
There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear
than this:
I do not know the thing I am,
and therefore do not know what I am doing,
where I am, or how to look upon the world or on
myself.
Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are
will TELL you of Itself.
Recognizing the Spirit
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. And 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 which 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 for 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!
The Saviors Vision
Learning is change. Salvation does not seek to use a means
as yet too alien to your thinking to be helpful, nor to make
the kinds of change you could not recognize. Concepts are
needed while perception lasts, and CHANGING concepts is
salvations task. For it must deal in contrasts, not in truth,
which has no opposite and cannot change. In this worlds
concepts are the guilty bad ; the good are innocent.
And no-one here but holds a concept of himself in which he
counts the good to pardon him the bad. Nor does he
trust the good in anyone, believing that the bad must
lurk behind. This concept emphasizes treachery, and trust
becomes impossible. Nor could it change while you perceive the
bad in YOU.
You could not RECOGNIZE your evil thoughts as long as
you see value in attack. You will perceive them sometimes, but
will not see them as meaningless. And so they come in fearful
form, with content still concealed, to shake your sorry
concept of yourself, and blacken it with still another
crime. You cannot give yourself your innocence, for you are
too confused about yourself. But should ONE brother dawn upon
your sight as wholly worthy of forgiveness, then your concept
of yourself IS wholly changed. YOUR evil thoughts have been
forgiven with his, because you let them all affect you not. No
longer did you choose that you should be the sign of evil and
of guilt in him. And as you gave your trust to what is good in
him, you gave it to the good in you.
In terms of concepts, it is thus you see him more than just
a body, for the good is never what the body seems to be. The
actions of the body are perceived as coming from the baser
part of you, and thus of him as well. By focusing upon the
good in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your
sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a
shadow circling round the good. And this will be your concept
of YOURSELF, when you have reached the world beyond the sight
your eyes alone can offer you to see. For you will not
interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you.
And in His sight there IS another world.
You live in that world just as much as this. For both are
concepts of yourself, which can be interchanged but never
jointly held. The contrast is far greater than you think, for
you will love this concept of yourself, because it was not
made for you alone. Born as a gift for someone not perceived
to be yourself, it has been given YOU. For your forgiveness,
offered unto him, has been accepted now for BOTH of you.
Have faith in him who walks with you, so that your fearful
concept of yourself may change. And look upon the good in him,
that you may not be frightened by your evil thoughts,
because they do not cloud your view of him. And all this shift
requires is that you be WILLING that this happy change occur.
No more than this is asked. On its behalf, remember what the
concept of yourself which now you hold has brought you in its
wake, and welcome the glad contrast offered you. Hold out your
hand, that you may have the gift of kind forgiveness which you
offer one whose need for it is just the same as yours. And let
the cruel concept of yourself be changed to one which brings
the peace of God.
The concept of yourself which now you hold would guarantee
your function here remain forever unaccomplished and undone.
And thus it dooms you to a bitter sense of deep depression and
futility. Yet it need not be fixed unless you choose to hold
it past the hope of change, and keep it static and concealed
within your mind. Give it instead to Him Who understands the
changes that it needs to let it serve the function given you
to bring you peace, that you may offer peace to have it yours.
Alternatives are in your mind to use, and you CAN see yourself
another way. Would you not rather look upon yourself as NEEDED
for salvation of the world, instead of as salvations enemy?
The concept of the self stands like a shield, a silent
barricade before the truth, and hides it from your sight. All
things you see are images, because you look on them as through
a barrier which dims your sight and warps your vision, so that
you behold nothing with clarity. The light is kept from
everything you see. At most, you glimpse a shadow of what lies
beyond. At least, you merely look on darkness, and perceive
the terrified imaginings that come from guilty thoughts and
concepts born of fear. And what you see is hell, for fear IS
hell. All that is given you is for release; the sight, the
vision and the inner Guide all lead you out of hell with those
you love beside you, and the universe with them.
Behold your role within the universe! To every part of true
creation has the Lord of Love and Life entrusted ALL salvation
from the misery of hell. And to each one has He allowed the
grace to be a Saviour to the holy ones especially entrusted to
his care. And this he learns when first he looks upon ONE
brother as he looks upon himself, and sees the mirror of
himself in him. Thus is the concept of himself laid by, for
nothing stands between his sight and what he looks upon, to
judge what he beholds. And in this single vision does he see
the face of Christ, and understands he looks on everyone as he
beholds this One. For there is light where darkness was
before, and now the veil is lifted from his sight.
The veil across the face of Christ, the fear of God and of
salvation, and the love of guilt and death, they all are
different names for just one error; that there is a space
between you and your brother, kept apart by an illusion of
yourself which holds him off from you, and you away from him.
The sword of judgment is the weapon which you give to the
illusion of yourself, that it may fight to keep the space that
holds your brother off unoccupied by love. Yet while you hold
this sword, you must perceive the body as yourself, for you
are bound to separation from the sight of him who holds the
mirror to another view of what he is, and thus what YOU must
be.
What is temptation but the WISH to stay in hell and misery?
And what could this give rise to but an image of yourself that
CAN be miserable, and remain in hell and torment? Who has
learned to see his brother NOT as this has saved himself, and
thus is he a Saviour to the rest. To everyone has God
entrusted all, because a partial saviour would be one who is
but partly saved. The holy ones whom God has given each of you
to save are everyone you meet or look upon, not knowing who
they are; all those you saw an instant and forgot, and those
you knew a long while since, and those you will yet meet, the
unremembered and the not yet born. For God has given you His
Son to save from every concept that he ever held.
Yet while you wish to stay in hell, how could you be the
Saviour of the Son of God? How would you know his holiness
while you see him apart from yours? For holiness is seen
through holy eyes that look upon the innocence within, and
thus expect to see it everywhere. And so they call it forth in
everyone they look upon, that he may be what they expect of
him. This is the Saviours vision; that he see his innocence
in all he looks upon, and sees his own salvation everywhere.
He holds no concept of himself between his calm and open eyes
and what he sees. He BRINGS the light to what he looks upon,
that he may see it as it really is.
Whatever form temptation seems to take, it always but
reflects a wish to be a self which you are not. And from that
wish a concept rises, teaching that you ARE the thing you wish
to be. It will remain your concept of yourself until the wish
that fathered it no longer is held dear. But while you cherish
it, you will behold your brother in the likeness of the self
whose image has the wish begot of YOU. For vision CAN but
represent a wish, because it has no power to create. Yet it
can look with love or look with hate, depending only on the
simple choice of whether you would join with what you see, or
keep yourself apart and separate.
The Saviours vision is as innocent of what your brother is
as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no
past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind,
unclouded by old concepts, and prepared to look on only what
the present holds. It cannot judge because it does not know.
And RECOGNIZING this, it merely asks, What is the meaning of
what I behold? Then is the answer given. And the door held
open for the face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks, in
innocence, to see beyond the veil of old ideas and ancient
concepts held so long and dear AGAINST the vision of the
Christ in you.
Be vigilant against temptation, then, remembering that it
is but a wish, insane and meaningless, to make yourself a
thing which you are not. And think as well upon the thing that
you would be instead. It is a thing of madness, pain and
death; a thing of treachery and black despair, of failing
dreams and no remaining hope except to die, and end the dream
of fear. THIS is temptation; nothing more than this. Can THIS
be difficult to choose AGAINST? Consider what temptation IS,
and see the real alternatives you choose between. There ARE
but two. Be not deceived by what appears as many choices.
There is hell or Heaven, and of these you choose but ONE.
Let not the worlds light, given unto you, be hidden from
the world. It NEEDS the light, for it is dark indeed, and men
despair because the Saviours vision is withheld, and what
they see is death. Their Saviour stands, unknowing and
unknown, beholding them with eyes unopened. And they cannot
see until he looks on them with seeing eyes, and offers them
forgiveness with his own. Can you to whom God says, Release
My Son! be tempted not to listen, when you learn that it is
YOU for whom He asks release? And what but this is what this
course would teach? And what but this is there for you to
learn?
Choose Once Again
Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms,
wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he
is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its
frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the
limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he
has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you BE
this, if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you
but this,
Choose once again if you would take your place
among the Saviours of the world, or would
remain in hell, and hold your brothers there.
For He HAS come, and He IS asking this.
How do you make the choice? How easily is this explained!
You always choose between your weakness and the strength of
Christ in you. And what you choose is what you think is real.
Simply by never using weakness to direct your actions, you
have given it no power. And the light of Christ in you is
given charge of everything you do. For you have brought your
weakness unto Him, and He has given you His strength instead.
Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented
once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now
can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you
chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all
distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and gently
says, My brother, choose again. He would not leave one
source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth.
He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell,
but would release your minds from everything that hides His
face from you. His holiness is yours because He is the ONLY
power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is
the Self that God created as His ONLY Son.
The images you make can NOT prevail against what God
Himself would have you be. Be never fearful of temptation,
then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and
let Christs strength prevail in every circumstance and every
place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears
to hide the face of Christ is powerless before His majesty,
and disappears before His holy sight. The Saviours of the
world, who see like Him, are merely those who chose His
strength instead of their own weakness, seen apart from Him.
They will redeem the world, for they are joined in all the
power of the Will of God. And what they will is ONLY what He
wills.
Learn, then, the happy habit of response to all temptation
to perceive yourself as weak and miserable with these words,
I am as God created me.
His Son can suffer nothing
And I AM His Son.
Thus is Christs strength invited to prevail, replacing all
your weakness with the strength that comes from God, and that
can never fail. And thus are miracles as natural as fear and
agony appeared to be before the choice for holiness was made.
For in that choice are false distinctions gone, illusory
alternatives laid by, and nothing left to interfere with
truth.
You ARE as God created you, and so is every living thing
you look upon, regardless of the images you see. What you
behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering
and loss, is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless
and in hell. Yield not to this, and you will see all pain, in
every form, wherever it occurs, but disappear as mists before
the sun. A miracle has come to heal Gods Son, and close the
door upon his dreams of weakness, opening the way to his
salvation and release. Choose once again what you would have
him be, remembering that every choice you make establishes
your own identity as you will see it, and believe it IS.
Deny me not the little gift I ask, when in exchange I lay
before your feet the peace of God, and power to bring this
peace to everyone who wanders in the world uncertain, lonely,
and in constant fear. For it is given you to join with him,
and through the Christ in you unveil his eyes, and let him
look upon the Christ in him. My brothers in salvation, do not
fail to hear my voice and listen to my words. I ask for
nothing but your OWN release. There is no place for hell
within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so
inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven. To your tired
eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean
and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw
before. Yet this a vision is which you must share with
everyone you see, for otherwise you will behold it not. To
give this gift is how to make it yours. And God ordained, in
loving kindness, that it BE for you.
Let us be glad that we can walk the world, and find so many
chances to perceive another situation where Gods gift can
once again be recognized as ours! And thus will all the
vestiges of hell, the secret sins and hidden hates be gone.
And all the loveliness which they concealed appear like lawns
of Heaven to our sight, to lift us high above the thorny roads
we travelled on before the Christ appeared. Hear me, my
brothers, hear and join with me. God has ordained I cannot
call in vain, and in His certainty I rest content. For you
WILL hear, and you WILL choose again. And in this choice is
everyone made free.
I thank You, Father, for these holy ones who are my
brothers as they are Your Sons. My faith in them is Yours. I
am as sure that they will come to me as You are sure of what
they are, and will forever be. They will accept the gift I
offer them, because You gave it me on their behalf. And as I
would but do Your holy Will, so will they choose. And I give
thanks for them. Salvations song will echo through the world
with every choice they make. For we are one in purpose, and
the end of hell is near.
In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother
who would join with me in reaching past temptation, and who
looks with fixed determination toward the light that shines
beyond in perfect constancy. Give me my own, for they belong
to You. And can You fail in what is but Your Will? I give You
thanks for what my brothers are. And as each one elects to
join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows
from tiny scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus
from a world redeemed from hell, and giving thanks to You.
And now we say Amen. For Christ has come to dwell in
the abode You set for Him before time was, in calm eternity.
The journey closes, ending at the place where it began. No
trace of it remains. Not one illusion is accorded faith, and
not one spot of darkness still remains to hide the face of
Christ from anyone. Thy Will is done, complete and perfectly,
and all creation recognizes You, and knows You as the only
Source it has. Clear in Your Likeness does the Light shine
forth from everything that lives and moves in You. For we have
reached where all of us are One, and we are home, where You
would have us be.