No-one can pay for therapy, for healing is of God and He asks for nothing. It is, however, part of His plan that everything in this world be used by the Holy Spirit to help in carrying out the plan. Even an advanced therapist has some earthly needs while he is here. Should he need money it will be given him, not in payment, but to help him better serve the plan. Money is not evil. It is nothing. But no-one here can live with no illusions, for he must yet strive to have the last illusion be accepted by everyone everywhere. He has a mighty part in this one purpose, for which he came. He stays here but for this. And while he stays he will be given what he needs to stay.
Only an unhealed healer could try to heal for money, and he will not succeed to the extent to which he values it. Nor will he find his healing in the process. There will be those of whom the Holy Spirit asks some payment for His purpose. There will be those from whom He does not ask. It should not be the therapist who makes these decisions. There is a difference between payment and cost. To give money where God's plan allots it has no cost. To withhold it from where it rightfully belongs has enormous cost. The therapist who would do this loses the name of healer, for he could never understand what healing is. He cannot give it, and so he does not have it.
The therapists of this world are indeed useless to the world's salvation. They make demands, and so they cannot give. Patients can pay only for the exchange of illusions. This, indeed, must demand payment, and the cost is great. A "bought" relationship cannot offer the only gift whereby all healing is accomplished. Forgiveness, the Holy Spirit's only dream, must have no cost. For if it does, it merely crucifies God's Son again. Can this be how he is forgiven? Can this be how the dream of sin will end?
The "right to live" is something no-one need fight for. It is promised him, and guaranteed by God. Therefore it is a right the therapist and patient share alike. If their relationship is to be holy, whatever one needs is given by the other; whatever one lacks the other supplies. Herein is the relationship made holy, for herein both are healed. The therapist repays the patient in gratitude, as does the patient repay him. There is no cost to either. But thanks are due to both, for the release from long imprisonment and doubt. Who would not be grateful for such a gift? Yet who could possibly imagine that it could be bought?
It has well been said that to him who hath shall be given. Because he has, he can give. And because he gives, he shall be given. This is the law of God, and not of the world. So it is with God's healers. They give because they have heard His Word and understood it. All that they need will thus be given them. But they will lose this understanding unless they remember that all they have comes only from God. If they believe they need anything from a brother, they will recognize him as a brother no longer. And if they do this, a light goes out even in Heaven. Where God's Son turns against himself, he can look only upon darkness. He has himself denied the light, and cannot see.
One rule should always be observed: No-one should be turned away because he cannot pay. No-one is sent by accident to anyone. Relationships are always purposeful. Whatever their purpose may have been before the Holy Spirit entered them, they are always His potential temple; the resting place of Christ and home of God Himself. Whoever comes has been sent. Perhaps he was sent to give his brother the money he needed. Both will be blessed thereby. Perhaps he was sent to teach the therapist how much he needs forgiveness, and how valueless is money in comparison. Again will both be blessed. Only in terms of cost could one have more. In sharing, everyone must gain a blessing without cost.
This view of payment may well seem impractical, and in the eyes of the world it would be so. Yet not one worldly thought is really practical. How much is gained by striving for illusions? How much is lost by throwing God away? And is it possible to do so? Surely it is impractical to strive for nothing, and to attempt to do what is impossible. Then stop a while, long enough to think of this: You have perhaps been seeking for salvation without recognizing where to look. Whoever asks your help can show you where. What greater gift than this could you be given? What greater gift is there that you would give?
Physician, healer, therapist, teacher, heal thyself. Many will come to you carrying the gift of healing, if you so elect. The Holy Spirit never refuses an invitation to enter and abide with you. He will give you endless opportunities to open the door to your salvation, for such is His function. He will also tell you exactly what your function is in every circumstance and at all times. Whoever He sends you will reach you, holding out his hand to his Friend. Let the Christ in you bid him welcome, for that same Christ is in him as well. Deny him entrance, and you have denied the Christ in you. Remember the sorrowful story of the world, and the glad tidings of salvation. Remember the plan of God for the restoration of joy and peace. And do not forget how very simple are the ways of God:
You were lost in the darkness of the world until you asked for light. And then God sent His Son to give it to you.
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 God's Son a body. For it is NOT the body that is like the Son's 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 creation 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 God's extension. And what is His MUST be His Son's 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 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 of itself, 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 Father's 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 body's 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?
The introduction of reason into the ego's 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 reason's 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 body's 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 ego's 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 therefore MUST have been an error. The ego's 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 body's 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 REASON's 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 body's 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 body's 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 can not prevent correction. The body's 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 maker's GOAL, but not to see? For THIS the body's eyes are perfect means. But NOT for seeing. See how the body's 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 body's 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 other's 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.
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 ego's law. Fidelity unto this law lets no light in, for it DEMANDS fidelity to darkness, and FORBIDS awakening. The ego's 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 ego's whole undoing. MAKE NO-ONE FEARFUL, for his guilt is yours, and, by obeying the ego's harsh commandments, you bring its condemnation on 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. Whate'er 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 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 him 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 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.
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 function 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 that 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 pleasure, and the pain BEHIND the pleasure will be felt no more. Sin's witnesses but shift from name to name, as one steps forward, and another, back. Yet which is foremost makes NO difference. Sin's 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 truth's 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.
God's 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 body's 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 sin's witnesses do His replace.
The miracle makes NO distinctions in the names by which sin's 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 suffering. 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 Love's symbols TAKE THE PLACE of sin.
It cannot be emphasized too often that CORRECTING perception is merely a temporary expedient. It is necessary ONLY because Misperception is a BLOCK to knowledge, while ACCURATE perception is a stepping-stone TOWARD it. The whole value of right perception lies in the inevitable judgment which it necessarily 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. But you must be careful that you really understand the question. What IS the you who are living in this world? Bill will probably have more trouble with this than you, but if he will try not to close his mind, he may decide that we are NOT engaging in denial after all.
To help him, it might be wise to review a number of the concepts with which he does not appear to have trouble, except at times. He liked the idea of invisibility, and was particularly open to the concept of different orders of reality. He also found the notion of varying densities of energy appealing. While he may yet agree that these are merely teaching aids, this is a good time to employ them.
Immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or will be, because it implies NO CHANGE AT ALL. It is not a continuum, and it is NOT understood by comparing it with any 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 the ego senses threat, and, being unable to realize that "a little knowledge" is a meaningless phrase because "all" and "a little" in this context are the same, decides that since "all" is impossible, the fear does not lie in this. "A little," however, is a scarcity concept, and this the ego understands well. Regarding "all" as impossible, "a little" is perceived as the real threat.
The essential thing to remember always 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 really 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. But we cannot safely leave it at that, or you will regard yourselves as necessarily conflicted as long as you are here, or more properly, 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 dissociate. The ratio of repression and dissociation of truth varies with the individual ego-illusion (tell Bill that phrase is VERY good), but dissociation is always involved, or you would not believe that you ARE here.
When I told Bill to concentrate on the phrase "here I am, Lord," I did not mean "in this world" by "here." I wanted him to think of himself as a separate consciousness, capable of direct communication with the Creator of that consciousness. He, too, MUST begin to think of himself as a very powerful receiving and sending channel, a description I once gave you symbolically. Remember that HE understood it before you did, because you are more dissociative and less repressed.
Your great debt to each other is something you should never forget. It is exactly the same debt that you owe to me. Whenever you react egotistically toward each other, you are throwing away the graciousness of your indebtedness and the holy perception it would produce. The reason why the term "holy" can be used here is that, 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. This gap is so small 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 to 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.
The classic conditioning by rewards model has always been most effective. Howard Hunt made a very good point in this connection, even though he did not understand that the real reason why conditioning through pain is not the most efficient method is because pain itself is an ego-illusion, and can never induce more than a temporary effect.
The rewards of God are immediately recognized as eternal. Since this recognition is made by YOU and NOT by your 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. 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 God's 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 several times 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. God has kept them very safe in HIS knowing while your attention has wandered. Bill gave you a very important idea when he told you that what has been dissociated IS STILL THERE. I am grateful to him for that, and I hope he will not decide that it is true only for you. Even though dissociation is much more apparent in you, and repression is much more evident in him, each of you utilizes both.
Wisdom always dictates that a therapist work through WEAKER defenses first. That is why I suggested to Bill that he persuade you to deal with REPRESSION first. We have only just about reached the point where dissociation means much to you, because it is so important to your misbeliefs. Bill might do well, - and you could help him here, - to concentrate more on HIS dissociative tendencies and not try to deal with repression yet.
I hinted at this when I remarked on his habit of disengaging himself, and when I spoke to him about distantiation. These are all forms of dissociation, and these weaker forms were always more evident in him than in you. That is because dissociation was so extreme in your case that you did not have to hide it because you were not aware that it was there. Bill, on the other hand, DOES dissociate more than he thinks, and that is why he cannot listen. He does not need to go through the same course in repression that you did, because he will give up his major misdefense AFTER he has rid himself of the lesser ones.
Do not disturb yourself about repression, Bill, but DO train yourself to be alert to any tendency to withdraw from your brothers. Withdrawal is frightening, and you do not recognize all the forms it takes in you. Helen is right that she will experience things that will cut across all her perceptions because of their stunning knowledge. You were right that this will occur when she learns to recognize what she ALREADY knows and has dissociated.
You, Bill, will learn somewhat differently, because you are afraid of all complete involvements, and believe that they lessen YOU. You have learned to be so much more clear-sighted about this that you should be ready to oppose it in yourself RELATIVELY easily. 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 at all. 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 thrown away deliberately? 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 your Soul. You have conditioned yourself the other way around. But a far greater reward will break through any conditioning, if it is repeatedly offered when the old habit 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?
Who, then, is the therapist, and who is the patient? In the end, everyone is both. He who needs healing must heal. "Physician, heal thyself." Who else is there to heal? And who else is in need of healing? Each patient who comes to a therapist offers him a chance to heal himself. He is therefore his therapist. And every therapist must learn to heal from each patient who comes to him. He thus becomes his patient. God does not know of separation. What He knows is only that He has one Son. His knowledge is reflected in the ideal patient-therapist relationship. God comes to him who calls, and in Him he recognizes Himself.
Think carefully, teacher and therapist, for whom you pray, and who is in need of healing. For therapy is prayer, and healing is its aim and its result. What is prayer except the joining of minds in a relationship which Christ can enter? This is His home, into which psychotherapy invites Him. What is symptom cure, when another is always there to choose? But once Christ enters in, what choice is there except to have Him stay? There is no need for more than this, for it is everything. Healing is here, and happiness and peace. These are the "symptoms" of the ideal patient-therapist relationship, replacing those with which the patient came to ask for help.
The process that takes place in this relationship is actually one in which the therapist in his heart tells the patient that all his sins have been forgiven him, along with his own. What could be the difference between healing and forgiveness? Only Christ forgives, knowing His sinlessness. His vision heals perception and sickness disappears. Nor will it return again, once its cause has been removed. This, however, needs the help of a very advanced therapist, capable of joining with the patient in a holy relationship in which all sense of separation finally is overcome.
For this, one thing and one thing only is required: The therapist in no way confuses himself with God. All "unhealed healers" make this fundamental confusion in one form or another, because they must regard themselves as self-created rather than God-created. This confusion is rarely if ever in awareness, or the unhealed healer would instantly become a Teacher of God, devoting his life to the function of true healing. Before he reached this point, he thought he was in charge of the therapeutic process and was therefore responsible for its outcome. His patient's failures thus became his own mistakes, and guilt became the cover, dark and strong, for what should be the Holiness of Christ. Guilt is inevitable in those who use their judgment in making their decisions. Guilt is impossible in those through whom the Holy Spirit speaks.
The passing of guilt is the true aim of therapy and the obvious aim of forgiveness. In this their oneness can be clearly seen. Yet who could experience the end of guilt who feels responsible for his brother in the role of guide for him? Such a function presupposes a knowledge that no-one here can have; a certainty of past, present and future, and of all the effects that may occur in them. Only from this omniscient point of view would such a role be possible. Yet no perception is omniscient, nor is the tiny self of one alone against the universe able to assume he has such wisdom except in madness. That many therapists are mad is obvious. No unhealed healer can be wholly sane.
Yet it is as insane not to accept a function God has given you as to invent one He has not. The advanced therapist in no way can ever doubt the power that is in him. Nor does he doubt its Source. He understands all power in earth and Heaven belongs to him because of who he is. And he is this because of his Creator, Whose Love is in him and Who cannot fail. Think what this means; he has the gifts of God Himself to give away. His patients are God's saints, who call upon his sanctity to make it theirs. And as he gives it to them, they behold Christ's shining face as it looks back at them.
The insane, thinking they are God, are not afraid to offer weakness to the Son of God. But what they see in him because of this they fear indeed. The unhealed healer cannot but be fearful of his patients, and suspect them of the treachery he sees in him. He tries to heal, and thus at times he may. But he will not succeed except to some extent and for a little while. He does not see the Christ in him who calls. What answer can he give to one who seems to be a stranger; alien to the truth and poor in wisdom, without the god who must be given him? Behold your God in him, for what you see will be your Answer.
Think what the joining of two brothers really means. And then forget the world and all its little triumphs and its dreams of death. The same are one, and nothing now can be remembered of the world of guilt. The room becomes a temple, and the street a stream of stardust brushing lightly past all sickly dreams. Healing is done, for what is perfect needs no healing, and what remains to be forgiven where there is no sin?
Be thankful, therapist, that you can see such things as this, if you but understand your proper role. But if you fail in that, you have denied that God created you, and so you will not know you are His Son. Who is your brother now? What saint can come to take you home with him? You lost the way. And can you now expect to see in him an answer that you have refused to give? Heal and be healed. There is no other choice of pathways that can ever lead to peace. Oh let your patient in, for he has come to you from God. Is not his holiness enough to wake your memory of Him?
Let us today be neither arrogant nor falsely humble. We have gone beyond such foolishness. We cannot judge ourselves, nor need we do so. These are but attempts to hold decision off, and to delay commitment to our function. It is not our part to judge our worth, nor can we know what role is best for us; what we can do within a larger plan we cannot see in its entirety. Our part is cast in Heaven, not in hell. And what we think is weakness can be strength; what we believe to be our strength is often arrogance.
Whatever your appointed role may be it was selected by the Voice for God, Whose function is to speak for you as well. Seeing your strengths exactly as they are, and equally aware of where they can be best applied, for what, to whom and when, He chooses and accepts your part for you. He does not work without your own consent, but He is not deceived in what you are, and listens only to His Voice in you.
It is through His ability to hear One Voice which is His Own that you become aware at last there is One Voice in you. And that One Voice appoints your function, and relays it to you, giving you the strength to understand it, do what it entails, and to succeed in everything you do that is related to it. God has joined His Son in this, and thus His Son becomes His messenger of unity with Him.
It is this joining, through the Voice of God, of Father and of Son, that sets apart salvation from the world. It is this Voice which speaks of laws the world does not obey; Which promises salvation from all sin, with guilt abolished in the mind which God created sinless. Now this mind becomes aware again of Who created it, and of His lasting union with itself. So is its Self the one Reality in Which its will and That of God are joined.
A messenger does not elect to make the message he delivers. Nor does he question the right of him who does, nor ask why he has chosen those who will receive the message that he brings. It is enough that he accept it, bring it to the ones for which it was appointed, and fulfill his role in its delivery. If he insists on judging what the messages should be, or what their purpose is, or where they should be carried, he is failing to perform his proper part as bringer of the Word.
There is one major difference in the role of Heaven's messengers, which sets them off from those the world appoints. The messages which they deliver are intended first for them. And it is only as they can accept them for themselves that they become able to bring them further, and to give them everywhere that they were meant to be. Like earthly messengers, they did not write the messages they bear, but they become their first receivers in the truest sense, receiving to prepare themselves to give.
An earthly messenger fulfills his role by giving all the messages away. The messengers of God perform their part by their acceptance of His messages as for themselves, and show they understand the messages by giving them away. They choose no roles that are not given them by His authority. And so they gain by every message which they give away.
Would you receive the messages of God? For thus do you become His messengers. You are appointed now, and yet you wait to give the messages you have received, and so you do not know that they are yours, and do not recognize them. No one can receive and understand he has received until he gives. For in the giving is his own acceptance of what he received.
You who are now the messengers of God receive His messages, for that is part of your appointed role. He has not failed to offer what you need, nor has it been left unaccepted. Yet another part of your appointed task is yet to be accomplished. He Who has received for you the messages of God would have them be received by you as well. For thus do you identify with Him and claim your own.
It is this joining that we undertake to recognize today. We will not seek to keep our minds apart from Him Who speaks for us, for it is but our voice we hear as we attend Him. He alone can speak to us and for us, joining in One Voice the getting and the giving of God's Word; the giving and receiving of His Will.
We practice giving Him what He would have, that we may recognize His gifts to us. He needs our voice that He may speak through us. He needs our hands to hold His messages, and carry them to those He appoints. He needs our feet to bring us where He wills, that those who wait in misery may be at last delivered. And He needs our will united with His Own, that we may be the true receivers of the gifts He gives.
Let us but learn this lesson for today: we will not recognize what we receive until we give it. You have heard this said a hundred ways, and yet belief is lacking still. But this is sure; until belief is given it, you will receive a thousand miracles and then receive a thousand more, but will not know that God Himself has left no gift beyond what you already have; nor has denied the tiniest of blessings to His Son. What can this mean to you, until you have identified with him and with his own?
Our lesson for today is stated thus:
"I am among the ministers of God,
And I am grateful that I have the means
By which to recognize that I am free."
The world recedes as we light up our minds, and realize these holy words are true. They are the message sent to us today from our Creator. Now we demonstrate how they have changed our minds about ourselves, and what our function is. For as we prove that we accept no will we do not share, our many gifts from our Creator will spring to our sight and leap into our hands, and we recognize what we received.
Cure is a word which cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as beneficial. What the world perceives as therapeutic is but what will make the body "better." When it tries to heal the mind, it sees no separation from the body where it thinks the mind exists. Its forms of healing thus must substitute illusion for illusion. One belief in sickness takes another form, and so the patient now perceives himself as well.
He is not healed. He merely had a dream that he was sick, and in the dream he found a magic formula to make him well. Yet he has not awakened from the dream, and so his mind remains exactly as it was before. He has not seen the light that would awaken him and end the dream. What difference does the content of a dream make in reality? One either sleeps or wakens. There is nothing in between.
The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings are different from the dreams of the world, where one can merely dream he is awake. The dreams forgiveness lets the mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep, so that the dreamer dreams another dream. His happy dreams are heralds of the dawn of truth upon the mind. They lead from sleep to gentle waking, so that dreams are gone. And thus they cure for all eternity.
Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.
Peace be to you who have been cured in God, and not in idle dreams. For cure must come from holiness, and holiness can not be found where sin is cherished. God abides in holy temples. He is barred where sin has entered. Yet there is no place where He is not. And therefore sin can have no home in which to hide from His beneficence.
There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide. This is the thought that cures. It does not make distinctions among unrealities. Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where the need of for healing is. This is no magic. It is merely an appeal to truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever. It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real.
Let us not try today to seek to cure what cannot suffer sickness. Healing must be sought but where it is, and then applied to what is sick so that it can be cured. There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. The mind that brings illusions to the truth is really changed. There is no change but this. For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes which have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?
Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. We will try today to find the source of healing, which is in our minds because our Father placed it there for us. It is not further from us than ourselves. It is as near to us as our own thoughts, so close it is impossible to lose. We need but seek it and it must be found.
We will not be misled today by what appears to us as sick. We go beyond appearances today, and reach the source of healing from which nothing is exempt. We will succeed to the extent to which we realize that there can never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and equally untrue. Here there are no degrees, and no beliefs that what does not exist is truer in some forms than others. All of them are false, and can be cured because they are not true.
So do we lay aside our amulets, our charms and medicines, our chants and bits of magic in whatever form they took. We will be still and listen for the Voice of healing which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. No voice but This can cure. Today we hear a single Voice Which speaks to us of truth where all illusions end, and peace returns to the eternal quiet home of God.
We waken hearing Him, and let Him speak to us five minutes as the day begins, and end the day by listening again five minutes more before we go to sleep. Our only preparation is to let our interfering thoughts be laid aside, not separately, but all of them as one. They are the same. We have no need to make them different, and thus delay the time when we can hear our Father speak to us. We hear Him now. We come to Him today.
With nothing in our hands to which we cling, with lifted hearts and listening minds we pray:
"Only salvation can be said to cure.
Speak to us, Father, that we may be healed."
And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection, and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds, nor offer proof to us that it is real. This will we learn today. And we will say our prayer for healing hourly, and take a minute as the hour strikes to hear the answer to our prayer be given us as we attend in silence and in joy. This is the day when healing comes to us. This is the day when separation ends, and we remember Who we really are.
It should be clear that, while the content of any particular ego-illusion does not matter, it is usually more helpful to correct it in a specific context. Bill is right that you are too abstract in this matter. Ego-illusions are QUITE specific, although they frequently change, and although the mind is naturally abstract, it became concrete voluntarily as soon as it split. However, only PART of it split, 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 ego's 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 communicate 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 made you BY this and FOR this. The mind can distort its functions, but it cannot endow itself with those 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 is SPECIFIC in how, what, and with whom communication is 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 its own 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 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 separate 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 it. 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 only create 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 thanks, and no perceptions with which to judge your 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. But 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. But it can 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 cannot 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 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 God's 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. I arranged for Bill to attend the rehabilitation meetings for very good reasons, and I want him to know them so we can share our goal there.