Love IS extension. To withhold the smallest gift is not to know love's 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 decisions 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 God's 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 which 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 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 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 that 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.
Every system of thought MUST have a starting point. It begins with either a making or a creating, a difference which we have already covered. Both are acts of will, except that making involves doing, and creating involves active willing. 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 absolutely essential that you 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 you have (made) created for yourselves. (The use of creative here was an error. You should have said made for yourself.)
You have both made the error of the psychotherapist we described in some detail before, and it is particularly serious at this time. You cannot resolve your authority problem by depreciating the power of your minds. It CAN hurt you if you misuse it, because you KNOW its strength. You also know that you CANNOT weaken it any more than you can weaken God.
The devil is a frightening concept ONLY 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 Souls. 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 perceived as willing to "sell" him their Souls in return for gifts they KNOW are of no real worth at all.
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 WILL 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 PERFECTLY real 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 he does, would he have put them in a position where their own destruction was possible? The "tree" which was forbidden was correctly named "tree of knowledge." Yet God created knowledge, and gave it freely to His Creations. The symbolism here is open to many interpretations, but you may be SURE that any interpretation which perceives either God OR His creations as if they were capable of destroying their own Purpose is wrong.
Eating of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic expression for incorporating into the self the ability for self-creation. 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 usually ascribed to the "father figure," a particularly interesting idea, in view of the fact that nobody means the physical father by the term. It refers to an IMAGE of a father in relation to an IMAGE of the self.
Once again, 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. I told you before that when you finally perceive correctly, you can only be GLAD YOU CAN'T. 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 would bring it to light.
You and Bill still believe you are images of your own creation. You are split with your own Souls on this point, and there is NO resolution, because you believe the one thing that is literally INCONCEIVABLE. That is why you CANNOT create, and are afraid to make or produce.
You, Helen, are CONSTANTLY arguing about the authorship of this course. This is NOT humility; it is a REAL authority problem. You, Bill, really believe that by teaching you are assuming a dominant or father role, and that the "father figure" will kill you. This is not humility either. Castration fears are a particularly distorted reflection of the real basic anxiety, or Separation fear.
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-systems 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 tree 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-systems WILL stand corrected. They 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.