Section 11 - The End of Sacrifice

Fear not to recognize as SOLELY OF YOUR MAKING the whole idea of sacrifice. 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 of yourself, but as 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 that 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. For through guilt, you EXCLUDE your Father and your brothers FROM yourself. And through peace, you will invite them back, and realize 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. For 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 body's 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?

For in the time of Christ, communication with Him is restored, and He joins us in the celebration of His Son's 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 week-end 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.

Section 4 - 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 Father's 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. But 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 your 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 God's 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 God's 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 him. 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 God's Mind. It is forever One, eternally united and at peace.

Thoughts SEEM to come and go. But 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.

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 Heaven's Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of Father and of 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.

Section 5 - Self-Concept versus Self

The learning of the world is built upon a concept of the self adjusted to the world's 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. But it is here the learning of the world has set its sights. For it is here the world's 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 that the world directs begun and ended with the single aim of teaching you this concept of yourself, that you will choose to follow this world's 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 Spirit's 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 concept's 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 perception's law that what you see reflects the state of the PERCEIVER's mind. Yet who was it that did the choosing first? If you are what you chose your brother be, alternatives were there to choose between, 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. And 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.

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 you 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. But 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 that 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 and on myself." Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are will TELL you of Itself.