Lesson 355 "There is no end to all the peace and joy and all the miracles that I will give when I accept God's Word. Why not today?"

Question 7 - What is the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit mediates between illusions and the truth. As He must bridge the gap between reality and dreams, perception leads to knowledge through the grace that God has given Him, to be His gift to everyone who turns to Him for truth. Across the bridge that He provides are dreams all carried to the truth, to be dispelled before the light of knowledge. There are sights and sounds forever laid aside. And where they were perceived before, forgiveness has made possible perception's tranquil end.

The goal the Holy Spirit's teaching sets is just this end of dreams. For sights and sounds must be translated from the witnesses of fear to those of love. And when this is entirely accomplished, learning has achieved the only goal it has in truth. For learning, as the Holy Spirit guides it to the outcome He perceives for it, becomes the means to go beyond itself, to be replaced by the Eternal Truth.

From knowledge, where He has been placed by God, the Holy Spirit calls to you, to let forgiveness rest upon your dreams, and be restored to sanity and peace of mind. Without forgiveness will your dreams remain to terrify you. And the memory of all your Father's Love will not return to signify the end of dreams has come.

Accept your Father's gift. It is a call from Love to Love, that It be but Itself. The Holy Spirit is His gift, by Which the quietness of Heaven is restored to God's beloved Son. Would you refuse to take the function of completing God, when all He wills is that you be complete?

Section 8 - The Inclusiveness of Creation

NOTHING beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing IS beyond you. Time and eternity are both in your minds, and WILL conflict, until you perceive time SOLELY as a means to REGAIN eternity. You cannot do this, as long as you believe that ANYTHING that happens to you is caused by factors OUTSIDE yourself. You must learn that time is solely at YOUR disposal, and that nothing in the world can take this responsibility FROM you. You can VIOLATE God's laws in your imagination, but you cannot escape from them. They were established for your protection, and are as inviolate as your safety.

God created nothing beside you, and nothing beside you exists, for you are part of Him. What except Him CAN exist? Nothing BEYOND Him can happen, because nothing EXCEPT Him is real. YOUR creations add to Him, as YOU do. But nothing is added that is different, because everything has always BEEN. What can upset you except the ephemeral, and how can the ephemeral be real, if you are God's ONLY creation, and He created you eternal?

Your holy will establishes EVERYTHING that happens to you. Every response you make, to everything you perceive, is up to you, because your will DETERMINES your perception of it. God does not change His Mind about YOU, for He is not uncertain of HIMSELF. And what He knows CAN be known, because He does not know only for Himself. He CREATED you for Himself, but He gave you the power to create for YOUR self, so you would be LIKE Him. That is why your will is holy.

Can anything EXCEED the love of God? Can anything, then, exceed YOUR will? Nothing can reach you from BEYOND it, because being in God, YOU encompass everything. Believe this, and you will realize how much IS up to you. When ANYTHING threatens your peace of mind, ask yourself "Has God changed His Mind about me?" Then ACCEPT His decision, for it is indeed changeless, and refuse to change your mind about YOURSELF.- God will never decide AGAINST you, or He would be deciding against Himself.

The reason you do not know YOUR creations is simply that you would decide against them, as long as your minds are split, and to attack what you have created is impossible. But remember that IT IS AS IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD. The law of Creation is that you love your creations as yourself, BECAUSE THEY ARE PART OF YOU. Everything that was created is therefore PERFECTLY safe, because the laws of God protect it by His love. Any part of your mind that does not know this, has banished itself from knowledge, because it has NOT MET ITS CONDITIONS.

Is it not possible that you merely shifted from one dream to another without really wakening? Would you bother to reconcile what happened in conflicting DREAMS, or would you dismiss BOTH TOGETHER, if you discovered that REALITY is in accord with neither? You do not remember being awake. When you hear the Holy Spirit, you merely feel BETTER, because loving seems POSSIBLE to you. But you do NOT remember yet that it once was so, and it is in this remembering that you will know it can be so again.

What is possible has not yet been accomplished. But what has once been is so now, if it is eternal. When you remember, you will know what you remember IS eternal, and therefore is NOW.

You will remember everything the instant you DESIRE IT WHOLLY, for if to desire wholly is to create, you will have willed away the separation, returning your mind simultaneously to your Creator and your creations. Knowing them, you will have no wish to sleep, but only the will to waken and be glad. Dreams will be impossible, because you will WANT only truth, and being at last your will, it will be yours.

Lesson 183 "I will be still a moment and go home."

No one but knows whereof we speak. Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to occupy their time, and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but a dream. Yet who in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self deception, would deny he understands the words we speak?

We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home. He goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind. He does not understand he builds in vain. The home he seeks can not be made by him. There is no substitute for Heaven. All he ever made was hell.

Perhaps you think it is your childhood home that you would find again. The childhood of your body and its place of shelter are a memory now so distorted that you merely hold a picture of a past that never happened. Yet there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father's house, and knows that He is alien here. This Childhood is eternal, with an innocence that will endure forever. Where this Child shall go is holy ground. It is His holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one.

It is this Child in you your Father knows as His Own Son. It is this Child Who knows His Father. He desires to go home so deeply, so unceasingly, His Voice cries unto you to let Him rest a while. He does not ask for more than just a few instants of respite; just an interval in which He can return to breathe again the holy air that fills His Father's house. You are His home as well. He will return. But give Him just a little time to be Himself, within the peace that is His home, resting in silence and in peace and in love.

This Child needs your protection. He is far from home. He is so little that He seems so easily shut out, His tiny Voice so readily obscured, His calls for help almost unheard amid the grating sounds and harsh and rasping noises of the world. Yet does He know that in you still abides His sure protection. You Will fail Him not. He will go home, and you along with Him.

This Child is your defenselessness, your strength. He trusts in you. He came because He knew you would not fail. He whispers of His home unceasingly to you. For He would bring you back with Him, that He Himself might stay, and not return again where He does not belong and where He lives an outcast in a world of alien thoughts. His patience has no limits. He will wait until you hear His gentle Voice within you, calling you to let Him go in peace, along with you, to where He is at home, and you with Him.

When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice. So poignantly He calls to you that you will not resist Him longer. In that instant, He will take you to His home, and you will stay with Him in perfect stillness, silent and at peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt, sublimely certain that you are at home.

Rest with Him frequently today. For He was willing to become a little Child that you might learn of Him how strong is he who comes without defenses, offering only love's messages to those who think He is their enemy. He holds the might of Heaven in His hand and calls them friend, and gives His strength to them that they may see He would be Friend to them. He asks but they protect Him, for His home is far away, and He will not return to it alone.

Christ is reborn as but a little Child each time a wanderer would leave his home. For he must learn that what he would protect is but this Child, Who comes defenseless and Who is protected by defenselessness. Go home with Him from time to time today. You are as much an alien here as He.

Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing, and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence. Christ has called you friend and brother. He has even come to you to ask your help in letting Him go home completed and completely. He has come as does a little child who must beseech his father for protection and for love. He rules the universe, and yet He asks unceasingly that you return with Him, and take illusions as your gods no more.

You have not lost your innocence. It is for this you yearn. This is your heart's desire. This is the Voice you hear, and this the Call which cannot be denied. The holy Child remains with you. His home is yours. Today He gives you His defenselessness, and you accept it in exchange for all the toys of battle you have made. And now the way is open, and the journey has an end in sight at last. Be still a moment and go home with Him and be at peace awhile.

Lesson 166 "I am entrusted with the gifts of God."

All things are given you. God's trust in you is limitless. He knows His Son. He gives without exception, holding nothing back that can contribute to your happiness. And yet, unless your will is one with His, His gifts are not received. But what would make you think there is another will than His?

Here is the paradox that underlies the making of the world. This world is not the Will of God, and so it is not real. Yet those who think it real must still believe there is another will, and one which leads to opposite effects from those He wills. Impossible indeed; but every mind which looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators; or in one, himself alone. But never in One God.

The gifts of God are not acceptable to anyone who holds such strange beliefs. He must believe that to accept God's gifts, however evident they may become, however urgently he may be called to claim them as his own, is being pressed to treachery against himself. He must deny their presence, contradict the truth, and suffer to preserve the world he made.

Here is the only home he thinks he knows. Here is the only safety he believes that he can find. Without the world he made is he an outcast, homeless and afraid. He does not realize that it is here he is afraid indeed, and homeless too; an outcast wandering so far from home, so long away, he does not realize he has forgotten where he came from, where he goes, and even who he really is.

Yet in his lonely, senseless wanderings God's gifts go with him, all unknown to him. He cannot lose them. But he will not look at what is given him. He wanders on, aware of the futility he sees about him everywhere, perceiving how his little lot but dwindles as he goes ahead to nowhere. Still he wanders on in misery and poverty, alone though God is with him, and a treasure his so great that everything the world contains is valueless before its magnitude.

He seems a sorry figure, weary, worn, in threadbare clothing, and with feet that bleed a little from the rocky road he walks. No one but has identified with him, for everyone who comes here has pursued the path he follows, and has felt defeat and hopelessness as he is feeling them. Yet is he really tragic when you see that he is following the way he chose, and need but realize Who walks with him, and open up his treasures to be free?

This is your chosen self, the one you made as a replacement for reality. This is the self you savagely defend against all reason, every evidence, and all the witnesses with proof to show this is not you. You heed them not. You go on your appointed way, with eyes cast down lest you might catch a glimpse of truth, and be released from self deception and set free.

Your ancient fear has come upon you now, and justice has caught up with you at last. Christ's hand has touched your shoulder, and you feel that you are not alone. You even think the miserable self you thought was you may not be your identity. Perhaps God's Word is truer than your own. Perhaps His gifts to you are real. Perhaps He has not wholly been outwitted by your plan to keep His Son in deep oblivion, and go the way you chose without your Self.

God's Will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His Will. There was a need He did not understand, to which He gave an Answer. That is all. And you who have this Answer given you have need no more of anything but this.

Now do we live, for now we cannot die. The wish for death is answered, and the sight that looked upon it now has been replaced by vision which perceives that you are not what you pretend to be. One walks with you Who gently answers all your fears with this one merciful reply, "It is not so." He points to all the gifts you have each time the thought of poverty oppresses you, and speaks of His Companionship when you perceive yourself as lonely and afraid.

Yet He reminds you still of one thing more you had forgotten. For His touch on you has made you like Himself. The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God. He has reminded you of all the gifts that God has given you. He speaks as well of what becomes your will when you accept these gifts, and recognize they are your own.

The gifts are yours, entrusted to your care, to give to all who chose the lonely road you have escaped. They do not understand they but pursue their wishes. It is you who teach them now. For you have learned of Christ there is another way for them to walk. Teach them by showing them the happiness that comes to those who feel the touch of Christ and recognize God's gifts. Let sorrow not tempt you to be unfaithful to your trust.

Your sighs will now betray the hopes of those who look to you for their release. Your tears are theirs. If you are sick you but withhold their healing. What you fear but teaches them their fears are justified. Your hand becomes the giver of Christ's touch; your change of mind becomes the proof that who accepts God's gifts can never suffer anything. You are entrusted with the world's release from pain.

Betray it not. Become the living proof of what Christ's touch can offer everyone. God has entrusted all His gifts to you. Be witness in your happiness to how transformed the mind becomes which chooses to accept His gifts and feel the touch of Christ. Such is your mission now. For God entrusts the giving of His gifts to all who have received them. He has shared His joy with you. And now you go to share it with the world.

Chapter 31 - The Simplicity of Salvation

Section 1 - Introduction

How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has NOT occurred, and CAN have no effects. And that is all. Can this BE hard to learn by anyone who WANTS it to be true? ONLY unwillingness to learn it could make such an easy lesson difficult. How hard is it to see that what is false can not be true, and what is true can not be false? You can no longer say that you perceive no differences in false and true. You have been told EXACTLY how to tell one from the other, and just what to do if you become confused. Why, then, do you persist in learning NOT such simple things?

There IS a reason. But confuse it not with difficulty in the simple things salvation asks you learn. It teaches but the very obvious. It merely goes from one apparent lesson to the next, in easy steps which lead you gently from one to another, with no strain at all. This CANNOT be confusing, yet you ARE confused. For somehow you believe that what is TOTALLY confused is easier to learn and understand. What you have taught yourselves is such a giant learning feat it is indeed incredible. But you accomplished it because you wanted to, and did not pause in diligence to judge it hard to learn, or too complex to grasp.

No-one who understands what you have learned, how carefully you learned it, and the pains to which you went to practice and repeat the lessons endlessly, in every form you could conceive of them, could EVER doubt the power of your learning skill. There is no greater power in the world. The world was MADE by it, and even now depends on nothing else. The lessons you have taught yourselves have been so overlearned and fixed they rise like heavy curtains, to obscure the simple and the obvious. Say not you cannot learn them. For your power to learn is strong enough to teach you that your will is NOT your own; your thoughts do NOT belong to you; and even YOU are someone else.

Learning is an ability you made, and gave yourselves. It was NOT made to do the Will of God, but to uphold a wish that It COULD be opposed, and that a will APART from It was yet more real than It. And this has learning sought to demonstrate, and you HAVE learned what it was made to teach. Now does your ancient overlearning stand implacable before the Voice of Truth, and teach you that Its lessons are not true; too hard to learn, too difficult to see, and too opposed to what is REALLY true. Yet you WILL learn them, for their learning is the ONLY purpose for your learning skill the Holy Spirit sees in all the world.

His simple lessons in forgiveness have a power mightier than yours, because they call from God and from your Self to you. Is this a LITTLE Voice, so small and still It cannot rise above the senseless noise of sounds which have no meaning? God willed not His Son forget Him. And the power of His Will is in the Voice That speaks for Him. Which lesson will you learn? Which outcome is inevitable, sure as God, and far beyond all doubts or question? CAN it be your little learning, strange in outcome, and incredible in difficulty, will withstand the simple lessons being taught to you in every moment of each day, since time began and learning had been made?

The lessons to be learned are only two. Each has its outcome in a different world. And each world follows surely from its source. The certain outcome of the lesson that God's Son is guilty is the world you see. It IS a world of terror and despair. Nor IS there hope of happiness in it. There IS no plan for safety you can make that ever will succeed. There IS no joy that you can seek for here, and hope to find. But this is NOT the only outcome which your learning can produce. However much you may have overlearned your chosen task, the lesson which reflects the Love of God is stronger still. And you WILL learn God's Son is innocent, and see ANOTHER world.

The outcome of the lesson that God's Son is guiltless is a world in which there is no fear, and everything is lit with hope, and sparkles with a gentle friendliness. Nothing but calls to you in soft appeal to be your friend, and let it join with you. And never does a call remain unheard, misunderstood, or left unanswered in the language in which the call itself was made. And you will understand it was THIS call that everyone and everything within the world has ALWAYS made. But YOU had not perceived it as it was. And now you see YOU were mistaken. You had been deceived by forms the call was hidden in. And so you did not hear it, and had lost a friend who ALWAYS wanted to be part of you.

The soft, eternal calling of each part of God's creation to the whole is heard throughout the world this second lesson brings. There is no living thing which does not share the universal will that it be whole, and that you do not leave its call unheard. Without your answer is it left to die, as it is saved from death when you have heard its calling as the ancient call to life, and understood that it is but your own. The Christ in you remembers God with all the certainty with which He knows His Love. But ONLY if His Son is innocent can He BE Love. For God were fear indeed, if he whom He created innocent could be a slave to guilt. God's perfect Son remembers his creation. But in guilt he has forgotten what he really is.

The fear of God results as surely from the lesson that His Son is guilty as God's Love must be remembered when he LEARNS his innocence. For hate must father fear, and look upon its father as itself. How wrong are you who fail to hear the call that echoes past each seeming call to death, that sings behind each murderous attack, and pleads that love restore the dying world! You do not understand Who calls to you beyond each form of hate, each call to war. But you will recognize Him as you give Him answer in the language that He calls. He will appear when you have answered Him, and you will know in Him that God is Love.

What is temptation but a wish to make the wrong decision on what you would learn, and have an outcome which you do not want? It is the RECOGNITION that it is a state of mind UNWANTED that becomes the means whereby the choice is reassessed; another outcome seen to be preferred. You are deceived if you believe you want disaster and disunity and pain. Hear not the call for this within yourself, but listen, rather, to the deeper call beyond it, that appeals for peace and joy. And all the world will GIVE you joy and peace. For as you hear you answer, and behold! - your answer is the proof of what you learned. Its outcome is the world you look upon.

Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean, and what their purpose is. Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for. We do not know. Let every image held of anyone be loosened from our minds and swept away. Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone. Now do you know him not. But you ARE free to learn of him, and learn of him anew. Now is he born again to you, and you are born again to him, WITHOUT the past that sentenced him to die, and you with him. Now is he free to live, as you are free, because an ancient learning passed away, and left a place for truth to be reborn.

Section 6 - Therapy and Teaching

You must have noticed how often I have used your own ideas to help YOU. Bill is right is saying that you have learned to be a loving, wise, and very understanding therapist, except for yourself. That exception has given you more than perception for others because of what you saw in them, but less than knowledge of your real relationships TO them because you did NOT make them part OF you. Understanding IS beyond perception, because it introduces meaning. But it is below knowledge, even though it can grow TOWARD it. It is possible, with great effort, to understand someone else and to be helpful to him, but the effort is misdirected. The misdirection is quite apparent. It is directed AWAY from you.

This does NOT mean that it is lost to you, but it DOES mean that you are not aware of it. I have saved all of your kindnesses and every loving thought you have had, and I assure you, you have had many. I have purified them of errors which hid their light, and have kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within YOU, and we know that what God creates is eternal.

Bill once spoke of the Kingdom in this way, because he yearns for what he has repressed. You are much more afraid of it, because dissociation is more fearful. B's better contact has allowed him the strength to retain the fear in awareness, and to resort to displacement, which he is learning to overcome with YOUR help. That is because you do not perceive HIM as dissociated, and can help him with his repression, which does not frighten you. He, on the other hand, has no difficulty in seeing YOU dissociate, and does not have to deal with repression in you, which WOULD produce fear in him.

Joining in Atonement, which I have repeatedly asked you to do, is ALWAYS a way OUT of fear. This does not mean that you can safely fail to acknowledge anything that is true, but the Holy Spirit will not fail to help you re-interpret EVERYTHING that you perceive as fearful, and teach you ONLY what is loving IS true. It is beyond your ability to destroy, but entirely within your grasp. It BELONGS to you because YOU created it. It is yours because it is part of you, just as you are part of God, because He created you.

The Atonement is the GUARANTEE of the safety of the Kingdom. Nothing good is lost, because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voice for Creation. Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore CANNOT be protected. What the ego makes it KEEPS TO ITSELF, and so it is without strength. Its unshared existence does not die. It was merely never born. Real birth is not a beginning; it is a CONTINUING. Everything that CAN continue has already BEEN born. But it can INCREASE as you are willing to return the part of your mind that needs healing to the higher part, and thus render your creating (creation) undivided.

You yourself always told your patients that the real difference between neurotic and 'healthy' guilt feelings was that neurotic guilt feelings DO NOT HELP ANYONE. This distinction was very wise, though incomplete. Let us make the distinction a little sharper now. Neurotic guilt feelings are a device of the ego for "atoning" without sharing, and for asking for pardon without change. The ego NEVER calls for real atonement, and cannot tolerate real forgiveness, which IS change.

Your concept of "healthy guilt feelings" has great merit, but without the concept of the Atonement it lacked the healing potential it held. YOU make the distinction in terms of feelings which led to a decision not to REPEAT the error, which is only PART of healing. Your concept therefore lacked the idea of UNDOING it. What you were really advocating, then, was adopting a policy of sharing without a real FOUNDATION.

I have come to give you the foundation, so your own thoughts can make you REALLY free. You have carried the burden of the ideas you did NOT share, and which were therefore too weak to increase, but you did NOT recognize how to UNDO their existence because you HAD made them. You CANNOT cancel out your past errors alone. They will NOT disappear from your mind without remedy. The remedy is NOT of your making, any more than YOU are.

You have become willing to receive my messages as I give them, without interference by the ego, so we can clarify an earlier point which was mentioned before. We said that you will one day teach as much as you learn, and that will keep you in balance. The time is now, because you have let it be now. You cannot learn EXCEPT by teaching. I heard one voice because I had learned that learning is attained BY teaching. I understood that I COULD NOT ATONE FOR MYSELF ALONE.

Listening to one voice MEANS the will to share the voice to hear it yourself. The mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to every mind created by God, because God's wholeness IS the wholeness of his Son. Turning the other cheek does NOT mean that you should submit to violence without protest. It means that you cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. Show him that he CANNOT hurt you, and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself.

Teaching is done in many ways, by formal means, by guidance, and above all BY EXAMPLE. If you will to learn, you MUST will to teach. Teaching is therapy because it means the sharing of ideas, and the awareness that to share them is to strengthen them. The union of the Sonship IS its protection. The ego cannot prevail against the Kingdom BECAUSE it is united, and the ego fades away and is undone in the presence of the attraction of the parts of the Sonship which hear the call of the Holy Spirit to be as One.

I cannot forget my need to teach what I have learned which arose in me BECAUSE I learned it. I call upon you to teach what you have learned, because by so doing YOU can depend on it. Make it dependable in my name, because my name is the name of God's Son. What I learned I give you freely, and the mind which was in me rejoices as YOU will to hear it. The Holy Spirit atones in all of us by UNDOING, and thus lifts the burden you have placed in your mind. By following Him, He leads you back to God where you belong. And how can you find this way except by taking your brother with you?

My part in the Atonement is not complete until YOU join it, and give it away. As you teach, so shall you learn. I will never leave you or forsake you, because to forsake you would be to forsake myself and God who created me. You will forsake yourselves and your God if you forsake any of YOUR brothers. You are more than your brother's keeper. In fact, you do not WANT to keep him. You must learn to see him as he is, and KNOW that he belongs to God, as you do. How could you treat your brother better than by rendering unto God the things which are God's?

Ideas do not LEAVE the mind which thought them in order to have separate being. Nor do separate thoughts conflict with one another in space, because they do not occupy space at all. HUMAN ideas can conflict in content, because they occur at different levels, and include opposite thoughts at the SAME level. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SHARE OPPOSING THOUGHTS. The Holy Spirit does not LET you forsake your brothers. Therefore, you can really share only the parts of your thoughts which are of Him, which He also keeps for YOU. And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. All the rest remains with you until He has re-interpreted them in the light of the Kingdom, making them, too, worthy of being shared. When they have been sufficiently purified, He lets you give them away. The will to share them IS their purification.

The Atonement gives you the power of a healed mind, but the power to create is of God. Therefore, those who have been forgiven must devote themselves first to healing, because having RECEIVED the idea of healing they MUST give it to hold it. The full power of creation (creating) cannot be expressed as long as any of God's ideas are withholding it from the Kingdom. The joint will of ALL the Sonship is the only creator that can create like the Father. That is because only the complete can think completely, and the thinking of God lacks nothing. Everything YOU think that is not through the Holy Spirit IS lacking.

How can you who are so Holy suffer? All your past, except its beauty, is gone, and nothing is left except a blessing. You can indeed depart in peace, because I have loved you as I loved myself. You go WITH my blessing and FOR my blessing. Hold it and share it, that it may always be ours. I place the peace of God in your heart, and in your hands, to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it, and the hands are strong to give it. We cannot lose. My judgment is as strong as the wisdom of God, in whose Heart and Hands we have our being. His quiet children are His blessed sons. The Thoughts of God are with you.

Section 3 - The Treachery of Specialness

Comparison MUST be an ego device, for love makes none. Specialness ALWAYS makes comparisons. It is ESTABLISHED by a lack seen in another, and maintained by searching for and keeping clear in sight all lacks it can perceive. This does it seek, and this it looks upon. And ALWAYS whom it thus diminishes would be your Savior, had you not chosen to make of him a tiny measure of your specialness instead. Against the littleness you see in him you stand as tall and stately, clean and honest, pure and unsullied by comparison with what you see.

Nor do you understand it is YOURSELF that you diminish thus. Pursuit of specialness is always at the cost of peace. Who can attack his Savior, and cut him down, and recognize his strong support? Who can detract from his omnipotence, and SHARE his power? And who can use him as the gauge of littleness, and be RELEASED from limits? You have a function in salvation. ITS pursuit will bring you joy. But the pursuit of specialness MUST bring you pain. Here is a goal that would defeat salvation, and thus run COUNTER to the Will of God. To value specialness is to esteem an alien will, to which illusions of yourself ARE dearer than the truth.

You are NOT special. If you think you are, and would defend your specialness against the truth of what you REALLY are, how can you know the truth? What answer that the Holy Spirit gives can reach you, when it is your specialness to which you listen, and which asks AND ANSWERS? Its tiny answer, soundless in the melody which pours from God to you eternally in loving praise of what you are, is all you listen to. And that vast song of honor and of love for what you are seems silent and unheard before ITS mightiness. You strain your ears to hear ITS soundless voice, and yet the Call of God Himself is soundless to you.

You CAN defend your specialness, but never will you hear the Voice for God beside it. They speak a different language, and they fall on different ears. To every special one a DIFFERENT message, and one with DIFFERENT meaning, is the truth. Yet how CAN truth be different to each one? The special messages the special hear convince them THEY are different and apart; each in his special sins and safe from love, which does not see his specialness at all. Christ's Vision IS their enemy, for it sees not what THEY would look upon. And it WOULD show them that the specialness they think they see IS an illusion.

What would they see instead? The shining radiance of the Son of God, so like his Father that the memory of Him springs instantly to mind. And with this memory, the Son remembers his own creations, as like to him as he is to his Father. And all the world he made, and all his specialness, and all the sins he held in its defense AGAINST himself, will vanish as his mind accepts the truth about himself, as it returns to take their place. This is the only "cost" of truth. You will no longer see what never was, nor hear what makes no sound. Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the Love of God forever?

You who have chained your Savior to your specialness, and given it HIS place, remember this: He has NOT lost the power to forgive you all the sins you think you placed between him and the function of salvation GIVEN him for you. Nor will you CHANGE his function, any more than you can change the truth in him and in yourself. But be you certain that the truth is just the same in both. It gives no different messages, and has ONE meaning. And it is one you BOTH can understand, and one which brings release to BOTH of you. Here stands your brother with the key to Heaven in his hand, held out to you. Let not the dream of specialness remain between you. What is one IS joined in truth.

Think of the loveliness that you will see within yourself, when you have looked on him as on a Friend. He IS the enemy of specialness, but ONLY friend to what is real in you. Not one attack you thought you made on him has taken from him the gift that God would have him give to you. His need to give it is as great as yours to have it. Let him forgive you all your specialness, and make you whole in mind, and one with him. He waits for your forgiveness only that he may return it unto you. It is not God Who has condemned His Son. But ONLY you, to save his specialness, and kill his Self.

You have come far along the way of truth; too far to falter now. Just one step more, and every vestige of the fear of God will melt away in love. Your brother's specialness and yours ARE enemies, and bound in hate to kill each other and DENY they are the same. Yet it is not illusions that have reached this final obstacle that seems to make God and His Heaven so remote that they cannot be reached. Here, in this holy place, does truth stand waiting to receive you both in silent blessing, and in peace so real and so encompassing that NOTHING stands outside.

Leave all illusions of yourself OUTSIDE this place, to which you come in hope and honesty. Here is your Savior FROM your specialness. He is in need of your acceptance of himself as part of you, as you for his. You are alike to God as God is to Himself. He is not special, for He would not keep one part of what He is unto Himself, NOT given to His Son, but kept for Him alone. And it is this you fear; for, if He is not special, then He willed His Son be like Him, and your brother IS like you. Not special, but possessed of everything, INCLUDING you.

Give him but what he has, remembering God gave Himself to BOTH of you in equal love, that both might share the universe with Him Who chose that love could never be divided and kept separate from what it IS and must forever be. You ARE your brother's; part of love was not DENIED to him. But can it be that YOU have lost because HE is complete? What has been given him makes YOU complete, as it does him. God's love gave you to him and him to you, BECAUSE He gave Himself. What is the same as God IS One with Him. And ONLY specialness could make the truth of God and you AS One seem anything BUT Heaven. And the hope of peace at last in sight.

Specialness is the seal of treachery upon the gift of love. Whatever serves its purpose MUST be given to kill. No gift that bears its seal but offers treachery to giver and receiver. Not one glance from eyes it veils but looks on sight of death. Not one believer in its potency but seeks for bargains and for compromise that would establish sin as love's substitute, and serve it faithfully. And no relationship that holds its purpose dear but clings to murder as safety's weapon, and the great defender of all illusions from the "threat" of love.

The hope of specialness makes it seem possible God made the body as the prison-house which keeps His Son from Him. For it DEMANDS a special place God cannot enter, and a hiding-place where none is welcome but your tiny self. Nothing is sacred here but unto you, and you alone, apart and separate from all your brothers; safe from ALL intrusions of sanity upon illusions; safe from God, and safe for conflict everlasting. Here are the gates of hell you closed upon yourself, to rule in madness and in loneliness your special kingdom, APART from God, AWAY from truth and from salvation.

The key you threw away God gave your brother, whose holy hands would offer it to you, when you were ready to accept His plan for your salvation in place of yours. How could this readiness be reached save through the sight of all your misery, and the awareness that your plan has failed, and will forever fail to bring you peace and joy of ANY kind? Through this despair you travel now, yet it is but ILLUSION of despair. The death of specialness is NOT your death, but your awaking into Life Eternal. You but emerge from an illusion of what you are, to the acceptance of yourself as God created you.