Purpose is meaning. Today's idea explains why nothing you see means anything. You do not know what it is for. Therefore it is meaningless to you. Everything is for your own best interests. That is what it is for; that is its purpose; that is what it means. It is in recognizing this that your goals become unified. It is in recognizing this that what you see is given meaning.
You perceive the world and everything in it as meaningful in terms of ego goals. These goals have nothing to do with your own best interests, because the ego is not you. This false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for. As a result, you are bound to misuse it. When you believe this, you will try to withdraw the goals you have assigned to the world, instead of attempting to reinforce them.
Another way of describing the goals you now perceive as valuable is to say that they are all concerned with "personal" interests. Since you have no personal interests, your goals are really concerned with nothing. In cherishing them, therefore, you have no goals at all. And thus you do not know what anything is for.
Before you can make any sense out of the exercises for today, one more thought is necessary. At the most superficial levels, you do recognize purpose. Yet purpose cannot be understood at these levels. For example, you do understand that a telephone is for the purpose of talking to someone who is not physically in your immediate vicinity. What you do not understand is what you want to reach him for. And it is this that makes your contact with him meaningful or not.
It is crucial to your learning to be willing to give up the goals you have established for everything. The recognition that they are meaningless, rather than "good" or "bad," is the only way to accomplish this. The idea for today is a step in this direction.
Six practice periods, each of two minutes duration, are required. Each practice period should begin with a slow repetition of the idea for today, followed by looking about you and letting your glance rest on whatever happens to catch your eye, near or far, "important" or "unimportant," "human" or "unhuman," with your eyes resting on each subject you so select, say, for example:
"I do not know what this chair is for."
"I do not know what this pencil is for."
"I do not know what this hand is for."
Say this quite slowly, without shifting your eyes until you have completed the statement. Then move on to the next subject, and apply today's idea as before.
In no situation which arises do you realize the outcome that would make you happy. Therefore you have no guide to appropriate action, and no way of judging the result. What you do is determined by your perception of the situation, and that perception is wrong. It is inevitable, then, that you will not serve your own best interests. Yet they are your only goal in any situation which is correctly perceived. Otherwise you will not recognize what they are.
If you realized that you do not perceive your own best interests, you could be taught what they are. But in the presence of your conviction that you do know what they are, you cannot learn. The idea for today is a step toward opening your mind so that learning can begin.
The exercises for today require much more honesty than you are accustomed to using. A few subjects, honestly and carefully considered in each of the five practice periods which should be undertaken today, will be more helpful than a more cursory examination of a large number. Two minutes are suggested for each of the mind-searching periods which the exercises involve.
Practice periods begin with repeating today's idea, followed by searching the mind, with closed eyes, for unresolved situations about which you are currently concerned. The emphasis should be on uncovering the outcome you want. You will quickly realize that you have a number of goals in mind as part of the desired outcome; and also that these goals are on different levels, and often conflict.
Name each situation that occurs to you, and enumerate carefully as many goals as possible that you would like to be met in its resolution. The form of each application should be roughly as follows:
"In the situation involving ____, I would like ____ to happen, and ____ to happen," and so on.
Try to cover as many different kinds of outcome as may honestly occur to you, even if some of them do not appear to you to be directly related to the situation, or even to be inherent in it at all.
If these exercises are done properly, you will quickly recognize that you are making a large number of demands of the situation which have nothing to do with it. You will also recognize that many of your goals are contradictory, that you have no unified outcome in mind, and that you must experience disappointment in connection with some of your goals however the situation turns out. After covering the list of as many hoped for goals as possible for each unresolved situation that crosses your mind, say to yourself:
"I do not perceive my own best interests in this situation,"
and go on to the next.
Sometimes in teaching there is benefit, particularly after you have gone through what seems theoretical and quite remote from what the student has already learned, to bring him back to practical concerns. This we will do today. We will not speak of lofty, world-encompassing ideas, but dwell instead on benefits to you.
You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains. There are no satisfactions in the world.
Today we list the real criteria by which to test all things you think you want. Unless they meet these sound requirements, they are not worth desiring at all, for they can but replace what offers more. The laws which govern choice you cannot make, no more than you can make alternatives from which to choose. The choosing you can do; indeed you must. But it is wise to learn the laws you set in motion when you choose, and what alternatives you choose between.
We have already stressed there are but two, however many there appear to be. The range is set, and this we cannot change. It would be most ungenerous to you to let alternatives be limitless, and thus delay your final choice until you had considered all of them in time, and not been brought so clearly to the place where there is but one choice which must be made.
Another kindly and related law is that there is no compromise in what your choice must bring. It cannot give you just a little, for there is no in between. Each choice you make brings everything to you or nothing. Therefore, if you learn the tests by which you can distinguish everything from nothing, you will make the better choice.
First, if you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is valueless. A temporary value is without all value. Time can never take away a value that is real. What fades and dies was never there, and makes no offering to him who chooses it. He is deceived by nothing in a form he thinks he likes.
Next, if you choose to take a thing away from someone else, you will have nothing left. This is because when you deny his right to everything, you have denied your own. You therefore will not recognize the things you really have, denying they are there. Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the belief that loss can offer gain. Yet loss must offer loss and nothing more.
Your next consideration is the one on which the others rest. Why is the choice you make of value to you? What attracts your mind to it? What purpose does it serve? Here it is easiest of all to be deceived, for what the ego wants it fails to recognize. It does not even tell the truth as it perceives it, for it needs to keep the halo which it uses to protect its goals from tarnish and from rust, that you may see how "innocent" it is.
Yet is its camouflage a thin veneer which could deceive but those who are content to be deceived. Its goals are obvious to anyone who cares to look for them. Here is deception doubled, for the one who is deceived will not perceive that he has merely failed to gain. He will believe that he has served the ego's hidden goals.
And though he tries to keep its halo clear within his vision, yet must he perceive its tarnished edges and its rusted core. His ineffectual mistakes appear as sins to him because he looks upon the tarnish as his own, the rust a sign of deep unworthiness within himself. He who would still preserve the ego's goals and serve them as his own makes no mistakes according to the dictates of his guide. This guidance teaches it is error to believe that sins are but mistakes, for who would suffer for his sins if this were so?
And so we come to the criterion for choice which is the hardest to believe, because its obviousness is overlaid with many levels of obscurity. If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed the ego's goals to come between the real alternatives, and thus you do not realize there are but two. And the alternative you think you chose seems fearful and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is.
All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. Choosing is easy just because of this. Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult. What is the gain to you in learning this? It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain.
Heaven Itself is reached by empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own. We will attempt to reach this state today, with self-deception laid aside, and with an honest willingness to value but the truly valuable and the real.
Our two extended practice periods of fifteen minutes will begin with this:
"I will not value what is valueless,
And only what has value do I seek,
For only that do I desire to find."
And then receive what waits for everyone who reaches, unencumbered, to the gate of Heaven, which swings open as he comes. Should you begin to let yourself collect some needless burdens, or believe you see some difficult decisions facing you, be quick to answer with this simple thought:
"I will not value what is valueless,
For what is valuable belongs to me."
All that is needful is to train our minds to overlook all little, senseless aims, and to remember that our goal is God. His memory is hidden in our minds, obscured but by our pointless little goals which offer nothing and do not exist. Shall we continue to allow God's grace to shine in unawareness, while the toys and trinkets of the world are sought instead? God is our only goal, our only Love. We have no aim but to remember Him.
"Our goal is but to follow in the way that leads to You. We have no goal but this. What could we want but to remember You? What could we seek but our Identity?"
Trusting your brothers is essential to establishing and holding up your faith in your ability to transcend doubt and lack of sure conviction in yourself. When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by what you have perceived in him. You do not look beyond his errors. Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to your awareness of the Self that lies beyond your own mistakes, and past his seeming sins as well as yours.
Perception has a focus. It is this which gives consistency to what you see. Change but this focus, and what you behold will change accordingly. Your vision now will shift to give support to the intent which has replaced the one you held before. Remove your focus on your brother's sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in you. And you will not transcend their sight and see the sinlessness that lies beyond.
Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such little focuses give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent. We instruct our minds that it is this we seek and only this, for just a little while. We do not care about our future goals, and what we saw an instant previous has no concern for us within this interval of time wherein we practice changing our intent. We seek for innocence and nothing else. We seek for it with no concern but now.
A major hazard to success has been involvement with your past and future goals. You have been quite preoccupied with how extremely different the goals this course is advocating are from those you held before. And you have also been dismayed by the depressing and restricting thought that, even if you should succeed, you will inevitably lose your way again.
How could this matter? For the past is gone; the future but imagined. These concerns are but defenses against present change of focus in perception. Nothing more. We lay these pointless limitations by a little while. We do not look to past beliefs, and what we will believe will not intrude upon us now. We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within.
We recognize that we have lost this goal if anger blocks our way in any form. And if a brother's sins occur to us, our narrowed focus will restrict our sight and turn our eyes upon our own mistakes, which we will magnify and call our "sins". So, for a little while, without regard to past or future, should such blocks arise, we will transcend them with instructions to our minds to change their focus, as we say:
"It is not this that I would look upon.
I trust my brothers, who are one with me."
And we will also use these thoughts to keep us safe throughout the day. We do not seek for long-range goals. As each obstruction seems to block the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an instant from the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and uncorrected will remain.
Nor do we ask for fantasies. For what we seek to look upon is really there. And as our focus goes beyond mistakes, we will behold a wholly sinless world. When seeing this is all we want to see, when this is all we seek for in the name of true perception, are the eyes of Christ inevitably ours. And the love He feels for us becomes our own as well. This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves.
The world which once proclaimed our sins becomes the proof that we are sinless. And our love for everyone we look upon attests to our remembrance of the holy Self Which knows no sin, and never could conceive of anything without Its sinlessness.
We seek for this remembrance as we turn our minds to practicing today. We look neither ahead nor backwards. We look straight into the present. And we give our trust to the experience we ask for now. Our sinlessness is but the Will of God. This instant is our willing one with His.
Psychotherapy is a process that changes the view of the self. At best this "new" self is a more beneficent self-concept, but psychotherapy can hardly be expected to establish reality. That is not its function. If it can make way for reality, it has achieved its ultimate success. Its whole function, in the end, is to help the patient deal with one fundamental error; the belief that anger brings him something he really wants, and that by justifying attack he is protecting himself. To whatever extent he comes to realize that this is mistaken, to that extent is he truly saved.
Patients do not enter the therapeutic relationship with this goal in mind. On the contrary, such concepts mean little to them, or they would not need help. Their aim is to be able to retain their self-concept exactly as it is, but without the suffering that it entails. Their whole equilibrium rests on the insane belief that this is possible. And because to the sane mind it is so clearly impossible, what they seek is magic. In illusions the impossible is easily accomplished, but only at the cost of making illusions true. The patient has already paid this price. Now he wants a "better" illusion.
At the beginning, then, the patient's goal and the therapist's are at variance. The therapist as well as the patient may cherish false self-concepts, but their respective perceptions of "improvement" still must differ. The patient hopes to learn how to get the changes he wants without changing his self-concept to any significant extent. He hopes, in fact, to stabilize it sufficiently to include within it the magical powers he seeks in psychotherapy. He wants to make the vulnerable invulnerable and the finite limitless. The self he sees is his god, and he seeks only to serve it better.
Regardless of how advanced the therapist himself may be, he must want to change the patient's self-concept in some way that he believes is real. The task of therapy is one of reconciling these differences. Hopefully, both will learn to give up their original goals, for it is only in relationships that salvation can be found. At the beginning, it is inevitable that patients and therapists alike accept unrealistic goals not completely free of magical overtones. They are finally given up in the minds of both.
We said that prayer is always for yourself, and this is true. Why, then, should you pray for others at all? And if you should, how should you do it? Praying for others, if rightly understood, becomes a means for lifting your projections of guilt from your brother, and enabling you to recognize it is not he who is hurting you. The poisonous thought that he IS your enemy, your evil counterpart, your nemesis, must be relinquished before YOU can be saved from guilt. For this the means is prayer, of rising power and with ascending goals, until it reaches even up to God.
The earlier forms of prayer, at the bottom of the ladder, will not be free from envy and even malice. They call for vengeance, not for love. Nor do they come from one who understands that they are calls for death, made out of fear by those who cherish guilt. They call upon a vengeful god, and it is he who seems to answer them. Hell cannot be asked for another, and then escaped by him who asks for this. Only those who are in hell can ask for hell. Those who have been forgiven, and who have accepted their forgiveness, could never make a prayer like this.
At this level, then, the learning goal must be to recognize that prayer will bring an answer only in the form in which the prayer was made. This is enough. From here it will be an easy step to the next level. It begins with this:
"What I have asked for for my brother is not what I would have. Thus have I made of him my enemy."
It is apparent that this step cannot be reached by anyone who sees no value nor advantage to himself in setting others free. This may be long delayed, because this step may seem to be dangerous instead of merciful. To the guilty there seems indeed to be a real advantage in having enemies, and this imagined gain must go, if enemies are to be set free. Guilt must be given up, and not concealed. Nor can it be without some pain, and a glimpse of the merciful nature of this step may for some time be followed by a deep retreat into fear. For fear's defenses are fearful in themselves, and when they are recognized they bring their fear with them.
Yet what advantage has an illusion of escape ever brought a prisoner? His real escape from guilt can lie only in the recognition that the guilt has gone. And how can this be recognized as long as he hides it in another, and does not see it as his own? Fear of escape makes it difficult to welcome freedom, and to make a jailer of an enemy seems to be safety. How, then, can he be released without an insane fear for yourself? You have made of him your salvation and your escape from guilt. Your investment in this escape is heavy, and your fear of letting go is strong.
Stand still an instant, now, and think what you have done. Do not forget that it is you who did it, and who can therefore let it go. Hold out your hand; this enemy has come to bless you. Take his blessing and feel how your heart is lifted and your fear released. Do not hold on to it, nor onto him. He is a Son of God, along with you. He is no jailer, but a messenger of Christ. Be this to him, that you may see him thus.
It is not easy to realize that prayers for things, for status, for external "gifts" of any kind, are always made to set up jailers and to hide from guilt. Yet these things, too, are used for goals that substitute for God, and therefore distort the purpose of prayer. The desire for them IS the prayer. One need not ask explicitly. The goal of God is lost in the quest for lesser goals of any kind, and prayer becomes requests for enemies. The power of prayer can be quite clearly recognized even in this. No-one who wants an enemy will fail to find one. But just as surely will he lose the only true goal that is given him. Think of the cost, and understand it well. All other goals are at the cost of God.
"Father, I give You all my thoughts today. I would have none of mine. In place of them give me Your own. I give You all my acts as well, that I may do Your Will instead of seeking goals which cannot be obtained, and wasting time in vain imaginings. Today I come to You. I will step back and merely follow You. Be You the Guide, and I the follower who questions not the wisdom of the Infinite, nor Love Whose tenderness I cannot comprehend, but which is yet Your perfect gift to me."
Today we have one Guide to lead us on. And as we walk together, we will give this day to Him with no reserve at all. This is His day. And so it is a day of countless gifts and mercies unto us.
If I forget my goal, I can be but confused, unsure of what I am, and thus conflicted in my actions. No one can serve contradicting goals and serve them well. Nor can he function without deep distress and great depression. Let us therefore be determined to remember what we want today, that we may unify our thoughts and actions meaningfully, and achieve only what God would have us do today.
"Father, forgiveness is Your chosen means for our salvation. Let us not forget that we can have no will but Yours today. And thus our purpose must be Yours as well, if we would reach the peace You will for us."
In this world Heaven is a choice, because here we believe there are alternatives to choose between. We think that all things have an opposite, and what we want we choose. If Heaven exists there must be hell as well, for contradiction is the way we make what we perceive and what we think is real.
Creation knows no opposite. But here is opposition part of being "real." It is this strange perception of the truth which makes the choice of Heaven seem to be the same as the relinquishment of hell. It is not really thus. Yet what is true in God's creation cannot enter here, until it is reflected in some form the world can understand. Truth cannot come where it could only be perceived with fear, for this would be the error truth can be brought to illusions. Opposition makes the truth unwelcome, and it cannot come.
Choice is the obvious escape from what appears as opposites. Decision lets one of the conflicting goals become the aim of effort and expenditure of time. Without decision time is but a waste and effort dissipated. It is spent for nothing in return. And time goes by without results. There is no sense of gain, for nothing is accomplished; nothing learned.
You need to be reminded that you think a thousand choices are confronting you when there is really only one to make. And even this but seems to be a choice. Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. You make but one. And when that one is made, you will perceive it was no choice at all, for truth is true and nothing else is real. There is no opposite to choose instead. There is no contradiction to the truth.
Choosing depends on learning. But the truth cannot be learned but only recognized. In recognition its acceptance lies, and as it is accepted it is known. But knowledge is beyond the goals we seek to teach within the framework of this course. Ours are teaching goals to be attained through learning how to reach them, what they are, and what they offer you. Decisions are the outcome of your learning, for they rest on what you have accepted as the truth of what you are and what your needs must be.
In this insanely complicated world Heaven appears to take the form of choice, rather than merely being what it is. Of all the choices you have tried to make this is the simplest, most definitive, the prototype of all the rest, the one which settles all decisions. If you could decide the rest, this one remains unsolved. But when you solve this one the others are resolved with it, for all decisions but conceal this one by taking different forms. Here is the final and the only choice in which is truth accepted or denied.
So we begin today considering the choice that time was made to help us make. Such is its holy purpose, now transformed from the intent you gave it; that it be a means for demonstrating hell is real, hope changes to despair, and life itself must in the and be overcome by death. In death alone are opposites resolved, for ending opposition is to die. And thus salvation must be seen as death, for life is seen as conflict. To resolve the conflict is to end your life as well.
These mad beliefs can gain unconscious hold of great intensity, and grip the mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas about its own protection. It must be saved from salvation, threatened to be safe, and magically armored against truth. And these decisions are made unaware to keep them safely undisturbed, apart from question and from reason and from doubt.
Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this time with Heaven's help, and all mistakes in judgment which the mind had made before are open to correction as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized.
The conscious choice of Heaven is as sure as is the ending of the fear of hell, when it is raised from its protective shield of unawareness, and is brought to light. Who can decide between the clearly seen and the unrecognized? Yet who can fail to make a choice between alternatives when only one is seen as valuable; the other as a wholly worthless thing, a but imagined source of guilt and pain?
Who hesitates to make a choice like this? And shall we hesitate to choose today? We make the choice for Heaven as we wake, and spend five minutes making sure that we have made the one decision that is sane. We recognize we make a conscious choice between what has existence and what has nothing but an appearance of the truth. Its pseudo-being brought to what is real, is flimsy and transparent in the light. It holds no terror now, for what was made enormous, vengeful, pitiless with hate, demands obscurity for fear to be invested there. Now it is recognized as but a foolish, trivial mistake.
Before we close our eyes in sleep tonight we reaffirm the choice that we have made each hour in between. And now we give the last five minutes of our waking day to the decision with which we awoke. As every hour passed, we have declared our choice again in a brief quiet time devoted to maintaining sanity. And finally we close the day with this, acknowledging we chose but what we want:
"Heaven is the decision I must make.
I make it now and will not change my mind,
Because it is the only thing I want."
The idea for today reaffirms your commitment to salvation. It also reminds you that you have no other function than this. Both of these thoughts are obviously necessary for a total commitment. Salvation cannot be the only purpose you hold while you still cherish others. The full acceptance of salvation as your only function necessarily entails two phases; the recognition of salvation as your function, and the relinquishment of all the other goals you have invented for yourself.
This is the only way in which you can take your rightful place among the Saviors of the world. This is the only way in which you can say and mean, "My only function is the one God gave me." This is the only way in which you can find peace of mind.
Today, and for a number of days to follow, set aside ten to fifteen minutes for a more sustained practice period in which you try to understand and accept what today's idea really means. It offers you escape from all your perceived difficulties. It places the key to the door to peace, which you have closed upon yourself, in your own hands. It gives you the answer to all the searching you have done since time began.
Try, if possible, to undertake the daily extended practice periods at approximately the same time each day. Try, also, to determine this time today in advance, and then adhere to it as closely as possible. The purpose of this is to arrange your day so that you have set apart the time for God, as well as for all the trivial purposes and goals you will pursue. This is part of the long range disciplinary training which your mind needs so that the Holy Spirit can use it consistently for the purpose He shares with you.
For this practice period, begin by reviewing the idea for today. Then close your eyes, repeat the idea to yourself once again, and watch your mind carefully to catch whatever thoughts cross it. At first, make no attempt to concentrate only on thoughts related to the idea for today. Rather, try to uncover each one that arises to interfere with it. Note each one as it comes to you with as little involvement or concern as possible, dismissing them by telling yourself:
"This thought reflects a goal which is preventing me from
accepting my only function."
After a while, interfering thoughts will become harder to find. Try, however, to continue a minute or so longer, attempting to catch a few of the idle thoughts which escaped your attention before, but do not strain or make undue effort in doing this. Then tell yourself:
"On this clean slate, let my true function be written for me."
You need not use these exact words, but try to get a sense of being willing to have your illusions of purpose be replaced by truth.
Finally, repeat the idea for today once more and devote the rest of the practice period to trying to focus on its importance to you; the relief its acceptance will bring you by resolving your conflicts once and for all, and the extent to which you really want salvation in spite of your own foolish ideas to the contrary.
In the shorter practice periods, which should be undertaken at least once an hour, use this form in applying today's idea:
"My only function is the one God gave me.
I want no other and I have no other."
Sometimes close your eyes as you practice, and sometimes keep them open and look about you. It is what you see now that will be totally changed when you accept today's idea completely.
65) "My only function is the one God gave me."
I have no function but the one God gave me. This recognition releases me from all conflict, because it means I cannot have conflicting goals. With one purpose only, I am always certain what to do, what to say, and what to think. All doubt must disappear and I acknowledge that my only function is the one God gave me.
More specific applications of this idea might take these forms:
"My perception of this does not change my function."
"This does not give me a function other than the one God gave me."
"Let me not use this to justify a function God did not give to me."
66) "My happiness and my function are one."
All things that come from God are one. They come from Oneness, and must be received as one. Fulfilling my function is my happiness because both come from the same Source. And I must learn to recognize what makes me happy if I would find happiness.
Some useful forms for specific applications of this idea are:
"This cannot separate my happiness from my function."
"The oneness of my happiness and my function remains wholly
unaffected by this."
"Nothing, including this, can justify the illusion of happiness apart from my function."
Here is the statement that will one day take all arrogance away from every mind. Here is the thought of true humility which holds no function as your own but that which has been given you. It offers your acceptance of a part assigned to you, without insisting on another role. It does not judge your proper role. It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven's peace.
Let us not fight our function. We did not establish it. It is not our idea. The means are given us by which it will be perfectly accomplished. All that we are asked to do is to accept our part in genuine humility, and not deny with self-deceiving arrogance that we are worthy. What is given us to do we have the strength to do. Our minds are suited perfectly to take the part assigned to us by One Who knows us well.
Today's idea may seem quite sobering until you see its meaning. All it says is that your Father still remembers you, and offers you the perfect trust He holds in you who are His Son. It does not ask that you be different in any way from what you are. What could humility request but this? And what could arrogance deny but this? Today we will not shrink from our assignment on the specious grounds that modesty is outraged. It is pride that would deny the Call of God Himself.
All false humility we lay aside today, that we may listen to God's Voice reveal to us what He would have us do. We do not doubt our adequacy for the function He will offer us. We will be certain only that He knows our strengths, our wisdom and our holiness. And if He deems us worthy, so we are. It is but arrogance that judges otherwise.
There is one way, and only one, to be released from the imprisonment your plan to prove the false is true has brought to you. Accept the plan you did not make instead. Judge not your value to it. If God's Voice assures you that salvation needs your part, and that the whole depends on you, be sure that it is so. The arrogant must cling to words, afraid to go beyond them to experience which might affront their stance. Yet are the humble free to hear the Voice Which tells them what they are and what to do.
Arrogance makes an image of yourself that is not real. It is this image which quails and retreats in terror as the Voice for God assures you that you have the strength, the wisdom and the holiness to go beyond all images. You are not weak, as is the image of yourself. You are not ignorant and helpless. Sin can not tarnish the truth in you, and misery can come not near the holy home of God.
All this the Voice for God relates to you. And as He speaks, the image trembles and seeks to attack the threat it does not know, sensing its basis crumble. Let it go. Salvation of the world depends on you, and not upon this little pile of dust. What can it tell the holy Son of God? Why need he be concerned with it at all?
And so we find our peace. We will accept the function God has given us, for all illusions rest upon the weird belief that we can make another for ourselves. Our self-made roles are shifting, and they seem to change from mourner to ecstatic bliss of love and loving. We can laugh or weep, and greet the day with welcome or with tears. Our very being seems to change as we experience a thousand shifts in mood, and our emotions raise us high indeed or dash us to the ground in hopelessness.
Is this the Son of God? Could He create such instability and call it Son? He Who is changeless shares His attributes with His creation. All the images His Son appears to make have no effect on what he is. They blow across his mind like wind-swept leaves that form a patterning an instant, break apart to group again, and scamper off. Or like mirages seen above a desert, rising from the dust.
These unsubstantial images will go, and leave your mind unclouded and serene when you accept the function given you. The images you make give rise to but conflicting goals, impermanent and vague, uncertain and ambiguous. Who could be constant in his efforts, or direct his energies and concentrated drive toward goals like these? The functions which the world esteems are so uncertain that they change ten times an hour at their most secure. What hope of gain can rest on goals like this?
In lovely contrast, certain as the sun's return each morning to dispel the night, your truly given function stands out clear and wholly unambiguous. There is no doubt of its validity. It comes from One Who knows no error. And His Voice is certain of Its messages. They will not change nor be in conflict. All of them point to one goal, and one you can attain. Your plan may be impossible, but God's can never fail because He is its Source.
Do as His Voice directs. And if It asks a thing of you that seems impossible, remember Who it is that asks and who would make denial. Then consider this; which is more likely to be right? The Voice that speaks for the Creator of all things, Who knows all things exactly as they are, or a distorted image of yourself, confused, bewildered, inconsistent and unsure of everything? Let not its voice direct you. Hear instead a certain Voice Which tells you of a function given you by your Creator, Who remembers you and urges that you now remember Him.
His gentle Voice is calling from the known to the unknowing. He would comfort you although He knows no sorrow. He would make a restitution though He is complete; a gift to you although He knows that you have everything already. He has Thoughts which answer every need His Son perceives, although He sees them not. For Love must give, and what is given in His Name takes on the form most useful in a world of form.
These are the forms which never can deceive, although they come from Formlessness Itself. Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still. Salvation of the world depends on you who can forgive. Such is your function here.
Would God have left the meaning of the world to YOUR interpretation? If He had, it HAS no meaning. For it cannot be that meaning changes constantly, and yet is true. The Holy Spirit looks upon the world as with ONE purpose, changelessly established. And NO situation can affect its aim, but MUST be in accord with it. For ONLY if its aim could change with every situation could each one be OPEN to interpretation which is different every time you think of it. You ADD an element into the script you write for every minute in the day, and all that happens now means something else. You TAKE AWAY another element, and every meaning shifts accordingly.
What do your scripts reflect except your plans for what the day SHOULD be? And thus you judge disaster and success, advance, retreat, and gain and loss. These judgments all are made according to the roles the script assigns. The fact they have no meaning in themselves is DEMONSTRATED by the ease with which these labels change with other judgments made on different aspects of experience. And then, in looking back, you think you see ANOTHER meaning in what went before. What have you really done, except to show there WAS no meaning there? And YOU assigned a meaning in the light of goals that change, with EVERY meaning shifting as they change.
Only a CONSTANT purpose can endow events with stable meaning. But it must ACCORD ONE MEANING TO THEM ALL. If they are given DIFFERENT meanings, it MUST mean that they reflect but different purposes, and this is ALL the meaning that they have. Can this BE meaning? Can confusion BE what meaning means? Perception CANNOT be in constant flux, and make allowance for stability of meaning ANYWHERE. Fear is a judgment NEVER justified. Its presence has no meaning but to show you wrote a fearful script, and are afraid accordingly. But NOT because the thing you fear has fearful meaning in itself.
A common purpose is the ONLY means whereby perception can be stabilized, and ONE interpretation given to the world and all experiences here. In this shared purpose is one meaning shared by everyone and everything you see. You do not have to judge, for you have learned one meaning has been GIVEN everything, and you are GLAD to see it everywhere. It cannot change BECAUSE you would perceive it everywhere, unchanged by circumstance. And so you OFFER it to all events, and LET them offer you stability. Escape from judgment simply lies in this; - All things have but one purpose, which you share with all the world. And nothing IN the world can BE opposed to it, for it belongs TO everything, as it belongs to you.
In SINGLE purpose is the end of all ideas of sacrifice, which MUST assume a DIFFERENT purpose for the one who gains and him who loses. There could BE no thought of sacrifice apart from this idea. And it IS this idea of different goals which makes perception shift and meaning change. In one united goal does this become impossible, for your AGREEMENT makes interpretation stabilize and last. How can communication REALLY be established, while the symbols which are used mean different things? The Holy Spirit's goal gives ONE interpretation, meaningful to you AND to your brother. Thus can you communicate with him, and he with you. In symbols which you BOTH can understand, the sacrifice of meaning is undone.
All sacrifice entails the LOSS of your ability to see relationships AMONG events. And, looked at SEPARATELY, they HAVE no meaning. For there is no light by which they can be seen and understood. They HAVE no purpose. And what they are FOR cannot BE seen. In any thought of loss there IS no meaning. No-one has agreed with you on what it means. It is a part of a distorted script, which cannot be interpreted with meaning. It must be forever unintelligible. This is NOT communication. Your dark dreams are but the senseless, isolated scripts you write in sleep. Look not to separate dreams for meaning. ONLY dreams of pardon can be shared. They mean the same for BOTH of you.
Do not interpret out of solitude, for what you see means nothing. It will shift in what it stands for, and you will believe the world is an uncertain place, in which you walk in danger and uncertainty. It is but your INTERPRETATIONS which are lacking in stability. And they are NOT in line with what you really are. This is a state so seemingly unsafe that fear MUST rise. Do not continue thus, my brothers. We have ONE Interpreter. And through His use of symbols are we joined, so that they mean the same to ALL of us. Our common language lets us speak to all our brothers, and to understand with them forgiveness has been given to us all, and thus we CAN communicate again.
169) "By grace I live. By grace I am released."
"God is but Love, and therefore so am I."
170) "There is no cruelty in God and none in me."
"God is but Love, and therefore so am I."
Our next few lessons make a special point of firming up your willingness to make your weak commitment strong; your scattered goals blend into one intent. You are not asked for total dedication all the time, as yet. But you are asked to practice now in order to attain the sense of peace such unified commitment will bestow, if only intermittently. It is experiencing this which makes it sure that you will give your total willingness to following the way the course sets forth.
Our lessons now are geared specifically to widening horizons, and direct approaches to the special blocks which keep your vision narrow, and too limited to let you see the value of our goal. We are attempting now to lift these blocks, however briefly. Words alone can not convey the sense of liberation which their lifting brings. But the experience of freedom and of peace that comes as you give up your tight control of what you see speaks for itself. Your motivation will be so intensified that words become of little consequence. You will be sure of what you want, and what is valueless.
And so we start our journey beyond words by concentrating first on what impedes our progress still. Experience of what exists beyond defensiveness remains beyond achievement while it is denied. It may be there, but you cannot accept its presence. So we now attempt to go past all defenses for a little while each day. No more than this is asked because no more than this is needed. It will be enough to guarantee the rest will come.
Failure is all about you while you seek for goals which cannot be achieved. You look for permanence in the impermanent; for love where there is none; for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death. Who could succeed where contradiction is the setting of his searching, and the place to which he comes to find stability?
Goals which are meaningless are not attained. There is no way to reach them, for the means by which you strive for them are meaningless as they are. Who can use such senseless means and hope through them to gain in anything? Where can they lead? And what could they achieve that offers any hope of being real? Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death. You look for safety and security while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you made.
Yet searching is inevitable here. For this you came, and you will surely do the thing you came for. But the world can not dictate the goal for which you search unless you give it power to do so. Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one which comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want.
Be glad that search you must. Be glad as well to learn you search for Heaven, and must find the goal you really want. No one can fail to want this goal, and reach it in the end. God's Son cannot seek vainly, though he try to force delay, deceive himself, and think that it is hell he seeks. When he is wrong he finds correction, when he wanders off he is led back to his appointed task.
No one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. You will find Heaven. Everything you seek but this will fall away, yet not because it has been taken from you. It will go because you do not want it. You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness.
Why wait for Heaven? It is here today. Time is the great illusion it is past or in the future. Yet this cannot be if it is where God wills His Son to be. How could the Will of God be in the past or yet to happen? What He wills is now, without a past and wholly futureless. It is as far removed from time as is a tiny candle from a distant star, or what you chose from what you really want.
Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.
God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two. How could it be His Son could be in hell when God Himself established him in Heaven? Could he lose what the Eternal Will has given him to be his home forever? Let us not try longer to impose an alien will upon His single purpose. He is here because He Wills to be, and what He wills is present now beyond the reach of time.
Today we will not choose a paradox in place of truth. How could the Son of God make time to take away the Will of God? He thus denies himself, and contradicts what has no opposite. He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven, and believes that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find. Leave foolish thoughts like these behind today, and turn your mind to true ideas instead. No one can fail who asks to reach the truth, and it is truth we ask to reach today.
We will devote ten minutes to this goal three times today, and we will ask to see the rising of the real world to replace the foolish images that we held dear, with true ideas arising in the place of thoughts which have no meaning, no effect, and neither source nor substance in the truth. This we acknowledge as we start upon our practice periods. Begin with this:
"I ask to see a different world, and think
A different kind of thoughts from those I made.
The world I seek I did not make alone,
The thoughts I want to think are not my own."
For several minutes watch your mind and see, although your eyes are closed, the senseless world you think is real. Review the thoughts as well which are compatible with such a world, and which you think are true. Then let them go, and sink below them to the holy place where they can enter not. There is a door beneath them in your mind which you could not completely lock to hide what lies beyond.
Seek for that door and find it. But before you try to open it, remind yourself no one can fail who asks to reach the truth, and it is this request you make today. Nothing but this has any meaning now; no other goal is valued now nor sought; nothing before this door you really want, and only what lies past it do you seek.
Put out your hand and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams.
You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you that you might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all your searching here and all the seeking of the world, which end together as you pass beyond the door.
Remember often that today should be a time of special gladness, and refrain from dismal thoughts and meaningless laments. Salvation's time has come. Today is set by Heaven Itself to be a time of grace for you and for the world. If you forget this happy fact, remind yourself with this:
"Today I seek and find all that I want.
"My single purpose offers it to me.
No one can fail who asks to reach the truth."
Prayer is a way to true humility. But here again it rises up, slowly at first, and grows in strength and love and holiness. Let it but leave the ground where it begins to rise to God, and true humility will come at last to grace the mind that thought it was alone and stood against the world. Humility brings peace because it does not claim that you must rule the universe, nor judge all things as you would have them be. All little gods it gladly lays aside, not in resentment, but in honesty and recognition that they did not serve.
Illusions and humility have goals so far apart they cannot coexist, nor share a dwelling place. Where one has come the other disappears. The truly humble have no goal but God because they need no idols, and defense no longer has a purpose. Enemies are useless now, because humility does not oppose. It does not hide in shame because it is content with what it is, knowing creation is the Will of God. Its selflessness is Self, and this it sees in every meeting, where it gladly joins with every Son of God, whose purity it recognizes that it shares with him. Now prayer is lifted from the world of things, of bodies, and of gods of every kind, and you can rest in holiness at last. Humility has taught you how to understand your glory as God's Son, and recognize the arrogance of sin. A dream has veiled the face of Christ from you. Now can you look upon His sinlessness.
High has the ladder risen. You have come almost to Heaven. There is little more to learn before the journey is complete. Now you say to everyone who joins in prayer with you:
"I cannot go without you, for you are a part of me."
And so he is in truth. Now must you pray only for what you truly share with him. For you have understood he never left, and you, who seemed alone, are one with him.
The ladder ends with this, for learning is no longer needed. Now you stand before the gate of Heaven, and your brother stands beside you there. The lawns are deep and still, for here the place appointed for the time when you should come has waited long for you. Here will time end forever. At this gate eternity itself will join with you. Prayer has become what it was meant to be, for you have recognized the Christ in you.
The psychotherapist is a leader in the sense that he walks slightly ahead of the patient, and helps him to avoid a few of the pitfalls along the road by seeing them first. Ideally, he is also a follower, for One should walk ahead of him to give him light to see. Without this One, both will merely stumble blindly on to nowhere. It is, however, impossible that this One be wholly absent if the goal is healing. He may, however, not be recognized. And so the little light that can be then accepted is all there is to light the way to truth.
Healing is limited by the limitations of the psychotherapist, as it is limited by those of the patient. The aim of the process, therefore, is to transcend these limits. Neither can do this alone, but when they join, the potentiality for transcending all limitations has been given them. Now the extent of their success depends on how much of this potentiality they are willing to use. The willingness may come from either one at the beginning, and as the other shares it, it will grow. Progress becomes a matter of decision; it can reach almost to Heaven or go no further than a step or two from hell.
It is quite possible for psychotherapy to seem to fail. It is even possible for the result to look like retrogression. But in the end there must be some success. One asks for help; another hears and tries to answer in the form of help. This is the formula for salvation, and must heal. Divided goals alone can interfere with perfect healing. One wholly egoless therapist could heal the world without a word, merely by being there. No-one need see him or talk to him or even know of his existence. His simple Presence is enough to heal.
The ideal therapist is one with Christ. But healing is a process, not a fact. The therapist cannot progress without the patient, and the patient cannot be ready to receive the Christ or he could not be sick. In a sense, the egoless psychotherapist is an abstraction that stands at the end of the process of healing, too advanced to believe in sickness and too near to God to keep his feet on earth. Now he can help through those in need of help, for thus he carries out the plan established for salvation. The psychotherapist becomes his patient, working through other patients to express his thoughts as he receives them from the Mind of Christ.
Seek you no further. You will not find peace except the peace of God. Accept this fact, and save yourself the agony of yet more bitter disappointments, bleak despair, and sense of icy hopelessness and doubt. Seek you no further. There is nothing else for you to find except the peace of God, unless you seek for misery and pain.
This is the final point to which each one must come at last, to lay aside all hope of finding happiness where there is none; of being saved by what can only hurt; of making peace of chaos, joy of pain and Heaven out of hell. Attempt no more to win through losing, nor to die to live. You cannot but be asking for defeat.
Yet you can ask as easily for love, for happiness, and for eternal life in peace that has no ending. Ask for this, and you can only win. To ask for what you have already must succeed. To ask that what is false be true can only fail. Forgive yourself for vain imaginings, and seek no longer what you cannot find. For what could be more foolish than to seek and seek and seek again for hell, when you have but to look with open eyes to find that Heaven lies before you, through a door which opens easily to welcome you?
Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places, and in alien forms which have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here. But it is given you to find the means whereby the world no longer seems to be a prison house for you or anyone.
Freedom is given you where you beheld but chains and iron doors. For you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape. You will be bound 'til all the world is seen by you as blessed, and everyone made free of your mistakes and honored as he is. You made him not; no more yourself. And as you free the one, the other is accepted as he is.
What does forgiveness do? In truth it has no function and does nothing, for it is unknown in Heaven. It is only hell where it is needed, and where it must serve a mighty function. Is not the escape of God's beloved Son from evil dreams which he imagines, yet believes are true, a worthy purpose? Who could hope for more while there appears to be a choice to make between success and failure; love and fear?
There is no peace except the peace of God because He has one Son, who cannot make a world in opposition to God's Will and to his own, which is the same as His. What could he hope to find in such a world? It cannot have reality because it never was created. Is it here that he would seek for peace? Or must he see that, as he looks on it, the world can but deceive? Yet can he learn to look on it another way, and find the peace of God.
Peace is the bridge which everyone will cross to leave this world behind. But it begins within the world perceived as different, and leading from this fresh perception to the gate of Heaven and the way beyond. Peace is the answer to conflicting goals, to senseless journeys, frantic vain pursuits and meaningless endeavors. Now the way is easy, sloping gently toward the bridge where freedom lies within the peace of God.
Let us not lose our way again today. We go to Heaven, and the path is straight. Only if you attempt to wander can there be delay, and needless wasted time on thorny byways. God alone is sure, and He will guide your footsteps. He will not desert His Son in need, nor let him stray forever from his home. The Father calls; the Son will hear. And that is all there is to what appears to be a world apart from God, where bodies have reality.
Now is there silence. Seek no further. You have come to where the road is carpeted with leaves of false desires, fallen from the trees of hopelessness you sought before. Now are they underfoot. And you look up and on toward Heaven, with the body's eyes but serving for an instant longer now. Peace is already recognized at last, and you can feel its soft embrace surround your heart and mind with comfort and with love.
Today we seek no idols. Peace can not be found in them. The peace of God is ours, and only this will we accept and want. Peace be to us today. For we have found a simple, happy way to leave the world of ambiguity, and to replace our shifting goals and solitary dreams with single purpose and companionship. For peace is union if it be of God. We seek no further. We are close to home, and draw still nearer every time we say:
"There is no peace except the peace of God,
And I am glad and thankful it is so."
Today's idea continues with the thought that joy and peace are not but idle dreams. They are your right, because of what you are. They come to you from God, Who cannot fail to give you what He wills. Yet must there be a place made ready to receive His gifts. They are not welcomed gladly by a mind which has instead received the gifts it made where His belong, as substitutes for them.
Today we would remove all meaningless and self-made gifts which we have placed upon the holy altar where God's gifts belong. These are the gifts which are our own in truth. These are the gifts which we inherited before time was, and which will still be ours when time has passed into eternity. These are the gifts which are within us now, for they are timeless. And we need not wait to have them. They belong to us today. Therefore we will to have them now, and know in choosing them in place of what we made, we but unite our will with what God wills, and recognize the same as being One.
Our longer practice periods today, the hourly five minutes given to the truth for your salvation, should begin with this:
"I seek but what belongs to me in truth."
And joy and peace are my inheritance."
Then lay aside the conflicts of the world which offer other gifts and other goals made of illusions, witnessed to by them, and sought for only in a world of dreams.
All this we lay aside, and seek instead that which is truly ours, as we ask to recognize what God has given us. We clear a holy place within our minds before His altar, where His gifts of peace and joy are welcome, and to which we come to find what has been given us by Him. We come in confidence today, aware that what belongs to us in truth is what He gives. And we would wish for nothing else, for nothing else belongs to us in truth.
So do we clear the way for Him today by simply recognizing that His Will is done already, and that joy and peace belong to us as His eternal gifts. We will not let ourselves lose sight of them between the times we come to seek for them where He has laid them. This reminder will we bring to mind as often as we can:
"I seek but what belongs to me in truth.
God's gifts of joy and peace are all I want."
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.
Yet the ideal outcome is rarely achieved. But psychotherapy begins with the realization that healing is of the mind, and in psychotherapy those have come together who believe this. It may be they will not get much further, for no-one learns beyond his own readiness. Yet levels of readiness change, and when therapist or patient has reached the next one, there will be a relationship held out to them that meets the changing need. Perhaps they will come together again and advance in the same relationship, making it holier. Or perhaps each of them will enter into another commitment. Be assured of this; each will progress. Retrogression is temporary. The overall direction is one of progress toward the truth.
Psychotherapy itself cannot be creative. This is one of the errors which the ego fosters; that it is capable of true change, and therefore of true creativity. When we speak of "the saving illusion" or "the final dream," this is not what we mean, but here is the ego's last defense. "Resistance" is its way of looking at things; its interpretation of "progress" and "growth." These interpretations will be wrong of necessity, because they are delusional. The "changes" the ego seeks to make are not really changes. They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different. Illusions are illusions; truth is truth.
Resistance as defined here can be characteristic of a therapist as well as of a patient. Either way, it sets a limit on psychotherapy because it restricts its aims. Nor can the Holy Spirit fight against the intrusions of the ego on the therapeutic process. But He will wait, and His patience is infinite. His goal is wholly undivided always. Whatever resolutions patient and therapist reach in connection with their own divergent goals, they cannot become completely reconciled as one until they join with His. Only then is all conflict over, for only then can there be certainty.
Ideally, psychotherapy is a series of holy encounters in which brothers meet to bless each other and to receive the peace of God. And this will one day come to pass for every "patient" on the face of this earth, for who except a patient could possibly have come here? The therapist is only a somewhat more specialized Teacher of God. He learns through teaching, and the more advanced he is the more he teaches and the more he learns. But whatever stage he is in, there are patients who need him just that way. They cannot take more than he can give for now. Yet they both will find sanity at last.
The idea for today can be regarded as the central thought toward which all our exercises are directed. God's is the only will. When you have recognized this, you have recognized that your will is His. The belief that conflict is possible has gone. Peace has replaced the strange idea that you are torn by conflicting goals. As an expression of the Will of God, you have no goal but His.
There is great peace in today's idea. And the exercises for today are directed toward finding it. The idea itself is wholly true. Therefore it cannot give rise to illusions. Without illusions conflict is impossible. Let us try to recognize this today, and experience the peace this recognition brings.
Begin the longer practice periods by repeating these thoughts several times, slowly and with firm determination to understand what they mean and to hold them in mind:
"There is no will but God's.
I cannot be in conflict."
Then spend several minutes in adding some related thoughts, such as:
"I am at peace."
"Nothing can disturb me. My will is God's."
"My will and God's are one."
"God wills peace for His Son."
During this introductory phase, be sure to deal quickly with any conflict thoughts that may cross your mind. Tell yourself immediately:
"There is no will but God's
These conflict thoughts are meaningless."
If there is one conflict area which seems particularly difficult to resolve, single it out for special consideration. Think about it briefly but very specifically, identify the particular person or persons and the situation or situations involved, and tell yourself:
"There is no will but God's.
I share it with Him.
My conflicts about ____ cannot be real."
After you have cleared your mind in this way, close your eyes and try to experience the peace to which your reality entitles you. Sink into it, and feel it closing around you. There may be some temptation to mistake these attempts for withdrawal, but the difference is easily detected. If you are succeeding, you will feel a deep sense of joy and an increased alertness, rather than a feeling of drowsiness and enervation. Joy characterizes peace. By this experience will you recognize that you have reached it.
If you feel yourself slipping off into withdrawal, quickly repeat the idea for today and try again. Do this as often as necessary. There is definite gain in refusing to allow retreat into withdrawal, even if you do not experience the peace you seek.
In the shorter periods, which should be undertaken at regular and predetermined intervals today, say to yourself:
"There is no will but God's.
I seek His peace today."
Then try to find what you are seeking. A minute or two every half hour, with eyes closed if possible, would be well spent on this today.
God indeed can be reached directly, for there is no distance between Him and His Son. His awareness is in everyone's memory and His Word is written on everyone's heart. Yet this awareness and this memory can arise across the threshold of the unconscious only where all barriers to truth have been removed. In how many is this the case? Here then is the role of God's teachers. They too have not attained the necessary understanding as yet, but they have joined with others. This is what sets them apart from the world. And it is this that enables others to leave the world with them. Alone they are nothing. But in their joining is the Power of God.
There are those who have reached God directly, retaining no trace of worldly limits and remembering their own Identity perfectly. These might be called the Teachers of teachers because, although they are no longer visible, their image can yet be called upon. And they will appear when and where it is helpful for them to do so. To those to whom such appearances would be frightening, they give their ideas. No-one can call on them in vain. Nor is there anyone of whom they are unaware. All needs are known to them, and all mistakes are recognized and overlooked by them. The time will come when this is understood. And meanwhile, they give all their gifts to the teachers of God who look to them for help, asking all things in Their Name and in no other.
Sometimes a teacher of God may have a brief experience of direct union with God. In this world, it is almost impossible that this endure. It can, perhaps, be won after much devotion and dedication, and then be maintained for most of the time on earth. But this is so rare that it cannot be considered a realistic goal. If it happens, so be it. If it does not happen, so be it as well. All worldly states must be illusory. If God were reached directly in sustained awareness, the body would not be long maintained. Those who have laid the body down merely to extend their helpfulness to those remaining behind are few indeed. And they need helpers who are still in bondage and still asleep, so that by their awakening can God's Voice be heard.
Do not despair, then, because of limitations. It is your function to escape from them, but not to be without them. If you would be heard by those who suffer, you must speak their language. If you would be Saviors, you must understand what needs to be escaped. Salvation is not theoretical. Behold the problem, ask for the answer, and then accept the answer when it comes. Nor will its coming be long delayed. All the help you can accept will be provided, and not one need you have will not be met. Let us not, then, be too concerned with goals for which you are not ready. God takes you where you are and welcomes you. What more could you desire, when this is all you need?
The world you see has nothing that you need to offer you; nothing that you can use in any way, nor anything at all that serves to give you joy. Believe this thought, and you are saved from years of misery, from countless disappointments, and from hopes that turn to bitter ashes of despair. No one but must accept this thought as true, if he would leave this world behind and soar beyond its petty scope and little ways.
Each thing you value here is but a chain that binds you to the world, and it will serve no other end but this. For everything must serve the purpose you have given it until you see a different purpose there. The only purpose worthy of your mind this world contains is that you pass it by, without delaying to perceive some hope where there is none. Be you deceived no more. The world you see has nothing that you want.
Escape today the chains you place upon your mind when you perceive salvation here. For what you value you make part of you, as you perceive yourself. All things you seek to make your value greater in your sight limit you further, hide your worth from you, and add another bar across the door that leads to true awareness of your Self.
Let nothing which relates to body thoughts delay your progress to salvation, nor permit temptation to believe the world has anything you want to hold you back. Nothing is here to cherish. Nothing here is worth one instant of delay and pain; one moment of uncertainty and doubt. The worthless offers nothing. Certainty of worth cannot be found in worthlessness.
Today we practice letting go all thought of values we have given to the world. We leave it free of purposes we gave its aspects and its phases and its dreams. We hold it purposeless within our minds, and loosen it from all we wish it were. Thus do we lift the chains which bar the door to freedom from the world, and go beyond all little values and diminished goals.
Peace and be still a little while, and see how far you rise above the world when you release your mind from chains, and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home. It will be grateful to be free a while. It knows where it belongs. But free its wings, and it will fly in sureness and in joy to join its holy purpose. Let it rest in its Creator, there to be restored to sanity, to freedom and to love.
Give it ten minutes rest three times today. And when your eyes are opened afterwards, you will not value anything you see as much as when you looked at it before. Your whole perspective on the world will shift by just a little every time you let your mind escape its chains. The world is not where it belongs. And you belong where it would be, and where it goes to rest when you release it from the world. Your Guide is sure. Open your mind to Him. Be still and rest.
Protect your mind throughout the day as well. And when you think you see some value in an aspect or an image of the world, refuse to lay this chain upon your mind, and tell yourself with quiet certainty:
"This will not tempt me to delay myself.
The world I see has nothing that I want."
How willing are you to forgive your brother? How much do you desire peace, instead of endless strife and misery and pain? These questions are the same, in different form. Forgiveness IS your peace, for herein lies the end of separation, and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss. This is the "sacrifice" salvation asks, and gladly offers peace INSTEAD of this. Swear not to die, thou holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One.
What SEEMS eternal all will have an end. The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons, and the lives of man; all things that change with time and bloom and fade, will not return. Where time has set an end is not where the Eternal is. God's Son can never change by what men made of him. He will be as he was, and as he is, for time appointed not his destiny, nor sets the hour of his birth and death. Forgiveness will not change him. But time waits upon forgiveness, that the things of time may disappear because they have no use.
Nothing survives its purpose. If it be conceived to die, then die it must, unless it does not take this purpose as its own. Change is the only thing that can be made a blessing here, where purpose is NOT fixed, however changeless it APPEARS to be. Think not that YOU can set a goal unlike God's Purpose FOR you, and establish it as changeless and eternal. You CAN give yourself a purpose that you do not have. But you can NOT remove the Power to change your mind, and see ANOTHER purpose there. Change is the gift of God He gave to all that YOU would make eternal, to ensure that ONLY Heaven would not pass away.
You were NOT born to die. You CANNOT change, because your Function HAS been fixed by God. All other goals are set in time, and change that time might be preserved, EXCEPTING ONE. Forgiveness does not aim at KEEPING time, but at its ending, when it has no use. Its purpose ended, it is gone. And where it once held seeming sway is now restored the Function God established for His Son in full awareness. Time can set no end to Its fulfillment, nor Its changelessness. There is no death, because the living share the Function their Creator gave to them. Life's function CANNOT be to die. It must be life's EXTENSION, that it be as One forever and forever, WITHOUT end.
This world will bind your feet and tie your hands and kill your body, ONLY if you think that it was made to crucify God's Son. For even though it WAS a dream of death, you need not let it stand for this to you. Let THIS be changed, and nothing in the world but MUST be changed as well. For nothing here but is defined as what you see it FOR. How lovely is the world whose purpose is forgiveness of God's Son! How free from fear, how filled with blessing and with happiness! And what a joyous thing it is to dwell a little while in such a happy place! Nor CAN it be forgot, in such a world, it IS a little while 'til timelessness comes quietly to take the place of time.
ALL things work together for good. There are NO exceptions except in the ego's judgment. Control is a central factor in what the ego permits into consciousness, and one to which it devotes its maximum vigilance. This is NOT the way a balanced mind holds together. ITS control is unconscious.
The ego is further off balance by keeping its primary motivation UNconscious, and raising control rather than sensible judgment to predominance. It has every reason to do this, according to the thought-system which both gave rise to it and which it serves. Sane judgment would inevitably judge AGAINST it, and MUST be obliterated by the ego in the interest of its self-preservation.
A crucial source of the ego's off-balance state is its lack of discrimination between impulses from God and from the body. Any thought-system which makes THIS confusion MUST be insane. Yet this demented state is ESSENTIAL to the ego, which judges ONLY in terms of threat or non-threat TO ITSELF.
In one sense, the ego's fear of the idea of God is at least logical, because this idea DOES dispel it. Fear of dissolution from the higher source, then, makes SOME sense in ego terms. But fear of the body, with which the ego identifies so closely, is more blatantly senseless. The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which it feels safe, because the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you CANNOT be of God.
This is the belief that it sponsors eagerly. Yet the ego hates the body, because it does not accept the idea that the body is good enough as its home. Here is where the mind becomes actually dazed. Being told by the ego that it is really part of the body, and that the body is its protector, it is also constantly informed that the body can NOT protect it. This, of course, is not only true, but perfectly obvious.
Therefore, the mind asks, "Where can I go for protection?", to which the ego replies, "Turn to me." The mind, and not without cause, reminds the ego that it has itself insisted that it IS identified with the body, so there is no point in turning to it for protection. The ego has no real answer to this because there ISN'T any. But it DOES have a typical solution. It obliterates the question from the mind's awareness. Once unconscious, it can and does produce uneasiness, but it cannot be answered because it cannot be asked.
This is the question which MUST be asked: "Where am I to go for protection?" Only an insane mind FAILS to ask it. Even the insane ask it unconsciously, but it requires real sanity to ask it consciously.
If you will remember your dream about the recorder, which was remarkably accurate in some ways because it came partly from ego-repressed knowledge, the real problem was correctly stated as "What is the question?"because, as you very well knew, the answer COULD be found if the question were recognized. If you remember, there were a number of solutions you attempted, all ego-based, not because you thought they would really work, but because the question ITSELF was obscure.
When the Bible says "Seek and ye shall find," it does NOT mean that you should seek blindly and desperately for something you wouldn't recognize. Meaningful seeking is consciously undertaken, consciously organized, and consciously directed. B's chief contribution to your joint venture is his insistence that the goal be formulated clearly, and KEPT IN MIND.
You, Helen, are not good at doing this. You still search for many gods simultaneously, and this goal confusion, given a strong will, MUST produce chaotic behavior. B's behavior is not chaotic, because he is not so much goal-divided as not goal-ORIENTED. Where Helen has over invested in many goals, Bill has underinvested in ALL goals. He has the advantage of POTENTIALLY greater freedom from distractibility, but he does not care enough to use it. Helen has the advantage of great effort, but she keeps losing sight of the goal.
B has very intelligently suggested that you both should set yourself the goal of really studying for this course. There can be no doubt of the wisdom of this decision, for any student who wants to pass it. But, knowing your individual weaknesses as learners and being a teacher with some experience, I must remind you that learning and wanting to learn are inseparable.
All learners learn best when they believe that what they are trying to learn is of value to them. But values in this world are hierarchical, and not everything you may WANT to learn has lasting value. Indeed, many of the things you want to learn are chosen BECAUSE their value will not last. The ego thinks it is an advantage not to commit itself to ANYTHING that is eternal, because the eternal MUST come from God.
Eternalness is the one function that the ego has tried to develop, but has systematically failed. It may surprise you to learn that had the ego willed to do so, it COULD have made the eternal, because, as a product of the mind, it IS endowed with the power of its own creator. But the DECISION to do this, rather than the ABILITY to do it is what the ego cannot tolerate. That is because the decision, from which the ability would naturally develop, would necessarily involve true perception, a state of clarity which the ego, fearful of being judged truly, MUST avoid.
The results of this dilemma are peculiar, but no more so than the dilemma itself. The ego has reacted characteristically here as elsewhere, because mental illness, which is ALWAYS a form of ego-involvement, is not a problem of reliability as much as of validity. The ego compromises with the issue of the eternal, just as it does with all issues that touch on the real question in ANY way. By compromising in connection with all TANGENTIAL questions, it hopes to hide the REAL question and keep it OUT OF MIND. Its characteristic "business" with non-essentials is precisely for that purpose.
Consider the alchemist's age-old attempts to turn base metal into gold. (This typo was originally "god"). The one question which the alchemist did not permit himself to ask was "What For?" He COULD not ask this, because it would immediately become apparent that there was no sense in his efforts, even if he succeeded. The ego has also countenanced some strange compromises with the idea of the eternal, making odd attempts to relate the concept to the unimportant in an effort to satisfy the mind without jeopardizing itself. Thus, it has permitted many good minds to devote themselves to perpetual MOTION, but NOT to perpetual THOUGHTS.
Ideational preoccupations with conceptual problems set up to be incapable of solution are another favorite ego device for impeding the strong-willed from real progress in learning. The problems of squaring the circle, and carrying pi to infinity are good examples. A more recent ego-attempt is particularly noteworthy. The idea of preserving the body by suspension, thus giving it the kind of limited immortality which the ego can tolerate, is among its more recent appeals to the mind.
It is noticeable that in all these diversionary tactics, the ONE question which is NEVER asked by those who pursue them is "What for?" This is the question which YOU must learn to ask in connection with everything your mind wills to undertake. What is your purpose? Whatever it is, you cannot doubt that it will channelize your efforts automatically. When you make a decision of purpose, then, you HAVE made a decision about future effort, a decision which will remain in effect UNLESS you change the DECISION.
Psychologists are in a good position to realize that the ego is capable of making and accepting as real some very distorted associations which are not true. The confusion of sex with aggression, and resulting behavior which is the same for BOTH, is a good example. This is understandable to the psychologist, and does not produce surprise. The lack of surprise, however, is NOT a sign of understanding. It is a symptom of the psychologist's ability to accept as reasonable a compromise which is clearly senseless, to attribute it to the mental illness of the patient rather than his own, and to limit his questions about both the patient AND himself to the trivial.
These relatively minor confusions of the ego are not among its more profound misassociations, although they DO reflect them. Your own egos have been blocking the more important questions which your minds should ask. You do NOT understand a patient while you yourselves are willing to limit the questions you raise about HIS mind, because you are also accepting these limits for YOURS. This makes you unable to heal him AND yourselves. Be ALWAYS unwilling to adapt to ANY situation in which miracle-mindedness is unthinkable. That state in ITSELF is enough to demonstrate that perception is wrong.
Can what has no beginning really end? The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no-one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone. The father of illusions is the belief that they have a purpose; that they serve a need or gratify a want. Perceived as purposeless, they are no longer seen. Their uselessness is recognized and they are gone. How but in this way are all illusions ended? They have been brought to truth, and truth saw them not. It merely overlooked the meaningless.
Until forgiveness is complete, the world does have a purpose. It becomes the home in which forgiveness is born, and where it grows and becomes stronger and more all embracing. Here is it nourished, for here it is needed. A gentle Savior, born where sin was made and guilt seemed real. Here is His home, for here there is need of Him indeed. He brings the ending of the world with Him. It is His Call God's teachers answer, turning to Him in silence to receive His Word. The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment. The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be.
Certainly this seems to be a long, long while away. "When not one thought of sin remains" appears to be a long-range goal indeed. But time stands still, and waits on the goals of God's teachers. Not one thought of sin will remain the instant any one of them accepts the Atonement for himself. It is not easier to forgive one sin than to forgive all of them. The illusion of orders of difficulty is an obstacle the teacher of God must learn to pass by and leave behind. One sin perfectly forgiven by one teacher of God can make salvation complete. Can you understand this? No; it is meaningless to anyone here. Yet it is the final lesson in which Unity is restored. It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven.
The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed. Until then, bits and pieces of its thinking will still seem sensible. The final lesson which brings the ending of the world cannot be grasped by those not yet prepared to leave the world and go beyond its tiny reach. What, then, is the function of the teacher of God in this concluding lesson? He need merely learn how to approach it; to be willing to go in its direction. He need merely trust that, if God's Voice tells him it is a lesson he can learn, he can learn it. He does not judge it either as hard or easy. His Teacher points to it, and he trusts that He will show him how to learn it.
The world will end in joy because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. In blessing it departs, for it will not end as it began. To turn hell into Heaven is the function of God's teachers, for what they teach are lessons in which Heaven is reflected. And now sit down in true humility, and realize that all God would have you do you can do. Do not be arrogant and say you cannot learn His Own curriculum. His Word says otherwise. His Will be done. It cannot be otherwise. And be you thankful it is so.
This is a day of silence and of trust. It is a special time of promise in your calendar of days. It is a time Heaven has set apart to shine upon, and cast a timeless light upon this day when echoes of eternity are heard. This day is holy, for it ushers in a new experience, a different kind of feeling and awareness. You have spent long days and nights in celebrating death. Today you learn to feel the joy of life.
This is another crucial turning point in the curriculum. We add a new dimension now; a fresh experience which sheds a light on all that we have learned already, and prepares us for what we have yet to learn. It brings us to the door where learning ceases, and we catch a glimpse of what lies past the highest reaches it can possibly attain. It leaves us there an instant and we go beyond it, sure of our direction and our only goal.
Today it will be given you to feel a touch of Heaven, though you will return to paths of learning, yet you have come far enough along the way to alter time sufficiently to rise above its laws, and walk into eternity a while. This you will learn to do increasingly, as every lesson, faithfully rehearsed, brings you more swiftly to this holy place and leaves you, for a moment, to your Self.
He will direct your practicing today, for what you ask for now is what He wills. And having joined your will with His this day, what you are asking must be given you. Nothing is needed but today's idea to light your mind, and let it rest in still anticipation and in quiet joy wherein you quickly leave the world behind.
From this day forth your ministry takes on a genuine devotion, and a glow that travels from your fingertips to those you touch, and blesses those you look upon. A vision reaches everyone you meet, and everyone you think of, or who thinks of you. For your experience today will so transform your mind that it becomes the touchstone for the holy Thoughts of God.
Your body will be sanctified today, its only purpose being now to bring the vision of what you experience this day to light the world. We cannot give experience like this directly. Yet it leaves a vision in our eyes which we can offer everyone, that he may come the sooner to the same experience in which the world is quietly forgot, and Heaven is remembered for a while.
As this experience increases and all goals but this become of little worth, the world to which you will return becomes a little closer to the end of time; a little more like Heaven in its ways; a little nearer its deliverance. And you who bring it light will come to see the light more sure; the vision more distinct. The time will come when you will not return in the same form in which you now appear, for you will have no need of it. Yet now it has a purpose, and will serve it well.
Today we will embark upon a course you have not dreamed of. But the Holy One, the Giver of the happy dreams of life, Translator of perception into truth, the holy Guide to Heaven given you, has dreamed for you this journey, which you make and start today, with the experience, this day holds out to you to be your own.
Into Christ's Presence will we enter now serenely unaware of everything except His shining Face and perfect Love. The vision of His Face will stay with you, but there will be an instant which transcends all vision, even this, the holiest. This you will never teach, for you attained it not through learning. Yet the vision speaks of your remembrance of what you knew that instant, and will surely know again.
False healing heals the body in a part, but never as a whole. Its separate goals become quite clear in this, for it has not removed the curse of sin that lies on it. Therefore it still deceives. Nor is it made by one who understands the other is exactly like himself, for it is this that makes true healing possible. When false, there is some power that another has, not equally bestowed on both as one. Here is the separation shown. And here the meaning of true healing has been lost, and idols have arisen to obscure the unity that is the Son of God.
Healing-to-separate may seem to be a strange idea. Yet it can be said of any form of healing that is based on inequality of any kind. These forms may heal the body, and indeed are generally limited to this. Someone knows better, has been better trained, or is perhaps more talented and wise. Therefore, he can give healing to the one who stands beneath him in his patronage. The healing of the body can be done by this because, in dreams, equality cannot be permanent. The shifts and change are what the dream is made of. To be healed appears to be to find a wiser one who, by his arts and learning, will succeed.
Someone knows better; this the magic phrase by which the body seems to be the aim of healing as the world conceives of it. And to this wiser one another goes to profit by his learning and his skill; to find in him the remedy for pain. How can that be? True healing cannot come from inequality assumed and then accepted as the truth, and used to help restore the wounded and to calm the mind that suffers from the agony of doubt.
Is there a role for healing, then, that one can use to offer help for someone else? In arrogance the answer must be "no." Yet in humility there is indeed a place for helpers. It is like the role that helps in prayer, and lets forgiveness be what it is meant to be. You do not make yourself the bearer of the special gift that brings the healing. You but recognize your oneness with the one who calls for help. For in this oneness is his separate sense dispelled, and it was this that made him sick. There is no point in giving remedy apart from where the source of sickness is, for never thus can it be truly healed.
Healers there are, for they are Sons of God who recognize their Source, and understand that all their Source creates is one with them. This is the remedy that brings relief which cannot fail. It will remain to bless for all eternity. It heals no part, but wholly and forever. Now the cause of every malady has been revealed exactly as it is. And in that place is written now the holy Word of God. Sickness and separation must be healed by love and union. Nothing else can heal as God established healing. Without Him there is no healing, for there is no love.
God's Voice alone can tell you how to heal. Listen, and you will never fail to bring His kindly remedy to those He sends to you, to let Him heal them, and to bless all those who serve with Him in healing's name. The body's healing will occur because its cause has gone. And now without a cause, it cannot come again in different form. Nor will death any more be feared because it has been understood. There is no fear in one who has been truly healed, for love has entered now where idols used to stand, and fear has given way at last to God.
The gap between you is NOT one of space between two separate bodies. This but SEEMS to be dividing off your separate minds. It is the SYMBOL of a promise, made to meet when you prefer, and separate until you both elect to meet again. And then your bodies seem to get in touch, and signify a meeting place to join. But always is it possible to go your separate ways. Conditional upon the right to separate will you agree to meet from time to time, and keep apart in intervals of separation, which protect you from the "sacrifice" of love. THE BODY SAVES YOU, for it gets away from total "sacrifice," and gives you time in which to build again your separate selves, which you believe DIMINISH as you meet.
The body COULD not separate your minds, unless you WANTED it to be a cause of separation and of distance seen between you. Thus do you ENDOW it with a power that lies NOT within itself. And herein lies its power over you. For now you think that IT determines when you meet, and limits your ability to make communion with each other's mind. And now it TELLS you where to go, and how to go there; what is feasible for you to undertake, and what you CANNOT do. It dictates what its health can tolerate, and what will tire it and make it sick. And its "inherent" weaknesses set up the limitations on what YOU would do, and keep your PURPOSE limited and weak.
The body WILL accommodate to this, if you would have it so. It WILL allow but limited indulgences in "love," with intervals of hatred in between. And it WILL take command of when to "love," and when to shrink more safely into fear. It will be sick BECAUSE you do not know what loving means. And so you MUST misuse each circumstance and everyone you meet, and see in them a purpose NOT their own. It is not love that asks a sacrifice. But fear DEMANDS the sacrifice of love, for in love's presence fear cannot abide. For hate to be maintained love MUST be feared, and only SOMETIMES present; SOMETIMES gone.
Thus is love seen as treacherous, because IT seems to come and go uncertainly, and offer no stability to you. You do NOT see how limited and weak is YOUR allegiance, and how frequently you have demanded that it go away, and leave you quietly alone in "peace." The body, innocent of ANY goal, is your excuse for variable goals YOU hold, and force the body to maintain. You do not fear its weakness, but its lack of strength OR weakness. Would you recognize that NOTHING stands between you? Would you know there IS no gap behind which you can hide?
There IS a shock that comes to those who learn their Savior is their enemy no more. There IS a wariness that is aroused by learning that the body is not real. And there ARE overtones of seeming fear around the happy message "God is Love." Yet all that happens when the gap is gone is peace eternal. Nothing MORE than that, and nothing less. Without the fear of God, what could induce you to abandon Him? What toys or trinkets in the gap could serve to hold you back an instant from His Love? Would you ALLOW the body to say "No" to Heaven's calling, were you not afraid to find a LOSS of self in finding God? And CAN your Self be lost by being found?
What time but now can truth be recognized? The present is the only time there is. And so today, this instant, now, we come to look upon what is forever there; not in our sight but in the eyes of Christ. He looks past time and sees eternity as represented there. He hears the sounds the senseless busy world engenders, yet He hears them faintly, for beyond them all He hears the song of Heaven and the Voice of God more clear, more meaningful, more near.
The world fades easily away before His sight. Its sounds grow dim. A melody from far beyond the world increasingly is more and more distinct; an ancient Call to Which He gives an ancient answer. You will recognize them both. For they are but your answer to your Father's Call to you. Christ answers for you, echoing your Self, using your voice to give His glad consent; accepting your deliverance for you.
How holy is your practicing today, as He gives you His sight and hears for you, and answers in your name the Call He hears. How quiet is the time you give to spend with Him beyond the world. How easily are all your seeming sins forgot and all your sorrows unremembered. On this day is grief laid by, for sights and sounds which come from nearer than the world are clear to you who will today accept the gifts He gives.
There is a silence into which the world can not intrude. There is an ancient peace you carry in your heart and have not lost. There is a sense of holiness in you the thought of sin has never touched. All this today you will remember. Faithfulness in practicing today will bring rewards so great and so completely different from all things you sought before, that you will know that here your treasure is, and here your rest.
This is the day when vain imaginings part like a curtain, to reveal what lies beyond them. Here is what is really there made visible, while all the shadows which appeared to hide it sink to obscurity. Now is the balance righted, and the scales of judgment left to Him Who judges true. And in His judgment will a world unfold in perfect innocence before your eyes. Now will you see it with the eyes of Christ. Now is its transformation clear to you.
Brothers, this day is sacred to the world. Your vision, given you from far beyond all things within the world looks back on them in a new light. And what you see becomes the healing and salvation of the world. The valuable and valueless are both perceived and recognized for what they are. And what is worthy of your love receives your love, while nothing to be feared remains.
We will not judge today. We will receive but what is given us from Judgment made beyond the world. Our practicing today becomes our gift of thankfulness for our release from blindness and from misery. All that we see will but increase our joy, because its holiness reflects our own. We stand forgiven in the sight of Christ, with all the world forgiven in our own. We bless the world as we behold it in the light in which our Savior looks on us, and offer it the freedom given us through His forgiving vision, now our own.
Open the curtain in your practicing by merely letting go all things you think you want. Your trifling treasures put away, and leave a clean and open space within your mind where Christ can come, and offer you the treasure of salvation. He has need of your most holy mind to save the world. Is not this purpose worthy to be yours? Is not Christ's vision worthy to be sought above the world's unsatisfying goals?
Let not today slip by without the gifts it holds for you receiving your consent and your acceptance. We can change the world if you acknowledge them. You may not see the value your acceptance gives the world. But this you surely want; you can exchange all suffering for joy this very day. Practice in earnest and the gift is yours. Would God deceive you? Can His promise fail? Can you withhold so little when His Hand holds out complete salvation to His Son?
Just as God's Son completes his Father, so your part in it completes your Father's plan. Salvation must reverse the mad belief in separate thoughts and separate bodies which lead separate lives and go their separate ways. One function shared by separate minds unites them in one purpose, for each one is equally essential to them all.
God's Will for you is perfect happiness. Why should you choose to go against His Will? The part that He has saved for you to take in working out His plan is given you that you might be restored to what He wills. This part is as essential to His plan as to your happiness. Your joy must be complete to let His plan be understood by those to whom He sends you. They will see their function in your shining face, and hear God calling to them in your happy laugh.
You are indeed essential to God's plan. Without your joy His joy is incomplete. Without your smile the world cannot be saved. While you are sad the light which God Himself appointed as the means to save the world is dim and lusterless. And no one laughs because all laughter can but echo yours. You are indeed essential to God's plan. Just as your light increases every light that shines in Heaven, so your joy on earth calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you in God's plan.
God's messengers are joyous, and their joy heals sorrow and despair. They are the proof that God wills perfect happiness for all who will accept their Father's gifts as theirs. We will not let ourselves be sad today. For if we do, we fail to take the part that is essential to God's plan, as well as to our vision. Sadness is the sign that you would play another part, instead of what has been assigned to you by God. Thus do you fail to show the world how great the happiness He wills for you. And so you do not recognize that it is yours.
Today we will attempt to understand joy is our function here. If you are sad your part is unfulfilled, and all the world is thus deprived of joy, along with you. God asks that you be happy, so the world can see how much He loves His Son, and wills no sorrow rises to abate his joy; no fear besets him to disturb his peace. You are God's messenger today. You bring His happiness to all you look upon; His peace to everyone who looks on you, and sees His message in your happy face.
We will prepare ourselves for this today in our five minute practice periods, by feeling happiness arise in us according to our Father's will and ours. Begin the exercises with the thought today's idea contains. Then realize your part is to be happy. Only this is asked of you or anyone who wants to take his place among God's messengers.
Think what this means. You have indeed been wrong in your belief that sacrifice is asked. You but receive according to God's plan, and never lose or sacrifice or die. Now let us try to find that joy which proves to us and all the world God's Will for us. It is your function that you find it here, and that you find it now. For this you came. Let this one be the day that you succeed!
Look deep within you, undismayed by all the little thoughts and foolish goals you pass as you ascend to meet the Christ in you. He will be there. And you can reach Him now. What could you rather look upon in place of Him who waits that you may look on Him? What little thought has power to hold you back? What foolish goal can keep you from success when He Who calls to you is God Himself?
He will be there. You are essential to His plan. You are His messenger today, and you must find what He would have you give. Do not forget the idea for today between your longer practice periods. It is your Self who calls to you today. And it is Him you answer every time you tell yourself you are essential to God's plan for the salvation of the world.
Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as you are not may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are but reflections of the worshipping of death as Savior and as giver of release.
Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and wishes in its blighting grasp; all goals perceived but in its sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone will surely come.
All things but death are seen to be unsure, too quickly lost however hard to gain, uncertain in their outcome, apt to fail the hopes they once engendered, and to leave the taste of dust and ashes in their wake in place of aspirations and of dreams. But death is counted on. For it will come with certain footsteps when the time has come for its arrival. It will never fail to take all life as hostage to itself.
Would you bow down to idols such as this? Here is the strength and might of God Himself perceived within an idol made of dust. Here is the opposite of God proclaimed as lord of all creation, stronger than God's Will for life, the endlessness of love and Heaven's perfect, changeless constancy. Here is the Will of Father and of Son defeated finally, and laid to rest beneath the headstone death has placed upon the body of the holy Son of God.
Unholy in defeat, he has become what death would have him be. His epitaph, which death itself has written, gives no name to him, for he has passed to dust. It says but this: "Here lies a witness God is dead." And this it writes again and still again, while all the while its worshippers agree, and kneeling down with foreheads to the ground, they whisper fearfully that it is so.
It is impossible to worship death in any form, and still select a few you would not cherish, and would yet avoid while still believing in the rest. For death is total. Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible. For here again we see an obvious position which we must accept if we be sane; what contradicts one thought entirely can not be true unless its opposite is proven false.
The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it. For it implies that God was once alive and somehow perished, killed, apparently, by those who did not want him to survive. Their stronger will could triumph over His, and so Eternal Life gave way to death. And with the Father died the Son as well.
Death's worshippers may be afraid. And yet can thoughts like these be fearful? If they saw that it is only this which they believed, they would be instantly released. And you will show them this today. There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and our own as well. God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past death and see the life beyond.
"Our Father, bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything. We live and breathe in You alone. We are not separate from Your Eternal Life. There is no death, for death is not Your Will. And we abide where You have placed us, in the Life we share with You and with all living things, to be like You and part of You forever. We accept Your Thoughts as ours, and our will is One with Yours eternally. Amen."
Although you are One Self, you experience yourself as two; as both good and evil, loving and hating, mind and body. This sense of being split into opposites induces feelings of acute and constant conflict, and leads to frantic attempts to reconcile the contradictory aspects of this self-perception. You have sought many such solutions, and none of them has worked. The opposites you see in you will never be compatible. But one exists.
The fact that truth and illusion cannot be reconciled no matter how you try, what means you use and where you see the problem, must be accepted if you would be saved. Until you have accepted this, you will attempt an endless list of goals you cannot reach; a senseless series of expenditures of time and effort, hopefulness and doubt, each one as futile as the one before, and failing as the next one surely will.
Problems which have no meaning cannot be resolved within the framework they are set. Two selves in conflict could not be resolved, and good and evil have no meeting place. The self you made can never be your Self, nor can your Self be split in two and still be what it is, and must forever be.
A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality.
Spirit makes use of mind as means to find Its Self-expression. And the mind that serves the Spirit is at peace and filled with joy. Its power comes from Spirit, and it is fulfilling happily its function here. Yet mind can also see itself divorced from Spirit, and perceive itself within a body it confuses with itself. Without its function then, it has no peace, and happiness is alien to its thoughts.
Yet mind apart from Spirit cannot think. It has denied its Source of strength, and sees itself as helpless, limited and weak. Dissociated from its function now, it thinks it is alone and separate, attacked by armies massed against itself, and hiding in the body's frail support. Now must it reconcile unlike with like, for this is what it thinks that it is for. Waste no more time on this. Who can resolve the senseless conflicts which a dream presents? What could the resolution mean in truth? What purpose could it serve? What is it for?
Salvation cannot make illusions real, and solve a problem which does not exist. Perhaps you hope it can. Yet would you have God's plan for the release of His dear Son bring pain to him, and fail to set him free? Your Self retains Its Thoughts, and They remain within your mind and in the Mind of God. The Holy Spirit holds salvation in your mind, and offers it the way to peace.
Salvation is a Thought you share with God, because His Voice accepted it for you, and answered in your name that it was done. Thus is salvation kept among the Thoughts your Self holds dear and cherishes for you. We will attempt today to find this Thought, Whose presence in your mind is guaranteed by Him Who speaks to you from your One Self. Our hourly five minute practicing will be a search for Him within your mind. Salvation comes from this One Self through Him Who is the bridge between your mind and It.
Wait patiently, and let Him speak to you about your Self, and what your mind can do, restored to It and free to serve Its Will. Begin by saying this:
"Salvation comes from my One Self.
Its Thoughts are mine to use."
Then seek Its Thoughts, and claim them as your own. These are your own real thoughts you have denied, and let your mind go wandering in a world of dreams, to find illusions in their place. Here are your Thoughts, the only ones you have. Salvation is among Them; find it there.
If you succeed, the Thoughts that come to you will tell you you are saved, and that your mind has found the function that it sought to lose. Your Self will welcome it, and give it peace. Restored in strength, it will again flow out from Spirit to the Spirit in all things created by the Spirit as Itself. Your mind will bless all things. Confusion done, you are restored, for you have found your Self.
Your Self knows that you cannot fail today. Perhaps your mind remains uncertain yet a little while. Be not dismayed by this. The joy your Self experiences, It will save for you, and it will yet be yours in full awareness. Every time you spend five minutes of the hour seeking Him Who joins your mind and Self, you offer Him another treasure to be kept for you.
Each time today you tell your frantic mind salvation comes from your One Self, you lay another treasure in your growing store. And all of it is given everyone who asks for it, and will accept the gift. Think, then, how much is given unto you to give this day, that it be given you!
Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the right guidance, for learning is invisible, and what has been learned can be recognized ONLY by its RESULTS. Its GENERALIZATION is demonstrated as you use it in more and more situations. You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles, when you have applied them to ALL situations. For there IS no situation to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them TO all situations, you will gain the REAL world. For in this holy perception, you will be made whole, and the Atonement will radiate from YOUR acceptance of it FOR YOURSELF, to everyone the Holy Spirit sends you for your blessing.
In every Child of God His blessing lies, and in your blessing of the Children of God is His blessing to YOU. Everyone in the world must play his part in the redemption of the world, to recognize that the world HAS BEEN redeemed. You cannot see the invisible. But if you see its effects, YOU KNOW IT MUST BE THERE. By perceiving what it DOES, you recognize its being. And by WHAT it does, you learn what it IS. You cannot SEE your abilities, but you gain confidence in their EXISTENCE as they enable you to ACT. And the results, of your actions you CAN see.
The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is.
You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you CAN see His MANIFESTATIONS. And UNLESS YOU DO, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak FOR it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth.
As long as you believe you have two functions, so long will you need correction. For this belief is the DESTRUCTION of peace, a goal in direct opposition to the Holy Spirit's purpose. You see what you expect, and you expect what you invite. Your perception is the result of your invitation, coming to you as you sent for it. Whose manifestations would you see? Of whose presence would you be convinced? For you will believe in what you MANIFEST, and as you look out so will you see in. Two ways of looking at the world are in your mind, and your perception will reflect the guidance you chose.
I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see me, it will be because you have invited Him. For He will send you His witnesses if you will but look upon them. Remember always that you see what you seek, for what you seek you WILL find. The ego finds what it seeks, and ONLY that. It does not find love, for that is NOT what it is seeking. But seeking and finding are the same, and if you seek for two goals, you will FIND them, but you will RECOGNIZE NEITHER. For you will think they are the same, BECAUSE YOU WANT THEM BOTH. The mind always strives for integration, and if it is split, and WANTS TO KEEP THE SPLIT, it will believe it has ONE goal by MAKING IT ONE.
We said before that WHAT you project is up to you, but it is NOT up to you WHETHER to project, for projection is a law of mind. Perception IS projection, and you look in BEFORE you look out. As you look IN, you choose the guide for seeing, and THEN look out, and behold his witnesses. This is why you find what you seek. What you want IN YOURSELF you will make manifest by PROJECTION, and you will accept it FROM the world, because you put it there BY wanting it.
When you think you are projecting what you do NOT want, it is still because you DO want it. This leads DIRECTLY to dissociation, for it represents the acceptance of two goals, each perceived IN A DIFFERENT PLACE, separated from each other BECAUSE YOU MADE THEM DIFFERENT. The mind then sees a divided world OUTSIDE ITSELF, but NOT within. This gives it an illusion of integrity, and enables it to believe that IT is pursuing one goal. As long as you perceive the world as split, YOU are not healed. For to be healed is to pursue one goal, because you have ACCEPTED only one, and WANT but one.
When you want ONLY love, you will see nothing else. The contradictory nature of the witnesses you perceive is merely the reflection of your conflicting invitations. You have looked upon your minds, and accepted opposition there, having SOUGHT it there. But do not then believe that the witnesses FOR opposition are true for they attest only to your DECISION about reality, returning to you the message you GAVE them. Love is recognized by its messengers. If you make it manifest, its messengers will come to you, because you INVITED them.
The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. YOU CAN DECIDE TO SEE IT RIGHT. What you MADE of it is NOT its reality, for its reality is only what you GAVE it. You cannot REALLY give anything BUT love to anyone or anything, nor can you really receive anything else FROM them. If you think you have received anything ELSE, it is because you have looked within, and thought you saw the power to GIVE something else WITHIN YOURSELF. It was only THIS decision that determined what you found, for it was the decision OF WHAT YOU SOUGHT.
You are afraid of me because you looked within, and are afraid of what you saw. Yet you COULD not have seen reality, for the reality of your mind is the loveliest of God's Creations. Coming only from God, its power and grandeur could only bring you peace, IF YOU REALLY LOOKED UPON IT. If you are afraid, it is because you saw something THAT IS NOT THERE. Yet in this same place you could have looked upon me and all your brothers, in the perfect safety of the Mind that created us. For we are there in the peace of the Father, Who wills to PROJECT His peace through YOU.
When you have accepted your mission to PROJECT peace, you will FIND it. For by MAKING IT MANIFEST you will SEE it. Its holy witnesses will surround you, because you CALLED UPON THEM, and they will come to you. I HAVE heard your call, and I have answered it, but you will not look upon me nor hear the answer which you sought. But that is only because you do not yet want ONLY that. Yet as I become more real to you, you will learn that you DO want only that. And you will see me as you look within, and we will look upon the world as God created it together. Through the eyes of Christ, ONLY the real world exists, and can BE seen.
As you decide so will you see. And all that you see but witnesses to your decision. When you look within and see me, it will be because you have decided to manifest truth. And as you manifest it, you will see it both without AND within, for you will see it without BECAUSE you saw it first within. Everything you behold without is a JUDGMENT of what you beheld within. If it is YOUR judgment, it will be wrong, for judgment is not your function. If it is the judgment of the Holy Spirit, it will be right, for judgment IS His function. You share His function only by judging AS HE DOES, reserving no judgment at all unto yourselves. For you will judge AGAINST yourselves, but He will judge FOR you.
Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy, and have condemned yourself to death. The death penalty is the ego's ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you are deserving of life. The death penalty never leaves the ego's mind, for that is what it always reserves for you in the end. Wanting to kill you, as the final expression of its feeling for you, it lets you live but to await death. It will torment you while you live, but its hatred is not satisfied until you die. For your destruction is the one end toward which it works, and the only one with which it will be satisfied.
The ego is not a traitor to God to Whom treachery is impossible. But it IS a traitor TO YOU who believe you have been treacherous to your Father. That is why the undoing of GUILT is an essential part of the Holy Spirit's teaching. For as long as you feel guilty, you are listening to the voice of the ego, which tells you that you HAVE been treacherous to God, AND THEREFORE DESERVE DEATH. You will think that death comes from Him, AND NOT FROM THE EGO, because, by confusing yourself WITH the ego, you believe that YOU want death. And from what you want God does NOT save you.
When you are tempted to yield to the desire for death, remember that I DID NOT DIE. You will realize that this is true when you look within and SEE me. Would I have overcome death for myself alone? And would eternal life have been given me of the Father UNLESS he had also given it to YOU? When you learn to make ME manifest, YOU will never see death. For you will have looked upon the deathless IN YOURSELF, and you will see only the eternal, as you look out upon a world that cannot die.
Prayer is the greatest gift with which God blessed His Son at his creation. It was then what it is to become; the single Voice Creator and creation share; the song the Son sings to the Father, Who returns the thanks it offers Him unto the Son. Endless the harmony, and endless too the joyous concord of the Love They give forever to each other. And in this creation is extended. God gives thanks to His extension in His Son. His Son gives thanks for his creation, in the song of his creating in his Father's Name. The Love They share is what all prayer will be throughout eternity, when time is done. For such it was before time seemed to be.
To you who are in time a little while, prayer takes the form that best will suit your need. You have but one. What God created one must recognize its oneness, and rejoice that what illusions seemed to separate is one forever in the Mind of God. Prayer now must be the means by which God's Son leaves separate goals and separate interests by, and turns in holy gladness to the truth of union in his Father and himself.
Lay down your dreams, you holy Son of God, and rising up as God created you, dispense with idols and remember Him. Prayer will sustain you now, and bless you as you lift your hearts to Him in rising song that reaches higher and then higher still until both high and low have disappeared. Faith in your goal will grow and hold you up as you ascend the shining stairway to the lawns of Heaven and the gate of peace. For this is prayer, and here salvation is. This is the way. It is God's gift to you.
Asking is holy, and it is holy because it is a way of reaching God. He is the Answerer because you are in need of an Answer. No-one can ask for another and receive the Answer for him. But you can, and indeed you must, help him by offering your love and support that his answer be holy and his true need recognized. That is prayer; it is the same for yourself or for another. There is no difference. If you received the answers for another, there would be a difference.
This does not mean that you cannot get messages for another, if it is God Who chooses this way of reaching him. This will usually happen unexpectedly, generally in the form of a sudden feeling that you have something to tell him; a message to deliver. You have not been wrong in the past about how you have asked, but you are ready for a step ahead now. There are joint decisions in which unanimity of response is a good indication of authenticity. This should not be abandoned. But asking is a lesson in trust, and no-one can trust for another. He can only strengthen another's trust by offering it to him and having faith in his ability to hear for himself.
Asking is the way to God because it offers us His Will as He would have us hear it. We will have a series of lessons on asking because you have not understood it. But do not think because of that that you have been mistaken in your attempts. You have done well and will do better.
Any specific question involves a large number of assumptions which inevitably limit the answer. A specific question is actually a decision about the kind of answer that is acceptable. The purpose of words is to limit, and by limiting to make a vast area of experience more manageable. But that means manageable by YOU. For many aspects of living in this world that is necessary. But not for asking. God does not use words and does not answer in words. He can only "speak" to the Christ in you, Who translates His Answer into whatever language you can understand and accept. Sometimes words will limit fear; sometimes not. That is why some people hear words, some receive feelings of inner conviction, and some do not become aware of anything. Yet God has answered, and His Answer will reach you when you are ready.
Answers are not up to you. Any limit you place on them interferes with hearing. God's Voice is silent and speaks in silence. That means that you do not phrase the question and you do not restrict the answer.
Asking is prayer. It is not a demand. It is not questioning. It is not limitation. The only real request is for God's Answer. It needs the humility of trust, not the arrogance of false certainty. Trust cannot lie in idols, for that is merely faith in magic. Trust requires faith that God understands, knows, and will answer. It means a state of peace. For this you can safely ask. In fact, if you do not feel that you have it, asking for it is the only real request you can make.
Seek not outside yourself. For it will fail, and you will weep each time an idol falls. Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace EXCEPTING there. Each idol that you worship when God calls will never answer in His place. There IS no other answer you can substitute, and find the happiness His Answer brings. Seek not outside yourself. For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting WHERE it must be found. What if it is not there? Do you prefer that you be right or happy? Be you glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer elsewhere. You will fail.
But it is given you to know the truth, and NOT to seek for it outside yourself. No-one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion, or some dream that there is something OUTSIDE of himself that will bring happiness and peace to him. If everything is IN him, this can not be so. And therefore, BY his coming, he denies the truth about himself, and seeks for something MORE than everything, as if a part of it were separated off, and found where all the REST of it is NOT. This is the purpose he bestows upon the body; that it seek for what he lacks, and GIVE him what would make himself complete.
And thus he wanders aimlessly about, in search of something that he cannot find, believing him to be what he is not. The lingering illusion will impel him to seek out a thousand idols, and to seek beyond them for a thousand more. And each will fail him, all excepting one; for he will die, and does not understand the idol that he seeks IS but his death. Its FORM appears to be outside himself. Yet does he seek to kill God's Son within, and PROVE that he is victor over him. This is the purpose EVERY idol has, for this the role that is assigned to it, and this the role that cannot BE fulfilled.
Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the body's betterment is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death. For you believe that you can suffer lack, and lack IS death. To sacrifice is to GIVE UP, and thus to be without, and to have suffered loss. And, BY this giving up is life renounced. Seek not outside yourself. The search implies you are not whole within, and fear to look upon your devastation, and prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are. Idols must fall BECAUSE they have no life, and what is lifeless IS a sign of death. You came to die, and what would you expect, but to PERCEIVE the signs of death you seek?
No sadness and no suffering proclaims a message OTHER than an idol found, which represents a parody of life which, in its lifelessness, is really death, conceived as real and given living form. Yet each must fail and crumble and decay, because a form of death can not BE life, and what is sacrificed can not BE whole. All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is OUTSIDE of you to be complete and happy. It is vain to worship idols in the hope of peace. God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself.
Let us forget the purpose of the world the past has given it. For otherwise, the future WILL be like the past, and but a series of depressing dreams, in which all idols fail you, one by one, and you see death and disappointment everywhere. To change all this, and open up a road of hope and of release in what appeared to be an endless circle of despair, you need but to decide you do not KNOW the purpose of the world. You GIVE it goals it does not have, and thus do YOU decide what it is for. You try to see in it a place of idols, found outside yourself, with power to make complete what is within by splitting what you are BETWEEN the two.
You CHOOSE your dreams, for they are what you wish, perceived AS IF it had been given you. And idols do what you would have them do, and HAVE the power you ascribe to them. And you pursue them vainly in the dream, because you want their power as your own. Yet where ARE dreams, but in a mind asleep? And CAN a dream succeed in making real the pictures it projects outside itself? Save time, my brothers! Learn what time is FOR. And speed the end of idols in the world made sad and sick by seeing idols there. Your holy minds are altars unto God, and where He is NO idols can abide.
The fear of God is but the fear of loss of idols. It is NOT the fear of loss of your reality. But YOU have made of your reality an idol, which you must protect AGAINST the light of truth. And all the world becomes the means by which this idol can be saved. Salvation thus appears to THREATEN life, and offer death. It is not so. Salvation seeks to prove there IS no death, and ONLY life exists. The sacrifice of death is NOTHING lost. An idol CANNOT take the place of God. Let Him remind you of His Love for you, and do not seek to drown His Voice in chants of deep despair to idols of yourself. Seek not outside your Father for your hope. For hope of happiness is NOT despair.
No gift of Heaven has been more misunderstood than has forgiveness. It has, in fact, become a scourge; a curse where it was meant to bless, a cruel mockery of grace, a parody upon the holy peace of God. Yet those who have not yet elected to begin the steps of prayer cannot but use it thus. Forgiveness's kindness is obscure at first, because salvation is not understood, NOR TRULY SOUGHT FOR. What was meant to heal is used to hurt because forgiveness is not wanted. Guilt becomes salvation, and the remedy appears to be a terrible alternative to life.
Forgiveness-to-destroy will therefore suit the purpose of the world far better than its true objective, and the honest means by which this goal is reached. Forgiveness-to-destroy will overlook no sin, no crime, no guilt that it can find and "love." Dear to its heart is error, and mistakes loom large and grow and swell within its sight. It carefully picks out all evil things, and overlooks the loving as a plague; a hateful thing of danger and of death. Forgiveness-to-destroy IS death, and this it sees in everything it looks upon and hates. God's mercy has become a twisted knife that would destroy the holy Son He loves.
Would you forgive yourself for doing this? Then learn that God has given you a means by which you can return to Him in peace. DO NOT SEE ERROR. Do not make it real. Select the loving and forgive the sin by choosing in its place the face of Christ. How otherwise can prayer return to God? He loves His Son. Can you remember Him and hate what He created? You will hate his Father if you hate the Son He loves. For as you see the Son you see yourself, and as you see yourself is God to you.
As prayer is always for yourself, so is forgiveness given you. It is impossible to forgive another, for it is only your sins you see in him. You want to see them there, and not in you. That is why forgiveness of another is an illusion. Yet it is the only happy dream in all the world; the only one that does not lead to death. Only in someone else can you forgive yourself, for you have called him guilty of your sins, and in him must your innocence be found. Who but the sinful need to be forgiven? And do not ever think you can see sin in anyone except yourself.
This is the great deception of the world, and you the great deceiver of yourself. It always seems to be another who is evil, and in his sin you are the injured one. How could freedom be possible if this were true? You would be slave to everyone, for what he does entails your fate, your feelings, your despair or hope, your misery or joy. You have no freedom unless he gives it to you. And being evil, he can only give of what he is. You cannot see his sins and not your own. But you can free him and yourself as well.
Forgiveness, truly given, is the only way in which your hope of freedom lies. Others will make mistakes and so will you, as long as this illusion of a world appears to be your home. God has given all His Sons a remedy for all illusions that they think they see. Christ's vision does not use your eyes, but you can look through His and learn to see like Him. Mistakes are tiny shadows, quickly gone, which for an instant only seem to hide the face of Christ, which still remains unchanged behind them all. His constancy remains in tranquil silence and in perfect peace. He does not know of shadows. His the eyes that look past error to the Christ in you.
Ask then His help, and ask Him how to learn forgiveness as His vision lets it be. You are in need of what He gives, and your salvation rests on learning this of Him. Prayer cannot be released to Heaven while forgiveness-to-destroy remains with you. God's mercy would remove this withering and poisoned thinking from your holy mind. Christ has forgiven you, and in His sight the world is holy as Himself. Who sees no evil in it sees like Him, for what He has forgiven has not sinned, and guilt can be no more. Salvation's plan is made complete, and sanity has come.
Forgiveness is the call to sanity, for who but the insane would look on sin when he could see the face of Christ instead? This is the choice you make; the simplest one, and yet the only one that you can make. God calls on you to save His Son from death by offering the love of Christ to him. This is your need, and God Himself holds out this gift to you. As He would give, so must you give as well. And thus is prayer restored to formlessness, beyond all limits into timelessness, with nothing of the past to hold it back from re-uniting with the ceaseless song that all creation sings unto its God.
But to achieve this end you first must learn, before you reach where learning cannot go. Forgiveness is the key, but who can use a key when he has lost the door for which the key was made, and where alone it fits? Therefore we make distinctions, so that prayer can be released from darkness into light. Forgiveness's role must be reversed, and cleansed from evil usages and hateful goals. Forgiveness-to-destroy must be unveiled in all its treachery, and then let go forever and forever. There can be no trace of it remaining, if the plan that God established for returning be achieved at last, and learning be complete.
This is the world of opposites. And you must choose between them every instant while this world retains reality for you. Yet you must learn alternatives for choice, or you will not be able to attain your freedom. Let it then be clear to you exactly what forgiveness means to you, and learn what it should be to set you free. The level of your prayer depends on this, for here it waits its freedom to ascend above the world of chaos into peace.
Only love is strong because it is UNDIVIDED. The strong do not attack, because they see no need to do so. BEFORE the idea of attack can enter your mind, YOU MUST HAVE PERCEIVED YOURSELF AS WEAK. Because you had attacked yourself, and BELIEVED THAT THE ATTACK WAS EFFECTIVE, you behold yourself as weakened. No longer perceiving yourself and all your brothers as equal, AND REGARDING YOURSELF AS WEAKER, you attempt to "equalize" the situation YOU HAVE MADE. You use attack to do so, because you believe that ATTACK WAS SUCCESSFUL IN WEAKENING YOU.
That is why the recognition of your OWN invulnerability is so important in the restoration of your sanity. For if you accept your invulnerability, you are recognizing that ATTACK HAS NO EFFECT. Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally, you will demonstrate that NOTHING HAPPENED. Therefore, by attacking, you have NOT DONE ANYTHING. Once you realize this, there is no longer any SENSE in attack, for it manifestly DOES NOT WORK, it cannot PROTECT you. But the recognition of your invulnerability has more than merely negative value.
If your attacks on yourself FAILED to weaken you, YOU ARE STILL STRONG. You therefore HAVE no need to "equalize" the situation to ESTABLISH your strength. But you will never realize the utter uselessness of attack, EXCEPT by recognizing that your attack on YOURSELF had no effects. For others DO react to attack, if they perceive it, and if you ARE trying to attack them, you will be unable to avoid interpreting this as reinforcement. The ONLY place where you can cancel out ALL reinforcement, is IN YOURSELF. For YOU are always the first point of your attack, and if this has never been it HAS no consequences.
The Holy Spirit's Love is your strength, for yours is divided, and therefore not real. You could not trust your own love, when you have ATTACKED it. You cannot learn of PERFECT love with a split mind, because a split mind HAS MADE ITSELF A POOR LEARNER. You tried to make the separation eternal because you wanted to RETAIN the characteristics of creation, WITH YOUR OWN CONTENT.
Creation is NOT of you, and poor learners need special teaching. You have learning handicaps in a very literal sense. There are areas in your learning skills that are so impaired, that you can progress only under constant clear-cut direction, provided by a teacher who can TRANSCEND your limited resources. He BECOMES your resource, because OF YOURSELF, you CANNOT learn. The learning situation in which you place yourself IS impossible, and IN this situation, you clearly require a special teacher, and a special curriculum.
Poor learners are not good choices for teachers, either for themselves or for anyone else. You would hardly turn to THEM to establish the curriculum by which they can ESCAPE their limitations. If they understood what is BEYOND them, they would not BE handicapped. You do NOT know the meaning of love, and this IS your handicap. Do not attempt to teach YOURSELVES what you do not understand, and do not try to set up curriculum goals, where yours have clearly failed. For YOUR learning goal has been NOT TO LEARN, and this CANNOT lead to successful learning.
You cannot transfer what you have not learned, and the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure. Would you ask those who have FAILED to learn, what learning aids are FOR? THEY DO NOT KNOW. For if they could INTERPRET the aids correctly, they would have LEARNED from them. We have said that the ego's rule is, "Seek and do NOT find." Translated into curricular terms, this is the same as saying, "TRY to learn but DO NOT SUCCEED."
The result of this curriculum goal is obvious. Every legitimate teaching aid, every real instruction, and every sensible guide to learning, WILL BE MISINTERPRETED. For they are all for learning FACILITATION, which this strange curriculum goal is AGAINST. If you are trying to learn how NOT to learn, and using the AIM of teaching TO DEFEAT ITSELF, what can you expect BUT confusion? The CURRICULUM does not make any sense.
This kind of learning has so weakened your mind that you CANNOT love. For the curriculum you have chosen is AGAINST love, and amounts to a course in HOW TO ATTACK YOURSELF. A necessary minor, supplementing this major curriculum goal, is in learning how NOT to overcome the split which made this goal believable. And YOU can NOT overcome it, for all YOUR learning is on its BEHALF.
Yet your will speaks against your learning, as your learning speaks against your will. And so you fight AGAINST learning, and SUCCEED, for that is your will. But you do NOT realize, even yet, that there IS something you DO will to learn, and that you CAN learn it, because it IS your will to do so. You who have tried to learn what you do NOT will, should take heart. For though the curriculum you set yourself is depressing indeed, it is merely ridiculous, IF YOU LOOK AT IT. Is it POSSIBLE that the way to achieve a goal is NOT TO ATTAIN IT?
Resign NOW as your own teachers. THIS resignation will NOT lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourselves, and of the learning outcomes which have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor understand, you will become excellent learners AND teachers. But it is not so yet, and will not BE so until the whole learning situation, as YOU have set it up, is reversed.
Your learning POTENTIAL, properly understood, is limitless, BECAUSE IT WILL LEAD YOU TO GOD. You can TEACH the way to Him AND learn it, if you will follow the Teacher Who knows it, and the curriculum for learning it. The curriculum is totally unambiguous, because the goal is NOT divided, and the means and the end are in COMPLETE accord. YOU need offer only UNDIVIDED ATTENTION. Everything else will be GIVEN you. For it is YOUR will to learn aright, and NOTHING can oppose the will of God's Son. His learning is as unlimited as HE is.
Although in truth the term sacrifice is altogether meaningless, it does have meaning in the world. Like all things in the world its meaning is temporary, and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it. Now its real meaning is a lesson. Like all lessons it is an illusion, for in reality there is nothing to learn. Yet this illusion must be replaced by a corrective device; another illusion that replaces the first, so both can finally disappear. The first illusion, which must be displaced before another thought system can take hold, is that it is a sacrifice to give up the things of this world. What could this be but an illusion, since this world itself is nothing more than that?
It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give. What can the sacrifice of nothing mean? It cannot mean that you have less because of it. There is no sacrifice in the world's terms that does not involve the body. Think a while about what the world calls sacrifice. Power, fame, money, physical pleasure; who is the hero to whom all these things belong? Could they mean anything except to a body? Yet a body cannot evaluate. By seeking after such things the mind associates itself with the body, obscuring its identity and losing sight of what it really is.
Once this confusion has occurred, it becomes impossible for the mind to understand that all the "pleasures" of the world are nothing. But what a sacrifice,- and it is sacrifice indeed - all this entails! Now has the mind condemned itself to seek without finding; to be forever dissatisfied and discontented; to know not what it really wants to find. Who can escape this self-condemnation? Only through God's Word could this be possible. For self-condemnation is a decision about identity, and no-one doubts what he believes he is. He can doubt all things, but never this.
God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. To them he sacrifices all his peace. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?
What is the real meaning of sacrifice? It is the cost of believing in illusions. It is the price that must be paid for the denial of truth. There is no pleasure of the world that does not demand this, for otherwise the pleasure would be seen as pain. And no-one asks for pain if he recognizes it. It is the idea of sacrifice that makes him blind. He does not see what he is asking for. And so he seeks it in a thousand ways and in a thousand places, each time believing it is there and each time disappointed in the end. "Seek but do not find" remains this world's stern decree, and no-one who pursues the world's goals can do otherwise.
You may believe this course requires sacrifice of all you really hold dear. In one sense that is true, for you hold dear the things that crucify God's Son. And it is the course's aim to set him free. But do not be mistaken about what sacrifice means. It always means the giving up of what you want. And what, oh teacher of God, is it that you want? You have been called by God, and you have answered. Would you now sacrifice that Call? Few have heard it as yet, and they can but turn to you. There is no other hope in all the world that they can trust. There is no other voice in all the world that echoes God's. If you would sacrifice the truth, they stay in hell. And if they stay, you will remain with them.
Do not forget that sacrifice is total. There are no "half sacrifices." You cannot give up Heaven partially. You cannot be a little bit in hell. The Word of God has no exceptions. It is this that makes It holy and beyond the world. It is Its holiness that points to God. It is Its holiness that makes you safe. It is denied if you attack any brother for anything. For it is here the split with God occurs. A split that is impossible. A split that cannot happen. Yet a split in which you surely will believe, because you have set up a situation that is impossible. And in this situation the impossible can seem to happen. It seems to happen at the "sacrifice" of truth.
Teacher of God, do not forget the meaning of sacrifice, and remember what each decision you make must mean in terms of cost. Decide for God, and everything is given you at no cost at all. Decide against Him and you choose nothing at the expense of the awareness of everything. What would you teach? Remember only what you would learn. For it is here that your concern should be. Atonement is for you. Your learning claims it and your learning gives it. The world contains it not, but learn this course and it is yours. God holds out His Word to you, for He has need of teachers. What other way is there to save His Son?
This is a crucial question both for teacher and pupil. If this issue is mishandled, the teacher of God has hurt himself and has also attacked his pupil. This strengthens fear and makes the magic seem quite real to both of them. How to deal with magic thus becomes a major lesson for the teacher of God to master. His first responsibility in this is not to attack it. If a magic thought arouses anger in any form, God's teacher can be sure that he is strengthening his own belief in sin and has condemned himself. He can be sure as well that he has asked for depression, pain, fear and disaster to come to him. Let him remember, then, it is not this that he would teach because it is not this that he would learn.
There is, however, a temptation to respond to magic in a way that reinforces it. Nor is this always obvious. It can, in fact, be easily concealed beneath a wish to help. It is this double wish that makes the help of little value, and must lead to undesired outcomes. Nor should it be forgotten that the outcome that results will always come to teacher and to pupil. How many times has it been emphasized that you give but to yourself? And where could this be better shown than in the kinds of help the teacher gives to those who need his aid? Here is his gift most clearly given him. For he will give only what he has chosen for himself. And in this gift is his judgment upon the holy Son of God.
It is easiest to let error be corrected where it is most apparent, and errors can be recognized by their results. A lesson truly taught can lead to nothing but release for teacher and pupil, who have shared in one intent. Attack can enter only if perception of separate goals has entered. And this must indeed have been the case if the result is anything but joy. The single aim of the teacher turns the divided goal of the pupil into one direction, with the call for help becoming his one appeal. This then is easily responded to with just one answer, and this answer will enter the teacher's mind unfailingly. From there it shines into his pupil's mind, making it one with his.
Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no-one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appear as facts. Regardless, too, of the intensity of the anger which is aroused. It may be merely slight irritation, perhaps too mild to be even clearly recognized. Or it may also take the form of intense rage, accompanied by thoughts of violence, fantasied or apparently acted out. It does not matter. All of these reactions are the same. They obscure the truth, and this can never be a matter of degree. Either truth is apparent or it is not. It cannot be partially recognized. Who is unaware of truth must look upon illusions.
Anger in response to perceived magic thoughts is a basic cause of fear. Consider what this reaction means, and its centrality in the world's thought system becomes apparent. A magic thought, by its mere presence, acknowledges a separation from God. It states, in the clearest form possible, that the mind which thinks it believes it has a separate will that can oppose the Will of God and succeed. That this can hardly be a fact is obvious. Yet that it can be believed as fact is surely so. And herein lies the birthplace of guilt. Who usurps the place of God and takes it for himself now has a deadly "enemy." And he must stand alone in his protection, and make himself a shield to keep him safe from fury that can never be abated and vengeance that can never be satisfied.
How can this unfair battle be resolved? Its ending is inevitable, for its outcome must be death. How then can one believe in one's defenses? Magic again must help. Forget the battle. Accept it as a fact and then forget it. Do not remember the impossible odds against you. Do not remember the immensity of the "enemy," and do not think about your frailty in comparison. Accept your separation, but do not remember how it came about. Believe that you have won it, but do not retain the slightest memory of Who your great "opponent" really is. Projecting your "forgetting" onto Him, it seems to you He has forgotten, too.
But what will now be your reaction to all magic thoughts? They can but reawaken sleeping guilt, which you have hidden but have not let go. Each one says clearly to your frightened mind, "You have usurped the place of God. Think not He has forgotten." Here we have the fear of God most starkly represented. For in that thought has guilt already raised madness to the throne of God Himself. And now there is no hope. Except to kill. Here is salvation now. An angry Father pursues His guilty Son. Kill or be killed, for here alone is choice. Beyond this there is none, for what was done cannot be done without. The stain of blood can never be removed, and anyone who bears this stain on him must meet with death.
Into this hopeless situation God sends His teachers. They bring the light of hope from God Himself. There is a Way in which escape is possible. It can be learned and taught, but it requires patience and abundant willingness. Given that, the lesson's manifest simplicity stands out like an intense white light against a black horizon, for such it is. If anger comes from an interpretation and not a fact, it is never justified. Once this is even dimly grasped, the Way is open. Now it is possible to take the next step. The interpretation can be changed at last. Magic thoughts need not lead to condemnation, for they do not really have the power to give rise to guilt. And so they can be overlooked, and thus forgiven in the truest sense.
Madness but seems terrible. In truth it has no power to make anything. Like the magic which becomes its servant, it neither attacks nor protects. To see it and to recognize its thought system is to look on nothing. Can nothing give rise to anger? Hardly so. Remember then, teacher of God, that anger recognizes a reality that is not there; yet is the anger certain witness that you do believe in it as fact. Now is escape impossible until you see you have responded to your own interpretation, which you have projected on an outside world. Let this grim sword be taken from you now. There is no death. This sword does not exist. The fear of God is causeless. But His Love is Cause of everything beyond all fear, and thus forever real and always true.
The guiltless and the guilty are totally incapable of understanding one another. Each perceives the other AS LIKE HIMSELF, making them unable to communicate, because each sees the other UNLIKE the way he sees himself. God can communicate ONLY to the Holy Spirit in your mind, because only He shares the knowledge of what you are WITH God. And only the Holy Spirit can answer God for YOU, for only He knows what God IS. Everything ELSE, that YOU have placed within your mind, CANNOT exist, for what is not in communication with the Mind of God, has never been. Communication with God is Life. Nothing without it IS at all.
The only part of your mind that has reality, is the part that links you still with God. Would you have ALL of it transformed into a radiant message of God's Love, to share with all the lonely ones, who have denied Him with you? GOD MAKES THIS POSSIBLE. Would you deny His yearning to be known? You yearn for Him, as He for you. This is forever changeless. Accept, then, the immutable. Leave the world of death behind, and return quietly to Heaven. There is NOTHING of value here, and EVERYTHING of value there. Listen to the Holy Spirit, and to God through Him. He speaks of you to YOU. There IS no guilt in you, for God is blessed in His Son, as the Son is blessed in Him.
Each one of you has a special part to play in the Atonement, but the message given to each to share is always the same; GOD's SON IS GUILTLESS. Each one teaches the message differently, and learns it differently. But UNTIL he teaches it and learns it, he will suffer the pain of dim awareness, that his true function remains unfulfilled in him. The burden of guilt is heavy, but God would not have you bound by it. HIS plan for your awaking is as perfect as yours is fallible. You know not what you do, but He Who knows is with you. His gentleness is yours, and all the love you share with God, He holds in trust for you. He would teach you nothing except how to be happy.
Blessed Son of a wholly blessing Father, joy was created FOR you. Who can condemn whom God has blessed? There is nothing in the Mind of God that does not share his shining innocence. Creation is the natural extension of perfect purity. Your only calling here is to devote yourself, with active willingness, to the denial of guilt in ALL its forms. To accuse is NOT TO UNDERSTAND. The happy learners of the Atonement become the teachers of the innocence that is the RIGHT of all that God created. Deny them not what is their due, for you will not withhold it from them alone.
The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation. Do not try to steal it from him, or you will ASK for guilt and WILL experience it. PROTECT his purity from every thought that would steal it away, and keep it from his sight. BRING INNOCENCE TO LIGHT, in answer to the call of the Atonement. Never allow purity to remain hidden, but shine away the heavy veils of guilt, within which the Son of God has hidden himself from his own sight. We are all joined in the Atonement here, and nothing else can unite us in this world. So will the world of separation slip away, and full communication be restored between the Father and the Son.
The miracle acknowledges the guiltlessness which MUST have been denied, to produce NEED of healing. Do not withhold this glad acknowledgment, for hope of happiness, and release from suffering of every kind, lies in it. Who is there but wishes to be free of pain? He may not yet have learned HOW to exchange his guilt for innocence, nor realize that ONLY in this exchange can freedom from pain be his. But those who have failed to learn need TEACHING, NOT attack. To attack those who have need of teaching is to fail to learn FROM them.
Teachers of innocence, each in his own way, have joined together, taking their part in the unified curriculum of the Atonement. There is no unity of learning goals apart from this. There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has ONE aim, however it is taught. Each effort made on its behalf is offered to the single purpose of RELEASE from guilt, to the eternal glory of God and His creation. And every teaching that points to this points straight to Heaven, and to the peace of God. There is no pain, no trial, no fear, that teaching this can fail to overcome. The power of God Himself supports this teaching, and GUARANTEES its limitless results
Join your own efforts to the Power that cannot fail, and MUST result in peace. No-one can be untouched by teaching such as this. You will not see yourself BEYOND the power of God if you teach only this. You will NOT be exempt from the effect of this most holy lesson, which seeks but to restore what is the right of God's creation. From everyone whom you accord release from guilt, you will INEVITABLY learn YOUR innocence. The circle of Atonement HAS no end. And you will find ever-increasing confidence in your safe inclusion in what is for all, in everyone you bring within its safety and its perfect peace.
Peace, then, be unto everyone who becomes a teacher of peace. For peace is the acknowledgment of perfect purity, from which no-one is excluded. Within its holy circle, is everyone whom God created as His Son. Joy is its unifying attribute, with no-one left outside, to suffer guilt alone. The power of God draws everyone to its safe embrace of love and union. Stand quietly within this circle, and attract all tortured minds to join with you, in the safety of its peace and holiness. Abide with me within it, as teachers of Atonement, NOT of guilt.
Blessed are ye who teach with me. Our power comes not of us, but of our Father. In guiltlessness we know Him, as He knows us guiltless. I stand within the circle, calling YOU to peace. Teach peace with me, and stand with me on holy ground. Remember for everyone your Father's power, that He has given them. Believe not that you cannot teach His perfect peace. Stand not outside, but join with me within. Fail not the only purpose to which MY teaching calls you. Restore to God His Son, as He created him, by teaching him his innocence.
The crucifixion had no part in the Atonement. Only the Resurrection became my part in it. THAT is the symbol of the RELEASE from guilt, by guiltlessness. Whomever you perceive as guilty, you would crucify. But you RESTORE guiltlessness to whomever you SEE as guiltless. Crucifixion is ALWAYS the ego's aim. It SEES AS GUILTY, and BY its condemnation, IT WOULD KILL. The Holy Spirit sees only guiltlessness, and, in His gentleness, He would RELEASE from fear, and re-establish the reign of love. The power of love is in His gentleness, which is of God and therefore cannot crucify, nor suffer crucifixion. The temple you restore becomes YOUR altar, for it was re-built through YOU. And everything you give to God IS yours. Thus He creates, and thus must YOU restore.
Each one you see you place, within the holy circle of Atonement, or leave outside, judging him fit for crucifixion or redemption. If you bring him INTO the circle of purity, you will rest there WITH him. If you leave him without, you JOIN him there. Judge not, except in quietness which is NOT of you. Refuse to accept anyone as WITHOUT the blessing of Atonement, and bring him INTO it by blessing him. Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy. Come gladly to the holy circle, and look out in peace on all who think they are outside. Cast no-one out, for this is what HE seeks along with you. Come, let us join him in the holy place of peace, which is for all of us, united as one, within the cause of peace.
To the advanced teacher of God this question is meaningless. There is no program, for the lessons in the curriculum change each day. Yet he is sure of but one thing; they do not change at random. Seeing this, and understanding it is true, he rests content. He will be told all that his role should be, this day and every day. And those who share that role with him will find him, so they can learn the lessons for the day together. Not one is absent whom he needs; not one is sent without a learning goal already set, and one which can be met that very day. For the advanced teacher of God, then, this question is superfluous. It has been asked and answered, and he keeps in constant contact with the Answer. He is set, and sees the road on which he walks stretch surely and smoothly before him.
But what about those who have not reached his certainty? They are not yet ready for such lack of structuring on their own part. What must they do to learn to give the day to God? There are some general rules which do apply, although each one must use them as best he can in his own way. Routines as such are dangerous, because they easily become gods in their own right, threatening the very goals for which they were set up. Broadly speaking, then, it can be said that it is well to start the day right. It is always possible to begin again, should the day begin with error. Yet there are obvious advantages in terms of saving time if the need for this can be avoided.
At the beginning it is wise to think in terms of time. This is by no means the ultimate criterion, but at the outset it is probably the simplest to observe. The saving of time is an essential early emphasis which, although it remains important throughout the learning process, becomes less and less emphasized. At the outset, we can safely say that time devoted to starting the day right does indeed save time. How much time should be so spent? This must depend on the teacher of God himself. He cannot claim that title until he has gone through the Workbook, since we are learning within the framework of our course. After completion of the more structured practice periods which the Workbook contains, individual need becomes the chief consideration.
This course is always practical. It may be that the teacher of God is not in a situation which fosters quiet thought as he awakes. If this is so, let him but remember that he chooses to spend time with God as soon as possible, and let him do so. Duration is not the major concern. One can easily sit still an hour with closed eyes, and accomplish nothing. One can as easily give God only an instant, and in that instant join with Him completely. Perhaps the one generalization that can be made is this; as soon as possible after waking take your quiet time, continuing a minute or two after you begin to find it difficult. You may find that the difficulty will diminish and drop away. If not, that is the time to stop.
The same procedures should be followed at night. Perhaps your quiet time should be fairly early in the evening, if it is not feasible for you to take it just before going to sleep. It is not wise to lie down for it. It is better to sit up, in whatever position you prefer. Having gone through the Workbook you must have come to some conclusions in this respect. If possible, however, just before sleeping is a desirable time to devote to God. It sets your mind into a pattern of rest, and orients you away from fear. If it is expedient to spend this time earlier, at least be sure that you do not forget a brief period,- not more than a moment will do,- in which you close your eyes and think of God.
There is one thought in particular that should be remembered throughout the day. It is a thought of pure joy; a thought of peace, a thought of limitless release, - limitless because all things are freed within it. You think you made a place of safety for yourself. You think you made a power that can save you from all the fearful things you see in dreams. It is not so. Your safety lies not there. What you give up is merely the illusion of protecting illusions. And it is this you fear, and only this. How foolish to be so afraid of nothing! Nothing at all! Your defenses will not work, but you are not in danger. You have no need of them. Recognize this and they will disappear. And only then will you accept your real protection.
How simply and how easily does time slip by for the teacher of God who has accepted His protection! All that he did before in the name of safety no longer interests him. For he is safe, and knows it to be so. He has a Guide Who will not fail. He need make no distinctions among the problems he perceives, for He to Whom he turns with all of them recognizes no order of difficulty in resolving them. He is as safe in the present as he was before illusions were accepted into his mind, and as he will be when he has let them go. There is no difference in his state at different times and different places, because they are all one to God. This is his safety. And he has no need for more than this.
Yet there will be temptations along the way the teacher of God has yet to travel, and he has need of reminding himself throughout the day of his protection. How can he do this, particularly during the time when his mind is occupied with external things? He can but try, and his success depends on his conviction that he will succeed. He must be sure success is not of him, but will be given him at any time, in any place and circumstance he calls for it. There are times his certainty will waver, and the instant this occurs he will return to earlier attempts to place reliance on himself alone. Forget not this is magic, and that magic is a sorry substitute for true assistance. It is not good enough for God's teacher because it is not good enough for God's Son.
The avoidance of magic is the avoidance of temptation. For all temptation is nothing more than the attempt to substitute another will for God's. These attempts may indeed seem frightening, yet they are merely pathetic. They can have no effects; neither good nor bad, neither rewarding nor demanding sacrifice, healing nor destructive, quieting nor fearful. When all magic is recognized as merely nothing, the teacher of God has reached the most advanced state. All intermediate lessons will but lead to this, and bring this goal nearer to recognition. For magic of any kind, in all its forms, simply does nothing. Its powerlessness is the reason it can be so easily escaped. What has no effects can hardly terrify.
There is no substitute for the Will of God. In simple statement, it is to this fact that the teacher of God devotes his day. Each substitute he may accept as real can but deceive him. But he is safe from all deception if he so decides. Perhaps he needs to remember "God is with me. I cannot be deceived." Perhaps he prefers other words, or only one or none at all. Yet each temptation to accept magic as true must be abandoned through his recognition not that it is fearful, not that it is sinful, not that it is dangerous, but merely that it is meaningless. Rooted in sacrifice and separation, two aspects of one error and no more, he merely chooses to give up all that he never had. And for this "sacrifice" is Heaven restored to his awareness.
Is not this an exchange that you would want? The world would gladly make it, if it knew it could be made. It is God's teachers who must teach it that it can. And so it is their function to make sure that they have learned it. No risk is possible throughout the day except to put your trust in magic, for it is only this that leads to pain. "There is no will but God's." His teachers know that this is so, and have learned that everything but this is magic. All belief in magic is maintained by just one simple-minded illusion; - that it works. All through his training, every day and hour, and even every minute and second, must God's teachers learn to recognize the forms of magic and perceive their meaninglessness. Fear is withdrawn from them and so they go. And thus the Gate of Heaven is reopened, and its light can shine again on an untroubled mind.
Any split in will MUST involve a rejection of part of it, and this IS the belief in separation. The wholeness of God, which IS His peace, cannot be appreciated EXCEPT by a whole mind, which recognizes the wholeness of God's creation and BY this recognition knows its Creator.
Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING. The reason, however, may not be as clear to you as you think. What you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe.
Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further.
Projection and attack are inevitably related, because projection is ALWAYS a means of JUSTIFYING attack. Anger without projection is impossible. The ego uses projection ONLY to distort your perception of both yourself AND your brothers. It begins by excluding something you think exists in you which you do not want, and leads directly to your excluding yourself from your brothers.
But we know that there is another use of projection. Every ability of the ego has a better counterpart, because its abilities are directed by the mind, which has a better voice. The Holy Spirit, as well as the ego, utilizes projection but since their goals are opposed, so is the result. The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving YOU as perfect. KNOWING this perfection is shared, it RECOGNIZES it in others, thus strengthening it in both. Instead of anger, this arouses love FOR both because IT ESTABLISHES INCLUSION. Perceiving equality, it perceives equal needs. This invites Atonement automatically, because Atonement IS the one need which is universal.
To perceive YOURSELF in this way is the ONLY way in which you can find happiness in this world. This is because it is the acknowledgement that you are NOT in this world, and the world IS unhappy. How else can you find joy in a joyless place EXCEPT by realizing that YOU ARE NOT THERE? You cannot be ANYWHERE that God did not put you, and God created you as part of HIM. That is both WHERE you are and WHAT you are. This is COMPLETELY unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change this now or ever. It is forever true. It is NOT a belief, but a fact.
Anything that God creates is as true as He is. Its truth lies only in its perfect inclusion in Him Who alone IS perfect. To deny this in any way is to deny yourself AND Him, because it is impossible to accept one without the other. The perfect equality of the Holy Spirit's perception is the counterpart of the perfect equality of God's knowing. The ego's perception has no counterpart in God, but the Holy Spirit remains the bridge between perception and knowledge. By enabling you to use perception in a way that PARALLELS knowledge, you will ultimately meet it and KNOW it.
The ego prefers to believe that parallel lines do not meet, and conceives of their meeting as impossible. But you might remember that the human eye perceives them as if they DO meet in the distance, which is the same as IN THE FUTURE, if time and space are one dimension. The later mathematics support the interpretation of ultimate convergence of the parallel theoretically. EVERYTHING meets in God, because everything was created BY Him and IN Him. God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part.
The Holy Spirit enables you to PERCEIVE THIS WHOLENESS NOW. You can no more pray for yourselves alone than you can find joy for yourself alone. Prayer is a re-statement of INCLUSION, directed by the Holy Spirit under the laws of God. God created you to create. You cannot EXTEND His Kingdom until you KNOW of its wholeness. But thoughts begin in the mind OF THE THINKER, from which they extend outward. This is as true of God's thinking as it is of yours. Because your minds are split, you can also perceive as well as think, but perception cannot escape from the basic laws of mind. You perceive FROM your mind, and extend your perceptions outward.
Although perception of any kind is unnecessary, YOU made it and the Holy Spirit can therefore use it well. He can INSPIRE perception and lead it toward God by making it PARALLEL to God's way of thinking, and thus guaranteeing their ultimate meeting. This convergence SEEMS to be far in the future ONLY because your mind is NOT in perfect alignment with the idea, and therefore DOES NOT WANT IT NOW. The Holy Spirit USES time, but does NOT believe in it. Coming from God, He uses EVERYTHING for good, but does not BELIEVE in what is not true.
Since the Holy Spirit IS in your minds, then your minds MUST be able to believe ONLY what is true. The Holy Spirit can speak only for this, because he speaks for God. He tells you to return your whole mind to God, BECAUSE IT HAS NEVER LEFT HIM. If it has never left Him, you need only perceive it AS IT IS to BE returned. The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation NEVER OCCURRED. The ego CANNOT prevail against this, because it is an explicit statement that the EGO never occurred.
The ego can accept the idea that RETURN is necessary, because it can so easily make the idea seem so difficult. But the Holy Spirit tells you that even RETURN is unnecessary, because what never happened CANNOT involve ANY problem. But it does NOT follow that YOU cannot make the idea of return both necessary AND difficult. God made nothing either necessary OR difficult. But YOU have perceived both AS IF they were part of His perfect creations. Yet it is surely clear that the perfect NEED nothing, and CANNOT experience perfection as a difficult accomplishment because that is what they ARE.
This is the way in which you MUST perceive God's Creations, bringing all of your perceptions into the one parallel line which the Holy Spirit sees. This line is the direct line of communication with God, and lets YOUR mind converge with HIS. There is NO CONFLICT ANYWHERE in this perception, because it means that ALL perception is guided by the Holy Spirit, whose mind is fixed on God. ONLY the Holy Spirit can resolve conflict, because ONLY the Holy Spirit is conflict-free. He perceives ONLY what is true in YOUR mind, and extends outward to ONLY what is true in other minds.
The difference between the ego's use of projection and projection as the Holy Spirit uses it is very simple. The ego projects to EXCLUDE and therefore to deceive. The Holy Spirit projects by RECOGNIZING HIMSELF in EVERY mind, and thus perceives them as ONE. Nothing conflicts in this perception, because what the Holy Spirit perceives IS the same. Wherever He looks He sees Himself, and because He is UNITED, He offers the whole Kingdom always. This is the one message which God gave TO Him, and for which He must speak because that is what He IS. The peace of God lies in that message, and so the peace of God lies in YOU.
The great peace of the Kingdom shines in your mind forever, but it must shine OUTWARD to make YOU aware of it. The Holy Spirit was given you with perfect impartiality, and only by perceiving Him impartially can you perceive Him at all. The ego is legion, but the Holy Spirit is one. No darkness abides ANYWHERE in the Kingdom, so your part is only to allow no darkness to abide in your OWN mind. This alignment with Light is unlimited, because it is in alignment with the Light of the world. Each of us IS the Light of the world, and by joining our minds IN this Light, we proclaim the Kingdom of God together and AS ONE.
God's MEANING waits in the Kingdom because that is where He placed it. It does NOT wait in time. It merely RESTS there (in the Kingdom) because it BELONGS there, as YOU do. How can you, who ARE God's meaning, perceive yourselves as absent FROM it? You can see yourselves as separated FROM your meaning only by EXPERIENCING YOURSELF AS UNREAL. This is WHY the ego is insane; it teaches that you are NOT what you ARE. This is so contradictory that it is clearly impossible. It is therefore a lesson which you CANNOT REALLY LEARN, and therefore CANNOT REALLY TEACH. But you ARE always teaching. You MUST, then, be teaching SOMETHING ELSE AS WELL, even though the ego DOES NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS.
The ego, then, IS always being undone, and DOES suspect your motives. Your mind CANNOT be unified in allegiance to the ego, because the mind does NOT BELONG to it. But what is "treacherous" to the ego IS faithful to peace. The ego's "enemy" is therefore YOUR friend. We said before that the ego's friend is not part of you but that is because the ego perceives itself as at war and therefore in need of allies. YOU, who are NOT at war, must look for brothers and RECOGNIZE all you see AS brothers, because ONLY EQUALS ARE AT PEACE.
Because God's equal Sons have everything, they CANNOT compete. But if they perceive ANY of their brothers as anything OTHER than their perfect equals, the IDEA of competition HAS entered their minds. Do not underestimate your need to be vigilant AGAINST this idea, because ALL your conflicts come FROM it. It IS the belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore means that you have accepted the IMpossible as true. How is that different from saying that you are perceiving YOURSELF as unreal?
To be IN the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention ON it. As long as you believe that you can ATTEND to what is NOT true, you are accepting conflict as your CHOICE. IS IT REALLY A CHOICE? It SEEMS to be, but seeming and reality are hardly the same. You who ARE the Kingdom are not concerned with seeming. Reality is yours because you ARE reality. This is how having and being are ultimately reconciled, NOT in the Kingdom, but IN YOUR MINDS. The altar there is the ONLY reality. It is PERFECTLY clear in its thought, because it is a reflection of PERFECT Thought. It SEES only brothers because it sees ONLY in its own Light.
God has lit your minds Himself, and keeps your mind lit BY His light because His light is WHAT YOUR MINDS ARE. This is TOTALLY beyond question. And when YOU questioned it, you WERE answered. The answer merely UNDOES the question by establishing the fact that to QUESTION reality is to question MEANINGLESSLY. That is why the Holy Spirit NEVER questions. Its sole function is to UNdo the questionable, and thus LEAD TO CERTAINTY. The certain are perfectly calm, because they are not in doubt. They do NOT raise questions because NOTHING QUESTIONABLE ENTERS THEIR MINDS. This holds them in perfect serenity because this is what they SHARE, KNOWING what they are.
Healing is both an art and a science, as has so often been said. It is an art because it depends on inspiration in the sense that we have already used the term. Inspiration is the opposite of dis-spiriting, and therefore means to make joyful. The dis-spirited are depressed because they believe that they are literally "without the Spirit," which is an illusion. You do not PUT the Spirit in them by inspiring them, because that would be "magic," and therefore would not be real healing. But you DO recognize the Spirit that is ALREADY THERE, and thereby REAWAKEN IT. This is why the healer is part of the Resurrection and the LIFE. The SPIRIT is not asleep in the minds of the sick, but the part of the mind that can perceive it and be glad IS.
Healing is also a science because it obeys the laws of God, whose laws are true. BECAUSE they are true, they are perfectly dependable, and therefore universal in application. The real aim of science is neither prediction nor control, but ONLY UNDERSTANDING. This is because it does NOT establish the laws it seeks; CANNOT discover them through prediction, and has NO control over them at all. Science is nothing more than an approach to WHAT ALREADY IS. Like inspiration, it can be misunderstood as magic, and WILL be whenever it is undertaken as SEPARATE from what already is, and perceived as a means for ESTABLISHING it. To believe this is possible is to believe YOU CAN DO IT. This can ONLY be the voice of the ego.
Truth can only be RECOGNIZED, and NEED only be recognized. Inspiration is of the Spirit, and certainty is of God according to His laws. Both therefore come from the same Source, because inspiration comes from the voice FOR God and certainty comes from the laws OF God. Healing does not come DIRECTLY from God, who knows His Creations as perfectly whole. But healing is nevertheless OF God, because it proceeds from His Voice and from His laws. It is their RESULT in a state of mind which does not know Him. The STATE is unknown to Him, and therefore does not exist. But those who sleep are stupefied, or better, UNAWARE. And BECAUSE they are unaware THEY DO NOT KNOW.
The Holy Spirit must work THROUGH you to teach you He is IN you. This is an intermediary step toward the knowledge that YOU are in God BECAUSE YOU ARE PART OF HIM. The miracles which the Holy Spirit inspires CAN have no order, because every part of Creation IS of one order. This is God's will AND yours. The laws of God ESTABLISH this, and the Holy Spirit reminds you OF it. When you heal, you are REMEMBERING THE LAWS OF GOD and FORGETTING the laws of the ego. We said before that forgetting is merely a way of REMEMBERING BETTER. It is therefore NOT the opposite of remembering, when it is properly conceived. Perceived IMproperly, it induces a perception of CONFLICT WITH SOMETHING ELSE, as all incorrect perception does. PROPERLY perceived, it can be used as a way OUT of conflict, as all proper perception can.
ALL abilities, then should be given over to the Holy Spirit, WHO KNOWS HOW TO USE THEM PROPERLY. He can use them ONLY for healing, because He knows you ONLY as whole. BY healing you learn of wholeness, and by learning of wholeness you learn to remember God. You HAVE forgotten Him, but the Holy Spirit still knows that YOUR forgetting MUST be translated into a way of remembering, and NOT perceived as a SEPARATE ability which OPPOSES AN OPPOSITE. This is the way in which the ego tries to use ALL abilities, because its goal is ALWAYS to make YOU believe that YOU are in opposition.
The ego's goal is as unified as the Holy Spirit's, and it is BECAUSE of this that their goals can NEVER be reconciled in ANY way or to ANY extent. The ego ALWAYS seeks to divide and separate. The Holy Spirit ALWAYS seeks to unify and HEAL. As you heal, you ARE healed because the Holy Spirit sees NO ORDER OF HEALING. Healing IS the way to undo the belief in differences, because it is the ONLY way of perceiving the Sonship WITHOUT this belief. This perception is therefore IN accord with the laws of God even in a state of mind which is OUT of accord with His. But the strength of right perception is so great that it brings the mind INTO accord with His, because it yields to His pull which IS in all of you.
To oppose the pull or the will of God is not an ability but a real delusion. The ego believes that it HAS this ability, and can offer this ability to YOU as a gift. YOU DO NOT WANT IT. It is NOT a gift. It is NOTHING AT ALL. God HAS given you a gift, which you both HAVE and ARE. When you do not USE it, you do not know you HAVE it. By not knowing this, you do NOT know what you ARE. Healing, then, is a way of APPROACHING knowledge by THINKING in accordance with the laws of God and RECOGNIZING THEIR UNIVERSALITY. WITHOUT this recognition, you have made the laws themselves meaningless TO you. But the LAWS are not meaningless, because all meaning is contained BY them, and IN them.
Seek ye FIRST the Kingdom of Heaven, because that is where the laws of God operate truly, and they can operate ONLY truly, because they are the laws of Truth. But SEEK THIS ONLY, because you can FIND nothing else. There IS nothing else. God is all in all in a very literal sense. All being is in Him because He IS all Being. YOU are therefore in Him because YOUR being IS His. Healing is a way of FORGETTING the sense of danger that the ego has induced in YOU by not recognizing its existence in your brothers. This strengthens the Holy Spirit in BOTH of you, because it is a REFUSAL TO ACKNOWLEDGE FEAR. Love needs only this invitation. It comes freely to ALL the Sonship, because it is what the Sonship IS. By their awakening TO it, they merely forget what they are NOT. This enables them to remember what they ARE.
The holy relationship is the EXPRESSION of the holy instant, in living in this world. Like EVERYTHING about salvation, the holy instant is a PRACTICAL device, WITNESSED by its results. The holy instant NEVER fails. The EXPERIENCE of it is ALWAYS felt. But, without EXPRESSION, IT IS NOT REMEMBERED. The holy relationship is a constant reminder of the experience in which the relationship became what it is. And, as the UNholy relationship is a continuing hymn of hate in praise of ITS maker, so is the holy relationship a happy song of praise to the REDEEMER of relationships. The holy relationship, a MAJOR step toward the perception of the real world, is LEARNED. It is the old, unholy relationship, transformed and seen anew.
The holy relationship is a phenomenal teaching accomplishment. In all its aspects, as it begins, develops, and becomes accomplished, it represents the REVERSAL of the unholy relationship. Be comforted in this; The ONLY difficult phase is the beginning. For here, the GOAL of the relationship is abruptly shifted to the EXACT OPPOSITE of what it was. This is the FIRST result of OFFERING the relationship to the Holy Spirit, to use for HIS purposes. This invitation is ACCEPTED IMMEDIATELY, and the Holy Spirit wastes no time in introducing the practical results of asking Him to enter. AT ONCE, HIS goal REPLACES yours.
This is accomplished very rapidly. But it makes the relationship seem disturbed, disjunctive and even quite distressing. The reason is quite clear. For the relationship, AS IT IS, is out of line with its own goal, and clearly unsuited to the purpose which has been ACCEPTED for it. In its UNholy condition, YOUR goal was all that SEEMED to give it meaning. Now, it seems to make NO sense. Many relationships have been broken off at this point, and the pursuit of the old goal re-established in ANOTHER relationship. For, once the unholy relationship has ACCEPTED the goal of holiness, it can never again be what it was.
The temptation of the ego becomes extremely intense, with this shift in goals. For the relationship has NOT, as yet, been changed sufficiently to make its former goal completely WITHOUT attraction, and its structure is 'threatened' by the recognition of its inappropriateness for meeting its new purpose. The conflict between the goal and the structure of the relationship is SO apparent that they CANNOT co-exist. Yet now, THE GOAL WILL NOT BE CHANGED. Set firmly in the unholy relationship, there IS no course except to CHANGE THE RELATIONSHIP to fit the goal. Until this HAPPY solution is seen and accepted as the ONLY WAY OUT of this conflict, the RELATIONSHIP seems to be severely strained.
It would NOT be kinder to shift the goal more slowly. For the CONTRAST would be obscured, and the ego given time to re-interpret each slow step, according to its liking. Only a radical shift in purpose COULD induce a COMPLETE change of mind about what the whole relationship IS FOR. As this change develops, and is finally accomplished, it grows increasingly beneficent and joyous. But, at the beginning, the situation is experienced as very precarious. A relationship, undertaken by two individuals for their unholy purposes, suddenly has HOLINESS for its goal.
As these two CONTEMPLATE their relationship from the point of view of this new purpose, they are inevitably appalled. Their perception of the relationship may even become quite disorganized. And yet, the FORMER organization of their perception, no longer serves the purpose THEY have agreed to set. THIS IS THE TIME FOR FAITH. You LET this goal be set for you. That WAS an act of faith. Do not ABANDON faith, now that the REWARDS of faith are being introduced. If you believed the Holy Spirit was THERE to ACCEPT the relationship, why would you now not STILL believe that He is there, to PURIFY what He has taken under His guidance?
Have faith in EACH OTHER in what but SEEMS to be a trying time. THE GOAL IS SET. And your relationship has SANITY as its purpose. Now you find yourselves in an INSANE relationship, RECOGNIZED as such IN THE LIGHT OF ITS GOAL. Now the ego counsels thus; substitute for this ANOTHER relationship, to which your FORMER goal was QUITE appropriate. You can ESCAPE from your distress, ONLY BY GETTING RID OF EACH OTHER. You need not part entirely, if you choose not to do so. But you MUST exclude MAJOR AREAS of fantasy FROM each other, TO SAVE YOUR SANITY.
Hear not this now! Have faith in Him Who ANSWERED you. He heard; has He not been very explicit in His answer? You are NOT now wholly insane. Can you DENY that He HAS given a MOST explicit statement? Now He asks for faith a little longer, even in bewilderment. For this will go, and you will see the JUSTIFICATION for your faith emerge, to bring you shining conviction. Abandon Him not now, NOR EACH OTHER. This relationship HAS BEEN reborn as holy. Accept with gladness what you do not understand, and LET it be explained to you, as you perceive its purpose work in it, to MAKE it holy.
You will find many opportunities to blame EACH OTHER for the 'failure' of your relationship. For it will seem, at times, to have NO purpose. A sense of aimlessness will come to haunt you, and to remind you of all the ways you once SOUGHT for satisfaction, and THOUGHT you found it. Forget not now the misery you REALLY found. And do not now breathe life into your failing egos. For your relationship has NOT been disrupted. IT HAS BEEN SAVED. You are very new in the ways of salvation, and think you have LOST your way. YOUR way IS lost, but think not this is LOSS.
In your newness, remember that you have started again, TOGETHER. And take each other's hand, to walk together along a road far more familiar than you now believe. Is it not certain, that you will remember a goal unchanged throughout eternity? For you have chosen but the goal of God, from which your true intent was NEVER absent. Throughout the Sonship is the song of freedom heard, in joyous echo of your choice. You have joined with many, in the holy instant, and THEY have joined with you. Think not your choice will leave YOU comfortless. For God Himself has blessed your special relationship. JOIN in His blessing, and withhold not yours upon it. For all it needs now IS your blessing, that you may see that in it rests salvation.
Condemn salvation not, for it HAS come to you. And welcome it TOGETHER, for it has come to JOIN you together, in a relationship in which ALL the Sonship is together blessed. You undertook, TOGETHER to invite the Holy Spirit into your relationship. He could not have entered otherwise. And, though you have made many mistakes since then, you have also made enormous efforts to help Him do His work. And He has NOT been lacking in appreciation for all you have done for Him, nor does He see the mistakes at all.
Have you been similarly grateful to each other? Have you consistently appreciated the GOOD efforts, and OVERLOOKED mistakes? Or has your appreciation flickered and grown dim, in what SEEMED to be the LIGHT of the mistakes? You are now entering upon a campaign to blame EACH OTHER for the discomfort of the situation in which you find yourselves. And by this LACK of thanks and gratitude, you make YOURSELVES unable to EXPRESS the holy instant, and thus you lose sight of it. The experience of an instant, HOWEVER compelling it may be, is easily forgotten, if you allow time to close over it. It must be kept shining and gracious, in your AWARENESS of time, but not CONCEALED within it. The instant remains. But where are YOU?
To give thanks to each other is to APPRECIATE the holy instant, and thus enable its RESULTS to be accepted AND SHARED. To ATTACK each other is not to LOSE the instant, but TO MAKE IT POWERLESS IN ITS EFFECTS. You HAVE received the holy instant, but you have established a condition IN WHICH YOU CANNOT USE IT. As a result, you do not realize that it is WITH YOU STILL. And, by CUTTING YOURSELF OFF from its EXPRESSION, you have denied yourself its benefit. You REINFORCE this, every time YOU ATTACK EACH OTHER, for the attack MUST blind you to YOURSELF. And it IS impossible to DENY yourself, and recognize what has been given, and RECEIVED by you.
You stand together in the holy Presence of Truth Itself. Here is the goal, together WITH you. Think you not the goal ITSELF will gladly arrange the MEANS for its accomplishment? It is just this same DISCREPANCY between the purpose which has BEEN accepted and the means as they stand now, that SEEMS to make you suffer, but which makes Heaven glad. If Heaven were OUTSIDE you, you could NOT share in its gladness. But, because it is WITHIN, the gladness, too, IS yours. You ARE joined in purpose, but remain still separate and divided on the means. Yet the GOAL is fixed, firm and unalterable. And the means will surely fall in place, BECAUSE the goal is sure.
And YOU will share the gladness of the Sonship that it is so. As you begin to recognize, and ACCEPT the gifts you have so freely given to EACH OTHER, you will also accept the EFFECTS of the holy instant, and use them to correct ALL your mistakes, and free you from THEIR results. And, learning this, you will have ALSO learned how to release ALL the Sonship, and offer it in gladness and thanksgiving to Him Who gave you YOUR release, and Who would EXTEND it through you.
Man must contribute to his readiness here as elsewhere. The readiness for faith, as for everything else that is true, entails the two steps necessary for the release from fear.
Denial of fear, in human terms, is a strong defense because it entails two levels of error:
1. That truth CAN be denied and
2. That absence of truth can be effective.
EXPERIENCING fear, which is more characteristic of Bill, involves only the second error. However, these differences do not affect the power of the miracle at all, since only truth and error are its concern.
YOU are both more miracle-minded, and less able to recognize fear because of your stronger, but split, identification. Bill, also characteristically, is less miracle-minded, but better able to recognize fear, because his identification is more consistently right but weaker.
Together, the conditions needed for consistent miracle-mindedness, the state in which fear has been abolished, can be particularly well worked out. In fact, it WAS already well worked out before.
Your idea about the real meaning of "possession" should be clarified. Your own denial of fear (this refers to a visionary experience of Helen Schucman) introduced some error variance, but not really a significant amount. However, there is always a chance that as the size of the sample increases, what was non-significant before may ATTAIN significance, so we had better get this out of the way now while you are still within the safety margin.
Fear of possession is a perverted expression of the fear of the irresistible attraction. (Aside. Yes, this DOES apply to homosexuality, among other errors, where the whole concept of possessing, or "entering" is a key fear. It is a symbolic statement of an inverted decision NOT to enter into, or possess, the Kingdom. In physical terms, which it emphasizes because of the inherent error of Soul avoidance, REAL physical creation is avoided, and fantasy gratification is substituted.)
The truth is still that the attraction of God is irresistible at ALL levels, and the acceptance of this totally unavoidable truth is only a matter of time. But you should consider whether you WANT to wait, because you CAN return now, if you choose. (Note to Helen Schucman: You are writing this with improper motivation, but we will try anyway. If you are to stop, do so immediately.)
Possession is a concept which has been subject to numerous distortions, some of which we will list below:
1. It (possession) can be associated with the body only. If this occurs, sex is particularly likely to be contaminated. Possession versus being possessed is apt to be seen as the male and female role. Since neither will be conceived of as satisfying alone, and both will be associated with fear, this interpretation is particularly vulnerable to psychosexual confusion.
2. From a rather similar misperceptual reference point, possession can also be associated with things. This is essentially a shift from 1), and is usually due to an underlying fear of associating possession with people. In this sense, it is an attempt to PROTECT people, like the superstition about "protecting the name", we mentioned before.
Both 1) and 2) are likely to become compulsive for several reasons, including:
a. They represent an attempt to escape from the real possession-drive, which cannot be satisfied this way.
b. They set up substitute goals, which are usually reasonably easy to attain.
c. They APPEAR to be relatively harmless, and thus SEEM to allay fear. The fact that they usually interfere with good interpersonal relationships can be interpreted, in this culture, as a lack of sophistication on the part of the OTHER (not the self), and this induces a false feeling of confidence in the solution, based on reliability NOT validity. It is also fairly easy to find a partner who SHARES the illusion. Thus, we have any number of relationships which are actually ESTABLISHED on the basis of 1), and others which HOLD TOGETHER primarily because of the joint interests in 2).
d. The manifestly EXTERNAL emphasis which both entail seems to be a safety device, and thus permits a false escape from much more basic inhibitions. As a compromise solution, the ILLUSION of interpersonal relating is preserved, along with the retention of the lack of love component. This kind of psychic juggling leaves the person (or juggler?) with a feeling of emptiness, which in fact is perfectly justified, because he IS acting from scarcity. He then becomes more and more driven in his behavior, to fill the emptiness.
When these solutions have been invested with extreme belief, 1) leads to sex crimes, and 2) to stealing. The kleptomaniac is a good example of the latter.
Generally, two types of emotional disturbances result:
a. The tendency to maintain the illusion that only the physical is real. This produces depression.
b. The tendency to invest the physical with non-physical properties. This is essentially magic, and tends more toward anxiety-proneness.
c. The tendency to vacillate from one to the other, which produces a corresponding vacillation between depression AND anxiety.
Both result in self imposed starvation.
3. Another type of distortion is seen in the fear of or desire for "spirit" possession. The term "spirit" is profoundly debased in this context, but it DOES entail a recognition that the body is not enough, and investing it with magic will not work. This recognition ACCEPTS the fact that neither 1) nor 2) is sufficient, but, precisely BECAUSE it does not limit fear so narrowly, it is more likely to produce greater fear in its own right.
Endowing the Spirit with human possessiveness is a more INCLUSIVE error than 1) or 2), and a step somewhat further away from the "Right Mind." Projection is also more likely to occur, with vacillations between grandiosity and fear. "Religion" in a distorted sense, is also more likely to occur in this kind of error, because the idea of a "spirit" is introduced, though fallaciously, while it is excluded from 1) and 2).
Witchcraft is thus particularly apt to be associated with 3), because of the much greater investment in magic.
It should be noted that 1) involves only the body, and 2) involves an attempt to associate things with human attributes. Three, on the other hand, is a more serious level confusion, because it endows the Spirit with EVIL attributes. This accounts both for the religious zeal of its proponents, and the aversion (or fear) of its opponents. Both attitudes stem from the same false belief.
This is NOT what the Bible means by "possessed of the Holy Spirit." It is interesting to note that even those who DID understand that could nevertheless EXPRESS their understanding inappropriately. The concept of "speaking in many tongues" was originally an injunction to communicate to everyone in his own language, or his own level. It hardly meant to speak in a way that NOBODY can understand. This strange error occurs when people DO understand the need for Universal communication, but have contaminated it with possession fallacies. The fear engendered by this misperception leads to a conflicted state in which communication IS attempted, but the fear is allayed by making the communication incomprehensible.
It could also be said that the fear induced selfishness, or regression, because incomprehensible communication is hardly a worthy offering from one Son of God to another.
4. Knowledge can also be misinterpreted as a means of possession. Here, the content is not physical, and the underlying fallacy is more likely to be the confusion of mind and brain. The attempt to unite non-physical content with physical attributes is illustrated by statements like "the thirst for knowledge." (No Helen, this is NOT what the "thirst" in the Bible means. The term was used only because of man's limited comprehension, and is probably better dropped.)
The fallacious use of knowledge can result in several errors, including:
a. The idea that knowledge will make the individual more attractive to others. This is a possession-fallacy.
b. The idea that knowledge will make the individual invulnerable. This is the reaction formation against the underlying fear of vulnerability.
c. The idea that knowledge will make the individual worthy. This is largely pathetic.
Both you and Bill should consider type 4) VERY carefully. Like all these fallacies, it contains a denial mechanism, which swings into operation as the fear increases, thus canceling out the error temporarily, but seriously impairing efficiency.
Thus, you claim you can't read, and Bill claims that he can't speak. Note that depression is a real risk here, for a Child of God should never REDUCE his efficiency in ANY way. The depression comes from a peculiar pseudo-solution which reads:
A Child of God is efficient.
I am not efficient.
Therefore, I am not a Child of God.
This leads to neurotic resignation, and this is a state which merely INCREASES the depression.
The corresponding denial mechanism for 1) is the sense of PHYSICAL inability, or IMPOTENCE. The denial mechanism for 2) is often bankruptcy. Collectors of things often drive themselves well beyond their financial means, in an attempt to force discontinuance. If this idea of cessation cannot be tolerated, a strange compromise involving BOTH insatiable possessiveness and insatiable throwing-away (bankruptcy) may result. An example is the inveterate or compulsive gambler, particularly the horse-racing addict. Here, the conflicted drive is displaced both from people AND things, and is invested in animals. The implied DEROGATION of people is the cause of the underlying EXTREME superstition of the horse racing addict.
We have repeated how little is asked of you to learn this course. It is the same small willingness you need to have your whole relationship transformed to joy. The LITTLE gift you offer to the Holy Spirit, for which He gives you EVERYTHING. The very little, on which salvation rests. The tiny change of mind by which the crucifixion is changed to Resurrection. And, being true, it is so simple that it cannot fail to be COMPLETELY understood. Rejected, yes, but NOT ambiguous. And, if you choose AGAINST it now, it will NOT be because it is obscure, but rather that this LITTLE cost seemed, in YOUR judgment, to be TOO MUCH to pay for peace.
This is the ONLY thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain, and the COMPLETE escape from sin, ALL to be given you. Say ONLY this, but MEAN it with NO reservations, for here the power of salvation lies:
"I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."
Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear.
It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is POSSIBLE within the universe as God created it, OUTSIDE of which is nothing. Suffer, and YOU decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you GAVE the power of decision to Him Who MUST decide for God for you. This is the little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit, and even this He gave to you to give yourself. For, BY this gift, is given you the power to release your Savior, that HE may give salvation unto YOU.
Begrudge not, then, this little offering. WITHHOLD it, and you keep the world as now you see it. GIVE IT AWAY, and everything YOU see goes with it. Never was so much given for so little. In the holy instant is this exchange effected and MAINTAINED. Here is the world you do NOT want, brought to the one you DO. And here the one you do is GIVEN you, BECAUSE you want it. But, for this, the POWER of your wanting must first be RECOGNIZED. You must accept its STRENGTH, and NOT its weakness. You must perceive that what is strong enough to MAKE a world, can let it go. And CAN accept correction, if it is willing to see that it was wrong.
The world you see is but the idle witness that you were RIGHT. This witness is insane. You trained it in its testimony, and, as it gave it BACK to you, you listened and convinced yourself that what it saw was true. YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF. See only this, and you will also see how circular the reasoning on which your "seeing" rests. This was NOT given you. This was your GIFT to you AND TO YOUR BROTHER. Be willing, then, to have it taken FROM him, and be replaced with truth. And, as you look upon the change in HIM, it will be given you to see it in YOURSELF.
Perhaps you do not see the need for you to give this little offering. Look closer, then, at what it IS. And, very simply, see in it the whole exchange of separation for salvation. All that the ego is, is an idea that it is possible that things should HAPPEN to the Son of God, WITHOUT his will. And thus, without the Will of his Creator, Whose Will cannot BE separated from his own. This is the Son of God's REPLACEMENT for his will, a mad revolt against what must forever be. This is the statement that he HAS the power to make God powerLESS. And so to take it from HIMSELF, and leave himself WITHOUT what God has willed FOR him.
This is the mad idea you have enshrined upon your altars, AND WHICH YOU WORSHIP. And anything that threatens this, seems to ATTACK your faith. For here it is invested. Think not that you are faithless, for your belief and trust in THIS is strong indeed. The Holy Spirit can GIVE you faith in holiness, and vision to see it, easily enough. But you have not left open and unoccupied the altar where the gift belongs. Where THEY should be, YOU have set up your idols to something ELSE. This OTHER will, which seems to TELL you what must happen, you GAVE reality. And what would SHOW you otherwise must therefore seem unreal.
All that is asked of you is to MAKE ROOM for truth. You are NOT asked to make or do what lies BEYOND your understanding. All you are asked to do is LET IT IN. Only to stop your INTERFERENCE with what will happen OF ITSELF. Simply to recognize again the presence of what you THOUGHT you gave away. Be willing, for an instant, to leave your altars free of what YOU placed upon them and what is REALLY there you CANNOT fail to see. The holy instant is NOT an instant of creation, but of RECOGNITION. For recognition comes of vision and SUSPENDED judgment. Then only is it possible to look within and see what MUST be there, plainly in sight, and wholly INDEPENDENT of inference and judgment.
Undoing is not YOUR task, but it IS up to you to welcome it or not. Faith and desire go hand in hand. For everyone believes in what he wants. We have already said that wishful thinking is how the ego deals with what it wants, to make it so. There is no better demonstration of the power of wanting, and therefore of FAITH, to make its goals seem real and possible. Faith in the UNreal leads to ADJUSTMENTS of reality, to make it fit the goal of madness. The goal of sin induces the perception of a fearful world, to JUSTIFY its purpose. What you desire, you WILL see. And if its reality is false, you will UPHOLD it by NOT realizing all the adjustments YOU have introduced, to MAKE it so.
When vision is DENIED, confusion of cause and effect becomes inevitable. The PURPOSE now becomes to KEEP OBSCURE the cause of the effect, and make effect appear to BE a cause. This seeming independence of effect enables it to be regarded as STANDING BY ITSELF, and capable of serving as a CAUSE of the events and feelings its maker thinks IT causes. Long ago, we spoke of your desire to create your own Creator, and be father and not Son to Him. This is the same desire. The Son is the effect, whose Cause he would deny. And so he seems to BE the cause, producing real EFFECTS.
Nothing can have effects WITHOUT a cause, and to confuse the two is merely to fail to understand them both. It is as needful that you recognize you MADE the world you see, as that you recognize that you did NOT create yourself. THEY ARE THE SAME MISTAKE. Nothing created NOT by your Creator, has ANY influence over you. And if you think what YOU have made can TELL you what you see and feel, and place your faith in its ability to do so, you ARE denying your Creator, and BELIEVING that you made yourself. For, if you think the world you made has power to make you what IT wills, you ARE confusing Son and Father; effect and Source.
The Son's creations ARE like his Father's. But, in creating THEM, the Son does not delude himself that he is INDEPENDENT of his Source. His union with It is the SOURCE of his creating. APART from this, he HAS no power to create, and what he makes is meaningless. It changes NOTHING in creation, depends ENTIRELY upon the madness of its maker, and can NOT serve to justify the madness. Your brother thinks he made the world with you. Thus he denies creation. With you, he thinks the world he made, made HIM. Thus he denies he MADE it.
Yet the truth is you were both created by a loving Father, Who created you together and as one. SEE what "proves" otherwise, and you DENY your whole reality. But grant that EVERYTHING that seems to stand BETWEEN you, keeping you from each other and separate from your Father, YOU MADE IN SECRET, and the instant of release has come to you. ALL its effects are gone, because its source has been uncovered. It is its seeming INDEPENDENCE of its source that kept you prisoner. This IS the same delusion that YOU are independent of the Source by which YOU were created, and have never left.
To forgive is merely to remember ONLY the LOVING thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. ALL the rest, must be forgotten. Forgiveness is a selective remembering, based NOT on YOUR selection. For the shadow figures YOU would make immortal, ARE 'enemies' of reality. Be willing to forgive the Son of God for what he did NOT do. The shadow figures are the witnesses you bring WITH you, to demonstrate he DID what he DID NOT. BECAUSE you brought them, YOU WILL HEAR THEM. And you who KEPT them BY YOUR OWN SELECTION, do NOT understand how they came into your minds, and what their purpose is.
THEY REPRESENT THE EVIL THAT YOU THINK WAS DONE TO YOU. You bring them with you ONLY that you may "return" evil FOR evil, hoping that THEIR witness will enable you to think guiltily of another, and NOT harm yourself. They speak so clearly for the separation, that no-one NOT obsessed with KEEPING separation, COULD hear them otherwise. They offer you the 'reasons' why you should enter into unholy alliances, which support the ego's goals, and make your relationships the witness to ITS power. It is these shadow figures which would MAKE THE EGO HOLY in your sight, and teach you what you do to keep IT safe, is really LOVE.
The shadow figures ALWAYS speak for vengeance, and ALL relationships into which they enter, are totally insane. WITHOUT EXCEPTION, these relationships have, AS THEIR PURPOSE, the EXCLUSION of the truth about the other, AND OF YOURSELF. That is why you see, IN BOTH what is not there, and MAKE of both the slaves of vengeance. And why whatever reminds you of your PAST grievances, no matter how distorted the associations by which you ARRIVE at the remembrance may be, ATTRACTS you, and seems to you to go by the name of love. And, finally, why all such relationships become the attempt at union THROUGH THE BODY, for ONLY bodies CAN be seen as means for vengeance.
That bodies are central to all unholy relationships is evident. Your OWN experience has taught you this. But what you do NOT realize, are ALL the reasons that go to MAKE the relationship unholy. For UNholiness seeks to RE-INFORCE itself, by gathering TO itself, what it perceives as LIKE itself, as holiness does. In the unholy relationship, it is NOT the body of the OTHER with which union is attempted, but the bodies of those WHO ARE NOT THERE. Even the BODY of the other, ALREADY a severely limited perception of him, is NOT the central focus as it is, or in entirety. What can be used for fantasies of vengeance, and what can be most readily associated with those on whom vengeance is REALLY sought, are centered on, and SEPARATED OFF, as being the only parts OF VALUE.
Every step taken in the making, the maintaining, and the breaking off of the unholy relationship, is a move toward further fragmentation and unreality. The shadow figures enter more and more, and the one in whom they SEEM to be, DECREASES in importance. Time is indeed unkind to the unholy relationship. For time IS cruel in the ego's hands, as it is kind when used for gentleness. The attraction of the unholy relationship begins to fade and to be questioned, almost at once. Once it is formed, doubt MUST enter in, because its purpose IS impossible. The only such relationships which RETAIN the fantasies which center on them, are the ones which have been DREAMED of, but have NOT been made at all.
Where NO reality has entered, there is NOTHING to intrude upon the DREAM of happiness. But consider what this means; the more of the REALITY that enters into the unholy relationship, the LESS SATISFYING it becomes. And the more the FANTASIES can encompass, the greater the satisfaction seems to be. The 'ideal' of the unholy relationship thus becomes one in which the REALITY of the other does not ENTER AT ALL, to 'spoil' the dream. And the LESS the other REALLY brings to it, the 'better' it becomes. Thus, the attempt at union becomes a way of EXCLUDING even the one with whom the union was sought. For it was FORMED to GET HIM OUT OF IT, and join with fantasies in uninterrupted 'bliss.'
How can the Holy Spirit bring HIS interpretation of the body, as a means of communicating into relationships whose ONLY purpose is SEPARATION from reality? What forgiveness IS, enables Him to do so. If all but loving thoughts have been forgotten, what remains IS eternal, and the TRANSFORMED past is made LIKE THE PRESENT. No longer does the past CONFLICT with now. THIS continuity EXTENDS the present, by increasing its reality, AND ITS VALUE, in your perception of it. In these loving thoughts is the spark of beauty, hidden in the ugliness of the unholy relationship in which the HATRED is remembered, yet there to COME ALIVE as the relationship is given to Him Who GIVES it life and beauty.
That is why Atonement centers ON THE PAST, which is the SOURCE of separation, and where it must be undone. For separation must be corrected WHERE IT WAS MADE. The EGO seeks to 'resolve' ITS problems, NOT at their source, but where they were NOT made. And thus it seeks to guarantee there WILL be no solution. The Holy Spirit wills only to make HIS resolutions complete and perfect. And so He seeks and FINDS the source of problems WHERE IT IS, and there UNDOES it. And, with each step in HIS undoing, is the SEPARATION more and more undone, and UNION brought closer. HE is not at all confused by ANY 'reasons' for separation. ALL He perceives in it is that it MUST BE UNDONE.
Let Him uncover the hidden spark of beauty in your relationships, and SHOW it to you. Its loveliness will so attract you, that you will be unwilling ever to lose the sight of it again. And you will LET it transform the relationship, so you can see it more and more. For you will want it more and more, and become increasingly unwilling to LET it be hidden from you. And you will learn to seek for, and ESTABLISH, conditions in which this, beauty CAN be seen. All this you will do gladly, if you but let Him hold the spark before you, to light your way, and make it CLEAR to you.
God's Son is one. And whom God has JOINED as one, the ego CANNOT break apart. The spark of holiness MUST be safe, however hidden it may be, in EVERY relationship. For the Creator of the one relationship, has LEFT no part of it without HIMSELF. THIS is the only part of the relationship the Holy Spirit sees, because He knows that ONLY this is true. YOU have made the relationship unreal, and THEREFORE unholy, by seeing it WHERE it is not, and as it IS not. Give the past to Him Who can change YOUR mind about it, FOR you. But first, be SURE you fully realize what YOU have made the past to REPRESENT, and why.
In brief, the past is NOW your justification for entering into a continuing, unholy alliance with the ego AGAINST THE PRESENT. For the present IS forgiveness. Therefore, the relationships which the unholy alliance dictates are not perceived NOR FELT as now. Yet the frame of reference to which the present is REFERRED for meaning, is an ILLUSION of the past, in which those elements which FIT the purpose of the unholy alliance are retained and ALL THE REST LET GO. And what is thus let go, is all the truth the past could ever OFFER to the present, as witnesses for ITS reality, while what is KEPT, but witnesses to the reality of dreams.
It is still up to you to choose to be willing to join with truth or illusion. But remember that to choose ONE, is to LET THE OTHER GO. Which one you choose, YOU will endow with beauty and reality, because the choice DEPENDS on which you value more. The spark of beauty, or the veil of ugliness; the real world, or the world of guilt and fear; truth or illusion; freedom or slavery, - it is all the same. For you can NEVER choose EXCEPT between God and the ego. Thought-systems are but true or false, and all their ATTRIBUTES come simply from what they ARE. Only the Thoughts of God ARE true. And all that follows FROM them, COMES FROM what they are, and is as true as is the holy Source from which they come.
My holy brothers, I would enter into all your relationships, and step between you and your fantasies. Let MY relationship to you be REAL to you, and let me bring REALITY to your perception of your brothers. They were not created to enable you to HURT yourselves through them. They were created to CREATE with you. This is the truth that I would interpose, between you and your goal of madness. Be not separate from me, and let not the holy purpose of Atonement be lost to you, in dreams of vengeance. Relationships in which such dreams are cherished have EXCLUDED me. Let me enter, in the Name of God, and bring YOU peace, that YOU may offer peace to me.
The holy instant does not REPLACE the need for learning, for the Holy Spirit must not leave you as your Teacher, until the holy instant has extended far beyond time. For a teaching assignment such as His, He must use EVERYTHING in this world for your release. He must side with EVERY sign or token of your willingness to learn of Him what truth MUST be. He is swift to utilize WHATEVER you offer Him, on behalf of this. His concern and care for you are limitless. In the face of your fear of forgiveness, which He perceives as clearly as He knows forgiveness IS release, He will teach you to remember always that forgiveness is NOT loss, BUT YOUR SALVATION. And that, in COMPLETE forgiveness, in which you recognize that there is nothing to forgive, YOU are absolved completely.
Hear Him gladly, and learn of Him that you have need of no special relationships at all. You but seek in them what you have THROWN AWAY. And, through THEM, you will never learn the value of what you have cast aside, but what you still desire with all your hearts. Let us join together in making the holy instant all that there is, by desiring that it BE all that there is. God's Son has such great need of your willingness to strive for this, that you cannot conceive of need so great. Behold the only need that God and His Son share, and will to meet together. You are NOT alone in this. The will of your creations call to you, to share your will with them. Turn, then, in peace, from guilt to God and them.
Relate only with what will never LEAVE you, and what YOU cannot leave. The loneliness of God's Son is the loneliness of his Father. Refuse not the awareness of your completion, and seek not to restore it to yourselves. Fear not to give redemption over to your Redeemer's love. He will NOT fail you, for He comes from One Who CANNOT fail. Accept YOUR sense of failure as nothing more than a mistake in WHO YOU WERE. For the holy host of God is BEYOND failure, and NOTHING that he wills can BE denied. You are forever in a relationship so holy, that it calls to everyone to ESCAPE from loneliness, and join you in your Love. And where YOU are must everyone seek, and FIND you there.
Think but an instant on this; God gave the Sonship to you, to ensure your perfect creation. This was His Gift, for, as He withheld Himself not from you, He withheld not His creation. Nothing that ever was created, but is not yours. Your relationships are with the universe. And this universe, being of God, is far beyond the petty sum of all the separate bodies YOU perceive. For all its parts are joined in God through Christ, where they become like to their Father. For Christ knows of no separation FROM His Father, Who is His One relationship, in which He gives as His Father gives to Him.
The Holy Spirit is God's attempt to free you of what He does not understand. And, because of the Source of the attempt, IT WILL SUCCEED. The Holy Spirit asks you to respond as God does, for He would teach you what YOU do not understand. God would respond to EVERY need, WHATEVER form it takes. And so He has kept this Channel open to receive His communication to you, AND YOURS TO HIM. God does NOT understand your problem in communication, for He does NOT share it with you. It is only YOU, who believe that it IS understandable.
The Holy Spirit KNOWS that it is not understandable, and yet He UNDERSTANDS it, because you have MADE it. In Him alone, lies the awareness of what God CANNOT know, and what YOU do NOT understand. It is His holy function to ACCEPT THEM BOTH, and, by removing EVERY element of DISagreement, to join them into one. He will do this, BECAUSE it is His function. Leave, then, what seems to you to be impossible, to Him Who knows it MUST be possible, because it is the Will of God. And let Him, Whose teaching is ONLY of God, teach you the ONLY meaning of relationships. For God Himself created the only relationship that HAS meaning, and that is His relationship with YOU.
As the ego would limit your perception of your brothers to the body, so would the Holy Spirit RELEASE your vision, and let you see the Great Rays shining from them, so unlimited that they reach to God. It is this shift in vision which is accomplished in the holy instant. Yet it is needful for you to learn just what this shift entails, so you will become willing to make it permanent. Given this willingness, it will NOT leave you, for it IS permanent. For, once you have accepted it as the ONLY PERCEPTION THAT YOU WANT, it is translated into knowledge, by the part that God Himself plays in the Atonement, for it is the ONLY step in it He understands. Therefore, in this there will be NO delay, when YOU are ready for it. God is ready NOW, but YOU are not.
Our task is but to continue, as fast as possible, the necessary process of looking straight at ALL the interference, and seeing it EXACTLY as it is. For it is impossible to recognize as WHOLLY without gratification, WHAT YOU THINK YOU WANT. The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. And both are nothing more than attempts to LIMIT communication, and thereby TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE. For communication MUST be UNlimited in order to HAVE meaning, and DEPRIVED of meaning, it will NOT satisfy YOU completely. Yet it remains the ONLY means by which you CAN establish real relationships.
Real relationships HAVE no limits, having been established by God. In the holy instant, where the Great Rays REPLACE the body in awareness, the recognition of relationships WITHOUT limits is given you. But to SEE this, it is necessary to give up EVERY use the ego has for the body, and to accept the fact that the ego has NO purpose you would SHARE with it. For the ego would limit everyone TO a body for ITS purposes, and, while you think it HAS a purpose, you will choose to utilize the means by which IT tries to turn its purpose into accomplishment. This will never BE accomplished.
Yet you have surely recognized that the ego, whose goals are altogether UNattainable, will strive for them with all its might. And will do so with the strength that YOU have given it. Yet it is impossible to DIVIDE your strength between Heaven and hell, God and the ego, and RELEASE your power unto creation, that is the ONLY purpose for which it was GIVEN you. For love would always give INCREASE. Limits are DEMANDED, representing the ego's demands to make little and ineffectual. Limit your vision of a brother to his body, which you WILL do, as long as you would not release him FROM it, and you have denied HIS gift to YOU. HIS BODY CANNOT GIVE IT. And seek it not through YOURS.
But your minds are ALREADY continuous, and THEIR union need only be accepted, and the loneliness in Heaven is gone. If you would but let the Holy Spirit tell you of the Love of God for you, and the need that your creations have to be with you forever, you would experience the attraction of the Eternal. For no-one can hear Him speak of this, and long remain willing to linger here. For it IS your will to be in Heaven, where you are complete and quiet, in such sure and loving relationships, that ANY limits are impossible. Would you not exchange your little relationships for this? For the body IS little and limited, and only those whom you would see WITHOUT the limits that the ego would impose on them, can offer YOU the gift of freedom.
You have no conception of the limits you have placed on your perception, and no idea of all the loveliness that you COULD see. But this you must remember; the attraction of guilt OPPOSES the attraction of God. His attraction for you remains unlimited, but, because your power, BEING His, is AS GREAT as His, you can TURN AWAY from love. What you invest in guilt, you withdraw from God. And your sight grows weak and dim and limited, for you have attempted to SEPARATE the Father from the Son, and LIMIT their communication. Seek not Atonement in FURTHER separation. And limit not your vision of God's Son to what INTERFERES with his release, and what the Holy Spirit must UNDO to set him free. For his belief in limits HAS imprisoned him.
When the body ceases to attract you, and when you place no value on it as a means of GETTING ANYTHING, then there will be NO interference in communication. And your thoughts will be as free as God's. As you let the Holy Spirit teach you how to use the body ONLY for purposes of communication, and RENOUNCE its use for separation and attack, which the EGO sees in it, you will learn you have no need of a body at all. In the holy instant, there ARE no bodies. And you experience ONLY the attraction of God. Accepting it as undivided, you join Him wholly, in an instant. For you would place NO limits on your union WITH Him. The reality of THIS relationship becomes the only truth that you could ever WANT. ALL Truth IS here.
In looking at the special relationship, it is necessary first to realize that it involves a great amount of pain. Anxiety, despair, guilt, and attack all enter into it, BROKEN INTO by periods in which they SEEM to be gone. All these must be understood for what they ARE. Whatever form they take, they are always an attack on the self, TO MAKE THE OTHER GUILTY. We have spoken of this before, but there are some aspects of what is REALLY being attempted, that we have not touched on. Very simply, the attempt to make guilty is ALWAYS directed against God. For the ego would have you see Him, AND HIM ALONE, as guilty, leaving the Sonship OPEN to attack, and unprotected against it.
The special love relationship is the ego's chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven. It does not APPEAR to be a weapon, but if you consider HOW you VALUE it, and why, you will realize what it MUST be. The special love relationship is the ego's most boasted gift, and the one that has the most appeal to those unwilling to relinquish guilt. The "dynamics" of the ego are clearest here, for, counting on the attraction of this offering, the fantasies which center around this, are often quite open. Here, they are usually judged to be quite acceptable, and even NATURAL. No-one considers it bizarre to love and hate together, and even those who believe that hate is "sin", merely feel guilty, but do NOT correct it.
This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here, where the ILLUSION of love is accepted IN ITS PLACE, love is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION.
It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish for special love from God, that the ego's hatred triumphs. For the special relationship is THE RENUNCIATION OF THE LOVE OF GOD, and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness that He denied. And it is essential to the preservation of the ego, that you believe this specialness is NOT hell, but HEAVEN. For the ego would never have you see that the separation can ONLY BE LOSS, being the one condition in which Heaven CANNOT be.
To everyone, Heaven is completion. There CAN be no disagreement on this, because both the ego AND the Holy Spirit accept it. They are, however, in complete DISagreement on what completion IS, and HOW it is accomplished. The Holy Spirit knows that self completion lies first in union, and then in the EXTENSION of union. To the ego, completion lies in triumph, and in the extension of the "victory," even to the final triumph over God. In THIS it sees the ultimate FREEDOM of the self, for nothing would remain to interfere with IT. And this IS its idea of Heaven. From this it follows that union, which is a condition in which the EGO cannot interfere, MUST BE HELL.
The special relationship is a strange and unnatural ego device for joining hell and Heaven, and making them indistinguishable. And the attempt to find the imagined "best" of BOTH worlds, has merely led to FANTASIES of both, and to the inability to perceive either one AS IT IS. The special relationship is the triumph of this confusion. It is a kind of union from which UNION IS EXCLUDED, and the BASIS for the ATTEMPT at union RESTS on exclusion. What better example could there be of the ego's maxim, "Seek, and do NOT find?"
Most curious of all, is the concept of the self, which the ego fosters in the special relationship. This "self" SEEKS the relationship, to MAKE ITSELF COMPLETE. Yet, when it FINDS the special relationship in which it thinks it can ACCOMPLISH this, IT GIVES ITSELF AWAY, and tries to TRADE itself for the self of another. This is NOT union, for there is NO increase and NO extension. Each partner tries to sacrifice the self he does NOT want, for one he thinks he would PREFER. He feels guilty for the "sin" of TAKING, and of giving nothing of value in return. For how much value CAN he place upon a self that he would GIVE AWAY, to get a BETTER one?
The "better" self the ego seeks is ALWAYS one that is MORE special. And whoever SEEMS to possess a special self is "loved," FOR WHAT CAN BE TAKEN FROM HIM. Where both partners see this special self IN EACH OTHER, the EGO sees "a union made in Heaven." For NEITHER will recognize that HE HAS ASKED FOR HELL, and so he will NOT interfere with the ego's ILLUSION of Heaven, which it offered him TO INTERFERE WITH HEAVEN. Yet if ALL illusions are of fear, and they CAN be of nothing else, the illusion of Heaven is nothing more than an ATTRACTIVE form of fear, in which the guilt is buried deep, and rises in the form of "love."
The appeal of hell lies ONLY in the terrible attraction of guilt, which the ego holds out to those who place their faith in littleness. The conviction of littleness lies in EVERY special relationship, for only the deprived COULD value specialness. The "DEMAND" for specialness, and the perception of the GIVING of specialness AS AN ACT OF LOVE, would MAKE LOVE HATEFUL. And the REAL purpose of the special relationship, in strict accordance with the ego's goals, is to DESTROY reality and SUBSTITUTE ILLUSION. For the ego is ITSELF an illusion, and ONLY illusions can BE the witnesses to its reality.
If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, WOULD YOU WANT IT? Let us not think of its fearful nature, nor of the guilt it MUST entail, nor of the sadness and the loneliness. For these are only ATTRIBUTES of the whole religion of the separation, and the total context in which it is thought to occur. The central theme in its litany to sacrifice is that GOD MUST DIE SO YOU CAN LIVE. And it is this theme that is acted out in the special relationship. Through the death of YOUR self, you think you can ATTACK another self, and snatch it FROM the other, to REPLACE the self that you despised. And you despise it BECAUSE YOU DO NOT THINK IT OFFERS YOU THE SPECIALNESS THAT YOU DEMAND. And, HATING it, YOU have made it little and unworthy, BECAUSE YOU ARE AFRAID OF IT.
How can you grant unlimited power to what you think you have ATTACKED? For so fearful has the truth become that, UNLESS it is weak, and little, and unworthy of value, you would not dare to look upon it. You think it safer to endow the little self which YOU have made, with power you WRESTED FROM truth, triumphing over it, and leaving IT helpless. See how EXACTLY is this ritual enacted in the special relationship. An altar is erected IN BETWEEN two separate people, on which each seeks to kill his self, and on his body, raise another self that TAKES HIS POWER FROM ITS DEATH.
Over and over and over, this ritual is enacted. And it is NEVER completed, nor ever will BE completed. For the RITUAL of completion CANNOT complete, and life arises not from death, nor Heaven from hell. Whenever ANY form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in ritual, remember love is CONTENT, and NOT form of ANY kind. The special relationship is a RITUAL OF FORM, aimed at the raising of the form to take the place of God, at the EXPENSE of content. There IS no meaning in the form, AND THERE WILL NEVER BE. The special relationship MUST be recognized for what it is; a senseless ritual, in which strength is extracted from the death of God, and invested in His killer, as the sign that form has triumphed over content, and love has LOST its meaning.
Would you WANT this to be possible, even APART from its evident impossibility? For, if it WERE possible, you would have made YOURSELF helpless. God is not angry. He merely could not let this happen. You can NOT change His Mind. No rituals that you have set up, in which the dance of death delights you, can bring death to the Eternal. Nor can your chosen substitute for the Wholeness of God, have ANY influence at all upon It. See in the special relationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods before Him, and, by worshipping them, to obscure THEIR tininess, AND HIS GREATNESS.
In the name of YOUR completion, you do not WANT this. And every idol that you raise to place BEFORE Him, stands before YOU, in place of what YOU are. Salvation lies in the simple fact that illusions are NOT fearful, BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT TRUE. And they but SEEM to be fearful to the extent to which you fail to recognize them FOR WHAT THEY ARE. And you WILL fail to do this, to the extent to which you WANT them to be true. And, to the same extent, you are DENYING truth, and so are making YOURSELF unable to make the simple choice between truth and illusion, fantasy and God.
Remember this, and you will have no difficulty in perceiving the decision as just what it IS, and nothing more. The core of the separation delusion lies simply in the fantasy DESTRUCTION of love's meaning. And, unless its meaning is RESTORED to you, you CANNOT know yourself, who SHARE its meaning. Separation is only the decision NOT to know yourself. Its whole thought-system is a carefully-contrived learning experience, designed to lead AWAY from truth, and into fantasy. Yet, for every learning that would hurt you, God offers you correction, and COMPLETE escape from ALL its consequences.
The decision whether or not to listen to this course and follow it, is but the choice between truth and illusion. For here IS truth, SEPARATED from illusion, and NOT confused with it at all. How simple does this choice become when it is perceived as only what it is. For ONLY fantasies made confusion in choosing possible, and they are totally UNreal. This year is thus the time to make the EASIEST decision that ever confronted you, and also the ONLY one. You will cross the bridge into reality, simply because you will recognize that God is on the other side AND NOTHING AT ALL IS HERE. It is impossible NOT to make the natural decision, as this is realized.
Who would defend himself unless he thought he was attacked, that the attack is real, and that his own defense can save himself? And herein lies the folly of defense; it gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult. And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish.
You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is happening, because it must contain what threatens you. A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense.
The world is based on this insane belief. And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve but to preserve its sense of threat. For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart.
Defense is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each defense is made. You think it offers safety. Yet it speaks of fear made real and terror justified. Is it not strange you do not pause to ask, as you elaborate your plans and make your armor thicker and your locks more tight, what you defend, and how, and against what?
Let us consider first what you defend. It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect itself, and needing your defense. What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern are needful to protect its little life? What but the body falters and must fail to serve the Son of God as worthy host?
Yet it is not the body that can fear, nor be a thing to fear. It has no needs but those which you assign to it. It needs no complicated structures of defense, no health-inducing medicine, no care and no concern at all. Defend its life, or give it gifts to make it beautiful or walls to make it safe, and you but say your home is open to the thief of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded with your very life.
Is not this picture fearful? Can you be at peace with such a concept of your home? Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus except your own belief? It is your mind which gave the body all the functions that you see in it, and set its value far beyond a little pile of dust and water. Who would make defense of something that he recognized as this?
The body is in need of no defense. This cannot be too often emphasized. It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it to roles it cannot fill, to purposes beyond its scope, and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish. Such attempts, ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad attacks you make upon it. For it seems to fail your hopes, your needs, your values and your dreams.
The "self" that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?
Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source.
These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond with health when they have been corrected and replaced with truth. This is the body's only real defense. Yet is this where you look for its defense? You offer it protection of a kind from which it gains no benefit at all, but merely adds to your distress of mind. You do not heal, but merely take away the hope of healing, for you fail to see where hope must lie if it be meaningful.
A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans which it receives through listening to Wisdom that is not its own. It waits until it has been taught what should be done, and then proceeds to do it. It does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it. It is secure in certainty that obstacles can not impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal which serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone.
A healed mind is relieved from the belief that it must plan, although it cannot know the outcome which is best, the means by which it is achieved, nor how to recognize the problem that the plan is made to solve. It must misuse the body in its plans until it recognizes this is so. But when it has accepted this as true, then is it healed, and lets the body go.
Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself must make the body sick. It is not free to be a means of helping in a plan which far exceeds its own protection and which needs its service for a little while. In this capacity is health assured. For everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly, and with the strength that has been given it and cannot fail.
It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are but defenses, with the purpose all of them were made to realize. They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection at the cost of truth. This is not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take, for the denial of reality is very obvious. Yet planning is not often recognized as a defense.
The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings. It does not think that it will be provided for unless it makes its own provisions. Time becomes a future emphasis, to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from past events and previous beliefs. It overlooks the present, for it rests on the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course.
The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. What it has learned before becomes the basis for its future goals. Its past experience directs its choice of what will happen. And it does not see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs. Anticipation plays no part at all, for present confidence directs the way.
Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. Their aim is to select what you approve, and disregard what you consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. Yet what remains is meaningless indeed. For it is your reality which is the "threat" that your defenses would attack, obscure, and take apart and crucify.
What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life.
Your present trust in Him is the defense which promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy which constantly increases as this life becomes a holy instant, set in time, but heeding only immortality. Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that only your defenses would conceal.
Without defenses, you become a light which Heaven gratefully acknowledges to be its own. And it will lead you on in ways appointed for your happiness according to the ancient plan, begun when time was born. Your followers will join their light with yours, and it will be increased until the world is lighted up with joy. And gladly will our brothers lay aside their cumbersome defenses which availed them nothing, and could only terrify.
We will anticipate that time today with present confidence, for this is part of what was planned for us. We will be sure that everything we need is given us for our accomplishment of this today. We make no plans for how it will be done, but realize that our defenselessness is all that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty.
For fifteen minutes twice today we rest from senseless planning, and from every thought which blocks the truth from entering our minds. Today we will receive instead of plan, that we may give instead of organize. And we are given truly, as we say:
"If I defend myself I am attacked.
But in defenselessness I will be strong,
And I will learn what my defenses hide."
Nothing but that. If there are plans to make, you will be told of them. They may not be the plans you thought were needed, nor indeed the answers to the problems which you thought confronted you. But they are answers to another kind of question, which remains unanswered, yet in need of answering until the Answer comes to you at last.
All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you will receive today. And in the light and joy of simple truth, you will but wonder why you ever thought that you must be defended from release. Heaven asks nothing. It is hell that makes extravagant demands for sacrifice. You give up nothing in these times today when, undefended you present yourself to your Creator as you really are.
He has remembered you. Today we will remember Him. For this is Easter time in your salvation. And you rise again from what was seeming death and hopelessness. Now is the light of hope reborn in you, for now you come without defense to learn the part for you within the plan of God. What little plans or magical beliefs can still have value, when you have received your function from the Voice of God Himself?
Try not to shape this day as you believe would benefit you most. For you can not conceive of all the happiness that comes to you without your planning. Learn today. And all the world will take this giant stride, and celebrate your Easter time with you. Throughout the day, as foolish little things appear to raise defensiveness in you and tempt you to engage in weaving plans, remind yourself this is a special day for learning, and acknowledge it with this:
"This is Easter time. And I would keep
It holy. I will not defend myself,
Because the Son of God needs no defense
Against the truth of his Reality."
The "laws of chaos" CAN be brought to light, though NEVER understood. Chaotic laws are hardly meaningful, and therefore out of reason's sphere. Yet they APPEAR to constitute an obstacle to reason and to truth. Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look BEYOND them, understanding what they ARE, NOT what they would maintain. It IS essential it be understood what they are FOR, because it is their PURPOSE to make meaningless, and to ATTACK the truth. Here are the laws that rule the world you made. And yet they govern nothing, and need NOT be broken; merely looked upon and gone beyond.
The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true. And each establishes this FOR HIMSELF, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values. This is justified BECAUSE the values differ. And those who hold them SEEM to be unlike, and THEREFORE enemies.
Think how this SEEMS to interfere with the first principle of miracles. For this establishes degrees of TRUTH among illusions, making it appear that some are HARDER to be overcome than others. If it were realized that they are all the same and EQUALLY untrue, it would be easy, then, to understand that miracles apply to ALL of them. Errors of ANY kind can be corrected, BECAUSE they are untrue. When brought to truth, instead of TO EACH OTHER, they merely disappear. No PART of nothing CAN be more resistant to the truth than can another.
The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper of sin, is that each one MUST sin, and therefore DESERVES attack and death. This principle, closely related to the first, is the demand that errors call for punishment, and NOT correction. For the DESTRUCTION of the one who makes the error places him BEYOND correction, and beyond forgiveness. What he has done is thus interpreted as an irrevocable sentence on himself, which God Himself is powerless to overlook. Sin cannot BE remitted, being the belief the Son of God can make mistakes for which his own destruction becomes inevitable.
Think what this SEEMS to do to the relationship between the Father and the Son. Now it appears that they can NEVER be One again. For One must ALWAYS be condemned, AND BY THE OTHER. Now are they different, and ENEMIES. And THEIR relationship is one of opposition, just as the separate aspects of the Son meet ONLY to conflict, but NOT to join. One becomes weak, the other strong BY HIS DEFEAT. And fear of God, and of each other, now appears as sensible, made real by what the Son of God has done, both to himself AND his Creator.
The arrogance on which the laws of chaos stand could not be more apparent than emerges here. Here is a principle which would define what the CREATOR of reality must be; what He MUST think, and what He must believe; and how He must RESPOND, believing it. It is not seen as even necessary that He be asked about the truth of what has been established for His belief. His Son can TELL Him this, and He has but the choice whether to take his word for it, or be mistaken.
This leads directly to the third preposterous belief that seems to make chaos eternal. For, if God cannot BE mistaken, then He must accept His Son's belief in what he is, and HATE him for it. See how the fear of God is REINFORCED by this third principle. Now it becomes IMPOSSIBLE to turn to Him for help in misery. For now He has become the "enemy" Who "caused" it, and to Whom appeal is useless. Nor can salvation lie within the Son, whose every aspect seems to be at war with Him, and JUSTIFIED in its attack.
And now is conflict made inevitable, and beyond the help of God. And now salvation MUST remain impossible, because the Savior HAS become the enemy. There can be NO release and NO escape. Atonement thus becomes a myth, and vengeance, NOT forgiveness, is the Will of God. From where all this begins, there IS no sight of help that can succeed. ONLY destruction can BE the outcome. And God Himself SEEMS to be siding with it, to overcome His Son. Think not the ego will enable you to find ESCAPE from what it wants. THAT is the function of this course, which does NOT value what the ego cherishes.
The ego values only what it TAKES. This leads to the fourth law of chaos which, if the others are accepted, MUST be true. This seeming law is the belief you HAVE what you have taken. By this, another's loss becomes your gain, and thus it fails to recognize that you can never "take away" save from YOURSELF. Yet all the other laws must lead to this. For enemies do NOT give willingly to one another, nor would they seek to SHARE the things they value. And what your ENEMIES would keep from you must BE worth having, just BECAUSE they keep it hidden from your sight.
All of the mechanisms of madness are seen emerging here. The "enemy," made strong by keeping hidden the valuable inheritance which should be yours; your JUSTIFIED possession, and attack for what has been withheld; and the inevitable loss the enemy MUST suffer, to save YOURSELF. Thus do the guilty ones protest their innocence. Were they not forced into this foul attack by the unscrupulous behavior of the enemy, they would respond with only kindness. But, in a savage world, the kind cannot survive. So they MUST take, or else be taken FROM.
And now there is a vague, unanswered question, not yet "explained." What IS this precious thing, this priceless pearl, this hidden secret treasure, to be wrested in righteous wrath from this most treacherous and cunning enemy? It must be what you want, and never found. And now you "understand" the reason WHY you found it not. For it was TAKEN from you by the enemy, and hidden where you would not think to look. He hid it in his BODY, making it the cover for his guilt; the hiding place for what belongs to YOU.
Now must his body be destroyed and sacrificed, that you may have that which BELONGS to you. His treachery DEMANDS his death, that YOU may live. And you attack only in self defense. But what is it you want, that NEEDS his death? Can you be sure your murderous attack IS justified, unless you know what it is FOR? And here a final principle of chaos comes to the "rescue." It holds there is a SUBSTITUTE for love. This is the "magic" that will cure all of your pain; the missing factor in your madness THAT MAKES IT SANE. THIS is the reason why you must attack. HERE is what makes your vengeance justified.
Behold, unveiled, the ego's secret gift, torn from your brother's body; hidden there in malice and in hatred for the one to whom the gift belongs. HE would deprive you of the secret ingredient which would give meaning to your life. The substitute for love, born of your enmity to one another, MUST be salvation. IT has no substitute, and there IS only one. And ALL relationships have but the purpose of seizing it, and making it your own. Never is your possession made complete. And never will your brother cease his own attack on YOU, for what you stole. Nor will God end His vengeance upon both, for, in His madness, HE must have this substitute for love, and kill you both.
You who believe you walk in sanity, with feet on solid ground, and through a world where meaning CAN be found, consider this: These ARE the laws on which your "sanity" appears to rest. These ARE the principles which makes the ground beneath your feet seem solid. And it IS here you look for meaning. These are the laws YOU made for your salvation. They hold in place the substitute for Heaven that you prefer. This is their PURPOSE; they were MADE for this. There is no point in asking what they mean. This is apparent. The MEANS of madness MUST be insane. Are you as certain that you realize the GOAL is madness?
NO-ONE wants madness, nor does anyone cling to his madness if he sees that this is what it IS. What PROTECTS madness is the belief THAT IT IS TRUE. It is the FUNCTION of insanity to TAKE THE PLACE of truth. It must be seen AS truth, to be believed. And, if it IS the truth, then must its opposite, which was the truth before, be madness now. Such a reversal, COMPLETELY turned around, with madness sanity, illusions true, attack a kindness, hatred love, and murder benediction, IS the goal the laws of chaos serve. These are the means by which the laws of God APPEAR to be reversed. Here do the laws of sin APPEAR to hold love captive, and let sin go free.
These do not SEEM to be the goals of chaos. For, by the great reversal, they appear to be the laws of ORDER. How could it NOT be so? Chaos is lawlessness, and HAS no laws. To be believed, its SEEMING laws must be perceived as REAL. Their goal of madness MUST be seen as sanity. And fear, with ashen lips and sightless eyes, blinded and terrible to look upon, is lifted to the throne of love, its dying conqueror, its substitute, the savior from salvation. How lovely do the laws of fear make death appear! Give thanks unto the hero on love's throne, who saved the Son of God for fear and death!
And yet, how can it be that laws like these can BE believed? There is a strange device that makes this possible. Nor is it unfamiliar; we have seen how it APPEARS to function many times before. In truth, it does NOT function, yet in dreams, where ONLY shadows play the major roles, it seems most powerful. No law of chaos COULD compel belief, but for the emphasis on form, AND DISREGARD OF CONTENT. No-one who thinks that one of them is true SEES WHAT IT SAYS. Some FORMS it takes seem to have meaning, and that is all.
How can some FORMS of murder NOT mean death? Can an attack in ANY form be love? What FORM of condemnation is a blessing? Who makes his Savior powerless, and FINDS salvation? Let not the FORM of the attack on him deceive you. You CANNOT seek to harm him, and be saved. Who can find SAFETY from attack by turning on himself? How can it matter what the FORM this madness takes? It is a judgment that defeats ITSELF, condemning what it says it wants to save. Be not deceived when madness takes a form you think is lovely. What is intent on your destruction, is NOT your friend.
You would maintain, and think it true, that you do NOT believe such senseless laws, nor act upon them. And, when you look at what they SAY, they CANNOT be believed. Brothers, you DO believe them. For how else could you PERCEIVE the form they take, with content such as this? Can ANY form of this be tenable? Yet you believe them FOR the forms they take, and DO NOT RECOGNIZE the content. IT never changes. Can you paint rosy lips upon a skeleton, dress it in loveliness, pet it and pamper it, AND MAKE IT LIVE? And can you be content with an illusion that YOU are living?
There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true.
The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others. Yet each one rests as surely on the belief the laws of chaos ARE the laws of order, as do the others. Each one upholds these laws completely, offering a certain witness that these laws are true. The seeming gentler FORM of the attack is no less certain in its witnessing, OR ITS RESULTS. Certain it is illusions will bring fear, because of the beliefs that they imply, NOT for their form. And lack of faith in love, in ANY form, attests to chaos AS REALITY.
From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is BECAUSE it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos DO follow neatly from their starting-point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and AWAY from truth. Think not one step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. And where your thinking starts, there must it end.
Brothers, take not one step in the descent to hell. For, HAVING taken one, you will NOT RECOGNIZE the rest for what they are. And they WILL follow. Attack in ANY form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads FROM Heaven. Yet, any instant, it is possible to have this all undone. How can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven or the way to hell? Quite easily. What do you feel? Is peace in your awareness? Are you CERTAIN which way you go? And are you sure the goal of Heaven CAN be reached? If not, you walk alone. Ask, then, your Friend to JOIN with you, and GIVE you certainty of where you go.