"Father, You are the One Who gave the plan for my salvation to me. You have set the way I am to go, the role to take, and every step in my appointed path. I cannot lose the way. I can but choose to wander off a while, and then return. Your loving Voice will always call me back, and guide my feet aright. My brothers all can follow in the way I lead them. Yet I merely follow in the way to You, as You direct me and would have me go."
So let us follow One Who knows the way. We need not tarry, and we cannot stray except an instant from His loving hand. We walk together, for we follow Him. And it is He Who makes the ending sure, and guarantees a safe returning home.
"Father, today we will forgive Your world, and let creation be Your own. We have misunderstood all things. But we have not made sinners of the holy Sons of God. What You created sinless so abides forever and forever. Such are we. And we rejoice to learn that we have made mistakes which have no real effects on us. Sin is impossible, and on this fact forgiveness rests upon a certain base more solid than the shadow world we see. Help us forgive, for we would be redeemed. Help us forgive, for we would be at peace."
The exercises with this idea are the same as those for the first one. Begin with the things that are near you, and apply the idea to whatever your glance rests on. Then increase the range outward. Turn your head so that you include whatever is to either side. If possible, turn around and apply the idea to what was behind you. Remain as indiscriminate as possible in selecting subjects for its application, do not concentrate on anything in particular, and do not attempt to include everything in an area or you will introduce strain. Merely glance easily and fairly quickly around you, trying to avoid selection by size, brightness, color, material, or relative importance to you.
Take the subjects simply as you see them. Try to apply the exercise with equal ease to a body or a button, a fly or a floor, an arm or an apple. The sole criterion for applying the idea to anything is merely that your eyes have 'lighted on it. Make no attempt to include anything in particular, but be sure that nothing is specifically excluded.
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.
The answer to this question is much like the preceding one. There are, of course, no "unnatural" powers, and it is obviously merely an appeal to magic to make up a power that does not exist. It is equally obvious, however, that each individual has many abilities of which he is unaware. As his awareness increases, he may well develop abilities that seem quite startling to him. Yet nothing that he can do can compare even in the slightest with the glorious surprise of remembering Who he is. Let all his learning and all his effort be directed toward this one great final surprise, and he will not be content to be delayed by the little ones that may come to him on the way.
Certainly there are many "psychic" powers that are clearly in line with this course. Communication is not limited to the small range of channels the world recognizes. If it were there would be little point in trying to teach salvation. It would be impossible to do so. The limits the world places on communication is the chief barrier to direct experience of the Holy Spirit, Whose Presence is always there and Whose Voice is available but for the hearing. These limits are placed out of fear, for without them the walls that surround all the separate places of the world would fall at the holy sound of His Voice. Who transcends these limits in any way is merely becoming more natural. He is doing nothing special, and there is no magic in his accomplishments.
The seemingly new abilities that may be gathered on the way can be very helpful. Given to the Holy Spirit, and used under His direction, they are very valuable teaching aids. To this, the question of how they arise is irrelevant. The only important consideration is how they are used. Taken as ends in themselves, no matter how this is done, will delay progress. Nor does their value lie in proving anything; achievements from the past, unusual attunement with the "unseen," or special favors from God. God gives no special favors, and no-one has any powers that are not available to everyone. Only by tricks of magic are special powers "demonstrated."
Nothing that is genuine is used to deceive. The Holy Spirit is incapable of deception, and He can use only genuine abilities. What is used for magic is useless to Him, but what He uses cannot be used for magic. There is, however, a particular appeal in unusual abilities which can be curiously tempting. Here are strengths which the Holy Spirit wants and needs. Yet the ego sees in these same strengths an opportunity to glorify itself. Strengths turned to weakness are tragedy indeed. Yet what is not given to the Holy Spirit must be given to weakness, for what is withheld from love is given to fear, and will be fearful in consequence.
Even those who no longer value the material things of the world may still be deceived by "psychic" powers. As investment has been withdrawn from the world's material gifts the ego has been seriously threatened. It may still be strong enough to rally under this new temptation to win back strength by guile. Many have not seen through the ego's defenses here, although they are not particularly subtle. Yet, given a remaining wish to be deceived, deception is made easy. Now the "power" is no longer a genuine ability, and cannot be used dependably. It is almost inevitable that, unless the individual changes his mind about its purpose, he will bolster its uncertainties with increasing deception.
Any ability that anyone develops has the potentiality for good. To this there is no exception. And the more unusual and unexpected the power, the greater its potential usefulness. Salvation has need of all abilities, for what the world would destroy the Holy Spirit would restore. "Psychic" abilities have been used to call upon the devil, which merely means to strengthen the ego. Yet here is also a great channel of hope and healing in the Holy Spirit's service. Those who have developed "psychic" powers have merely let some of the limitations they laid upon their minds be lifted. It can be but greater limitations they lay upon themselves if they utilize their increased freedom for further imprisonment. The Holy Spirit needs these gifts, and those who offer them to Him and Him alone go with Christ's gratitude upon their hearts, and His holy sight not far behind.
The CONTINUING will to remain separated is the only possible reason for continuing guilt feelings. We have said this before, but we did not emphasize the destructive results of this decision at that time. ANY decision of the mind will affect both behavior AND experience. And what you will you EXPECT. This is NOT delusional. Your mind DOES create your future, and CAN turn it back to full creation at any minute, IF IT ACCEPTS THE ATONEMENT FIRST. It will also turn back to full creation the instant it has done so. Having given up its thought DISORDER, the proper ordering of thought becomes quite apparent.
God in His knowledge is not waiting. But His Kingdom IS bereft while YOU wait. All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as YOU are waiting for THEIRS. Delay does not matter in eternity, but it IS tragic in time. You have elected to be in time rather than in eternity, and have therefore changed your belief in your status. But election is both free and alterable. You do NOT belong in time. Your place is ONLY in eternity, where God Himself placed you forever.
Guilt feelings are the PRESERVERS of time. They induce fears of FUTURE retaliation or abandonment, and thus ensure that the future will remain like the past. This IS the ego's continuity, and gives it a false sense of security through the belief that you cannot escape from it. But you can and MUST. God offers you the continuity of eternity in exchange. When you will to make this exchange, you will simultaneously exchange guilt for peace, viciousness for love, and pain for joy.
My role is only to unchain your will and make it free. Your egos cannot accept this freedom, and will oppose your free decision at every possible moment, and in every possible way. And as its maker, you KNOW what it can do, because you GAVE IT the ability to do it. The mind does indeed know its power, because the mind does indeed know God. Remember the Kingdom always, and remember that you who are part of it cannot BE lost. The mind that was in me IS in you, for God creates with perfect fairness. Let the Holy Spirit remind you always of His fairness, and let me teach you how to share it with your brothers. How else can the chance to claim it for yourself be given you?
What you do not understand is that the two voices speak for different interpretations of the same thing simultaneously, or almost simultaneously, for the ego always speaks first. Alternate interpretations are unnecessary until the first one has been made, and speaking itself was unnecessary before the ego was made. The ego speaks in judgment, and the Holy Spirit reverses its decisions, much as the Supreme Court has the power to reverse the lower court's decision about the laws of this world.
The ego's decisions are ALWAYS wrong, because they are based on a complete fallacy which they are made to uphold. NOTHING it perceives is interpreted correctly. Not only does it cite scripture for its purpose, but it even interprets scripture as a witness for itself. The Bible is a fearful thing to the ego, because of its prejudiced judgment. Perceiving it as fearful, it interprets it fearfully. Having made YOU afraid, you do not appeal to the higher court, because you believe its judgment would be AGAINST you.
We need cite only a few examples to see how the ego's interpretations have mislead you. A favorite ego quotation is "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." Another is "Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord." Still another is "I will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and the fourth generation." And also, "The wicked shall perish." There are many others, but if you will let the Holy Spirit re-interpret these in its own light, they will suffice.
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap" merely means that what you believe to be worth cultivating you will cultivate in yourself. Your judgment of what is worthy DOES make it worthy for you.
"Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord" is easily explained if you remember that ideas increase only by being shared. This quotation therefore emphasizes the fact that vengeance CANNOT be shared. Give it therefore to the Holy Spirit, who will undo it in you because it does not BELONG in your mind, which is part of God.
"I will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation," as interpreted by the ego, is particularly vicious. It is used, in fact, as an attempt to guarantee its survival beyond itself. Actually, all it really means is that the Holy Spirit in later generations retains the power to interpret CORRECTLY what former generations have thought, and thus release THEIR thoughts from the ability to produce fear ANYWHERE in the Sonship.
"The wicked shall perish" is merely a statement of fact, if the word "perish" is properly understood. Every loveless thought MUST be undone, and even the word "undone" is fearful to the ego, which interprets "I am undone" as "I am destroyed." The ego will NOT be destroyed, because it is part of YOUR thought. But because it is uncreative, and therefore unsharing, it WILL be re-interpreted entirely, to release you from fear.
The part of your thought which you have given TO the ego will merely return to the Kingdom, where your whole mind BELONGS. The ego is a form of ARREST, but arrest is merely delay. It does NOT involve the concept of police at all, although the ego welcomes that interpretation. You CAN delay the completion of the Kingdom, but you CANNOT introduce the concept of ASSAULT into it.
When I said "I am come as a light into the world," I surely came to share this light with you. Remember the symbolic reference we made before to the ego's dark glass, and remember also that we said "Do not look there." It is still true that "Where you look to find yourself is up to you." The Higher Court will not condemn you. It will merely dismiss the case against you. There can BE no case against a child of God, and every witness to guilt in God's creations is bearing false witness to God Himself.
Appeal everything you believe gladly to God's own Higher Court, because it speaks for Him, and therefore speaks truly. It WILL dismiss the case against you, however carefully YOU have built it. The case may be fool-proof, but it is NOT God-proof. The voice for God will not hear it at all, because it can only witness truly. Its verdict will always be "Thine is the Kingdom," because it was given you to remind you of what you ARE.
Your patience with each other is your patience with your selves. Is not a child of God worth patience? I have shown you infinite patience, because my will IS that of our Father, from whom I learned of infinite patience. His voice was in me, as it is in you, speaking for patience toward the Sonship, in the name of its Creator. What you need to learn now is that only infinite patience CAN produce immediate effects. This is the way in which time is exchanged for eternity. Infinite patience calls upon infinite Love, and by producing results NOW renders time unnecessary.
To say that time is temporary is merely redundant. We have repeatedly said that time is a learning device which will be abolished when it is no longer useful. The Holy Spirit, who speaks for God in time, also knows that time is meaningless. He reminds you of this in every passing moment of time, because it is His special function to return YOU to eternity and remain to bless YOUR creations there. He is the only blessing you can truly give, because He is so truly blessed. And because He has been given you so freely by God, you must give Him as you received Him.
Today's idea does not describe the way you see yourself now. It does, however, describe what vision will show you. It is difficult for anyone who thinks he is in this world to believe this of himself. Yet the reason he thinks he is in this world is because he does not believe it.
You will believe that you are part of where you think you are. That is because you surround yourself with the environment you want. And you want it to protect the image of yourself which you have made. The image is part of it. What you see while you believe you are in it is seen through the eyes of the image. It is not vision. Images cannot see.
The idea for today presents a very different view of yourself. By establishing your Source it establishes your identity, and it describes you as you must really be in truth. We will use a somewhat different kind of application for today's idea, because the emphasis for today is on the perceiver, rather than on what he perceives.
For each of the three five-minute practice periods today, begin by repeating today's idea to yourself, and then close your eyes and search your mind for the various kinds of descriptive terms in which you see yourself. Include all of the ego-based attributes which you ascribe to yourself, positive or negative, desirable or undesirable, grandiose or debased. All of them are equally unreal because you do not look upon yourself through the eyes of holiness.
In the earlier part of the mind-searching period, you will probably emphasize what you consider to be the more negative aspects of your perception of yourself. Toward the latter part of the exercise period, however, more self-inflating descriptive terms may well cross your mind. Try to recognize that the direction of your fantasies about yourself does not matter. Illusions have no direction in reality. They are merely not true.
A suitable unselected list for applying the idea for today might be as follows:
"I see myself as imposed on."
"I see myself as depressed."
"I see myself as failing."
"I see myself as endangered."
"I see myself as helpless."
"I see myself as victorious."
"I see myself as losing out."
"I see myself as charitable."
"I see myself as virtuous."
You should not think of these terms in an abstract way. They will occur to you as various situations, personalities, and events in which you figure cross your mind. Pick up any specific situation that occurs to you, identify the descriptive term or terms which you feel are applicable to your reactions to that situation, and use them in applying today's idea. After you have named each one, add:
"But my mind is part of God's. I am very holy."
During the longer exercise periods, there will probably be intervals in which nothing specific occurs to you. Do not strain to think up specific things to fill the interval, but merely relax and repeat today's idea slowly until something occurs to you. Although nothing that does occur should be omitted from the exercises, nothing should be "dug out" with effort. Neither force nor discrimination should be used.
As often as possible during the day, pick up a specific attribute or attributes which you are ascribing to yourself at the time, and apply the idea for today to them, adding the idea to each of them in the form stated above. If nothing particular occurs to you, merely repeat the idea to yourself, with closed eyes.
You are hampered in your progress by your demands to know what you do not know. This is actually a way of hanging on to deprivation. You cannot reasonably object to following instructions in a course FOR knowing, on the grounds that you do not know. The need for the course is implicit in your objection. Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. PEACE is. As the PREREQUISITE for knowledge, peace MUST be learned. This is ONLY because those who are in conflict are not peaceful, and peace is the CONDITION of knowledge because it is the condition of the Kingdom.
Knowledge will be restored when YOU meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God, who made no bargains at all. It is merely the result of your misuse of His Laws on behalf of a will that was not His. Knowledge IS His Will. If you are OPPOSING His Will, how CAN you have knowledge? I have told you what knowledge OFFERS you, but it is clear that you do NOT regard this as wholly desirable. If you did, you would hardly be willing to throw it away so readily, when the ego asks for your allegiance.
The distraction of the ego SEEMS to interfere with your learning, but it HAS no power to distract unless you GIVE it the power. The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect the EGO to say "I am not real." Hallucinations ARE inaccurate perceptions of reality. But you are NOT asked to dispel them alone. You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results TO YOU. If you DO NOT WANT THEM on the basis of LOSS OF PEACE, they will be removed from your mind FOR you. Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war DOES deprive you of peace.
Yet in this war THERE IS NO OPPONENT. THIS is the re-interpretation of reality which you must make to secure peace, and the ONLY one you need ever make.
When you react AT ALL to errors, you are NOT LISTENING TO THE HOLY SPIRIT. He has merely disregarded them, and if you ATTEND to them, you are NOT HEARING HIM. If you do not hear HIM, you are listening to YOUR ego, and making as little sense as the brother whose errors you perceive. This CANNOT be correction. But it is more than merely lack of correction for him. It is the GIVING UP of correction in YOURSELF.
When a brother behaves insanely, you can heal him ONLY by perceiving the SANITY in him. If you perceive his errors and ACCEPT them, you are accepting YOURS. If you want to give YOURS over to the Holy Spirit, you must do this with HIS. Unless this becomes the ONE way in which you handle ALL errors, you cannot understand HOW ALL ERRORS ARE UNDONE. How is this different from telling you that what you teach you LEARN? Your brother is as right as you are. And if you think he is WRONG, you are condemning YOURSELF.
YOU cannot correct YOURSELF. Is it possible, then, for you to correct another? But you CAN see him truly, because it IS possible for you to see YOURSELF truly. It is not up to you to CHANGE him, but merely to accept him AS HE IS. His errors do not come from the truth that is in him, and ONLY this truth is yours. His errors cannot change this, and can have no effect at all on the truth in YOU.
To perceive errors in anyone, and to REACT to them AS IF THEY WERE REAL, is to MAKE them real to you. You will not escape paying the price for this, NOT because you are being PUNISHED for it, but because you are following the wrong guide, and will lose your way. Your brother's errors are not of him, any more than yours are OF YOU. Accept his errors as real, and you have attacked YOURSELF. If you would find YOUR way AND KEEP IT, see only truth beside you, for you walk together.
The Holy Spirit in you forgives all things in you, AND your brother. HIS errors are forgiven WITH yours. Atonement is no more separate than love. It CANNOT be separate, because it COMES from Love. ANY attempt you make to correct a brother, means that you believe correction by YOU is possible, and this can ONLY be the arrogance of the ego. Correction is of God, Who does not know of arrogance. The Holy Spirit forgives everything, BECAUSE GOD CREATED EVERYTHING. Do not undertake HIS function, or you will forget YOURS.
Accept ONLY the function of healing in time, because that is what time is FOR. GOD gave you the function to create in eternity. You do not need to learn this. But you DO need to learn to WANT this, and for THIS all learning was made. This is the Holy Spirit's good use of an ability which you do not need, but which you HAVE made. Give it to Him; you do NOT know how to use it. He will teach you how to see YOURSELF without condemnation, by learning how to look on EVERYTHING without it. Condemnation will then not be real to you, and all YOUR errors WILL be forgiven.
In the ultimate sense, reincarnation is impossible. There is no past nor future, and the idea of birth into a body has no meaning either once or many times. Reincarnation cannot, then, be true in any real sense. Our only question should be, "Is the concept helpful?" And that depends, of course, on what it is used for. If it is used to strengthen the recognition of the eternal nature of life it is helpful indeed. Is any other question about it really useful in lighting up the way? Like many other beliefs, it can be bitterly misused. At least, such misuse offers preoccupation and perhaps pride in the past. At worst, it induces inertia in the present. In between, many kinds of folly are possible.
Reincarnation would not, under any circumstances, be the problem to be dealt with now. If it were responsible for some of the difficulties the individual faces now, his task would still be only to escape from them now. If he is laying the groundwork for a future life, he can still work out his salvation only now. To some there may be comfort in the concept, and if it heartens them its value is self-evident. It is certain, however, that the way to salvation can be found by those who believe in reincarnation and by those who do not. The idea cannot, therefore, be regarded as essential to the curriculum. There is always some risk in seeing the present in terms of the past. There is always some good in any thought which strengthens the idea that life and the body are not the same.
For our purposes, it would not be helpful to take any definite stand on reincarnation. A teacher of God should be as helpful to those who believe in it as to those who do not. If a definite stand on it were required of him, it would merely limit his usefulness as well as his own decision-making. Our course is not concerned with any concept that is not acceptable to anyone, regardless of his formal beliefs. His ego will be enough for him to cope with, and it is not the part of wisdom to add sectarian controversies to his burdens. Nor would there be an advantage in his premature acceptance of the course merely because it advocates a long-held belief of his own.
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this course aims at a complete reversal of thought. When this is finally accomplished issues such as the validity of reincarnation become meaningless. Until then they are likely to be merely controversial. The teacher of God is therefore wise to step away from all such questions, for he has much to teach and learn apart from them. He should both learn and teach that theoretical issues but waste time, draining it away from its appointed purpose. If there are aspects to any concept or belief that will be helpful, he will be told about it. He will also be told how to use it. What more need he know?
Does this mean that the teacher of God should not believe in reincarnation himself, or discuss it with others who do? The answer is, certainly not. If he does believe in reincarnation, it would be a mistake for him to renounce the belief unless his Internal Teacher so advised. And this is most unlikely. He might be advised that he is misusing the belief in some way which is detrimental to his pupil's advance or his own. Reinterpretation would then be recommended because it would be necessary. All that must be recognized, however, is that birth was not the beginning and death is not the end. Yet even this much is not required of the beginner. He need merely accept the idea that what he knows is not necessarily all there is to learn. His journey has begun.
The emphasis of this course always remains the same; - it is at this moment that complete salvation is offered you, and it is at this moment that you can accept it. This is still your one responsibility. Atonement might be equated with total escape from the past and total lack of interest in the future. Heaven is here. There is nowhere else. Heaven is now. There is no other time. No teaching that does not lead to this is of concern to God's teachers. All beliefs will point to this if properly interpreted. In this sense it can be said that their truth lies in their usefulness. All beliefs that lead to progress should be honored. This is the sole criterion this course requires. No more than this is necessary.
Judgment, like other devices by which the world of illusions is maintained, is totally misunderstood by the world. It is actually confused with wisdom, and substitutes for truth. As the world uses the term, an individual is capable of "good" and "bad" judgment, and his education aims at strengthening the former and minimizing the latter. There is, however, considerable confusion about what these categories mean. What is "good" judgment to one is "bad" judgment to another. Further, even the same person classifies the same action as showing "good" judgment at one time and "bad" judgment at another time. Nor can any consistent criteria for determining what these categories are be really taught. At any time the student may disagree with what his would-be teacher says about it, and the teacher himself is inconsistent in what he believes they are.
"Good judgment" in these terms, does not mean anything. No more does "bad." It is necessary for the teacher of God to realize not that he should not judge, but that he cannot. In giving up judgment he merely gives up what he did not have. He gives up an illusion; or better, he has an illusion of giving up. He has actually merely become more honest. Recognizing that judgment was always impossible for him, he no longer attempts it. This is no sacrifice. On the contrary, he puts himself in a position where judgment through him rather than by him can occur. And this Judgment is neither "good" nor "bad." It is the only Judgment there is, and it is only one: "God's Son is guiltless, and sin does not exist."
The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world's learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible. This is not an opinion but a fact. In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things; past, present and to come. One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way. And one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception, so that his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future. Who is in a position to do this? Who except in grandiose fantasies would claim this for himself?
Remember how many times you thought you knew all the "facts" you needed for judgment, and how wrong you were! Is there anyone who has not had this experience? Would you know how many times you merely thought you were right, without ever realizing you were wrong? Why would you choose such an arbitrary basis for decision-making? Wisdom is not judgment; it is the relinquishment of judgment. Make then but one more judgment. It is this; there is Someone with you Whose judgment is perfect. He does know all the facts, past, present and to come. He does know all the effects of His judgment on everyone and everything involved in any way. And He is wholly fair to everyone, for there is no distortion in His perception.
Therefore lay judgment down, not with regret but with a sigh of gratitude. Now are you free of a burden so great that you could merely stagger and fall down beneath it. And it was all illusion. Nothing more. Now can the teacher of God rise up unburdened, and walk lightly on. Yet it is not only this that is his benefit. His sense of care is gone, for he has none. He has given it away, along with judgment. He gave himself to Him Whose judgment he has chosen now to trust instead of his own. Now he makes no mistakes. His Guide is sure. And where he came to judge he comes to bless. Where now he laughs he used to come to weep.
It is not difficult to relinquish judgment. But it is difficult indeed to try to keep it. The teacher of God lays it down happily the instant he recognizes its cost. All of the ugliness he sees about him is its outcome. All of the pain he looks upon is its result. All of the loneliness and sense of loss; of passing time and growing hopelessness; of sickening despair and fear of death; all these have come of it. And now he knows that these things need not be. Not one is true. For he has given up their cause, and they, which never were but the effects of his mistaken choice, have fallen from him. Teacher of God, this step will bring you peace. Can it be difficult to want but this?
If I could realize but this today, salvation would be reached for all the world. This the decision not to be insane, and to accept myself as God Himself, my Father and my Source, created me. This the determination not to be asleep in dreams of death, while truth remains forever living in the joy of life. And this the choice to recognize the Self Whom God created as the Son He loves, and Who remains my one Reality.
"Father, Your Name is Love, and so is mine. Such is the truth. And can the truth be changed by merely giving it another name? The name of fear is simply a mistake. Let me not be afraid of truth today."
Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in this view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin except a false idea about God's Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God.
An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is untrue. The mind is closed, and will not be released. The thought protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its needed goal?
An unforgiving thought does many things. In frantic action it pursues its goal, twisting and overturning what it sees as interfering with its chosen path. Distortion is its purpose and the means by which it would accomplish it as well. It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view.
Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes. It merely looks and waits and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.
Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show you what to do through Him Who is your Guide, your Savior and Defender, strong in hope and certain of your ultimate success. He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God.
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.
I need but look upon all things that seem to hurt me, and with perfect certainty assure myself, "God wills that I be saved from this," and merely watch them disappear. I need but keep in mind my Father's Will for me is only happiness, to find that only happiness has come to me. And I need but remember that His Love surrounds His Son and keeps his sinlessness forever perfect, to be sure that I am saved and safe forever in His arms. I am the Son He loves. And I am saved because God in His mercy wills it so.
"Father, Your holiness is mine. Your Love created me, and made my sinlessness forever part of You. I have no guilt nor sin in me, for there is none in You."
The Atonement does not MAKE holy. You were CREATED holy. It merely brings UNholiness TO holiness, or what you MADE, to what you ARE. The bringing together of truth and illusion, OF THE EGO AND GOD, is the Holy Spirit's only function. Keep not your making from your Father, for hiding it has cost you knowledge of Him, and of yourselves. The knowledge is safe, but wherein is YOUR safety, APART from it? The making of time, to TAKE THE PLACE of timelessness, lay in the decision to BE NOT as you WERE. Thus, truth was made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion. And the past, too, was changed, and INTERPOSED between what ALWAYS was, and NOW. The past that YOU remember NEVER was, and represents only denial of what ALWAYS was.
Bringing the ego to God, is but to bring error to truth, where it stands corrected, because it is the OPPOSITE of what it meets, and is undone because the CONTRADICTION can no longer stand. How long can contradiction stand, when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in light is NOT attacked. It merely vanishes, because it is not true. Different realities ARE meaningless, for reality MUST be one. It CANNOT change with time, or mood, or chance. Its changelessness is WHAT MAKES IT REAL. This CANNOT be undone. Undoing is for UNreality. And this, reality WILL do for you.
Merely by BEING WHAT IT IS, does truth release you from everything that it is NOT. The Atonement is so gentle, you need but whisper to it, and all its power will rush to your assistance and support. You are not frail, with God beside you. But WITHOUT Him, you are nothing. The Atonement OFFERS YOU GOD. The gift which you refused, is held by Him in you. His Spirit holds it there FOR you. God has not left His altar, though His worshippers placed other gods upon it. The temple still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it IS Holiness.
In the temple, holiness waits quietly for the return of them that love it. For the Presence knows they will return to purity and to grace. The graciousness of God will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss, with the immortal assurance of their Father's Love. There, fear of death will be replaced with joy of living. For God is Life, and they abide IN Life. Life is as holy as the Holiness by which it was created. The Presence of Holiness lives in everything that lives, for Holiness CREATED life, and leaves not what it created holy as Itself.
In the world you, can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves.
The reflection of God NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you. Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in YOU, can bring to all the world, you COULD not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean, to receive the image of the Holiness that heals the world.
The image of holiness that shines in YOUR mind is NOT obscure, and will NOT change. Its meaning, to those who look upon it is not obscure, for everyone perceives it AS THE SAME. All bring their DIFFERENT problems to its healing light, but ALL their problems are met ONLY with healing there. The response of holiness, to ANY form of error, is ALWAYS the same. There is no contradiction in what holiness CALLS FORTH. Its ONE response is healing, without ANY regard for what is brought TO it.
Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the ACTUAL CONDITION of what was but reflected TO them here. God is no image, and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely REFLECT the truth, for THEY ARE truth.
Today we will anticipate the time when dreams of sin and guilt are gone, and we have reached again the holy place we never left. Merely a tiny instant has elapsed between eternity and timelessness. So brief the interval there was no lapse in continuity, nor break in thoughts which are forever unified as one. Nothing has ever happened to disturb the peace of God the Father and the Son. This we accept as wholly true today.
"We thank you, Father, that we cannot lose the memory of You and of Your Love. We recognize our safety, and give thanks for all the gifts You have bestowed on us, for all the loving help we have received, for Your eternal patience, and the Word Which You have given us that we are saved."
Salvation is a promise, made by God, that you would find your way to Him at last. It cannot not be kept. It guarantees that time will have an end, and all the thoughts that have been born in time will end as well. God's Word is given every mind which thinks that it has separate thoughts, and will replace these thoughts of conflict with the Thought of peace.
The Thought of peace was given to God's Son the instant that his mind had thought of war. There was no need for such a Thought before, for peace was given without opposite, and merely was. But when the mind is split, there is a need of healing. So the Thought Which has the power to heal the split became a part of every fragment of the mind which still was one, but failed to recognize its oneness. Now it did not know itself, and thought its own identity was lost.
Salvation is undoing in the sense that it does nothing, failing to support the world of dreams and malice. Thus it lets illusions go. By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust. And what they hid is now revealed; an altar to the holy Name of God whereon His Word is written, with the gifts of your forgiveness laid before It, and the memory of God not far behind.
Let us come daily to this holy place, and spend a while together. Here we share our final dream. It is a dream in which there is no sorrow, for it holds a hint of all the glory given us by God. The grass is pushing through the soil, the trees are budding now, and birds have come to live within their branches. Earth is being born again in new perception. Night has gone, and we have come together in the light.
From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God's Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, eternity has shined away the world, and only Heaven now exists at all.
Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE. To forgive is to OVERLOOK. Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your perception HOLDS. Accept as true only what your brother IS, if you would know yourself. Perceive what he is NOT, and you CANNOT know what you are, BECAUSE you see HIM falsely. Remember always that your identity is shared, and that its sharing IS its reality.
You have a PART to play in the Atonement. But the plan of the Atonement IS beyond you. You do not know how to OVERLOOK errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to think either that you do NOT make them, or that you can CORRECT them without a GUIDE TO CORRECTION. And if you do not FOLLOW this Guide, your errors will NOT be corrected. The plan is not yours BECAUSE of your limited ideas about WHAT YOU ARE. But this limitation IS where ALL ERRORS ARISE. The way to UNDO them is, therefore, not OF you, but FOR you.
The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of what is your NATURAL ability. By RE-INTERPRETING the ability to ATTACK, which you DID make, into the ability to SHARE, He TRANSLATES what you have made, into what God created. But if you would accomplish this THROUGH Him, you cannot look on your abilities through the eyes of the ego, or you will judge them as IT does. All their harmfulness lies in ITS judgment. All their HELPFULNESS lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit.
The ego has a plan of forgiveness, because you are ASKING for one, but not of the right teacher. The EGO's plan, of course, MAKES NO SENSE and WILL NOT WORK. By following it, you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation, to which the ego ALWAYS leads you. Its plan is to have you SEE ERROR CLEARLY FIRST, and THEN overlook it. But how CAN you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you HAVE made it real, and CANNOT overlook it.
This is where the ego is forced into appealing to mysteries, and begins to insist that you accept the meaningless, to save yourself. Many have tried to do this in my name, forgetting that my words make PERFECT sense, because they come from GOD. They are as sensible now as they ever were, because they speak of ideas which are eternal. Forgiveness that is learned of ME does not use fear to UNDO fear. Nor does it make real the UNreal, and then destroy it.
Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus KEEPING it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that you must UNDO what you have made, in order to BE forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit, the effects of error are TOTALLY non-existent. By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT. Follow His teaching in forgiveness, then, because forgiveness IS His function, and HE knows how to fulfill it perfectly. That is what we meant when we once said that miracles are NATURAL, and when they do NOT occur, something has gone wrong. Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow HIS plan of Salvation, in recognition of the FACT that you do NOT know what it is. His work is NOT your function, and unless you accept this, you CANNOT learn what your function IS.
The confusion of functions is so typical of the ego, that you should be quite familiar with it by now. The ego believes that ALL functions belong to IT, even though it has no idea what they ARE. This is more than mere confusion. It is a particularly dangerous combination of grandiosity AND confusion, that makes it likely that the ego will attack anyone and anything, for no reason at all. This is exactly what it DOES. It is TOTALLY unpredictable in its responses, because it has no idea WHAT it heard.
If one has no idea what is happening, how appropriately can you EXPECT him to react? But you might still ask yourself, regardless of how you can ACCOUNT for the reactions, whether they place the ego in a very sound position as a guide for YOURS. It seems absurd to have to emphasize repeatedly that the ego's qualifications as a guide are singularly unfortunate, and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a teacher of salvation. Yet this question, ridiculous as it seems, is REALLY the crucial issue in the whole separation fantasy.
Anyone who elects a totally insane guide, MUST be totally insane himself. It is not true that you do not know the guide is insane. YOU know it because I know it, and you HAVE judged it by the same Standard as I have. The ego literally lives on borrowed time, and ITS days ARE numbered. Do not fear the last judgment, but welcome it and do not wait, for the ego's time is borrowed from YOUR eternity. This IS the Second Coming, which was made FOR you, as the First was created.
The Second Coming is merely the return of SENSE. Can this POSSIBLY be fearful? What can be fearful but fantasy, and no one turns to fantasy unless he despairs of satisfaction in reality. But it is CERTAIN that he will NEVER find satisfaction in fantasy, so that his ONLY hope is to change his mind about REALITY. Only if the decision that reality is fearful is WRONG, can GOD be right. And I ASSURE you that God IS right.
Be glad, then, that you HAVE been wrong, but this was only because you did not know who you WERE. Had you REMEMBERED, you could no more have been wrong than God can. The impossible can happen ONLY in fantasy. When you search for reality in fantasies, you will not find it. The symbols of fantasy are of the ego, and of THESE you will find many. But do not look for meaning in them. They have no more meaning than the fantasies into which they are woven.
Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful, pretty or ugly, but NO ONE calls them TRUE. Children may believe them, and so, for a while, they ARE true for them. But when Reality dawns, they are gone. REALITY has NOT gone in the meanwhile. The Second Coming is the AWARENESS of Reality, not its RETURN. Behold, my children, Reality is here. It belongs to you and me and God, and is perfectly satisfying to all of us. Only THIS awareness heals, because it is the awareness of truth.
We have already discussed the Last Judgment in some though insufficient detail. After the Last Judgment, there isn't any more. This is symbolic only in the sense that everybody is much better off WITHOUT judgment. When the Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own. The choice to judge rather than know has been the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not cognition rests. We covered this before in terms of selectivity. Evaluation was said at that time to be its obvious prerequisite.
Judgment ALWAYS involves rejection. It is not an ability which emphasizes ONLY the positive aspects of what is judged, whether it be in or out of the self. However, what has been perceived and rejected, (or judged and found wanting) remains in the unconscious because it HAS been perceived. Watson had a very relevant notion of the unconscious in this connection. In fact, it was so relevant that he dropped it as officially out of accord with Behaviorism. He was right on both counts.
One of the illusions from which human perception suffers is that what it perceives and judges against has no effect. This cannot be true, unless man also believes that what his judgment vetoes does not exist. He evidently does not believe this, or he would not have judged against it. It does not really matter, in the end, whether you judge right or wrong. Either way, you are placing your belief in the unreal. This cannot be avoided in any type of judgment, because it IMPLIES the belief that reality is yours to choose FROM.
Neither of you has any idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourselves and your brothers totally without judgment. If you will look back at the earlier notes about what you and your brothers ARE, you will realize that judging them in any way is really without meaning. In fact, their meaning is lost to you precisely BECAUSE you ARE judging them. All uncertainty comes from a totally fallacious belief that you are under the coercion of judgment. You do not need it to organize your life, and you certainly do not need it to organize yourselves.
When you look upon knowledge, all judgment is automatically suspended, and this is the process that enables recognition to REPLACE perception. Man is very fearful of everything he has perceived and refused to accept. He believes that because he has refused to accept it, he has lost control over it. This is why he sees it in nightmares, or in pleasant disguise in what seems to be happier dreams. Nothing that you have refused to accept can be brought into awareness. It does NOT follow that it is dangerous. But it DOES follow that you have made it dangerous.
When you feel tired, it is merely because you have judged yourself as capable of being tired. When you laugh at someone it is because you have judged him as debased. When you laugh at yourself, you are singularly likely to laugh at others, if only because you cannot tolerate being more debased THAN others. All of this does make you tired, because it is essentially disheartening. You are not really capable of being tired, but you are very capable of wearying yourselves.
The strain of constant judgment is virtually intolerable. It is a curious thing that any ability which is so debilitating should be so deeply cherished. But there is a very good reason for this. (This, however, depends upon what you mean by good.)
If you wish to be the author of reality, which is totally impossible anyway, then you will insist on holding on to judgment. You will also use the term with considerable fear and believe that judgment will someday be used against you. To whatever extent it IS used against you, it is due ONLY to your belief in its efficacy as a weapon of defense for your own authority.
The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has a "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself, and resents his own projection that you share his delusion in this respect. He then perceives the situation as one in which two people are literally fighting for his own authorship. This is the fundamental error of all those who believe they have usurped the power of God.
The belief is very frightening to them, but hardly troubles God at all. He is, however, eager to undo it, not to punish His children, but ONLY because He knows that it makes them unhappy. Souls were given their own true authorship, and men preferred to remain anonymous when they chose to separate themselves FROM their Author. The word "authority" has been one of their most fearful symbols ever since. Authority has been used for great cruelty, because, being uncertain of their true Authorship, men believe that their creation was anonymous. This has left them in a position where it SOUNDS meaningful to consider the possibility that they must have created themselves.
The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all. Despite the apparent contradiction in this position, it is in one sense more tenable than the view that they created themselves. At least, it acknowledged the fact some TRUE authorship is necessary for existence.
Only those who give over all desire to reject can KNOW that their own rejection is impossible. You have not usurped the power of God, but you HAVE lost it. Fortunately, when you lose something, this does not mean that the something has gone. It merely means that YOU do not know where it is. Existence does not depend on your ability to identify it, or even to place it. It is perfectly possible to look on reality without judgment, and merely KNOW it is there. By knowing this, you are not doubting its reality at all.
Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is NOT free to establish what his inheritance IS. The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship. All fear comes ultimately, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial of Authorship. The offense is never to God, but only to the denier himself. He has thrown away the reason for his own peace, and sees himself only in pieces. This strange perception IS an authority problem. It is also the basis for castration anxiety, since both forms of error are fundamentally the same.
Neither you nor Bill can find peace while this authority problem continues. But the truth is still that there IS no problem about this. There is no man who does not feel that he is imprisoned in some way. If this has been the result of his own free will, he must regard his will as if it were NOT free, or the obviously circular reasoning of his own position would be quite apparent.
Free will MUST lead to freedom. Judgment always imprisons, because it separates segments of reality according to highly unstable scales of desire. Wishes are not facts, by definition. To wish is to imply that willing is not sufficient. However, no one really believes that what is wished is as real as what is willed. Instead of "seek you first the Kingdom of Heaven" say "Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven," and you have said "I know what I am, and I will to accept my own inheritance."
It is ESSENTIAL that this whole authority problem be voluntarily dismissed at once and for all before B's course. Neither of you understands how important this is for your sanity. You are both quite insane on this point. (This is not a judgment. It is merely a fact. (No, Helen, you SHOULD use the word "fact." This is just as much a fact as God is. A fact is literally a "making" or a starting point. You DO start from this point, and your thinking is inverted because of it.)
This idea is, of course, the reason why you see only the past. No one really sees anything. He sees only his thoughts projected outward. The mind's preoccupation with the past is the cause of the total misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything.
The only wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. Very few minds have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything.
The purpose of the exercises for today is to begin to train your mind to recognize when it is not really thinking at all. While thoughtless "ideas" preoccupy your mind, the truth is blocked. Recognizing that your mind has been merely blank, rather than believing that it is filled with real ideas, is the first step to opening the way to vision.
The exercises for today should be done with eyes closed. This is because you actually cannot see anything, and it is easier to recognize that no matter how vividly you may picture a thought, you are not seeing anything. With as little investment as possible, search your mind for the usual minute or so, merely noting the thoughts you find there. Name each one by the central figure or theme it contains, and pass on to the next. Introduce the practice period by saying:
"I seem to be thinking about ____."
Then name each of your thoughts specifically, for example:
"I seem to be thinking about (name of person), about (name of object), about (name of emotion), and so on,"
concluding at the end of the mind-searching period with:
"But my mind is preoccupied with past thoughts."
This can be done four or five times during the day, unless you find it irritates you. If you find it trying, three or four times is sufficient. You might find it helpful, however, to include your irritation, or any emotion which the idea may induce, in the mind-searching itself.
"Here is the only 'sacrifice' You ask of Your beloved Son; You ask him to give up all suffering, all sense of loss and sadness, all anxiety and doubt, and freely let Your Love come streaming in to his awareness, healing him of pain, and giving him Your own eternal joy. Such is the 'sacrifice' You ask of me, and one I gladly make; the only 'cost' of restoration of Your memory to me, for the salvation of the world."
And as we pay the debt we owe to truth - a debt which merely is the letting go of self-deceptions and of images we worshipped falsely - truth returns to us in wholeness and in joy. We are deceived no longer. Love has now returned to our awareness. And we are at peace again, for fear has gone, and only Love remains.
"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.
Cure is a word which cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as beneficial. What the world perceives as therapeutic is but what will make the body "better." When it tries to heal the mind, it sees no separation from the body where it thinks the mind exists. Its forms of healing thus must substitute illusion for illusion. One belief in sickness takes another form, and so the patient now perceives himself as well.
He is not healed. He merely had a dream that he was sick, and in the dream he found a magic formula to make him well. Yet he has not awakened from the dream, and so his mind remains exactly as it was before. He has not seen the light that would awaken him and end the dream. What difference does the content of a dream make in reality? One either sleeps or wakens. There is nothing in between.
The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings are different from the dreams of the world, where one can merely dream he is awake. The dreams forgiveness lets the mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep, so that the dreamer dreams another dream. His happy dreams are heralds of the dawn of truth upon the mind. They lead from sleep to gentle waking, so that dreams are gone. And thus they cure for all eternity.
Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.
Peace be to you who have been cured in God, and not in idle dreams. For cure must come from holiness, and holiness can not be found where sin is cherished. God abides in holy temples. He is barred where sin has entered. Yet there is no place where He is not. And therefore sin can have no home in which to hide from His beneficence.
There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide. This is the thought that cures. It does not make distinctions among unrealities. Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where the need of for healing is. This is no magic. It is merely an appeal to truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever. It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real.
Let us not try today to seek to cure what cannot suffer sickness. Healing must be sought but where it is, and then applied to what is sick so that it can be cured. There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. The mind that brings illusions to the truth is really changed. There is no change but this. For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes which have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?
Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. We will try today to find the source of healing, which is in our minds because our Father placed it there for us. It is not further from us than ourselves. It is as near to us as our own thoughts, so close it is impossible to lose. We need but seek it and it must be found.
We will not be misled today by what appears to us as sick. We go beyond appearances today, and reach the source of healing from which nothing is exempt. We will succeed to the extent to which we realize that there can never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and equally untrue. Here there are no degrees, and no beliefs that what does not exist is truer in some forms than others. All of them are false, and can be cured because they are not true.
So do we lay aside our amulets, our charms and medicines, our chants and bits of magic in whatever form they took. We will be still and listen for the Voice of healing which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. No voice but This can cure. Today we hear a single Voice Which speaks to us of truth where all illusions end, and peace returns to the eternal quiet home of God.
We waken hearing Him, and let Him speak to us five minutes as the day begins, and end the day by listening again five minutes more before we go to sleep. Our only preparation is to let our interfering thoughts be laid aside, not separately, but all of them as one. They are the same. We have no need to make them different, and thus delay the time when we can hear our Father speak to us. We hear Him now. We come to Him today.
With nothing in our hands to which we cling, with lifted hearts and listening minds we pray:
"Only salvation can be said to cure.
Speak to us, Father, that we may be healed."
And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection, and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds, nor offer proof to us that it is real. This will we learn today. And we will say our prayer for healing hourly, and take a minute as the hour strikes to hear the answer to our prayer be given us as we attend in silence and in joy. This is the day when healing comes to us. This is the day when separation ends, and we remember Who we really are.
We have said much about discrepancies of means and end, and how these must be brought in line before your holy relationship can bring you ONLY joy. But we have also said the means to meet the Holy Spirit's goal will come from the same Source as does His purpose. Being so simple and direct, this course has NOTHING in it that is not consistent. The SEEMING inconsistencies, or parts you find more difficult than others, are merely indications of areas where means and end are still discrepant. And this produces great discomfort. This NEED not be. This course requires almost NOTHING of you. It is impossible to imagine one that asks so little, or could offer more.
The period of discomfort that follows the sudden change in a relationship from sin to holiness, should now be almost over. To the extent you still experience it, you are REFUSING to leave the means to Him Who changed the purpose. You recognize you WANT the goal. Are you not also willing to ACCEPT the means? If you are not, let us admit that YOU are inconsistent. A purpose is ATTAINED by means. And if you WANT a goal, you MUST be willing to want the means as well. How can one be sincere and say, "I want this above all else, and yet I do not want to learn the means to get it?"
To obtain the GOAL, the Holy Spirit indeed asked little. He asks no more to give the means as well. The means are second to the goal. And, when you hesitate, it is because the PURPOSE frightens you, and NOT the means. Remember this, for otherwise you will make the error of believing the MEANS are difficult. Yet how CAN they be difficult, if they are merely GIVEN you? They GUARANTEE the goal. And they are PERFECTLY in line with it. Before we look at them a little closer, remember that if you think THEY are impossible, your wanting of the PURPOSE has been shaken. For if a GOAL is possible to reach, the means to do so MUST be possible as well.
It IS impossible to see your brother sinless, and yet to look upon him as a body. Is this not perfectly consistent with the goal of holiness? For holiness is merely the result of letting the effects of sins be lifted, so what was ALWAYS true is RECOGNIZED. To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego. EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE. And BOTH must be undone, for purposes of truth.
The body IS the means by which the ego tries to make the unholy relationship seem real. The unholy instant IS the time of bodies. But the PURPOSE here is sin. It cannot BE attained but in illusion. And so the illusion of a brother as a body is quite in keeping with the purpose of unholiness. BECAUSE of this consistency, the means remain unquestioned while the end is cherished. Vision adapts to wish, for sight is ALWAYS secondary to desire. And if you see the body, you have chosen judgment, and NOT vision. For vision, like relationships, HAS no order. You either SEE, or not.
Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE. He can but be IMAGINED in the darkness, and it is here that the illusions you hold about him are NOT held up to his reality. Here are illusions and reality kept SEPARATED. Here are illusions NEVER brought to truth, and ALWAYS hidden from it. And here, in darkness, is your brother's reality IMAGINED as a body, in unholy relationships with other bodies, serving the cause of sin an instant, before he dies.
There is indeed a difference between this vain imagining and vision. The difference lies not in THEM, but in their purpose. Both are but MEANS, each one appropriate to the end for which it is employed. Neither can serve the purpose of the other, for each one is a CHOICE of purpose, employed on its behalf. Either is meaningless WITHOUT the end for which it was intended, nor is it valued as a SEPARATE thing, APART from the intention. The means seem real because the GOAL is valued. And judgment HAS no value unless the GOAL is sin. The body can NOT be looked upon EXCEPT through judgment. To see the body is the sign that you LACK vision, and have DENIED the means the Holy Spirit offers you, to serve HIS purpose.
How can a holy relationship achieve its purpose through the means of sin? Judgment you taught YOURSELF; vision is learned from Him Who would UNDO your teaching. HIS vision cannot see the body, BECAUSE IT CANNOT LOOK ON SIN. And thus it leads you to reality. Your holy brother, sight of whom is YOUR release, is no illusion. Attempt to see him not in darkness, for your imaginings about him WILL seem real there. You CLOSED your eyes to shut him out. Such was your PURPOSE, and while this purpose seems to have ANY meaning, the means for its attainment will be evaluated as WORTH the seeing, and so you will NOT see.
Your question should not be, "How can I see my brother without the body?" Ask only, "Do I REALLY wish to see him sinless?" And, as you ask, forget not that HIS sinlessness is YOUR escape from fear. Salvation is the Holy Spirit's goal. The means is vision. For what the seeing look upon IS sinless. No-one who loves can judge, and what he sees is FREE of condemnation. And what he sees he did NOT make, for it was GIVEN him to see, as was the vision which made his seeing possible.
Power can NOT oppose. For opposition would WEAKEN it, and weakened power is a contradiction in ideas. Weak strength is meaningless. And power used to weaken is EMPLOYED to limit. Thus it MUST be limited and weak, because that is its purpose. Power is UNopposed, to be itself. No weakness CAN intrude upon it without changing what it IS, to something it is not. To weaken IS to limit, and impose an opposite that CONTRADICTS the concept it attacks. And BY its contradiction does it JOIN to the idea a something it is not, and make it unintelligible. Who can understand a double concept, such as "weakened-power," or as "hateful-love?"
You have decided that your brother IS a symbol for a "hateful-love," a "weakened-power," and, above all, a "living-death." And so he has NO meaning to you, for he stands for what is meaningless. He represents a double thought, where half is cancelled out by the remaining half. Yet even this is quickly contradicted by the half it cancelled out, and so they BOTH are gone. And now he stands for nothing. Symbols which but represent ideas that cannot BE, must stand for empty space and nothingness. Yet nothingness and empty space can NOT be interference. What CAN interfere with the awareness of reality is the belief that there is SOMETHING THERE.
The picture of your brother that you see means nothing. There is nothing to attack or to deny; to love or hate, or to endow with power or to see as weak. The picture has been wholly cancelled out, because it symbolized a contradiction which cancelled out the THOUGHT it represents. And thus the picture has no cause at all. Who can perceive effect WITHOUT a cause? What can the causeless BE but nothingness. The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent, and has never been. Let, then, the empty space it occupies be RECOGNIZED as vacant, and the time devoted to its seeing be perceived as idly spent, a time unoccupied.
An empty space that is NOT seen as filled, an unused interval of time NOT seen as spent and fully occupied, become a silent invitation to the truth to enter, and to make Itself at home. No preparation CAN be made that would enhance the invitation's real appeal. For what you leave as vacant GOD will fill, and where HE is, there MUST the truth abide. Unweakened Power, with NO opposite, is what creation IS. For this there are NO symbols. Nothing points BEYOND the truth, and what can stand for MORE than everything? Yet true undoing must be kind, and so the first replacement for your picture is ANOTHER picture, of ANOTHER kind.
As nothingness can not BE pictured, so there IS no symbol for totality. Reality is ultimately known WITHOUT a form, unpictured and unseen. Forgiveness is not yet a Power known as wholly free of limits. Yet it sets no limits YOU have chosen to impose. Forgiveness is the means by which the truth is represented TEMPORARILY. It lets the Holy Spirit make EXCHANGE of pictures possible, until the time when aids are meaningless, and learning done. No learning aid has use which can extend BEYOND the goal of learning. When its aim HAS BEEN accomplished, it is functionless. Yet, in the learning interval, it HAS a use which now you fear, but yet will love.
The picture of your brother GIVEN you to occupy the space so lately left unoccupied and vacant, will not need defense of ANY kind. For you will give it OVERWHELMING preference. Nor delay an instant in deciding that it is the ONLY one you want. It does NOT stand for double concepts. Though it is but HALF the picture, and IS incomplete, WITHIN itself it is the same. The other half of what it represents remains unknown, but is NOT cancelled out. And thus is God left free to take the final step Himself. For this you need NO pictures and NO learning aids. And what will ultimately take the place of EVERY learning aid will merely BE.
Forgiveness vanishes and symbols fade, and nothing that the eyes have ever seen, or ears have heard, remains to be perceived. A Power wholly limitless has come, NOT to destroy, but to RECEIVE Its Own. There is no CHOICE of function anywhere. The choice you fear to lose you never HAD. Yet only this APPEARS to interfere with power unlimited and SINGLE thoughts, complete and happy, WITHOUT opposite. You do not know the peace of power which opposes NOTHING. Yet no OTHER kind can be at all. Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness, and beyond the world of symbols and of limitations. He would merely BE, and so He merely IS.
1) "Nothing I see means anything."
The reason this is so is that I see nothing, and nothing has no meaning. It is necessary that I recognize this that I may learn to see. What I think I see now is taking the place of vision. I must let it go by realizing that it has no meaning, so that vision may take its place.
2) "I have given what I see all the meaning it has for me."
I have judged everything I look upon. And it is this and only this that I see. This is not vision. It is merely an illusion of reality, because my judgments have been made quite apart from reality. I am willing to recognize the lack of validity in my judgments because I want to see. My judgments have hurt me, and I do not want to see according to them.
3) "I do not understand anything I see."
How could I understand what I see when I have judged it amiss? What I see is the projection of my own errors of thought. I do not understand what I see because it is not understandable. There is no sense in trying to understand it. But there is every reason to let it go, to make room for what can be seen and understood and loved. I can exchange what I see now for this merely by being willing to do so. Is not this a better choice than the one I made before?
4) "These thoughts do not mean anything."
The thoughts of which I am aware do not mean anything because I am trying to think without God. What I call "my" thoughts are not my real thoughts. My real thoughts are the thoughts I think with God. I am not aware of them because I have made "my" thoughts to take their place. I am willing to recognize that "my" thoughts do not mean anything, and to let them go. I choose to have them replaced by what they were intended to replace. "My" thoughts are meaningless, but all creation lies in the Thoughts I think with God.
5) "I am never upset for the reason I think."
I am never upset for the reason I think because I am constantly trying to justify "my" thoughts. I am constantly trying to make them true. I make all things my "enemies," so that my anger is justified, and my attacks are warranted. I have not realized how much I have misused everything I see by assigning this role to it. I have done this to defend a thought system which has hurt me, and which I no longer want. I am willing to let it go.
Prayer is a way offered by the Holy Spirit to reach God. It is not merely a question or an entreaty. It cannot succeed until you realize that it asks for nothing. How else could it serve its purpose? It is impossible to pray for idols and hope to reach God. True prayer must avoid the pitfall of asking to entreat. Ask rather to receive what is already given; to accept what is already there.
You have been told to ask the Holy Spirit for the answer to any specific problem, and that you will receive a specific answer if such is your need. You have also been told that there is only one problem and one answer. In prayer this is not contradictory. There are decisions to make here, and they must be made whether they be illusions or not. You cannot be asked to accept answers which are beyond the level of need that you recognize. Therefore it is not the form of the question that matters, nor how it is asked. The form of the answer, if given by God through His Voice, will suit your need as you see it. This is merely an echo of the reply of His Voice. The real sound is always a song of thanksgiving and love.
We cannot, then, ask for the echo. It is the song that is the gift. Along with it come the overtones, the harmonics, the echoes, but these are secondary. In true prayer you hear only the song. All the rest is merely added. You have sought first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all else has indeed been given you.
The secret of true prayer is to forget the things you think you need. To ask for the specific is much the same as to look on sin and then forgive it. Also in the same way, in prayer you overlook your specific needs as you see them, and let them go into His hands. There they become your gifts to Him, for they tell Him that you would have no gods before Him; no Love but His. What could His Answer be but your remembrance of Him? Can this be traded for a bit of trifling advice about a problem of an instant's duration? God answers only for eternity. But still all little answers are contained in this.
Prayer is a stepping aside; a letting go; a quiet time of listening and loving. It should not be confused with supplication of any kind, because it is a way of remembering your holiness. Why should holiness entreat, being fully entitled to everything love has to offer? And it is to Love one goes in prayer. Prayer is an offering; a giving up of oneself to be at one with Love. There is nothing to ask because there is nothing left to want. That nothingness becomes the altar of God. It disappears in Him.
This is not a level of prayer that everyone can attain as yet. Those who have not need your help in prayer because their asking is not yet based upon acceptance. Help in prayer does not mean that another mediates between you and God. But it does mean that another can stand beside you and help to raise you up to Him. One who has realized the goodness of God prays without fear. And one who prays without fear cannot but reach Him. He can therefore also reach His Son, wherever he may be and whatever form he may seem to take.
Praying to Christ in anyone is true prayer because it is a gift of thanks to his Father. To ask that Christ be but Himself is not an entreaty but it IS a song of thanksgiving for what you are. Herein lies the power of prayer. It asks nothing and receives everything. This prayer can be shared because it receives for everyone. To pray with one who knows that this is true is to be answered. Perhaps the specific form of solution for a specific problem will occur to either of you; it does not matter which. Perhaps it will reach both, if you are genuinely attuned to one another. It will come because you have realized that it does not matter. Therein lies its only truth.
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.
My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear.
I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand. But now I talk to you and give you the same message. The death of an illusion means nothing. It disappears when you awaken and decide to dream no more. And you still do have the power to make this decision as I did.
God holds out His hand to His Son to help him rise and return to Him. I can help because the world is illusion, and I have overcome the world. Look past the tomb, the body, the illusion. Have faith in nothing but the spirit and the guidance God gives you. He could not have created the body because it is a limit. He must have created the spirit because it is immortal. Can those who are created like Him be limited? The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there anytime you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so. And then, and then... I cannot speak of that.
A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death. This is the message of the crucifixion; there is no order of difficulty in miracles. This is the message of the resurrection: Illusions are illusions. Truth is true. Illusions vanish. Only truth remains.
These lessons needed to be taught but once, for when the stone of death is rolled away, what can be seen except an empty tomb? And that is what you see who follow me into the sunlight and away from death, past all illusions, on to Heaven's gate, where God will come Himself to take you home.
Distinctions therefore must be made between true healing and its faulty counterpart. The world of opposites is healing's place, for what in Heaven could there be to heal? As prayer within the world can ask amiss and seeming charity forgive to kill, so healing can be false as well as true; a witness to the power of the world or to the everlasting Love of God.
False healing merely makes a poor exchange of one illusion for a "nicer" one; a dream of sickness for a dream of health. This can occur at lower forms of prayer, combining with forgiveness kindly meant but not completely understood as yet. Only false healing can give way to fear, so sickness will be apt to strike again. False healing can indeed remove a form of pain and sickness. But the cause remains, and will not lack effects. The cause is still the wish to die and overcome the Christ. And with this wish is death a certainty, for prayer IS answered. Yet there is a kind of seeming death that has a different source. It does not come because of hurtful thoughts and raging anger at the universe. It merely signifies the end has come for usefulness of body functioning. And so it is discarded as a choice, as one lays by a garment now outworn.
This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us. But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again.
We call it death, but it is liberty. It does not come in forms that seem to be thrust down in pain upon unwilling flesh, but as a gentle welcome to release. If there has been true healing, this can be the form in which death comes when it is time to rest a while from labor gladly done and gladly ended. Now we go in peace to freer air and gentler climate, where it is not hard to see the gifts we gave were saved for us. For Christ is clearer now; His vision more sustained in us; His Voice, the Word of God, more certainly our own.
This gentle passage to a higher prayer, a kind forgiveness of the ways of earth, can only be received with thankfulness. Yet first true healing must have come to bless the mind with loving pardon for the sins it dreamed about and laid upon the world. Now are its dreams dispelled in quiet rest. Now its forgiveness comes to heal the world and it is ready to depart in peace, the journey over and the lessons learned.
This is not death according to the world, for death is cruel in its frightened eyes and takes the form of punishment for sin. How could it be a blessing, then, and how could it be welcome when it must be feared? What healing has occurred in such a view of what is merely opening the gate to higher prayer and kindly justice done? Death is reward and not a punishment. But such a viewpoint must be fostered by the healing that the world cannot conceive. There is no partial healing. What but shifts illusions has done nothing. What is false cannot be partly true. If you are healed your healing is complete. Forgiveness is the only gift you give and would receive.
False healing rests upon the body's cure, leaving the cause of illness still unchanged, ready to strike again until it brings a cruel death in seeming victory. It can be held at bay a little while, and there can be brief respite as it waits to take its vengeance on the Son of God. Yet it cannot be overcome until all faith in it has been laid by, and placed upon God's substitute for evil dreams; a world in which there is no veil of sin to keep it dark and comfortless. At last the gate of Heaven opens and God's Son is free to enter in the home that stands ready to welcome him, and was prepared before time was and still but waits for him.
Perception follows judgment. Having judged, you therefore see what you would look upon. For vision merely serves to offer you what you would have. It is impossible to overlook what you would see, and fail to see what you have chosen to behold. How surely, therefore, must the real world come to greet the holy sight of anyone who takes the Holy Spirit's purpose as his goal for seeing. And he cannot fail to look upon what Christ would have him see, and share Christ's love for what he looks upon.
"I have no purpose for today except to look upon a liberated world, set free from all the judgments I have made. Father, this is Your Will for me today, and therefore it must be my goal as well."
The ego makes illusions. Truth undoes its evil dreams by shining them away. Truth never makes attack. It merely is. And by its Presence is the mind recalled from fantasies, awaking to the Real. Forgiveness bids this Presence enter in, and take its rightful place within the mind. Without forgiveness is the mind in chains, believing in its own futility. Yet with forgiveness does the light shine through the dream of darkness, offering it hope, and giving it the means to realize the freedom that is its inheritance.
"We would not bind the world again today. Fear holds it prisoner. And yet Your Love has given us the means to set it free. Father, we would release it now. For as we offer freedom it is given us. And we would not remain as prisoners, while You hold out our freedom unto us."
Forgiveness is a choice. I never see my brother as he is, for that is far beyond perception. What I see in him is merely what I wish to see, because it stands for what I want to be the truth. It is to this alone that I respond, however much I seem to be impelled by outside happenings. I choose to see what I would look upon, and this I see, and only this. My brother's sinlessness shows me that I would look upon my own. And I will see it, having chosen to behold my brother in its holy light.
"What could restore Your memory to me except to see my brother's sinlessness? His holiness reminds me that he was created one with me and like myself. In him I find my Self, and in Your Son I find the memory of You as well."
The concept of "set" is among the better psychological percepts. Actually, it is used quite frequently in the Bible, and also here, under many different terms. "God will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed (or set) on Thee because he trusteth in Thee."
The pronouns here are confusing without explanation, and the attempt to shift "Thee" to "Him" is a misinterpretation. The statement means that God's peace is set in the Holy Spirit, because it is fixed on God. It is also fixed in you. You, then, ARE fixed in the peace of God.
The concept of "fixation" is a very helpful one, which Freud understood perfectly. Unfortunately, he lost his understanding because he was afraid, and as you know all too well, fear is incompatible with good judgment. Fear DISTORTS thinking, and therefore DISorders thought. Freud's system of thought was extremely ingenious, because Freud was extremely ingenious. A mind MUST endow its thoughts with its own attributes. This is its inherent STRENGTH, even though it may misuse its power.
Freud lost much of the potential value of his own thought system because, much like Cayce, he did NOT include himself in it. This IS a dissociated state, because the thinker cuts himself off from his thoughts. Freud's thought was so conflicted that he could not have retained his sanity as HE saw it WITHOUT dissociating. This is why the many contradictions which are quite apparent in his thinking became increasingly less apparent to HIM.
A man who knows what fixation REALLY means and does NOT yield to it is terribly afraid. Fixation is the pull of God, on whom your mind IS fixed because of the Holy Spirit's irrevocable set. "Irrevocable" means "cannot be called back or redirected." The irrevocable nature of the Holy Spirit's set is the basis for its unequivocal voice. The Holy Spirit NEVER changes its mind. Clarity of thought CANNOT occur under conditions of vacillation. Unless a mind is fixed in its purpose, it is NOT clear. But clarity literally means the state of light, and enlightenment IS understanding. It stands UNDER perception because you have denied it as the REAL foundation of thought. This is the basis for ALL delusional systems.
The concept of fixation, as Freud saw it, has a number of real learning advantages. First, it recognizes that man CAN be fixated at a point in development which does NOT accord with a point in time. This clearly could have been a means toward real release from the time belief, had Freud pursued it with an open mind. But Freud suffered all his life from refusal to allow eternity to dawn upon his mind, and enlighten it truly. As a result, he overlooked NOW entirely, and merely saw the continuity of past and future.
Second, although he misinterpreted what the Holy Spirit told him, or better, reminded him of, he was too honest to deny more than he had to, to keep his fear in tolerable bounds, as he perceived the situation. Therefore, he EMPHASIZED that the point in development at which the mind is fixated is more real to ITSELF than the external reality with which it DISagrees. This again could have been a powerful RELEASE mechanism, had Freud not decided to involve it in a strong defense system because he perceived it as an attack.
Third, although Freud interpreted fixation as irrevocable danger points to which the mind can always regress, the concept can also be interpreted as an irrevocable call to sanity which the mind cannot LOSE. Freud saw return as a threat to maturity because he did not understand prodigality. He merely interpreted it as squandering. Actually, "prodigal" also means careful. This confusion between careful and careless led him to confuse the escape from care with something desirable. In fact, he even went so far as to equate it quite literally WITH desire.
But throughout his thought-system, the "threat" of fixation remained, and could never be completely eliminated by any living human being anywhere. Essentially, this was the basis of his pessimism. This was personally as well as theoretically the case. Freud tried every means his very inventive mind could devise to set up a form of therapy which could enable the mind to escape from fixation forever, even though he KNEW this was impossible. The knowledge plagued his belief in his own thought-system at every turn, because he was both an honest man and a healer. He was therefore only PARTIALLY insane at the perceptual level, and was unable to relinquish the hope of release even though he could not cope with it.
The reason for this amount of detail is because YOU are in the same position. You were eternally fixated on God in your creation, and the pull of this fixation is so strong that you will never overcome it. The reason is perfectly clear. The fixation is on a level that is so high that it cannot BE surmounted. You are ALWAYS being pulled back to your Creator because you belong in Him.
Do you REALLY believe you can make a voice that can drown out His? Do you REALLY believe that you can devise a thought-system which can separate you from His? Do you REALLY believe that you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can? You need be neither careful nor careless. You need merely cast all your cares upon Him because He careth for YOU. You ARE His care because He loves you. His voice reminds you always that all hope is yours BECAUSE of His care.
You CANNOT choose to escape His care, because that is not His will. But you CAN choose to accept His care, and use the infinite power OF His care for all those He created BY it. There have been many healers who did not heal themselves. They have not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not WHOLE. Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer heals HIMSELF, he does NOT believe that there is no order in miracles. He has not learned that EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE.
You are asked merely to return to God the mind as HE created it. He asks you only for what He gave, knowing that this giving will heal YOU. Sanity IS wholeness. And the sanity of your brothers IS yours. Why should you listen to the endless insane calls which you think are made upon you, when you KNOW the voice of God Himself is in you? God commended His Spirit to you, and asks that you commend yours to Him. He wills to keep it in perfect peace because you are of one mind and Spirit with Him.
Excluding yourself from the Atonement is the ego's last-ditch defense of its own existence. It reflects both the ego's need to separate, and your willingness to side with its separateness. This willingness means that YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE HEALED. When I told Bill that there is "just one more thing," he heard me very well. I hope he will hear me as well now. His intelligent mis-hearing of "river" as "rivet" showed that, even though he wanted release, he was not able to cope with it at the time.
But the time IS now. You have not been asked to work out the Plan of Salvation yourselves, because, as I told you before, the Remedy is NOT of your making. God Himself gave you the perfect correction for everything you have made which is not in accord with His Holy Will. I have made His Plan perfectly clear and perfectly explicit to you, and have also told you of your part in His Plan and how urgent it is that you fulfill it.
There is time for delay, but there need not be. God weeps at the sacrifice of His children who believe they are lost to Him. The "one more thing" that Bill must learn is merely that he is NOT the one more. He is both ONE and AT ONE. If he will learn this NOW, he will be willing in accord with the last judgment, which is really only the Biblical reminder of the inevitability of self-INCLUSION. This is what "Physician, heal thyself" really means. Bill has frequently observed for HIMSELF that this is hard to do. He has, however, been perfectly aware of JUST what YOU should do about it.
You might ask him for me whether he does not think he might be dissociating HIMSELF from his own awareness, since he is so clear about the remedy for YOU. You might also remind him that to whatever extent he separates himself from you, he is separating himself from ME. This IS a collaborative venture. Let me therefore return his own ideas to him, so that you can share them and thus help each other to help me.
But let me first remind you of something I told you myself. Whenever you are not wholly joyous, it is because you have reacted with a lack of love to some Soul which God created. Perceiving this as sin, you become defensive because you EXPECT ATTACK. The decision to react in that way, however, was YOURS, and can therefore be undone. It CANNOT be undone by repentance in the usual sense, because this implies guilt. If you allow yourself to feel guilty, you will reinforce the error, rather than allowing it to be undone FOR you.
Decisions CANNOT be difficult. This is obvious if you realize that you must ALREADY have made a decision NOT to be wholly joyous if that is what you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that YOU ACTIVELY DECIDED WRONGLY, BUT CAN AS ACTIVELY DECIDE OTHERWISE.
Be very firm with yourselves in this, and keep yourselves fully aware of the fact that the UNDOING process, which does NOT come from you, is nevertheless WITHIN you because God placed it there. YOUR part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace. Say to yourselves the following, as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:
I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.
I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.
I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace.
I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL
the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.
I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me.
What has been given you? The knowledge that you are a mind, in Mind and purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid because you were created out of Love. Nor have you left your Source, remaining as you were created. This was given you as knowledge which you cannot lose. It was given as well to every living thing, for by that knowledge only does it live.
You have received all this. No one who walks the world but has received it. It is not this knowledge which you give, for that is what creation gave. All this cannot be learned. What, then, are you to learn to give today? Our lesson yesterday evoked a theme found early in the text. Experience cannot be shared directly in the way that vision can. The revelation that the Father and the Son are One will come in time to every mind. Yet is that time determined by the mind itself, not taught.
The time is set already. It appears to be quite arbitrary. Yet there is no step along the road that anyone but takes by chance. It has already been taken by him, although he has not yet embarked on it. For time but seems to go in one direction. We but undertake a journey that is over. Yet it seems to have a future still unknown to us.
Time is a trick; a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appearances which does not change. The script is written. When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by.
The teacher does not give experience, because he did not learn it. It revealed itself to him at its appointed time. But vision is his gift. This he can give directly, for Christ's knowledge is not lost because He has a vision He can give to anyone who asks. The Father's Will and His are joined in knowledge. Yet there is a vision which the Holy Spirit sees because the mind of Christ beholds it too.
Here is the joining of the world of doubt and shadows made with the intangible. Here is a quiet place within the world made holy by forgiveness and by love. Here are all contradictions reconciled, for here the journey ends. Experience, unlearned, untaught, unseen, is merely there. This is beyond our goal, for it transcends what needs to be accomplished. Our concern is with Christ's vision. This we can attain.
Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees.
This can be taught, and must be taught by all who would achieve it. It requires but the recognition that the world can not give anything that faintly can compare with this in value; nor set up a goal which does not merely disappear when this has been perceived. And this you give today, see no one as a body. Greet him as the Son of God he is, acknowledging that he is one with you in holiness.
Thus are his sins forgiven him, for Christ has vision which has power to overlook them all. In His forgiveness they are gone. Unseen by One, they merely disappear, because a vision of the holiness which lies beyond them comes to take their place. It matters not what form they took, nor how enormous they appeared to be, nor who seemed to be hurt by them. They are no more, and all effects they seemed to have are gone with them, undone and never to be done.
Thus do you learn to give as you receive. And thus Christ's vision looks on you as well. This lesson is not difficult to learn, if you remember in your brother you but see yourself. If he be lost in sin so must you be; if you see light in him your sins have been forgiven by yourself. Each brother whom you meet today provides another chance to let Christ's vision shine on you, and offer you the peace of God.
It matters not when revelation comes, for that is not of time. Yet time has still one gift to give in which true knowledge is reflected in a way so accurate its image shares its unseen holiness; its likeness shines with its immortal Love. We practice seeing with the eyes of Christ today. And by the holy gifts we give, Christ's vision looks upon ourselves as well.
What can correct illusions but the truth? And what are errors but illusions which remain unrecognized for what they are? Where truth has entered errors disappear. They merely vanish, leaving not a trace by which to be remembered. They are gone because without belief they have no life, and so they disappear to nothingness, returning whence they came. From dust to dust they come and go, for only truth remains.
Can you imagine what a state of mind without illusions is? How it would feel? Try to remember when there was a time, - perhaps a minute, maybe even less, - when nothing came to interrupt your peace; when you were certain you were loved and safe. Then try to picture what it would be like to have that moment be extended to the end of time and to eternity. Then let the sense of quiet that you felt be multiplied a hundred times, and then be multiplied another hundred more.
And now you have a hint, not more than just the faintest intimation of the state your mind will rest in when the truth has come. Without illusions there could be no fear, no doubt and no attack. When truth has come all pain is over, for there is no room for transitory thoughts and dead ideas to linger in your mind. Truth occupies your mind completely, liberating you from all beliefs in the ephemeral. They have no place because the truth has come, and they are nowhere. They cannot be found, for truth is everywhere forever now.
When truth has come it does not stay a while, to disappear, or change to something else. It does not shift and alter in its form, nor come and go and go and come again. It stays exactly as it always was, to be depended on in every need, and trusted with a perfect trust in all the seeming difficulties and the doubts which the appearances the world presents engender. They will merely blow away when truth corrects the errors in your mind.
When truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect constancy, and love which does not falter in the face of pain but looks beyond it, steadily and sure. Here is the gift of healing, for the truth needs no defense, and therefore no attack is possible. Illusions can be brought to truth to be corrected. But the truth stands far beyond illusions, and can not be brought to them to turn them into truth.
Truth does not come and go nor shift nor change, in this appearance now and then in that, evading capture and escaping grasp. It does not hide. It stands in open light, in obvious accessibility. It is impossible that anyone could seek it truly and would not succeed. Today belongs to truth. Give truth its due, and it will give you yours. You were not meant to suffer and to die. Your Father wills these dreams be gone. Let truth correct them all.
We do not ask for what we do not have. We merely ask for what belongs to us, that we may recognize it as our own. Today we practice on the happy note of certainty which has been born of truth. The shaky and unsteady footsteps of illusion is not our approach today. We are as certain of success as we are sure we live and hope and breathe and think. We do not doubt we walk with truth today, and count on it to enter into all the exercises that we do this day.
Begin by asking Him Who goes with you upon this undertaking that He be in your awareness as you go with Him. You are not made of flesh and blood and bone, but were created by the self-same Thought Which gave the gift of life to Him as well. He is your Brother, and so like to you your Father knows that you are both the same. It is your Self you ask to go with you, and how could He be absent where you are?
Truth will correct all errors in your mind which tell you you could be apart from Him. You speak to Him today, and make your pledge to let His function be fulfilled through you. To share His function is to share His joy. His confidence is with you as you say:
"Truth will correct all errors in my mind,
And I will rest in Him who is my Self."
Then let Him lead you gently to the truth which will envelop you and give you peace so deep and tranquil that you will return to the familiar world reluctantly.
And yet you will be glad to look again upon this world. For you will bring with you the promise of the changes which the truth that goes with you will carry to the world. They will increase with every gift you give of five small minutes, and the errors which surround the world will be corrected as you let them be corrected in your mind.
Do not forget your function for today. Each time you tell yourself with confidence, "Truth will correct all errors in my mind," you speak for all the world, and Him Who would release the world as He would set you free.
Now look slowly around you, and practice applying this idea very specifically to whatever you see:
"This table does not mean anything."
"This chair does not mean anything."
"This hand does not mean anything."
"This pen does not mean anything."
Then look farther away from your immediate area, and apply the idea to a wider range:
"That door does not mean anything."
"That body does not mean anything."
"That lamp does not mean anything."
"That sign does not mean anything."
"That shadow does not mean anything."
Notice that these statements are not arranged in any order, and make no allowance for differences in the kinds of things to which they are applied. That is the purpose of the exercise. The statement is merely applied to anything you see. As you practice applying the idea for the day, use it totally indiscriminately. Do not attempt to apply it to everything you see, for these exercises should not become ritualistic. Only be sure that nothing you see is specifically excluded. One thing is like another as far as the application of the idea is concerned.
The ultimate purpose of projection, as the ego uses it, is ALWAYS to get rid of guilt. But, characteristically, it attempts to get rid of it FROM ITS VIEWPOINT ONLY. For much as the ego wants to RETAIN guilt, YOU find it intolerable. For guilt stands in the way of your remembering God, Whose pull is so strong that YOU cannot resist it. On this issue, then, the deepest split of all occurs, for if you are to RETAIN guilt, as the ego insists, YOU CANNOT BE YOU. Only by persuading you that IT is you, could the ego possibly induce you to PROJECT guilt, and thereby keep it in your mind.
But consider how strange a solution the ego's arrangement is. You PROJECT guilt to get rid of it, but you actually merely CONCEAL it. You DO experience guilt FEELINGS, but you have NO IDEA OF WHY. On the contrary, you associate them with a weird assortment of EGO ideals, which the ego claims you have failed. But you have no idea that you are failing the Son of God, by seeing HIM as guilty. Believing you are no longer YOU, you do not realize that you are failing YOURSELF.
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.
You are entitled to miracles because of what you are. You will receive miracles because of what God is. And you will offer miracles because you are one with God. Again, how simple is salvation! It is merely a statement of your true identity. It is this that we will celebrate today.
Your claim to miracles does not lie in your illusions about yourself. It does not depend on any magical powers you have ascribed to yourself, nor on any of the rituals you have devised. It is inherent in the truth of what you are. It is implicit in what God your Father is. It was ensured in your creation, and guaranteed by the laws of God.
Today we will claim the miracles which are your right, since they belong to you. You have been promised full release from the world you made. You have been assured that the Kingdom of God is within you, and can never be lost. We ask no more than what belongs to us in truth. Today, however, we will also make sure that we will not content ourselves with less.
Begin the longer practice periods by telling yourself quite confidently that you are entitled to miracles. Closing your eyes, remind yourself that you are asking only for what is rightfully yours. Remind yourself also that miracles are never taken from one and given to another, and that in asking for your rights you are upholding the rights of everyone. Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God.
After this brief introductory phase, wait quietly for the assurance that your request is granted. You have asked for the salvation of the world and for your own. You have requested that you be given the means by which this is accomplished. You cannot fail to be assured in this. You are but asking that the Will of God be done.
In doing this, you do not really ask for anything. You state a fact that cannot be denied. The Holy Spirit cannot but assure you that your request is granted. The fact that you accepted must be so. There is no room for doubt and uncertainty today. We are asking a real question at last. The answer is a simple statement of a simple fact. You will receive the assurance that you seek.
Our shorter practice periods will be frequent, and will also be devoted to a reminder of a simple fact. Tell yourself often today:
"I am entitled to miracles."
Ask for them whenever a situation arises in which they are called for. You will recognize these situations, you are not relying on yourself to find them, and you are therefore fully entitled to receive them whenever you ask. Remember, too, not to be satisfied with less than the perfect answer. Be quick to tell yourself, should you be tempted:
"I will not trade miracles for grievances.
I want only what belongs to me.
God has established miracles as my right."
The idea for today combines two very powerful thoughts, both of major importance. It also sets forth a cause and effect relationship which explains why you cannot fail in your efforts to achieve the goal of the course. You will see because it is the Will of God. It is His strength, not your own, that gives you power. And it is His gift to you, rather than your own, which offers vision to you.
God is indeed your strength, and what He gives is truly given. This means that you can receive it any time and anywhere, wherever you are and in whatever circumstances you find yourself. Your passage through time and space is not random. You cannot but be in the right place at the right time. Such is the strength of God. Such are His gifts.
We will have two three-to-five-minute longer exercise periods today, one as soon as possible after you wake, and another as close as possible to the time you go to sleep. It is better, however, to wait until you can sit quietly by yourself at a time when you feel ready, than it is to be concerned with the time as such.
Begin the longer practice period by repeating the idea for today slowly, with eyes open, looking about you. Then close your eyes and repeat the idea again, quite slowly. After this, try to think of nothing except thoughts which occur to you in relation to today's idea. You might think, for example:
"Vision must be possible. God gives truly."
or,
"God's gifts to me must be mine because He gave them to me."
Whatever thought that is clearly related to the idea itself is suitable.
You may, in fact, be astonished at the amount of course-related understanding some of your own thoughts contain. Let them come without censoring unless you realize that your mind is merely wandering, and you have let obviously irrelevant thoughts intrude. You may also reach a point where no thoughts at all seem to come to mind. If such interferences occur, open your eyes and repeat the thought once more while looking slowly about; close your eyes, repeat the idea once more, and then continue to look for related thoughts in your mind.
Remember, though, that active searching is not appropriate for today's exercises. Try merely to step back and let the thoughts come. If you find this difficult, it is better to spend the practice period alternating between slow repetitions of the idea with eyes open, then closed, then open, and so on than it is to strain in order to find suitable thoughts.
There is no limit on the number of short practice periods which would be most beneficial. The idea for today is a beginning step in bringing thoughts together and teaching you that what you are studying is a unified thought system in which nothing is lacking that is needed, and nothing is included that is contradictory or irrelevant. The more often you repeat the idea during the day, the more often you will be reminding yourself that the goal of the course is important to you, and that you have not forgotten it.
Apply this idea in the same way as the previous ones, without making distinctions of any kind. Whatever you see becomes a proper subject for applying the idea. Be sure that you do not question the suitability of anything for the application of the idea. These are not exercises in judgment. Anything is suitable if you see it. Some of the things you see may have emotionally-charged meaning for you. Try to lay such feelings aside, and merely use these things exactly as you would anything else.
The point of the exercises is to help you clear your mind of all past associations, to see things exactly as they appear to you now, and to realize how little you really understand about them. It is therefore essential that you keep a perfectly open mind, unhampered by judgment, in selecting the things to which the idea for the day is to be applied. For this purpose one thing is like another; equally suitable and therefore equally useful.
Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? Yet that is what time is for; to learn just that, and nothing more. God's Teacher cannot be satisfied with His teaching, until it constitutes ALL your learning. He has not fulfilled His teaching function until you have become such consistent learners THAT YOU LEARN ONLY OF HIM. When this has happened, you will no longer need a teacher, or time in which to learn.
One of the sources of perceived discouragement from which you suffer, is your belief that THIS TAKES TIME, and that the results of the Holy Spirit's teaching are far in the future. This is not so. For the Holy Spirit USES time in His OWN way, and is NOT bound to it. Time is His friend in teaching. It does not waste Him, as it does you. But all the waste that time seems to bring with it, is due but to your identification with the ego, who uses time to support ITS belief in destruction. The ego, like the Holy Spirit, uses time to convince you of the inevitability of the goal and end of learning. To the ego, the goal is death, which IS its end. But to the Holy Spirit, the goal is life, which HAS no end.
The idea for today simply states a fact. It is not a fact to those who believe in illusions, but illusions are not facts. In truth there is nothing to fear. It is very easy to recognize this. But it is very difficult to recognize for those who want illusions to be true.
Today's practice periods will be very short, very simple, and very frequent. Merely repeat the idea as often as possible. You can use it with your eyes open at any time and in any situation. It is strongly recommended, however, that you take a minute or so whenever possible to close your eyes and repeat the idea slowly to yourself several times. It is particularly important that you use the idea immediately, should anything disturb your peace of mind.
The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are trusting in your own strength. The awareness that there is nothing to fear shows that somewhere in your mind, not necessarily in a place which you recognize as yet, you have remembered God and let His strength take the place of yours. The instant you are willing to do this there is indeed nothing to fear.
75) "The light has come."
In choosing salvation rather than attack I merely choose to recognize what is already there. Salvation is a decision made already. Attack and grievances are not there to choose. That is why I always choose between truth and illusion; between what is there and what is not. The light has come. I can but choose the light, for it has no alternative. It has replaced the darkness, and the dark is gone.
These would prove useful forms for specific applications of this idea:
"This cannot show me darkness, for the light has come."
"The light in you is all that I would see, (name)"
"I would see in this only what is there."
76) "I am under no laws but God's."
Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's. I am constantly tempted to make up other laws, and give them power over me. I suffer only because of my belief in them. They have no real effect on me at all. I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of freedom.
For specific forms in applying this idea, these would be useful:
"My perception of this shows me I believe in laws which do not exist."
"I see only the laws of God at work in this."
"Let me allow God's laws to work in this, and not my own."
THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE YOU. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is in that realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. For God created only this, and He did not depart from it, nor leave it separate from Himself. The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else. Nothing OUTSIDE THIS Oneness, and NOTHING ELSE within.
What could God give, but knowledge of Himself? What else IS there to give? The belief that you could give AND GET something, else, something OUTSIDE yourself, has cost you the awareness of Heaven, and the loss of knowledge of your identity. And you have done a stranger thing than you yet realize. You have displaced your guilt to your bodies, FROM YOUR MINDS. Yet a body CANNOT be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. You who think you hate your bodies, deceive yourselves. YOU HATE YOUR MINDS, for guilt has entered into them, and they would remain separate, which they CANNOT DO.
Minds ARE joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the mind the properties OF THE BODY, does separation SEEM to be possible. And it is MIND that seems to be fragmented and private and ALONE. Its guilt, which KEEPS it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers and dies, BECAUSE IT IS ATTACKED to hold the separation in the mind, and let it NOT KNOW its unity. Mind cannot attack, but it CAN make fantasies, and direct the body to act them out. But it is never what the BODY does that seems to satisfy. Unless the mind BELIEVES the body is ACTUALLY acting out ITS fantasies, it will attack the body by INCREASING the projection of its guilt upon it.
In this, the mind is CLEARLY delusional. It cannot attack, but maintains it CAN, and USES what it does to hurt the body, to PROVE it can. The mind can not attack, but it CAN deceive itself. And this is ALL it does, when it believes it has attacked the body, It CAN project its guilt, but it will NOT lose it through projection. And though it clearly can MISPERCEIVE the function of the body, it CANNOT change its function from what the Holy Spirit ESTABLISHES it to be. The body was NOT made by love. But love does not condemn it, and can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made, and using it to SAVE him from illusions.
Would you not have the instruments of separation RE-INTERPRETED as means for salvation, and USED for purposes of love? Would you not welcome AND SUPPORT the shift from fantasies of vengeance to RELEASE from them? Your PERCEPTION of the body can clearly be sick, but project this not upon the body. For your wish to make destructive what CANNOT destroy, can have no REAL effect at all. And what God created is only what He would have it be, being His Will.
You cannot make His Will destructive. You can make FANTASIES, in which your will CONFLICTS with His, but that is all. It is insane to use the body as the scapegoat for guilt; DIRECTING its attack, and BLAMING it for what you wished it to do. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ACT OUT FANTASIES. For it is still the FANTASIES you want, and they have nothing to do with what the body does. IT does not dream of them, and they but make IT a liability, where it COULD be an asset. For fantasies have made your body your "enemy," weak, vulnerable, and treacherous, "worthy" of the hate which you invest in it.
How has this served you? You have IDENTIFIED with this thing you hate, the instrument of vengeance, and the perceived source of your guilt. YOU have done this to a thing that has no meaning, proclaiming it to be the dwelling place of the Son of God, and turning it AGAINST him. This is the host of God that YOU have made. And neither God nor His most holy Son can enter an abode which harbors hate, and where you have sown the seeds of vengeance, violence, and death.
This thing you made to serve your guilt, stands between you and other minds. The minds ARE joined, but you do not IDENTIFY with them. You SEE yourself as locked in a separate prison, remote and unreachable, incapable of reaching out as being reached. You HATE the prison that you made, and would destroy it. Yet you would NOT escape from it, leaving it unharmed, WITHOUT your guilt upon it. But only thus CAN you escape. The home of vengeance is not yours; The place you set aside to house your hatred is NOT a prison, but an ILLUSION OF YOURSELF.
The body is a limit imposed on the universal communication which is an eternal property of mind. But the communication is INTERNAL. Mind reaches to ITSELF. It is NOT made up of different PARTS, which reach each other. It does not go OUT. Within ITSELF, it HAS no limits, and there is nothing OUTSIDE it. It encompasses EVERYTHING. It encompasses you ENTIRELY; you within it, and it within you. There IS nothing else, anywhere or ever. The body is OUTSIDE you, and SEEMS to surround you, shutting you off from others, and keeping you APART from them, and them from you.
IT IS NOT THERE. There IS no barrier between God and His Son, nor can His Son be separated from himself, except in illusion. This is NOT his reality, though he believes it IS. Yet this could only BE, IF God were wrong. God would have had to create DIFFERENTLY, and to have separated HIMSELF from His Son, to make this possible. He would have had to create DIFFERENT things, and to establish different ORDERS of reality, only SOME of which were love. Yet love must be forever like itself, changeless forever, and forever WITHOUT alternative. And so it is.
YOU cannot put a barrier around yourself, because God placed none between HIMSELF and you. Your hand can stretch out, and reach to Heaven. You whose hands are joined have begun to reach BEYOND the body, but NOT outside yourselves. To reach your shared identity TOGETHER. Could this be OUTSIDE you? Where God is not? Is He a body, and did He create you as He is not, and where He CANNOT be? You are surrounded ONLY by Him. What limits CAN there be on you, whom HE encompasses?
Everyone has experienced what he would call a sense of being transported BEYOND himself. This feeling of liberation FAR exceeds the DREAM of freedom sometimes experienced in special relationships. It is a sense of actual ESCAPE from limitations. If you will consider what this "transportation" REALLY entails, you will realize that it is a sudden UNawareness of the body, and a joining of your self and SOMETHING ELSE, in which your mind ENLARGES to encompass it. It becomes PART of you, as you UNITE with it. And BOTH become whole, as NEITHER is perceived as separate.
What REALLY happens is that you have GIVEN UP the illusion of a LIMITED awareness, and lost your fear of union. The love that INSTANTLY replaces it EXTENDS to what has freed you, and UNITES you with it. And, while this lasts, you are NOT uncertain of your identity, and would not limit it. You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no questions of reality, but merely ACCEPTING it. You have accepted this INSTEAD of the body, and have LET yourself be ONE with something beyond it, simply by NOT letting your mind be limited BY it.
This can occur REGARDLESS of the physical distance that SEEMS to be between you and what you join; of your respective positions in space; and of your differences in size and seeming quality. Time is not relevant; it can occur with something past, present, or anticipated. The "something" can be ANYTHING and ANYWHERE; a sound, a sight, a thought, a memory, even a more GENERAL idea, WITHOUT specific reference. But, in every case, you join it without RESERVATION, because you love it, and would BE with it. And so you rush to meet it, letting your limits melt away, suspending ALL the "laws" your body obeys, and gently SETTING THEM ASIDE.
There is no violence at all in this escape. The body is NOT attacked, but merely PROPERLY PERCEIVED. It does not limit you, merely because YOU would not have it so. You are not really "lifted out" of it; it cannot CONTAIN you. You go where you would be; GAINING, NOT losing, a sense of self. In these instants of release from physical restrictions, you experience much of what happens in the holy instant; the lifting of the barriers of time and space, the sudden experience of peace and joy, and, above all, the LACK of awareness of the body, and of the questioning WHETHER OR NOT ALL THIS IS POSSIBLE. It IS possible, BECAUSE YOU WANT IT.
The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. NOT through destruction, NOT through a "breaking out," but merely by a quiet "melting in." For peace will join you there, simply because YOU have been willing to let go the limits YOU have placed on love, and JOINED it where it is, and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call to be at 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.
Today's idea is an attempt to recognize that you can shift your perception of the world in both its outer and inner aspects. A full five minutes should be devoted to the morning and evening application.
In these practice periods, the idea should be repeated as often as you find profitable, though unhurried applications are essential. Alternate between surveying your outer and inner perceptions, but without an abrupt sense of shifting. Merely glance casually around the world you perceive as outside yourself, then close your eyes and survey your inner thoughts with equal casualness. Try to remain equally uninvolved in both, and to maintain this detachment as you repeat the idea throughout the day.
The shorter exercise periods should be as frequent as possible. Specific applications of today's idea should also be made immediately when any situation arises which tempts you to become disturbed. For these applications, say:
"There is another way of looking at this."
Remember to apply today's idea the instant you are aware of distress. It may be necessary to take a minute or so to sit quietly and repeat the idea to yourself several times. Closing your eyes will probably help in this form of application.
Here is the end of choice. For here we come to a decision to accept ourselves as God created us. And what is choice except uncertainty of what we are? There is no doubt that is not rooted here. There is no question but reflects this one. There is no conflict that does not entail the single simple question, "What am I?"
Yet who could ask this question except one who has refused to recognize himself? Only refusal to accept yourself could make the question seem to be sincere. The only thing that can be surely known by any living thing is what it is. From this one point of certainty it looks on other things as certain as itself.
Uncertainty about what you must be is self-deception on a scale so vast its magnitude can hardly be conceived. To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead. For what is life except to be yourself, and what but you can be alive instead? Who is the doubter? What is it he doubts? Whom does he question? Who can answer him?
He merely states that he is not himself and therefore, being something else, becomes a questioner of what that something is. Yet he could never be alive at all unless he knew the answer. If he asks as if he did not know, it merely shows he does not want to be the thing he is. He has accepted it because he lives; has judged against it and denied its worth; and has decided that he does not know the only certainty by which he lives.
Thus he becomes uncertain of his life, for what it is has been denied by him. It is for this denial that you need Atonement. Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth. You are yourself. There is no doubt of this, and yet you doubt it. But you do not ask what part of you can really doubt yourself. It cannot really be a part of you that asks this question, for it asks of one who knows the answer. Were it part of you, uncertainty would be impossible.
Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself and be unsure of what you really are. This is the depth of madness. Yet it is the universal question of the world. What does this prove except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true? Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are.
And they will come again until the time Atonement is accepted, and they learn it is impossible to doubt yourself and not to be aware of what you are. Only acceptance can be asked of you, for what you are is certain. It is set forever in the holy Mind of God and in your own. It is so far beyond all doubt and question that to ask what it must be is all the proof you need to show that you believe the contradiction that you know not what you cannot fail to know.
Is this a question or a statement which denies itself in statement? Let us not allow our holy minds to occupy themselves with senseless musings such as this. We have a mission here. We did not come to reinforce the madness which we once believed in. Let us not forget the goal that we accepted. It is more than just our happiness alone we came to gain.
What we accept as what we are proclaims what everyone must be along with us. Fail not your brothers, or you fail yourself. Look lovingly on them that they may know that they are part of you and you of them. This does Atonement teach, and demonstrates the oneness of God's Son is unassailed by his belief he knows not what he is.
Today accept Atonement, not to change reality, but merely to accept the truth about yourself, and go your way rejoicing in the endless Love of God. It is but this that we are asked to do. It is but this that we will do today. Five minutes in the morning and at night we will devote to dedicate our minds to our assignment for today. We start with this review of what our mission is:
"I will accept Atonement for myself,
For I remain as God created me."
We have not lost the knowledge that God gave to us when He created us like Him. We can remember it for everyone, for in creation are all minds as one, and in our memory is the recall how dear our brothers are to us in truth, how much a part of us is every mind, how faithful they have really been to us, and how our Father's Love contains us all.
In thanks for all creation, in the Name of its Creator and His Oneness with all aspects of creation, we repeat our dedication to our cause today each hour, as we lay aside all thoughts which would distract us from our holy aim. For several minutes let your mind be cleared of all the foolish cobwebs which the world would weave around the holy Son of God and learn the fragile nature of the chains which seem to keep the knowledge of yourself apart from your awareness, as you say:
"I will accept Atonement for myself,
For I remain as God created me."
The holy instant is the RESULT of your determination to be holy. It is the ANSWER. The desire and the willingness to let it come PRECEDE its coming. YOU prepare your minds for it ONLY to the extent of RECOGNIZING that you want it above all else. It is not necessary that you do more; indeed, it is necessary that you realize that you can NOT do more. Do not attempt to give the Holy Spirit what He does NOT ask, or you will add the ego unto Him, and CONFUSE THE TWO. He asks but little. It is HE Who adds the greatness and the might. He JOINS with you to make the holy instant far greater than you can understand.
It is your realization that you NEED do so little that enables HIM to give so much. Trust not your good intentions. They are not enough. But trust IMPLICITLY your willingness, whatever else may enter. Concentrate only on this, and be NOT disturbed that shadows surround it. THAT IS WHY YOU CAME. If you could come WITHOUT them, you would not NEED the holy instant. Come to it not in arrogance, assuming that YOU must achieve the state its coming brings with it. The miracle of the holy instant lies in your willingness to let IT be what it is. And in your willingness for THIS, lies also your acceptance of yourself as YOU were meant to be.
Humility will NEVER ask that you remain content with littleness. But it DOES require that you be NOT content with less than greatness which comes NOT of you. Your difficulty with the holy instant arises from your fixed conviction that you are not WORTHY of it. And what is this but the determination to BE as you would MAKE YOURSELF? God did not create His dwelling-place unworthy of Him. And if you believe He cannot enter where He wills to be, you MUST be INTERFERING with His Will. You do not need the strength of willingness to come from YOU, but only from HIS Will.
The holy instant does NOT come from your little willingness alone. It is ALWAYS the result of your SMALL willingness COMBINED with the unlimited power of HIS Will. You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to prepare YOURSELF for Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness, and NOT believe that it is up to you to establish the conditions for peace. GOD HAS ESTABLISHED THEM. They do not wait upon your willingness for what they ARE. Your willingness is needed ONLY to make it possible to TEACH you what they are.
If you maintain you are unworthy of LEARNING this, you are INTERFERING with the lesson by believing that YOU MUST MAKE THE LEARNER DIFFERENT. You did NOT make the learner, nor CAN you make him different. Would you FIRST make a miracle of YOURSELF, and THEN expect one to be made FOR you? You merely ask the QUESTION. The answer is GIVEN. Seek not to ANSWER it, but merely RECEIVE the answer AS it is given. In preparing for the holy instant, do NOT attempt to make yourself holy to be READY to receive it. That is but to confuse YOUR role with His. Atonement CANNOT come to those who think that THEY must FIRST atone, but only to those who offer it NOTHING MORE than simple willingness to make way for it.
Purification is of God alone. And THEREFORE for you. Rather than seek to prepare YOURSELF for Him, try to think thus:
"I who am host to God AM worthy of Him.
He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling-place in me created it as He would have it be.
It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only that I DO NOT INTERFERE with His plan to RESTORE to me my own AWARENESS of my readiness, which is eternal.
I need ADD nothing to His plan,
But to RECEIVE it, I must be willing NOT to substitute my own IN PLACE of it."
And that is all. Add MORE, and you will merely TAKE AWAY the little that is asked. Remember YOU MADE GUILT, and that your plan for the ESCAPE from guilt has been to bring Atonement TO it, and MAKE SALVATION FEARFUL. And it is ONLY fear that you will add, if you prepare YOURSELF for love. The preparation for the holy instant belongs to Him Who gives it. RELEASE yourselves to Him Whose function IS release. Do NOT assume His function FOR Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may learn how LITTLE is your part, and how great is HIS.
It is this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural. YOU make it difficult, because you insist there MUST be more that you need do. You find it difficult to ACCEPT the idea that you need give so LITTLE, to receive so much. And it is very hard for you to realize that it is not personally insulting that YOUR contribution and the Holy Spirit's are so EXTREMELY disproportionate. You are still convinced YOUR understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and MAKES IT WHAT IT IS. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing. Salvation is easy JUST BECAUSE it asks nothing that you cannot give RIGHT NOW.
Forget not that it has been your decision to make EVERYTHING that is natural and easy for you IMPOSSIBLE. What you believe to be impossible WILL BE, if God so wills it, but you will remain quite UNAWARE of it. If you believe the holy instant is difficult FOR YOU, it is because YOU have become the arbiter of what is possible, and remain UNWILLING to give place to One Who KNOWS. The whole belief in orders of difficulty in miracles is centered on this. Everything God wills is not only possible, but has already happened. And that is WHY the past has gone. It NEVER HAPPENED in reality. Only in your minds, WHICH THOUGHT IT DID, is its undoing needful.
All magic is a form of reconciling the irreconcilable. All religion is the recognition that the irreconcilable cannot BE reconciled.
Sickness and perfection ARE irreconcilable. If God created you perfect, you ARE perfect. If you believe you can be sick, you HAVE placed other gods before Him. GOD is not at war with the god of sickness which you made, but YOU are. He is the symbol of willing AGAINST God, and you are afraid of him BECAUSE he cannot be reconciled with God's will. If you ATTACK him, you will make him real to you. But if you refuse to worship him, in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made.
Reality can dawn only in an unclouded mind. It is always THERE, to BE accepted, but its acceptance depends on your WILLINGNESS TO HAVE IT. To know reality MUST involve the willingness to judge Unreality FOR WHAT IT IS. This is the RIGHT use of selective perception. To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO. Knowledge cannot dawn on a mind full of illusions, because truth and illusions are irreconcilable. Truth is whole, and CANNOT be known by PART of a mind.
The Sonship cannot be perceived as PARTLY sick, because to perceive it that way, is not to perceive it at all. If the Sonship is ONE, it is one in ALL respects. ONENESS CANNOT BE DIVIDED. If you perceive other gods, YOUR mind is split, and you will not be able to LIMIT the split, because the split IS the sign that you have removed part of your mind from God's Will, and this MEANS that it is out of control. To be out of control is to be out of REASON, and the mind DOES become unreasonable without reason. This is merely a matter of DEFINITION. By DEFINING the mind wrongly, you perceive it as FUNCTIONING wrongly.
God's laws will keep your minds at peace, because peace IS His Will, and His laws are established to uphold it. His are the laws of freedom, but yours are the laws of bondage. Since freedom and bondage are irreconcilable, their laws CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD TOGETHER. The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His. Everything else is merely lawLESS, and therefore chaotic. But God Himself has protected EVERYTHING He created BY His laws. Therefore, everything that is not under them does not exist.
"Laws of chaos" are meaningless, by definition. Creation is perfectly lawful, and the chaotic is without meaning, BECAUSE IT IS WITHOUT GOD. You have given your peace to the gods you made, but they are not there to take it FROM you, and you are NOT able to give it TO them. You are NOT free to give up freedom, but only to DENY it. YOU CANNOT DO WHAT GOD DID NOT INTEND, because what He did not intend DOES NOT HAPPEN. Your gods do not BRING chaos; you are ENDOWING them with chaos, and accepting it OF them.
All this has never been. Nothing but the laws of God has ever operated, and nothing except His Will will ever be. You were created through His laws and by His Will, and the manner of your creation established you AS CREATORS. What you have made is so unworthy of you, that you could hardly want it, IF YOU WERE WILLING TO SEE IT AS IT IS. You will see nothing at all. And your vision will AUTOMATICALLY look beyond it, to what is IN you, and all AROUND you. Reality cannot BREAK THROUGH the obstructions you interpose, but it WILL envelop you completely, WHEN YOU LET THEM GO.
When you have experienced the protection of God, the making of idols becomes inconceivable. There are no strange images in the Mind of God, and what is not in His Mind CANNOT be in yours, because you are of One Mind, and that Mind belongs to HIM. It is yours BECAUSE it belongs to Him, for ownership is sharing to Him. And if it is so for Him, it is so for you. His definitions ARE His laws, for by them He established the universe as what it is. No false gods you attempt to interpose between yourself and your reality, affect truth at all. Peace is yours because God created you. And He created nothing else.
The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal.
In many, only the spark remains, for the great rays are obscured. But God has kept the spark alive, so the rays can never be completely forgotten. If you but see the little spark, you will learn of the greater light, for the rays are there unseen. Perceiving the spark will heal, but knowing the Light will create. Yet in the returning, the little light must be acknowledged first, for the separation was a descent from magnitude to littleness. But the spark is still as pure as the Great Light, because it is the remaining call of Creation. Put all your faith in it, and God Himself will answer you.
How does one overcome illusions? Surely not by force or anger. Nor by OPPOSING them in ANY way. Merely by letting reason tell you that they CONTRADICT reality. They GO AGAINST what must be true. The opposition comes from THEM, and NOT reality. Reality opposes nothing. What merely is, NEEDS no defense, and offers none. Only illusions need defense, BECAUSE OF WEAKNESS. And how CAN it be difficult to walk the way of truth, when only WEAKNESS interferes? YOU are the strong ones in this seeming conflict. And you need NO defense. Everything that needs defense YOU DO NOT WANT. For anything that needs defense will WEAKEN you.
Consider what the ego wants defenses FOR. ALWAYS to justify what GOES AGAINST the truth, flies in the face of reason, AND MAKES NO SENSE. Can this BE justified? What can this be, except an invitation to insanity, to save you FROM the truth? And what would you be SAVED from, but what you FEAR? Belief in sin needs GREAT defense, and at ENORMOUS cost. All that the Holy Spirit offers must be DEFENDED AGAINST, and SACRIFICED. For sin is carved into a block out of YOUR peace, and laid BETWEEN you and its return. Yet how can peace BE so fragmented? It is STILL whole, and NOTHING has been TAKEN FROM it.
See how the means and the material of evil dreams are nothing! In truth, you stand together, with NOTHING in between. God holds your hands, and what can separate whom He has joined as one with Him? It is your Father Whom you would defend against. Yet it remains impossible to keep Love out. God rests with you in quiet, undefended and wholly undefending. For in this quiet state alone is strength and power. Here can NO weakness enter, for here is no attack, and therefore no illusions. Love rests in CERTAINTY. Only UNcertainty can BE defensive. And ALL uncertainty is doubt about YOURSELF.
How weak is fear; how little and how meaningless! How insignificant before the quiet strength of those whom Love has joined! This is your "enemy;" a frightened mouse which would attack the universe. How likely is it that it will SUCCEED? Can it be difficult to disregard its feeble squeaks that tell of its omnipotence, and would drown out the hymn of praise to its Creator that every heart throughout the universe forever sings as one? Which IS the stronger? Is it this tiny mouse, or everything that God created? You are NOT joined together by this mouse, but by the Will of God. And can a mouse BETRAY whom God has joined?
If you but RECOGNIZED how little stands between you and your AWARENESS of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within YOU, there is a force which NO illusions can resist. This body only SEEMS to be immovable. This force IS irresistible in truth. What, then, MUST happen when they come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended for what is quietly PAST THROUGH, and GONE BEYOND?
Forget not, when you feel the need arise to be defensive about ANYTHING, you have identified YOUR SELF with an illusion. And therefore feel that you are weak, BECAUSE YOU ARE ALONE. This is the cost of ALL illusions. Not one but rests on the belief that you are separate. Not one that does not SEEM to stand, heavy and solid and unmovable, between you and your brother. And not one that truth can NOT pass over lightly, and so easily that you MUST be convinced, in spite of what you THOUGHT it was, that it was nothing. If you forgive each other, this MUST happen. For it IS your unwillingness to overlook what seems to stand between you that makes it look impenetrable, and DEFENDS the illusion of its immovability.
Grace is an aspect of the Love of God which is most like the state prevailing in the Unity of truth. It is the world's most lofty aspiration, for it leads beyond the world entirely. It is past learning yet the goal of learning, for grace cannot come until the mind prepares itself for true acceptance. Grace becomes inevitable instantly in those who have prepared a table where it can be gently laid and willingly received; an altar clean and holy for the gift.
Grace is acceptance of the Love of God within a world of seeming hate and fear. By grace alone the hate and fear are gone, for grace presents a state so opposite to everything the world contains that those whose minds are lighted by the gift of grace can not believe the world of fear is real.
Grace is not learned. The final step must go beyond all learning. Grace is not the goal this course aspires to attain. Yet we prepare for grace in that an open mind can hear the Call to waken. It is not shut tight against God's Voice. It has become aware that there are things it does not know, and thus is ready to accept a state completely different from experience with which it is familiarly at home.
We have perhaps appeared to contradict our statement that the revelation of the Father and the Son as One has been already set. But we have also said the mind determines when that time will be, and has determined it. And yet we urge you to bear witness to the Word of God to hasten the experience of truth, and speed its advent into every mind which recognizes its effects on you.
Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him. We say "God is," and then we cease to speak, for in that knowledge words are meaningless. There are no lips to speak them, and no part of mind sufficiently distinct to feel that it is now aware of something not itself. It has united with its Source, and like the Source Itself, it merely is.
We cannot speak nor write nor even think of this at all. It comes to every mind when total recognition that its will is God's has been completely given and received completely. It returns the mind into the endless present, where the past and future cannot be conceived. It lies beyond salvation; past all thought of time, forgiveness, and the holy Face of Christ. The Son of God has merely disappeared into His Father, as His Father has in Him. The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state.
This is beyond the experience we try to hasten. Yet forgiveness, taught and learned, brings with it the experiences which bear witness that the time the mind itself determined to abandon all but this is now at hand. We do not hasten it, in that what you will offer was concealed from Him Who teaches what forgiveness means.
All learning was already in His Mind, accomplished and complete. He recognized all that time holds and gave it to all minds, that each one might determine, from a point where time has ended, when it is released to revelation and eternity. We have repeated several times before that you but make a journey that is done.
For Oneness must be here. Whatever time the mind has set for revelation is entirely irrelevant to what must be a constant state, forever as it always was; forever to remain as it is now. We merely take the part assigned long since, and fully recognized as perfectly fulfilled by Him Who wrote salvation's script in His Creator's Name, and in the Name of His Creator's Son.
There is no need to further clarify what no one in the world can understand. When revelation of your Oneness comes, it will be known and fully understood. Now we have work to do, for those in time can speak of things beyond, and listen to words which explain what is to come is past already. Yet what meaning can the words convey to those who count the hours still, and rise and work and go to sleep by them?
Suffice it, then, that you have work to do to play your part. The ending must remain obscure to you until your part is done. It does not matter. For your part is still what all the rest depends on. As you take the role assigned to you, salvation comes a little nearer each uncertain heart that does not beat as yet in tune with God. Forgiveness is the central theme which runs throughout salvation, holding all its parts in meaningful relationships, the course it runs directed, and its outcome sure.
And now we ask for grace, the final gift salvation can bestow. Experience that grace provides will end in time, for grace foreshadows Heaven yet does not replace the thought of time but for a little while. The interval suffices. It is here that miracles are laid; to be returned by you from holy instants you receive, through grace, in your experience, to all who see the light that lingers on your face.
What is the Face of Christ but his who went a moment into timelessness, and brought a clear reflection of the Unity he felt an instant back to bless the world? How could you finally attain to it forever, while a part of you remains outside, unknowing, unawakened and in need of you as witness to the truth?
Be grateful to return, as you were glad to go an instant and accept the gifts which grace provided you. You carry them back to yourself. And revelation stands not far behind. Its coming is ensured. We ask for grace and for experience that comes from grace. We welcome the release it offers everyone. We do not ask for the unaskable. We do not look beyond what grace can give. For this we can give in the grace that has been given us.
Our learning goal today does not exceed this prayer, yet in the world what could be more than what we ask this day of Him Who gives the grace we ask, as it was given Him?
"By grace I live. By grace I am released.
By grace I give. By grace I will release."
Today we will begin to assert some of the happy things to which you are entitled, being what you are. No long practice periods are required today, but very frequent short ones are necessary. Once every ten minutes would be highly desirable, and you are urged to attempt this and to adhere to this schedule whenever possible. If you forget, try again. If there are long interruptions, try again. Whenever you remember, try again.
You need not close your eyes for the exercise periods, although you will probably find it more helpful if you do. However, you may be in a number of situations during the day when closing your eyes would not be appropriate. Do not miss a practice period because of this. You can practice quite well under almost any circumstance, if you really want to.
Today's exercises take little time and no effort. Repeat today's idea, and then add several of the attributes which you associate with being a Son of God, applying them to yourself. One practice period might, for example, consist of the following:
"I am blessed as a Son of God.
I am happy, peaceful, loving and contented."
Another might be something as follows:
"I am blessed as a Son of God.
I am calm, quiet, assured and confident."
If only a brief period is available, merely telling yourself that you are blessed as a Son of God will do.
This is the first idea we have had which is related to a major phase of the correction process; the reversal of the thinking of the world. It seems as if the world determines what you perceive. Today's idea introduces the concept that your thoughts determine the world you see. Be glad indeed to practice it in this initial form, for in this idea is your release made sure. The key to forgiveness lies in it.
The practice periods for today's idea are to be undertaken somewhat differently from the previous ones. Begin with eyes closed, and repeat the idea slowly to yourself. Then open your eyes and look about, near or far, up or down, -- anywhere. During the minute or so to be spent in using the idea, merely repeat it to yourself, being sure to do so without haste and with no sense of urgency or effort.
To do these exercises for maximum benefit, the eyes should move from one thing to another fairly rapidly, since they should not linger on anything in particular. The words, however, should be used in an unhurried, even leisurely fashion. The introduction to this idea should be practiced as casually as possible. It contains the foundation for the peace, relaxation and freedom from worry that we are trying to achieve. On concluding the exercises, close your eyes and repeat the idea once more, slowly to yourself.
Three practice periods today will probably be sufficient. However, if there is little or no uneasiness and an inclination to do more, as many as five may be undertaken. More than this is not recommended.
This manual is not intended to answer all questions which both teacher and pupil may raise. In fact, it covers only a few of the more obvious ones, in terms of a brief summary of some of the major concepts in the text and workbook. It is not a substitute for either, but merely a supplement. While it is called a manual for teachers, it must be remembered that only time divides teacher and pupil, so that the difference is temporary by definition. In some cases, it may be helpful for the pupil to read the manual first. Others might do better to begin with the workbook. Still others may need to start at the more abstract level of the text.
Which is for whom? Who would profit more from prayers alone? Who needs but a smile, being as yet unready for more? No-one should attempt to answer these questions alone. Surely no teacher of God has come this far without realizing that. The curriculum is highly individualized. And all aspects are under the Holy Spirit's particular care and guidance. Ask and He will answer. The responsibility is His, and He alone is fit to assume it. To do so is His function. To refer the questions to Him is yours. Would you want to be responsible for decisions about which you understand so little? Be glad you have a Teacher Who cannot make a mistake. His answers are always right. Would you say that of yours?
There is another advantage,- and a very important one, - in referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency. Perhaps you have not thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious. To follow the Holy Spirit's guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt. It is the essence of the Atonement. It is the core of the curriculum. The imagined usurping of functions not your own is the basis of fear. The whole world you see reflects the illusion you have done so, making fear inevitable. To return the function to the One To Whom it belongs is thus the escape from fear. And it is this that lets the memory of love return to you. Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you.
Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power. The image you made of yourself has none. The Holy Spirit knows the truth about you. The image you made does not. Yet, despite its obvious and complete ignorance, this image assumes it knows all things because you have given that belief to it. Such is your teaching and the teaching of the world which was made to uphold it. But the Teacher Who knows the truth has not forgotten it. His decisions bring benefit to all, being wholly devoid of attack. And therefore incapable of arousing guilt.
Who assumes a power that he does not have is deceiving himself. Yet to accept the power given him by God is but to acknowledge his Creator and accept His gifts. And His gifts have no limit. To ask the Holy Spirit to decide for you is merely to accept your true inheritance. Does this mean that you cannot say anything without consulting Him? No, indeed! That would hardly be practical, and it is the practical with which this course is most concerned. If you have made it a habit to ask for help when and where you can, you can be confident that wisdom will be given you when you need it. Prepare for this each morning, remember God when you can throughout the day, ask the Holy Spirit's help when it is feasible to do so, and thank Him for His guidance at night. And your confidence will be well founded indeed.
Never forget that the Holy Spirit does not depend on your words. He understands the requests of your heart and answers them. Does this mean that, while attack remains attractive to you He will respond with evil? Hardly! For God has given Him the power to translate your prayers of the heart into His language. He understands that an attack is a call for help. And He responds with help accordingly. God would be cruel if He let your words replace His Own. A loving father does not let his child harm himself or choose his own destruction. He may ask for injury, but his father will protect him still. And how much more than this does your Father love His Son?
Remember you are His completion and His Love. Remember your weakness is His strength. But do not read this hastily or wrongly. If His strength is in you, what you perceive as your weakness is but illusion. And He has given you the means to prove it so. Ask all things of His Teacher, and all things are given you. Not in the future but immediately; now. God does not wait, for waiting implies time and He is timeless. Forget your foolish images, your sense of frailty and your fear of harm, your dreams of danger and selected "wrongs." God knows but His Son, and as he was created so he is. In confidence I place you in His Hands, and I give thanks for you that this is so.
And now in all your doings be you blessed.
God turns to you for help to save the world.
Teacher of God, His thanks He offers you,
And all the world stands silent in the grace
You bring from Him. You are the Son He loves,
And it is given you to be the means
Through which His Voice is heard around the world
To close all things of time, to end the sight
Of all things visible; and to undo
All things that change. Through you is ushered in
A world unseen, unheard, yet truly there.
Holy are you, and in your light the world
Reflects your holiness, for you are not
Alone and friendless. I give thanks for you,
And join your efforts on behalf of God,
Knowing they are on my behalf as well
And for all those who walk to God with me.
FINIS
The new emphasis will now be on healing. The miracle is the means, the Atonement the principle, and the healing is the result. Those who speak of "the miracle OF healing" are combining two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing is NOT a miracle. The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a REMEDY. It is purely a means, while any type of healing is a result.
The order of error to which Atonement is applied is irrelevant. Essentially, ALL healing is the release from fear. But to undertake this you cannot be fearful yourself.
You do not understand healing because of your own fear. I have been hinting throughout (and once stated very directly, because you were unfearful at the time) that you MUST heal others. The reason is that their healing merely witnesses or attests to yours.
A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at ALL levels. Illness, which is really "not Right Mindedness", is the result of level confusion in the sense that it always entails the misbelief that what is amiss in one level can adversely affect another.
We have constantly referred to miracles as the means of correcting level confusion. In reality, all mistakes must be corrected at the level at which they occur. Only the mind is capable of error. The body can ACT erroneously, but this is only because it has responded to mis-Thought. The body cannot create, and the belief that it CAN, a fundamental error responsible for most of the fallacies already referred to, produces all physical symptoms.
All physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion which created magic rested on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter, which can control the mind. This fallacy can work either way; i.e., it can be misbelieved either that the mind can miscreate IN the body, or that the body can miscreate in the mind. If it can be made clear that the mind, which is the only level of creation, cannot create beyond itself, then neither confusion need occur.
The reason why only the mind can create is more obvious than may be immediately apparent. The Soul has been created. The body is a learning device FOR the mind. Learning devices are not lessons in themselves. Their purpose is merely to facilitate the THINKING of the learner. The most that a faulty use of a learning device can do is to fail to facilitate. It does not have the power in itself to introduce actual learning errors.
The body, if properly understood, shares the invulnerability of the Atonement to two-edged application. This is not because the body is a miracle, but because it is not inherently open to misinterpretation. The body is merely a fact. Its ABILITIES can be, and frequently are, over-evaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence. Those who do are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial. (The use of the word "unworthy" here implies simply that it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the un-mindful. There is little doubt that the mind can miscreate. If one denies this unfortunate aspect of its power, one is also denying the power itself.)
All material means which man accepts as remedies for bodily ills are simply restatements of magic principles. It was the first level of the error to believe that the body created its own illness. Thereafter, it is a second mis-step to attempt to heal it through non-creative agents. It does not follow, however, that the application of these very weak corrective devices are evil. Sometimes the illness has sufficiently great a hold over an individual's mind to render him inaccessible to Atonement. In this case, one may be wise to utilize a compromise approach to mind and body, in which something from the OUTSIDE is temporarily given healing belief. This is because the last thing that can help the non-Right-Minded (or the sick) is an increase in fear. They are already in a fear-weakened state. If they are inappropriately exposed to a straight and undiluted miracle, they may be precipitated into panic. This is particularly likely to occur when upside down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening.
The value of the Atonement does not lie in the manner in which it is expressed. In fact, if it is truly used it will inevitably BE expressed in whatever way is most helpful to the receiver, not the giver. This means that a miracle, to attain its full efficacy, MUST be expressed in a language which the recipient can understand without fear. It does not follow by any means that this is the highest level of communication of which he is capable. But it DOES mean that it is the highest level of communication of which he is capable NOW.
The whole aim of the miracle is to RAISE the level of communication, not to impose regression (as improperly used) upon it. Before it is safe to let miracle workers loose in this world, it is essential that they understand fully the fear of release. Otherwise, they may unwittingly foster the misbelief that release is imprisonment, which is very prevalent. This misperception arose from the attempted protection device (or misdefense) that harm can be limited to the body. This was because of the much greater fear (which this one counteracts) that the mind can hurt itself. Neither error is really meaningful, because the miscreations of the mind do not really exist. That recognition is a far better protection device than any form of level confusion, because of the advantages of introducing correction at the level of the error.
It is essential that the remembrance of the fact that ONLY mind can create at all remain with you. Implicit in this is the corollary that correction belongs at the thought level, and NOT at either level to which creation is inapplicable. To repeat an earlier statement, and also to extend it somewhat, the Soul is already perfect, and therefore does not require correction. The body does not really exist, except as a learning device for the mind. This learning device is not subject to errors of its own, because it was created, but is NOT creating. It should be obvious, then, that correcting the creator (or inducing it to give up miscreation) is the only application of creation which is inherently meaningful at all.
We said before that magic is essentially mindless, or the destructive (miscreated) use of mind. Physical medicines are a form of "spells." In one way, they are a more benign form, in that they do not entail the possession fallacy which DOES enter when a mind believes that it can possess another. Since this is considerably less dangerous, though still incorrect, it has its advantages. It is particularly helpful to the therapist who really wants to heal, but is still fearful himself. By using physical means to do so, he is not engaging in any form of enslavement, even though he is not applying the Atonement. This means that his mind is dulled by fear, but is not actively engaged in distortion.
Those who are afraid of using the mind to heal are right in avoiding it, because the very fact that they are afraid HAS made them vulnerable to miscreation. They are therefore likely to misunderstand any healing they might induce, and, because egocentricity and fear usually occur together, may be unable to accept the real Source of the healing. Under these conditions, it is safer for them to rely TEMPORARILY on physical healing devices, because they cannot misperceive them as their own creations. As long as their own vulnerability persists, it is essential to preserve them from even attempting miracles.
We said in a previous section that the miracle is an expression of miracle-Mindedness. Miracle-Mindedness merely means Right-Mindedness in the sense that we are now using it. Right-Mindedness neither exalts nor depreciates the mind of the miracle worker nor of the miracle receiver. However, as a creative act, the miracle need not await the Right-Mindedness of the receiver. In fact, its purpose is to restore him TO his Right Mind. But it is essential that the miracle worker be in his Right Mind, or he will be unable to reestablish Right-Mindedness in someone else.
The healer who relies on his own readiness is endangering his understanding. He is perfectly safe as long as he is completely unconcerned about HIS readiness, but maintains a consistent trust in MINE. (Errors of this kind produce some very erratic behavior, which usually point up an underlying unwillingness to co-operate. Note that by inserting the carbon backwards, Bill created a situation in which two copies did not exist. This reflected two levels of confidence lack, one in My readiness to heal, and the other in his own willingness to give.) These errors inevitably introduce inefficiency into the miracle worker's behavior, and temporarily disrupt his miracle-mindedness. We might also make very similar comments about your own hesitation about dictating at all. This is a larger error only because it results in greater inefficiency. If you don't say anything, nobody can use it, including Me. We have established that for all corrective processes, the first step is know that this is fear. Unless fear had entered, the corrective procedure would never have become necessary. If your miracle working propensities are not working, it is always because fear has intruded on your Right-Mindedness, and has literally upset it (i.e. turned it upside down).
All forms of not-Right-Mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the Atonement FOR YOURSELF. If the miracle worker DOES accept it, he places himself in the position to recognize that those who need to be healed are simply those who have NOT done so. The reason why you felt the vast radiation range of your own inner illumination is because you were aware that your Right-Mindedness IS healing. The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal. By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from over-evaluating its own learning device (the body), and restores the mind to its true position as the learner. It should be re-emphasized that the body does not learn, any more than it creates. As a learning device, it merely follows the learner, but if it is falsely endowed with self initiative, it becomes a serious obstruction to the learning it should facilitate.
ONLY the mind is capable of illumination. The Soul is already illuminated, and the body in itself is too dense. The mind, however, can BRING its own illumination TO the body by recognizing that density is the opposite of intelligence, and therefore unamenable to independent learning. It is, however, easily brought into alignment with a mind which has learned to look beyond density toward light.
Corrective learning always begins with awakening the spiritual eye, and turning away from belief in physical sight. The reason this entails fear is because man is afraid of what his spiritual eye will see, which was why he closed it in the first place. We said before that the spiritual eye cannot see error, and is capable only of looking beyond it to the defense of Atonement. There is no doubt that the spiritual eye does produce extreme discomfort by what it sees. The thing that man forgets is that the discomfort is not the final outcome of its perception. When the spiritual eye is permitted to look upon the defilement of the altar, it also looks immediately toward Atonement. Nothing which the spiritual eye perceives can induce fear. Everything that results from accurate spiritual awareness merely is channelized toward correction. Discomfort is aroused only to bring the need to correct forcibly into awareness.
What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can it be corrected by any device which can be physically seen. As long as a man believes in what his physical sight tells him, all his corrective behavior will be misdirected. The reason why the real vision is obscured is because man cannot endure to see his own defiled altar. But since the altar has BEEN defiled, this fact becomes doubly dangerous unless it IS perceived. This perception is totally non-threatening because of the Atonement. The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself.
Healing was an ability which was lent to man after the Separation, before which it was completely unnecessary. Like all aspects of the space-time belief, healing ability is temporary. However, as long as time persists, healing remains among the stronger human protections. This is because healing always rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving the true perfection of another, even if he cannot perceive it himself. Most of the loftier concepts of which man is capable now are time-dependent. Charity is really a weaker reflection of a much more powerful love-encompassment, which is far beyond any form of charity that man can conceive of as yet. Charity is essential to Right-Mindedness, in the limited sense to which Right-Mindedness can now be attained. Charity is a way of looking at another AS IF he had already gone far beyond his actual accomplishment in time. Since his own thinking is faulty, he cannot see the Atonement himself, or he would have no need for charity at all. The charity which is accorded him is both an acknowledgment that he IS weak, and a recognition that he COULD BE stronger. The way in which both of these beliefs are stated clearly implies their dependence on time, making it quite apparent that charity lies within the framework of human limitations, though toward the higher levels.
We said before, twice in fact, that only Revelation transcends time. The miracle, as an expression of true human charity, can only shorten it a best. It must be understood, however, that whenever a man offers a miracle to another, he IS shortening the suffering of both. This introduces a correction into the Record, which corrects retroactively as well as progressively.
Attitudes toward the body are attitudes toward ATTACK. The ego's definitions of ANYTHING are childish, and are ALWAYS based on what it believes a thing is FOR. This is because it is incapable of true generalizations, and equates what it sees with the function IT ascribes to it. It does NOT equate it with what it IS. To the ego, the body IS TO ATTACK WITH. Equating YOU with the body, it teaches that YOU are to attack with, because THIS IS WHAT IT BELIEVES. The body, then, is not the source of its own health. Its condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function.
The reason why definitions by function are inferior is merely because they may well be inaccurate. Functions are part of being, since they arise FROM it. But the relationship is NOT reciprocal. The whole does define the part, but the part does NOT define the whole. This is as true of knowledge as it is of perception. The reason why to KNOW in part is to know entirely is merely because of the fundamental difference between knowledge and perception. In perception, the whole is built up of parts, which can separate and reassemble in different constellations. Knowledge never changes, so that its constellation is permanent. The only areas in which part-whole relationships have any meaning are those in which change is possible. There IS no difference between the whole and the part where change is impossible.
The body exists in a world which seems to contain two voices which are fighting for its possession. In this perceived constellation, the body is regarded as capable of shifting its control from one to the other, making the concept of both health and sickness possible. The ego makes a fundamental confusion between means and ends, as it always does. Regarding the body as an end, it has no real use for it at all, because it is NOT an end. You must have noticed an outstanding characteristic of every end that the ego has accepted as its own. When you have achieved it, IT HAS NOT SATISFIED YOU. This is why the ego is forced to shift from one end to another without ceasing, so that YOU will continue to hope it can offer you something.
It has been particularly difficult to overcome the ego's belief in the body as an end because this is synonymous with ATTACK AS AN END. The ego has a REAL INVESTMENT IN SICKNESS. If you are sick, how can you object to the ego's firm belief that you are NOT invulnerable? This is a particularly appealing argument from the ego's point of view, because it obscures the obvious attack which underlies the sickness. If you accepted THIS, and also decided AGAINST attack, you could not give this false witness to the ego's stand. It is hard to perceive this as a false witness, because you do not realize that it IS entirely out of keeping with what YOU want. This witness, then, appears to be innocent and trustworthy only because YOU have not seriously cross-examined him.
If you did, you would not consider sickness such a strong witness on behalf of the ego's views. A more honest statement would be as follows: Those who WANT the ego are predisposed to defend it. Therefore, their choice of witnesses should be suspect from the beginning. The ego does not call upon witnesses who might disagree with its case, NOR DOES THE HOLY SPIRIT. We have said before that judgment IS the function of the Holy Spirit, and one which He is perfectly equipped to fulfill. The ego, as a judge, gives anything BUT an impartial trial (judgment.) When the ego calls on a witness, it has ALREADY MADE IT AN ALLY. It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end. The ego, however, establishes it AS an end because, as such, IT WILL LOSE ITS TRUE FUNCTION.
This is the purpose of everything the ego does. Its sole aim is to lose sight of the functions of EVERYTHING. A sick body does not make any sense. It COULD not make any sense, since sickness is not what it is FOR. Sickness is meaningful only if the two basic premises on which the ego's interpretation of the body rests are true. These are specifically first that the body is for attack, and also that you ARE a body. Without this, sickness is completely inconceivable. Sickness is a way of demonstrating that YOU CAN BE HURT. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance. The ego uses this as its best argument for your need for ITS guidance. It dictates endless prescriptions for AVOIDING this catastrophic outcome. The Holy Spirit, perfectly aware of the same data, does not bother to analyze it at all. If the data are meaningless, there is no point in treating them at all.
The function of truth is to collect data which are TRUE. There is no point in trying to make sense out of meaningless data. ANY way they are handled results in nothing. The more complicated the results become, the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine ALL possible outcomes to which premises give rise to judge the PREMISES truly.
A learning DEVICE is NOT a teacher. IT cannot tell you how you feel. YOU do not KNOW how you feel, because YOU HAVE ACCEPTED THE EGO's CONFUSION, and YOU think A LEARNING DEVICE CAN TELL YOU HOW YOU FEEL. Sickness is merely another example of your insistence on asking for guidance of a teacher who DOES NOT KNOW THE ANSWER. The ego is INCAPABLE of knowing how you feel. When we said that the ego DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING, we said the one thing about the ego that is wholly true. But there is a corollary. If knowledge is being, and the ego has no knowledge, then the ego HAS NO BEING.
You might ask how the voice of something which does not exist can be so insistent. Have you ever seriously considered the distorting power of something you WANT, even if it is not true? You have had many instances of how what you want can distort what you see and hear. No one can doubt the ego's skill in building up false cases. And no one can doubt your willingness to listen, until YOU will not to tolerate ANYTHING except truth.
When YOU lay the ego aside it will be gone. The Holy Spirit's voice is as loud as your willingness to listen. It cannot be louder without violating your will, which He seeks to free but never to command. He will teach you to use your body ONLY to reach your brothers so He can teach His message through you. This will heal them and THEREFORE heal you. Everything used in accordance with its function as HE sees it CANNOT be sick. Everything used otherwise IS.
Do not allow the body to be a mirror of a split mind. Do not let it be an image of your own perception of littleness. Do not let it reflect your will to attack. Health is the natural state of anything whose interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, who perceives no attack on anything. Health is the result of relinquishing ALL attempts to use the body lovelessly. It is the beginning of the proper perspective on life, under the guidance of the one teacher who knows what life IS, being the voice for Life Itself.
Today we are continuing with the idea for yesterday, adding another dimension to it. You cannot see in darkness, and you cannot make light. You can make darkness and then think you see in it, but light reflects life, and is therefore an aspect of creation. Creation and darkness cannot coexist, but light and life must go together, being but different aspects of creation.
In order to see, one must recognize that light is within, not without. You do not see outside yourself. Nor is the equipment for seeing outside you. An essential part of this equipment is the light which makes seeing possible. It is with you always, making vision possible in every circumstance.
Today we are going to attempt to reach that light. For that purpose, we will use a form of practice which has been suggested once before, and which we will utilize increasingly. It is a particularly difficult form for the undisciplined mind because it represents a major goal of mind training. It embodies precisely what the untrained mind lacks. Yet the training must be accomplished if you are to see.
Have at least three practice periods today, each lasting three-to-five minutes. A longer time is highly recommended, but only if you find the time merely slipping by with little or no sense of strain. The form of exercise we will use today is the most natural and easy one in the world for the trained mind, just as it seems to be the most unnatural and difficult for the untrained mind.
Your mind is no longer wholly untrained. You are quite ready to learn the form of exercise we will use today, but you may find that you will encounter strong resistance. The reason is very simple. While you practice in this form, you leave behind everything that you now believe, and all the thoughts which you have made up. Properly speaking, this is the release from hell. Perceived through the ego's eyes, it is loss of identity and a descent into hell.
If you can stand aside from the ego ever so little, you will have no difficulty in recognizing that its opposition and fears are meaningless. You might find it helpful to remind yourself from time to time that to reach light is to escape from darkness, whatever you may believe to the contrary. God is the Light in which you see. You are attempting to reach Him.
Begin the practice period by repeating today's idea with your eyes open, and close them slowly, repeating the idea several times more. Then try to sink into your mind, letting go every kind of interference and intrusions by quietly sinking past them. Your mind cannot be stopped in this unless you choose to stop it. It is merely taking its natural course. Try to observe your passing thoughts without involvement, and slip quietly by them.
While no particular form of approach is advocated, what is needful is a sense of the importance of what you are doing, its inestimable value to you, and an awareness that you are attempting something very holy. Salvation is your happiest accomplishment. It is also the only one that has any meaning, because it is the only one that has any use to you at all.
If resistance rises in any form, pause long enough to repeat today's idea, keeping your eyes closed unless you are aware of fear. In that case, you will probably find it more reassuring to open your eyes briefly. Try, however, to return to the exercises as soon as possible.
If you are doing the exercises correctly, you should experience some sense of relaxation, and even a feeling that you are approaching, if not actually entering into light. Try to think of light, formless and without limit, as you pass by the thoughts of this world. And do not forget that they cannot hold you to the world unless you give them the power to do so.
Throughout the day, repeat the idea often, with eyes open or closed as seems better to you at the time. Do not forget. Above all, be determined not to forget today.
Unless you KNOW something, you CANNOT dissociate it. Knowledge therefore PRECEDES dissociation, and dissociation is nothing more than a DECISION TO FORGET. What has been FORGOTTEN then appears to be fearful, but ONLY because the dissociation was an ATTACK ON TRUTH. You are fearful BECAUSE you have forgotten. And you have REPLACED your knowledge by an awareness of dreams, BECAUSE YOU ARE AFRAID OF YOUR DISSOCIATION, NOT of what you have dissociated. Even in this world's therapy, when dissociated material is ACCEPTED, it ceases to be fearful, for the laws of mind always hold.
But to give up the dissociation of REALITY brings more than merely lack of fear. In THIS decision lie joy, and peace, and the glory of creation. Offer the Holy Spirit only your will to remember, for He retains the knowledge of God and of you FOR you, waiting for your acceptance. Give up gladly EVERYTHING that would stand in the way of your remembering, for God is in your memory, and His Voice will tell you that you are part of Him when you are willing to remember Him and know your own reality again. Let nothing in this world delay your remembering of Him, for in this remembering is the knowledge of YOURSELF.
To remember is merely to restore to your mind WHAT IS ALREADY THERE. You do not make what you remember; you merely accept again what has BEEN made AND REJECTED. The ability to ACCEPT truth in this world is the perceptual counterpart of creating in the Kingdom. God WILL do His part if you will do yours, and HIS return in exchange for yours IS the exchange of knowledge for perception. NOTHING is beyond His will for you. But signify your will to remember Him, and behold! He will give you everything but for your asking.
Whenever you attack, you are denying YOURSELF. You are specifically teaching yourself that you are NOT what you are. YOUR denial of reality precludes ACCEPTANCE of God's gift, BECAUSE YOU HAVE ACCEPTED SOMETHING ELSE IN ITS PLACE. If you understand that the misuse of defenses always constitutes an attack on truth, and truth is God, you will realize why this is ALWAYS fearful. If you further recognize that you are PART of God, you will also understand why it is that YOU ALWAYS ATTACK YOURSELF FIRST.
ALL attack is self attack. It cannot BE anything else. Arising from your OWN decision NOT to be what you ARE, IT IS AN ATTACK ON YOUR IDENTIFICATION. Attack is thus the way in which your identification is lost, because, when you attack, you MUST have forgotten what you are. And if your reality is God's, when YOU attack, you are not remembering HIM. This is not because He is gone, but because you are ACTIVELY WILLING NOT TO REMEMBER HIM.
If you realized the complete havoc this makes of your peace of mind, you COULD not make such an insane decision. You make it only because you still believe that it can GET YOU SOMETHING YOU WANT. It follows, then, that you want something OTHER than peace of mind, and you have not considered what it must be. Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear, if you will LOOK at it. By deciding AGAINST your reality, you have made yourself vigilant AGAINST God and His Kingdom. And it is THIS vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Him.
You have NOT attacked God, and you DO love Him. Can you change your reality? No-one can will to destroy himself. When you think you are attacking your SELF, it is a sure sign that you hate what you think you are. And this, and ONLY this, can BE attacked by you. What you THINK you are CAN be hateful, and what this strange image makes you do can be very destructive. The destruction is no more real than the image, but those who make idols DO worship them. The idols are nothing, but their worshippers are the Sons of God in sickness.
God would have them released from their sickness, and returned to His Mind. He will not limit your power to help them, because He has given it TO you. Do not be afraid of it, because it is your salvation. What Comforter can there be for the sick children of God except His power through YOU? Remember that it does not matter where in the Sonship He is accepted. He is ALWAYS accepted for all, and when your mind receives Him, the remembrance of Him awakens throughout the Sonship.
Heal your brothers simply by accepting God FOR them. Your minds are not separate, and God has only one channel for healing, because He has but one Son. His remaining communication link with all His Children joins them together, and them to Him. To be aware of this is to heal them, because it is the awareness that no one is separate, and so no one is sick. To believe that a Son of God can be sick is to believe that PART OF GOD CAN SUFFER.
Love CANNOT suffer, because it cannot attack. The remembrance of love therefore brings invulnerability with it. Do not side with sickness in the presence of a Son of God, even if HE believes in it, for YOUR acceptance of God in him ACKNOWLEDGES the love of God which he has forgotten. Your recognition of him as PART OF GOD teaches him the truth about himself, WHICH HE IS DENYING. Would you STRENGTHEN his denial of God, and thus lose sight of YOURSELF? Or would you remind him of his wholeness, and remember your Creator WITH him?
To believe a Son of God is sick is to worship the same idol he does. God created love, NOT idolatry. ALL forms of idolatry are caricatures of creation, taught by sick minds, who are too divided to know that Creation SHARES power, and NEVER usurps it. Sickness is idolatry, because it is the belief that POWER CAN BE TAKEN FROM YOU. But this is impossible, because you are part of God, Who IS all power. A sick god MUST be an idol, made in the image of what its maker thinks HE is. And that is exactly what the ego DOES perceive in a Son of God; -- a sick god, self-created, self-sufficient, very vicious, and very vulnerable.
Is this the idol you would worship? Is this the image you would be vigilant to SAVE? Are you REALLY afraid of losing THIS? Look calmly at the logical conclusion of the ego's thought-system, and judge whether its offering is really what you want, for this IS what it offers you. To obtain THIS, you are willing to attack the Divinity of your brothers, and thus lose sight of YOURS. And you are willing to keep it hidden, to protect this idol, which you think will save you from dangers WHICH THE IDOL ITSELF STANDS FOR, but which do not exist.
There are no idolaters in the Kingdom, but there is great appreciation for every Soul which God created, because of the calm knowledge that each one is part of Him. God's Son knows no idols, but He DOES know His Father. Health in this world is the counterpart of value in Heaven. It is not my merit that I contribute to you, but my love, for you do not value yourselves. When you do not value yourself you become sick, but MY value of you can heal you, because the value of God's Son is one.
When I said, "my peace I give unto you," I meant it. Peace came from God through me to YOU. It was FOR you, but you did not ask. When a brother is sick, it is because HE IS NOT ASKING FOR PEACE, and therefore he does not know he HAS it. The ACCEPTANCE of peace is the denial of illusion, and sickness IS an illusion. Yet every Son of God has the power to deny illusions ANYWHERE in the Kingdom, merely by denying them completely in himself.
I CAN heal you, because I KNOW you. I know your value FOR you, and it is this value that makes you whole. A whole mind is not idolatrous, and does not know of conflicting laws. I will heal you merely because I have only ONE message, and it is true. Your faith in it will make you whole, when you have faith in me. I do not bring God's message with deception, and you will learn this as you learn that you ALWAYS receive as much as you ACCEPT. You could accept peace NOW, for everyone you meet, and offer them perfect freedom from ALL illusions, BECAUSE YOU HEARD. But have no other gods before Him, or you will NOT hear.
God is not jealous of the gods you make, but YOU are. You would save them and serve them, because you believe that THEY MADE YOU. You think they are your father, because you are projecting onto them the fearful fact that YOU MADE THEM TO REPLACE GOD. But when they seem to speak to you, remember that NOTHING can replace God, and whatever replacements you have attempted ARE nothing. Very simply, then, you may BELIEVE you are afraid of nothingNESS, but you are REALLY afraid of NOTHING. And in THAT awareness you ARE healed.
You WILL hear the god you listen to. You MADE the god of sickness, and BY making him, you made yourself ABLE to hear him. But you did NOT create him, because he is NOT the Will of the Father. He is therefore not eternal, and will be UNmade for you, the instant you signify your willingness to accept ONLY the eternal. If God has but one Son, there is but one God. You share reality with Him, BECAUSE reality is not divided. To accept other gods before Him, is to place other images before YOURSELF. You do not realize how much you listen to your gods, and how vigilant you are on their behalf. But they exist only because you honor them.
Place honor where it is due, and peace WILL be yours. It is your inheritance from your REAL Father. You cannot make your father, and the father you made did NOT make you. Honor is not due to illusions, for to honor them is to honor nothing. But fear is not due them either, for nothing cannot be fearful. You have chosen to fear love BECAUSE of its perfect harmlessness. And because of this fear, you have been willing to give up your own perfect helpfulness, and your own perfect Help. Only at the altar of God will you find peace, and this altar is in you, because God put it there. His Voice still calls you to return, and He will be heard, when you place no other gods before Him.
You can give up the god of sickness for your brothers; in fact, you would HAVE to do so, if you give him up for yourself. For if you see him anywhere, YOU are accepting him. And if you accept him, you WILL bow down and worship him, because HE WAS MADE AS GOD's REPLACEMENT. He is the belief that YOU CAN CHOOSE WHICH GOD IS REAL. Although it is perfectly clear that this has nothing to do with REALITY, it is equally clear that it has EVERYTHING to do with REALITY AS YOU PERCEIVE IT.
The idea for today is obviously a continuation and extension of the preceding one. This time, however, specific mind-searching periods are necessary in addition to applying the idea to particular situations as they arise. Five practice periods are urged, allowing a full minute for each.
In the practice periods, begin by repeating the idea to yourself. Then close your eyes and search your mind carefully for situations past, present or anticipated, which arouse anger in you. The anger may take the form of any reaction ranging from mild irritation to rage. The degree of the emotion you experience does not matter. You will become increasingly aware that a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury.
Try, therefore, not to let the "little" thoughts of anger escape you in the practice periods. Remember that you do not really recognize what really arouses anger in you, and nothing that you believe in this connection means anything. You will probably be tempted to dwell more on some situations than on others, on the fallacious grounds that they are more "obvious." This is not so. It is merely an example of the belief that some forms of attack are more justified than others.
As you search your mind for all the forms in which attack thoughts present themselves, hold each one in mind and tell yourself;
"I am determined to see ____ (name of person) differently."
"I am determined to see ____ (specify the situation) differently."
Try to be as specific as possible. You may, for example, focus your anger on a particular attribute of a particular person, believing that the anger is limited to this aspect. If your perception of the person is suffering from this form of distortion, say:
"I am determined to see____ (specify the attribute) in____ (name of person) differently."
To say these words is nothing. But to mean these words is everything. If you could but mean them for just an instant, there would be no further sorrow possible for you in any form; in any place or time. Heaven would be completely given back to full awareness, memory of God entirely restored, the resurrection of all creation fully recognized.
No one can mean these words and not be healed. He cannot play with dreams, nor think he is himself a dream. He cannot make a hell and think it real. He wants the peace of God and it is given him. For that is all he wants, and that is all he will receive. Many have said these words. But few indeed have meant them. You have but to look upon the world you see around you to be sure how very few they are. The world would be completely changed should any two agree these words express the only thing they want.
Two minds with one intent become so strong that what they will becomes the Will of God. For minds can only join in truth. In dreams, no two can share the same intent. To each, the hero of the dream is different; the outcome wanted not the same for both. Loser and gainer merely shift about in changing patterns, as the ratio of gain to loss and loss to gain takes on a different aspect or another form.
Yet compromise alone a dream can bring. Sometimes it takes the form of union, but only the form. The meaning must escape the dream, for compromising is the goal of dreaming. Minds cannot unite in dreams. They merely bargain. And what bargain can give them the peace of God? Illusions come to take His place. And what He means is lost to sleeping minds intent on compromise, each to his gain and to another's loss.
To mean you want the peace of God is to renounce all dreams. For no one means these words who wants illusions, and who therefore seeks the means which bring illusions. He has looked on them and found them wanting. Now he seeks to go beyond them, recognizing that another dream would offer nothing more than all the others. Dreams are one to him. And he has learned their only difference is one of form, for one will bring the same despair and misery as do the rest.
The mind which means that all it wants is peace must join with other minds, for that is how peace is obtained. And when the wish for peace is genuine, the means for finding it is given in a form each mind which seeks for it in honesty can understand. Whatever form the lesson takes is planned for him in such a way that he can not mistake it if his asking is sincere. And if he asks without sincerity, there is no form in which the lesson will meet with acceptance and be truly learned.
Let us today devote our practicing to recognizing that we really mean the words we say. We want the peace of God. This is no idle wish. These words do not request another dream be given us. They do not ask for compromise, nor try to make another bargain in the hope that there must yet be one which can succeed where all the rest have failed. To mean these words acknowledges illusions are in vain, requesting the eternal in the place of shifting dreams which seem to change in what they offer, but are one in nothingness.
Today devote your practice periods to careful searching of your mind, to find the dreams you cherish still. What do you ask for in your heart? Forget the words you use in making your requests. Consider but what you believe will comfort you and bring you happiness. But be you not dismayed by lingering illusions, for their form is not what matters now. Let not some dreams be more acceptable, reserving shame and secrecy for others. They are one. And being one, one question should be asked of all of them; "Is this what I would have in place of Heaven and the peace of God?"
This is the choice you make. Be not deceived that it is otherwise. No compromise is possible in this. You choose God's peace or you have asked for dreams, and dreams will come as you requested them. Yet will God's peace come just as certainly, and to remain with you forever. It will not be gone with every twist and turning of the road, to reappear unrecognized in forms which shift and change with every step you take.
You want the peace of God. And so do all who seem to seek for dreams. For them as well as for yourself you ask but this when you make this request with deep sincerity. For thus you reach to what they really want, and join your own intent with what they seek above all things, perhaps unknown to them, but sure to you. You have been weak at times, uncertain in your purpose, and unsure of what you wanted, where to look for it, and where to turn for help in the attempt. Help has been given you. And would you not avail yourself of it by sharing it?
No one who truly seeks the peace of God can fail to find it. For he merely asks that he deceive himself no longer by denying to himself what is God's Will. Who can remain unsatisfied who asks for what he has already? Who could be unanswered who requests an answer which is his to give? The peace of God is yours.
For you it was created, given you by its Creator, and established as His Own eternal gift. How can you fail when you but ask for what He wills for you? And how could your request be limited to you alone? No gift of God can be unshared. It is this attribute which sets the gifts of God apart from every dream that ever seemed to take the place of truth.
No one can lose and everyone must gain whenever any gift of God has been requested and received by anyone. God gives but to unite. To take away is meaningless to Him. And when it is as meaningless to you, you can be sure you share One Will with Him and He with you. And you will also know you share One Will with all your brothers, whose intent is yours.
It is this one intent we seek today, uniting our desires with the need of every heart, the call of every mind, the hope that lies beyond despair, the love attack would hide, the brotherhood that hate has sought to sever, but which still remains as God created it. With Help like this beside us, can we fail today as we request the peace of God be given us?
Yes, you are blessed indeed. But in this world, you do not know it. Yet you have the means for LEARNING it, and SEEING it quite clearly. The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily, and as well, as does the ego, except that HIS conclusions are NOT insane. They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego's logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. And HAVING seen them, we have realized that they can NOT be seen but in delusions. For there alone their SEEMING clearness SEEMS TO BE CLEARLY SEEN. Let us now turn AWAY from them, and follow the simple logic, by which the Holy Spirit teaches you the simple conclusions that speak for truth, and ONLY truth.
If you are blessed and do not know it, you need to learn it MUST be so. The KNOWLEDGE is not taught, but its conditions MUST be acquired, for it is THEY that have been thrown away. You CAN LEARN to bless, and CANNOT give WHAT YOU HAVE NOT. If, then, you OFFER blessing, it MUST have come FIRST TO YOURSELF. And you must also have ACCEPTED IT AS YOURS, for how else could you GIVE IT AWAY? This is WHY your miracles offer YOU the testimony that YOU are blessed. If what you offer IS complete forgiveness, you MUST have LET GUILT GO, accepting the Atonement for yourself, and learning you ARE guiltless. How could you learn what has been done for you, BUT WHICH YOU DO NOT KNOW, unless you do what you would HAVE to do, if it HAD BEEN done unto you?
INDIRECT proof of truth is needed in a world made of denial, and without direction. You will perceive the need for this, if you will realize that to DENY is the decision NOT to know. The logic of the world MUST therefore lead to nothing, for its GOAL is nothing. If you decide to have and give and BE nothing except a dream, you MUST direct your thoughts unto oblivion. And if you have and give and are EVERYTHING, and ALL THIS HAS BEEN DENIED, your thought system is closed off, and wholly separated from the truth. This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream IS sacred to you.
That is why God placed the Holy Spirit IN you, where YOU placed the dream. Seeing is ALWAYS outward. Were your thoughts wholly of YOU, the thought-system which YOU have made, WOULD be forever dark. The thoughts which the mind of God's Son projects, HAVE all the power that he gives them. The thoughts he shares with God are BEYOND his belief, but those HE made ARE his beliefs. And it is THESE, and NOT the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love. They will not be taken from him. But they CAN be given up BY him, for the Source of their undoing is IN him. There is NOTHING in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane, and leads to nothing. But in him who MADE this insane logic, there is One Who KNOWS it leads to nothing, for He knows of EVERYTHING.
Any direction which will lead you where the Holy Spirit leads you NOT, goes nowhere. Anything you deny, which He knows to be true, you have denied YOURSELF, and He must therefore teach you NOT to deny it. Undoing IS indirect, as DOING is. You were created ONLY to create, neither to see NOR do. These are but INDIRECT expressions of the will to live, which has been blocked by the capricious and unholy whim of death and murder, that your Father shared not WITH you. You have set yourselves the task of sharing what can NOT be shared. And while you think it possible to LEARN to do this, you will NOT believe all that IS possible to learn to do.
The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching, by showing you what you can NEVER learn. His MESSAGE is not indirect, but He must introduce the simple truth into a thought-system which has become so twisted and so complex, that you CANNOT SEE that it means nothing. HE merely looks at its foundation, and DISMISSES it. But YOU, who CANNOT undo what you have made, nor escape the heavy burden of it's dullness that lies upon your minds, cannot see THROUGH it. It DECEIVES you, because you chose to deceive YOURSELVES. Those who choose to BE deceived, will merely ATTACK direct approaches, which would seem but to ENCROACH upon deception, and strike at it.
NOTHING beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing IS beyond you. Time and eternity are both in your minds, and WILL conflict, until you perceive time SOLELY as a means to REGAIN eternity. You cannot do this, as long as you believe that ANYTHING that happens to you is caused by factors OUTSIDE yourself. You must learn that time is solely at YOUR disposal, and that nothing in the world can take this responsibility FROM you. You can VIOLATE God's laws in your imagination, but you cannot escape from them. They were established for your protection, and are as inviolate as your safety.
God created nothing beside you, and nothing beside you exists, for you are part of Him. What except Him CAN exist? Nothing BEYOND Him can happen, because nothing EXCEPT Him is real. YOUR creations add to Him, as YOU do. But nothing is added that is different, because everything has always BEEN. What can upset you except the ephemeral, and how can the ephemeral be real, if you are God's ONLY creation, and He created you eternal?
Your holy will establishes EVERYTHING that happens to you. Every response you make, to everything you perceive, is up to you, because your will DETERMINES your perception of it. God does not change His Mind about YOU, for He is not uncertain of HIMSELF. And what He knows CAN be known, because He does not know only for Himself. He CREATED you for Himself, but He gave you the power to create for YOUR self, so you would be LIKE Him. That is why your will is holy.
Can anything EXCEED the love of God? Can anything, then, exceed YOUR will? Nothing can reach you from BEYOND it, because being in God, YOU encompass everything. Believe this, and you will realize how much IS up to you. When ANYTHING threatens your peace of mind, ask yourself "Has God changed His Mind about me?" Then ACCEPT His decision, for it is indeed changeless, and refuse to change your mind about YOURSELF.- God will never decide AGAINST you, or He would be deciding against Himself.
The reason you do not know YOUR creations is simply that you would decide against them, as long as your minds are split, and to attack what you have created is impossible. But remember that IT IS AS IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD. The law of Creation is that you love your creations as yourself, BECAUSE THEY ARE PART OF YOU. Everything that was created is therefore PERFECTLY safe, because the laws of God protect it by His love. Any part of your mind that does not know this, has banished itself from knowledge, because it has NOT MET ITS CONDITIONS.
Who could have done this but you? Recognize this gladly, for in this recognition lies the realization that your banishment is not of God, and therefore does not exist. You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to Reality. Is it your will to do so? You know, from your own experience, that what you see in dreams you think is real, as long as you are asleep. But the instant you waken, you KNOW that everything that SEEMED to happen DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL. You do not think this mysterious, even though ALL the laws of what you awake to WERE violated while you slept.
Is it not possible that you merely shifted from one dream to another without really wakening? Would you bother to reconcile what happened in conflicting DREAMS, or would you dismiss BOTH TOGETHER, if you discovered that REALITY is in accord with neither? You do not remember being awake. When you hear the Holy Spirit, you merely feel BETTER, because loving seems POSSIBLE to you. But you do NOT remember yet that it once was so, and it is in this remembering that you will know it can be so again.
What is possible has not yet been accomplished. But what has once been is so now, if it is eternal. When you remember, you will know what you remember IS eternal, and therefore is NOW.
You will remember everything the instant you DESIRE IT WHOLLY, for if to desire wholly is to create, you will have willed away the separation, returning your mind simultaneously to your Creator and your creations. Knowing them, you will have no wish to sleep, but only the will to waken and be glad. Dreams will be impossible, because you will WANT only truth, and being at last your will, it will be yours.
Bill has asked lately how the mind could ever have made the ego. This is a perfectly reasonable question; in fact, the best question either of you could ask. There is no point in giving an historical answer, because the past does not matter in human terms, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present. Bill has often told you that your thinking is too abstract at times, and he is right. Abstraction DOES apply to knowledge, because knowledge is completely impersonal, and examples are irrelevant to its understanding. Perception, however, is always specific, and therefore quite concrete.
Perceptual distortions are not abstractions. They are merely confusions. Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, and one for everyone he perceives, which is equally variable. Their interaction IS a process which literally alters both, because they were not made either BY or WITH the unalterable.
It is particularly important to realize that this alteration can and does occur as readily when the interaction takes place IN THE MIND as when it involves physical presence. THINKING about another ego is as effective in changing relative perception as is their physical interaction. There could be no better example of the fact that the ego is an idea, though not a reality-based thought. Your own present state is the best concrete example Bill could have of how the mind could have made the ego. You DO have real knowledge at times, but when you throw it away it is as if you never had it. This willfulness is so apparent that Bill need only perceive it to see that is DOES happen. If it can occur that way in the present, why should he be surprised that it occurred that way in the past? All psychology rests on the principle of continuity of behavior. Surprise is a reasonable response to the unfamiliar, but hardly to something that has occurred with such persistence.
An extreme example is a good teaching aid, not because it is typical, but because it is clear. The more complex the material, the clearer the examples should be for teaching purposes. (Bill, remember that for your own course, and do not avoid the dramatic. It holds the student's interest precisely because it is so apparent that it CAN be readily perceived.) But, as we have said before, all teaching devices in the hands of good teachers are aimed at rendering themselves unnecessary. I would therefore like to use your present state as an example of how the mind can work, provided you both fully recognize that it need not work that way. I NEVER forget this myself, and a good teacher shares his own ideas, which he himself believes. Otherwise, he cannot really "profess" them, as we used the term before.
With full recognition of its transitory nature, (a recognition which I hope you both share), Helen offers a very good teaching example of alternations between Soul and ego, with concomitant variation between peace and frenzy. In answer to Bill's question, it is perfectly apparent that when she is ego-dominated, she DOES NOT KNOW her Soul. Her abstract ability, which is perfectly genuine and does stem from knowledge, cannot help her because she has turned to the concrete which she cannot handle abstractly. Being incapable of appropriate concreteness perceptually, because her ego is not her natural home, she suffers from its intrusions, but NOT from complete lack of knowledge.
The result is a kind of "double vision", which would have produced an actual diplopia, if she had not settled for nearsightedness. This was an attempt to see the concrete more clearly through the ego's eyes, without the "interference" of the longer range. Her virtual lack of astigmatism is due to her real efforts at objectivity and fairness. She has not attained them, or she would not be nearsighted. But she HAS tried to be fair with what she permitted herself to see.
Why are you surprised that something happened in the dim past, when it is so clearly happening right now? You forget the love that even animals have for their own offspring, and the need they feel to protect them. This is because they regard them as part of themselves. No one disowns something he regards as a very real part of himself. Man reacts to his ego much as God does to His Souls, -- with love, protection, and great charity. The reaction of man to the self he made is not at all surprising. In fact, it duplicates in many ways the way he will one day react to his real creations, which are as timeless as he is.
The question is not HOW man responds toward his ego, but only what he believes he IS. Again, belief is an ego-function, and as long as your origin is open to belief at all, you ARE regarding it from an ego viewpoint. That is why the Bible quotes me as saying, "Ye believe in God, believe also in me." Belief DOES apply to me, because I am the teacher of the ego. When teaching is no longer necessary, you will merely know God.
Belief that there IS another way is the loftiest idea of which ego-thinking is capable. This is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is NOT the self. Helen always had this idea, but it merely confused her. Bill, you were more capable of a long-range view, and that is why your eyesight is good. But you were willing to see because you utilized judgment against what you saw. This gave you clearer perception than Helen's, but cut off the cognitive level more deeply. That is why you believe that you never had knowledge.
Repression HAS been a stronger mechanism in your own ego defense, and that is why you find her shifts so hard to tolerate. Willfulness is more characteristic of her, and that is why she has less sense than you do. It is extremely fortunate, temporarily, that the particular strengths you will both develop and use are precisely those which the other must supply now. You who will be the strength of God are quite weak, and you who will be God's help are clearly in need of help. What better plan could have been devised to prevent the intrusion of the ego's arrogance on the outcome?
Undermining the foundation of an ego's thought-system MUST be perceived as painful, even though this is anything but true. Babies scream in rage if you take away a knife or a scissors, even though they may well harm themselves if you do not. The speedup has placed you both in the same position.
You are NOT by any means prepared, and in this sense you ARE babies. You have no sense of real self-preservation and are very likely to decide that you need precisely what would hurt you most. Whether you know it now or not, however, you both HAVE willed to cooperate in a concerted and very commendable effort to become both harmLESS and helpFUL, two attributes which MUST go together. Your attitudes, even toward this, are necessarily conflicted, because ALL attitudes are ego-based.
This will not last. Be patient awhile, and remember what we have said once before; the outcome is as certain as God! Helen used to perceive the quotation "To him that hath shall be given" as a paradox that bordered on the ironic. She also had a similar reaction to another related one: "Faith is the gift of God." We have re-interpreted both of these statements before, but perhaps we can make them even clearer now.
Only those who have a real and lasting sense of abundance can be truly charitable. This is quite obvious when you consider the concepts involved. To be able to give anything implies that you can do without it. Even if you associate giving with sacrifice, you still give only because you believe you are somehow getting something better so that you can do without the thing you give.
"Giving to get" is an inescapable law of the ego, which ALWAYS evaluates itself in relation to others' egos, and is therefore continually preoccupied with the scarcity principle which gave rise to it. This IS the meaning of Freud's "pleasure principle." Freud was the most accurate "ego psychologist" we ever had, although he would not have preferred this description himself. His ego was a very weak and deprived concept, which could function ONLY as a thing in need.
The "reality principle" of the ego is not real at all. It is forced to perceive the "reality" of other egos, because it CANNOT establish the reality of itself. In fact, its whole perception of other egos AS real is ONLY an attempt to convince itself that IT is real.
"Self esteem," in ego terms, means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its reality and is therefore temporarily less predatory. This "self esteem" is ALWAYS vulnerable to stress, a term which really means that a condition has arisen in which the delusion of reality of the ego is threatened. This produces either ego-deflation or ego-inflation, resulting in either withdrawal or attack. The ego literally lives by comparisons. This means that equality is beyond its grasp, and charity becomes impossible.
The ego NEVER gives out of abundance, because it was made as a SUBSTITUTE for it. This is why the concept of GETTING arose in the ego's thought-system. All appetites are "getting" mechanisms representing ego needs to confirm itself. This is as true of bodily appetites as it is of the so-called "higher" ego needs. Bodily appetites are NOT physical in origin, because the ego regards the body as its home, and DOES try to satisfy itself through the body. But the IDEA that this is possible is a decision of the ego, which is completely confused about what is really possible. This accounts for its essential erraticness.
Consider the inevitable confusion which MUST arise from a perception of the self which responds: When I was completely on my own I "had no idea what was possible."The ego DOES believe it is completely on its own, which is merely another way of describing how it originated. This is such a fearful state that it can only turn to other egos, and unite with them in a feeble attempt at identification, or attack them in an equally feeble show of strength. The ego is free to complete the stem: "When I was completely on my own" in any way it chooses, but it is NOT free to consider the validity of the premise itself, because this premise is its FOUNDATION. The ego IS the belief of the mind that it is completely on its own.
The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the Soul's acknowledgement and thus establish its own existence are utterly useless. The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego. It merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of the Soul, it DOES perceive itself as rejected by something which is greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms MUST be a delusion.
The creations of God do not create myths, but the creative efforts of man can turn to mythology, but only under one condition. What man then makes is no longer creative. Myths are entirely perceptions and are so ambivalent in form, and so characteristically good and evil in nature that the most benevolent of them is not without fearful components, if only in innuendo. Myths and magic are closely associated, in that myths are usually related to the ego origins, and magic to the powers which the ego ascribes to itself. Every mythological system includes an account of "the creation," and associates this with its particular perception of magic.
The "battle for survival" is nothing more than the ego's struggle to preserve itself and its interpretation of its own beginning. This beginning is always associated with physical birth, because nobody maintains that the ego existed before that point in time. The religiously ego-oriented tend to believe that the Soul existed before, and will continue to exist afterwards, after a temporary lapse into ego-life. Some actually believe that the Soul will be punished for this lapse, even though in reality it could not possibly know anything about it.
The term "salvation" does NOT apply to the Soul, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged. Salvation is nothing more that "right-mindedness" which is NOT the one-mindedness of the Soul, but which must be accomplished before one-mindedness can be restored. Right-mindedness dictates the next step automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack, so that wrong-mindedness is obliterated. The ego cannot survive without judgment, and is laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only ONE direction in which it can move.
The directions which the mind will take are always automatic, because they cannot BUT be dictated by the thought-system to which it adheres. Every thought-system has INTERNAL consistency, and this does provide a basis for the continuity of behavior. However, this is still reliability and NOT validity. Reliable behavior is a meaningful perception, as far as ego thinking goes. However, VALID behavior is an expression which is inherently contradictory, because validity is an END, and behavior is a MEANS. These cannot be combined logically, because when an end has been attained, the means for its attainment are no longer meaningful.
Test constructors recognize that there are different kinds of validity, and also that they are of different orders. This means that they do not mean truth and do not pretend to mean it. Test validity can be judged by logic, by theory, and by practice, each being regarded as a different dimension. In each case, the amount of confidence is expressed in some form of percentage, either quantitatively, or merely in terms of "high," moderate, and low. But a hypothesis is tested as either true or false, to be accepted or rejected accordingly. If it is shown to be true it becomes a fact, after which no one attempts to evaluate it unless its status AS fact is questioned.
EVERY idea which the ego has accorded the status of fact is questionable, because facts are in the realm of knowledge. Confusing realms of discourse is a thinking error which philosophers have recognized for centuries. Psychologists are generally quite deficient in this respect, as are many theologians. Data from one realm of discourse do not mean anything in another, because they can be understood only WITHIN the thought-systems of which they are a part. This is why psychologists are concentrating increasingly on the ego, in an attempt to unify their clearly unrelated data. It need hardly be said that an attempt to relate the unrelated cannot succeed.
The recent ecological emphasis is but a more ingenious way of trying to impose order on chaos. We have already credited the ego with considerable ingenuity, though not with creativeness. But it should always be remembered that inventiveness is really wasted effort, even in its most ingenious forms. We do not have to EXPLAIN anything. This is why we need not trouble ourselves with inventiveness. The highly specific nature of invention is not worthy of the abstract creativity of God's Creations.
No one can judge on partial evidence. That is not judgment. It is merely an opinion based on ignorance and doubt. Its seeming certainty is but a cloak for the uncertainty it would conceal. It needs irrational defense because it is irrational. And its defense seems strong, convincing, and without a doubt, because of all the doubting underneath.
You do not seem to doubt the world you see. You do not really question what is shown you through the body's eyes. Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! Why would you trust them so implicitly? Why but because of underlying doubt which you would hide with show of certainty?
How can you judge? Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. Yet witness never falser was than this. But how else do you judge the world you see? You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. You think your fingers touch reality and close upon the truth. This is awareness which you understand, and think more real than what is witnessed to by the eternal Voice of God Himself.
Can this be judgment? You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you. You cannot judge. You merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false. It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt.
This thing it speaks of and would yet defend it tells you is yourself. And you believe that this is so with stubborn certainty. Yet underneath remains the hidden doubt that what it shows you as reality with such conviction it does not believe. It is itself alone that it condemns. It is within itself it sees the guilt. It is its own despair it sees in you.
Hear not its voice. The witnesses it sends to prove to you its evil is your own are false, and speak with certainty of what they do not know. Your faith in them is blind because you would not share the doubts their lord can not completely vanquish. You believe to doubt his vassals is to doubt yourself.
Yet you must learn to doubt their evidence will clear the way to recognize yourself, and let the Voice for God alone be Judge of what is worthy of your own belief. He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body's mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers' touch reports of him. He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God's Son.
He recognizes only what God loves, and in the holy light of what He sees do all the ego's dreams of what you are vanish before the splendor He beholds. Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its Face. Christ cannot doubt Himself. The Voice of God can only honor Him, rejoicing in His perfect, everlasting sinlessness.
Whom He has judged can only laugh at guilt, unwilling now to play with toys of sin, unheeding of the body's witnesses before the rapture of His holy Face. And thus He judges you. Accept His word of what you are, for He bears witness to your beautiful creation and the Mind Whose Thought created your reality.
What can the body mean to Him Who knows the glory of the Father and the Son? What whispers of the ego can He hear? What could convince Him that your sins are real? Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth.
He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle Face of Christ in all of them. You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings and teach the single lesson which they all contain.
He will select the elements in them that represent the truth, and disregard those aspects which reflect but idle dreams. And He will reinterpret all you see, and all occurrences, each circumstance, and every happening which seems to touch on you in any way from His one frame of reference, wholly unified and sure. And you will see the love beyond the hate, the constancy in change, the pure in sin, and only Heaven's blessing on the world.
Such is your resurrection, for your life is not a part of anything you see. It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness, within the Holy, holy as Itself. In everyone and everything His Voice would speak to you of nothing but your Self and your Creator, Who is One with Him. So will you see the holy Face of Christ in everything, and hear in everything no sound except the echo of God's Voice.
We practice wordlessly today, except at the beginning of the time you spend with God. We introduce these times with but a single, slow repeating of the thought with which the day begins. And then we watch our thoughts, appealing silently to Him Who sees the elements of truth in them. Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the Will of God.
Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son as proof of His eternal Love. And as each thought is thus transformed, it takes on healing power from the Mind Which saw the truth in it, and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. All the threads of fantasy are gone, and what remains is unified into a perfect Thought that offers Its perfection everywhere.
Spend fifteen minutes thus when you awake, and gladly give another fifteen more before you go to sleep. Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified. So are you taught to teach the Son of God the holy lesson of his sanctity. No one can fail to listen when you hear the Voice of God give honor to God's Son. And everyone will share the thoughts with you which He has retranslated in your mind.
Such is your Eastertide. And so you lay the gift of snow-white lilies on the world, replacing witnesses to sin and death. Through your transfiguration is the world redeemed and joyfully released from guilt. Now do we lift our resurrected minds in gladness and in gratitude to Him Who has restored our sanity to us.
And we will hourly remember Him Who is salvation and deliverance. As we give thanks, the world unites with us, and happily accepts our holy thoughts, which Heaven has corrected and made pure. Now has our ministry begun at last, to carry 'round the world the joyous news that truth has no illusions, and the peace of God, through us, belongs to everyone.
Christ's Second Coming, which is sure as God, is merely the correction of mistakes and the return of sanity. It is a part of the condition which restores the never-lost, and re-establishes what is forever and forever true. It is the invitation to God's Word to take illusion's place; the willingness to let forgiveness rest upon all things without exception and without reserve.
It is the all-inclusive nature of Christ's Second Coming that permits it to embrace the world, and hold you safe within its gentle advent which encompasses all living things with you. There is no end to the release the Second Coming brings, as God's creation must be limitless. Forgiveness lights the Second Coming's way because it shines on everyone as one.
The Second Coming ends the lessons which the Holy Spirit teaches, making way for the Last Judgment, in which learning ends in one last summary that will extend beyond itself, and reaching up to God. The Second Coming is the time in which all minds are given to the hands of Christ, to be returned to Spirit in the Name of true creation and the Will of God.
The Second Coming is the one event in time which time itself can not affect. For every one who ever came to die, or yet will come or who is present now, is equally released from what he made. In this equality is Christ restored as one Identity, in Which all Sons of God acknowledge that they all are one. And God the Father smiles upon His Son, His one creation and His only joy.
Pray that this Second Coming will be soon, but do not rest with that. It needs your eyes and ears and hands and feet. It needs your voice. And most of all it needs your willingness. Let us rejoice that we can do God's Will, and join together in Its holy light. Behold, the Son of God is one in us, and we can reach our Father's Love through him.
We are now ready for another review. We will begin where our last review left off, and cover two ideas each day. The earlier part of the day will be devoted to one of these ideas, and the latter part of the day to the other. We will have one longer exercise period and frequent shorter ones in which we practice each of them.
The longer practice periods will follow this general form: Take about 15 minutes for each of them, and begin by thinking about the idea and the comments which are included in the assignments. Devote about 3 or 4 minutes to reading them over slowly, several times if you wish, and then close your eyes and listen. Repeat the first phase if you find your mind wandering, but try to spend the major part of the practice period listening quietly but attentively.
There is a message waiting for you. Be confident that you will receive it. Remember that it belongs to you, and that you want it. Do not allow your intent to waver in the face of distracting thoughts. Realize that, whatever form they take, they have no meaning and no power. Replace them with your determination to succeed.
Do not forget that your will has power over fantasies and dreams. Trust it to see you through, and carry you beyond them all. Regard these practice periods as dedications to the way, the truth, and the life. Refuse to be side-tracked into detours, illusions, and thoughts of death. You are dedicated to salvation. Be determined each day not to leave your function unfulfilled.
Reaffirm your determination in the shorter practice periods as well, and using the original form of the idea for general application, and a more specific form when needed. Some specific forms will be included in the comments. These, however, are merely suggestions. It is not the particular words you use that matter.
Most of the abilities man now possesses are only shadows of his real strengths. The Soul knows, loves, and creates. These are its unequivocal functions. All of the functions of man are equivocal, or open to question or doubt. This is because he can no longer be certain how he will USE them. He is therefore incapable of knowledge, because he is uncertain. He is also incapable of true loving, because he can perceive lovelessly. He cannot create surely, because perception deceives, and illusions are not pure.
Perception did not exist until the Separation had introduced degrees, aspects and intervals. The Soul has no levels, and ALL conflict arises from the concept of levels. Wars arise when some regard others as if they were on a different level. All interpersonal conflicts arise from this fallacy. Only the levels of the Trinity are capable of Unity. The levels which man created by the Separation are disastrous. They cannot BUT conflict. This is because one is essentially meaningless to another. Freud realized this perfectly, and that is why he conceived as forever irreconcilable the different levels of his psyche. They were conflict-prone by definition, because they wanted different things and obeyed different principles.
In our picture of the psyche, there is an unconscious level, which properly consists ONLY of the miracle ability and should be under MY direction; and a conscious level, which perceives or is aware of impulses from both the unconscious and the superconscious. These are the sources of the impulses it receives. Consciousness is thus the level of perception, but NOT of knowledge. Again, to PERCEIVE is NOT to know. (In this connection, Cayce is more accurate than Freud.)
Consciousness was the first split that man introduced into himself. He became a PERCEIVER rather than a creator in the true sense.
Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego. Jung was right indeed in insisting that the ego is NOT the self, and that the self should be regarded as an achievement. He did not RECOGNIZE (a term we now understand) that the Achievement was God's. In a sense, the ego was a man-made attempt to perceive himself as he wished, rather than as he IS. This is an example of the created/creator confusion we spoke of before. He can only KNOW himself as he IS, because that is all he can be SURE of. Everything else IS open to question.
The ego is the questioning compartment in the post-Separation psyche which man created for himself. It is capable of asking valid questions, but not of perceiving wholly valid answers, because these are cognitive, and cannot BE perceived. The endless speculation about the meaning of mind has led to considerable confusion because the mind IS confused. Only One-Mindedness is without confusion. A separate, or divided, mind MUST be confused. A divided mind is uncertain by definition. It HAS to be in conflict because it is out of accord with itself.
Intrapersonal conflict arises from the same basis as interpersonal. One part of the psyche perceives another part as on a different LEVEL, and does not understand it. This makes the parts strangers to each other, WITHOUT RECOGNITION. This is the essence of the fear-prone condition, in which attack is ALWAYS possible.
Man has every reason to feel anxious, as he perceives himself. This is why he cannot escape fear until he KNOWS that he DID not and CAN not create himself. He can NEVER make this misperception valid, and when he at last PERCEIVES clearly, he is GLAD HE CAN'T. His Creation is beyond his own error variance, and this is why he MUST eventually choose to heal the Separation.
Right-mindedness is not to be confused with the KNOWING mind, because it is applicable only to right perception. You can be right-minded or wrong-minded, and this is subject to degrees, a fact which clearly demonstrates a lack of association with knowledge. (No, Helen, this is PERFECTLY clear and DOES follow the previous section. Neither you nor I is at all confused, even in grammar.)
The term "right-mindedness" is properly used as the correction for wrong-mindedness, and applies to the state of mind which induces accurate perception. It is miraculous because it heals misperception, and healing is indeed a miracle, in view of how man perceives himself. Only the sick NEED healing. The Soul does not need healing, but the mind DOES.
Freud gave a very graphic but upside down account of how the divisions of the mind arose from the bottom UP. Actually, this is impossible, because the unconscious cannot create the conscious. You cannot create something you can't KNOW. Freud was greatly worried about this, being VERY bright, though misguided, and attempted to get around it by introducing a number of "borderline" areas which merely resulted in fuzziness. This was particularly unfortunate, because he was capable of going much higher, if he had not been so afraid. This is why he kept pulling the mind DOWN.
The ego did NOT arise out of the unconscious. A lower-order perception cannot create a higher-order one, (which is the way you perceive the structure of the psyche if you look at it from the bottom UP) because it doesn't understand it. But a higher-order perception CAN create a lower-order one by understanding it in terms of MISperception.
Perception ALWAYS involves some misuse of will, because it involves the mind in areas of uncertainty. The mind is very active because it has will-power. When it willed the Separation it willed to perceive. Until it chose to do this, it willed only to know. Afterwards, it had to will ambiguously, and the only way out of ambiguity IS clear perception.
The ego is as frail as Freud perceived it. The later theorists have tried to introduce a less pessimistic view, but have looked in the wrong direction for their hope. Any attempt to endow the ego with the attributes of the Soul, is merely confused thinking. Freud was more clear-sighted about this, because he knew a BAD thing when he perceived it, but he failed to recognize that a bad thing cannot exist. It is therefore wholly unnecessary to try to get out of it. As you very rightly observed yourself, the thing to do with a desert is to LEAVE.
The mind returns itself to its proper function only when it WILLS TO KNOW. This places it in the Soul's service, where perception is meaningless. The superconscious is the level of the mind which wills to do this. (Freud was particularly distorted on this point, because he was getting too far UP for comfort according to his own perception.) But he WAS right in maintaining that the "parts" of the psyche cannot be correctly perceived either as THINGS or as entirely separate. (He would have thought better if he had said "entirely separated.")
The mind DID divide itself when it willed to create its own levels AND the ability to perceive them. But it could NOT entirely separate itself from the Soul, because it is FROM the Soul that it derives its whole power to create. Even in miscreating, will is affirming its source, or it would merely cease to be. This is impossible, because it IS part of the Soul, which God created, and which is therefore eternal.
The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something. This is why perception involves an exchange, or a translation, which knowledge does NOT need. The interpretive function of perception, (actually, a distorted form of creation), then permitted man to interpret the body as HIMSELF, which, although depressing, was a way out of the conflict he induced. (This has already been covered in some detail.)
The superconscious, which KNOWS, could not be reconciled with this loss of power, because it was incapable of darkness. This is why it became almost inaccessible to the mind, and entirely inaccessible to the body. It was PERCEIVED as a threat, because light does abolish darkness by establishing the clear fact that it ISN'T THERE. The truth will ALWAYS destroy error in this sense. This is not an ACTIVE process of destruction at all. We have already emphasized the fact that knowing does not DO anything. It can be PERCEIVED as an attacker, but it CANNOT attack.
What man perceives as its attack is his own recognition of the fact that it can always be REMEMBERED, because it has never been destroyed. This is not a literal remembering as much as a re-membering. (That is largely for Bill I wish he would decide to use that talent of his constructively. He has no idea of how powerful it could be. Actually, it does come from the unconscious, and is really a distorted form of miraculous perception which he has reduced to word twisting. Although this can be quite funny, it is still a real waste. Maybe he'd care to let me control it, and still use it humorously himself. He doesn't have to decide it is one OR the other.)
The unconscious should never have been reduced to a "container" for the waste products of conflict. Even as HE perceives his psyche, every level has a creative potential, because nothing man creates can wholly lose this.
God and the Souls He created remain in surety, and therefore KNOW that no miscreation exists. Truth cannot deal with unwilling error, because it does not will to be blocked out. But I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge. Tell Bill that when he refused to misperceive he was indeed behaving as I behaved. And as a man, I did not attempt to counteract error with knowledge, so much as to CORRECT error from the bottom up. I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body AND the power of the mind, by uniting MY will with that of my Creator, which naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose.
I cannot unite your will with God's for you. But I CAN erase all misperceptions from your mind, if you will bring it under my guidance. ONLY your misperceptions stand in your own way. Without them, your own choice is certain. Sane perception INDUCES sane choosing. The Atonement was an act based on true perception. I cannot choose for you, but I CAN help you make your own right choice.
"Many are called but few are chosen" SHOULD read, "ALL are called but few choose to listen. Therefore, they do not choose RIGHT." The "chosen ones" are merely those who choose right SOONER. This is the real meaning of the celestial speed-up. Strong wills can do this NOW. And you WILL find rest for your Souls. God knows you only in peace, and this IS your reality.
(Note that the term "insight", though referring to lofty perception, is not an attribute of knowledge. This is why terms like "lofty" are meaningless in this context. Insight is not the way TO knowledge, but it IS a prerequisite FOR knowledge. Being of God, knowledge has nothing to do with your perceptions at all. That is why it can only be a gift of God TO you.)
A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time's limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it gives.
A miracle contains the gift of grace, for it is given and received as one. And thus it illustrates the law of truth the world does not obey, because it fails entirely to understand its ways. A miracle inverts perception which was upside-down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to the truth. Now is forgiveness seen as justified.
Forgiveness is the home of miracles. The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. Perception stands corrected in His sight, and what was meant to curse has come to bless. Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love. And each is laid before the Word of God upon the universal altar to Creator and creation, in the Light of perfect purity and endless joy.
The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought you saw.
Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality.
Unless you are guiltless you cannot know God, Whose Will is that you know Him. Therefore, you MUST be guiltless. But, if you do not accept the necessary conditions for knowing Him, YOU HAVE DENIED HIM, and do not recognize Him, though He is all around you. He cannot be known without His Son, whose guiltlessness IS the condition for knowing Him. Accepting His Son as guilty is denial of the Father so complete, that knowledge is swept away from recognition, in the very mind where God Himself has placed it. If you would but listen, and learn how impossible this is! Do not endow Him with attributes YOU understand. You made Him not, and anything YOU understand, is not of Him.
Your task is not to make reality. It is here, WITHOUT your making, but NOT without YOU. You who have thrown your selves away, and valued God so little, hear me speak for Him, and for yourselves. You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt, APART from Him, that resembles it ever so faintly. You cannot even give a blessing in perfect gentleness. Would you know of One Who gives forever, and Who knows of nothing EXCEPT giving?
The Children of Heaven live in the light of the blessing of their Father, because THEY KNOW THAT THEY ARE SINLESS. The Atonement was established as the means of restoring guiltlessness to the mind which has denied it, and thus denied Heaven to Itself. Atonement teaches you the true condition of the Son of God. It does NOT teach you what you are, or what your Father is. The Holy Spirit, Who remembers this FOR you, merely teaches you how to REMOVE the blocks that stand between you and what YOU know. His memory is YOURS. If you remember what YOU have made, you are remembering nothing. Remembrance of reality is in HIM, and THEREFORE in you.
Christ's Second Coming gives the Son of God the gift to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgment is in which perception ends. At first you see a world which has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.
The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless.
You who believed that God's Last Judgment would condemn the world to hell along with you, accept this holy truth: God's Judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God's saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering, return to peace, security and happiness, and union with your own Identity.
God's Final Judgment is as merciful as every step in His appointed plan to bless His Son, and call Him to return to the eternal peace He shares with him. Be not afraid of Love. For It alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dreams of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks you give it welcome. And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free.
This is God's Final Judgment: "You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as Your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am Your Father and you are My Son."
It CANNOT be that it is hard to do the task that Christ appointed you to do, since it is HE that does it. And, in the DOING of it, will you learn the body merely SEEMS to be the means to do it. For the Mind is HIS. And so it MUST be yours. HIS holiness directs the body THROUGH the mind at one with Him. And YOU are manifest unto your holy brother, as he to you. Here is the meeting of the holy Christ unto Himself. Nor ANY differences perceived to stand between the aspects of His holiness, which meet and join, and raise Him to His Father, whole and pure, and worthy of His Everlasting Love.
How can you manifest the Christ in you, EXCEPT you look on holiness, and see Him there? Perception tells you YOU are manifest in what you see. Behold the body, and you WILL believe that you are there. And every body that you look upon reminds you of yourself; YOUR sinfulness, YOUR evil, and, above all YOUR death. And would you not despise the one who tells you this, and seek HIS death instead? The message and the messenger ARE one. And you MUST see your brother as yourself. Framed in his body you will see YOUR sinfulness, wherein YOU stand condemned. Set in his holiness, the Christ in him proclaims HIMSELF as you.
Perception is a choice of what you want YOURSELF to be; the world you WANT to live in, and the state in which you think your mind will be content and satisfied. It chooses where you think your safety lies, AT YOUR DECISION. It reveals yourself to you, as YOU would have you be. And ALWAYS is it faithful to your purpose, from which it never separates, nor gives the slightest witness unto anything the purpose IN YOUR MIND upholdeth not. Perception is a PART of what it is your purpose to behold, for means and end are NEVER separate. And thus you learn what SEEMS to have a life APART has none.
YOU are the means for God. NOT separate, nor with a life apart from His. HIS Life is manifest in you who are His Son. Each aspect of Himself is framed in holiness and perfect purity, in love celestial and so complete It wishes ONLY that It may release ALL that It looks upon unto Itself. Its radiance shines through each body that It looks upon, and brushes ALL its darkness into light merely by looking PAST it TO the Light. The veil is lifted through Its gentleness, and NOTHING hides the face of Christ from its beholders. And BOTH of you stand there before Him now, to let HIM draw aside the veil that SEEMS to keep you separate and apart.
Since you believe that YOU are separate, Heaven presents itself to you as separate, too. NOT that it is the truth, but that the link that has been given you to JOIN the truth may reach to you through what you understand. Father and Son and Holy Spirit are as One, as all your brothers join as one in truth. Christ and His Father NEVER have been separate, and Christ abides within your understanding, in the part of you that SHARES His Father's Will. The Holy Spirit links the other part, the tiny, mad desire to be separate, different, and special, TO the Christ, to make the Oneness clear to what is REALLY One. In this world, this is not understood, but CAN be taught.
The Holy Spirit serves Christ's purpose in your mind, so that the aim of specialness CAN be corrected where the error lies. Because His purpose still is One with both the Father AND the Son, He KNOWS the Will of God, and what you REALLY will. But this is understood by mind PERCEIVED as one, AWARE that it is one, AND SO EXPERIENCED. It is the Holy Spirit's function to teach you HOW this Oneness is experienced; WHAT you must do that it can BE experienced; and WHERE you should go to do it. All this takes note of time and place AS IF they were discrete, for while YOU think that part of YOU is separate, the concept of a Oneness JOINED as one is meaningless.
It is apparent that a mind so split could NEVER be the teacher of the Oneness Which unites ALL things within Itself. And so what IS within this mind, and DOES unite all things together MUST be its teacher. Yet must It use the language which this mind can understand in the condition which it THINKS it is. And It must use all learning to transfer illusions TO the truth, taking all FALSE ideas of what you are, and leading you BEYOND them to the truth that IS beyond them. All this can very simply be reduced to this: What is the same can NOT be different, and what is One can NOT have separate parts.
THE MIRACLE DOES NOTHING. All it does is to UNdo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what HAS BEEN done. It does not add, but merely takes away. And what it takes away is long since gone, but, being kept in memory, APPEARS to have immediate effects. This world was over long ago. The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them, and loved them for a while. The miracle but shows the past is gone, and what has truly gone HAS no effects. REMEMBERING a cause can but produce ILLUSIONS of its presence, NOT effects.
All the effects of guilt are here no more. For guilt is over. In its passing went its consequences, left without a cause. Why would you cling to it in memory, if you did not DESIRE its effects? Remembering is as selective as perception, being its past tense. It is perception of the past, as if it were occurring NOW, and still were there to see. Memory, like perception, is a skill made up by you, to take the place of what God GAVE in your creation. And, like all the things you made, it can be used to serve ANOTHER purpose, and to be means for something ELSE. It can be used to heal, and NOT to hurt, if you so wish.
Nothing employed for healing represents an effort to do anything at all. It is a recognition that you HAVE no needs which mean that something must be DONE. It is an unselective memory, which is NOT used to INTERFERE with truth. All things the Holy Spirit can employ for healing have been given Him WITHOUT the content and the purposes for which they have been made. They are but skills WITHOUT an application. They AWAIT their use. They have NO dedication and NO aim.
Like any good teacher, He DOES know more than you know NOW, but He teaches only to make you equals. This is because you had ALREADY taught wrong, having believed what was not true. YOU DID NOT BELIEVE IN YOUR OWN PERFECTION. Could God teach you that you had made a split mind when He knows your mind only as whole?
What God DOES know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His Children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in time, but in eternity. God's extending outward, though not His completeness, was blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, "My Children sleep, and must be awakened."
How can you wake children better and more kindly than with a gentle Voice that will not frighten them, but will merely remind them that the night is over and the Light has come? You do not inform them that the nightmares which frightened them so badly were not real, because children BELIEVE in magic. You merely reassure them that they are safe NOW. Then you train them to RECOGNIZE THE DIFFERENCE between sleeping and waking, so that THEY will understand they need not be afraid of dreams. Then when bad dreams come, they will call on the Light THEMSELVES to dispel them.
A wise teacher teaches through approach, NOT avoidance. He does not emphasize what you must avoid to escape from harm as much as what you need to learn to have joy. This is true even of the world's teachers. Consider the confusion that a child would experience if he were told, "Do not do THIS because it might hurt you and make you unsafe, but if you do THAT you will escape from harm and be safe, and then you will not be afraid." All of this could be included in only three words: "Do only that." That simple statement is perfectly clear, easily understood, and very easily remembered.
The Holy Spirit NEVER itemizes errors, because He does not frighten children, and those who lack wisdom ARE children. But He ALWAYS answers their call, and His dependability makes THEM more certain. Children DO confuse fantasy and reality, and they ARE frightened because they do not know the difference.
The Holy Spirit makes NO distinction among dreams. He merely shines them away. His light is ALWAYS the call to awake, WHATEVER you may have been dreaming. Nothing lasting lies in dreams, and the Holy Spirit, shining with the light from God Himself, speaks only for what lasts forever.
When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that YOU will last forever. Many think that this is accomplished through death, but NOTHING is accomplished through death because death is nothing. EVERYTHING is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the Mind. The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life. If we share the same mind, YOU CAN OVERCOME DEATH BECAUSE I DID. Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not willing at all. Like any other impossible solution which the ego attempts, IT WILL NOT WORK.
God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist. The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into a learning device FOR you. Again, as always, it re-interprets what the ego uses as an argument FOR separation into an argument AGAINST it.
If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this. We have said that the Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION for miracles. This is because He ALWAYS tells you that ONLY the mind is real, because only the mind CAN BE SHARED. The body IS separate, and therefore CANNOT be part of you. To be of one mind is meaningful, but to be of one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body IS meaningless.
To the Holy Spirit THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES. This is FAMILIAR enough to you by now, but it has not yet become believable. Therefore, you do not understand it and cannot USE it. We have too much to accomplish on behalf of the Kingdom to let this crucial concept slip away. It is a real foundation stone of the thought system I teach and want YOU to teach. You cannot perform miracles without believing it, because it is a belief in perfect equality.
Only one equal gift CAN be offered to the equal Sons of God, and that is FULL APPRECIATION. Nothing more and nothing less. Without a range, order of difficulty IS meaningless, and there must BE no range in what you offer to each other. The Holy Spirit, which leads to God, translates communication into being, just as He ultimately translates perception into knowledge.
You DO NOT LOSE WHAT YOU COMMUNICATE. The ego uses the body for attack, for pleasure, and for pride. The insanity of this perception makes it a fearful one. The Holy Spirit sees it only as a means of COMMUNICATION. And because communicating IS sharing, it becomes communion. You might argue that fear as well as love can be communicated, and therefore can be shared. But this is not so real as it sounds. Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and attack always BREAKS communication, and therefore makes communion impossible.
Egos DO join together in temporary allegiance, but always for WHAT EACH ONE CAN GET SEPARATELY. The Holy Spirit communicates only WHAT EACH ONE CAN GIVE TO ALL. He never takes ANYTHING back, because He wants YOU to keep it. Therefore, His teaching begins with the lesson: To HAVE, GIVE all TO all.
This is a very preliminary step, and THE ONLY ONE YOU MUST TAKE YOURSELF. It is not even necessary that you COMPLETE the step yourself, but it IS necessary that you turn in that direction. Having willed to go that way, you place YOURSELF in charge of the journey, where you and ONLY you must remain.
This step APPEARS to exacerbate conflict rather than resolve it, because it is the BEGINNING step in reversing your perception and turning it right side up. This conflicts with the upside down perception which you have not yet abandoned, or the change in direction would not have been necessary. Some people remain at this step for a very long time, experiencing VERY acute conflict. Many try to accept the CONFLICT, rather than to take the next step toward its resolution. But having taken the first step, they WILL be helped. Having willed what they CANNOT complete alone, THEY ARE NO LONGER ALONE.
You, Helen, had taken this step, and because you believed in it, you taught it to Bill, who still believed in the solution of sleep. You were not consistent in teaching it, but you did so often enough to enable him to learn it. Once HE learned it, he could teach YOU how to become more consistently awake, and thus begin to waken HIMSELF. This placed him, too, in command of the journey. His recognition of the direction it must take was perfectly stated when he INSISTED ON COLLABORATION.
You, H., had taken a giant step INTO conflict, but Bill turned you both forwards TOWARD THE WAY OUT. The more he teaches this, the more he will learn it.
If sickness is separation, the will to heal and BE HEALED is the first step toward RECOGNIZING WHAT YOU TRULY WANT. Every ATTACK is a step AWAY from this, and every healing thought brings it closer. The Son of God HAS both Father and Son because he IS both Father and Son.
To unite having and being is only to unite your will with His, for He wills you HIMSELF. And you will yourself to HIM, because in your perfect understanding of Him, you KNOW there IS but One Will. But when you attack ANY part of God and His Kingdom, your understanding is NOT perfect, and what YOU will is therefore lost to you.
Healing thus becomes A LESSON IN UNDERSTANDING, and the more you practice it, the better teacher AND LEARNER you become. If you have DENIED truth, what better witnesses to its reality could you have, than those who have been healed BY it? But be sure to count yourself among them, for in your willingness to JOIN them is YOUR healing accomplished.
Every miracle which you accomplish speaks to you of the Fatherhood of God. Every healing thought which you ACCEPT, either FROM your brother or in your OWN mind, teaches you that you are God's Son. But in every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God's Fatherhood and your Sonship. And denial IS as total as love. You cannot deny PART of yourself, simply because the remainder will seem to be unintegrated, and therefore without meaning. And being without meaning TO YOU, you will not understand it. To deny meaning MUST be to fail to understand.
You can only heal yourself, for only God's Son NEEDS healing. He needs it because he does not understand himself, and therefore knows not what he does. Having forgotten his will, he does not know what he WANTS. Healing is a sign that HE WANTS TO MAKE WHOLE. And this willingness opens his OWN ears to the Voice of the Holy Spirit, Whose message IS wholeness. He will enable you to go far beyond the healing YOU would undertake, for beside your small willingness to make whole He will lay His Own COMPLETE Will and make YOURS whole. What can the Son of God NOT accomplish with the Fatherhood of God in him?
And yet the invitation must come from you, for you have surely learned that whom you invite as your guest WILL abide with you. The Holy Spirit cannot speak to an unwelcoming host, BECAUSE HE WILL NOT BE HEARD. The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice grows faint in alien company. He needs your protection, but only because your care is a sign that you WANT Him. Think like Him ever so slightly, and the little spark becomes a blazing light that fills your mind so that He becomes your only Guest.
Whenever you ask the ego to enter, you lessen His welcome. HE will remain, but YOU have allied yourself AGAINST Him. Whatever journey you choose to take, He will go with you, waiting. You can safely trust His patience, for He CANNOT leave a part of God. But you will far more than patience. You will never rest until you know your function AND FULFILL IT, for only in this can your will and your Father's be wholly joined. To HAVE Him is to be LIKE Him, and He has GIVEN Himself to you.
You who have God MUST be as God, for HIS function became YOURS with His gift. Invite this knowledge back into your minds, and let nothing that will obscure it enter. The Guest whom God sent you will teach you how to do this, if you but recognize the little spark, and are WILLING TO LET IT GROW. YOUR willingness need not be perfect, because His IS. If you will merely offer Him a little place, He will lighten it so much, that you will gladly extend it. And by THIS extending, you will begin to remember Creation.
Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God? You will accept only whom YOU invite. You are free to determine who shall be your guest, and how long he shall remain with you. But this is not REAL freedom, for it depends on how you see it. For the Holy Spirit is THERE, although He cannot help you without your invitation, and the ego is nothing, whether you invite it in or not. Real freedom depends on welcoming REALITY, and of your guests only He IS real. Know, then, Who abides with you, merely by recognizing WHAT IS ALREADY THERE, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you.
Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes which will not disappear if seen aright. For pain proclaims God cruel. How could it be real in any form? It witnesses to God the Father's hatred of His Son, the sinfulness He sees in him, and His insane desire for revenge and death.
Can such projections be attested to? Can they be anything but wholly false? Pain is but witness to the Son's mistakes in what he thinks he is. It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed; for attack on what is wholly unassailable. It is a nightmare of abandonment by an Eternal Love Which could not leave the Son whom It created out of love.
Pain is a sign illusions reign in place of truth. It demonstrates God is denied, confused with fear, perceived as mad and seen as traitor to Himself. If God is real there is no pain. If pain is real there is no God. For vengeance is not part of love, and fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain.
Peace to such foolishness! The time has come to laugh at such insane ideas. There is no need to think of them as savage crimes or secret sins with weighty consequence. Who but a madman could conceive of them as cause of anything? Their witness, pain, is mad as they, and no more to be feared than the insane illusions which it shields and tries to demonstrate must still be true.
It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness.
My holy brothers, think of this awhile; the world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents your thoughts. And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind, and choose the joy of God as what you really want. Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable forever and forever. And would you deny a little corner of your mind its own inheritance, and keep it as a hospital for pain, a sickly place where living things must come at last to die?
The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect it cannot make effects. As an illusion it is what you will. Your idle wishes represent its pains. Your strange desires bring it evil dreams. Your thoughts of death envelop it in fear, while in your kind forgiveness does it live.
Pain is the thought of evil taking form, and working havoc in your holy mind. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. In pain is God denied the Son He loves. In pain does fear appear to triumph over love, and time replace eternity and Heaven. And the world becomes a cruel and a bitter place, where sorrow rules and little joys give way before the onslaught of the savage pain that waits to end all joy in misery.
Lay down your arms and come without defense into the quiet place where Heaven's peace holds all things still at last. Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. Let no attack enter with you. Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness.
Here will you understand there is no pain. Here does the joy of God belong to you. This is the day when it is given you to realize the lesson which contains all of salvation's power. It is this: Pain is illusion; joy reality. Pain is but sleep; joy is awakening. Pain is deception; joy alone is truth.
And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; we choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven. Let our gratitude unto our Teacher fill our hearts as we are free to choose our joy instead of pain, our holiness in place of sin, the peace of God instead of conflict, and the light of Heaven for the darkness of the world.
God asks for nothing, and His Son, like Him, need ask for nothing. For there is no lack in him. An empty space, a little gap, would BE a lack. And it is only there that he could want for something he has not. A space where God is not, a gap between the Father and the Son is NOT the Will of either, who have promised to be One. God's promise is a promise to HIMSELF, and there is no-one who could BE untrue to what He wills as part of what He IS. The promise that there IS no gap between Himself and what He is cannot BE false. What will can come between what MUST be One, and in Whose Wholeness there can BE no gaps?
The beautiful relationship you have with all your brothers is a part of you BECAUSE it is a part of God Himself. Are you not sick if you deny yourself your wholeness and your health, the Source of help, the call to healing and the Call to heal? Your Savior waits for healing, and the world waits with him. Nor are YOU apart from it. For healing will be one, or not at all, its oneness being where the healing LIES. What could CORRECT for separation but its opposite? There is no middle ground, in ANY aspect of salvation. You accept it wholly, or accept it not. What is unseparated must be JOINED. And what is joined cannot BE separate.
Either there IS a gap between you and your brother, or you ARE as one. There is no in between, no other choice, and no allegiance to be split BETWEEN the two. A split allegiance is but faithlessness to both, and merely sets you spinning round, to grasp uncertainly at any straw that seems to hold some promise of relief. Yet who can build his home upon a straw, and count on it as shelter from the wind? The body can be made a home like this BECAUSE it lacks foundation in the truth. And yet, BECAUSE it does, it can be seen as NOT your home, but merely as an aid to help you reach the home where God abides.
With THIS as purpose IS the body healed. It is NOT used to witness to the dream of separation and disease. Nor is it idly blamed for what it did not do. It serves to help the HEALING of God's Son, and, for THIS purpose, it cannot BE sick. It will not join a purpose not your own, and you have chosen that it NOT be sick. All miracles are based upon this choice, and GIVEN you the instant it is made. No forms of sickness are immune, because the choice cannot be MADE in terms of form. The choice of SICKNESS seems to be a form, yet it is one, as is its opposite. And YOU are sick or well, accordingly.
But NEVER you alone. This world is but the dream that you can BE alone, and think without affecting those apart from you. To be alone MUST mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot BUT be sick. This SEEMS to prove that you must be APART. Yet all it means is that you tried to keep a promise to be true to faithlessness. Yet faithlessness IS sickness. It is like the house upon a straw. It SEEMS to be quite solid and substantial IN ITSELF. But its stability cannot be judged APART from its foundation. If it rests on straws, there is no need to bar the door and lock the windows, and make fast the bolts. The wind WILL topple it, and rain WILL come, and carry it into oblivion.
What is the SENSE in seeking to be safe in what was MADE for danger and for fear? Why burden it with further locks and chains and heavy anchors, when its weakness lies, NOT in itself, but in the frailty of the little gap of nothingness whereon it stands? What CAN be safe which rests upon a shadow? Would you build your home upon what WILL collapse beneath a feather's weight? Your home is built upon your brother's health; upon his happiness, his sinlessness, and everything his Father promised him. No secret promise you have made INSTEAD has shaken the Foundation of his home.
The winds will blow upon it and the rain will beat against it, but with NO effect. The world will wash away, and yet this house will stand forever, for its strength lies NOT within itself alone. It is an ark of safety, resting on God's promise, that His Son is safe forever in Himself. What gap can interpose itself between the safety of this shelter and its Source? From here, the body can be seen as what it is, and neither less nor more in worth than the extent to which it can be used to liberate God's Son unto his home. And, with this holy purpose, is it made a home of holiness a little while, because it shares your Father's Will with You.
In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved. In conflict there can BE no answer and no resolution. For its PURPOSE is to make NO resolution possible, and to ensure NO answer will be plain. A problem set in conflict HAS no answer, for it is seen in different ways. And what would be an answer from one point of view is NOT an answer in another light. You ARE in conflict. Thus it must be clear you cannot answer anything at all, for conflict HAS no limited effects. Yet, if God gave an Answer, there MUST be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what He wills already has been done.
Thus it MUST be that time is not involved, and every problem can be answered now. Yet it must also be that in your state of mind, solution is impossible. Therefore, God must have given you a way of reaching to ANOTHER state of mind, in which the answer is ALREADY THERE. Such is the Holy Instant. It is here that ALL your problems should be brought and LEFT. Here they BELONG, for here THEIR answer is. And where its answer is, a problem MUST be simple and be easily resolved. It MUST be pointless to attempt to solve a problem where the answer cannot be. Yet, just as surely, it MUST be resolved, if it is brought to where the answer IS.
Attempt to solve NO problems but within the Holy Instant's surety. For there the problem WILL be answered and resolved. Outside, there will be no solution, for there IS no answer there that could be found. Nowhere outside a single simple question is ever ASKED. The world can ONLY ask a double question, with MANY answers, none of which will do. It does not ask a question to BE answered, but only to restate its point of view. All questions asked within this world are but a way of LOOKING, NOT a question asked. A question asked in hate cannot be answered, because it IS an answer in itself. A double question asks and answers, both attesting the same thing, in different form.
The world asks but one question. It is this: "Of these illusions, which of them are true? Which ones establish peace and offer joy? And which can bring escape from all the pain of which this world is made?" Whatever form the question takes, its purpose is the same. It asks but to ESTABLISH sin is real, and answers in the form of preference. "Which sin do you prefer?" That is the one that you should choose. The OTHERS are not true. What can the body get that you would want the most of all? It is your servant and your friend. But tell it what you want, and it will serve you lovingly and well. And this is NOT a question, for it TELLS you WHAT you want, and WHERE to go to ask for it. It leaves no room to question its beliefs, except that what it states takes question's FORM.
A pseudo-question has no answer. It DICTATES the answer, even as it asks. Thus is all questioning within the world a form of propaganda for itself. Just as the body's witnesses are but the senses from WITHIN itself, so are the answers to the questions of the world contained within the questions. Where answers represent the QUESTIONS they add nothing new, and nothing has been learned. An HONEST question is a learning tool which asks for something that you do NOT know. It does NOT set conditions for response, but merely asks what the RESPONSE should be. And no-one in a conflict state is free to ASK this question, for he does not WANT an honest answer, where the conflict ENDS.
Only within the Holy Instant can an honest question honestly be asked. And from the meaning of the QUESTION does the meaningfulness of the answer come. Here is it possible to separate your wishes FROM the answer, so it can be GIVEN you, and also be RECEIVED. The answer is provided everywhere, but it is only here it can be HEARD. An honest answer asks NO sacrifice, because it answers questions truly asked. The questions of the world but ask of whom is sacrifice demanded, asking NOT if sacrifice is meaningful at all. And so, UNLESS the answer tells "of whom," it will remain unrecognized, unheard, and thus the QUESTION is preserved intact, because it gave the answer to ITSELF.
The Holy Instant is the interval in which the mind is still enough to hear an answer that is NOT entailed within the question asked. It offers something new and DIFFERENT from the question. How COULD it be answered, if it but repeats itself. Therefore, attempt to solve NO problem in a world from which the answer has been barred. But bring the problem to the only place which holds the answer lovingly FOR you. Here are the answers which will SOLVE your problems, because they stand APART from them, and see what CAN be answered; what the QUESTION is. Within the world, the answers merely raise ANOTHER question, though they leave the first unanswered. In the holy instant, you can bring the question TO the answer, and receive the answer that was MADE for you.
It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing. You think you think them, and so you think you see them. This is how your "seeing" was made. This is the function you have given your body's eyes. It is not seeing. It is image-making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions.
This introductory idea to the process of image-making which you call seeing will not have much meaning for you. You will begin to understand it when you have seen little edges of light around the same familiar objects which you see now. That is the beginning of real vision. You can be certain that real vision will come quickly when this has occurred.
As we go along, you may have many "light episodes." They may take many different forms, some of them quite unexpected. Do not be afraid of them. They are signs that you are opening your eyes at last. They will not persist, because they merely symbolize true perception, and they are not related to knowledge. These exercises will not reveal knowledge to you. But they will prepare the way to it.
In practicing the idea for today, repeat it first to yourself, and then apply it to whatever you see around you, using its name and letting your eyes rest on it as you say:
"This ____ is an image which I have made."
"That ____ is an image which I have made."
It is not necessary to include a large number of specific subjects for the application of today's idea. It is necessary, however, to continue to look at each subject while you repeat the idea to yourself. The idea should be repeated quite slowly each time.
Although you will obviously not be able to apply the idea to very many things during the minute or so of practice that is recommended, try to make the selection as random as possible. Less than a minute will do for the practice periods, if you begin to feel uneasy. Do not have more than three application periods for today's idea unless you feel completely comfortable with it, and do not exceed four.
Those whom you PERCEIVE as opponents are PART of your peace, which YOU are giving up by attacking them. How can you have what YOU give up? You SHARE to have, but you do NOT give it up yourselves. When you GIVE UP peace, you are EXCLUDING yourself FROM it. This is a condition which is so ALIEN to the Kingdom that you CANNOT understand the state which prevails WITHIN it.
Your past learning MUST have taught you the wrong things, simply because it has not made you happy. On this basis alone, its value should be questioned. If learning aims at CHANGE, and that is ALWAYS its purpose, are you satisfied with the changes YOURS has brought you? Dissatisfaction with the learning outcome MUST be a sign of learning failure, because it means that you did NOT get what you WANT.
The curriculum of the Atonement IS the opposite of the curriculum you have established for yourselves, but SO IS ITS OUTCOME. If the outcome of yours has made you unhappy, and if you WANT a different outcome, a change in the curriculum is obviously necessary.
The first change that MUST be introduced is a change in DIRECTION. A meaningful curriculum CANNOT be inconsistent. If it is planned by two teachers, each believing in diametrically opposed ideas, it CANNOT be integrated. If it is carried out by these two teachers simultaneously, EACH ONE MERELY INTERFERES WITH THE OTHER. This leads to fluctuation, but NOT to change. The volatile HAVE no direction. They cannot choose one, because they CANNOT relinquish the others EVEN IF THE OTHERS DO NOT EXIST. Their conflicted curriculum teaches them that ALL directions exist, and gives them no RATIONALE for choice.
The total senselessness of such a curriculum must be fully recognized before a real change in direction becomes possible. You CANNOT learn simultaneously from two teachers who are in TOTAL DISAGREEMENT ABOUT EVERYTHING. Their joint curriculum presents an IMPOSSIBLE learning task. They are teaching you ENTIRELY different things in ENTIRELY different ways, which WOULD be possible except for the crucial fact that both are teaching you about YOURSELF. Your REALITY is unaffected by both. But if you LISTEN to both, your mind will split on WHAT YOUR REALITY IS.
Healing involves an understanding of what the illusion of sickness is for. Healing is impossible without this.
Healing is accomplished the instant the sufferer no longer sees any value in pain. Who would choose suffering unless he thought it brought him something, and something of value to him? He must think it is a small price to pay for something of greater worth. For sickness is an election; a decision. It is the choice of weakness, in the mistaken conviction that it is strength. When this occurs, real strength is seen as threat and health as danger. Sickness is a method, conceived in madness, for placing God's Son on his Father's throne. God is seen as outside, fierce and powerful, eager to keep all power for Himself. Only by his death can He be conquered by His Son.
And what, in this insane conviction, does healing stand for? It symbolizes the defeat of God's Son and the triumph of his Father over him. It represents the ultimate defiance in a direct form which the Son of God is forced to recognize. It stands for all that he would hide from himself to protect his life. If he is healed, he is responsible for his thoughts. And if he is responsible for his thoughts he will be killed, to prove to him how weak and pitiful he is. But if he chooses death himself, his weakness is his strength. Now has he given himself what God would give to him, and thus entirely usurped the throne of his Creator.
Healing must occur in exact proportion in which the valuelessness of sickness is recognized. One need but say, "There is no gain at all to me in this," and he is healed. But to say this one must first recognize certain facts. First, it is obvious that decisions are of the mind, not of the body. If sickness is but a faulty problem-solving approach, it is a decision. And if it is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it. The resistance to recognizing this is enormous, because the existence of the world as we perceive it depends on the body being the decision-maker. Terms like "instincts," "reflexes" and the like represent attempts to endow the body with non-mental motivators. Actually, such terms merely state or describe the problem. They do not answer it.
The acceptance of sickness as a decision of the mind, for a purpose for which it would use the body, is the basis of healing. And this is so for healing in all forms. A patient decides that this is so, and he recovers. If he decides against recovery he will not be healed. Who is the physician? Only the mind of the patient himself. The outcome is what he decides that it is. Special agents seem to be ministering to him, yet they but give form to his own choice. He chooses them to bring tangible form to his desires. And it is this they do, and nothing else. They are not actually needed at all. The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, "I have no use for this." There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once.
What is the single requisite for this shift in perception? It is simply this; the recognition that sickness is of the mind, and has nothing to do with the body. What does this recognition "cost"? It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea.
With this idea is pain forever gone. But with this idea goes also all confusion about creation. Does not this follow of necessity? Place cause and effect in their true sequence in one respect, and the learning will generalize and transform the world. The transfer value of one true idea has no end nor limit. The final outcome of this lesson is the remembrance of God. What do guilt and sickness, pain, disaster and all suffering mean now? Having no purpose, they are gone. And with them also go all the effects they seemed to cause. Cause and effect but replicate creation. Seen in their proper perspective, without distortion and without fear, they re-establish Heaven.
If the patient must change his mind in order to be healed, what does the teacher of God do? Can he change the patient's mind for him? Certainly not. For those already willing to change their mind he has no function except to rejoice with them, for they have become teachers of God with him. He has, however, a more specific function for those who do not understand what healing is. These patients do not realize they have chosen sickness. On the contrary, they believe that sickness has chosen them. Nor are they open-minded on this point. The body tells them what to do and they obey. They have no idea how insane this concept is. If they even suspected it they would be healed. Yet they suspect nothing. To them the separation is quite real.
To them God's teachers come to represent another choice which they had forgotten. The simple presence of a teacher of God is a reminder. Their thoughts ask for the right to question what the patient has accepted is true. As God's messengers, they are the symbols of salvation. They ask the patient for forgiveness for God's Son in his own Name. They stand for the Alternative. With God's Word in their minds they come in benediction, not to heal the sick but to remind them of the remedy God has already given them. It is not their hands that heal. It is not their voice that speaks the Word of God. They merely give what has been given them. Very gently they call to their brothers to turn away from death. Behold, you Son of God, what life can offer you. Would you choose sickness in place of this?
Not once do the advanced teachers of God consider the forms of sickness in which their brother believes. To do this is to forget that all of them have the same purpose and therefore are not really different. They seek for God's Voice in this brother who would so deceive himself as to believe God's Son can suffer. And they remind him that he has not made himself, and must remain as God created him. They recognize illusions can have no effect. The truth in their minds reaches out to the truth in the minds of their brothers, so that illusions are not reinforced. They are thus brought to truth, and truth is not brought to them. So are they dispelled, not by the will of another, but by the union of the One Will with Itself. And this is the function of God's teachers; to see no will as separate from their own, nor theirs as separate from God's.
6) "I am upset because I see what is not there."
Reality is never frightening. It is impossible that it could upset me. Reality brings only perfect peace. When I am upset, it is always because I have replaced reality with illusions which I made up. The illusions are upsetting because I have given them reality, and thus regard reality as an illusion. Nothing in God's creation is affected in any way by this confusion of mine. I am always upset by nothing.
7) "I see only the past."
As I look about, I condemn the world I look upon. I call this seeing. I hold the past against everyone and everything, making them my "enemies." When I have forgiven myself and remembered who I am, I will bless everyone and everything I see. There will be no past, and therefore no "enemies." And I will look with God on all that I failed to see before.
8) "My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts."
I see only my own thoughts, and my mind is preoccupied with the past. What, then, can I see as it is? Let me remember that I look on the past to prevent the present from dawning on my mind. Let me understand that I am trying to use time against God. Let me learn to give the past away, realizing that in so doing I am giving up nothing.
9) "I see nothing as it is now."
If I see nothing as it is now, it can truly be said that I see nothing. I can see only what is now. The choice is not whether to see the past or the present: it is merely whether to see or not. What I have chosen to see has cost me vision. Now I would choose again, that I may see.
10) "My thoughts do not mean anything."
I have no private thoughts. Yet it is only private thoughts of which I am aware. What can these thoughts mean? They do not exist, and so they mean nothing. Yet my mind is part of creation and part of its Creator. Would I not rather join the thinking of the universe than to obscure all that is really mine with my pitiful and meaningless "private" thoughts?
No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach which carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear.
Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self deception. And like all the rest its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself.
Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done.
Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? All this cannot be done unconsciously. But afterwards your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent; a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by your self.
It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your "reality" which makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control. But what you have forgot can be remembered, given willingness to reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded by oblivion. Your not remembering is but the sign that this decision still remains in force, as far as your desires are concerned. Mistake this not for fact. Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. They aim at doing this, and this they seem to do.
Every defense takes fragments of the whole, assembles them without regard to all their true relationships, and thus constructs illusions of a whole which is not there. It is this process which imposes threat, and not whatever outcome may result. When parts are wrested from the whole and seen as separate and as wholes within themselves, they become symbols standing for attack upon the whole, successful in effect, and never to be seen as whole again. And yet you have forgotten that they stand but for your own decision of what should be real, to take the place of what is real.
Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay when, for an instant, truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away, and threaten your establishments no more. How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth.
You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be.
Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than Everlasting Life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will. His Son is dust, the Father incomplete, and chaos sits in triumph on His throne.
Such is your planning for your own defense. And you believe that Heaven quails before such mad attacks as these, with God made blind by your illusions, truth turned into lies, and all the universe made slaves to laws which your defenses would impose on it. Yet who believes illusions but the one who made them up? Who else can see them and react to them as if they were the truth?
God knows not of your plans to change His Will. The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which you thought to govern it. And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life to death. You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin.
Such is the simple truth. It does not make appeal to might nor triumph. It does not command obedience, nor seek to prove how pitiful and futile your attempts to plan defenses which would alter it. It merely wants to give you happiness, for such its purpose is. Perhaps it sighs a little when you throw away its gifts, and yet it knows with perfect certainty that what God wills for you must be received.
It is this fact which demonstrates that time is an illusion. For it lets you think what God has given you is not the truth right now, as it must be. The Thoughts of God are quite apart from time. For time is but another meaningless defense you made against the truth. Yet what God wills is here, and you remain as He created you.
Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where it has been allowed to enter. And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms and cease to play with folly. It is found at any time; today, if you will choose to practice giving welcome to the truth.
This is our aim today. And we will give a quarter of an hour twice to ask the truth to come to us and set us free. And truth will come, for it has never been apart from us. It merely waits for just this invitation which we give today. We introduce it with a healing prayer to help us rise above defensiveness, and let the truth be as it has always been:
"Sickness is a defense against the truth.
I will accept the truth of what I am,
And let my mind be wholly healed today."
Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey.
Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. And you will recognize you practiced well by this; the body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains, and nothing more.
Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.
Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:
"I have forgotten what I really am,
For I mistook my body for myself.
Sickness is a defense against the truth,
But I am not a body. And my mind
Cannot attack. So I can not be sick."
This idea is particularly difficult to believe at first. Yet it is the rationale for all of the preceding ones.
It is the reason why nothing that you see means anything. It is the reason why you have given everything you see all the meaning that it has for you. It is the reason why you do not understand anything you see.
It is the reason why your thoughts do not mean anything, and why they are like the things you see.
It is the reason why you are never upset for the reason you think.
It is the reason why you are upset because you see something that is not there.
Old ideas about time are very difficult to change, because everything you believe is rooted in time, and depends on your not learning these new ideas about it. Yet that is precisely why you need new ideas about time. This first time idea is not really so strange as it may sound at first. Look at a cup, for example.
Do you see a cup, or are you merely reviewing your past experiences of picking up a cup, being thirsty, drinking from a cup, feeling the rim of a cup against your lips, having breakfast, and so on? Are not your aesthetic reactions to the cup, too, based on past experiences? How else would you know whether or not this kind of cup will break if you drop it? What do you know about this cup except what you learned in the past? You would have no idea what this cup is except for your past learning. Do you, then, really see it?
Look about you. This is equally true of whatever you look at. Acknowledge this by applying the idea for today indiscriminately to whatever catches your eye. For example:
"I see only the past in this pencil."
"I see only the past in this shoe."
"I see only the past in this hand."
"I see only the past in that body."
"I see only the past in that face."
Do not linger over any one thing in particular, but remember to omit nothing specifically. Glance briefly at each subject, and then move on to the next.
Today's idea is the introduction to your declaration of release. Again, the idea should be applied to both the world you see without and the world you see within. In applying the idea, we will use a form of practice which will be used more and more, with changes as indicated. Generally speaking, the form includes two aspects, one in which you apply the idea on a more sustained basis, and the other consisting of frequent applications of the idea throughout the day.
Two longer periods of practice with the idea for today are needed, one in the morning and one at night. Three to five minutes for each of them is recommended. During that time, look about you slowly while repeating the idea two or three times. Then close your eyes and apply the same idea to your inner world. You will escape from both together, for the inner is the cause of the outer.
As you survey your inner world, merely let whatever thoughts cross your mind come into your awareness, each to be considered for a moment and then replaced by the next. Try not to establish any thought of hierarchy among them. Watch them come and go as dispassionately as possible. Do not dwell on any one in particular, but try to let the stream move on evenly and calmly, without any special investment on your part. As you sit and quietly watch your thoughts, repeat today's idea to yourself as often as you care to, but with no sense of hurry.
In addition, repeat the idea for today as often as possible during the day. Remind yourself that you are making a declaration of independence in the name of your own freedom. And in your freedom lies the freedom of the world.
The idea for today is a particularly useful one to use as a response to any form of temptation. It is a declaration that you will not yield to it and put yourself in bondage.
The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing. To invest in something WITHOUT profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost TO YOU is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality, by DENYING YOURS, and gives you nothing in return. You CANNOT sell your Soul, but you CAN sell your AWARENESS of it.
You cannot perceive the soul, but you will not KNOW it while you perceive anything ELSE as more valuable. The Holy Spirit is your strength because He perceives nothing BUT your soul AS YOU. He is perfectly aware that you do NOT know yourselves, and perfectly aware of how to teach you what you are. BECAUSE He loves you, He will gladly teach you what He loves, for He wills to share it. Remembering you always, He cannot let you forget your worth. For the Father never ceases to remind Him of His Son, and He never ceases to remind His Son of the Father. God is in your memory BECAUSE of Him.
You CHOSE to forget your Father, but you did NOT will to do so. And THEREFORE, you CAN decide otherwise. As it was MY decision, so is it YOURS. YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself, but yours IS in you. As self value comes from self EXTENSION, so does the PERCEPTION of self value come from the projection of loving thoughts outward.
Make the world real unto YOURSELF, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and so it BELONGS to you. Correction is for all who cannot see. To open the eyes of the blind is the Holy Spirit's mission, for He knows that they have not LOST their vision, but merely sleep. He would awaken them from the sleep of forgetting, to the remembering of God. Christ's eyes are open, and He will look upon whatever you see with love - if you accept His vision as yours.
The Holy Spirit keeps the vision of Christ for every Son of God who sleeps. In His sight, the Son of God is perfect, and He longs to share His vision WITH you. He will SHOW you the real world, because God GAVE you Heaven. Through Him, your Father calls His Son to remember. The awakening of His Son begins with his investment in the REAL world, and BY this, he will learn to REinvest in HIMSELF. For reality is one with the Father AND the Son, and the Holy Spirit blesses the real world in Their Name.
When you have seen this real world, as you will surely do, you WILL remember us. But you must learn the cost of sleeping, AND REFUSE TO PAY IT. Only then will you decide to awake. And then the real world will spring to your sight, for Christ has never slept. He is waiting to be seen, for He has never lost sight of YOU. He looks quietly on the real world, which He would SHARE with you, because He knows of the Father's love for Him. And knowing this, He would give you what is yours.
In perfect peace, He waits for you at His Father's altar, holding out the Father's love to you, in the quiet light of the Holy Spirit's blessing. For the Holy Spirit will lead everyone home to his Father, where Christ waits as his Self. Every Child of God is one in Christ, for his Being is in Christ, as Christ's is in God. Christ's love for you is His love for His Father, which He knows because He knows His Father's love for Him. When the Holy Spirit has at last led you to Christ, at the altar to His Father, perception fuses into knowledge, because perception has become so holy that its transfer to Holiness is merely its natural extension.
Love transfers to love without ANY interference, for the situations are identical. Only the ABILITY to make this transfer is the product of learning. As you perceive more and more common elements in ALL situations, the transfer of your training, under the Holy Spirit's guidance increases and becomes generalized. Gradually, you learn to apply it to everyone and everything, for its applicability IS universal. When this has been accomplished, perception and knowledge have become so similar that they share the unification of the Laws of God. What is One cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial of the separation IS the reinstatement of knowledge.
At the altar of God, the holy perception of God's Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it, and the Spirit of God's Son shines in the Mind of the Father, and becomes one with it. Very gently does God shine upon Himself, loving the extension of Himself which is His Son. The world has no purpose, as it blends into the Purpose of God. For the real world has slipped quietly into Heaven, where everything eternal in it has always been. There, the Redeemer and the redeemed join in perfect love of God, and of each other. Heaven is your home, and being in God, it must ALSO be in you.
In this world, God's Son comes closest to himself in a holy relationship. There he begins to find the certainty his Father has in him. And there he finds his function of restoring his Father's laws to what was held OUTSIDE them, and finding what was lost. Only in time can anything BE lost, but never lost forever. So do the parts of God's Son gradually join in time, and with each joining is the end of time brought nearer. Each miracle of joining is a mighty herald of eternity. No-one who has a single purpose, unified and sure, can BE afraid. No-one who SHARES his purpose with him can NOT be one with him.
Each herald of eternity sings of the end of sin and fear. Each speaks in time of what is far BEYOND it. Two voices, raised together, call to the hearts of everyone, and let them beat as one. And in that single heart beat is the unity of love proclaimed and given welcome. Peace to your holy relationship, which has the power to hold the unity of the Son of God together. You give to one another for EVERYONE. And in your gift is everyone made glad. Forget not Who has given YOU the gifts you give. And through your NOT forgetting this, will you remember Who gave the gifts to Him to give to you.
It is impossible to over-estimate your brother's value. Only the ego does this, but all it means is that it WANTS the other for ITSELF, and therefore values him too little. What is inestimable clearly cannot BE evaluated. Do you recognize the fear that rises from the meaningless attempt to judge what lies so far BEYOND your judgment you cannot even SEE it? Judge not what is invisible to you, or you will NEVER see it. But wait in patience for its coming. It will be GIVEN you to see your brother's worth, when all you WANT for him is peace. And what you want for HIM, you will receive.
How can you estimate the worth of him who offers peace to you? What would you want EXCEPT his offering? His worth has been established by his Father, and you will RECOGNIZE it as you receive his Father's gift through him. What is in him will shine so brightly in your grateful vision, that you will merely love him, and be glad. You will not think to judge him. Who would SEE the face of Christ, and yet insist that judgment still has meaning? For this insistence is of those who do NOT see. Vision OR judgment is your choice, but never BOTH of these.
Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function. For minds NEED not the body to communicate. The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship. And while you look upon each other thus, the means and end have NOT been brought in line. Why should it take so many holy instants to let this be accomplished, when one would do? There IS but one. The little breath of eternity that runs through time like golden light is all the same. Nothing before it; nothing afterwards.
You look upon each holy instant as a DIFFERENT point in time. IT NEVER CHANGES. All that it ever held or will ever hold is here right now. The past takes nothing FROM it, and the future will ADD no more. Here, then, is EVERYTHING. Here is the loveliness of your relationship, with means and ends in perfect harmony ALREADY. Here is the perfect faith that you will one day offer to each other, ALREADY offered you. And here the limitless forgiveness you will give each other is ALREADY given; the face of Christ you yet will look upon ALREADY seen.
Can you EVALUATE the giver of a gift like this? Would you EXCHANGE this gift for ANY other? This gift returns the laws of God to your remembrance. And merely BY remembering them, the laws that held you prisoner to pain and death MUST be forgotten. This is no gift your brother's BODY offers you. The veil that hides the gift hides him as well. He IS the gift, and yet he knows it not. No more do you. And yet have faith that He Who sees the gift in BOTH of you, will offer and receive it for you BOTH. And through His vision will YOU see it, and through His understanding RECOGNIZE it, and love it as your own.
Be comforted, and feel the Holy Spirit watching over you, in love and perfect confidence in what He sees. He knows the Son of God. And shares his Father's certainty the universe rests in his gentle hands in safety and in peace. Let us consider now what he must learn, to SHARE his Father's confidence in him. What IS he, that the Creator of the universe should offer it to him, and KNOW it rests in safety? He looks upon himself not as his Father knows him. And yet it is impossible the confidence of God should be misplaced.
There are not different kinds of life, for life is like the truth. It does not have degrees. It is the one condition in which all that God created share. Like all His Thoughts, it has no opposite. There is no death because what God created shares His Life. There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist. There is no death because the Father and the Son are One.
In this world there appears to be a state that is life's opposite. You call it death. Yet we have learned that the idea of death takes many forms. It is the one idea which underlies all feelings that are not supremely happy. It is the alarm to which you give response of any kind that is not perfect joy. All sorrow, loss, anxiety and suffering and pain, even a little sigh of weariness, a slight discomfort or the merest frown, acknowledge death. And thus deny you live.
You think that death is of the body. Yet it is but an idea, irrelevant to what is seen as physical. A thought is in the mind. It can be then applied as mind directs it. But its origin is where it must be changed, if change occurs. Ideas leave not their source. The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God.
Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator. It is the belief conditions change, emotions alternate because of causes you cannot control, you did not make, and you can never change. It is the fixed belief ideas can leave their source, and take on qualities the source does not contain, becoming different from their own origin, apart from it in kind as well as distance, time, and form.
Death cannot come from life. Ideas remain united to their source. They can extend all that their source contains. In that they can go far beyond themselves. But they can not give birth to what was never given them. As they are made, so will their making be. As they were born, so will they then give birth. And where they come from, there will they return.
The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist, because it has no source. For mind creates all things that are, and cannot give them attributes it lacks, nor change its own eternal, mindful state. It cannot make the physical. What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep.
The opposite of life can only be another form of life. As such, it can be reconciled with what created it, because it is not opposite in truth. Its form may change; it may appear to be what it is not. Yet mind is mind awake or sleeping. It is not its opposite in anything created, nor in what it seems to make when it believes it sleeps.
God creates only mind awake. He does not sleep, and His creations cannot share what He gives not, nor make conditions which He does not share with them. The thought of death is not the opposite to thoughts of life. Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly but yet within Themselves, for They are everywhere.
What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was.
Let us today be children of the truth, and not deny our holy heritage. Our life is not as we imagine it. Who changes life because he shuts his eyes, or makes himself what he is not because he sleeps and sees in dreams an opposite to what he is? We will not ask for death in any form today. Nor will we let imagined opposites to life abide even an instant where the Thought of Life Eternal has been set by God Himself.
His holy home we strive to keep today as He established it, and wills it be forever and forever. He is Lord of what we think today. And in His Thoughts, Which have no opposite, we understand there is one life, and that we share with Him; with all creation, with their thoughts as well, whom He created in a Unity of life which cannot separate in death and leave the Source of Life from where It came.
We share our life because we have one Source, a Source from Which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect. As we were, so are we now and will forever be. A sleeping mind must waken as it sees its own perfection mirroring the Lord of Life so perfectly it fades into what is reflected there. And now it is no more a mere reflection. It becomes the thing reflected, and the light which makes reflection possible. No vision now is needed. For the wakened mind is one that knows its Source, its Self, its Holiness.
The idea for today is a beginning step in dispelling the belief that your thoughts have no effect. Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact. Thoughts are not big or little; powerful or weak. They are merely true or false. Those which are true create their own likeness. Those which are false make theirs.
There is no more self-contradictory concept than that of "idle thoughts." What gives rise to the perception of a whole world can hardly be called idle. Every thought you have contributes to truth or to illusion; either it extends the truth or it multiplies illusions. You can indeed multiply nothing, but you will not extend it by doing so.
In addition to never being idle, salvation requires that you recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war; either love or fear. A neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible. There is such a temptation to dismiss fear thoughts as unimportant, trivial, and not worth bothering about that it is essential you recognize them all as equally destructive but equally unreal. We will practice this idea in many forms before you really understand it.
In applying the idea for today, search your mind for a minute or so, with eyes closed, and actively seek not to overlook any "little" thought which tends to elude the search. This is quite difficult until you get used to it. You will find that it is still hard for you not to make artificial distinctions. Every thought that occurs to you, regardless of the quality which you assign to it, is a suitable subject for applying today's idea.
In the practice periods, first repeat the idea, and then as each one crosses your mind, hold it in awareness while you tell yourself:
"This thought about ____ is not a neutral thought."
"That thought about ____ is not a neutral thought."
As usual, use today's idea whenever you are aware of a particular thought which arouses uneasiness. The following form is suggested for this purpose:
"This thought about ____ is not a neutral thought, because I have no neutral thoughts."
Four or five practice periods are recommended, if you find them relatively effortless. If strain is experienced, three will be enough. The length of the exercise period should also be reduced if there is discomfort.
No-one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are PROTECTED. There is no need to shrink from illusions, for they cannot be dangerous. We are ready to look more closely at the ego's thought system, because together we have the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize you do not WANT it, you MUST be ready. Let us be very calm in doing this, for we are merely looking honestly for truth. The "dynamics" of the ego will be our lesson for a while, for we must look first at this to look beyond it, since you HAVE made it real. We will UNDO this error quietly together, and then look beyond it to truth.
What is healing, but the removal of all that STANDS IN THE WAY of knowledge? And how else can one dispel illusions EXCEPT by looking at them directly, WITHOUT protecting them? Be not afraid, therefore, for what you will be looking at IS the source of fear, but you have learned surely by now, that FEAR IS NOT REAL. We have accepted the fact already that its EFFECTS can be dispelled, merely by denying THEIR reality. The next step is obviously to recognize that WHAT HAS NO EFFECTS DOES NOT EXIST.
Laws do not operate in a vacuum, and what leads to nothing HAS NOT HAPPENED. If reality is recognized BY ITS EXTENSION, what extends to nothing CANNOT be real. Do not be afraid, then, to look upon fear, for it cannot BE seen. Clarity undoes confusion by definition, and to look upon darkness through light MUST dispel it. Let us begin this lesson in "ego dynamics", by understanding that the term itself does not mean anything. In fact, it contains exactly the contradiction in terms that MAKES it meaningless. "Dynamics" implies the power to DO something, and the whole separation fallacy lies in the belief that the ego HAS the power to do ANYTHING.
The ego is fearful BECAUSE you believe this. But the truth is very simple; ALL POWER IS OF GOD. What is NOT of Him has no power to do ANYTHING. When we look at the ego, then, we are NOT considering dynamics, but delusions. We can surely regard a delusional system without fear, for it cannot have any effects if its source is not true. Fear becomes more obviously inappropriate if one recognizes the ego's GOAL, which is so clearly senseless that any effort exerted on its behalf is NECESSARILY expended on nothing.
The ego's goal is quite explicitly EGO AUTONOMY. From the beginning, then, its PURPOSE is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power EXCEPT ITS OWN. This is WHY it is the symbol of separation. Every idea has a purpose, and its purpose is always the natural extension of what it IS. Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its RESULTS, is merely to recognize that their SOURCE is NOT natural, being out of accord with your TRUE nature.
We once said that to will contrary to God is wishful thinking, and not real willing. His Will is One, because the extension of His Will CANNOT be unlike ITSELF. The real conflict you experience, then, is between the ego's idle wishes and the Will of God, WHICH YOU SHARE. Can this BE a real conflict? Yours is the independence of Creation, NOT of autonomy. Your whole creative function lies in your complete dependence on God, Whose function He shares WITH you. By HIS willingness to share it, He becomes as dependent on you, as you are on HIM. Do not ascribe the ego's arrogance to Him, Who wills NOT to be independent of YOU. He has included YOU in HIS Autonomy. Can YOU believe that autonomy is meaningful APART from Him?
The belief in EGO autonomy is costing you the knowledge of your dependence on God, IN WHICH YOUR FREEDOM LIES. The ego sees ALL dependency as threatening, and has twisted even your longing for God into a means of establishing ITSELF. But do not be deceived by ITS interpretation of your conflict. The ego ALWAYS attacks on behalf of separation. Believing it HAS the power to do this, it does nothing else, because its goal of autonomy IS nothing else. The ego is totally confused about reality, BUT IT DOES NOT LOSE SIGHT OF ITS GOAL. It is much more vigilant than YOU are, BECAUSE it is perfectly certain of its purpose. YOU are confused, because you do NOT know YOURS.
What you must learn to recognize is that the LAST thing the ego wishes you to realize, is THAT YOU ARE AFRAID OF IT. For if the ego gives rise to fear, it is DIMINISHING your independence, and WEAKENING your power. Yet its one claim to your allegiance is that it can GIVE power to you. Without THIS belief, you would not listen to it at all. How, then, can its existence continue, if you realize that by accepting it, you ARE belittling yourself, and DEPRIVING yourself of power?
The ego can and does allow you to regard yourself as supercilious, unbelieving, "light hearted -," distant, emotionally shallow, callous, uninvolved, and even desperate, BUT NOT REALLY AFRAID. MINIMIZING fear, but NOT its undoing, is the ego's constant effort, and is indeed the skill at which it is VERY ingenious. How can it preach separation WITHOUT upholding it through fear, and would you listen to it, if you recognized this IS what it is doing?
YOUR recognition that whatever seems to separate you from God is ONLY fear, regardless of the form it takes, and quite apart from HOW THE EGO WANTS YOU TO EXPERIENCE IT, is therefore the basic ego threat. Its dream of autonomy is shaken to its foundation by this awareness. For though you may countenance a false idea of independence, you will NOT accept the cost of fear, IF YOU RECOGNIZE IT. Yet this IS the cost, and the ego CANNOT minimize it. For if you overlook love, you are overlooking YOURSELF, and you MUST fear UNreality BECAUSE YOU HAVE DENIED YOURSELF. By believing that you have successfully attacked truth, YOU ARE BELIEVING THAT ATTACK HAS POWER. Very simply, then, YOU HAVE BECOME AFRAID OF YOURSELF. And no one wills to learn what he believes would DESTROY him.
If the ego's goal of autonomy COULD be accomplished GOD's purpose could be DEFEATED, and this IS impossible. Only by learning what fear IS, can you finally learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible, and the false from the true. According to the ego's teaching, ITS goal CAN be accomplished, and GOD's Purpose can NOT. According to the Holy Spirit's teaching, ONLY God's Purpose IS accomplishment, and it is ALREADY accomplished.
God is as dependent on you as you are on Him, because HIS autonomy ENCOMPASSES yours, and is therefore incomplete WITHOUT it. You can only ESTABLISH your autonomy by identifying WITH Him, and FULFILLING YOUR FUNCTION AS IT EXISTS IN TRUTH. The ego believes that to accomplish ITS goal IS happiness. But it is given YOU to know that GOD's function IS yours, and happiness CANNOT be found apart from your joint will. Recognize only that the ego's goal, which you have pursued quite diligently, has merely brought you FEAR, and it becomes difficult to maintain that FEAR is happiness.
UPHELD by fear, this IS what the ego would have you believe. Yet God's Son is not insane, and CANNOT believe it. Let him but RECOGNIZE it, and he will NOT accept it. For only the insane would choose fear IN PLACE of love, and only the insane could believe that love can be gained by ATTACK. But the sane KNOW that only attack COULD produce fear, from which the love of God COMPLETELY protects them.
The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit ACCEPTS. The appreciation of wholeness comes ONLY through acceptance, for to analyze MEANS to separate out. The attempt to understand totality by BREAKING IT UP is clearly the characteristically contradictory approach of the ego to everything. Never forget that the ego believes that power, understanding AND TRUTH lie in separation. And to ESTABLISH this belief it MUST attack. Unaware that the belief cannot BE established, and obsessed with the conviction that separation IS salvation, the ego attacks everything it perceives, by breaking it up into small and disconnected parts, without meaningful relationships, and thus without meaning. The ego will ALWAYS substitute chaos for meaning, for if separation is salvation, harmony is threat.
The ego's interpretations of the laws of perception are, and would HAVE to be, the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit's. The ego FOCUSES ON ERROR, and OVERLOOKS TRUTH. It makes real every mistake it perceives, and with characteristically circular reasoning, concludes that, BECAUSE of the mistake, consistent truth must be meaningless. The next step, then, is obvious. If consistent truth is meaningless, INCONSISTENCY must be true if truth has meaning. Holding error clearly in mind, and protecting what it has made real, the ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system; that error is real, and TRUTH IS ERROR.
The ego makes no attempt to UNDERSTAND this, and it is clearly not understandable. But the ego does make EVERY attempt to DEMONSTRATE it, and THIS it does constantly. Analyzing to ATTACK meaning, the ego DOES succeed in overlooking it, and is left with a series of fragmented perceptions WHICH IT UNIFIES ON BEHALF OF ITSELF. This, then, becomes the universe it perceives and it is this universe which, in turn, becomes its demonstration of its own reality.
Do not underestimate the appeal of the ego's demonstrations to those who would listen. Selective perception chooses its witnesses carefully, and its witnesses ARE consistent. The case for insanity IS strong to the insane. For reasoning ends at its beginning, and no thought system transcends its source. Yet reasoning without meaning CANNOT demonstrate anything, and those who are convinced by it, MUST be deluded. Can the ego teach truly, when it overlooks truth? Can it perceive what it has DENIED? Its witnesses DO attest to its DENIAL, but hardly to WHAT it has denied. The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son.
Would YOU remember the Father? Accept His Son and you WILL remember Him. Nothing can demonstrate that His Son is unworthy, for nothing can prove that a lie is true. What you see of His Son through the eyes of the ego is a demonstration that His Son does not exist, yet where the Son is, the Father MUST be. Accept what God does NOT deny, and HE will demonstrate its truth. The witnesses for God stand in His Light and behold what HE created. Their silence is the sign that they have beheld God's Son, and in the Presence of Christ, THEY need demonstrate nothing, for Christ speaks to them of Himself and of His Father. They are silent because Christ speaks to them, and it is His words that THEY speak.
Every brother you meet becomes a witness for Christ or for the ego, depending on what you perceive in him. Everyone convinces you of WHAT YOU WANT TO PERCEIVE, and of the reality of the Kingdom you have chosen for your vigilance. Everything you perceive is a witness to the thought-system YOU WANT TO BE TRUE. Every brother has the power to release you, IF YOU WILL TO BE FREE. You cannot accept false witness of him, unless you have evoked false witnesses AGAINST him. If HE speaks not of Christ to YOU, YOU spoke not of Christ to him. You hear but your own voice, and if Christ speaks through you, YOU will hear Him.
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."
Words will mean little now. We use them but as guides on which we do not now depend. For now we seek direct experience of truth alone. The lessons which remain are merely introductions to the times in which we leave the world of pain, and go to enter into peace. Now we begin to reach the goal this course has set, and find the end toward which our practicing is geared.
Now we attempt to let the exercise be merely a beginning. For we wait in quiet expectation for our God and Father. He has promised He will take the final step Himself. And we are sure His promises are kept. We have come far along the road, and now we wait for Him.
We will continue spending time with Him each morning and at night, as long as makes us happy. We will not consider time a matter of duration now. We use as much as we will need for the result that we desire. Nor will we forget our hourly remembrance, in between calling to God when we have need of Him as we are tempted to forget our goal.
We will continue with a central thought for all the days to come. And we will use that thought to introduce our times of rest, and calm our minds at need. Yet we will not content ourselves with simple practicing in the remaining holy instants which conclude the year that we have given God. We say some simple words of welcome, and expect our Father to reveal Himself as He has promised. We have called on Him, and He has promised that His Son will not remain unanswered when he calls His Name.
Now do we come to Him with but His Word upon our minds and hearts, and wait for Him to take the step to us that He has told us, through His Voice, He would not fail to take when we invited Him. He has not left His Son in all his madness, nor betrayed His trust in him. Has not His faithfulness earned Him the invitation that He seeks to make us happy? We will offer it, and it will be accepted. So our times with Him will now be spent. We say the words of invitation that His Voice suggests, then we wait for Him to come to us.
Now is the time of prophecy fulfilled. Now are all ancient promises upheld and fully kept. No step remains for time to separate from its accomplishment. For now we cannot fail. Sit silently and wait upon your Father. He has willed to come to you when you have recognized it is your will He do so. And you could have never come this far unless you saw, however dimly, that it is your will.
I am so close to you, we cannot fail. Father, we give these holy times to You in gratitude to Him Who taught us how to leave the world of sorrow, in exchange for its replacement given us by You. We look not backward now. We look ahead, and fix our eyes upon the journey's end. Accept these little gifts of thanks from us, as through Christ's vision we behold a world beyond the one we made, and take that world to be the full replacement of our own.
And now we wait in silence, unafraid, and certain of Your coming. We have sought to find our way by following the Guide You sent to us. We did not know the way, but You did not forget us. And we know that You will not forget us now. We ask but that Your ancient promises be kept which are Your Will to keep. We will with You in asking this. The Father and the Son, Whose holy Will created all that is, can fail in nothing. In this certainty, we undertake these last few steps to You, and rest in confidence upon Your Love, Which will not fail the Son who calls to You.
And so we start upon the final part of this one holy year, which we have spent together in the search for Truth and God, Who is Its one Creator. We have found the way He chose for us, and made the choice to follow it as He would have us go. His hand has held us up. His Thoughts have lit the darkness of our minds. His Love has called to us unceasingly since time began.
We had a wish that God would fail to have the Son whom He created of Himself. We wanted God to change Himself, and be what we would make of Him. And we believed that our insane desires were the truth. Now we are glad that this is all undone, and we no longer think illusions true. The memory of God is shimmering across the wide horizons of our minds. A moment more, and It will rise again. A moment more, and we who are God's Son are safely home, where He would have us be.
Now is the need for practice almost done. For in this final section we will come to understand that we need only call to God, and all temptations disappear. Instead of words, we need but feel His Love. Instead of prayer, we need but call His Name. Instead of judging, we need but be still and let all things be healed. We will accept the way God's plan will end, as we received the way it started. Now is it complete. This year has brought us to eternity.
One further use for words we still retain. From time to time, instructions on a theme of special relevance will intersperse our daily lessons and the periods of wordless, deep experience which should come afterwards. These special thoughts should be reviewed each day, each one of them to be continued 'til the next is given you. They should be slowly read and thought about a little while, preceding one of the holy and blessed instants in the day. We give the first of these instructions now.
21) "I am determined to see things differently."
What I see now are but signs of disease, disaster and death. This cannot be what God created for His beloved Son. The very fact that I see such things is proof that I do not understand God. Therefore I also do not understand His Son. What I see tells me that I do not know who I am. I am determined to see the witnesses to the truth in me, rather than those which show me an illusion of myself.
22) "What I see is a form of vengeance."
The world I see is hardly the representation of loving thoughts. It is a picture of attack on everything and by everything. It is anything but a reflection of the Love of God and the love of His Son. It is my own attack thoughts which give rise to this picture. My loving thoughts will save me from this perception of the world, and give me the peace God intended me to have.
23) "I can escape from the world by giving up attack thoughts."
Herein lies my salvation, and nowhere else. Without attack thoughts I could not see a world of attack. As forgiveness allows love to return to my awareness I will see a world of peace and safety and Joy. And It is this that I choose to see, in place of what I look on now.
24) "I do not perceive my own best interests."
How could I recognize my own best interests when I do not know who I am? What I think are my best interests would merely bind me closer to the world of illusions. I am willing to follow the Guide God has given me to find out what my own best interests are, recognizing that I cannot perceive them by myself.
25) "I do not know what anything is for."
To me, the purpose of everything is to prove that my illusions about myself are real. It is for that purpose that I attempt to use everyone and everything. It is this that I believe the world is for. Therefore I do not recognize its real purpose. The purpose I have given the world has led to a frightening picture of it. Let me open my mind to its real purpose by withdrawing the one I have given it, and learning the truth about it.
31) "I am not the victim of the world I see."
How can I be the victim of a world which can be completely undone if I so choose? My chains are loosened. I can drop them off merely by desiring to do so. The prison door is open. I can leave it simply by walking out. Nothing holds me in this world. Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner. I would give up insane wishes, and walk into the sunlight at last.
32) "I have invented the world I see."
I made up the prison in which I see myself. All I need do is recognize this, and I am free. I have deluded myself into believing it is possible to imprison the Son of God. I was bitterly mistaken in this belief, which I no longer want. The Son of God must be forever free. He is as God created him, and not what I would make of him. He is where God would have him be, and not where I thought to hold him prisoner.
33) "There is another way of looking at the world."
Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it. I see everything upside-down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God's Son. It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom.
34) "I could see peace instead of this."
When I see the world as a place of freedom, I will realize that it reflects the laws of God instead of the rules which I made up for it to obey. I will understand that peace, not war, abides in it. And I will perceive that peace also abides in the hearts of all who share this place with me.
35) "My mind is part of God's. I am very holy."
As I share the peace of the world with my brothers, I begin to understand that this peace comes from deep within myself. The world I look upon has taken on the light of my forgiveness, and shines forgiveness back at me. In this light, I begin to see what my illusions about myself had kept hidden. I begin to understand the holiness of all living things including myself, and their oneness with me.
This idea contains the first glimmerings of your true function in the world, or why you are here. Your purpose is to see the world through your own holiness. Thus are you and the world blessed together. No one loses; nothing is taken away from anyone; everyone gains through your holy vision. It signifies the end of sacrifice, because it offers everyone his full due. And he is entitled to everything, because it is his birthright as a Son of God.
There is no other way in which the idea of sacrifice can be removed from the world's thinking. Any other way of seeing will inevitably demand payment of someone or something. As a result, the perceiver will lose. Nor will he have any idea why he is losing. Yet is his wholeness restored to his awareness through your vision. Your holiness blesses him by asking nothing of him. Those who see themselves as whole make no demands.
Your holiness is the salvation of the world. It lets you teach the world that it is one with you, not by preaching to it, not by telling it anything, but merely by your quiet recognition that in your holiness are all things blessed, along with you.
Today's four longer exercise periods, each to involve three to five minutes of practice, begin with the repetition of the idea for today, followed by a minute or so of looking about you as you apply the idea to whatever you see:
"My holiness blesses this chair."
"My holiness blesses that window."
"My holiness blesses this body."
Then close your eyes and apply the idea to any person who occurs to you, using his name and saying:
"My holiness blesses you, (name)"
You may continue the practice period with your eyes closed; you may open your eyes again and apply the idea for today to your outer world if you so desire; you may alternate between applying it to what you see around you and to those who are in your thoughts; or you may use any combination of these two phases of application which you prefer. The practice period should conclude with a repetition of the idea made with your eyes closed, and another, following immediately, made with your eyes open.
The shorter exercises consist of repeating the idea as often as you can. It is particularly helpful to apply it silently to anyone you meet, using his name as you do so. It is essential to use the idea if anyone seems to cause an adverse reaction in you. Offer him the blessing of your holiness immediately, that you may learn to keep it in your own awareness.
This is not a course in theoretical philosophy, nor is it concerned with precise terminology in connection with origins. It is concerned only with Atonement, or the correction of perception. The means of the Atonement is forgiveness. The structure of "individual consciousness" is essentially irrelevant, because it is a concept representing the "original error" or the "original sin." To study the error itself does not lead to correction, if you are indeed to succeed in overlooking the error. And it is just this process of overlooking at which the course aims.
All terms are potentially controversial, and those who seek controversy will find it. Yet those who seek clarification will find it as well. They must, however, be willing to overlook controversy, recognizing that it is a defense against truth in the form of a delaying maneuver. Theological considerations as such are necessarily controversial, since they depend on belief and can therefore be accepted or rejected. A universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary. It is this experience toward which the course is directed. Here alone consistency becomes possible because here alone uncertainty ends.
This course remains within the ego framework, where it is needed. It is not concerned with what is beyond all error because it is planned only to set the direction toward it. Therefore it uses words, which are symbolic, and cannot express what lies beyond symbols. It is always the ego that questions because it is only the ego that doubts. The course merely gives another Answer, once a question has been raised. However, this Answer does not attempt to resort to inventiveness or ingenuity. These are attributes of the ego. THE COURSE IS SIMPLE. It has one function and one goal. Only in that does it remain wholly consistent because only that can BE consistent.
The ego will demand many answers this course does not give. It does not recognize as questions the mere form of a question to which an answer is impossible. The ego may ask, "How did the impossible occur?", "To what did the impossible happen?", and may ask in many forms. Yet there is no answer; only an experience. Seek only this, and do not let theology delay you.
You will notice that the emphasis on structural issues in the course is brief and early. Afterwards and soon, it drops away to make way for the central teaching. Since you have asked for clarification, however, these are some of the terms that are used.
Beginning with today, we will have a series of review periods. Each of them will cover five of the ideas already presented, starting with the first and ending with the fiftieth. There will be a short comment after each of the ideas, which you should consider in your review. In the practice period, the exercises should be done as follows:
Begin, the day by reading the five ideas, with the comments included. Thereafter, it is not necessary to follow any particular order in considering them, though each one should be practiced at least once. Devote two minutes or more to each practice period, thinking about the idea and the related comments. Do this as often as possible during the day. If any one of the five ideas appeals to you more than the others, concentrate on that one. At the end of the day, however, be sure to review all of them once more.
It is not necessary to cover the comments literally or thoroughly in the practice periods. Try, rather, merely to emphasize the central point, and think about it as part of your review of the idea to which it relates. The review exercises should be done with the eyes closed, and when you are alone in a quiet place, if possible.
This is emphasized particularly for reviews at your stage of learning. It will be necessary, however, that you learn to require no special settings in which to apply what you have learned. You will need it most in situations which appear to be upsetting, rather than in those which already seem to be calm and quiet. The purpose of your learning is to enable you to bring the quiet with you, and to heal distress and turmoil. This is not done by avoiding them and seeking a haven of isolation for yourself.
You will yet learn that peace is part of you, and requires only that you be there to embrace any situation in which you are. And finally you will learn that there is no limit to where you are, so that your peace is everywhere, as you are.
You will note that for review purposes the ideas are not always given in quite their original form of statement. Use them as they are given here. It is not necessary to return to the original statements, nor to apply the ideas as was suggested then. We are now emphasizing the relationships among the first fifty of the ideas we have covered, and the cohesiveness of the thought system to which they are leading you.
This idea applies to all the thoughts of which you are aware, or become aware in the practice periods. The reason the idea is applicable to all of them is that they are not your real thoughts. We have made this distinction before, and will again. You have no basis for comparison as yet. When you do, you will have no doubt that what you once believed were your thoughts did not mean anything.
This is the second time we have used this kind of idea. The form is only slightly different. This time, the idea is introduced with "My thoughts" instead of "These thoughts," and no link is made overtly with the things around you. The emphasis is now on the lack of reality of what you think you think.
This aspect of the correction process began with the idea that the thoughts of which you are aware are meaningless, outside rather than within; and then stressed their past rather than their present status. Now we are emphasizing that the presence of these "thoughts" means that you are not thinking. This is merely another way of repeating our earlier statement that your mind is really a blank. To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it. As such, it is the prerequisite for vision.
Close your eyes for these exercises, and introduce them by repeating the idea for today quite slowly to yourself. Then add:
"This idea will help to release me from all that I now believe."
The exercises consist, as before, in searching your mind for all the thoughts which are available to you, without selection or judgment. Try to avoid classification of any kind. In fact, if you find it helpful to do so, you might imagine that you are watching an oddly assorted procession going by, which has little if any personal meaning to you. As each one crosses your mind, say:
"This thought about ____ does not mean anything."
"That thought about ____ does not mean anything."
Today's idea can obviously serve for any thought that distresses you at any time. In addition, five practice periods are recommended, each involving no more than a minute or so of mind-searching. It is not recommended that this time period be extended, and it should be reduced to half a minute or even less if you experience discomfort. Remember, however, to repeat the idea slowly before applying it specifically, and also to add:
"This idea will help to release me from all that I now believe."
To empathize does NOT mean to JOIN IN SUFFERING, for this is what you must REFUSE to understand. This is the EGO's interpretation of empathy, and is ALWAYS used to form a special relationship, in which SUFFERING is shared. The CAPACITY to empathize is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way. His way is very different. He does NOT understand suffering, and would have you teach IT IS NOT UNDERSTANDABLE. When He relates through you, He does NOT relate through the ego to another ego. He does NOT join in pain, knowing that HEALING pain is NOT accomplished by delusional attempts to ENTER INTO IT, and lighten it by SHARING the delusion.
The clearest proof that empathy, as the ego uses it, is DESTRUCTIVE, lies in the fact that it is applied ONLY to certain types of problems, and in certain people. These it SELECTS OUT and JOINS WITH. And it NEVER joins, except to strengthen itself. Having identified with what it THINKS it understands, it sees ITSELF, and would INCREASE itself by sharing what is LIKE itself. Make no mistake about this maneuver; the ego always EMPATHIZES TO WEAKEN. And to weaken is ALWAYS to attack.
You do NOT know what empathizing means. But of this you may be sure; if you will merely sit quietly by, and let the Holy Spirit relate THROUGH you, you will EMPATHIZE WITH STRENGTH, and both of you will gain in strength, and NOT in weakness. Your part is only to remember this; you do not want anything that YOU value to come of the relationship. You will neither to hurt it, NOR TO HEAL IT in your own way. You do NOT know what healing IS. All you have learned of empathy IS FROM THE PAST. And there is NOTHING from the past that you would share, for there is nothing there that YOU WOULD KEEP.
Do NOT use empathy to MAKE THE PAST REAL, and so perpetuate it. Step gently aside, and let the healing be done FOR you. Keep but one thought in mind, and do not lose sight of it, however tempted you may be to judge the situation, and DETERMINE your response BY judging it. Focus your mind only on this:
"I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest.
I have invited Him, and He is here.
I need do nothing except NOT TO INTERFERE."
How can you be delivered from all gifts the world has offered you? How can you change these little, cruel offerings for those that Heaven gives and God would have you keep? Open your hands, and give all things to me that you have held against your holiness and kept as slander on the Son of God. Practice with every one you recognize as what it is. Give me these worthless things the instant that you see them through my eyes and understand their cost. Then give away these bitter dreams as you perceive them now to be but that, and nothing more than that.
I take them from you gladly, laying them beside the gifts of God that He has placed upon the altar to His Son. And these I give to you to take the place of those you gave away in mercy on yourself. These are the gifts I ask, and only these. For as you lay them by you reach to me, and I can come as savior then to you. The gifts of God are in my hands, to give to anyone who would exchange the world for Heaven. You need only call my Name, and ask me to accept the gift of pain from willing hands that would be laid in mine, with thorns laid down and nails long thrown away as one by one the sorry gifts of earth are joyously relinquished. In my hands is everything you want and need and hoped to find among the shabby toys of earth. I take them all from you and they are gone. And shining in the place where once they stood there is a gateway to another world through which we enter in the Name of God.
Father, we thank You for these gifts that we have found together. Here we are redeemed. For it is here we joined, and from this place of holy joining we will come to You because we recognize the gifts You gave and would have nothing else. Each hand that finds its way to mine will take Your gifts from me, and as we look together on the place whereon I laid your worthless gifts for you, we will see nothing but the gifts of God reflected in the shining round our heads. Holy are we who know our holiness, for it is You Who shine Your light on us, and we are thankful, in our Father's Name, that You have not forgotten. What we thought we made of You has merely disappeared, and with its going are the images we made of Your creation gone as well. And it is finished. Now into Your Hands we give again the spirit of Your Son who seemed to lose his way a little while but never left the safety of Your Love. The gifts of fear, the dream of death, are done. And we give thanks. And we give thanks, Amen.
A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else's. Once he has done that his road is established and his direction is sure. A light has entered the darkness. It may be a single light, but that is enough. He has entered an agreement with God, even if he does not yet believe in Him. He has become a bringer of salvation. He has become a teacher of God.
They come from all over the world. They come from all religions and from no religion. They are the ones who have answered. The Call is universal. It goes on all the time everywhere. It calls for teachers to speak for it and redeem the world. Many hear it but few will answer. But it is all a matter of time. Everyone will answer in the end, but the end can be a long, long way off. It is because of this that the plan of the teachers was established. Their function is to save time. Each one begins as a single light, but with the Call at its center it is a light that cannot be limited. And each one saves a thousand years of time as the world judges it. To the Call itself time has no meaning.
There is a course for every teacher of God. The form of the course varies greatly. So do the particular teaching aids involved. But the content of the course never changes. Its central theme is always, "God's Son is guiltless, and in his innocence is his salvation." It can be taught by actions or thoughts; in words or soundlessly; in any language or in no language; in any place or time or manner. It does not matter who the teacher was before he heard the Call. He has become a savior by his answering. He has seen someone else as himself. He has therefore found his own salvation and the salvation of the world. In his rebirth is the world reborn.
This is a manual for a special curriculum, intended for teachers of a special form of the universal course. There are many thousands of other forms, all with the same outcome. They merely save time. Yet it is time alone that winds on wearily, and the world is very tired now. It is old and worn and without hope. There was never a question of outcome, for what can change the Will of God? But time, with its illusions of change and death, wears out the world and all things in it. Yet time has an ending, and it is this that the teachers of God are appointed to bring about. For time is in their hands. Such was their choice, and it is given them.
A theoretical foundation such as the Text is necessary as a background to make these exercises meaningful. Yet it is the exercises which will make the goal possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth.
The exercises are very simple. They do not require more than a few minutes, and it does not matter where or when you do them. They need no preparation. They are numbered, running from 1 to 365. The training period is one year. Do not undertake more than one exercise a day.
The purpose of these exercises is to train the mind to a different perception of everything in the world. The Workbook is divided into two sections, the first dealing with the undoing of what you see now, and the second with the restoration of sight. It is recommended that each exercise be repeated several times a day, preferably in a different place each time, and if possible in every situation in which you spend any long period of time. The purpose is to train the mind to generalize the lessons, so that you will understand that each of them is as applicable to one situation as it is to another.
Unless specified to the contrary, the exercise should be practiced with the eyes open, since the aim is to learn how to see. The only rule that should be followed throughout is to practice the exercises with great specificity. Each one applies to every situation in which you find yourself, and to everything you see in it. Each day's exercises are planned around one central idea, the exercises themselves consisting of applying that idea to as many specifics as possible. Be sure that you do not decide that there are some things you see to which the idea for the day is inapplicable. The aim of the exercises will always be to increase the application of the idea to everything. This will not require effort. Only be sure that you make no exceptions in applying the idea.
Some of the ideas you will find hard to believe, and others will seem quite startling. It does not matter. You are merely asked to apply them to what you see. You are not asked to judge them, nor even to believe them. You are asked only to use them. It is their use which will give them meaning to you, and show you they are true. Remember only this; you need not believe them, you need not accept them, and you need not welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist. None of this will matter, nor decrease their efficacy. But allow yourself to make no exceptions in applying the ideas the exercises contain. Whatever your reactions to the ideas may be, use them. Nothing more than this is required.
Anger is NEVER justified. Attack has NO foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this forgiveness rests, AND IS BUT NATURAL. You are NOT asked to offer pardon where attack is due, and WOULD be justified. For this would mean that you forgive a sin by overlooking what is REALLY there. THIS IS NOT PARDON. For it would assume that, by responding in a way which is NOT justified, your PARDON will become the answer to attack which HAS been made. And thus is pardon inappropriate, by being granted where it is NOT due.
Pardon is ALWAYS justified, and has a sure foundation. You do NOT forgive the unforgivable, nor overlook a REAL attack that calls for punishment. Salvation does not lie in being asked to make unnatural responses, which are inappropriate to what is real. Instead, it merely asks that you respond appropriately to what is NOT real, by not perceiving what has not occurred. If pardon WERE unjustified, you WOULD be asked to sacrifice your rights when you return forgiveness for attack. But you are merely asked to see forgiveness as the NATURAL reaction to distress which rests on error, and thus calls for help. Forgiveness is the ONLY sane response. It KEEPS your rights from being lost to you.
This understanding is the ONLY change that lets the real world rise to take the place of dreams of terror. Fear cannot ARISE unless attack is justified. And if it HAD a real foundation, pardon could have none. The real world is achieved when you perceive the basis of FORGIVENESS is quite real and fully justified. While you regard it as a gift unwarranted, it MUST uphold the guilt you would "forgive." Unjustified forgiveness IS attack. And this is all the world can ever give. It pardons "sinners" sometimes, but remains AWARE that they have sinned. And so they do not MERIT the forgiveness that it gives.
This is the false forgiveness which the world employs to KEEP the sense of sin alive. And recognizing God is just, it seems impossible His pardon COULD be real. Thus is the fear of God the sure result of seeing pardon as unmerited. No-one who sees himself as guilty CAN avoid the fear of God. But he is SAVED from this dilemma if HE can forgive. The mind MUST think of its Creator as it looks upon itself. If you can see your brother MERITS pardon, you have learned forgiveness is YOUR right, as much as his. Nor will you think that God intends for you a fearful judgment which your brother does not merit. For it is the truth that you CAN merit neither more nor less than he.
Forgiveness RECOGNIZED as merited will heal. It gives the miracle its strength to OVERLOOK illusions. This is how you learn that you must be forgiven too. There CAN be no appearance that can NOT be overlooked. For, if there were, it would be necessary FIRST there be some sin which stands BEYOND forgiveness. There would be an error that is MORE than a mistake; a special FORM of error, which remains unchangeable, eternal, and beyond correction or escape. There would be one mistake which had the power to UNDO creation, and to make a world which could REPLACE it and DESTROY the Will of God. Only if this were possible could there be SOME appearances which could withstand the miracle, and NOT be healed by it.
There is no surer proof idolatry is what you wish than a belief there are some forms of sickness and of joylessness forgiveness CANNOT cure. This means that you prefer to keep SOME idols, and are not prepared, as yet, to let ALL idols go. And thus you think that SOME appearances are real, and not appearances at all. Be not deceived about the MEANING of a fixed belief that SOME appearances are harder to look past than others are. It ALWAYS means you think forgiveness must be limited. And you have set a goal of partial pardon and a limited escape from guilt FOR YOU. What can this be, except a false forgiveness of YOURSELF, and everyone who seems APART from you?
It MUST be true the miracle can heal ALL forms of sickness, or it CANNOT HEAL. Its purpose cannot be to judge which FORMS are real, and which APPEARANCES are true. If one appearance must remain APART from healing, one illusion must be part of truth. And you could NOT escape all guilt, but only SOME of it. You must forgive God's Son ENTIRELY. Or you will keep an image of yourself that is not whole, and will remain afraid to look within, and find escape from EVERY idol there. Salvation rests on faith there CANNOT be some forms of guilt which you can NOT forgive. And so there cannot be appearances which have replaced the truth about God's Son.
Look on your brother with the willingness to see him as he is. And do not keep a part of him outside your willingness that he be healed. To heal is to make whole. And what is whole can HAVE no missing parts that have been kept outside. Forgiveness rests on recognizing this, and being GLAD there cannot be some forms of sickness which the miracle must LACK the power to heal. God's Son is perfect, or he cannot be God's Son. Nor will you KNOW him, if you think he does not merit the escape from guilt in ALL its forms and ALL its consequence. There IS no way to think of him but this, if you would know the truth about yourself:
"I thank you, Father, for your perfect Son,
And in his glory will I see my own."
Here is the joyful statement that there are NO forms of evil which can overcome the Will of God; the glad acknowledgment that guilt has NOT succeeded, by your wish, to make illusions real. And what is this, except a simple statement of the truth? Look on your brother with this hope in you, and you will understand he COULD not make an error that could change the truth in him. It is NOT difficult to overlook mistakes that have been given no effects. But what you see as having power to make an idol of the Son of God, you will NOT pardon. For he has become to you a graven image, and a sign of death. Is THIS your Savior? Is his Father WRONG about His Son? Or have YOU been deceived in him who has been given you to heal for YOUR salvation and deliverance?
When we are all united in Heaven, you will value NOTHING that you value here. For nothing that you value here you value wholly, and so you do not value it at all. Value is where God placed it, and the value of what God esteems CANNOT BE JUDGED, for it HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED. It is WHOLLY of value. It can merely be appreciated OR NOT. To value it partially is NOT TO KNOW ITS VALUE. In Heaven is everything God values, and nothing else. Heaven is perfectly unambiguous. Everything is clear and bright, and calls forth ONE response. There is no darkness, and there is no contrast. There is no variation. There is no interruption. There is a sense of peace so deep, that no dream in this world has ever brought even a dim imagining of what it is.
Nothing in this world can give this peace, for nothing in this world is wholly shared. Perfect perception can merely show you what is CAPABLE of being wholly shared. It can also show you the RESULTS of sharing, while you still remember the results of NOT sharing. The Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference FOR you, allowing Him to demonstrate which MUST be true. He has perfect faith in your final judgment because He knows that HE WILL MAKE IT FOR YOU. To doubt this would be to doubt that His mission will be fulfilled. How is this possible, when His mission is of God?
You whose minds are darkened by doubt and guilt, remember this; God gave the Holy Spirit TO you, and gave HIM the mission to REMOVE all doubt, and every trace of guilt, that His dear Son has laid upon himself. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE THAT THIS MISSION FAIL. Nothing can prevent what God would HAVE accomplished from accomplishment. Whatever your reactions to the Holy Spirit's voice may be, whatever voice you choose to listen to, whatever strange thoughts may occur to you, God's Will IS done. You WILL find the peace in which He has established you, because HE does NOT change His Mind. He is invariable as the peace in which you dwell, and of which the Holy Spirit reminds you.
You will not remember change and shift in Heaven. You have need of contrast only here. Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids, for by them you learn what to avoid, and what to seek. When you have LEARNED this, you will find the answer that makes the need for ANY differences disappear. Truth comes of its OWN will, unto its own. When you have learned that you BELONG to truth, it will flow lightly over you, without a difference of ANY kind. For you will NEED no contrast to help you realize that THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT, and ONLY this.
Fear not the Holy Spirit will fail in what your Father has given Him to do. THE WILL OF GOD CAN FAIL IN NOTHING. Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient; God wills you be in Heaven, and nothing can keep you FROM it, or IT from you. Your wildest misperceptions, your weird imaginings, your blackest nightmares all mean nothing. They will not prevail against the peace God wills for you. The Holy Spirit WILL restore your sanity, because insanity is NOT the Will of God. If that suffices Him, it is enough for you. You will NOT keep what God would have removed, because it breaks communication with you, with whom He would communicate. His voice WILL be heard.
The communication link which God Himself placed within you, joining your minds with His, CANNOT be broken. You may believe you WANT it broken, and this belief DOES interfere with the deep peace, in which the sweet and constant communication which God would SHARE with you, is known. Yet His channels of reaching out CANNOT be wholly closed, and separated FROM Him. Peace will be yours, because His peace still flows to you, from Him Whose Will IS peace. YOU HAVE IT NOW. The Holy Spirit will teach you how to USE it, and by PROJECTING it, to learn that it IS in you.
God willed you Heaven, and will ALWAYS will you nothing else. The Holy Spirit knows ONLY of His Will. There is no chance that Heaven will not be yours, for God is sure, and what He wills is sure as He is. You will learn salvation, because you will learn HOW TO SAVE. It will not be possible to exempt yourself from what the Holy Spirit wills to teach you. Salvation is as sure as God. His certainty suffices. Learn that even the darkest nightmare that disturbed the mind of God's sleeping Son, holds no power over him. He WILL learn the lesson of awaking. God watches over him, and light surrounds him.
Can God's Son lose himself in dreams, when God has placed WITHIN him the glad call to awaken and be glad? He cannot separate himself from what is IN him. His sleep will not withstand the call to wake. The mission of redemption will be fulfilled, as surely as the Creation will remain unchanged throughout Eternity. You do NOT have to know that Heaven is yours, to MAKE it so. It IS so. But the will of God must be accepted AS your will, to KNOW it. The Holy Spirit CANNOT fail to undo FOR you everything that you have learned, that teaches you what is NOT true must be RECONCILED with truth. This is the reconciliation which the ego would substitute for your reconciliation unto sanity and unto peace.
The Holy Spirit has a very different kind of reconciliation in His mind for you, and one which HE WILL EFFECT, as surely as the ego will NOT effect what it attempts. Failure is of the ego, NOT of God. From Him you CANNOT wander, and there is no possibility that the plan the Holy Spirit offers to everyone, for the salvation OF everyone, will not be perfectly accomplished. You WILL be released, and you will NOT remember anything you made that was not created FOR you, and BY you in return. For how can you remember what was never true, or NOT remember what has always been? It is this reconciliation with truth, and ONLY truth, in which the peace of Heaven lies.
And now the reason why you are afraid of this course should be apparent. For this is a course on love, because it is about YOU. You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven. It would thus destroy you here, and bury you here, leaving you no inheritance except the dust out of which it thinks you were made. While it is reasonably satisfied with you, as its reasoning goes, it offers you oblivion. When it becomes overtly savage, it offers you hell.
Yet neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as Heaven. For your definition of Heaven IS hell and oblivion, and the REAL Heaven is the greatest threat you think you COULD experience. For hell and oblivion are ideas which YOU made up, and you are bent on DEMONSTRATING their reality, TO ESTABLISH YOURS. If THEIR reality is questioned, you believe that YOURS is. For you believe that ATTACK established your reality, and that your DESTRUCTION is the final proof THAT YOU WERE RIGHT.
Under the circumstances, would it not be MORE DESIRABLE to have been wrong, even apart from the fact that you WERE wrong? For while it could perhaps be argued that death suggests there WAS life, no one would claim that it proves there IS life. And even the PAST life, which death might indicate, could only have been futile if it must come to this, and NEEDS this to prove that it WAS. You question Heaven, but you do NOT question this. You could heal and be healed, if you DID question it. And even though you know not Heaven, might it not be more desirable than death? You have been as selective in your questioning as in your perception. An open mind is more honest than this.
The ego has a very strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that the questioning might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end, believes that the past is the ONLY aspect of time that is meaningful. You will remember that we said its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity, by MAKING THE FUTURE LIKE THE PAST, and thus AVOIDING the present. By the notion of PAYING FOR the past in the future, the past becomes the DETERMINER of the future, making THEM continuous, WITHOUT an intervening present. For the ego uses the present ONLY as a brief transition TO the future, in which it brings the past TO the future, BY INTERPRETING THE PRESENT IN PAST TERMS.
NOW has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of PAST hurts, and it reacts to the present AS IF it were past. For the ego cannot tolerate RELEASE from the past, and though it is no more, the ego tries to preserve its IMAGE by responding as if it were present. Thus, it dictates reactions to those you meet NOW from a PAST reference point, obscuring their PRESENT reality. In effect, if you FOLLOW its dictates, you will react to your brothers as though they were SOMEONE ELSE, and this will surely prevent you from perceiving them AS THEY ARE. And you will receive messages from them out of your OWN past because, by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to LET IT GO. You thus DENY yourself the message of release that every brother offers you NOW.
The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you must ESCAPE. For they are not real, and have no hold over you, unless YOU bring them WITH you. They carry the spots of pain in your minds, directing you to attack in the present, in retaliation for a past that is no more. AND THIS DECISION IS ONE OF FUTURE PAIN. For unless you learn that PAST pain is delusional, you are choosing a future of delusions, and losing the endless opportunities which you COULD find for release in the present. For the ego would PRESERVE your nightmares, and PREVENT you from awaking, and understanding that THEY are past.
Would you RECOGNIZE a holy encounter, if you are merely perceiving it as a meeting with your OWN past? For you are meeting no one, and the SHARING of salvation, WHICH MAKES THE ENCOUNTER HOLY, is excluded from your sight. The Holy Spirit teaches that you always meet YOURSELF, and the encounter is holy because YOU are. The ego teaches that you always encounter your PAST, and because your dreams WERE not holy, the future CANNOT be, and the present is without meaning. It is evident that the Holy Spirit's perception of time is the exact opposite of the ego's. And the reason is equally clear, for they perceive the GOAL of time as diametrically opposed.
The Holy Spirit interprets time's PURPOSE as rendering the need for it UNNECESSARY. Thus does He regard the function of time as temporary, serving only His teaching function, which is temporary by definition. HIS emphasis is therefore on the ONLY aspect of time which CAN extend to the infinite. For NOW is the closest approximation of eternity that this world offers. And it is in the REALITY of now, without past OR future, that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. For only now is HERE, and IT presents the opportunities for the holy encounters, in which salvation can be found.
The ego, on the other hand, regards the function of time as one of extending itself IN PLACE of eternity. For, like the Holy Spirit, the ego interprets the goal of time as its own. The continuity of past and future, UNDER ITS DIRECTION, is the only purpose it perceives in time, and it closes over the present, so that no gap in the EGO's continuity can occur. ITS continuity, then, would KEEP you in time, while the Holy Spirit would release you FROM it. And it is HIS interpretation of the means of salvation that you must learn to accept, if you would share His goal of salvation FOR you.
You, too, will interpret the function of time as you interpret yours. If you accept your function in the world of time AS HEALING, you will emphasize ONLY the aspect of time in which healing can occur. For healing CANNOT be accomplished in the past, and MUST be accomplished in the present to RELEASE the future. THIS interpretation ties the future to the present, and EXTENDS THE PRESENT, rather than the past. But if you interpret your function as DESTRUCTION, you will lose sight of the present, and hold on to the past TO ENSURE A DESTRUCTIVE FUTURE. And time WILL be as you interpret it, for OF ITSELF it IS nothing.
The term "mind" is used to represent the activating agent of Spirit, supplying its creative energy. When the term is capitalized it refers to God or Christ (i.e., the Mind of God or the Mind of Christ). Spirit is the Thought of God which He created like Himself. The unified Spirit is God's one Son, or Christ.
In this world, because the mind is split, the Sons of God appear to be separate. Nor do their minds seem to be joined. In this illusory state, the concept of an "individual mind" seems to be meaningful. It is therefore described in the course AS IF it has two parts; spirit and ego.
Spirit is the part that is still in contact with God through the Holy Spirit, Who abides in this part but sees the other part as well. The term "soul" is not used except in direct Biblical quotations because of its highly controversial nature. It would, however, be an equivalent of "spirit," with the understanding that, being of God, it is eternal and was never born.
The other part of the mind is entirely illusory and makes only illusions. Spirit retains the potential for creating, but its Will which is God's, seems to be imprisoned while the mind is not unified. Creation continues unabated because that is the Will of God. This Will is always unified, and therefore has no meaning in this world. It has no opposite and no degrees.
The mind can be right or wrong, depending on the voice to which it listens. RIGHT-MINDEDNESS listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place. This is the final vision, the last perception, the condition in which God takes the final step Himself. Here time and illusions end together. WRONG-MINDEDNESS listens to the ego and makes illusions; perceiving sin and justifying anger, and seeing guilt, disease and death as real. Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened. Therefore it is not the ONE-MINDEDNESS of the Christ Mind, Whose Will is One with God's.
In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice; this choice is always between two choices or two voices. Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice. CONSCIOUSNESS is the receptive mechanism, receiving messages from above or below; from the Holy Spirit or the ego. Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. Yet the very fact that it has levels and can be trained demonstrates that consciousness cannot reach knowledge.
Fear of the Will of God is one of the strangest beliefs that the human mind has ever made. This could not possibly have occurred unless the mind was already profoundly split, making it possible for IT to be afraid of what it really is. It is apparent that reality CANNOT "threaten" anything except illusions, because reality can only UPHOLD truth. The very fact that the will of God, which IS what you are, is perceived as fearful TO you demonstrates that you ARE afraid of what you are. It is not, then, the will of God of which you are afraid, but YOURS. Your will is NOT the ego's, and that is why the ego is against you. What seems to be the fear of God is really only the fear of YOUR OWN REALITY.
It is impossible to learn anything consistently in a state of panic. If the purpose of this course is to learn what you are, and if you have ALREADY DECIDED that what you are is FEARFUL, then it MUST follow that you will NOT LEARN THIS COURSE. But you might remember that the reason FOR the course is that you do NOT know who you are. If you do not know your reality, how would you know whether it is fearful or not? The association of truth and fear, which would be highly artificial at best, is particularly inappropriate in the minds of those who do not know what truth IS. All that this kind of association means is that you are arbitrarily endowing something quite beyond your awareness with something YOU DO NOT WANT.
It is evident, then, that you are judging something of which you are totally unaware. You have set this strange situation up so that it is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE to escape from it WITHOUT a guide who DOES know what your reality is. The purpose of this Guide is merely to remind you of what YOU want. He is not attempting to force an alien will UPON you. He is merely making every possible effort, within the limits YOU impose upon Him, to RE-ESTABLISH your OWN will in your consciousness. You have IMPRISONED it in your UNconscious, where it remains available, but cannot help you. When we said that the Holy Spirit's function is to sort out the true from the false in your unconscious, we meant that He has the power to look into what YOU have hidden, and perceive the Will of God there.
His perception of this will can make it real to YOU, because HE is in your mind, and therefore He IS your reality. If, then, His perception OF your mind brings its reality TO you, He IS teaching you what you are. The only source of fear in this whole process can ONLY be WHAT YOU THINK YOU LOSE. But it is only what the Holy Spirit sees that you can possibly HAVE. We have emphasized many times that the Holy Spirit will never call upon you to sacrifice anything. But if you ask the sacrifice of reality OF YOURSELVES, the Holy Spirit MUST remind you that this is not God's will BECAUSE it is not yours.
There is NO DIFFERENCE between your will and God's. If you did not have divided wills, you would recognize that willing is salvation because it IS communication. It is impossible to communicate in alien tongues. You and your Creator can communicate through creation, because that, and only that, IS your joint will. Divided wills do not communicate because they speak for different things TO THE SAME MIND. This loses the ability to communicate, simply because confused communication DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING. A message cannot be said to be communicated UNLESS it makes sense.
How sensible can your messages be, when they ask for WHAT YOU DON'T WANT? Yet as long as you are afraid of your will, this is precisely what you WILL ask for. You may insist that the Holy Spirit does not answer you, but it might be wiser to consider the kind of asker you are. YOU DO NOT ASK ONLY FOR WHAT YOU WANT. This is SOLELY because you are afraid you might receive it, AND YOU WOULD. THIS is really why you persist in asking the teacher who could not possibly teach you your will. Of him, you can never learn it, and this gives you the illusion of safety. But you cannot be safe FROM truth, but only IN it. Reality is the ONLY safety.
Your will is your salvation BECAUSE IT IS THE SAME AS GOD's. The separation is nothing more than the belief that it is DIFFERENT. NO mind can believe that its will is STRONGER than God's. If, then, a mind believes that ITS will is different FROM His, it can only decide either that there IS no God, or that GOD'S WILL IS FEARFUL. The former accounts for the atheist, and the latter for the martyr. Martyrdom takes many forms, the category including ALL doctrines which hold that God demands sacrifices of ANY kind.
Either basic type of insane decision will induce panic, because the atheist believes he is alone and the martyr believes that God is crucifying him. Both really fear both abandonment AND retaliation, but the former is more reactive against abandonment and the latter against retaliation. The atheist maintains that God has left him, but he does not care. He will, however, become very fearful, and hence very ANGRY, if anyone suggests that God has NOT left him. The martyr, on the other hand, is more aware of guilt, and believing that punishment is inevitable, attempts to teach himself to LIKE it.
The truth is, very simply, that NO-ONE WANTS EITHER ABANDONMENT OR RETALIATION. Many people SEEK both, but it is still true that they do NOT want it. Can you ask the Holy Spirit for "gifts" such as these, and actually expect to RECEIVE them? The Holy Spirit is totally incapable of giving YOU anything that does NOT come from God. His task is NOT to make anything FOR you. He CANNOT make you want something you DON'T want. When you ask the Universal Giver for what you do not want, YOU are asking for what CANNOT be given, BECAUSE IT WAS NEVER CREATED. It was never created because it was never your will for YOU.
Ultimately everyone must learn the will of God, because ultimately everyone must recognize HIMSELF. This recognition IS the recognition that HIS WILL AND GOD'S ARE ONE. In the presence of Truth, there are no unbelievers and no sacrifices. In the security of Reality fear is totally meaningless. To deny what IS can only SEEM to be fearful. Fear cannot be real without a cause, and GOD is the only Cause. God is Love, and you DO want Him. This IS your will. Ask for THIS and you WILL be answered, because you will be asking only for what BELONGS to you.
When you ask the Holy Spirit for what would hurt you, He CANNOT answer, because NOTHING can hurt you and SO YOU ARE ASKING FOR NOTHING. ANY desire which stems from the ego IS a desire for nothing, and to ask for it IS NOT A REQUEST. It is merely a denial in the FORM of a request. The Holy Spirit is not concerned with form at all, being aware only of MEANING. The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for ANYTHING, because there is COMPLETE COMMUNICATION FAILURE between them. But YOU can ask for EVERYTHING of the Holy Spirit, because YOUR requests are real, being of your will. Would the Holy Spirit deny the Will of God? And could He fail to recognize it in God's Sons?
The energy which you withdraw from Creation you expend on fear. This is not because your ENERGY is limited, but because YOU HAVE LIMITED IT. You do not recognize the ENORMOUS waste of energy which you expend in denying truth. What would YOU say of someone who PERSISTED in attempting the impossible, and believed that to ACHIEVE it is SUCCESS? The belief that you MUST HAVE THE IMPOSSIBLE in order to be happy is totally at variance with the principle of Creation. God COULD not will that happiness DEPENDED on what you could never have.
The fact that God is love does not require belief, but it DOES require ACCEPTANCE. It is indeed possible for you to DENY facts, although it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to CHANGE them. If you hold your hands over your eyes you will NOT see, because you are interfering with the laws of seeing. If you deny love you will NOT KNOW IT because your cooperation is the LAW OF ITS BEING. You cannot change laws you did not make, and the laws of happiness were created FOR you, NOT BY you.
Attempts of any kind to deny what IS are fearful, and if they are strong they WILL induce panic. WILLING AGAINST reality, though impossible, can be MADE into a very persistent goal, EVEN THOUGH YOU DO NOT WANT IT. But consider the result of this strange decision. You are DEVOTING your mind to what you DO NOT WANT. How real can this devotion be? If you do not want it, it was never created. If it was never created, it is nothing. Can you REALLY devote yourself to nothing?
God, in His devotion to YOU, created you devoted to EVERYTHING, and GAVE you what you are devoted TO. Otherwise, you would not have been created perfect. Reality IS everything, and you therefore have everything BECAUSE you are real. You cannot make the UNreal because the ABSENCE of reality is fearful, and fear cannot BE created. As long as you believe that fear is possible, YOU WILL NOT CREATE. Opposing orders of reality MAKE REALITY MEANINGLESS, and reality is MEANING.
Remember, then, that God's Will is ALREADY possible, and nothing else will EVER be. This is the simple acceptance of Reality because only this is real. You cannot DISTORT reality and KNOW WHAT IT IS. And if you DO distort reality you will experience anxiety, depression, and ultimately panic, because you are trying to MAKE YOURSELF UNREAL. When you feel these things do not try to look BEYOND yourself for truth, for truth can only be WITHIN you. Say, therefore, :
"Christ is in me, and where He is God MUST be, for Christ is PART of Him."
We once said that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the answer to EVERYTHING, because He knows what the answer to everything IS. The ego does not know what a REAL question is, although it asks an endless number. But YOU can learn this, as you learn to question the value of the ego and thus establish your ability to EVALUATE its questions. When the ego tempts you to sickness, do not ask the Holy Spirit to heal the body. For this would merely be to accept the ego's belief that the body is the proper aim for healing. Ask rather that the Holy Spirit teach you the right PERCEPTION of the body, for perception alone can be distorted.
ONLY PERCEPTION CAN BE SICK, because perception can be WRONG. Wrong perception is DISTORTED WILLING, which WANTS things to be as they are not. The reality of EVERYTHING is totally harmless, because total harmlessness is the CONDITION of its reality. It is also the condition of your AWARENESS of its reality. You do not have to SEEK reality. It will seek you and FIND you, WHEN YOU MEET ITS CONDITIONS. Its conditions are part of WHAT IT IS. And this part only is up to you. The rest is of Itself. You need do so little, because It is so powerful that your little part WILL bring the whole to you. Accept, then, your little part, and LET the whole be yours. Wholeness heals BECAUSE it is of the mind.
All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual. "Rest in peace" is a blessing for the living, not the dead, because rest comes from waking, not from sleeping. Sleep is withdrawing; waking is JOINING. Dreams are ILLUSIONS of joining, taking on the ego's distortions about what joining means, if you are sleeping under its guidance. But the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep, and can use dreams on BEHALF of waking, if you will let Him.
How you wake is the sign of how you have used sleep. To whom did you give it? Under which teacher did you place it? Whenever you wake dis-spiritedly, it was NOT of the Spirit. ONLY when you awaken joyously have you utilized sleep ACCORDING TO THE HOLY SPIRIT'S PURPOSE. You can indeed be "drugged by sleep," but this is ALWAYS because you have MISUSED IT ON BEHALF OF SICKNESS. Sleep is no more a form of death than death is a form of unconsciousness. UNCONSCIOUSNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE. You can rest in peace only BECAUSE YOU ARE AWAKE.
Healing is release from the fear of waking, and the substitution of the will to wake. The will to wake is the will to love, since ALL healing involves replacing fear with love. The Holy Spirit cannot distinguish among degrees of error, for if He taught that one form of sickness is more serious than another, He would be teaching that one error can be more REAL than another. But HIS function is to distinguish ONLY between the false and the true, REPLACING the false WITH the true.
The ego, which always WEAKENS the will, wants to SEPARATE the body from the mind. This IS an attempt to DESTROY it. But the ego actually believes that it is PROTECTING it. This is because it believes that MIND IS DANGEROUS, and that to MAKE MINDLESS is to heal. But to make mindless is impossible, since it would mean to make nothing out of what God Created. The ego DESPISES weakness, even though it makes every effort to INDUCE it. IT WANTS ONLY WHAT IT HATES. To the ego this is perfectly sensible. Believing in the power of attack, it WANTS it.
You have begun to realize that this is a very practical course, because it means EXACTLY what it says. So does the Bible, if it is properly understood. There has been a marked tendency on the part of many of the Bible's followers, and also its translators, to be entirely literal about fear and ITS effects, but NOT about love and ITS results. Thus, "hellfire" means burning, but raising the dead becomes allegorical. Actually, it is PARTICULARLY the references to the outcomes of love that should be taken literally because the Bible is ABOUT love, being about GOD.
The Bible enjoins you to be perfect, to heal ALL errors, to take no thought of the body AS SEPARATE, and to accomplish all things IN MY NAME. This is not my name alone, for ours is a shared identification. The name of God's Son is One, and you are enjoined to do the works of love BECAUSE we share this oneness. Our minds are whole BECAUSE they are one. If you are sick, you are withdrawing from me. But you CANNOT WITHDRAW FROM ME ALONE. You can only withdraw from yourself AND me.
I would not ask you to do things which you CANNOT do, and it is impossible that I could do things YOU cannot do. Given this, and given this QUITE LITERALLY, there CAN be nothing which prevents you from doing EXACTLY what I ask, and EVERYTHING which argues FOR it. I give you NO limits, because God lays none upon you. When you limit YOURSELF, we are NOT of one mind, and that IS sickness. But sickness is not of the body, but OF THE MIND. ALL forms of DISfunction are merely signs that the mind has split, and does not accept a UNIFIED PURPOSE.
The unification of purpose, then, is the Holy Spirit's ONLY way of healing. This is because it is the only level at which healing MEANS anything. The re-establishing of meaning in a chaotic thought system IS the only way to heal it. We said before that your task is only to meet the conditions FOR meaning, since meaning itself is of God. But your RETURN to meaning is essential TO HIS, because YOUR meaning is PART of His. Your healing, then, is part of HIS health, because it is part of His Wholeness. He cannot lose this, but YOU can not know it. Yet it is still His will for you, and His will MUST stand forever and in all things.
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.
WHAT DO YOU WANT? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are yours, but not both. Opposites must be brought together, and not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as YOU are. In union, everything that is not real MUST disappear, for truth IS union. As darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns. Perception is the medium by which ignorance is BROUGHT to knowledge. But the perception must be without deceit, for otherwise, it becomes the messenger of ignorance, rather than a helper in the search for truth.
The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything that INTERFERES with truth. TRUTH IS. And can be neither lost, nor sought, nor found. It is there, wherever YOU are, being WITHIN you. But it CAN be recognized or unrecognized, real or false, to YOU. If you hide it, it becomes unreal to you, BECAUSE you hid it, and SURROUNDED IT WITH FEAR. Under each cornerstone of fear, on which you have erected your insane system of belief, THE TRUTH LIES HIDDEN. Yet you cannot know this, for, by HIDING truth in fear, you see no reason to believe the more you LOOK at fear, the LESS you see it, and the clearer WHAT IT CONCEALS becomes.
It is not possible to convince the unknowing that they know. From their point of view, IT IS NOT TRUE. Yet it IS true, because GOD knows it. These are clearly opposite viewpoints of what the "unknowing" ARE. To God, unknowing is impossible. It is therefore not a point of view at all, but merely a belief in something that does not exist. It is only this BELIEF that the unknowing have, and BY it, they are wrong about themselves. They have DEFINED themselves as they were NOT created. Their creation was NOT a point of view, but rather, a CERTAINTY. Uncertainty BROUGHT to certainty does not retain ANY conviction of reality.
You must have noticed that the emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable TO the desirable, what you do NOT want to what you DO. You will realize that salvation MUST come to you this way, if you consider what dissociation IS. Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking, whereby two systems of belief, which CANNOT coexist, are BOTH MAINTAINED. It HAS BEEN recognized that, if they were BROUGHT TOGETHER, their joint acceptance WOULD become impossible. But, if one is kept in darkness FROM THE OTHER, their SEPARATION seems to keep them both alive, and equal in their reality. Their JOINING thus becomes the source of fear, for, if they meet, acceptance MUST be withdrawn from one of them.
You CANNOT have them both, for each DENIES the other. Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each, in a SEPARATE place, CAN be endowed with firm belief. BRING THEM TOGETHER, and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. One WILL go, BECAUSE the other is seen in the SAME place. Light cannot enter darkness, when a mind BELIEVES in darkness, and will not let it go. Truth does not struggle AGAINST ignorance, and love does not ATTACK fear. What needs no protection, does not defend itself. Defense was of YOUR making. God knows it not.
The Holy Spirit uses defenses ON BEHALF of truth, only because you made them AGAINST it. His perception of them, according to HIS purpose, merely changes them into a CALL FOR what you have ATTACKED WITH them. Defenses, like everything you made, must be gently turned to your own good, translated by Him from means of self-destruction, to means of preservation and release. His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. Therefore, to Him, it is so easy, that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you.
Do not delay yourselves in your return to peace, by wondering how He can fulfill what God has given Him to do. Leave that to Him Who knows! You are not asked to do mighty tasks yourself. You are merely asked to do the little He SUGGESTS you do, trusting Him only to the small extent of believing that, if He asks it, you can do it. You will SEE how easily ALL that He asks can be accomplished. He asks of you but this; - bring to Him every secret you have locked away from Him. Open every door to Him, and bid Him enter the darkness, and lighten it away.
At YOUR request, He enters gladly. He brings the light to darkness, if you make the darkness OPEN to Him. But what you hide, He cannot look upon. For He sees FOR YOU, and unless you look WITH Him, He CANNOT see. The vision of Christ is not for Him alone, but for Him WITH YOU. Bring, therefore, all your dark and secret thoughts to Him, and look upon them WITH Him. He holds the light, and you the darkness. They CANNOT coexist, when both of you TOGETHER look on them. His judgment MUST prevail, and He will GIVE it to you, as you join your perception to His. Joining with Him in seeing, is the way in which you learn to share with Him the interpretation of perception that leads to knowledge.
You cannot see alone. Sharing perception with Him Whom God has given you, teaches you how to RECOGNIZE what you see. It is the recognition that NOTHING you see means ANYTHING alone. Seeing WITH Him will SHOW you that all meaning, INCLUDING YOURS, comes not from double vision, but from the gentle fusing of everything into one meaning, one emotion and one purpose. God has one Purpose, which He shares with you. The single vision, which the Holy Spirit offers you, will bring this Oneness to your mind with clarity and brightness so intense, you could not wish, for all the world, not to accept what God would have you have. Behold your will, accepting it as His, with all His love as yours. All honor to you through Him, and through Him unto God.
In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you, and the power that He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All that, lies hidden in every darkened place shrouded in guilt, and in the dark denial of innocence. Behind the dark doors which you have closed lies nothing, BECAUSE nothing CAN obscure the gift of God. It is the CLOSING of the doors, that interferes with recognition of the power of God that shines in you. Banish not power from your mind, but let all that would hide your glory, be brought to the judgment of the Holy Spirit, and there undone. Whom He would save for glory IS saved for it. He has promised the Father that, through Him, you would be released from littleness to glory.
To what He promised God, He is wholly faithful, for He shared WITH God the promise that was given to Him to share with YOU. He shares it still, FOR YOU. Everything that promises otherwise, great or small, however much or little valued, He will replace with the one promise GIVEN unto Him to lay upon the altar to your Father and His Son. No altar stands to God WITHOUT His Son. And NOTHING brought there that is not equally worthy of BOTH, but will be REPLACED by gifts wholly acceptable to Father AND to Son. Can you offer guilt to God? You cannot, then, offer it to His Son. For they are NOT apart, and gifts to one ARE offered to the other.
You know not God, because you know not this. And yet you DO know God, and ALSO this. All this is safe WITHIN you, where the Holy Spirit shines. He shines not in division, but in the meeting-place where God, UNITED with His Son, speaks to His Son THROUGH Him. Communication between what cannot BE divided CANNOT cease. The holy meeting-place of the unseparated Father and His Son lies in the Holy Spirit, and in YOU. All interference in the communication that God Himself wills with His Son is quite impossible here. Unbroken and uninterrupted love flows constantly between the Father and the Son, as BOTH would have it be. And so it IS.
Let your minds wander not through darkened corridors, AWAY from Light's center. You may choose to lead YOURSELVES astray, but you can only be BROUGHT TOGETHER by the Guide appointed FOR you. He will surely lead you to where God and His Son await your recognition. They are joined in giving you the gift of Oneness, before which ALL separation vanishes. Unite with what you ARE. You CANNOT join with anything EXCEPT reality. God's glory and His Son's BELONG to you in truth. They HAVE no opposite, and nothing else CAN you bestow upon yourselves.
There is no substitute for truth. And truth will make this plain to you, as you are brought into the place where you must MEET with truth. And there you must be led, through gentle understanding, which can lead you nowhere else. Where God is, there are YOU. Such IS the truth. Nothing can change the knowledge GIVEN you by God into UNknowing. Everything God created KNOWS its Creator. For this is how creation is accomplished, by the Creator, and by His creations. In the holy meeting-place are joined the Father and His creations, and the creations of His Son, with them together.
There is one link which joins them all together, holding them in the Oneness out of which creation happens. The link with which the Father joins Himself to those He gives the power to create LIKE Him, can NEVER be dissolved. Heaven itself is union with ALL of creation, and with its One Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God for YOU. Lay no gifts other than this upon your altars, for nothing can coexist BESIDE it. Here, your meager offerings are BROUGHT TOGETHER with the gift of God, and only what is worthy of the Father will be accepted by the Son, for whom it was intended. To whom God gives Himself, He IS given. Your little gifts will vanish, on the altar where He has placed His Own.
Today's idea accurately describes you as God created you. You are one within yourself, and One with Him. Yours is the unity of all creation. Your perfect unity makes change in you impossible. You do not accept this, and you fail to realize it must be so, only because you believe that you have changed yourself already.
You see yourself as a ridiculous parody on God's creation, weak, vicious, ugly and sinful, miserable and beset with pain. Such is your version of your self; a self divided into many warring parts, separated from God, and tenuously held together by its erratic and capricious maker, to which you pray. It does not hear your prayers, for it is deaf. It does not see the Oneness in you, for it is blind. It does not understand you are the Son of God, for it is senseless and understands nothing.
We will attempt today to be aware only of what can hear and see, and what makes perfect sense. We will again direct our exercises toward reaching your One Self, which is united with Its Creator. In patience and in hope we try again today. The use of the first 5 minutes of every waking hour for practicing the idea for the day has special advantages at the stage of learning in which you are at present.
It is difficult at this point not to allow your mind to wander if it undertakes extended attempts. You have surely realized this by now. You have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline, and of your need for mind training. It is necessary that you be aware of this, for it is indeed a hindrance to your advance.
Frequent but shorter practice periods have other advantages for you at this time. In addition to recognizing your difficulties with sustained attention, you must also have noticed that, unless you are reminded of your purpose frequently, you tend to forget about it for long periods of time. You often fail to remember the short applications of the idea for the day, and you have not yet formed the habit of using it as an automatic response to temptation.
Structure, then, is necessary for you at this time, planned to include frequent reminders of your goal, and regular attempts to reach it. Regularity in terms of time is not the ideal requirement for the most beneficial form of practice in salvation. It is advantageous, however, for these whose motivation is inconsistent, and who remain heavily defended against learning.
We will therefore keep to the five minutes an hour practice periods for a while, and urge you to omit as few as possible. Using the first five minutes of the hour will be particularly helpful, since it imposes firmer structure. Do not, however, use your lapses from this schedule as an excuse not to return to it again as soon as you can.
There may well be a temptation to regard the day as lost because you have already failed to do what is required. This should, however, merely be recognized as what it is; a refusal to let your mistakes be corrected, and an unwillingness to try again. The Holy Spirit is not delayed in His teaching by your mistakes. He can be held back only by your unwillingness to let them go.
Let us therefore be determined, particularly for the next week or so, to be willing to forgive ourselves for our lapses in diligence, and our failures to follow the instructions for practicing the day's idea. This tolerance for weakness will enable us to overlook it, rather than give it power to delay our learning. If we give it power to do this, we are regarding it as strength, and are confusing strength and weakness.
When you fail to comply with the requirements of this course you have merely made a mistake. This calls for correction, and for nothing else. To allow a mistake to continue is to make additional mistakes, based on the first, and reinforcing it. It is this process which must be laid aside, for it is but another way in which you would defend illusions against the truth.
Let all these errors go by recognizing them for what they are. They are attempts to keep you unaware you are One Self, united with your Creator, at one with every aspect of creation, and limitless in power and in peace. This is the truth, and nothing else is true. Today we will affirm this truth again, and try to reach the place in you in which there is no doubt that only this is true. Begin the longer practice periods with this assurance, given to your mind with all the certainty that you can give:
"I am One Self, united with my Creator,
At one with every aspect of creation,
And limitless in power and in peace."
Then close your eyes and tell yourself again, slowly and thoughtfully, attempting to allow the meaning of the words to sink into your mind, replacing false ideas:
"I am One Self."
Repeat this several times, and then attempt to feel the meaning which the words convey. You are One Self, united and secure in light and joy and peace. You are God's Son, One Self with One Creator and one goal; to bring awareness of this Oneness to all minds, that true creation may extend the Allness and the Unity of God.
You are One Self, complete and healed and whole, with power to lift the veil of darkness from the world, and let the light in you come through to teach the world the truth about itself. You are One Self, in perfect harmony with all there is and all that there will be. You are One Self, the holy Son of God, united with your brothers in this Self; united with your Father in His Will.
Feel this One Self in you, and let It shine away all your illusions and your doubts. This is your Self, the Son of God Himself, sinless as Its Creator, with His strength within you, and His Love forever yours. You are One Self, and it is given you to feel this Self within you, and to cast all your illusions out of the One Mind Which is this Self, the holy truth in you.
Do not forget today. We need your help, your little part in bringing happiness to all the world. And Heaven looks to you in confidence that you will try today. Share, then, its surety, for it is yours. Be vigilant. Do not forget today.
Throughout the day do not forget your goal. Repeat today's idea as frequently as possible, and understand each time you do so, someone hears the voice of hope, the stirring of the truth within his mind, the gentle rustling of the wings of peace. Your own acknowledgment you are One Self, united with your Father, is a call to all the world, to be at one with you.
To everyone you meet today be sure to give the promise of today's idea, and tell him this:
"You are One Self with me,
United with our Creator in this Self.
I honor you because of what I am,
And what He is, Who loves us both as one."
I once asked if you were willing to sell all you have, and give to the poor and follow me. This is what I meant: If you had no investment in anything in this world, you could teach the poor where THEIR treasure IS. The poor are merely those who have invested wrongly, and they are poor indeed! And because they are in need, it is given to you to help them, since you are among them. Consider how perfectly your lesson would be learned, IF YOU WERE UNWILLING TO SHARE THEIR POVERTY. For poverty is lack, and there is but one lack, since there is but one need.
Suppose a brother insists on having you do something you think you do not want to do. The very fact of his insistence should tell you that HE BELIEVES SALVATION LIES IN IT. If you insist on refusing, and experience a quick response of opposition, YOU are believing that YOUR salvation lies in NOT doing it. You, then, are making the same mistake that HE is, and are making his error real to both of you. Insistence means INVESTMENT, and what you invest in is ALWAYS related to your notion of salvation. The question is always two-fold; first, WHAT is to be saved, and second, how can it BE saved?
Whenever you become angry with a brother, for WHATEVER reason, you are believing that the EGO is to be saved, AND TO BE SAVED BY ATTACK. If HE attacks, you are agreeing with this belief, and if YOU attack, you are reinforcing it. REMEMBER THAT THOSE WHO ATTACK ARE POOR. Their poverty asks for gifts, NOT for further impoverishment. You who could help them are surely acting destructively, if you accept their poverty AS YOURS. If you had not invested AS THEY HAD, it would never occur to you to overlook their need.
RECOGNIZE WHAT DOES NOT MATTER, and if your brothers ask you for something "outrageous," do it BECAUSE it does not matter. Refuse, and your OPPOSITION establishes that it DOES matter to you. It is only you, therefore, who have MADE the request outrageous, for nothing can BE asked OF you, and EVERY request of a brother is FOR you. Why would you insist in DENYING him? For to do so is to deny yourself, and impoverish both. HE is asking for salvation, as YOU are. Poverty is of the ego, and never of God. No "outrageous" request CAN be made of one who recognizes what is valuable, and wants to accept nothing else.
Salvation is for the mind, and it is attained through peace. This is the only thing that CAN be saved, and the ONLY way to save it. Any response OTHER than love, arises from a confusion about the "what" and the "how" of salvation. And this is the ONLY answer. Never lose sight of this, and never allow yourself to believe, even for an instant, that there is another answer. For you will surely place yourself among the poor, who do not understand that they dwell in abundance and that salvation is come.
To identify with the ego is to attack yourself, and MAKE YOURSELF POOR. That is why everyone who identifies with the ego FEELS DEPRIVED. What he EXPERIENCES is then depression or anger, but what he DID is to exchange his self-love for self-hate, MAKING HIM AFRAID OF HIMSELF. He does NOT realize this. Even if he is fully aware of ANXIETY, he does NOT perceive its source AS HIS OWN EGO IDENTIFICATION, and he ALWAYS tries to handle it by making some sort of insane "arrangement" with the world. He ALWAYS perceives this world as OUTSIDE HIMSELF, for this is crucial to his adjustment. He does NOT realize that HE MAKES THIS WORLD, for there IS no world outside him.
If only the loving thoughts of God's Son ARE the world's reality, the real world MUST be IN HIS MIND. His insane thoughts, too, must be in his mind, but an INTERNAL conflict of this magnitude he cannot tolerate. For a split mind IS endangered, and the recognition that it encompasses COMPLETELY opposed thoughts within itself IS intolerable. Therefore, the mind projects the split, NOT the reality. EVERYTHING you perceive as the outside world, is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation.
But consider what has happened, for thoughts have consequences to the thinker. You are AT ODDS with the world as you perceive it because you think IT is antagonistic to you. THIS IS A NECESSARY CONSEQUENCE OF WHAT YOU HAVE DONE. You have projected outward what IS antagonistic to what is inward, and therefore you would HAVE to perceive it this way. That is why you MUST realize that your hatred IS in your mind, and NOT OUTSIDE IT, before you can get rid of it. And why you MUST get rid of it, BEFORE you can perceive the world as it really is.
Long ago we said that God so loved the world that He gave it TO His only-begotten Son. (that whosoever believeth on him should never see death). God DOES love the real world, and those who perceive its reality CANNOT see the world of death. For death is not OF the real world, in which everything is eternal. God gave you the real world in exchange for the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death. For if you could REALLY separate yourselves from the Mind of God, you WOULD die. And the world you perceive IS a world of separation.
You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father. But He would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it.
Yet this world is ONLY in the mind of its maker, along with his REAL salvation. Do not believe it is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing WHERE it is, will you gain control over it. For you DO have control over your mind, for the mind is the mechanism of decision. If you will recognize that ALL attack which you perceive, is in your own mind, and NOWHERE ELSE, you will at last have placed its source, and where it began it must end. For in this place also lies salvation. The altar of God, where Christ abideth, is there.
You have defiled the altar, but NOT the world. But Christ has placed the Atonement on the altar FOR you. Bring your perceptions of the world to this altar, for it is the altar to truth. There you will see your vision changed, and there you will learn to see truly. From this place, where God and His Son dwell in peace, and where you are welcome, you will look out in peace, and behold the world truly. But to find the place, you must relinquish your investment in the world as YOU have projected it, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world TO you, from the altar of God. -
(On Wed. evening, Nov. 24, Helen Schucman had sudden flash of illumination and very much wanted to offer prayer for Bill, which she did as follows: "Jesus, help me see my brother (Bill ) as he really is, and thus release both him and me." Helen Schucman also thought later: Every time there is anything unlovable that crosses one's mind (re sex, possession, etc.) you should immediately recognize that you do not want to hurt your brother.) On Thurs. morning, the prayer for the miracle occurred as follows stated above.)
You had a lot of trouble afterwards with the words (which are essentially irrelevant) partly because you were dissatisfied with yourself at the time, but also because you ARE confused about the difference between perception and cognition. You will note that we have said very little about cognition as yet. (Aside: One of the exceptions is in the correction formula for fear, which begins with KNOW first) The reason is because you must get your perceptions straightened out before you can KNOW anything.
To know is to be certain. Uncertainty merely means that you DON'T know. Knowledge is power BECAUSE it is certain, and certainty is strength. Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love. Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge. True perception is the BASIS for knowledge, but KNOWING is the affirmation of truth.
All of your difficulties ultimately stem from the fact that you do not recognize, or KNOW, yourselves, each other, or God. "Recognize" means "know again." This means that you knew before. (Note that it does not mean SAW before.) You can see in many ways, because perception involves different interpretations, and this means it is not whole. The miracle is a way of PERCEIVING, not a way of knowing. It is the right answer to a question, but you do not ask questions at all when you know.
Questioning delusions is the first step in undoing them. The miracle, or the right answer, corrects them. Since perceptions CHANGE, their dependence on time is obvious. They are subject to transitory states, and this implies variability by definition. How you perceive at any given time determines what you DO, and action MUST occur in time. Knowledge is timeless because certainty is not questionable. You KNOW when you have ceased to ask questions.
The "questioning mind" perceives itself in time, and therefore looks for FUTURE answers. The unquestioning mind is closed merely because it believes the future and the present will be the same. This establishes an unchanged state, or stasis. This is usually an attempt to counteract an underlying fear that the future will be WORSE than the present, and this fear inhibits the tendency to question at all.
Visions are the natural perception of the spiritual eye, but they are still corrections. B's question about the "spiritual eye" was a very legitimate one. The "spiritual eye" is symbolic, and therefore NOT a device for knowing. It IS, however, a means of right perception, which brings it into the proper domain of the miracle, but NOT of revelation. PROPERLY speaking, a "vision of God" is a miracle rather than a revelation. The fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge. That is why these visions do not last.
The Bible instructs you to "KNOW thyself," or BE CERTAIN. Certainty is always of God. When you love someone, you have PERCEIVED him as he is, and this makes it possible for you to KNOW him. But it is not until you RECOGNIZE him that you KNOW him. Only then are you ABLE to stop asking questions about him.
While you ask questions about God, you are clearly implying that you do NOT know Him. Certainty does not require action. When you say you are ACTING on the basis of sure knowledge, you are really confusing perception and cognition. Knowledge brings MENTAL strength for creative THINKING, but not for right doing.
Perception, miracles and doing are closely related. Knowledge is a result of revelation, and induces only thought (thinking). Perception involves the body even in its most spiritualized form. Knowledge comes from the altar within, and is timeless because it is certain. To perceive the truth is not the same as KNOWING it. This is why Bill is having so much trouble in what he calls "integrating" the notes. His tentative perception is too uncertain for knowledge, because knowledge is SURE. Your perception is so variable that you swing from sudden but real knowledge to complete cognitive disorganization. This is why Bill is more prone to irritation, while you are more vulnerable to rage. He is consistently BELOW his potential, while you achieve it at times and then swing very wide of the mark.
Actually, these differences do not matter. But I thought you might be glad to learn that you are much better off with DIFFERENT perceptual problems than you would be if you suffered from similar ones. This enables each of you to RECOGNIZE (and this is the right word here) that the misperceptions of the other are unnecessary. It is because you do not KNOW what to do about it that Bill reacts to yours with irritation, and you respond to his with fury.
I repeat again that if you ATTACK error, you will hurt yourself. You do not RECOGNIZE each other when you attack. Attack is ALWAYS made on a stranger. You are MAKING him a stranger by misperceiving him, so that you CANNOT know him. It is BECAUSE you have made him into a stranger that you are afraid of him. PERCEIVE him correctly, so that your Soul can KNOW him.
Right perception is necessary before God can communicate DIRECTLY to his own altars, which he has established in His Sons. There he can communicate His certainty, and His KNOWLEDGE will bring the peace WITHOUT question.
God is not a stranger to His Own Sons, and His Sons are not strangers to each other. Knowledge preceded both perception and time, and will also ultimately replace (or correct for) them. This is the real meaning of the Biblical account of God as "Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End." It also explains the quotation "Before Abraham WAS, I AM." Perception can and must be stabilized, but knowledge IS stable. "Fear God and keep His Commandments" is a real scribal error. It should read, "KNOW God and accept His certainty." (This error is why the commandments are all negative, in contrast to Christ's statement about "Thou shalt love." etc.) There are no strangers in His Creation. To create as He Created, you can create only what you KNOW and accept as yours.
God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He Created them by knowing them. He recognizes them perfectly. When they do not recognize each other, they do not recognize Him. Brothers can misperceive one another, but they rarely maintain that they do not KNOW each other. This is possible only if they maintain that they are NOT really brothers. The Bible is VERY specific on this point.
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?
This is a question everyone must ask. Certainly peace seems to be impossible here. Yet the Word of God promises other things that seem impossible, as well as this. His Word has promised peace. It has also promised that there is no death; that resurrection must occur, and that rebirth is man's inheritance. The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this.
Again we come to the question of judgment. This time, ask yourself whether your judgment or the Word of God is more likely to be true. For they say different things about the world, and things so opposite that it is pointless to try to reconcile them. God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so.
The text explains that the Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made. These problems are not true, but that is meaningless to those who believe in them. And everyone believes in what he made, for it was made by his believing it. Into this strange and paradoxical situation, - one without meaning and devoid of sense, yet out of which no way seems possible, - God has sent His Judgment to answer yours. Gently His Judgment substitutes for yours. And through this substitution is the ununderstandable made understandable. How is peace possible in this world? In your judgment it is not possible, and can never be possible. But in the Judgment of God what is reflected here is only peace.
Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped. It is not the world which makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see that is impossible. Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted world redeemed it and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace descends on it in joyous answer. Peace now belongs here, because a Thought of God has entered. What else but a Thought of God turns hell to Heaven merely by being what It is? The earth bows down before Its gracious Presence, and It leans down in answer to raise it up again. Now is the question different. It is no longer, "Can peace be possible in this world?" but instead, "Is it not impossible that peace be absent here?"
Healing is always certain. It is impossible to let illusions be brought to truth and keep the illusions. Truth demonstrates illusions have no value. The teacher of God has seen the correction of his errors in the mind of the patient, recognizing it for what it is. Having accepted the Atonement for himself, he has also accepted it for the patient. Yet what if the patient uses sickness as a way of life, believing healing is the way to death? When this is so, a sudden healing may precipitate intense depression, and a sense of loss so deep that the patient may even try to destroy himself. Having nothing to live for, he may ask for death. Healing must wait, for his protection.
Healing will always stand aside when it would be seen as threat. The instant it is welcome it is there. Where healing has been given it will be received. And what is time before the gifts of God? We have referred many times in the text to the storehouse of treasures laid up equally for the giver and the receiver of God's gifts. Not one is lost, for they can but increase. No teacher of God should feel disappointed if he has offered healing and it does not appear to have been received. It is not up to him to judge when his gift should be accepted. Let him be certain it has been received, and trust that it will be accepted when it is recognized as a blessing and not a curse.
It is not the function of God's teachers to evaluate the outcome of their gifts. It is merely their function to give them. Once they have done that, they have also given the outcome, for that is part of the gift. No-one can give if he is concerned with the result of the giving. That is a limitation on the giving itself, and neither the giver nor the receiver would have the gift. Trust is an essential part of giving; in fact, it is the part that makes sharing possible, the part that guarantees the giver will not lose, but only gain. Who gives a gift, and then remains with it, to be sure it is used as the giver deems appropriate? Such is not giving but imprisoning.
It is the relinquishing of all concern about the gift that makes it truly given. And it is trust that makes true giving possible. Healing is the change of mind that the Holy Spirit in the patient's mind is seeking for him. And it is the Holy Spirit in the mind of the giver Who gives the gift to him. How can it be lost? How can it be ineffectual? How can it be wasted? God's treasure house can never be empty. And if one gift were missing it would not be full. Yet is its fullness guaranteed by God. What concern, then, can a teacher of God have about what becomes of his gifts? Given by God to God, who in this holy exchange can receive less than everything?
Who is the light of the world except God's Son? This, then, is merely a statement of the truth about yourself. It is the opposite of a statement of pride, of arrogance, or of self-deception. It does not describe the self-concept you have made. It does not refer to any of the characteristics with which you have endowed your idols. It refers to you as you were created by God. It simply states the truth.
To the ego, today's idea is the epitome of self-glorification. But the ego does not understand humility, mistaking it for self-debasement. Humility consists of accepting your role in salvation, and in taking no other. It is not humility to insist that you cannot be the light of the world, if that is the function God assigned to you. It is only arrogance that would assert this function cannot be for you, and arrogance is always of the ego.
True humility requires that you accept today's idea because it is God's Voice which tells you it is true. This is a beginning step in accepting your real function on earth. It is a giant stride toward taking your rightful place in salvation. It is a positive assertion of your right to be saved, and an acknowledgment of the power that is given you to save others.
You will want to think about this idea as often as possible today. It is the perfect answer to all illusions, and therefore to all temptation. It brings all the images you have made about yourself to the truth, and helps you depart in peace, unburdened and certain of your purpose.
As many practice periods as possible should be undertaken today, although each one need not exceed a minute or two. They should begin with telling yourself:
"I am the light of the world.
That is my only function.
That is why I am here."
Then think about these statements for a short while, preferably with your eyes closed if the situation permits. Let a few related thoughts come to you, and repeat the idea to yourself if your mind wanders away from the central thought.
Be sure both to begin and end the day with a practice period. Thus you will awaken with an acknowledgment of the truth about yourself, reinforce it throughout the day, and turn to sleep as you re-affirm your function and your only purpose here. These two practice periods may be longer than the rest, if you find them helpful and want to extend them.
Today's idea goes far beyond the ego's petty views of what you are and what your purpose is. As a bringer of salvation, this is obviously necessary. This is the first of a number of giant steps we will take in the next few weeks. Try today to begin to build a firm foundation for these advances. You are the light of the world. God has built His plan for the salvation of His Son on you.
Grandeur is of God, and ONLY of Him. Therefore, it is in you. Whenever you become aware of it, however dimly, you abandon the ego automatically, because in the presence of the grandeur of God, the meaninglessness of the ego becomes perfectly apparent. Though it does not understand this, the ego believes that its "enemy" has struck, and attempts to offer gifts to induce you to return to its protection. SELF-inflation is the only offering it can make. The grandiosity of the ego is its alternative to the grandeur of God. Which will you choose?
Grandiosity is ALWAYS a cover for despair. It is without hope, because it is not real. It is an attempt to COUNTERACT your littleness, based on the belief THAT THE LITTLENESS IS REAL. WITHOUT this belief, the grandiosity is meaningless, and you could not possibly WANT it. The essence of grandiosity is competitiveness, because it ALWAYS involves ATTACK. It is a delusional attempt to OUTDO, but NOT to UNdo. We said before that the ego vacillates between suspiciousness and viciousness. It remains suspicious as long as you DESPAIR of yourself. It shifts to viciousness whenever you will not tolerate self-debasement, and seek relief. Then it offers you the delusion of ATTACK as a solution.
The ego does not know the difference between grandeur and grandiosity, because it does not know the difference between miracle-impulses and ego-alien beliefs of its own. We once said that the ego IS aware of threat, but does NOT make distinctions between two ENTIRELY different kinds of threat to its existence. Its own PROFOUND sense of vulnerability renders it incapable of judgment, EXCEPT in terms of attack. When it experiences threat, its ONLY decision is whether to attack NOW, or withdraw to attack later. If you ACCEPT its offer of grandiosity, it will attack immediately. If you do not, it will wait.
The ego is immobilized in the presence of God's grandeur, because HIS grandeur establishes YOUR freedom. Even the faintest hint of your reality literally drives the ego from your mind, because of the complete lack of investment in it. Grandeur is totally WITHOUT illusion, and because it is real, it is compellingly convincing. But the conviction of reality will not REMAIN with you, UNLESS YOU DO NOT ALLOW THE EGO TO ATTACK IT.
The ego will make every effort to recover, and mobilize its energies AGAINST your release. It will tell you that you are insane, and argue that grandeur CANNOT be a real part of you, because of the littleness in which IT believes. But your grandeur is NOT delusional, BECAUSE YOU DID NOT MAKE IT. YOU have made grandiosity, and are afraid of it, because it is a form of ATTACK. But your grandeur is of God, who created it out of His love. From your grandeur you can only bless, because your grandeur is your ABUNDANCE. By blessing you hold it in your minds, protecting it from illusions, and keeping yourself in the Mind of God.
Remember always that you cannot be anywhere EXCEPT in the Mind of God. When you FORGET this, you WILL despair, and you WILL attack. The ego depends SOLELY on your willingness to tolerate it. But if you are willing to look upon your grandeur, you CANNOT despair, and therefore you CANNOT want the ego. Your grandeur is God's ANSWER to the ego, because it is true. Littleness and grandeur cannot co-exist, nor is it possible for them to alternate in your awareness. Littleness and grandiosity can and MUST, since both are untrue, and therefore on the same level. Being the level of shift, it is experienced as shifting, and extremes are its essential characteristic.
But truth and littleness are DENIALS of each other, and grandeur IS truth. Truth does not vacillate; it is ALWAYS true. When grandeur slips away from you, YOU HAVE REPLACED IT WITH SOMETHING YOU HAVE MADE. Perhaps it is the belief in littleness; perhaps it is the belief in grandiosity. But it MUST be insane, because it is NOT TRUE. Your grandeur will NEVER deceive you, but your illusions ALWAYS will. Illusions ARE deceptions.
You CANNOT triumph, but you ARE exalted. And in your exalted state, you seek others like you, and rejoice with them. It is easy to distinguish grandeur from grandiosity, simply because love is returned, but pride is not. Pride will not produce miracles, and therefore will deprive you of the true witnesses to your reality. Truth is not obscure nor hidden, but its obviousness to YOU lies in the joy you bring to its witnesses, WHO SHOW IT TO YOU. They attest to your grandeur, but they cannot attest to pride because pride is not shared.
God WANTS you to behold what He created, because it is HIS joy. Can your grandeur be arrogant, when God HIMSELF witnesses to it? And what can be real that has NO witnesses? What good can come of it? And if no good can come of it, the Holy Spirit cannot use it. What He cannot TRANSFORM to the Will of God does not exist at all. Grandiosity is delusional because it is used to REPLACE your grandeur. Yet what God has created cannot BE replaced.
God is incomplete without you, simply because His grandeur is total, and you cannot BE missing from it. You are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God. No one else can fill your part of it, and while you leave your part of it empty, your eternal place merely waits for your return. God, through His Voice, reminds you of it, and God Himself keeps your extensions safe within it. But YOU do not know them, until you return TO them.
You CANNOT replace the Kingdom, and you cannot replace yourself. God, Who KNOWS your value, would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. Your value is in GOD's Mind, and therefore NOT in yours alone. To accept yourself as He created you CANNOT be arrogant, because it is the DENIAL of arrogance. To accept your littleness IS arrogant, because it means that you believe that YOUR evaluation of yourself is TRUER THAN GOD's. But if truth is indivisible, then YOUR evaluation of yourself MUST BE GOD's.
You did not ESTABLISH your value, and it needs no defense. NOTHING can attack it, or prevail over it. It does not vary. It merely IS. Ask the Holy Spirit WHAT it is, and He will tell you. But do not be afraid of His Answer, for it comes from God. It IS an exalted answer, because of its Source. But the Source is true, and so is its answer. Listen and do not question what you hear, for God does not deceive. He would have you replace the ego's belief in littleness with His own exalted answer to the question of your being, so that you can cease to question it, and KNOW it for what it IS.
The ONLY way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends WITHOUT your help. But you ARE needed that it can BEGIN. ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth, because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED. No-one can ask ANOTHER to be healed. But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not HAVE? And who can SHARE what he denies HIMSELF? The Holy Spirit speaks to YOU. He does not speak to someone ELSE. Yet BY your listening, His Voice extends, BECAUSE you have accepted what He says.
Health is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief. No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible. But if you are AFRAID of healing, then it cannot come through you. The ONLY thing that is required for a healing is a lack of fear. The fearful are NOT healed, and cannot heal. This does NOT mean the conflict must be gone forever from your mind. For if it were, there were no NEED for healing any more. But it DOES mean, if only for an instant, you love without attack. An instant is sufficient. Miracles wait not on time.
The holy instant is the miracle's abiding-place. From there, each one is born into this world, as witness to a state of mind which has TRANSCENDED conflict, and has reached to peace. It carries comfort from the place of peace into the battleground, and DEMONSTRATES that war has no effects. For all the hurt that war has sought to bring; the broken bodies and the shattered limbs, the screaming dying and the silent dead, are gently lifted up and comforted. There IS no sadness, where a miracle has come to heal. And nothing more than just ONE instant of your love WITHOUT attack is necessary, that all this occur.
In that ONE instant are YOU healed, and in that single instant is ALL healing done. What stands APART from you, when you accept the blessing that the holy instant brings? Be not afraid of blessing for the One Who blesses you loves all the world, and leaves nothing within the world that COULD be feared. But if you SHRINK from blessing, will the world indeed seem fearful, for you have WITHHELD its peace and comfort, leaving it to die. Would not a world so bitterly bereft be looked on as a condemnation by the one who COULD have saved it, but stepped back, because he was AFRAID of being healed? The eyes of all the dying bring reproach, and suffering whispers, "What is there to fear?"
Consider well its question. It is asked of you on YOUR behalf. A dying world asks only that you rest an instant from attack upon YOURSELF, that it be healed. Come to the holy instant and be healed, for nothing that is there received is left behind, on your returning to the world. And BEING blessed, you will bring blessing. Life is given you, to give the dying world. And suffering eyes no longer will accuse, but shine in thanks to you who blessing gave. The holy instant's radiance will light YOUR eyes, and give them sight to see beyond ALL suffering, and see Christ's Face INSTEAD. Healing REPLACES suffering. Who looks on one cannot PERCEIVE the other, for they CANNOT both be there. And what YOU see the world will witness, and will witness TO.
Thus is YOUR healing everything the world requires, that it may be healed. It needs ONE lesson that has perfectly been learned. And then, when YOU forget it, will the world remind you gently of what you have taught. No reinforcement will its thanks withhold from you who let yourselves be healed, that it might live. It will call forth its witnesses to show the Face of Christ to you who brought the sight to THEM, by which THEY witnessed it. The world of accusation is replaced by one in which all eyes look lovingly upon the friend who brought them their release. And happily your brother will perceive the many friends he thought were enemies.
Problems are not specific, but they take specific forms, and these specific shapes make up the world. And no-one understands the nature of his problem. If he DID, it would be there no more for him to see. Its very NATURE is that it is NOT. And thus, WHILE he perceives it, he can NOT perceive it as it is. But HEALING is apparent in specific instances, and generalizes to include them all. This is because they really ARE the same, DESPITE their different forms. All learning aims at transfer, which becomes complete within two situations which are seen as one. For ONLY common elements are there. But this can only be attained by One Who does not see the DIFFERENCES you see.
The total transfer of your learning is NOT made by you. But that it HAS been made, IN SPITE of all the differences you see, convinces YOU that they could not be real. Your healing WILL extend, and WILL be brought to problems that you thought were NOT your own. And it will ALSO be apparent that your many DIFFERENT problems will be solved, as any ONE of them has been escaped. It CANNOT be their differences which made this possible, for learning does not jump from situations to their opposites, and bring the SAME effects. All healing MUST proceed in lawful manner, in accord with laws that have been properly perceived, but NEVER violated. Fear you not the way that YOU perceive them. You ARE wrong, but there is One within you Who is RIGHT.
Leave, then, the transfer of your learning to the One Who REALLY understands its laws, and Who will GUARANTEE that they remain unviolated and unlimited. Your part is merely to apply what He has taught you TO YOURSELF, and He will do the rest. And thus the power of your learning will be PROVED to you, by all the many DIFFERENT witnesses it finds. Your brother FIRST among them will be seen, but thousands stand behind him, and beyond each one of them there are a thousand more. Each one may SEEM to have a problem which is DIFFERENT from the rest. Yet they are solved TOGETHER. And their common Answer shows the QUESTIONS could not have been separate.
Peace be to you whom is healing offered. And you will learn that peace is given you, when you accept the healing for yourself. Its TOTAL value need not be appraised by YOU, to let you understand that you have benefited from it. What occurred within the instant which love entered in WITHOUT attack, will stay with you forever. YOUR healing will be ONE of its effects, as will your brother's. Everywhere you go, will you behold its multiplied effects. Yet all the witnesses that you behold will be FAR less than all there really ARE. Infinity cannot be understood by merely counting up the separate parts. God thanks you for your healing, for He knows it is a gift of love unto His Son, and therefore is it given unto Him.
Vision will come to you at first in glimpses, but they will be enough to show you what is given YOU who see your brother sinless.
Truth is restored to you through your desire, as it was lost to you through your desire for something ELSE. Open the holy place which you closed off by VALUING the something else, and what was never lost will quietly return. It HAS been saved for you. Vision would not be necessary, had judgment not been made. Desire now its whole undoing, and it is done FOR you. Do you not WANT to know your own identity? Would you not happily exchange your doubts for certainty? Would you not willingly be FREE of misery, and learn again of joy? Your holy relationship offers all this to you. As IT was given you, so will be its EFFECTS.
And as its holy purpose was not made by you, the means by which its happy end is yours is also not of you. Rejoice in what is yours but for the asking. And think not that you need make either means OR end. All this is GIVEN you, who would but SEE your brother sinless. All this is GIVEN, waiting on your desire but to RECEIVE it. Vision is freely given to those who ask to see. Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision, and to rejoice in, along with Him. For peace will come to all who ask for it with real desire and sincerity of purpose, SHARED with the Holy Spirit, and at one with Him on what salvation IS.
Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless, that Christ may rise before your vision, and give you joy. And place NO value on your brother's body, which held him to illusions of what he is. It is HIS desire to see his sinlessness, as it is YOURS. And bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what you have MADE of him. The Holy Spirit GUARANTEES that what God has willed and given shall be yours. This is YOUR purpose now, and the vision that makes it yours is ready to be given. You have the vision that enables you to see the body not. And as you look upon each other, you will see an altar to your Father, holy as Heaven, glowing with radiant purity, and sparkling with the shining lilies you laid upon it.
What can you value more than this? Why do you think the body is a better home, a safer shelter for God's Son? Why would you rather look on IT, than on the truth? How can the engine of destruction be PREFERRED, and chosen to REPLACE the holy home the Holy Spirit offers, where HE will dwell WITH you? The body is the sign of weakness, vulnerability, and LOSS of power. Can such a Savior HELP you? Would you turn, in your distress and need for help, unto the HELPLESS? Is the pitifully LITTLE the perfect choice to call upon for strength? Judgment WILL seem to make your Savior weak. But it is YOU who need his strength.
There is no problem, no event or situation, no perplexity, that vision will not solve. All is redeemed, when looked upon with vision. For this is not YOUR sight, and brings with it the laws beloved of Him Whose sight it IS. Everything looked upon with vision falls gently into place, according to the laws brought TO it by His calm and certain sight. The end, for everything HE looks upon, is ALWAYS sure. For it will meet His purpose, seen in UNADJUSTED form, and suited perfectly to meet it. Destructiveness becomes benign, and sin is turned to blessing under His gentle gaze.
What can the body's eyes perceive, with power to CORRECT? Its eyes ADJUST to sin, unable to overlook it in ANY form, and seeing it EVERYWHERE, in EVERYTHING. Look through ITS eyes, and EVERYTHING will stand condemned before you. All that could SAVE you, you will never see. Your holy relationship, the SOURCE of your salvation, will be DEPRIVED of meaning, and its most holy purpose bereft of means for its accomplishment. Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination. But vision sets all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway of Heaven's laws.
What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are. This IS the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they ARE gone. And all YOU need to do is recognize YOU DID THIS. Once you ACCEPT this simple fact, and take unto YOURSELF the power you GAVE them, YOU are released from them.
One thing is sure; hallucinations serve a purpose, and when that PURPOSE is no longer held, THEY disappear. Therefore, the question never is whether you want THEM, but ALWAYS do you want the purpose that they serve? This world SEEMS to hold out many purposes, each different, and with different values. Yet they are all the same. Again, there is no order, but a SEEMING hierarchy of values. Only two purposes are possible. And one is sin; the other holiness. Nothing is in between, and which you choose determines what you see. For what you see is merely HOW you elect to meet your goal.
Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness. They are the means by which the OUTSIDE world, projected from within, ADJUSTS to sin, and SEEMS to witness to its reality. It still is true that nothing IS without. Yet, upon nothing, are ALL projections made. For it is the PROJECTION which gives the "nothing" ALL the meaning that it holds. What has NO meaning, cannot BE perceived. And meaning ALWAYS looks within, to find itself. And THEN looks out. ALL meaning that you give the world outside, must thus reflect the sight you saw WITHIN. Or better, IF you saw at all, or merely judged AGAINST.
Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations, that show you all fearful outcomes of imagined sin, into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. They are HIS substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the ego's purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They step AWAY from sin, reminding you that it is NOT reality that frightens you, and that the errors which you made CAN be corrected.
When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and SEEN it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and WATCHED them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need PERSUADE you to accept the gift of vision? And AFTER vision, who is there who COULD refuse what MUST come after? Think but an instant just on this. YOU can behold the holiness God gave His Son. And NEVER need you think that there IS something else for you to see.
The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct. Nor at the beginning stages of their functioning as teachers of God, have they yet acquired the deeper characteristics that will establish them as what they are. God gives special gifts to His teachers because they have a special role in His plan for Atonement. Their specialness is, of course, only temporary; set in time as a means of leading out of time. These special gifts, born in the holy relationship toward which the teaching-learning situation is geared, become characteristic of all teachers of God who have advanced in their own learning. In this respect they are all alike.
All differences among the Sons of God are temporary. Nevertheless, in time it can be said that the advanced teachers of God have the following characteristics:
This is the foundation on which their ability to fulfill their function rests. Perception is the result of learning. In fact, perception is learning, because cause and effect are never separated. The teachers of God have trust in the world, because they have learned it is not governed by the laws the world made up. It is governed by a Power which is in them but not of them. It is this Power that keeps all things safe. It is through this Power that the teachers of God look on a forgiven world.
When this Power has once been experienced, it is impossible to trust one's own petty strength again. Who would attempt to fly with the tiny wings of a sparrow when the mighty power of an eagle has been given him? And who would place his faith in the shabby offerings of the ego when the gifts of God are laid before him? What is it that induces them to make the shift?
First, they must go through what might be called "a period of undoing." This need not be painful, but it usually is so experienced. It seems as if things are being taken away, and it is rarely understood initially that their lack of value is merely being recognized. How can lack of value be perceived unless the perceiver is in a position where he must see things in a different light? He is not yet at a point at which he can make the shift entirely internally. And so the plan will sometimes call for changes in what seem to be external circumstances. These changes are always helpful. When the teacher of God has learned that much, he goes on to the second stage.
Next, the teacher of God must go through "a period of sorting-out." This is always somewhat difficult because, having learned that the changes in his life are always helpful, he must now decide all things on the basis of whether they increase the helpfulness or hamper it. He will find that many, if not most of the things he valued before will merely hinder his ability to transfer what he has learned to new situations as they arise. Because he has valued what is really valueless, he will not generalize the lesson for fear of loss and sacrifice. It takes great learning to understand that all things, events, encounters and circumstances are helpful. It is only to the extent to which they are helpful that any degree of reality should be accorded them in this world of illusion. The word "value" can apply to nothing else.
The third stage through which the teacher of God must go can be called a "period of relinquishment." If this is interpreted as giving up the desirable it will engender enormous conflict. Few teachers of God escape this distress entirely. There is, however, no point in sorting out the valuable from the valueless unless the next obvious step is taken. The third step is rarely if ever begun until the second is complete. Therefore, the period of overlap is apt to be one in which the teacher of God feels called upon to sacrifice his own best interests on behalf of truth. He has not realized as yet how wholly impossible such a demand would be. He can learn this only as he actually does give up the valueless. Through this, he learns that where he anticipated grief, he finds a happy light-heartedness instead; where he thought something was asked of him he finds a gift bestowed on him.
Now comes "a period of settling down." This is a quiet time, in which the teacher of God rests a while in reasonable peace. Now he consolidates his learning. Now he begins to see the transfer value of what he has learned. Its potential is literally staggering, and the teacher of God is now at the point in his progress at which he sees in it his whole way out. "Give up what you do not want, and keep what you do." How simple is the obvious. And how easy to do. The teacher of God needs this period of respite. He has not yet come as far as he thinks. Yet when he is ready to go on, he goes with mighty companions beside him. Now he rests a while, and gathers them before going on. He will not go on from here alone.
The next stage is indeed "a period of unsettling." Now must the teacher of God understand that he did not really know what was valuable and what was valueless. All that he really learned so far was that he did not want the valueless and that he did want the valuable. Yet his own sorting out was meaningless in teaching him the difference. The idea of sacrifice, so central to his own thought system, had made it impossible for him to judge. He thought he had learned willingness, but now he sees that he does not know what the willingness is for. And now he must attain a state that may remain impossible for a long, long time. He must learn to lay all judgment aside and ask only what he really wants in every circumstance. Were not each step in this direction so heavily reinforced, it would be hard indeed.
And finally, there is "a period of achievement." It is here that learning is consolidated. Now what was seen as merely shadows before become solid gains, to be counted on in all "emergencies" as well as tranquil times. Indeed, the tranquility is their result; the outcome of honest learning, consistency of thought and full transfer. This is the stage of real peace, for here is Heaven's state fully reflected. From here, the way to Heaven is open and easy. In fact, it is here. Who would "go" anywhere, if peace of mind is already complete? And who would seek to change tranquility for something more desirable? What could be more desirable than this?
All other traits of God's teachers rest on trust. Once that has been achieved the others cannot fail to follow. Only the trusting can afford honesty, for only they can see its value. Honesty does not apply only to what you say. The term actually means consistency. There is nothing you say that contradicts what you think or do; no thought opposes any other thought; no act belies your word; and no word lacks agreement with another. Such are the truly honest. At no level are they in conflict with themselves. Therefore it is impossible for them to be in conflict with anyone or anything.
The peace of mind which the advanced teachers of God experience is largely due to their perfect honesty. It is only the wish to deceive that makes for war. No-one at one with himself can even conceive of conflict. Conflict is the inevitable result of self-deception, and self-deception is dishonesty. There is no challenge to a teacher of God. Challenge implies doubt, and the trust on which God's teachers rest secure makes doubt impossible. Therefore they can only succeed. In this as in all things they are honest. They can only succeed, because they never do their will alone. They choose for all mankind; for all the world and all things in it; for the unchanging and unchangeable beyond appearances; and for the Son of God and his Creator. How could they not succeed? They choose in perfect honesty, sure of their choice of themselves.
God's teachers do not judge. To judge is to be dishonest, for to judge is to assume a position you do not have. Judgment without self-deception is impossible. Judgment implies that you have been deceived in your brothers. How then could you not have been deceived in yourself? Judgment implies a lack of trust, and trust remains the bedrock of the teacher of God's whole thought system. Let this be lost and all his learning goes. Without judgment are all things equally acceptable, for who could judge otherwise? Without judgment are all men brothers, for who is there who stands apart? Judgment destroys honesty and shatters trust. No teacher of God can judge and hope to learn.
Harm is impossible for God's teachers. They can neither harm nor be harmed. Harm is the outcome of judgment. It is the dishonest act that follows a dishonest thought. It is a verdict of guilt upon a brother and therefore on oneself. It is the end of peace and the denial of learning. It demonstrates the absence of God's curriculum and its replacement by insanity. No teacher of God but must learn, - and fairly early in his training, - that harmfulness completely obliterates his function from his awareness. It will make him confused, fearful, angry and suspicious. It will make the Holy Spirit's lessons impossible to learn. Nor can God's Teacher be heard at all except by those who realize that harm can actually achieve nothing. No gain can come from it.
Therefore God's teachers are wholly gentle. They need the strength of gentleness, for it is in this that the function of salvation becomes easy. To those who would do harm it is impossible. To those to whom harm has no meaning it is merely natural. What choice but this has meaning to the sane? Who chooses hell when he perceives a way to Heaven? And who would choose the weakness that must come from harm in place of the unfailing, all-encompassing and limitless strength of gentleness? The might of God's teachers lies in their gentleness, for they have understood their evil thoughts came neither from God's Son nor his Creator. Thus did they join their thoughts with Him Who is their Source. And so their will, which always was His Own, is free to be itself.
Joy is the inevitable result of gentleness. Gentleness means that fear is now impossible, and what could come to interfere with joy? The open hands of gentleness are always filled. The gentle have no pain. They cannot suffer. Why would they not be joyous? They are sure they are beloved and must be safe. Joy goes with gentleness as surely as grief attends attack. God's teachers trust in Him. And they are sure His Teacher goes before them, making sure no harm can come to them. They hold His gifts and follow in His way, because God's Voice directs them in all things. Joy is their song of thanks. And Christ looks down on them in thanks as well. His need of them is just as great as theirs of Him. How joyous it is to share the purpose of salvation.
God's teachers have learned how to be simple. They have no dreams that need defense against the truth. They do not try to make themselves. Their joy comes from their understanding Who created them. And does what God created need defense? No-one can become an advanced teacher of God until he fully understands that defenses are but the foolish guardians of mad illusions. The more grotesque the dream, the fiercer and more powerful its defenses seem to be. Yet when the teacher of God finally agrees to look past them, he finds nothing was there. Slowly at first he lets himself be undeceived. But he learns faster as his trust increases. It is not danger that comes when defenses are laid down. It is safety. It is peace. It is joy. And it is God.
The term generosity has special meaning to the teacher of God. It is not the usual meaning of the word; in fact, it is a meaning that must be learned and learned very carefully. Like all the other attributes of God's teachers this one rests ultimately on trust, for without trust no-one can be generous in the true sense. To the world, generosity means "giving away" in the sense of "giving up." To the teachers of God, it means "giving away" in order to keep. This has been emphasized throughout the text and the workbook, but it is perhaps more alien to the thinking of the world than many other ideas in our curriculum. Its greater strangeness lies merely in the obviousness of its reversal of the world's thinking. In the clearest way possible and at the simplest of levels, the word means the exact opposite to the teachers of God and to the world.
The teacher of God is generous out of Self-interest. This does not refer, however, to the self the world speaks of. The teacher of God does not want anything he cannot give away, because he realizes it would be valueless to him by definition. What would he want it for? He could only lose because of it. He could not gain. Therefore he does not seek what only he could keep, because that is a guarantee of loss. He does not want to suffer. Why should he ensure himself pain? But he does want to keep for himself all things that are of God, and therefore for His Son. These are the things that belong to him. These he can give away in true generosity, protecting them forever for himself.
Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait, and wait without anxiety. Patience is natural to the teacher of God. All he sees is certain outcome, at a time perhaps unknown as yet, but not in doubt. The time will be as right as is the answer. And this is true for everything that happens now or in the future. The past as well held no mistakes; nothing that did not serve to benefit the world as well as him to whom it seemed to happen. Perhaps it was not understood at the time. Even so, the teacher of God is willing to reconsider all his past decisions, if they are causing pain to anyone. Patience is natural to those who trust. Sure of the ultimate interpretation of all things in time, no outcome already seen or yet to come can cause them fear.
The extent of the teacher of God's faithfulness is the measure of his advancement in the curriculum. Does he still select some aspects of his life to bring to his learning, while keeping others apart? If so, his advancement is limited and his trust not yet firmly established. Faithfulness is the teacher of God's trust in the Word of God to set all things right; not some, but all. Generally, his faithfulness begins by resting on just some problems, remaining carefully limited for a time. To give up all problems to one Answer is to reverse the thinking of the world entirely. And that alone is faithfulness. Nothing but that really deserves the name. Yet each degree, however small, is worth achieving. Readiness, as the text notes, is not mastery.
True faithfulness, however, does not deviate. Being consistent it is wholly honest. Being unswerving it is full of trust. Being based on fearlessness it is gentle. Being certain it is joyous, and being confident it is tolerant. Defenselessness attends it naturally, and joy is its condition. Faithfulness, then, combines in itself the other attributes of God's teachers. It implies acceptance of the Word of God and His definition of His Son. It is to Them that faithfulness in the true sense is always directed. Toward Them it looks, seeking until it finds. And having found, it rests in quiet certainty on That alone to which all faithfulness is due.
The centrality of open-mindedness, perhaps the last of the attributes the teacher of God acquires, is easily understood when its relation to forgiveness is recognized. Open-mindedness comes with lack of judgment. As judgment shuts the mind against God's Teacher, so open-mindedness invites Him to come in. As condemnation judges the Son of God as evil, so open-mindedness permits him to be judged by the Voice for God on His behalf. As the projection of guilt upon him would send him to hell, so open-mindedness lets Christ's image be projected on him. Only the open-minded can be at peace, for they alone see reason for it.
How do the open-minded forgive? They have let go all things that would prevent forgiveness. They have in truth abandoned the world, and let it be restored to them in newness and in joy so glorious they never could have conceived of such a change. Nothing is now as it was formerly. Nothing but sparkles now which seemed so dull and lifeless before. And above all are all things welcoming, for threat has gone. No clouds remain to hide the Face of Christ. Now is the goal achieved. Forgiveness is the final goal of the curriculum. It paves the way for what goes far beyond all learning. The curriculum makes no effort to exceed its legitimate goal. Forgiveness is its single aim, at which all learning ultimately converges. It is indeed enough.
You may have noticed that the list of attributes of God's teachers does not include those things which are the Son of God's inheritance. Terms like love, sinlessness, perfection, knowledge, and eternal truth do not appear in this context. They would be most inappropriate here. What God has given is so far beyond our curriculum that learning but disappears in its presence. Yet while its presence is obscured, the focus properly belongs on the curriculum. It is the function of God's teachers to bring true learning to the world. Properly speaking, it is unlearning that they bring, for that is "true learning" in the world. It is given to the teachers of God to bring the glad tidings of complete forgiveness to the world. Blessed indeed are they, for they are the Bringers of salvation.
After taking the first corrective step, i.e., "Knowing it IS fear," you might benefit temporarily by adding another next step BEFORE going on with the corrective process. Try saying to yourself that you MUST have willed not to love somehow or somewhere, or that fear which arises from behavior-will conflict could not have happened. Then follow previous instructions.
If you consider what the process really means, it is nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps in the larger process of accepting the Atonement as THE remedy. From this viewpoint, the steps can be reworded as follows:
1.) Know first this is fear.
2.) Fear arises from lack of love.
3.) The ONLY remedy for lack of love is perfect love.
4.) Perfect love IS the Atonement.
The final procedural step (3) is inherent in the last statement (4). We have emphasized that the miracle, or the EXPRESSION of Atonement, is always a sign of real respect from the worthy TO the worthy. This worth IS re-established by the Atonement.
It is obvious, then, that when you are afraid you have placed yourself in a position where you NEED Atonement BECAUSE you have DONE something loveless because you WILLED without love. This is precisely the situation for which the Atonement was offered. The need for the remedy inspired its CREATION.
As long as you recognize only the NEED for the remedy, you will remain fearful. However, as soon as you REMEDY it, you have also abolished the fear. This is how TRUE healing occurs.
Everyone experiences fear, and nobody enjoys it. Yet, it would take very little Right-thinking to know why it occurs. Neither you nor Bill have thought about it very much, either. ( I object at this point to the use of plural verb with a properly singular subject - - Helen Schucman - - and remember that last time in a very similar sentence, He said it correctly and I remembered it with real pleasure. This real grammatical error makes me suspicious of the genuineness of these notes. ANSWER: What it really shows is that YOU are not very receptive. The reason it came out that way, is because you are projecting (in the inappropriate way) your own anger, which has nothing to do with these notes. YOU made the error, because you are not feeling loving, so you want me to sound silly, so you won't have to pay attention. Actually, I am trying to get through against considerable opposition, because you are not very happy, and I wish you were. I thought I'd take a chance, even though you are so resistant, because I MIGHT be able to make you feel better. You may be unable not to attack at all, but do try to listen a little, too.)
Very few people appreciate the real power of the mind. Nobody remains fully aware of it all the time. This is inevitable in this world, because the human being has many things he must do, and cannot engage in constant thought-watching. However, if he hopes to spare himself from fear, there are some things he must realize, and realize them fully, at least some of the time.
The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will. Many of your ordinary expressions reflect this. For example, when you say "don't give it a thought", you are implying that if you do not think about something, it will have no effect on you. This is true enough.
On the other hand, many other expressions are clear expressions of the prevailing LACK of awareness of thought-power. For example, you say, "just an idle thought", and mean that the thought has no effect. You also speak of some actions as "thoughtless", implying that if the person HAD thought, he would not have behaved as he did. You also use phrases like "thought provoking", which is bland enough, but the term "a provoking thought" means something quite different.
While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don't really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains.
It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don't believe it.
People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them. Therapists try to help people who are afraid of their own death wishes by depreciating the power of the wish. They even attempt to "free" the patient by persuading him that he can think whatever he wants, without ANY real effect at all.
There is a real dilemma here, which only the truly right-minded can escape. Death wishes do not kill in the physical sense, but they DO kill spiritually. ALL destructive thinking is dangerous. Given a death wish, a man has no choice except to ACT upon his thought, or behave CONTRARY TO it. He can thus choose ONLY between homicide and fear. (See previous notes on will conflicts.) (NOTE I avoided this term in the last series of notes intentionally, because it seemed too Rankian. Apparently, there was a reason why this word should have been used last time. It is used in this section for a very good reason.)
The other possibility is that he depreciates the power of his thought. This is the usual psychoanalytic approach. This DOES allay guilt, but at the cost of rendering thinking impotent. If you believe that what you think is ineffectual, you may cease to be overly afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it, either. The world is full of endless examples of how man has depreciated himself because he is afraid of his own thoughts. In some forms of insanity, thoughts are glorified, but this is only because the underlying depreciation was too effective for tolerance.
The truth is that there ARE no "idle thoughts." ALL thinking produces form at some level. The reason why people are afraid of ESP, and so often react against it, is because they KNOW that thought can hurt them. Their OWN thoughts have made them vulnerable.
You and Bill, who complain all the time about fear, still persist in creating it most of the time. I told you last time that you cannot ask ME to release you from it, because I KNOW it does not exist. YOU don't. If I merely intervene between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect, in fact the most fundamental one there is in this world. I would hardly help if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course.
It is certainly much more useful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts at all carefully, except for a relatively small part of the day, and somewhat inconsistently even then. You may feel at this point that it would take a miracle to enable you to do this, which is perfectly true. Human beings are not used to miraculous thinking, but they CAN be TRAINED to think that way.
All miracle-workers HAVE to be trained that way. I have to be able to count on them. This means that I cannot allow them to leave their mind unguarded, or they will not be able to help me. Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation. Otherwise, the miracle will be necessary to set the mind ITSELF straight, a circular process which would hardly foster the time-collapse for which the miracle was intended. Nor would it induce the healthy respect that every miracle-worker must have for true cause and effect.
Miracles cannot free the miracle-worker from fear. Both miracles AND fear come from his thoughts, and if he were not free to choose one, he would also not be free to choose the other. Remember, we said before that when electing one person, you reject another.
It is much the same in electing the miracle. By so doing, you HAVE rejected fear. Fear cannot assail unless it has been created. You and Bill have been afraid of God, of me, of yourselves, and of practically everyone you know at one time or another. This can only be because you have miscreated all of us, and believe in what you have created. (We spent a lot of time on this before, but it did not help very much.) You would never have done this if you were not afraid of your own thoughts. The vulnerable are essentially miscreators, because they misperceive Creation.
You and Bill are willing to accept primarily what does NOT change your minds too much, and leaves you free to leave them quite unguarded most of the time. You persist in believing that when you do not consciously watch your mind, it is unmindful.
It is time to consider the whole world of the unconscious, or unwatched mind. This will frighten you, because it is the source of fright. You may look at it as a new theory of basic conflict, if you wish, which will not be entirely an intellectual approach, because I doubt if the truth will escape you entirely.
The unwatched mind is responsible for the whole content of the unconscious, which lies above the miracle-level. All psychoanalytic theorists have made some contribution to the truth in this connection, but none of them has seen it in its true entirety. (The correct grammar here is a sign of your better cooperation. Thank you.) Jung's best contribution was an awareness of individual vs. collective unconscious levels. He also recognized the major place of the religious spirit in his schema. His archetypes were also meaningful concepts. But his major error lay in regarding the deepest level of the unconscious as shared in terms of CONTENT. The deepest level of the unconscious is shared as an ABILITY. As MIRACLE-MINDEDNESS, the content, (or the particular miracles which an individual happens to perform) does not matter at all. They will, in fact, be entirely different, because, since I direct them, I make a point of avoiding redundancy. Unless a miracle actually heals, it is not a miracle at all.
The content of the miracle-level is not recorded in the individual's unconscious, because if it were, it would not be automatic and involuntary, which we have said repeatedly it should be. However, the content IS a matter for the record, which is NOT within the individual himself.
All psychoanalysts made one common error, in that they attempted to uncover unconscious CONTENT. You cannot understand unconscious activity in these terms, because "content" is applicable ONLY to the more superficial unconscious levels to which the individual himself contributes. This is the level at which he can readily introduce fear, and usually does.
Freud was right in calling this level pre-conscious, and emphasizing that there is a fairly easy interchange between preconscious and conscious material. He was also right in regarding the censor as an agent for the protection of consciousness from fear. HIS major error lay in his insistence that this level is necessary at all in the psychic structure. If the psyche contains fearful levels from which it cannot escape without splitting, its integration is permanently threatened. It is essential not to control the fearful, but to ELIMINATE it.
Here, Rank's concept of the will was particularly good, except that he preferred to ally it only with man's own truly creative ability, but did not extend it to its proper union with God's. His "birth trauma", another valid idea, was also too limited, in that it did not refer to the Separation, which was really a FALSE idea of birth. Physical birth is not a trauma in itself. It can, however, remind the individual of the Separation, which was a very real cause of fear.
The idea of "will-THERAPY" was potentially a very powerful one, but Rank did not see its real potential because he himself used his mind partly to create a theory OF the mind, but also partly to attack Freud. His reactions to Freud stemmed from his own unfortunate acceptance of the deprivation-fallacy, which itself arose from the Separation. This led him to believe that his own mind-creation could stand only if the creation of another's fell. In consequence, his theory emphasized rather than minimized the two-edged nature of defenses. This is an outstanding characteristic of his concepts, because it was outstandingly true of him.
He also misinterpreted the birth-trauma in a way that made it inevitable for him to attempt a therapy whose goal was to ABOLISH FEAR. This is characteristic of all later theorists, who do not attempt, as Freud did, to split off the fear in his own form of therapy.
No one as yet has fully recognized either the therapeutic value of fear, or the only way in which it can be truly ended. When man miscreates, he IS in pain. The cause and effect principle here is temporarily a real expeditor. Actually, Cause is a term properly belonging to God, and Effect, which should also be capitalized, is HIS Sonship. This entails a set of cause and effect relationships which are totally different from those which man introduced into the Miscreation.
The fundamental opponents in the real basic conflict are Creation and miscreation. All fear is implicit in the second, just as all love is inherent in the first. Because of this difference, the basic conflict IS one between love and fear.
So much, then, for the true nature of the major opponents in the basic conflict. Since all such theories lead to a form of therapy in which a re-distribution of psychic energy results, it is necessary to consider OUR concept of libido next. In this respect, Freud was more accurate than his followers, who were essentially more wishful. Energy CAN emanate from both Creation AND miscreation, and the particular ratio between them which prevails at a given point in time DOES determine behavior AT that time. If miscreation did NOT engender energy in its own right, it would be unable to produce destructive behavior, which it very patently DOES.
Everything that man creates has energy because, like the Creation of God, they (it) come FROM energy, and are endowed by their creator with the power to create. Miscreation is still a genuine creative act in terms of the underlying IMPULSE, but NOT in terms of the CONTENT of the creation. This, however, does not deprive the creation of its OWN creative power. It DOES, however, GUARANTEE that the power will be misused, or USED FEARFULLY.
To deny this is merely the previously mentioned fallacy of depreciation. Although Freud made a number of fallacies of his own, he DID avoid this one in connection with libido. The later theorists denied the split-energy concept, not by attempting to heal it, but by re-interpreting it instead of redistributing it.
This placed them in the illogical position of assuming that the split which their therapies were intended to heal had not occurred. The result of this approach is essentially a form of hypnosis. This is quite different from Freud's approach, which merely ended in a deadlock.
A similar deadlock occurs when both the power of Creation and of miscreation coexist. This is experienced as conflict only because the individual feels AS IF both were occurring AT THE SAME LEVEL. He BELIEVES in what he has created in his own unconscious and he naturally believes it is real BECAUSE he has created it. He, thus, places himself in a position where the fearful becomes REAL.
Nothing but level-confusion can result as long as this belief is held in ANY form. Inappropriate denial and equally inappropriate identification of the REAL factors in the basic conflict will NOT solve the problem itself. The conflict CANNOT disappear until it is fully recognized that miscreation is NOT real, and therefore there IS no conflict. This entails a full realization of the basic fact that, although man has miscreated in a very real sense, he need neither continue to do so, nor to suffer from his past errors in this respect.
A REDISTRIBUTION of psychic energy, then, is NOT the solution. Both the idea that both kinds MUST exist, and the belief that ONE kind is amenable for use or misuse, are real distortions. The ONLY way is to STOP MISCREATING NOW, and accept the Atonement for miscreations of the past. Only this can re-establish true single-mindedness. The structure of the psyche, as you very correctly noted yourself, follows along the lines of the particular libido concept the theorist employs. (I still think it was the other way around - - Helen Schucman. Answer: This confusion arises out of the fact that you DID change the order - - several times in fact. Actually, it didn't matter, because the two concepts DO flow from each other. It was a TERRIFIC waste of time, and one in which I hardly care to become engaged myself. PLEASE!)
Freud's psyche was essentially a good and evil picture, with very heavy weight given to the evil. This is because every time I mentioned the Atonement to him, which was quite often, he responded by defending his theory more and more against it. This resulted in his increasingly strong attempts to make the illogical sound more and more logical.
I was very sorry about this, because his was a singularly good mind, and it was a shame to waste it. However, the major purpose of his incarnation was not neglected. He DID succeed in forcing recognition of the unconscious into man's calculations about himself, a step in the right direction which should not be minimized. Freud was one of the most religious men I have known recently. Unfortunately, he was so afraid of religion that the only way he could deal with it was to regard IT (not himself) as sick. This naturally prevented healing.
Freud's superego is a particularly interesting example of the real power of miscreation. It is noteworthy throughout the whole development of his theories that the superego never allied itself with freedom. The most it could do in this direction was to work out a painful truce in which both opponents LOST. This perception could not fail to force him to emphasize discontent in his view of civilization.
The Freudian id is really only the more superficial level of the unconscious, and not the deepest level at all. This, too, was inevitable, because Freud could not divorce miracles from magic. It was therefore his constant endeavor, (even preoccupation) to keep on thrusting more and more material between consciousness and the real deeper level of the unconscious, so that the latter became increasingly obscured. The result was a kind of bedlam, in which there was no order, no control, and no sense. This was exactly how he FELT about it.
The later theoretical switch to the primacy of anxiety was an interesting device intended to deny both the instinctive nature of destructiveness, and the force of the power of miscreation. By placing the emphasis on the RESULT, the generative nature of the power was minimized.
Destructive behavior IS instinctual. The instinct for creation is NOT obliterated in miscreation. That is why it is always invested with reality. *One of the chief ways in which man can correct his magic-miracle confusion is to remember that he did not create himself. He is apt to forget this when he becomes egocentric, and this places him in a position where belief in magic is virtually inevitable. His instincts for creation were given him by his own Creator, who was expressing the same instinct in His Creation. Since the creative ability rests solely in the mind, everything which man creates is necessarily instinctive.
(This goes after basic conflict theory.) (Dictated without notes by Helen Schucman)
We have already said that the basic conflict is one between love and fear, and that the proper organization of the psyche rests on a lack of level confusion. The section on psychic energy should be re-read very carefully, because it is particularly likely to be misinterpreted until this section is complete.
It has already been said that man CANNOT control fear, because he himself created it. His belief in it renders it out of his control by definition. For this reason, any attempt to resolve the basic conflict through the concept of mastery of fear is meaningless. In fact, it asserts the power of fear by the simple assumption that it need be mastered at all.
The essential resolution rests entirely on the mastery of love. In the interim, conflict is inevitable. The reason for this is the strangely illogical position in which man had placed himself. Since we have frequently emphasized that correction must be applied within the level that error occurs, it should be clear that the miracle MUST be illogical because its purpose is to correct the illogical and restore order.
Two concepts which CANNOT coexist are nothing and everything. To whatever extent one is believed in, the other HAS BEEN abolished. In the conflict, fear is really nothing, and love is really everything. (This recognition is really the basis for the castration complex.) This is because whenever light penetrates darkness, it DOES abolish it. The unwillingness to be seen, or submit error to light, is spuriously associated with active doing. In this incarnation, this can take the form of oedipal involvement and concomitant castration anxiety.
However, in more long range and meaningful terms, the oedipal complex is a miniature of the true Separation fear, and the castration complex is a way of denying that it ever occurred. Like all pseudo-solutions, this kind of distorted thinking is very creative, but false. The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay.
It is worth repeating that ultimately there is no compromise possible between everything and nothing. The purpose of time is essentially a device by which all compromise in this respect can be abolished. It seems to be abolished by degrees precisely because time itself involves a concept of intervals which do not really exist. The faulty use of creation has made this necessary as a corrective device.
"And God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son so that whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish but have Eternal Life" needs only one slight correction to be entirely meaningful in this context. It should read "And God so loved the world that he gave it TO His only begotten Son." It should be noted that God HAS begotten only ONE Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created ARE His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul MUST be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness DOES transcend the sum of its parts. However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved UNTIL all of the individual parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then, in the true sense, can the meaning of wholeness be understood.
The concept of minus numbers has always been regarded as a mathematical rather than an actual expedient. (This is a major limitation on mathematics as presently understood.) Any statement which implies degrees of difference in negation is essentially meaningless. What can replace this negative approach is a recognition of the fact that as long as one part (which is the same as a million or ten or eight thousand parts) of the Sonship is missing, it is NOT complete.
In the Divine psyche, the Father and the Holy Spirit are not incomplete at all. The Sonship has the unique faculty of believing in error, or incompleteness, if he so elects. However, it is quite apparent that so to elect IS to believe in the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the Atonement.
We have already briefly spoken about readiness. But there are some additional awarenesses which might be helpful. Readiness is nothing more than the prerequisite for accomplishment. The two should not be confused. As soon as a state of readiness occurs, there is always some will to accomplish, but this is by no means undivided. The state does not imply more than the potential for a shift of will. Confidence cannot develop fully until mastery has been accomplished. We began this section with an attempt to correct the fundamental human error that fear can be mastered. The Correction was that ONLY love can be mastered. When I told you that you were "ready for Revelation", I did not mean that you had in any way mastered this form of communication. However, you yourself attested to your readiness by insisting that I would not have said so if it had not been true. This IS an affirmation of readiness. Mastery of love necessarily involves a much more complete confidence in the ability than either of you has attained. But the readiness at least is an indication that you believe this is possible. This is only the beginning of confidence.
In case this be misunderstood as a statement that an enormous amount of time will be necessary between readiness and mastery, I would again remind you that time and space are under My control. Dictated without notes by Helen Schucman)
One of the chief ways in which man can correct his magic-miracle confusion is to remember that he did not create himself. He is apt to forget this when he becomes egocentric, and this places him in a position where belief in magic is virtually inevitable. His instincts for creation were given him by his own Creator, who was expressing the same instinct in His Creation. Since the creative ability rests solely in the mind, everything which man creates is necessarily instinctive.
It also follows that whatever he creates is real in his own eyes, but not necessarily in the sight of God. This basic distinction leads us directly into the real meaning of the Last Judgment. (I am aware of the fact that you would much rather continue with the parallels involved in other theories of basic conflict. However, this would merely be a delay which we will engage in only if you regard it as essential.)
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."
Let us review the meaning of "forgive," for it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something which entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth. In such a view, forgiveness must be seen as mere eccentric folly, and this course appears to rest salvation on a whim.
This twisted view of what forgiveness means is easily corrected when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. It must be limited to what is false. It is irrelevant to everything except illusions. Truth is God's creation, and to pardon this is meaningless. All truth belongs to Him, reflects His laws and radiates His Love. Does this need pardon? How can you forgive the sinless and eternally benign?
The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth and not illusions. You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind as you regard yourself.
Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception. For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. Thus is forgiveness really but a sin, like all the rest. It says the truth is false, and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass; as white as snow. It is delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish. It would see as right the plainly wrong; the loathsome as the good.
Pardon is no escape in such a view. It merely is a further sign that sin is unforgivable, at best to be concealed, denied, or called another name, for pardon is a treachery to truth. Guilt can not be forgiven. If you sin, your guilt is everlasting. Those who are forgiven from the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned; first by themselves for what they think they did, and once again by those who pardon them.
It is sin's unreality which makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. It does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly, with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth. And there they disappear entirely.
Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth."
The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth. It is because of this that it becomes the undeceiver in the face of lies, the great restorer of the simple truth. By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth, which had been blocked by dreams of guilt. Now are you free to follow in the way your true forgiveness opens up to you. For if one brother has received this gift of you, the door is open to yourself.
There is a very simple way to find the door to true forgiveness, and perceive it open wide in welcome. When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for this is self-deception. Ask instead, "Should I accuse myself of doing this?"
Thus will you see alternatives for choice in terms which render choosing meaningful, and keep your mind as free of guilt and pain as God Himself intended it to be, and as it is in truth. It is but lies which would condemn. In truth is innocence the only thing there is. Forgiveness stands between illusions and the truth, between the world you see and that which lies beyond, between the hell of guilt and Heaven's gate.
Across this bridge, as powerful as Love Which laid Its blessing on it, are all dreams of evil and of hatred and attack brought silently to truth. They are not kept to swell and bluster and to terrify the foolish dreamer who believes in them. He has been gently wakened from his dream by understanding what he thought he saw was never there. And now he cannot feel that all escape has been denied to him.
He does not have to fight to save himself. He does not have to kill the dragons which he thought pursued him. Nor need he erect the heavy walls of stone and iron doors he thought would make him safe. He can remove the ponderous and useless armor made to chain his mind to fear and misery. His step is light, and as he lifts his foot to stride ahead, a star is left behind to point the way to those who follow him.
Forgiveness must be practiced for the world cannot perceive its meaning, nor provide a guide to teach you its beneficence. There is no thought in all the world which leads to any understanding of the laws it follows, nor the Thought which it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is your own reality. And yet it joins your mind with the reality in you.
Today we practice true forgiveness that the time of joining be no more delayed. For we would meet with our Reality in freedom and in peace. Our practicing becomes the footsteps lightening up the way for all our brothers, who will follow us to the Reality we share with them.
That this may be accomplished, let us give a quarter of an hour twice today, and spend it with the Guide Who understands the meaning of forgiveness, and was sent to us to teach it. Let us ask of Him:
"Let me perceive forgiveness as it is."
Then choose one brother as He will direct, and catalogue his "sins" as one by one they cross your mind. Be certain not to dwell on any one of them, but realize that you are using his "offenses" but to save the world from all ideas of sin. Briefly consider all the evil things you thought of him, and each time ask yourself "Would I condemn myself for doing this?"
Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now you are prepared for freedom. If you have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty, you will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weight across your chest, a deep and certain feeling of relief. The time remaining should be given to experiencing the escape from all the heavy chains you sought to lay upon your brother, which were laid upon yourself.
Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will be so many times when you forget its meaning, and attack yourself. When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself:
"Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Would I accuse myself of doing this?
I will not lay this chain upon myself."
In everything you do remember this:
No one is crucified alone, and yet,
No one can enter Heaven by himself.
It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize. The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you.
God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will ALWAYS seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him. The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe.
This fragment of your mind is such a tiny part of it that, could you but appreciate the whole, you would see instantly that it is like the smallest sunbeam is to the sun. Or like the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it IS the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the ocean. Think how alone and frightened is this little thought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart, against the universe. The sun becomes the sunbeam's "enemy," which would devour it. And the ocean terrifies the little ripple, and "wants" to swallow it.
Yet neither sun nor ocean is even aware of all this strange and meaningless activity. They merely continue, unaware that they are feared and hated by a tiny segment of themselves. Even that segment is not LOST to them, for it could not survive APART from them And what IT thinks it is in no way changes its total dependence on them FOR ITS BEING. Its whole existence still remains IN THEM. Without the sun, the sunbeam WOULD be gone; the ripple WITHOUT the ocean IS inconceivable.
Such is the strange position in which those in a world inhabited by bodies seem to be. Each body seems to house a SEPARATE mind, a DISCONNECTED thought, living alone and in no way joined to the Thought by which it was created. Each tiny fragment seems to be self-contained, needing each other for SOME things, but by no means TOTALLY dependent on their One Creator for EVERYTHING. And needing the whole to give them ANY meaning, for by themselves, they DO mean nothing. Nor HAVE they any life apart, and by themselves.
Yet, like the sun and ocean, your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part regards ITSELF as you. It is not missing; it could not EXIST if it were separate, nor would the whole BE whole without it. It is not a separate kingdom, ruled by an IDEA of separation from the rest. Nor does a fence surround it, preventing it from JOINING with the rest, and keeping it apart from its Creator. This little aspect is NO DIFFERENT from the whole, being continuous with it, and at one with it. It leads no separate life, because its life IS in the Oneness in which its being was created.
Do not accept this little, fenced-off aspect as your Self. The sun and ocean are as nothing, beside what YOU are. The sunbeam sparkles only in the sunlight, and the ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean. Yet in neither sun nor ocean is the power that rests in you. Would you remain WITHIN your tiny kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all he surveys, who looks on nothing, but who would still die to DEFEND it? This little self is NOT your kingdom. Arched high above it, and surrounding it, with love, is the glorious whole, which offers all its happiness and deep content to EVERY part.
The little aspect that you think you set apart is no exception. Love knows no bodies, and reaches to everything created like itself. Its total lack of limit IS its meaning. It is COMPLETELY impartial in its giving, encompassing ONLY to preserve and KEEP COMPLETE what it would give. In your tiny kingdom you have so little! Should it not, then, be there that you would call on love to enter? Look at the desert, dry and unproductive, scorched and joyless, that makes up your little kingdom. And realize the life and joy that love would bring to it, from where IT comes, and where it would return WITH you.
The Thought of God surrounds your little kingdom, waiting at the barrier you built, to come in and shine upon the barren ground. See how life springs up everywhere! The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and quiet, offering rest to those who lost their way, and wander in the dust. Give them a place of refuge, prepared by love for them, where once a desert was. And every one you welcome will bring love with him, from Heaven for you. They enter one by one into this holy place, but they will not depart as they had come, alone.
The love they BROUGHT with them will STAY with them, as it will stay with YOU. And, under its beneficence, your little garden will expand, and reach out to everyone who thirsts for living water, but has grown too weary to go on alone. Go out and FIND them, for they bring your Self with them. And lead them gently to your quiet garden, and receive their blessing there. So will it grow, and stretch across the desert, leaving no lonely little kingdoms locked away from love, and leaving YOU outside. And you will RECOGNIZE yourself, and see your little garden gently transformed into the Kingdom of Heaven, with all the love of its Creator shining upon it.
The holy instant is your invitation to love, to enter into your bleak and joyless kingdom, and transform it into a garden of peace and welcome. Love's answer is inevitable. It will come, because you came WITHOUT the body, and interposed no barriers which would INTERFERE with its glad coming. In the holy instant, you ask of love only what it offers everyone, neither less nor more. Asking for EVERYTHING, you will RECEIVE it. And your shining Self will lift the tiny aspect that you tried to hide from Heaven, straight into Heaven. No part of love calls on the whole in vain. No son of God remains OUTSIDE His Fatherhood.
Be sure of this; love has entered your special relationship, and entered fully, at your weak request. You do NOT recognize that love has come, because you have not yet let go of ALL the barriers you hold against EACH OTHER. And you will NOT be able to give love welcome separately. You could no more know God alone, than He knows YOU without your brother. But, TOGETHER, you could no more be UNAWARE of love, than love could know you not, or fail to recognize ITSELF in you.
You have reached the end of an ancient journey not realizing yet that it is over. You are still worn and tired, and the desert's dust still seems to cloud your eyes, and keep you sightless. Yet He Whom you welcomed has come to you, and would welcome YOU. He has waited long to give you this. Receive it now of Him, for He would have you KNOW Him. Only a little wall of dust still stands between you. Blow on it lightly and with happy laughter, and it will fall away. And walk into the garden love has prepared for BOTH of you.
Forgiveness is for God and toward God but not of Him. It is impossible to think of anything He created that could need forgiveness. Forgiveness, then, is an illusion, but because of its purpose, which is the Holy Spirit's, it has one difference. Unlike all other illusions it leads away from error and not toward it.
Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction; a way in which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception and the truth. They cannot go directly from perception to knowledge because they do not think it is their will to do so. This makes God appear to be an enemy instead of what He really is. And it is just this insane perception that makes them unwilling merely to rise up and to return to Him in peace.
And so they need an illusion of Help because they are helpless; a Thought of peace because they are in conflict. God knows what His Son needs before he asks. He is not at all concerned with form, but having given the content it is His Will that it be understood. And that suffices. The form adapts itself to need; the content is unchanging, as eternal as its Creator.
THE FACE OF CHRIST has to be seen before the memory of God can return. The reason is obvious. Seeing the Face of Christ is perception. No-one can look on knowledge. But the Face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world. Whoever looks on this no longer sees the world. He is as near to Heaven as is possible outside the gate. Yet from this gate it is no more than just a step inside. It is the final step. And this we leave to God.
It is a symbol, too, but as the symbol of His Will alone it cannot be divided. And so the Unity that it reflects becomes His Will. It is the only thing still in the world in part, and yet the bridge to Heaven.
God's Will is all there is. We can but go from nothingness to everything; from hell to Heaven. Is this a journey? No, not in truth, for truth goes nowhere. But illusions shift from place to place; from time to time. The final step is also but a shift. As a perception it is partly unreal. And yet this part will vanish. What remains is peace eternal and the Will of God.
There are no wishes now for wishes change. Even the wished-for can become unwelcome. That must be so because the ego cannot be at peace. But Will is constant, as the gift of God. And what He gives is always like Himself. This is the purpose of the Face of Christ. It is the gift of God to save His Son. But look on this and you have been forgiven.
How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself reflected there. Now you are sinless and behold your sinlessness. Now you are holy and perceive it so. And now the mind returns to its Creator; the joining of the Father and the Son, the Unity of unities that stands behind all joining but still beyond them all. God IS NOT SEEN BUT ONLY UNDERSTOOD. His Son is not attacked but recognized.
Our final lessons will be left as free of words as possible. We use them but at the beginning of our practicing, and only to remind us that we seek to go beyond them. Let us turn to Him Who leads the way and makes our footsteps sure. To Him we leave these lessons, as to Him we give our lives henceforth. For we would not return again to the belief in sin, which made the world seem ugly and unsafe, attacking and destroying, dangerous in all its ways and treacherous beyond the hope of trust and the escape from pain.
His is the only way to find the peace that God has given us. It is His way that everyone must travel in the end, because it is this ending God Himself appointed. In the dream of time it seems to be far off. And yet, in truth, it is already here; already serving us as gracious guidance in the way to go. Let us together follow in this way that truth points out to us. And let us be the leaders of our many brothers who are seeking for the way but find it not.
And to this purpose let us dedicate our minds, directing all our thoughts to serve the function of salvation. Unto us the aim is given to forgive the world. It is the goal that God has given us. It is His ending to the dream we seek, and not our own. For all that we forgive we will not fail to recognize as part of God Himself. And thus His memory is given back completely and complete.
It is our function to remember Him on earth, as it is given us to be His own completion in reality. So let us not forget our goal is shared. For it is that remembrance which contains the memory of God, and points the way to Him and to the Heaven of His peace. And shall we not forgive our brother, who can offer this to us? He is the way, the truth and life that show the way to us. In him resides salvation, offered us through our forgiveness given unto him.
We will not end this year without the gift our Father promised to His holy Son. We are forgiven now, and we are saved from all the wrath we thought belonged to God, and found it was a dream. We are restored to sanity, in which we understand that anger is insane, attack is mad, and vengeance merely foolish fantasy. We have been saved from wrath because we learned we were mistaken. Nothing more than that. And is a Father angry at His Son because he failed to understand the truth?
We come in honesty to Him and say we did not understand, and ask Him to help us to learn His lessons through the Voice of His own Teacher. Would He hurt His Son? Or would He rush to answer him, and say, "This is my Son, and all I have is his?" Be certain He will answer thus, for these are His own Words to you. And more than that can no one ever have, for in these Words is all there is, and all that there will be throughout all time and in eternity.
The idea for today contains the only way out of fear that will succeed. Nothing else will work; everything else is meaningless. But this way cannot fail. Every thought you have makes up some segment of the world you see. It is with your thoughts, then, that we must work, if your perception of the world is to be changed.
If the cause of the world you see is attack thoughts, you must learn that it is these thoughts which you do not want. There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effects will change automatically.
The world you see is a vengeful world, and everything in it is a symbol of vengeance. Each of your perceptions of "external reality" is a pictorial representation of your own attack thoughts. One can well ask if this can be called seeing. Is not fantasy a better word for such a process, and hallucination a more appropriate term for the result?
You see the world which you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image-maker. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause. This is what salvation means, for where is the world you see when its cause is gone? Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them even though they were made of hate. For you will not be making them alone.
The idea for today introduces the thought that you are not trapped in the world you see, because its cause can be changed. This change requires, first, that the cause be identified and then let go, so that it can be replaced. The first two steps in this process require your cooperation. The final one does not. Your images have already been replaced. By taking the first two steps, you will see that this is so.
Besides using it throughout the day as the need arises, five practice periods are required in applying today's idea. As you look about you, repeat the idea slowly to yourself, and then close your eyes and devote about a minute to searching your mind for as many attack thoughts as occur to you. As each one crosses your mind, say:
"I can escape from the world by giving up attack thoughts about ____."
Hold each one in mind as you say this, and then dismiss that thought and go on to the next.
In the practice periods, be sure to include both your thoughts of attacking and of being attacked. Their effects are exactly the same, because they are exactly the same. You do not yet recognize this, and you are asked at this time only to treat them as the same in today's practice periods. We are still at the stage of identifying the cause of the world you see. When you finally realize that thoughts of attack and of being attacked are not different, you will be ready to let the cause go.
Today's idea is merely another way of saying, "Let me not wander into temptation." The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. It is the temptation to abandon God and His Son, taking on a physical appearance. It is this which the body's eyes look upon.
Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself. Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception, the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recognition of salvation.
To review our last few lessons, your function here is to be the light of the world, a function given you by God. It is only the arrogance of the ego which leads you to question this, and only the fear of the ego which induces you to regard yourself as unworthy of the task assigned to you by God Himself. The world's salvation awaits your forgiveness because through it does the Son of God escape from all illusions and thus from all temptation. The Son of God is you.
Only by fulfilling the function given you by God will you be happy. That is because your function is to be happy by using the means by which happiness becomes inevitable. There is no other way. Therefore every time you choose whether or not to fulfill your function, you are really choosing whether to be happy or not.
Let us remember this today. Let us remind ourselves of it in the morning and again at night, and all through the day as well. Prepare yourself in advance for all the decisions you will make today by remembering that they are all really very simple. Each one will lead to happiness or unhappiness. Can such a simple decision really be difficult to make?
Let not the form of the decision deceive you. Complexity of form does not imply complexity of content. It is impossible that any decision on earth can have a content different from just this one simple choice. That is the only choice the Holy Spirit sees. Therefore it is the only choice there is.
Today, then, let us practice these thoughts:
"Let me not forget my function.
Let me not try to substitute mine for God's.
Let me forgive and be happy."
At least once devote ten or fifteen minutes to reflecting on this with closed eyes. Related thoughts will come to help you, if you remember the crucial importance of your function to you and to the world.
In the frequent applications of today's idea to be made throughout the day, devote several minutes to reviewing the thoughts, and then to thinking about them and about nothing else. This will be difficult at first particularly, since you are not proficient in the mind discipline which it requires. You may need to repeat "Let me not forget my function" quite often, to help you concentrate.
Two forms of the shorter practice periods are required. At times, do the exercises with your eyes closed, trying to concentrate on the thoughts you are applying. At other times keep your eyes open after reviewing the thoughts and look slowly and unselectively about you, telling yourself:
"This is the world it is my function to save." W(119)
What keeps the world in chains but your beliefs? And what can save the world except your Self? Belief is powerful indeed. The thoughts you hold are mighty, and illusions are as strong in their effects as is the truth. A madman thinks the world he sees is real and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts' effects. It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last.
Yet is salvation easily achieved, for anyone is free to change his mind, and all his thoughts change with it. Now the source of thought has shifted, for to change your mind means you have changed the source of all ideas you think or ever thought or yet will think. You free the past from what you thought before. You free the future from all ancient thoughts of seeking what you do not want to find. The present now remains the only time.
Here in the present is the world set free. For as you let the past be lifted and release the future from your ancient fears, you find escape and give it to the world. You have enslaved the world with all your fears, with doubts and miseries, your pain and tears, and all your sorrows press upon it, and keep it a prisoner to your beliefs. Death strikes it everywhere because you hold the bitter thought of death within your mind.
The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly.
Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride that tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind. But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is.
There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again. But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize.
Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world. And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today.
Today's idea is true because the world does not exist. And if it is indeed your own imagining, then you can loose it from all things you ever thought it was by merely changing all the thoughts that gave it these appearances. The sick are healed as you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death.
A lesson earlier repeated once must now be stressed again, for it contains the firm foundation for today's idea. You are as God created you. There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state. How can a world of time and place exist if you remain as God created you?
What is the lesson for today except another way of saying that to know your Self is the salvation of the world? To free the world from every kind of pain is but to change your mind about yourself. There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought.
Yet if you are as God created you, you cannot think apart from Him, nor make what does not share His timelessness and love. Are these inherent in the world you see? Does it create like Him? Unless it does, it is not real and cannot be at all. If you are real the world you see is false, for God's creation is unlike the world in every way. And as it was His Thought by which you were created, so it is your thoughts which made it and must set it free, that you may know the Thoughts you share with God.
Release the world! Your real creations wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him.
There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.
Today our purpose is to free the world from all the idle thoughts we ever held about it, and about all living things we see upon it. They can not be there, no more than we. For we are in the home our Father set for us along with them. And we who are as He created us would loose the world this day from every one of our illusions, that we may be free.
Begin the fifteen minute periods in which we practice twice today with this:
"I who remain as God created me
Would loose the world from all I thought it was.
For I am real because the world is not,
And I would know my own reality."
Then merely rest, alert but with no strain, and let your mind in quietness be changed so that the world is freed along with you.
You need not realize that healing comes to many brothers far across the world as well as to the ones you see near by, as you send out these thoughts to bless the world. But you will sense your own release, although you may not fully understand as yet that you could never be released alone.
Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your ideas to all the world, and say whenever you are tempted to deny the power of your simple change of mind:
"I loose the world from all I thought it was,
And choose my own reality instead."
Remember that the Holy Spirit is the ANSWER, not the question. The ego always speaks first, because it is capricious and does NOT mean its maker well. This is because it believes, and correctly, that its maker may withdraw his support from it at any moment. If it meant you well, it would be glad, as the Holy Spirit will be glad when He has brought you home and you no longer need His guidance. The ego does NOT regard itself as part of you. Herein lies its primary perceptual error, the foundation of its whole thought system.
When God created you, He made you part of Him. That is why attack WITHIN the Kingdom is impossible. But YOU made the ego without love, and so it does not love YOU. You could not remain WITHIN the Kingdom without love, and since the Kingdom IS love, you believe you are WITHOUT it. This enables the ego to regard itself as SEPARATE AND OUTSIDE ITS MAKER, thus speaking for the part of your mind that believes YOU are separate and outside the Mind of God.
The ego, then, raised the first question that was ever asked, but it can never answer it. That question, which was "What are you?" was the beginning of doubt. The ego has never answered ANY questions since, though it has raised a great many. The most inventive activities of the ego have never done more than OBSCURE THE QUESTION, because you HAVE the answer, and THE EGO IS AFRAID OF YOU. You cannot really understand conflict until YOU fully understand one basic fact that the ego does not know. The Holy Spirit does not speak first, but He ALWAYS answers. EVERYONE has called upon Him for help at one time or another, and in one way or another, AND HAS BEEN ANSWERED. Since the Holy Spirit answers truly, He answers FOR ALL TIME, and that means that EVERYONE HAS THE ANSWER NOW.
The ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit, but it DOES feel that part of the same mind that made it is AGAINST it. It interprets this wholly as a justification for ATTACKING its maker. The ego believes that the best defense is attack, and WANTS YOU TO BELIEVE THIS. Unless you DO believe it, you will not side with it. And the ego feels badly in need of allies, though not of brothers.
Perceiving something alien to itself in your MIND, the ego turns to the body, NOT the mind as its ally BECAUSE the body is not part of you. This makes the body the ego's friend. But it is an alliance frankly based on separation. If you side with this alliance, you WILL be afraid, because you are siding with an alliance OF fear. The ego and the body conspire AGAINST your minds, and because they realize that their "enemy" CAN end them both merely by knowing they are not part of him, they join in the attack together. This is perhaps the strangest perception of all, if you consider what it really involves. The ego, which is not real, attempts to persuade the mind, which IS real, that it IS its own learning device, and that the learning device is more real than IT is. No-one in his right mind could POSSIBLY believe this, and no-one in his right mind DOES believe it.
Hear, then, the one answer of the Holy Spirit to ALL the questions which the ego raises. You are a Child of God, a priceless part of His Kingdom, which He created as part of Him. Nothing else exists, and ONLY this is real. You have chosen a sleep in which you have had bad dreams, but the sleep is not real, and God calls you to awake. There will be nothing left of your dream when you hear Him, because you WILL be awake. Your dreams have contained many of the ego's symbols, and they have confused you. But that was only because you were asleep and DID NOT KNOW.
When you awake, you will see the Truth around you and in you, and you will no longer believe in dreams, because they will have no reality for you. But the Kingdom and all that you have created there will have great reality for you, because they are beautiful and true. In the Kingdom, where you are and what you are is perfectly certain. There is no doubt there, because the first question was never asked. Having finally been wholly answered, IT HAS NEVER BEEN. BEING alone lives in the Kingdom, where everything lives in God without question. The time that was spent on questioning in the dream has given way to the Creation and to its Eternity.
YOU are as certain as God, because you are as true as He is. But what was once quite certain in your minds has become only the ABILITY for certainty. The introduction of abilities into being was the beginning of UNcertainty, because abilities are POTENTIALS, not accomplishments. Your abilities are totally useless in the presence of God's accomplishments and also of yours. Accomplishments are RESULTS which HAVE BEEN achieved. When they are perfect, abilities are meaningless.
It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In fact, it is impossible. But you must remember that when you put yourselves in an impossible situation, you believed that the impossible WAS possible.
Abilities must be DEVELOPED, or you cannot use them. This is not true of anything that God created, but it is the kindest solution possible to what YOU have made. In an impossible situation, you can develop your abilities to the point where they CAN GET YOU OUT OF IT. You have a guide to how to develop them, but you have no commander EXCEPT YOURSELF. This leaves YOU in charge of the Kingdom, with both a guide to FIND it and a MEANS to keep it. You have a model to follow who will strengthen YOUR command, and never detract from it in any way. You therefore retain the central place in your perceived enslavement, a fact which ITSELF demonstrates that you are NOT enslaved.
You are in an impossible situation only because you thought it was possible to be in one. You WOULD be in an impossible situation if God showed you your perfection, and PROVED to you that you were wrong. This would demonstrate that the perfect were inadequate to bring THEMSELVES to the awareness of their perfection, and thus side with the belief that those who have everything need help, and are therefore helpless.
This is the kind of reasoning that the ego engages in, but God, who KNOWS that His creations are perfect does NOT insult them. This would be as impossible as the ego's notion that it has insulted Him. That is why the Holy Spirit NEVER commands. To command is to assume INequality, which the Holy Spirit demonstrates does not exist. Fidelity to premises is a law of the mind, and everything God created is faithful to His laws. But fidelity to other laws is also possible, not because the laws are true, but because YOU MADE THEM.
What would be gained if God proved to you that you have thought insanely? Can God lose His own certainty? We have frequently stated that what you teach you ARE. Would you have God teach you that you have sinned? If He confronted the self you have made with the Truth He created FOR you, what could you be but afraid? You would doubt your sanity, which is the one thing in which you can FIND the sanity He gave you. God does not teach. To teach is to imply a lack which God KNOWS is not there. God is not conflicted. Teaching aims at change, but God created ONLY the changeless.
The separation was not a loss of perfection, but a failure in COMMUNICATION. A harsh and strident form of communication arose as the ego's voice. It could not shatter the peace of God, but it COULD shatter YOURS. God did not blot it out, because to eradicate it would be to attack it. Being questioned, He did not question. He merely gave the Answer.
God's answer IS your teacher.
We have not dwelt upon the crucifixion, because of its fearful connotations. The only emphasis we laid upon it was that it was NOT a form of punishment. But we know that nothing can be really explained only in negative terms. There is a positive interpretation of the crucifixion which is wholly devoid of fear, and therefore wholly benign in what it teaches, if it is properly understood. It is nothing more than an extreme example. Its value, like the value of any teaching device, lies solely in the kind of learning it facilitates. It can be, and has been, misunderstood. But this is only because the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully.
I told you before that you can always call on me to share my decision and thus MAKE IT STRONGER. I also told you that the crucifixion was the last foolish journey that the Sonship need take, and that it should mean RELEASE from fear to anyone who understands it. While we emphasized the Resurrection only before, the purpose of the crucifixion and how it actually LED to the Resurrection was not clarified at that time. Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to your own lives, and if you will consider it WITHOUT fear, it will help you understand your own role as teachers.
You have reacted for years AS IF you were being crucified. This is a marked tendency of the separated, who ALWAYS refuse to consider what they have done to THEMSELVES. Projection means anger, anger fosters assault, and assault promotes fear. The real meaning of the crucifixion lies in the APPARENT intensity of the assault of some of the Sons of God upon a brother. This, of course, is impossible, and must be fully understood AS an impossibility. In fact, unless it IS fully understood as ONLY that, I cannot serve as a real model for learning.
Assault can ultimately be made ONLY on the body. There is little doubt that one BODY can assault another, and can even destroy it. But if destruction ITSELF is impossible, then ANYTHING that is destructible cannot be real. Therefore, its destruction does NOT justify anger. To the extent to which you believe it DOES, you MUST be accepting false premises and TEACHING THEM TO OTHERS. The message which the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive ANY form of assault in persecution because you cannot BE persecuted. If you respond with anger, you MUST be equating yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely. I have made it perfectly clear that I am like you, and you are like me. But our fundamental equality can be demonstrated only through joint decision.
You are free to perceive yourselves as persecuted if you choose. But you might remember when you DO choose to react that way that I WAS persecuted as the world judges, and did NOT share this evaluation for myself. And because I did not share it, I did NOT strengthen it. I therefore offered a DIFFERENT interpretation of attack, and one which I DO want to share with you. If you will BELIEVE it, you will help me TEACH it.
We have said before, "As you teach so shall you learn." If you react as if you are persecuted, you ARE teaching persecution. This is not a lesson which the Sons of God should WANT to teach if they are to realize their own salvation. Rather teach your own perfect immunity, which IS the Truth in you, and KNOW that it cannot be assailed. Do not protect it yourselves, or you have believed that it IS assailable. You are not asked to BE crucified, because that was part of my own teaching contribution. You are merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less extreme temptations to misperceive, and NOT to accept them falsely as justifications for anger.
There can BE no justification for the unjustifiable. Do not believe there is, and do not TEACH that there is. Remember always that what you believe you WILL teach. Believe with me, and we will become equal as teachers. YOUR resurrection is your re-awakening. I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your minds of what is already in them. God placed it there Himself, and so it is true forever. I believed in it, and therefore made it forever true for me. Help me to teach it to our brothers in the name of the Kingdom of God. But first believe that it is true for you, or you will teach amiss.
My brothers slept during the so-called "agony in the garden," but I could not be angry with them, because I had learned I could not BE abandoned. Peter swore he would never deny me, but he did so three times. It should be noted that he did offer to defend me with the sword, which I naturally refused, not being at all in need of bodily protection. I AM sorry when my brothers do not share my decision to hear (and be) only one voice, because it weakens them as teachers AND learners. But yet I know that they cannot really betray themselves or me, and that it is still on them that I MUST build my church.
There is no choice in this, because only you can BE the foundation of God's church. A church is where an altar is, and the presence of the altar is what makes it a church. Any church which does not inspire love has a hidden altar which is not serving the purpose for which God intended it. I must found His church on you because you, who accept me as a model are literally my disciples. Disciples are followers, but if the model they follow has chosen to SAVE THEM PAIN IN ALL RESPECTS, they are probably unwise NOT to follow him.
I elected, both for your sake AND mine, to demonstrate that the most outrageous assault, as judged by the ego, did not matter. As the world judges these things, but NOT as God knows them, I was betrayed, abandoned, beaten, torn, and finally killed. It was perfectly clear that this was only because of the projection of others onto me, because I had not harmed anyone and had healed many. We are still equal as learners, even though we need not have equal experiences. The Holy Spirit is glad when you can learn enough from MINE to be re-awakened by them. That was their only purpose, and that is the only way in which I can be perceived as the Way, the Truth, and the Light.
When you hear only one voice, you are never called on to sacrifice. On the contrary, by enabling YOURSELVES to hear the Holy Spirit in others, you can learn from their experiences and gain from them WITHOUT experiencing them. That is because the Holy Spirit IS one, and anyone who listens is inevitably led to demonstrate His way for ALL. You are not persecuted, nor was I. You are not asked to repeat my experience, because the Holy Spirit which we SHARE, makes this unnecessary. But to use my experiences constructively for yourselves, you must still follow my example in how to perceive them.
My brothers and yours are constantly engaged in justifying the unjustifiable. My one lesson, which I must teach as I learned, is that no perception which is out of accord with the judgment of the Holy Spirit CAN be justified. I undertook to show this was true in a very extreme case, merely because this would serve as a good teaching aid to those whose temptations to give in to anger and assault would NOT be as extreme.
I will, with God Himself, that none of His Sons should suffer. Remember that the Holy Spirit is the communication link between God the Father and His separated Sons. If you will listen to His voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or BE hurt, but that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves. When you perceive only this need in them, and do not respond to any others, you will have learned of me, and be as eager to share your learning as I am. The crucifixion CANNOT be shared, because it is the symbol of projection. But the Resurrection IS the symbol of sharing, because the re-awakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness. Only this IS knowledge.
The message of the crucifixion is very simple and perfectly clear: "teach ONLY love, for that is what you ARE." If you interpret it in any other way, you are using it as a weapon for assault rather than as the call to peace for which it was intended. The Apostles often misunderstood it, and always for the same reason that makes anyone misunderstand anything. Their own imperfect love made them vulnerable to projection, and out of their own fear they spoke of the wrath of God as His RETALIATORY weapon. They also could not speak of the crucifixion entirely without anger, because their own sense of guilt had made them angry.
There are two glaring examples of upside down thinking in the New Testament, whose whole Gospel is only the message of love. These are not at all like the several slips into impatience which I made, because I had learned the Atonement prayer, which I also came to teach, too well to engage in upside down thinking myself. If the Apostles had not felt guilty, they never could have quoted ME as saying, "I come not to bring peace but a sword." This is clearly the exact opposite of everything I taught.
Nor could they have described my reactions to Judas Iscariot as they did, if they had really understood ME. They could not have believed that I could have said, "Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?" unless I BELIEVED IN BETRAYAL. The whole message of the crucifixion was simply that I did NOT. The "punishment" which I am said to have called forth upon Judas was a similar reversal. Judas was my brother and a Son of God, as much a part of the Sonship as myself. Was it likely that I would condemn him when I was ready to demonstrate that condemnation is impossible?
I am very grateful to the Apostles for their teaching, and fully aware of the extent of their devotion to me. But as you read their teachings, remember that I told them myself that there was much they would understand later, because they were NOT wholly ready to follow me at the time. I emphasize this only because I do not want you to allow ANY fear to enter into the thought system toward which I am guiding you. I do NOT call for martyrs but for TEACHERS.
Bill is an outstanding example of this confusion, and has literally believed for years that teaching IS martyrdom. This is because he thought, and still thinks at times, that teaching leads to crucifixion rather than to re-awakening. The upside down nature of this association is so obvious that he could only have made it BECAUSE he felt guilty. No-one is "punished" for sins, and the Sons of God are not sinners. ANY concept of "punishment" involves the projection of blame, and REINFORCES the idea that blame is justified. The behavior that results is a LESSON IN BLAME, just as all behavior teaches the beliefs that motivate it.
The crucifixion was a complex of behaviors arising out of clearly opposed thought systems. As such, it is the perfect symbol of conflict between the ego and the Son of God. It was as much intrapersonal as interpersonal then, just as it is now, and it is still just as real. But BECAUSE it is just as real now, its lesson, too, has equal reality WHEN IT IS LEARNED. I do not need gratitude any more than I needed protection. But YOU need to develop your weakened ability to BE grateful, or you cannot appreciate God. HE does not need your appreciation, but you DO.
You cannot love what you do not appreciate, and FEAR MAKES APPRECIATION IMPOSSIBLE. Whenever you are afraid of what you are, you do not appreciate it, and will therefore reject it. As a result, you will TEACH REJECTION. The power of the Sons of God is operating all the time, because they were created as creators. Their influence on EACH OTHER is without limit, and MUST be used for their joint salvation. Each one MUST learn to teach that all forms of rejection are utterly meaningless.
The separation IS the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this, YOU still believe it. This is NOT as God thinks, and you must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again.
Strictly speaking, words play no part at all in healing. The motivating factor is prayer, or asking. What you ask for you receive. But this refers to the prayer of the heart, not to the words you use in praying. Sometimes the words and the prayer are contradictory; sometimes they agree. It does not matter. God does not understand words, for they were made by separated minds to keep them in the illusion of separation. Words can be helpful, particularly for the beginner, in helping concentration and facilitating the exclusion or at least the control of extraneous thoughts. Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality.
As symbols, words have quite specific references. Even when they seem most abstract, the picture which comes to mind is apt to be very concrete. Unless a specific referent does occur to the mind in conjunction with the word, the word has little or no practical meaning and thus cannot help the healing process. The prayer of the heart does not really ask for concrete things. It always requests some kind of experience, the specific things asked for being the bringers of the desired experience in the judgment of the asker. The words, then, are symbols for the thing asked for, but the things themselves but stand for the experiences which are hoped for.
The prayer for things of this world will bring experiences of this world. If the prayer of the heart asks for this, this will be given because this will be received. It is impossible that the prayer of the heart remain unanswered in the perception of the one who asks. If he asks for the impossible, if he wants what does not exist or seeks for illusions in his heart, all this becomes his own. The power of his decision offers it to him as he requests. Herein lie hell and Heaven. The sleeping Son of God has but this power left to him. It is enough. His words do not matter. Only the Word of God has any meaning, because it symbolizes that which has no human symbols at all. The Holy Spirit alone understands what this Word stands for. And this, too, is enough.
Is the teacher of God then to avoid the use of words in his teaching? No, indeed. There are many who must be reached through words, being as yet unable to hear in silence. The teacher of God must, however, learn to use words in a new way. Gradually, he learns how to let his words be chosen for him by ceasing to decide for himself what he will say. This process is merely a special case of the Workbook lesson "I will step back and let Him lead the way." The teacher of God accepts the words which are offered him and gives as he receives. He does not control the direction of his speaking. He listens and hears and speaks.
A major hindrance in this aspect of his learning is the teacher of God's fear about the validity of what he hears. And what he hears may indeed be quite startling. It may also seem to be irrelevant to the presented problem as he perceives it, and may, in fact, confront him with a situation that appears to be very embarrassing. All these are judgments which have no value. They are his own, coming from the shabby self-perception that he would leave behind. Judge not the words that come to you, but offer them in confidence. They are far wiser than your own. God's teachers have God's Word behind their symbols. And He Himself gives to the words they use the power of His Spirit, raising them from meaningless symbols to the call of Heaven itself.
For this review, we take but one idea each day, and practice it as often as is possible. Besides the time you give morning and evening, which should not be less than fifteen minutes, and the hourly remembrances you make throughout the day, use the idea as often as you can between them. Each of these ideas alone would be sufficient for salvation, if it were learned truly. Each would be enough to give release to you and to the world from every form of bondage, and invite the memory of God to come again.
With this in mind, we start our practicing in which we carefully review the thoughts the Holy Spirit has bestowed on us in our last twenty lessons. Each contains the whole curriculum, if understood, practiced, accepted and applied to all the seeming happenings throughout the day. One is enough. But for that one, there must be no exceptions made. And so we need to use them all, and let them blend as one as each contributes to the whole we learn.
These practice sessions, like our last review, are centered round a central theme with which we start and end each lesson. It is this:
"I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me."
The day begins and ends with this. And we repeat it every time the hour strikes, or we remember, in between, we have a function that transcends the world we see. Beyond this, and a repetition of the special thought we practice for the day, no form of exercise is urged, except a deep relinquishment of everything that clutters up the mind, and makes it deaf to reason, sanity and simple truth.
We will attempt to get beyond all words and special forms of practicing for this review. For we attempt this time to reach a quickened pace along a shorter path to the serenity and peace of God. We merely close our eyes, and then forget all that we thought we knew and understood. For thus is freedom given us from all we did not know and failed to understand.
There is but one exception to this lack of structuring. Permit no idle thought to go unchallenged. If you notice it, deny its hold and hasten to assure your mind that this is not what it would have. Then gently let the thought which you denied be given up in sure and quick exchange for the idea you practice for the day.
When you are tempted, hasten to proclaim your freedom from temptation, as you say:
"This thought I do not want. I choose instead . . ."
And then repeat the idea for the day, and let it take the place of what you thought. Beyond such special applications of each day's idea, we will add but few formal expressions or specific thoughts to aid your practicing. Instead we give these times of quiet to the Teacher Who instructs in quiet, speaks of peace, and gives our thoughts whatever meaning they may have.
To Him I offer this review for you. I place you in His charge, and let Him teach you what to do and say and think each time you turn to Him. He will not fail to be available to you each time you call to Him to help you. Let us offer Him the whole review we now begin, and let us also not forget to Whom it has been given, as we practice, day by day, advancing toward the goal He set for us; allowing Him to teach us how to go, and trusting Him completely for the way each practice period can best become a loving gift of freedom to the world.
Do you not understand that to oppose the Holy Spirit IS to fight yourself? He tells you but YOUR will; He speaks for YOU. In HIS Divinity is but your own. And all He knows is but YOUR knowledge, saved for YOU, that you may do YOUR will through Him. God ASKS you do your will. He joins with YOU. He did not set His kingdom up alone. And Heaven itself but represents your will, where everything created is for you. No spark of life but was created with your glad consent, as you would have it be. And not one Thought that God has ever had but waited for your blessing to be born. God is no enemy to you. He asks no more than that He hear you call Him Friend.
How wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom's name. UNLESS you do your will, you are NOT free. And would God leave His Son WITHOUT what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never LOSE your will, when He gave you His perfect Answer. Hear It now, that you may be reminded of His Love, and learn YOUR will. God would not have His Son made prisoner to what he does not want. He JOINS with you in willing you be free. And to OPPOSE Him is to make a choice against YOURSELF, and choose that YOU be bound.
Look once again upon your enemy, the one you chose to hate instead of love. For thus was hatred born into the world, and thus the rule of fear established here. Now hear God speak to you through Him Who is His Voice, and YOURS as well, reminding you that it is NOT your will to hate, and be a prisoner to fear, a slave to death, a LITTLE creature with a LITTLE life. Your will is boundless; it is NOT your will that it be bound. What lies in you has joined with God Himself in all creation's birth. Remember Him Who has created you, and through YOUR will created everything.
Not one created thing but gives you thanks, for it is by your will that it was born. No light of Heaven shines except for you, for it was set in Heaven by your will. What cause have you for anger in a world which merely waits YOUR blessing to be free? If YOU be prisoner, then God Himself could not be free. For what is done to him whom God so loves is done to God Himself. Think not HE wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but KEEP your will forever and forever limitless.
The world awaits the freedom you will give, when you have recognized that YOU are free. But you will not forgive the world until you have forgiven Him Who GAVE your will to you. For it is BY your will the world is given freedom. Nor can YOU be free APART from Him Whose holy Will you share. God turns to YOU to ask the world be saved, for by your OWN salvation is it healed. And no-one walks upon the earth but must depend on YOUR decision, that he learn death HAS no power over him because he shares YOUR freedom, as he shares your will. It IS your will to heal him, and because you have decided WITH him, he is healed. And now is God forgiven, for you chose to look upon your brother as a friend.
Specialness is a lack of trust in anyone except yourself. Faith is invested in yourself alone. Everything else becomes your enemy, feared and attacked, deadly and dangerous, hated and worthy only of destruction. Whatever gentleness it offers is but deception, but its hate is real. In danger of destruction, it MUST kill, and YOU are drawn to it, to kill it first. And such is guilt's attraction. Here is death enthroned as savior; crucifixion is now redemption, and salvation can ONLY mean destruction of the world, EXCEPT YOURSELF.
What could the purpose of the body Be BUT specialness? And it is this that makes it frail and helpless in its own defense. It was CONCEIVED to make YOU frail and helpless. The goal of separation is its curse. But bodies HAVE no goal. Purpose is of the mind. And minds can change, as they desire. What they ARE, and all their attributes, CANNOT change. But what they hold as purpose CAN be changed, and body states must shift accordingly. Of itself, the body can do nothing. See it as means to hurt, and it is hurt. See it as means to heal, and it is healed.
YOU CAN BUT HURT YOURSELF. This has been oft repeated, but is difficult to grasp as yet. To minds intent on specialness, it is impossible. But to those who wish to heal and NOT attack, it is quite obvious. The purpose of attack is in the MIND, and its effects are felt but where it IS. Nor is mind limited; so must it be that harmful purpose hurts the mind AS ONE. Nothing could make LESS sense to specialness. Nothing could make MORE sense to miracles. For miracles are merely change of purpose from hurt to healing.
This shift in purpose DOES "endanger" specialness, but only in the sense that all illusions are "threatened" by the truth. They will NOT stand before it, yet what comfort has ever been in them, that you would keep the gift your Father asks from Him, and give it there instead? Given to HIM, the universe is yours. Offered to THEM, no gifts can be returned. What you have given specialness has left you bankrupt, and your treasure-house barren and empty, with an open door inviting everything that would disturb your peace to enter and destroy.
Long ago we said consider not the means by which salvation is attained, nor how to reach it. But DO consider, and consider well, whether it be your WISH that you might see your brother sinless. To specialness the answer MUST be "no." A sinless brother IS its enemy, while sin, if it were possible, WOULD be its friend. Your brother's "sins" would justify itself, and GIVE it meaning that the truth denies. All that is real proclaims his sinlessness. All that is false proclaims his sins as real. If HE is sinful, then is YOUR reality not real, but just a dream of specialness which lasts an instant, crumbling into dust.
Do not defend this senseless dream, in which God is bereft of what He loves, and you remain beyond salvation. Only this is certain, in this shifting world which has NO meaning in reality: When peace is not with you ENTIRELY, and when you suffer pain of ANY kind, you have beheld some sin within your brother, AND HAVE REJOICED at what you thought was there. Your specialness seemed safe BECAUSE of it. And thus you saved what YOU appointed to be your savior, and crucified the one whom God has given you instead. So are you bound with him, for you ARE one with him. And so is specialness HIS enemy, and YOURS as well.
The ego IS an ally of time, but NOT a friend. For it is as mistrustful of death as it is of life, and what it wants for you, IT cannot tolerate. The ego wants YOU dead, but NOT itself. The outcome of its strange religion MUST therefore be the conviction that it can pursue you BEYOND the grave. And out of its unwillingness for you to find peace, even in the death it wants for you, it offers you immortality in hell. It speaks to you of Heaven, but assures you that Heaven is not for you. How can the guilty hope for Heaven?
The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it. The ego teaches that hell is IN THE FUTURE, for this is what ALL its teaching is directed to. HELL IS ITS GOAL. For, although the ego aims at death and dissolution as an end, IT does not believe it. The goal of death, which it craves for you, leaves IT unsatisfied. No-one who follows the ego's teaching is without the FEAR of death. If death were thought of merely as an end of pain, would it be FEARED?
We have seen this strange paradox in the ego's thought-system before, but never so clearly as here. For the ego must SEEM to KEEP FEAR FROM YOU, to keep your allegiance. Yet it must ENGENDER fear, in order to maintain ITSELF. Again, the ego tries, and all too frequently succeeds, in doing both, but using dissociation for holding its contradictory aims together, so that they SEEM to be reconciled. The ego teaches thus: Death is the end, as far as hope of Heaven goes. But, because you and ITSELF cannot be separated, and because it cannot conceive of its OWN death, it will pursue you still, BECAUSE YOUR GUILT IS ETERNAL.
Such is the ego's version of immortality. And it is THIS the ego's version of time supports. The ego teaches that Heaven is here and now, because the FUTURE is hell. Even when it attacks so savagely that it tries to take the life of someone who hears it temporarily as the ONLY voice, it speaks of hell even to him. For it tells him hell is HERE, and bids him leap from hell into oblivion. The only time the ego allows anyone to look upon, with some amount of equanimity is the PAST. And even then, its only value is that it is no more.
How bleak and despairing is the ego's use of time! And how TERRIFYING! For underneath its fanatical insistence that the past and future be the same, is hidden a far more insidious threat to peace. The ego does not advertise its final threat, for it would have its worshippers still believe that IT can offer the ESCAPE from it. But the belief in guilt MUST lead to the BELIEF IN HELL, and ALWAYS DOES. The only way in which the ego allows the fear of hell to be experienced is to BRING HELL HERE, but ALWAYS as a foretaste of the future. For no-one who considers himself as DESERVING hell, can believe that punishment will end in peace.
The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There IS no hell. Hell is only what the ego has made OF THE PRESENT. The BELIEF in hell is what PREVENTS you from UNDERSTANDING the present, because YOU ARE AFRAID OF IT. The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven, as the ego drives to hell. For the Holy Spirit, Who knows ONLY the present, uses it to UNDO the fear by which the ego would make the present useless. There is NO ESCAPE from fear, in the ego's use of time. For time, according to its teaching, is nothing but a teaching device for COMPOUNDING guilt, until it becomes all-encompassing, and demands vengeance forever.
The Holy Spirit would undo ALL of this NOW. Fear is NOT of the present, but ONLY of the past and future, which do not exist. There is no fear in the present, when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the future. Each instant is a clean, untarnished birth, in which the Son of God emerges FROM the past, into the present. And the present EXTENDS FOREVER. It is so beautiful and so clean and free of guilt, that nothing but happiness is there. No darkness is remembered, and his immortality and joy are NOW.
This lesson takes NO time. For what IS time, WITHOUT a past and future? It HAS taken time to misguide you so completely, but it takes no time at all to BE what you ARE. Begin to practice the Holy Spirit's USE of time, as a teaching aid to happiness and peace. Take this very instant, NOW, and think of it as ALL THERE IS of time. Nothing can reach you here, out of the past, and it is here that you are COMPLETELY absolved, COMPLETELY free, and WHOLLY without condemnation. From this holy instant, wherein holiness is born, you will go forth in time without fear, and with no sense of change WITH time.
Time is inconceivable without change, and holiness does NOT change. Learn from this instant more than merely hell does not exist. IN THIS REDEEMING INSTANT LIES HEAVEN. And Heaven will NOT change, for the birth into the holy present is SALVATION from change. And change is an illusion, taught by those who could not see themselves as guiltless. There is no change in Heaven, because THERE IS NO CHANGE IN GOD.
In the holy instant, in which you see yourself as bright with freedom, you WILL remember God. For remembering Him IS to remember freedom. Whenever you are tempted to be dispirited by the thought of HOW LONG it would take to change your mind so completely, ask yourself, "How long is an instant?" Could you not give so SHORT a time to the Holy Spirit, for your Salvation? He asks no more, for He has no need of more. It takes far longer to teach you how to be willing to Give Him this, than for Him to use this tiny instant to offer you the whole of Heaven. In exchange for this instant, He stands ready to give you the remembrance of Eternity.
You will never give this holy instant to the Holy Spirit on behalf of YOUR release, while you are unwilling to give it to your brothers on behalf of THEIRS. For the instant of holiness is SHARED, and CANNOT be yours alone. Remember, then, when you are tempted to attack a brother, that HIS instant of release is YOURS. Miracles ARE the instant of release you offer, and will RECEIVE. They attest to YOUR willingness to BE released, and to offer time to the Holy Spirit, for HIS use of it. How long is an instant? It is as short for your brothers, as it is for you. Practice GIVING this blessed instant of freedom to all who are ENSLAVED by time, and thus make time their friend FOR them.
The Holy Spirit gives their blessed instant TO you, through your giving it. As you GIVE it, He offers it to YOU. Be not unwilling to give what you would receive of Him, for you join WITH Him in giving. In the crystal cleanness of the release you GIVE, is YOUR INSTANTANEOUS escape from guilt. You MUST be holy, if you OFFER holiness. How long is an instant? As long as it takes tore-establish perfect sanity, perfect peace, and perfect love for everyone, for God, and for YOURSELF. As long as it takes to remember immortality, and your immortal creations, who share it with you. As long as it takes to exchange hell for Heaven. Long enough to transcend ALL of the ego's making, and ascend unto your Father.
Time is your friend, if you leave it to the Holy Spirit to use. He needs but very little, to restore God's Whole power to you. He Who transcends time FOR you, understands what it is FOR. Holiness lies not in time, but in Eternity. There never WAS an instant in which God's Son could lose his purity. His changeless state is BEYOND time, for his purity remains forever beyond attack, and without variability. Time stands still in his holiness, and changes not. And so it is no longer time at all. For, caught in the single instant of the eternal sanctity of God's creation, it is TRANSFORMED into forever.
GIVE the eternal instant, that eternity may be remembered FOR you, in that shining instant of perfect release. Offer the miracle of the holy instant THROUGH the Holy Spirit, and leave His giving it to you to Him.
When no perception stands between God and His Creation, or between His Children and their own, the knowledge of creation MUST continue forever. The reflections that you accept into the mirror of your minds in time, but bring eternity nearer or farther.
But eternity ITSELF is beyond ALL time. Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its reflection IN you, and you will turn FROM time to holiness, as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to Heaven. For the REFLECTION of truth draws everyone TO truth. And as they enter INTO it, they leave ALL reflections behind. In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected. By sharing its reflection HERE, its truth becomes the only perception which the Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of His Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality.
You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur. The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle is the one thing you can do that TRANSCENDS order, being based, NOT on differences, but on equality. Miracles are NOT in competition, and the number you can do is LIMITLESS. They can be simultaneous and legion. This is not difficult to understand, once you conceive of them as possible at all.
What is more difficult to grasp is the lack of order of magnitude, which stamps the miracle as something that MUST come from elsewhere, NOT from here. From the world's viewpoint, this is quite impossible. You have experienced the lack of competition among your thoughts, which, even though they may conflict, can occur to you together, and in great numbers. You are so used to this, that it can cause you little surprise. Yet you are also used to classifying some of your thoughts as more important, larger, or better, wiser, or more productive and valuable, than others. And this is true about the thoughts that cross the mind of those who think they live apart. For some are reflections of Heaven, while others are motivated by the ego, which but SEEMS to think.
The result is a weaving, changing pattern that never rests, and is never still. It shifts unceasingly across the mirror of your mind, and the reflections of Heaven last but a moment, and grow dim, as darkness blots them out. Where there was light, darkness removes it in an instant, and alternating patterns of light and darkness, darkness and light, sweep constantly across your minds. The little sanity that still remains is held together by a sense of order which YOU establish. The very fact that you can DO this, and bring ANY order into chaos, shows you that you are NOT an ego, and that MORE than an ego MUST be in you. For the ego IS chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible.
But, though the order which you impose upon your minds limits the ego, IT ALSO LIMITS YOU. To order is to judge, and to arrange BY judgment. Therefore, it is NOT your function, but the Holy Spirit's. It will seem very difficult for you to learn that YOU HAVE NO BASIS AT ALL for ordering your thoughts. This lesson the Holy Spirit teaches, by giving you shining examples, to show you that your way of ordering is wrong, but that a better way is OFFERED you. The miracle offers EXACTLY the same response to EVERY call for help. IT DOES NOT JUDGE THE CALL. It merely recognizes what it IS, and answers accordingly. It does NOT consider which call is louder, or greater, or more important.
You may wonder how you, who are still bound to judgment, can be asked to do that which requires no judgment of your own. The answer is very simple. The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you. That is the reason that the miracle gives EQUAL blessing to ALL who share in it, and that is also why EVERYONE shares in it. The power of God IS limitless. And, being always maximal, it offers EVERYTHING to EVERY call from ANYONE. There is no order here. A call for help is GIVEN help. The only judgment involved at all is in the Holy Spirit's one division into two categories; one of love, and the other, the call for love.
You cannot safely make this division, for you are much too confused, either to recognize love, or to believe that EVERYTHING else is nothing but a NEED for love. You are too bound to form, and NOT to content. What you CONSIDER content, is not content at all. It is merely form, and nothing else. For you do NOT respond to what a brother REALLY offers you, but only to the particular perception of his offering by which your EGO judges it. The ego is incapable of understanding content, and is totally unconcerned with it. To the ego, if the form is acceptable, the content MUST be. Otherwise, it will attack the form.
You who believe you understand something of the dynamics of the mind, let me assure you that you know NOTHING of it at all. For of yourselves, you COULD not know of it. The study of the ego is NOT the study of the mind. In fact, the ego enjoys the study of itself, and thoroughly approves the undertakings of the students who would analyze it, approving its importance. Yet they but study form, with meaningless content. For their teacher is senseless, though careful to conceal this fact behind a lot of words that sound impressive, but which lack ANY consistent sense when they are put together.
This is the characteristic of the ego's judgments. SEPARATELY, they seem to hold, but PUT THEM TOGETHER, and the system of thought which arises from JOINING them, is incoherent and utterly chaotic. For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying LACK of content, makes a cohesive system impossible. SEPARATION therefore remains the ego's chosen condition. For no-one ALONE can judge the ego truly. But when two or more JOIN TOGETHER in searching for truth, the ego can no longer defend its lack of content. The fact of union tells them it is not true.
It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For remembering Him means you are NOT alone, and willing to remember it. Take no thought FOR YOURSELF, for no thought you hold IS for yourself. If you would remember your Father, let the Holy Spirit order your thoughts, and give only the answer with which He answers you. Everyone seeks for love, as you do, and knows it not, unless he joins WITH you in seeking it. If you undertake the search TOGETHER, you bring with you a light so powerful, that what you see is GIVEN meaning. The lonely journey fails, because it has EXCLUDED what it would FIND.
As God communicates to the Holy Spirit in you, so does the Holy Spirit TRANSLATE His communications THROUGH you, so YOU can understand them. God has no secret communications, for everything of Him is perfectly open, and freely accessible to all, being FOR all. Nothing lives in secret, and what you would hide from the Holy Spirit IS nothing. Every interpretation you would lay upon a brother is senseless. Let the Holy Spirit SHOW HIM TO YOU, and teach you both his love and NEED for love. Neither his mind, NOR YOURS, holds but these two orders of thought. The miracle is the recognition that this is true.
Where there is love, your brother MUST give it to you, because of what it IS. But where there is NEED for love, YOU must give it, because of what YOU are. Long ago we said this course will teach you what you are, restoring to you your identity. And we have already learned that this identity is shared. THE MIRACLE BECOMES THE MEANS OF SHARING IT. By SUPPLYING your identity, WHEREVER it is NOT recognized, YOU will recognize it. And God Himself, Who wills to be with His Son forever, will bless each recognition of His Son, with all the love He holds for him. Nor will the power of all His love be absent from any miracle you offer TO His Son. How, then, can there be ANY order of difficulty among them?
It has been said that there is a kind of peace that is not of this world. How is it recognized? How is it found? And being found, how can it be retained? Let us consider each of these questions separately, for each reflects a different step along the way.
First, how can the peace of God be recognized? God's peace is recognized at first by just one thing; in every way it is totally unlike all previous experiences. It calls to mind nothing that went before. It brings with it no past associations. It is a new thing entirely. There is a contrast, yes, between this thing and all the past. But strangely, it is not a contrast of true differences. The past just slips away, and in its place is everlasting quiet. Only that. The contrast first perceived has merely gone. Quiet has reached to cover everything.
How is this quiet found? No-one can fail to find it who but seeks out its conditions. God's peace can never come where anger is, for anger must deny that peace exists. Who sees anger as justified in any way or any circumstance proclaims that peace is meaningless, and must believe that it cannot exist. In this condition, peace cannot be found. Therefore, forgiveness is the necessary condition for finding the peace of God. More than this, given forgiveness there must be peace. For what except attack will lead to war? And what but peace is opposite to war? Here the initial contrast stands out clear and apparent. Yet when peace is found, the war is meaningless. And it is conflict now that is perceived as non-existent and unreal.
How is the peace of God retained, once it is found? Returning anger, in whatever form, will drop the heavy curtain once again, and the belief that peace cannot exist will certainly return. War is again accepted as the one reality. Now must you once again lay down your sword, although you will not recognize that you have picked it up again. But you will learn, as you remember even faintly now what happiness was yours without it, that you must have taken it again as your defense. Stop for a moment now and think of this: Is conflict what you want, or is God's peace the better choice? Which gives you more? A tranquil mind is not a little gift. Would you not rather live than choose to die?
Living is joy, but death can only weep. You see in death escape from what you made. But this you do not see; that you made death, and it is but illusion of an end. Death cannot be escape, because it is not life in which the problem lies. Life has no opposite, for it is God. Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life. Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything which God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real. In this one sentence is our course explained. In this one sentence is our practicing given its one direction. And in this the Holy Spirit's whole curriculum is specified exactly as it is.
What is the peace of God? No more than this; the simple understanding that His Will is wholly without opposite. There is no thought that contradicts His Will, yet can be true. The contrast between His Will and yours but seemed to be reality. In truth there is no conflict, because His Will is yours. Now is the mighty Will of God Himself His gift to you. He does not seek to keep it for Himself. Why would you seek to keep your tiny, frail imaginings apart from Him? The Will of God is One and all there is. This is your heritage. The universe beyond the sun and stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive, belong to you. God's peace is the condition for His Will. Attain His peace, and you remember Him.
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.
The light has come. You are healed and you can heal. The light has come. You are saved and you can save. You are at peace and you bring peace with you wherever you go. Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared. The light has come. Today we celebrate the happy ending to your long dream of disaster. There are no dark dreams now. The light has come.
Today the time of light begins for you and everyone. It is a new era, in which a new world is born. The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing. Today we see a different world because the light has come. Our exercises for today will be happy ones, in which we offer thanks for the passing of the old and the beginning of the new. No shadows from the past remain to darken our sight and hide the world forgiveness offers us.
Today we will accept the new world as what we want to see. We will be given what we desire. We will to see the light; the light has come.
Our longer practice periods will be devoted to looking at the world which our forgiveness shows us. This is what we want to see, and only this. Our single purpose makes our goal inevitable. Today the real world rises before us in gladness, to be seen at last. Sight is given us, now that the light has come. We do not see the ego's shadow on the world today. We see the light, and in it we see Heaven's reflection lie across the world.
Begin the practice period by telling yourself the glad tidings of your release:
"The light has come.
I have forgiven the world."
Dwell not upon the past today. Keep a completely open mind, washed of all past ideas and clean of every concept you have made. You have forgiven the world today. You can look upon it now as if you never saw it before. You do not know yet what it looks like. You merely wait to have it shown to you. While you wait, repeat several times slowly and in complete patience;
"The light has come.
I have forgiven the world."
Realize that your forgiveness entitles you to vision. Understand that the Holy Spirit never fails to give the gift of sight to the forgiving. Believe He will not fail you now. You have forgiven the world. He will be with you as you watch and wait. He will show what true vision sees. It is His Will, and you have joined with Him.
Wait patiently for Him. He will be there. The light has come. You have forgiven the world. Tell Him you know you cannot fail because you trust in Him. Tell yourself you wait in certainty to look upon the world He promised you. From this time forth you will see differently. Today the light has come. And you will see the world that has been promised you since time began, and in which is the end of time ensured.
The shorter practice periods, too, will be joyful reminders of your release. Remind yourself every quarter of an hour or so that today is a time for special celebration. Give thanks for mercy and the Love of God. Rejoice in the power of forgiveness to heal your sight completely. Be confident that on this day there is a new beginning. Without the darkness of the past upon your eyes, you cannot fail to see today. And what you see will be so welcome that you will gladly extend today forever. Say, then:
"The light has come.
I have forgiven the world."
Should you be tempted, say to anyone who seems to pull you back to darkness:
"The light has come.
I have forgiven you."
We dedicate this day to the serenity in which God would have you be. Keep it in your awareness of yourself and see it everywhere today, as we celebrate the beginning of your vision, and the sight of the real world which has come to replace the unforgiven world you thought was real.
If guilt is hell, what is its opposite? Like the Text for which this Workbook was written, the ideas which are used for these exercises are very simple, very clear, and totally unambiguous. We are not concerned with intellectual feats nor logical toys. We are dealing only in the very obvious, which has been overlooked in the clouds of complexity in which you think you think.
If guilt is hell, what is its opposite? This is not difficult, surely. The hesitation you may feel in answering is not due to the ambiguity of the question. But do you believe that guilt is hell? If you did, you would see at once how direct and simple the text is, and you would not need a Workbook at all. No one needs practice to gain what is already his.
We have already said that your holiness is the salvation of the world. What about your own salvation? You cannot give what you do not have. A Savior must be saved. How else can he teach salvation? Today's exercises will apply to you alone, recognizing that your salvation is crucial to the salvation of the world. As you apply the exercises to your own world, the whole world stands to benefit.
Your holiness is the answer to every question that was ever asked, is being asked now, or will be asked in the future. Your holiness means the end of guilt, and therefore the end of hell. Your holiness is the salvation of the world, and your own. How could you to whom your holiness belongs be excluded from it? God does not know unholiness. Can it be He does not know His Son?
A full five minutes are urged for the four longer practice periods for today. Longer and more frequent practice sessions are encouraged. If you want to exceed the minimum requirements more rather than longer sessions are recommended, although both are encouraged.
Begin the practice periods as usual, by repeating today's idea to yourself. Then, with closed eyes, search out your unloving thoughts in whatever form they appear; uneasiness, depression, anger, fear, worry, attack, insecurity, and so on. Whatever form they take they are unloving and therefore fearful. And so it is from them that you need to be saved.
Specific situations, events or personalities you associate with unloving thoughts of any kind are suitable subjects for today's exercises. It is imperative for your own salvation that you see them differently. And it is your blessing on them that will save you and give you vision.
Slowly, without conscious selection and without undue emphasis on any one in particular, search your mind for every thought that stands between you and your salvation. Apply the idea for today to each one of them in this way:
"My unloving thoughts about ____ are keeping me in hell. My holiness is my salvation."
You may find these sessions easier if you intersperse the applications with several short periods during which you merely repeat today's idea to yourself slowly a few times. You may also find it helpful to include a few short intervals in which you just relax and do not seem to be thinking of anything. Sustained concentration is very difficult at first. It will become much easier as your mind becomes more disciplined and less distractible.
Meanwhile, you should feel free to introduce variety into your application periods, in whatever form appeals to you. Do not, however, change the idea itself in varying the method of applying it. However you elect to use it, the idea should be stated so that its meaning remains that your holiness is your salvation. End each practice period by repeating the idea in its original form once more, and adding:
"If guilt is hell, what is its opposite?"
In the shorter applications, which should be made some three or four times an hour and more if possible, you may ask yourself this question, repeat today's idea, or preferably both. If temptations arise, a particularly helpful form of the idea is:
"My holiness is my salvation from this."
Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom lies here. It would be impossible NOT to know the meaning of love, EXCEPT FOR THIS. For the special love relationship, IN WHICH THE MEANING OF LOVE IS LOST, is undertaken SOLELY to OFFSET this, but NOT to LET IT GO. Your salvation will rise clearly before your open eyes, as you look on this. YOU CANNOT LIMIT HATE. The special love relationship will NOT offset it, but will merely DRIVE IT UNDERGROUND, and out of sight. It is essential to bring it INTO sight, and to make NO attempt to hide it. For it is the attempt to BALANCE hate with love that makes love meaningless to you.
The extent of the split that lies in this you do NOT realize. And until you do, the split will remain unrecognized, AND THEREFORE UNHEALED. The symbols of hate against the symbols of love play out a conflict that does not exist. For symbols stand for something else, and the SYMBOL of love IS without meaning, if love is everything. You will go through this last undoing quite unharmed, and will emerge AS YOURSELF. This is the last step in the readiness for God. Be not unwilling now, you are too near, and you WILL cross the bridge in perfect safety, translated quietly from war to peace. For the ILLUSION of love will NEVER satisfy you. But its REALITY, which awaits you on the other side, WILL give you everything.
The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the destructive EFFECTS of hate, by finding a haven in the storm of guilt. It makes NO attempt to RISE ABOVE the storm, into the sunlight. On the contrary, it EMPHASIZES guilt OUTSIDE the haven, by attempting to build barricades AGAINST it, and keep WITHIN them. The special love relationship is NOT perceived as of value IN ITSELF, but as a place of safety, from which hatred is split off, and KEPT APART. The special love partner is acceptable ONLY as long as he serves this purpose. Hatred can enter, and, indeed, is WELCOME in some ASPECTS of the relationship, but it is still held together by the illusion of love. If the illusion goes, the relationship is broken or becomes unsatisfying, on the grounds of DISillusionment.
LOVE IS NOT AN ILLUSION. It is a FACT. Where DISillusionment is possible, there was NOT love, but HATE. For hate IS an illusion, and what can change was NEVER love. It is certain that those who select certain ones as partners in ANY aspect of living, and use them for ANY purpose which they would NOT share with others, are trying to LIVE WITH guilt rather than DIE OF it. This is the choice they see. And love to them is only AN ESCAPE FROM DEATH. They seek it desperately, NOT in the peace in which it would gladly come quietly TO them. And when they find the fear of death is still upon them, the "love" relationship loses the illusion that it IS what it is NOT. For, when the barricades against it are broken, fear rushes in and hatred triumphs.
There are no triumphs of love. Only hate is concerned with the triumph of love at all. The ILLUSION of love CAN triumph over the illusion of hate, but ALWAYS at the price of MAKING BOTH ILLUSIONS. As long as the illusion of hatred lasts, so long WILL love be an illusion to you. And then the ONLY choice that remains possible, is which illusion you PREFER. There IS no conflict in the choice between truth and illusion. Seen in these terms, NO-ONE would hesitate. But conflict enters the instant the choice seems to be one BETWEEN ILLUSIONS, for this choice does NOT matter. Where one choice IS as dangerous as the other, the decision MUST be one of despair.
Your task is NOT to seek for love, but merely to seek and FIND all of the barriers WITHIN YOURSELF that you have built AGAINST it. It is NOT necessary to seek for what is true, but it IS necessary to seek for what is FALSE. Every illusion is one of fear, WHATEVER form it takes. And the attempt to escape from one illusion INTO ANOTHER, MUST fail. If you seek love OUTSIDE yourself, you can be certain that you perceive hatred within, AND ARE AFRAID OF IT. Yet peace will never come from the ILLUSION of love, but ONLY from its reality.
Recognize this, for it is true, and truth MUST be recognized, if it is to be distinguished from illusion: the special love relationship is an attempt TO BRING LOVE INTO SEPARATION. And, as such, it is nothing more than an attempt to bring love into fear, and MAKE IT REAL IN FEAR. In fundamental violation of love's one condition, the special love relationship would thus ACCOMPLISH THE IMPOSSIBLE. How but in illusion COULD this be done? It is essential that we look VERY closely at exactly what it is you THINK you can do, to solve a dilemma which seems very real to you, but which does not exist. You have come very close to truth. And only this stands between you and the bridge that leads you into it. Heaven waits silently, and your creations are holding out their hands to help you cross, and welcome them.
FOR IT IS THEY YOU SEEK. You seek but for your own COMPLETION, and it is they who render you complete. The special love relationship is but a shabby substitute for what makes you whole IN TRUTH, NOT in illusion. Your relationship with them IS without guilt, and THIS enables you to look on all your brothers with gratitude, because your creations were created in union WITH them. Acceptance of your creations IS the acceptance of the oneness of creation, without which you would never BE complete. No specialness can offer you what God has given, and what YOU are joined WITH Him in giving. Across the bridge IS your completion, for you will be WHOLLY in God, willing for NOTHING special, but only to be wholly like unto Him, completing Him by your completion.
Fear not to cross to the abode of peace and perfect holiness. Only there is the completion of God and of His Son established forever. Seek not for this in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certain, and where everything fails to satisfy. And, in the Name of God, be wholly willing to abandon ALL illusion. In any relationship in which you are wholly willing to accept completion, and ONLY this, there is God completed, and His Son WITH Him. The bridge that leads to union IN YOURSELF, MUST lead to knowledge, for it was built with God beside you. And will lead you straight to Him, where YOUR completion rests, WHOLLY compatible with His.
Every illusion which you accept into your mind, BY JUDGING IT TO BE ATTAINABLE, removes your own sense of completion, and thus denies the Wholeness of your Father. Every fantasy, be it of love OR hate, DEPRIVES you of knowledge. For fantasies ARE the veil behind which truth is hidden. To lift the veil, which seems so dark and heavy, it is only needful to VALUE truth beyond ALL fantasy, and to be entirely UNwilling to settle for illusion IN PLACE of truth. Would you not go THROUGH fear to Love? For such the journey SEEMS to be. Love calls, though hate would bid you stay.
Hear not the call of hate, and see no fantasies. For your completion lies in truth, and NOWHERE ELSE. See in the call of hate, and in every fantasy that rises to delay you, but the call for help, that rises ceaselessly from you to your Creator. Would He not answer you; whose completion is His? He loves you, wholly WITHOUT illusion, as you must love. For love IS wholly without illusion, and therefore wholly WITHOUT FEAR. Whom God remembers, MUST be whole. And God has NEVER forgotten what makes HIM whole. In YOUR completion lies the memory of HIS wholeness, and His gratitude to you for His completion.
In His link with you lie both His INABILITY to forget, and YOUR ability to remember. In Him are joined your WILLINGNESS to love, and all the love of God, Who forgot you not. Your Father can no more forget the truth in you, than you can fail to remember it. The Holy Spirit is the bridge to Him, made from your willingness to UNITE with Him, and created by His joy, in union WITH you. The journey that SEEMED to be endless is ALMOST complete, for what IS endless is very near. YOU HAVE ALMOST RECOGNIZED IT. Turn with me firmly away from ALL illusion NOW, and let nothing stand in the way of truth. We will take the last foolish journey AWAY FROM truth together. And then TOGETHER we go straight to God, in joyous answer to His call for His completion.
If special relationships of ANY kind would HINDER God's completion, CAN they have any value TO YOU? What would interfere with God, MUST interfere with you. Only in time does interference in God's completion SEEM to be possible. The bridge that He would carry you across, lifts you FROM time into eternity. Waken from time, and answer fearlessly the call of Him Who gave eternity to you in your creation. On this side of the bridge to timelessness, you understand nothing. But, as you step lightly across it, upheld BY Timelessness, you are directed straight to the heart of knowledge. At Its center, and ONLY there, you are safe forever, BECAUSE YOU ARE COMPLETE FOREVER. There is no veil the love of God in us together CANNOT lift. The way to Truth is open. Follow it with me.
Perception is not an attribute of God. His is the realm of knowledge. Yet He has created the Holy Spirit as the Mediator between perception and knowledge. Without this link with God, perception would have replaced knowledge forever in your minds. With this link with God, perception will become so changed and purified that it will lead to knowledge. That is its function as the Holy Spirit sees it. Therefore, that is its function in truth.
In God you cannot see. Perception has no function in God, and does not exist. Yet in salvation, which is the undoing of what never was, perception has a mighty purpose. Made by the Son of God for an unholy purpose, it must become the means for the restoration of his holiness to his awareness. Perception has no meaning. Yet does the Holy Spirit give it a meaning very close to God's. Healed perception becomes the means by which the Son of God forgives his brother and thus forgives himself.
You cannot see apart from God because you cannot be apart from God. Whatever you do you do in Him, because whatever you think you think with His Mind. If vision is real, and it is real to the extent to which it shares the Holy Spirit's purpose, then you cannot see apart from God.
Three five-minute practice periods are required today, one as early as possible and another as late as possible. The third may be undertaken at the most convenient and suitable time which circumstances and readiness permit. At the beginning of the practice period, repeat the idea to yourself with your eyes open. Then glance around you for a short time, applying today's idea specifically to what you see. Four or five subjects for this phase of the exercise are sufficient. You might say, for example:
"God is my Source. I cannot see this desk apart from Him."
"God is my Source. I cannot see that picture apart from Him."
Although this part of the exercise period should be relatively short, be sure that you select the subjects for this phase indiscriminately, without self-directed inclusion or exclusion. For the second and longer phase of the exercise period, close your eyes, repeat today's idea again, and then let whatever relevant thoughts occur to you add to the idea in your own personal way. Thoughts such as:
"I see through the eyes of forgiveness,"
"I see the world as blessed,"
"The world can show me myself,"
"I see my own thoughts, which are like God's,"
or any thought related more or less directly to today's idea is suitable. The thoughts need not bear an obvious relationship to the idea, but they should not be in opposition to it.
If you should find your mind wandering; if you begin to be aware of thoughts which are clearly out of accord with today's idea; or if you seem to be unable to think of anything, open your eyes, repeat the first phase; and then try the second phase again. Do not allow any protracted period to occur in which you become preoccupied with irrelevant thoughts. Return to the first phase as often as necessary to prevent this.
In applying today's idea in the shorter practice periods, the form may vary according to the circumstances and situations in which you find yourself during the day. When you are with someone else, for example, try to remember to tell him silently:
"God is my Source. I cannot see you apart from Him."
This form is equally applicable to strangers and to those you know well. Try, in fact, not to make distinctions of this kind at all.
The idea should also be applied throughout the day to various situations and events which may occur, particularly those which distress you in any way. For this kind of application, use this form:
"God is my Source. I cannot see this apart from Him."
If no particular subject presents itself to your awareness, merely repeat the idea in its original form.
Try today not to allow long periods of time to slip by without remembering today's idea, and thus remembering your function.
The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world's perception. It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world's standards, completely upsets the mental balance. What the body's eyes behold is only conflict. Look not to them for peace and understanding.
Illusions are always illusions of differences. How could it be otherwise? By definition, an illusion is an attempt to make something real that is regarded as of major importance, but is recognized as being untrue. The mind therefore seeks to make it true out of its intensity of desire to have it for itself. Illusions are travesties of creation; attempts to bring truth to lies. Finding truth unacceptable, the mind revolts against truth and gives itself an illusion of victory. Finding health a burden, it retreats into feverish dreams. And in these dreams the mind is separate, different from other minds, with different interests of its own, and able to gratify its needs at the expense of others.
Where do all these differences come from? Certainly they seem to be in the world outside. Yet it is surely the mind that judges what the eyes behold. It is the mind that interprets the eyes' messages and gives them "meaning." And this meaning does not exist in the world outside at all. What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it. The body's eyes will never see except through differences. Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests. Only the mind evaluates their messages, so only the mind is responsible for seeing. It alone decides whether what is seen is real or illusory, desirable or undesirable, pleasurable or painful.
It is in the sorting out and categorizing activities of the mind that errors in perception enter. And it is here correction must be made. The mind classifies what the body's eyes bring to it according to its preconceived values, judging where each sense datum fits best. What basis could be faultier than this? Unrecognized by itself, it has itself asked to be given what will fit into these categories. And having done so, it concludes that the categories must be true. On this the judgment of all differences rests, because it is on this that judgments of the world depend. Can this confused and senseless "reasoning" be depended on for anything?
There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion. Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one? Will he agree more quickly to the unreality of a louder voice he hears than to that of a softer one? Will he dismiss more easily a whispered demand to kill than a shout? And do the number of pitchforks the devils he sees carrying affect their credibility in his perception? His mind has categorized them as real, and so they are real to him. When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear. And so it is with healing. The properties of illusions which seem to make them different are really irrelevant, for their properties are as illusory as they are.
The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth.
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?
No one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first you have it in your own possession. Here the laws of Heaven and the world agree. But here they also separate. The world believes that to possess a thing it must be kept. Salvation teaches otherwise. To give is how to recognize you have received. It is the proof that what you have is yours.
You understand that you are healed when you give healing. You accept forgiveness as accomplished in yourself when you forgive. You recognize your brother as yourself, and thus do you perceive that you are whole. There is no miracle you cannot give, for all are given you. Receive them now by opening the storehouse of your mind where they are laid, and giving them away.
Christ's vision is a miracle. It comes from far beyond itself, for it reflects Eternal Love and the rebirth of love which never dies, but has been kept obscure. Christ's vision pictures Heaven, for it sees a world so like to Heaven that what God created perfect can be mirrored there. The darkened glass the world presents can show but twisted images in broken parts. The real world pictures Heaven's innocence.
Christ's vision is the miracle in which all miracles are born. It is their source, remaining with each miracle you give, and yet remaining yours. It is the bond by which the giver and receiver are united in extension here on earth as they are one in Heaven. Christ beholds no sin in anyone, and in His sight the sinless are as one. Their holiness was given by His Father and Himself.
Christ's vision is the bridge between the worlds, and in its power can you safely trust to carry you from this world into one made holy by forgiveness. Things which seem quite solid here are merely shadows there, transparent, faintly seen, at times forgot, and never able to obscure the light that shines beyond them. Holiness has been restored to vision, and the blind can see.
This is the Holy Spirit's single gift; the treasure house to which you can appeal with perfect certainty for everything that can contribute to your happiness. All are laid here already. All can be received but for the asking. Here the door is never locked, and no one is denied his least request or his most urgent need. There is no sickness not already healed. No lack unsatisfied, no need unmet, within this golden treasury of Christ.
Here does the world remember what was lost when it was made. For here it is repaired, made new again but in a different light. What was to be the home of sin becomes the center of redemption and the hearth of mercy, where the suffering are healed and welcome. No one will be turned away from this new home, where his salvation waits. No one is stranger to him. No one asks for anything of him except the gift of his acceptance of his welcoming
Christ's vision is the holy ground in which the lilies of forgiveness set their roots. This is their home. They can be brought from here back to the world, but they can never grow in its unnourishing and shallow soil. They need the light and warmth and kindly care Christ's charity provides. They need the love with which He looks on them. And they become His messengers which give as they received.
Take from His storehouse, that its treasures may increase. His lilies do not leave their home when they are carried back into the world. Their roots remain. They do not leave their source, but carry its beneficence with them, and turn the world into a garden like the one they came from, and to which they go again with added fragrance. Now are they twice blessed. The messages they brought from Christ have been delivered and returned to them. And they return them gladly unto Him.
Behold the store of miracles set out for you to give. Are you not worth the gift, when God appointed it be given you? Judge not God's Son, but follow in the way He has established. Christ has dreamed the dream of a forgiven world. It is His gift whereby a sweet transition can be made from death to life, from hopelessness to hope. Let us an instant dream with Him. His dream awakens us to truth. His vision gives the means for a return to our unlost and everlasting sanctity in God.
Do you believe that truth can be but SOME illusions? They are dreams BECAUSE they are not true. Their EQUAL lack of truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which MEANS that you have understood that dreams are dreams, and that escape depends, NOT on the dream, but ONLY on awaking. COULD it be some dreams are KEPT, and others WAKENED FROM? The choice is NOT between which dreams to keep, but ONLY if you want to live in dreams, or to awaken from them. Thus it is the miracle does not select SOME dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence. You cannot dream some dreams and wake from some. For you are either sleeping OR awake. And dreaming goes with only ONE of these.
The dreams you THINK you like would hold you back, as much as those in which the fear is seen. For EVERY dream is but a dream of fear, no matter what the form it seems to take. The fear is seen within, without, or both. Or it can be disguised in pleasant form. But never is it ABSENT from the dream. For fear is the material of dreams, from which they ALL are made. Their form can change, but they cannot be MADE of something else. The miracle were treacherous indeed if it allowed you still to be afraid, because you did not RECOGNIZE the fear. You would not then be WILLING to awake, for which the miracle prepares the way.
In simplest form, it can be said attack is a response to function unfulfilled AS YOU PERCEIVE THE FUNCTION. It can be in you or someone else, but where it is perceived, it will be there it is attacked. Depression or assault must be the theme of every dream, for they are made of fear. The thin disguise of pleasure and of joy in which they may be wrapped but slightly veils the heavy lump of fear which is their core. And it is THIS the miracle perceives, and NOT the wrappings in which it is bound. When you are angry, is it not because someone has failed to fill the function YOU allotted him? And does not THIS become the "reason" your attack is justified?
The dreams you THINK you like are those in which the functions YOU have given have been filled; the needs which YOU ascribe to you are met. It does not matter if they be fulfilled, or merely wanted. It is the idea that they EXIST from which the fears arise. Dreams are not wanted more or less. They are desired or not. And each one represents some function which you have assigned; some goal which an event, or body, or a thing SHOULD represent, and SHOULD achieve for you. If it succeeds, you think you LIKE the dream. If it should fail, you think the dream is sad. But whether it succeeds or fails is not its core, but just the flimsy covering.
How happy would your dreams become, if you were NOT the one who gave the "proper" role to every figure that the dream contains. No-one can fail but your IDEA of him, and there IS no betrayal but of this. The core of dreams the Holy Spirit gives is NEVER one of fear. The coverings may not appear to change, but what they MEAN has changed BECAUSE they cover something else. Perceptions are determined by their purpose, in that they seem to BE what they are FOR. A shadow figure who attacks becomes a brother giving you a chance to help, if this becomes the FUNCTION of the dream. And dreams of sadness thus are turned to joy.
What is your brother FOR? You do not know, because YOUR function is obscure to you. Do NOT ascribe a role to him which you imagine would bring happiness to you. And do not try to hurt him, when he fails to take the part which you assigned to him in what you dream your life was meant to be. He asks for help in every dream he has, and you have Help to give him if you see the FUNCTION of the dream as He perceives its function, Who can utilize all dreams as means to serve the Function given Him. Because He loves the dreamer, NOT the dream, each dream becomes an offering of love. For at its center is His Love for you, which lights WHATEVER form it takes with love.
You see the flesh or recognize the Spirit. There is no compromise between the two. If one is real the other must be false, for what is real denies its opposite. There is no choice in vision but this one. What you decide in this determines all you see, and think is real, and hold as true. On this one choice does all your world depend, for here have you established what you are, as flesh or Spirit in your own belief. If you choose flesh, you never will escape the body as your own reality, for you have chosen that you want it so. But choose the Spirit, and all Heaven bends to touch your eyes, and bless your holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more, except to heal and comfort and to bless.
Salvation is undoing. If you choose to see the body, you behold a world of separation, unrelated things, and happenings that make no sense at all. This one appears and disappears in death. That one is doomed to suffering and loss. And no-one is exactly as he was an instant previous. Nor will he be the same as he is now an instant hence. Who could have trust where so much change is seen, for who is worthy if he be but dust? Salvation is undoing of all this. And constancy arises in the sight of those whose eyes salvation has released from looking at the cost of keeping guilt, because they chose to let it go instead.
Salvation does not ask that you behold the Spirit, and perceive the body not. It merely asks that this should be your CHOICE. For YOU can see the body WITHOUT help, but do not understand how to behold a world APART from it. It is your world salvation will undo, and LET you see another world your eyes could never find. Be not concerned HOW this could ever be. You do not understand how what YOU see arose to meet your sight. For if you did, it would be gone. The veil of ignorance is drawn across the evil and the good, and must be passed that both may disappear, so that perception finds no hiding place.
How is this done? It is not done at all. What COULD there be within the universe that God created that must still be done? Only in arrogance could you conceive that YOU must make the way to Heaven plain. The means are GIVEN you by which to see the world that will replace the one you made. Your will be done! In Heaven as on earth this is forever true. It matters not where you believe you are, or what you think the truth about yourself must really be. It makes no difference what you look upon, nor what you choose to feel or think or wish. For God Himself hath said, "Thy will be done." And it IS done to you accordingly.
You who believe that you can choose to see the Son of God as you would have him be, forget not that no CONCEPT of yourself will stand against the truth of what you are. Undoing truth would be impossible. But concepts are not difficult to change. One vision, clearly seen, that does not fit the picture as it was perceived before, will change the world for eyes that learn to see BECAUSE THE CONCEPT OF THE SELF HAS CHANGED. Are YOU invulnerable? Then the world is harmless in your sight. Do YOU forgive? Then is the world forgiving, for you have forgiven it its trespasses. And so it looks on you with eyes that see as yours.
Are YOU a body? So is all the world perceived as treacherous, and out to kill. Are you a Spirit, deathless, and without the promise of corruption and the stain of sin upon you? So the world is seen as stable, fully worthy of your trust; a happy place to rest in for a while, where nothing need be feared but only loved. Who is unwelcome to the kind in heart? And what could hurt the truly innocent? Thy will be done, you holy Child of God. It does not matter if you think you are in earth or Heaven. What your Father wills for you can never change. The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as Love Itself. And you ARE worthy that your Will be done.
You no more recognize what is painful than you know what is joyful, and are, in fact, very apt to confuse them. The Holy Spirit's main function is to teach you to TELL THEM APART.
However strange it may seem that this is necessary, it obviously IS. The reason is equally obvious. What is joyful to you IS painful to the ego, and as long as you are in doubt about what YOU are, you WILL be confused about joy and pain. This confusion is the cause of the whole idea of sacrifice. Obey the Holy Spirit, and you WILL be giving up the ego, but you will be SACRIFICING nothing. On the contrary, you will be gaining EVERYTHING. But if you BELIEVED this there would BE no conflict. That is why you need to DEMONSTRATE THE OBVIOUS TO YOURSELF. It is NOT obvious to you.
You REALLY believe that doing the opposite of God's will CAN be better for you. You also believe that it is POSSIBLE to do the opposite of God's will. Therefore, you believe that an impossible choice IS open to you, which is both very fearful and very desirable. But God WILLS. He does NOT wish. YOUR will is as powerful as His because it IS His. The ego's wishes do not mean anything, because the ego wishes for the impossible. You CAN wish for the impossible, but you can only WILL with God. This is the ego's weakness and YOUR strength.
The Holy Spirit ALWAYS sides with YOU and with your STRENGTH. As long as you avoid His guidance in any way, you WANT TO BE WEAK. But weakness IS frightening. What else, then, can this decision mean except that you WANT to be fearful? The Holy Spirit NEVER asks for sacrifice, but the ego ALWAYS does. When you are confused about this VERY clear distinction in motivation, it CAN only be due to projection. Projection of this kind IS a confusion in motivation, and given THIS confusion, TRUST becomes impossible.
No-one obeys gladly a guide he does not trust. But this does not mean that the GUIDE is untrustworthy. In this case, it ALWAYS means that the FOLLOWER IS. However, this, too, is merely a matter of his own belief. Believing that HE can betray, he believes that everything can betray HIM. But this is ONLY because he has ELECTED TO FOLLOW FALSE GUIDANCE. Unable to follow THIS guidance WITHOUT fear, he associates fear WITH guidance, and refuses to follow ANY guidance at all. If the result of this decision is confusion, this is hardly surprising.
The Holy Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as YOU are. God Himself trusts you and therefore your trustworthiness IS beyond question. It will always remain beyond question, however much you may question it. I trust MY choices ONLY because they ARE God's Will. We said before that YOU are the will of God. His will is not an idle wish, and your identification WITH His Will is not optional because it IS what you are. Sharing His will WITH me is not really open to choice at all, though it may SEEM to be. The whole separation lies in this fallacy. And the ONLY way out of the fallacy is to decide that YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DECIDE ANYTHING.
Everything has been given you by GOD'S decision. This IS His Will, and you can NOT undo it. Even the relinquishment of your false decision-making prerogative, which the ego guards so jealously, is not accomplished by your wish. It was accomplished FOR you by the Will of God, who has not left you comfortless. His Voice WILL teach you how to distinguish between pain and joy, and lead you out of the confusion YOU have made. There IS no confusion in the mind of a Son of God, whose will MUST be the will of the Father, because the Father's Will IS His Son.
Miracles are IN ACCORD with the Will of God, whose will you do NOT know because you are confused about what YOU will. This MEANS that you are confused about what you are. If you ARE God's will and do NOT ACCEPT His will, you can ONLY be not accepting what you are. But if your joy IS what you are, you ARE denying joy. The miracle therefore is a lesson in WHAT JOY IS. Being a lesson in SHARING, it is a lesson in love, which IS joy. Every miracle is thus a lesson in Truth, and by OFFERING truth YOU are learning the difference between pain and joy.
Forgiveness-to-destroy has many forms, being a weapon of the world of form. Not all of them are obvious, and some are carefully concealed beneath what seems like charity. Yet all the forms that it may take have but one goal; their purpose is to separate and make what God created equal, different. The difference is clear in several forms where the designed comparison cannot be missed, nor is it meant to be.
In this group, first, there are the forms in which a "better" person deigns to stoop to save a baser one from what he is. Forgiveness here rests solely on the base of gracious lordliness so far from love that arrogance could never be dislodged. Who can forgive and yet despise? And who can tell another he is steeped in sin, and yet perceive him as the Son of God? Who makes a slave to teach what freedom is? There is no union here, but only grief. This is not mercy. This is death.
Another form, still very like the first if it is understood, does not appear in quite such blatant arrogance. The one who would forgive the other does not claim to be the better. Now he merely says that here is one whose sinfulness he shares, since both have been unworthy and deserve the retribution of the wrath of God. This can appear to be a humble act, and can indeed become a rivalry in baseness and in guilt. It is not love for God's creation and the holiness that is His gift forever. Can His Son condemn himself and still remember Him?
Here the goal is to separate from God the Son He loves, and keep him from his Source. This goal is also sought by those who seek the role of martyr at another's hand. Here must the aim be clearly seen, for this may pass as meekness and as charity instead of cruelty. Is it not kind to be accepting of another's spite, and not respond except with silence and a gentle smile? Behold, how good are you who bear with patience and with saintliness the anger and the hurt another gives, and do not show the bitter pain you feel.
Forgiveness-to-destroy will often hide behind a cloak like this. It shows the face of suffering and pain, in silent proof of guilt and of the ravages of sin. Such is the witness that it offers one who could be savior, not an enemy. But having made him enemy, he must accept the guilt and heavy-laid reproach that thus is put upon him. Is this love? Or is it rather treachery to one who needs salvation from the pain of guilt? What is it for, except to keep the witnesses of guilt away from love?
Forgiveness-to-destroy can also take the form of bargaining and compromise. "I will forgive you if you meet my needs, for in your slavery is my release." Say this to anyone and you are slave. And you will seek to rid yourself of guilt in further bargains which can give no hope, but only greater pain and misery. How fearful has forgiveness now become, and how distorted is the end it seeks. Have mercy on yourself who bargained thus. God gives and does not ask for recompense. There is no giving but to give like Him. All else is mockery. For who would try to strike a bargain with the Son of God, and thank his Father for his holiness?
What would you show your brother? Would you try to reinforce his guilt and thus your own? Forgiveness is the means for your escape. How pitiful it is to make of it a means for further slavery and pain. Within the world of opposites there is a way to use forgiveness for the goal of God, and find the peace He offers you. Take nothing else, or you have sought your death, and prayed for separation from your Self. Christ is for all because He is in all. It is His face forgiveness lets you see. It is His face in which you see your own.
All forms forgiveness takes that do not lead away from anger, condemnation, and comparisons of every kind are death. For that is what their purposes have set. Be not deceived by them, but lay them by as worthless in their tragic offerings. You do not want to stay in slavery. You do not want to be afraid of God. You want to see the sunlight and the glow of Heaven shining on the face of earth, redeemed from sin and in the Love of God. From here is prayer released, along with you. Your wings are free, and prayer will lift you up and bring you home where God would have you be.
Prayer has no beginning and no end. It is a part of life. But it does change in form, and grows with learning until it reaches its formless state, and fuses into total communication with God. In its asking form it need not, and often does not, make appeal to God, or even involve belief in Him. At that level prayer is merely wanting, out of a sense of scarcity and lack.
The prayer, or asking-out-of-need, always involves feelings of weakness and inadequacy, and could never be made by a Son of God who knows Who he is. No-one, then, who is sure of his Identity could pray in this form. Yet it is also true that no-one who is uncertain of his Identity could avoid praying in this way. And prayer is as continual as life. Everyone prays without ceasing. Ask and you have received, for you have established what it is you want.
It is also possible to reach a higher form of asking-out-of-need, for in this world prayer must be used for reparation, and so it must entail levels of learning. Here, the asking may be addressed to God in honest belief, though not yet with understanding. A vague and usually unstable sense of identification has generally been reached, but it tends to be blurred by a deep-rooted sense of sin. It is possible at this level to continue to ask for things of this world in various forms, but it is also possible to ask for qualities such as honesty or goodness, and particularly for forgiveness for the many sources of guilt that inevitably underlie any prayer of need. Without guilt there is no scarcity. The sinless have no needs.
At this level also comes that curious contradiction in terms known as "praying for one's enemies." The contradiction lies not in the actual words, but in the way they are usually interpreted. While you believe you have enemies, you have limited prayer to the laws of this world, and limited your ability to receive and accept to the same narrow margins. And yet, if you have enemies you have need of prayer, and great need, too. What does the phrase really mean? Pray for yourself, that you may not seek to imprison Christ and thereby lose the recognition of your own Identity. Be traitor to no-one, or you will be treacherous to yourself. An enemy is the symbol for an imprisoned Christ. And who could He be except yourself?
The prayer for enemies thus becomes a prayer for your own freedom. Now it is no longer a contradiction in terms. Rather it is a statement of the unity of Christ and a recognition of His sinlessness. And now it has become holy, for it acknowledges the Son of God as he was created.
Let it never be forgotten that prayer at any level is always for yourself. If you unite with anyone in prayer, you make him part of you. The enemy is you, as is the Christ. Before it can become holy, then, prayer becomes a choice. You do not choose for another. You can but choose for yourself. Pray truly for your enemies, then, for herein lies your own salvation. Forgive them for your sins, and you will be forgiven indeed.
Prayer is a ladder reaching up to Heaven. At the top there is a transformation much like your own, for prayer is part of you. The things of earth are left behind, all unremembered. There is no asking, for there is no lack. Identity in Christ is fully recognized as set forever, beyond all change and incorruptible. The light no longer flickers, and will never go out.
Now, without needs of any kind, and clad forever in the pure sinlessness which is the gift of God to you, His Son, prayer can again become what it was meant to be. For now it rises as a song of thanks to your Creator, sung without words, or thoughts, or vain desires, unneedful now of anything at all. So it extends, as it was meant to do. And for this giving God Himself gives thanks.
God is the goal of every prayer, giving it timelessness instead of end. Nor has it a beginning, because the goal has never changed. Prayer in its earlier forms is an illusion, because there is no need for a ladder to reach what one has never left. Yet prayer is part of forgiveness as long as forgiveness, itself an illusion, remains unattained. Prayer is tied up with learning until the goal of learning has been reached. And then all things will be transformed together, and returned unblemished into the Mind of God.
Being beyond learning, this state cannot be described. The stages necessary to its attainment, however, need to be understood, if peace is to be restored to the Son of God, who lives now with the illusion of death and the fear of God.
God's gifts can rarely be received directly. Even the most advanced of God's teachers will give way to temptation in this world. Would it be fair if their pupils were denied healing because of this? The Bible says "Ask in the name of Jesus Christ." Is this merely an appeal to magic? A name does not heal, nor does an invocation call forth any special power. What does it mean to call on Jesus Christ? What does calling on his Name confer? Why is the appeal to him part of healing?
We have repeatedly stated that one who has perfectly accepted the Atonement for himself can heal the world. Indeed, he has already done so. Temptation may recur to others, but never to this One. He has become the risen Son of God. He has overcome death because he has accepted Life. He has recognized himself as God created him, and in so doing he has recognized all living things as part of him. There is now no limit on his power, because it is the Power of God. So has his name become the Name of God, for he no longer sees himself as separate from Him.
What does this mean to you? It means that in remembering Jesus you are remembering God. The whole relationship of the Son to the Father lies in him. His part in the Sonship is also yours, and his completed learning guarantees your own success. Is he still available for help? What did he say about this? Remember his promises, and ask yourself honestly whether it is likely that he will fail to keep them. Can God fail His Son? And can one who is one with God be unlike Him? Who transcends the body has transcended limitation. Would the greatest teacher be unavailable to those who follow him?
The name of Jesus Christ as such is but a symbol. But it stands for love that is not of this world. It is a symbol that can safely be used as a replacement for the many names of all the gods you pray to. It becomes the shining symbol for the Word of God, so close to What it stands for that the little space between the two is lost the moment that the Name is called to mind. Remembering His name is to give thanks for all the gifts that God has given you. And gratitude to God becomes the way in which He is remembered, for love cannot be far behind a grateful heart and thankful mind. God enters easily, for these are the true conditions for your coming home.
Jesus has led the way. Why would you not be grateful to him? He has asked for love, but only that he might give it to you. You do not love yourself. But in his eyes your loveliness is so complete and flawless that he sees in it an image of his Father. You become the symbol of his Father here on earth. To you he looks for hope, because in you he sees no limit and no stain to mar your beautiful perfection. In his eyes Christ's vision shines in perfect constancy. He has remained with you. Would you not learn the lesson of salvation through his learning? Why would you choose to start again, when he has made the journey for you?
No-one on earth can grasp what Heaven is, or what its One Creator really means. Yet we have witnesses. It is to them that wisdom would appeal. There have been those whose learning far exceeds what you can learn. Nor would we teach the limitations we have laid on us. No-one who has become a true and dedicated teacher of God forgets his brothers. Yet what he can offer them is limited by what he learns himself. Then turn to one who laid all limits by, and went beyond the farthest reach of learning. He will take you with him, for he did not go alone. And you were with him then, as you are now.
This course has come from him because his words have reached you in a language you can love and understand. Are other teachers possible, to lead the way to those who speak in different tongues and appeal to different symbols? Certainly there are. Would God leave anyone without a very present help in time of trouble; a Savior who can symbolize Himself? Yet do we need a many-faceted curriculum, not because of content differences but because symbols must shift and change to suit the need. Jesus has come to answer yours. In him you find God's Answer. Do you then teach with him, for he is with you; he is always here.
You have surely noticed an emphasis throughout our recent lessons on the connection between fulfilling your function and achieving happiness. This is because you do not really see the connection. Yet there is more than just a connection between them; they are the same. Their forms are different, but their content is completely one.
The ego does constant battle with the Holy Spirit on the fundamental question of what your function is. So does it do constant battle with the Holy Spirit about what your happiness is. It is not a two-way battle. The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond. He knows what your function is. He knows that it is your happiness.
Today we will try to go past this wholly meaningless battle, and arrive at the truth about your function. We will not engage in ceaseless arguments about what it is. We will not become hopelessly involved in defining happiness and determining the means for achieving it. We will not indulge the ego by listening to its attacks on truth. We will merely be glad that we can find out what truth is.
Our longer practice period today has as its purpose your acceptance of the fact that not only is there a very real connection between the function God gave you and your happiness, but that they are actually identical. God gives you only happiness. Therefore the function He gave you must be happiness, even if it appears to be different. Today's exercises are an attempt to go beyond these differences in appearance, and recognize a common content where it exists in truth.
Begin the 10 to 15 minute practice period by reviewing these thoughts:
"God gives me only happiness.
He has given my function to me.
Therefore my function must be happiness."
Try to see the logic in this sequence, even if you do not accept the conclusion. It is only if the first two thoughts are wrong that the conclusion could be false. Let us, then, think about the premises for a while, as we are practicing.
The first premise is that God gives you only happiness. This could be false, of course, but in order to be false it is necessary to define God as something He is not. Love cannot give evil, and what is not happiness is evil. God cannot give what He does not have, and He cannot have what He is not. Unless God gives you only happiness, He must be evil. And it is this definition of Him which you are believing if you do not accept the first premise.
The second premise is that God has given you your function. We have seen that there are only two parts of your mind. One is ruled by the ego, and is made up of illusions. The other is the home of the Holy Spirit, where truth abides. There are no other guides but these to choose between, and no other outcomes possible as a result of your choice but the fear which the ego always engenders and the love which the Holy Spirit always offers to replace it.
Thus it must be that your function is established by God through His Voice or is made by the ego which you made to replace Him. Which is true? Unless God gave your function to you, it must be the gift of the ego. Does the ego really have gifts to give, being itself an illusion and offering only the illusion of gifts?
Think about this during the longer practice period today. Think also about the many forms which the illusion of your function has taken in your mind, and the many ways in which you try to find salvation under the ego's guidance. Did you find it? Were you happy? Did they bring you peace? We need great honesty today. Remember the outcomes fairly, and consider also whether it was ever reasonable to expect happiness from anything the ego has ever proposed. Yet the ego is the only alternative to the Holy Spirit's Voice.
You will listen to madness or hear the truth. Try to make this choice as you think about the premises on which our conclusion rests. We can share in this conclusion, but in no other. For God Himself shares it with us.
Today's idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same, and the different as different. On one side stand all illusions. All truth stands on the other. Let us try today to realize that only the truth is true.
In the shorter practice periods, which would be most helpful today if undertaken twice an hour, this form of the application is suggested:
"My happiness and function are one,
because God has given me both."
It will not take more than a minute, and probably less, to repeat these words slowly, and think about them a little as you say them.
We said before that the abilities which man possesses are only shadows of his true abilities. The Soul's true functions are knowing, loving, and creating. The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then. You will also remember that I made it very clear that the Resurrection was the return to knowledge, which was accomplished by the union of my will with the Father's.
Since the Separation, the words "create" and "make" are inevitably confused. When you make something, you make it first out of a sense of lack or need, and second, out of a something that already exists. Anything that is made is made for a specific purpose. It has no true generalizability. When you make something to fill a perceived lack, which is obviously why you would make anything, you are tacitly implying that you believe in the Separation. Knowing does not lead to doing, as we have frequently observed already.
What appears to be contradictory about the difference between knowing and perceiving, and Revelation and miracles, is again the fallacy that is the root cause of all subsequent errors. The miracle was associated with perception, and not with knowing. However, we also noted that prayer is the medium of miracles, and also the natural communication of the Creator and the Created. Prayer is always an affirmation of knowledge, not of accurate perception. That is why unless perception has entered into it, it calls on Revelation.
The confusion between your own creation and what you create is so profound that it has literally become impossible to know anything, because knowledge is always stable. It is quite evident that human beings are not. Nevertheless, they are perfectly stable as God created them. In this sense, when their behavior is unstable, they are obviously disagreeing with God's idea of the Creation. This is a fundamental right of man, although not one he would care to exercise if he were in his Right Mind.
The problem that is bothering you most is the fundamental question which man continually asks of himself, but which cannot properly be directed to himself at all. He keeps on asking "himself" what he is. This implies that the answer is not only one which he knows, but one which is up to him. The first part of this statement is perfectly true, but the second part is not. We have frequently commented on the absolute necessity of correcting all fallacious thinking which associates man in any way with his own Creation. Man CANNOT perceive himself correctly. He has no image at all. The word "image" is always perception related, and is not a product of knowing. Images are symbolic, and stand for something else. The current emphasis on "changing your image" is a good description of the power of perception, but it implies that there is nothing to KNOW.
Prayer is the medium of miracles, not because God created perceptions, but because God created YOU. At the beginning of this course, we said that YOU are a miracle. Therefore, the miracle worker is a miracle NOT of his own creation. Unless perception rests on some knowing basis, it is so unstable that it doesn't mean anything. Knowing is not open to interpretation, because its meaning is its own. It is possible to interpret meaning, but this is always open to error because it involves the perception of meaning. All of these wholly needless complexities are the result of man's attempt to regard himself both as separated and unseparated at the same time. It is impossible to undertake a confusion as fundamental as this without engaging in further confusion.
Methodologically, man's mind has been very creative. But, as always occurs when method and content are separated, it has not been utilized for anything but an attempt to escape a fundamental and entirely inescapable impasse. This kind of thinking cannot result in a creative outcome, though it has resulted in considerable ingenuity. It is noteworthy, however, that this ingenuity has almost totally divorced him from knowledge.
Knowledge does not require ingenuity at all. When we say "the truth shall set you free," we mean that all this kind of thinking is a waste of time, but that you are free of the need of engaging in it.
Note again that the functions of the Soul were not referred to as abilities. This point requires clarification, because abilities are beliefs which are BASED on the scarcity fallacy, since they do not mean anything apart from within-group comparisons. As you yourself never fail to point out, "nobody has none of an ability, and nobody has all of it." That is, of course, why the curve never rests on the line. The clearest implications of relativity, which properly inheres in this statement, DEMONSTRATE that abilities are not functions of the Soul. The Soul's functions are NOT relative. They are ABSOLUTE. They are OF God and FROM God, and therefore God-like.
Prayer is a way of asking for something. When we said that prayer is the medium of miracles, we also said that the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven HAVE everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted, prayer in the usual sense becomes utterly without meaning. Essentially, a prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that we may be able to recognize something we already have.
In electing the ability to perceive instead of the will to know, man placed himself in a position where he could resemble his Father ONLY by perceiving miraculously. But he lost the knowledge that he HIMSELF is a miracle. MIRACULOUS CREATION was his own Source, and also his own real function. "God created man in his own image and likeness" is correct in meaning, but the words are open to considerable misinterpretation. This is avoided, however, if "image" is understood to mean "thought," and "likeness" is taken as "of a like quality." God DID create the Son in His own Thought, and of a quality like to His own. There IS nothing else.
Perception is impossible WITHOUT a belief in "more" and "less." Unless perception, at every level, involves selectivity, it is incapable of organization. In all types of perception, there is a continual process of accepting and rejecting, of organizing and reorganizing, and of shifting and changing focus. Evaluation is an essential aspect of perception, because judgment MUST be made for selection. "Lack of lack" is a concept which is meaningless to a perceiver, because the ability to perceive at all RESTS ON lack.
What happens to perceptions if there ARE no judgments, and there is nothing BUT perfect equality? Perception is automatically useless. Truth can only be KNOWN. All of it is equally true, and knowing any part of it IS to know all of it.
Only perception involves partial awareness. Knowledge transcends ALL of the laws which govern perception. Partial KNOWLEDGE is impossible. It is all One, and has no separate parts. (i.e. the parts have NOT separated.) This IS the real knowledge. You who are really one with it need but know YOURSELF and your knowledge is complete. To know God's miracle is to know Him.
Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. Correct perception of EACH OTHER is necessary ONLY because minds have willed to see themselves AS separate beings. Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT.
God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts. God shines in them all with perfect light. If they recognize this light anywhere, they know it universally. Revelation cannot be explained, because it IS knowledge. Revelation HAPPENS. It is the only REALLY natural happening, because it reflects the nature of God.
As long as perception lasts, prayer has a place. Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing. Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know. God and HIS miracles are inseparable.
All words, at best, are preparatory. THE word is really a thought. No one WORD is universally meaningful, because a word is a symbol, but thought is not divisible by creation. The original name for "thought" and "word" was the same. The quotation should read "In the beginning was the thought, and the thought was with God, and the thought WAS God." How beautiful indeed are the thoughts of God, who live in His light. Your worth is beyond perception because it is beyond doubt.
Do not perceive yourself in different lights. KNOW yourself in the One Light, where the miracle which is you is perfectly clear.
The prerequisites for therapy must include the following conditions:
1. The procedure must involve the recognition rather than the denial of the importance of thought.
2. The exact equality of everyone who is involved. This must include Me.
3. No one is either therapist or patient. (Bill should add "teacher or pupil.")
4. Above all EVERYONE involved must want to give up everything that is NOT true. The reason for the negative emphasis here is that therapy implies something HAS gone wrong. Even though the purpose is to correct, those who are ill ARE negative.
5. Therapy is EXACTLY the same as all other forms of miracle-working. It has no separate laws of its own. All of the points that were given for miracles apply to therapy because, UNLESS therapy proceeds from miracle-mindedness, it CANNOT heal.
6. The therapist (hopefully) does have the role of being the better perceiver. (This is also, again hopefully, true of the teacher.) It does not follow that he is the better knower. Temporarily, the therapist or teacher can help in straightening out twisted perceptions, which is also the only role that I would ever contribute myself. All therapy should do is try to place EVERYONE involved in the right frame of mind to help one another. It is essentially a process of true courtesy, including courtesy to Me.
Any form of mental illness can truthfully be described as an expression of viciousness. We said before that those who are afraid are apt to be vicious. If we were willing to forgive other people's misperceptions of us, they could not possibly affect us at all. There is little doubt that you can explain your present attitudes in terms of how people used to look at you, but there is no wisdom in doing so. In fact, the whole historical approach can justifiably be called doubtful.
As you have so often said, no one has adopted ALL of his parents' attitudes as his own. In every case, there has been a long process of choice, in which the individual has escaped from those he himself vetoed, while retaining those he voted FOR. Bill has not retained his parents political beliefs, in spite of the particular kind of newspapers that constituted their own reading matter in this area. The reason why he could do this was because he believed he was free in this area.
There must be some acute problem OF HIS OWN that would make him so eager to accept their misperception of his own worth. This tendency can ALWAYS be regarded as punitive. It cannot be justified by the inequality of the strengths of parents and children. This is never more than temporary, and is largely a matter of maturational and thus physical difference. It does not last unless it is held onto.
When B's father came to his new office and "destroyed" it, it is quite apparent that Bill MUST have been willing to let it be destroyed. The many times that he has commented on this event alone would suggest that the extreme importance of this misperception in his own distorted thinking. Why should anyone accord an obvious misperception so much power? There cannot be any real justification for it, because even Bill himself recognized the real problem by saying "How could he do this to me?" The answer is HE didn't.
Bill has a very serious question to ask himself in this connection. We said before that the purpose of the Resurrection was to "demonstrate that no amount of misperception has any influence at all on a Son of God." This demonstration EXONERATES those who misperceive, by establishing beyond doubt that they have NOT hurt anyone. B's question, which he must ask himself very honestly, is whether he is willing to demonstrate that his parents have NOT hurt him. Unless he is willing to do this, he has not forgiven them.
The essential goal of therapy is the same as that of knowledge. No one can survive independently as long as he is willing to see himself through the eyes of others. This will always put him in a position where he MUST see himself in different lights. Parents do not create the image of their children, though they may perceive images which they do create. However, as we have already said, you are not an image. If you SIDE WITH image-makers, you are merely being idolatrous.
Bill has no justification whatever for perpetuating ANY image of himself at all. He is NOT an image. Whatever is true of him is wholly benign. It is essential that he KNOW this about himself, but he cannot know it while he chooses to interpret himself as vulnerable enough to BE hurt. This is a peculiar kind of arrogance, whose narcissistic component is perfectly obvious. It endows the perceiver with sufficient unreal strength to make him over, and then acknowledges the perceiver's miscreation. There are times when this strange lack of real courtesy appears to be a form of humility. Actually, it is never more than simple spite.
Bill, your parents did misperceive you in many ways, but their ability to perceive was quite warped, and their misperceptions stood in the way of their own knowledge. There is no reason why it should stand in the way of yours. It is still true that you believe they DID something to you. This belief is extremely dangerous to your perception, and wholly destructive of your knowledge. This is not only true of your attitudes toward your parents, but also of your misuse of your friends. You still think that you MUST respond to their errors AS IF they were true. By reacting self-destructively, you are GIVING them approval for their misperceptions.
No one has the right to change himself according to different circumstances. Only his actions are capable of appropriate variation. His belief in himself is a constant, unless it rests on perceptual acuity rather than knowledge of what he is.
It is your DUTY to establish beyond doubt that you are totally unwilling to side with (identify with) anyone's misperceptions of you, including your own. If you become concerned with totally irrelevant factors, such as the physical condition of a classroom, the number of students, the hour of the course, and the many elements which you may choose to select for emphasis as a basis for misperception, you have lost the knowledge of what ANY interpersonal relationship is for. It is NOT true that the difference between pupil and teacher is lasting. They meet IN ORDER to abolish the difference. At the beginning, since we are still in time, they come together on the basis of inequality of ability and experience. The aim of the teacher is to give them more of what is temporarily his. This process has all of the miracle conditions we referred to at the beginning. The teacher (or miracle worker) gives more to those who have less, bringing them closer to equality with him, at the same time gaining for himself.
The confusion here is only because they do not gain the same things, because they do not NEED the same things. If they did, their respective, though temporary roles would not be conducive to mutual profit. Freedom from fear can be achieved by BOTH teacher and pupil ONLY if they do not compare either their needs or their positions in regard to each other in terms of higher and lower.
Presumably, children must learn from parents. What parents learn from children is merely of a different order. Ultimately, there is no difference in order, but this involves only knowledge. Neither parents nor children can be said to HAVE knowledge, or their relationships would not exist AS IF they were on different levels. The same is true of the teacher and the pupil. Children have an authority problem ONLY if they believe that their image is influenced BY the authority. This is an act of will on their part, because they are electing to misperceive the authority and GIVE him this power.
A TEACHER with an authority problem is merely a pupil who refuses to teach others. He wants to maintain HIMSELF in a position where he can be misused and misperceived. This makes him resentful of teaching, because of what he insists it has done to him.
The ONLY way out of this particular aspect of the desert is still to leave. The way this is left is to release EVERYONE involved, by ABSOLUTELY REFUSING to engage in any form of honoring error. Neither teacher nor pupil is imprisoned by learning unless he uses it as an attack. If he does this, he will be imprisoned whether he actually teaches or learns, or refuses to be engaged in the process at all.
The role of a teacher, properly conceived, is one of leading himself and others out of the desert. The value of this role can hardly be underestimated, if only because it was one to which I very gladly dedicated my own life. I have repeatedly asked MY pupils to follow me. This means that, to be effective teachers, they MUST interpret teaching as I do. I have made EVERY effort to teach you ENTIRELY without fear. If you do not listen, you will be unable to avoid the VERY obvious error of perceiving teaching as a threat.
It is hardly necessary to say that teaching is a process whose purpose is to produce learning. The ultimate purpose of ALL learning is to abolish fear. This is necessary so that knowledge can happen. The role of the teacher is NOT the role of God. This confusion is all too frequently made, by parents, teachers, therapists, and the clergy. It is a real misunderstanding of both God and His miracles. Any teacher who believes that teaching is fearful CANNOT learn because he is paralyzed. He also cannot really teach.
Bill was quite right in maintaining that this course is a prerequisite for his. However, he was really saying much more than that. The purpose of this course IS to prepare you for knowledge. So is the only real purpose of ANY legitimate course. All that is required of you as a teacher is to follow Me.
Whenever anyone decides that he can function only in SOME roles but not in others, he cannot BUT be attempting to make a compromise which will not work. If Bill is under the misbelief that he is coping with the fear problem by functioning as an administrator and as a teacher of interns, but NOT as a teacher of students, he is merely deceiving himself. He owes himself greater respect. There is nothing as tragic as the attempt to deceive one's self, because it implies that you perceive yourself as so unworthy that deception is more fitting for you than truth. Either you can function in all of the roles you have properly undertaken to fill, or you cannot function effectively in any of them. This IS an all or none decision. You CANNOT make inappropriate level distinctions within this choice. You are either capable or not. This does not mean that you can DO everything, but it DOES mean that you are either totally miracle-minded or not. This decision is open to NO compromise whatever. When Bill says that he cannot teach, he is making the same mistake that we spoke of before, when he acted as if universal laws applied to everyone except him. This is not only arrogant, but patently untrue. Universal laws MUST apply to him, unless he does not exist. We will not bother to argue about this.
Descartes engaged in a very interesting teaching procedure, and one from which he himself learned a great deal. He began with doubting the existence of everything, except himself. He insisted that his own existence was not open to doubt, and rebuilt his entire thought system on the one premise "I think, therefore I am." It is noteworthy that he arrived at accepting the entire system he originally doubted, solely on the basis of this ONE piece of knowledge. There was, however, a distinct shift in his own perception. He no longer really questioned the reality of what he perceived, because he KNEW he was there.
We mentioned before that Bill is not too sure of this, and that is why we suggested that he concentrate on "Lord, here I am." A teacher is unlikely to be effective unless he begins with BEING THERE. B, this is not really open to question. You will lose all your fear of teaching and relating in any form once you know who you are. There is no point whatever in remaining in the prison of believing that this is up to you. You do NOT exist in different lights. It is this belief which has confused you about your own reality. Why would you want to remain so obscure to yourself?
When you accept a brother's guiltlessness, you will SEE Atonement in him. For, by proclaiming it in HIM, you make it YOURS, and you WILL see what you sought. You will not see the symbol of your brother's guiltlessness shining within him, while you still believe IT IS NOT THERE. HIS guiltlessness is YOUR Atonement. Grant it to him, and you will see the truth of what you have acknowledged. Yet truth is offered FIRST, to be received, even as God gave it first to His Son. The first in time means nothing, but the First in Eternity is God the Father, Who is both First and One. Beyond the First, there is no other, for there is no order, no second or third, and nothing BUT the First.
You who belong to the First Cause, created by Him like unto Himself, and part of Him, are more than merely guiltless. The state of guiltlessness is only the condition in which what is NOT there has been REMOVED, from the disordered mind that THOUGHT it WAS. This state, and only this, must YOU attain with God beside you. For until you do, you will still think that you are separate FROM Him. You can feel His Presence NEXT TO you, but CANNOT know that you are one with Him. This need not be taught. Learning applies ONLY to the condition IN WHICH IT HAPPENS of itself.
When you have let all that has obscured the truth in your most holy mind be undone for you, and stand in grace before your Father, He will give Himself to you, as He has ALWAYS done. Giving Himself is all He knows, and so it is ALL knowledge. For what He knows NOT cannot be, and therefore CANNOT BE GIVEN. Ask not to BE forgiven, for this has already been accomplished. Ask rather to LEARN how to forgive, and restore WHAT ALWAYS WAS to your unforgiving mind. Atonement becomes real and visible, to them that USE it. On earth, it is your ONLY function, and you must learn that it is all you WANT to learn.
You WILL feel guilty 'til you learn this. For, in the end, whatever form it takes, your guilt arises from your failure to fulfill your function in God's Mind with ALL OF YOURS. Can you ESCAPE this guilt, by failing to fulfill your function HERE? You need not understand creation, to do what must be done, BEFORE that knowledge would be meaningful to you. God breaks no barriers; neither did He MAKE them. When YOU release them, they are gone. God will not fail, nor ever has, in anything.
Decide that God is right, and YOU are wrong, about yourself. He created you out of Himself, but still WITHIN Him. He knows what you are. Remember that there is no second to Him. There cannot, therefore, be anyone WITHOUT His Holiness, nor anyone unworthy of His perfect love. Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place, made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deception UNdone. FAIL NOT YOURSELF, but instead, offer to God AND YOU His blameless Son. For this small gift of appreciation FOR His love, God will Himself exchange your gift for HIS.
Before you make ANY decisions for yourself, remember that YOU HAVE DECIDED AGAINST YOUR FUNCTION IN HEAVEN, and consider carefully whether you WANT to make decisions here. Your function here is only to decide AGAINST deciding what you want, in recognition that YOU DO NOT KNOW. How, then, CAN you decide what you should do? Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself, by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt INSTEAD of love. Give up this frantic and insane attempt, which cheats you of the joy of living with your God and Father, and awaking gladly to His Love and Holiness, which join together as truth in YOU, making you One with Him.
When you have learned how to decide WITH God, ALL decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently, as if you were being carried along a quiet path in summer. Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard. The Holy Spirit will not delay at all in answering your EVERY question what to do. He KNOWS. And He will TELL you, and then do it FOR you. You who are tired might consider whether this is not more restful than sleep. For you can bring your guilt into sleeping, but NOT into this.
Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home.
This light can not be lost. Why wait to find it in the future, or believe it has been lost already or was never there? It can so easily be looked upon that arguments which prove it is not there become ridiculous. Who can deny the presence of what he beholds in him? It is not difficult to look within, for there all vision starts. There is no sight, be it of dreams or from a truer source, that is not but the shadow of the seen through inward vision. There perception starts and there it ends. It has no source but this.
The peace of God is shining in you now, and from your heart extends around the world. It pauses to caress each living thing, and leave a blessing with it which remains forever and forever. What it gives must be eternal. It removes all thoughts of the ephemeral and valueless. It brings renewal to all tired hearts, and lights all vision as it passes by. All of its gifts are given everyone, and everyone unites in giving thanks to you who give and you who have received.
The shining in your mind reminds the world of what it has forgotten, and the world restores the memory to you as well. From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. To you, the giver of the gift, does God Himself give thanks. And in His blessing does the light in you shine brighter, adding to the gifts you have to offer to the world.
The peace of God can never be contained. Who recognizes it within himself must give it. And the means for giving it are in his understanding. He forgives because he recognized the truth in him. The peace of God is shining in you now, and in all living things. In quietness is it acknowledged universally. For what your inward vision looks upon is your perception of the universe.
Sit quietly and close your eyes. The light within you is sufficient. It alone has power to give the gift of sight to you. Exclude the outer world, and let your thoughts fly to the peace within. They know the way. For honest thoughts, untainted by the dream of worldly things outside yourself, become the holy messengers of God Himself. These thoughts you think with Him. They recognize their home. And they point surely to their Source, where God the Father and the Son are One.
God's peace is shining on them, but they must remain with you as well, for they were born within your mind, as yours was born in God's. They lead you back to peace, from where they came but to remind you how you must return. They heed your Father's Voice when you refuse to listen. And they urge you gently to accept His Word for what you are, instead of fantasies and shadows. They remind you that you are the co-creator of all things that live. For as the peace of God is shining in you, it must shine on them.
We practice coming nearer to the light in us today. We take our wandering thoughts, and gently bring them back to where they fall in line with all the thoughts we share with God. We will not let them stray. We let the light within our minds direct them to come home. We have betrayed them, ordering that they depart from us. But now we call them back, and wash them clean of strange desires and disordered wishes. We restore to them the holiness of their inheritance.
Thus are our minds restored with them, and we acknowledge that the peace of God still shines in us, and from us to all living things that share our life. We will forgive them all, absolving all the world of what we thought it did to us. For it is we who make the world as we would have it. Now we choose that it be innocent, devoid of sin, and open to salvation. And we lay our saving blessing on it as we say:
"The peace of God is shining in me now.
Let all things shine upon me in that peace,
And let me bless them with the light in me."
The state of sinlessness is merely this: The WHOLE desire to attack is gone, and so there is no reason to perceive the Son of God as other than he is. The NEED for guilt is gone, because it has no purpose, and is meaningless without the goal of sin. Attack and sin are bound as ONE illusion, each the cause and aim and JUSTIFIER of the other. Each is meaningless alone, but SEEMS to draw a meaning from the other. Each depends upon the other for whatever sense it seems to have. And no-one COULD believe in one unless the other were the truth, for each attests the other MUST be true.
Attack makes Christ your enemy, and God along with Him. MUST you not be afraid, with enemies like these? And must you not be fearful of YOURSELF? For you HAVE hurt yourself, and made your Self your enemy. And now you MUST believe you are not you, but something alien to yourself and "something else," a "something" to be feared instead of loved. Who would attack whatever he sees as wholly innocent? And who, BECAUSE he wishes to attack, can FAIL to think it MUST be guilty, to DESERVE the wish and leave HIM innocent? And who would see the Son of God as innocent, and wish him dead?
Christ stands before you both, each time you look on one another. He has NOT gone because your eyes are closed. But what is there to see by searching for your Savior, seeing Him through sightless eyes? It is NOT Christ you see by looking thus. It is the enemy, CONFUSED with Christ, you look upon. And HATE BECAUSE there is no sin in him for you to see. Nor do you hear his plaintive call, unchanged in content in WHATEVER form the call is made, that you UNITE with him, and JOIN with him in innocence and peace. And yet, beneath the ego's senseless shrieks, such IS the Call that God has given him, that YOU might hear in him His Call to YOU, and answer by returning unto God what is His own.
The Son of God asks only this of you; that you return to him what is his due, that you may SHARE in it with him. Alone, does NEITHER have it. So must it remain useless to both. Together, it will give to each an EQUAL strength to save the other, and save himself along WITH him. FORGIVEN by you, your Savior offers YOU salvation. CONDEMNED by you, he offers death to you. In everyone you see but the reflection of what you chose to have HIM be to you. If you decide against his proper function, the ONLY one he really has in truth, you are depriving him of all the joy he WOULD have found if he fulfilled the role God gave to him. But think not Heaven is lost to him alone. Nor can it be regained unless the way is shown to him through YOU, that YOU may find it, walking by his side.
It is no sacrifice that he be saved, for BY his freedom will you gain your own. To let HIS function be fulfilled is but the means to let YOURS be. And so you walk toward Heaven or toward hell, but NOT alone. How beautiful his sinlessness will be, when you perceive it! And how great will be YOUR joy when he is free to offer you the gift of sight God gave to him for you. He HAS no need but this; that you allow him freedom to complete the task God gave to him. Remembering but this; that what HE does YOU do, along with him. And AS you see him, so do YOU define the function he will have for you, until you see him differently, and LET him be what God APPOINTED that he be to you.
Against the hatred that the Son of God may cherish toward himself is God believed to be without the power to save what He created from the pain of hell. But in the love he shows himself is God made free to LET His Will be done. In each of you, you see the picture of your OWN belief of what the Will of God MUST be for you. In YOUR forgiveness will you understand His Love for you. Through your ATTACK, believe He hates you, thinking Heaven must be hell. Look once again upon your brother, NOT without the understanding that he is the way to Heaven or to hell, as YOU perceive him. But forget not this; the role you give to him is given YOU, and YOU will walk the way you pointed out to him, BECAUSE it is your judgment made upon yourself.
It is your Father's holy Will that you complete Himself and that your Self shall be His sacred Son, forever pure as He, of love created and in love preserved, extending love, creating in its Name, forever one with God and with your Self. Yet what can such a function mean within a world of envy, hatred and attack?
Therefore you have a function in the world in its own terms. For who can understand a language far beyond his simple grasp? Forgiveness represents your function here. It is not God's creation, for it is the means by which untruth can be undone. And who would pardon Heaven? Yet on earth you need the means to let illusion go. Creation merely waits for your return to be acknowledged, not to be complete.
Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all. Yet God created One Who has the power to translate into form the wholly formless. What He makes are dreams, but of a kind so close to waking that the light of day already shines in them, and eyes already opening behold the joyful sights their offerings contain.
Forgiveness gently looks upon all things unknown in Heaven, sees them disappear, and leaves the world a clean and unmarked slate on which the Word of God can now replace the senseless symbols written there before. Forgiveness is the means by which the fear of death is overcome because it holds no fierce attraction now, and guilt is gone. Forgiveness lets the body be perceived as what it is; a simple teaching aid to be laid by when learning is complete, but hardly changing him who learns at all.
The mind without the body cannot make mistakes. It cannot think that it will die, nor be the prey of merciless attack. Anger becomes impossible, and where is terror then? What fears could still assail those who have lost the source of all attack; the core of anguish and the seat of fear? Only forgiveness can relieve the mind of thinking that the body is its home. Only forgiveness can restore the peace that God intended for His holy Son. Only forgiveness can persuade the Son to look again upon his holiness.
With anger gone, you will indeed perceive that for Christ's vision and the gift of sight no sacrifice was asked, and only pain was lifted from a sick and tortured mind. Is this unwelcome? Is it to be feared? Or is it to be hoped for, met with thanks and joyously accepted? We are one, and therefore give up nothing, for we have indeed been given everything by God.
Yet do we need forgiveness to perceive that this is so. Without its kindly light we grope in darkness, using reason but to justify our rage and our attack. Our understanding is so limited that what we think we understand is but confusion born of error. We are lost in mists of shifting dreams and fearful thoughts, our eyes shut tight against the light; our minds engaged in worshipping what is not there.
Who can be born again in Christ but him who has forgiven everyone he sees or thinks of or imagines? Who could be set free while he imprisons anyone? A jailor is not free, for he is bound together with his prisoner. He must be sure that he does not escape, and so he spends his time in keeping watch on him. The bars which limit him become the world in which the jailor lives, along with him. And it is on his freedom that the way to liberty depends for both of them.
Therefore hold no one prisoner. Release instead of bind, for thus are you made free. The way is simple. Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head. And it will fall or be averted as you choose to be condemned or free. Thus does each one who seems to tempt you to be angry represent your Savior from the prison-house of death. And so you owe him thanks instead of pain.
Be merciful today. The Son of God deserves your mercy. It is he who asks that you accept the way to freedom now. Deny him not. His Father's Love for him belongs to you. Your function here on earth is only to forgive him, that you may accept him back as your identity. He is as God created him. And you are what he is. Forgive him now his sins, and you will see that you are one with him.
Now a review again, this time aware we are preparing for the second part of learning how the truth can be applied. Today we will begin to concentrate on readiness for what will follow next. Such is our aim for this review and for the lessons following. Thus we review the recent lessons and their central thoughts in such a way as will facilitate the readiness which we would now achieve.
There is a central theme that unifies each step in the review we undertake, which can be simply stated in these words:
"My mind holds only what I think with God."
This is a fact and represents the truth of What you are and What your Father is. It is this Thought by Which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as co-creator with Himself. It is this Thought Which fully guarantees salvation to the Son, for in his mind no thoughts can dwell but those his Father shares. Lack of forgiveness blocks this Thought from his awareness. Yet It is forever true.
Let us begin our preparation with some understanding of the many forms in which the lack of true forgiveness may be carefully concealed. Because they are illusions, they are not perceived to be but what they are; defenses which protect your unforgiving thoughts from being seen and recognized. Their purpose is to show you something else, and hold correction off through self-deceptions made to take its place.
And yet your mind holds only what you think with God. Your self-deceptions cannot take the place of truth. No more than can a child who throws a stick into the ocean change the coming and the going of the tides, the warming of the water by the sun, the silver of the moon on it at night. So do we start each practice period in this review with readying our minds to understand the lessons that we read, and see the meaning which they offer us.
Begin each day with time devoted to the preparation of your mind to learn what each idea you will review that day can offer you in freedom and in peace. Open your mind and clear it of all thoughts that would deceive, and let this Thought alone engage it fully and remove the rest:
"My mind holds only what I think with God."
Five minutes with this Thought will be enough to set the day along the lines which God appointed, and to place His Mind in charge of all the thoughts you will receive that day. They will not come from you alone, for they will all be shared with Him. And so each one will bring the message of His Love to you, returning messages of yours to Him. So will communion with the Lord of Hosts be yours, as He Himself has willed it be. And as His Own completion joins with Him, so will He join with you who are complete as you unite with Him and He with you.
After your preparation, merely read each of the two ideas assigned to you to be reviewed that day. Then close your eyes and say them slowly to yourself. There is no hurry now, for you are using time for its intended purpose. Let each word shine with the meaning God has given it as it was given to you through His Voice. Let each idea that you review that day give you the gift which He has laid in it for you to have of Him. And we will use no format for our practicing but this:
Each hour of the day bring to your mind the Thought with which the day began, and spend a quiet moment with It. Then repeat the two ideas you practice for the day unhurriedly, with time enough to see the gifts which they contain for you, and let them be received where they were meant to be.
We add no other thoughts, but let them be the messages they are. We need no more than that to give us happiness and rest and endless quiet, perfect certainty, and all our Father wills that we receive as the inheritance we have of Him.
Each day of practicing, as we review, we close as we began, repeating first the Thought that made the day a special time of blessing and of happiness for us; and through our faithfulness restored the world from darkness to the light, from grief to joy, from pain to peace, from sin to holiness. God offers thanks to you who practice thus the keeping of His Word. And as you give your mind to the ideas for the day again before you sleep, His gratitude surrounds you in the peace wherein He wills you be forever, and are learning now to claim again as your inheritance.
Perception is consistent. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see. Your values are determiners of this, for what you value you must want to see, believing what you see is really there. No one can see a world his mind has not accorded value. And no one can fail to look upon what he believes he wants.
Yet who can really hate and love at once? Who can desire what he does not want to have reality? And who can choose to see a world of which he is afraid? Fear must make blind, for this its weapon is; that which you fear to see you cannot see. Love and perception thus go hand in hand, but fear obscures in darkness what is there.
What, then, can fear project upon the world? What can be seen in darkness that is real? Truth is eclipsed by fear, and what remains is but imagined. Yet what can be real in blind imaginings of panic born? What would you want that this is shown to you? What would you wish to keep in such a dream?
Fear has made everything you think you see. All separation, all distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world. They are not there. Love's enemy has made them up. Yet love can have no enemy, and so they have no cause, no being and no consequence. They can be valued, but remain unreal. They can be sought, but they can not be found. Today we will not seek for them, nor waste this day in seeking not what can be found.
It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. Seek for the one; the other disappears. But one remains. They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. The real and the unreal are all there is to choose between, and nothing more than these.
Today we will attempt no compromise where none is possible. The world you see is proof you have already made a choice as all-embracing as its opposite. What we would learn today is more than just the lesson that you cannot see two worlds. It also teaches that the one you see is quite consistent from the point of view from which you see it. It is all a piece because it stems from one emotion, and reflects its source in everything you see.
Six times today, in thanks and gratitude, we gladly give five minutes to the thought which ends all compromise and doubt, and go beyond it all as one. We will not make a thousand meaningless distinctions, nor attempt to bring with us a little part of unreality, as we devote our minds to finding only what is real.
Begin your searching for the other world, by asking for a strength beyond your own, and recognize what it is you seek. You do not want illusions. And you come to these five minutes emptying your hands of all the petty treasures of this world. You wait for God to help you, as you say:
"It is impossible to see two worlds.
Let me accept the strength God offers me
And see no value in this world, that I
May find my freedom and deliverance."
God will be there. For you have called upon the great unfailing Power Who will take this giant step with you in gratitude. Nor will you fail to see His thanks expressed in tangible perception and in truth. You will not doubt what you will look upon. For though it is perception, it is not the kind of seeing that your eyes alone have ever seen before. And you will know God's strength upheld as you made this choice.
Dismiss temptation easily today whenever it arises, merely by remembering the limits on your choice. The unreal or the real, the false or true is what you see, and only what you see. Perception is consistent with your choice, and hell or Heaven comes to you as one.
Accept a little part of hell as real, and you have damned your eyes and cursed your sight, and what you will behold is hell indeed. Yet the release of Heaven still remains within your range of choice, to take the place of everything that hell would show to you. All you need say to any part of hell, whatever form it takes, is simply this:
"It is impossible to see two worlds.
I seek my freedom and deliverance,
And this is not a part of what I want."
Prepare you NOW for the undoing of what never was. If you already UNDERSTOOD the difference between truth and illusion, Atonement would HAVE no meaning. The holy instant, your holy relationship, the Holy Spirit's teaching, and all the means by which salvation is accomplished, would have no purpose. For they are all but ASPECTS of the plan to change your dreams of fear to happy dreams, from which you waken easily to knowledge. Put yourself NOT in charge of this, for you can NOT distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of your greatest advances YOU have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats YOU have evaluated as success.
Never approach the holy instant AFTER you have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind. That is ITS function. Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven. On your little faith, joined with HIS understanding, HE will build your part in the Atonement, and MAKE SURE that you fulfill it easily. And WITH Him, YOU will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith, and rising even to Heaven. Nor will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone.
Through your holy relationship, reborn and blessed in every holy instant which you did NOT arrange, thousands will rise to Heaven WITH you. Can YOU plan for THIS? Or could you PREPARE yourselves for such a function? Yet it IS possible, because God wills it. Nor will He change His Mind about it. The means and purpose BOTH belong to Him. You have accepted one; the other will be provided. A purpose such as this, WITHOUT the means, IS inconceivable. HE will provide the means to ANYONE who SHARES His purpose.
HAPPY DREAMS COME TRUE. NOT because they are dreams, but only because they are HAPPY. And so they MUST be loving. Their message is, "Thy Will be done," and NOT, "I want it otherwise." The alignment of means and purpose is an undertaking IMPOSSIBLE for you to understand. You do not even realize you HAVE accepted the Holy Spirit's purpose as your own. And you would merely bring UNholy means to its accomplishment. The little faith it needed to change the purpose is all that is required to RECEIVE the means and USE them.
It is no dream to love your brother as yourself. Nor is your holy relationship a dream. All that remains of dreams within it is that it is still a SPECIAL relationship. Yet it is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, Who has a special FUNCTION here. It will become the HAPPY dream through which He can spread joy to thousands on thousands who believe that love is fear, NOT happiness. Let Him fulfill the function that He GAVE to your relationship by ACCEPTING it FOR you. And NOTHING will be wanting that would make of it what HE would have it be.
When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by ANYTHING, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness, IN SPITE of fear, to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one which YOU would rather have. He will NEVER fail in this. But forget not that your relationship IS ONE, and so it MUST be that whatever threatens the peace of one is an equal threat to the other. The power of joining, AND ITS BLESSING, lies in the fact that it is now impossible for either of you to experience fear alone, or to attempt to DEAL with it alone. Never believe that this is necessary, or even possible.
But, just as THIS is impossible, so is it equally impossible that the holy instant come to either of you WITHOUT the other. And it WILL come to both at the REQUEST of either. Whichever is saner at the time when threat is perceived, should remember how deep is his indebtedness to the other, and how much gratitude is due him. AND BE GLAD that he can pay his debt, by bringing happiness to both. Let him remember this, and say:
"I desire this holy instant for myself
That I may SHARE it with my brother, whom I love.
It is not possible that I can have it WITHOUT him, nor he
without me.
Yet it is WHOLLY possible for us to SHARE it NOW.
And so I choose THIS instant as the one to offer to the Holy
Spirit, that His blessing may descend on us, and
keep us BOTH in peace."
Perfect perception, then, has many elements IN COMMON with knowledge, making transfer TO it possible. Yet the last step must be taken by God, because the last step in your redemption, which SEEMS to be in the future, WAS accomplished by God in your creation. The separation has NOT interrupted it. Creation cannot BE interrupted. The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, WITH NO EFFECT AT ALL. The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here. ASPECTS of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of UNREALITY. Aspects of reality can be seen IN EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE. Yet only God can gather them together by crowning them AS ONE with the final gift of eternity.
Apart from the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit has no function. He is not separate from either, being in the mind of both, and knowing that Mind is one. He is a thought of God, and God has GIVEN Him to you, because He has NO thoughts He does not share. His message speaks of timelessness in time, and that is why Christ's vision looks on everything with love. Yet even Christ's vision is not His reality. The golden ASPECTS of reality, which spring to light under His loving gaze, are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them.
This is the miracle of creation; THAT IT IS ONE FOREVER. Every miracle you offer to the Son of God, is but the true perception of one ASPECT of the whole. Though every aspect IS the whole, you cannot KNOW this, until you SEE that every aspect IS THE SAME, perceived in the SAME light; and THEREFORE one. Everyone seen WITHOUT the past thus brings you nearer to the end of time, by bringing healed and healing sight into the darkness, and ENABLING THE WORLD TO SEE. For light must come into the darkened world, to make Christ's vision possible even here. Help Him to give His gift of light to all who think they wander in the darkness, and let Him gather them into His quiet sight that makes them one.
They are all the same; all beautiful, and equal in their holiness. And He will offer them unto His Father, as they were offered unto Him. There is ONE miracle, as there is ONE reality. And every miracle you do contains them all, as every aspect of reality you see blends quietly into the one reality of God. The only miracle that ever was, is God's most holy Son, created in the One Reality that is his Father. Christ's vision is His gift to you. His Being is His Father's gift to Him.
Be you content with healing, for Christ's gift you CAN bestow, and your Father's gift you CANNOT lose. Offer Christ's gift to everyone and everywhere. For miracles, offered the Son of God through the Holy Spirit, attune YOU to reality. The Holy Spirit knows your part in the redemption, and who are seeking you, and where to find them. Knowledge is far beyond your individual concern. You who are part of it, and all of it, need only realize that it is of the Father, NOT of you. Your role in the redemption LEADS you to it, by re-establishing its oneness in your minds.
When you have seen your brothers as yourself, you will be RELEASED to knowledge, having learned to FREE yourself, of Him who knows of freedom. Unite with me, under the holy banner of His teaching, and, as we grow in strength, the power of God's Son will move in us, and we will leave no-one untouched and no-one left alone. And suddenly, time will be over, and we will all unite in the Eternity of God the Father. The holy light you saw OUTSIDE yourself, in every miracle you offered to your brothers, will be RETURNED to you. And, KNOWING that the light is IN you, YOUR creations will be there WITH you, as you are in your Father.
As miracles in this world join you to your brothers, so do your creations establish your fatherhood in Heaven. YOU are the witnesses to the Fatherhood of God, and He has given you the power to create the witnesses to YOURS, which is as HIS. Deny a brother here, and you deny the witnesses to your fatherhood in Heaven. The miracle which God created is perfect, as are the miracles which YOU created in His Name. They need no healing, nor do you, when you know THEM.
But in this world, your perfection is unwitnessed. God knows it, but YOU do not, and so you do not SHARE His witness TO it. Nor do you witness unto Him, for reality is witnessed to as one. God waits your witness to His Son, and to Himself. The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven, and to Him. They witness to what you do not know, and, as they reach the gates of Heaven, God will open them. For never would He leave His own beloved Son outside them, and beyond Himself.
There is a light in you the world can not perceive. And with its eyes you will not see this light, for you are blinded by the world. Yet you have eyes to see it. It is there for you to look upon. It was not placed in you to be kept hidden from your sight. This light is a reflection of the thought we practice now. To feel the Love of God within you is to see the world anew, shining in innocence, alive with hope, and blessed with perfect charity and love.
Who could feel fear in such a world as this? It welcomes you, rejoices that you came, and sings your praises as it keeps you safe from every form of danger and of pain. It offers you a warm and gentle home in which to stay a while. It blesses you throughout the day, and watches through the night as silent guardian of your holy sleep. It sees salvation in you, and protects the light in you in which it sees its own. It offers you its flowers and its snow in thankfulness for your benevolence.
This is the world the Love of God reveals. It is so different from the world you see through darkened eyes of malice and of fear that one belies the other. Only one can be perceived at all. The other one is wholly meaningless. A world in which forgiveness shines on everything and peace offers its gentle light to everyone is inconceivable to those who see a world of hatred, rising from attack, poised to avenge, to murder and destroy.
Yet is the world of hatred equally unseen and inconceivable to those who feel God's Love in them. Their world reflects the quietness and peace that shines in them; the gentleness and innocence they see surrounding them; the joy with which they look out from the endless wells of joy within. What they have felt in them they look upon, and see Its sure reflection everywhere.
What would you see? The choice is given you. But learn and do not let your mind forget this law of seeing: You will look upon that which you feel within. If hatred finds a place within your heart, you will perceive a fearful world, held cruelly in death's sharp-pointed, bony fingers. If you feel the Love of God within you, you look out upon a world of mercy and of love.
Today we pass illusions as we seek to reach to what is true in us, and feel Its all-embracing tenderness, Its Love Which knows us perfect as Itself, Its sight which is the gift Its Love bestows on us. We learn the way today. It is as sure as Love Itself, to Which it carries us. For its simplicity avoids the snares the foolish convolutions of the world's apparent reasoning but serve to hide.
Simply do this: Be still and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false or good or bad; of every thought it judges worthy and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God.
Is it not He Who knows the way to you? You need not know the way to Him. Your part is simply to allow all obstacles that you have interposed between the Son and God the Father to be quietly removed forever. God will do His part in joyful and immediate response. Ask and receive. But do not make demands, nor point the road to God by which He should appear to you. The way to reach Him is merely to let Him be. For in that way is your reality acclaimed as well.
And so today we do not choose the way in which we go to Him. But we do choose to let Him come, and with this choice we rest. And in our quiet hearts and open minds His Love will blaze Its pathway of Itself. What has not been denied is surely there, if it be true, and can be surely reached. God knows His Son, and knows the way to him. He does not need His Son to show Him how to find His way. Through every opened door His Love shines outward from Its home within, and lightens up the world in innocence.
Father, we do not know the way to You. But we have called and You have answered us. We will not interfere. Salvation's ways are not our own for they belong to You, and it is unto You we look for them. Our hands are open to receive Your gifts. We have no thoughts we think apart from You, and cherish no beliefs of what we are or who created us. Yours is the way that we would find and follow. And we ask but that Your Will, Which is our own as well, be done in us and in the world, that it becomes a part of Heaven now. Amen.
The Holy Spirit will NEVER teach you that you are sinful. ERRORS He will correct, but this makes no-one fearful. You are indeed afraid to look within, and see the sin you THINK is there. This you would NOT be fearful to admit. Fear in association with sin the ego deems quite appropriate, and smiles approvingly. IT has no fear to let you feel ashamed. It doubts not your belief and faith in sin. Its temples do not shake because of THIS. Your faith that sin is there but witnesses your desire that it BE there to see. This merely SEEMS to be the source of fear. Remember that the ego is NOT alone. Its rule IS tempered. And its unknown "Enemy," Whom it cannot even see, it FEARS.
Loudly the ego tells you NOT to look inward, for if you do, your eyes will light on sin, and God will strike you blind. This you believe, and so you do NOT look. Yet this is NOT the ego's hidden fear, nor YOURS who serve it. Loudly indeed the ego claims it IS. TOO loudly and TOO often. For underneath this constant shout and frantic proclamation, the ego is NOT certain it is so. Beneath your fear to look within because of sin is yet ANOTHER fear, and one which makes the ego tremble. What if you looked within, and saw NO sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego NEVER asks. And you who ask it now ARE "threatening" the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to PRETEND it is your friend.
Those who have joined their brothers HAVE detached themselves from their belief that their identity lies in the ego. A holy relationship is one in which you join with what IS part of you in TRUTH. And your belief in sin has been ALREADY shaken, nor are you now ENTIRELY unwilling to look within and see it NOT. Your liberation still is only partial; still limited and incomplete, yet born WITHIN you. Not wholly mad, you HAVE been willing to look on much of your insanity, and RECOGNIZE its madness. Your faith is moving inward, PAST insanity, and on to reason. And what your reason tells you now, the ego would not hear.
The Holy Spirit's purpose was accepted by the part of your mind the ego knows not of. No more did YOU. And yet this part, with which you now identify, is NOT afraid to look upon ITSELF. It KNOWS that it is sinless. How otherwise COULD it have been willing to see the Holy Spirit's purpose as its own? This part has seen your brother, and RECOGNIZED him perfectly, since time began. And it desired nothing but to JOIN with him, and to be free again, as once it was. It has been waiting for the birth of freedom; the ACCEPTANCE of release to come to you. And now you recognize that it was NOT the ego that joined the Holy Spirit's purpose, and so there MUST be something else.
Think not that THIS is madness. For this your REASON tells you. And it follows PERFECTLY from what you have ALREADY learned. There is NO inconsistency in what the Holy Spirit teaches. This is the reasoning of the SANE. You have perceived the EGO'S madness, and NOT been made afraid, because you did not choose to SHARE in it. At times it still deceives you. Yet, in your saner moments, its ranting strikes no terror in your hearts. For you have realized that all the gifts it would withdraw from you in rage at your "presumptuous" wish to look within, you do not WANT. The few remaining trinkets still seem to shine and catch your eye. Yet you would not "sell" Heaven to have them.
And now the ego IS afraid. But what it hears in terror, the OTHER part hears as the sweetest music; the song it longed to hear since first the ego came into your minds. The ego's weakness is ITS strength. The song of freedom, which sings the praises of ANOTHER world, brings to it hope of peace. For it REMEMBERS Heaven. And now it sees that Heaven HAS come to earth at last, from which the ego's rule has kept it out so long. Heaven has come because it found a home in your relationship on earth. And earth can hold no longer what has been GIVEN Heaven as its own.
Look gently on each other, and remember the ego's WEAKNESS is revealed in BOTH your sight. What it would keep apart has met and joined, and looks upon the ego unafraid. Little children, innocent of sin, follow in gladness the way to certainty. Be not held back by fear's insane insistence that sureness lies in doubt. This HAS no meaning. What matters it to you how loudly it is proclaimed? The senseless is not made meaningful by repetition and by clamor. The quiet way is open. Follow it happily, and question not what MUST be so.
Learning is change. Salvation does not seek to use a means as yet too alien to your thinking to be helpful, nor to make the kinds of change you could not recognize. Concepts are needed while perception lasts. And changing concepts IS salvation's task. For it must deal in contrasts, not in truth, which has no opposite and cannot change. In this world's concepts are the guilty "bad;" the "good" are innocent. And no-one here but holds a concept of himself in which he counts the "good" to pardon him the "bad." Nor does he trust the "good" in anyone, believing that the "bad" must lurk behind.
This concept emphasizes treachery, and trust becomes impossible. Nor could it change while you perceive the "bad" in you. You could not recognize your "evil" thoughts as long as you see value in attack. You WILL perceive them sometimes, but will NOT see them as meaningless. And so they come in fearful form, with content still concealed, to shake your sorry concept of yourself, and blacken it with still another "crime." YOU cannot give yourself your innocence, for you are too confused about yourself. But should ONE brother dawn upon your sight as wholly worthy of forgiveness, then your concept of yourself IS wholly changed.
YOUR "evil" thoughts have been forgiven with his, because you let them all effect YOU not. No longer did you choose that you should be the sign of "evil" and of guilt in him. And as you gave your trust to what is "good" in him, you gave it to the "good" in you. In terms of concepts, it is thus you see him MORE than just a body, for the "good" is NEVER what the body seems to be. The actions of the body are perceived as coming from the "baser" part of you, and thus of him as well. By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good."
And this will be your concept of YOURSELF, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see. For you will not interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you. And in His sight there IS another world. You live in that world just as much as this, for BOTH are concepts of yourself, which can be interchanged, but never jointly held. The contrast is far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of yourself, BECAUSE IT WAS NOT MADE FOR YOU ALONE. Born as a gift for someone NOT perceived to be yourself, it has been given YOU. For your forgiveness, offered unto him, has been accepted now for BOTH of you.
Have faith in him who walks with you, so that your fearful concept of yourself may change. And look upon the "good" in him, that you may not be fearful of your "evil" thoughts, because they do not cloud your view of him. And all this shift requires is that you be WILLING that this happy change occur. No more than this is asked. On its behalf, remember what the concept of yourself which now you hold has brought you in its wake, and welcome the glad contrast offered you. Hold out your hand, that you may have the gift of kind forgiveness, which you offer one whose need for it is just the same as yours. And let your cruel concept of yourself be changed to one which brings the peace of God.
The concept of yourself which now you hold would GUARANTEE your function here remain forever unaccomplished and undone. And thus it dooms you to a bitter sense of deep depression and futility. Yet it need not be fixed, unless you choose to hold it past the hope of change, and keep it static and concealed within your mind. Give it instead to Him Who understands the changes that it needs to let it SERVE the function given you to bring you peace, that you may offer peace to have it yours. Alternatives are in your mind to use, and you CAN see yourself another way. Would you not rather look upon yourself as NEEDED for salvation of the world, instead of as salvation's enemy?
The concept of the self stands like a shield, a silent barricade before the truth, and hides it from your sight. All things you see are images because you look on them as through a barrier which dims your sight and warps your vision, so that you behold nothing with clarity. The light is kept from everything you see. At most, you glimpse a shadow of what lies beyond. At least you merely look on darkness, and perceive the terrified imaginings that come from guilty thoughts and concepts born of fear. And what you see is hell, for fear IS hell. All that is given you is for release; the sight, the vision and the inner Guide all lead you OUT of hell, with those you love beside you, and the universe with them.
Behold your role within the universe! To every part of true creation has the Lord of Love and Life entrusted ALL salvation from the misery of hell. And to each one has He allowed the grace to be a Savior to the holy ones especially entrusted to his care. And this he learns when first he looks upon ONE brother as he looks upon himself, and sees the mirror of himself in him. Thus is the CONCEPT of himself laid by, for nothing stands BETWEEN his sight and what he looks upon, to judge what he beholds. And in this single vision does he see the Face of Christ, and understands he looks on everyone, as he beholds this One. For there is light where darkness was before, and now the veil is lifted from his sight.
The veil across the Face of Christ, the fear of God and of salvation, and the love of guilt and death, - they all are different names for just ONE error; that there is a space between you and your brother, kept apart by an illusion of yourself which holds him off from you, and you away from him. The sword of judgment is the weapon which you give to the illusion of yourself, that it may fight to keep the space that holds your brother off unoccupied by love. Yet while you hold this sword you MUST perceive the body as YOURSELF, for you are bound to separation from the sight of him who holds the mirror to another view of what HE is, and thus what YOU must be.
What is temptation but the WISH to stay in hell and misery? And what could this give rise to BUT an image of yourself that CAN be miserable, and remain in hell and torment? Who has learned to see his brother NOT as this HAS saved himself, and thus IS he a savior to the rest. To everyone has God entrusted all, because a PARTIAL savior would be one who is but partly saved. The holy ones whom God has given each of you to save are everyone you meet or look upon, not knowing who they are; all those you saw an instant and forgot, and those you knew a long while since, and those you will yet meet, the unremembered and the not yet born. For God has given you His Son to save from every concept that he ever held.
Yet while you wish to stay in hell, how COULD you be the savior of the Son of God? How would you know his holiness, while you see him apart from yours? For holiness is seen through holy eyes that look upon the innocence within, and thus EXPECT to see it everywhere. And so they call it forth in everyone they look upon, that he may be what they expect of him. This is the Savior's vision; that he see HIS innocence in all he looks upon, and sees his own salvation everywhere. He holds NO concept of himself between his calm and open eyes and what he sees. He BRINGS the light to what he looks upon, that he may see it as it really is.
Whatever form temptation seems to take, it ALWAYS but reflects a wish to be a self that you are not. And FROM that wish a concept rises, teaching you you ARE the thing you wish to be. It will remain your concept of yourself until the wish that fathered it no longer is held dear. And while you cherish it, you will behold your brother in the likeness of the self whose image has the wish begot of YOU. For vision CAN but represent a wish, because it has NO power to create. Yet it can look with love or look with hate, depending only on the simple choice of whether you would JOIN with what you see, or keep yourself apart and separate.
The Savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts and prepared to look on ONLY what the present holds. It cannot judge because it does not know. And RECOGNIZING this, it merely asks, "What is the meaning of what I behold?" Then is the Answer given, and the door held open for the Face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks in innocence to see BEYOND the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear AGAINST the vision of the Christ in you.
Be vigilant against temptation, then, remembering that it is but a wish, insane and meaningless, to make yourself a thing which you are not. And think as well upon the thing that you would be instead. It is a thing of madness, pain, and death; a thing of treachery and black despair, of failing dreams and no remaining hope except to die and end the dream of fear. THIS is temptation; nothing MORE than this. CAN this be difficult to choose AGAINST? Consider what temptation is, and see the real alternatives you choose between. There ARE but two. Be not deceived by what appears as many choices. There is hell or Heaven. And of these you choose but ONE.
Let not the world's light, given unto you, be hidden from the world. It NEEDS the light, for it is dark indeed, and men despair because the Savior's vision is withheld, and what they see is death. Their Savior stands, unknowing and unknown, beholding them with eyes unopened. And THEY cannot see until he looks on them with seeing eyes, and offers them forgiveness with his own. Can you to whom God says, "Release My Son" be tempted NOT to listen, when you learn that it is YOU for whom He asks release? And what BUT this is what this course would teach? And what BUT this is there for you to learn?
The journey that we undertake together is the change of dark for light, of ignorance for understanding. NOTHING YOU UNDERSTAND IS FEARFUL. It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening, and you shrink away from it to further darkness. And yet, it is only the hidden that CAN terrify, NOT for what it IS, but FOR its hiddenness. The obscure is frightening, BECAUSE you do not understand its meaning. If you did, IT would be clear, and you would be no longer in the dark. Nothing has HIDDEN value, for what is hidden CANNOT be shared, and so its value is unknown. The hidden is KEPT APART, but value ALWAYS lies in joint appreciation. What is concealed CANNOT be loved, and so it MUST be feared.
The quiet light in which the Holy Spirit dwells within you, is merely perfect openness, in which nothing is hidden, and therefore nothing is feared. Attack will ALWAYS yield to love, if it is brought TO love, not hidden FROM it. There is no darkness that the light of love will not dispel, unless it is concealed from love's beneficence. What is KEPT APART from love CANNOT share its healing power, because it has been separated off, and KEPT IN DARKNESS. The sentinels of darkness watch over it carefully, and you who made these guardians of illusion out of nothing, are now AFRAID of them.
Would you continue to give imagined power to these strange ideas of safety? They are neither safe nor unsafe. They do not protect, NEITHER DO THEY ATTACK. They DO nothing at all, BEING nothing at all. As guardians of darkness and of ignorance, look to them ONLY for fear, for what they keep obscure IS fearful. But let them go, and what WAS fearful, will be so no longer. Without protection of obscurity, ONLY the light of love remains, for only this HAS meaning, and CAN live in light. Everything else MUST disappear.
Death yields to life, simply because destruction IS NOT TRUE. The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are BROUGHT TOGETHER, the truth of one MUST make the falsity of its OPPOSITE perfectly clear. Keep not guilt and guiltlessness APART, for your belief that you can HAVE THEM BOTH, is meaningless. All you have done by keeping them apart is LOSE THEIR MEANING, by confusing them with each other. And so you do not realize that only one means ANYTHING, and the other is wholly without sense of ANY kind.
You have interpreted the separation as a means which you have made for BREAKING your communication with your Father. The Holy Spirit re-interprets it as a means of re-establishing what has NOT been broken, but HAS been made obscure. All things you made have use to Him, for His most holy purpose. He KNOWS you are not separate from God, but He perceives much in your mind that lets you THINK you are. All this, and nothing else, would He separate FROM you. The power of decision, which you made IN PLACE of power of creation, He would teach you how to use ON YOUR BEHALF. You who made it to crucify yourselves, must learn of Him how to apply it to the holy cause of restoration.
You who speak in dark and devious symbols, do not understand the language you have made. It HAS no meaning, for its purpose is NOT communication, but rather, the DISRUPTION of communication. If the purpose of language IS communication, how can this tongue mean ANYTHING? Yet even this strange and twisted effort to communicate through NOT communicating, holds enough of love to MAKE IT MEANINGFUL, IF ITS INTERPRETER IS NOT ITS MAKER. You who made it are but expressing CONFLICT, from which the Holy Spirit would RELEASE you. Leave what you would communicate to Him. He will interpret it to you with perfect clarity, for He knows with Whom you ARE in perfect communication.
You know not what you say, and so you know not what is said to you. But your Interpreter perceives the meaning in your alien language. He will not attempt to communicate the meaningless. But He WILL separate out all that HAS meaning, dropping off all the rest, and offering your true communication to those who would communicate as truly WITH you. YOU SPEAK TWO LANGUAGES AT ONCE, and this MUST lead to unintelligibility. But if one means nothing, and the other EVERYTHING, only that one is possible for purposes of communication. The other but INTERFERES with it.
The Holy Spirit's function is ENTIRELY communication. He therefore MUST remove whatever INTERFERES with it, in order to RESTORE it. Therefore, keep no source of interference from His sight, for He will NOT attack your sentinels. But bring them TO Him, and let His gentleness teach you that, in the light, they are not fearful, and CANNOT serve to guard the dark doors behind which nothing at all is carefully concealed. We must open all doors, and let the light come streaming through. There are no hidden chambers in God's Temple. Its gates are open wide, to greet His Son. No-one can fail to come where God has called him, if he close not the door himself upon His Father's welcome.
Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about. If you believed this statement there would be no problem in complete forgiveness, certainty of goal, and sure direction. You would understand the means by which salvation comes to you, and would not hesitate to use it now.
Let us consider what you do believe in place of this idea. It seems to you that other people are apart from you, and able to behave in ways which have no bearing on your thoughts, nor theirs on yours. Therefore your attitudes have no effect on them, and their appeals for help are not in any way related to your own. You further think that they can sin without affecting your perception of yourself, while you can judge their sin and yet remain apart from condemnation and at peace.
When you "forgive" a sin, there is no gain to you directly. You give charity to one unworthy merely to point out that you are better, on a higher plane than he whom you forgive. He has not earned your charitable tolerance, which you bestow on one unworthy of the gift because his sins have lowered him beneath a true equality with you. He has no claim on your forgiveness. It holds out a gift to him but hardly to yourself.
Thus is forgiveness basically unsound; a charitable whim, benevolent yet undeserved; a gift bestowed at times, at other times withheld. Unmerited, withholding it is just, nor is it fair that you should suffer when it is withheld. The sin which you forgive is not your own. Someone apart from you committed it and if you then are gracious unto him by giving him what he does not deserve, your gift is no more yours than was his sin.
If this be true, forgiveness has no grounds on which to rest dependably and sure. It is an eccentricity in which you sometimes choose to give indulgently an undeserved reprieve. Yet it remains your right to let the sinner not escape the justified repayment for his sin. Think you the Lord of Heaven would allow the world's salvation to depend on this? Would not His care for you be small indeed if your salvation rested on a whim?
You do not understand forgiveness. As you see it, it is but a check upon overt attack, without requiring correction in your mind. It cannot give you peace as you perceive it. It is not a means for your release from what you see in someone other than yourself. It has no power to restore your unity with him to your awareness. It is not what God intended it to be for you.
Not having given Him the gift He asks of you, you cannot recognize His gifts, and think He has not given them to you. Yet would He ask you for a gift unless it was for you? Could He be satisfied with empty gestures, and evaluate such petty gifts as worthy of His Son? Salvation is a better gift than this, and true forgiveness, as the means by which it is attained, must heal the mind that gives, for giving is receiving. What remains as unreceived has not been given, but what has been given must have been received.
Today we try to understand the truth that giver and receiver are the same. You will need help to make this meaningful because it is so alien to the thoughts to which you are accustomed. But the Help you need is there. Give Him your faith today and ask Him that He share your practicing in truth today. And if you only catch a tiny glimpse of the release which lies in the idea we practice for today, this is a day of glory for the world.
Give fifteen minutes twice today to the attempt to understand today's idea. It is the thought by which forgiveness takes its proper place in your priorities. It is the thought that will release your mind from every bar to what forgiveness means, and let you realize its worth to you.
In silence close your eyes upon the world which does not understand forgiveness, and seek sanctuary in the quiet place where thoughts are changed and false beliefs laid by. Repeat today's idea, and ask for help in understanding what it really means. Be willing to be taught. Be glad to hear the Voice of truth and healing speak to you, and you will understand the words He speaks, and recognize He speaks your words to you.
As often as you can, remind yourself you have a goal today; an aim which makes this day of special value to yourself and all your brothers. Do not let your mind forget this goal for long, but tell yourself:
"All that I give is given to myself.
The Help I need to learn that this is true
Is with me now. And I will trust in Him."
Then spend the quiet moment, opening your mind to His correction and His Love. And what you hear of Him you will believe, for what He gives will be received by you.
You still have too much faith in the body as a source of strength. What plans do you make that do NOT involve its comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way? This makes it an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this ALWAYS means YOU STILL FIND SIN ATTRACTIVE. No-one accepts Atonement for himself who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus not met your one responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by those who PREFER pain and destruction.
You have made much progress, and are really trying to make still more, but there is one thing you have never done; not for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body. It has faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED. You are not asked to let this happen for more than an instant, but it is in this instant that the miracle of Atonement happens. Afterwards, you will see the body again, but never quite the same. And every instant that you spend WITHOUT awareness of it gives you a different view of it, when you return.
At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but NEVER experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely. For sin is never present. In any SINGLE instant, the attraction of guilt would be experienced as pain and nothing else, and would be avoided. IT HAS NO ATTRACTION NOW. Its whole attraction is imaginary, and therefore MUST be thought of from the past, or in the future.
It is impossible to accept the holy instant WITHOUT RESERVATION unless, JUST FOR AN INSTANT, you are willing to see no past or future. You cannot PREPARE for it without placing it in the FUTURE. Release is given you the INSTANT you desire it. Many have spent a lifetime in preparation, and have, indeed, achieved their instants of success. This course does not attempt to teach more than they learned in time. But it does aim at SAVING time.
You are attempting to follow a very long road to the goal you have accepted. It is extremely difficult to reach Atonement by fighting against sin. Enormous effort is expended in the attempt to make holy what is hated and despised. Nor is a lifetime of contemplation, and long periods of meditation aimed at DETACHMENT from the body necessary. All such attempts will ultimately succeed, because of their purpose. But the means are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them LOOK TO THE FUTURE for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy.
Your way will be different. NOT in purpose, but in means. A HOLY RELATIONSHIP IS A MEANS OF SAVING TIME. One instant spent TOGETHER restores the universe to BOTH of you. You ARE prepared. Now you need but remember YOU NEED DO NOTHING. It would be FAR more profitable now merely to concentrate on this, than to consider what you SHOULD do.
When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation, and fight against giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation, or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it ALWAYS comes with just ONE happy realization, -- "I need do nothing." Here is the ultimate release that everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time. We do not need this time. Time has been SAVED for you, because you are together. This is the special means this course is using, to save you time.
You are not making use of the course if you insist on using means that have served others well, neglecting what was made for YOU. Save time for me by only this one preparation, and practice doing NOTHING ELSE. "I need do nothing" is a statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty. Believe it for just one instant, and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of contemplation, or of struggle against temptation.
To DO anything involves the body. And, if you recognize you NEED do nothing, you HAVE withdrawn the body's value from your mind. Here is the quick and open door through which you slip past centuries of effort, and ESCAPE from time. This is the way in which sin loses ALL attraction RIGHT NOW. For here is time denied, and past and future gone. Who need do nothing has no need for time. To do nothing is to rest, and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes, and there abides.
He will remain when you forget, and the body's activities return to occupy your conscious mind. But there will always be this place of rest, to which you can return. And you will be more aware of the quiet center of the storm, than all its raging activity. This quiet center, IN WHICH YOU DO NOTHING, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For, FROM this center, will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly. It is this center, from which the body is ABSENT, that will keep it so, in your awareness of it.
There IS a rationale for choice. Only ONE teacher KNOWS what your reality is. If learning that is the PURPOSE of the curriculum, you MUST learn it of Him. The ego does NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS TRYING TO TEACH. It is trying to teach you what you are WITHOUT KNOWING IT. The ego is expert ONLY in confusion. It does not understand ANYTHING ELSE. As a teacher, then, it is totally confused and TOTALLY CONFUSING.
Even if you could disregard the Holy Spirit entirely, which is quite impossible, you could learn nothing from the ego, because the ego KNOWS nothing. Is there ANY possible reason for choosing a teacher such as this? Does the TOTAL disregard of ANYTHING it teaches make anything BUT sense? Is THIS the teacher to whom a Son of God should turn to find HIMSELF? The ego has never given you a sensible answer to anything. Simply on the grounds of your own experience with the ego's teaching, should not this alone disqualify it as your future teacher?
But the ego has done more harm to your learning than this alone. Learning is joyful if it leads you along your natural path, and facilitates the development of WHAT YOU HAVE. But when you are taught AGAINST your nature, you will lose by your learning, because your learning will IMPRISON you. Your will is IN your nature, and therefore CANNOT go AGAINST it. The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free, because you WILL NOT LISTEN TO IT. It is NOT your will to be imprisoned, BECAUSE your will is free.
That is why the ego IS the denial of free will. It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you. His voice teaches ONLY His Will, but that is not the Holy Spirit's lesson, because that is what you ARE. The LESSON is that your will and God's CANNOT be out of accord because they ARE one. This is the UNdoing of EVERYTHING the ego tries to teach. It is not, then, only the DIRECTION (of the curriculum?) which must be unconflicted, but also the CONTENT.
The ego wants to teach you that you want to OPPOSE God's Will. This unnatural lesson CANNOT be learned, but the ATTEMPT to learn it is a violation of your own freedom, and makes you AFRAID of your will BECAUSE it is free. The Holy Spirit opposes ANY imprisoning of the will of a Son of God, KNOWING that the will of the Son IS the Father's. He leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard, or look beyond EVERYTHING that would hold you back.
We said before that the Holy Spirit teaches you the difference between pain and joy. That is the same as saying that He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom. YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS DISTINCTION WITHOUT HIM. That is because you have taught YOURSELF that imprisonment IS freedom. Believing them to be the same, how can you tell them apart? Can you ask the part of your mind that taught you to believe they ARE the same to teach you the DIFFERENCE?
The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only one direction, and has only one goal. His direction is freedom, and His goal is God. But He cannot conceive of God without YOU, because it was not God's Will to BE without you. When you have learned that your will IS God's, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without YOU. This IS freedom and this IS joy. Deny YOURSELF this, and you ARE denying God His Kingdom, because He created you FOR this.
When we said, "all power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His," this is what we meant: The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because its extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all things because it CREATED all things. By CREATING all things, it made them PART OF ITSELF. YOU are the Will of God, because this is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you ARE like Him.
You are part of Him who IS all power and glory, and are therefore as unlimited as He is. To what else EXCEPT all power and glory can the Holy Spirit appeal to restore God's Kingdom? His appeal, then, is merely to what the Kingdom is, and for its own acknowledgment of what it is. When you acknowledge THIS, you bring the acknowledgment automatically to everyone, because YOU HAVE ACKNOWLEDGED EVERYONE. By your recognition you awaken theirs, and through theirs YOURS is extended. Awakening runs easily and gladly through the Kingdom in answer to the call of God. This is the natural response of every Son of God to the Voice of His Creator, because it is the voice for HIS creations and for his own extension.
The learning of the world is built upon a concept of the self adjusted to the world's reality. It fits it well. For this an image is that suits a world of shadows and illusions. Here it walks at home, where what it sees is one with it. The building of a concept of the self is what the learning of the world is FOR. This is its purpose; that you come WITHOUT a self, and MAKE one as you go along. And by the time you reach "maturity," you have perfected it to meet the world on equal terms, at one with its demands. A concept of the self is made by YOU. It bears NO likeness to yourself at all. It is an idol, made to take the place of your reality as Son of God.
The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked, and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears, at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good.
This aspect NEVER makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse. The face of innocence the concept of the self so proudly wears can tolerate attack in self-defense, for is it not a well-known fact the world deals harshly with defenseless innocence? No-one who makes a picture of himself omits this face, for he has need of it. The other side he does not want to see. But it is here the learning of the world has set its sights. For it is here the world's reality is set, to see to it the idol lasts.
Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this; "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me you stand condemned, because of what I am." On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the pathways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on them will not escape.
Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what YOU are has now become his sin. For this is no forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter what he does, for your accusing finger points to him, unwavering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved, and kept in darkness, where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. You can be neither BLAMED for what you are, nor can you CHANGE the things it makes you do. And you are each the symbol of your sins to one another, silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency condemning still your brother for the hated thing you are.
Concepts are learned. They are not natural. Apart from learning they do not exist. They are not given, and they must be made. Not one of them is true, and many come from feverish imaginations, hot with hatred and distortions born of fear. What is a concept but a thought to which its maker gives a meaning of his own? Concepts maintain the world. But they can NOT be used to demonstrate the world is real. For all of them are made WITHIN the world, born in its shadow, growing in its ways, and finally "maturing" in its thought. They are ideas of idols painted with the brushes of the world, which cannot make a single picture representing truth.
A concept of the self is meaningless, for no-one here can see what it is for, and therefore cannot picture what it IS. Yet is all learning that the world directs begun and ended with the single aim of teaching you this concept of yourself, that you will choose to follow this world's laws, and never seek to go BEYOND its roads, nor realize the way you see yourself. Now must the Holy Spirit find a way to help you see this concept of the self must be undone, if ANY peace of mind is to be given you. Nor can it be unlearned except by lessons aimed to teach that you are something else. For otherwise, you would be asked to make exchange of what you now believe for total loss of self. And greater terror would arise in you.
Thus are the Holy Spirit's lesson plans arranged in easy steps, that, though there be some lack of ease at times, and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation of what seems to be the evidence on its behalf. Let us consider, then, what proof there is that you are what your brother made of you. For even though you do not yet perceive that this is what you think, you surely learned by now that you BEHAVE as if it were. Does he REACT for you? And did he know exactly what would happen? Could he see your future, and ordain before it came what you should do in EVERY circumstance? He must have made the world as well as you, to have such prescience in the things to come.
That you are what your brother made of you seems most unlikely. Even if he did, who gave the face of innocence to you? Is this YOUR contribution? Who is, then, the "you" who made it? And who is deceived by all your goodness, and attacks it so? Let us forget the concept's foolishness, and merely think of this; there are two parts to what you think yourself to be. If one was generated by your brother, who was there to make the other? And from whom must something be kept hidden? If the world be evil, there is still no need to hide what YOU are made of. Who is there to see? And what but is attacked could NEED defense?
Perhaps the reason why this concept must be kept in darkness is that, in the light, the one who would not think it true is YOU. And what would happen to the world you know, if all its underpinnings were removed? Your concept of the world DEPENDS upon this concept of the self. And BOTH would go, if either one were ever raised to doubt. The Holy Spirit does not seek to throw you into panic. So He merely asks if just a LITTLE question might be raised. There ARE alternatives about the thing that you must be. You might, for instance, be the thing you chose to have your BROTHER be.
This shifts the concept of the self from what is wholly passive, and at least makes way for active choice, and some acknowledgment that interaction must have entered in. There is some understanding that you chose for BOTH of you, and what he represents has meaning that was given it by YOU. It also shows some glimmering of sight into perception's law that what you see reflects the state of the PERCEIVER's mind. Yet who was it that did the choosing first? If you are what you chose your brother be, alternatives were there to choose between, and someone must have first decided on the one to choose, and let the others go.
Although this step has gains, it does not yet approach a basic question. Something must have gone BEFORE these concepts of the self. And something must have done the learning which gave rise to them. Nor can this be explained by either view. The main advantage of the shifting to the second from the first is that you somehow entered in the choice by YOUR decision. But this gain is paid in almost equal loss, for now YOU stand accused of guilt for what your BROTHER is. And you must SHARE his guilt, because you chose it FOR him, in the image of your own. While ONLY he was treacherous before, now must YOU be condemned along with him.
The concept of the self has always been the great preoccupation of the world. And everyone believes that he must find the answer to the riddle of himself. Salvation can be seen as nothing more than the ESCAPE from concepts. It does not concern itself with content of the mind, but with the simple statement THAT IT THINKS. And what can think has choice, and CAN be shown that different thoughts have different consequence. And it can learn that EVERYTHING it thinks reflects the deep confusion that it feels about how it was made, and what it is. And vaguely does the concept of the self appear to answer what it does not know.
Seek not your Self in symbols. There can be no concept that can stand for what you are. What matters it which concept you accept, while you perceive a self which interacts with evil, and reacts to wicked things? Your concept of yourself will still remain quite meaningless. And you will not perceive that you can interact but with yourself. To see a guilty world is but the sign your learning has been guided by the world, and you behold it as you see yourself. The concept of the self embraces all you look upon, and NOTHING is outside of this perception. If you can be hurt by ANYTHING, you see a picture of your secret wishes. Nothing more than this. And in your suffering of ANY kind, you see your own concealed desire to kill.
You will make many concepts of the self as learning goes along. Each one will show the changes in your own relationships, as your perception of yourself is changed. There will be some confusion every time there is a shift, but be you thankful that the learning of the world is loosening its grasp upon your mind. And be you sure and happy in the confidence that it will go at last, and leave your mind at peace. The role of the accuser will appear in many places and in many forms, and each will seem to be accusing you. But have no fear it will not be undone. The world can teach no images of you unless you WANT to learn them. There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will see you know not what you are.
It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is. When every concept has been raised to doubt and question, and been recognized as made on NO assumptions that would stand the light, then is the truth left free to enter in its sanctuary clean and free of guilt. There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:
"I do not know the thing I am, and THEREFORE do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world and on myself." Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are will TELL you of Itself.
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.
Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud, obscuring voice, whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness. Pain compels attention, drawing it away from Him, and focusing upon itself. Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means TO MAKE THE BODY REAL. What shares a common function IS the same. This is the law of purpose, which unites all those who share in it within itself. Pleasure and pain are EQUALLY unreal, because their purpose CANNOT be achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning. And they share the lack of meaning that their PURPOSE has.
Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. For EITHER witness is the same, and carries but one message, "You are here, WITHIN this body, and you CAN be hurt. You can have pleasure, too, but ONLY at the cost of pain." These witnesses are joined by many more. Each one SEEMS different, because it has a different NAME, and so it seems to answer to a different SOUND. Except for this, the witnesses of sin are all alike. Call pleasure "pain," and it will hurt. Call pain pleasure, and the pain BEHIND the pleasure will be felt no more. Sin's witnesses but shift from name to name, as one steps forward, and another, back. Yet which is foremost makes NO difference. Sin's witnesses hear but the call of death.
This body, purposeless within itself, holds all your memories and all your hopes. You use its eyes to see, its ears to hear, and let it TELL you what it is it feels. IT DOES NOT KNOW. It tells you but the NAMES you gave it to use, when YOU call forth the witnesses to its reality. You cannot choose AMONG them which are real, for any one you choose is like the rest. This name or that, but nothing more, you choose. You do not MAKE a witness true, because you called him by truth's NAME. The truth is found in him IF IT IS TRUTH HE REPRESENTS. And otherwise he lies, if you should call him by the Holy Name of God Himself.
God's Witness sees no witnesses AGAINST the body. Neither does He harken to the witnesses by OTHER names, which speak in OTHER ways for its reality. He KNOWS it is not real. For NOTHING could contain what you believe it holds within. Nor COULD it tell a Part of God Himself what It should feel, and what Its Function is. Yet must He love whatever YOU hold dear. And for each witness to the body's death, He sends a witness to your Life in Him Who knows no death. Each miracle He brings is witness that the body is NOT real. Its pains and pleasures does He heal alike, for ALL sin's witnesses do His replace.
The miracle makes NO distinctions in the names by which sin's witnesses are called. It merely proves that what they REPRESENT has no effects. And this it proves BECAUSE its own effects have come to take their place. It matters not the name by which you called your suffering. IT IS NO LONGER THERE. The One Who brings the miracle perceived them all as one, and called by name of "fear." As fear is witness unto death, so is the miracle the witness unto Life. It is a witness no-one can deny, for it is the EFFECTS of life it brings. The dying live, the dead arise, and pain has vanished. Yet a miracle speaks not but for itself, but what it REPRESENTS. Love, too, has symbols in a world of sin. The miracle forgives BECAUSE it stands for what is PAST forgiveness, and is TRUE.
How foolish and insane it is to think a miracle is BOUND by laws which it came solely to UNDO. The laws of SIN have different witnesses, with different strengths. And THEY attest to different suffering. Yet to the One Who sends forth miracles to bless the world, a tiny stab of pain, a little worldly pleasure, and the throes of death itself are but a single sound; a call for healing, and a plaintive cry for help within a world of misery. It is their SAMENESS that the miracle attests. It is their SAMENESS that it PROVES. The laws which call them DIFFERENT are dissolved, and SHOWN as powerless. The PURPOSE of a miracle is to accomplish this. And God Himself has GUARANTEED the strength of miracles for what they witness TO.
Be witnesses unto the miracle, and NOT the laws of sin. There is no NEED to suffer any more. But there IS need that you be healed, because the suffering of the world has made it deaf to its salvation and deliverance. The resurrection of the world awaits YOUR healing and YOUR happiness, that you may DEMONSTRATE the healing of the world. The holy instant will replace ALL sin, if you but carry its effects with you. And no-one will ELECT to suffer more. What better function COULD you serve than this? Be healed that you may heal, and suffer not the laws of sin to be applied to YOU. And Truth WILL be revealed to you who chose to let Love's symbols TAKE THE PLACE of sin.
The world you see is based on SACRIFICE of oneness. It is a picture of a COMPLETE disunity and total LACK of joining. Around each entity is built a wall so seeming solid that it looks as if what is inside can never reach without, and what is out can never reach and join with what is locked away within the wall. Each part must SACRIFICE the other part to keep itself complete. For if they joined, each one would LOSE its own identity, and BY their separation are their selves maintained. The little that the body fences off BECOMES the self, preserved through sacrifice of all the rest. And all the rest must LOSE this little part, remaining incomplete to keep its own identity intact.
In THIS perception of your self the BODY's loss would be a sacrifice indeed. And sight of bodies becomes the sign that sacrifice IS limited, and something still remains for you alone. And FOR this little to belong to you, are limits placed on EVERYTHING outside, just as they are on everything you think is YOURS. For giving and receiving ARE the same. And to ACCEPT the limits of a body is to IMPOSE these limits on each brother that you see. For you MUST see him as you see yourself. The body IS a loss, and CAN be made to sacrifice. And while you see your brother as a body,APART from you and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him AND you.
What greater sacrifice could be demanded than that God's Son perceive himself without his Father? And his Father be without His Son? Yet EVERY sacrifice demands that they be separate and without the other. The memory of God MUST be denied, if ANY sacrifice is asked of ANYONE. What witness to the wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? He is INVISIBLE in such a world. Nor can his song of union and of joy be heard at all. Yet is it given him to make the world recede before his song and sight of him REPLACE the body's eyes.
Those who would see the witnesses to truth INSTEAD of to illusion merely ask that they might see a PURPOSE in the world that gives it sense and makes it meaningful. WITHOUT your special function HAS this world no meaning for you. Yet it can become a treasure house as rich and limitless as Heaven Itself. No instant passes here in which your brother's holiness can NOT be seen, to add a limitless supply to every meager scrap and tiny crumb of happiness that you allot yourself. You CAN lose sight of oneness, but can NOT make sacrifice of its reality. Nor can you LOSE what you would sacrifice, nor keep the Holy Spirit from His task of showing you that it has NOT been lost.
Hear, then, the song your brother sings to you. And LET the world recede, and TAKE the rest his witness offers on behalf of peace. But judge him not, for you will hear no song of liberation for yourself, nor see what it is given him to witness to, that YOU may see it and rejoice WITH him. Make not his holiness a sacrifice to your belief in sin. You sacrifice YOUR innocence with his, and die each time you see in him a sin deserving death. Yet every instant can you be reborn, and given life again. His holiness gives life to you, who CANNOT die because his sinlessness is known to God, and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees it not.
You who would make a sacrifice of life, and make your eyes and ears bear witness to the death of God and of His holy Son, think not that you have power to make of them what God willed not they be. In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin. And as he is in Heaven, so MUST he be eternally and everywhere. He is the same forever. Born again each instant, untouched by time, and FAR beyond the reach of ANY sacrifice of life OR death. For neither did he make, and only ONE was given him, by One Who KNOWS His gifts can NEVER suffer sacrifice and loss.
God's justice rests in gentleness upon His Son, and keeps him safe from ALL injustices the world would lay upon him. COULD it be that YOU could make his sins reality, and sacrifice his Father's Will for him? Condemn him not by seeing him within the rotting prison where he sees himself. It is your special function to ensure the door be opened, that he may come forth to shine on you, and give you back the gift of freedom by receiving it of you. What is the Holy Spirit's Special Function but to release the holy Son of God from the imprisonment he made, to KEEP himself from justice? Could YOUR function be a task apart and SEPARATE from His Own?
The practical application of the Holy Spirit's purpose is extremely simple, but it IS unequivocal. In fact, in ORDER to be simple, it MUST be unequivocal. The simple is merely what is EASILY UNDERSTOOD, and for this, it is apparent that IT MUST BE CLEAR. The setting of the Holy Spirit's goal is GENERAL. Now He will work WITH you, TO MAKE IT SPECIFIC, for application IS specific. There are certain VERY specific guidelines He provides for ANY situation, but remember that you do not yet realize their universal application. Therefore, it is essential, at this point, to use them in each situation separately, until you can more safely look BEYOND each situation, in an understanding far broader than you now possess.
In any situation in which YOU are uncertain, the FIRST thing to consider, very simply, is, "What do I want to come of this? What is it FOR?" The clarification of the goal belongs at the BEGINNING, for it is this that will DETERMINE the outcome. In the ego's procedure, this is reversed. The SITUATION becomes the determiner of the outcome, WHICH CAN BE ANYTHING. The reason for this disorganized approach is evident. The ego does not know what it WANTS to come of it. It IS aware of what it does NOT want, but only that. It has no POSITIVE goal at all.
Without a clear-cut, positive goal, set at the outset, the situation just seems to happen, and makes no sense until it has ALREADY HAPPENED. Then you look BACK at it, and try to piece together what it MUST have meant. AND YOU WILL BE WRONG. Not only is your judgment IN THE PAST, but you have no idea what SHOULD have happened. No goal was set, with which to bring the means IN LINE. And now, the only judgment LEFT to make is whether or not the ego LIKES it; is it acceptable, or does it call for vengeance. The absence of a criterion for outcome, SET IN ADVANCE, makes understanding doubtful and evaluation impossible.
The value of deciding, in advance, what you WANT to happen, is simply that you will perceive the situation as a means to MAKE it happen. You will therefore make every effort to OVERLOOK what interferes with the accomplishment of your objective, and concentrate on everything that helps you meet it. It is quite noticeable that THIS approach has brought you closer to the Holy Spirit's SORTING OUT of truth and falsity. The "true" becomes what can be used to MEET the goal. The "false" becomes the useless FROM THIS POINT OF VIEW. The situation now HAS meaning, but only because the goal has MADE it meaningful.
The goal of truth has further practical advantages. If the situation is used for truth and sanity, its outcome MUST be peace. And this is quite APART from what the outcome IS. For if peace is the CONDITION of truth and sanity, and CANNOT be WITHOUT them, where peace is, they MUST be. Truth comes of itself. If you experience PEACE, it is because the truth HAS come to you. And you WILL see the outcome truly, for deception can not prevail against you. And you will RECOGNIZE the outcome, BECAUSE you are at peace. Here, again, you see the OPPOSITE of the ego's way of looking. For the EGO believes the situation BRINGS the experience. The Holy Spirit knows the situation IS as the goal determines it, and is experienced ACCORDING to the goal.
The goal of truth REQUIRES FAITH. Faith is implicit in the acceptance of the Holy Spirit's purpose. AND THIS FAITH IS ALL-INCLUSIVE. Where the goal of truth is set, there faith MUST be. The Holy Spirit sees the situation AS A WHOLE. The goal establishes the fact that EVERYONE involved in it WILL play his part in its accomplishment. THIS IS INEVITABLE. No-one will fail in anything. This SEEMS to ask for faith BEYOND you, and beyond what you can GIVE. But this is so ONLY from the viewpoint of the ego, for the ego believes in 'solving' conflicts through FRAGMENTATION, and does NOT perceive the situation as a whole. Therefore, it seeks to split off SEGMENTS of the situation and deal with them SEPARATELY. For it has faith in separation, and NOT in wholeness.
Confronted with any ASPECT of the situation which SEEMS to be difficult, the ego will attempt to TAKE THIS ASPECT ELSEWHERE, and resolve it there. And it will SEEM to be successful. Except that this attempt CONFLICTS WITH UNITY, and MUST obscure the goal of truth. And peace will not be experienced, EXCEPT in fantasy. Truth has NOT come, because faith has been DENIED, being WITHHELD from where it rightfully belonged. Thus do you LOSE the understanding of the situation the goal of truth would bring. For fantasy solutions bring but the ILLUSION of experience, and the illusion of peace is NOT the condition in which the truth can enter.
The substitutes for ASPECTS of the situation are the witnesses to your LACK of faith. They demonstrate that you did NOT believe that the solution AND THE PROBLEM were in the same place. The problem WAS this lack of faith. And it is THIS you demonstrate, when you REMOVE it from its source, and place it elsewhere. As a result, YOU DO NOT SEE THE PROBLEM. Had you not lacked the faith it COULD be solved, the PROBLEM would be gone. And the situation would have been MEANINGFUL to you, because the INTERFERENCE in the way of understanding, would have been removed. To remove the problem ELSEWHERE is to KEEP it. For you remove yourself FROM it, and MAKE it unsolvable.
It cannot be emphasized too often that CORRECTING perception is merely a temporary expedient. It is necessary ONLY because Misperception is a BLOCK to knowledge, while ACCURATE perception is a stepping-stone TOWARD it. The whole value of right perception lies in the inevitable judgment which it necessarily entails that it is UNNECESSARY. This removes the block entirely.
You may ask how this is possible as long as you appear to be living in this world. And since this is a sensible question, it has a sensible answer. But you must be careful that you really understand the question. What IS the you who are living in this world? Bill will probably have more trouble with this than you, but if he will try not to close his mind, he may decide that we are NOT engaging in denial after all.
To help him, it might be wise to review a number of the concepts with which he does not appear to have trouble, except at times. He liked the idea of invisibility, and was particularly open to the concept of different orders of reality. He also found the notion of varying densities of energy appealing. While he may yet agree that these are merely teaching aids, this is a good time to employ them.
Immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or will be, because it implies NO CHANGE AT ALL. It is not a continuum, and it is NOT understood by comparing it with any opposite. Knowledge NEVER involves comparisons. That is its essential difference from everything else the mind can grasp.
"A little knowledge" is not dangerous except to the ego. Vaguely the ego senses threat, and, being unable to realize that "a little knowledge" is a meaningless phrase because "all" and "a little" in this context are the same, decides that since "all" is impossible, the fear does not lie in this. "A little," however, is a scarcity concept, and this the ego understands well. Regarding "all" as impossible, "a little" is perceived as the real threat.
The essential thing to remember always is that the ego DOES NOT RECOGNIZE the real source of its perceived threat. And if YOU associate yourself WITH the ego, YOU do not perceive the whole situation as it really is. Only your allegiance to it gives the ego ANY power over you. We have spoken of the ego as if it were a separate thing, acting on its own. This was necessary to persuade you that you cannot dismiss it lightly, and MUST realize how much of your thinking is ego-directed. But we cannot safely leave it at that, or you will regard yourselves as necessarily conflicted as long as you are here, or more properly, BELIEVE that you are here.
The ego is nothing more than a PART of your belief about yourselves. Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate. The ratio of repression and dissociation of truth varies with the individual ego-illusion (tell Bill that phrase is VERY good), but dissociation is always involved, or you would not believe that you ARE here.
When I told Bill to concentrate on the phrase "here I am, Lord," I did not mean "in this world" by "here." I wanted him to think of himself as a separate consciousness, capable of direct communication with the Creator of that consciousness. He, too, MUST begin to think of himself as a very powerful receiving and sending channel, a description I once gave you symbolically. Remember that HE understood it before you did, because you are more dissociative and less repressed.
Your great debt to each other is something you should never forget. It is exactly the same debt that you owe to me. Whenever you react egotistically toward each other, you are throwing away the graciousness of your indebtedness and the holy perception it would produce. The reason why the term "holy" can be used here is that, as you learn how much you ARE indebted to the whole Sonship which includes me, you come as close to knowledge as perception ever can. This gap is so small knowledge can easily flow across it and obliterate it forever.
You have very little trust in me as yet, but it will increase as you turn more and more often to me instead of to your egos for guidance. The results will convince you increasingly that your choice in turning to me is the only sane one you can make. No one who has learned from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs much conditioning. The ego cannot withstand the conditioning process, because the process itself DEMONSTRATES that there is another way.
The classic conditioning by rewards model has always been most effective. Howard Hunt made a very good point in this connection, even though he did not understand that the real reason why conditioning through pain is not the most efficient method is because pain itself is an ego-illusion, and can never induce more than a temporary effect.
The rewards of God are immediately recognized as eternal. Since this recognition is made by YOU and NOT by your ego, the recognition ITSELF establishes that you and your ego CANNOT be identical. You may believe that you have already accepted the difference, but you are by no means convinced as yet. The very fact that you are preoccupied with the idea of escaping FROM the ego shows this.
You cannot escape from the ego by humbling it, or controlling it, or punishing it. The ego and the Soul DO NOT KNOW each other. The separated mind cannot maintain the separation EXCEPT by dissociating. Having done this, it utilizes repression against all truly natural impulses, not because the EGO is a separate thing, but because you want to believe that YOU are. The ego is a device for maintaining this belief, but it is still only YOUR willingness to use the device that enables it to endure.
My trust in you is greater than yours in me at the moment, but it will not always be that way. Your mission is very simple. You have been chosen to live so as to demonstrate that You are NOT an ego. I repeat that I do not choose God's channels wrongly. The Holy One shares my trust and always approves my Atonement decisions, because my will is never out of accord with His.
I have told you several times that I am in charge of the whole Atonement. This is ONLY because I completed my part in it as a man, and can now complete it through other men. My chosen receiving and sending channels cannot fail, because I will lend them MY strength as long as theirs is wanting. I will go with you to the Holy One, and through MY perception HE can bridge the little gap. Your gratitude to each OTHER is the only gift I want. I will bring it to God for you, knowing that to know your brother IS to know God.
A little knowledge is an all-encompassing thing. If you are grateful to each other you are grateful to God for what He created. Through your gratitude you can come to know each other, and one moment of real recognition makes all men your brothers because they are all of your Father. Love does not conquer all things, but it DOES set all things right.
Because you are all the Kingdom of God, I can lead you back to your own creations, which you do not yet know. God has kept them very safe in HIS knowing while your attention has wandered. Bill gave you a very important idea when he told you that what has been dissociated IS STILL THERE. I am grateful to him for that, and I hope he will not decide that it is true only for you. Even though dissociation is much more apparent in you, and repression is much more evident in him, each of you utilizes both.
Wisdom always dictates that a therapist work through WEAKER defenses first. That is why I suggested to Bill that he persuade you to deal with REPRESSION first. We have only just about reached the point where dissociation means much to you, because it is so important to your misbeliefs. Bill might do well, - and you could help him here, - to concentrate more on HIS dissociative tendencies and not try to deal with repression yet.
I hinted at this when I remarked on his habit of disengaging himself, and when I spoke to him about distantiation. These are all forms of dissociation, and these weaker forms were always more evident in him than in you. That is because dissociation was so extreme in your case that you did not have to hide it because you were not aware that it was there. Bill, on the other hand, DOES dissociate more than he thinks, and that is why he cannot listen. He does not need to go through the same course in repression that you did, because he will give up his major misdefense AFTER he has rid himself of the lesser ones.
Do not disturb yourself about repression, Bill, but DO train yourself to be alert to any tendency to withdraw from your brothers. Withdrawal is frightening, and you do not recognize all the forms it takes in you. Helen is right that she will experience things that will cut across all her perceptions because of their stunning knowledge. You were right that this will occur when she learns to recognize what she ALREADY knows and has dissociated.
You, Bill, will learn somewhat differently, because you are afraid of all complete involvements, and believe that they lessen YOU. You have learned to be so much more clear-sighted about this that you should be ready to oppose it in yourself RELATIVELY easily. As you come closer to a brother, you DO approach me, and as you withdraw from him I become distant to you.
Your giant step forward was to INSIST on a collaborative venture. This does NOT go against the true spirit of meditation at all. It is inherent IN it. Meditation is a collaborative venture with GOD. It CANNOT be undertaken successfully by those who disengage themselves from the Sonship, because they are disengaging themselves from me. God will come to you only as you will give Him to your brothers. Learn first of them, and you will be ready to hear God as you hear them. That is because the function of love is One.
How can you teach someone the value of something he has thrown away deliberately? He must have thrown it away because he did NOT value it. You can only show him how miserable he is WITHOUT it, and bring it near very slowly, so he can learn how his misery lessens as he approaches it. This conditions him to associate his misery with its ABSENCE, and to associate the OPPOSITE of misery with its presence. It gradually becomes desirable, as he changes his mind about its worth.
I am conditioning you to associate misery with the ego, and joy with your Soul. You have conditioned yourself the other way around. But a far greater reward will break through any conditioning, if it is repeatedly offered when the old habit is broken. You are still free to choose. But can you really WANT the rewards of the ego in the presence of the rewards of God?
Here is the answer to your search for peace. Here is the key to meaning in a world which seems to make no sense. Here is the way to safety in apparent dangers which appear to threaten you at every turn, and bring uncertainty to all your hopes of ever finding quietness and peace. Here are all questions answered; here the end of all uncertainty ensured at last.
The unforgiving mind is full of fear, and offers love no room to be itself; no place where it can spread its wings in peace, and soar above the turmoil of the world. The unforgiving mind is sad, without the hope of respite and release from pain. It suffers and abides in misery, peering about in darkness, seeing not, yet certain of the danger lurking there.
The unforgiving mind is torn with doubt, confused about itself and all it sees, afraid and angry, weak and blustering, afraid to go ahead, afraid to stay, afraid to waken or to go to sleep, afraid of every sound, yet more afraid of stillness; terrified of darkness, yet more terrified at the approach of light. What can the unforgiving mind perceive but its damnation? What can it behold except the proof that all its sins are real?
The unforgiving mind sees no mistakes, but only sins. It looks upon the world with sightless eyes, and shrieks as it beholds its own projections rising to attack its miserable parody of life. It wants to live, yet wishes it were dead. It wants forgiveness, yet it sees no hope. It wants escape, yet can conceive of none because it sees the sinful everywhere.
The unforgiving mind is in despair, without the prospect of a future which can offer anything but more despair. Yet it regards its judgment of the world as irreversible, and does not see it has condemned itself to this despair. It thinks it cannot change, for what it sees bears witness that its judgment is correct. It does not ask because it thinks it knows. It does not question, certain it is right.
Forgiveness is acquired. It is not inherent in a mind which cannot sin. As sin was an idea you taught yourself, forgiveness must be learned by you as well, but from a Teacher other than yourself, who represents the other Self in you. Through Him you learn how to forgive the self you think you made, and let it disappear. Thus you return your mind as one to Him Who is your Self, and Who can never sin.
Each unforgiving mind presents you with an opportunity to teach your own how to forgive itself. Each one awaits release from hell through you, and turns to you imploringly for Heaven here and now. It has no hope, but you become its hope. And as its hope do you become your own. The unforgiving mind must learn through your forgiveness that it has been saved from hell. And as you teach salvation, you will learn. Yet all your teaching and your learning will be not of you, but of the Teacher Who was given you to show the way to you.
Today we practice learning to forgive. If you are willing, you can learn today to take the key to happiness, and use it on your own behalf. We will devote ten minutes in the morning, and at night another ten, to learning how to give forgiveness and receive forgiveness too.
The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same. Yet we will try to learn today that they are one through practicing forgiving toward one whom you think of as an enemy and one whom you consider as a friend. And as you learn to see them both as one, we will extend the lesson to ourselves, and see that their escape included ours.
Begin the longer practice periods by thinking of someone you do not like, who seems to irritate you, or to cause regret in you if you should meet him; one you actively despise, or merely try to overlook. It does not matter what the form your anger takes. You probably have chosen him already. He will do.
Now close your eyes and see him in your mind, and look at him a while. Try to perceive some light in him somewhere; a little gleam which you had never noticed. Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture which you hold of him. Look at this picture until you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers him, and makes the picture beautiful and good.
Look at this changed perception for a while, and turn your mind to one you call a friend. Try to transfer the light you learned to see around your former "enemy" to him. Perceive him now as more than friend to you, for in that light his holiness shows you your Savior, saved and saving, healed and whole.
Then let him offer you the light you see in him, and let your "enemy" and Friend unite in blessing you with what you gave. Now are you one with them, and they with you. Now have you been forgiven by yourself. Do not forget, throughout the day, the role forgiveness plays in bringing happiness to every unforgiving mind, with yours among them.
Every hour tell yourself:
"Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
I will awaken from the dream that I
Am mortal, fallible, and full of sin,
And know I am the perfect Son of God."
God's Will is your salvation. Would He not have given you the means to find it? If He wills you to HAVE it, He MUST have made it possible, and very easy to obtain it.
Your brothers are everywhere. You do not have to seek far for salvation. Every minute and every second gives you a chance to save YOURSELF. Do not lose these chances, NOT because they will not return, but because delay of joy is needless. God wills you perfect happiness NOW. Is it possible that this is not also YOUR will? And is it possible that this is not ALSO the will of your brothers? Consider, then, that in this joint will, you ARE all united, and IN THIS ONLY. There WILL be disagreement on anything ELSE, but NOT in this. This, then, is where peace ABIDES. And YOU abide in peace, when you so decide.
But you cannot abide in peace unless you accept the Atonement, because the Atonement IS the way to peace. The reason is very simple, and so obvious that it is often overlooked. That is because the ego is AFRAID of the obvious, since obviousness is the essential characteristic of reality. You CANNOT overlook it, unless you are NOT LOOKING. It is PERFECTLY obvious that if the Holy Spirit looks with love on all He perceives, He looks with love on YOU. His EVALUATION of you is based on his knowledge of what you ARE, and so He evaluates you truly. And this evaluation MUST be in your mind, because HE is.
The ego is also in your mind, because you have ACCEPTED it there. ITS evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit's, because the ego does NOT love you. It is unaware of what you are, and wholly mistrustful of EVERYTHING it perceives, because its own perceptions are so shifting. The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best, and viciousness at worst. That is its range. It cannot exceed it, because of its uncertainty. And it can never go BEYOND it, because it can never BE certain.
You, then, have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your minds, and they CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE. You do not yet realize how COMPLETELY different these evaluations are, because you do not understand how lofty the Holy Spirit's perception of you really is. He is not deceived by ANYTHING you do, because He NEVER forgets what you are. The ego is deceived by EVERYTHING you do, even when you respond to the Holy Spirit, because at such times ITS CONFUSION INCREASES. The ego is, therefore, particularly likely to attack you when you react lovingly, because it has evaluated you AS UNLOVING, and you are going AGAINST ITS JUDGMENT.
The ego will begin to ATTACK your motives as soon as they become clearly out of accord with its perception of you. This is when it will shift abruptly from suspiciousness to viciousness, because its uncertainty is INCREASED. But it is surely pointless to attack in return. What can this mean, except that you are AGREEING with the ego's evaluation of what you are? If you are willing to see yourself as unloving, YOU WILL NOT BE HAPPY. You are condemning yourself, and MUST therefore regard yourself as inadequate.
Would you look to the ego to help you escape from a sense of inadequacy it has PRODUCED, and must MAINTAIN for its own existence? Can you ESCAPE from its evaluation of you, by using its methods for keeping this picture INTACT? You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from WITHIN it. Its own range precludes this. You can only GO BEYOND it, and look back from a point where SANITY exists, and SEE THE CONTRAST. Only BY this contrast, can insanity be judged as insane.
With the grandeur of God in you, you have chosen to be little, and lament your littleness. Within the system which DICTATED this choice, the lament IS inevitable. Your littleness is TAKEN FOR GRANTED there, and you do NOT ask who granted it. The question is meaningless WITHIN the ego's thought-system, because it OPENS THE WHOLE THOUGHT-SYSTEM TO QUESTION. We said before that the ego does not know what a real question is. Lack of knowledge of ANY kind is ALWAYS associated with UNWILLINGNESS to know, and produces a TOTAL lack of knowledge, simply because KNOWLEDGE is total. NOT to question your littleness is, therefore, to deny ALL knowledge, and keep the ego's WHOLE thought-system intact.
You cannot retain PART of a thought-system, because it can BE questioned only at its foundation. And this MUST be questioned from beyond it, because WITHIN it, its foundation DOES stand. The Holy Spirit judges against the reality of the ego's thought-system, merely because He knows its FOUNDATION is not true. Therefore, nothing that arises from it MEANS anything. The Holy Spirit judges every belief you hold in terms of where it comes from. If it comes from God, He knows it to be true. If it does not, He knows it is meaningless.
Whenever you question your value, say, "God Himself is incomplete without me." Remember this when the ego speaks, and you will not hear it. The truth about YOU is so lofty that nothing that is unworthy of God is worthy of you. Choose, then, what you want in these terms, and accept nothing that you would not offer to God as wholly fitting for HIM, for YOU do not want anything else. Return your part of Him, and He will give you all of Himself, in exchange for your return of what belongs to Him, and renders Him complete.
Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified perception. Partial Atonement is a meaningless idea, just as special areas of hell in Heaven is inconceivable. Accept Atonement and you are healed. Atonement is the Word of God. Accept His Word and what remains to make sickness possible? Accept His Word and every miracle has been accomplished. To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there then he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him?
The progress of the teacher of God may be slow or rapid, depending on whether he recognizes the Atonement's inclusiveness or for a time excludes some problem areas from it. In some cases, there is a sudden and complete awareness of the perfect applicability of the lesson of the Atonement to all situations. This, however, is comparatively rare. The teacher of God may have accepted the function God has given him long before he has learned all that his acceptance holds out to him. It is only the end that is certain. Anywhere along the way, the necessary realization of inclusiveness may reach him. If the way seems long, let him be content. He has decided on the direction he will take. What more is asked of him? And having done what was required, would God withhold the rest?
That forgiveness is healing needs to be understood, if the teacher of God is to make progress. The idea that a body can be sick is a central concept in the ego's thought system. This thought gives the body autonomy, separates it from the mind, and keeps the idea of attack inviolate. If the body could be sick Atonement would be impossible. A body that can order a mind to do as it sees fit could merely take the place of God and prove salvation is impossible. What then is left to heal? The body has become lord of the mind. How could the mind be returned to the Holy Spirit unless the body is killed? And who would want salvation at such a price?
Certainly sickness does not appear to be a decision. Nor would anyone actually believe he wants to be sick. Perhaps he can accept the idea in theory, but it is rarely if ever consistently applied to all specific forms of sickness, both in the individual's perception of himself and of all others as well. Nor is it at this level that the teacher of God calls forth the miracle of healing. He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the Face of Christ shining in front of him, correcting all mistakes and healing all perception. Healing is the result of the recognition, by God's teacher, of Who it is that is in need of healing. This recognition has no special reference. It is true of all things that God created. In it are all illusions healed.
When a teacher of God fails to heal, it is because he has forgotten Who he is. Another's sickness thus becomes his own. In allowing this to happen, he has identified with another's ego, and has thus confused him with a body. In so doing, he has refused to accept Atonement for himself, and can hardly offer it to his brother in Christ's Name. He will, in fact, be unable to recognize his brother at all, for his Father did not create bodies, and so he is seeing in a brother only the unreal. Mistakes do not correct mistakes, and distorted perception does not heal. Step back now, teacher of God. You have been wrong. Lead not the way, for you have lost it. Turn quickly to your Teacher, and let yourself be healed.
The offer of Atonement is universal. It is equally applicable to all individuals in all circumstances. And in it is the power to heal all individuals of all forms of sickness. Not to believe this is to be unfair to God, and thus unfaithful to Him. A sick person perceives himself as separate from God. Would you see him as separate from you? It is your task to heal the sense of separation that has made him sick. It is your function to recognize for him that what he believes about himself is not the truth. It is your forgiveness that must show him this. Healing is very simple. Atonement is received and offered. Having been received, it must be accepted. It is in the receiving, then, that healing lies. All else must follow from this single purpose.
Who can limit the power of God Himself? Who then can say who can be healed of what, and what must remain beyond God's power to forgive? This is insanity indeed. It is not up to God's teachers to set limits upon Him, because it is not up to them to judge His Son. And to judge His Son is to limit his Father. Both are equally meaningless. Yet this will not be understood until God's teacher recognizes that they are the same mistake. Herein does he receive Atonement, for he withdraws his judgment from the Son of God, accepting him as God created him. No longer does he stand apart from God, determining where healing should be given and where it should be withheld. Now can he say with God, "This is my beloved Son, created perfect and forever so."
Learning will be commensurate with motivation, and the interference in your motivation for learning, is EXACTLY the same as that which interferes with ALL your thinking. The happy learner CANNOT FEEL GUILTY ABOUT LEARNING. This is so ESSENTIAL to learning, that it should never be forgotten. The guiltless learner learns so easily, BECAUSE HIS THOUGHTS ARE FREE. But this entails the recognition that GUILT IS INTERFERENCE, NOT SALVATION, and serves NO useful function at all.
You are accustomed to using guiltlessness merely to offset the pain of guilt, and do not look upon it as having value IN ITSELF. You believe that guilt AND guiltlessness are BOTH of value, each representing an ESCAPE from what the other does NOT offer you. You do NOT want either alone, for without both, you do not see YOURSELVES as whole, and therefore happy. You are whole ONLY in your guiltlessness, and only in your guiltlessness, CAN you be happy. There IS no conflict here.
To wish for guilt in ANY way, in ANY form, will lose appreciation of the value of your guiltlessness, and push it from your sight. There is NO compromise that you can make with guilt, and escape from the pain which ONLY guiltlessness allays. Learning is living here, as creating is Being in Heaven. Whenever the pain of guilt seems to ATTRACT you, remember that, if you yield to it, you are deciding AGAINST your happiness, and will NOT learn how to be happy. Say, therefore, to yourself, gently, but with the conviction born of the love of God and of His Son:
What I experience I will make manifest.
If I am guiltless, I have nothing to fear.
I choose to testify to my ACCEPTANCE of the Atonement,
NOT FOR ITS REJECTION.
I would accept my guiltlessness by making it manifest,
and SHARING it.
Let me bring peace to God's Son from his Father.
Each day, each hour and minute, - even each second, - you are deciding between the crucifixion and the Resurrection; between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego is the choice for guilt, the Holy Spirit the decision for blamelessness. The power of decision is all that is yours. What you can decide BETWEEN is fixed, because there are no alternatives, EXCEPT truth and illusion. And there is no overlap between them, because they are opposites which CANNOT be reconciled, and CANNOT both be true. You are guilty OR guiltless, bound OR free, happy OR unhappy.
The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness, freedom, and joy. It is not a cause, but an EFFECT. It is the natural result of CHOOSING RIGHT, attesting to your happiness that comes from choosing to be FREE of guilt. Everyone you offer healing TO, returns it. Everyone you attack, KEEPS it and cherishes it, by holding it AGAINST you. Whether he DOES this, or does it not, will make no difference. YOU WILL THINK HE DOES. It is impossible to offer WHAT YOU DO NOT WANT, without this penalty. The cost of giving IS receiving. Either it is a penalty from which you suffer, or the happy purchase of a treasure to hold dear.
No penalty is ever asked of God's Son, except BY himself and OF himself. Every chance given to him to heal, is another opportunity to replace darkness with light, and fear with love. If he refuses it, he binds himself TO darkness because he did not choose to free his brother, and enter light WITH him. By GIVING power to nothing, he threw away the joyous opportunity to learn that nothing HAS no power. And, by NOT DISPELLING, darkness, HE became afraid of darkness AND of light. The joy of learning darkness has no power over the Son of God, is the happy lesson the Holy Spirit teaches, and would have YOU teach WITH Him. It is HIS joy to teach it, as it will be YOURS.
The way to teach this simple lesson is merely this; guiltlessness IS invulnerability. Therefore, make your INVULNERABILITY manifest to everyone, and teach him that, WHATEVER he may try to do to you, your perfect freedom from the belief that you can BE harmed, shows him HE is guiltless. He can do NOTHING that can hurt you, and by refusing to allow him to THINK HE CAN, you teach him that the Atonement, which you have accepted for yourself, IS ALSO HIS. THERE IS NOTHING TO FORGIVE. No-one can hurt the Son of God. His guilt is WHOLLY without cause, and, being without cause, CANNOT exist.
God is the ONLY Cause, and guilt is NOT of Him. Teach no-one he has hurt you, for, if you do, you teach YOURSELF that what is NOT of God, HAS POWER OVER YOU. THE CAUSELESS CANNOT BE. Do not attest to it, and do not foster belief in it in any mind. Remember always MIND IS ONE, and CAUSE IS ONE. You will learn communication with this Oneness ONLY when you learn to DENY the causeless, and accept the Cause of God as YOURS. The power that God has given to His Son IS his, and nothing else can His Son see, or choose to look upon, without imposing on HIMSELF the penalty of guilt, IN PLACE of all the happy teaching the Holy Spirit would gladly offer him.
Whenever you decide to make decisions FOR YOURSELF, you are thinking self-destructively, and the decision WILL BE WRONG. It will hurt you, because of the CONCEPT of decision which led to it. It is not true that you can make decisions BY yourself, or FOR yourself alone. No thought of God's Son CAN be separate, or isolated in its effects. Every decision is made for the WHOLE SONSHIP, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of. Those who accept Atonement, ARE invulnerable. But those who believe they are guilty, WILL respond to guilt, because THEY THINK IT IS SALVATION, and will NOT refuse to see it, and side WITH it. They BELIEVE that INCREASING guilt is self-PROTECTION. And they fail to understand the simple fact that, what they do NOT want, MUST hurt them.
All this arises because they do NOT believe that WHAT THEY WANT IS GOOD. Yet will was given them BECAUSE it is holy, and will bring TO them ALL that they need, coming as naturally as peace that knows no limits. There is NOTHING their wills will not provide, that offers them ANYTHING of value. But, because they do NOT understand their will, the Holy Spirit quietly understands if FOR them, and gives them what THEY will, without effort, strain, or the impossible burden of deciding WHAT THEY WANT AND NEED ALONE. It will never happen that you will have to make decisions FOR YOURSELF. You are NOT bereft of help, and HELP THAT KNOWS THE ANSWER. Would you be content with little, which is all that YOU ALONE can offer yourself, when He Who GIVES YOU EVERYTHING will simply OFFER it TO you?
He will never ask what you have done to make you worthy of the gift of God. Ask it not therefore of yourselves. Instead, accept His answer, for He KNOWS you are worthy of everything God wills FOR you. Do not try to escape the gift of God, which He so freely, and so gladly offers you. He offers you but what God gave Him FOR you. You need NOT decide whether or not you are DESERVING of it. GOD KNOWS THAT YOU ARE. Would you deny the truth of GOD'S decision, and place your pitiful appraisal of yourself, in place of His calm and unswerving value of His Son? NOTHING can shake God's conviction of the perfect purity of everything that He created, for it IS wholly pure. Do not decide AGAINST it, for being of Him it MUST be true.
Peace abides in every mind that quietly accepts the plan that GOD has set for his Atonement, RELINQUISHING HIS OWN. You know NOT of Salvation, for you do NOT understand it. Make no decisions about what it is, or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle counsel. The One Who knows the plan, of God which God would have you follow, can teach you what it IS. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you would define what Salvation is, and what you would be saved FROM. The Holy Spirit KNOWS that ALL Salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other "enemy," and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God, the Holy Spirit is your ONLY friend.
He is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you free. And it is HIS decision to undo EVERYTHING that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. Let Him, therefore, be the only guide that you would follow to Salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. WITH Him, you will not fail to learn what God wills FOR you IS your will. WITHOUT His guidance, you will think you know alone, and will decide AGAINST your peace, as surely as you made the wrong decision in ever thinking that Salvation lay in you alone. Salvation is of Him to Whom God GAVE it FOR you. He has not forgotten it. Forget HIM not, and He will make EVERY decision for you, for YOUR Salvation and the peace of God in you.
Seek not to appraise the worth of God's Son, whom He created holy, for to do so is TO EVALUATE HIS FATHER, and judge AGAINST Him. And you WILL feel guilty for this imagined "crime," which no one in this world, or Heaven, CAN POSSIBLY commit. God's Spirit teaches only that the "sin" of SELF replacement on the throne of God is NOT a source of guilt. What CANNOT happen, can have no effects to fear. Be quiet in your faith in Him, Who loves you, and would lead you out of insanity. Madness may be your CHOICE, but NOT your reality. Never forget the Love of God, Who HAS remembered you. For it is quite impossible that He could ever let His Son drop from His loving Mind, wherein he was created, and where his abode was fixed in perfect peace forever.
Say to the Holy Spirit only, "Decide for me," and it is done. For His decisions are reflections of WHAT GOD KNOWS ABOUT YOU, and in this light, error of ANY kind becomes impossible. Why would you struggle so frantically to anticipate all that you CANNOT know, when ALL knowledge lies behind EVERY decision that the Holy Spirit makes FOR YOU? Learn of His wisdom and His love, and teach His answer to everyone who struggles in the dark. For you decide for THEM AND for yourself. How gracious is it to decide all things through Him, Whose equal love is given equally to all alike. He leaves you no one OUTSIDE yourself, alone WITHOUT you. And so He gives you what is yours, because your Father would have you share it WITH him.
In everything be led by Him, and do not reconsider. Trust Him to answer quickly, surely, and with love for everyone who will be touched, in any way by the decision. And EVERYONE will be. Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring ONLY good to everyone? Would you KNOW this? You taught YOURSELVES the most unnatural habit of NOT communicating with your Creator. Yet you remain in close communication with Him, and with everything that is within Him, as it is within YOURSELF. UNlearn isolation through His loving guidance, and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown away, but could NOT lose.
Whenever you are in doubt what you should do, think of His Presence in you, and tell yourself this, and ONLY this: "He leadeth me, and knows the way, which I know not. Yet He will never KEEP from me what He would have me LEARN. And so I trust Him to communicate to me all that He knows FOR me." Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is ALREADY there.
When this is firmly understood and kept in full awareness, you will not attempt to harm yourself, nor make your body slave to vengeance. You will not attack yourself, and you will realize that to attack another is but to attack yourself. You will be free of the insane belief that to attack a brother saves yourself. And you will understand his safety is your own, and in his healing you are healed.
Perhaps at first you will not understand how mercy, limitless and with all things held in its sure protection, can be found in the idea we practice for today. It may, in fact, appear to be a sign that punishment can never be escaped because the ego, under what it sees as threat, is quick to cite the truth to save its lies. Yet must it fail to understand the truth it uses thus. But you can learn to see these foolish applications, and deny the meaning they appear to have.
Thus do you also teach your mind that you are not an ego. For the ways in which the ego would distort the truth will not deceive you longer. You will not believe you are a body to be crucified. And you will see within today's idea the light of resurrection, looking past all thoughts of crucifixion and of death to thoughts of liberation and of life.
Today's idea is one step we take in leading us from bondage to the state of perfect freedom. Let us take this step today that we may quickly go the way salvation shows us, taking every step in its appointed sequence as the mind relinquishes its burdens one by one. It is not time we need for this. It is but willingness. And what would seem to need a thousand years can easily be done in just one instant by the grace of God.
The dreary, hopeless thought that you can make attacks on others and escape yourself has nailed you to the cross. Perhaps it seemed to be salvation. Yet it merely stood for the belief the fear of God is real. And what is that but hell? Who could believe his Father is his deadly enemy, separate from him, and waiting to destroy his life and blot him from the universe, without the fear of hell upon his heart?
Such is the form of madness you believe, if you accept the fearful thought you can attack another and be free yourself. Until this form is changed, there is no hope. Until you see that this, at least, must be entirely impossible, how could there be escape? The fear of God is real to anyone who thinks this thought is true. And he will not perceive its foolishness, nor even see that it is there so that it would be possible to question it.
To question it at all, its form must first be changed at least as much as will permit fear of retaliation to abate, and the responsibility returned to some extent to you. From there you can at least consider if you want to go along this painful path. Until this shift has been accomplished, you can not perceive that it is but your thoughts which bring you fear, and your deliverance depends on you.
Our next steps will be easy, if you take this one today. From there we go ahead quite rapidly. For once you understand it is impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear of God must disappear. You do not now believe that fear is caused without. And God, Whom you had thought to banish, can be welcomed back within the holy mind He never left.
Salvation's song can certainly be heard in the idea we practice for today. If it can but be you you crucify, you did not hurt the world and need not fear its vengeance and pursuit. Nor need you hide in terror from the deadly fear of God projection hides behind. The thing you dread the most is your salvation. You are strong, and it is strength you want. And you are free, and glad of freedom. You have sought to be both weak and bound, because you feared your strength and freedom. Yet salvation lies in them.
There is an instant in which terror seems to grip your mind so wholly that escape appears quite hopeless. When you realize, once and for all, that it is you you fear, the mind perceives itself as split. And this had been concealed while you believed attack could be directed outward, and returned from outside to within. It seemed to be an enemy outside you had to fear. And thus a god outside yourself became your mortal enemy; the source of fear.
Now, for an instant, is a murderer perceived within you, eager for your death, intent on plotting punishment for you until the time when it can kill at last. Yet in this instant is the time as well in which salvation comes. For fear of God has disappeared. And you can call on Him to save you from illusions in His Love, calling Him Father and yourself His Son. Pray that the instant may be soon, - today. Step back from fear and make advance to love.
There is no Thought of God that does not go with you to help you reach that instant, and to go beyond it quickly, surely and forever. When the fear of God is gone, there are no obstacles which still remain between you and the holy peace of God. How kind and merciful is the idea we practice! Give it welcome as you should, for it is your release. It is indeed but you your mind can try to crucify. Yet your redemption, too, will come from you.
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."
It is NOT difficult to understand the reasons why you do not ask the Holy Spirit to solve ALL problems for you. HE has not a greater difficulty in resolving some than others. Every problem is the SAME to Him, because each one is solved in just the SAME respect, and through the SAME approach. The aspects that NEED solving do not change, whatever FORM the problem seems to take. A problem can appear in MANY forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts. It serves no purpose to attempt to solve it in a SPECIAL form. It WILL recur, and then recur again and yet again, until it has been answered for ALL time, and will not rise again in ANY form. And ONLY then are you RELEASED from it.
The Holy Spirit offers you release from EVERY problem that you think you have. They are the SAME to Him, because each one, regardless of the form it seems to take, is a demand that someone suffer loss, and make a sacrifice that you might gain. And, when the situation is worked out so NO-ONE loses, is the problem gone, because it was an error in perception, which now has been corrected. One mistake is NOT more difficult for Him to bring to truth than is another. For there IS but one mistake; the whole idea that loss is possible, and COULD result in gain for anyone. If THIS were true, then God WOULD be unfair; sin WOULD be possible, attack be justified, and vengeance fair. This ONE mistake, in ANY form, has ONE correction. There IS no loss; to think there IS, is a mistake.
You HAVE no problems, though you THINK you have. And yet you COULD not think so, if you saw them vanish one by one, WITHOUT regard to size, complexity, or place and time, or ANY attribute which you perceive that makes each one seem different from the rest. Think not the limits YOU impose on what you see can limit God in ANY way. The miracle of justice can correct ALL errors. Every problem IS an error. It does injustice to the Son of God, and therefore is not true. The Holy Spirit does not evaluate injustices as great or small, or more or less. They have NO properties to Him. They are mistakes from which the Son of God IS suffering, but needlessly. And so He takes the thorns and nails away. He does not pause to judge whether the hurt be large or little. He makes but one judgment; that to hurt God's Son MUST be unfair, and therefore is not so.
You who believe it safe to give but SOME mistakes to be corrected while you keep the others to yourself, remember this: Justice is total. There IS no such thing as partial justice. If the Son of God is guilty, then is he condemned, and he DESERVES no mercy from the God of justice. But ask not God to punish him because YOU find him guilty, and would have him die. God OFFERS you the means to see his innocence. Would it be fair to punish him because you will not LOOK at what is there to see? Each time you keep a problem for YOURSELF to solve, or judge that it is one which HAS no resolution, you have made it great, and past the hope of healing. You deny the miracle of justice CAN be fair.
If God is just, then CAN there be NO problems that justice cannot solve. But YOU believe that some injustices ARE fair and good, and necessary to preserve yourself. It is THESE problems that you think are great, and cannot BE resolved. For there are those you WANT to suffer loss, and NO-ONE whom you wish to be preserved from sacrifice entirely. Consider once again your special function. ONE is given you to see in him his perfect sinlessness. And you will ASK no sacrifice of him, because you could not will he suffer loss. The miracle of justice you call forth will rest on you as surely as on him. Nor will the Holy Spirit be content until it is received by everyone. For what you give to Him IS everyone's, and BY your giving it can He ensure that everyone receives it equally.
Think, then, how great your OWN release will be, when you are willing to receive correction for ALL your problems. You will not keep ONE, for pain in ANY form you will not WANT. And you will see each little hurt resolved before the Holy Spirit's gentle sight. For all of them ARE little in His sight and worth no more than just a tiny sigh before they disappear, to be forever undone and unremembered. What seemed once to be a SPECIAL problem, a mistake WITHOUT a remedy, or an affliction WITHOUT a cure, has been transformed into a universal blessing. Sacrifice is gone. And in its place, the Love of God can be remembered, and will shine away all memory of sacrifice and loss.
He cannot BE remembered until justice is loved INSTEAD of feared. He cannot be unjust to anyone or anything, because He knows that EVERYTHING that is belongs to Him, and will forever be as He created it. Nothing He loves but MUST be sinless and beyond attack. Your special function opens wide the door beyond which is the memory of His Love kept perfectly intact and undefiled. And all you need to do is but to wish that Heaven be given you instead of hell, and every bolt and barrier that seems to hold the door securely barred and locked, will merely fall away, and disappear. For it is NOT your Father's Will that you should offer or receive LESS than He gave, when He created you in perfect Love.
No-one can pay for therapy, for healing is of God and He asks for nothing. It is, however, part of His plan that everything in this world be used by the Holy Spirit to help in carrying out the plan. Even an advanced therapist has some earthly needs while he is here. Should he need money it will be given him, not in payment, but to help him better serve the plan. Money is not evil. It is nothing. But no-one here can live with no illusions, for he must yet strive to have the last illusion be accepted by everyone everywhere. He has a mighty part in this one purpose, for which he came. He stays here but for this. And while he stays he will be given what he needs to stay.
Only an unhealed healer could try to heal for money, and he will not succeed to the extent to which he values it. Nor will he find his healing in the process. There will be those of whom the Holy Spirit asks some payment for His purpose. There will be those from whom He does not ask. It should not be the therapist who makes these decisions. There is a difference between payment and cost. To give money where God's plan allots it has no cost. To withhold it from where it rightfully belongs has enormous cost. The therapist who would do this loses the name of healer, for he could never understand what healing is. He cannot give it, and so he does not have it.
The therapists of this world are indeed useless to the world's salvation. They make demands, and so they cannot give. Patients can pay only for the exchange of illusions. This, indeed, must demand payment, and the cost is great. A "bought" relationship cannot offer the only gift whereby all healing is accomplished. Forgiveness, the Holy Spirit's only dream, must have no cost. For if it does, it merely crucifies God's Son again. Can this be how he is forgiven? Can this be how the dream of sin will end?
The "right to live" is something no-one need fight for. It is promised him, and guaranteed by God. Therefore it is a right the therapist and patient share alike. If their relationship is to be holy, whatever one needs is given by the other; whatever one lacks the other supplies. Herein is the relationship made holy, for herein both are healed. The therapist repays the patient in gratitude, as does the patient repay him. There is no cost to either. But thanks are due to both, for the release from long imprisonment and doubt. Who would not be grateful for such a gift? Yet who could possibly imagine that it could be bought?
It has well been said that to him who hath shall be given. Because he has, he can give. And because he gives, he shall be given. This is the law of God, and not of the world. So it is with God's healers. They give because they have heard His Word and understood it. All that they need will thus be given them. But they will lose this understanding unless they remember that all they have comes only from God. If they believe they need anything from a brother, they will recognize him as a brother no longer. And if they do this, a light goes out even in Heaven. Where God's Son turns against himself, he can look only upon darkness. He has himself denied the light, and cannot see.
One rule should always be observed: No-one should be turned away because he cannot pay. No-one is sent by accident to anyone. Relationships are always purposeful. Whatever their purpose may have been before the Holy Spirit entered them, they are always His potential temple; the resting place of Christ and home of God Himself. Whoever comes has been sent. Perhaps he was sent to give his brother the money he needed. Both will be blessed thereby. Perhaps he was sent to teach the therapist how much he needs forgiveness, and how valueless is money in comparison. Again will both be blessed. Only in terms of cost could one have more. In sharing, everyone must gain a blessing without cost.
This view of payment may well seem impractical, and in the eyes of the world it would be so. Yet not one worldly thought is really practical. How much is gained by striving for illusions? How much is lost by throwing God away? And is it possible to do so? Surely it is impractical to strive for nothing, and to attempt to do what is impossible. Then stop a while, long enough to think of this: You have perhaps been seeking for salvation without recognizing where to look. Whoever asks your help can show you where. What greater gift than this could you be given? What greater gift is there that you would give?
Physician, healer, therapist, teacher, heal thyself. Many will come to you carrying the gift of healing, if you so elect. The Holy Spirit never refuses an invitation to enter and abide with you. He will give you endless opportunities to open the door to your salvation, for such is His function. He will also tell you exactly what your function is in every circumstance and at all times. Whoever He sends you will reach you, holding out his hand to his Friend. Let the Christ in you bid him welcome, for that same Christ is in him as well. Deny him entrance, and you have denied the Christ in you. Remember the sorrowful story of the world, and the glad tidings of salvation. Remember the plan of God for the restoration of joy and peace. And do not forget how very simple are the ways of God:
You were lost in the darkness of the world until you asked for light. And then God sent His Son to give it to you.
You who have spent your lives in bringing truth to illusion, reality to fantasy, HAVE walked the way of dreams. For you have gone from waking to sleeping, and on and on to a yet deeper sleep. Each dream has led to other dreams, and every fantasy that SEEMED to bring a light into the darkness but made the darkness deeper. Your GOAL was darkness, in which no ray of light could enter. And you sought a blackness so complete that you could hide from truth forever, in complete insanity. What you forgot was simply that God can NOT destroy Himself. The light is IN you. Darkness can COVER it, but CANNOT put it out.
As the light comes nearer, you WILL rush to darkness, shrinking from the truth, sometimes retreating to the lesser forms of fear, and sometimes to stark terror. But you WILL advance, because your goal IS the advance from fear to truth. YOU KNOW THIS. The goal which you accepted IS the goal of knowledge, for which you signified your willingness. Fear seems to live in darkness. WHEN you are afraid, YOU HAVE STEPPED BACK. Let us then join quickly in an instant of light, and it will be enough to remind you that your goal IS light. Truth has rushed to meet you, since YOU called upon it.
If you knew Who walks beside you on THIS way, which YOU have chosen, fear would be impossible. You do NOT know, because the journey into darkness has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it. A little flicker of your eyelids, closed so long, has not yet been sufficient to give you confidence in yourselves, so long despised. You go TOWARD love, still hating it, and TERRIBLY afraid of its judgment upon you. And you do NOT realize that you are NOT afraid of love, but only OF WHAT YOU MADE OF IT.
You are advancing to love's MEANING, and away from ALL illusions in which you have surrounded it. When you retreat to the illusions, YOUR FEAR INCREASES, for there is little doubt that what YOU think it means IS fearful. But what is that to us who travel surely and very swiftly AWAY from fear? You who hold each other's hand also hold mine, for when you joined each other you were not alone. Do you believe that I would LEAVE you in the darkness you agreed to leave with ME? In your relationship is this world's light. And fear MUST disappear before you now.
Be tempted not to snatch away the gift of faith you offered to each other. You will succeed only in frightening yourselves. The gift is given forever, for God Himself received it. You CANNOT take it back. YOU HAVE ACCEPTED GOD. The holiness of your relationship is established in Heaven. You do not realize WHAT you accepted, but remember that your understanding is NOT necessary. All that was necessary was merely the WISH to understand. That wish was the DESIRE TO BE HOLY. The will of God IS granted you. For you desire the only thing you ever had, or ever were.
Each instant that we spend together will teach you that this goal is possible, and will strengthen your DESIRE to reach it. And in your desire, lies its accomplishment. YOUR desire is now in COMPLETE accord with all the power of the Holy Spirit's Will. No little faltering footsteps that you may take can separate your desire from His Will, and from His STRENGTH. I hold your hand as surely as you agreed to take each other's. YOU WILL NOT SEPARATE for I stand with you, and walk with you in your advance to truth. And where we go we carry God with us.
In your relationship, you have joined with me in bringing Heaven to the Son of God, who hid in darkness. You have been willing to bring the darkness to light, and this willingness has given strength to everyone who would REMAIN in darkness. Those who would see WILL see. And they will join with me in carrying THEIR light into the darkness, when the darkness in them is OFFERED to the light, and is removed forever. My need for you, joined with me in the holy light of your relationship, is YOUR need for salvation. Would I not give you what you gave to me? For when you joined each other, you answered ME.
You who are now the bringers of salvation have the function of bringing light to darkness. The darkness in you HAS been brought to light. Carry it back TO darkness, from the holy instant to which you BROUGHT it. We are made whole in our desire to make whole. Let not time worry you, for all the fear that you experience is really past. Time has been re-adjusted to help us do, together, what your separate pasts would hinder. You have gone PAST fear, for no two minds can JOIN in the desire for love without love's joining THEM.
Not one light in Heaven but goes with you. Not one ray that shines forever in the Mind of God but shines on you. Heaven is JOINED with you in your advance to Heaven. When such great light has joined with you to give the little spark of your desire the power of God Himself, can YOU remain in darkness? You are coming home together, after a long and meaningless journey which you undertook apart, and which led nowhere. You have FOUND each other, and will light each other's way. And from this light will the Great Rays extend back into darkness and forward unto God, to shine away the past and so make room for His Eternal Presence, in which everything is radiant in the light.
The world as YOU perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is NOT as you see it. God created ONLY the eternal, and everything YOU see is perishable. Therefore, there must be another world which you do NOT see. The Bible speaks of a NEW Heaven and a NEW earth, yet this cannot be literally true, for the eternal are not RE-created. To PERCEIVE anew is merely to perceive again, implying that before YOU WERE NOT PERCEIVING AT ALL. What, then, is the world that awaits your perception WHEN YOU SEE IT? Every loving thought that the Son of God ever had is eternal. Those which his mind perceived in this world are the world's only reality. They are still perceptions, because he still believes that he is separate, yet they are eternal, because they are loving. And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die.
The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM. The ego sees SOME good, but never ONLY good. That is WHY its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for this you could not accept, but it always ADDS something that is NOT real TO the real, thus CONFUSING ILLUSION AND REALITY. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth AND illusion you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE.
To establish your PERSONAL autonomy, you tried to create UNLIKE your Father, BELIEVING what you made to be capable of BEING unlike Him. Yet everything in what you have made that IS true, IS like Him. Only this is the real world, and perceiving ONLY this will lead you to the real Heaven because IT WILL MAKE YOU CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING IT. The perception of goodness is not knowledge, but the denial of the OPPOSITE of goodness enables you to perceive a condition in which opposites do not exist. And this IS the condition of knowledge. WITHOUT this awareness, you have NOT met its conditions, and until you do you will not know that it is yours already.
You have made many ideas which you have placed between yourselves and your Creator, and these beliefs are the world as YOU perceive it. Truth is not absent here, but it IS obscure. You do not know the difference between what you have made, and what God created, and so you do not know the difference between what you have made, and what YOU have created. To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself. You CAN know God, because it is His Will to BE known. The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you, out of what you have made, and to perceive only this is salvation, because it is the recognition that reality is ONLY WHAT IS TRUE.
This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. BUT DO YOU BELIEVE IT? When you have perceived the real world, you will recognize that you did NOT believe it. But the swiftness with which your new and ONLY real perception will be translated into knowledge, will leave you only an instant to realize that this judgment is true. And then everything you made will be forgotten, the good and the bad, the false and the true. For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction, but its TRANSLATION into Heaven. The RE-INTERPRETATION of the world is the transfer of ALL perception to knowledge.
The Bible tells you to become as little children. Little children recognize that they do not understand what they perceive, and so they ASK WHAT IT MEANS. Do not make the mistake of believing that YOU understand what YOU perceive, for its meaning IS lost to you. But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away. As long as you THINK YOU KNOW its meaning, you will see no need to ask it OF Him. You do not know the meaning of ANYTHING you perceive. NOT ONE THOUGHT YOU HOLD IS WHOLLY TRUE.
The recognition of this is your firm beginning. You are not misguided; you have accepted no guide at all. Instruction in perception is your great need, FOR YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING. RECOGNIZE this, but do not accept it, for understanding is your inheritance. Perceptions are learned, and you are not without a Teacher. But your willingness to learn of Him depends on your willingness to question EVERYTHING you have learned OF YOURSELF, for you who have learned amiss should not be your own teachers. No-one can withhold truth, except from himself. Yet God will not refuse the answer He GAVE you. Ask, then, for what is yours, but which you did NOT make, and do not defend yourself AGAINST truth.
YOU made the problem which God HAS answered. Ask yourselves, therefore, but one simple question; "Do I want the problem or do I want the answer?" Decide for the answer, and you WILL have it, for you will see it as it is, and it is yours already. You complain that this course is not sufficiently specific for you to understand it AND USE IT. Yet it has been VERY specific, and YOU HAVE NOT DONE WHAT IT SPECIFICALLY ADVOCATES. This is not a course in the play of ideas, but in their PRACTICAL APPLICATION. Nothing could be more specific than to be told very clearly, that if you ask you WILL receive.
The Holy Spirit will answer EVERY specific problem, as long as you believe that problems ARE specific. His answer is both many and one, as long as you believe that the One IS many. Realize that YOU ARE AFRAID OF HIS SPECIFICITY, for fear of what you think it will DEMAND of you. Yet only by asking will you learn that nothing that is of God demands ANYTHING of you. God GIVES; He does NOT take. You are refusing to ask, because you believe that asking is TAKING, and you do not perceive it as sharing. The Holy Spirit will give you only what is yours, and will take nothing in return. For what is yours IS everything, and you share it WITH God. This IS its reality. Would the Holy Spirit, Who wills only to RESTORE, be capable of MISinterpreting the question you must ask to learn His answer?
You HAVE heard the answer, but you have misunderstood the QUESTION. You have believed that to ask for guidance of the Holy Spirit, IS TO ASK FOR DEPRIVATION. Little children of God, you do not understand your Father. You believe in a world that takes because you believe that you can get by taking. But BY that perception, you have lost sight of the real world. You are afraid of the world AS YOU SEE IT, but the real world is still yours for the asking. Do not deny it TO yourself, for it can ONLY free you. Nothing of God will enslave His Son, whom He created free and whose freedom is protected by HIS Being.
Blessed are you who will ask the truth of God without fear, for only thus can you learn that His answer IS the release from fear. Beautiful Child of God, you are asking only for what I promised you. Do you believe I would DECEIVE you? The Kingdom of Heaven IS within you. Believe that the truth is in me, for I KNOW that it is in YOU. God's Sons have nothing which they do not share. Ask for truth of any Son of God, and you have asked it of me. No one of us but has the answer in him, to give to anyone who asks it OF him. Ask anything of God's Son, and His Father will answer you, for Christ is not deceived in His Father and His Father is not deceived in Him.
Do not, then, be deceived in your brother, and see only his loving thoughts as his reality, for by denying that his mind is split, YOU WILL HEAL YOURS. Accept him as his Father accepts him, and heal him unto Christ, for Christ is his healing AND YOURS. Christ is the Son of God Who is in no way separate from His Father, Whose EVERY thought is as loving as the Thought of His Father, by which He was created. Be not deceived in God's Son, for thereby you MUST be deceived in yourself. And being deceived in yourself you ARE deceived in your Father, in Whom no deceit is possible.
In the real world, there is no sickness, for there is no separation and no division. Only loving thoughts are recognized, and because no-one is without YOUR help, the Help of God goes with YOU everywhere. As you become willing to ACCEPT this Help BY ASKING FOR IT, you will give it BECAUSE YOU WANT IT. Nothing will be beyond your healing power, because nothing will be denied your simple request. What problems will not disappear in the presence of God's answer? Ask, then, to learn of the reality of your brother BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT YOU WILL PERCEIVE IN HIM, and you will see YOUR beauty reflected in HIM.
Do not accept your brother's variable perception of himself, for his split mind is yours, and you will not accept YOUR healing without his. For you share the real world as you share Heaven, and his healing IS yours. To love yourself is to HEAL yourself, and you cannot perceive part of you as sick and achieve your OWN goal. Brother, we heal together as we live together, and love together. Be not deceived in God's Son, for he is one with himself, and One with his Father. Love him who is beloved of His Father, and you will learn of the Father's Love for YOU.
If you perceive offense in a brother, pluck the offense from your mind, for you are offended by Christ, and are deceived in Him. HEAL in Christ and be not offended by Him, for there is no offense IN Him. If what you perceive offends you, you are offended in YOURSELF, and are condemning God's Son, whom God condemneth not. Let the Holy Spirit remove ALL offense of God's Son against himself and perceive no-one but through HIS guidance, for He would save you from ALL condemnation. Accept His healing power, and use it for all He sends you, for He wills to heal the Son of God in whom He is not deceived.
Children perceive terrifying ghosts and monsters and dragons, and they are terrified. But if they ask someone they trust for the REAL meaning of what they perceive, and are willing to LET THEIR INTERPRETATIONS GO IN FAVOR OF REALITY, their fear goes with them. When a child is helped to translate his "ghost" into a curtain, his "monster" into a shadow and his "dragon" into a dream, he is no longer afraid, and laughs happily at his own fear. You, my children, are afraid of your brothers, and of your Father and of YOURSELVES. But you are merely DECEIVED in them.
Ask what they ARE of the Teacher of Reality, and hearing His answer, you too will laugh at your fears and replace them with peace. For fear lies not in reality, but in the minds of children who do not UNDERSTAND it. It is only their LACK OF UNDERSTANDING that frightens them, and when they learn to perceive truly, they are not afraid. And because of this, they will ask for truth again, when they are frightened. It is not the REALITY of your brothers, or your Father, or yourself which frightens you. You do not know what they ARE, and so YOU perceive them as ghosts and monsters and dragons.
ASK of their reality from the One Who knows it, and He will tell you what they are. For you do NOT understand them, and because you are deceived by what you see, you NEED reality to dispel your fears. Would you not exchange your fears for truth if the exchange is yours for the asking? For if God is not deceived in you, you can be deceived only in YOURSELF. But you can learn the truth of yourself of the Holy Spirit, Who will teach you that, as part of God, deceit in YOU is impossible. When you perceive yourself without deceit, you will accept the real world in place of the false one you have made. And then your Father will lean down to you, and take the last step for you, by raising you unto Himself.
You WILL attack what does not satisfy, and thus you will not see you made it up. You ALWAYS fight illusions. For the truth behind them is so lovely and so still in loving gentleness, were you AWARE of it, you would forget defensiveness entirely, and rush to its embrace. The truth could never BE attacked. And this you knew when you made idols. They were made that this might be forgotten. You attack but FALSE ideas, and NEVER truthful ones. All idols ARE the false ideas you made to fill the gap you think arose between yourself and what is true. And you attack them for the things you think they REPRESENT. What lies BEYOND them cannot BE attacked.
The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children's toys. A child IS frightened when a wooden head springs up as a closed box is opened suddenly. Or when a soft and silent wooly bear begins to squeak as he takes hold of it. The rules he made for boxes and for bears have failed him, and have broken his control of what surrounds him. And he is afraid because he thought the rules PROTECTED him. Now must he learn the boxes and the bears did NOT deceive him, broke no rules, nor mean his world is made chaotic and unsafe. HE WAS MISTAKEN. He misunderstood what MADE him safe, and thought that it had left.
The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless forms. And each one seems to break the rules you set for it. It never WAS the thing you thought. It MUST appear to break your rules for safety, since the RULES are wrong. But YOU are not endangered. You can laugh at popping heads and squeaking toys, as does the child who learns they are no threat to him. But while he likes to play with them, he still perceives them as obeying rules he made for his enjoyment. So there still are rules which they can seem to break, and frighten him. Yet IS he at the mercy of his toys? And CAN they represent a threat to him?
Reality observes the laws of God, and NOT the rules you set. It is His laws which GUARANTEE your safety. All illusions that you believe about yourself obey NO laws. They seem to dance a little while, according to the rules you set for them. But then they fall, and cannot rise again. They are but toys, my children. Do not grieve for them. Their dancing never brought you joy, but neither were they things to frighten you, nor make you safe if they obeyed your rules. They must be neither cherished NOR attacked, but merely looked upon as children's toys, without a SINGLE meaning of their own. See ONE in them, and you will see them all. See NONE in them, and they will touch you not.
Appearances deceive BECAUSE they are appearances, and not reality. Dwell not on them in ANY form. They but OBSCURE reality. And they bring fear BECAUSE they hide the truth. Do not attack what you have made to LET you be deceived. For thus you prove that you HAVE BEEN deceived. Attack HAS power to make illusions real. Yet what it makes is nothing. Who could be made fearful by a power that can have no REAL effects at all? What could it BE but an illusion, making things appear like to itself? Look calmly at its toys, and understand that they are idols which but dance to vain desires. Give them not your worship, for they are not there. But this is EQUALLY forgotten in attack.
God's Son needs NO defense against his dreams. His idols do not threaten him at all. His ONE mistake is that he thinks them real. What can the power of illusions DO? Appearances can but deceive the mind that WANTS to be deceived. And you can make a simple choice that will forever place you far BEYOND deception. You need not concern yourself with HOW this will be done, for this you CANNOT understand. But you WILL understand that mighty changes have been quickly brought about, when you decide one very simple thing; you do not WANT whatever you believe an idol gives. For thus the Son of God declares that he is free of idols. And thus IS he free.
Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be EXCEPT a happy dream? For you are asked but to forgive all things that no-one ever did; to overlook what is not there; and not to look upon the unreal as reality. You are but asked to let your will be done, and seek no longer for the things you do not want. And you are asked to let yourself be free of all the dreams of what you never were, and seek no more to substitute the strength of idle wishes for the Will of God. Here does the dream of separation start to fade and disappear. For here the gap that is not there begins to be perceived without the toys of terror that you made.
No more than this is asked. Be glad indeed salvation asks so little, NOT so much. It asks for NOTHING in reality. And even in illusions it but asks forgiveness be the substitute for fear. Such is the ONLY rule for happy dreams. The gap is emptied of the toys of fear, and then its unreality is plain. Dreams are for nothing. And the Son of God CAN have no need of them. They offer him no single thing that he could ever want. He is DELIVERED from illusions by his will, and but restored to what he IS. What could God's plan for his salvation BE, except a means to give him to Himself?
The one remaining problem that you have is that you see an interval between the TIME when you forgive, and will receive the benefits of trust. This but reflects the little you would keep between YOURSELVES, that you might be a LITTLE separate. For time and space are ONE illusion, which takes different forms. If it has been projected BEYOND your minds, you think of it as time. The nearer it is brought to where it IS, the more you think of it in terms of space. There is a DISTANCE you would keep apart from one another. And this space you see as time, because you still believe you are EXTERNAL to each other. This makes trust impossible. And you can NOT believe that trust would settle every problem NOW.
Thus do you think it SAFER to remain a LITTLE careful and a LITTLE watchful of interests perceived as separate. From this perception, you can not conceive of gaining what forgiveness offers NOW. The interval you think lies in between the giving and receiving of the gift SEEMS to be one in which you sacrifice, and suffer loss. You see EVENTUAL salvation; not IMMEDIATE results. Salvation IS immediate. Unless you so perceive it, you WILL be afraid of it, believing that the risk of loss is great between the time its PURPOSE is made yours, and its EFFECTS will come to you. In this form is the error still obscured that is the SOURCE of fear. Salvation WOULD wipe out the space you see between you still, and let you INSTANTLY become as one. And it is HERE you fear the loss would lie.
Do not project this fear to time, for time is NOT the enemy that you perceive. Time is as neutral as the body is, except in terms of what you see it FOR. If you would keep a little SPACE between you still, you want a little TIME in which forgiveness is withheld a little while. This makes the interval BETWEEN the time in which forgiveness is withheld and given seem dangerous, with terror justified. But SPACE between you is apparent NOW, and cannot BE perceived in future time. No more can it be OVERLOOKED, except within the present. FUTURE loss is not your fear. But PRESENT joining IS your dread.
Who can feel desolation except NOW? A FUTURE cause as yet HAS no effects. And therefore MUST it be that, if you fear, there is a PRESENT cause. And it is THIS that needs correction, NOT a future state. The plans YOU make for safety all are laid within the future, where you CANNOT plan. No purpose has been GIVEN it as yet, and what WILL happen has as yet no cause. Who can predict effects without a cause? And who could fear effects UNLESS he thought they had BEEN caused and judged disastrous NOW? Belief in sin arouses fear, and like its cause, is looking forward; looking back, but OVERLOOKING what is here and now.
Yet only here and now its cause must be, if its effects ALREADY have been judged as fearful. And, in overlooking THIS, is it protected and kept separate from healing. For a miracle is NOW. It stands ALREADY there, in present grace, within the only interval of time which sin and fear have overlooked, but which is all there IS to time. The working out of ALL correction takes no time at all. But the ACCEPTANCE of the working out can SEEM to take forever. The change of purpose the Holy Spirit brought to your relationship has IN it all effects that you will see. They can be looked at NOW. Why wait 'til they unfold in time, and fear they may NOT come, although already THERE?
You have been told that everything brings good that comes from God. And yet it SEEMS as if this is not so. Good in disaster's form is difficult to credit in advance. Nor is there really SENSE in this idea. Why SHOULD the good appear in evil's form? And is this not deception if it does? Its CAUSE is here, if it appears at all. Why are not its effects apparent, then? Why in the future? And you seek to be content with sighing, and with "reasoning," you do not understand it now, but WILL some day. And THEN its meaning will be clear. This is NOT reason, for it is unjust, and clearly hints at punishment until the time of liberation is at hand.
Given a change of purpose for the good, there is NO reason for an interval in which disaster strikes, to be perceived as good some day, but now in form of pain. This is a SACRIFICE of now, which COULD not be the cost the Holy Spirit asks for what he gave WITHOUT a cost at all. Yet this illusion has a cause which, though untrue, must be ALREADY in your mind. And THIS illusion is but one effect which it engenders, and one form in which its outcome is perceived. This interval in time, when retribution is perceived to be the form in which the good appears, is but one aspect of the little space that lies between you, unforgiven still.
Be not content with future happiness. It has NO meaning, and is NOT your just reward. For you have cause for freedom NOW. What profits freedom in a prisoner's form? Why SHOULD deliverance be disguised as death? Delay is senseless, and the reason that would maintain effects of PRESENT cause must be delayed until a FUTURE time is merely a denial of the fact that consequence and cause MUST come as one. Look not to time, but to the little space between you still, to be delivered FROM. And do not let it be DISGUISED as time, and so preserved BECAUSE its form is changed, and what it IS cannot be recognized. The Holy Spirit's purpose NOW is yours. Should not His happiness be yours as well?
The first obstacle that peace must flow across is YOUR desire to get RID of it. For it cannot extend, UNLESS you keep it. YOU are the center from which it radiates outward, to call the others IN. You are its home; its tranquil dwelling-place, from which it gently reaches out, but NEVER leaving YOU. If YOU would make it homeless, how can it abide within the Son of God? If it would spread across the whole creation, it MUST begin with you. And, FROM you, reach to everyone who calls, and bring him rest by JOINING you.
Why would you want peace homeless? What do you think that it must DISPOSSESS, to dwell in you? What SEEMS to be the cost you are so unwilling to pay? The little barriers of sand still stand between you. Would you reinforce them NOW? You are NOT asked to let them go for yourselves alone. Christ asks it of you, for HIMSELF. He would bring peace to everyone. And how can He do this, EXCEPT through you? Would you let a little bank of sand, a wall of dust, a tiny seeming barrier stand between your brothers and salvation?
And yet it IS this little remnant of attack you cherish still against each other, that is the first obstacle the peace in you encounters, in its going forth. This little wall of hatred would STILL oppose the Will of God, and keep It limited. The Holy Spirit's purpose rests in peace within you. Yet you are STILL unwilling to let it JOIN you wholly. You still oppose the Will of God, just by a little. But that little IS a limit you would place upon the whole. God's Will is One, NOT many. It HAS no opposition, for there is none BESIDE It.
What you would still contain behind your little barrier, and keep SEPARATE from each other, is mightier than the universe. For it would HOLD BACK the universe AND ITS CREATOR. This little wall would hide the purpose of Heaven, and keep it FROM Heaven. Would you thrust salvation AWAY from the GIVER of salvation? For such have YOU become. Peace could no more DEPART from you than from God. Fear not this little obstacle. It can NOT contain the Will of God. Peace WILL flow across it, and join you WITHOUT hindrance.
Salvation cannot BE withheld from you. It IS your purpose. You CANNOT will APART from this. You HAVE no purpose apart from each other, nor apart from the one you asked the Holy Spirit to SHARE with you. The little wall will fall away so quietly, beneath the wings of peace! For it will send its messengers from you to all the world. And barriers will fall away before their coming, as easily as those which YOU would interpose will be surmounted. To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall. For in the miracle of YOUR relationship, WITHOUT this barrier, is EVERY miracle contained.
There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they ARE all the same. Each is a gentle WINNING OVER, from the appeal of guilt to the appeal of love. How can this FAIL to be accomplished, WHEREVER it is undertaken? Guilt can raise no REAL barriers against it. And all that seems to stand between you MUST fall away, because of the appeal YOU answered. And from you who answered, He Who answered you would call. His home is in your holy relationship. Do not attempt to stand BETWEEN Him and His holy purpose, for it IS yours. But let Him quietly EXTEND the miracle of your relationship to everyone CONTAINED in it, as it was given.
There is a hush in Heaven, a happy expectancy, a little pause of gladness, in acknowledgment of the journey's end. For Heaven knows you well, as you know Heaven. No illusions stand between you. Look not upon the little wall of shadows. The sun has risen OVER it. How can a shadow KEEP you from the sun? No more can YOU be kept by shadows from the light in which illusions end. EVERY miracle is but the end of an illusion. Such was the journey; such its ending. And in the goal of truth, which YOU ACCEPTED, must ALL illusions end.
The little, insane wish to get rid of Him Whom you invited IN, and push Him OUT, MUST produce conflict. As you look upon the world, this little wish, uprooted and floating aimlessly, can land and settle briefly upon ANYTHING. For it HAS no purpose now. BEFORE the Holy Spirit entered to abide with you, it SEEMED to have a MIGHTY purpose; the fixed and unchangeable dedication to sin and its results. Now it is aimless, wandering pointlessly, causing no more than tiny interruptions in love's appeal.
This feather of a wish, this tiny illusion, this microscopic remnant of the belief in sin, is all that remains of what once SEEMED to be the world. It is no longer an unrelenting barrier to peace. Its pointless wandering makes its results APPEAR to be more erratic and unpredictable than before. Yet what COULD be more unstable than a tightly-organized delusional system? Its SEEMING stability is its pervasive WEAKNESS, which extends to EVERYTHING. The VARIABILITY which the little remnant induces, merely indicates its LIMITED results.
How mighty can a little feather be, before the great wings of truth? Can it oppose an eagle's flight, or hinder the advance of summer? Can it interfere with the EFFECTS of summer's sun upon a garden covered by the snow? See but how easily this little wisp is lifted up and carried away, never to return. And part with it in gladness, not regret. For it is nothing in itself, and STOOD FOR nothing when you had greater faith in its protection. Would you not rather greet the summer sun, than fix your gaze upon a disappearing snowflake, and shiver in remembrance of the winter's cold?
Today we practice differently, and take a stand against our anger, that our fears may disappear and offer room to love. Here is salvation in the simple words in which we practice with today's idea. Here is the answer to temptation which can never fail to welcome in the Christ where fear and anger had prevailed before. Here is Atonement made complete, the world passed safely by and Heaven now restored. Here is the Answer of the Voice of God.
Complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind. But part of it is now unnatural. It does not look on everything as one. It sees instead but fragments of the whole, for only thus could it invent the partial world you see. The purpose of all seeing is to show you what you wish to see. All hearing but brings to your mind the sounds it wants to hear.
Thus were specifics made. And now it is specifics we must use in practicing. We give them to the Holy Spirit that He may employ them for a purpose which is different from the one we gave to them. Yet He can use but what we made to teach us from a different point of view, so we can see a different use in everything.
One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? What can they seem to be but empty sounds, pretty, perhaps; correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all-encompassing. We need to see a little that we learn a lot.
It seems to be the body we feel limits our freedom, makes us suffer and at last puts out our life. Yet bodies are but symbols of a concrete form of fear. Fear without symbols calls for no response, for symbols can stand for the meaningless. Love needs no symbols, being true. But fear attaches to specifics, being false.
Bodies attack, but minds do not. This thought is surely reminiscent of our text, where it is often emphasized. This is the reason bodies easily become fear's symbols. You have many times been urged to look beyond the body, for its sight presents the symbol of love's "enemy" Christ's vision does not see. The body is the target for attack, for no one thinks he hates a mind. Yet what but mind directs the body to attack? What else could be the seat of fear except what thinks of fear?
Hate is specific. There must be a thing to be attacked. An enemy must be perceived in such a form he can be touched and seen and heard, and ultimately killed. When hatred rests upon a thing, it calls for death as surely as God's Voice proclaims there is no death. Fear is insatiable, consuming everything its eyes behold; seeing itself in everything; compelled to turn upon itself and to destroy.
Who sees a brother as a body sees him as fear's symbol. And he will attack because what he beholds is his own fear external to himself, poised to attack, and howling to unite with him again. Mistake not the intensity of rage projected fear must spawn. It shrieks in wrath, and claws the air in frantic hope it can reach to its maker and devour him.
This do the body's eyes behold in one whom Heaven cherishes, the angels love, and God created perfect. This is his reality. And in Christ's vision is his loveliness reflected in a form so holy and so beautiful that you could scarce refrain from kneeling at his feet. Yet you will take his hand instead, for you are like him in the sight which sees him thus. Attack on him is enemy to you, for you will not perceive that in his hands is your salvation. Ask him but for this, and he will give it to you. Ask him not to symbolize your fear. Would you request that love destroy itself? Or would you have it be revealed to you and set you free?
Today we practice in a form we have attempted earlier. Your readiness is closer now, and you will come today nearer Christ's vision. If you are intent on reaching it, you will succeed today. And once you have succeeded, you will not be willing to accept the witnesses your body's eyes call forth. What you will see will sing to you of ancient melodies you will remember. You are not forgot in Heaven. Would you not remember it?
Select one brother, symbol of the rest, and ask salvation of him. See him first as clearly as you can, in that same form to which you are accustomed. See his face, his hands and feet, his clothing. Watch him smile, and see familiar gestures which he makes so frequently. Then think of this; what you are seeing now conceals from you the sight of one who can forgive you all your sins; whose sacred hands can take the nails which pierce your own away, and lift the crown of thorns which you have placed upon your bleeding head. Ask this of him that he may set you free:
"Give me your blessing, holy Son of God,
I would behold you with the eyes of Christ,
And see my perfect sinlessness in you."
And He will answer Whom you called upon, for He will hear the Voice of God in you, and answer in your own. Behold him now whom you had seen as merely flesh and bone, and recognize that Christ has come to you. Today's idea is your safe escape from anger and from fear. Be sure you use it instantly, should you be tempted to attack a brother and perceive in him the symbol of your fear. And you will see him suddenly transformed from enemy to Savior; from the devil into Christ.
No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is.
You may believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. Yet can truth have exceptions? If you have the gift of everything can loss be real? Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where love and perfect holiness abide?
Truth must be all-inclusive if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposite and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. Without the first the second has no meaning, but without the second is the first no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This can not be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false, and truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false.
This is the simplest of distinctions, yet the most obscure. But not because it is a difficult distinction to perceive. It is concealed behind a vast array of choices which do not appear to be entirely your own. And thus the truth appears to have some aspects which belie consistency, but do not seem to be but contradictions introduced by you.
As God created you, you must remain unchangeable with transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind, in all awareness and in all response. This is the all-inclusiveness which sets the truth apart from falsehood, and the false kept separate from the truth as what it is.
Is it not strange that you believe to think you made the world you see is arrogance? God made it not. Of this you can be sure. What can He know of the ephemeral, the sinful and the guilty, the afraid, the suffering and lonely, and the mind which lives within a body that must die? You but accuse Him of insanity to think He made a world where such things seem to have reality. He is not mad. Yet only madness makes a world like this.
To think that God made chaos, contradicts His Will, invented opposites to truth, and suffers death to triumph over life, all this is arrogance. Humility would see at once these things are not of Him. And can you see what God created not? To think you can is merely to believe you can perceive what God willed not to be. And what could be more arrogant than this?
Let us today be truly humble, and accept what we have made as what it is. The power of decision is our own. Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear. What rises to awareness then will be all that there ever was, eternally as it is now. And it will take the place of self deceptions made but to usurp the altar to the Father and the Son.
Today we practice true humility, abandoning the false pretense by which the ego seeks to prove it arrogant. Only the ego can be arrogant. But truth is humble in acknowledging its mightiness, its changelessness and its eternal wholeness, all-encompassing, God's perfect gift to His beloved Son. We lay aside the arrogance which says that we are sinners, guilty and afraid, ashamed of what we are. And lift our hearts in true humility instead to Him Who has created us immaculate, like to Himself in power and in love.
The power of decision is our own. And we accept of Him that which we are, and humbly recognize the Son of God. To recognize God's Son implies as well that all self-concepts have been laid aside and recognized as false. Their arrogance has been perceived. And in humility the radiance of God's Son, his gentleness, his perfect sinlessness, his Father's love, his right to Heaven and release from hell, are joyously accepted as our own.
Now do we join in glad acknowledgment that lies are false and only truth is true. We think of truth alone as we arise, and spend five minutes practicing its ways, encouraging our frightened minds with this:
"The power of decision is my own.
This day I will accept myself as what
My Father's Will created me to be."
Then will we wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions as we humbly ask our Self that He reveal Himself to us. And He Who never left will come again to our awareness, grateful to restore His home to God as it was meant to be.
In patience wait for Him throughout the day, and hourly invite Him with the words with which the day began, concluding it with this same invitation to your Self. God's Voice will answer, for He speaks for you and for your Father. He will substitute the peace of God for all your frantic thoughts, the truth of God for self-deceptions, and God's Son for your illusions of yourself.
Today's idea remains the central thought on which salvation rests. For healing is the opposite of all the world's ideas which dwell on sickness and on separate states. Sickness is a retreat from others, and a shutting off of joining. It becomes a door that closes on a separate self, and keeps it isolated and alone.
Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh which it can not surmount. The world obeys the laws that sickness serves, but healing operates apart from them.
It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. In sickness must he be apart and separate. But healing is his own decision to be one again, and to accept his Self with all its parts intact and unassailed. In sickness does his Self appear to be dismembered and without the unity which gives It life. But healing is accomplished as he sees the body has no power to attack the universal Oneness of God's Son. Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth. But healing demonstrates that truth is true.
The separation sickness would impose has never really happened. To be healed is merely to accept what always was the simple truth, and always will remain exactly as it has forever been. Yet eyes accustomed to illusions must be shown that what they look upon is false. So healing, never needed by the truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real.
Healing might thus be called a counter-dream which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth, but not in truth itself. Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred. Just as the real world will arise to take the place of what has never been at all, healing offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas which dreams embroider into pictures of the truth.
Yet think not healing is unworthy of your function here. For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real. The body seems to be more solid and more stable than the mind. And love becomes a dream, while fear remains the one reality which can be seen and justified and fully understood.
Just as forgiveness shines away all sin, and the real world will occupy the place of what you made, so healing must replace the fantasies of sickness which you hold before the simple truth. When sickness has been seen to disappear in spite of all the laws which hold it cannot but be real, then questions have been answered. And the laws can be no longer cherished nor obeyed.
Healing is freedom, for it demonstrates that dreams will not prevail against the truth. Healing is shared. And by this attribute it proves that laws unlike the ones which hold that sickness is inevitable are more potent than their sickly opposites. Healing is strength. For by its gentle hand is weakness overcome. And minds which were walled off within a body free to join with other minds, to be forever strong.
Healing, forgiveness, and the glad exchange of all the world of sorrow for a world where sadness cannot enter, are the means by which the Holy Spirit urges you to follow Him. His gentle lessons teach how easily salvation can be yours; how little practice you need undertake to let His laws replace the ones you made, to hold yourself a prisoner to death. His life becomes your own as you extend the little help He asks in freeing you from everything that ever caused you pain.
And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you. Perhaps you will not recognize them all, nor realize how great your offering to all the world, when you let healing come to you. But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift which you receive when you are healed.
Those who are healed become the instruments of healing. Nor does time elapse between the instant they are healed and all the grace of healing it is given them to give. What is opposed to God does not exist, and who accepts it not within his mind becomes a haven where the weary can remain to rest. For here is truth bestowed, and here are all illusions brought to truth.
Would you not offer shelter to God's will? You but invite your Self to be at home, and can this invitation be refused? Ask the inevitable to occur and you will never fail. The other choice is but to ask what cannot be to be, and this cannot succeed. Today we ask that only truth will occupy our minds; that thoughts of healing will this day go forth from what is healed to what must yet be healed, aware that they will both occur as one.
We will remember, as the hour strikes, our function is to let our minds be healed that we may carry healing to the world, exchanging curse for blessing, pain for joy, and separation for the peace of God. Is not a minute of the hour worth the giving to receive a gift like this? Is not a little time a small expense to offer for the gift of everything?
Yet must we be prepared for such a gift. And so we will begin the day with this, and give ten minutes to these thoughts with which we will conclude today at night as well:
"When I am healed I am not healed alone.
And I would share my healing with the world,
That sickness may be banished from the mind
Of God's One Son, Who is my only Self."
Let healing be through you this very day. And as you rest in quiet be prepared to give as you receive, to hold but what you give, and to receive the Word of God to take the place of all the foolish thoughts that ever were imagined. Now we come together to make well all that was sick, and offer blessing where there was attack. Nor will we let this function be forgot as every hour of the day slips by, remembering our function with this thought:
"When I am healed I am not healed alone.
And I would bless my brothers, for I would
Be healed with them as they are healed with me."
What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. That is the only power which they have. Their purpose is obscure, and they are feared, and worshipped, both, BECAUSE you do not know what they are for, and why they have been made. An idol is an image of your brother, which you would value MORE than what he IS. Idols are made that HE may be replaced, no matter what their form. And it is this which NEVER is perceived and recognized. Be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or a circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a right demanded or achieved, it is the same.
Let not their form deceive you. Idols are but substitutes for your reality. In some way you believe they will complete your little self, and let you walk in safety in a world perceived as dangerous, with forces massed against your confidence and peace of mind. They have the power to supply your lacks, and add the value which you do not have. No-one believes in idols who has not enslaved himself to littleness and loss. And thus must seek BEYOND his little self for strength to raise his head and stand apart from all the misery the world reflects. This is the penalty for looking not within for certainty, and for a quiet calm which liberates you FROM the world, and lets you stand apart in quiet and in peace unlimited.
An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of anti-Christ which constitutes a gap BETWEEN the Christ and what you see. An idol is a wish, made tangible and given form, and thus perceived as real, and seen OUTSIDE the mind. Yet they remain ideas, and CANNOT leave the mind that is their source. Nor is their form apart from the idea it represents. All forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ. And fall before His Face like a dark veil which SEEMS to shut you off from Him, alone in darkness. Yet the light is there. A cloud does not put out the sun. No more a veil can banish what it seems to separate, nor darken by one whit the Light Itself.
This world of idols IS a veil across the Face of Christ BECAUSE its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself. A dark and fearful purpose, yet a thought without the power to change one blade of grass from something living to a sign of death. Its form is nowhere, for its source abides within your mind where God abideth not. Where IS this place, where What is everywhere has been excluded, and been kept apart? What hand could be held up to block God's way; whose voice could make demands He enter not? The "more-than-everything" is NOT a thing to make you tremble and to quail in fear. Christ's enemy is nowhere. He can take NO form in which he EVER will be real.
What is an idol? Nothing! It must be believed BEFORE it seems to come to life, and GIVEN power that it may be feared. Its life and power are its believer's gift, and this is what the miracle restores to what HAS life and power worthy of the gift of Heaven and eternal peace. The miracle does not restore the truth, the light the veil between has NOT put out. It merely LIFTS the veil, and LETS the truth shine unencumbered, being what It is. It does not NEED belief to be Itself, for It HAS BEEN created, so It IS. An idol is ESTABLISHED by belief, and when it is withdrawn, the idol "dies."
This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die.
WHERE is an idol? Nowhere! Can there be a gap in what is infinite, a place where time can INTERRUPT eternity? A place of darkness set where all is light, a dismal alcove separated off from what is endless, HAS no place to be. An idol is beyond where God has set all things forever, and has left no room for anything EXCEPT His Will to be. Nothing and nowhere MUST an idol be, while God is everything and everywhere. What purpose has an idol, then? What is it FOR? This is the only question which has many answers, each depending on the one of whom the question has been asked.
The world BELIEVES in idols. No-one comes unless he worshipped them, and still attempts to seek for one that yet might offer him a gift reality does NOT contain. Each worshipper of idols harbors hope his SPECIAL deities will give him MORE than other men possess. It MUST be "more." It does not really matter more of what, - more beauty, more intelligence, more wealth; or even more affliction and more pain. But MORE of SOMETHING is an idol FOR. And when one fails another takes its place, with hope of finding more of something ELSE. Be not deceived by forms the "something" takes. An idol is a means for getting MORE. And it is THIS that is against God's Will.
God has not many sons, but only One. Who can have more, and who be given less? In Heaven would the Son of God but laugh, if idols could intrude upon his peace. It is for HIM the Holy Spirit speaks, and tells you idols HAVE no purpose here. For MORE than Heaven can you never have. If Heaven is within why would you seek for idols which would make of Heaven less, to give you MORE than God bestowed upon your brother AND on you, as One with Him? God GAVE you all there is. And to be sure you could not lose it, did He ALSO give the same to every living thing as well. And thus IS every living thing a part of you as of Himself. No idol can establish you as MORE than God. But YOU will never be content with being LESS.
This course is not beyond IMMEDIATE learning, unless you prefer to believe that WHAT GOD WILLS TAKES TIME. And this means ONLY that you would rather DELAY the recognition that His Will IS so. The holy instant is THIS one, and EVERY one. The one you WANT it to be, it IS. The one you would NOT have it be, is lost to you. YOU must decide on WHEN it is. Delay it not. For beyond the past and future, in which you will NOT find it, it stands in shimmering readiness for your acceptance.
Yet you cannot bring it into glad awareness while you do not want it, for it holds the whole RELEASE from littleness. Your practice MUST therefore rest upon your willingness to let all littleness go. The instant in which magnitude will dawn upon you, is but as far away as your DESIRE for it. As long as you desire it not, and cherish littleness instead, by so much is it far from you. By so much as you want it, will you bring it nearer. Think not that you can find Salvation in your own way, and HAVE it.
Give over EVERY plan that you have made for your Salvation, in exchange for God's. HIS will content you, for there IS nothing else that can bring you peace. For peace is of God, and of no-one beside Him. Be humble before Him, and yet great IN Him. And value NO plan of the ego, BEFORE the plan of God. For you leave your place in His plan, which you MUST fulfill if you would join with me, empty by your decision to join in any plan BUT His. I call you to fulfill your holy part in the plan that He has given to the world, for its release from littleness. God would have His host abide in perfect freedom.
Every allegiance to a plan of Salvation that is APART from Him, diminishes the value of His Will for you in your own minds. And yet, it is your mind that IS the host to Him. Would you learn how perfect and immaculate is the holy altar on which your Father has placed HIMSELF? This you WILL recognize, in the holy instant in which you willingly and gladly give over EVERY plan but His. For there lies peace, PERFECTLY clear, because you have been willing to meet its conditions.
You can claim the holy instant ANY time and ANYWHERE you want it. In your practice, try to give over EVERY plan you have accepted, for finding magnitude in littleness. IT IS NOT THERE. USE the holy instant ONLY to recognize that you alone CANNOT know where it is, and can only DECEIVE yourself. I stand within the holy instant, as clear as you would have me. And the extent to which you learn to be willing to ACCEPT me, IS the measure of the time in which the holy instant will be yours. I call to you to make the holy instant yours AT ONCE, for the release from littleness in the mind of the host of God, depends on willingness, and NOT on time.
The reason why this course is simple, is that TRUTH is simple. Complexity is of the ego, and is nothing more than the ego's attempt to obscure the obvious. You could live forever in the holy instant, BEGINNING NOW and reaching to eternity, but for a very simple reason. Do not obscure the simplicity of this reason, for, if you do, it will be ONLY because you prefer NOT to recognize it, and NOT to let it go. The simple reason, stated simply as what it is, is this: The holy instant is a time in which you receive AND GIVE perfect communication. This means, however, that it is a time in which your mind is OPEN, both to receive AND give. It is the recognition that all minds ARE in communication. It therefore seeks to CHANGE nothing, but merely to ACCEPT everything.
How can you do this when you would prefer to have PRIVATE thoughts, AND KEEP THEM? The ONLY way you COULD do this, is to DENY the perfect communication that makes the holy instant WHAT IT IS. You BELIEVE that it is possible to harbor thoughts you would NOT share, and that Salvation lies in keeping your thoughts TO YOURSELF ALONE. For, in private thoughts, KNOWN ONLY TO YOURSELF, you think you find a way to keep what you would HAVE alone, and share what YOU would share. And then you wonder why it is that you are not in full communication with those around you, and with God, Who surrounds ALL of you together.
Every thought you would keep hidden shuts communication off, BECAUSE YOU WOULD HAVE IT SO. It is impossible to RECOGNIZE perfect communication, while BREAKING communication holds value to you. Ask yourselves honestly, "Would I WANT to have perfect communication, and am I WHOLLY willing to let EVERYTHING that INTERFERES WITH IT, go forever?" If the answer is "no," then the Holy Spirit's readiness to GIVE it to you, is not enough to make it yours, for you are NOT ready to share it WITH Him. And it cannot come into a mind that has decided to OPPOSE it. For the holy instant is given and received with EQUAL willingness, being the acceptance of the SINGLE Will that governs ALL thought.
The necessary condition for the holy instant, does NOT require that you have no thoughts that are not pure. But it DOES require that you have none that you would KEEP. Innocence is not of your making. It is GIVEN you, the instant you would HAVE it. But it would not BE Atonement, if there were no NEED for Atonement. You will not be able to ACCEPT perfect communication, as long as you would HIDE it from yourself. For what you would hide IS hidden. In your practice, then, try only to be vigilant AGAINST DECEPTION, and seek not to PROTECT the thoughts you would keep unto yourself. Let the Holy Spirit's purity shine them away, and bring ALL your awareness to the READINESS for purity He offers you. Thus will He make you ready to acknowledge that you ARE host to God, and hostage to no-one and to nothing.
No one attacks without intent to hurt. This can have no exception. When you think that you attack in self-defense, you mean that to be cruel is protection; you are safe because of cruelty. You mean that you believe to hurt another brings you freedom. And you mean that to attack is to exchange the state in which you are for something better, safer, more secure from dangerous invasion and from fear.
How thoroughly insane is the idea that to defend from fear is to attack! For here is fear begot and fed with blood, to make it grow and swell and rage. And thus is fear protected, not escaped. Today we learn a lesson which can save you more delay and needless misery than you can possibly imagine. It is this:
You make what you defend against, and by
your own defense against it is it real
and inescapable. Lay down your arms,
and only then do you perceive it false.
It seems to be the enemy without that you attack. Yet your defense sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable. For love now has an "enemy," an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are.
If you consider carefully the means by which your fancied self-defense proceeds on its imagined way, you will perceive the premises on which the idea stands. First, it is obvious ideas must leave their source. For it is you who make attack, and must have first conceived of it. Yet you attack outside yourself, and separate your mind from him who is to be attacked, with perfect faith the split you made is real.
Next are the attributes of love bestowed upon its "enemy." For fear becomes your safety and protector of your peace, to which you turn for solace and escape from doubts about your strength and hope of rest in dreamless quiet. And as love is shorn of what belongs to it and it alone, love is endowed with attributes of fear. For love would ask you lay down all defense as merely foolish. And your arms indeed would crumble into dust. For such they are.
With love as enemy must cruelty become a god, and gods demand that those who worship them obey their dictates, and refuse to question them. Harsh punishment is meted out relentlessly to those who ask if the demands are sensible or even sane. It is their enemies who are unreasonable and insane, while they are always merciful and just.
Today we look upon this cruel god dispassionately. And we note that though his lips are smeared with blood and fire seems to flame from him, he is but made of stone. He can do nothing. We need not defy his power. He has none. And those who see in him their safety have no guardian, no strength to call upon in danger, and no mighty warrior to fight for them.
This moment can be terrible. But it can also be the time of your release from abject slavery. You make a choice, standing before this idol, seeing him exactly as he is. Will you restore to love what you have sought to wrest from it, and lay before this mindless piece of stone? Or will you make another idol to replace it? For the god of cruelty takes many forms. Another can be found.
Yet do not think that fear is the escape from fear. Let us remember what the course has stressed about the obstacles to peace. The final one, the hardest to believe is nothing, and a seeming obstacle with the appearance of a solid block, impenetrable, fearful and beyond surmounting, is the fear of God Himself. Here is the basic premise which enthrones the thought of fear as god. For fear is loved by those who worship it, and love appears to be invested now with cruelty.
Where does the totally insane belief in gods of vengeance come from? Love has not confused its attributes with those of fear. Yet must the worshippers of fear perceive their own confusion in fear's "enemy"; its cruelty as now a part of love. And what becomes more fearful than the Heart of Love Itself? The blood appears to be upon His lips; the fire comes from Him. And He is terrible above all else, cruel beyond conception, striking down all who acknowledge Him to be their God.
The choice you make today is certain. For you look for the last time upon this bit of carven stone you made, and call it god no longer. You have reached this place before, but you have chosen that this cruel god remain with you in still another form, and so the fear of God returned with you. This time you leave it here. And you return to a new world unburdened by its weight; beheld not in its sightless eyes, but in the vision that your choice restored to you.
Now do your eyes belong to Christ, and He looks through them. Now your voice belongs to God, and echoes His. And now your heart remains at peace forever. You have chosen Him in place of idols, and your attributes, given by your Creator, are restored to you at last. The Call of God is heard and answered. Now has fear made way for love, as God Himself replaces cruelty.
"Father, we are like You. No cruelty abides in us for there is none in You. Your peace is ours. And we bless the world with what we have received from You alone. We choose again and make our choice for all our brothers, knowing they are one with us. We bring them Your salvation as we have received it now. And we give thanks for them who render us complete. In them we see Your glory, and in them we find our peace. Holy are we because Your holiness has set us free. And we give thanks. Amen."
Nothing can hurt you, unless you give it the power to do so. For YOU give power as the laws of this world INTERPRET giving; as you give, you LOSE. It is not up to you to give power at all. Power is of God, GIVEN by Him, and RE-AWAKENED by the Holy Spirit, Who knows that, as you give you GAIN. He gives NO power to sin, and therefore it HAS none. Nor to its results, as this world sees them; sickness and death and misery and pain. These things have not occurred, because the Holy Spirit sees them not, and gives no power to their seeming source. Thus would He keep you free of them.
Being without illusion of what you are, the Holy Spirit merely gives EVERYTHING to God, Who has already given AND RECEIVED all that is true. The UNtrue He has neither received NOR given. Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien, and can no more enter than can their source. And therein lies your need to see your brother sinless. In him is Heaven. See sin in him INSTEAD, and Heaven is lost to YOU. But see him as he IS, and what is yours shines from him to you.
Your Savior gives you ONLY love. But what you would RECEIVE of him, is up to you. It lies in him to overlook ALL your mistakes, and therein lies his OWN salvation. And so it is with YOURS. Salvation is a lesson in giving, as the Holy Spirit interprets it. It is the re-awakening of the laws of God in minds that have established OTHER laws, and given them power to enforce what God created not. Your insane laws were made to GUARANTEE that you would make mistakes, and give them power over you by ACCEPTING their results as your just due.
What COULD this be but madness? And is it THIS that you would see within your Savior FROM insanity? He is as free from this as you are, and in the freedom that you see in HIM, you see your own. For this you SHARE. What God has given follows HIS laws, and His alone. Nor is it possible for those who follow them to suffer the results of any other source. Those who choose freedom will experience only ITS results. Their power is of God. And they will give it only to what GOD has given, to SHARE with them.
Nothing but this can touch them, for they see ONLY this, sharing their power according to the Will of God. And thus their freedom is established AND MAINTAINED. It is upheld through ALL temptations to imprison and to BE imprisoned. It is THEM, who learned of freedom, that you should ask what freedom IS. Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars, for those with little wings have not accepted for THEMSELVES the power to share with you. The sinless give as they received. See, then, the power of sinlessness within your brother, and share with him the power of the RELEASE from sin you offered HIM.
To each who walks this earth in seeming solitude is a Savior given, whose special function here is to release him, and so to free himself. In the world of separation, each is appointed separately, though they are all the same. But those who KNOW that they are all the same, need not salvation. And each one FINDS his Savior, when he is ready to look upon the face of Christ, and see Him sinless. The plan is not of you, nor need you be concerned with anything except the part that has been given YOU to learn. For He Who knows the rest will see to it WITHOUT your help. But think not that He does not need your part, to help Him with the rest. For in your part lies ALL of it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole completed WITHOUT your part. The ark of peace is entered two by two, yet the beginning of another world goes with them. Each holy relationship must enter here, to learn its special function in the Holy Spirit's plan, now that it SHARES His purpose. And, as this purpose is fulfilled, a new world rises, in which sin can enter not, and where the Son of God can enter WITHOUT fear. And where he rests a while, to forget imprisonment, and to remember freedom.
How can he enter, to rest and to remember, without YOU? Except you be there, he is NOT complete, and it is his COMPLETION that he remembers there. This is the purpose GIVEN you. Think not that your forgiveness of each other serves but you two alone. For the whole new world rests in the hands of every two who enter here, to rest. And as they rest, the face of Christ shines on them, and they remember the laws of God, forgetting all the rest, and yearning only to have His laws perfectly fulfilled in them and all their brothers.
Think you, when this has been achieved, that you will rest WITHOUT them? You could no more leave one of them outside than I could leave you, and forget part of myself. You may wonder how you can BE at peace when, while you are in time, there is so much that must be done BEFORE the way to peace is open. Perhaps this seems impossible to YOU. But ask yourself if it is possible that GOD would have a plan for your salvation that does NOT work. Once you accept HIS plan as the ONE function that you would fulfill, there WILL be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not ARRANGE for you, WITHOUT your effort.
He will go before you, making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. NOTHING you need will be denied you. Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away BEFORE you reach it. You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill. As THAT was given you, so will its fulfillment be. God's guarantee will hold against ALL obstacles, for it rests on certainty, and NOT contingency. IT RESTS ON YOU. And what can be more certain than the Son of God?
This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place which called you to return although you do not recognize the Voice, nor what it is the Voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again.
No one but knows whereof we speak. Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to occupy their time, and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but a dream. Yet who in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self deception, would deny he understands the words we speak?
We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home. He goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind. He does not understand he builds in vain. The home he seeks can not be made by him. There is no substitute for Heaven. All he ever made was hell.
Perhaps you think it is your childhood home that you would find again. The childhood of your body and its place of shelter are a memory now so distorted that you merely hold a picture of a past that never happened. Yet there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father's house, and knows that He is alien here. This Childhood is eternal, with an innocence that will endure forever. Where this Child shall go is holy ground. It is His holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one.
It is this Child in you your Father knows as His Own Son. It is this Child Who knows His Father. He desires to go home so deeply, so unceasingly, His Voice cries unto you to let Him rest a while. He does not ask for more than just a few instants of respite; just an interval in which He can return to breathe again the holy air that fills His Father's house. You are His home as well. He will return. But give Him just a little time to be Himself, within the peace that is His home, resting in silence and in peace and in love.
This Child needs your protection. He is far from home. He is so little that He seems so easily shut out, His tiny Voice so readily obscured, His calls for help almost unheard amid the grating sounds and harsh and rasping noises of the world. Yet does He know that in you still abides His sure protection. You Will fail Him not. He will go home, and you along with Him.
This Child is your defenselessness, your strength. He trusts in you. He came because He knew you would not fail. He whispers of His home unceasingly to you. For He would bring you back with Him, that He Himself might stay, and not return again where He does not belong and where He lives an outcast in a world of alien thoughts. His patience has no limits. He will wait until you hear His gentle Voice within you, calling you to let Him go in peace, along with you, to where He is at home, and you with Him.
When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice. So poignantly He calls to you that you will not resist Him longer. In that instant, He will take you to His home, and you will stay with Him in perfect stillness, silent and at peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt, sublimely certain that you are at home.
Rest with Him frequently today. For He was willing to become a little Child that you might learn of Him how strong is he who comes without defenses, offering only love's messages to those who think He is their enemy. He holds the might of Heaven in His hand and calls them friend, and gives His strength to them that they may see He would be Friend to them. He asks but they protect Him, for His home is far away, and He will not return to it alone.
Christ is reborn as but a little Child each time a wanderer would leave his home. For he must learn that what he would protect is but this Child, Who comes defenseless and Who is protected by defenselessness. Go home with Him from time to time today. You are as much an alien here as He.
Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing, and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence. Christ has called you friend and brother. He has even come to you to ask your help in letting Him go home completed and completely. He has come as does a little child who must beseech his father for protection and for love. He rules the universe, and yet He asks unceasingly that you return with Him, and take illusions as your gods no more.
You have not lost your innocence. It is for this you yearn. This is your heart's desire. This is the Voice you hear, and this the Call which cannot be denied. The holy Child remains with you. His home is yours. Today He gives you His defenselessness, and you accept it in exchange for all the toys of battle you have made. And now the way is open, and the journey has an end in sight at last. Be still a moment and go home with Him and be at peace awhile.
The ego's plan for forgiveness is far more widely used than God's. This is because it is undertaken by unhealed healers, and IS therefore of the ego. Let us consider the unhealed healer more carefully now. By definition, he is trying to GIVE what he has NOT received. If he is a theologian, he may begin with the premise, "I am a miserable sinner, and so are you." If he is a psychotherapist, he is more likely to start with the equally incredible idea that HE really believes in attack, and so does the patient, but it does not matter in EITHER case.
We have repeatedly stated that beliefs of the ego CANNOT be shared, and THIS IS WHY THEY ARE NOT REAL. How, then, can UNCOVERING them MAKE them real? Every healer who searches fantasies for truth MUST be unhealed, because he DOES NOT KNOW WHERE TO LOOK FOR TRUTH, and therefore does not have the answer to the problem of healing. There IS an advantage to bringing nightmares into awareness, but ONLY to teach that they are NOT real, and that ANYTHING they contain is meaningless. The unhealed healer cannot DO this, because he does not BELIEVE it.
All unhealed healers follow the ego's plan for forgiveness, in one form or another. If they are theologians, they are likely to condemn THEMSELVES, TEACH condemnation, and advocate a very fearful solution. Projecting condemnation onto God, they make Him retaliative, and FEAR HIS RETRIBUTION. What they have done is merely to IDENTIFY with the ego, and by perceiving clearly what IT does, condemn THEMSELVES because of this profound confusion.
It is understandable that there has been a revolt against this concept, but to revolt AGAINST it, is still to BELIEVE in it. The FORM of the revolt, then, is different, but NOT the content. The new form of the ego's plan is as unhelpful as the older one, because form does not matter to the Holy Spirit, and therefore DOES NOT MATTER AT ALL. According to the newer forms of the plan, the therapist interprets the ego's symbols IN the nightmare, and uses them to PROVE THE NIGHTMARE IS REAL. Having MADE it real, he then attempts to dispel its EFFECTS by DEPRECIATING THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DREAMER.
This WOULD be a healing approach, IF THE DREAMER were properly identified AS UNREAL. But if the dreamer is equated WITH the mind, the mind's corrective power, through the Holy Spirit, is DENIED. It is noteworthy that this is a contradiction even in the ego's own terms, and one which it usually DOES note, even in its confusion. If the way to counteract fear is to reduce the importance of the FEARER, how can this build up ego STRENGTH? These perfectly self-evident inconsistencies account for why, except for certain stylized verbal accounts, NOBODY can EXPLAIN what happens in psychotherapy. Nothing real DOES.
Nothing REAL has happened to the unhealed healer, and HE LEARNS FROM HIS OWN TEACHING. BECAUSE his ego is involved, it ALWAYS attempts to gain some support from the situation. Seeking to GET something for HIMSELF, the healer does NOT know how to give, and consequently CANNOT SHARE. He CANNOT correct, because he is not working CORRECTIVELY. He believes that it is up to him to teach the patient what is REAL, but he does not know it HIMSELF.
What, then, SHOULD happen? When God said: "Let there be Light," there WAS light. Can you find light by ANALYZING darkness as the psychotherapist does, or like the theologian, by ACKNOWLEDGING it in yourself, and looking for a distant light to remove it, while emphasizing the distance?
Healing is NOT mysterious. Nothing occurs UNLESS you understand it, since light IS understanding. A "miserable sinner" cannot be healed without magic, nor can an "unimportant mind" esteem itself without magic. Both forms of the ego's approach, then, MUST arrive at an impasse, the characteristic "impossible situation" to which the ego ALWAYS leads.
It CAN be helpful to point out to a patient WHERE HE IS HEADING, but the point is LOST unless he can change his direction. The therapist cannot do this for him, but he also CANNOT DO THIS FOR HIMSELF. His only MEANINGFUL contribution is to present an example of one whose direction has been changed FOR him, and who NO LONGER BELIEVES IN NIGHTMARES OF ANY KIND. The light in HIS mind will therefore ANSWER the questioner, who MUST decide with God that there IS light BECAUSE HE SEES IT. And by HIS acknowledgment, THE THERAPIST KNOWS IT IS THERE.
That is how perception ultimately is translated into knowledge. The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient.
The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God.
As you awaken other minds TO Him through HIM, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world, but that the laws you ARE obeying WORK. "The good is what works" is a sound though insufficient statement. ONLY the good CAN work. Nothing else works at all. This course is a guide to behavior. Being a very direct and very simple learning situation, it provides the guide who tells you what to do. If you do it, you will SEE that it works. Its RESULTS are more convincing than its words. THEY will convince you that the words are true.
By following the right Guide, you will learn the simplest of all lessons: "By their fruits ye shall know them, and THEY shall know THEMSELVES."
As all therapy is psychotherapy, so all illness is mental illness. It is a judgment on the Son of God, and judgment is a mental activity. Judgment is a decision, made again and again, against creation and its Creator. It is a decision to perceive the universe as you would have created it. It is a decision that truth can lie and must be lies. What, then, can illness be except an expression of sorrow and of guilt? And who could weep but for his innocence?
Once God's Son is seen as guilty, illness becomes inevitable. It has been asked for and will be received. And all who ask for illness have now condemned themselves to seek for remedies that cannot help, because their faith is in the illness and not in salvation. There can be nothing that a change of mind cannot effect, for all external things are only shadows of a decision already made. Change the decision, and how can its shadow be unchanged? Illness can be but guilt's shadow, grotesque and ugly since it mimics deformity. If a deformity is seen as real, what could its shadow be except deformed?
The descent into hell follows step by step in an inevitable course, once the decision that guilt is real has been made. Sickness and death and misery now stalk the earth in unrelenting waves, sometimes together and sometimes in grim succession. Yet all these things, however real they seem, are but illusions. Who could have faith in them once this is realized? And who could not have faith in them until he realizes this? Healing is therapy or correction, and we have said already and will say again, all therapy is psychotherapy. To heal the sick is but to bring this realization to them.
The word "cure" has come into disrepute among the more "respectable" therapists of the world, and justly so. For not one of them can cure, and not one of them understands healing. At worst, they but make the body real in their own minds, and having done so, seek for magic by which to heal the ills with which their minds endow it. How could such a process cure? It is ridiculous from start to finish. Yet having started, it must finish thus. It is as if God were the devil and must be found in evil. How could love be there? And how could sickness cure? Are not these both one question?
At best, and the word is perhaps questionable here, the "healers" of the world may recognize the mind as the source of illness. But their error lies in the belief that it can cure itself. This has some merit in a world where "degrees of error" is a meaningful concept. Yet must their cures remain temporary, or another illness rise instead, for death has not been overcome until the meaning of love is understood. And who can understand this without the Word of God, given by Him to the Holy Spirit as His gift to you?
Illness of any kind may be defined as the result of a view of the self as weak, vulnerable, evil and endangered, and thus in need of constant defense. Yet if such were really the self, defense would be impossible. Therefore, the defenses sought for must be magical. They must overcome all limits perceived in the self, at the same time making a new self-concept into which they cannot return. In a word, error is accepted as real and dealt with by illusions. Truth being brought to illusions, reality now becomes a threat and is perceived as evil. Love becomes feared because reality is love. Thus is the circle closed against the "inroads" of salvation.
Illness is therefore a mistake and needs correction. And as we have already emphasized before, correction cannot be achieved by first establishing the "rightness" of the mistake and then overlooking it. If illness is real it cannot be overlooked in truth, for to overlook reality is insanity. Yet that is magic's purpose; to make illusions true through false perception. This cannot heal, for it opposes truth. Perhaps an illusion of health is substituted for a little while, but not for long. Fear cannot long be hidden by illusions, for it is part of them. It will escape and take another form, being the source of all illusions.
Sickness is insanity because all sickness is mental illness, and in it there are no degrees. One of the illusions by which sickness is perceived as real is the belief that illness varies in intensity; that the degree of threat differs according to the form it takes. Herein lies the basis of all errors, for all of them are but attempts to compromise by seeing just a little bit of hell. This is a mockery so alien to God that it must be forever inconceivable. But the insane believe it because they are insane.
A madman will defend his own illusions because in them he sees his own salvation. Thus, he will attack the one who tries to save him from them, believing that he is attacking him. This curious circle of attack-defense is one of the most difficult problems with which the psychotherapist must deal. In fact, this is his central task; the core of psychotherapy. The therapist is seen as one who is attacking the patient's most cherished possession; his picture of himself. And since this picture has become the patient's security as he perceives it, the therapist cannot but be seen as a real source of danger, to be attacked and even killed.
The psychotherapist, then, has a tremendous responsibility. He must meet attack without attack, and therefore without defense. It is his task to demonstrate that defenses are not necessary, and that defenselessness is strength. This must be his teaching, if his lesson is to be that sanity is safe. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the insane believe that sanity is threat. This is the corollary of the "original sin"; the belief that guilt is real and fully justified. It is therefore the psychotherapist's function to teach that guilt, being unreal, cannot be justified. But neither is it safe. And thus it must remain unwanted as well as unreal.
Salvation's single doctrine is the goal of all therapy. Relieve the mind of the insane burden of guilt it carries so wearily, and healing is accomplished. The body is not cured. It is merely recognized as what it is. Seen rightly, its purpose can be understood. What is the need for sickness then? Given this single shift, all else will follow. There is no need for complicated change. There is no need for long analyses and wearying discussions and pursuits. The truth is simple, being one for all.
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.
We have spoken of many different human symptoms, and at this level there IS almost endless variation. But there is only one cause for all of them. The authority problem IS "the root of all evil." Money is but one of its many reflections, and is a reasonably representative example of the kind of thinking which stems from it. The idea of buying and selling implies precisely the kind of exchange that the Souls cannot understand at all, because their own Supply is always abundant, and all their demands are fully met.
Every symptom which the ego has made involves a contradiction in terms. This is because the mind is split between the ego and the Soul, so that WHATEVER the ego makes is incomplete and contradictory. Consider what a "speechless professor" means as a concept. It literally means a "non-professing professor," or a "nonspeaking speaker."
Untenable positions such as this are the result of the authority problem, which, because it accepts the one inconceivable thought as its premise, can only produce ideas which are inconceivable. Bill may claim (and has certainly done so in the past) that the PROFESSORSHIP was thrust upon him. This is not true. He wanted it very much, and also worked hard to get it. He would not have had to work so hard either, if he had not misunderstood it.
The term "profess" is used quite frequently in the Bible, but in a somewhat different context. To profess is to identify with an idea and offer the idea to others to be THEIR own. The idea does NOT lessen; it becomes STRONGER. The teacher clarifies his own ideas and strengthens them BY teaching them.
Teacher and pupil, therapist and patient, are all alike in the learning process. They are in the SAME order of learning, and unless they SHARE their lessons they will lack conviction. If a salesman must believe in the product he sells, how much more must a teacher believe in the ideas which he professes. But he needs another condition; he must also believe in the students to whom he offers his ideas.
Bill could not be afraid to teach unless he still believes that interaction means loss, and that learning means separation. He stands guard over his own ideas, because he wants to protect his thought-system as it is, and learning MEANS change. Change is always fearful to the separated, because they cannot conceive of it as a change toward HEALING the separation. They ALWAYS perceive it as a change for further separation, because separation WAS their first experience of change.
Bill, your whole fear of teaching is nothing but an example of your own intense separation anxiety, which you have handled with the usual series of mixed defenses in the combined pattern of attack on truth and defense of error, which characterizes ALL ego-thinking.
You insist that if you allow no change to enter into your EGO, your SOUL will find peace. This profound confusion is possible only if one maintains that the SAME thought-system can stand on two foundations.
NOTHING can reach the Soul from the ego, and nothing FROM the Soul can strengthen the ego, or reduce the conflict within it. The ego IS a contradiction. Man's self and God's Self ARE in opposition. They are opposed in creation, in will, and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable because the Soul cannot perceive, and the ego cannot know. They are therefore NOT IN COMMUNICATION, and can never BE in communication.
Nevertheless the ego can learn, because its maker can be misguided, but CANNOT make the totally lifeless out of the life-given. The Soul need not be taught, but the ego MUST. The ultimate reason why learning or teaching is perceived as frightening is because true learning DOES lead to the relinquishment (NOT destruction) of the ego to the light of the Soul. This is the change the ego MUST fear, because it does not share my charity.
My lesson was like yours, and because I learned it I can teach it. I never attack your egos (in spite of H's strange beliefs to the contrary), but I DO try to teach them how their thought-systems have arisen. When I remind you of your TRUE Creation, your egos cannot BUT respond with fear.
Bill, teaching and learning are your greatest strengths now, because you MUST change your mind and help others change theirs. It is pointless to refuse to tolerate change or changing because you believe that you can demonstrate by doing so that the Separation never occurred. The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream while he is still dreaming it is not really healing the level-split.
You HAVE dreamed of a separated ego, and you HAVE believed in a world which rested upon it. This is very real to you. You cannot undo this by doing nothing and not changing.
If you are willing to renounce the role of guardians of your thought-systems and open them to me, I will correct them very gently, and lead you home. Every good teacher hopes to give his students so much of his own thinking that they will one day no longer need him. This is the one real goal of the parent, teacher, and therapist. This goal will not be achieved by those who believe that they will LOSE their child or pupil or patient if they succeed.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to convince the ego of this, because it goes against all of its own laws. But remember that laws are set up to protect the continuity of the system in which the law-maker believes. It is natural enough for the ego to try to protect itself, once YOU have made it. But it is NOT natural for YOU to want to obey its laws unless YOU believe in them.
The ego cannot make this choice because of the nature of its origin. But YOU can, because of the nature of YOURS. Egos can clash in any situation, but Souls cannot clash at all. If you perceive a teacher as merely a "larger ego," you WILL be afraid, because to ENLARGE an ego IS to increase separation anxiety. Do not engage in this foolishness, Bill. I will teach with you and live with you, if you will think with me.
But my goal will always be to absolve you finally from the need for a teacher. This is the OPPOSITE of the ego-oriented teacher's goal. He is concerned with the effect of HIS ego on OTHER egos, and he therefore interprets their interaction as a means of ego preservation. This is no less true if he is afraid to teach than if he is frankly out to dominate through teaching. The form of the symptom is only a reflection of his particular way of handling the separation anxiety.
ALL separation anxiety is a symptom of a continuing will to remain separated. This cannot be repeated too often because you have NOT learned it. Bill, you are afraid to teach ONLY because you are afraid of the impression your image of yourself will make ON OTHER IMAGES. You believe that their APPROVAL of your image will exalt it, but also that your separation anxiety will be increased. You also believe that their DISAPPROVAL of it will lessen the separation anxiety, but at the cost of depression.
I would not be able to devote myself to teaching if I believed either of these ideas, and YOU will not be a devoted teacher yourself as long as you maintain them. I am constantly being perceived as a teacher either to be exalted or rejected, but I do not accept either perception for myself.
Your own worth is NOT established by your teaching. Your worth was established by God. As long as you dispute this, EVERYTHING you do will be fearful, and particularly any situation which lends itself easily to the superior-inferior fallacy. Teachers must be patient, and repeat their lessons until they are learned. I am willing to do so, because I have no right to set your learning limits for you.
Once again, - NOTHING you do, or think, or will, or make is necessary to establish your worth. This point IS NOT DEBATABLE except in delusions. Your ego is NEVER at stake because God did not create it. Your Soul is never at stake because He DID. Any confusion on this point IS a delusion, and no form of devotion is possible as long as this delusion lasts.
Bill, if you will to be a devoted teacher rather than an egocentric one, you will not be afraid. The teaching situation IS fearful if it is misused as an ego involvement. If you become afraid, it is BECAUSE you are using it this way. But the devoted teacher perceives the situation AS IT IS, and NOT as HE wills it. He does not see it as dangerous because HE is not exploiting it.
The ego tries to exploit ALL situations into forms of praise for itself in order to overcome its doubts. It will be doubtful forever, or better, as long as you believe in it. You who made it CANNOT trust it, because you KNOW it is not real. The ONLY sane solution is not to try to change reality, which is indeed a fearful attempt, but to see it as it is. YOU are part of reality, which stands unchanged beyond the reach of your ego, but within easy reach of your Soul.
Bill, again I tell you that when you are afraid, be still and KNOW that God is real and YOU are His beloved son in whom he is well pleased. Do not let your ego dispute this, because the ego cannot know what is as far beyond its reach as you are. God is NOT the author of fear. YOU are. You have willed, therefore, to create unlike Him, and you have made fear for yourselves.
You are not at peace, because you are not fulfilling your function. God gave you a very lofty responsibility which you are not meeting. You KNOW this, and you are afraid. But your egos have chosen to be afraid INSTEAD of meeting it. When you awaken you will not be able to understand this, because it is literally incredible.
DO NOT BELIEVE THE INCREDIBLE NOW. Any attempt to increase its believableness is merely to postpone the inevitable. The word "inevitable" is fearful to the ego, but joyous to the Soul. God IS inevitable and you CANNOT avoid Him any more than He can avoid YOU.
The ego is afraid of the Soul's joy, because once you have experienced this, you will withdraw all protection from your ego and become totally without investment in fear. Your investment is great now, because fear is a witness to the Separation, and your ego rejoices when you witness to it.
Leave it behind. Do not listen to it, and do not preserve it. Listen only to God, who is as incapable of deception as are the Souls he created. As teachers and therapists, release yourselves and release others. Do not present a false and unworthy picture of yourselves TO others, or accept such a picture OF them yourselves.
The ego has built a shabby and unsheltering home for you, because it cannot build otherwise. Do not try to make this impoverished house stand. ITS weakness IS your strength. Only God could make a home that was worthy of His Creations, who have chosen to leave it empty by their own dispossession.
His Home will stand forever, and is ready for you when you choose to enter. Of this you can be wholly certain. God is as incapable of creating the perishable as your ego is of making the eternal.
Of your egos you can do nothing to save yourselves or others. But of your Souls you can do everything for the salvation of both. Humility is a lesson for the ego, not for the Soul. The Soul is beyond humility, because it recognizes its radiance, and gladly sheds its light everywhere.
The meek shall inherit the earth because their egos are humble, and this gives them better perception. The Kingdom of Heaven is the right of the Soul, whose beauty and dignity are beyond doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the love of God for His Creations, who are wholly worthy of Him and ONLY of Him. Nothing else is sufficiently worthy to be a gift for a creation of God Himself.
I will substitute for your ego if you will, but NEVER for your Soul. A father can safely leave a child with an elder brother who has shown himself responsible, but this involves no confusion about the child's origin. The brother can protect the child's body and his ego, which are very closely associated, but he does not confuse HIMSELF with the father because he does this, although the child may.
The reason why I can be entrusted with YOUR body and YOUR egos is simply because this enables YOU not to be concerned with them, and ME to teach you their unimportance. I could not understand their importance to YOU if I had not once been tempted to believe them myself. Let us undertake to learn this lesson together, so we can also be free of them together.
I need devoted teachers as much as I need devoted priestesses. They both heal the mind, and that is always my own aim. The Soul is far beyond the need of your protection OR mine.
The Biblical quotation should read "In this world you need NOT have tribulation BECAUSE I have overcome the world." THAT is why you should "be of good cheer."
B's course was very carefully chosen, because "abnormal psychology" IS ego psychology. This is precisely the kind of content which should never be taught FROM the ego whose abnormality should be lessened by teaching, not increased. You, Bill, are particularly well suited to perceive this difference, and can therefore teach this course as it should be taught. Most teachers have an unfortunate tendency to teach the COURSE abnormally, and many of the students are apt to suffer considerable perceptual distortion because of their own authority problem.
Your teaching assignment (and I assure you it IS an assignment) will be to present perceptual distortions without either engaging in them yourself, or encouraging your students to do so. This interpretation of your role and theirs is too charitable to induce fear. If you adhere to this role, you will both engender and experience hope, and you will inspire rather than dispirit the future teachers and therapists I am entrusting to you.
I promise to attend myself, and you should at least credit with me with some dependability in keeping my own promises. I never make them lightly, because I know the need my brothers have for trust.
Accepting the Atonement for yourself means NOT to give support to someone's dream of sickness and of death. It means that you share NOT his wish to separate, and let him turn illusions on himself. Nor do you wish that they be turned instead on YOU. Thus have they NO effects. And YOU are free of dreams of pain because you let HIM be. UNLESS you help him, YOU will suffer pain with him because that is your wish. And you become a figure in HIS dream of pain, as he in YOURS. So do you BOTH become illusions, and without identity. You could be anyone or anything, depending on whose evil dream you share. You can be sure of just ONE thing; that you are evil, for you share in dreams of fear.
There is a way of finding certainty RIGHT HERE AND NOW. Refuse to be a part of fearful dreams, WHATEVER form they take. For you will lose identity in them. You FIND yourself by NOT accepting them as causing you, and GIVING you effects. You stand apart from them, but NOT apart from him who dreams them. Thus you separate the dreamer from the dream, and join with ONE, but let the OTHER go. The dream is but illusion in the mind. And with the MIND you WOULD unite, but NEVER with the dream. It is the DREAM you fear, and NOT the mind. You see them as the same, because you think that YOU are but a dream. And what is real and what is but illusion IN YOURSELF you do not know and cannot tell apart.
Like you, your brother thinks HE is a dream. Share not in his illusion of himself. For YOUR identity depends on his reality. Think, rather, of him as a mind in which illusions still persist, but as a mind which brother is to you. He is not brother made by what he DREAMS, nor is his body, "hero" of the dream, your brother. It is his REALITY that is your brother, as is yours to him. Your mind and his ARE joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but SEEM to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. And yet, between your MINDS there IS no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him NOT, because his dreams would SEPARATE from you.
Therefore release him, merely by your claim on brotherhood, and NOT on dreams of fear. Let him acknowledge who he IS, by not supporting his illusions by your faith, for if you do, you will have faith in YOURS. With faith in yours, HE will not be released, and YOU are kept in bondage to his dreams. And dreams of fear will haunt the little gap, inhabited but by illusions which you have SUPPORTED in each other's minds. Be certain, if you do YOUR part, he will do his, for he will JOIN you where YOU stand. Call not to him to meet you in the gap BETWEEN you, or you MUST believe that it is YOUR reality, as well as his. You CANNOT do his part, but this you DO when you become a passive figure in his dream INSTEAD of dreamer of your own.
Identity in dreams is meaningless BECAUSE the dreamer and the dream are one. Who shares a dream must BE the dream he shares, because, BY sharing, is a cause produced. You share confusion, and you ARE confused, for in the gap no stable self exists. What is the same seems different, because what IS the same appears to be unlike. His dreams are yours, because you LET them be. But, if you took your OWN away, would he be free of them, and of his own as well. Your dreams are witnesses to his, and his attest the truth of yours. But if you see there IS no truth in yours, his dreams will disappear before his eyes, and he will understand what MADE the dream.
The Holy Spirit is in BOTH your minds, and He IS One, because there is no gap that separates His Oneness from Itself. The gap between your bodies matters not, for what is joined in Him is ALWAYS one. No-one is sick, if someone ELSE accepts his union WITH him. His desire to be a sick and separated mind can NOT remain without a witness or a cause. And both ARE gone, if someone wills to be united with him. He has dreamed that he was separated from his brother, who, by sharing NOT his dream, has left the space between them vacant. And the Father comes to join His Son the Holy Spirit joined.
The Holy Spirit's Function is to take the broken picture of the Son of God, and put the pieces into place again. This holy picture, healed entirely, does He hold out to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture IN ITSELF. To each he offers his identity, which the WHOLE picture represents, instead of just a little, broken bit, which he insisted was himself. And when he sees THIS picture, he will RECOGNIZE himself. If you share not your brother's evil dreams, this IS the picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin. And here the Father will receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to himself.
I thank you, Father, knowing you will come to close each little gap that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy Son. Your Holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. And they ARE joined, because what is in one IS in them all. How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is recognized as being part of the completed picture of God's Son. The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing. For the Whole is in each one. And every aspect of the Son of God is just the same as every other part. Join not your brother's dream, but join with HIM, and where you join His Son, the Father IS.
Who seeks for substitutes, when he perceives HE HAS LOST NOTHING? Who would WANT to have the "benefits" of sickness, when he has received the simple happiness of health? What God has given cannot BE a loss, and what is not of Him has NO effects. What, then, would you perceive within the gap? The seeds of sickness come from the belief that there is JOY in separation, and its giving up WOULD BE A SACRIFICE. But miracles are the result, when you do not insist on seeing in the gap what is not there. Your willingness to LET illusions go is all the Healer of God's Son requires. He will place the miracle of healing where the seeds of sickness were. And there will be NO loss, but ONLY gain.
Illusions are made as substitutes for truth, for which no substitutes are possible. Creator separate from creation was the first illusion, where all gifts of fear were born. For now creation could not be like its Creator, Who could never leave what He Himself created part of Him. Now must there be a substitute for love, which cannot have an opposite in truth and, being all, can have no substitute. So fear was made, and with it came the need for gifts to lend the substance to the dream in which there is no substance. Now the dream seems to have value, for its offerings appear as hope and strength and even love, if only for an instant. They content the frightened dreamer for a little while, and let him not remember the first dream which gifts of fear but offer him again.
The seeming solace of illusions' gifts are now his armor, and the sword he holds to save himself from waking. For before he could awaken, he would first be forced to call to mind the first dream once again. It is not God Who asks a price of him, but having drawn a veil across the truth, he now must let the veil be drawn away so that its lack of substance can be seen. No one would hesitate to leave a dream of shock and terror, merciless decay and sickening contortions, with despair always in sight and death not far behind, if he believed that it was but a dream. Yet if he thinks that he must first go through a greater terror still, he must see hope in what will now appear the "better" dream.
And now he seeks within his dream to find what gifts it may contain. What can you get within its shadows? Who can save you now by giving you the love you threw away? What can you learn to do to make yourself a master over others? What is there that is your special gift within the dream? Find these and do not waken from the dream, for it can give you what you think you lack. And if you waken all its gifts will go, your armor and your sword will disappear, and vultures, always circling overhead, will claim you as their lawful prey at last.
Oh children of the Father you forgot, you have not put your idols in His place, nor made Him give the gifts of fear you made. Let me be Savior from illusions. Truth may be concealed from you by evil dreams, but it is only from the dreams that you have need of saving. Truth is still untouched by your deceptions. But you cannot go past that first dream without a Savior's hand in yours. Each gift of fear would hold you back unless you let me lift it from your mind by showing you that it is but a dream within a larger dream of hopelessness in which there is no hope. Take not its gifts, for they condemn you to a lasting hell which will endure when all the seeming joy the gifts appeared to give has passed away.
Do not be tempted. Do not fall away into the shadows, and a deeper sleep in which the waking seems to be the dream. Help me give you salvation. Let us share the strength of Christ, and look upon the dream in which illusions started, and which serves to keep their birthplace secret and apart from the illumination of the truth. Come unto me. There is no need to dream of an escape from dreaming. It will fail. For if the dream were real, escape would be impossible, and there would be no hope except illusions. Do not yield to this. It is not so. For I am not a dream that comes in mockery. Salvation needs your help as well as mine. Do not forget you do not answer for yourself alone.
My call to you is that you offer help from all the dreams the holy Son of God imagines, from the time that first of dreams was given false reality until all dreaming ends forever. Could a gift be holier than this? And could the need within a world of dreams be more acute or more compelling? Give me help in this, and not one gift the world may seek to give, or one illusion held against the truth, can bind you longer. Time can have no sway upon you, nor can any laws of earth have power over you. Your hands will heal, and give the gifts that you accept of me.
How joyful and how holy is our way when death has no dominion, and the dream of separation, agony and loss has been dispelled forever. Do not think that anything the gifts of fear hold out is worth an instant's hesitation, when the gate of Heaven stands before you and the Christ of God is waiting your return. Be still and hear Him, for His call to you could not be more insistent nor more dear, for it is but the call of Love Itself, Which will not cease to speak of God to you. You have forgot, but He is faithful still, because He is so like His Father He remembers Him forever in His Love. And He cannot forget creation is inseparable from Creator, so He understands that you are part of God and of the Son created like Himself.
How dear are you to Him, a part in which is every gift of God forever laid, without whom is Christ incomplete, Who is completion of His Father. Can a dream destroy a truth so holy and so pure that it encompasses all truth, and leaves nothing beyond Itself? Can you betray a love so perfect that its gifts become Itself in oneness, and this single gift is all there is to give and to receive? Oh come and let creation be again all that it always was and still will be forever and forever. Let the dream of time be given its appointed end, and let God's Son have mercy on himself.
There is a silence covering the world that was an ancient dream so long ago no one remembers now. Its time is done, and in the little space it seemed to have is nothingness. The dream has gone, and all its dreams of gifts have disappeared as well. The first dream has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear on which the world was based. Behind the dream, reaching to everything, embracing all, creation and Creator still remain in perfect harmony and perfect love.
This is beyond the gate at which we stand. And shall we stay to wait upon a dream? Your holiness is mine, and mine is His. Here is His gift, complete and undefiled. It is Himself He gives, and it is this that is the truth in you. How beautiful are you who stand beside me at the gate, and call with me that everyone may come and step aside from time. Put out your hand to touch eternity and disappear into its perfect rest. Here is the peace that God intended for the Child He loves. Enter with me and let its quietness cover the earth forever. It is done. Father, your Voice has called us home at last: gone is the dream. Awake, My Child, in love.
You have been told to bring the darkness to the light, and guilt to holiness. And you have also been told that error must be corrected at its source. Therefore, it is the tiny part of your self, the little thought that seems split off and separate, that the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in God's keeping, and needs no guide. But this wild and delusional thought needs help, because, in its delusions, it thinks it is the Son of God, whole and omnipotent, sole ruler of the kingdom it set apart, to tyrannize by madness into obedience and slavery.
This is the LITTLE part of you, you think you stole from Heaven. Give it back to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but YOU have lost sight of Heaven. Let the Holy Spirit remove it from the withered kingdom in which you set it up, surrounded by darkness, guarded by attack, and reinforced by hate. Within its barricades is still a tiny segment of the Son of God, complete and holy, serene and unaware of what you think surrounds it. Be you not separate, for the One Who DOES surround it has brought union to you, returning your little offering of darkness to the Eternal Light.
How is this done? It is extremely simple, being based on what this little kingdom really IS. The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes. ITS vision IS distorted, and the messages IT transmits to you, who MADE it to limit your awareness, ARE little and limited, so fragmented that they are meaningless. From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. For YOU sent forth these messengers, to bring this BACK to you.
Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are NO messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is NOT the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not, its senses remain quite UNAWARE of it, its tongue can not relay ITS messages. Yet God can bring you there, if you are willing to follow the Holy Spirit through seeming terror, trusting Him not to abandon you, and LEAVE you there. For it is not HIS purpose to frighten you, but only YOURS. YOU are severely tempted to abandon HIM at the outside ring of fear. But HE would lead you safely through, and FAR beyond.
The circle of fear lies just below the level the body sees, and SEEMS to be the whole foundation on which the world is based. Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury, vengeance, and betrayal that were made to keep the guilt in place, so that the world could RISE from it, and keep IT hidden. Its SHADOW rises to the surface, enough to hold its most external manifestations in darkness, and to bring despair and loneliness to it, and keep it joyless. But its INTENSITY is veiled by its heavy coverings, and kept APART from what was made to keep it hidden.
The body cannot see this, for the body AROSE from this for its protection, which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes will NEVER look on it. Yet they will SEE what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs, as long as YOU believe that guilt is real. For the REALITY of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a REAL foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light.
This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is like a bank of low, dark clouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is WHOLLY an illusion. It gives way softly to the mountain tops that rise above it, and has no power at all to hold back anyone willing to climb above it, to see the sun. It is not strong enough to stop a button's fall, nor hold a feather. Nothing can rest upon it, for it is but an ILLUSION of a foundation. Try but to touch it, and it disappears; attempt to grasp it, and your hands hold nothing.
Yet in this cloud bank it is easy to see a whole world rising. A solid mountain range, a lake, a city, all arise in your imagination, and FROM the clouds, the messengers of your perception return to you, assuring you that it is all THERE. Figures stand out and move about, actions seem real, and forms appear and shift from loveliness to the grotesque. And back and forth they go, as long as you would play the game of children's "make believe." Yet, however long you play it, and regardless of how much imagination you bring to it, you do NOT confuse it with the world below, nor seek to make it real.
So should it be with the dark clouds of guilt, no more impenetrable and no more substantial. You will NOT bruise yourself against them, in traveling through. Let your Guide TEACH you their UNsubstantial nature, as He leads you PAST them. For BENEATH them is a world of light, whereon they cast no shadows. Their shadows lie upon the world BEYOND them, still FURTHER from the light. But from them TO the light, their shadows CANNOT fall. This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here, the world OUTSIDE is seen anew, WITHOUT the shadow of guilt upon it.
Here are YOU forgiven, for here you have forgiven everyone. Here is the new perception, where everything is bright and shining with innocence, washed in the waters of forgiveness, and cleansed of every evil thought you laid upon it. Here there is no attack upon the Son of God, and YOU are welcome. Here is your innocence, waiting to clothe you and protect you, and make you ready for the final step in the journey inward. Here are the dark and heavy garments of guilt laid by, and gently replaced by purity and joy.
Yet even forgiveness is not the end. Forgiveness DOES make lovely, but it does NOT create. It IS the source of healing, but it is the MESSENGER of love, and not its Source. Here you are led, that God Himself can take the final step unhindered. For here does nothing INTERFERE with love, letting it be Itself. A step BEYOND this holy place of forgiveness. A step still further inward, but one you CANNOT take, transports you to something COMPLETELY different. Here is the Source of light; nothing perceived, forgiven, nor transformed. But merely KNOWN.
Perhaps this will become clearer and more personally meaningful if the ego's use of guilt is clarified. The ego has a purpose, just as the Holy Spirit has. The ego's purpose is FEAR, because only the fearful can be egotistic. The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But let us again remember that both are in you.
In Heaven there is no guilt, because the Kingdom is attained through the Atonement, which creates it in you. The word "create" is appropriate here, because once what YOU have made is undone by the Holy Spirit, the blessed residue IS restored, and therefore continues in creation. What is truly blessed is incapable of giving rise to guilt, and must give rise to joy. This makes it invulnerable to the ego, because its peace is unassailable. It is invulnerable to disruption BECAUSE it is whole.
Guilt is ALWAYS disruptive. Anything that engenders fear is divisive, because it obeys the law of division. If the ego is the symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt. Guilt is more than merely not of God. It is the symbol of the ATTACK on God. This is a totally meaningless concept EXCEPT to the ego, but do not underestimate the power of the ego's belief in it. This is the belief from which ALL guilt really stems.
The ego IS the part of the mind which believes in division. But how can part of God detach itself WITHOUT believing it is attacking Him? We spoke before of the authority problem as involving the concept of USURPING His power. The ego believes that this is what YOU did, because it believes it IS you. It follows, then, that if you identify WITH the ego, you MUST perceive yourself as guilty.
Whenever you respond to your ego, you WILL experience guilt, and you WILL fear punishment. The ego is quite literally a fearful thought. And however ridiculous the idea of attacking God may be to the sane mind, never forget that the ego is NOT SANE. It REPRESENTS a delusional system, and it speaks FOR it. Listening to the ego's voice MEANS that you believe it is possible to attack God. You believe that a part of Him has been torn away by YOU.
The classic picture of fear of retaliation from without then follows, because the severity of the guilt is so acute that it MUST be projected. Although Freud was wrong about the basic conflict itself, he was very accurate in describing its effects. Whatever you accept INTO your mind has reality for you. It is, however, only the ACCEPTANCE which makes it real.
As an extreme example of dissociation yourself, you should have little trouble in understanding that it is perfectly possible not to ACCEPT what IS in your minds. If you enthrone the ego in it, the fact that you have accepted it, or allowed it to enter, MAKES IT YOUR REALITY. This is because the mind as God created it IS capable of creating reality. We said before that you must learn to think WITH God. To think WITH Him is to think LIKE Him. This engenders joy, not guilt, because it is natural. Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking is UNnatural. Perverted thinking will ALWAYS be attended with guilt, because it IS the belief in sin.
The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love. It perceives it as a POSITIVE ACT OF ASSAULT. This is an interpretation which is necessary to its survival, because as soon as YOU regard it as a LACK, you will automatically attempt to remedy the situation. And you will also succeed. The ego regards this as doom, but YOU must learn to regard it as freedom.
The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone. We said before that illness is a form of magic. It might be better to say it is a form of magical SOLUTION. The ego believes that by punishing ITSELF, it will mitigate the punishment of God. Yet even in this it is arrogant. It attributes to God a punishing attempt, and then takes over this intent as its OWN prerogative. It tries to usurp ALL the functions of God as it perceives them, because it recognizes that only total allegiance can be trusted.
The ego cannot OPPOSE the laws of God, any more than YOU can. But it can INTERPRET them according to what it wants, just as YOU can. That is why the question "what DO you want" must be answered. You ARE answering it every minute and every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment which is anything BUT ineffectual. Its effects will follow automatically UNTIL THE DECISION IS CHANGED. This is a redundant statement, because you have NOT learned it. But again, any decision can be UNmade as well as made.
But remember that the ALTERNATIVES are unalterable. The Holy Spirit, like the ego, is a decision. Together they constitute all the alternatives which your mind CAN accept and obey. The ego and the Holy Spirit are the ONLY choices which are open to you. God created one, and so you cannot eradicate it. YOU made the other, so you CAN. Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable. What YOU have made can always be changed, because when you do not think LIKE God, you have not really thought at all. Delusional ideas are NOT thought, but you CAN think that you believe in them.
But you are wrong. The function of thought comes FROM God and is IN God. As part of HIS thought, you cannot think APART from Him. Irrational thought is a thought DISORDER. God Himself orders your thought, because your thought was created BY Him. Guilt feelings are always a sign that you do not know this. They also show that you believe you CAN think apart from God, and WANT to.
Every thought disorder is attended by guilt at its inception, and MAINTAINED by guilt in its continuance. Guilt is inescapable for those who believe that they order their OWN thought, and must therefore obey its orders. This makes them feel RESPONSIBLE for their mind ERRORS, without recognizing that by ACCEPTING this responsibility they are really reacting IRresponsibly. If the sole responsibility of the miracle-worker is to accept the ATONEMENT, and I assure you that it is, then the responsibility for what is atoned FOR CANNOT be yours.
This contradiction cannot BE resolved except by accepting the solution of undoing. You WOULD be responsible for the effects of all your wrong thinking IF IT COULD NOT BE UNDONE. The purpose of the Atonement is to save the past in PURIFIED form only. If you accept the remedy FOR a thought-disorder, and a remedy whose efficacy is beyond doubt, how can its symptoms remain? You have reason to question the validity of symptom cure. But NO ONE believes that the symptoms can remain if the underlying CAUSE is removed.
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.
All things are given you. God's trust in you is limitless. He knows His Son. He gives without exception, holding nothing back that can contribute to your happiness. And yet, unless your will is one with His, His gifts are not received. But what would make you think there is another will than His?
Here is the paradox that underlies the making of the world. This world is not the Will of God, and so it is not real. Yet those who think it real must still believe there is another will, and one which leads to opposite effects from those He wills. Impossible indeed; but every mind which looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators; or in one, himself alone. But never in One God.
The gifts of God are not acceptable to anyone who holds such strange beliefs. He must believe that to accept God's gifts, however evident they may become, however urgently he may be called to claim them as his own, is being pressed to treachery against himself. He must deny their presence, contradict the truth, and suffer to preserve the world he made.
Here is the only home he thinks he knows. Here is the only safety he believes that he can find. Without the world he made is he an outcast, homeless and afraid. He does not realize that it is here he is afraid indeed, and homeless too; an outcast wandering so far from home, so long away, he does not realize he has forgotten where he came from, where he goes, and even who he really is.
Yet in his lonely, senseless wanderings God's gifts go with him, all unknown to him. He cannot lose them. But he will not look at what is given him. He wanders on, aware of the futility he sees about him everywhere, perceiving how his little lot but dwindles as he goes ahead to nowhere. Still he wanders on in misery and poverty, alone though God is with him, and a treasure his so great that everything the world contains is valueless before its magnitude.
He seems a sorry figure, weary, worn, in threadbare clothing, and with feet that bleed a little from the rocky road he walks. No one but has identified with him, for everyone who comes here has pursued the path he follows, and has felt defeat and hopelessness as he is feeling them. Yet is he really tragic when you see that he is following the way he chose, and need but realize Who walks with him, and open up his treasures to be free?
This is your chosen self, the one you made as a replacement for reality. This is the self you savagely defend against all reason, every evidence, and all the witnesses with proof to show this is not you. You heed them not. You go on your appointed way, with eyes cast down lest you might catch a glimpse of truth, and be released from self deception and set free.
You cower fearfully lest you should feel Christ's touch upon your shoulder, and perceive His gentle hand directing you to look upon your gifts. How could you then proclaim your poverty in exile? He would make you laugh at this perception of yourself. Where is self-pity then? And what becomes of all the tragedy you sought to make for him whom God intended only joy?
Your ancient fear has come upon you now, and justice has caught up with you at last. Christ's hand has touched your shoulder, and you feel that you are not alone. You even think the miserable self you thought was you may not be your identity. Perhaps God's Word is truer than your own. Perhaps His gifts to you are real. Perhaps He has not wholly been outwitted by your plan to keep His Son in deep oblivion, and go the way you chose without your Self.
God's Will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His Will. There was a need He did not understand, to which He gave an Answer. That is all. And you who have this Answer given you have need no more of anything but this.
Now do we live, for now we cannot die. The wish for death is answered, and the sight that looked upon it now has been replaced by vision which perceives that you are not what you pretend to be. One walks with you Who gently answers all your fears with this one merciful reply, "It is not so." He points to all the gifts you have each time the thought of poverty oppresses you, and speaks of His Companionship when you perceive yourself as lonely and afraid.
Yet He reminds you still of one thing more you had forgotten. For His touch on you has made you like Himself. The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God. He has reminded you of all the gifts that God has given you. He speaks as well of what becomes your will when you accept these gifts, and recognize they are your own.
The gifts are yours, entrusted to your care, to give to all who chose the lonely road you have escaped. They do not understand they but pursue their wishes. It is you who teach them now. For you have learned of Christ there is another way for them to walk. Teach them by showing them the happiness that comes to those who feel the touch of Christ and recognize God's gifts. Let sorrow not tempt you to be unfaithful to your trust.
Your sighs will now betray the hopes of those who look to you for their release. Your tears are theirs. If you are sick you but withhold their healing. What you fear but teaches them their fears are justified. Your hand becomes the giver of Christ's touch; your change of mind becomes the proof that who accepts God's gifts can never suffer anything. You are entrusted with the world's release from pain.
Betray it not. Become the living proof of what Christ's touch can offer everyone. God has entrusted all His gifts to you. Be witness in your happiness to how transformed the mind becomes which chooses to accept His gifts and feel the touch of Christ. Such is your mission now. For God entrusts the giving of His gifts to all who have received them. He has shared His joy with you. And now you go to share it with the world.
Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell. Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE. The picture of yourself you offer him you show YOURSELF, and give it all your faith. The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is NO pain and NO reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence.
The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins.
Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.
Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true.
It is not Will for Life, but wish for death, that is the motivation for this world. Its ONLY purpose is TO PROVE GUILT REAL. No worldly thought or act or feeling has a motivation other than this one. These are the witnesses that are called forth to be believed, and lend conviction to the system they speak for and represent. And each has many voices, speaking to your brother and yourself in different tongues. And yet to both the message is the same. Adornment of the body seeks to show how lovely are the witnesses for guilt. Concerns about the body demonstrate how frail and vulnerable is your life; how easily destroyed is what you love. Depression speaks of death and vanity of real concern with anything at all.
The strongest witness to futility, which bolsters all the rest and helps them paint the picture in which sin is justified, is sickness in whatever form it takes. The sick have reason for each one of their unnatural desires and strange needs. For who could live a life so soon cut short, and NOT esteem the worth of passing joys? What pleasures COULD there be that will endure? Are not the frail ENTITLED to believe that every stolen scrap of pleasure is their righteous payment for their little lives? Their death will pay the price for all of them, if they enjoy the benefits or not. The end of life must come, whatever way that life be spent. And so take pleasure in the quickly passing and ephemeral.
These are NOT sins, but witnesses unto the strange belief that sin and death are real, and innocence and sin will end alike, within the termination of the grave. If this were true, there WOULD be reason to remain content to seek for passing joys, and cherish little pleasures where you can. But in this picture is the body NOT perceived as neutral and WITHOUT a goal inherent in itself. For it becomes the symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there to see, so that the cause can NEVER be denied. Your function is to PROVE to him that sin can HAVE no cause. How futile MUST it be to see yourself a picture of the proof that what your function IS can never be.
The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it ALL signs of accusation and of blamefulness. Pictured WITHOUT a purpose, it is seen as neither sick nor well, nor bad nor good. No grounds are offered that it may be judged in ANY way at all. It has no life, but neither is it dead. It stands apart from ALL experience of fear OR love. For now it witnesses to NOTHING yet, its purpose being open, and the mind made free again to choose what it is FOR. Now it is not condemned, but waiting for a purpose to be GIVEN, that it may fulfill the function that it will receive.
Into this empty space, from which the GOAL of sin has been removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can come, and perfect healing take the place of death. The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."
The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you KNEW its purpose was to foster guilt. For this insists your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents. This leaves no space in which a DIFFERENT view, ANOTHER purpose, can be given it. You do NOT know its purpose. You but gave ILLUSIONS of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your function from yourself. This thing WITHOUT a purpose CANNOT hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, ITS purpose and YOUR function both be reconciled at last, and seen as one.
WE are the joint will of the Sonship, whose wholeness is for all. We begin the journey back by setting out TOGETHER, and gather in our brothers as we CONTINUE together.
Every gain in our strength is offered to all, so they, too, can lay aside their weakness and add their strength to us. God's welcome waits for us all, and He will welcome us as I am welcoming YOU. Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it CAN blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true.
I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours. If it were, you would have destroyed yourselves. But God did not will the destruction of His Creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from yourselves, but from your illusions of yourselves. He has saved you FOR yourselves. Let us glorify Him Whom the world denies, for over His Kingdom it has no power.
No-one created by God can find joy in anything except the eternal. That is not because he is DEPRIVED of anything else, but because nothing else is WORTHY of him. What God AND His Sons create IS eternal, and in this and this only is their joy. Listen to the story of the prodigal son, and learn what God's treasure is and YOURS.
This son of a loving father left his home and thought he squandered everything for nothing of any value, though he did not know its worthlessness at the time. He was ashamed to return to his father, because he thought he had hurt him. But when he came home the father welcomed him with joy, because only the son himself WAS his father's treasure. HE WANTED NOTHING ELSE.
God wants only His Son, because His Son is His only treasure. You want your creations, as He wants His. Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for YOUR creation. They do not leave you, any more than you have left YOUR Creator. But they EXTEND your creation, as God extended Himself to YOU. Can the Creations of God Himself take joy in what is not real? And what IS real except the Creations of God and those which are created like His? YOUR creations love you as your Soul loves your Father FOR THE GIFT OF CREATION. There IS no other gift that is eternal, and therefore THERE IS NO OTHER GIFT THAT IS TRUE.
How, then, can you accept anything else, or GIVE anything else, and expect joy in return? And what else BUT joy would you want? You made neither yourself nor your function. YOU have made only the DECISION to be unworthy of both. But you COULD not make YOURSELF unworthy because YOU ARE THE TREASURE OF GOD. What HE values IS valuable. There CAN be no question of its worth, because its value lies in God's sharing Himself with it and ESTABLISHING ITS VALUE FOREVER. YOUR function is to ADD to God's treasure by creating YOURS. His will TO you is His Will FOR you. He would not withhold creation from you, because HIS joy is in it.
You CANNOT find joy EXCEPT as He does. HIS joy lay in creating YOU, and He extends His Fatherhood to you so that you can extend yourself AS HE DID. You do not understand this because you do not understand Him. No one who does not know his function can understand it. And no one CAN know his function unless he knows who he IS. Creation is the Will of God. His Will created you TO CREATE. Your will was not created separate from His, and so it wills as HE wills.
An unwilling will does not mean anything, because it is a contradiction in terms which actually leaves nothing. You can make yourself powerless only in a way that has NO MEANING AT ALL. When you THINK you are unwilling to will with God, YOU ARE NOT THINKING. God's will IS thought. It cannot be contradicted BY thought. God does not contradict HIMSELF. And His Sons, who are like Him, cannot contradict themselves OR Him. But their thought is so powerful that they can even imprison the mind of God's Son IF THEY SO CHOOSE. This choice DOES make the Son's function unknown TO HIM, but never to his Creator. And BECAUSE it is not unknown to his Creator, it is forever knowable to him.
There is no question but one you should ever ask of yourself: "Do I want to know my Father's Will for me?" HE will not hide it. He has revealed it to me because I asked it of Him, and learned of what He had already given. Our function is to function together, because apart from each other we cannot function at all. The whole power of God's Son lies in all of us, but not in any of us alone. God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him. Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God Himself, and therefore as holy as He is. Through our creations we extend our Love, and thus increase the joy of the Holy Trinity. You do not understand this for a very simple reason. You who are God's own treasure do not regard yourselves as valuable. Given this belief YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING.
I share with God the knowledge of the value HE puts upon you. My devotion to you is of Him, being born of my knowledge of myself AND Him. We cannot BE separated. Whom God has joined CANNOT be separated, and God has joined all His Sons WITH HIMSELF. Can you be separated from your life and your being? The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance, to a goal that has never changed.
Truth can only be EXPERIENCED. It cannot be described and it cannot be explained. I can make you aware of the CONDITIONS of truth, but the experience is of God. Together we can meet its conditions, but truth will dawn upon you of itself. What God has willed for you IS yours. He has given His Will to His treasure, whose treasure It is. Your heart lies where your treasure is, as His does. You who are beloved of God are wholly blessed. Learn this of me, and free the Holy Will of all those who are as blessed as you are.
The belief in sin is an ADJUSTMENT. And an adjustment is a CHANGE, a shift in perception, or a belief that what was so before has been made DIFFERENT. Every adjustment is therefore a DISTORTION, and calls upon defenses to uphold it AGAINST reality. Knowledge requires NO adjustment, and, in fact, is lost if any shift or change is undertaken. For this reduces it at once to mere perception; a way of LOOKING in which CERTAINTY is lost, and DOUBT has entered. To this IMPAIRED condition are adjustments necessary. BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT TRUE. Who need adjust to truth, which calls upon only what he IS, to understand?
Adjustments of ANY kind are of the ego. For it is the ego's fixed belief that all relationships DEPEND upon adjustments, to make of them what it would have them be. DIRECT relationships, in which there are NO interferences, are ALWAYS seen as dangerous. The ego is the self-appointed mediator of ALL relationships, making whatever adjustments it deems necessary, and INTERPOSING them BETWEEN those who would meet, to keep them separate and PREVENT their union. It is this studied interference which makes it difficult to recognize your holy relationship for what it is.
The holy do not interfere with truth. They are NOT afraid of it, for it is WITHIN it that they RECOGNIZED their holiness, and rejoiced at what they saw. They looked on it directly, WITHOUT attempting to ADJUST themselves to it, or it to them. And so they saw that it was IN them, NOT deciding first where they would have it be. Their looking merely asked a question, and it was WHAT THEY SAW that answered . YOU make the world and THEN adjust to it. AND IT TO YOU. Nor is there any difference between yourself and it in your perception, WHICH MADE THEM BOTH.
A simple question yet remains, and NEEDS an answer. Do you LIKE what you have made? A world of murder and attack, through which you thread your timid way through constant dangers, alone and frightened, hoping at most that death will wait a little longer, before it overtakes you, and you disappear. YOU MADE THIS UP. It is a picture of what you think YOU are; of how you SEE yourself. A murderer IS frightened, and those who kill FEAR death. All these are but the fearful thoughts of those who would adjust themselves to a world MADE fearful by their adjustments. And they look out in sorrow from what is sad WITHIN, and see the sadness THERE.
Have you wondered what the world is REALLY like? How would it look through HAPPY eyes? The world you see is but a judgment on YOURSELF. IT is not there at all. But judgment lays a sentence on it, JUSTIFIES it, and MAKES IT REAL. Such is the world you see; a judgment on yourself, and made by YOU. This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego, whose image it IS and which it loves, and placed OUTSIDE you, in the world. And TO this world must YOU adjust, as long as you believe this picture IS outside, and has you at its mercy.
This world IS merciless, and, were it outside you, you SHOULD indeed be fearful. But it is YOU who made it merciless. And now, if mercilessness SEEMS to look back at you, IT CAN BE CORRECTED. Who, in a holy relationship, can long remain unholy? The world the holy see is one with them, just as the world the ego looks upon is like itself. The world the holy see is beautiful, because they see their innocence in it. They did not TELL it what it was. They did not make adjustments to fit their orders. They gently questioned it, and whispered "what are you?" And He Who watches over all perception answered.
Take not the judgment of the world as answer to the question, "what am I?" The world BELIEVES in sin, but the belief that made it as you see it, is NOT outside you. Seek not to make the Son of God ADJUST to his insanity. There IS a stranger in him, who wandered carelessly into the home of Truth, and who will wander off. He came WITHOUT a purpose. But he will not remain before the shining light the Holy Spirit offered, and you accepted. For there the STRANGER is made homeless, and YOU are welcome. Ask not this transient stranger, "who am I?" He is the only thing in all the universe that does not know.
Yet it is he you asked, and it is to HIS answer you would adjust. This one wild thought, fierce in its arrogance and yet so tiny and so meaningless it slips unnoticed through the universe of truth, becomes your guide. To it you turn, to ask the MEANING of the universe. And of the one blind thing in all the seeing universe you ask, "how shall I look upon the Son of God?" Does one ask judgment of what is totally BEREFT of judgment? And if you HAVE, would you BELIEVE the answer? And ADJUST to it as if it were the truth? The world you look on IS the answer that it gave you. And YOU have given it power to ADJUST the world to MAKE its answer true.
You asked this puff of madness for the meaning of your unholy relationship, and adjusted it according to its insane answer. How happy did it make you? Did you meet with joy, to bless the Son of God, and give him thanks for all the happiness he held out to you? Did you RECOGNIZE each other as the eternal gift of God to you? Did you see the holiness that shone in both of you, to bless the other? That is the purpose of your HOLY relationship. Ask not the means of its attainment of the one thing that still would have it be unholy. Give it NO power to ADJUST the means and end.
Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and emaciated, weak and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember not the light, do not leap up in joy the instant they are made free. It takes a while for them to understand what freedom IS. You groped but feebly in the dust and found each other's hand, uncertain whether to let it go, or to take hold on life so long forgotten. Strengthen your hold, and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies. He seemed to be crucified beside you. And yet his holiness remained untouched and perfect, and with him beside you shall you this day enter with him to Paradise, and know the peace of God.
Such is my will for BOTH of you, and for each of you for one another, and for HIMSELF. Here there is only holiness, and joining without limit. For what is Heaven but union, direct and perfect, and WITHOUT the veil of fear upon it? Here are we one, looking with perfect gentleness upon each other, and on ourselves. Here, all thought of ANY separation between us becomes impossible. You who were prisoners in separation are now made free in Paradise. And here would I unite with you, my friends, my brothers, and my Self. Your gift unto each other has given me the certainty our union will be soon. Share then this faith with me, who KNOW that it is justified.
There is no fear in perfect love, BECAUSE it knows no sin. And it MUST look on others as on itself. Looking with charity within, what can it fear WITHOUT? The innocent see safety, and the pure see God within His Son, and look unto the Son to lead them to the Father. And where else would they go, but where they will to be? Each of you now will lead the other to the Father, as surely as God created His Son holy, and kept him so. In your brother is the light of God's eternal promise of YOUR immortality. See HIM as sinless, and there can BE no fear in you.
Strictly speaking the answer is no. How could a separate profession be one in which everyone is engaged? And how could any limits be laid on an interaction in which everyone is both patient and therapist in every relationship into which he enters? Yet practically speaking, it can still be said that there are those who devote themselves primarily to healing of one sort or another as their chief function. And it is to them that a large number of others turn for help. That, in effect, is the practice of therapy. These are therefore "officially" helpers. They are devoted to certain kinds of needs in their professional activities, although they may be far more able teachers outside of them. These people need no special rules, of course, but they may be called upon to use special applications of the general principles of healing.
First, the professional therapist is in an excellent position to demonstrate that there is no order of difficulty in healing. For this, however, he needs special training, because the curriculum by which he became a therapist probably taught him little or nothing about the real principles of healing. In fact, it probably tried to teach him how to make healing impossible. Most of the world's training follows a curriculum in judgment, with the aim of making the therapist a judge.
Even this the Holy Spirit can use, and will use, given the slightest invitation. The unhealed healer may be arrogant, selfish, unconcerned, and actually dishonest. He may be disinterested and unconcerned with healing as his major goal. Yet something happened to him, however slight it may have been, when he chose to be a healer, however misguided the direction he may have chosen. That "something" is enough. Sooner or later that something will rise in awareness and grow; a patient will touch his heart, and the therapist will silently ask him for help. He has himself found a therapist. He has asked the Holy Spirit to enter the relationship and heal it. He has accepted the Atonement for himself.
God is said to have looked on all He created and pronounced it good. No, He declared it perfect, and so it was. And since His creations do not change and last forever, so it is now. Yet neither a perfect therapist nor a perfect patient can possibly exist. Both must have denied their perfection, for their very need for each other implies a sense of lack. A one-to-one relationship is not one Relationship. Yet it is the means of return; the way God chose for the return of His Son. In that strange dream a strange correction must enter, for only that is the call to awake. And what else should therapy be? Awake and be glad, for all your sins have been forgiven you. This is the only message that any two should ever give each other.
Something good must come from every meeting of patient and therapist. And that good is saved for both, against the day when they can recognize that only that was real in their relationship. At that moment it is returned to them, blessed by the Holy Spirit as a gift from their Creator as a sign of His Love. For the therapeutic relationship must become like the relationship of the Father and the Son. There is no other, for there is nothing else. The therapists of this world do not expect this outcome, and many of their patients would not be able to accept help from them if they did. Yet no therapist really sets the goal for the relationships of which he is a part. His understanding begins with recognizing this, and then goes on from there.
It is in the instant that the therapist forgets to judge the patient that healing occurs. In some relationships this point is never reached, although both patient and therapist may arrive at different dreams in the process. Yet it will not be the same dream for both of them, and so it is not the dream of forgiveness in which both will someday wake. The good is saved; indeed is cherished. But only little time is saved and the new dreams will lose their temporary appeal and turn to dreams of fear, which is the content of all dreams. Yet no patient can accept more than he is ready to receive, and no therapist can offer more than he believes he has. And so there is a place for all relationships in this world, and they will bring as much good as each can accept and use.
Yet it is when judgment ceases that healing occurs, because only then it can be understood that there is no order of difficulty in healing. This is a necessary understanding for the healed healer. He has learned that it is no harder to wake a brother from one dream than from another. No professional therapist can hold this understanding consistently in his mind, offering it to all who come to him. There are some in this world who have come very close, but they have not accepted the gift entirely in order to stay and let their understanding remain on earth until the closing of time. They could hardly be called professional therapists. They are the Saints of God. They are the Saviors of the world. Their image remains, because they have chosen that it be so. They take the place of other images, and help with kindly dreams.
Once the professional therapist has realized that minds are joined, he can also recognize that order of difficulty in healing is meaningless. Yet well before he reaches this in time he can go toward it. Many holy instants can be his along the way. A goal marks the end of a journey, not the beginning, and as each goal is reached another can be dimly seen ahead. Most professional therapists are still at the very start of the beginning stage of the first journey. Even those who have begun to understand what they must do may still oppose the setting-out. Yet all the laws of healing can be theirs in just an instant. The journey is not long except in dreams.
The professional therapist has one advantage that can save enormous time if it is properly used. He has chosen a road on which there is great temptation to misuse his role. This enables him to pass by many obstacles to peace quite quickly, if he escapes the temptation to assume a function that has not been given him. To understand there is no order of difficulty in healing, he must also recognize the equality of himself and the patient. There is no halfway point in this. Either they are equal or not. The attempts of therapists to compromise in this respect are strange indeed. Some utilize the relationship merely to collect bodies to worship at their shrine, and this they regard as healing. Many patients, too, consider this strange procedure as salvation. Yet at each meeting there is One Who says, "My brother, choose again."
Do not forget that any form of specialness must be defended, and will be. The defenseless therapist has the strength of God with him, but the defensive therapist has lost sight of the Source of his salvation. He does not see and he does not hear. How, then, can he teach? Because it is the Will of God that he take his place in the plan for salvation. Because it is the Will of God that his patients be helped to join with him there. Because his inability to see and hear does not limit the Holy Spirit in any way. Except in time. In time there can be a great lag between the offering and the acceptance of healing. This is the veil across the Face of Christ. Yet it can be but an illusion, because time does not exist and the Will of God has always been exactly as it is.
It is possible even in this world to hear ONLY that voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls. The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy.
You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your minds, and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let to banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own.
Before the separation you did not need guidance. You KNEW as you will know again, but you do not know now. God does not guide, because He can share only PERFECT KNOWLEDGE. Guidance is EVALUATIVE, because it implies that there is a RIGHT way and also a WRONG way, one to be chosen and the other avoided. By choosing one, you give up the other. This IS a conflict state. It MEANS that knowledge has been lost, because knowledge is SURE.
God is not in you; YOU are part of HIM. When you willed to leave Him, He gave you a voice to speak FOR Him, because He could no longer share His knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct communication was broken, because you had made another voice through another will. The Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and forget. You have chosen to be in a state of opposition, in which opposites are possible. As a result, there ARE choices which you must make. In the holy state, the will is free in the sense that its CREATIVE power is unlimited, but choice itself is meaningless.
Freedom to choose is the same POWER as freedom to create, but its APPLICATION is different. Choosing MEANS divided will. The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. This way is in you BECAUSE there is also another way. God did not leave His Children comfortless, even though they left Him. The voice they put in their minds was NOT the voice of His Will, for which the Holy Spirit speaks. The call to return is stronger than the call to depart, but it speaks in a different way.
The voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because it is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand, because it does not seek control. It does not overcome, because it does not attack. It merely REMINDS. It is compelling only because of what it reminds you OF. It brings to your mind the OTHER way, remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you have made for yourselves. The voice for God is always quiet, because it speaks of peace. Yet peace is stronger than war, because it heals. War is DIVISION, not increase. No-one gains from strife.
"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" This means that if he listens to the wrong voice, he has LOST SIGHT of his Soul. He CANNOT lose it, but he CAN not know it. It is therefore LOST TO HIM, until he chooses right. The Holy Spirit is your guide in choosing. He is the part of your mind which ALWAYS speaks for the right choice, because he speaks for God. He is your remaining communication with God, which you can interrupt, but cannot destroy.
The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds. The voice for God comes from your own altars to Him. These altars are not THINGS. They are DEVOTIONS. But you have other devotions now. Your divided devotion has given you the two voices, and you must choose at which altar you will to serve. The call you answer now IS an evaluation, because it is a DECISION. The decision itself is very simple. It is made on the basis of which call is worth more to you.
My mind will always be like yours, because we were created as equals. It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision FOR YOURSELF. The will for this decision is the will to SHARE it, because the decision itself IS the decision to share. It is MADE BY GIVING, and is therefore the one act of mind that resembles true creation.
You understand the role of models in the learning process, and the importance of the models you value and choose to follow in determining what you will to learn. I am your model for decision. By deciding for God, I showed you that this decision CAN be made, and that YOU can make it. I promised you that the mind that made the decision for me is also in YOU, and that you can let it change you just as it changed me. This mind is unequivocal, because it hears only ONE VOICE, and answers in ONE WAY.
You are the light of the world with me. Rest does not come from sleeping, but from waking. The Holy Spirit is the call to awake and be glad. The world is very tired, because it is the IDEA of weariness. Our task is the joyous one of waking it to the call for God. Everyone will answer the call of the Holy Spirit, or the Sonship cannot be as one. What better vocation could there be for any part of the Kingdom than to restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole?
Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you, and teach your brothers to listen as I am teaching you. When you are tempted by the wrong voice, call on me to remind you how to heal by sharing my decision and MAKING IT STRONGER. As we share this goal, we increase its power to attract the whole Sonship, and to bring it back into the Oneness in which it was created.
Remember that "Yoke" means "join together," and "burden" means message. Let us reconsider the biblical statement "my yoke is easy and my burden light" in this way. Let us join together, for my message is Light. I came to your minds because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact that there is another way, or another voice. Having given this invitation to the Holy Spirit, I could come to provide the model for HOW TO THINK.
Psychology has become the study of BEHAVIOR, but no-one denies the basic law that behavior is a response to MOTIVATION, and motivation is will. I have enjoined you to behave as I behaved, but we must respond to the same mind to do this. This mind is the Holy Spirit, whose will is for God always. It teaches you how to keep me as the model for your thought, and behave like me as a result.
The power of our joint motivation is beyond belief, but NOT beyond accomplishment. What we can accomplish together has no limits, because the call for God IS the call to the unlimited. Child of God, my message is for YOU, to hear and give away as you answer the Holy Spirit within you.
There is one more point which must be perfectly clear before any residual fear which may still be associated with miracles becomes entirely groundless. The Crucifixion did NOT establish the Atonement. The Resurrection did. This is a point which many very sincere Christians have misunderstood. Nobody who was free of the scarcity-fallacy could POSSIBLY have made this mistake.
If the Crucifixion is seen from an upside down point of view, it certainly does appear AS IF God permitted, and even encouraged, one of his Sons to suffer BECAUSE he was good. Many very devoted ministers preach this every day. This particularly unfortunate interpretation, which actually arose out of the combined misprojection of a large number of my own would-be followers, has led many people to be bitterly afraid of God.
This particularly anti-religious concept happens to enter into many religions, and this is neither by chance nor coincidence.
The real Christian would have to pause and ask "how could this be?" Is it likely that God Himself would be capable of the kind of thinking which His own Words have clearly stated is unworthy of man?
(There are times when) The best defense, as always, is NOT to attack another's position, but rather to protect the truth. It is not necessary to consider anything acceptable, if you have to turn a whole frame of reference around in order to justify it. This procedure is painful in its minor applications, and genuinely tragic on a mass basis. Persecution is a frequent result, justifying the terrible misperception that God Himself persecuted His own Son on behalf of salvation. The very words are meaningless.
It has always been particularly difficult to overcome this because, although the error itself is no harder to overcome than any other error, men were unwilling to give it up because of its prominent escape value. In milder forms, a parent says "This hurts me more than it hurts you," and feels exonerated in beating a child. Can you believe that the Father REALLY thinks this way?
It is so essential that all such thinking be dispelled that we must be VERY sure that NOTHING of this kind remains in your mind. I was NOT punished because YOU were bad. The wholly benign lesson which the Atonement teaches is wholly lost if it is tainted with this kind of distortion in ANY form.
"Vengeance is Mine sayeth the Lord" is strictly a karmic viewpoint. It is a real misperception of truth, by which man assigns his own evil past to God. The "evil conscience" from the past has nothing to do with God. He did not create it, and He does not maintain it. God does NOT believe in karmic retribution at all. His Divine mind does not create that way. HE does not hold the evil deeds of a man even against HIMSELF. Is it likely, then, that He would hold against any man the evil that ANOTHER did?
Be very sure that you recognize how impossible this assumption really is, and how ENTIRELY it arises from misprojection. This kind of error is responsible for a host of related fallacies, including the misbelief that God rejected man and forced him out of the Garden of Eden, or that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort to use words which are ALMOST impossible to distort, but man is very inventive when it comes to twisting symbols around.
God Himself is not symbolic; He is FACT. The Atonement, too, is totally without symbolism. It is perfectly clear, because it exists in light. Only man's attempts to shroud it in darkness have made it inaccessible to the unwilling, and ambiguous to the partly willing. The Atonement itself radiates nothing but truth. It therefore epitomizes harmlessness, and sheds ONLY blessing. It could not do this if it arose from anything other than perfect innocence! Innocence is wisdom, because it is unaware of evil, which does not exist. It is, however, PERFECTLY aware of EVERYTHING, that is true.
The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness. The Atonement is thus the perfect lesson. It is the final demonstration that all of the other lessons which I taught are true.
Man is released from ALL errors if he believes in this. The deductive approach to teaching accepts the generalization which is applicable to ALL single instances, rather than building up the generalization after analyzing numerous single instances separately. If you can accept the ONE GENERALIZATION NOW, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons.
NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father. By doing this, the mind awakens from its sleep, and the Soul remembers its Creator. All sense of Separation disappears, and level confusion vanishes. The Son of God IS part of the holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is One. There is no confusion within ITS levels, because they are of One Mind and One Will. This Single Purpose creates perfect integration, and establishes the (reign of the) Peace of God.
But this vision can be perceived only by the truly innocent. Because their hearts are pure, they defend true perception, instead of defending themselves AGAINST it. Understanding the lesson of the Atonement, they are without the will to attack, and therefore they see truly. This is what the Bible means when it says "(and) when He shall appear (or be perceived) we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him AS HE IS."
Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. It arises solely from fear of the Records. This is particularly unfortunate, because frightened people are apt to be vicious. Sacrificing others in any way is a clear-cut violation of God's own injunction that man should be merciful even as His Father in Heaven is merciful.
It has been harder for many Christians to realize that this commandment (or assignment) also applies to THEMSELVES. Good teachers never terrorize their students. To terrorize is to attack, and this results in rejection of what the teacher offers. This results in learning failures.
I have been correctly referred to in the Bible as "The Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world." Those who represent the lamb as blood-stained (an all too widespread conceptual error) do NOT understand the meaning of the symbol.
Correctly understood, the symbol is a very simple parable, or teaching device, which merely depicts my innocence. The lion and the lamb lying down together refers to the fact that strength and innocence are NOT in conflict, but naturally live in peace. "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God" is another way of saying the same thing. Only the innocent CAN see God.
There has been some controversy (in human terms) as to whether seeing is an attribute of the eyes, or an expression of the integrative powers of the brain. Correctly understood, the issue revolves around the question of whether the body or the mind can see (or understand). This is not really open to question at all.
The body is not capable of understanding. Only the mind KNOWS anything. A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its strength. It cannot attack the body, because it knows EXACTLY what the body IS. This is what "a sane mind in a sane body" really means.
A sane mind is NOT out for blood. It does not confuse destruction with innocence, because it associates innocence with strength, NOT with weakness. Innocence is INCAPABLE of sacrificing anything, because the innocent mind HAS everything and strives only to PROTECT its Wholeness. This is why it CANNOT misproject. It can only honor man, because honor is the NATURAL greeting of the truly loved to others who are LIKE them.
The lamb taketh away the sins of the world only in the sense that the state of innocence or Grace, is one in which the meaning of the Atonement is perfectly apparent. The innocence of God is the true state of the mind of His Son. In this state, man's mind DOES see God, and because he sees Him as he Is, he knows that the Atonement, NOT sacrifice, is the ONLY appropriate gift to His OWN altar, where nothing except perfection truly belongs. The understanding of the innocent is TRUTH. That is why their altars are truly radiant.
(Dictated directly without notes) pp 7-12 Though Christians generally (but by no means universally) recognize the contradiction involved in victimizing others, they are less adept at ensuring their own inability to victimize themselves. Although this appears to be a much more benign error from the viewpoint of society, it is nevertheless inherently dangerous because once a two-edged defense is used, its direction cannot be self-controlled.
Bill recently observed how many ideas were condensed into relatively few pages here. This is because we have not been forced to dispel miscreations throughout. (There is one set of notes not yet transcribed which is devoted to this. These emphasize only the enormous waste of time that is involved.) Cayce's notes, too, could have been much shortened. Their excessive length is due to two factors. The first involves a fundamental error which Cayce himself made, and which required constant undoing. The second is more related to the attitude of his followers. They are unwilling to omit anything he said. This is respectful enough, but not overly-judicious. I would be a far better editor, if they would allow me this position on their staff.
It is obvious that Cayce himself was not able to transcend the misperceptions of the need for sacrifice, or he could not possibly have been willing to sacrifice himself. Anyone who is unable to leave the requests of others unanswered has not entirely transcended egocentricity. I never "gave of myself" in this inappropriate way, nor would I ever have encouraged Cayce to do so.
Cayce could not see the Atonement as totally lacking in sacrifice at ANY level. It WAS obvious to him that the mind cannot be so limited. It was equally apparent to him that the Soul is merely unaffected by such an idea. This left him only the body with which to invest his misperception. This is also why he used his own mind at the "EXPENSE of his body."
Because Cayce was a somewhat erratic listener, he was compelled to correct his own errors at very great length, and not always adequately. Consider the basis from which he started, when he began with "yes, we have the body." It is noteworthy that in all these readings, a large section was actually devoted to the body, even though he usually concluded with the caution that the body cannot be healed by itself. It would have saved an enormous number of words if he had always begun with this.
Cayce and his devotion to me are in no way underestimated by the realization that he worked under very great strain, which is ALWAYS a sign that something is wrong. One of the difficulties inherent in trance states is that it is very difficult to overcome the split which the trance itself induces through the medium of communications made while in the trance state.
Cayce's whole approach put him in a real double-bind, from which he did not recover. When he spoke of a dream in which he saw his own rather immanent reincarnation, he was perfectly accurate. He was sufficiently attuned to real communication to make it easy to correct his errors, and free him to communicate without strain. It is noticeable throughout his notes that he frequently engaged in a fallacy that we have already noted in some detail: namely, the tendency to endow the physical with nonphysical properties. Cayce suffered greatly from this error. He did not make either of the other three. However, you will remember that it is this one which is particularly vulnerable to magical associations. Cayce's accuracy was so great that, even when he did this, he was able to apply it constructively. But it does not follow that this was a genuinely constructive approach.
It should also be noted that, when Cayce attempted to "see" the body in proper perspective, he saw physically discernible auras surrounding it. This is a curious compromise, in which the nonphysical attributes of the self are approached AS IF they could be seen with the physical eye.
Cayce's illiteracy never stood in his way. This is because illiteracy does not necessarily imply any lack of love, and in Cayce's case very definitely did not. He therefore had no difficulty at all in overcoming this seeming limitation. What DID hamper him was a profound sense of personal unworthiness, which, characteristically enough, was sometimes over-compensated for in what might be called a Christian form of grandiosity. Cayce was essentially uncharitable to himself. This made him very erratic in his own miracles, and, because he was genuinely anxious to help others, left himself in a highly vulnerable position.
His son comments both on the rather erratic nature of the Cayce household, and also on the rather uneven nature of Cayce's temper. Both of these observations are true, and clearly point to the fact that Cayce did not apply the Peace of God to himself. Once this had occurred, particularly in a man whose communication channels were open, it was virtually impossible for him to escape external solutions. Cayce was a very religious man, who should have been able to escape fear through religion. Being unable to apply his religion wholeheartedly to himself, he was forced to accept certain magical beliefs which were alien to his own Christianity. This is why he was so different when he was asleep, and even disowned what he said in this state.
The lack of integration which this split state implies is clearly shown in certain off-the-mark detours into areas such as the effects of stones on the mind, and some curious symbolic attempt to integrate churches and glands. (This is hardly more peculiar than some of your own confusion.)
Cayce's mind was imprisoned to some extent by an error against which you have been cautioned several times. He looked to the past for an EXPLANATION of the present, but he never succeeded in separating the past FROM the present. When he said "mind is the builder," he did not realize that it is only what it is building NOW that really creates the future. The past, in itself, does not have the ability to do this. Whenever we move from one instant to the next, the previous one no longer exists. In considering the body as the focus for healing, Cayce was expressing his own failure to accept this AS ACCOMPLISHED. He did not fail to recognize the value of the Atonement for others, but he did fail to accept its corrective merit for himself.
As we have frequently emphasized, man CANNOT control his own errors. Having created them, he does believe in them. Because of his failure to accept his own perfect freedom FROM the past, Cayce could not really perceive others as similarly free. This is why I have not wholly endorsed the Cayce documents for widespread use.
I am heartily supportive of the ARE's endeavor to make Cayce's singular contributions immortal, but it would be most unwise to have them promulgated as a faith until they have been purged of their essential errors. This is why there have been a number of unexplained set backs in their explication. It is also one of the many reasons why the Cayce material, a major step in the speedup, must be properly understood before it can be meaningfully validated.
Cayce's son has been wise in attempting to deal with reliability, which in Cayce's case is very high. There is a way of validating the material, and Hugh Lynn is perfectly aware that this must be done eventually. He is also aware of the fact that he is unable to do it. In the present state of the material, it would be most unwise even to attempt it. There is too much that IS invalid. When the time comes that this can be corrected to the point of real safety, I assure you it will be accomplished. In tribute to Cayce, I remind you that no effort is wasted, and Cayce's effort was very great.
It would be most ungrateful of me if I allowed his work to produce a generation of witch doctors. I am sorry that Cayce himself could not rid himself of a slight tendency in this direction. But fortunately I have a fuller appreciation of him than he had.
I am repeating here a Biblical injunction of my own, already mentioned elsewhere, that if my followers eat any deadly thing it shall not hurt them. This is what Cayce could NOT believe, because he could not see that, as a Son of God, he WAS invulnerable.
Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you BE this, if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this, "Choose once again if you would take your place among the Saviors of the world, or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there." For He HAS come, and He IS asking this.
How do you make the choice? How easily is this explained! You ALWAYS choose between YOUR weakness and the strength of Christ in you. And what you choose is what you think is real. Simply by never using weakness to direct your actions, you have given it no power. And the Light of Christ in you is given charge of everything you do. For you have brought your weakness unto Him, and He has given you His strength instead. Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you.
In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again." He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created altars unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you. His holiness is yours because He is the ONLY power that is real in you. His strength is yours because He is the Self that God created as His ONLY Son. The images you make can not prevail against what God Himself would have you be.
Be never fearful of temptation then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ's strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, and disappears before His holy sight. The Saviors of the world, who see like Him, are merely those who chose His strength instead of their own weakness, seen APART from Him. They will redeem the world, for they are joined to all the power of the Will of God. And what they will is ONLY what He wills.
Learn, then, the happy habit of response to ALL temptation to perceive yourself as weak and miserable with these words:
"I am as God created me. His Son
can suffer nothing. And I AM His Son."
Thus is Christ's strength INVITED to prevail, replacing all your weakness with the strength that comes from God, and that can NEVER fail. And thus are miracles as natural as fear and agony APPEARED to be before the choice for holiness was made. For IN that choice are false distinctions gone, illusory alternatives laid by, and nothing left to INTERFERE with truth.
You ARE as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, REGARDLESS of the images you see. What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive YOURSELF defenseless and in hell. Yield NOT to this, and you will see ALL pain in EVERY form WHEREVER it occurs but disappear as mists before the sun. A miracle has come to heal God's Son, and close the door upon his dreams of weakness, opening the way to his salvation and release. Choose once again what you would have him be, remembering that every choice you make establishes your own identity as you will see it, and believe it IS.
Deny me not the little gift I ask, when in exchange I lay before your feet the peace of God, and power to bring this peace to everyone who wanders in the world, uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear. For it is given you to JOIN with him, and through the Christ in you unveil his eyes, and let him look upon the Christ in him. My brothers in salvation, do not fail to hear my voice and listen to my words. I ask for nothing but your OWN release. There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven. To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow that you saw before.
But this a vision is which you must SHARE with everyone you see. For otherwise you will behold it not. To GIVE this gift is how to make it yours. And God ordained, in loving kindness, that it BE for you. Let us be glad that we can walk the world, and find so many chances to perceive another situation where His gift can once again be recognized as ours. And thus will all the vestiges of hell, the secret sins and hidden hates be gone, and all the loveliness which they concealed appear like lawns of Heaven to our sight, to lift us high above the thorny roads we travelled on before the Christ appeared.
Hear me, my brothers, hear and join with me. God has ordained I cannot call in vain. And in His certainty I rest content. For you WILL hear, and you WILL choose again. And in this choice is everyone made free. I thank You, Father, for these holy ones who are my brothers as they are Your Sons. My faith in them is Yours. I am as sure that they will come to me as You are sure of what they are, and will forever be. They will accept the gift I offer them because You gave it me on their behalf. And as I would but do Your holy Will, so will they choose. And I give thanks for them.
Salvation's song will echo through the world with every choice they make. For we are one in purpose, and the end of hell is near. In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother who would join with me in reaching past temptation, and who looks with fixed determination toward the light that shines beyond in perfect constancy. Give me my own, for they belong to You. And can You fail in what is but Your Will? I give You thanks for what my brothers are, and as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny, scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell, and giving thanks to You.
And now we say "Amen." For Christ has come to dwell in the abode You set for Him before time was, in calm Eternity. The journey closes, ending at the place where it began. No trace of it remains. Not one illusion is accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness still remains to hide the Face of Christ from anyone. Thy Will is done, complete and perfectly, and all creation recognizes You and knows You as the only Source it has. Clear in Your Likeness does the Light shine forth from everything that lives and moves in You. For we have reached where all of us are One, and we ARE home where You would have us be.
Before your brother's holiness the world is still, and peace descends on it in gentleness and blessing so complete, that not one trace of conflict still remains to haunt you in the darkness of the night. He is your Savior from the dreams of terror. He is the healing of your sense of sacrifice, and fear that what you have will scatter with the wind, and turn to dust. In him is your assurance God is here, and with you now. While he is what he is, you can be sure that God is knowable, and WILL be known to you. For He could never leave His own creation. And the sign that this is so lies in your brother, offered you that all your doubts about yourself may disappear before his holiness.
See in him God's creation. For in him his Father waits for your acknowledgment that He created YOU as part of Him. Without you, there would be a lack in God, a Heaven incomplete, a Son without a Father. There could be no universe, and no reality. For what God wills is whole, and part of Him BECAUSE His Will is One. Nothing alive that is not part of Him, and nothing is but IS alive in Him. Your brother's holiness shows you that God is One with him AND you; that what he has is yours BECAUSE you are not separate from him OR from his Father.
Nothing is lost to you in all the universe. Nothing that God created has He failed to lay before you lovingly, as yours forever. And no thought within His Mind is absent from your own. It is His Will you SHARE His love for you, and look upon yourself as lovingly as He conceived of you before the world began, and as He knows you still. God changes not His Mind about His Son with passing circumstance which has no meaning in eternity where He abides, and you with Him. Your brother IS as He created him. And it is this that saves YOU from a world that He created not.
Forget not that the healing of God's Son is all the world is for. That is the ONLY purpose the Holy Spirit sees in it, and thus the only one it HAS. Until you see the healing of the Son as all you wish to be accomplished by the world, by time, and ALL appearances, you will NOT know the Father OR yourself. For you will use the world for what is NOT its purpose, and will NOT escape its laws of violence and death. Yet it is GIVEN you to be BEYOND its laws in ALL respects, in EVERY way, and EVERY circumstance; in ALL temptation to perceive what is NOT there, and ALL belief God's Son can suffer pain because he sees himself as he is not.
Look on your brother, and behold in him the whole reversal of the laws that SEEM to rule this world. See in his freedom YOURS, for such it IS. Let not his specialness obscure the truth in him, for not one law of death you bind him to will YOU escape. And not one sin you see in him but keeps you BOTH in hell. Yet will his perfect sinlessness RELEASE you both, for holiness is quite impartial, with one judgment made for all it looks upon. And that is made, not of itself, but through the Voice that speaks for God in everything that lives, and shares His Being.
It is HIS sinlessness that eyes that see can look upon. It is HIS loveliness they see in everything. And it is HE they look for everywhere, and find no sight or place or time where He is NOT. Within your brother's holiness, the perfect frame for YOUR salvation and the world's, is set the shining memory of Him in Whom your brother lives, and you along with him. Let not your eyes be blinded by the veil of specialness that hides the face of Christ from him, and you as well. And let the fear of God no longer hold the vision you were MEANT to see from you. Your brother's BODY shows not Christ to you. He IS set forth within his holiness.
Choose, then, his body OR his holiness as what you WANT to see, and which you choose is yours to look upon. Yet will you choose in countless situations, and through time which seems to have no end, until the truth be your decision. For eternity is NOT regained by still one more denial of the Christ in him. And where is YOUR salvation, if he is but a body? Where is YOUR peace, but in his holiness? And where is God Himself but in that part of Him He set forever in your brother's holiness, that YOU might see the truth about yourself set forth at last in terms you recognized and understood?
Your brother's holiness is sacrament and benediction unto YOU. His errors can NOT withhold God's blessing from himself, nor you who see him truly. His mistakes can cause delay, which it is given YOU to take from him, that both may end a journey that has never been begun, and NEEDS no end. What never was is NOT a part of you. Yet will you think it is, until you realize that it is not a part of him who stands beside you. He is the mirror of yourself, wherein you see the judgment you have laid on BOTH of you. The Christ in you beholds his holiness. Your specialness looks on his body, and beholds him not.
See him as what he IS, that YOUR deliverance may not be long. A senseless wandering, without a purpose and without accomplishment of any kind, is all the other choice can offer you. Futility of function not fulfilled will haunt you while your brother lies asleep, 'til what has been assigned to you is done, and he is risen from the past. He who condemned himself, and you as well, is given you to save from condemnation, along with you. And both shall see God's glory in His Son, whom you mistook as flesh, and bound to laws that have NO power over him at all.
Would you not gladly realize these laws are not for YOU? Then see HIM not as prisoner to them. It CANNOT be what governs part of God holds not for all the rest. You place YOURSELF under the laws you see as ruling HIM. Think, then, how great the Love of God for YOU must be, that He has given you a part of Him, to save from pain and give YOU happiness. And never doubt but that your specialness will disappear before the Will of God Who loves each part of Him with equal love and care. The Christ in you CAN see your brother truly. And would you decide AGAINST the holiness He sees?
Specialness is the function that you gave yourself. It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body. In its eyes, you are a separate universe, with all the power to hold itself complete within itself, with every entry shut against intrusion, and every window barred against the light. Always attacked and always furious, with anger always fully justified, you have pursued this goal with vigilance you never thought to yield, and effort that you never thought to cease. And all this grim determination was for this: YOU WANTED SPECIALNESS TO BE THE TRUTH.
Now you are merely asked that you pursue another goal with far LESS vigilance, with little effort and with little time, and with the power of God maintaining it, and promising success. Yet, of the two, it is THIS one you find more difficult. The SACRIFICE of self you understand, nor do you deem THIS cost too heavy. But a tiny willingness, a nod to God, a greeting to the Christ in you, you find a burden wearisome and tedious, too heavy to be borne. Yet, to the dedication to the truth as GOD established it, NO sacrifice is asked, NO strain called forth, and all the power of Heaven and the might of truth itself is given to provide the means, and GUARANTEE the goal's accomplishment.
You who believe it easier to see your brother's body than his holiness, be sure you understand what made this judgment. Here is the voice of specialness heard clearly, judging AGAINST the Christ, and setting forth, for YOU, the purpose that you CAN attain, and what you can NOT do. Forget not that this judgment MUST apply to what you do with IT as your ally. For what you do through Christ it does not know. To Him, this judgment makes no sense at all, for ONLY what His Father wills is possible, and there IS no alternative for Him to see. Out of His LACK of conflict comes your peace. And from His purpose come the means for effortless accomplishment and rest.
The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator. If it were elsewhere, it WOULD rest upon contingency. But there IS nothing else. And this is wholly loving and forever. Yet has the Son of God invented an unholy relationship between him and his Father. His REAL relationship is one of perfect union, and unbroken continuity. The one he made is partial, self-centered, broken into fragments and full of fear. The one created by his Father is wholly self-encompassing and self-EXTENDING. The one he made is wholly self-DESTRUCTIVE and self-LIMITING.
Nothing can show the contrast better than the experience of both a holy and an unholy relationship. The first is based on love, and rests on it serene and undisturbed. THE BODY DOES NOT INTRUDE UPON IT. Any relationship in which the body enters is based, NOT on love, but on idolatry. Love wishes to be known, COMPLETELY understood, and shared. IT HAS NO SECRETS; nothing that it would keep apart and hide. It walks in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome, and in sincerity so simple and so obvious it cannot BE misunderstood.
But idols do not share. Idols ACCEPT, but never make return. They can BE loved, but cannot love. They do not understand what they are offered, and any relationship in which they enter, has LOST its meaning. The love of THEM has MADE love meaningless. They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight, and happy in the body's darkness, where they can hide, and keep their secrets hidden, along with them. And they have NO relationships, for no-one else is welcome there. They smile on no-one, and those who smile on them they do not see.
Love has no darkened temples, where mysteries are kept obscure and hidden from the sun. IT DOES NOT SEEK FOR POWER, but for RELATIONSHIPS. The body is the ego's chosen weapon for seeking power THROUGH relationships. And its relationships MUST be unholy, for what they ARE, it does not even SEE. It wants them solely for the offerings on which its idols thrive. The rest it merely throws away, for all that IT could offer, is seen as valueless. Homeless, the ego seeks as many bodies as it can collect, to place its idols in, and so establish them as temples to itself.
The Holy Spirit's temple is NOT a body, but a RELATIONSHIP. The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. Here, the unholy relationship escapes reality, and seeks for crumbs to keep itself alive. Here it would drag its brothers, holding them here in its idolatry. Here it is "safe," for here love CANNOT enter. The Holy Spirit does not build His temples where love can never be. Would He Who SEES the face of Christ choose as His home the only place in all the universe where it can NOT be seen?
You CANNOT make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will NEVER be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater, and of love's CONDEMNATION. For here is love made fearful, and hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshipped here are shrouded deep in mystery, and kept APART from those who worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no relationships, and no return. Here is the "mystery" of separation perceived in awe and held in reverence. What God would have NOT be, is here kept "safe" from Him. But what you do NOT realize is what you fear within your brother, and would not SEE in HIM, is what makes God seem fearful and kept unknown.
Idolaters will ALWAYS be afraid of love. For nothing so severely threatens them as love's approach. Let love draw near them and OVERLOOK the body, as it will surely do, and they retreat in fear, feeling the seeming firm foundation of their temple begin to shake and loosen. Brothers, you tremble with them. But what you fear is but the herald of escape. This place of darkness is NOT your home. Your temple is NOT threatened. You are idolaters no longer. The Holy Spirit's purpose lies safe in your RELATIONSHIP, and NOT your bodies. You have ESCAPED the body. Where you are now, the BODY cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set HIS temple there.
There is no order in relationships. They either ARE, or not. An unholy relationship is NO relationship. It is a state of isolation, which SEEMS to be what it is NOT. No more than that. The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, ALL relationships were made meaningless. In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea, and give it the ILLUSION of reality. And so it SEEMED to have a home, that held together for a little while in time, and vanished. For what could house this mad idea AGAINST reality, but for an instant?
Idols MUST disappear, and leave no trace behind their going. The unholy instant of their seeming power is frail as is a snowflake, but without its loveliness. Is this the substitute you WANT, for the eternal blessing of the holy instant, and its unlimited beneficence? Is the malevolence of the unholy relationship, so seeming powerful and so bitterly misunderstood, and so invested in FALSE attraction, your preference to the holy instant, which offers peace and understanding? Then lay aside the body and quietly TRANSCEND it, rising to welcome what you REALLY want. And from His holy temple look you not back on what you have awakened FROM. For no illusions CAN attract the minds that have TRANSCENDED them, and left them far behind.
The holy relationship reflects the TRUE relationship the Son of God has with his Father in reality. The Holy Spirit rests within it, in the certainty it will endure forever. Its firm foundation is eternally upheld by truth, and love shines on it with the gentle smile and tender blessing it offers to its own. Here the unholy instant is exchanged in gladness for the holy one of safe return. Here is the way to true relationships held gently open, through which you walk together, leaving the body thankfully behind, and resting in the Everlasting Arms. Love's arms are open to receive you, and give you peace forever.
The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on.
And here he is more dead than living. But it is also here he makes his choice again, between idolatry and love. Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying tribute to the body, or LET himself be given freedom from it. Here he can ACCEPT the holy instant, offered him to REPLACE the unholy one he chose before. And here can he learn relationships are his SALVATION, NOT his doom. You who ARE learning this may still be fearful, but you are NOT immobilized. The holy instant IS of greater value now to you than its unholy seeming counterpart, and you HAVE learned you REALLY want but one.
This is no time for sadness. Perhaps confusion, but hardly discouragement. YOU HAVE A REAL RELATIONSHIP. And it HAS meaning. It is as like your real relationship with God, as equal things are like themselves. Idolatry is past and meaningless. Perhaps you fear each other a little yet; perhaps a shadow of the fear of God remains with you. But what is that to those who have been given one TRUE relationship, BEYOND the body? Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ? And can they long withhold the memory of their relationship with their Father FROM themselves, and keep remembrance of His Love APART from their awareness?
You have made by projection, but God has created by extension. The cornerstone of God's creation is YOU, for HIS thought system is light. Remember the rays that are there unseen. The more you approach the center of HIS thought system, the clearer the light becomes. The closer you come to the foundation of the ego's thought system, the darker and more obscure becomes the way. But even the little spark in your mind is enough to lighten it. Bring this light fearlessly with you, and hold it up to the foundation of the ego's thought system bravely. Be willing to judge it with perfect honesty. Open the dark stone of terror on which it rests, and bring it out into the light. There you will see that it rests on meaninglessness, and that everything of which you have been afraid was based on nothing.
My brother, you are part of God and part of me. When you have at last looked at the ego's foundation without shrinking, you will also have looked upon ours. I come to you from our Father, to offer you everything again. Do not refuse it to keep a dark cornerstone hidden, for ITS protection will not save you. I GIVE you the lamp, and I will go with you. You will not take this journey alone. I will lead you to your true Father, Who hath need of you, as I have. Will you not answer the call of love with joy?
You HAVE learned your need of healing. Would you bring anything ELSE to the Sonship, KNOWING your need of it for yourself? For in this lies the beginning of knowledge; the foundation on which God will help you build again the thought system which you share WITH Him. Not one stone you place upon it but will be blessed by Him. For you will be restoring the holy dwelling place of His Son, where He wills His Son to be, and where he IS. In whatever part of the mind of God's Son you restore this reality, you restore it to YOURSELF. For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone.
To be alone is to be separated from Infinity, but how can this be, if Infinity has no end? No-one can BE beyond the limitless, because what has NO limits, must be everywhere. There are no beginnings and no endings in God, Whose Universe is Himself. Can you exclude yourself from the Universe, or from God, Who IS the Universe? I and my Father are one with YOU, for you are part of us. Do you REALLY believe that part of God can be missing or lost to Him?
If you were not part of God, His Will would not be unified. Is this conceivable? Can part of His Mind contain nothing? If your place in His Mind cannot be filled by anyone EXCEPT you, and your filling it WAS your creation, WITHOUT you, there would be an empty place in God's Mind. Extension cannot be blocked, and it has no voids. It continues forever, however much it is denied. Your DENIAL of its reality arrests it in time, but not in Eternity. That is why your creations have not ceased to be extended, and why so much is waiting for your return.
Waiting is possible ONLY in time, but time has no meaning. You who made delay can leave time behind, simply by recognizing that neither beginnings nor endings were created by the Eternal, Who placed no limits on His creation nor upon those who create like Him. You do not know this, simply because you have tried to limit what HE created, and so you believe that ALL creation is limited. How, then, could you know YOUR creations, having DENIED Infinity? The laws of the universe do not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for you. If you believe YOU are absent from God, you WILL believe He is absent from you.
Infinity is meaningless WITHOUT you, and YOU are meaningless without God. There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you yours. See His creations as HIS Son, for yours were created in honor of Him.
The universe of love does not stop because you do not see it, and your closed eyes have not lost the ability to see. Look upon the glory of His creation, and you will learn what God has kept for YOU. God has given you a place in His Mind which is yours forever. But you could keep it only by Giving it, as it was given to you. Could YOU be alone there, if it was given you because GOD did not will to be alone? God's Mind cannot be lessened. It can ONLY be increased, and EVERYTHING He creates has the function of creating. LOVE DOES NOT LIMIT, and what it creates is not limited.
To give without limit is God's Will for you, because only this can bring you the joy which is His, and which He wills to share with YOU. Your love is as boundless as His because it IS His. Could any part of Him be WITHOUT His Love, and could any part of His Love be contained? God is your heritage, because His one gift is Himself. How can you give except LIKE Him, if you would know His gift to YOU? Give, then, without limit and without end, to learn how much HE has given YOU. Your ability to ACCEPT Him depends on your willingness to give as He gives. Your fatherhood and your Father are One.
God willed to create, and your will is His. It follows, then, that YOU will to create, since your will follows from His. And being the extension of His will, yours MUST be the same. Yet what you will, you do not know. This is not strange, when you realize that to deny IS to not know. God's Will was that you are His Son. By DENYING this, you denied your OWN will, and therefore DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS. The reason you must ask what God's Will is in everything, is merely because It IS yours. YOU do not know what it is, but the Holy Spirit REMEMBERS IT FOR YOU.
Ask him, therefore, what God's Will is for you, and He will tell you YOURS. It cannot be too often repeated that you do NOT KNOW it. Whenever what the Holy Spirit tells you appears to be coercive, it is ONLY because YOU DO NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR OWN WILL. The projection of the ego makes it appear as if God's Will is OUTSIDE yourself, and therefore NOT YOURS. In THIS interpretation, it IS possible for God's Will and yours to conflict. God, then, may seem to demand of you what you do NOT want to give, and thus DEPRIVE you of what you want. Would God, Who wants ONLY your will, be capable of this? Your will is His Life, which He has GIVEN to you. Even in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF. Yet God's Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM.
Creation is your will because it is His. You cannot be happy unless you do what you will truly, and you CHANGE this, because it is immutable. But it is immutable by God's Will AND YOURS, for otherwise His Will would not have been extended. You are afraid to know God's Will, because you believe it is NOT yours. This belief is your whole sickness, and your whole fear. Every symptom of sickness and fear arises here, because this is the belief that makes you want not to know. Believing this, you hide in darkness, denying that the Light is in YOU.
You are asked to trust the Holy Spirit only because He speaks for YOU. He is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you; He does not thrust it UPON you. Always remember that what He gives He holds, so that nothing He gives CAN contradict Him. You who share His Life must share it to KNOW it, for sharing IS knowing. Blessed are you who learn that to hear the Will of your Father, is to know your own. For it is YOUR will to be LIKE Him, Whose Will it is that it be so.
God's Will is that His Son be One, and united with Him in His Oneness. That is why healing is the beginning of the recognition that YOUR WILL IS HIS.
Decisions are continuous. You do not always know when you are making them. But, with a little practice in the ones you recognize, a set begins to form which sees you through the rest. It is not wise to let yourself become preoccupied with every step you take. The proper set, adopted consciously each time you wake, will put you well ahead. And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. DO NOT FIGHT YOURSELF. But think about the kind of day you want, and tell yourself there is a way by which this very day can happen just like that. Then try again to HAVE the day you want.
1. The outlook starts with this:
"Today I will make NO decisions by myself."
This means that you are choosing NOT to be the judge of what to do. But it must ALSO mean you will not judge the situations where you will be called upon to make response. For if you judge them, you HAVE set the rules for how you should react to them. And then ANOTHER answer cannot BUT produce confusion and uncertainty AND FEAR. This is your major problem now. You still make up your minds, and THEN decide to ask what you should do. And what you hear may not resolve the problem AS YOU SAW IT FIRST. This leads to fear, because it contradicts what you perceive, and so you feel attacked, AND THEREFORE ANGRY. There are rules by which this will not happen. But it does occur, at first, to everyone who listens well.
2. Throughout the day, at any time you think of it, and have a quiet moment for reflection, tell yourself again the kind of day you want; the feelings you would have, the things you WANT to happen, and the things you WOULD experience. And say,
"If I make no decisions by myself,
This is the day that will be GIVEN me."
These two procedures, practiced well, will serve to let you be directed WITHOUT fear, for opposition will not FIRST arise, and THEN become a problem in itself. But there will still be times when you have judged ALREADY. Now the answer will provoke attack, unless you quickly straighten out your mind to WANT an answer that will work. Be certain this has happened, if you feel yourself to be unwilling to sit by, and ask to have the answer GIVEN you. This means you HAVE decided by yourself, AND CANNOT SEE THE QUESTION. Now you need a quick restorative BEFORE you ask.
3. Remember once again the day you want, and recognize that something has occurred which is not part of it. Then realize that you have asked a question by yourself, and MUST have set an answer in your terms. Then say,
"I HAVE no question. I forgot what to decide."
This cancels out the terms which you have set, and lets the ANSWER show you what the question MUST have really been. Try to observe this rule without delay DESPITE your opposition. For you have ALREADY gotten angry, and your fear of being answered in a different way from what YOUR version of the question asks will gain momentum until you believe the day you want is one in which you get YOUR answer to your question. And you will not get it, for it would destroy the day by robbing you of what you REALLY want. This can be very hard to realize, when once you have decided by yourself the rules which PROMISE you a happy day. But these decisions still can be undone, by simple methods which you CAN accept.
4. If you are so unwilling to receive you cannot even let your QUESTION go, you can begin to change your mind with this:
"At least I can decide I do not LIKE what I feel now."
This much is obvious, and paves the way for the next easy step, which follows this.
5. Having decided that you do not like the way you feel, what could be easier than to continue with -
"And so I HOPE I have been wrong."
This works AGAINST the sense of opposition, and reminds you that help is not being thrust upon you, but is something that you want and that you need BECAUSE you do not like the way you feel. This tiny opening will be enough to let you go ahead with just a few more steps you need to LET yourself be helped.
6. Now you have reached the turning point, because it has occurred to you that YOU will gain, if what you have decided is NOT so. Until this point is reached, you will believe your happiness DEPENDS on being right. But this much reason have you now attained; YOU would be better off if you were WRONG. This tiny grain of wisdom will suffice to take you further. You are NOT coerced, but merely hope to have a thing you WANT. And you can say in perfect honesty,
"I WANT another way to look at this."
Now you have changed your mind about the day, and have REMEMBERED what you really want. Its PURPOSE has no longer been obscured by the insane belief you want it for the goal of being RIGHT when you are WRONG. This is the READINESS for asking, brought to your awareness, for you CANNOT be in conflict when you ask for what you want, and SEE that it is this for which you ask.
7. This final step is but acknowledgment of LACK of opposition to be helped. It is a statement of an open mind, not certain yet, but willing to be shown:
"Perhaps there IS another way to look at this.
What can I LOSE by asking?"
Thus are you made ready for a question that makes sense, and so the ANSWER will make sense as well. Nor will you fight AGAINST it, for you see that it is YOU who will be helped by it.
It MUST be clear that it is easier to have a happy day if you PREVENT unhappiness from entering at all. But this takes practice in the rules which will PROTECT you from the ravages of fear. When THIS has been achieved, the sorry dream of judgment has FOREVER been undone. But, meanwhile, you have need for practicing the rules for its undoing. Let us, then, consider once again the very first of the decisions which are offered here. We said you can begin a happy day with the determination NOT to make decisions by yourself. This SEEMS to be a free decision in itself. And yet, you CANNOT make decisions by yourself. The only question really is WITH WHAT you choose to make them. That is really all.
The first rule, then, is not coercion, but a simple statement of a simple fact. You WILL not make decisions by yourself whatever you decide. For they are made with idols or with God. And you ask help of Christ or anti-Christ, and which you choose WILL join with you, and tell you what to do. Your day is NOT at random. It is set by what you choose to live it WITH, and HOW the friend whose counsel you have sought perceives your happiness. You ALWAYS ask advice before you can decide ANYTHING. Let THIS be understood, and you can see there cannot BE coercion here, nor grounds for opposition that you may be free. There IS no freedom from what must occur. And if you think there is, you MUST be wrong.
The second rule as well is but a fact. For you and your adviser must AGREE on what you want BEFORE it can occur. It is but this AGREEMENT which permits all things to happen. NOTHING can be caused without some form of union, be it with a dream of judgment or the Voice for God. Decisions cause results BECAUSE they are not made in isolation. They are made by you and your adviser, for yourself, AND FOR THE WORLD AS WELL. The day you want you offer to the world, for it WILL be what you have asked for, and will reinforce the rule of your adviser through the world. Whose kingdom is the world for you today? What kind of day will you decide to have?
It needs but two who would have happiness this day to promise it to all the world. It needs but two to understand that they can not decide alone, to GUARANTEE the joy they asked for will be wholly shared. For they have understood the basic law which MAKES decision powerful, and gives it all effects that it will EVER have. It needs but two. These two ARE joined before there CAN be a decision. Let this be the ONE reminder that you keep in mind, and you will have the day you want, and give it to the world by having it yourselves. Your judgment has been LIFTED from the world by your decision for a happy day. And as you have received so MUST you give.
Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet, without effects, there is no CAUSE. The cause a cause is MADE by its effects; the Father IS a father by His Son. Effects do not CREATE their cause, but they ESTABLISH its causation. Thus the Son gives fatherhood to his Creator, and RECEIVES the gift that he has given Him. It is BECAUSE he is God's Son that he must ALSO be a father, who creates as God created him. The circle of creation has no end. Its starting and its ending are the same. But, in itself, it holds the universe of all creation, without beginning AND without an end.
Fatherhood is creation. Love MUST be extended. Purity is not confined. It is the NATURE of the innocent to be forever uncontained, without a barrier or limitation. Thus is purity NOT of the body. Nor can it be FOUND where limitation is. The body CAN be healed by its EFFECTS, which are as limitless as is itself. Yet must all healing come about because the mind is recognized as NOT within the body, and its innocence is quite APART from it, and where ALL healing IS. Where, then, is healing? ONLY where its cause is GIVEN its effects. For sickness is a meaningless attempt to give effects to causelessness, and MAKE it be a cause.
Always in sickness does the Son of God attempt to make himself his cause, and NOT allow himself to be his Father's Son. For this impossible desire, he does not believe that he is Love's EFFECTS, and must be cause BECAUSE of what he is. The cause of healing is the ONLY Cause of everything. It has but ONE effect. And, in that recognition, causelessness is GIVEN no effects, and none are SEEN. A mind within a body, and a world of other bodies, each with SEPARATE minds, are your "creations," you the "other" mind, creating with effects UNLIKE yourself. And, AS their father, you must be like them.
Nothing at all has happened, but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone ELSE's dream. The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the DREAMER is. It teaches you there IS a choice of dreams while you are still asleep, depending on the PURPOSE of your dreaming. Do you wish for dreams of healing, or for dreams of death? A dream is like a memory, in that it pictures what you WANTED shown to you. An empty storehouse, with an open door, holds ALL your shreds of memories and dreams.
Yet, if you are the DREAMER, you perceive this much at least; that YOU have caused the dream, and can accept ANOTHER dream as well. But, for this change in content of the dream, it MUST be realized that it is YOU who dreamed the dreaming that you do not like. It is but an effect that YOU have caused, and you would not BE cause of this effect. In dreams of murder and attack are YOU the victim, in a dying body slain. But, in forgiving dreams, is NO-ONE asked to be the victim and the sufferer. These are the happy dreams the miracle exchanges for your own. It does NOT ask you make another. ONLY that you see you made the one you would EXCHANGE for this.
This world is CAUSELESS, as is every dream that anyone has dreamed within the world. No plans are possible, and no design exists that could be found and understood. What else could be EXPECTED from a thing that has no cause? But, if it HAS no cause, IT HAS NO PURPOSE. You may cause a dream, but never will you give it real EFFECTS. For that would change its CAUSE, and it is this you CANNOT do. The dreamer of a dream is NOT awake, but does NOT know he sleeps. He sees ILLUSIONS of himself as sick or well, depressed or happy, but without a stable cause with GUARANTEED effects.
The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. And it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have been done. Thus does he fear his OWN attack, but sees it at another's hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but NOT their cause. He authored NOT his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused.
The miracle does nothing but to show him that HE has done nothing. What he fears is cause WITHOUT the consequences which would MAKE it cause. And so it never was. The separation started with the dream the Father was deprived of His effects, and powerless to keep them, since He was no longer their Creator. In the dream, the dreamer made HIMSELF, but what he made had turned AGAINST him, taking on the role of its creator, as the dreamer had. And, as he hated HIS Creator, so the figures in the dream have hated HIM. His body is their slave, which they abuse because the motives HE has given it have THEY adopted as their own. And hate it for the vengeance IT would offer THEM.
It is THEIR vengeance on the body which appears to prove the dreamer COULD not be the maker of the dream. Effect and cause are first split off, and then REVERSED, so that effect becomes a cause; the cause, effect. This is the separation's final step, with which salvation, which proceeds to go the OTHER way, begins. This final step is an effect of what has gone before, APPEARING as a cause. The miracle is the first step in giving BACK to cause the function of causation, NOT effect. For THIS confusion has produced the dream, and, while it lasts, will wakening be feared. Nor will the Call to wakening be heard, because it SEEMS to be the call of fear.
Like EVERY lesson that the Holy Spirit requests you learn, the miracle is clear. It DEMONSTRATES what He would have you learn, and SHOWS you its effects are what you WANT. In its forgiving dream, are the EFFECTS of yours undone, and hated enemies perceived as friends, with merciful intent. Their enmity is seen as causeless now, BECAUSE they did not make it. And you can accept the role of maker of their hate BECAUSE you see that it has no effects. Now are you freed from this much of the dream; the world is neutral, and the bodies which still seem to move about as separate things NEED NOT BE FEARED. And so they are NOT sick.
The miracle returns the CAUSE of fear to you who made it. But it ALSO shows that, HAVING no effects, it is NOT cause, because the function of causation is to HAVE effects. And where effects are gone, there IS no cause. Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT, of what it made. But HALF the lesson will not teach the whole. The miracle is useless, if you learn but that the BODY can be healed, for this is NOT the lesson it was sent to teach. The lesson is the MIND was sick that thought the body COULD be sick; projecting OUT its guilt caused NOTHING, and had NO effects.
This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream's ALTERNATIVE, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. They are the glad effects of taking back the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released, because the mind acknowledges "this is not DONE TO me, but I am doing this." And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and ALL the dreaming of the world undone.
How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has NOT occurred, and CAN have no effects. And that is all. Can this BE hard to learn by anyone who WANTS it to be true? ONLY unwillingness to learn it could make such an easy lesson difficult. How hard is it to see that what is false can not be true, and what is true can not be false? You can no longer say that you perceive no differences in false and true. You have been told EXACTLY how to tell one from the other, and just what to do if you become confused. Why, then, do you persist in learning NOT such simple things?
There IS a reason. But confuse it not with difficulty in the simple things salvation asks you learn. It teaches but the very obvious. It merely goes from one apparent lesson to the next, in easy steps which lead you gently from one to another, with no strain at all. This CANNOT be confusing, yet you ARE confused. For somehow you believe that what is TOTALLY confused is easier to learn and understand. What you have taught yourselves is such a giant learning feat it is indeed incredible. But you accomplished it because you wanted to, and did not pause in diligence to judge it hard to learn, or too complex to grasp.
No-one who understands what you have learned, how carefully you learned it, and the pains to which you went to practice and repeat the lessons endlessly, in every form you could conceive of them, could EVER doubt the power of your learning skill. There is no greater power in the world. The world was MADE by it, and even now depends on nothing else. The lessons you have taught yourselves have been so overlearned and fixed they rise like heavy curtains, to obscure the simple and the obvious. Say not you cannot learn them. For your power to learn is strong enough to teach you that your will is NOT your own; your thoughts do NOT belong to you; and even YOU are someone else.
Who could maintain that lessons such as these are easy? Yet you have learned more than this. You have continued, taking every step, however difficult, without complaint, until a world was built that suited you. And every lesson that makes up the world arises from the first accomplishment of learning; an enormity so great the Holy Spirit's Voice seems small and still before its magnitude. The world began with one strange lesson, powerful enough to render God forgotten, and His Son an alien to himself, in exile from the home where God Himself established him. You who have taught yourselves the Son of God is guilty, say not that you cannot learn the simple things salvation teaches you.
Learning is an ability you made, and gave yourselves. It was NOT made to do the Will of God, but to uphold a wish that It COULD be opposed, and that a will APART from It was yet more real than It. And this has learning sought to demonstrate, and you HAVE learned what it was made to teach. Now does your ancient overlearning stand implacable before the Voice of Truth, and teach you that Its lessons are not true; too hard to learn, too difficult to see, and too opposed to what is REALLY true. Yet you WILL learn them, for their learning is the ONLY purpose for your learning skill the Holy Spirit sees in all the world.
His simple lessons in forgiveness have a power mightier than yours, because they call from God and from your Self to you. Is this a LITTLE Voice, so small and still It cannot rise above the senseless noise of sounds which have no meaning? God willed not His Son forget Him. And the power of His Will is in the Voice That speaks for Him. Which lesson will you learn? Which outcome is inevitable, sure as God, and far beyond all doubts or question? CAN it be your little learning, strange in outcome, and incredible in difficulty, will withstand the simple lessons being taught to you in every moment of each day, since time began and learning had been made?
The lessons to be learned are only two. Each has its outcome in a different world. And each world follows surely from its source. The certain outcome of the lesson that God's Son is guilty is the world you see. It IS a world of terror and despair. Nor IS there hope of happiness in it. There IS no plan for safety you can make that ever will succeed. There IS no joy that you can seek for here, and hope to find. But this is NOT the only outcome which your learning can produce. However much you may have overlearned your chosen task, the lesson which reflects the Love of God is stronger still. And you WILL learn God's Son is innocent, and see ANOTHER world.
The outcome of the lesson that God's Son is guiltless is a world in which there is no fear, and everything is lit with hope, and sparkles with a gentle friendliness. Nothing but calls to you in soft appeal to be your friend, and let it join with you. And never does a call remain unheard, misunderstood, or left unanswered in the language in which the call itself was made. And you will understand it was THIS call that everyone and everything within the world has ALWAYS made. But YOU had not perceived it as it was. And now you see YOU were mistaken. You had been deceived by forms the call was hidden in. And so you did not hear it, and had lost a friend who ALWAYS wanted to be part of you.
The soft, eternal calling of each part of God's creation to the whole is heard throughout the world this second lesson brings. There is no living thing which does not share the universal will that it be whole, and that you do not leave its call unheard. Without your answer is it left to die, as it is saved from death when you have heard its calling as the ancient call to life, and understood that it is but your own. The Christ in you remembers God with all the certainty with which He knows His Love. But ONLY if His Son is innocent can He BE Love. For God were fear indeed, if he whom He created innocent could be a slave to guilt. God's perfect Son remembers his creation. But in guilt he has forgotten what he really is.
The fear of God results as surely from the lesson that His Son is guilty as God's Love must be remembered when he LEARNS his innocence. For hate must father fear, and look upon its father as itself. How wrong are you who fail to hear the call that echoes past each seeming call to death, that sings behind each murderous attack, and pleads that love restore the dying world! You do not understand Who calls to you beyond each form of hate, each call to war. But you will recognize Him as you give Him answer in the language that He calls. He will appear when you have answered Him, and you will know in Him that God is Love.
What is temptation but a wish to make the wrong decision on what you would learn, and have an outcome which you do not want? It is the RECOGNITION that it is a state of mind UNWANTED that becomes the means whereby the choice is reassessed; another outcome seen to be preferred. You are deceived if you believe you want disaster and disunity and pain. Hear not the call for this within yourself, but listen, rather, to the deeper call beyond it, that appeals for peace and joy. And all the world will GIVE you joy and peace. For as you hear you answer, and behold! - your answer is the proof of what you learned. Its outcome is the world you look upon.
Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean, and what their purpose is. Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for. We do not know. Let every image held of anyone be loosened from our minds and swept away. Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone. Now do you know him not. But you ARE free to learn of him, and learn of him anew. Now is he born again to you, and you are born again to him, WITHOUT the past that sentenced him to die, and you with him. Now is he free to live, as you are free, because an ancient learning passed away, and left a place for truth to be reborn.
The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by OTHER bodies, born into the world OUTSIDE the body, lives a little while, and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies, dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different, and CAN be told apart.
The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real. It puts things on itself that it has bought with little metal discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and good. It works to get them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does not NEED, and does not even WANT. It hires OTHER bodies, that they may protect it, and collect more senseless things that it can call its own. It looks about for special bodies which can SHARE its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies which would hurt and torture it.
The body's serial adventures, from the time of birth to dying is the theme of every dream the world has ever had. The "hero" of this dream will never change, nor will its purpose. Though the dream itself takes many forms, and SEEMS to show a great variety of places and events wherein its "hero" finds itself, the dream has but ONE purpose, taught in many ways. This single lesson does it try to teach again, and still again, and yet once more; - that it is CAUSE and NOT effect. And YOU are ITS effect, and CANNOT be its cause. Thus are you NOT the dreamer, but the DREAM. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that IT contrives.
That this is all the BODY does, is true. For it IS but a figure in a dream. But who REACTS to figures in a dream, UNLESS he sees them as if they were real?
The INSTANT that he sees them as they ARE, they HAVE no more effects on him BECAUSE he understands he GAVE them their effects BY CAUSING THEM, and MAKING them seem real. How willing are you to ESCAPE effects of all the dreams the world has ever had? Is it your wish to let NO dream appear to be the cause of what it is YOU do? Then let us merely look upon the dream's beginning, for the part you see is but the SECOND part, whose CAUSE lies in the first.
No-one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No-one believes there really was a time when he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real. He would have seen at once that these ideas are one illusion, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious they now appear to be! And no-one can remember when they would have met with laughter and with disbelief. We CAN remember this, if we but look directly at their CAUSE. And we will see the grounds for laughter, NOT a cause for fear. Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream as SEPARATE from himself, and done to him.
Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them BOTH away, and understand that time can NOT intrude upon eternity. It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time. A timelessness in which is time made real; a Part of God Which can attack Itself; a separate brother as an enemy; a mind WITHIN a body; all are forms of circularity, whose ending starts at its beginning, ending at its cause.
The world you see depicts EXACTLY what you thought YOU did. Except that NOW you think that what you did is being done to YOU. The guilt for what YOU thought is being placed OUTSIDE yourself, and on a guilty world which dreams your dreams, and thinks your thoughts INSTEAD of you. It brings ITS vengeance, not your own. IT keeps you narrowly confined within a body, which it punishes because of all the sinful things the body does within ITS dream. You have NO power to make the body stop its evil deeds, because you did NOT make it, and can NOT control its actions, or its purpose, or its fate.
The world but demonstrates an ancient truth; - you WILL believe that others do to you EXACTLY what you think you did to them. But, once deluded into blaming THEM, you will not see the CAUSE of what they do BECAUSE you want the guilt to rest on them. How childish is this petulant device to keep your innocence by pushing guilt OUTSIDE yourself, but NEVER letting go! It is not easy to perceive the jest, when all around you do your eyes behold its heavy consequences, but WITHOUT their trifling cause. Without the cause do its effects seem serious and sad indeed. Yet they but follow. And it is their CAUSE which follows nothing, and is but a jest.
In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks NOT to effects. How else could He correct YOUR error, who have OVERLOOKED the cause entirely? He bids you bring each terrible effect to Him, that you may look TOGETHER on its foolish cause, and laugh with Him a while. YOU judge effects, but HE has judged their CAUSE. And by His judgment are effects removed. Perhaps you come in tears, but hear Him say, "My brother, Holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in which this could occur," and you will leave the holy instant with your laughter and your brother's JOINED with His.
The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes.
The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."
Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like the rest. He sees NO differences where none exist, and He will teach you how each one is CAUSED. None has a DIFFERENT cause from all the rest, and ALL of them are easily undone by but a SINGLE lesson truly learned. Salvation is a secret you have kept but from yourself. The universe proclaims it so. But, to its witnesses, you pay no heed at all. For they attest the thing you do not WANT to know. They seem to keep it secret FROM you. Yet you need but learn you choose but NOT to listen, NOT to see.
How differently will you perceive the world, when this is recognized! When you forgive the world YOUR guilt, YOU will be free of it. Its innocence does NOT demand your guilt, nor does YOUR guiltlessness rest on ITS sins. This is the obvious, a secret kept from no-one but yourself. And it is this that has maintained you SEPARATE from the world, and kept your brother SEPARATE from you. Now need you but to learn that BOTH of you are innocent OR guilty. The one thing that is impossible is that you be UNLIKE each other; that they BOTH be true. This is the only secret yet to learn. And it will be NO secret you are healed.
Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship, and ALWAYS obscured by it, is the powerful attraction of the Father for His Son. There is no OTHER love that can satisfy you, because there IS no other love. This is the ONLY love that is fully given, AND FULLY RETURNED. Being complete, it asks nothing. Being wholly pure, everyone joined in it HAS everything. This is NOT the basis for ANY love relationship in which the ego enters. For EVERY relationship on which the ego embarks IS special. The ego establishes relationships ONLY to GET something. And it would keep the giver BOUND TO ITSELF, through guilt.
It is impossible for the ego to enter into any relationship without anger, for the ego believes that ANGER MAKES FRIENDS. This is NOT its statement, but it IS its purpose. For the ego REALLY BELIEVES that it can get, and KEEP, by MAKING GUILTY. This is its ONE attraction. An attraction so weak, that it would have no hold at all, except that NO-ONE RECOGNIZES IT. For the ego always SEEMS to attract through love, and has no attraction at all to anyone who perceives that IT ATTRACTS THROUGH GUILT.
The sick attraction of guilt MUST be recognized FOR WHAT IT IS. For, having been made REAL to you, it is essential to look at it clearly, and, by withdrawing your INVESTMENT in it, to LEARN TO LET IT GO. No-one would choose to let go what he believes has value. Yet the attraction of guilt has value to you ONLY because you have NOT looked at what it IS, and have judged it as valuable COMPLETELY in the dark. As we bring it to light, your ONLY question will be why it was you EVER WANTED it. You have NOTHING to lose by looking open-eyed at this, for ugliness such as this belongs not in your holy mind. The host of God CAN have no REAL investment here.
We said before that the ego attempts to maintain and INCREASE guilt, but in such a way, that you do NOT recognize what it would do to YOU. For it is the ego's fundamental doctrine that, what you do to others, YOU HAVE ESCAPED. The ego wishes NO-ONE well. But its survival DEPENDS on your belief that YOU are exempt from its evil intentions. It counsels, therefore, that if you are HOST to it, IT will enable you to direct the anger that it holds outward, thus protecting YOU. And thus, it embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of special relationships, forged out of anger, and dedicated to but one insane belief; that the more anger you invest OUTSIDE yourself, the safer YOU become.
It is this chain that binds the Son of God to guilt, and it is this chain the Holy Spirit would REMOVE from his holy mind. For the chain of savagery belongs not around the chosen host of God, who CANNOT make himself host to the ego. In the name of his release, and in the Name of Him Who would release him, let us look more closely at the relationships that the ego contrives, and let the Holy Spirit judge them truly. For it is certain that, if you LOOK at them, you will offer them gladly TO Him. What HE can make of them you do NOT know, but you WILL become willing to find out, if you are willing, first, to perceive what YOU have made of them.
In one way or another, every relationship which the ego makes is based on the idea that, by SACRIFICING itself, IT BECOMES BIGGER. The "sacrifice," which it regards as purification, is actually the root of its bitter resentment. For it would much prefer to attack directly, and avoid delaying what it REALLY wants. Yet the ego acknowledges "reality" as it sees it, and recognizes that NO-ONE could interpret DIRECT attack as love. Yet to make guilty IS direct attack, but does not SEEM to be. For the guilty EXPECT attack, and, having ASKED for it, they are ATTRACTED to it.
In these insane relationships, the attraction of what you do NOT want seems to be much stronger than the attraction of what you DO. For each one thinks that he has SACRIFICED something to the other, AND HATES HIM FOR IT. Yet this is what he thinks he WANTS. He is NOT in love with the other at all; he merely believes he is IN LOVE WITH SACRIFICE. And FOR this sacrifice, which he demanded OF HIMSELF, HE demands the other ACCEPT the guilt, and SACRIFICE HIMSELF as well. Forgiveness becomes impossible, for the ego believes, that to forgive another, IS TO LOSE HIM. For it is only by attack WITHOUT forgiveness, that the ego can ensure the guilt which holds ALL its relationships together.
Yet they only SEEM to be together. For relationships, to the ego, mean ONLY that BODIES are together. It is always PHYSICAL closeness that the ego demands, and it does not object where the mind goes, or what it thinks, for this seems unimportant. For, as long as the BODY is there, to receive its sacrifice, it is content. To the ego, THE MIND IS PRIVATE, and only the body CAN be shared. Ideas are basically of no concern, except as they draw the BODY of another closer or farther. And it is in these terms that it evaluates ideas as "good" or "bad." What makes another guilty, AND HOLDS HIM THROUGH GUILT, is "good." What releases him FROM guilt is "bad," because he would no longer believe that BODIES communicate, and so he would be "gone."
Suffering and sacrifice are the gifts with which the ego would "bless" all unions. And those who are united at its altar ACCEPT suffering and sacrifice as the PRICE of union. In their angry alliances, born of the fear of loneliness, and yet dedicated to the CONTINUANCE of loneliness, they seek RELIEF from guilt, by INCREASING it in the other. For they believe that this DECREASES it in them. The other seems always to be attacking and wounding them, perhaps in little ways, perhaps "unconsciously," yet never without demand of sacrifice. The fury of those joined at the ego's altar, far exceeds your awareness of it. For what the ego really, wants you do NOT realize.
Whenever you are angry, you can be sure that you have formed a special relationship which the ego has "blessed," for anger IS its "blessing." Anger takes many forms, but it cannot long deceive those who will learn that LOVE BRINGS NO GUILT AT ALL, and what brings guilt CANNOT be love, and MUST be anger. ALL anger is nothing more than an attempt to MAKE SOMEONE FEEL GUILTY, and this attempt is the ONLY basis which the ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only need the ego has, and, as long as you identify WITH it, guilt will remain ATTRACTIVE to you.
But remember this; to be WITH A BODY is NOT communication. And, if you think it IS, you will feel guilty about COMMUNICATION, and will be AFRAID to hear the Holy Spirit, recognizing in His voice, your OWN need to communicate. The Holy Spirit CANNOT teach through fear. And how can He communicate with you, while you believe that, to communicate, is to MAKE YOURSELF ALONE? It is CLEARLY insane to believe that, by communicating, you will be abandoned. And yet, you DO believe it. For you think that your minds must be kept PRIVATE, or you will LOSE them. And, if your BODIES are together, your minds remain your own.
The union of bodies thus becomes the way in which you would KEEP MINDS APART. For bodies cannot forgive. They can do only as the mind directs. The illusion of the autonomy of the body, and ITS ability to overcome loneliness, is but the working of the ego's plan to establish its OWN autonomy. As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT. And you will see SAFETY IN GUILT, and DANGER IN COMMUNICATION. For the ego will ALWAYS teach that loneliness is solved by guilt, and that communication is the CAUSE of loneliness. And, despite the evident insanity of this lesson, YOU HAVE LEARNED IT.
Forgiveness lies in communication, as surely as damnation lies in guilt. It is the Holy Spirit's teaching function to instruct those who believe that communication is damnation, that communication is salvation. And He will do so, for the power of God in Him AND YOU is joined in REAL relationship, so holy and so strong, that it can overcome even this, WITHOUT fear. It is through the holy instant that what SEEMS impossible is ACCOMPLISHED, making it evident that it is NOT impossible. In the holy instant, guilt holds NO attraction, since communication HAS BEEN restored. And guilt, whose ONLY purpose is to DISRUPT communication, HAS no function here.
Here, there is no concealment, and no private thoughts. The WILLINGNESS to communicate attracts communication TO it, and overcomes loneliness completely. There is complete forgiveness here, for there is no desire to exclude ANYONE from your completion, in sudden recognition of the value of his part in it. In the protection of YOUR wholeness, all are invited and made welcome. And you understand that YOUR completion is God's, Whose only need is to have you Be complete. For your completion MAKES you His, in YOUR awareness. And here it is that you experience yourself as you were created, AND AS YOU ARE.
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.
The rituals of the god of sickness are strange and very demanding. Joy is never permitted, for depression is the sign of allegiance to him. Depression MEANS that you have foresworn God. Men are afraid of blasphemy, but they do not know what it means. They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death. The sense is very literal; -- denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute.
Do not forget, however, that to deny God will inevitably result in projection, and you will believe that others, AND NOT YOURSELF, have done this TO you. You WILL receive the message you give, because it is the message you WANT. You may believe that you judge your brothers by the messages they give YOU, but you HAVE judged them by the message you give THEM. Do not attribute your denial of joy to them, or you cannot see the spark in them, that could bring joy to YOU. It is the DENIAL of the spark that brings depression, and whenever you see your brothers WITHOUT it, you ARE denying God.
Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival. But consider what this means to YOU. UNLESS you are sick you cannot keep the gods you made, for only in sickness could you possibly WANT them. Blasphemy, then, is SELF-destructive, not God destructive. It means that you are willing NOT to know yourself, IN ORDER to be sick. This IS the offering which your god demands, because having made him out of YOUR insanity, he IS an insane idea. He has many forms, but though he may seem like many different things, he is but one idea;-- the denial of God.
Sickness and death entered the mind of God's Son against His Will. The "attack on God" made His Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression. This was his alternative to joy, because he would not accept the fact that, although he was a creator, he had been created. Yet the Son IS helpless without the Father, Who alone IS his Help. We said before that of yourselves you can do nothing, but you are not OF yourselves. If you were, what you have made would be true, and you could never escape.
It is BECAUSE you did not make yourselves, that you need be troubled by nothing. Your gods are nothing, because your Father did not create them. You cannot make creators who are unlike your Creator, any more than He could have created a Son who was unlike Him. If creation is sharing, it cannot create what is unlike itself. It can share only what it IS. Depression is isolation, and so it could not have BEEN created.
Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken. But this can be corrected, and God will help you, knowing that you could not sin against Him. You denied Him BECAUSE you loved Him, knowing that if you RECOGNIZED your love for Him, you COULD not deny Him. Your denial therefore MEANS that you love Him, and THAT YOU KNOW HE LOVES YOU. Remember that what you deny you MUST have known. And if you can accept denial, YOU CAN ACCEPT ITS UNDOING.
Your Father has not denied you. He does not retaliate, but He DOES call to you to return. When you think He has not answered your call, YOU HAVE NOT ANSWERED HIS. He calls to you from every part of the Sonship, because of His love for His Son. If you hear His message, He HAS answered you, and you will learn what you are of Him, if you hear aright. The love of God is in everything He created, for His Son is everywhere. Look with peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing into your heart, in gratitude for your gift to Him.
Do not look to the god of sickness for healing, but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him. When you acknowledge Him, you will KNOW that He has never ceased to acknowledge you, and that in His acknowledgment OF you lies your Being. You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do. Remember, though, that to do this IS blasphemy, for it means that you are looking without love on God and His Creation, from which He cannot be separated. Only the eternal can be loved, for love does not die. What is of God is His forever, and you ARE of God. Would He allow Himself to suffer? And would He offer His Son anything that is not acceptable to Him?
If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. But to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father IS the acknowledgment of yourself as you ARE. Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free.
You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God, in His love, would not have it so. Yet He would not interfere with you, because He would not know His Son if he were not free. To interfere with you would be to attack HIMSELF, and God is not insane. When you denied HIM, you WERE insane. Would you have Him SHARE your insanity? God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. That was the condition of His Son's Creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. To know that is sanity. To deny it is insanity. God gave HIMSELF to you in your Creation, and His gifts ARE eternal. Would you deny yourself to Him?
Out of your gifts to Him, the Kingdom will be restored to His Son. His Son removed himself from His gift by refusing to accept what had been created FOR him, and what he himself had created in the name of His Father. Heaven waits for his return, for it was created as the dwelling place of God's Son. You are not at home anywhere else, or in any other condition. Do not deny yourself the joy which was created FOR you, for the misery you have made for yourselves. God has given you the means for undoing what you have made. Listen, and you WILL learn what you are.
If God knows His children as wholly sinless, it is blasphemous to perceive them as guilty. If God knows His children as wholly without pain, it is blasphemous to perceive suffering anywhere. If God knows his children to be wholly joyous, it is blasphemous to feel depressed. All these illusions, and the many other forms which blasphemy may take, are REFUSALS TO ACCEPT CREATION AS IT IS. If God created His Son perfect, that is how you must learn to see him, to learn of his reality. And as part of the Sonship, THAT IS HOW YOU MUST SEE YOURSELF TO LEARN YOURS.
Do not perceive ANYTHING God did not create, or you ARE denying Him. His is the ONLY Fatherhood, and it is yours only because HE has given it to you. Your gifts to YOURSELF are meaningless, but your gifts to YOUR creations are like His, because they are given in His Name. That is why your creations are as real as His. But the real Fatherhood must be acknowledged, if the real Son is to be known. You believe that the sick things which you have made are your real creations, because you believe that the sick images you perceive are the Sons of God.
Only if you ACCEPT the Fatherhood of God will you have anything, because His Fatherhood GAVE you everything. That is why to deny Him IS to deny yourself. Arrogance is the denial of love, because love shares and arrogance withholds. As long as both appear to you to be desirable, the concept of choice, which is not of God, will remain with you. While this is not true in Eternity, it IS true in time, so that, while time lasts in YOUR minds, there WILL be choices. Time itself WAS your choice. If you would remember Eternity, you must learn to look on only the Eternal. If you allow yourselves to become preoccupied with the temporal, you are LIVING IN TIME. As always, your choice is determined by what you value. Time and Eternity cannot both be real, because they contradict each other. If you will accept only what is timeless as real, you will begin to understand Eternity, and make it yours.
Forget not that you came this far TOGETHER. And it was surely NOT the ego that led you here. No obstacle to peace can BE surmounted through ITS help. IT does not open up its secrets, and bid you look at them, and go BEYOND them. IT would not have you see its weakness and learn it has NO power to KEEP you from the truth. The Guide Who brought you here REMAINS with you, and when you raise your eyes, you WILL be ready to look on terror with no fear at all. But first, lift up your eyes and look upon each other in innocence, born of COMPLETE forgiveness of each other's illusions, and through the eyes of faith, which see them not.
No-one can look upon the fear of God unterrified, unless he has ACCEPTED the Atonement, and learned illusions are not real. No-one can stand before this obstacle alone, for he could not have REACHED it unless his brother walked beside him. And no-one would dare to LOOK on it, without COMPLETE forgiveness of his brother in his heart. Stand you here a while, and tremble not. You will be ready. Let us join together in a holy instant, here in this place where the purpose, GIVEN in a holy instant, has led you. And let us join in faith that He Who brought us here together will OFFER you the innocence you need, and that you will ACCEPT it for my love and His.
Nor is it POSSIBLE to look on this too soon. This is the place to which everyone must come, when he is ready. Once he has found his brother, he IS ready. But merely to REACH a place is not enough. A journey without a purpose is still meaningless. And even when it is over, it seems to make no sense. How can you KNOW that it is over, unless you realize its purpose IS accomplished? Here, with the journey's end before you, you SEE its purpose. And it is here you choose whether to look upon it, or wander on, only to return and make the choice again.
To look upon the fear of God DOES need some preparation. Only the sane can look on stark insanity and raving madness with pity and compassion, but NOT with fear. For only if you SHARE in it does it seem fearful. And you DO share in it until you look upon each other with perfect faith and love and tenderness. Before complete forgiveness, you still stand unforgiving. You are afraid of God BECAUSE you fear each other. Those you do not forgive, YOU FEAR. And no-one reaches love, with FEAR beside him.
This brother, who stands beside you, still seems to be a stranger. You do NOT know him, and your INTERPRETATION of him is VERY fearful. And you attack him still, to keep what seems to be YOURSELF unharmed. Yet in his hands IS your salvation. You see his madness, which you hate because you SHARE in it. And all the pity and forgiveness that would HEAL it, gives way to fear. Brothers, you NEED forgiveness of each other. For you will share in madness or in Heaven TOGETHER. And you will raise your eyes in FAITH together, or not at all.
Beside each of you is one who offers you the chalice of Atonement, for the Holy Spirit is in him. Would you hold his sins AGAINST him, or accept his gift to YOU? Is this giver of Salvation your friend or enemy? Choose which he is, remembering that you will RECEIVE of him according to your choice. He has IN HIM the power to forgive YOUR sins, as you for HIM. Neither can give it to himself alone. And yet your Savior stands beside each one. Let him be what he IS, and seek not to make of love an enemy.
Behold your Friend, the Christ Who stands beside you. How holy and how beautiful He is! You THOUGHT He sinned, because you cast the veil of sin upon Him to HIDE His loveliness. Yet still He holds forgiveness out to you, to SHARE His holiness. This "enemy," this "stranger" still offers you salvation as His Friend. The "enemies" of Christ, the worshippers of sin, know not Whom they attack. This is your brother, crucified by sin, and waiting for release from pain. Would you not OFFER him forgiveness, when only he can offer it to you?
For HIS redemption he will give you yours, as surely as God created every living thing, and loves it. And he will give it truly, for it will be both offered and RECEIVED. There is no grace of Heaven that you cannot OFFER to each other, and receive from your most holy Friend. Let him withhold it not, for by receiving it, you offer it to HIM. And he WILL receive of you what YOU received of him. Redemption has been given you to give EACH OTHER, and thus receive it. Whom you forgive IS free. And what you give, YOU SHARE. Forgive the sins your brother THINKS he has committed, and all the guilt YOU see in him.
Here is the holy place of RESURRECTION, to which we come again; to which we will RETURN until redemption is accomplished AND RECEIVED. Think who your brother IS, before you would condemn him. And offer thanks to God that he is holy, and has been given the gift of holiness for YOU. Join him in gladness, and remove all trace of guilt from his disturbed and tortured mind. Help him to lift the heavy burden of sin you laid upon him, and he ACCEPTED as his own, and toss it lightly and with happy laughter AWAY from him. Press it not like thorns against his brow, nor nail him to it, unredeemed and hopeless.
Give each other faith, for faith and hope and mercy ARE yours to give. Into the hands that give, the gift is given. Look on your brother, and see in him the gift of God you would RECEIVE. It is almost Easter, the time of Resurrection. Let us give redemption to each other, and SHARE in it, that we may rise as one in resurrection, and not SEPARATE in death. Behold the gift of freedom that I gave the Holy Spirit, for BOTH of you. And be you free together, as you offer TO the Holy Spirit this SAME gift, and, giving it, receive it OF Him, in RETURN for what you gave.
He leadeth you and me together, that we might meet here, in this holy place, and make the SAME decision. Free your brother here, as I freed you. Give him the self-same gift, nor look upon him with condemnation of ANY kind. See him as guiltless as I look on you, and OVERLOOK the sins he THINKS he sees within himself. Offer each other freedom and complete release from sin, here in the garden of seeming agony and death. So will we prepare TOGETHER the way unto the Resurrection of God's Son. And let him rise again to glad remembrance of his Father, Who knows no sin, no death, but ONLY life eternal.
Together we will disappear into the Presence BEYOND the veil, not to be lost, but FOUND; not to be seen, but to be KNOWN. And, knowing, nothing in the plan God has established for salvation will be left undone. This is the journey's purpose, WITHOUT which IS the journey meaningless. Here is the Peace of God, given to you eternally by Him. Here is the rest and quiet that you seek, the REASON for the journey from its beginning. Heaven is the gift you OWE each other, the debt of gratitude you offer to the Son of God, in thanks for what he is, and what his Father created him to be.
Think carefully how you would look upon the giver of this gift, for as you look on HIM, so will the gift ITSELF appear to be. As HE is seen as either the giver of guilt or of salvation, so will his OFFERING be seen, and so RECEIVED. The crucified give pain, because they ARE in pain. But the redeemed give joy, because they have been HEALED of pain. Everyone gives as he receives, but HE must choose what it will BE that he receives. And he will RECOGNIZE his choice by what he gives, and what is given HIM. Nor is it given anything in hell or Heaven to INTERFERE with his decision.
You came this far because the journey WAS your choice. And no-one undertakes to do what he believes is meaningless. What you had faith in still is faithful, and watches over you in faith so gentle, yet so strong, that it would lift you far beyond the veil, and place the Son of God safely within the sure protection of his Father. Here is the ONLY purpose that gives this world, and the long journey THROUGH this world, whatever meaning lies in them. Beyond this, they ARE meaningless. You stand together, still without conviction they HAVE a purpose. Yet it is GIVEN you to SEE this purpose in your holy Friend, and RECOGNIZE it as your own.
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 way to LEARN TO KNOW your brother is by perceiving the Holy Spirit in him. We have already said that the Holy Spirit is the bridge or thought-transfer of perception TO knowledge, so we CAN use the terms as if they were related, because in HIS mind they are. This relationship MUST be in His mind, because unless it were, the separation between the two ways of thinking would not be open to healing. He is part of the Holy Trinity, because His Mind is partly YOURS and also PARTLY GOD's. This needs clarification not in statement, since we have said this before, but in EXPERIENCE.
The Holy Spirit is the IDEA of healing. Being thought, the idea GAINS AS IT IS SHARED. Being the call FOR God, it is also the idea OF God. If you are part of God, it is also the idea of YOURSELF, as well as of all the parts of God. The idea of the Holy Spirit shares the property of other ideas, because it follows the laws of the universe of which IT is a part. Therefore, it is strengthened by being given away. It increases in YOU as you give it to your brothers.
Since thoughts do not have to be conscious to exist, your brother does NOT have to be AWARE of the Holy Spirit, either in himself or in you for this miracle to occur. He may have dissociated the call for God, just as YOU have. But the dissociation is healed in BOTH of you as you see it in him, and thus acknowledge its BEING. Bill, who has made a number of vital contributions to our joint venture, made a major one a while ago, which he himself did not appreciate or even understand. If we recognize its value together, we will be able to use it together, because it is an idea, and must therefore be shared to be held.
When Bill said that he was determined "NOT to see you that way," he was speaking negatively. If he will state the same idea POSITIVELY, he will see the POWER of what he said. He had realized that there are two ways of seeing you, and also that they are diametrically opposed to one another. These two ways must be in HIS mind, because he was referring to HIMSELF as the perceiver. They must also be in YOURS, because he was perceiving YOU.
What he was really saying was that he would NOT look at you through HIS ego, or perceive YOUR ego in you. Stated positively, he would see you through the Holy Spirit in HIS mind, and perceive it in YOURS. What you acknowledge in your brother, you ARE acknowledging in yourself. What you share you STRENGTHEN. The voice of the Holy Spirit IS weak in you. That is why you MUST share it, because it must be INCREASED in strength before YOU can hear it. It is impossible to hear it in yourself while it is so weak in your OWN mind. It is NOT weak in itself; but it IS limited by your unwillingness to hear it.
Will itself is an idea, and is therefore strengthened by being shared. You have made the mistake of looking for the Holy Spirit in YOURSELVES, and that is why your meditations have frightened you. By adopting the ego's viewpoint, you undertook an ego-alien journey WITH THE EGO AS GUIDE. This was BOUND to produce fear. Bill's better idea needs to be strengthened in BOTH of you. Since it was HIS, HE can increase it by giving it to you.
Delay is of the ego, because time is ITS concept. Delay is obviously a TIME idea. Both time AND delay are meaningless in eternity. We have said before that the Holy Spirit is God's answer to the ego. Everything of which the Holy Spirit reminds you is in direct opposition to the ego's notions, because true and false perceptions are THEMSELVES opposed. The Holy Spirit has the task of UNDOING what the ego has made. It must undo it in the same realm of discourse in which the ego itself operates, or the mind would be unable to understand the change. We have repeatedly emphasized the fact that one level of the mind is not understandable to another. So it is with the ego and the soul, and with time and eternity.
Eternity is an idea of God, so the soul understands it perfectly. Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which IS the ego's domain, accepts it without question. The only aspect of time which is really eternal is NOW. That is what we REALLY mean when we say that now is the only time. The literal nature of this statement does not mean anything to the ego. It interprets it, at best, to mean "don't worry about the future." This is NOT what it really means at all.
The Holy Spirit is the mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the Soul. Its ability to deal with symbols enables it to work AGAINST the ego's beliefs in its own language. Its equal ability to look BEYOND symbols into eternity also enables it to understand the laws of God, for which it speaks.
It can thus perform the function of RE-INTERPRETING what the ego makes, not by destruction, but by understanding. Understanding is light, and light leads to knowledge. The Holy Spirit is IN light, because it is IN YOU who ARE light. But you yourselves do not know this. It is therefore the task of the Holy Spirit to re-interpret you on behalf of God.
You cannot understand yourselves alone. This is because you have no meaning apart from your rightful place in the Sonship, and the rightful place of the Sonship in God. This is your life, your eternity, and YOURSELF. It is of this that the Holy Spirit reminds you. It is this that the Holy Spirit SEES. This vision invariably frightens the ego, because it is so calm. Peace is the ego's greatest enemy, because according to ITS interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival. The ego becomes strong in strife because if you believe there is strife, you will react viciously because the idea of danger has entered your mind. This idea itself IS an appeal to the ego.
The Holy Spirit is as vigilant as the ego to the call of danger, opposing it with ITS strength just as the ego WELCOMES it with all its might. The Holy Spirit counters this welcome by welcoming peace. Peace and eternity are as closely related as are time and war. Perception as well as knowledge derive meaning from RELATIONSHIPS. Those which you accept are the foundations of your beliefs.
The Separation is merely another term for a split mind. It was not an act, but a thought. Therefore, the idea of Separation can be given away, just as the idea of unity can, and either way, it will be STRENGTHENED IN THE MIND OF THE GIVER. The ego is the symbol of the Separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace. What you perceive in others you are STRENGTHENING IN YOUR SELF. You let your mind misperceive, but the Holy Spirit lets your mind re-interpret its own misperceptions. The Holy Spirit is the perfect teacher. It uses only what your minds ALREADY understand, to teach you that you do not understand it.
The Holy Spirit can deal with an unwilling learner without going counter to his will, because part of his will IS still for God. Despite the ego's attempts to conceal this part, it is still much stronger than the ego, even though the ego does not recognize it. The Holy Spirit recognizes it perfectly, because it is its own dwelling place, or the place in the mind where it is at home. YOU are at home there, too, because it is a place of peace, and peace is of God.
You who are part of God are not at home EXCEPT in His peace. If peace is eternal, you are at home only in eternity. The ego made the world as IT perceives it, but the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made, sees it only as a teaching device for bringing you home. The Holy Spirit must perceive time and re-interpret into the timeless. The mind must be led into eternity THROUGH time, because having made time it is capable of perceiving its opposite.
The Holy Spirit must work through opposites, because it must work with and for a mind that IS in opposition. Correct and learn, and be open to learning. You have NOT made truth, but truth can still set you free. Look as the Holy Spirit looks, and understand as He understands. His understanding looks back to God, in remembrance of Me. He is in Holy Communion always, and He is part of YOU. He is your guide to salvation, because he holds the remembrance of things past and to come. He holds this gladness gently in your minds, asking only that you INCREASE it in His name by sharing it to increase His joy in YOU.
Miracles are a blessing from parents to children. This is just another way of phrasing the previous point about "from those who have more to those who have less." Children do NOT belong to parents, but they DO need to share their greater abundance. If they are deprived, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships.
Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The miracle calls to him to return, because it blesses and honors him even though he may be absent in spirit.
The miracle acknowledges all men as your brothers and Mine. It is a way of perceiving the Universal Mark of God in them.
(Tell Bill that this is the true "strawberry mark" of Brotherhood. This is just a sign of special concern for him, because he keeps worrying about this.)
You might add that his false idea about his own exclusion from Universal Love is fallacious in your terms, and arrogant in his. HIS real specialness does NOT stem from exclusion, but from inclusion. ALL My Brothers are special. He should stop interpreting this as "all except Bill " This is ridiculous!
Tell him that the implied lack of love that his version contains is WAY off the Mark, and misses the level of right thinking entirely. He MUST heal his perception in this respect. He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are.
(Tell B. that 50,000,000 Frenchmen CAN be wrong, because the notion is too fragmented. What CAN'T be wrong is the Universal Sonship of which he is a part.)
God WOULD be mocked if ANY of his creations lacked holiness. The Creation IS whole. The mark of Wholeness is Holiness, not holes. THE SONSHIP HAS NO HOLES ANYWHERE.
Wholeness is the perceptual content of the miracle. It thus corrects (or atones for) the faulty perception of lack.
We now turn to the fundamental distinction between miracles and projection. The stimulus MUST precede the response, and must also (determine) (influence) the kind of response that is evoked. The relationships of S and R are EXTREMELY intimate. (The behavioristic terminology is because this part deals with behavior.)
Behavior IS response, so that the question "response to what?" becomes crucial.
Stimuli of all kinds are identified through perception. You perceive the stimulus and behave accordingly. It follows, then, that:
As ye perceive
So will ye behave
(Helen Schucman raises point that Biblical language is hardly behavioristic terminology. Answer: No, but they needn't be OUT of accord with each other, either.)
Consider the Golden Rule again. You are asked to behave toward others as you would have them behave toward you. This means that the perception of both must be accurate, since the Golden Rule is the Order for appropriate behavior. You can't behave appropriately unless you perceive accurately, because appropriate behavior DEPENDS on lack of level confusion. The presence of level confusion ALWAYS results in variable reality testing, and hence variability in behavioral appropriateness.
All forms of self image debasement are FUNDAMENTAL perceptual distortions. They inevitably produce either self-contempt or projection, and usually both.
Since you and your neighbor are equal members of the same family, as you perceive both, so will you behave toward both. The way to perceive for Golden Rule behavior is to look out from the perception of your own holiness and perceive the holiness of others.
Bill and you need considerable clarification of the channel role. Look carefully at Mrs. Albert. She is working miracles every day, because she knows who she is. I emphasize again that your tendency to forget names is not hostility, but a fear of involvement or RECOGNITION. You had misinterpreted human encounters as opportunities for magic rather than for miracles and so you tried to PROTECT THE NAME. This is a very ancient and primitive way of trying to protect a person.
NOTE The very old Jewish practice of changing the name of a person who is very ill, so that when the list is given to the Angel of Death, the person with that name will not be found.
This is a good example of the curiously literal regression which can occur in very bright people when they become afraid. You and Bill both do it. Actually, it is a device closely related to the phobia, in the sense that they both narrow fear to a simple aspect of a much larger problem in order to enable them to avoid it.
A similar mechanism works when you get furious about a comparatively minor expression by someone to whom you are ambivalent. A good example of this is your response to Jonathan, who DOES leave things around in very strange ways. Actually, he does this because he thinks that by minor areas of disorganization he can protect his stability. I remind you that you have done this yourself for years, and should understand it very well. This should be met with great charity, rather than with great fury.
The fury comes from your awareness that you do not love Jonathan as you should, and you narrow your lack of love by centering your hate on trivial behavior in an attempt to protect him from it. You also call him Jonathan for the same reason (see previous reference).
Note that a name is a human symbol that "stands for" a person. Superstitions about names are very common for just that reason. That is also why people sometimes respond with anger when their names are spelled or pronounced incorrectly.
Actually, the Jewish superstition about changing the names was a distortion of a revelation about how to alter or avert death. What the revelation's proper content was that those "who change their mind" (not name) about destruction (or hate) do not need to die. Death is a human affirmation of a belief in hate. That is why the Bible says "There is no death," and that is why I demonstrated that death does not exist. Remember that I came to FULFILL the law by RE-INTERPRETING it. The law itself, if properly understood, offers only protection to man. Those who have not yet "changed their minds" have entered the "hellfire" concept into it.
Remember, I said before that because "nature abhors a vacuum", it does NOT follow that the vacuum is filled with hell fire. The emptiness engendered by fear should be replaced by love, because love and its absence are in the same dimension, and correction cannot be undertaken except WITHIN a dimension. Otherwise, there has been a confusion of levels.
Returning to Mrs. Albert (not Andrews), she corrected your error about her name without embarrassment and without hostility, because she has NOT made your own mistake about names.
She is not afraid, because she knows she is protected. She made the correction ONLY because you were inaccurate, and the whole question of embarrassment did not occur to her.
She was also quite unembarrassed when she told you that everything has to be done to preserve life, because you never can tell when God may come and say "Get up, Dave," and then he will.
She did not ask what YOU believed first, and afterwards merely added "and it's true, too." The RIGHT answer to the SCT item is: WHEN THEY TOLD ME WHAT TO DO, I "referred the question to the only REAL authority."
(Helen Schucman note: If you ask somebody what he believes before you tell him what you believe, then you are implying that you will say what he approves. This is not "the real authority.")
You took a lot of notes on "Those who are ashamed of Me before men, them will I be ashamed of before God." This was rather carefully clarified, even though the quotation is not quite right, but it doesn't matter.
The important thing is that elsewhere in the Bible it also says "Those who represent (or plead for) Me to men will be represented (or pleaded for) BY Me before God." (Note: This quotation is also not the correct Biblical phrasing, but it IS what it means.) Note that one who represents also "witnesses for." The quotation thus means that you represent or "witness for" the authority in whom you believe.
Your witnessing DEMONSTRATES your belief, and thus strengthens it.
I assure you that I will "witness for" anyone who lets me, and to whatever extent he himself permits it.
Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abandoned deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned BELONGS to them.
A MAJOR contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing man from his misplaced sense of isolation, deprivation, and lack. They are affirmations of Sonship, which is a state of completion and abundance.
B's very proper emphasis on "changing your mind" needs clarification.
Whatever is true and real is eternal, and CANNOT change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters.
While the ballot itself is a secret one, and the right to vote is fully protected, voting ALWAYS entails both election AND rejection. If two candidates are voted for, for the same position, the machine cancels the ballot automatically.
This is necessary, because a split vote does not represent ANY REAL allegiance.
Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God.
The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished. The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants.
To "change your mind" means to place it at the disposal of True authority. The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has elected to be guided by Christ in HIS service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow him.
P.S. The reason you have been late recently (for work) because you were taking dictation is merely because you didn't remember to ask me when to stop. This is an example of the "indiscriminate or uncontrolled" miracle-working we already spoke of. It is well-meant but ill-advised.
I prompted that call from Jack (taxi man - couldn't pick Helen Schucman up, etc.) to show you that this is not necessary. Also, the other man needed the money more today.
NOTE that you managed to fill your scribal role with no interruptions, and were also on time.
NOTE also that you closed the book and put it aside WITHOUT consulting me. ASK "Is that all?" ANSWER: No: add the following: These notes are serving, among other things, to replace the "handwriting on the wall" which you once saw next to your own altar, which read "You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting."
Scribes MUST learn Christ-control, to replace their former habits, which DID produce scarcity rather than abundance. From errors of this kind, the sense of deprivation IS inevitable, but very easily corrected.
The following is in relation to question about sex. Tell Bill "the one more river" is related to sex. You might even explain it to him as a "tidal wave", a term which he will understand. YOU won't.
Both of you are involved with unconscious distortions (above the miracle level), which are producing a dense cover over miracle-impulses which makes it hard for them to reach consciousness. Sex and miracles are both WAYS OF RELATING. The nature of any interpersonal relationship is limited or defined by what you want it to DO which is WHY you want it in the first place. Relating is a way of achieving an outcome.
Indiscriminate sexual impulses resemble indiscriminate miracle impulses in that both result in body image misperceptions. The first is an expression of an indiscriminate attempt to reach communion through the body. This involves not only the improper self identification, but also disrespect for the individuality of others. Self-control is NOT the whole answer to this problem, though I am by no means discouraging its use. It must be understood, however, that the underlying mechanism must be uprooted (a word you both should understand well enough by now not to regard it as frightening).
ALL shallow roots have to be uprooted, because they are not deep enough to sustain you. The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened and thus made to hold is one of the corollaries on which the reversal of the Golden Rule, referred to twice before, is balanced. As these false underpinnings are uprooted (or given up), equilibrium is experienced as unstable. But the fact is that NOTHING is less stable than an orientation which is upside down. Anything that holds it this way is hardly conducive to greater stability.
The whole danger of defenses lies in their propensity to hold misperceptions rigidly in place. This is why rigidity is regarded AS stability by those who are off the mark.
NOTE The only final solution - (no, Helen, this has nothing to do with the Nazi use of the term.) You just got frightened again. One of the more horrible examples of inverted or upside down thinking (and history is full of horrible examples of this) is the fact that the Nazis spelled their appalling error with capital letters. I shed many tears over this, but it is by no means the only time I said "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."
All actions which stem from reverse thinking are literally the behavioral expressions of those who know not what they do. Actually, Jean Dixon was right in her emphasis on "Feet on the ground and fingertips in the Heaven," though she was a bit too literal for your kind of understanding. Many people knew exactly what she meant, so her statement was the right miracle for them.
For you and Bill, it would be better to consider the concept in terms of reliability and validity. A rigid orientation can be extremely reliable, even if it IS upside down. In fact, the more consistently upside down it is, the more reliable it is, because consistency always held up better mathematically than test-re-test comparisons, which were ALWAYS on shaky ground. You can check this against Jack's notes if you wish, but I assure you its true. Split-half reliability is statistically a MUCH stronger approach. The reason for this is that correlation which is the technique applied to test-re-test comparisons, measures only the EXTENT OF association, and does not consider the Direction at all.
But two halves of the same thing MUST go in the same direction, if there is to be accuracy of measurement. This simple statement is really the principle on which split half reliability, a means of estimating INTERNAL consistency, rests.
Note, however, that both approaches leave out a very important dimension. Internal consistency criteria disregard time, because the focus is on one-time measurements. Test-retest comparisons are BASED on time intervals, but they disregard direction.
It is possible, of course, to use both, by establishing internal consistency AND stability over time. You will remember that Jack once told his class that the more sophisticated statisticians are concentrating more and more on reliability, rather than validity. The rationale for this, as he said, was that a reliable instrument DOES measure something. He also said, however, that validity is still the ultimate goal, which reliability can only serve.
I submit (I'm using Jack's language in this section, because it always had a special meaning for you. So did Jack.) Your confusion of sex and statistics is an interesting example of this whole issue. Note that night you spent in the scent of roses doing a complex factorial analysis of covariance. It's a funny story to others, because they see a different kind of level confusion than the one you yourself were making. You might recall that YOU wanted that design, and Jack opposed it. One of the real reasons why that evening was so exhilarating was because it represented a "battle of intellects", (both good ones, by the way), each communicating exceptionally clearly but on opposite sides. The sexual aspects were naturally touched off in both of you, because of the sex and aggression confusion.
(It is especially interesting that after the battle ended on a note of compromise with your agreeing with Jack, he wrote in the margin of your notes "virtue is triumphant." (Helen Schucman note re submission-dominance, feminine-masculine roles, entered into this.) While this (remark) was funny to both of you at the time, you might consider its truer side. The virtue lay in the complete respect each of you offered to the other's intellect. Your mutual sexual attraction was also shared. The error lay in the word "triumphant." This had the "battle" connotation, because neither of you was respecting ALL of the other. There is a great deal more to a person than intellect and genitals. The omission was the Soul.)
I submit (after a long interruption) that if a mind (Soul) is in valid relationship with God, it CAN'T be upside down. Jack and the other very eminent methodologists have abandoned validity in favor of reliability because they have lost sight of the end and are concentrating on the means.
Remember the story about the artist who kept devoting himself to inventing better and better ways of sharpening pencils. He never created anything, but he had the sharpest pencil in town. (The language here is intentional. Sex is often utilized on behalf of very similar errors. Hostility, triumph, vengeance, self-debasement, and all sort of expressions of the lack of love are often VERY clearly seen in the accompanying fantasies. But it is a PROFOUND error to imagine that, because these fantasies are so frequent (or occur so reliably), that this implies validity. Remember that while validity implies reliability the relationship is NOT reversible. You can be wholly reliable, and ENTIRELY wrong.
While a reliable test DOES measure something, what USE is the test unless you discover what the "something" is? And if validity is more important than reliability, and is also necessarily implied BY it, why not concentrate on VALIDITY and let reliability fall naturally into place.
Intellect may be a "displacement upward", but sex can be a "displacement outward." How can man "come close" to others through the parts of him which are really invisible? The word "invisible" means "cannot be seen or perceived."What cannot be perceived is hardly the right means for improving perception.
The confusion of miracle impulse with sexual impulse is a major source of perceptual distortion, because it INDUCES rather than straightening out the basic level-confusion which underlies all those who seek happiness with the instruments of the world. A desert is a desert is a desert. You can do anything you want in it, but you CANNOT change it from what it IS. It still lacks water, which is why it IS a desert (Bring up that dream about the Bluebird. While Helen Schucman was looking for this dream, she came across another. The message was to bring both, as an excellent example of how extremely good Helen Schucman had become over the intervening 25 years at sharpening pencils. Note that the essential content hasn't changed; it's just better written.) The thing to do with a desert is to LEAVE.
Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind. By being One, this state of mind goes out to ANYONE, even without the awareness of the miracle worker himself. The impersonal nature of miracles is because Atonement itself is one, uniting all creations with their Creator.
The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and acceptance of his Atonement. The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother.
The miracles you are told NOT to perform have not lost their value. They are still expressions of your own state of Grace, but the ACTION aspect of the miracle should be Christ-controlled, because of His complete Awareness of the Whole Plan. The impersonal nature of miracle-mindedness ensures YOUR own Grace, but only Christ is in a position to know where Grace can be BESTOWED.
A miracle is never lost. It touches many people you may not even know, and sometimes produces undreamed of changes in forces of which you are not even aware. This is not your concern. It will also always bless YOU. This is not your concern, either. But it IS the concern of the Record. The Record is completely unconcerned with reliability, being perfectly valid because of the way it was set up. It ALWAYS measures what it was supposed to measure.
I want to finish the instructions about sex, because this is an area the miracle worker MUST understand.
Inappropriate sex drives (or misdirected miracle-impulses) result in guilt if expressed, and depression if denied. We said before that ALL real pleasure comes from doing God's will. Whenever it is NOT done an experience of lack results. This is because NOT doing the will of God IS a lack of self.
Sex was intended as an instrument for physical creation to enable Souls to embark on new chapters in their experience, and thus improve their record. The pencil was NOT an end in itself. (See earlier section.) It was an aid to the artist in his own creative endeavors. As he made new homes for Souls and guided them through the period of their own developmental readiness, he learned the role of the father himself. The whole process was set up as a learning experience in gaining Grace.
The pleasure which is derived from sex AS SUCH is reliable only because it stems from an error which men shared. AWARENESS of the error produces the guilt. DENIAL of the error results in projection. CORRECTION of the error brings release.
The only VALID use of sex is procreation. It is NOT truly pleasurable in itself. "Lead us not into Temptation" means "Do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."
The "sin of onan" was called a "sin" because it involved a related type of self-delusion; namely, that pleasure WITHOUT relating can exist.
To repeat an earlier instruction, the concept of either the self or another as a "sex-OBJECT" epitomizes this strange reversal. As Bill put it, and very correctly, too, it IS objectionable, but only because it is invalid. Upside down logic produces this kind of thinking.
Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful, and the holy. Do not lose sight of this. You were right in telling Bill to invite Me to enter anywhere temptation arises. I will change the situation from one of inappropriate sexual attraction to one of impersonal miracle-working. The concept of changing the channel for libidinal expression is Freud's greatest contribution, except that he did not understand what "channel" really means.
The love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another. That is because the real vision is still so dim. Everyone can use his body best by enlarging man's perception, so he can see the real VISION. THIS VISION is invisible to the physical eye. The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation.
NOTE Scribes have a particular role in the Plan of Atonement, because they have the ability to EXPERIENCE revelations themselves, and also to put into words enough of the experience to serve as a basis for miracles.
(This refers to experiences at the visionary level, after which Helen Schucman wrote "If you will tell me what to do, I will to do it." She had not known that the word "to" was inserted, and had merely intended to write "I will do it." This recognition had a terrific impact on Helen Schucman.)
This is why you EXPERIENCED that revelation about "I will to do" VERY personally, but also WROTE IT: What you wrote CAN be useful to miracle workers other than yourself. We said before that prayer is the medium of miracles. The miracle prayer IS what you wrote, i.e. "If you will tell me what to do, I will to do it." *
This prayer is the door that leads out of the desert forever.
*(Correction next day. This is not a complete statement, because it does not exclude the negative. We have already told you to add "and NOT to do what you would not have me do." in connection with miracles. The distinction has also been made here between "miracle-mindedness" as a STATE, and "miracle-doing" as its expression.
The former needs YOUR careful protection, because it is a state of miracle-READINESS. This is what the Bible means in the many references to "Hold yourself ready" and other similar injunctions.
Readiness here means keep your perception right side up, (or valid), so you will ALWAYS be ready, willing, and able. These are the essentials for "listen, learn, and do." You must be
READY to listen
WILLING to learn
and ABLE to do
Only the last is involuntary, because it is the APPLICATION of miracles which must be Christ-controlled. But the other two, which are the voluntary aspects of miracle-mindedness, ARE up to you.
To channelize DOES have a "narrowing down" connotation, though NOT in the sense of lack. The underlying state of mind, or Grace is a total commitment. Only the DOING aspect involves the channel at all. This is because doing is always specific.
As Jack said, "A reliable instrument must measure something," but a channel is also valid. It must learn to do ONLY what it is supposed to do. Change the prayer to read:
If you will tell me what to do,
ONLY THAT I will to do.
NOTE Helen Schucman objects to doggerel sound of this, and regards it as very inferior poetry. ANSWER: It's hard to forget, though.
The Revelation is literally unspeakable, because it is an experience of unspeakable love. The word "Awe" should be reserved only for revelations, to which it is perfectly and correctly applicable. It is NOT appropriately applied to miracles, because a state of true awe is worshipful. It implies that one of a lesser order stands before the Greater One. This is the case only when a Soul stands before his Creator. Souls are perfect creations, and should be struck with awe in the presence of the Creator of Perfection.
The miracle, on the other hand, is a sign of love among equals. Equals cannot be in awe of each other, because awe ALWAYS implies inequality. Awe is not properly experienced even to me. That is why in that short introductory vision, I knelt beside you, FACING the light.
An Elder Brother is entitled to respect for his greater experience, and a reasonable amount of obedience for his greater wisdom. He is also entitled to love, because he is a brother, and also to devotion, if he is devoted. It is only my own devotion that entitles me to yours. But you will notice that I have knelt at your altar as readily as I would ever have you kneel at mine.
There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you.
"No man cometh to the Father but by me" is among the most misunderstood statements in the Bible. It DOES NOT mean that I am in any way separate (or different) from you, EXCEPT IN TIME. Now, we know that time does not exist. Actually, the statement is much more meaningful if it is considered on a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. Regarded along the vertical, man stands below me, and I stand below God. In the process of "rising up", I AM higher. This is because without me the distance between God and man is too great for man to encompass. I bridge the distance as an Elder Brother to man, on the one hand, and a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I can render complete only to the extent I can SHARE it.
This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."
The Holy Spirit is the Bringer of Revelations, not miracles. Revelations are INDIRECTLY inspired by me, because I am close to the Holy Spirit, and alert to revelation-readiness in my brothers. I can thus BRING DOWN to them more than they can DRAW down to themselves. Jean Dixon's description is perhaps a better statement of my position. Because my feet are on the ground and my hands are in heaven, I can bring down the glories of Heaven to my brothers on earth.
The Holy Spirit is the Highest Communication Medium. Miracles do not involve this type of communication, because they are TEMPORARY communicative devices. When man can return to his original form of communication with God by direct REVELATION, the need for miracles is over. The Holy Spirit mediates higher to lower order communication, keeping the direct channel from God to man open for revelation. Revelation is NOT reciprocal. It is always FROM God TO man. This is because God and man are NOT equal. The miracle is reciprocal because it ALWAYS involves equality.
In the longitudinal (or horizontal) plane, the true equality of all men in the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. But we know that time is only an artifact introduced as a learning aid.
The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need for time. The sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception which the miracle entails introduces an interval from which the doer and the receiver both emerge much farther along in time than they would otherwise have been.
A miracle has thus the unique property of abolishing time by rendering the space of time it occupies unnecessary. There is NO relation between the time a miracle TAKES and the time it COVERS. It substitutes FOR learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does this by the underlying recognition of perfect equality and holiness between doer and receiver on which the miracle rests.It is unstable, but perfectly consistent, i.e., it does not occur predictably across time, and it rarely occurs in comparable forms. But within ITSELF it is perfectly consistent. Since it contains NOTHING BUT an acknowledgment of equality and worth, all parts ARE equal. This establishes the prerequisite for validity.
We said before that the miracle abolishes time. It does this by a process of COLLAPSING it. It thus abolishes certain INTERVALS within it. It does this, however, WITHIN the larger temporal sequence.
The validity of the miracle, then, is PREDICTIVE, not logical, within the temporal schema. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval, which is NOT under the usual laws of time. Only in this sense is it timeless. By collapsing time, it literally saves time, much the way "daylight saving time" does. It rearranges the distribution of light.
The miracle is the only device which man has at his immediate disposal for controlling time. Only the Revelation TRANSCENDS it, having nothing to do with time at all. The miracle is much like the body, in that both are learning aids which aim at facilitating a state in which they are unnecessary. When the Soul is finally in the original state of direct communication, neither the body nor the miracle serves any purpose.
While he is IN the body, however, man can choose between loveless and miraculous channels of creativity. He can create an empty shell (see previous reference), but he DOES NOT create nothing at all. He can wait, delay, paralyze himself, reduce his creativity almost to nothing, and even introduce a real developmental arrest or regression. But he CANNOT abolish his creativity. He CAN destroy his medium of communication, but NOT his potential.
He was NOT created by his own free will. Only what HE creates is his to decide. The basic decision of the miracle-minded is NOT to wait on time any longer than is necessary. Time can waste, as well as be wasted. The miracle-worker, therefore, accepts the time-control factor of the miracle gladly, because he knows that every collapse of time brings all men closer to the ultimate RELEASE from time, in which the Son and the Father ARE one.
The real meaning of "are of one kind" is "of one mind or will." When the will of the Sonship and the Father are one, their perfect accord IS Heaven.
ASIDE Tell Bill he is right in providing you with the consistent strength you need to get, and he needs to offer. Your instability and his weakness have resulted from bad karmic choices, and your relationship NOW is crucial for the future. You must both exert every effort to restore it to what it once was. Both of you are correcting where you have failed before. This has already enabled you to fulfill a very unexpected role in your own joint salvation, and the salvation of many other children I will entrust increasingly to you. These are by no means chosen at random. Bill should know that his preparation is not only in terms of sharing in the results of your better application of some rather unusual talents. His own role, which he will understand after his preparation is complete, will be equally surprising. He will need your help then, as you need his strength now.
Note that you DO NOT need his help as a scribe, because you developed this ability by your own efforts, and finally placed them at MY disposal. By lending you his strength, he strengthens himself. When he gains this through his own efforts, he will need your help in a very unexpected way. But this is just another example of the reciprocal nature of miracles.
Equality does not imply homogeneity NOW. When EVERYONE has EVERYTHING, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary. When the Atonement has been completed, ALL talents will be shared by ALL of the Sons of God. God is NOT partial. All of His children have His total love, and all of his gifts are given freely to everyone alike.
"Except you become as little children" means unless you fully recognize your complete dependence on God, you cannot know the real power of the Son in his true relationship with the Father.
You and Bill DO have special talents which are needed for the Celestial speedup at this time. But note that the term speed-up is not one which relates to the TRANSCENDING of time.
When time is abolished, and all of the Sons of God have come home, no special agents will be necessary. But do not underestimate the power of special agents now, or the great need there is for them. I do not claim to be more than that myself. No one in his Right Mind, (a term which should be specially noted) ever wants either more or less than that. Those who are called on to witness for me NOW are witnessing for all men, as I am.
The role of the Priestess was once to experience Revelations and to work miracles. The purpose was to bring those not yet available for direct Revelations into proper focus for them. Heightened perception was always the essential Priestess attribute.
(This is the first time that Helen Schucman ever said that she would be honored if there were any notes.)
(Neither Bill nor I is really clear about how sexual-impulses can be directly translated into miracle-impulses.) The fantasies that I mentioned yesterday (refers to discussion Helen Schucman and Bill had) provide an excellent example of how you switch. (Now switch the pronoun references, or it will be too confusing.)
Fantasies are distorted forms of thinking, because they always involve twisting perception into unreality. Fantasy is a debased form of vision. Visions and Revelations are closely related. Fantasies and projection are more closely associated, because both attempt to control external reality according to false internal needs. "Live and let live" happens to be a very meaningful injunction. Twist reality in any way, and you are perceiving destructively. Reality was lost through usurpation, which in turn produced tyranny. I told you you were now restored to your former role in the Plan of Atonement. But you must still choose freely to devote your heritage to the greater Restoration. As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete. Complete restoration of the Sonship is the only true goal of the miracle-minded.
Sexual fantasies are distortions of perception by definition. They are a means of making false associations, and obtaining pleasure from them. Man can do this only because he IS creative. But although he can perceive false associations, he can never make them real except to himself. As was said before, man believes in what he creates. If he creates a miracle, he will be equally strong in his belief in that. The strength of his conviction will then sustain the belief of the miracle receiver.
NO fantasies, sexual or otherwise, are true. Fantasies become totally unnecessary as the Wholly satisfying nature of reality becomes apparent. The sex impulse IS a miracle impulse when it is in proper focus. One individual sees in another the right partner for "procreating the stock" (Wolff was not too far off here), and also for their joint establishment of a creative home. This does not involve fantasy at all. If I am asked to participate in the decision, the decision will be a Right one, too.
In a situation where you or another person, or both, experience inappropriate sex impulses, KNOW FIRST that this is an expression of fear. Your love toward each other is NOT perfect, and this is why the fear arose. Turn immediately to me by denying the power of the fear, and ask me to help you to replace it with love. This shifts the sexual impulse immediately to the miracle-impulse, and places it at MY disposal.
Then acknowledge the true creative worth of both yourself AND the other one. This places strength where it belongs. Note that sexual fantasies are ALWAYS destructive (or depleting), in that they perceive another in an inappropriate creative role. Both people are perceived essentially as "objects" fulfilling THEIR OWN pleasure drives. This dehumanized view is the source of the DEPLETING use of sex. Freud's description is purely NEGATIVE, i.e., as a release from the UNPLEASANT. He also observed that the tension from id impulses never completely abates.
What he should have said is that the shift from miracle-impulses to sexual impulses was debilitating in the first place, because of the level-confusion involved. This set up a state in which real release was impossible. Note also that Freud's notion of sex was as a device for inducing RELAXATION, which he confused with PEACE.
Inappropriate sex relaxes only in the sense that it may induce physical sleep. The miracle, on the other hand, is an ENERGIZER. It always strengthens, and never depletes. It DOES induce peace, and by establishing tranquility (not relaxation) it enables both giver and receiver to enter into a state of Grace. Here his miracle-mindedness, (not release from tension) is restored.
Tension is the result of a building-up of unexpressed miracle-impulses. This can be truly abated only by releasing the miracle-drive, which has been blocked. Converting it to sexual libido merely produces further blocking. Never foster this illusion in yourself, or encourage it in others. An "object" is incapable of release, because it is a concept which is deprived of creative power. The recognition of the real creative power in yourself AND others brings release because it brings peace.
The peace of God which passeth understanding CAN keep your hearts now and forever.
There are only two short additions needed here:
1. Your earlier acute problem in writing things down came from a MUCH earlier misuse of very great scribal abilities. These were turned to secret rather than shared advantage, depriving it (?) of its miraculous potential, and diverting it into possession. This is much like the confusion of sex impulses with possession-impulses. Some of the original material is still in the Temple. This is why you became so afraid about Atlantis. Bill has his own reasons.
2. Retain your miracle-minded attitude toward Rosie VERY carefully. She once hurt both of you, which is why she is now your servant. But she is blessed in that she sees service as a source of joy. Help her straighten out her past errors by contributing to your welfare now.
(special Revelation re Helen Schucman -OMISSION 1.)
Helen Schucman question re: past memories. ANSWER: As long as you remember ALWAYS that you never suffered anything because of anything that anyone ELSE did, this is not dangerous.
Remember that you who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness. You never really WANTED peace before, so there was no point in knowing how to get it. This is an example of the "need to know" principle, which was established by the Plan of Atonement long before CIA.
No kind of knowledge is acquired by anyone unless he wants it, or believes in some way he NEEDS it. A psychologist does NOT need a lesson on the hierarchy of needs as such, but like everyone else, he DOES need to understand his own.
This particular set of notes will be the only one which deals with the concept of "lack", because while the concept does not exist in the Creation of God, it is VERY apparent in the creations of man. It is, in fact, the essential difference.
A need implies lack, by definition. It involves the recognition, conscious or unconscious, (and at times, fortunately, superconscious) that you would be better off in a state which is somehow different from the one you are in.
Until the Separation, which is a better term than the Fall, nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them.
After the Separation, needs became the most powerful source of motivation for human action. All behavior is essentially motivated by needs, but behavior itself is not a Divine attribute. The body is the mechanism for behavior. (Ask any behaviorist, and he's RIGHT, too.)
You tell your own classes that nobody would bother even to get up and go from one place to another if he did not think he would somehow be better off. This is very true.
Believing that he COULD be "better off" is the reason why man has the mechanism for behavior at his disposal. This is why the Bible says "By their DEEDS ye shall know them."
A man acts according to the particular hierarchy of needs he establishes for himself. His hierarchy, in turn, depends on his perception of what he IS, i.e., what he LACKS. This establishes his own rules for what he needs to know.
Separation from God is the only lack he really needs to correct. But his Separation would never have occurred if he had not distorted his perception of truth, and thus perceived himself as lacking.
The concept of ANY sort of need HIERARCHY arose because, having made this fundamental error, he had already fragmented himself into levels with DIFFERENT needs. As he integrates, HE becomes one, and his ONE need becomes one accordingly. Only the fragmented can be confused about this.
Internal integration within the self will not (suffice to?) correct the lack fallacy, but it WILL correct the NEED fallacy. (Thank you for writing this as given.) Unified need produces unified action, because it produces lack of ambivalence.
The concept of need hierarchy, a corollary to the original error, requires correction at its OWN level, before the error of levels itself can be corrected. Man cannot operate (or behave) effectively while he operates at split levels. But as long as he does so, he must introduce correction from the bottom UP.
This is because he now operates in space, where "up" and "down" are meaningful terms. Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF. The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man KNEW he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary.
The need to know is not safely under man's control at this time. It is MUCH better off under mine. Let's just leave it at that.
(Specific question raised by WT re sex under existing conditions) (Helen Schucman raised previous question about the past, which has just been answered.)
The other question, however, I am more than willing to answer, because it is appropriate for NOW. You and Bill both chose your present sex partners shamefully, and would have to atone for the lack of love which was involved in any case.
You selected them precisely BECAUSE they were NOT suited to gratify your fantasies. This was not because you wanted to abandon or give up the fantasies, but because you were AFRAID of them. You saw in your partners a means of protecting against the fear, but both of you continued to "look around" for chances to indulge the fantasies.
The dream of the "perfect partner" is an attempt to find EXTERNAL integration, while retaining conflicting needs in the self.
Bill was somewhat less guilty of this than you, but largely because he was more afraid. He had abandoned the hope (of finding a perfect partner) in a neurotic sense of despair of finding it. You, on the other hand, insisted that the hope was justified. Neither of you, therefore, was in your Right Mind.
As was said before, homosexuality is INHERENTLY more risky (or error prone) than heterosexuality, but both can be undertaken on an equally false basis. The falseness of the basis is clear in the accompanying fantasies. Homosexuality ALWAYS involves misperception of the self OR the partner, and generally both.
Penetration DOES NOT involve magic, nor DOES ANY form of sexual behavior. It IS a magic belief to engage in ANY form of body image activity at all. You neither created yourselves, nor controlled your creation. By introducing levels into your own perception, you opened the way for body-image distortions.
The lack of love (or faulty need-orientation) which led to your particular person (not OBJECT) choices CAN BE corrected within the existent framework, and would HAVE to be in the larger interest of overall progress. The situation is questionable largely because of its inherent vulnerability to fantasy-gratification. Doing the best you can WITHIN this limitation is probably the best corrective measure at present. Any relationship you have undertaken for whatever reasons becomes a responsibility.
If you shift your own needs, some amount of corresponding shift in the need-orientation of the other person MUST result, This will be beneficial, even if the partner was originally attracted to you BECAUSE of your disrespect. Teaching devices which are totally alien to a learner's perceptual system are usually merely disruptive. Transfer depends on SOME common elements in the new situation which are understandable in terms of the old.
Man can never control the effects of fear himself, because he has CREATED fear and believes in what he creates. In attitude, then, though not in content, he resembles his own Creator, who has perfect faith in His Creations because he Created them. All creation rests on belief, and the belief in the creation produces its existence. This is why it is possible for a man to believe what is not true for anyone else. It is true for him because it is made BY him.
Every aspect of fear proceeds from upside down perception. The TRULY creative devote their efforts to correcting this. The neurotic devotes his to compromise. The psychotic tries to escape by establishing the truth of his own errors. It is most difficult to free him by ordinary means, only because he is more stable in his denial of truth.
The miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception. It is a device for perception-correction which is effective quite apart from either the degree or the direction of the error. This is its TRUE indiscriminateness.
Christ-controlled miracles are selective only in that they are directed toward those who can use them for THEMSELVES. Since this makes it inevitable that they will extend them to others, a very strong chain of Atonement is welded. But Christ-control takes no account at all of the MAGNITUDE of the miracle itself, because the concept of size exists only in a plane that is itself unreal. Since the miracle aims at RESTORING reality, it would hardly be useful if it were bound by the laws of the same error it aims to correct. Only man makes that kind of error. It is an example of the "foolish consistency" his own false beliefs have engendered.
Both the power and the strength of man's creative will must be understood, before the real meaning of denial can be appreciated and abolished. Denial is NOT mere negation. It is a positive miscreation. While the miscreation is NECESSARILY believed in by its own creator, it does not exist at all at the level of true Creation.
The miracle compares the creations of man with the higher level of creation, accepting what is in ACCORD as true, and rejecting the DISCORDANT as false. This is why it is so closely associated with validity. Real validity is both true AND useful, or better, it is useful BECAUSE it is true.
All aspects of fear are untrue, because they DO NOT exist at the higher creative levels, and therefore do not exist at all. To whatever extent a man is willing to submit his beliefs to the real test of validity, to that extent are his perceptions healed (or corrected.)
In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds much along the lines suggested very correctly by Bill, i.e.:
If perfect love casts out fear,
And if fear exists,
Then there is NOT perfect love.
But
Only perfect love really exists.
Therefore, if there is fear, it creates a state which does not exist. Believe THIS and you WILL be free. Only God can establish this solution, for THIS faith IS His gift.
You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the "gifts" it merely lends to take away again, attend this lesson well. The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus.
The world gives rise but to defensiveness. For threat brings anger, anger makes attack seem reasonable, honestly provoked, and righteous in the name of self-defense. Yet is defensiveness a double threat. For it attests to weakness, and sets up a system of defense which cannot work. Now are the weak still further undermined, for there is treachery without and still a greater treachery within. The mind is now confused, and knows not where to turn to find escape from its imaginings.
It is as if a circle held it fast, wherein another circle bound it, and another in that one, until escape no longer can be hoped for nor obtained. Attack, defense; defense, attack, become the circles of the hours and the days which bind the mind in heavy bands of steel with iron overlaid, returning but to start again. There seems to be no break nor ending in the ever-tightening grip of imprisonment upon the mind.
Defenses are the costliest of all the prices which the ego would exact. In them lies madness in a form so grim that hope of sanity seems but to be an idle dream, beyond the possible. The sense of threat the world encourages is so much deeper and so far beyond the frenzy and intensity of which you can conceive that you have no idea of all the devastation it has wrought. You are it's slave. You know not what you do in fear of it. You do not understand how much you have been made to sacrifice who feel its iron grip upon your heart.
You do not realize what you have done to sabotage the holy peace of God by your defensiveness. For you behold the Son of God as but a victim to attack by fantasies, by dreams, and by illusions he has made; yet helpless in their presence, needful only of defense by still more fantasies and dreams, by which illusions of his safety comfort him.
Defenselessness is strength. It testifies to recognition of the Christ in you. Perhaps you will recall the course maintains that choice is always made between His strength and your own weakness seen apart from Him. Defenselessness can never be attacked because it recognizes strength so great attack is folly, or a silly game a tired child might play when he becomes too sleepy to remember what he wants.
Defensiveness is weakness. It proclaims you have denied the Christ and come to fear His Father's anger. What can save you now from your delusion of an angry god whose fearful image you believe you see at work in all the evils of the world? What but illusions could defend you now, when it is but illusions which you fight?
We will not play such childish games today, for our true purpose is to save the world, and we would not exchange for foolishness the endless joy our function offers us. We would not let our happiness slip by because a senseless fragment of a dream happened to cross our minds, and we mistook the figures in it for the Son of God; its tiny instant for eternity.
We look past dreams today, and recognize that we need no defense because we are created unassailable, without all thought or wish or dream in which attack has any meaning. Now we cannot fear, for we have left all fearful thoughts behind. And in defenselessness we stand secure, serenely certain of our safety now, sure of salvation; sure we will fulfill our chosen purpose as our ministry extends its holy blessing through the world.
Be still a moment, and in silence think how holy is your purpose, how secure you rest, untouchable within its light. God's ministers have chosen that the truth be with them. Who is holier than they? Who could be surer that his happiness is fully guaranteed? And who could be more mightily protected? What defense could possibly be needed by the ones who are among the chosen ones of God by His election and their own as well?
It is the function of God's ministers to help their brothers choose as they have done. God has elected all, but few have come to realize His Will is but their own. And while you fail to teach what you have learned salvation waits, and darkness holds the world in grim imprisonment. Nor will you learn that light has come to you, and your escape has been accomplished. For you will not see the light until you offer it to all your brothers. As they take it from your hands, so will you recognize it as your own.
Salvation can be thought of as a game that happy children play. It was designed by One Who loves His children, and Who would replace their fearful toys with joyous games, which teach them that the game of fear is gone. His game instructs in happiness because there is no loser. Everyone who plays must win, and in his winning is the gain to everyone ensured. The game of fear is gladly laid aside when children come to see the benefits salvation brings.
You who have played that you are lost to hope, abandoned by your Father, left alone in terror in a fearful world made mad by sin and guilt, be happy now. That game is over. Now a quiet time has come in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of Heaven's children and the Son of God.
We pause but for a moment more, to play our final happy game upon this earth. And then we go to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless. So is the story ended. Let this day bring the last chapter closer to the world, that everyone may learn the tale he reads of terrifying destiny, defeat of all his hopes, his pitiful defense against a vengeance he can not escape, was but his own deluded fantasy. God's ministers have come to waken him from the dark dreams this story has evoked in his confused, bewildered memory of this distorted tale. God's Son can smile at last, on learning that it is not true.
Today we practice in a form we will maintain for quite a while. We will begin each day by giving our attention to the daily thought as long as possible. Five minutes now becomes the least we give to preparation for a day in which salvation is the only goal we have. Ten would be better; fifteen better still. And as distraction ceases to arise to turn us from our purpose, we will find that half an hour is too short a time to spend with God. Nor will we willingly give less at night in gratitude and joy.
Each hour adds to our increasing peace, as we remember to be faithful to the Will we share with God. At times, perhaps, a minute, even less, will be the most that we can offer as the hour strikes. Sometimes we will forget. At other times the business of the world will close on us, and we will be unable to withdraw a little while and turn our thoughts to God.
Yet when we can, we will observe our trust as ministers of God in hourly remembrance of our mission and His Love. And we will quietly sit by and wait on Him and listen to His Voice, and learn what He would have us do the hour that is yet to come; while thanking Him for the gifts He gave us in the one gone by.
In time, with practice, you will never cease to think of Him, and hear His loving Voice guiding your footsteps into quiet ways, where you will walk in true defenselessness, for you will know that Heaven goes with you. Nor would you keep your mind away from Him a moment, even though your time is spent in offering salvation to the world. Think you He will not make this possible for you who chose to carry out His plan for the salvation of the world and yours?
Today our theme is our defenselessness. We clothe ourselves in it as we prepare to meet the day. We rise up strong in Christ, and let our weakness disappear, as we remember that His strength abides in us. We will remind ourselves that He remains beside us through the day, and never leaves our weakness unsupported by His strength. We call upon His strength each time we feel the threat of our defenses undermine our certainty of purpose. We will pause a moment, as He tells us "I am here."
Our practicing will now begin to take the earnestness of love to help you keep your mind from wandering from its intent. Be not afraid nor timid. There can be no doubt that you will reach your final goal. The ministers of God can never fail, because the love and strength and peace that shine from them to all their brothers come from Him. These are His gifts to you. Defenselessness is all you need to give Him in return. You lay aside but what was never real, to look on Christ and see His sinlessness.
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.
You must have noticed how often I have used your own ideas to help YOU. Bill is right is saying that you have learned to be a loving, wise, and very understanding therapist, except for yourself. That exception has given you more than perception for others because of what you saw in them, but less than knowledge of your real relationships TO them because you did NOT make them part OF you. Understanding IS beyond perception, because it introduces meaning. But it is below knowledge, even though it can grow TOWARD it. It is possible, with great effort, to understand someone else and to be helpful to him, but the effort is misdirected. The misdirection is quite apparent. It is directed AWAY from you.
This does NOT mean that it is lost to you, but it DOES mean that you are not aware of it. I have saved all of your kindnesses and every loving thought you have had, and I assure you, you have had many. I have purified them of errors which hid their light, and have kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within YOU, and we know that what God creates is eternal.
Bill once spoke of the Kingdom in this way, because he yearns for what he has repressed. You are much more afraid of it, because dissociation is more fearful. B's better contact has allowed him the strength to retain the fear in awareness, and to resort to displacement, which he is learning to overcome with YOUR help. That is because you do not perceive HIM as dissociated, and can help him with his repression, which does not frighten you. He, on the other hand, has no difficulty in seeing YOU dissociate, and does not have to deal with repression in you, which WOULD produce fear in him.
Joining in Atonement, which I have repeatedly asked you to do, is ALWAYS a way OUT of fear. This does not mean that you can safely fail to acknowledge anything that is true, but the Holy Spirit will not fail to help you re-interpret EVERYTHING that you perceive as fearful, and teach you ONLY what is loving IS true. It is beyond your ability to destroy, but entirely within your grasp. It BELONGS to you because YOU created it. It is yours because it is part of you, just as you are part of God, because He created you.
The Atonement is the GUARANTEE of the safety of the Kingdom. Nothing good is lost, because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voice for Creation. Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore CANNOT be protected. What the ego makes it KEEPS TO ITSELF, and so it is without strength. Its unshared existence does not die. It was merely never born. Real birth is not a beginning; it is a CONTINUING. Everything that CAN continue has already BEEN born. But it can INCREASE as you are willing to return the part of your mind that needs healing to the higher part, and thus render your creating (creation) undivided.
You yourself always told your patients that the real difference between neurotic and 'healthy' guilt feelings was that neurotic guilt feelings DO NOT HELP ANYONE. This distinction was very wise, though incomplete. Let us make the distinction a little sharper now. Neurotic guilt feelings are a device of the ego for "atoning" without sharing, and for asking for pardon without change. The ego NEVER calls for real atonement, and cannot tolerate real forgiveness, which IS change.
Your concept of "healthy guilt feelings" has great merit, but without the concept of the Atonement it lacked the healing potential it held. YOU make the distinction in terms of feelings which led to a decision not to REPEAT the error, which is only PART of healing. Your concept therefore lacked the idea of UNDOING it. What you were really advocating, then, was adopting a policy of sharing without a real FOUNDATION.
I have come to give you the foundation, so your own thoughts can make you REALLY free. You have carried the burden of the ideas you did NOT share, and which were therefore too weak to increase, but you did NOT recognize how to UNDO their existence because you HAD made them. You CANNOT cancel out your past errors alone. They will NOT disappear from your mind without remedy. The remedy is NOT of your making, any more than YOU are.
The Atonement cannot be understood except as a PURE ACT OF SHARING. That is what is meant when we said that it is possible even in this world to listen to ONE voice. If you are part of God, and the Sonship is one, you CANNOT be limited to the self the ego sees. Every loving thought held in ANY part (of the Sonship) belongs to every part. It is shared BECAUSE it is loving. Sharing is God's way of creating, and also YOURS. Your ego can keep you in exile FROM the Kingdom but in the Kingdom itself it has no power.
You have become willing to receive my messages as I give them, without interference by the ego, so we can clarify an earlier point which was mentioned before. We said that you will one day teach as much as you learn, and that will keep you in balance. The time is now, because you have let it be now. You cannot learn EXCEPT by teaching. I heard one voice because I had learned that learning is attained BY teaching. I understood that I COULD NOT ATONE FOR MYSELF ALONE.
Listening to one voice MEANS the will to share the voice to hear it yourself. The mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to every mind created by God, because God's wholeness IS the wholeness of his Son. Turning the other cheek does NOT mean that you should submit to violence without protest. It means that you cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. Show him that he CANNOT hurt you, and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself.
Teaching is done in many ways, by formal means, by guidance, and above all BY EXAMPLE. If you will to learn, you MUST will to teach. Teaching is therapy because it means the sharing of ideas, and the awareness that to share them is to strengthen them. The union of the Sonship IS its protection. The ego cannot prevail against the Kingdom BECAUSE it is united, and the ego fades away and is undone in the presence of the attraction of the parts of the Sonship which hear the call of the Holy Spirit to be as One.
I cannot forget my need to teach what I have learned which arose in me BECAUSE I learned it. I call upon you to teach what you have learned, because by so doing YOU can depend on it. Make it dependable in my name, because my name is the name of God's Son. What I learned I give you freely, and the mind which was in me rejoices as YOU will to hear it. The Holy Spirit atones in all of us by UNDOING, and thus lifts the burden you have placed in your mind. By following Him, He leads you back to God where you belong. And how can you find this way except by taking your brother with you?
My part in the Atonement is not complete until YOU join it, and give it away. As you teach, so shall you learn. I will never leave you or forsake you, because to forsake you would be to forsake myself and God who created me. You will forsake yourselves and your God if you forsake any of YOUR brothers. You are more than your brother's keeper. In fact, you do not WANT to keep him. You must learn to see him as he is, and KNOW that he belongs to God, as you do. How could you treat your brother better than by rendering unto God the things which are God's?
Ideas do not LEAVE the mind which thought them in order to have separate being. Nor do separate thoughts conflict with one another in space, because they do not occupy space at all. HUMAN ideas can conflict in content, because they occur at different levels, and include opposite thoughts at the SAME level. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SHARE OPPOSING THOUGHTS. The Holy Spirit does not LET you forsake your brothers. Therefore, you can really share only the parts of your thoughts which are of Him, which He also keeps for YOU. And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. All the rest remains with you until He has re-interpreted them in the light of the Kingdom, making them, too, worthy of being shared. When they have been sufficiently purified, He lets you give them away. The will to share them IS their purification.
The Atonement gives you the power of a healed mind, but the power to create is of God. Therefore, those who have been forgiven must devote themselves first to healing, because having RECEIVED the idea of healing they MUST give it to hold it. The full power of creation (creating) cannot be expressed as long as any of God's ideas are withholding it from the Kingdom. The joint will of ALL the Sonship is the only creator that can create like the Father. That is because only the complete can think completely, and the thinking of God lacks nothing. Everything YOU think that is not through the Holy Spirit IS lacking.
How can you who are so Holy suffer? All your past, except its beauty, is gone, and nothing is left except a blessing. You can indeed depart in peace, because I have loved you as I loved myself. You go WITH my blessing and FOR my blessing. Hold it and share it, that it may always be ours. I place the peace of God in your heart, and in your hands, to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it, and the hands are strong to give it. We cannot lose. My judgment is as strong as the wisdom of God, in whose Heart and Hands we have our being. His quiet children are His blessed sons. The Thoughts of God are with you.
You can think of the Sonship ONLY as one. This is part of the law of Creation, and therefore governs ALL thought. You can PERCEIVE the Sonship as fragmented, but it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to see something in part of it that you will not attribute to ALL of it. That is why attack is NEVER discrete. And why attack MUST be relinquished entirely. If it is NOT relinquished entirely, it is not relinquished at all. Fear and love are equally reciprocal. They make or create depending on whether the ego or the Holy Spirit begets or inspires them, but they WILL return to the mind of the thinker, and they WILL affect his total perception. That includes his perception of God, of His Creations, and of his own. He will not appreciate ANY of these if he regards them fearfully. He will appreciate ALL of them if he regards them with love.
The mind that accepts attack CANNOT love. This is because it believes that it can DESTROY love, and therefore does not understand what love IS. If it does not understand what love IS, it CANNOT perceive itself as loving. This loses the awareness of being; induces feelings of unreality; and results in utter confusion. Your own thinking has done this, because of its power. But your own thinking can also save you FROM this, because its power is not of your making. Your ability to DIRECT your thinking as you will IS part of its power. If you do not believe you can do this, you have DENIED the power of your thought, and thus rendered it powerLESS in your belief.
The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it stems from the power of the mind WHICH THE EGO DENIES. This means that the ego attacks WHAT IS PRESERVING IT, and this MUST be a source of extreme anxiety. This is why it NEVER knows what it is doing. This is perfectly logical, though clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source which is totally inimitable to its existence FOR its existence. Fearful of perceiving the POWER of this source, it is forced to DEPRECIATE it. This threatens its OWN existence, a state which it finds intolerable.
Remaining logical but still insane, the ego resolves this completely insane dilemma in a completely insane way. It does not perceive ITS existence as threatened, by projecting the threat onto YOU, and perceiving your BEING as NONexistent. This ensures ITS continuance, if you side WITH it, by guaranteeing that you will NOT know your OWN safety. The ego CANNOT AFFORD TO KNOW ANYTHING. Knowledge is total, and the ego DOES NOT BELIEVE IN TOTALITY. This unbelief is its own origin, and while the ego does not love YOU, it IS faithful to its own antecedent, begetting as it was begotten.
Mind ALWAYS REproduces as it was produced. Produced by fear, the ego REproduces fear. This IS its allegiance, and this allegiance makes it treacherous to love BECAUSE you are love. Love IS your power, which the ego MUST deny. It must also deny everything which this power gives TO you, BECAUSE it gives you everything. No-one who has everything WANTS the ego. Its own maker, then, DOES NOT WANT IT. Rejection is therefore the only decision which the ego could POSSIBLY encounter if the mind which made it knew ITSELF. And if it recognized ANY part of the Sonship, it WOULD know itself.
The ego therefore opposes ALL appreciation, ALL recognition, ALL sane perception, and ALL knowledge. It perceives their threat as total because it senses the fact that all commitments which the mind makes ARE total. Forced therefore to detach itself from you who ARE mind, it is willing to attach itself to anything ELSE. But there IS nothing else. It does NOT follow, however, that the mind cannot make illusions. But it DOES follow that if it makes illusions it will BELIEVE in them, because THAT IS HOW IT MADE THEM.
The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them merely because He cannot perceive them at all. They therefore do not exist for Him. He resolves the APPARENT conflict which they engender by perceiving CONFLICT as meaningless. We said before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict EXACTLY AS IT IS, and it IS meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want you to UNDERSTAND conflict. He wants you to realize that BECAUSE conflict is meaningLESS it cannot BE understood. We have already said that understanding brings appreciation, and appreciation brings love. Nothing else CAN be understood because nothing else is real and therefore nothing else HAS meaning.
If you will keep in mind what the Holy Spirit offers you, you cannot be vigilant for anything BUT God and His Kingdom. The ONLY reason why you find this difficult is because you think there IS something else. Belief does not require vigilance UNLESS it is conflicted. If it IS, there ARE conflicting components within it which have engendered a state of war, and vigilance has therefore BECOME essential. Vigilance has no place at all in peace. It is necessary ONLY AGAINST beliefs which are NOT true, and would never have been called upon by the Holy Spirit if you had not believed the untrue yourselves.
But you CANNOT deny that when you BELIEVE something you HAVE made it true FOR YOU. When YOU believe what God DOES NOT KNOW, your thought seems to CONTRADICT His, and this makes it appear AS IF YOU ARE ATTACKING HIM. We have repeatedly emphasized that the ego DOES believe it can attack God, and tries to persuade you that YOU have done this. If the mind CANNOT attack, the ego proceeds perfectly logically to the position that YOU cannot be mind. By not seeing you as YOU are, it can see ITSELF as it WANTS to be. Aware of its weakness, the ego wants your allegiance, but NOT as you really are. The ego therefore wants to engage your mind in its OWN delusional system, because otherwise the light of YOUR understanding WILL dispel it.
The ego wants no part of truth, because the truth is that IT is not true. If truth is total, the UNtrue CANNOT exist. Commitment to either MUST be total, because they cannot co-exist in your minds WITHOUT splitting them. If they cannot coexist in peace, and if you WANT peace, you MUST give up the IDEA of conflict ENTIRELY, and for ALL TIME. This requires vigilance ONLY as long as YOU DO NOT RECOGNIZE WHAT IS TRUE. While you believe that two totally contradictory thought systems SHARE truth, your need for vigilance is apparent. Your minds ARE dividing their allegiance between two kingdoms, and YOU are totally committed to neither.
Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you WHEN YOU ARE THINKING INSANELY. What you are is NOT established by your perception, and is NOT influenced BY it at all. ALL perceived problems in identification at ANY level ARE NOT PROBLEMS OF FACT. But they ARE problems in UNDERSTANDING, because they MEAN that you perceive WHAT you can understand as UP TO YOU TO DECIDE. The ego believes THIS totally, being fully committed TO it. But it is NOT TRUE. The ego is therefore totally committed to UNtruth, perceiving in total contradiction to the Holy Spirit and to the knowledge of God.
You can be perceived with meaning ONLY by the Holy Spirit, because your being IS the knowledge of God. ANY belief that you accept which is APART from this WILL obscure God's voice in you, and will therefore obscure God TO you. Unless you perceive His Creation truly, you CANNOT know the Creator, because God and His Creation ARE NOT SEPARATE. The Oneness of the Creator and the Creation IS your wholeness, your sanity, and your limitless power. This limitless power is God's gift to you, because it is WHAT YOU ARE. If you dissociate your mind FROM it, you are perceiving the most powerful force in the universe of thought AS IF it were weak, because you do NOT believe YOU are part of it.
Perceived WITHOUT your part IN it, God's Creation IS perceived as weak, and those who SEE themselves as weakened DO attack. The attack MUST be blind, because there is nothing TO attack. Therefore, they make up images, perceive them as unworthy, and attack them for their unworthiness. That is all the world of the ego is. NOTHING. It has no meaning. It does not exist. Do not TRY to understand it, because if you do you are believing that it CAN be understood, and therefore is capable of being appreciated and loved. This WOULD justify it, but it CANNOT BE justified. YOU cannot make the meaningLESS meaningFUL. This can ONLY be an insane attempt.
Allowing INsanity to enter your minds means that you have not judged sanity AS WHOLLY DESIRABLE. If you WANT something else, you WILL MAKE something else. But because it IS something else it WILL attack your thought system and divide your allegiance. You CANNOT create in this divided state, and you MUST be vigilant AGAINST this divided state because ONLY peace CAN BE extended. Your divided minds ARE blocking the extension of the Kingdom, and its extension IS your joy. If you do not extend the Kingdom, you are NOT thinking with your Creator and creating as He created.
In this depressing state, the Holy Spirit reminds you gently that you are sad because you are not fulfilling your function as co-creators WITH God, and are therefore depriving YOURSELVES of joy. This is not God's will, but YOURS. If your will is out of accord with God's, YOU ARE WILLING WITHOUT MEANING. But because ONLY God's will is unchangeable, no REAL conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirit's perfectly consistent teaching. Creation, not separation, IS your will BECAUSE it is God's. And nothing that opposes this means anything at all. Being a perfect Accomplishment, the Sonship can only accomplish perfectly, EXTENDING the joy in which it was created, and identifying itself with both its Creator and its creations, KNOWING they are One.
Do you want freedom of the body, or of the mind? For both you cannot have. Which do you value? Which is your goal? For one you see as means; the other, end. And one must serve the other, and LEAD to its predominance, increasing ITS importance by DIMINISHING its own. Means serve the end, and as the end is reached, the value of the means decreases, and is eclipsed entirely when they are recognized as functionless. No-one but yearns for freedom, and tries to find it, but he will seek for it where he believes it IS, and CAN be found. He will believe it possible of mind OR body, and he will make the other SERVE his choice, as means to find it.
Where freedom of the BODY has been chosen, the mind is used as MEANS, whose value lies in its ability to contrive ways to achieve the body's freedom. Yet freedom of the body HAS no meaning. And so the mind is DEDICATED to serve illusions. This is a situation SO contradictory and SO impossible that anyone who chooses this has NO idea of what is valuable. Yet even in this confusion, so profound it cannot BE described, the Holy Spirit waits in gentle patience, as certain of the outcome as He is sure of His Creator's love. He knows this mad decision was made by one as dear to His Creator as Love is to Itself.
Be not disturbed at all to think how He can change the role of means and end so easily in what God loves, and would have free forever. But be you, rather, grateful that YOU can be the means to serve His end. This is the ONLY service which leads to freedom. To serve THIS end, the body MUST be perceived as sinless, BECAUSE the goal is sinlessness. The LACK of contradiction makes the soft transition from means to end as easy as is the shift from hate to gratitude before forgiving eyes. You WILL be sanctified by one another, using your bodies ONLY to serve the sinless. And it will be IMPOSSIBLE for you to hate what serves what you would HEAL.
This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in strength, and blazing with a light far brighter than the sun which lights the sky YOU see, is chosen of your Father as a means for His Own plan. Be thankful that it serves yours not at all. Nothing entrusted to it can BE misused. And nothing given it but WILL be used. This holy relationship has the power to heal ALL pain, REGARDLESS of its form. Neither of you alone can serve at all. Only in your JOINT will does healing lie. For here YOUR healing is, and here will YOU accept Atonement. And in your healing IS the Sonship healed, BECAUSE your wills are joined.
Before a holy relationship, there IS no sin. The FORM of error is no longer seen. And reason, joined with love, looks quietly on ALL confusion, observing merely, "this was a mistake." And then the same Atonement YOU accepted in YOUR relationship, CORRECTS the error, and lays a part of Heaven in its place. How blessed are you, who let this gift be given! Each part of Heaven that you bring, is given YOU. And every empty place in Heaven that you fill again with the Eternal Light YOU bring, shines now on YOU. The means of sinlessness can know no fear, because they carry ONLY love with them.
Children of peace, the light HAS come to you. The light you bring you do NOT recognize, and yet you will remember. Who can deny HIMSELF the vision that he brings to others? And who would fail to recognize a gift he let be laid in Heaven through HIMSELF? The gentle service that you give the Holy Spirit IS service to yourself. You who are now HIS means must love all that He loves. And what you bring is YOUR remembrance of everything that is eternal. No trace of anything in time can long remain in minds that serve the timeless. And NO illusion can disturb the peace of a relationship which has become the MEANS of peace.
When you have looked upon each other with COMPLETE forgiveness, from which NO error is excluded and NOTHING kept hidden, what mistake can there be ANYWHERE you can NOT overlook? What form of suffering could BLOCK your sight, preventing you from seeing PAST it? And what illusion COULD there be you will NOT recognize as a mistake; a shadow through which you walk COMPLETELY undismayed? God would let NOTHING interfere with those whose wills are His. And they will RECOGNIZE their wills are His, BECAUSE they serve His Will. AND SERVE IT WILLINGLY. How can it NOT be theirs? And COULD remembrance of what they are be long delayed?
You will see your value through each other's eyes, and each one is released as he beholds his Savior IN PLACE of the attacker who he THOUGHT was there. Through this releasing is the world released. This is YOUR part in bringing peace. For you have asked what is your function here, and have been answered. Seek not to change it, nor to substitute ANOTHER goal. This one was GIVEN you, and ONLY this. Accept this one, and serve it willingly, for what the Holy Spirit does with the gifts you give each other, to whom He offers them, and where and when, is up to Him.
He will bestow them where they are received and welcomed. He will use every one of them for peace. Nor will one little smile, or willingness to overlook the tiniest mistake, be lost to anyone. What can it be but universal blessing to look on what your Father loves with charity? EXTENSION of forgiveness is the Holy Spirit's function. Leave this to Him. Let YOUR concern be only that you give TO Him that which can BE extended. Save no dark secrets that He cannot use. But offer Him the tiny gifts He can extend forever.
He will take every one, and make of it a potent force for peace. He will withhold no blessing from it, or limit it in any way. He will join to it ALL the power that God has given Him, to make each little gift of love a source of healing for everyone. Each little gift you offer to the other lights up the world. Be not concerned with darkness; look AWAY from it, and TOWARD each other. And let the darkness be dispelled by Him Who knows the light, and lays it gently in each gentle smile of faith and confidence with which you bless each other.
On your learning depends the welfare of the world. And it is only arrogance that would DENY the power of your will. Think you the Will of God is powerLESS? Is this HUMILITY? You do not see what this belief has done. You see yourself as vulnerable, frail, and easily destroyed. And at the mercy of countless attackers more powerful than you. Let us look straight at how this error came about, for here lies buried the heavy anchor that seems to keep the fear of God in place, unmovable and solid as a rock. While this remains, so will it seem to be.
Who can attack the Son of God, and NOT attack his Father? How can God's Son be weak and frail and easily destroyed, UNLESS HIS FATHER IS? You do NOT see that EVERY sin and EVERY condemnation which you perceive and justify IS an attack upon your Father. And that is WHY it has not happened, nor COULD be real. You do not see that this is your attempt, BECAUSE you think the Father and the Son are separate. And you MUST think that they are separate, BECAUSE OF FEAR. For it SEEMS safer to attack another or yourself, than to attack the great Creator of the universe, Whose power you KNOW.
If you were one with Him, AND RECOGNIZED THIS ONENESS, you would know His power is YOURS. But you will NOT remember this, while you believe attack of ANY kind means ANYTHING. It is unjustified in ANY form, BECAUSE it has no meaning. The only way it COULD be justified is if each one of you were SEPARATE from the other, and all were separate from your Creator. For ONLY then would it be possible to attack a part of the creation WITHOUT the whole; the Son WITHOUT the Father. And to attack another, WITHOUT yourself; or hurt yourself, without the other feeling pain.
And this belief, you WANT. Yet wherein lies its value, EXCEPT in the desire to attack in safety? Attack is neither safe nor dangerous. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. And this is so, BECAUSE the universe is one. You would not choose attack on its reality, if it were not ESSENTIAL to attack to see it SEPARATE FROM ITS CREATOR. And thus it seems as if love could attack, AND BECOME FEARFUL. Only the DIFFERENT can attack. So you conclude, BECAUSE you can attack, you must be DIFFERENT. Yet does the Holy Spirit explain this differently. BECAUSE you are NOT different, you CAN NOT ATTACK.
Either position is a logical conclusion, if only the different can attack. Either could be maintained, BUT NEVER BOTH. The ONLY question to be answered to decide which MUST be true, is WHETHER YOU ARE DIFFERENT. From the position of what YOU understand, you seem to BE. And THEREFORE can attack. Of the alternatives, this SEEMS more natural, and more in line with your experience. And therefore it is necessary that you have OTHER experiences, more in line with truth, to teach you what IS natural and true. This is the function of your holy relationship. For what ONE thinks, the OTHER will experience WITH him. What can this mean, EXCEPT your minds are one?
Look not with fear upon this happy fact, and think not that it lays a heavy burden on you. For, when you have ACCEPTED it with gladness, you will realize that your relationship is a reflection of the union of the Creator and His Son. From loving minds, there IS no separation. And every thought in one brings gladness to the other, BECAUSE they are the same. Joy is unlimited, BECAUSE each shining thought of Love EXTENDS its Being, and creates more of Itself. There is no difference ANYWHERE within it. For every thought is like Itself.
The light that joins you shines throughout the universe. And, BECAUSE it joins you, so it makes you one with your Creator. And, in HIM, is all creation joined. Would you REGRET you cannot fear alone, when your relationship can also teach the power of love is there, which makes ALL fear impossible? Do not attempt to keep a little of the ego with this gift. For it was given to be USED, and NOT obscured. What teaches you you CANNOT separate, DENIES the ego. Let TRUTH decide if you be different or the same, and TEACH you which is true.
Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other.
Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same, because their real attraction to you is unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it.
This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world. Yet the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE.
You HAVE been wrong about the world, because you have misjudged YOURSELF. From such a twisted reference point, what COULD you see? All vision starts WITH THE PERCEIVER, who judges what is true and what is false. And what he judges false, HE DOES NOT SEE. You who would judge reality CANNOT see it, for whenever judgment enters, reality has slipped away. The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him not. His Being does NOT depend upon your recognition. He lives within you in the quiet present, and waits for you to leave the past behind, and enter into the world He holds out to you in love.
No-one in this distracted world but has not seen some glimpses of the other world about him. But while he still lays value on his own, he will DENY the vision of the other world, maintaining that he loves WHAT HE LOVES NOT, and following not the road that love points out. Love leads so gladly! And as you follow Him, YOU will rejoice that you have found His company, and learned of Him the joyful journey home. You wait but for YOURSELF. To give this sad world over, and exchange your errors for the peace of God, is but YOUR will. And Christ will ALWAYS offer you the Will of God, in recognition that you share it WITH Him.
It is God's Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything. The world about him shines with love, because God placed him in Himself where pain is not, and love surrounds him without end or flaw. Disturbance of his peace can never be. In perfect sanity he looks on love, for it is all about him, and within him. He MUST deny the world of pain, the instant he perceives the arms of love around him. And from this point of safety, he looks quietly about him, and recognizes that the world is one with him.
The peace of God passeth your understanding ONLY in the past. Yet here it IS, and you CAN understand it NOW. God loves His Son forever, and His Son RETURNS his Father's love forever. The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance of this one thing that is wholly true, and wholly YOURS. For all else you have LENT yourself in time, and it WILL fade. But this one thing is ALWAYS yours, being the gift of God unto His Son. Your ONE reality was GIVEN you, and BY it God created you as one with Him.
You will first DREAM of peace, and THEN awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what, you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where ALL perception is. Knowledge needs NO correction. Yet the dreams of love lead UNTO knowledge. In them you see nothing fearful, and BECAUSE of this they are the welcome that you OFFER knowledge. Love waits on welcome, NOT on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always was. Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have NOT lost. Praise, then, the Father for the perfect sanity of His most holy Son.
Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. In Heaven this is so, for what could you need in eternity? In YOUR world you DO need things, because it is a world of scarcity in which you find yourself BECAUSE you are lacking. But CAN you find yourself in such a world? Without the Holy Spirit, the answer would be no. But BECAUSE of Him, the answer is a joyous YES. As mediator between the two worlds, He knows what you have need of, and WHICH WILL NOT HURT YOU. Ownership is a dangerous concept, if it is left to you. The ego wants to HAVE things for salvation, for possession is its law. Possession for its OWN sake is the ego's fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches that it builds unto itself. And at ITS altar, it demands you lay ALL of the things it bids you get, leaving you no joy in them.
EVERYTHING that the ego tells you that you need will hurt you. For, although it urges you again and again to GET, it LEAVES you nothing, for what you get it will DEMAND of you. And even from the very hands that grasped it, it will be wrenched and hurled into the dust. For where the ego sees salvation IT SEES SEPARATION, and so you lose whatever you have gotten in its name. Therefore, ask not of yourselves what you need, FOR YOU KNOW NOT, and your advice unto yourself WILL hurt you. For what YOU think you need will merely serve to tighten up your world AGAINST the light, and render you unwilling to question the value that this world can REALLY hold for you.
Only the Holy Spirit KNOWS what you need. For HE will give you all things that do NOT block the way to light. And what else COULD you need? In time, He gives you all the things that you need have, and will renew them as long as you have need of them. He will take nothing FROM you, as long as you have ANY need of it. And yet He knows that EVERYTHING you need is temporary, and need but last until you step aside from ALL your needs, and learn that all of them HAVE BEEN fulfilled. Therefore, He has no investment in the things that He supplies, except to make certain that you will NOT use them on behalf of lingering in time. He knows that you are not at home there, and He wills no delay to wait upon your joyous homecoming.
Leave, then, your needs to Him. He will supply them, with no emphasis at all upon them. What comes to you of Him comes safely, for He will ensure it never can become a dark spot, hidden in your mind, and kept to hurt you. Under His guidance, you will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is ever on the journey's end, which is His goal. God's Son is not a traveler through OUTER worlds. However holy his perception may become, no world OUTSIDE himself holds his inheritance. Within HIMSELF he HAS no needs, for light needs nothing but to shine in peace. And from ITSELF, to let the rays extend in quiet to infinity.
Whenever you are tempted to undertake a foolish journey that would lead AWAY from light, remember what you REALLY want, and say, "The Holy Spirit leads me unto Christ, and where else would I go? What need have I but to awake in Him?" Then follow Him in joy, with faith that He will lead you safely through all the dangers to your peace of mind that this world sets before you. Kneel not before the altars to sacrifice, and seek not what you will surely lose. Content yourselves with what you will as surely KEEP, and be not restless, for you undertake a quiet journey to the peace of God, where He would have you be in quietness.
In me, you have ALREADY overcome EVERY temptation that would hold you back. We walk together on the way to quietness that is the gift of God. Hold me dear, for what EXCEPT your brothers CAN you need? We will restore to you the peace of mind that we MUST find together. The Holy Spirit will teach you to awaken unto us, and to yourself. THIS is the only REAL need to be fulfilled in time. Salvation FROM the world lies ONLY here. My peace I GIVE you. TAKE it of me, in glad exchange for all the world has offered but to TAKE AWAY. And we will spread it, like a veil of light, across the world's sad face, in which we hide our brothers FROM the world, and it from them.
We cannot sing redemption's hymn alone. My task is not completed 'til I have lifted every voice with mine. And yet it is NOT mine, for as it is my gift to you, so was it the Father's gift to me, given me through His Spirit. The sound of it will banish sorrow from the mind of God's most holy Son, where it cannot abide. Healing in time IS needed, for joy cannot establish its eternal reign where sorrow dwells. You dwell not here, but in eternity. You travel but in dreams, while safe at home. Give thanks to every part of you that you have taught how to REMEMBER you. Thus does the Son of God give thanks unto his Father for his purity.
Fear is a symptom of your deep sense of loss. If, when you perceive it in others, you learn to SUPPLY the loss, the basic CAUSE of fear is removed. Thereby you teach yourself that fear does not exist IN YOU, for you have in YOURSELF, the means for removing it, and have DEMONSTRATED this by GIVING it. Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable. One is false, for it was made out of denial, and denial DEPENDS on the real belief in what is denied for its OWN existence.
By interpreting fear correctly, as a POSITIVE AFFIRMATION OF THE UNDERLYING BELIEF IT MASKS, you are undermining its perceived usefulness by rendering it useless. Defenses which do not work AT ALL are AUTOMATICALLY discarded. If you raise what fear conceals to CLEAR-CUT, UNEQUIVOCAL PRE-DOMINANCE, fear becomes meaningless. You have denied its power to conceal love, which was its only purpose. The mask which YOU have drawn across the face of Love has disappeared.
If you would look upon Love, which IS the world's reality, how could you do better than to recognize, in every defense AGAINST it, the underlying appeal FOR it? And how could you better learn of its reality, than by answering the appeal for it by GIVING it? The Holy Spirit's interpretation of fear DOES dispel it, for the AWARENESS of truth cannot BE denied. Thus does the Holy Spirit replace fear with love, and translate error into truth. And thus will YOU learn of Him how to replace your dream of separation with the fact of unity. For the separation is only the DENIAL of union, and, correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that union is true.
Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs.
The light in them shines as brightly, REGARDLESS of the density of the fog that obscures it. If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember.
Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer HIMSELF. Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you MAKE whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health, is to recognize in hatred the call for love. And to give a brother what he REALLY wants, is to offer it unto yourself. For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself. Answer HIS call for love, and YOURS is answered. Healing is the love of Christ for His Father, and for HIMSELF.
You have no idea of the intensity of your wish to get rid of each other. This does NOT mean that you are not strongly impelled TOWARD each other, but it DOES mean that LOVE IS NOT THE ONLY EMOTION. Because your love has become more in awareness, the conflict can no longer be "settled" by your previous attempts to MINIMIZE the fear. The love makes attack untenable, BUT YOU STILL FEEL THE FEAR. Instead of trying to resolve it directly, you have a strong tendency to TRY TO ESCAPE FROM THE LOVE. Yet this is the LAST thing you would want to ESCAPE from. And even if you did, you can escape from everything ELSE, but not from this. Be glad indeed that there IS no escape from salvation.
You do not realize how much you hate each other. You will not get rid of this until you DO realize it, for UNTIL then, you will think you want to get rid of EACH OTHER and KEEP THE HATRED. Yet if you are each other's salvation, what can this mean except that you PREFER attack to salvation? Be glad that neither your reality nor your salvation is a matter of your preference, for you HAVE much cause for joy. But that the cause is NOT of your making is surely obvious. You DO hate and fear each other, and your love, which is very real, is TOTALLY obscured by it. How can you know the meaning of love UNLESS it is total?
This will be a very difficult period for you, but it will not be so for long. You are in danger, but you WILL be helped, and nothing will happen. But you cannot remain in darkness, and this will BE the way out. Look as calmly as you can upon hatred, for if we are to deny the denial of truth, we must first RECOGNIZE what we are denying. Remember that knowledge PRECEDES denial, and that the separation was a descent from magnitude to littleness. And so the way back is to retrace the way to magnitude.
Your hatred is not real, But it is real to you. IT HIDES WHAT YOU REALLY WANT. Surely you are willing to look upon what you do NOT want without fear, EVEN IF IT FRIGHTENS YOU, if you can thereby get rid of it? For you CANNOT escape salvation, and you WILL not escape fear until you WANT salvation. Be not afraid of this journey into fear, for it is not your destination. And we will walk through it in safety, for peace is not far, and you will be led in its light.
Remember what we said about the frightening perceptions of little children, which terrify them because they do not understand them. If they ASK for enlightenment, AND ACCEPT IT, their fears vanish. But if they HIDE their nightmares, they will KEEP them. It is easy to help an uncertain child, for he recognizes that he does not know what his perceptions mean. But you believe you DO know. Little children, you are hiding your heads under the covers of the heavy blankets you have laid upon yourselves. You are hiding your nightmares in the darkness of your own certainty, and refusing to open your eyes and LOOK AT THEM.
Let us not save nightmares, for they are not fitting offerings for Christ, and so they are not fit gifts for YOU. Take off the covers, and look at what you are afraid of. Only the ANTICIPATION will frighten you, for the reality of nothingness cannot be frightening. Let us not delay this, for your dream of hatred will not leave you without help, and help is here. Learn to be quiet in the midst of turmoil, for quietness is the END of strife, and this is the journey to peace. Look straight at every image that rises to delay you, for the goal is inevitable, because it is eternal.
The goal of love is but your right, and it belongs to you DESPITE your preference. YOU STILL WILL WHAT GOD WILLS, and no nightmare can defeat a Child of God in his purpose. For your purpose was given you by God, and you must accomplish it, BECAUSE it is His Will. Awake and remember your purpose, for it is YOUR will to do so. What has been accomplished FOR you MUST be yours. Do not let your hatred stand in the way of love, for NOTHING can withstand the love of Christ for His Father, or His Father's love for Him.
A little while, and you WILL see me. For I am not hidden because you are hiding. I will awaken you as surely as I awakened myself, for I awoke FOR you. In MY Resurrection is YOUR release. Our mission is to ESCAPE CRUCIFIXION; - not Redemption. Trust in my help, for I did not walk alone, and I will walk with you, as our Father walked with me. Did you not know that I walked with Him in peace? And does not that mean that peace goes with US on the journey?
There is no fear in perfect love. We will but be making perfect TO you, what is ALREADY perfect IN you. You do not fear the UNKNOWN, but the KNOWN. You will not fail in your mission, because I failed not in mine. Give me but a little trust, in the name of the COMPLETE trust I have in you, and we will easily accomplish the goal of perfection together. For perfection IS, and cannot be denied. To deny the denial of perfection is not so difficult as the denial of truth. And what we can accomplish together MUST be believed, when you SEE it as accomplished. You who have tried to banish love have not succeeded. But you who choose to banish fear WILL succeed.
The Lord is with you, but you know it not. Yet your Redeemer liveth, and abideth in you in the peace out of which He was created. Would you not exchange THIS awareness for the awareness of your fear? When we have OVERCOME fear, not by hiding it, not by minimizing it, not by denying its full import in ANY way, THIS IS WHAT YOU WILL REALLY SEE. You cannot lay aside the obstacle to real vision without looking upon it, for to lay aside means to judge AGAINST. If YOU will look, the Holy Spirit will judge, AND WILL JUDGE TRULY. He cannot shine away what YOU keep hidden, for you have not offered it TO Him, and He CANNOT take it FROM you.
We therefore are embarking on an organized, well-structured, and carefully planned program, aimed at learning how to offer to the Holy Spirit everything you do NOT want. HE knows what to DO with it. You do NOT know how to use what He knows. Whatever is revealed to Him that is not of God, is gone. But you must reveal it to YOURSELF in perfect willingness, for otherwise His knowledge remains useless TO you. Surely He will not fail to help you, since help is His ONLY purpose. Do you not have greater reason for fearing the world, as you perceive it, than for looking at the cause of fear, and letting it go forever?
Attack is ALWAYS physical. When attack in ANY form enters your mind, you are EQUATING YOURSELF WITH A BODY. This is the ego's INTERPRETATION of the body. You do not have to ATTACK physically to accept this interpretation; you ARE accepting it simply by the belief that attack can GET YOU SOMETHING YOU WANT. If you did NOT believe this, the IDEA of attack would have no appeal to you.
When you equate yourself with a body, you will ALWAYS experience depression. When a Child of God thinks of himself in this way, he is belittling himself and seeing his brothers as similarly belittled. Since he can find himself ONLY in them, he has cut himself off from salvation. Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body ONLY as a means of communication. Being the communication link between God and His separated Sons, He interprets everything YOU have in the light of what HE is.
The ego SEPARATES through the body. The Holy Spirit reaches THROUGH it to others. You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do not interpret their bodies AND YOURS solely as a means of JOINING THEIR MINDS and uniting them with yours and mine. This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has NONE. If you use it for attack it is harmful to you. But if you use it ONLY to reach the minds of those who believe they ARE bodies and teach them THROUGH the body that THIS IS NOT SO, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you. If you use the body for this, and ONLY for this, you CANNOT use it for attack. In the service of uniting, it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion IS.
This is God's way of making unlimited what YOU have limited. His Voice does not see the body as YOU do, because He knows the ONLY reality that ANYTHING can have is the service it can render God on behalf of the function HE has given. Communication ENDS separation. Attack PROMOTES it. The body is ugly or beautiful, savage or holy, helpful or harmful, according to the use to which it is put. And in the body of another you will see the use to which you put YOURS.
If the body becomes for you a means which you give to the Holy Spirit to use on behalf of the union of the Sonship, you will not see ANYTHING physical except as WHAT IT IS. Use it for truth, and you will see it truly. MISuse it and you WILL misunderstand it, because you have already done so BY misusing it. Interpret ANYTHING apart from the Holy Spirit, and you will mistrust it. This will lead you to hatred and attack and LOSS OF PEACE.
But ALL loss comes only from your own misunderstanding. Loss of ANY kind is impossible. When you look upon a brother as a physical entity, HIS power and glory are lost to you and SO ARE YOURS. You HAVE attacked him, and you MUST have attacked yourself first. Do not see him this way for your OWN salvation, which MUST bring him his. Do not ALLOW him to belittle himself in YOUR mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and escape from YOURS. As part of YOU, HE is holy. As part of ME, YOU are. To communicate with part of God Himself is to reach beyond the Kingdom to its Creator, through His Voice which He has established as part of YOU.
Rejoice, then, that of yourselves you can do nothing. You are not OF yourselves. And He of Whom you ARE has willed your power and glory FOR you, with which you can perfectly accomplish His holy Will for you when you so will it yourself. He has not withdrawn His gifts from YOU, but YOU have withdrawn them from Him. Let no Son of God remain hidden for His Name's sake, because His Name is YOURS.
Remember that the Bible says, "The word (or thought) was made flesh." Strictly speaking, this is impossible, since it seems to involve the translation of one order of reality into another. Different orders of reality merely SEEM to exist, just as different orders of miracles do. Thought cannot be MADE into flesh except by belief, because thought is NOT physical. But thought IS communication, for which the body can be used. This is the only NATURAL use to which it can be put. To use the body UNnaturally is to lose sight of the Holy Spirit's purpose, and thus to confuse the goal of His curriculum.
There is nothing so frustrating to a learner as to place him in a curriculum which he cannot learn. His sense of adequacy suffers, and he MUST become depressed. Being faced with an impossible learning situation, REGARDLESS of why it is impossible, is the most depressing thing in the world. In fact, it is ultimately WHY the world is depressing. The Holy Spirit's curriculum is NEVER depressing because it is a curriculum in joy. Whenever the reaction to learning is depression, it is only because the goal of the curriculum has been lost sight of.
In the world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions which bear little or no relationship to each other, so that it appears to be ruled by chaos. Guided by the ego, it IS. Guided by the Holy Spirit, it is NOT. It becomes ONLY a means by which the part of the mind which you have separated from your Soul can reach beyond its distortions and RETURN to the Soul. The ego's temple thus becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, where devotion to Him replaces devotion to the ego. In this sense the body DOES become a temple to God, because His Voice abides in it by directing the use TO WHICH YOU PUT IT.
Healing is the result of using the body SOLELY for communication. Since this IS natural, it heals by making whole, which is also natural. ALL mind is whole, and the belief that part of it is physical or NOT MIND is a fragmented (or sick) interpretation. Mind CANNOT be made physical, but it CAN be made manifest THROUGH the physical if it uses the body to GO BEYOND itself. By reaching OUT, the mind EXTENDS itself. It does not STOP at the body, for if it does it is blocked in its purpose. A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has TURNED AGAINST ITSELF.
The removal of blocks, then, is the ONLY way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not IN it. If the mind believes the body is its GOAL, it WILL distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot BUT foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else.
To use a medium of communication as a medium of ATTACK is an obvious confusion in purpose. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously WITH THE SAME THING, and NOT suffer? Perception of the body can be unified only by ONE PURPOSE. This releases the mind from the temptation to see it in many lights, and gives it over ENTIRELY to the One Light in which it can be really understood at all.
To confuse a learning device with a curriculum GOAL is a fundamental confusion. Learning can hardly be meaningfully arrested at its own aids, and hope to understand them OR its real purpose. Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished ONLY if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND's FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND's JOY.
The opposite of joy is depression. When your learning promotes depression INSTEAD of joy, you CANNOT be listening to God's joyous teacher, and you MUST be learning amiss. To see a body as anything EXCEPT a means of pure extension is to limit your mind and HURT YOURSELF. Health is therefore nothing more than united purpose. If the body is brought under the purpose of the mind, it becomes whole because the mind's purpose IS one.
Attack can only be an assumed goal of the body, but the body APART from the mind HAS NO PURPOSE AT ALL. You are NOT limited by the body, and thought CANNOT be made flesh. But mind can be manifested through the body if it goes beyond it and DOES NOT INTERPRET IT AS LIMITATION. Whenever you see another as limited TO or BY the body, you are imposing this limit ON YOURSELF. Are you willing to ACCEPT this, when your whole purpose for learning should be to escape FROM limitations?
To conceive of the body as a means of attack of any kind, and to entertain even the possibility that joy could POSSIBLY result, is a clear-cut indication of a poor learner. He has accepted a learning goal in obvious contradiction to the unified purpose of the curriculum, and is interfering with his ability to accept it AS HIS OWN.
Joy is unified purpose, and unified purpose is ONLY God's. When yours is unified, it IS His. Interfere with His purpose, and YOU NEED SALVATION. You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God. Therefore, it is not true. No more are any of the RESULTS of your condemnation. When you see a brother as a body, you are condemning him BECAUSE you have condemned yourself. But if ALL condemnation is unreal, and it MUST be unreal because it is a form of attack, then it can HAVE no results.
Do not allow yourselves to suffer from the results of what is not true. Free your minds from the belief that this is possible. In its complete impossibility, and your full awareness OF its complete impossibility, lies your only hope for release. But what other hope would you want? Freedom from illusions lies only in not BELIEVING them. THERE IS NO ATTACK, but there IS unlimited communication and therefore unlimited power and wholeness. The power of wholeness is EXTENSION. Do not arrest your thought in this world, and you will open your mind to Creation in God.
The attraction of guilt is found in sin, NOT error. Sin will be repeated, BECAUSE of this attraction. Fear can become so acute that the sin is denied the acting out, but, while the guilt REMAINS attractive, the mind will suffer, and not let go the IDEA of the sin. For guilt still calls to it, and the mind hears it and yearns for it, making it a willing captive to its sick appeal. Sin is an idea of evil that can not BE corrected, and will be forever DESIRABLE. As an ESSENTIAL part of what the ego thinks you ARE, you will ALWAYS want it. And only an AVENGER, with a mind UNLIKE your own, could stamp it out through FEAR.
The ego does not think it possible that love, NOT fear, is really called upon by sin, AND ALWAYS ANSWERS. For the ego brings sin to FEAR, demanding punishment. But punishment is but another form of guilt's protection. For what is deserving punishment, must have been REALLY DONE. Punishment is always the great preserver of sin; treating it with respect, and honoring its enormity. What must be punished, MUST BE TRUE. And what is true MUST be eternal, and WILL be repeated endlessly. For what you think is real YOU WANT, and will NOT let it go.
An ERROR, on the other hand, is NOT attractive. What you see clearly AS A MISTAKE, you WANT corrected. Sometimes a sin can be repeated over and over, with OBVIOUSLY distressing results, but WITHOUT the loss of its appeal. And suddenly you change its status from a sin to a MISTAKE. Now you will NOT repeat it; you will merely stop, and let it go. UNLESS THE GUILT REMAINS. For then, you will but change the FORM of sin, granting that it was an error, but KEEPING IT UNCORRECTABLE. This is not really a change in your perception, for it is SIN that calls for punishment, NOT error.
The Holy Spirit CANNOT punish sin. Mistakes He recognizes, and would correct them all, as God entrusted Him to do. But SIN He knows not, nor can He RECOGNIZE mistakes that cannot be corrected. For a mistake that cannot be corrected is MEANINGLESS to Him. Mistakes are FOR correction. They call for NOTHING ELSE. What calls for punishment, must call for NOTHING. Yet every mistake MUST be a call for love. What, then, is sin? What COULD it be but a mistake you would keep hidden; a call for help that you would keep UNHEARD, and thus UNANSWERED?
In time, the Holy Spirit CLEARLY sees the Son of God can make mistakes. On this, you SHARE His vision. Yet you do NOT share His recognition of the difference between time and eternity. And when correction is completed, time IS eternity. Time is like a downward spiral, that seems to travel down from a long, unbroken line, along another plane, but which in no way BREAKS the line, or interferes with its smooth continuousness. Along the spiral, it SEEMS as if the line MUST have been broken, but, at the LINE, its wholeness is apparent.
Everything seen from the spiral is misperceived. But, as you approach the line, you realize that IT was not affected by the drop into another plane at all. But, FROM this plane, the LINE seems discontinuous. And this is but an error in perception, which can be easily corrected IN THE MIND, although the body's eyes will see no change. The eyes see many things the mind corrects, and YOU respond, NOT to the eyes' illusions, BUT TO THE MIND's CORRECTIONS. You SEE the line as broken, and as you shift to different aspects of the spiral, the line looks different. Yet in your mind is One Who KNOWS it is unbroken, and forever changeless.
This One can teach you how to look on time differently, and to see BEYOND it. But NOT while you believe in sin. In error, yes, for this CAN be corrected by the mind. But sin is the belief that YOUR perception is UNCHANGEABLE, and that the MIND must ACCEPT AS TRUE what it is told THROUGH it. If it does not obey, the MIND is judged insane. The ONLY power that could CHANGE perception is thus kept impotent, held to the body by the FEAR of changed perception, which its Teacher, Who is One with it, would bring.
When you are tempted to believe that sin is real, remember this: If sin is real, both God AND YOU are not. If creation is EXTENSION, the Creator MUST have extended HIMSELF, and it is impossible that what is PART of Him is totally unlike the rest. If sin is real, God must be at war WITHIN HIMSELF. HE must be split, and torn between good and evil; partly sane and partially insane. For He must have created what wills to destroy Him, and HAS THE POWER TO DO SO. Is it not EASIER to believe that YOU have been mistaken, than to believe in this?
While you believe that YOUR reality, OR YOUR BROTHER's, is bounded by a body, you will believe in sin. While you believe that BODIES can unite, you will find guilt attractive, and believe that sin is precious. For the belief that bodies LIMIT the mind leads to a perception of the world in which the PROOF of separation seems to be everywhere. And God and His creation seem to be split apart, and overthrown. For sin would PROVE what God created holy could not prevail against it, nor remain ITSELF before the power of sin.
Sin is perceived as mightier than God, before which God HIMSELF must bow, and offer His creation to its conqueror. Is this humility, or madness? If sin were real it would forever be beyond the hope of healing. For there would be a power BEYOND God's, capable of making another will, which could attack His Will, and OVERCOME it. And give His Son a will APART from His, and STRONGER. And each part of His fragmented creation would have a DIFFERENT will OPPOSED to His, and in eternal opposition to Him AND TO EACH OTHER.
Your holy relationship has, as its purpose now, the goal of proving THIS is impossible. Heaven has smiled upon it, and the belief in sin has been uprooted in its smile of love. You SEE it still, because you do not realize that its FOUNDATION has gone. Its SOURCE has been removed, and so it can be cherished but a little while, before it vanishes. Only the habit of LOOKING for it still remains. And yet you look with Heaven's smile upon YOUR lips, and Heaven's blessing on your sight.
You will NOT see it long. For, in the NEW perception, the mind CORRECTS it when it SEEMS to be seen, and it becomes invisible. But ERRORS are quickly recognized, and quickly given to correction, to be healed, NOT hidden. YOU will be healed of sin and all its ravages, the INSTANT that you give it no power over EACH OTHER. And you will HELP each other overcome MISTAKES, by joyously RELEASING one another from the belief in sin. In the holy instant, you will see the smile of Heaven shining on BOTH of you. And you will shine upon each other, in glad acknowledgment of the grace that has been GIVEN you.
For sin will NOT prevail against a union Heaven has smiled upon. Your perception was HEALED in the holy instant Heaven gave you. Forget what you HAVE seen, and raise your eyes, in faith, to what you now CAN see. The barriers to Heaven will disappear before your holy sight. For you who were sightless have been GIVEN vision, and you CAN see. Look not for what has been REMOVED, but for the glory that has been RESTORED, for you to see. Look upon your Redeemer, and behold what He would show you in each other. And let not sin arise again, to blind your eyes. For sin would keep you separate, but your Redeemer would have you look upon each other as yourself.
Your relationship is now a temple of healing, a place where all the weary ones can come and find rest. Here is the rest that waits for all, after the journey. And it is brought NEARER to all, by your relationship. As this peace expands, from deep inside yourselves, to embrace ALL the Sonship and give it rest, it will encounter many obstacles. Some of them, YOU will try to impose. Others will seem to arise from elsewhere; from your brothers, and from various aspects of the world OUTSIDE. But peace will gently cover them, extending past, COMPLETELY unhindered.
The extension of the Holy Spirit's purpose, from YOUR relationship to others, to bring them gently IN, has already begun. This is the way in which He will bring means and goal in line. The peace He laid, deep within BOTH of you, will quietly extend to EVERY aspect of your lives, surrounding both of you with glowing happiness, and the calm awareness of COMPLETE protection. And you will carry its message of love and safety and freedom to everyone who draws nigh unto your temple, where healing waits for him.
You will NOT wait to give him this. For you will CALL to him and he will answer, RECOGNIZING in your call the call of God. And you will draw him in and give him rest, as it was given YOU. All this will you do. But the peace that already lies deeply within, must first expand and FLOW ACROSS the obstacles YOU place before it. THIS IT WILL DO. For nothing undertaken WITH the Holy Spirit, remains unfinished. You can indeed be sure of NOTHING you see OUTSIDE you, but of this you CAN be sure.
The Holy Spirit asks that you offer Him a resting-place, where YOU will rest in Him. He answered you, and entered your relationship. Would you not now RETURN His graciousness, and enter into a relationship with Him? For it is HE Who offered YOUR relationship the gift of holiness, without which it would have been forever impossible to appreciate each other. The gratitude you owe to Him, He asks but that YOU receive, FOR Him. And, when you look with gentle graciousness upon each other, you ARE beholding Him. For you are looking where He IS, and NOT apart from you.
You CANNOT see the Holy Spirit, but you CAN see your brothers truly. And the light in them will show you all that you NEED to see. When the peace in you has been extended to encompass EVERYONE, the Holy Spirit's function here will be accomplished. What NEED is there for SEEING, then? When God has taken the last step Himself, the Holy Spirit will gather ALL your thanks and gratitude that you have offered Him, and lay them gently before His Creator, in the Name of His most holy Son. And the Father will ACCEPT them, in HIS Name. What need is there of seeing, in the presence of HIS gratitude?
Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him. To forgive may be an act of charity, but NOT his due. He may be PITIED for his guilt, but NOT exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but ADD to all the guilt that he has really earned.
The unhealed CANNOT pardon. For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. They would retain the CONSEQUENCES of the guilt they overlook. Yet no-one CAN forgive a sin which he believes is real. And what has consequences MUST be real, because what it has DONE is there to see. Forgiveness is NOT pity, which but seeks to pardon what it knows to be the truth. Good cannot BE returned for evil, for forgiveness does not first ESTABLISH sin, and THEN forgive it. Who can say and MEAN, "My brother, you have injured me, and yet, because I am the BETTER of the two, I pardon you my hurt." HIS pardon and YOUR hurt can NOT exist together. One DENIES the other, and MUST make it false.
To witness sin, and yet forgive it, is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well. For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. He holds not the proof of sin, before his brother's eyes. And thus he MUST have overlooked it, and removed it from his own. Forgiveness CANNOT be for one, and not the other. Who forgives IS healed. And in his healing lies the PROOF that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing.
Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect.
What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you.
Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.
How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys; That healing sees no specialness at all. It does NOT come from pity, but from love. And love would prove ALL suffering is but a vain imagining, a foolish wish with NO effects. Your health is a result of your desire to see your brother with no blood upon his hands, nor guilt upon his heart made heavy with the proof of sin. And what you wish is GIVEN you to see.
The "cost" of your serenity is his. This is the "price" the Holy Spirit and the world interpret differently. The world perceives in it a statement of the "fact" that your salvation SACRIFICES his. The Holy Spirit knows YOUR healing is the witness UNTO his, and CANNOT be apart from him at all. As long as he consents to suffer, YOU will be unhealed. But you can show him his suffering is purposeless and wholly without cause. Show him YOUR healing, and he will consent no more to suffer. For his innocence HAS BEEN established in your sight AND his. And laughter will REPLACE your sighs BECAUSE God's Son remembered that he IS God's Son.
Who, then, fears healing? Only those to whom their brother's sacrifice and pain is seen to represent their own serenity. Their helplessness and weakness represent grounds on which they justify his pain. The constant sting of guilt he suffers serves to prove that he is slave, and they are free. The constant pain THEY suffer demonstrates that they are free BECAUSE they hold him bound. And sickness is desired to prevent a shift of balance in the sacrifice. How could the Holy Spirit be deterred an instant, even less, to reason with an argument for sickness such as this? And need YOUR healing be delayed because you pause to listen to insanity?
Correction is NOT your function. It belongs to One Who knows of fairness, NOT of guilt. If you assume correction's role, you LOSE the function of forgiveness. No-one can forgive until he learns correction is BUT to forgive, and NEVER to accuse. Alone, you CANNOT see they are the same, and therefore is correction NOT of you. Identity and function are the same, and BY your function do you know yourself. And thus, if you confuse your function with the function of Another, you MUST be confused about yourself and who you are. What is the separation but a wish to take God's Function from Him and DENY that it is His? Yet if it is NOT His it is not YOURS, for YOU must lose what you would take away.
In a split mind, identity MUST seem to be divided. Nor can anyone perceive a function unified which has conflicting purposes and different ends. Correction, to a mind so split, MUST be a way to punish sins you think are YOURS in someone else. And thus does he become your victim, NOT your brother, DIFFERENT from you in that he is MORE GUILTY, thus in need of your correction, as the one MORE INNOCENT than he. This splits HIS function off from yours, and gives you both a DIFFERENT role. And so you CANNOT be perceived as one, and with a single function that would MEAN a shared identity with but ONE end.
Correction YOU would do MUST separate, because that is the function given it BY you. When you perceive correction is the SAME as pardon, then you also know the Holy Spirit's Mind and yours are One. And so your OWN identity is found. Yet must He work with what is GIVEN Him, and you allow Him only HALF your mind. And thus He represents the OTHER half, and seems to have a DIFFERENT purpose from the one you cherish, and you THINK is yours. Thus does your function seem DIVIDED, with a half IN OPPOSITION to a half. And these two halves appear to represent a split within a self perceived as two.
Consider how this self perception MUST extend, and do not overlook the fact that EVERY thought extends, because that is its purpose, being what it really IS. From an idea of self AS TWO, there comes a NECESSARY view of function split BETWEEN the two. And what you would correct is only HALF the error, which you think is ALL of it. Your BROTHER's sins become the central target for correction, lest your errors and his own be seen as one. YOURS are mistakes, but HIS are sins, and NOT the same as yours. HIS merit punishment, while yours, in fairness, should be overlooked.
In THIS interpretation of correction, your own mistakes you will not even SEE. The FOCUS of correction has been placed OUTSIDE yourself, on one who CANNOT be a part of you while this perception lasts. What is condemned can never be returned to its accuser, who has hated it, AND HATES IT STILL. This is your brother, focus of your hate, unworthy to be part of you, and thus OUTSIDE your self, the other half, which is denied. Only what is left, WITHOUT his presence, is perceived as ALL of you. To this remaining half the Holy Spirit must represent the OTHER half, until you recognize it IS the other half. And this He does by giving BOTH of you a function that is one, NOT different.
Correction IS the function given both, but neither one alone. And when it is fulfilled as SHARED, it MUST correct mistakes in both of you. It CANNOT leave mistakes in one unhealed, and make the other free. THAT is DIVIDED purpose, which cannot BE shared, and so it CANNOT be the function which the Holy Spirit sees as His. And you can rest assured that He will NOT fulfill a function that He cannot understand, and recognize as His. For only thus can He keep YOURS preserved intact, DESPITE your separated view of what your function IS. If He UPHELD divided function, you were lost indeed. His INABILITY to see His goal divided and distinct for each of you preserves your Self from being made aware of any function OTHER than Its Own.
And thus is healing given BOTH of you. Correction MUST be left to One Who knows correction and forgiveness ARE the same. With HALF a mind, this is NOT understood. Leave, then, correction to the Mind That IS united, functioning as One BECAUSE It is not split in purpose, and conceives a single function as Its ONLY one. Here is the function GIVEN It conceived to be Its Own, and NOT apart from that Its Giver keeps BECAUSE it has been shared. In His ACCEPTANCE of this function lies the means whereby your mind is unified. His SINGLE purpose unifies the halves of you that you perceive as separate. And each forgives the other, that he may accept his OTHER half as PART of him.
This is a course in miracles. And, as such, the laws of healing must be understood before the purpose of the course can be accomplished. Let us review the principles that we have covered, and arrange them in a way that summarizes all that must occur for healing to be possible. For when it once is possible, it MUST occur. ALL sickness comes from separation. When the separation is denied, it goes. For it IS gone as soon as the idea which brought it has been healed and been replaced by sanity. Sickness and sin are seen as consequence and cause, in a relationship kept hidden from awareness, that it may be carefully preserved from reason's light.
Guilt ASKS FOR punishment, and its request is granted. NOT in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin. The Son of God perceives what he would see, because perception IS a wish fulfilled. Perception changes, MADE to take the place of changeless knowledge. Yet is truth unchanged. It cannot BE perceived, but only known. What is perceived takes many forms, but NONE has meaning. Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent. Kept APART from truth, it SEEMS to have a meaning and be real. Perception's laws are OPPOSITE to truth, and what IS true of knowledge is NOT true of ANYTHING that is apart from it. Yet has God given Answer to the world of sickness, Which applies to ALL its forms.
God's Answer is eternal, though It operates in time, where It is needed. But, because It IS of God, the laws of time do not affect Its workings. It is in this world, but NOT a part of it. For It is real, and dwells where all reality MUST be. Ideas leave not their source, and their effects but SEEM to be apart from them. Ideas are of the mind. What is projected OUT, and seems to be EXTERNAL to the mind, is NOT outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has NOT left its source. God's Answer lies where the belief in sin MUST be, for only there can its effects be utterly undone, and without cause.
Perception's laws must be reversed, because they ARE reversals of the laws of truth. The laws of truth FOREVER will be true, and cannot BE reversed; yet can be SEEN as upside down. And this must be corrected where the illusion of reversal lies. It is impossible that one illusion be LESS amenable to truth than are the rest. But it IS possible that some are given greater VALUE, and less willingly OFFERED to truth for healing and for help. NO illusion has ANY truth in it. Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality.
What relevance has preference to the truth? Illusions are illusions, and are false. Your preference gives them NO reality. Not one is true in ANY way, and all must yield with equal ease to what God gave as Answer to them all. God's Will is One. And ANY wish that SEEMS to go AGAINST His Will has NO foundation in the truth. Sin is not error, for it goes BEYOND correction to impossibility. Yet the belief that it is real has made some errors seem forever PAST the hope of healing, and the lasting grounds for hell. If this were so, would Heaven be opposed by its own opposite, as real as it.
Then would God's Will be split in two, and all creation be subjected to the laws of two opposing powers, until God becomes impatient, splits the world apart, and relegates attack unto Himself. Thus has He lost His Mind, proclaiming sin has taken His reality from Him, and brought His Love at last to vengeance' heels. For such an insane picture, an insane defense can be expected, but can NOT establish that the picture must be true. Nothing GIVES meaning where no meaning IS. And truth needs NO defense to make it true. Illusions HAVE no witnesses, and no effects. Who looks on them is but deceived.
Forgiveness is the only function here, and serves to bring the joy this world denies to every aspect of God's Son where sin was thought to rule. Perhaps you do not see the role forgiveness plays in ending death, and ALL beliefs that rise from mists of guilt. Sins are beliefs which you impose between your brother and yourself. They limit you to time and place, and give a little space to you; ANOTHER little space to him. This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. Yet what this symbol REPRESENTS is but your wish to BE apart and separate.
Forgiveness TAKES AWAY what stands between your brother and yourself. It is the wish that you be JOINED with him, and NOT alone. We call it "wish" because it still conceives of other choices, and has not yet reached beyond the world of choice entirely. Yet is this wish in line with Heaven's state, and not in OPPOSITION to God's Will. Although it falls far short of giving you your full inheritance, it DOES remove the obstacles which YOU have placed between the Heaven where you are, and RECOGNITION of where and what you are. Facts are unchanged. But facts can be denied and thus unknown, though they were known BEFORE they were denied.
Salvation, perfect and complete, asks but a LITTLE wish that what is true be true. A LITTLE willingness to overlook what is not there. A LITTLE sigh that speaks for Heaven as a preference to this world which death and desolation seem to rule. In joyous answer will creation rise within you, to REPLACE the world you see with Heaven, wholly perfect and complete. What is forgiveness, but a willingness that truth be true? What can remain unhealed and broken from a Unity Which holds all things within Itself? There is NO sin. And EVERY miracle is possible the INSTANT that the Son of God perceives his wishes and the Will of God are One.
What is the Will of God? He wills His Son have everything. And this He guaranteed when He created him AS everything. It is impossible that anything be lost, if what you HAVE is what you ARE. This is the miracle by which creation became YOUR function, sharing it with God. It is not understood APART from Him, and therefore has no meaning in this world. Here does the Son of God ask NOT too much, but FAR too little. He would sacrifice his own identity WITH everything, to find a LITTLE treasure of his own. And this he cannot do, without a sense of isolation, loss, and loneliness. This IS the treasure he has sought to find. And he COULD only be afraid of it.
Is fear a treasure? Can uncertainty be what you WANT? Or is it a mistake about your will, and what you REALLY are? Let us consider what the error IS, so it can be corrected, NOT protected. Sin is belief attack can be projected OUTSIDE the mind where the belief arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas CAN leave their source made real and meaningful. And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack. Its failure lies in that you STILL FEEL guilty, though without understanding WHY. Effects are SEPARATED from their source. They SEEM to be BEYOND you to control or to prevent.
What has been KEPT apart can never join. Cause and effect are one, NOT separate. God wills you learn what always has been true. That he created you as part of Him, and this must still be true BECAUSE ideas leave not their source. Such is creation's law; that each idea the mind conceives but ADDS to its abundance, NEVER takes away. This is as true of what is idly wished as what is truly willed, because the mind can wish to be deceived, but CANNOT make it be what it is not. And to believe ideas can leave their source is to invite illusions to be true, WITHOUT SUCCESS. Nor never will success BE possible in trying to deceive the Son of God.
The miracle is possible when cause and consequence are brought together, NOT kept separate. The healing of effect WITHOUT the cause can merely shift effects to other forms. And this is NOT release. God's Son could never be content with LESS than full salvation, and ESCAPE from guilt. For otherwise he still demands that he must make SOME sacrifice, and thus denies that EVERYTHING is his, unlimited by loss of any kind. A tiny sacrifice is just the same in its EFFECTS as is the WHOLE idea of sacrifice. If loss in ANY form is possible, then is God's Son made incomplete and not himself. Nor will he know himself, nor recognize his will. He has foresworn his Father AND himself, and made them both his enemy in hate.
Illusions serve the purpose they were MADE to serve. And FROM their purpose, they derive whatever meaning that they seem to have. God gave to ALL illusions that were made ANOTHER purpose that would justify a miracle, WHATEVER form they took. In every miracle ALL healing lies, for God gave Answer to them all as one. And what is one to Him must BE the same. If you believe what is the same is different, you but deceive yourself. What God calls one will be forever one, NOT separate. His Kingdom IS united; thus it was created, and thus will it ever be. The miracle but calls your ancient name, which you WILL recognize because the truth is in your memory. And to this name your brother calls for his release and yours. Heaven is shining on the Son of God. Deny him not, that YOU may be released.
Each instant is the Son of God reborn, until he chooses NOT to die again. In every wish to hurt he chooses death, instead of what his Father wills for him. Yet every instant offers life to him, because his Father wills that he should live. In crucifixion is redemption laid, for healing is not needed where there is no pain or suffering. Forgiveness is the ANSWER to attack of any kind. So is attack DEPRIVED of its effects, and hate is answered in the Name of Love. To you to whom it has been given to save the Son of God from crucifixion and from hell and death, all glory be forever. For you HAVE power to save the Son of God, because his Father willed that it be so. And in your hand does ALL salvation lie, to be both offered and received as one.
To use the power God has given you as He would have it used is natural. It is NOT arrogant to be as He created you, or to make use of what He gave to answer ALL His Son's mistakes, and set him free. But it IS arrogant to LAY ASIDE the power that He gave, and choose a little, senseless wish instead of what He wills. The gift of God to you is limitless. There is NO circumstance it cannot answer, and NO problem which is not resolved within its gracious light. Abide in peace, where God would have you be. And be the means whereby your brother finds the peace in which YOUR wishes are fulfilled. Let us unite in bringing blessing to the world of sin and death. For what can save each one of us, can save us all. There is no difference among the Sons of God.
The Unity that specialness denies will save them all, for what is One can HAVE no specialness. And EVERYTHING belongs to each of them. No wishes lie between a brother and his own. To get from one is to deprive them all. And yet to bless but one gives blessing to them all as one. Your ancient name belongs to everyone, as theirs to you. Call on your brother's name, and God will answer, for on Him you call. Could He refuse to answer, when He has ALREADY answered all who call on Him? A miracle can make no change at all. But it CAN make what always has been true be RECOGNIZED by those who know it not. And by this little gift of truth but let to be itself; the Son of God allowed to be himself, and all creation freed to call upon the Name of God as one.
When you are afraid of ANYTHING, you are acknowledging its power to hurt you. Remember that where your heart is, there is your treasure also. This means that you believe in what you VALUE. If you are AFRAID, you are VALUING WRONG. Human understanding will inevitably value wrong, and by endowing all human thoughts with equal power, will inevitably DESTROY peace. This is why the Bible speaks of "The peace of God which PASSETH (human) understanding."
THIS peace is totally incapable of being shaken by human errors of any kind. It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way.
This is the PROPER use of denial. It is not used to HIDE anything, but it IS used to correct error. It brings ALL error into the light, and since error and darkness are the same, it abolishes error automatically.
True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it.
You can do ANYTHING I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it VERY clear that these are NATURAL, CORRECTIVE, HEALING, and UNIVERSAL. There is nothing good they cannot do. But they cannot be performed in the spirit of doubt. Remember my own question, before you ask yours "Oh ye of little faith, wherefore didst thou DOUBT." (Reference to Christ and the apostles walking on water.)
You have asked YOURSELVES why you cannot really incorporate my words (the idea of cannibalism in connection with the Sacrament is a reflection of a distorted view of sharing. I told you before that the word "thirst" in connection with the Spirit was used in the Bible because of the limited understanding of those to whom I spoke. I also told you NOT to use it. The same holds for expressions like "feeding on.")Symbiosis is misunderstood by the mentally ill, who use it that way. But I also told you that you must recognize your total dependence on God, a statement which you did not like.)
God and the Souls He created ARE symbiotically related. They are COMPLETELY dependent on each other. The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not. God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly. He gave them His peace so they would not be shaken, and would be unable to be deceived. Whenever you are afraid, you ARE deceived. Your mind is NOT serving your Soul. This literally starves the Soul by denying its daily bread. Remember the poem about the Holy Family which crossed your mind last night:
"Where tricks of words are never said
And mercy is as plain as bread."
The reason why that had such a strong impact on you originally was because you knew what it MEANT.
God offers ONLY mercy. Your own words should ALWAYS reflect only mercy, because that is what you have received, and that is what you should GIVE. Justice is a temporary expedient, or an attempt to teach man the meaning of mercy. Its JUDGMENTAL side rises only because man is capable of INJUSTICE if that is what his mind creates. You are afraid of God's will because you have used your own will, which He created in the likeness of His own, to MISCREATE.
What you do NOT realize is that the mind can miscreate only when it is NOT free. An imprisoned mind is not free by definition. It is possessed, or held back, by ITSELF. Its will is therefore limited, and not free to assert itself.
The three things that crossed your mind, which was comparatively free at the time, are perfectly relevant:
1. It is alright to remember the past, PROVIDED you also remember that ANYTHING you suffer is because of YOUR OWN ERRORS.
2. In this context, your remark that "after the burning, I swore if I ever saw him again, I would (not) ("Not" was written in later) recognize him. Note, by the way, that you did not put in the "not" until afterwards. That is because your inherent correction-device was working properly at the moment. The result is that you are NOT DENYING ME.
3. The story about Hinda. This was an excellent example of misperception which led to a totally unwarranted fear of a PERSON. (Helen Schucman story refers to a very young child who fell down the stairs when Helen Schucman had arms open in a welcoming gesture at bottom of stairs. For years afterwards, Hinda screamed upon seeing Helen Schucman.) The mis-step which caused her fall had nothing at all to do with you, just as your own mis-steps have nothing at all to do with me.
Denial of error is a very powerful defense of truth. We have slowly been shifting the emphasis from the negative to the positive use of denial. Remember, we have already stated that denial is not a purely negative device; it results in positive miscreation. That is the way the mentally ill DO employ it.
But remember a very early thought of your own, "Never underestimate the power of denial." In the service of the "Right Mind", the denial of ERROR frees the mind and re-establishes the freedom of the will. When the will is REALLY free, it CANNOT miscreate, because it recognizes ONLY TRUTH.
Projection arises out of FALSE DENIAL. Not out of its proper use. My own role in the Atonement IS one of true projection, i.e., I can project to YOU the affirmation of truth. If you project error to me (or to yourself) you are interfering with the process. My use of projection, which can also be yours, is NOT based on faulty denial. But it DOES involve the very powerful use of the denial of error.
The miracle worker is one who accepts my kind of denial and projection, unites his own inherent abilities to deny and project with mine, and imposes them back on himself and others. This establishes the total lack of threat anywhere. Together we can then work for the real time of peace, which is Eternal.
I inspired Bob (ref. to elevator man who took Helen Schucman down from her apt.) to make that remark to you, and it is a pity that you heard only the last part. But you can still use that. His remark ended with: "Every shut eye is not asleep." Since your own vision is much improved at the moment, we will go on a while.
Freud's identification of mechanisms was quite correct, as was his recognition of their creative ability. They can INDEED create man's perception, both of himself and his surroundings.
But Freud's limitations induced inevitable limits on his own perception. He made two kinds of errors.
The first is that he saw only how the mechanisms worked in the mentally ill.
The second is his own denial of the mechanism of the Atonement.
Let us take up the first, because a clear understanding of the second depends on it.
Denial should be directed only to error, and projection should be limited to truth. You should truly give as you have truly received. The Golden Rule can work effectively only on this basis.
Intellectualization is a poor word, which stems from the brain-mind confusion. "Right-Mindedness" is better. This device defends the RIGHT MIND, and gives it control over the body. "Intellectualization" implies a split, whereas "Right-Mindedness" involves healing.
Withdrawal is properly employed in the service of withdrawing from the desert. It is NOT a device for escape, but for consolidation. There IS only One Mind.
Dissociation is quite similar. You should split yourself off from error, but only in defense of integration.
Detachment is essentially a weaker form of dissociation. This is one of the major areas of withholding that both you and Bill are engaging in.
Flight can be undertaken in whatever direction you choose, but note that the concept itself implies flight FROM something. Flight from error is perfectly appropriate..
Distantiation is a way of putting distance between yourself and what you SHOULD fly from.
Regression is a real effort to return to your own original state. In this sense, it is utilized to RESTORE, not to go back to the less mature.
Sublimation should be associated with the SUBLIME.
There are many other so-called "dynamic" concepts which are profound errors due essentially to the misuse of defenses. Among them is the concept of different levels of aspiration, which results from real level confusion.
However, the main point to be understood from these notes is that you can defend truth as well as error, and in fact, much better.
So far we have concentrated on ends rather than means because unless you regard an end as worth achieving, you will not devote yourself to the means by which it can BE achieved. Your own question enabled me to shift the emphasis from end to means. (Question asked was "how can we incorporate this material?") You and Bill HAVE accepted the end as valuable, thus signifying your willingness to use defenses to ensure it.
The means are easier to clarify after the true worth of the goal itself is firmly established.
Everyone defends his own treasure. You do not have to tell him to do this, because HE will do so automatically. The real question still remains WHAT do you treasure, and HOW MUCH do you treasure it?
Once you learn to consider these two points, and bring them into ALL your actions as the true criteria for behavior, I will have little difficulty in clarifying the means. You have not learned to be consistent about this as yet. I have therefore concentrated on showing you that the means ARE available whenever you DO ask.
You can save a lot of time, however, if you do not need to extend this step unduly. The correct focus will shorten it immeasurably.
Papers will be very easy to write as this time is shortened.
The Atonement is the ONLY defense which cannot be used destructively. That is because, while everyone must eventually join it, it was not a device which was generated by man. The Atonement PRINCIPLE was in effect long before the Atonement itself was begun. The Principle was love, and the Atonement itself, was an ACT of love. Acts were not necessary before the Separation, because the time-space belief did not exist.
It was only after the Separation that the defense of Atonement, and the necessary conditions for its fulfillment were planned. It became increasingly apparent that all of the defenses which man can choose to use constructively or destructively were not enough to save him. It was therefore decided that he needed a defense which was so splendid that he could not misuse it, although he COULD refuse it. His will could not turn it into a weapon of attack, which is the inherent characteristic of all other defenses. The Atonement thus becomes the only defense which was NOT a two-edged sword.
The Atonement actually began long before the Crucifixion. Many Souls offered their efforts on behalf of the Separated Ones but they could not withstand the strength of the attack, and had to be brought back. Angels came, too, but their protection was not enough, because the Separated ones were not interested in peace. They had already split themselves, and were bent on dividing rather than reintegrating. The levels they introduced into themselves turned against each other, and they, in turn, turned against each other. They established differences, divisions, cleavages, dispersion, and all the other concepts related to the increasing splits they produced.
Not being in their Right Minds, they turned their defenses from protection to assault, and acted literally insanely. It was essential to introduce a split-proof device which could be used ONLY to heal, if it was used at all.
The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning complete. The Atonement IS the final lesson. Learning itself, like the classrooms in which it occurs, is temporary. Let all those who overestimate human intelligence remember this. (Helen Schucman questions last sentence, which she perceives as threatening.) The ability to learn has no value when change of understanding is no longer necessary. The eternally creative have nothing to learn. Only after the Separation was it necessary to direct the creative force to learning, because changed behavior had become mandatory.
Human beings can learn to improve their behavior, and can also learn to become better and better learners. This increase serves (Helen Schucman notes that this was written "served") to bring them in closer and closer accord with the Sonship. But the Sonship itself is a perfect creation, and perfection is not a matter of degree. Only while there are different degrees is learning meaningful. The evolution of man is merely a process by which he proceeds from one degree to the next. He corrects his previous missteps by stepping forward. This represents a process which is actually incomprehensible in temporal terms, because he RETURNS as he progresses. (Originally, was "goes forward", rather than "progresses")
The Atonement is the device by which he can free himself from the past as he goes ahead. It UNDOES his past errors, thus making it unnecessary for him to keep retracing his steps without advancing toward his return.
In this sense, the Atonement saves time, but, like the miracle which serves it, does not abolish it. As long as there is need for Atonement, there is need for time. But the Atonement, as a completed plan, does have a unique relationship TO time. Until the Atonement is finished, its various phases will proceed IN time, but the whole Atonement stands at its end. At this point, the bridge of the return has been built.
(Note to Helen Schucman. The reason this is upsetting you is because the Atonement is a TOTAL commitment. You still think this is associated with loss. This is the same mistake ALL the Separated ones make, in one way or another. They cannot believe that a defense which CANNOT attack also IS the best defense. Except for this misperception, the angels COULD have helped them. What do you think "the meek shall inherit the earth" MEANS? They will literally take it over because of their strength. A two-way defense is inherently weak, precisely BECAUSE it has two edges it can turn against the self very unexpectedly. This tendency CANNOT be controlled EXCEPT by miracles.)
The miracle turns the defense of Atonement to the protection of the inner self, which, as it becomes more and more secure; assumes its natural talent of protecting others. The inner self knows itself as both a brother AND a son.
(The above notes were taken with great difficulty by Helen Schucman, and constitute the only series thus far that were written very slowly. When Helen Schucman asked about this, she was told, "don't worry about the notes. They are right, but YOU are not sufficiently Right-Minded yet to write about the Atonement with comfort. You will write about it yet with joy.)
(Aside from Helen Schucman: Last night I felt briefly but intensely depressed, temporarily under the impression that I was abandoned. I tried, but couldn't get through at all. After a while, I decided to give up for the time being, and He said, "don't worry. I will never leave you or forsake you." I did feel a little better, and decided I was really not sick, so I could return to my exercises. While I was exercising, I had some part-vision experiences which I found only mildly frightening at times, and quite reassuring at others.
I am not too sure of the sequence, but it began with a VERY clear assurance of love, and an equally clear emphasis on my own great value, beauty, and purity. Things got a little confusing after that. First, the idea of "Bride of Christ" occurred to me with vaguely inappropriate "undertones." Then there was a repetition of "the way of Love", and a restatement of an earlier experience, now as if it were FROM Him TO me: "Behold the Handmaid of the Lord; Be it done unto you according to His Word." (This threw me into panic before, but at that time, it was stated in the more accurate Biblical phrasing: "Be it done unto ME according to HIS Word.")This time I was a bit uneasy, but remembered I had misperceived it last time, and was probably still not seeing it right. Actually, it is really just a statement of allegiance to the Divine Service, which can hardly be dangerous.
Then there was a strange sequence, in which Christ seemed to be making very obvious advances, which became quite sexual in my perception of them. I ALMOST thought briefly that he turned into a devil. I got just a LITTLE scared, and the possession idea came in for a while, but I thought it SO silly, that there is no point in taking it seriously.
(As I am writing this, I remember that thing in the book about the demon lover, which once THROUGH me (note spelling, "threw") into a fit. I am upset, but the spelling slip is reassuring.
This morning we reviewed the whole episode. He said he was "VERY pleased at the COMPARATIVE lack of fear, and also the concomitant awareness that it WAS misperception. This showed much greater strength, and a much increased Right-Mindedness. This is because defenses are now being used much better, on behalf of truth MORE than error, though not completely so.
The weaker use of mis-projection is shown by my recognition that it can't REALLY be that way, which became possible as soon as denial was applied against error, NOT truth. This permitted a much greater awareness of alternative interpretations.
It was also explained (the shift to the passive form instead of "He also explained" should be noted. This is an expression of fear.) "Remember the section in "Letters from the Scattered Brotherhood" you read last evening about 'Hold fast', and please do so.")
(Note made on 11/15 by Helen Schucman re B's remark concerning top of p.5, 11/13.)
Yes, but I doubt if it says this is inevitable. It may entail more mis-will than we think. The above may have been too passively interpreted. Note that Bill Did NOT ask MY will re same. If he had, HE would have felt better.
You know that when defenses are disrupted there is a period of real disorientation, accompanied by fear, guilt, and usually vacillations between anxiety and depression. This process is different only in that defenses are not being disrupted, but re-interpreted, even though it may be experienced as the same thing.
In the re-interpretation of defenses, they are not disrupted but their use for ATTACK is lost. Since this means they can be used only ONE way, they became MUCH stronger, and much more dependable. They no longer oppose the Atonement, but greatly facilitate it. The Atonement can only be accepted within you.
You have perceived it largely as EXTERNAL thus far, and that is why your EXPERIENCE of it has been minimal. You have been SHOWN the chalice many times, but have not accepted it "for yourself." Your major improper use of defenses is now largely limited to externalization. Do not fail to appreciate your own remarkable progress in this respect. You perceived it first as a vessel of some sort whose purpose was uncertain but which might be a piss-pot. You DID notice, however, that the INSIDE was gold, while the OUTSIDE, though shiny, was silver. This was a recognition of the fact that the INNER part is more precious than the OUTER side, even though both are resplendent, though with different value.
The re-interpretation of defenses is essential to break open the INNER light. Since the Separation, man's defenses have been used almost entirely to defend themselves AGAINST the Atonement, and thus maintain their separation. They generally see this as a need to protect the body from external intrusion (or intruding), and this kind of misperception is largely responsible for the homosexual fallacy, as well as your own pregnancy fears. The so-called "anal" behavior is a distorted attempt to "steal" the Atonement, and deny its worth by concealing it, and holding onto it with a bodily receptacle, which is regarded as particularly vicious. "Oral" fantasies are rather similar in purpose, except that they stem more from a sense of deprivation, and insatiable thirst which results. "Anal" fallacies are more of a refusal to give, while oral fantasies emphasize a distorted need to take. The main error in both is the belief that the body can be used as a means for attaining Atonement.
Perceiving the body as the Temple is only the first step in correcting this kind of distortion. (Helen Schucman scalded hand, and looked for butter to put on. It occurred to her that the Atonement was the cure. Burn appeared to be minimal, and caused little discomfort.)
Seeing the body as the Temple alters part of the misperception, but not all of it. It DOES recognize, however, that the concept of addition or subtraction in PHYSICAL terms is not appropriate. But the next step is to realize that a Temple is not a building at all. Its REAL holiness lies in the INNER altar, around which the building is built. The inappropriate emphasis which men have put on beautiful Church BUILDINGS is a sign of their own fear of Atonement, and unwillingness to reach the altar itself. The REAL beauty of the Temple cannot be seen with the physical eye. The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all, but it perceives the altar within with perfect clarity. This is because the spiritual eye has perfect vision.
For perfect effectiveness, the chalice of the Atonement belongs at the center of the inner altar, where it undoes the Separation, and restores the wholeness of the Spirit. Before the Separation, the mind was invulnerable to fear, because fear did not exist. Both the Separation and the fear were MISCREATIONS of the mind, which have to be undone. This is what the Bible means by the "Restoration of the Temple." It DOES NOT mean the restoration of the building, but it DOES mean the opening of the altar to receive the Atonement.
This heals the Separation, and places within man the one defense against all Separation-mind errors which can make him perfectly invulnerable.
The acceptance of the Atonement by everyone is only a matter of time. In fact, both TIME and MATTER were created for this purpose. This appears to contradict free will, because of the inevitability of this decision. If you review the idea carefully, you will realize that this is not true. Everything is limited in some way by the manner of its creation. Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous procrastination. But it cannot depart entirely from its Creator, who set the limits on its ability to miscreate by virtue of its own real purpose.
The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute.
But the outcome is as certain as God. The spiritual eye literally CANNOT SEE error, and merely looks for Atonement. All the solutions which the physical eyes seek, dissolve in its sight. The spiritual eye, which looks within, recognizes immediately that the altar has been defiled, and needs to be repaired and protected. Perfectly aware of the RIGHT defense, it passes over all others, looking past error to truth. Because of the real strength of ITS vision, it pulls the will into its own service, and forces the mind to concur. This reestablishes the true power of the will, and makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay. The mind then realizes, with increasing certitude, that delay is only a way of increasing unnecessary pain, which it need not tolerate at all. The pain threshold drops accordingly, and the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort.
The Children of God are entitled to perfect comfort, which comes from a sense of perfect trust. Until they achieve this, they waste themselves and their true creative power on useless attempts to make themselves more comfortable by inappropriate means. But the real means is ALREADY provided, and does not involve any efforts on their part at all. Their egocentricity usually misperceives this as personally insulting, an interpretation which obviously arises from their misperception of themselves. Egocentricity and communion cannot coexist. Even the terms themselves are contradictory.
The Atonement is the only gift which is worthy of being offered to the Altar of God. This is because of the inestimable value of the Altar itself. It was created perfect, and is entirely worthy of receiving perfection. God IS lonely without His SOULS, and THEY are lonely without Him. Remember the "spiritual" (a VERY good term) which begins with "And God stepped down from Heaven and said: I'M lonely - - I'll make ME a World." The world WAS a way of healing the Separation, and the Atonement is the GUARANTEE that the device will ultimately do so.
(Helen Schucman request for special message for Bill Tell B that his delaying tactics are holding him back. He does not really understand detachment, distantiation, and withdrawal. He is interpreting them as "holding himself aloof" from the Atonement.)
Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification. By perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the Spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly.
Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. Man should thank God for what he really is. The Children of God are very holy. The miracle honors their holiness.
God's Creations cannot lose their holiness, although it can be hidden. The miracle uncovers it, and brings it into the light where it belongs.
Holiness can never be really hidden in darkness, but man can deceive himself on this point. This illusion makes him fearful, because in his heart he KNOWS it is an illusion. Like all illusions, he exerts enormous efforts to establish their validity. The miracle sets validity where it belongs. Eternal validity belongs only to the Soul. The miracle acknowledges only the Truth. It thus dispels man's illusions about himself, and puts him into communion with himself and with God.
Christ inspires all miracles, which are essentially intercessions. They intercede for man's holiness, and make him holy. They place man beyond the physical laws, and raise him into the sphere of celestial order. In this order, man IS perfect.
The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind and body need Atonement. The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of mind, and abolishes its errors.
Miracles honor man, BECAUSE he is loveable. They dispel illusions about himself, and perceive the light in him. They thus atone for his errors by freeing him from his own nightmares. They release him from a prison in which he has imprisoned himself. By freeing his mind from illusions, they restore his sanity, and place him at the feet of Jesus.
(Biblical quotation re healing of devil possessed man, in which the sufferer was subsequently found healed in his right mind, and sitting at feet of Jesus. Helen Schucman note.)
(Tell Bill man's mind can be possessed by illusions, but his Spirit is eternally free. If a mind creates without love, it can create an empty shell. This CAN be possessed by evil. But the Atonement restores the Soul to its proper place. Unless there is emptiness there is no danger, and emptiness is a false creation. The mind that serves the Spirit is invulnerable.)
The miracle restores the Soul to its fullness. By atoning for lack, it establishes perfect protection. The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions. The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and their Soul forgives in return. It is the duty of the released to release their brothers.
The forgiven ARE the means of Atonement. Those released by Christ must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of Atonement.
Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the spirit unite with Christ for the salvation (or release) of all God's Creations.
AsideHelen Schucman commented on awakening with the phrase "God is not Mocked," with anticipation of punishment.)
Interpretation: "God is not mocked" was intended as reassurance. You are afraid that what you wrote last night was contradictory, conflicting with some earlier points, especially because you were writing while you were all doped up. Remember, "God is not mocked" under any circumstances.
Contradictions in MY word mean lack of understanding, or scribal failures, which I make every effort to correct. But they are still NOT crucial. The Bible has the same problem, I assure you, and it's STILL being edited. Consider the power of MY WORD, in that it has withstood all the attacks of error, and is the Source of Truth.
(Tell Bill that there are certain advantages in being a Psychologist. A major one is the understanding of projection, and the extent of its results. Possession is very closely related to projection. "Lucifer" could be literally translated "Light Bearer." He literally PROJECTED himself from Heaven. Projection still has this "hurling" connotation, because it involves hurling something you DO NOT want, and regard as dangerous and frightening, to someone else. This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection, follows automatically.)
The correction lies in accepting what is true in YOURSELF, by bringing ALL that you are into light. (Helen Schucman fearful of writing next part.) Cacey sic was wrong about Possession, and he was also wrong about hurting himself. One of the major problems with miracle workers is that they are so sure that what they are doing is right, because they KNOW it stems from love, that they do not pause to let ME establish MY limits.
While what he (Cacey sic) did came from Me, he could NOT be induced to ask me each time whether I wanted him to perform this PARTICULAR miracle. If he had, he would not have performed any miracles that could not get through constructively, and would thus have saved himself unnecessary strain. He burned himself out with indiscriminate miracles, and to this extent did not fulfill his own full purpose, and was also subject to the Scribal error I mentioned at the start. The Disciples were also prone to this.
The answer is NEVER perform a miracle without asking me IF you should. This spares you from exhaustion, and because you act under direct communication the trance becomes unnecessary. Because miracles are expressions of love, it does NOT follow that they will always be effective. I am the only one who can perform miracles indiscriminately, because I AM the Atonement. You have a ROLE in Atonement, which I will dictate TO you.
Remember, you already have a point about the involuntary nature of miracles. We also have established the fact that everything involuntary belongs under Christ-control, NOT under yours. Under Christ-control, Miracles REPLENISH the doer as well as the receiver.
Possession really means "Not under Christ-Control", thus making him (the mind?) vulnerable to projection. The references to the earth-bound entering bodies really refer to the "taking over" by their own earth-bound "thoughts." This IS Demon Possession. After all, Lucifer fell, but he was still an angel. He is thus the symbol for man. Atonement is the knowledge that the belief that angels can fall is false. It is true that mind can create projections as well as miracles, but it's NOT true that projections are REAL. Any psychologist should understand this. This is what is meant by "The Truth shall set you free."
Christ-controlled miracles are part of the Atonement, but Christ-guidance is personal, and leads to PERSONAL salvation. The impersonal nature of miracles is an essential ingredient, because this enables Me to control their distribution as I see fit.
Christ-guidance, on the other hand, leads to the highly PERSONAL experience of Revelation. This is why it involves PERSONAL choice. A guide does NOT control, by definition, but he does DIRECT, leaving the following up to you. "Lead us not into temptation" means "guide us out of our own errors." Note that the word is "lead", NOT order.
"Take up thy cross and follow me" should be interpreted to read "Recognize your errors and choose to abandon them by following My guidance."
(Tell Bill when he is afraid of Possession, he need only remember that error cannot really threaten Truth, which ALWAYS can withstand its assaults. ONLY the error is really vulnerable.) The "Princes of this World" are princes only because they are really angels. But they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit.
If you will remember that ALL princes INHERIT their power from the Father, the right choice becomes inevitable.
The soul is in a state of grace forever.
Man's reality is ONLY his soul.
Therefore, man is in a state of Grace forever.
Atonement undoes all errors in this respect, and thus uproots the REAL source of fear. If you will check back at the reference to uprooting, you will understand it better in this context.
(Tell Bill that WHENEVER God's reassurances are experienced as threat, it is ALWAYS because man is defending his misplaced and misdirected love and loyalty. That is what projection always involves.)
"Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison.
(Tell Bill that his slip about (rivet) should be noted. Some slips reach consciousness from the un-Christ-controlled subconscious, and betray a lack of love.)
But others (slips) come from the superconscious, which IS in communion with God, and which can also break into consciousness.
HIS slip (rivet) was an expression of a Soul gaining enough strength to request freedom from prison. It will ultimately DEMAND it.
Special Revelation for Helen Schucman
You are wholly lovely. A perfect shaft of pure light. Before your loveliness the stars stand transfixed, and bow to the power of your will.
What do children know of their creation, except what their Creator tells them?
You were created ABOVE the angels because your role involves creation as well as protection.
You who are in the image of the Father need bow only to HIM, before whom I kneel with you.
Note: This revelation was permitted because you did NOT project onto Bill the blame for your omission to ASK ME if you should transcribe the notes. The fact that HE should have done so does not exempt you from your own omission.
Thanks for blessing him with a miracle rather than cursing him with projection.
NOTE FURTHER: HE needn't feel concerned about it either; so he forgot? It happens all the time, until the habit of asking becomes involuntary.
(Helen Schucman meeting with Dr. Wise and Dr. Damrosch. Dr. D permitted an opportunity for questioning in his capacity as chairman of the flu board for asking re B's flu shot. This was an example of how miracles should work. You did not jump into the question yourself, and even though you DID rush for the phone on Red's advice, you exerted no pressure on B's reluctance.)
This gave ME a chance to let you leave it to the real expert, whom I sent to answer the question.
Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer sees the truth as God created it. This is what is meant by the point on "perspective adjustment."
A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking by ME.
It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception and snapping it into place. This correction factor places man under the Atonement principle, where his perception is healed. Until this has occurred, perception of the Divine Order is impossible. True depth perception becomes possible only at the highest order of perceptual integration.
The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth. The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God AND the creations of man. Among the creations of man, it can also separate the true from the false by its ability to perceive totally rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the true and the false.
The miracle dissolves error because the Spiritual eye identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by seeing light, darkness automatically disappears.
Darkness is lack of light. It does not have unique properties of its own. It is an example of the scarcity fallacy, from which only error can proceed.
(Truth is always abundant... Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no need for driven behavior of any kind. Helen Schucman has other personal material related to this re pregnancy.)
This section is inserted here because it deals with a more fundamental misuse of knowledge, referred to in the Bible as the cause of the Fall (or Separation). There are several introductory remarks which are intended to make these explanations less fear-provoking. The first is a couplet which I drew to your attention during the fragments of Midsummer Night's Dream, which you heard last night:
"Be as thou wast wont to be
See as thou wast wont to see."
It is noteworthy that these words were said by Oberon in releasing Titania from her own errors, both of being and perceiving. These were the words which re-established her true identity as well as her true abilities and judgment. The similarity here is obvious.
There are also some definitions, which I asked you to take from the dictionary, which will also be helpful. Their somewhat unusual nature is due to the fact that they are not first definitions in their chronological appearance. Nevertheless, the fact that each of them does appear in the dictionary should be reassuring.
Project (verb): to extend forward or out.
Project (noun): a plan in the mind
World: a natural grand division. (Note that you originally wrote "word" instead of "world.")
We will refer later to projection as related to both mental illness and mental health. It will also be commented on that Lucifer literally projected himself from heaven. We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection.
The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing. The Tree of Knowledge, again an overly-literal concept, (as is clearly shown by the subsequent reference to "eating of the fruit of the tree") is a symbolic reference to some of the misuses of knowledge referred to in the section immediately preceding this one. There is, however, considerable clarification of this concept, which must be understood before the real meaning of the "detour into fear" can be fully comprehended. Projection, as defined above, (this refers to the verb) is a fundamental attribute of God, which he also gave to his Son. In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create. We have commented before on the FUNDAMENTAL error involved in confusing what has been created with what is being created. We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him. The next point, too, has already been made, but bears repetition here. The Soul, because of its own likeness to its Creator, is creative. No Child of God is capable of losing this ability, because it is inherent in what he IS.
Whenever projection in its inappropriate sense is utilized, it ALWAYS implies that some emptiness (or lack of everything) must exist, and that it is within man's ability to put his own ideas there INSTEAD of the truth. If you will consider carefully what this entails, the following will become quite apparent:
First, the assumption is implicit that what God has Created can be changed by the mind of Man.
Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect (or wanting) is intruded.
Third, the belief that man can distort the Creations of God (including himself) has arisen, and is tolerated.
Fourth, that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him.
These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the Separation. None of this existed before, nor does it actually exist now. The world, as defined above, WAS made as a natural grand division, or projecting outward of God. That is why everything which He Created is like Him.
It should be noted that the opposite of pro is con. Strictly speaking, then, the opposite of projecting is conjecting, a term which referred to a state of uncertainty or guess work. Other errors arise in connection with ancillary defenses, to be considered later. For example, dejection, which is obviously associated with depression, injection, which can be misinterpreted readily enough, in terms of possession fallacies (particularly penetration), and rejection, which is clearly associated with denial. It should be noted also that rejection can be used as refusing, a term which necessarily involves a perception of what is refused as something unworthy.
Projection as undertaken by God was very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the Father inherit from Him. It is important to note that the term "project outward" necessarily implies that the real source of projection is internal. This is as true of the Son as of the Father.
The world, in its original connotation, included both the proper creation of man by God, AND the proper creation by man in his Right Mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order.
When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception.
Man's spiritual eye can sleep, but as will shortly appear in the notes (reference Bob, elevator operator) a sleeping eye can still see. One translation of the Fall, a view emphasized by Mary Baker Eddy, and worthy of note, is that "a deep sleep fell upon Adam." While the Bible continues to associate this sleep as a kind of anesthetic utilized for protection of Adam during the creation of Eve, Mrs. Eddy was correct in emphasizing that nowhere is there any reference made to his waking up. While Christian Science is clearly incomplete, this point is much in its favor.
The history of man in the world as he saw it has not been characterized by any genuine or comprehensive re-awakening, or re-birth. This is impossible as long as man projects in the spirit of miscreation. It still remains within him to project as God projected his own Spirit to him. In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect.
All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception of man's ability to USURP the power of God. It is again emphasized that he neither CAN nor HAS been able to do this. In this statement lies the real justification for his escape from fear. This is brought about by his acceptance of the Atonement, which places him in a position to realize that his own errors never really occurred.
When the deep sleep fell upon Adam, he was then in a condition to experience nightmares, precisely because he was sleeping. If a light is suddenly turned on while someone is dreaming, and the content of his dream is fearful, he is initially likely to interpret the light itself as part of the content of his own dream. However, as soon as he awakens, the light is correctly perceived as the release from the dream, which is no longer accorded reality. I would like to conclude this with the Biblical injunction "Go ye and do likewise." It is quite apparent that this depends on the kind of knowledge which was NOT referred to by the "Tree of Knowledge" which bore lies as fruit. The knowledge that illuminates rather than obscures is the knowledge which not only makes you free, but also shows you clearly that you ARE free.
Lead in for p. 61 (after insert)
The preceding sections were inserted because of the necessity of distinguishing between real and false knowledge. Having made this distinction, it is well to return to the errors already listed a while back. It might be well to recapitulate them here. The first involved the fallacy that only the physical is real. The second involved things rather than people. The third involves the endowment of the physical with non-physical properties. And the fourth clarified the misuse of knowledge. All of them were subsumed under possession fallacies. The denial mechanism for three has already been set forth in some detail, and will also continue after the following:
(Retyped)
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.
The alcoholic is in a similar position, except that his hostility is more inward than outward directed.
Defenses aimed at protecting (or retaining) error are particularly hard to undo, because they introduce second-order misperceptions which obscure the underlying errors still further.
The pseudo-corrective mechanism of three is apt to be more varied because of the more inclusive nature of the error, which has already been mentioned. Some of the possibilities are listed below:
One aspect of the possession/possessed conflict can be raised to predominance. If this is attempted in connection with POSSESSING, it leads to the paranoid solution. The underlying component of "being possessed" is retained in the "persecution" fantasies, which are generally concomitants.
If "being possessed" is brought to ascendance, a state of some sort of possession by external forces results, but NOT with a major emphasis on attacking others. Attack BY others becomes the more obvious component. In the more virulent forms, there is a sense of being possessed by demons, and unless there is vacillation with a), a catatonic solution is more likely than a paranoid one.
The FOCUSED paranoid has become more rigid in his solution, and centers on ONE source of projection to escape from vacillation. (Aside: It should be noted that this type of paranoia is an upside down form of religion, because of its obvious attempt to unify into oneness.)
Both 1, 2, and 4 are more likely to produce neurotic rather than psychotic states, though this is by no means guaranteed. However, 3 is inherently more vulnerable to the psychotic correction, again because of the more fundamental level confusion which is involved.
It should be noted, however, that the greater fear which is induced by 3 can ITSELF reach psychotic proportions, thus forcing the individual closer and closer to a psychotic solution.
It is emphasized here that these differences have no effect at all on the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease. This is because of the miracle's inherent avoidance of within-error distinctions. Its SOLE concern is to distinguish between truth, on the one hand, and ALL kinds of error, on the other. This is why some miracles SEEM to be of greater magnitude than others. But remember the first point in this course, i.e., that there is no order of difficulty in miracles.
The emphasis on mental illness which is marked in these notes reflects the "UNDOING" aspect of the miracle. The "DOING" aspect is, of course, much more important. But a true miracle cannot occur on a false basis. Sometimes the undoing must precede it.
At other times, both can occur simultaneously, but you are not up to this at the moment.
Further, insights into mental illness can be misused, and lead to preoccupation with one's own symptoms. This is why this area is less constructive for most people than a course primarily devoted to mental health. However, some professions will find (some?) principles of mental illness constructive, especially those which are concerned with mental illness in others. This obviously includes psychologists.
The obvious correction for ALL types of the possession-fallacy is to redefine possession correctly. In the sense of "taking over," the concept does not exist at all in divine reality, which is the only level of reality where real existence is a meaningful term.
No one CAN be "taken over" unless he wills to be. However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance concept onto free will himself. This produces the obvious contradiction inherent in any formulation that associates free will with imprisonment. Even in very mild forms, this kind of association is risky, and may spread quite unexpectedly, particularly under external stress. This is because it can be internally controlled ONLY if EXTERNAL conditions are peaceful. This is not safe, because external conditions are produced by the thoughts of many, not all of whom are pure in heart as yet.
Why should you be at THEIR mercy? This issue is VERY closely related to the whole possession issue. You insist on thinking that people CAN possess you, if you believe that their thoughts (or the external environment) can affect you, regardless of WHAT they think. You are perfectly unaffected by ALL expressions of lack of love. These can be either from yourself and others, or from yourself to others, or from others to you. (I'm glad you passed that test. It was crucial. This is ref. to Helen Schucman reluctance to take dictations as given.)
Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles of correcting the external conditions, which proceed from lack of love in others.
Miracles are an industrial necessity. Industry depends on cooperation, and cooperation depends on miracles. (see page 8)
1 Miracles are cobwebs of iron. They unite human frailty to the strength of God. (see page 7)
(add for 21. Helen Schucman considered changing "iron" to "steel." Correction: No. Steel would NOT be a better word. Steel is very useful but it would have to be tempered by fire. Iron is the raw material. The point of miracles is that they replace fire, thus making it unnecessary.)
Miracles are natural expressions of total forgiveness. Through miracles, man accepts God's forgiveness by extending it to others. The second step is inherent in the first, because light cannot tolerate darkness. Light dispels darkness automatically, by definition.
EXPLANATORY INSTRUCTIONS: Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacy that darkness can hide. Man believes that what he cannot see does not exist, and his physical eyes cannot see in the dark. This is a very primitive solution, and has led to a denial of the spiritual eye, which always depends on light. Remember the Biblical injunction: "May I never forget that THINE eye is ever upon me, beholding the evil and the good."
There are two stages, one lower and one higher, which are involved in the escape from darkness: 1) the recognition that darkness CANNOT hide. This usually does entail fear.
2) The recognition that there is nothing you WANT to hide, even if you could. This brings escape from fear.
Corrections Re Pt. 21 cobwebs of iron. "This is upside down as stated. The part about 'uniting human frailty with the strength of God' is all right, but the explanation stops too soon. If iron is the 'raw material', cobwebs can't become the iron. That is only the way it seems, because cobwebs are associated with the frailty and iron with strength. If you look carefully at the phrasing, you will see it is reversed (one point already tells you that miracles reverse the physical or lower order laws.)
The raw material, or iron, is heavy but crude, and stands for the body, which is a crude creation. The cobweb concept is closer to how the body SHOULD be regarded, i.e., as an airy and temporary home, which can just be blown away with a slight breeze.
(21. 2) The point should read "A miracle reawakens the awareness that the spirit, and not the body, is the altar of Truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle."
(22a) A miracle rearranges the order of perception, and places the levels in their true perspective. This heals at all levels, because all sickness comes from confusing the levels.
(Tell Bill about the idea (which is still dim to Helen Schucman) that the reason is not that you (plural) distantiate, doubt, or cannot believe. It is more of a reaction formation against a pull which you both recognize is so intense that you are afraid that you will be uprooted. But remember that a cobweb is really stronger than the iron, if you see it properly. This fear is also why you couldn't get the point straight.)
By the way, it is not true that you are both 'JUST SCRIBES'. You might remember that the Scribes were very wise and holy men and are even sometimes spelled with a capital S. If you want to go further, you might change the meaning of 'just' from 'merely' to 'honest', a term used in the Bible in association with 'might' or 'strength.' Tell Bill you couldn't make that pun if the original phrasing had been singular. (Helen Schucman aside about liking the first about assumption failure more.) Answer: It was cuter, but this one MEANS more. The REAL reason you don't like it is because it refers to you in a VERY lofty position. This makes you nervous.)
Correction: And don't lose sight of the emphasis on cooperation, or the NOT SINGULAR. That point about "industrial necessity" should read "corporate", referring to the body of Christ which is a way of referring to the Church. But the Church of God is only the sum of the souls he created, which IS the corporate body of Christ. Correct to read: "A Miracle makes souls one in God," and leave in the next part about cooperation.
Further correction: "God" should read "Christ." The Father and the Son are not identical, but you CAN say "Like Father, LIKE Son."
(Remind Bill to get another notebook. I don't give up as easily as HE does. If I could get YOU to listen, which was a miracle in itself, I can get him to register. He should appreciate this more than anyone else, having had some trouble with this problem himself.)
"Lord heal me" is the only legitimate prayer. This also means "Lord atone for me," because the only thing man should pray for is forgiveness. He HAS everything else.
Now take this personally, and listen to Divine logic: If, when you have been forgiven, you have everything else, and
If you have been forgiven
Then you HAVE everything else.
This happens to be the simplest of all propositions.
IF P then Q
P
Therefore, Q
The real question is, is P true. If you will review the evidence, I think you will find this inescapable. I went on very personal record to this effect, and I am the only completely True Witness for God. You have every right to examine MY credentials - in fact, I urge you to do so. You haven't read the Bible in years.
Special Explanatory Note: As soon as you (H and B) have entered the second phase, you will be not only willing to enter into communion, but will also understand peace and joy. Your commitment is not yet total. That is why you still have more to learn than to teach. When your equilibrium stabilizes, you can teach AS MUCH as you learn. This will give you the proper sense of balance. Meanwhile, remember that NO EFFORT IS WASTED. Unless you remember this, you cannot avail yourself of MY efforts, which are limitless.
(Have a good day.) Since only eternity is real, why not use the illusion of time constructively? You might remember that "underneath are the Everlasting Arms."
BIBLICAL QUOTATION: "If you are ashamed of me before men, I will be ashamed of you before God," (Helen Schucman ? of misquote.) is interpreted as a threat ONLY as long you remain in the first step. (see bottom of p. 6 for steps.)
What it REALLY means is that if you are ashamed of me (or embarrassed by love), you will project and therefore make it impossible for me to reach you. Make every effort you can NOT to do this. I will help you as much as you will let me.
Miracles make time and tide wait for all men. They can heal the sick and raise the dead because man himself made both death and taxes, and can abolish both. Note: Tax also means "strain." (One definition for miracles is: "That which, or one who, is of surpassing excellence or merit.") (from Dictionary, third definition)
YOU are a miracle. God creates only "that which, or one who, is of surpassing excellence or merit." Man is capable of this kind of creation, too, being in the image and likeness of his own Creator. Anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the Creations of Light are real.
Miracles are a part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. This process works all the time and in all dimensions of time. (e.g. given of Helen Schucman report rewrite for Esther! Esther had hurt something you loved, by writing a report you regarded as very bad. You atoned for her by writing one in her name that was very good. Actually, it was not your responsibility professionally to do this, but because you DO love the Shield you recognized that in this case, you ARE your brother's keeper. While you did not cancel Esther's sin (later defined as "lack of love") you DID cancel out its EFFECTS.
Someday I want to tell Esther that not only is she forgiven but that the effects of all her sins are cancelled. This is what I have already told you. When I can tell her, she will be afraid for a long time, because she will remember many things, consciously or unconsciously, including the Shield report, a lack of love which you cancelled out in advance by a miracle of devotion.
I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin. My Atonement was for the canceling out of all sins (i.e., lack of love) which human beings could not otherwise correct. That is what the Biblical statement "underneath are the Everlasting Arms" means. (Helen Schucman explanation: This means that He will backstop whenever human miracles will not suffice for atonement purposes. However, it is perfectly clear that when a person can atone by miracles, both giver and receiver are atoning. It is better to atone this way because of the mutual benefits involved.)"Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these, my children" really ends with "you do it unto yourself and ME." The reason why YOU come before me is because I do not need miracles for my own Atonement, but I stand at the end in case YOU fail temporarily.
SPECIAL EXPLANATION: (In response to Helen Schucman request re possible corrections.) Change the word "sin" to "absence of love." Sin is a manmade word with threat connotations which he made up himself. No REAL threat is involved anywhere. Just because "nature abhors a vacuum," which is true enough, it does NOT follow that "a vacuum is filled with hellfire." Nothing is gained by frightening yourself, and it is very destructive. Miracles need freedom from fear. Part of their Atonement value involves just that. Note that the word "atone" really means "undo."
The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. (That is, to restore the awareness. Later clarification.) You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did.
Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO."
This means Listen to My Voice, Learn to undo the error, and DO something to correct it.
The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers.
The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose.
24 A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. Explanation: You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me.
(ASIDE. Tell B that that is what Professor really means. As an Assoc. Prof., he must become associated with My strength. As an Asst. Prof., you must assist both him and Me. The Children need both strength and help. You cannot help until you are strong. The Everlasting Arms are your strength, and the Wisdom of God is your help.)
"Heaven and Earth shall pass away" means that they will not always exist as separate states. My Word, which is the Resurrection and the Light, shall not pass away, because Life is Eternal. YOU are the work of God, and His Work is wholly loveable and wholly loving. This is how a man MUST think of himself in his heart, because this is what he IS.
Add: "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
Remember the point about Miracles as a means of organizing different levels of consciousness. Miracles come from the (below conscious) (subconscious) level. Revelations come from the above conscious level. The conscious level is in between and reacts to either sub- or super-conscious impulses in varying ratios. Freud was right about the classification, but not the names. He was also right that the content of consciousness is fleeting. Consciousness is the level which engages in the world, and is capable of responding to both external and internal impulses. Having no impulses from itself, and being primarily a mechanism for inducing response, it can be very wrong.
For example, if the identification is with the body, consciousness may distort superconscious impulses by denying their Source, and seeking their impact in the orgasm. This is the result of the "mistaken identity" confusion.
If you will look back at the description of the EFFECTS of Revelation you will see that there ARE some similarities in the experiential results but hardly in the content.
(This and preceding paragraph go later)
Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls, before the intrusion of fire and ice made this impossible. It should be noted that they involve an extremely personal sense of closeness to Creation, which man tries to find in sexual relationships. This confusion is responsible for the depression and fear which are often associated with sex.
Sex is often associated with lack of love, but Revelation is PURELY a love experience. Physical closeness CANNOT achieve this. As was said before, the subconscious impulses properly induce Miracles, which ARE interpersonal, and result in closeness to others. This can be misunderstood by a personally willful consciousness as an impulse toward sexual gratification.
The Revelation unites Souls directly with God.
The Miracle unites Souls directly with each other. Neither emanates from consciousness, but both are EXPERIENCED there. This is essential, because consciousness is the state which PRODUCES action, though it DOES NOT Inspire it.
Man is free to believe what he chooses. What he DOES attests to what he believes.
The deeper levels of his subconscious always contain the impulse to Miracles, but he is free to fill its superficial levels, which are closer to consciousness, with the impulses of this world and to identify himself with them. This results in denying himself access to the miracle level underneath. In conscious actions, then, his interpersonal relationships also become superficial, and miracle-inspired relating becomes impossible.
Miracles are a way of EARNING release from fear.
Revelation induces a state in which fear has ALREADY BEEN abolished. Miracles are thus a means, and Revelations are an end. In this sense, they work together.
(Tell Bill that miracles DO NOT depend on Revelation. They INDUCE it. He is quite capable of miracles already, but he is still too fearful for Revelations.)
Note that YOUR (Helen Schucman) Revelation occurred specifically after you had engaged at the visionary level in a process of DENYING fear.
Revelation is intensely personal, and is actually not translatable into conscious content at all. That is why any attempt to describe it in words is usually incomprehensible, even to the writer himself at another time. This is why the Book of Revelations is essentially incomprehensible. Revelation induces ONLY experience. Miracles, on the other hand, induce interpersonal ACTION. In the end, these are more useful, because of their IMPERSONAL nature.
In this phase of learning, working miracles is more valuable because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you. The experience cannot last.
(Tell Bill that your propensity for Revelations, which is very great, is the result of a high level of past communion. Its transitory nature comes from the descent into fear, which has not yet been overcome. His own "suspended" state mitigates both extremes. This has been very apparent in the course of both of your recent developmental patterns.)
Miracles are the essential course of ACTION for both of you. They will strengthen him and stabilize you.
(NOTE that the much more personal than usual notes you are taking today reflect the Revelatory experience. This does NOT produce the more generalizeable quality which this course is aimed at. They may, nevertheless, be of great help to Bill personally, since you asked for something that WOULD help him personally. It depends on how he listens, and how well he understands the COOPERATIVE nature of your joint experience. You can help only by reading this note FIRST. Ask him later if this should be included in the written part of the course at all or whether you should keep these notes separately. He is in charge of these decisions.)
(Tell Bill he should try to understand the VERY important difference between Christ-control and Christ-guidance. This is what made him fearful yesterday.)