IA´s Journal

[IA56]

I will in this journal write about my thoughts and feelings, in try to sort my mind out.

Last night in my Dream state I was given an overwiew what did stroke a core in me to start this journal.
It is a feeling to share and maybe get others view and thoughts to share also.

What all has Always bean for me is onesess vs duality...I call duality a Dream state...and onesess the reality the only reality there is.

In duality is all fighting and all hindrands to develop in spirituality and to be frightened NOT to Wake up, to keep us in the Wheel of Death and birth....

Spirituality is not an Religion even many have made it to one, but the real Spirituality is to free and to Live from real LOVE...The real Spirituality is LOVE.

Love
ia

[IA56]

I have to admit that Gary R Renards book´s have given me new energy and spark to feel energetic again. As I have noticed both Buddha and Jesus energy is the same...and I do not mean the religion but the field so to speak, the feeling in energy you connect to both what they where talking about and giving the teachings for everyone to get in touch with by them self´s...and no need for any religion leaders so to speak...or guru´s for that matter.

I did come in touch with this as a Child already but did not know what to call it, it was very familar to me and gave me the right hope I did need in my childhood to cope and survive...and I was so happy in 4th grade in school when got to hear more about Jesus but I did very soon notice that the school teachings and the real energy was not syncronised so to speak...but I was happy to hear and that it was noticed and meansoned in book´s...and much later when I was Reading the 8 fold path by Buddha that the energy of Buddhan was the same as Jesus and everyone was able to connect to that field...I was already in heaven :-)

I did hear about A Cours of Miracles in 1998 for the first time...( a friend did show the book to me, I do not have any Contact to that women anymore) and I did try to read it but it did not give me anything more new so to speak what I already had....but now by Gary´s book´s to hear that the whole cours is about working with forgivness and for every round it will deepen and giving more profound and clearing up how to live the course so to speak...and it is here I feel what I did already get to hear in 2003 when I was told by people that I do not have to forgive anyone...just say go to h....and I asked Crying if he was right about that forgivness does not matter...and the answere was...you have to forgive the whole way to eternity...just as I had knewn all my Life...but it is not that easy when bad things happen ...it is much easier to hate than to love...and to condemn than forgive...real forgivness is what matters and do free and make the ego undone.

I have lived now in 8 years in bad Health and low income...so I was so happy when my chÃ♥ldhood friend did tell me that she have the book A cours in miracles for years in English and she does not get to work or read it at all...so she said I can have her book...wow...I am so happy because I do not have the Money to buy it for my self....so next week I can start to work for real and live the forgivness what will lead me home :-)

I all ready do feel that it will not be easy but that is the final help what I need to live my own devoir of LOVE as I feel that LOVE is what is what matters and is the only what will be left when all other illusions fade away...eventually...but LOVE will last and is the real reality there ever is :-)

So bear with me...ego does belong to the body and is what Always will be in duality as bodies too...and that is not what we are in our essence and energy...we are eternal.

We are not our bodies.

Love
ia

[IA56]

The book has arrived :-)
I am both amazed and very very surprised over the workbook for students and the dayly lessons to work with...to do the exercise but they should not become ritualistic...this is my cup of tea :-)
Each of the first three lessons should not be done more than twice a day, preferably morning and evening. Nor should they be attempted for more than a minut or so, unless that entails a sense of hurry. A comfortable sense of leisure is essential.

The text did make me so happy and bring trears in my Eyes of joy and happiness.
I am trying to pick something to write here but every Word is so talkative but I choose this to chare with you:

"Revelation is not reciprocal. It proceeds from God to you, but not from you to God"...

When I read this I got a revelation about that the only thing I can do is to make me open for the Contact for be able to "feel" the Connection....it is the only thing I can do,...make me open and willing...

"The miracle substitutes for Learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does so by underlying recognition of perfect equality of giver and receiver on which the miracle rests. The miracle shortens time by collapsing it, thus eliminating certain intervals within it. It does this, however, within the larger temporal sequence".

Love
ia

[eyeoneblack]

"Revelation is not reciprocal. It proceeds from God to you, but not from you to God"...

I totally disagree.

[IA56]

I totally disagree.

Okay :-)
Can you elaborate why you disagree??

Love
ia

[IA56]

Peace is an attribute in you. You cannot find it outside.
Illness is some form of external serching.
Health is inner Peace.
It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without and capable, through your acceptance of miracles, of correcting the condition proceeding from lack of love in others.

Love
ia

[IA56]

Revelation is intensely personal and cannot be meaningfully translated.
That is why any attempt to describe it in Words is impossible.
Revelation induces only experience.
Miracles, on the other hand, induces action.
They are more useful now because of their impersonal nature.
In this phase of Learning, working miracles is important because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you.
Revelation is literally unspeakable because it is an experience of unspeakable love.

Love
ia

[IA56]

Atonement undoes all errors in this respect, and thus uproots the source of fear.
Whenever you experience God´s reassurance as threat, it is Always because you are defending misplaced or misdirected loyalty.
When you Project this to others you imprison them, but only to the extent to which you reinforce errors they have already made.

Spirit is in a state of grace forever.
Your reality is only spirit.
Therefore you are in a state of grace forever.

Love
ia

[IA56]

It is truly a Deep blessing to work with this book A Cours in Miracles, a deeper Peace has come into me, and I feel such a joy in my whole existence.
I have for a long time longed after a book where I can underline and really meditate over the written word´s and now at last I have found my book, thank you from my whole heart.



"The escape from darkness involves two stages: First, the recognition that darkness cannot hide.
This step usually entails fear.
Second, the recognition that there is nothing you want to hide even if you could.
This step brings escape from fear.
When you have become willing to hide nothing, you will not only be willing to enter into Communication but will also understand Peace and joy.
Reality belongs only to spirit, and the miracle acknowledges only truth".

Love
ia

[IA56]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-nbPOvkS88#t=102


Love
ia

[IA56]

You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive correctly.
Since you and your neighbor are equal members of one family, as you perceive both so you will do to both.
You should look out from the perception of your own holiness to the holiness of others.
Miracle arise from a mind that is ready for them.
By being United this mind goes out to everyone, even without the awarness of the miracle worker himself.
The impersonal nature of miracles is because the Atonement itself is one, uniting all Creations with its Creator.
As an expression of what you truly are, the miracle places the mind in a state of grace.
The mind then naturally welcomes the Host within and the stranger without.
When you bring in a stranger, he becomes your brother.
That the miracle may have effect on your Brothers that you may not recognize is not your concern.
The miracle will Always bless you.
Miracles you are not asked 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 controlled by me (Jesus or Buddha or holy ghost) because of my complete awareness of the whole plan.
The impersonal nature of miracle-mindedness ensures your grace, but only I (every I in this book is about Jesus or the field because I do Believe we need a mediator Before we can reach the field).. am in position to know where they can be bestowed.
Miracles are selective only in the sence that they are directed towards those who can use them for themselves.
Since this makes it inevitable that they will extend them to others, a stong chain of Atonement is welded.
However, this selectivity takes no account of the magnitude of the miracle itself, because the consept of size exists on a plan that is itself unreal. Since the miracle aims at restoring the awareness of reality, it would not be useful if it where bound by laws that govern the error it aims to correct.

Love
ia

[IA56]

The mind that serves spirit is invulnerable.
Darkness is lack of light and sin is lack of love. It has no unique properties of its own.
It is an example of the "scarcity" belief, from which only error can proceed. Truth is always abundant.
Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no needs of any kind.
The purpose of the Atonament is to restore everything to you; or rather, to restore it to your awareness.
You where given everything when you where created, just as everyone was.
The emptiness engendered by fear must be replaced by forgivness.
That is what the Bible means by "There is not death", and why I could demostrate that death does not exist.
I came to fulfill the law by reinterpreting it. The law itself, if properly understood, offers only protection.
It is those who have not yet changed their minds who brought the "hell-fire" concept into it.
I assure you that I will witness for anyone who lets me, and to whatever extent he permits it.
Your witnessing demostrates your belief, and thus strengthens it.
Those who witness for me are expressing, through their miracles, that they have abondoned the belief in deprivation in favor of the abudance they have learned belongs to them.
The miracle is much like the body in that both are learning aids for facilitating a state in which they become unnecessary.
When sprit´s original state of direct communication is reached, neither the body nor the miracle seves any purpose.
While you believe you are in a body, however, you can choose between loveless and miraculous channels of expression.
You can wait, delay, paralyze yourself, or reduce your creativity almost to nothing.
But you cannot abolish it.
You can destroy your medium of communication, but not your potential.
You did not create yourself.

Love
ia

[IA56]

You who want peace can find it only by compleate forgivness.
No learning is acquired by anyone unless he wants to learn it and believes in some way that he needs it.
While lack does not exist in the creation of God, it is very apparant in what you have made.
It is, in fact, the essential difference between them.
Lack implies that you would be better off in a state somehow different from the one you are in.
Until the "separation", which is the meaning of the "fall", nothing was lacking.
There was no needs at all.
Needs arise only when you deprive yourself.
You act according to the particular order of needs you establish.
This, in turn, depends on your perception of what you are.
A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct.
This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your persception of truth, and have thus perceived yourself as lacking
This idea of order of needs arose because, having made this fundamental error, you have already fragmented yourself into levels with different needs.
As you intergrate you become one, and your needs become one accordingly.
Unified needs lead to unified action, because this produces a lack of conflict.
The idea of orders of need, which follows from the original error that one can be separated from God, requires correction at its own level before the error of perceiving level at all can be corrected.
You cannot behave effectivly while you function on different levels.
However, while you do, correction must be introduced vertically from the bottom up.
This is because you think you live in space, where concepts such as "up" and "down" are meningful.
Ultimately, space is meaningless as time.
Both are merelly beliefs.
The real purpose if this world is to use it to correct your unbeliefs.
You can never control the effects of fear yourself, because you made fear, and you believe in what you made.
In attitude, then, though not in content, you resemble your Creator, Who has perfect faith in His creations because He created them.
Belief produces the acceptance of existence.
That is why you can believe what no one els thinks is true. It is true for you because it was made by you.
All aspect of fear are untrue because they do not exist at the creative level, and therefore fo not exist at all.
To whatever estent you are willing to submit your beliefs to this test, to that extent are your perceptions corrected.
In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds along these lines:

Perfect love casts out fear.
If fear exists,
Then there is not perfect love.

But,

Only perfect love exists,
If ther is fear,
It produces a state that does not exist.

Believe this and you will be free. Only God can establish this solution, and this faith is His gift.

Love
ia

[IA56]

I was doing the lesson 8 and it was to be done with closed eyes...I do not write the whole text but a part of it here so you will maybe understand when I then in the end tell you how my exercise went...the text say....

"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".

Without knowing I have bean doing this exercise for very many years without knowing or being aware of what it´s purpose has bean...I have called it ...sitting in silence and watching...and yes the field I have watched has bean blank...and if a vision has arised it has bean eigder a symbol or if I try to locate something...Now this exercise did bring a new allertness in me...and I did noticee to my right the allert part in me being really allert...like this part I could see like a goal keeper looking out into the blank field and waiting something to arise..so it will not miss it...I burst into laugh because it was so hilarious...I have to assume that this allert part is me too...but yet to understand what part...if it is something duality or if it is the onesess part of me...interesting.

More from the book:

Your distorted perceptions produce a dense cover over miracle impulses, making it hard for them to reach your own awareness.
The confusion of miracle impulses with physical impulses is a major perceptual distortion.
Physical impulses are misdirected miracle impulses.
All real pleasure comes from doing God´s Will.
This is because not doing it is a denial of Self.
Denial of Self results in illusions, while correction of the error brings release from it.
Do not deceive yourself into believing that you can relate in peace to God or to your brothers with anything external.
Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful and the holy.
Do not forget this. The Love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another, because vision is still so dim.
You can use your body best to help you enlarge your perception so you can achieve real vision, of which the physical eye is incapable. Learning to do this is the body´s only true usefulness.
Fantasy is a distorted form of vision. Fantasies of any kind are distortions, because they always involve twisting perception into unreality.
Actions that stem from distortions are literally the reactions of those who know not what they do.

Love
ia

[IA56]

This is a course in mind training. All learning involves attention and study at some level.
Some of the later parts of the course rest too heavily on these earlier sections not to require their careful study.
You will also need them for preparation.
Without this, you may become much too fearful of what is to come to make constructive use of it.
However, as you study these earlier sections, you will begin to see some of the implications that will be amplified later on.
A solid foundation is necessary because of the confusion between fear and awe to which I have already referred, and which is often made. I have said that awe is inappropriate in connection with the Son of God, because you should not experience awe in the presence of your equals.
However, it was also emphasized that awe is proper in the presence of your Creator.
I have bean careful to clarifye my role in the Atonament without either over or understanding it.
I am also trying to do the same with yours. I have stressed that awe is not an appropriate reaction to me becase of our inherent equality. Some of the later steps in this course, however, involve a more direct approach to God Himself. It would be unwise to start on these steps without careful preparation, or awe will be confused with fear, and the experience will be more traumatic than beatific. Healing is of God in the end.
The means are being carefully explained to you.
Revelation may occasionally reveal the end to you, but to reach it the means are needed.

Love
ia

[IA56]

You have not only bean fully created, but have also bean created perfect.
There is no emptiness in you.
Because of your likeness to your Creator you are creative.
No child of God can lose this ability because it is inherent in what he is, but he can use it inappropriately by projecting.
The inappropriate use of extention, or projection, occurs when you believe that some emptiness or lack exists in you, and that you can fill it with your own ideas instead of truth.
This process involves the following steps.

*First, you believe that what God created can be changed by your own mind.
*Second, you believe that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect or lacking.
*Third, you believe that you can distort the creations of God, including yourself.
*Fourth, you believe that you can create yourself, and that the direction of your own creation is up to you.

These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occured in the separation of the "detour into fear".
None of this existed before the separation, nor does it actually exist now.
It´s real sourse is internal
This world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth.
Such a rebirth is impossible as long as you continue to project or miscreate.
It still remains within you, however, to extend as God extended His Spirit to you.
In reality this is your only choice, because your free will was given you for your joy in creating the perfect.
All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic mispercetioin that you have the abillity to usurp the power of God.
Of course, you neither can nor have bean able to do this.
Here is the real basis for your escape from fear.
The escape is brought about by your acceptance of the Atonament, which enables you to realize that your errors never really occured.

Love
ia

[IA56]

You can defend truth as well as error.
The means are easier to understand after the value of the goal is firmly established.
It is a question of what it is for .
Everyone defends his treasure, and will so do automatically.
The real question are, what do you treasure? and how much do you treasure it?
Once you have learned to consider these questions and bring them into all your actions, you will have little difficulty in clarifyint the means. The means are available whenevery you ask.
You can, however, save time if you do not protract this step unduly,
The correct focus will shorten it immeaurably.
The Atonament is the only defense that cannot be used destructively because it is not a device you made.
The Atonament principle was in effect long before the Atonament began.
The principle was love and the Atonament was an act of love.
Acts were not necessary before the separation, because belief in space and time did not exists.
It was only after the separation that the Atonament and the conditions necessary for its fullfillment were planned.
Then a defense so splendid was needed that it could not be misused, although it could be refused.
Refusal could not, however, turn it into a weapon of attack, which is the inherent characteristic of other defenses.
The Atonoment thus becomes the only defense that is not a two-edged sword.It can only heal.
The Atonament was built into the space-time belief to set a limit on the need for the belief itself, and ultimately to make,
learning complete.
The Atonament is the final lesson.
Learning itself, like the classroom in which it occurs, is temporary. The ability to learn has no value when change is no longer nessessary.
The eternally creative have nothing to learn.
You can learn to improve your perceptions, and can become a better and better learner.
This will bring you into closer and closer acccord with the Sonship; but the Sonship itself is a perfect Creation and perfection is not a matter of degree. Only while there is a belief in differences is learning meaningful.
Evolution is a process in which you seem to proceed from one degree to the next.
You correct your previous missteps by stepping forward.
This process is actually incomprehensible in temporal terms, because you return as you go forward.
The Atonament is the device by which you can free yourself from the past as you go ahead.
It undoes your past errors, thus making it unnecessary for you to keep retracing your steps without advancing to your return.
In this sense the Atonament saves time, but like the miracle it serves, does not abolish it-
As long as there is need for Atonament, there is need for time. But the Atonament as a completed plan has a unique relationship to time. Until the Atonament is complete its various phases will proceed in time, but the whole Atonament stands at time´s end.
At that point the bridge of return has been built.
The Atonament is a total commitment.
You may still think this is associated with loss, a mistake all the separated Sons of God make in one way or another.
It is hard to believe a defense that cannot attack is the best defense.
This is what is meant by "the meek shall inherit the earth".
They will literally take it over because of their strength.
A two-way defense is inherently weak precisely because it has two edges, and can be turned against you very unexpectedly.
This possibility cannot be controlled exept by miracles.
The miracle turns the defense of Atonament to your real protection, and as you become more and more secure you assume your natural talent of protecting others, knowing yourself as both a borther and a Son.

Love

[IA56]

The Atonament can be accepted within you only by the releasing of the inner light.
Since the separation, defenses have been used almost entirely to defend against the Atonament, and thus maintain the separation.
This is generally seen as a need to protect the body.
The many body fantasies in which minds engage arise from the distorted belief that the body can be used as a means for attaining "atonament".
Perceiving the body as a temple is only the first step in correcting this distortion, because it alters only part of it.
It does recognize that Atonament in physical terms is impossible.
The next step, however, is to realize that a temple is not a structure at all.
Its true holiness lies at the inner altar around which the structure is built.
The emphasis on beautiful structures is a sigh of the fear of Atonament, and an unwillingness to reach the alter itself.
The real beauty of the temple cannot be seen with the physical eye.
Spiritual sigh, on the other hand, cannot see the structure at all because it is perfect vision.
It can, however, see the altar with perfect clarity.
For perfect effectivness the Atonament belongs at the center of the inner altar, when it undoes the separation and restores the wholeness of the mind. Before the separation the mind was invulnerable to fear because fear did not exist.
Both The separation and the fear are miscrations that must be undone for the resoration of the temple, and for the opening of the altar to receive the Atonament.
This heals the separation by placing within you the one effective defence againist all separation thoughts and making you perfectly invulnerable.
The acceptancee of the Atonament by everyone is only a matter of time.
This may appear to contradict free will because of the inevitablility of the final decisision, but this is not so.
You can temporize and you are capable of enormous procrastination, but you cannot depart entirely from you Creator, Who set the limits of your ability to miscreate.
An imprisoned will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable.
Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit.
Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way.
As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning-point.
This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously weakiening the investment in physical sight.
The alternating investment in the two levels of perfection is usually experienced as conflict, which can become very acute.
But the outcome is as certain as God.
Spiritual vision literally cannot see error, and merely looks for Atonament.
All solutions the physical eye seeks dissolve.
Spiritual vision looks within and 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.
This re-establishes the power of the mind and makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay, realizing that it only adds unnecessary pain.
As a result, the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it wwould once have regarded as very minor intursions of discomfort
The children of God are entitled to the perfect comfort that comes from perfect trust.
Until they achive this, they wast ehemselves and theri true creative powers on useless attemts to make themselves more comfortble by inappropriate means.
But the real mean are already provided, and do not involve any effort at all on their part.
The Atonament is the only gift that is worthy of being offered at the alter of God, because of the value of the altar itself.
It was created perfect and is entirely worthy of receiving perfection.
God and his creation are completely dependent on each other.
He depends on them because He created them perfect.
He gave them His peace so they could not be shaken and could not be deceived.
Whenever you are afraid you are deceived, and your mind cannot serve the Holy Spirit.
This starves you by denying you your daily bread.
God is lonely without His Sons, and tey are lonely without Him.
They must learn to look upon the world as a means of healing the separation.
The Atonament is the guarantee that they will ultimately succeed.

Love

[IA56]

Our emphasis is now on healing.
The Miracle is the means, the Atonament is the principle, and healing is the result.
To speak of "a miracle of healing" is to combine two orders of reality inappropriately.
Healing is not a miracle.
The Atonament, or the final miracle, is a remedy and any type of healing is a result.
The kind of error to which Atonament is applied is irrelevant.
All healing is essentially the release from fear.
To undertake this you cannot be fearful yourself.
You do not understand healing because of your own fear.
A major step in the Atonament plan is to undo error at all levels.
Sickness or "not-right-mindedness" is the result of level confusion, because it always entails the belief that what is amiss on one level can adversely affect another.
We have feferred to miracles as the means of correcting level confusion, for all mistakes must be corrected at the level on which they occur.
Only the mind is capable of error.
The body can act wrongly only when it is responding to misthought.
The body cannot create, and the belierf that it can, a fundamental error, produses all physical symptoms.
Physical illness represents a belief in magic.
The whole distortion that made magic rest on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter which the mind cannot control.
The error can take two forms; it can be believed that the mind can miscreate in the body, or that the body can miscreate in the mind.
When it is understood that the mind, the only level of creation, and the body is a learning device of the mind.
Learning devices are not lessons in themselves.
Their purpouse is merely to facilitate learning.
The worst a faulty use of a learning device can do is to fail to facilitate learning.
It has no power in itself to introduce actual learning errors.
The body, if properly understood, shares the invulnerability of the Atonament 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 part of your experience in the physical world,.
Its abillity can be and frequently are overvaluated.
However, it is allmost impossible to deny its existence unworthy form of denial.
The term "unworthy" here implies only that it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the unmindful.
If one denies the undortunate aspect of the mind´s power, one is also denying the power itself.
All material means that you accept as remedies for bodily ills are restatement of magic principles.
This is the first step in believing that the body makes its own illness.
It is a second misstep to heal it through non-creative agents.
It does not follow, however, that the use of such agents for cerrective purposes is evil.
Sometimes the illness has a sufficiently strong hold over the mind to render a person temporarily inaccessible to the Atonament.
In this case it may be wise to utilize a compromise approach to mind and body, in which from outside is temporarily give healing belief.
This is because the last thing that can help the non-right-minded, or the sick, is an increasing in fear.
They are already in a fear-weakened state.
If they are prematurely exposed to a miracle, they can be precipitated into panic.
This is likely to occur when upside-down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening.
The value of the Atonament does not lie in the manner in which it is expressed.
In fact, if it is used truly, it will inevitably be expressed in whatever way is most helpful to the receiver.
This means that a miracle, to attain its full efficacy, must be expressed in a language that the recipient can understand without fear.
This does not necessarily mean that this is the highest lever of communication of which he is capable.
It does mean, however, 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 lower it by increasing fear.

Love

[IA56]

Before miracle workers are ready to undertake their function in this world, it is essential that they understand the fear of release.
Otherwise they may unwittingly foster the belief that release is imprisonment, a belief that is already very prevalent.
This mispersecption arises in turn from the belief that harm can be limited to the body.
That is because of the underlying fear that the mind can hurt itself.
Non of there errors is meaningful, because the miscreations of the mind do not really exist.
This recognition is a far better protective device than any form of level confusion, because it introduces correction at the leve of the error.
It is essential to remember that only the mind can create, and that correction belongs at the thought level.
To amplify an earlier statement, spirit is already perfect and therefore does not require correction.
The body does not exist execpt as a learning device for the mind.
This learning device is not subject to errors of its own, because it cannot create.
It is obvious, then, that inducing the mind to give up its miscreations is to only application of creative ability that is truly meaningful.
Magic is the mindless of the miscreative use of mind.
Physical medications are forms of "spells" but if you are afraid to use the mind to heal, you should not attemt to do so.
The very fact that you are afraid makes your mind vulnerable to miscreation.
You are therefore likely to misunderstand any healing that might occur, and because egocentricity and fear usually occur together, you may be unable to accept the real Source of the healing.
Under these conditions, because you cannot misperceive them as your own crations. As long as your sense of vulnerability persists, you should not attempt to perform miracles.
I have already said that miracles are expressions of miracle mindedness, and miracle-mindedness means right-mindedness.
The right-mindedness neither exalt nor depreciate the mind of the miracle worker or the miracle receiver.
However, as a correction, the miracle need not await the right-mindedness of the receiver.
In fact, its purpose is to restore him to his right mind, however briefly, or he will be unable to re.establish right-mindedness in someone els.
The healer who relies on his own readiness is endangering his understanding.
You are perfectly safe as long as you are completely unconcerned about rediness, but maintain a consistens trust in mine.
If your miracle working inclinations are not functioning properly, it is always because fear has intruded on your right-mindedness and has turned it upside down.
All forms of not-right-mindedness are the result of refusal to accept the Atonement for yourself.
If you do accept it, you are in a position to recognize that those who need healing are simply those who have not realized that right-mindedness is healing.
The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself.
This means you recognize that mind is the only crative level, and that its errors are healed by the Atonement.
Once you accept this, your mind can only heal.
Be denying your mind any destructive potential and reinstating its purely constructive powers, you place yourself in a position to undo the level confusion of others-
The message you then give to them is the truth that their minds are similarly constructive, and their miscreations cannot hurt them.
By affirming this you release the mind from overvaluating its own learning device, and restore the mind to its true position as the learner.
It should be emphasized again that the body does not learn any more than it creates.
As a lerarning device it merely follows the learner, but if it is falsely endowed with self-initiative, it becomes a serious obsgtruction to the very learning it should facilitate.
Only the mind is capable of illumination.
Spirit is already illuminated and the body in itself is too dense.
The mind, however, can bring its illumination to the body by recognizing that it is not the learner, and is therefore unamenable to learning.
The body is, however, easily brought into alignment with a mind that has learned to look beyond it toward the light.
Corrective learning always begins with the awakening of spirit, and the turning away from the belief in physical sight.
This often entails fear, becasuse you are afraid of what your spiritual sight will show you.
I said before that the Holy Spirit cannot see error, and iss capable only of looking beyond it to the defense of Atonement.
There is no doubt that this may produce discomfort, yet the discomfort is permitted to look upon the defilemnt of the altar, He also looks immediately toward the Atonement.
Nothing He perceives can induce fear.
Everything that results from spiritual awareness is merely channelized towards correction.
Discomfort is aroused only to bring the need for correction into awareness.
The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept unequvocally that healing is necessary.
What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can error be corrected by any device that can be seen physically.
As long as you believe in what your physical sight tells you, your attemts at correction will be misdirected.
The real vision is obscured, because you cannot endure to see your own defiled altar.
But since the altar has been defiled, your state becomes doubly dangerous unless it is perceived.
Healing is an ability that developed after the separation, before which it was unnecessary.
Like all aspects of the belief in space and time, it is temporary.
However, as long as time persists, healing is needed as a means of protection.
This is because healing rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving the perfection of another even if you cannot perceive it in yourself.
Most of the loftier concepts of which you are capable now are time-dependent.
Charity is really a weaker reflection of a much more powerful love-encompassment that is far beyond any form of charity you can conceive of as yet.
Charity is essential to right-mindedness in the limited sense in which it can now be attained.
Charity is a way of looking at another as if he had already gone far beyond his actual accomplishments in time.
Since his own thinking is faulty he cannot see the Atonement for himself, or he would have no need of charity.
The charity that is accorded him is both an acknowledgment that he needs help, and a recognition that he will accept it.
Both of there perceptions clearly imply their dependence on time, making it apparent that charity still lies within the limitations of this world.
I said before that only revelation transcends time.
The miracle, as an expression of charity, can only shorten it.
I must be understood, however, that whenever you offer a miracle to another, you are shortening the suffering of both of you.
This corrects retroactively as well as progressively.

Love

[IA56]

Special Principles for Miracle Workers.

1. The miracle abolishes the need for lower-order concerns. Since it is an out-of-pattern time interval, the ordinary considerations of time and space do not apply. When you perform a miracle, I will arrange both time and space to adjust to it.

2. A clear distinction between what is created and what is made is essential. All forms of healing rest on this fundamental correction in level perception.

3. Never confuse right- and wrong-mindedness. Responding to any form of error with anything except a desire to heal is an expression of this confusion.

4. The miracle is always a denial of this error and an affirmation of the truth. Only right-mindedness can correct in a way that has any real effect. Pragmatically, what has no real effect has no existence. Its effect, then, is emptiness. Being without substantial content, it lends itself to projection.

5. The level-adjustment power of the miracle induces the right perception for healing. Until this has occured healing cannot be understood. Forgiveness is an empty gesture unless it entails correction. Without this it is essentially judgmental, rather than healing.

6. Miracle-minded forgineness is only correction. It has no element of judgment at all. The statement "Father forgive them for they know not what they do" in no way evaluates what they do. It is an appeal to God to heal their minds. There is no reference to the outcome of the error. That does not matter.

7. The injunction "Be of one mind" is the statement for revelation-rediness. My request "Do this in remembrance of me" is the appeal for cooperation from miracle workers. The two statements are not in the same order of reality. Only the latter involves an awareness of time, since to remember is to recall the past in the present. Time is under my direction, but timelessness belongs to God. In time we exist for and with each other. In timelessness we coexist with God.

8. You can do much on behalf of your own healing and that of other if, in a situation calling for help, you think of it this way:

I am here only to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Him Who sent me.
I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do,
because He Who sent me will direct me.
I am content to be wherever He wishes,
knowing He goes there with me.
I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal.

Love

[IA56]

I want to share this lesson 16

"I have no neutral thoughts"

The idea for today is a beginning step in dispelling the belief that your thoughts have no effect.
Everything ou 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 ture or false.
Those that are true create their own likeness. Those that are false mkie theirs.
There is no more self-constradictory concept than that of "idle thoughts". We give 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.
Besides your recognizing that thoughts are never idle, salvation requires that you also 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 practice this idea in many forms before you really understand it.
In applying the idea for today, serch your mind for a minute or so with eyes closed, and actively seek not to overlook any "little" thoughts that may tend to elude the serch. This is quite difficult until you get used to it.
You will find that it is still hard for you to make artificial distinctions. Every thought that occurs to you, regardless of the qualities that you assign to it, is a suitable subject for applying today´s idea.
In this practice periods, first repeat the idea to yourself, and then as each one crosses your mind hold it in awareness while you tell yourself.

"This thought about---------is not a neutral thought"

As usual, use today´s idea whenever you are aware of a particular thought that arouses uneasiness. The following form is suggested for this purpose:

"This thought about----is not neutral thought, because I have no neutral thoughts"

For 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.

Love

[CFTraveler]

Nice.

[IA56]

Being afraid seems to be involuntary; something beyond your own control.
Yes I have said already that only constructive acts should be involuntary. My control can take over everything that does not matter, while my guidance can direct everything that does, if you so choose.
Fear cannot be controlled by me, but it can be self-controlled.
Fear prevents me from giving you my control.
The presence of fear shows that you have raised body thoughts to the level of the mind.
This removes them from my control, and makes you feel personally responsible for them.
This is an obvious confusion of levels.
I do not foster level confusion, but you must choose to correct it.
You would not excuse insane behavios on your part by saying you could not help it.
Why should you condone insane thinking? There is a confusion here that you would do well to look at clearly?
You may believe that you are sepsonsible for what you do, but not what you think.
The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice.
What you do comes from what you think.
You cannot separate yourself from the truth by "giving" autonomy to behavior.
This is controlled by me automatically as soon as you place what you think unde my guidance.
Whenever you are afraid, it is a sure sign that you have allowed your mind to miscreate and have not allowed me to guide it.
It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of misthought can reslut in healing.
When you are fearful, you have chosen wrongly.
That is why you feel responsible for it.
You must change your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of willingness.
You do not need guidance execpt at the mind level.
Correction belongs only at the level wher change is possible.
Change does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work.
The correction of fear is your responsibility.
When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about.
These conditions always entail a willingness to be separate.
At that level you can help it.
You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, and are passively condoning your mind´s miscreations.
The particular result does not matter, but the fundamental error does.
The correction is always the same.
Before you choose to do anything, ask me if your choice is in accord with mine.
If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear.
Fear is always a sign of strain, arising whenever what you want conflicts with what you do.
This situation arises in two ways: First, you can choose to do conflicting things, either simultaneously or successively.
This produces conflicted behavior, which is intolerable to you because the part of the mind that wants to do something els is outraged. Second, you can behave as you think you should, but without entirely wanting to do so.
This produces consistent behavior, but entails great strain.
In both cases, the mind and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in a situation in which you are doing what you do not wholly want to do. This arouses a sense of coercion that usually produces rage, and projection is likely to follow.
Whenever there is fear, it is because you have not made up your mind.
Your mind is therefore split, and your behavior inevetably becomes erratic.
Correction at the behavioral level can shift the error from the first to the second type, but will not oblitarete the fear.
It is possible to reach a state in which you bring your mind under my guidance without conscious effort but this imlies a willingness that you have not developed as yet.
The Holy Spirit cannot ask more than you are willing to do.
The strength to do comes from your undivided decision. There is no strain in doing God´s Will as soon as you recognize that it is also your own. The lesson here is quite simple, but paricularly likely to be overlooked.
I will therefore repeat it, urging you to listen.
Only your mind can produce fear.
It does so whenever it is conflicted in what it wants, producing inevitable strain only by accepting a unified goal.
The first correcitve step in undoing the error is to know first that the conflict is an exression of fear.Say to yourself that you must somehow have chosen not to love, or the fear could not have arisen.
Then the whole process of correction becomes nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps in the large process of accepting the Atonament as the remedy. These steps may be summarized in this way:

1. KNow first that 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 Atonament.

I have emphasized that the miracle, or the expression of Atonament, is always a sign of respect from the worthy to the worthy.
The recognition of 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.
You have done something loveless, having chosen without love.
This is precisely the situation for which the Atonement ws offered.
The need for the remedy inspired its establishment.
As long as you recognize only need for the remedy, you will remain fearful.
However, as soon as you accept the remedy, you have ablished the fear.
This is how true healing occurs.
Everyone experiences fear. Yet it would take very little right-thinking to realize why fear occurs.
Few appreciate the real power of the mind, and no one remains fully aware of it all the time.
However, if you hope to spare yourself from fear there are some things you must realize, and realize fully.
The mind is very powerful, and never loses its creative force.
It never sleeps.
Every instant it is creating.
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 arrogant, but that is not the real reason you do not belive it. You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them.
This may allay awareness of the guilt, but at the cost of perceiving the mind as impotent.
If you belive that what you think is ineffectual you may cease to be afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it.
There are no idle thoughts.
All thinking produces form at some level.

Love

[IA56]

You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful.
I have already indicated that you cannot ask me to release you from fear.
I know it does not exist, but you do not.
If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is.
I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking.
This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course.
It is much more helpful to reming you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully enough.
You may feel that at this point it would take a miracle to enable you to do this, which is perfectly true.
You are not used to miracle-minded thinking, but you can be trained to think that way. All miracle workers need that kind of training.
I cannot let you leave your mind unguarded, or you will not be able to help me.
Miracle working entails a full realization of the power of thought in order to avoid miscreation.
Otherwise a miracle will be necesary to set the mind itself straight, a circular process that would not foster the time collapse for which the miracle was intended.
The miracle worker must have genuine respect for true cause and effect as a necessary condition for the miracle to occur.
Both miracles and fear come from thoughts.
If you are not free to choosee one, you would also not be free to chosse the other.
By choosing the miracle you have rejected fear, if only temporarily.
You have been fearfful of everyone and everything.
You are afraid of God, and of me and of yourself.
You have misperceived or miscreated us, and believe in what you have made. You would not have done this if you were not afraid of your own thoughts.
The fearful must miscreate, because they misperceive creation.
When you miscreate you are in pain.
The cause and effect principle now becomes a real expediter, though only temporarily.
Actua, "Cause" is a term properly belonging to God and His "Effect" is His Son.
This entails a set of Cause and Effect relationships totally different from those you introduce into miscreation.
The fundamental conflict in this world, then, is between creation and miscreation.
All fear is implicit in the second, and all love in the first.
The conflict is therefore one between love and fear.
It has already been said that you believe you cannot control fear because you yourself made it, and your belief in it seems to render it out of your control.
Yet any attempt to reslove the error, through attempting the mastery of fear is useless.
In fact, it assers the power of fear by the very assumption that it need be mastered.
The true resolution rest entirely on mastery through love.
In the interim, however, the sense of conflict is inevitable, since you have placed yourself in a position where you believe in the power of what does not exist.
Nothing and everything cannot coexist.
To believe in one is to deny the other.
Fear is really nothing, and love is everything.
Whatever light enters darkness, the darkness is abolished.
What you believe is true for you.
In this sense the separeation has occured, and to deny it is merely to use denial inappropriately.
However, to concentrate on error is only a further error.
The initial corrective procedure is to recognize temporarily that there is a problem, but only as an indication that immediate correction is needed. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay.
It would be emphasized, however, that ultimately np compromise is possible between everything and nothing. Time is essentially a device by which all compromise in this respect can be given up.
It only seems to be abolished by degrees, because time itself involves intervals that do not exist.
Miscreation made this necessary as a corrective device.
The statement "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlsting life" needs only one slight correction to be meaningful in this context;
"He gave it to His only begotten son".
It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an intergral part of the whole Sonship.
The Sonship in its oneness transcends to sum of its parts.
However, this is obscured as long as any of its parts is missing.
That is why thee conflict cannot ultimately be resloved until all the parts of his Sonship have returned.
Only then can the meaning of wholeness in the true sense be understood.
Any part of the Sonship can believe in error of incompleatness if he so choose. However, if he does so, he is believing in the existence of nothingness-
The correction of this error is the Atonement.
I have already briefly spoken about readiness, but som additional points might be helpful here.
Rediness is only the prerequisite for accomlisshment.
The two should not be confused.
As soon as a steete of readiness occurs, there is unsually some degree of desire to accomplish, but it is by no means necessarily undivided.
The state does not imply more than a potential for a change of mind.
Confidence cannot develop fully until mastery has been accomplished.
We have already attempted to correct the fundamental error that fear can be mastered, and have emphasized that the only real mastery is through love.
Readiness is only the beginning of confidence.
You may think this implies that an enormous amount of time is necessary between readiness and mastery, but let me remind you that time and space are under my control.

Love

[IA56]

OMG!!!

I did just now notice this text in the book.

No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the publisher,
exept for the quatation of brief passages in critiscism.

I do not know more than that I from now on do write more brief and more of my own experiences and findings.

Sorry.

Love
ia

[IA56]

About the meaning of the Last Judgment.

YOu did not create yourself.
You are apt to forget this when become egocentric and this puts you in a position where a belief in magic is virtually inevitable.
Since creative ability rests in the mind, everything you create is a matter of will.
All what you create is real in your mind, though not in the Mind of God.
This basic distinction leads directly into the real meaning of the Last Judgment.
It is the one of the most threatening ideas in your thinking.
It is because you do not understand it.
Judgment is not an attribute of God.
It was brought to being after the separation, it became one of the learning devices to be built into the overall plan.
Just as the separation occured over millions of years, the Last Judgment will extend over a similarly long period, and perhaps longer.
In length, however, can be greatly shortened by miracles, the device for shortening but not abolishing time.
If a sufficient number become truly miracle-minded, this shortening process can be virtually immeasurable.
It is a final healing than a meting out of punishment.
The first step towards freedom involves sorting out of the false from the true.

Love

[IA56]

The Innocent Perception. Atonament Without Sacrifice.

The crucifixtion did not establish the Atonement; the resurrection did.
Many sincere Christians have misunderstood this. No on who is free of the belief in scarcity could possibly make this mistake.
If the crucifixtion is seen from an upside-down point of view, it does appear as if God permitted and even encouraged one of His Sons to suffer because he was good.
This particularly unfortunate interpretation, which arose out of projection, has led many people to be bitterly afraid of God.
Such anti-religious concepts enter into many religions.
Yet the real Christians should pause and ask, "How could this be"? It is likely that God Himself would be capable of the kind of thinking which His Own words, have clearly stated is unworthy of His son?
The best defense, as always, is not unwise to accept any concepts if you have to invert a whole frame of reference in order to justify it. This procedure is painful in its minor applications and genuinely tragic on a wider scale.
Persecution frequently resluts in an attempt to "justify" the terrible misperception that God Himself persecuted His Own Son on behalf of salvation. The very words are meaningless. It has been particularly difficult to overcome this because, although the error itself is no harder to correct than any other, many have been unwilling to give it up in view of its prominent value as a defense. In milder forms a parent says, "This hurts me more than it hurst you," and feels exonerated in beating a child.
Can you believe our Father really thinks this way? It is so essential that all such thinking be dispelled that we must be sure that nothing of this kind remains in your mind.
It was not "punished" because you were bad. The wholly beningn lesson the Atonement teaches is lost if it is tainted with this kind of distortion in any form.
The statment "Venegance is Mine, sayeth the Lord" is a misperception by which one assigns his own "evil" past to God.
The "evil" past has nothing to do with God.
He did not create it and He does not maintain it.
God does not believe in retribution.
His Mind does not create that way.
He does not hold your "evil" deeds against you.
Is it likely that He would hold them against me? Be very sure that you recognize how utterly impossible this assumtion is, and how entirely it arises from projection. This kind of error is responsible for a host of related errors, including the belief that God rejected Adam and forced him out of the Garden of Eden.
It is also why you may believe from time to time that I am misdirecting you.
I have made enery effort to use words that are almost impossible to distort, but it is always possible to twist symbols around if you wish.
Sacrifice is a notion totally anknown to God.
It arises solely from fear, and frightened people can be vicious.
Sacrificing in any way is a violation of my injunction that you should be merciful even as your Father in Heaven is merciful.
It has bean hard for many Christians to realize that this applies to themselves.
Good teachers never terrorize their students. To terrorize is to attack, and this results in rejection of what the teacher offers.
The result is learning failure.
I have been correctly referred to as "the lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world", but those who represent the lamb as blood-stained do not understand the meaning of the symbol.
Correctly understood, it is a very simple symbol that speaks of my innocence. The lion and the lamb lying down together symbolizes 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 to say the same thing. A pure mind knows the truth and this is its strength.
It does not confuse destruction with innocensce 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 the wholeness.
It cannot project.
It can only honor other minds, 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" in the sense that the state of innocence, or grace, is one in which the meaning of the Atonement is perfectly apparent.
The Atonement is entirely unambigous.
It is perfectly clear because it exists in light.
Only the attempt to shroud it in darkness have made it inaccessible to those who do not choose to see.
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 but perfect innocence.
Innocence is wisdom because it is unaware of evil, and evil does not exist.
It is, however, perfectly aware of everything that is true.
The resurrection demon-strated the nothing can destroy truth
Good can withstand any form of evil, as light abolishes forms of darkness.
The Atonement is therefore the perfect lesson.
It is the final demonstration that all the other lessons I taught are true.
If you can accept this one generalization now, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons.
You are relesed from all errors if you believe this.
The innocence of God is the true state of the mind of His Son.
In ths state your mind knows God, for God is not symbolic; He is Fact.
Knowing His son as he is, you realize that the Atonement, not sacrifice, is the only appropriate gift for God´s altar, where nothing exept perfection belongs.
The understanding of the innocent is truth.
That is why their altars are truly radiant.

Love

[IA56]

Miracles as True Persception.

I have stated that the basic concepts referred to in this course are not matters of degree.
Certain fundamental concepts cannot be understood in terms of opposites.
It is impossible to conceive of light and darkness or everything and nothing as joint possibilities.
They are all true or all false.
It is essential that you realize your thinking will be erratic until a firm commitment to one or other is made.
A firm commitment to darkness or nothingness, however, is impossible.
No one has ever lived who has not experienced some light and some thing.
No one, therefore, is able to deny truth totally, even if he thinks he can.
Innocence is not a partial attribute. It is not real until it is total.
The partly innocent are apt to be quite foolish at times.
It is not until their innocence becomes a viewpoint with universal application that it becomes wisdom.
Innocent or true perception means that you never misperceive and always see truly.
More simplym, it means that you never see what does not exist, and always see what does.
When you lack confidence in what someone will do, you are attesting to your belief that he is not in his right mind.
This is hardly a denying the power of the miracle.
The miracle perceives everything as it is. If nothing but the truth exists, right-minded seeing cannot see anything but perfection.
I have said that only what God createss or what you create with the same will has any real existence.
This, then, is all the innocent can see. They do not suffer from distorted perception.
You are afraid of God´s Will because you have used your own mind, which He created in the likness of His Own, to miscreate.
The mind can miscreate only when it believes it is not free.
An "imprisoned" mind is not free because it is possessed, or held back, by itself.
It is therefore limited, and the will is not free to assert itself.
To be on is to be of one mind or will.
When the Will of the Sonship and the Father are one, their perfect accord is Heaven.
Nothing can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit int the Hands of his Father.
By doing this the mind awakens from its sleep and remembers its Creator.
All sense of separation disappears.
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 intergration and establishes the peace of God.
Yet this vision can be perceived only by the truly innocent.
Because their hearts are pure, the innocent defend thrue perception instead of defending themselves against it.
Understanding the lesson of the Atonement they are without the wish to attack, and therefore they see truly.
This is what the Bible means when it says, "When He shall appear (or be perceived) we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as he is".
The way to correct distortions is to withdraw your faith in them and invest it only in what is true.
You cannot make untruth true.
If you are willing to accept what is true in everything you perceive truly you are cancelling out misperceptions in yourself and in others simultaneuously. Because you see them as they are, you offer them your acceptance of their truth so they can accept it for themselves.
This is the healing that the miracle induces.

Love

[IA56]

Perception versus Knowledge.

We have been emphasizing perception, and have said very little about knowledge as yet.
This is because perception must be straightened out before you can know anything.
To know is to be certain, and certainty is strenght.
Perception is temporary.
As an attribute of the benefit in space and time, it is subject either to fear or love.
Misperceptions produce fear and true perseptions foster love, but neither brings 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 and beyond all perceptions.
All your difficulties stem from the fact that you do not recognize yourself, your brother or God.
To recognize means to "know again", implying that you knew before.
You can see in many ways because perception involves interpretation, and this means that it is not whole or consistent.
This miracle, being a way of perceving, is not knowledge. It is the right answer to a question, but you do not question when you know
Questioning illusions is the first step in undoing them.
The miracle, or the right answer, corrects them.
Since perceptions change, their dependence on time is obvious.
How you perceive at any given time determines what you do, and actions must occur in time.
Knowledge is timeless, because certainty is not questionable.
The questioning mind perceives itself in time, and therefore looks for future answers.
The closed mind believes the future and the present will be the same.
This establishes a seemingly stable state that is usually an attempt to conunteract an underlying fear that the future will be worse than the persent.
This fear inhibits the tendency to question at all.
True vision is the natural perception of spiritual sight, but it is still a correction rather than a fact.
Spiritual sight is symbolic, and therefore not a device of knowing.
It is, however, a means of right perception, which brings it into the proper domain of the miracle. A "vision of God" would be a miracle rather than a revelation. The fact that perception in involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge.
That is why visions, however holy, do not last.
The Bible tells you to know yourself, or to be certain.
Certainty is alway of God.
When you love someone you perceive him as he is, and this makes it possible for you to know him.
While you ask questions about him you are clearly implying that you do not know God.
Certainty does not require action.
When you say you are acting on the basis of knowledge, you are really confusing knowledge with perception.
Knowledge provides the strength of creative thinking, but not for right doing.
Perception, miracles and doing are closely related.
Knowledge is the result of revelation and induces only thought.
Even in its most spiritualized form perception involves the body.
Knowledge comes from the altar within and is timless because it is certain.
To perceive the truth is not the same as to know it.
Right perception is necessary before God can communicate directly to His altars, which He established in His Sons.
There He can communicate His certainty, and His knowledge will bring peace without question.
God is not a stranger to His Sons. There He can communicate.
His certainty, and His knowledge will bring peace without question. God is not a stranger to His Sons, and His Sons are not strangers to each other.
Knowledge precedes both perception and time, and will ultimately replace them.
That is the real meaning of "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end", and "Before Abraham was I am" Perceptions can and must be stabilized, but knowledge is table.
"Fear God and keep His commandments" becomes "Know God and accept His certainty".
If you attack error in another, you will hurt yourself.
You cannot know your brother when you attack him. Attack is always made upon a stranger.
You are making him a stranger by misperceiving him, and so you cannto know him.
It is because you have made him a stanger that you are afraid of him.
Perceive him correctly so that you can know him. There are no strangers in God´s creation.
To create as He created you can create only what you know, and therefore 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

Love

[IA56]

Error and the Ego.

The abilities you now possess are only shadows of your real strength.
All of your present functions are divided and open to question and doubt.
This is because you are not certain how you will use them, and are therefore incapable of knowledge.
You are also incapable of knowledge because you can still perceive lovelessly.
Perception did not exist until the separation introduced degrees, aspects and intervals.
Spirit has no levels, and all conflict arises from the concepts of levels.
Only the Levels of the Trinity are capable of Unity.
The levels created by the separation cannot but conflict.
This is because they are meningless to each other.
Consiusness, the level of perception, was the first split introduced into the mind after the separation,making the mind a perceiver rather than a creator.
Consiousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego.
The ego is a wrong-minded attempt to perceive yourself as you wish to be, rather than as you are.
Yet you can know yourself only as you are, because that is all you can be sure of.
Everything els is open to question.
The ego is the questioning aspect of the post-separation self, which was made rather than created.
It is capable of asking questions but not of perceiving meaningful answers, because these would involve knowledge and cannot be perceived.
This mind is therefore confused, because only One-mindedness can be without confusion.
A separated or divided mind must be confused,. It is necessarily uncertain about what it is.
It has to be in conflict because it is out of accord with itself.
This makes its apsects strangers to each other, and this is the essence of the fear-prone condition, in which attack as you perceive yourself. This is why you cannot escape from fear until you realize that you did not and could not create yourself.
You can never make your misperceptions true, and your creation is beyond your own error.
That is why you 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 even this is subject to degrees, clearly demonstrating that knowledge is not involved.
The term "right-mindnedness" is properly used as the correction for "wrong-mindedness" and applies to the state of mind that induces accurate perception. It is miracle-minded because it heals misperception, and this is indeed a miracle in view of how you perceive yourself.
Perception always involves some misuse of mind, because it brings the mind into areas of uncertainty.
The mind is very active.
When it chooses to be separated it chooses to perceive.
Until then it wills only to know.
Afterwards it can only choose ambiguously, and the only way out of ambiguity is clear perception.
The mind returns to its proper function only when it wills to know.
This places it in the service of spirit, because it is from spirit that it derives its whole power to make or create.
Even in miscreation the mind is affirming its Source, or it would merely cease to be.
This is impossible, because the mind belongs to spirit which God created and which is therefore eternal.
The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive something and with something.
That is why persecption involves an exchange of translation, which knowledge does not need.
The interpretative function of perception, a distorted form of creation, then permits you to interpret the body as yourself in an attempt to escape from the conflict you have induced.
Spirit, which knows, could not be reconciled with this loss of power, because it is capable of darkness.
This makes sprit almost inaccessible to the mind and entirely inaccessible to the body.
Thereafter, spirit is perceived as a threat, because light abolishes darkness merely by showing you it is not there.
Truth will always overcome error in this way.
This cannot be an active process of correction because, as I have already emphasized, knowledge does not do anything. It can be perceived as an attacker, but it cannot attack.
What you perceive as its attack is your own vague recognition that knowledge can always be remembered, never having been destroyed.
God and His creations remain in surety, and therefore know that no miscreation exists.
Truth cannot deal with errors that you want.
I was a man who remembered spirit and its knowledge, but to correct error from the bottom up.
I demostrated both the powerlessness of the body and the power of the mind.
By uniting my will that of my Creator, I naturally rememberd sprit and its 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 way.
Without them your choice is certain. Sane perception induces sane choosing.
I cannot choose for you, but I can help you make your own right choice.
"Many are called but few are chosen" should be, "All are called but few choose to listen".
Therefore, they do not choose right.
The "chosen ones" are merely those who choose right sooner.
Right minds can do this now, and they will find rest unto their souls.
God knows you only in peace, and this is your reality.

Love

[IA56]

Beyond Perception.

I have said that the abilities you possess are only shadows of your real strength, and that perception, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the separation.
No one has been sure of anything since.
I have also made it clear that the resurrection was the means for the return to knowledge, which was accoplished by the union of my will with the Father´s.
We can now establish a distinction that will clarify some of our subsequent statments.
Since the separation, the words "create" and "make" have become confused.
When you make something, you do so out of a specific sense of lack or need.
Anything made for a specific purpose has no true generalizability.
When you make something to fill a perceived lack, you are tacitly implying that you beleive in separation.
The ego has invented many ingenious thougts systems for this purpose.
None of them is creative.
Inventivness is wasted effort even in its most ingenious form.
The highly specific nature of invention is not worhty of the abstract creativity of God´s creations.
Knowing, as have already observed, does not lead to doing.
The confusion between your real creation and wht you have made of yourself is no profound that it has become litterally impossible for you to know anything.
Knowledge is always stable, and it is quite evident that you are not.
Nevertheless, you are perfectly stable as God created you. In this sense, when your behavior is unstable, you are disagreeing with God´s Idea of your creation. You cando this if you choose, but you would hardly want to do it if you were in your right mind.
The fundamental question you continually ask yourself cannot properly be directed to yourself at all.
You keep asking what it is you are.
This implies that the answer is not only one you know, but is also one that is up to you to supply.
Yet you cannot perceive yourself correctly.
You have no image to be perceived. The word "image" is always perception-related, and not a part of knowledge.
Images are symbolic and stand for something els. The idea of "changing your image" recognizes the power of perception, but also implies that there is nothing stable to know.
Knowing is not open to interpretation. You may try to "interpret" meaning, but this is always open to error because it refers to the perception of meaning. Such incongruities are the reslutof attempts to regard yourself as separated and un-separated at the same time. It is impossible to make so fundamental a confusion without increasing your overall confusion still further. Your mind may have become vvery ingenious, but as always happens when method and content are separeted, it is utilized in a futile attempt to escape from an inescapable impasse.
Ingenuity is totally divorced from knowledge, because knowledge does not require ingenuity.
Ingenious thinking is not the truth that shall set you free, but you are free of the need to engage in it when you are willing to let it go.
Prayes is a way of asking for something. It is the medium of miracles. But 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 meaningless.
The prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that you may be able to recognize what you already have. In electing perception instead of knowledge, you place yourself in a position where you could resemble your Father only by perceiving miraculously. You have lost the knowledge that you yourself are a miracle of God.
Creation is your Source and your only real function.
The statement "God created man in his own image and likeness" need reinterpretation.
"Image" can be understood as "thought", and "likeness" as "of a like quality".
God did create spirit in His Own Thought and of a quality like to His Own.
There is nothing els. Perception, on the other hand, is impossible without a belief in "more" and "less".
At every level it involves selectivity. Perception is a continual process of accepting and rejecting, organizing and reorganizing, shifting and changing.
Evaluation is an essential part of perception, because judments are necessary in order to select.
What happens to perceptions if there are no judments and nothng but perfect equality?
Perception becomes impossible.
Truth can only be known.
All of it is equally true, and knowing any part of it is to know all of it.
Only persception involves partial awareness.
Knowledge trancends the laws governing perception, because partial knowledge is impossible.
It is all one and has no separate parts.
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 your brother is necessary, because minds have chosen to see themselves as separate.
Spirit knows God completely.
That is its miraculous power. The fact that each one has this power completely is a condition entirely alien to the world´s thinking. The world believes that if anyone has everything, there is nothing left.
But God´s miracles are as total as His Thoughts because they are His Thoughts.
As long as perception lasts prayr has a place.
Since perception rest on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given themselves over to truth. Perception is based on a separated state, so that anyone who perceives at all needs healing.
Communion, not prayr, is the natural state of those who know.
God and His miracle are inseparable. 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 that is you is perfectly clear.

Love

[IA56]

I want to share this lesson 23 with you all.

"I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts".

The idea for today contains the only way out of fear that will ever succeed.Nothing els will work; everything els 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 effect 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 that you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image-maker. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape form 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 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 first, and then close your eyes and devote about a minute to serching your mind for as many attack thoughts as occur to you. As each one crosses your mind, say:

"I an escape from the world I see by giving up attack thougts about____________".

Hold each attack thought in mind as you say this, and then dismiss that thought and go on to the next.
In this practis 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 recognize this as yet, 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 learn that thoughts of attack and of being attacked are not different, you will be ready to let the cause go.

Love

[IA56]

Judgment and the Authority Problem.

We have already discussed the Last Judgment, but in insufficient detail. After the Last Judgment there will be no more
Judgment is symbolic because beyond perception there is no judgment.
When Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged" it means that if you judge the reality of others you will be unable to avoid judging your own.
The choice to judge rather than to know is the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not knowledge rests. I have discussed this before in terms of the selectivity of perception, pointing out that evaluation is its obvious prerequisite.
Judgment always involves rejection.
It never emphsizes only positive aspects of what is judged, whether in you or in others.
What has been perceived and rejected, or judged and found wanting, remains in your mind because it has been perceived. One of the illusions from which you suffer is the belief that what you against has no effect.
This cannot be true unless you also believe that what you judged against does not exist.
You evidently do not believe this, or you would not have judged against it.
In the end it does not matter whether your judgment is 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 select from.
You have no idea of the tremendous relese and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment.
When you recognize what you are and what your brothers are, you will realize that judging them in any way is without meaning. In fact, their meaning is lost to you precisely because you are judging them.
All uncertainty comes from the belief that you are under the coercion of judgment. You do not need judgment to organize your life, and certainly do not need it to organize yourself.
In the presence of knowledge all judgment is automatically suspended, and this is the process that enables recognition to replace perception.
You are very fearful of everything you have perceived but have refused to accept.
You believe that, because you have refused to accept it, you have lost control over it.
This is why you see it in nightmares, or in pleasant disguises in what seem to be your happier dreams.
Nothing that you have refused to accept can be brought into awarness. It is not dangerous in itself, but you have made it seem dangerous to you.
When you feel tired, it is because you have judged yourself as capable of being tired.
When you laugh at someone, it is because you have judged him as unworthy.
When you laugh at yoursels you must laugh at others, if only because you cannot tolerate the idea of being more unworthy than they are. All this makes you feel tired because it is essentially disheartening.
You are not really capable of being tired, but you are very capable of wearying yourself.
the strain of constant judgment is virtually intorelable. It is curious that an ability so deblibitating would be so deeply cherished. Yet if you wish to be the author of reality, you will insist on holding on to judgment.
You will also regard judgment with fear, believing that it will somday be used against you.
This belief an exist only to the extent that you belive in the efficacy of judgment as a wapon of defense for your own authority.
God offers only mercy.
Your words should reflect only mercy, because that is what you have recived and that is what you should give.
Justice is a temporary expedient, or an attempt to teach you the meaning of mercy.
It is judgmental only because you are capable of injustise.
I have spoken of different symptoms, and at that level there is almost endless variation.
There is, however, only one cause for all of them: the authority problem.
This is "the root of all evil". Every symptom the ego makes involves a contradiction in terms, because the mind is split between the ego and the Holy Spirit, so that whatever the ego makes is incomplete and contradictory.
This untenable position is the result of the authority problem which, because it accepts the one inconceivable thought as its premise, can produce only ideas that are inconceivable.
The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When you have an authority problem, it is always because you believe you are the author of yourself and project your delusion onto others.
You then perceive tthe situation as one in which others are literally fighting you for your authorship.
This is the fundamental error of all those who believe they have usurped the power of God.
This belief is very frightening to them, but hardly troubles God.
He is, however, eager to undo it, not to punish His children, but only becuse He knows that it makes them unhappy.
God´s creations are given their true Authorship, but you prefer to be anonymous when you choose to separate yourself from your Author.
Being uncertain of your ture Authorship, you believe that your creation was anonymous.
This leaves you in a position where it sounds meaningful to believe that you created yourself.
This dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in your mind that it may even doubt whether you really exist at all.
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, to lose something does not mean that it is gone.
It merely means that you do not remember where it is. Its existence does not depend on your ability to identify it, or even to place it. It is possible to look on reality without judgment and merely know that it is there.
Peace is a natural heritage of spirit. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is not free to establish what his inheritance is. The problem everyone must decide is the fundamental question of authorship.
All fea comes ultimately, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial of Authorship.
The offense is to God, but only to those who deny Him.
To deny His Authorship is to deny yourself the reason for your peace, so that you see yourself only in segments.
This strange perception is the authority problem.
There is no one who does not feel that he is imprisoned in some way. If this is the result of his own free will he must regard his will as not free, or the circular reasoning in this position would be quite apparent.
Free will must lead to freedom.
Judgment always imprisons because it separates segments of reality by the unstable scales of desire.
Wishes are not facts.
To wish is to imply that willing is not sufficient.
Yet no on is his right mind believes that what is wished is as real as what is willed.
Instead of "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven" say, "Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven", and you have said,
"I know what I am and I accept my own inheritance".

Love

[IA56]

Creating versus the Self-Image

Every system of thought must have a starting point. It begins with either a making or a creating, a difference we have already discussed. Their resemblance lies in their power of fundations. Their difference lies in what rests upon them.
Both are cornerstones for systems of belief by which one lives. It is a mistake to believe that a thought system based on lies is weak. Nothing made by a child of God is without power.
It is essential to realize this, because otherwise you will be unable to escape from prison you have made.
You cannot resolve the authority problem by depreciating the power of your mind.
To do so is to deceive yourself, and this will hurt you because you really understand the strength of the mind.
You also realize that you cannot weaken it, any more than you can weaken God.
The "devil" is a frightening concept because he seems to be extreamly powerful and extremaly active.
He is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for possession of His creation.
The devil decives by lies, and builds kingdoms in which everything is in direct opposition to God.
Yet he attracts men rather repels them, and they are willing to "sell" him their souls in return of gifts of no real worth. This makes absolutely no sense.
We have discussed the fall of separation before, but its meaning must be clearly understood.
The separation is a system of thought real enough in time, though not in eternity.
All beliefs are real to the believer.
The fruit of only one tree was "forbidden" in the symbolic garden. But God could not have fobidden it, or it could not have bean eaten. If God knows His children, and I assure you that He does, would He have put them in a position where their own destruciton was possible? The "forbidden tree" was named the "tree of knowledge". Yet God created knowledge and gave it freely to His creations. The symbolism here has been given many interpretations, but you may be sure that any interpretation that sees either God or His creation as capable of destroying Their Own purpose is in error.
Eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic expression for usurping the ability for self-creating.
This is the only sense in which God and His creations are not co-crators. The belief that they are is implicit in the "self concept", or the tendency of the self to make an image of itself. Images are perceived, not known.
Knowldedge cannot deceive, but perception can.
You can perceive yourself as self-creating, but you cannot do more than believe it.
You cannot make it true.
And, as I said before, when you finally perceive correctly you can only be glad that you cannot.
Until then, however, the belief that you can is the foundation stone in your thought system, and all your defenses are used to attack ideas that might bring it to light.
You still believe you are an image of your own making. Your mind is split with the Holy Spirit on this point, and there is no resolution while you believe the one thing that is literally inconceivable. That is why you cannot create and are filled with fear about what you make.
The mind can make the belief in separation very real and very fearful, and this belief is the "devil". It is powerful, active, destructive and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood.
Look at your life and see what the devil has made.
But realize that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation is a lie.
Your creation by God is the only foundation that cannot be shaken, because the light is in it.
Your starting point is truth, and you must return to you Beginning.
Much has been seen since then, but nothing has really happened.
Your Self is still in peace, even though your mind is in conflict.
You have not yet gone back far enough, and that is why you become so fearful.
As you approach the Beginning, you feel the fear of thee destruction of your thought system upon you as if it were the fear of death.
There is no death, but there is a belief in death.
The branch that bears no fruit will be cut off and will wither away. Be glad! The light will shine from the true Foundation of life, and your own thought system will stand corrected. It cannot stand otherwise.
You who fear salvation are choosing death.
Life and death, light and darkness, knowledge and perception, are irreconcilable.
To believe that they can be reconciled is to believe that God and His Son can not.
Only the oneness of knowledge is free of conflict.
Your kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from beyond this world.
Only in this world is the idea of an authority problem meaningful.
The world is not left by death but by truth, and truth can be known by all those whom the Kingdom was created,
and for whom it waits.

Love

[IA56]

The Illusions of the Ego.

The Bible says that you should go with a brother twice as far as he asks. It certainly does not suggest that you set him back on his journey. Devotion to a brother cannot set you back either. It can lead only to mutual progress.
The result of genuine devotion is inspiration, a word which properly understood is the opposite of fatigue.
To be fatigued is to be dis-spirted, but to be inspired is to be in the spirit.
The truly inspired are enlightened and cannot abide in darkness.
You can speak from the spirit or from the ego, as you choose.
If you speak from spirit you have chosen to "Be still and know that I am God".
These words are inspired because they reflect knowledge.
If you speak from the ego you are disclaming knowledge instead of affirming it, and are thus dis-spiriting yourself.
Do not embark on useless journeys, because they are indeed in vain.
The ego may desire them, but spirit cannot embark on them because it is forever unwilling to depart from its Foundation.
The journey to the cross should be the last "useless journey".
Do not dwell upon it, but dismiss it as accomplished.
If you can accept it as your own last useless journey, you are also free to join my resurrection.
Until you do so your life is indeed wasted.
It merely re-enacts the separation, the loss of power, the futile attempts of the ego at reparation, and finallly the crucifixon of the body, or death.
Such repetitions are endless until they are voluntarily given up.
Do not make the pathetic error of "clinging to the old rugged cross".
The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross.
Until then you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose.
This is not the Gospel I intented to offer you.
We have another journey to undertake, and if you will read these lessons carefully they will help prepare you to undertake it.

Love

[IA56]

Right Teaching and Right Learning.

A good teacher clarifies his own ideas and strengthens them by teaching them. Teacher and pupil are alike in the learning process. They are in the same order of learning, and unless they share their lessons conviction will be lacking. A good teacher must believe in the idea he teaches, but he must meet another condition; he must believe in the students to whom he offers the ideas.
Many stand guard over their ideas because they want to protect their thought systems as they are, and learning means change.
Change is always fearful and to the separated, because they cannot conceive of it as a move towards healing the separation. They always perceive it as a move towards further separation, because the separation was their first expereince of change. You believe that if you allow no change to enter into your ego you will find peace.
This profound confusion is possible only if you maintain that the same thought system can stand on two foundations.
Nothing can reach spirit from the ego, and nothing can reach the ego from spirit.
Spirit can neither strenghten the ego nor reduce the conflict within it.
The ego is a contradition. Your self and God´s Self are in opposition.
They are opposed in source, in direction and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable, because spirit cannot percieve and the ego cannot know. They are therefore not in communication and can never bbe in communication. Nevertheless, the ego can learn, even though its maker can be misguided. He cannot, however, make the totally lifeless out of the life-given.
Spirit need not be taught, but the ego must be. Learning is ultimately percived as frightening because it leads to the relinquisment, not to destruction, of the ego to light of spirit.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 will never attack your ego, but I am trying to teach you how its thought system arose. When I remind you of your true creation, your ego cannot but respond with fear.
Teaching and learning are your greatest strengths now, because they enable you to change your mind and help others to change theirs. Refusing to change your mind will not prove that the separation has not occured.
The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream while he is still dreaming is not really healing his split mind.
You dream of a separated ego and believe in a world that rests upon it. This is very real to you.
You cannot undo it by not changing your mind about it. If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian of your thought system and open it to me, I will correct it very gently and lead you back to God.
Every good teacher hopes to give his students so much of his own learning that they will on day no longer need him
This is the one true goal of the teacher.
It is impossible to convice 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 lawmaker believes.
It is natural 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 them. The ego cannot make this choice because of the nature of its origin.
You can, because of the nature yours.
Egos can clash in any situation, but spirit cannot clash at all.
If you perceive a teacher as merely "a larger ego" you will be afraid, because to enlarge an ego would be to increasee anxiety about separation. I will teach with you and live with you if you will think with me, but my goal will always be to absolve your finally from the need for a teacher. This is the opposite of the ego-orientedd teacher´s goal. He is concerned with the effect of his ego on the other egos, and therefore interprets their interaction as a means of ego presevation.
I would not be able to devote myself to teaching if I believed this, and you will not be a devoted teacher as long as you belive it. I am constantly being percived as a teacher either to be exaltedd or rejected, but I do not accept either perception for myself.
Your worth is not estabblished by teachng or learning. Your worth is established by God.
As long as you dispute this everything you do will be fearful, particularly any situation that lends itself to the belief in superiority and inferiority. Teachers must be patient and repeat the lessons until they are learned.
I am willing to do this, because I have no right to set your learning limits for you.
Again, - nothing you do or think or wish 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 spirit is never at stake because He did. Any confusion on this point is delusional, and no form of devotion is possible as long as this delusion lasts.
The ego tries to exploit all situations into forms of praise for itself in order to overcome its doubts. It will remain doubtful as long as you believe in its existence. You who made it cannot trust it, because in your right mind you realize it is not real. The only sane solution is not to try to change reality, which is indeed a fearful attempt, but to accept it as it is. You are part of realtiy, which stands unchanged beyond the reach of your ego but within easy reach of spirit. 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 chosen to create unlike Him, and have therefore made fear for yourself. You are not at peace because you are not fulfilling your function. God gave you a very lofty function that you are not meeting.
Your ego has 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 increadible now. Any attempt to increase its believableness is merely to postpone the inevitable.
The word "inevitable" is fearfful to the ego, but joyjous to the sprit.
God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him any more than He can avoid you.
The ego is afraid of the spirit´s joy, because once you have experienced it you will withdraw all protection form the 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 is the spirit. He created. Release yourself and release others. Do not present a false and unworthy picture of yourself to others, and not accept such a picture of them yourself.
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 is wothy of his creations, who have chosen to leave it empty by their own dispossession. Yet His home will stand forever, and is ready for you when you choose to enter it.
Of this you can be wholly certain. God is as incapable of creating the perishable as the ego is of makeing the eternal
Of your ego you can do nothing to save yourself of others, but of your spirit you can do everything for the salvation of both. Humility is a lesson for the ego, not for the spirit. Spirit 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 truer perception. The Kingdom of Heaven, is the spirit´s right, whose beauty and dignity are far beyond doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the Love of God for His creation, who are wholly worthy of Him and only of Him. Nothing els is sufficiently worthy to be a gift for a creation of God Himself.
I will subtitute for your ego if you wish, but never for your spirit. 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, but he does not confuse himself with the father because he does this.
I can be entrusted with your body and your ego only because this enables you not to be concerned with them, and lets me teach you their unimportance. I could not understand their importance to you if I had not once been tempted to believe in them myself. Let us undertake to learn this lesson together so we can be free of them together. I need devoted teachers who share my aim of healing the mind. Spirit is far beyond the need of your protection of mine.
Remember this:

In this world you need not have tribulation because I have overcome the world.
that is why you should be of good cheer.

Love

[IA56]

The Ego and False Autonomy.

It is reasonable to ask how gthe mind could ever have made the ego. In fact, it is the best question you could ask.
There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past because the past does not matter, and history would not exist if the same error were not being repeted in the present. Abstract thought applies to knowledge because knowledge is completely impersonal, and examples are irrelevant to its understanding.
Percetion, however, is always specific, and therefore quite concrete.
Everyone makes an ego or a self for himself, which is subject to enormous variation because of its instability.
He also makes an ego for everyone els he percives, which is equally variable.
Their interaction is a process that alters both, because they were not made by or with the Unalterable.
It is important to realize that this alternation can and does occur as readily when the interaction takes place in the mind as when it involves physical interaction.
There could be no better example that the ego is only an idea and not a fact.
Your own state of mind is a good example of how the ego was made.
When you threw knowledge away it is as if you never had it. This is so apprant that one need only recogonize it to see that it does happenj. If this occurs in the present, why is it surprising that it occurred in the past?
Surprise is a reasonable response to the unfamiliar, though hardly to something that occurs with such persistence.
But do not forget that the mind need not work that way, even though it does work that way now.
Think of the love of animals for their offspring, and the need they feel to protect them. That is because they regard them as part of themselves. No on dismiss something he considers part of himself.
You react to your ego much as God does to His creations, - with love, protection and charity.
Your reactions to the self you made are not surprising. In fact, they resemble in many ways how you will one day react to your real creations, which are as timeless as you are. The question is not how you respond to the ego, but what you believe you are. Belief is an ego function, and as long as your origin is open to belief you are regarding it from an ego viewpoint. When teaching is no longer necessary you will merely know God. Belief that there is another way of perceiving is the loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable. That is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is not the Self.
Undermining the ego´s thought system must be percived as painful, even though this is anything but true.
Babies scream in rage if you take away a knife or scissors, although they may well harm themselfs if you do not.
In this sense you are still a baby. You have no sense of real self-preservation, and are likely to decide that you need prcisely what would hurt you most. Yet whether or not you recognize it now, you have agreed to cooperate in the effort to become both harmless and helpful, attributes that go together. Your attitudes even toward this are necessarily conflicted, because all attitudes are ego-based. This will not last. Be patient a while and remember that the outcome is a certain as God.
Only those who have a real and lasting sense of abundance can be truly charitable. This is obvious when you cansider what is involved. To the ego, to give anything implies that you will havvt ot do without it. When you associate giving with sacrifiece, you give only because you believe that you are somehow getting something better, and can therefore do without the thing you give. "Giving to get" is an inescapable law of the ego, which always evaluates itself in relation to other egos. It is therefore continually preoccupied with the belief in scarcity that gave rise to it. Its whole perception of others egos as real is only an attempt to convince itself that it is real.
"Self-esteem" is always vulnerable to stress, a term which refers to any perceived threat to the ego´s existence.
The ego litterally lives by comparisons. Equality is beyond its grasp, and charity becomes impossible. The ego never gives outof abudance, because it was made as a substitute for it. That is why the concept of "getting" arose in the ego´s thought system. Appetites are "getting" mechanisms, representing the ego´s need to confirm itself.
This is true of body appetites as it is of the so-called "higher" ego needs". Body appetites are not physical in origin
The ego regards the body as its home, and tries to satisfy itself through the body. But the idea that this is possible is a decision of the mind, which has become completely confused about what is really possible.
The ego believes it is completely on its own, which is merely another way of describing how it thinks it originated.
This is such a fearful state that it can only turn to other egos and try to unite with them in a feeble attempt at identification, or attack them in an equally feeble show of strength. It is not free, however, to open the premise to question, because the premise is its foundation. The ego is the mind´s belief that it is completely on its own.
The ego´s ceaseless attempts to gain the spirit´s acknowledgment and thus establish its own existence are useless.
Spirit in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does not attack; it merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of spirit, it does perceive itself as being rejected by something greater than itself.
This is why self-esteem in ego terms must be delusional. The creations of God do not create myths, although creative effort can be turned to mythology. It can do so, however, only under one condition; what it makes is then no longer creative. Myths are enirely percuptual, and so ambiguous in form and characteristicically good-and-evil in nature that the most benevolent of them is not without fearful connotations.
Myths and magic are closely associated, since myths are usually related to ego origins, and magic to the power the ego ascribes to itself. Mythological systems generally include some account of "the creation" and associate this with its particular form of magic. The so-called "battle for survival" is only the ego´s struggle to preseve itself, and its interpretation of its own beginning. This beginning is usually associated with physical birth, because it is hard to maintain that the ego existed before that point in time. The more "religiously" ego-oriented may belive that the soul existed before, and will continue to exist after a temporary lapse into ego life. Some even believe that the soul will be punished for this lapse. However, salvation does not apply to spirit, which is not in danger and does not need to be slavaged.
Salvation is nothing more than "right-mindedness", which is not the One-mindedness of the Holy Spirit, but which must be achived before One-mindedness is restored. Right-mindedness leads to the next step automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack, and therefore wrong-mindedness is obliterated.
The ego cannot survie without judgment, and is laid aside accoringly. The mind then has only one direction in which it can move. Its direction is always automatic, because it cannot but be dictated by the thought system to which it adheres.
It cannot be emphasized to 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 towards it.
The whole value of right perception lies in the inevitable realization that all perception is unnecessary.
This removes the block enirely. You may ask how this is possible as long as you appear to be living in this world.
That is a reasonable question. You must be careful, however, that you really understand it. Who is the "you" who are living in this world? Spirit is immortal, and immortality is a constant state. It is a true now as it ever was or ever will be, because it imlies no change at all. It is not a continuum, nor is it understood by being compared to an opposite. Knowledge never involves comparisons. This is its main difference from everything els the mind can grasp.

Love

[IA56]

Love without conflict.

It is hard to understand what "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you" really means. This is because it is not understandable to the ego, which interprets it as if something outside is inside, and this does not mean anything.
The word "within" is unnecessary.
The Kingdom of Heaven is you.
What els but you did the Creator create, and what els but you is His Kingdom?
This is the whole message which in its totality trancends the sum of its parts.
You, too, have a kingdom that your spirit created. It has not ceased to create, because of the ego´s illusions.
Your creations are no more fatherless than you are. Your ego and your spirit will never be co-creators, but your spirit and your Creator will always be. Be confident that your crations are as safe as you are.

The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly
protected, and the ego will not prevail against it.
Amen.

This is written in the form of a prayer because it is useful in moments of temtation. It is a declaration of independence. You will find it very helpful if you undertand it fully.
The reason you need my help is because you have denied your own Guide and therefore need guidance.
My role is to separate the true from the false, so truth can break through the barriers the ego has set up and can shine into your mind. Against our united strength the ego cannot prevail.
It is surely apparant by now why the ego regards spirit as its "enemy".
The ego arose from the separation, and its continued existence depends on your continuing belief in the separation.
The ego must offer you some sort of reward for maintaining this belief.
All it can offer is a sense of temporary existence, which begins with its own beginning and ends with its own ending.
It tells you this life is your existence because it is its own.
Against this sense of temporary existence spirit offers you the knowledge of permanence and unshakable being.
No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again.
How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God?
You who identify with your ego cannot believe God loves you.
You do not love what you made, and what you made does not love you. Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allergiance to its maker. You cannot conceive of the real relationship that exists between God and His creation because of your hatered for the self you made. You project onto the ego the decision to separate, and this conflicts with the love you feel for the ego because you made it. No love in this world is without this ambivalence, the concept is beyond its understanding. Love will enter immediately into any mind that truly wants it,
but it must want it truly. This means that it wants it without ambivalence, and this kind of wanting is wholly without the ego´s "drive to get". There is a kind of experience so different from anything the ego can offer that you will never want to cover or hide it again. It is necessary to repeat that your belief in darkness and hiding is why the light cannot enter. The Bible gives many references to the immeasurable gifts which are for you, but for which you must ask. This is not a condition as the ego sets conditions. It is the glorious condition of what you are.
No force except your own will is strong enough or worthy enough to guide you. In this you are as free as God, and must remain so forever. Let us ask the Father in my name to keep you mindful of His Love for you and yours for Him. He has never failed to answer this request, because it asks only for what He has already willed. Those who call truly are alwasy answered. Thou shalt have no other gods before Him because there are none.
It has never really entered your mind to give up every idea you ever had that opposes knowledge. You retain thousands of little scraps of fear that prevent the Holy One from entering. Light cannot penetrate through the walls you make to block it, and it is forever unwilling to destroy what you have made. No one can see through a wall, but I can step around it. Watch your mind for the scraps of fear, or you will be unable to ask me to do so. I can help you only as our Father created us. I will love you and honor you and maintain complete respect for what you have made, but I will not uphold it unless it is true. I will come in response to a single unequivocal call.
Watch carefully and see what it is you are really asking for. Be very honest with yourself in this, for we must hide nothing from each other. If you will really try to do this, you have taken the first step toward prepareing your mind for the Holy One to enter. We will prepare for this together, for once He has come, you will be ready to help me to take other minds ready for Him. How long will you deny Him His Kingdom?
In your own mind, though denied by the ego, is the declaration of your relese. God has given you everything.
This one fact means the ego does not exist, and this makes it profoundly afraid. In the ego´s language, "to have" and "to be" are different, but they are identical to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit knows that you both have everything and are everything. Any distinction in this respect is meaningful only when the idea of "getting", which implies a lack, has already been accepted. That is why we make no distinction between having the Kingdom of God and being the Kingdom of God.
The calm being of God´s Kingdom, which in your sane mind is perfectly conscious, is ruthlessly benished from the part of the mind the ego rules. The ego is deperate because it opposes literally invincible odds, whether you aree asleep or awake. Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to protect your ego, and how little to protect your right mind. Who but the insane would undertake to believe what is not true, and then protect this belief at the cost of truth?

Love

[IA56]

This Need Not Be.

If you cannot hear the Voice of God, it is because you do not choose to listen.
That you do listen to the voice of your ego is demonstrated by your attitudes, your feelings and you behavior.
Yet this is what you want. This is what you are fighting to keep, and what you are vigilant to save.
Your mind is filled with schemas to save the face of your ego, and you do not seek the face of Christ.
The glass in which the ego seeks to see its face is dark indeed. How can it maintain the trick of its existence except with mirrors? But where you look to find yourself is up to you.
I have said that you cannot change your mind by changing your behavior, but I have also said, and many times, that you can change your mind. When your mood tells you that you have chosen wrongly, and this is so whenever you are not joyous, then know this need not be. In every case you have thought wrongly about some brotherr God created, and are perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass. Think honestly what you have thought that God would not have thought, and what you have not thought that God would have you think.
Serch sincerely for what you have done and left undone accrodingly, and then change your mind to think with God´s. This may seem hard to you, but it is much easier than trying to think against it.
Your mind is one with God´s.
Denying this and thinking otherwise has held your ego together, but has literally split your mind.
As a loving brother I am deeply concerned with your mind, and urge you to follow my example as you look at yourself and at your brother, and see in both the glorious creations of a glorious Father.
When you are sad, know this need not be. Depression comes from a sense of being deprived of something you want and do not have. Remember that you are deprived of nothing except by your own decisions, and then decide otherwise.
When you are anxious, realize that anxiety comes from the capriciousness of the ego, and know this need not be.
You can be as vigilant against the ego´s dictates as for them.
When you feel guilty, remember that the ego has indeed vilated the laws of God, but you have not.
Leave the "sins" of the ego to me. That is what Atonement is for. But until you change your mind about those whom your ego has hurt, the Atonement cannot relese you. While you feel guilty your ego is in command, because onlly the ego can experience guilt. This need not be.
Watch your mind for the temptations of the ego, and do not be deceuved by it. It offer you nothing.
When you have given up this voluntary dis-spiriting, you will see how your mind can focus and rise above fatigue and heal. Yet you are not sufficently vigilant against the demands of the ego to disengage yourself.This need not be.
The habit of engaging with God andd His creations is easily made if you actively refuse to let your mind slip away.
The problems is not one of concentration;it is the belief that no one, including yourself, is worth consistent effort.
Side with me consistently against this deception, and do not permit this shabby belief to pull you back.
This disheartened are useless to themselves and to me, but only the ego can be disheartened.
Have you really considered how many opportunities you have had to gladden yourself, and how many of them you have refused?
There is no limit to the power of a Son of God, but he can limit the expression of his power as much as he chooses.
Your mind and mine can unite in shining your ego away, releasing the strength of God into everything you think and do. Do not settle for anything less than this, and refuse to accept anything but this as your goal.
Watch your mind carefully for any belief that hinder its accomplishment, and step away from them. Judge how well you have done this by your own feelings, for this is the one right use of judgment. Judgment, like any other defense, can be used to attack or protect; to hurt or to heal.
The ego should be brought to judgment and found wanting there. Without your own allegiance, protection and love, the ego cannot exist. Let it be judged truly and you must withdraw allegiance, protection and love from it.
You are a mirror of truth, in which God Himself shines in perfect light. The ego´s dark glass you need but say, "I will not look there because I know there images are not true". The let the Holy One shine on you in peace, knowing that this and only this must be. His Mind shone on you in your creation and brought your mind into being. His Mind still shines on you and must shine through you. Your ego cannot prevent Him from shining on you, but it can prevent your from letting Him shine through you.
The First Coming of Christ is merely another name for the creation, for Christ is the Son of God. The Second Coming of Christ means nothing more than the end of the ego´s rule and the healing of the mind. I was created like you in the first, and I have called you to join me in the second. I am in charge of the Second Coming, and my judgment, which is used only for protection, cannot be wrong because it never attacks. Yours may be so distorted that you believe I was mistaken in choosing you. I assure you this is a mistake of your ego. Do not mistake it ffor humility.
Your ego is trying to convice you that it is real and I am not, because if I am real, I am no more real than you are.
That knowledge, and I assure you that it is knowledge, mens that Christ has come into your mind and healed it.
I do not attack your ego. I do work with your higher mind, the home of the Holy Spirit, whether you are asleep or awake, just as your ego does with your lower mind, which is its home. I am your vigilance in this, because you are too confused to recognize your own hope. I am not mistaken. Your mind will elect to join with mine, and together we are invincible. You and your brother will yet come together in my name, and your sanity will be restored.
I raised the dead by knowing that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God created.
Why do you believe it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles; you do. I have called and you will answer. I understand that miracles are natural, because they are expressons of love. My calling you is as natural as your answer, and as inevitable.

Love

[IA56]

The Ego-Body Illusion.

All things work together for good. There are no expectations except in the ego´s judgment. The ego exerts maximal vigilance about what it permits into awareness, and this is not the way a balanced mind holds together.
The ego is thrown further off balance because it keeps its primary motivation from your awareness, and raises control rather than sanity to predominace. The ego has every reasonto do this, according to the thought system which gave rise to it an which it serves. Sane judgment wouldd inevvitably judge against the ego, and must be obliterated by the ego in the interst of its self-presevation.
A major source of the ego´s off-balanced state is its lack of discrimination between the body and the Thoughts of God. Thoughts of God are unacceptable to the ego, because they clearly point to the nonexistence of the ego itself.
The ego therefore either distorts them or refuses to accept them. It cannot, however, make them cease to be.
It therefore tries to conceal not only "unacceptable" body impulses, but also the Thoughts of God, because both are threatening to itl. Being concerned primarly with its own preservation in the face of threat, the ego perceives them as the same. By perceiving them as the same, the ego attempts to save itself from being swept away, as it would surely be in the presence of knowledge.
Any thought system that cunfuses God and the body must be insane. Yet this confusion is essential to the ego, which judges only in terms of threat of non-threat to itself. In one sense the ego´s fear of God is at least logical, since the idea of Him does dispel the ego.
But fear of the body, with which the eggo identifies so closely, makes no sense at all.
The body is the ego´s home by its own election. It is the only identification with which the ego feels safe, since the body´s vulnerablility is its own best argument that you cannot be of God. This is the belief that the ego sponsors eagerly. Yet the ego hates the body, because it cannot accept it as good enough to be its home.
Here is where the mind becomes actually dazed. Being told by the ego that it is really part of the body and that the body is its protector, the mind is also told that the body cannot protect it.
Therefore, the mind asks, "Where can I go for protection?" to which the ego replies, "Turn to me". The mind, and not without cause, reminds the ego that it has itself insited that it is identified with the body, so there is no point in turning to it for protection. The ego has no real answer to this because there is none, but it does have a typical solution. It obliterates the question from the mind´s awareness. Once out of awareness the question can and does produce unesiness, but it cannot be answered because it cannot be asked.
This is the question that must be asked: "Where can I go for protection?" "Seek and ye shall find" does not mean that you should seek blindly and desperately for something you would not recognize. Meaningful seeking is consiously undertaken, conciously organized and conciously directed. The goal must be formulated clearly and kept in mind. Learning and wanting to learn are inseparable. You learn best when you believe what you are trying to learn is of value to you. However, not evertything you may want to learn has lasting value. Indeed, many of the things you want to learn may be chosen because their value will not last.
The ego thinks it is an advantage not to commit itself to anything that is eternal, because the eternal must come from God. Eternalness is the one function the ego has tried to develop, bbut ha systematically failed to achieve.
The ego compromises with the issue of the eternal, just as it does with all issues touching on the real question in any way. By becoming involved with tangential issues, it hopes to hide the real question and keep it out of mind.
The ego´s characteristic busy-ness with nonessentials is for precisely that purpose.
Preoccupations with problems set up to be incapable of solution are favorite ego devices for impeding learning progress. In all these diversional tactics, however, the one question that is never asked by those who pursue them is, "What for?" This is the question that you must learn to ask in connection with everything.
What is the purpose? Whatever it is, will direct your efforts automatically. When you make a decision of purpose, then, you have made a decision about your future effort;a decision that will remain in effect unless you change your mind.

Love

[IA56]

I want to share lesson number 31 with you all,

I am not working too deep with each of the lessons because I do not want to awaken too much fear as I am invaded with it already very much, my plan is to work with these lessons for many years to come.

"I am not the victim of the world I see"

Today´s idea is the introduction to your declaration of relese.
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 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 onger 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 these are recomended. During that time, look about you slowly while repeating the 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 replace by the next. Try not to establish any kind of hierachy 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 also a particularly useful one to use as a response to any form of temptation that may arise.
It is a declaration that you will not yield to it, and put yourself in bondage.

Love

[IA56]

The Rewards of God.

The ego does not recognize the real source of "threat", and if you accosiate yourself with the ego, you do not understand the situation as it is. Only your allegiance to it gives the ego any power over you.
I have spoken of the ego as if it were a spearated 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.
We cannot safely let it go at that, however, or you will regard yourself as necessarily conflicted as long as you are here, or as long as you believe that you are here. The ego is nothing more than a part of your belief about yourself.
Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate it.
In learning to escape from illusions, your debt to your brother is something you must never forget. It is the same debt that you owe to me. Whenever you act egotistically towards another, you are throwing away the graciousness of your indebtedness and the holy perception it would produce. The term "holy" can be used here because, as you learn how much you are indebted to the whole Sonship, which includes me, you come as close to knowledge as perception can. The gap is then small that 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 insteadd of to your ego for guidance.
The results will convince you increasingly that this choice is the only sane one you can make.
No one who learns from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs additional convincing. Learning through rewards is more effective than learning through pain, because pain is an ego illusion, and can never induce more than a temporary effect. The rewards of God, however, are immediately recognized as eternal. Since the recognition is made by you and not the ego, the recognition itself establishes that you and your ego cannot be identical. You may believe that you have already accepted this difference, but you are by no means convinced as yet. The fact that you believe you must escape from the ego shows this; but you cannot escape from the ego by humbling it or controlling it or punishing it.
The ego and the spirit do not know each other.
The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating. Having done this, it denies 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 decision to use the device that enables it to endure.
How can you teach someone the value of something he has deliberately thrown away? He must have thrown it away because he did not value it. You can only show him how miserable he is without it, and slowly bring it nearer so he can learn how his meserry lessens as he approaches it.
This teaches him to associate his misery with its absdence, and the opposite of misery with its presence. It gradually becomes desirable as he changes his mind about its worth. I am teaching you to associate misery with the ego and joy with the spirit. You have taught yourself the opposite. You are still free to choose, but can you really want the rewardss of the ego in the presence of the rewards of God?
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 are asked to live so as to demostrate that you are not an ego, and I do not choose God´s channels wrongly. The Holy One shares my trust, and accepts my Atonement decisions because my will is never out of accord with His. I have said before that I am in charge of the Atonement. This is only because I completed my part in it as a man, and can now complete it through others. My chosen channels cannot fail, because I will lend them my strength as long as theirs is waiting.
I will go with you to the Holy One, and through my perception He can bridge the little gap. Your gratitude to your brother is the only gift I want. I will bring it to God for you, knowing that to know your brother is to know God.
If you are gratful to your brother, you are greatful to God what he created. Through your gratitude you come to know your brother, and one moment of real recognition makes everyone your brother because each of them is of your Father. Love does not conqure all things, but it does set all things right. Because you are the Kingdom of God I can lead you back to your own creations. You do not recognize them now, but what has been dissociated is still here
As you come closer to a brother you approach me, and as you withdraw from him I become distant to you.
Salvation is a collaborative venture. It cannot be undertaken sucessfully 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. That is because the function of Love is one.

Love

[IA56]

Creation and Communication.

It is clear that while the content of any particular ego-illusion does not matter, its correction is more helpful in a specific context. Ego-illusions are quite specific, although the mind is naturally abstract.
Part of the mind becomes concrete, however, when it splits.
The concrete part believes in the ego, because the ego depends on the concrete. The ego is a part of the mind that believes your existence is defined by separation.
Everything the ego perceives is a spearate whole, without the relationships that imply being. The ego is thus against communication, except insofar as it is utilized to establish separateness rather than to abolish it. The communication system of the ego is based on its own thought system, as is everything els it dictates. Its communication is controlled by its need to protect itself, and it will disrupt comminication when it experiences threat
This disruption is a reaction to a specific person or persons. The specificity of the ego´s thinking, then, results in spurious generalization which is really not abstract at all. It merely responds in certain specific ways to everything it perceives as related. In contrast, spirit reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and does not respond at all to anytning else. Nor does it make any attempt to establish what is true. It knows that what is true is everything that God created. It is in complete and direct communication with every aspect of creation, because it is in complete and direct communication with its Creator. This communication is the Will of God. Creation and communication are synonymous. God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind, and Will.
Since only beings of a like order can truly communicate. His creations naturally communicate with Him and like Him. This communication is perfectly abstract, since its quality is universal in application. God created you by this and for this. The mind can distort its function, but it cannot endow itself with functions it was not given.
That is why the mind cannot totally lose the ability to communicate, even though it may refuse to utilize it on behalf of being.
Existence as well as being rest on communication. Existence, however, is specific in how, what and with whom communication is judged to be worth undertaking. Being is completely without these distinctions. It is a state in which the mind is in communication with everything that is real. To whatever extent you permit this state to be curtailed you are limiting your sense of your own reality, which becomes total only recognizing all reality in the glorious context of its real relationship to you. This is your reality. Do not desecrate it or recoil from it. It is your real home, your real temple and your real Self.
God, Who encompass all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing real can be increased except by sharing. That is why God created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in sharing. That is what creation means. "How", "what" and "to whom" are irrelevant, because real creation gives everything, since it can create only like itself. Remember that in the Kingdom there is no difference between having and being, as there is in existence. In the state of being the mind gives everything always.
The Bible repeatedly states that you should priase God. This hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. He has no ego with which to accept such praise, and no perception with which to judge it.
But unless you take part in the creation, His joy is not complete because yours is incomplete. And this He does know. He knows it in His Own Being and its experience of His Son´s experience. The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed, and He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him.
God has kept your kingdom for you, but He connot share His joy with you until you know it with your whole mind.
Revelation is not enough, because it is only communcation from God. God does not need revelation returned to Him, which would clearly be impossible, but He does want it brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual revelation; its content cannot be expressed, because it is intensely personal to the mind that receives it. It can, however, be returned by the mind to other minds, through the attitudes the knowledge from the revelation brings.
God is praised, whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful.
This is impossible without being wholly harmless, because the two beliefs must coexist. The truly helpful are invulnerable, because they are not protecting their egos and so nothing can hurt them.
Their helpfulness is their praise to God, and He will return their praise of Him because they are like Him, and they can rejoice together. God goes out to them and through them, and there is great joy throughout the Kingdom.
Every mind that is changed adds to this joy with its individual willingness to share in it. This truly helpful are God´s miracle workers, whom I direct until we are all united in the joy of the Kingdom. I will direct you to wherever you can be truly helpful, and to whoever can follow my guidance through you.

Love

[IA56]

Healing and Wholeness.

To heal is to make happy. I have told you to think how many opportunities you have had to gladden yourself, and how many you have refused. This is the same as telling you that you have refused to heal yourself.
The light that belongs to you is the light of joy. Radiance is not associated with sorrow. Joy calls forth an intergrated willingness to share it, and promotes the mind´s natural impuls to respong as one. Those who attempt to heal without being wholly joyous themselves call forth different kinds of responses at the same time, and thus deprive others of the joy of responding whole-heartedly.
To be whole-hearted you must be happy. If fear and love cannot coexist, and if it is impossible to be wholly fearful and remain alive, the only possible whole state is that of love. There is no difference between love and joy.
Therefore, the only possible whole state is the wholly joyous. To heal or make joyous is therefore the same as to intergrate and to make one. That is why it makes no difference to what part or by what part of the Sonship the healing is offered.
Every part benefits, and benefits equally.
You are being blessed by every beneficent though of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, our of gratitude. You need not know them individually, or they you. The light is so strong that it radiates throughout the Sonship and returns thanks to the Father for radiating His joy upon it. Only God´s holy children are worthy channels of His beautiful joy, because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it. It is impossible for a child of God to love his neighbor execpt as himself. That is why the healing prayer is:

"Let me know this brother as I know myself".

Love

[IA56]

The Invitation to the Holy Spirit.

Healing is a thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and lets God go out into them and through them.
Only the healed mind can experience revelation with lasting effect, because revelation is an experience of pure joy.
If you do not choose to be wholly joyous, your mind cannot have what it does not choose to be. Remember that spirit knows no difference between having and being. The higher mind thinks according to the laws spirit obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God. To spirit getting is meaningless and giving is all. Having everything, spirit holds everything by giving it, and thus creates as the Father created. While this kind of thinking is totally alien to having things, even to the lower mind it is quite comprehansible in connection with ideas.
If you share a physical possession, you do divide into ownership. If you share an idea, however, you do not lessen it. All of it is still yours although all of it has been given away. Further, if the one to whom you give it accepts it as his, he reinforces it in your mind and thus increases it. If you can accept the concept that the world is one of ideas, the whole belief in the false association the ego makes between giving and losing is gone.
Let us start our process of reawakening with just a few simple concepts:

Thoughts increase by being given away.
The more who believe in them the stronger they
become.
Everything is an idea.
How, then, can given and losing be associated?

This is the invitation to the Holy Spirit. I have said already that I can reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you, but I can bring Him to you only at your own invitation. The Holy Spirit is in your right mind, as He was in mind. The Bible says, "May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus," and uses this as a blessing. It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as I thought, joining with me in Christ-thinking.
The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity that has a symbolic function. He is referred to as the Healer, the Comforter and the Guide. He is also described as something "separate,"apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself said, "If I go I will send you another Comforter and He will abide with you." His symbolic function makes the Holy Spirit difficult to understand, because symbolism is open to different interpretations. As a man and also one of God´s creations, my right thinking, which came from the Holy Spirit or the Universal Inspiration, taught me first and foremost that this Inspiration is for all. I could not have It myselfWithout knowing this. The word "know" is proper in this context, because the Holy Spirit is so close to knowledge that He calls it forth; or better, allows it to come. I have spoken before of the higher or "true" perception, which is so near to truth that God Himself can flow across the little gap. Knowledge is always ready to flow everywhere, but it cannot oppose. Therefore you can obstruct it, although you can never lose it.
The Holy Spirit is the Christ Mind which is aware of the knowledge that lies beyond perception. He came into being with the separation as a protection, inspiring the Atonement principle at the same time. Before that there was no need for healing, for no one was comforless. 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 creation and keep them in the light of joy.
God honored even the miscreations of His children because they had made them. But He also blessed His children with a way of thinking that could raise their perceptions so high they could reach almost back to Him. The Holy Spirit is the Mind of the Atonement. He represents a state of mind close enough to One-mindedness that transfer to it is at last possible. Perception is not knowledge, but it can be transferred to knowledge, or cross over into it. It might even be more helpful here to use the literal meaning of transferred of "carried over", since the last step is taken by God.
The Holy Spirit, the shared Inspiration of all the Sonship, induces a kind of perception in which many elements are like those in the Kingdom of Heaven itself:
First, its universality is perfectly clear, and no one who attains it could believe for one instant that sharing it involves anything but gain.
Second, it is incapable of attack and is therefore truly open. This means that although it does not engender knowledge, it does not obstruct it in any way.
Finally, it points the way beyond the healing that it brings, and leads the mind beyond its own intergration toward the paths of creation. It is at this point that sufficient quantitative change occurs to produce a real qualitative shift.

Love

[IA56]

The Voice of God.

Healing is not creating: It is reparation. The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed. This alteration of the time sequence should be quite familar, because it is very similar to the shift in the perception of time that the miracle introduces.
The Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracle-mindedness; the decision to heal the separation by letting it go.
Your will is still in you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. God Himself keeps your will alive you cannot obliterate it. God Himself keeps your will alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time. The miracle itself is a reflection of this union of will between Father and Son.
The Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. He is the Call to return with which God blessed the minds of His separated Sons. This is the vocation of the mind. The mind had no calling until the separation, because before that it had only being, and would not have understood the call to right thinking. The Holy Spirit is God´s Answer to the separation; the means by which the Atonement heals until the whole mind returns to creating.
The principle of Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When the ego was made. God placed in the mind the call to joy. This call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound. That is why you must choose to hear one of two voices within you. One you made yourself, and that one is not of God. But the other is givem you by God. Who asks you only to listen to it. The Holy Spirit is in you in a very litteral sense. His is the Voice That calls you back to where you were before and will be again. 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 sons.
You are the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your mind and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let 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 as you do not know now.
God does not guide, because He can share only perfect knowledge. Guidance is evaluative, because it implies there is a right way and also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the other to be avoided. By choosing one you give up the other. The choice for the Holy Spirit is the choice for God. God is not in you in a literal sense; you are part of Him.
When you chose to leave Him He gave you a Voice to speak for Him, because He could not longer share His knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct communication was broken because you had made another voice.
The Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and to forget. You have chosen to be in a state of opposition in which opposites are possible. As a result, there are choices you must make. In the holy state the will is free, so that its creative power is unlimited and choice is meaningless. Freedom to choose is the same power as freedom to create, but its application is different. Choosing depends on a split mind. The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. God did not leave His children comfortless, even though they chose to leave Him. The voice they put in their minds was not the Voice for His Will, for which the Holy Spirit speaks.
The Voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because it is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand, becausse 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 may make. The Voice for God is always quiet, because it speaks of peace. Peace is stronger than war because it heals. Was is division, not increase. No onegains from strife. What profithet it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? If you listen the wrong voice you have lost sight of your soul. You cannot lose it, but you can not know it. It is therefore "lost" to you until you choose right.
The Holy Spirit is your Guide in choosing. He is in the part of your mind that 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 is done on earth as it is in Heaven. Both Heaven and Earth are in you, because the call of both is in your mind. The Voice of God comes from your own altars to Him. These altars are not things; they are devotions. Yet you have other devvotions now. Your divided devotion has given you the two voices. and must choose at which altar you want to serve. The call you answer now is an evalution because it is a decision. The decision 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. This decision is the choice to share it, because the decision itself is the decision to share. It is made by giving, and is therefore the one choice that resembles true creation. 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 have assured you that the Mind that decided 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 answeres in only 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 awaken 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 intergration 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 makeing 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 togeather", and "burden" means "message". Let us restate "My yoke is easy and my burden light" in this way; Lets us join together, for my message is Light.
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. He teaches you how to keep me as the model for your thought, and to behave like me as a result. The power of our joint motivation is beyond belief, but not beyond accomplisment. 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.

Love

[IA56]

The Guide to Salvation.

The way to reconize your brother is by recognizing the Holy Spirit in him. I have already said that the Holy Spirit is the bridge for the transfer of perception to knowledge, so we can use the terms as if they were rekated, because in His Mind they are. This separtation 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 need clarification, not in statement but in experience.
The Holy Spirit is the idea of healing. Being thought, the idea gains as it is shared. Being the Call of God, it is also the idea of God. Since you are part of God it is also the idea of yourself, as well as of all His creations. 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.
It is strengthened by being given away. It increases in you as you give it to your brother. Your brother does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in himself or in you for this miracle to occur. This dissociation is healed in both of you as you become aware of the Call of God in him, and thus acknowledge its being.
There are two dimetrically opposed ways of seeing your brother. They must both be in your mind, because you are the perceiver. They must also be in his, because you are perceiving him. See him through the Holy Spirit in his mind, and you will recognize Him in yours. What you acknowledge in your brother you are acknowledgin in yourself, and what you share you strengthen.
The Voice of the Holy Spirit is weak in you. That is why you must share It. 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 mind. It is not weak in Itself, but It is limited by your unwillingness to hear It. If you make the mistake of looking for the Holy Spirit in yourself alone your thouhts will frighten you because, by adopting the ego´s viewpoint, you are undertaking an ego-alien journey with the ego as guide. This is bound to produce fear.
Delay is the ego, because time is its concept. Both time and delay are meaningless in eternity. I 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 perception are themselves opposed. The Holy Spirit has the task of undoing what the ego has made. He undoes it at the same level on which the ego operates, or the mind would be unable to understand the change.
I have repeatedly emphasized that one level of the mind is not understandable to another. So it is with the ego and the Holy Spirit; with time and eternity. Eternity is an idea of God, so the Holy Spirit 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 that is eternal is now.
The Holy Spirit is the mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowldege of the spirit. His ability to deal with symbols enables Him to work with the ego´s beliefs in its own language. His ability to look beyond symbols into eternity enables Him to understand the laws of God, for which He speaks. He can therefore perform the function of reinterpreting what the ego makes, not by destruction but by understanding. Understanding is light, but you yourself do not know this. It is therefore the task of the Holy Spirit to einterpret you on behalf of God.
You cannot understand yourself alone. This is because you have no meaning apart from your rightful place in the Sonship, and the rightful place in the Sonship is God. This is your life, your eternity and your Self. It is of this that the Holy Spirit reminds you. It is this that the Holy Spirit sees. This vision 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 guarentee of its survival. The ego becomes strong in strife. If you believe this 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 His stength jus as the ego welcomes it. The Holy Spirit counters this welcome by welcoming peace. Eternity and peace are as closely related as are time and war.
Perception derives meaning from relationships. Those you accept are the foundation of your belief. The separation is merely another term for a split mind. The ego is the symbol of separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace. What you perceive in others you are strengthening in yourself. You may let your mind misperceive, but the Holy Spirit lets your mind reinterpret its own misperceptions.
The Holy Spirit is the perfect teacher. He uses only what your mind already understands to teach you that you do not understand it. The Holy Spirit can deal with a reluctant learner without going counter to his mind, because part of it is still for God. Despite the ego´s attempts to conceal this part, it is still much stronger than the ego, although the ego does not recognize it. The Holy Spirit recognizes it perfectly because it is His Own dwelling place; the place in the mind where He 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 reinterpreter of what the ego made, sees the world as a teaching device for bringing you home. The Holy Spirit must percieve time, and eintepret it into the timeless. He must work through opposites, because He 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 rememberance of me. He is in communion with God always, and He is part of you. He is your guide to salvation, because He holds the rememberance of things past and to come, and brings them to the present. He holds this gladness gently in your mind, asking only that you increase it in His Name by sharing it to increase His joy in you.

Love

[IA56]

Teaching and Healing.

What fear has hidden still is part of you. Joining the Atonement is the way out of fear. The Holy Spirit will help you reinterpret everything that you perceive as fearful, and teach you that only what is loving is true. Truth is beyond your ability to destroy, but entirely within your ability accept. It belongs to you because, as an extention of God, you created it with Him. It is yours because it is part of you, just as you are part of God because He created you.
Nothing that is good can be 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. The Atonement is the guarantee of the safety of the Kingdom, and the union of the Sonship is its protection. The ego cannot prevail against the Kingdom because the Sonship is united. In the presence of those who hear the Holy Spirit´s call to be as one, the ego fades away and is undone.
What the ego makes it keeps to itself, and so it is without strength. Its existence is unshared. It does not die; it was merely never born. Physical birth is not a beginning; it is a continuing.
Everything that continues has already been born. It will increase as you are willing to return the unhealed part of your mind to the higher part, returning it undivided to creation. I have cometo give you the foundation, so your own thoughts can make you really free. You have carried the burden of unshared ideas that are too weak to increase, bbut having made them you did not realize how to undo them. You cannot cancel out your past errors alone.
They will not disappear from your mind without the Atonement, a remedy not of your making. The Atonement must be understood as a pure act of sharing. That is what I meant what I said it is possible even inthis 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. The ego can keep you in exile from the Kingdom, but in the Kingdom itself it has no power. Ideas of the spirit do not leave the mindthat thinks them, nor can they conflict with each other.
However, ideas of the ego can conflict because they occur at different levels and also include opposite thoughts at the same level. It is impossible to share opposing thoughts. You can share only the thougts that are of God and that He keeps for you. And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. The rest remains with you until the Holy Spirit has reinterpretedd 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 decision to share them is their purification.
I heard on Voice because I understood that I could not atone for myself alone. Listening to one Voice implies the decision to share it in order to hear it It yourself. The Mind that was in me is still irresistaly drawn to every mind created by God, because God´s Wholeness is the wholeness of His Son. You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show our brother anything except your wholeness.
Show him that he cannot hurt you and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. This is the meaning of "turning the other cheek".
TEaching is done in many ways, above all by example. Teaching should be healing, because it is the sharing of ideas and the recognition that to share ideas is to strengthen them. 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 doing you can depend on it. Make it dependeble in my name because my name is the Name of God´s Son. What I learned I give you freely, and the Mind that was in me rejoices as you choose to hear it.
The Holy Spirit atones in all of us by undoing, and thus lifts thee burden you have placed in your mind. By following Him you are led back to God where you belong, and how can you find in the Atonement is not compleat until you join in 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 forsake yourself and God if you forsake any of your brothers.
You must learn to see them as they are, and understand they belong to God as you do. How could you treat your brother better than by rendering unto God the things that are God´s?
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 cannot be expressed as long as any of God´s ideas is witheld from the Kingdom. The joint will of the Sonship is the only creator that can create like the Father, 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 but a blessing.
I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and 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 what God creates is eternal. 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, I Whose Heart and Hands we have our being. His quit children are His blessed Sons. The Thoughts of God are with you.

Love

[IA56]

The Ego´s Use of Guilt.

Perhaps some of our concepts 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 egoistic.
The ego´s logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But again, remember that both are in you.
In Heaven there is no guilt, because the Kingdom, is attained through the Atonement, which releases you to create.
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 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 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 that believes in division. How could part of God detach itself without believing it is attacking Him? We spoke before of the authority problem as based on thee concept of usurping God´s power. The ego believes that this is what you did because it believes that it is you. If you identify with the ego, you must perceive yourself as guilty. Whatever you respond to your ego you will experience guilt, and you will fear punishment. The ego is guite literally a fearful thought. 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 speaks for it. Listening to the ego´s voice means that you beleive it is possible to attack God, and that a part of Him has been torn away by you. Fear of retaliation from without follows, because the serenity of the guilt is so acute that it must be projected.
Whatever you accept into your mind has reality for you. It is your acceptance of it that makes it real. If you enthrone the ego in your mind, your allowing it to enter makes it your reality. This is because the mind is capable of creating reality or making illusions. I 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. Unnatural 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, but as a positive act of assault. This is necessary to the ego´s survival because, as soon as you regard sin as a lack, you will automatically attempt to rememdy the situation. And you will succeed.
The ego regards this as doom, but you must learn to regard it as freedom.
The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, the mind heals the body because it cannot conceive of attacking anyone or anything. I said before that illness is a form of magic. It might be better to say that 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 intent, and thentakes this intentas its own pregogative. 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 that is anything but ineffectual. Its effects will follow automatically until the decision is changed. Remember, though, that the alternatives themselves are unalterable. The Holy Spirit, like the ego, is a decision. Together they constitute all the alternatives the mind can accept and obey. The Holy Spirit and the ego are the only choices open to you. God created one, and so you cannot erradicate it. You made the other, and so you can. Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable. What you made can always be changed because, when you do not think like God, you are not really thinking at all.
Delusional ideas are not real thoughts, although you can 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 disordered thought. 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 disordered thought is attended by guilt at its inception, and maintained by guilt in its continuance. Guilt is inescapable by those who believe they order their own thoughts, and must therefore obey their dictates. This makes them feel responsible for their errors without recognizing that, by accepting this responsibilty, they are reacting irresponsibly. If the sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself, and I assure you that it is, then the responsibility for what it atoned for cannot be yours.
The dilemma cannot be resloved 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 rememdy for disordered thought, a remedy whose efficacy is beyond doubt, how can its symptoms remain?
The continuing guilt decision to remain separated is the only possible reason for continuing guilt feelings.
We have said this before, but did not emphasize the destructive results of the decision. Any decision of the mind will affect both behavior and experience. What you want you expect. This is not delusional. Your mind does make your future, and it will turn it back to full creation at any minute if it accepts the Atonement first. It will also return to full creation the instant it has done so. Having given up its disordered thought, the proper ordering of thought becomes quite apparent.

Love

[IA56]

Time and Eternity.

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 awaiting for theirs. Delay does not matter in eternity, but it is tragic in time. You have elected to be in time rather than eternity, and therefore believe you are in time. Yet your 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 presevers of time. They induce fear of retaliation of abandonment, and thus ensure that the future will be like the past. This is the ego´s continuity. It gives the ego a false sense of security by believing that you cannot escape from it. But you can and must. God offers you the continuity of eternity in exchange. When you choose to make this exchange, you will simultaneously exchange guilt for joy, viciousness for love, and pain for peace. My role is only to unchain your will and set it free. Your ego cannot accept this freedom, and will oppose it at every possible moment and in every possible way. And as its maker, you recognize what it can do because you gave it the power to do it. Remember the Kingdom always, and remember that you who are part of the Kingdom 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 howw to share it wwith your brothers. How else can the chance to claim it for yourself be given you? The two voices speak for different interpretations of the same thing simultaneously; or almost simultaneously, for the ego always speaks first. Alterntive interpretations were unnecessary until the first one was made. The ego speaks in judgment, and the Holy Spirit reverses its decision, much as a higher court has the power to reverse a lower court´s decisions in this world. The ego´s decisions are always wrong, because they are based on the error they were made to uphold. Nothing the ego perceives is interpreted correctly. Not only does the ego cite Scriture for its purpose, but it ever interprets Scriture as a witness for itself. The Bible is a fearful thing in the ego´s judgment. Perceiving it as frightening, it interprets it fearfully. Being afraid, you do not appeal to the Higher Court because you believe its judgment would also be agaist you. There are many examples of how the ego´s interpretations are misleading, but a few will suffice to show how the Holy Spirit can reinterpret them in His Own Light. ”As ye sow, so shall ye reap” He interprets to mean what you consider worth cultivating you will cultivate in yourself. Your judgment of what iss worthy makes it worthy for you. ”Vengance is mine, sayeth the Lord” is easily reinterpreted if you remember that ideas increase only by being shared. The statement emphasizes that vengance 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 becomes merely an attempt to guarantee the ego´s own survival. To the Holy Spirit, the statement means that in later generations He can still reinterpret what former generations had misunderstood, and thus release the thoughts from the ability to produce fear. ”The wicked shall perish” becomes a statement of Atonement, if the word ”perish” is understood as ”be undone”. Every loveless thought must be undone, a word the ego cannot even understand. To the ego, to be undone means to be 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 reinterpreted to release you from fear. The part of your mind that you have given to the ego will merely return to the Kingdom, where your whole mind belongs. You can delay the completion of the Kingdom, but you cannot introduce the concept of fear into it. You need not fear the Higher Court will 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 up. The case may be fool-proof, but it is not God-proof. The Holy Spirit will not hear it, because He can only witness truly. His verdict will always be ” thine is the Kingdom”, because He was given to you to remind you of what you are. When I said ”I am come as a light into the world”, I meant that I came to share the light with you. Remember my reference to the ego´s dark glass, and remember also that I said, ”Do not look there”. It is still true that where you look to find yourself is up to you. Your patience with your brother is your patience with yourself. 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 the patience towards the Sonship in the Name of Its Creator. Now you must learn that only infinite patience produces immediate effects. This is the way in which time is exchanged for eternity. Infinite patience calls upon infinite love, and by producing results now it renders time unnecessary. We have repeatedly said that time is a learning device to 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 to eternity and remain to bless your creations there. He is the only blessing you can truly give, because He is truly blessed. Because He has been given freely by God, you must give Him as you received Him.

Love

[IA56]

The Decision for God.

Do you really believe you can make a voice that can drown out God´s? Do you really believe you can devise a thought system that can separate you from Him? Do you really believe you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can? You need be neither careful nor careless; you need merely cast 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 cannot 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 cannot believe that there is no order of difficulty in miracles. He has not learned that every mind God created is equally worthy of being healed because God created it whole. You are merely asked 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 you think are made upon you, when you can know the Voice for God is in you? God commended His Spirit to you, and asks that you commend your 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 need to separate, and you willingness to side with its separateness. This willingness means that you do not want to be healed. But the time is now. You have not been asked to work out the plan of salvation yourself because, as I told you before, the rememdy could not be of your making. God Himself gave you the perfect Correction for everything you made that is not in accord with His holy Will. I am making His plan perfectly explicit to you, and will also tell you of your part in it, and how urgent it is to fulfill it. God weeps at the ”sacrifice” of His children who believe they are lost to Him. Whenever you are not wholly joyous, it is because you have reacted with a lack of love to one of God´s creations. Perceiving this as ”sin” you become defensive because you expect attack. The decision to react in this way is yours, and can therefore be undone. It cannot be undone by repetance in the usual sense, because this implies guilt. If you allow yourself to feel guilty, you will reinforce the error rather than allow it to be undone for you. Decision cannot be difficult. This is obvious, if you realize that you must already have decided not to be wholly joyous if that is how you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recongnize that you actively decided wrongly, but can as actively decide otherwise. Be very firm with yourself in this, and keep yourself fully aware 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 this to yourself 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 want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.
I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the concequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.
I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me.

The Lesson of Love

The relationship of anger to attack is obvious, but the relationship of anger to fear is not always so apparant. Anger always involves projection of separation, which must ultimately be accepted as one´s own responsibility, rather than being blamed on others. Anger cannot occure unless you believe that you have been attacked, that your attack is justified in return, and that you are in no way responsible for it. Given these three wholly irrational premises, the equally irrational conclusion that a brother is worthy of attack rather than of love must follow. What can be expected from insane conclusions is to consider the sanity of the premises on which it rests. You cannot be attacked, attack has no justification, and you are responsible for what you believe. You have been asked to take me as your model for learning, since an extreme example is a particularly helpful learning device. Everyone teaches, and teaches all the time. This is a responsibility you inevitably assume the moment you accept any premise at all, and no one can organize his life without some thought system. Once you have developed a thought system of any kind, you live by it and teach it. Your capacity for allegiance to a thought system may be misplaced, but it is still a form of faith and can be redirected.

Love

[IA56]

The Message of the Crucifixion.

For learning purpose, let us consider the crucifixtion again. I did not dwell on it before because of the fearful connotations you may associate with it. The only emphasis laid upon it so far has been that it was not a form of punishment. Nothing, however, can be explained in negative terms only. There is a positive interpretation of the crucifixion that is wholly devoid of fear, and therefore wholly bening in what it teaches, if it is properly understood. The crucifixtion 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. This is only because the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully. I have already told you that you can always call on me to share my decision, and thus make it stronger. I have also told you that the crucifixtion was the last useless journey the Sonship need take, and that is represents relese from fear to anynone who understands it. While I emphasized only the resurrection before, the purpose of the crucifixtion and how it actually led to the resurrection was not clarifeid then. Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to your own life, and if you will consider it without fear, it will help you understand your own role as a teacher. You have probably 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 crucifixtion lies in the apparent intensity of the assault of some of the Sons of God upon another. This, of course, is impossible, and must be fully understood as impossible. Otherwise, I cannot serve as a 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. Yet if destruction itself is impossible, anything that is destructible cannot be real. Its destruciton, therefore, does not justify anger. To the extent to which you believe that it does, you are accepting false premise and teaching them to others. The message the crucifixtion was intented to teach was that it is not necessary to precive any form of assault in percecution, 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 demostrated only through joint decision. You are free to perceive yourself as persecuted if you choose. When you do choose to react that way, however, you might remember 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 want to share with you. If you will believe it, you will help me teach it. As I 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 a Son of God should want to teach if he is to realize his own salvation. Rather, teach your own perfect immunity, which is the truth in you, and realize that it cannot be assailed. Do not try to protect it yourself, or you are believing that it is assailable. You are not asked to be crucified, which 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 as false 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 reawakening. I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your mind of what is already in it. God placed it there Himself, and so it is true forever. I believe in it, and therefore accepted it as 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 brother slept during the ”agony in the garden”, but I could not be angry with them because I knew I could not be abandoned. I am sorry when my brothers do not share my decision to hear only one Voice, because it weakens them as teachers and as learners. Yet I know 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 the church holy. A church that does not inspire love has a hidden altar that is not serving the purpose for which God intended it. I must found His church on you, because those who accept me as a model are literally my disciples. Disciples are followers, and if the model they follow has chosen to save them pain in all respect, they are unwise not to follow him. I elected, for your sake and mine, to demostrate that the most outrageous assault, as judged by the ego, does not matter. As the world judgest he se things, but not as God knows them. I was betrayed, abondened, beaten , torn, and finallly killed. It was clear that this was only because of the projection of others onto me, since I had not harmed anyone and had healed many. We are still equal as learners, although we do not need to have equal experiences. The Holy Spirit is glad when you can learn from mine, and be reawakened by them. That is their only purpose, and that is the only way in which I can be perceived as the way, the truth and the life. When you hear only one Voice you are never called on to sacrifice. On the contrary, by being able to hear the Holy Spirit in others you can learn from their experiences, and can gain from them without experiencing them directly yourself. That is because the Holy Spirit is one, and anyone who listens is inevitably led to demostrate His way for all. You are not persecuted, nor was I. You are not asked to repeat my experiences because the Holy Spirit, Whom we share, makes this unnecessary. To use my experiences constructivly, however, 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 it, is that no perception that is out of accord with the judgment of the Holy Spirit can be justified. I undertook to show this was true in an extreme case, merely because it would serve as a good teaching aid to those whose temptation to give in to anger and assault would not be so extreme. I will with God that none of His Sons should suffer. The crucifixion cannot be shared because it is the symbol of projection, but the resurrectionis the symbol of sharing because the reawakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness. Only this is knowledge. The message of the crucifixtion is perfectly clear:

”Teach only love, for that is what you are”

If you interpret the crucifixion in any other way, you are using it as a weapon for assault rather than as the call for peace for which it was intented. The Apostles often misunderstood it, andfor the same reason that anyone misunderstands it. 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. Nor could they speak of the crucifixtion entirely without anger, because their sense of guilt had made them angry. These are some of the examples of upside-down thinking in the New Testament, although its gospel is really only the message of love. If the Apostels had not felt guilty, they never could have quouted me as saying, ”I come not to bring peace but a sword”. This is clearly the opposite of everthing I taught. Nor could they have described my reactions to Judas as they did, if they had really understood me. I could not have said, ”Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss”? Unless I believed in betrayal. The whole message of the crucifixion was simly that I did not. The ”punishment” I was said to have called forth upon Judas was a similar mistake. 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 demostrate that condemnation is impossible? As you read the teachings of the Apostles, 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 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. No on 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 result is a lesson in blame, for all behavior teaches the beliefs that motivate it. The crucifixtion was the result of clearly opposed thought systems; the symbol of the ”conflict” between the ego and the Son of God. This conflict seems just as real now, and its lessons must be learned now as well as then. I do not need gratitude, but you need to develop your weakened ability to be greatful, or you cannot appreaciate God. He does not need your appreciation, but you do. You cannot love what you do not appreciate, for fear makes appreaciation impossible. When 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 present all the time, because they were created as creators. Their influence on each others is without limit, and must be used for their joint salvation. Each one must learn to teach that all forms of rejection are meaningless. The separation is the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this you will believe it. This is not as God thinks, and you must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again. 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, and 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 other, you will have learned of me and will be eager to share your learning as I am.

Love

[IA56]

The Alternative to Projection.

Any split in mind must involve a rejection of part of it, and this is the belief in separation. The wholeness of God, which is His peace, cannot be appreciated except by a whole mind that recognizes the wholeness of God´s creation. By this recognition it knows its Creator. Exclusion and separation are synonymous, as are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and is dissociation, and that once it occurs projection becomes its main defense, or the device that keeps it going. The reason, however, may not be so obvious as you think. What you project you disown, and therefore do not believe is yours. You are excluding yourself by the very judgment that you are different from the one on whom you project. Since you have also judged against what you project, you continue to attackit because you continue to keep it separated. By doing this unconsciously, you try to keep the fact that you attacked yourself out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe. Yet projection will always hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its only pupose is to keep the separation going. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel different from your brothers and separated from them. The ego justifies this on the grounds that it makes you seem �better� than they are, thus obscuring your equality with them still further. Projection and attack are inevitably related, because projection is always a means of justifying attack. Anger without projection is impossible. The ego uses projection only to destroy your perception of both yourself and your brothers. The process begins by excluding something that exissts in you but which you do not want, and leads directly to excluding you form your brothers. We have learned, however, that there is an alternative to projection. Every ability of the ego has a better use, because its abilities are directed by the mind, which has a better Voice. The Holy Spirit extends and the ego projects. As their goals are opposed, so is the result. The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving you as perfect. Knowing this perfection is shared He recognizes it in others, thus strengthening it in both. Instead of anger this arouse love for both, because it establishes inclusion. Perceiving equality, the Holy Spirit perceives equal needs. This invites Atonement automatically,because Atonement is the one need in this world that is universal. To perceive yourself this way is the only way in which you can find happiness in the world. That is because it is the ackonwledgment that you are not in this world, for the world is unhappy. How else can you find joy in a joyless place except by realizing that you are not there? You cannot be anywhere God did not put you, and God created you as part of Him. That is both where you are and what you are. It is completely unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change it now or ever. It is forever true. It is not a belief, but a Fact. Anything that God created is as true as He is. Its truth lies only in its perfect inclusion in Him Who alone is perfect. To deny this is to deny yourself and Him, since it is impossible to accept one without the other. The perfect equality of the Holy Spirit´s perception is the reflection of the perfect equality of God´s knowing. The ego´s perception has no counterpart in God, but the Holy Spirit remains the bridge between perception and knowledge. By enabling you to remember it. The ego would prefer to believe that this memory is impossible, yet it is your perception the Holy Spirit guides. Your perception will end where it began. Everything meets in God, because everything was created by Him and in Him. God created His Sons by extending His Thoughts, and retaining the extenstions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. The Holy Spirit enables you to perceive this wholeness now. God created you to create. You cannot extend His Kingdom until you know of it wholeness. Thoughts begin in the mind of the thinker, from which they reach outward. This is as true of God´s Thinking as it is of yours. Because your mind is split, you can perceive as well as think. Yet perception cannot escape the basic laws of mind. You perceive from your mind and project your percepptions outward. Although perception of any kind is unreal, you made it and the Holy Spirit can therefore use it well. He can inspire perception and lead it towards God. This convergence seems to be far in the future only because your mind is not in perfect alignment with the idea, and therefore does not want it now. The Holy Spirit uses time, but does not believe in it. Coming from God He uses everything for good, but He does not believe in what is not true. Since the Holy Spirit is in your mind, your mind can also believe only what is true. The Holy Spirit can speak only for this, because He speaks for God. He tells you to return your whole mind to God, because it has never left Him. If it has never left Him, you need only perceive it as it is to be returned. The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation never occured. The ego cannot prevail against this because it is an explicit statement that the ego never occured. The ego can accept the idea that return is necessary because it can so easily make the idea seem difficult. Yet the Holy Spirit tells you that even return is unnecessary, because what never happened cannot be difficult. However, you can make the idea return both necessary and difficult. Yet it is surely clear that the perfect need nothing, and you cannot experience perfection as a difficult accomplishement, because that is what you are. This is the way in which you must perceive God´s creations, bringing all of your perceptions into the one line the Holy Spirit sees. This line is the direct line of communication with God, and lets your mind converge with His. There is no conflict anywhere in this perception, because only the Holy Spirit is conflict-free. He perceives only what is true in your mind, and extends outward only to what is true in others minds. The difference between the ego´s projection and the Holy Spirit´s extension is very simple. The ego projects to exclude, and therefore to deceive. The Holy Spirit extends by recognizing Himself in every mind, and thus percieves then as one. Nothing conflicts in this perception, because what the Holy Spirit perceives is all the same. Wherever He looks He sees Himself, and because He is united He offers the whole Kingdom always. This is the one message God gave to Him and for which He must speak, because He is unitid He offers the whole Kingdom always. This is the one message God gave to Him and for which He must speak, because that is what He is. The peace of God lies in that message, and so the peace of God lies in you. The great peace of the Kingdom shines in your mind forever, but it must shine outwards to make you aware of it. The Holy Spirit was given you with perfect impartiality, and only by recognizing HIm impartially can you recognize Him at all. The ego is legion, but the Holy Spirit is one. No darkness abides anywhere in the Kingdom, but your part is only to allow no darkness to abide in your own mind. This alignment with light is unlimited, because it is in alignment with the light of the world. Each of us is the light of the world, and by joining our minds in this light we proclaim the Kingdom of God together and as one.

Love

[IA56]

The Relinquisment of Attack.

As we have already emphasized, every idea begins in the mind of the thinker. Therefore, what extends from the mind is still in it, and from what it extends it knows itself. The word �knows� is correct here, because the Holy Spirit still holds knowledge safe in your mind through His impartial perception. By attacking nothing, He presents no barrier to the communication of God. Therefore, being is never threatened. Your Godlike mind can never be defiled. The ego never was and never will be part of it, but through the ego you can hear and teach and learn what is not true. You have taught yourself to believe that you are not what you are. You cannot teach what you have not learned, and what you teach you strengthen in yourself because you are sharing it. Every lesson you teach you are learning. That is why you must teach only one lesson. If you are to be conflict-free yourself, you must learn only from the Holy Spirit and teach only by Him. You are only love, but when you deny this, you make what you are something you must learn to remember. I said before that the message of the crucifixtion was, �Teach only love, for that is what you are�. This is the one lesson that is perfectly unified, because it is the only lesson that is one. Only by teaching it can you learn it. �As you teach so will you learn�. If this is true, and it is true indeed, do not forget that what you teach is teaching you. And what you project or extend you believe. The only safety lies in extending the Holy Spiri, because as you see His gentleness in others your own mind perceives itself as totally harmless. Once it can accept this fully, it sees no need to protect itself. The protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever. The perfectly safe are wholly bening. They bless because they know that they are blessed. Without anxiety the mind is wholly kind, and because it extends beneficence it is beneficent. Safety is the complete relinquisment of attack. No compromise is possible in this. Teach attack in any form and you have learned it, and it will hurt you. Yet this learning is not immortal, and you can unlearn it by not teaching it. Since you cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything the ego believes. This is how you will learn the truth that will set you free, and will keep you free as others learn it of you. The only way to have peace is to teach peace. By teaching peace you must learn it yourself, because you cannot teach what you still dissociate. Only thus can you win back the knowledge that you threw away. An idea that you share you must have. It awakens in your mind through the conviction of teaching it. Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love.

Love

[IA56]

The Only Answer.

Remember that the Holy Spirit is the Answer, not the question. The ego always speaks first. It is capricious and does not mean its maker well. It believes, and correctly, that its maker may withdraw his support from it at any moment. If it means you well it would be glad, as the Holy Spirit will be glad when He brought you home and you no longer need His guidance. The ego does not regard itself as part of you. Herein lies its primary 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. 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 that you are without it. This enables the ego to regard itself as separte and outside its maker, thus speaking for the part of your mind that believes you are separated and outside the Mind or God. The ego, then raised the first question that was ever asked, but one it can never answer. That question, ”What are you”? Was the beginning off doubt. The ego has never answered any question since, although 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 understand the conflict until you fully understand the basic fact that the ego cannot know anything. The Holy Spirit does not speak first, but the always answere. 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, which means that everyone has the answer now. The ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit, but it does believe that part of the mind, that made it is against it. It interprets this as a justification for attacking its maker. It believes that the best defense is attack, and wants you you to believe it. 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 alies to itself is your mind, the ego turns to the body as it ally, because the body is not part of you. This makes the body the ego´s friend. 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 uses the body to conspire against your mind, and because the ego realizes that its ”enemy” can end them both merely by recognizing they are not part of you, 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 the mind is the ego´s learning device; and further, that the body is more real than the mind 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 the ego raises: You are a child of God, and 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 awaken. Your dreams contain many of the ego´s symbols and they have confused you. Yet that was only because you were asleep and did not know. When you wake you will see the truth around you and you will no longer believe in dreams, because they will have no reality for you. Yet 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 in perfectly certain. There is no doubt, 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 spent on questioning in the dream has given way to creation and to its eternity. You are as certain in your mind has become only the ablility for certainty. The introduction of abilities into being was the beginning of uncertainty, because abilities are potentials, not accoplishements. Your abilities are useless in the precense of God´s accompishments, and also of yours. Accomplisments are results that has been achived. When they are perfect, abilities are meaningless. It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In fact, it is impossible. Remember, however, that when you put yourself in an impossible situation your believe that the impossible is possible. Abilities must be developed before you can use them. This is not true of anything that God created, but it is the kindest solution possible for what you 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 strengten your command, and never detract from it in any way. You therefore retain the central place in your imagined enslavement, which in itself demonstrates that you are not enslaved. You are in an impossible situation only because your think it is possible to be in one. You would be in an impossible situation if God showed you your perfection, and proved to you that your were wrong. This would demonstrate that the perfect are inadequate to bring themselves to an answereness 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” in which the ego engages. God, Who knows that His creations are perfect, does not affront them. This would be as impossible as the ego´s notion that it has affronted Him. That is why the Holy Spirit never commands. To command is to assume inequality, which the Holy Spirit demostrates does not exist. Fidelity to premises is a law of mind, and everything God created is faithful to His laws. Fidelity to other laws is also possible, however, not because the laws are true, but because you mad them. What would be gained if God proved to you that you have thought insanely? Can God lose His Own certainty? I have frequently said that what you teach you are. Would you have God teach you that you have sinned? If He confronted the self you made with the truth He created for you, what could you be but afraid? You would doubt your right mind, which is the only place where 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 harch 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, becasuse to eradicate it would be to attack it. Being questioned, He did not question. He merely gave the Answer. His Answer is your Teacher.

Love

[IA56]

The Lesson of the Holy Spirit.

Like any good teacher, the Holy Spirit knows more than you do now, but He teaches only to make you equal with Him. You had already taught yourself wrongly, having believed what was not true. You did not believe in your own perfection. Would God teach you that you had made a split mind, when He knows your mind only as whole? What does God 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. Giving His joy is an ongoing process, not in time but in eternity. God´s extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, â€�My children sleep and must be awakenedâ€�. How can you wake children in a more kindly way than by a gentle Voice That will not frighten them, but will merely remind them that the night is over and the light has come? You don not inform them that the nightmares that frightened them so badly are not real, because children believe in magic. You merely reassure them that they are safe now. Then you train them to recognize the diffference between sleepÃ♥ng and waking, so they will understand they need not be afraid of dreams. And so when bad dreams come, they will themselves call on the light to dispel them. A wise teacher teaches through approach, not avoidance. He does not emhasize what you must avoid to escape from harm, but what you need to learn to have joy. Consider the fear and confusion a child would experience if he were told, â€�Do not do this because it will hurt you and make you unsafe; but if you do that instead, you will escape from harm and be safe, and then you will not be afraidâ€�. It is surely better to use only three words: â€�Do only thatâ€�! This 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. Yet He always answeres their call, and His dependability makes themn more certain. Children do confuse fantasy and reality, and they are frightened because they do not recognize the difference. The Holy Spirit makes no distinction among dreams. He merely shines them away. His light is always the call to awaken, whatever you 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.


Love

[IA56]

1 �To have, Give All to All�

When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever. Perhaps you think 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 deciding at all. Like any other impossible solution 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. Again as always, He reinterprets what the ego uses as an argument for separation into a demostration against it. If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demostrates this. I have said that the Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracles. He always tells you that 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 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 familar 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 believving it, becauce it is a belief in perfect equality. Only one equal gift can be offered to the equal Sons of God, and that is full appreaciation. Nothing more and nothing less. Without a range order of difficulty is meaningless, and there must be no range in what you offer to your brother. The Holy Spirit, Who leads to God, translates communication into being, just as He ultimately translates perception into knowledge. The ego uses the body for attack, for pleasure and for pride. The insanity of this perception makes it a fearful one indeed. The Holy Spirit sees the body only as a means of communication, and because communicationg is sharing it becomes communion. Perhaps you think that fear as well as love can be communicated; and therefore can be shared. Yet this is not so real as it may appear. Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and attack always breaks communication, makeing it impossible. Egos do join together in temporary alligiance, but always for what each one can get separatly. 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, Hes teachings begins with the lesson:
�To have, give all to all�
This is a very preliminary step, and the only one you must take for yourself. It is not even necessary that you complete the step for yourself. It is not even necessary that you complete the step yourself, but it is necessary that you turn it that direction. Having chosen to go that way, you place yourself in charge of the journey,where you and only you must remain. This step may appear 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 you have not yet abondoned, or the change in direction would not have been necessary. Some remain at this step for a long time, experiencing very acute conflict. At this point may try to accept the conflict, rahter than take the next step towards its resolution. Having taken the first step, however, they will be helped. Once they have chosen what they cannot complete alone, they are no longer alone.

Love

[IA56]

II. ”To Have Peace, Teach Peace to learn it”

All who believe in separation have a basic fear of retaliation and abondonment. They believe in attack and rejection, so that is what they perceive and teach and learn. Therse insane ideas are clearly the result of dissociation and projection. What you teach you are, but it is quite apparant that you can teach wrongly, and can therefore teach yourself wrong. Many thought I was attacking them, even thought it was apparent I was not. An insane learner learns strange lessons. What you must recognize is that when you do not share a thought system, you are weakening it. Those who believe in it therefore perceive this as an attack on them. This is because everyone identifies himself with his thought system, and every thought system centers on what you believe you are. If the center of the thought system is true, only truth extends from it. But if a lie is at its center, only decpetion proceed from it. All good teachers realize that only fundamental change will last, but they do not begin at that level. Strengthening motivation for change is their first and foremost goal. It is also their last and final one. Increasing motivation for change in the learner is all that a teacher need do to guarantee change. Change in motivation is a change of mind, and this will inevitabley produce fundamental change because the mind is fundamental. The first step in the reversal or undoing process is the undoing of the getting concept. Accordingly, the Holy Spirit´s first lesson was ”To have, give all to all”. I said that this is apt to increase conflict temporarily, and we can clarify this still further nwo. All this point, the equality of having and being is not yet received. Until it is, having appears to be the opposite of giving. Therefore, the first lesson seems to contain a contradiction, since it is being learned by a conflicted mind. This means conflicting motivation, and so the lesson cannot be learned consistently as yet. Further, the mind of the learner projects its own conflict, and thus does not perceive consistency in the mind of others, making him suspicious of their motivation. This is the real reason why, in many respects, the first lesson is the hardest to learn. Still strongly aware of the ego in yourself, and responding primarily to the ego in others, you are being taught to react to both as if what you do belive is not true. Upside down as always, the ego perceives the first lesson as insane. In fact, this is its only alternative since the other possibility, which would be much less accepted to it, would obviously be that it is insane. The ego´s judgment, here as always, is predetermined by what it is. The fundamental change will still occur with the change of mind in the thinker. Meanwhile, the increasing clarity of the Holy Spirit´s Voice makes it impossible for the learner not to listen. For a time, then, he is receiving conflicting messages and accepting both. The way out of conflict between two opposing though systems is clearly to choose one and relinquish the other. If you identify with your thought system, and you cannot escape this, and if you accept two thought systems which are in complete disagreement, peace of mind is impossible. If you tech both, which you will surely do as long as you accept both, you are teaching conflict and learning it. Yet you do want peace, or you would not have called upon the Voice for peace to help you. Its lesson is not insane; the conflict is. There can be no conflict between sanity and insanity. Only one is true, and therefore only one is real. The ego tries to persuade you that it is up to you to decide which voice is true, but the Holy Spirit teaches you that truth was created by God, and your decision cannot change it. As you begin to realize the quiet power of the Holy Spirit´s Voice, and Its perfect consisntency, it must draw on your mind that you are trying to undo a decision that was irrevocably made by you. That is why I suggested before that you reming yourself to allow the Holy Spirit to decide for God for you. You are not asked to make insane decisions, although you can think you are. It msut, however, be insane to believe that it is up to you to decide what God´s creations are. The Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is. Therefore, His second lesson is:

”To have peace, teach peace to learn it”

This is still a peliminary step, since having and being are still not equated. It is, however, more advanced than the first step, which is really only the beginning of the though reversal. The second step is a positive affirmation of what you want. This, then, is a step in the direction out of conflict, since it means that alternatives have been considered, andd one has been chosen as more desirable. Nevertheless, the term ”more desirable” still implies that the desirabel has degrees. Therefore, although this step is essential for the ultimate decision, it is clearly not the final one.Lack of order of difficulty in miracles has not yet been accepted, because nothing is difficult that is wholly desired. To desire wholly is to create, and creating cannot be difficult if God Himself created you as a creator. The second step , then, is still perceptual, although it is a giant step towards the unified perception that reflects God´s knowing. As you take this step and hold this direction, you will be pushing towards the center of your thought system, where the fundamental change will occur. At the second step progress is intermittent, bbut the second step is easier than the first step because it follows. Realizing that it must follow is a demostration of growing awareness that the Holy Spirit will lead you on.

Love

[IA56]

III. �Be Vigilant Only for God and His Kingdom�.

We said before that the Holy spirit is evaluative, and must be. He sorts out the true from the false in your mind, and teaches you to judge every thought you allow to enter it in the light of what God put there. Whatever is in accord with this light He retains, to strengthen the Kingdom in you. What is partly in accord with it He accepts and purfies. But what is out of accord entirely He rejects by judging against. This is how He keeps, the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified. Remember, however, that what the Holy Spirit rejects the ego accepts. This is because they are in fundamental disagreement about everything, being in fundamental disagreement about what you are. The ego´s beliefs on this crucial issue vary, and that is why it promotes differnt moods. The Holy Spirit never varies on this point, and so the one mood He engenders is joy. He protects it by rejecting everything that doe not foster joy, and so He alone can keep you wholly joyous. The Holy Spirit does not teach you to judge others, because He doesn not want you to teach error and learn it yourself. He would hardly be consistent if He allowed you to strengthen what you must learn to avoid. In the mind of the thinker, then, He is judgmental, but only in order to unify the mind so it can perceive without judgment. This enables the mind to teach without judgment, and therefore to learn to be without judgment. The undoing is necessary only in your mind, so that you will not project, instead of extend. God Himself has established what you can extend with perfect safety. Therefore, the Holy spirit´s third lesson is:

�Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom�.

This is major step toward fundamental change. Yet it still has an aspect of thought reversal, since it implies that there is something you must be vigilan against. It has advanced far from the first lesson, which is merely the beginning of the thought reversal, and also from the second, which is essentially the identification of what is more desirable. This step, which follows from the second as the second follows from the first, emhasizes the dichotomy between the desirable and the undesirable. It therefore makes the ultimate choice inevitable. While the first step seems to increase conflict and second may still entail conflict to some extent, this step calls for consistent vigilance against it. I have already told you you that you can be as vigilant against the ego as for it. This lesson teaches not only that you can be, but that you must be. It does not concern itself with order to difficulty, but with clear-cut priority for vigilance. This lesson is undequivocal in that it teaches there must be no exceptions, although it does not deny that the temptation to make exceptions, although it does not deny that the temptation to make execptions will occur. Here, then, your consistency is called on despite chaos. Yet chaos and concistency cannot coexist for long, since they are mutual exclusive. As long as you must be vigilant against anything, however, you are not recognizing this mutual exclusiveness, and still believe that you can choose either one. By teaching what to choose, the Holy Spirit will ultimately teach you that you need not choose at all. This will finally liberate your mind from choice, and direct it towards creation within the Kingdom. Choosing through the Holy Spirit will lead you to the Kingdom. You create by your true being, but what you are you must learn to remember. The way to remember it is inherent in the third step, which brings together the lessons implied in the others, and goes beyond them towards real intergration. If you allow yourself to have in your mind only what God put there, you are acknowledging your mind as God created it. Therefore, you are accepting it as it is. Since it is whole, you are teaching peace because you believe in it. The final step will still be taken for you by God. He is getting you ready for the translation of having into being by the very nature of the steps you must take with Him. You learn first that having rests on giving, and not on getting. Next you learn that you learn what you teach, and that you want to learn peace. This is the condition for identifying with the Kingdom, since it is the condition of the Kingdom. You have believed that you are without the Kingdom, and have therefore excluded yourself from it in your belief. It is therefore essential to teach you that you must be included, and that the belief that you are not is the only thing that you must exclude. The third step is thus one of protection for your mind, allowing you to identifye only with the center, where God placed the altar to Himself. Altars are beliefs, but God and His creations are beyond belief because they are beyond question. The Voice for God speaks only for belief beyond question, which is the preparation for being without question. As long as belief in God and His Kingdom is assailed by any doubts in your mind, His perfect accomplishment is not apparant to you. This is why you must be vigilant on God´s behalf. The ego speaks against His creation, and therefore engenders doubt. You cannot to beyond belief until you believe fully. To teach the whole Sonship without exception demostrates that you perceive its wholeness, and have learned that it is one. Now you must be vigilant to hold its oneness in your mind because, if you let doubt enter, you will lose awareness of its wholeness andwill be unable to teach it. The wholeness of the Kingdom does not depend on your perception, but your awareness of its wholeness does. It is only your awareness that needs protection, since being cannot be assailed. Yet a real sense of being cannot be yours while you are doubtful of what you are. This is why vigilance is essential. Doubts about being must not enter your mind, or you cannot know what you are with certainty. Certainty is of God for you. Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it is necessary against illusions. Truth is without illusions and therefore within the Kingdom. Everything outside the Kingdom is illusion. When you threw truth away you saw yourself as if you were without it. By making another kingdom that you valued, you did not keep only the Kingdom of God in your mind, and thus placed part of your mind outside it. What you made has imprisoned your will, and given you a sick mind that must be healed. Your vigilance against this sickness is the way to heal it. Once your mind is healed it radiates health, and thereby teaches healing. This establishes you as a teacher who teaches like me. Vigilance was required of me as much as of you, and those who choose to teach the same thing must be in agreement about what they believe. The third step, then, is a statement of what you want to believe, and entails a willingness to relingquish everything else. The Holy Spirit will enable you to take this step, if you follow Him. Your vigilance is the sign that you want Him to guide you. Vigilance does require effort, but only until you learn that effort itself is unnecessary. You have exerted great effort to preserve what you made because it was not true. Therefore, you must now turn your effort against it. Only this can cancel out theneed for effort, and call upon the being which you both have and are. This recognition is wholly without effort since it is already true and needs no protection. It is in the perfect safety of God. Therefore, inclusion is total and creation is without limit.

Love

[IA56]

THE GIFTS OF THE KINGDOM

The Last Step.

The creative power of God and His creations is limitless, but they are not in reciprocal relationship. You communicate fully with God, as He does with you. This is an ongoing process in which you share, and because you share it, you are inspired to create like God. Yet in creation you are not in a reciprocal relation to God, since He created you but you did not create Him. I have already todl you that only in this respect your creative power differs from His. Even in this world there is a prallel. Parents give birth to children, but children do not give birht to parents. They do, however, give birth to their children, and thus give birth as their parents do. If you created God and He created you, the Kingdom could not increase through its own creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you would not be co-creators with God. As God´s crative Thought proceeds from Him to you, so must your creative thought proceed from you to your creations. Only in this creative thought proceed from you to your creations. Only in this way can all creative power extend outward. God´s accomplishments are not yours, but yours are like His. He created the Sonship and you increase it. You have the power to add to the Kingdom, though not to add to the Creator of the Kingdom. You claim this power when you become vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. By accepting this power as yours you have learned to remember what you are. Your creations belong in you, as you belong in God. You are part of God, as your sons are part of His Sons. To create is to love. Love extends outward simply because it cannot be contained. Being limitless it does not stop. It creates forever, but not in time. God´s crations have always been, because He created you eternal. The ego, on the other hand, always demands reciprocal rights, because it is competitive rather than loving. It is always willing to strike a bargain, but it cannot understand that to be like another means that no bargains are possible. To gain you must give, not bargain. To bargain is to limit giving, and this is not God´s Will. To will with God is to create like Him. God does not limit His gifts in any way. You are His gifts, and so your gifts must be like His. Your gifts to the Kingdom must be like His gifts to you. I gave only love to the Kingdom because I believed that was what I was. What you believe you are determines your gifts, and if God created you by extending Himself as you, you can only extend yourself as He did. Only joy increases forever, since joy and eternity are inseparable. God extend outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you who are co-creator with Him extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit. Eternity is the indelible stamp of creation The eternal are in peace and joy forever. To think like God is to share His certainty of what you are, and to create like Him is to share the perfect Love Hes hares with you. To this the Holy Spirit leads you, that your joy may be complete because the Kingdom of God is whole. I have said that the last step in the reawakening ofknowledge is taken by God. This is true, but it is hard to explain in words because words are symbols, andd nothing that is true need be explained. However, the Holy Spirit has the task of translating the useless into the useful, and meaningless into the meaningful, and the temporary into the timeless. He can therefore tell you something about this last step. God does not take steps, because His accomplishements are not gradual. He does not teach, because His creations are changeless. He does nothing last, because He created first and for always. It must be understood that the word �first� as applied to Him is not a time concept. He is first in the sense that He is the First in the Holy Trinity Itself. He is the Prime Creator, because He created His co-creators. Because Hed id, time applies neither to Him nor to what He created. The �last step� that God will take was therefore true in the beginning, is true now, and will be true forevver. What is timeless is always there, because its being is eternally changeless. It does not change by increase, because it was forever created to increase. If you perceive it as not increasing you do not know what it is. You also do not know Who created it. God does not revele this to you because it was never hidden. His light was never obscured, because it is His Will to share it. How can what is fully shared be withheld and the reveled?

Love

[IA56]

The Law of the Kingdom.

To heal is the only kind of thinking in this world that resembles the Thought of God, and because of the elements they share, can transfer easily to it. When a brother perceives himself as sick, he is perceiving himself as not whole, and therefore in need. If you, too, see him this way, you are seeing him as if he were absent from the Kingdom or separated from it, thus making the Kingdom itself obscure to both of you. Sickness and separation are not of God, but the Kingdom is. If you obscure the Kingdom, you are perceiving what is not of God. To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother and yourself by sharing the Holy Spirit with him. This places you both within the Kingdom, and restores its wholeness and intergrates by extending. What you project or extend is real for you. This is an immutable law of the mind in this world as well as in the Kingdom. However, the content is different in this world, because the thoughts is governs are very different from the Thoughs in the Kingdom. Laws must be adapted to circumstances if they are to maintain order. The outstanding characteristic of the laws of mind as they operate in this world is that by obeying them, and I assure you that you must obey them. You can arrive at diametrically opposed results. This is because the laws have been adapted to the circumstances of this world, in which diametrically opposed outcomes seem possible because you can respond to two conflicting voices. Outside the Kingdom, the law that prevails inside is adapted to ”What you project you believe”. This is its teachings from, because outside the Kingdom learning is essential. This form implies that you will learn what you are from what you have projected onto others, and therefore believe they are. In the Kingdom there is no teaching or learning, because there is no belief. There is only certainty. God and His Sons, in the surety of being, know that what you extend you are. That form of the law is not adapted at all, being the law of creation. God Himself created the law by creating by it. And His Sons, who create like Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the increase of the Kingdom depends on it, just as their own cration did. Laws must be communicated if they are to be helpful. In effect, they must be translated for those who speak different languages. Nevertheless, a good translator, although he must alter the form of what he translates, never changes the meaning. In fact, his whole purpose is to change the form so that the original meaning is retained. The Holy Spirit is the translator of the laws of God To those who do not understand them. You could not do this yourself because a conflicted mind cannot be faithful to onemeaning, and will therefore change the meaning to preserve the form. The Holy Spirit´s purpose is translating is exactly the opposite. He translates only to preserve the original meaning in all respets and in all languages. Therefore, He opposes the idea that differences in form and meaninful, emhasizing always that these differences do not matter. The meaning of His message is always the same; only the meaning matters. God´s law of creation does not involve the use of thruth to convince His Sons of truth. The extention of truth, which is the law of the Kingdom, rests only on the knowledge of what truth is. This is your inheritance and requires no learning at all, but when you disinherited yourself you became a learner of necessity. No on questions the connection of learning and memory. Learning is impossible without memory since it must be consistent to be remembered. That is why the Holy Spirit´s teachings is a lesson in remembering. I said before that He teaches remembering and forgetting, but the forgetting is only to make the remembering consistent. You forget in order to remember better. You will not understand His translations while you listen to two ways of interpreting them. Therefore you must forget of relingquish one to understand the other. This is the only wayyou can learn consistency, so that you can finally be consistent. What can the perfect consistency of the Kingdom mean to the confused? It is apparent that confusion interferes with meaning, and therefore prevents the learner from appreciationg it. There is no confusion in the Kingdom, because there is only one meaning. This meaning comes from God and is God. Because it is also you, you share it and extend it as your Creator did. This needs no translation because it is perfectly understood, but it does need extension because it means extension. Communication is perfectly direct and perfectly united. It is totally free, because nothing discordant ever enters. That is why it is the Kingdom of God. It belongs to Him and is therefore like Him. That is its reality, and nothing can assail it.

Love

[IA56]

The Reality of the Kingdom.

The Holy Spirit teaches one lesson, and applies it to all individuals in all situations. Being conflict-free, He maximizes all efforts and all results. By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that all power is yours. Its application does not matter. It is always maximal. Your vigilance does not establish it as yours, but it does enable you to use it always and in all ways. When I said �I am with you always�, I meant it literally. I am not absent to anyone in any situation. Because I am always with you, you are the way, the truth and the life. You did not make this power, any more than I did. It was created to be shared, and therefore cannot be meaningfully perceived as beloning to anyone at the expense of another. Such a perception makes it meaningless by eliminating or overlooking its real and only meaning. God´s meaning waits in the Kingdom, because that is where He placed it. It does not wait in time. It merely rests in the Kingdom because it belongs there, as you do. How can you who are God´s meaning perceive yourself as absent from it? You can see yourself as unreal. This is why the ego is insane; it teaches that you are not what you are. That is so contradictory it is clearly impossible. It is therefore a lesson you cannot really learn, and therefore cannot really teach. Yet you are always teaching. You must, therefore, be teaching something else, 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. Yet what is �trecherous� to the ego is faithful to peace. The ego´s �enemy� is therefore your friend. I said before that the ego´s friend is not part of you, because the ego perceives itself at war and therefore in need off allies. You who are not at war must look for brothers and recognize all whom you see as brother, because only equals are at peace. Because God´s equal Sons have enverythng, they cannot compete. Yet if they perceive any of their brothers as anything other than their perfect equals, the idea of competition has enterd 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 you have accepted the impossible as true. Is that different from saying you perceive yourself as unreal? To be in the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention on it. As long in the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention onit. As long as you believe 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 aree the Kingdom are not concerned with seeming. Reality is yours because you are reality. This is now hawing and being are ultimately reconciled, not in the Kingdom, but in your mind. The altar there is to only reality. The altar is perfectly clear in thought, because it is a reflection of perfect Thought. Your right mind sees only brothers, because it sees only its own light. God has lit your mind Himself, and keeps your mind lit by His Light because His Light is what your mind is. This is totally beyond question, and when you questin it you are 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. His 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.

Love

[IA56]

Healing as Recognition of Truth.

Truth can only be recognized and need only be recognized. Inspiration is of the Holy Spirit, and certainty is of God according to His laws. Both, therefore, come from the same Source, since inspiration comes from the Voice of God and certainty comes from the laws of God. Healing does not come directly from God, Who knows His creations as perfectly whole. Yet healing is still of God, because it proceeds from His Voice and from His laws. It is their result, in a state of mind that does not know Him. The state is unknown to Him and therefore does not exist, but those who sleep are unaware. 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 the Holy Spirit inspires can have no order to difficulty, 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. I said before that forgetting is merely a way of remembering better. It is therefore not the opposite of remembering when it is properly perceived. 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 prosper perception can. The ego does not want to teach everyone all it has learned, because that would defeat its purpose. Therefore it does not really learn at all. The Holy Spirit teaches you to use what the ego has made, to teach the opposite of what the ego has �learned�. The kind of learning is as irrelevant as is the particular ability that was applied to the learning. All you need do is to make the effort to learn, for the Holy Spirit has a unified goal for the effort. If different abilities are applied long enough to one goal, the abilities themselves become unified. This is because they are channelized in one direction, or in one way. Ultimately, then, they all contribute to one result, and by so doing, their similarity rather than their differences is emphasized. All abilities should therefore be given over to the Holy Spirit, Who understands how to use them properly. He uses 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 understands that your forgetting must be translated into a way of remembering. 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 difficulty in healing. Healing is the way to undo the belief in differences, being the only way of perceiving the Sonship as one. This perception is therefore in accord with the laws of God, even in a state of mind that is out of accord with His. The strength of right perception is so great that it brings the mind into accord with His, because it serves His Voice, Which is in all of you. To think you ca noppose the Will of God is a real delusion. The ego believes that it can, and that it can offer you its own �will� as a gift. You do not want it. It is not a gift. It is nothing at all. God has given you a gift that you both have and are. When you do no t use it, you forget that you have it. By not remembering it, 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 meaningless to you. Yet the laws are not meaninless, since 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 inall in a very literal sense. All being is in Him Who is all Being. You are therefore in Him since your being is His. Healing is a way of forgetting the sense of danger the ego has induced in you, by not recognizing its existence in your brother. 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, being what the Sonship is. By your awakening to it, you are merely forgetting what you are not. This enables you to remember what you are.

[IA56]

Healing and Changelessness ofMind.

The body is nothing more than aframework for developing abilities, which is quite apart what they are usedfor. That is a decision. The effects of the ego´s decision in this matter areso apparent that they need no elaboration, but the Holy Spirit´s decision touse the body only for communication has such a direct connection with healingthat it does need clarification. The unhealed healer obvioulsy does notunderstand his own vocation. Only minds communicate. Since the ego cannotobliterat the impulse to communicate because it is also the impulse to create,it can only teach you that the body can both communicate and create andtherefore does not need the mind, and is therefore self-sufficient. Yet we havelearned that behavior is not the level for either teaching or learning, sinceyou can act in accordance with what you do not believe. To do this, however,will weaken you as a teacher and a learner because, as has been repeatedlyemphasized, you teach what you do believe. An inconsistent lesson will bepoorly taught and poorly learned. If you teach both sickness and healing, youare both a poor teacher and a poor learner. Healing is the one ability everyonecan develop and must develop if he is to be healed. Healing is the HolySpirit´s form of communication in this world, and the only one He accpets. Herecognizes no other, because He does not accept the ego´s confusion of mind andbody. Minds can communicate, but they cannot hurt. The body in the service ofthe ego can hurt other bodies, but this cannot occur unless the body hasalready been confused with the mind. This situation, too, can be used eitherfor healing or for magic, but you must remember that magic always involves thebelief that healing is harmful. This belief is its totally insane premise, andso it proceeds accordingly. Healing only strengthens. Magic always tries toweaken. Healing receives nothing in the healer that everyone else does notshare with him. Magic always sees something ”special” in the healer, which hebelieves he can offer as a gift to someone who does not have it. He may believethat the gift comes from God to Him, but it is quite evident that he doesn notunderstand God if het hinks he has something that others lack. The Holy Spiritdoes not work by chance, and healing that is of Him always works. Unless thehealer always heals by Him the results will vary. Yet healing itself isconsistent, since only consistency is conflict-free, and only the conflict-freeare whole. By accepting exceptions andacknowledging that he can sometimes heal and sometimes not, the healer isobviously accepting inconsistency. He is therefore in conflict, and is teachingconflict. Can anything of God not be for all and for always? Lve is incapableof any exceptions. Only if there is fear does the idea of exceptions seem to bemeaningful. Exceptions are fearful because they are made by fear. The”fearful healer”is a contradiction interms, and is therefore a concept that only a conflicted mind could possiblyperceive as meaninful. Fear does not gladden. Healing does. Fear always makes execptions. Healing never does.Fear produces dissociation, because it induces separation. Healing alwaysproduces harmony, because it proceeds from intergration. It is predictablebecause it can be counted on. Everything that is of God can be counted on , becauseeverything of God is wholly real. Healing can be counted on because it isinspired by His Voice, and is an accord with His laws. Yet if healing isconsistent it cannot be inconsistently understood. Understanding meansconsistency because God means consistency. Since that is His meaning, it isalso yours. Your meaning cannot be out of accord with His, because your wholemeaning and your only meaning comes from His and is like His. God cannot be outof accord with Himself, and you cannot be out of accord with Him. You cannotseparete your Self from your Creator, Who created you by sharing Hiss Beingwith you. The unhealed healer wants gratitude from his brothers, bu the is notgreatful to them. That is because het hinks he is giving something to them, andis not receiving something equally desirable in return. His teaching is limitedbecause he is learning so little. His healing lesson is limited by his owningratitude, which is a lesson in sickness. True learning is constant, and sovital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in oneinstant and change the world in the next. This is because, by changing hismind, he has changed the most powerful device that was ever given him forchange. This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as God createdit, but you think that you have changed it as long as you learn through theego. This places you in a position of needing to learn a lesson that seemscontradictory; - you must learn to changeyou mind about your mind. Only by this can you learn that it is changeless.When you heal, that is exactly what you are learning. You are recognizing thechangeless mind in your brother by realizing that he could not have changed hismind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is only the HolySpirit in him what never changes His Mind. He himself may think he can, or hewould not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his Selfis. If you see only the changeless in him you have not really changed him. Bychanging your mind about his for him, you help him undo the change his egothinks it has made in him. As you can hear two voices, so you can see in twoways. One way shows you an image, or an idol that yo may worship out of fear,but will never love. The other shows you only truth, which you will lovebecause you will understand it. Understanding is appreaciation, because whatyou understand you can identify with, and by making it part of you, you haveaccepted it with love. That is how God Himself created you; in understanding,in appreciation and in love. The ego is totally unable to understand this,because it does not understand what it makes, does not appreciate it and doesnot love it. It incorporates to take away. It literally believes that everytime it deprives someone of something, it has increased. I have spoken often ofthe increase of the Kingdom by our creations, which can only be created as you were. The wholy gloryand perfect joy that is the Kingdom lies in you to give. Do you not want togive it? You cannot forget the Father because I am with you, and I cannotforget Him. To forget me is to forget yourself adn Him Who created you. Ourbrothers are forgetful. That is why they need your rememberance of me and ofHim Who created me. Through this rememberance, you can change their minds aboutthemselves, as I can change yours. Your mind is so powerful a light that youcan look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours. I want toshare my mind with your because we are of one Mind, and that Mind is ours. Seeonly this Mind everywhere, because only this iss everywhere and in everything.It is everything because it encompasses all things within itself. Blessed areyou who perceive only this, because you perceive only wht is true. Come thereforeunto me, and learn of the truth in you. The mind we share is shared by all our brothers, and as we see themtruly they will be healed. Let your mindshine with mind upon theri minds, and by our gratitude to them make them awareof the light in them. This light will shine back upon you and on the whole Sonship, because this isyour proper gift to God. He will accept it and give it to the Sonship, becauseit is acceptable to Him and therefore to His Sons. This is true communion withthe Holy Spirit, Who sees the altar of God in everyone, and by bringing it toyour appreciation, He calls upon you to love God and His creation. You can appreciate theSonship only as one. This is part of the law of creation, and therefore governsall thought.

Love

[IA56]

From Vigilance to Peace.

Although you can love the Sonship only as one, you can perceive it as fragmented. It is impossible, however, to see something in part of it that you will not attibute to all of it. That is why attack is never discrete, and why it must be relinquished entirely. If it is not relinquished entirely it is not relinquished at all. Fear and love 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 concept of God, of his creations and of his own. He will not appreaciate any of them if he regards them fearfully. He will appreciate all of them if he regards them with love. The mind that accepts attack cannot love. That is because it believes it can destroy love, and therefore does not understand what love is. If it does not understandd what love is, it cannnot perceive itself as loving. This loses the awareness of being, induces feelings of itself as loving. This loses the awareness of being, induces feelings of unreality and results in utter confusion. Your thinking has done this because of its power, but your thinking can also save you from this because its power is not of your making. Your ability to direct your thinking as you choose 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 very power of the mind the ego denies. This means that the ego attacks what is preseving it, which must result in extreme anxiety. That is why the ego never recognizes what it is doing. It is perfectly logical but clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source that is totally inimical 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 continuace if you side with it, by guaranteen 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 origin, and while the ego does not love you it is faithful to its own antecedents, begetting as it was begotten. Mind always reproduces as it was produced. Produced by fear, the ego reproduces fear. This is its allegiance, andthis allegiance makes it treacherous to love because you are love. Love is your power, which the ego must deny. It must also deny everything this power gives 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 the ego could possibly encounter, if the mind that make 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 that all commitments the mind makes are total. Forced, therefore, to detach itself from you, it is willing to attach itself to anything else. But there is nothing else. The mind can, however, make up illusions, and if it does so it will believe in them, because that is how it made them. The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them, because He cannot perceivve them at all. They therefore do not exist for Him. He resloves the apparent conflict they engender by perceving conflict as meaningless. I have 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 is not understandable. As I have already said, 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 you may find this hard to accept is because you may still think there is something else. Belief does not require vigilance unless it is conflicted. If it is, there are conflicting components within it that have led to a state of war, and vigilance has therefore become essential. Vigilance has no place in peace. It is necessary against beliefs that are not true, and would never have been called upon by the Holy Spirit if you had not believed the untrue. When you believe something, you have made it true for you. When you believe what God does not knwo, your thought seems to contradict His, and this makes it appear as if you are attacking Him. I 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 belief that you must be a body. 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 would dispel it. It wants no part of truth, because the ego itself is not true. If truth is total, the untrue cannot exist. Commitment to either must be total; they cannot coexist in your mind without splitting it. If they cannot coexist in peace, and if you want peace, you must give up the idea of conflict entirely and for all time. While you believe that two totally contradictory thought systems share truth, your need for vigilance is apparant. Your mind is dividing its allegiance between two kingdom, and you are totally commited 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. Perceived problems in identification at any level are not problems of fact. They are problems of understanding, since their presence implies a belief that what you are is up to you to decide. The ego believes this totally, being fully comitted to it. It is not true. The ego therefore is totally comitted 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 you accept 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, since God and His 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 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 seen as weak, and those who see themselves as weakened do attack. The attack must be blind, howerver, because there is nothing to attack. Therefore they make up images, perceive them as unworthy and attack them for their unwothiness. 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 is therefore capable of being appreaciated and loved. That would justify its existence, which cannot be justified. You cannot make the meaningless meaningful. This can only be an insane attempt. Allowing insanity to enter your mind 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 alligance. You cannot create in this divided state, and you must be vigilant against this divided state because only peace can be extended. Your divided mind is blocking the extention 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-creator with God, and are therefore depriving yourself of joy. This is not God´s choice but yours. If your mind could be out of accord with God´s, you would be willing without meaning. Yet because God´s Will is unchangeble, no conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirit´s perfectly consitent teaching. Creation, not separation, is your will because it is God´s and nothing that opposes this means anything at all. Being a perfect accomplishemt, the Sonship can only accomplish perfectly, extending the joy in which it was created, and identifying itself with both its Creator andd its creation, knowing they are one.

Love

[IA56]

The Totality of the Kingdom.

Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother you will feel deprived, because denial is as total as love. It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part. Nor is it possible to love it totally at times. You cannot be totally commited sometimes. Denial has no power in itself, but you can give it the power of your mind, whose power is without limit. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone for you. Reality cannot be partly appreaciated. That is why denying any part of it means you have loste the awareness of all of it. Yes denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as well as negativly. Used negatively it will be destructive, because it will be used for attack. But in the service of the Holy Spirit, it can help recognize part of reality, and thus appreaciate all of it. Mind is too powerful to be subject to exclusion. You will never be able to exclude yourself from your thoughts. When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an opportunity to bless him. His need is yours. You need the blessing you can offer him. There is no way for you to have it except by giving it. This is the law of God. And it has no exceptions. What you deny you lack, not because it is lacking, but because you have denied it ijn another and are therefore not aware of it in yourself. Every response you make is determined by what you think you are. What you want to be, then, must determine every response you make. You do not need God´s blessings because that you have forever, but you do need yours. The ego´s picture of you is deprived, unloving and vulnerable. You cannot love this. Yet you can very easily escape from this image by leaving it behind. You are not there and that is not you. Do not see this picture in anyone, or you have accepted it as you. All illusions about the Sonship are dispelled together as they were made together. Teach no one that he is what you would not want to be. Your brother is the mirror in which you see the image of yourself as long as perception lasts. And perception will last until the Sonship knows itself as whole. You made perception and it must last as long as you want it. Illusions are investments. They last as long as you value them. Values are relative, but they are powerful bbecause they are mental judgments. The only way to dispel illusions is to withdraw all investments form them, and they will have no life for you because you will have put them out of your mind. While you include them in it, you are giving life to them. Except there is nothing there to receive your gift. The gift of life is yours to give, because it was given to you. You are unaware of your gift because you do not give it. You cannot make nothing live, since nothing cannot be enlivened. Therefore, you are not extending the gift you both have and are, and so you do not know your being. All confusion comes from not extending life, because that is not the Will of your Creator. You can do nothing apart form Him, and yo do nothing apart from Him. Keep His way to remember yourself, and teach His way lest you forget yourself. Give only honor to the Sons of the living God, and count yourself among them gladly. Only honor is fitting gift for those whom God Himself created worthy of honor, and whom He honors. Give them the appreciation God accords them always, because they are His beloved Sons in whom He is well pleased. You cannot be apart from them because you are not apart from Him. Rest in His Love and protct your rest by loving. But love everything He created, of which you are a part, of you cannnot learn of His peace and accept His gift for yourself and as yourself. You cannot know your own perfection until you have honored all those who were created like you. One child of God is the only teacher sufficiently worthy to teach another. One Teacher is in all minds and He teaches the same lesson to all. He always teaches you the worth of every Son of God, teaching it will infinite patience born of the infinite Love for which He speaks. Every attack is a call for His patience, since His patience can translate attack into blessing. Those who attack do not know they are blessed. They attack because they believe they are deprived. Give, therefore, of your abundance, and teach your broither theirs. Do not share their illusions of scarcity, or you will perceive yourself as lacking. Attack could never promote attack unless you perceived it as a means of depriving you of something you want. Yet you cannot lose anything unless you do not value it, and therefore do not want it. This makes you feel deprived of it, and by projecting your own rejection you believe that others are taking it from you. You must be fearful if you believe that your brother is attacking you to tear the Kingdom of Heaven from you. This is the ulitmate basis for all the ego´s projection. Being the part of your mind that does not believe it is responsible for itself, and being without allegiance to God, the ego is incapable of trust. Projecting its insane belief that you have been treacherous to your Creator, it believes that your brothers , who are as incapable of this as you are, are out to take God from you. Whenever a brother attacks another, that is what he believes. Projection always sees your whises in others. If you choose to separate yourself from God, that is what you will think others are doing to you. You are the Will of God. Do not accept anything else as your will, or you are denying what you are. Deny this and you will attack, believing you have been attacked. But see the Love of God in you, and you will see it everywhere because it is everywhere. See His abudance in everyone, and you will know that you are in Him with them. They are part of you, as you are part of God. You are as lonely without understanding this as God Himself is lonely when His Sons do not know Him. The peace of God is understanding this. There is only one way out of the world´s thinking, just as there was only one way into it. Understanding totally by understanding totality. Perceuve any part of the ego´s thought system as wholly insane, wholly delusional and wholly undesirable, and you have correctly evaluated all of it. This correction enables you to perceive any part of creation as whooly real, wholly perfect and wholly desirable. Wanting this only you will have this only, and giving this only you will be only this. The gifts you offer to the ego are always experienced as sacrifices, but the gifts you offer to the Kingdom are gifts to you. They will always be treasured by God because they belong to His beloved Sons, who belong to Him. All power and glory are yours because of the Kingdom is His.

Love

[IA56]

The Unbelievable Belief.

We have said that without projection there can be no anger, but it is also true that without extention there can be no love. These reflect a fundamental law of the mind, andtherefore one that always operates. It is the law by which you create and were created. It is the law that unifies the Kingdom, and keeps it in the Mind of God. To the ego, the law is perceived as a means of getting rid of something it does not want. To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, bywhich you give what you value in order to keep it in your mind. To the Holy Spirit it is the law of extention. To the ego it is the law of deprivation. It therefore produces abundance or scarcity, depending on how you choose to applyit. This choice is up to you, but it is not up to you decide whether or not youwill utilize the law. Every mind must project or extend, because that is show itlives, and every mind is life. The ego´s use of projection and anger can be finally undone. The ego always tries to preserve conflict. It is very ingenious indevising way that seem to diminish conflict, because it does not want you tofind conflict so intorelable that you will insist on giving it up. The egotherefore tries to persuade you that it can free you of conflict, lest you givethe ego up and free yourself. Using its own warped version of the laws of God,the ego utilizes the power of the mind only to defeat the mind´s real purpose.It projects conflict from your mind to other minds, in an attempt to persuadeyou that you have gotten rid of the problem. There are two major errors involved in this attempt. Frist, strictly speaking, conflict cannot beprojected because it cannot be shared. Any attempt to keep part of it and getrid of another part does not really mean anything. Remember that a conflictedteacher is a poor teacher and a poor learner. His lessons are confused, and their transfer value is limited by his confusion. The second error is the ideathat you can get rid of something you do not want by giving it away. Giving itis how you keep it. The belief that by seeing it away. Giving it is how youkeep it. The belief that by seeing it outside you have excluded it from withinis a complete distortion of the power of extension. That is why those whoproject are vigilant for their own safety. They are afraid that theirprojections will return and hurt them. Beliving they have blotted theirprojections from their own minds, they also believe their their projections aretrying to creep back in.Since the projections have not left their minds, they are forced to engage in constantactivity in order not to recogninze this. You cannot perpetuate an illusionabout another without perpetuating it about yourself. There is no way out ofthis, because it is impossible to fragment the mind. To fragment is to break into pieces, and mind cannot attack or be attacked. The belief that it can, an error the ego always makes, underlies its whole use of projection. It does not understand what mind is, its whole use of projection. It does not understand what mind is, and therefore does not understand what you are. Yet its existenceis dependent on your mind, because the ego is your belief. The ego is a confusionin identification. Never having had a consistent model, it never developed consistently. It is the product of the misapplicatiuon of the laws of God by distorted minds that are misusing their power. Do not be afraid of the ego. It depends on your mind, and as you made it by believing in it, so you can dispel by withdrawing belief from it. Do not project the responsibility for yourbelief in it onto anyone else, or you will preserve the belief. When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego´s existence you will havelaid aside all anger and all attack, because they come from an attempt toroject responsibility for your own errors. By having accepted the errors asyours, do not keep them. Givet hem over quickly to the Holy Spirit to be undonecompletely, so that all their effects will vanish from your mind and from theSonship as a whole. The Holy Spirit will teach you to perceive beyond yourbelief, because truth is beyond belief and His perception is true. The ego canbe completely forgotten at any time, because it is a totally incredible belief,and no one can keep a belief he has judged to be unbelievable. The more youlearn about the ego, the more you realize that it cannnot be believed. Theincredible cannot be understood because it is unbelievable. The meaninglessnessof perception based on the unbelievable is apparent, but it may not berecognized as being beyond belief, because it is made by belief. The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever be unbelievable. You who made the ego by believing the unbelievablecannot make this judgment alone. By accepting the Atonement for yourself, youare deciding against the belief that you can be alone, thus dispelling the ideaof separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom asliterally part of you. This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyondbelief. Your wholeness has no limits because being is infinity.

Love

[IA56]

The Extention of the Kingdom.

Only you can limit your creative power, but God wills to release it. He no more wills you to deprive yourself of your creatins than He wills to deprive Himself of His. Do not withhold your gifts to the Sonship, or you withhold yourself from God! Selfishness is of the ego, but Self-fullness is of spirit because that is how God created it. The Holy Spirit is in the part of the mind that lies between the ego and the spirit, mediationg between them always in favor of the spirit. To the ego this is partiality, and it responds as if it were being sided against. To spirit this is truth, because it knows its fullness and cannot conceive of any part from which it is excluded. Spirit knows that the awareness of all its brothers is included in its own, as it is included in God.The power of the whole Sonship and of its creator is therefore spirits´s own fullness, rendering its creations equally whole and equal in perfection. The ego cannot prevail against a totality that includes God, and any totality must include God. Everything He created is given all His power, because it is part of Him and shares His Being with Him. Creating is the opposite of loss, as blessing is the opposite if sacrifice. Being must be extended. That is how it retains the knowledge of itself. Spirit yearns to share its beings as its Creator did. Created by sharing, its will is to create. It does not wish to contain God, but wills to extend His Being. The extention of God´s Being is spirits´s only function. Its fullness cannot be contained, any more than can the fullness of its Creator Fullness is extention. The ego´s whole thought system blocks extention, and thus blocks your only function. It therefore blocks your joy, so that you perceive yourself as unfulfilled. Unless you create you are unfulfilled, but God does not know unfulfillment and therefore you must create. You may not know your own creations, but this can no more interfere with their reality than your unawareness of your spirit can interfere with its being. The Kingdom is forever extending because it is in the Mind of God. You do not know your joy because you do not know your own Self-fullness. Exclude any part of the Kingdom from yourself and you are not whole. A split mind cannot perceive its fullness, and needs the miracle of its wholeness to dawn upon it and heal it. This reawakens the wholeness. The full appreaciation of the mind´s Self-fullness makes selfishness impossible and extention inevitable. That is why there is perffect peace in the Kingdom. Spirit is fulfilling its function, and only complete fulfillment is peace. Your creations are protected for you because the Holy Spirit Who is in your mind, knows of them and can bring them into your awareness whenevver your will let Him. They are there as part of your own being, because your fulfillment includes them. The creations of every Son of God are yours. Since every creation belongs to evveryone, being created for the Sonship as a whole. You have not failed to increase the inheritance of the Sons of God, and thus have not failed to secure it for yourself. Since it was the Will of God to give it to you, He gave it forever. Since it was His Will that you have it forever, He gave you the means for keeping it. And you have done so. Disobeying God´s Will is meaninful only to the insane. In truth it is impossible. Your Self-fullness is as boundless as God´s. Like His, It extends forever and in perfect peace. Its radiance is so intense that It creates in perfect joy, and only the whole can be born of Its wholness. Be confident that you have never lost your Identity and the extention which maintain It in wholeness and peace. Miracles are an extention of this confidence. They are reflections of both your proper identification with your brothers, and of your awareness that your identification is maintained by extention. The miracle is a lesson in total perfection. By including any part of totality in the lesson, you have included the whole.

Love

[IA56]

The Confusion of Pain and Joy.

The Kingdom is the result of premises, just as this whole is. You may have carried the ego´s reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is total confusion about everything. If you really saw this result you could not want it. The only reason you could possibly want any part of its is because you do not see the whole of it. You are willing to look at the ego´s premises, but not at their logical outcome. It is not possible that you have done the same thing with the premises of God? Your creations are the logical outcome of His premises. His thinking has establishe them for you. They are exactly where they belong. They belong in your mind as part of your identification with His, but your state of mind and your recognition of what is in it depend on what you believe about your mind. Whatever these beliefs may be, they are the premises that will determine what you accept into your mind. It is surely clear that you can both accept into your mind what is not there, and deny what is. Yet the function God Himself gave your mind through His you may deny, but you cannot prevent. It is the logical outcome of what you are. The ability to see a logical outcome depends on the willingness to see it, but its truth has nothing to do with your willingness to see it, but its truth has nothing to do with your willingness. Truth is God´s Will. Share His Will and you share what He knows. Deny His will as yours, and you are denying His kingdom and yours. The Holy Spirit will direct you only so as to awoid pain. Surely no one would object to this goal if he recognized it. The problem is not whether what the Holy Spirit sayes is true, but whether you want to listen to what He says. You no more recognize what is painful that you know what is joyful, and are, in fact, very apt to confuse the two. The Holy Spirit´s main function is to teach you to tell them apart. 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. If you believed this, there would be no conflict. That is why you need no demonstrate the obvious to yourself. It is not obvious to you. You believe that doing the oppoisite of God´s Will can be better for you. Therefore, you believe that an imposible choice is open to you, and one which is both fearful and desirable. Yet God wills. He does not wish. Your will is as powerful as His because it is His. The ego´s whishes do not mean anything, because the ego whishes for the impossible. You can wish for the impossible, but you can will only 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 awoid His guidance in any way, you want to be weak. Yet 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 distincion in motivation, it can only be due to projection. Projections is a confusion in motivation, and gives this confusion, trust becomes impossible. No one gladly obeys 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. Yet 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. The Holy Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as you are. God Himself trusts you, and therefore your turstwothiness is beyond question. It will always remain beyond question, however much you may question it. I 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, since it is what you are. Sharing His Will with me is not really open to choice, though it may seem to be. The whole separation lies in this error. The only way out of the error is to decide that you do not have to decide anything. Everything has been given you by God´s decision. That is His Will, and you cannot undo it. Even the relingquishment of your false decision-making prerogative, which the ego guards so jealously, is not accomlished 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 destinguish between pain and joy, and will 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 are denying joy. The miracle is therefore 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 lessson in truth, and by offering truth you are learning the differece between pain and joy.

Love

[IA56]

The State of Grace.

The Holy Spirit will always guide you truly, because your joy is His. This is His Will for everyone because He speaks for the Kingdom of God, which is joy. Following Him is therefore the easiest thing in the world, and the only thing that is easy, because it is not the world. It is therefore natural. The world goes against your nature, being out of accord with God´s laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in everything. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By demostrating to yourself there is no order of difficulty in miracles, you will convince yourself that, in your natural state, there is no difficulty at all because it is a state of grace. Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is not in a state of grace, he is out of his natural enviroment and does not function well. Everyting he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the enviroment he has made. He therefore cannot adapt to it, nor can he adapt it to him. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy when he knows he is with God. That is the only enviroment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only enviroment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond anything he can make. Concider the kingdom you have made and judge its worth fairly. It is worhty to be a home for a child of God? Does it protect his peace and shine love upon him? Does it keep his heart untouched by fear, and allow him to give always, without any sense of loss? Does it teach him that this giving is his joy, and that God Himself thanks him for his giving? This is the only enviroment in which you can be happy, you cannot make it, any more than you can make yourself. It has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing. Yet when they deny Him they do not know this, because they deny themselves everything. You who could give the Love of God to everything you see and touch and remember, are literally denying Heaven to yourself. I call upon you to remember that I have chosen you to teach the Kingdom to the Kingdom. There are no execptions to this lesson, becauce the lack of execptions is the lesson. Every Son who returns to the Kingdom with this lesson in his heart has healed the Sonship and given thanks to God. Everyone who learns this lesson has become the perfect teacher, because he has learned it of the Holy Spirit. When a mind has only light, it knows only light. Its own radiance shines all around it, and extends out into the darkness of other minds, transforming them into majesty. The Majesty of God is there, for you to recognize and appreaciate and know. Recognizing the Majesty of God as your brother is to acept your own inheritance. God gives only equally. If you recognize His gift in anyone, you have ackonowledged what He has given you. Nothing is so easy to recognize as truth. This is the recognition that is immediate, clear and natural. You have trained yourself not to recognize it, and this has been very difficult for you. Out of your natural enviroment you may well ask, ”What is truth?” since truth is the enviroment by which and for which you were created. You do not know yourself, because you do not know your Creator. You do not know your creation because you do not know your brothers, who created them with you. I have already said that only the whole Sonship is worthy to be co-creator with God, because only the whole Sonship can create like Him. Whenever you heal a brother by recognizing his worth, you are acknowledging his power to create and yours. He cannot have lost what you recognize, and you must have the glory you see in him. He is a co-creator with God with you. Deny his creative power, and you are denying yours and that of God Who created you. You cannot deny part of truth. You do not know your creations because you do not know their creator. You do not know yourself because you do not know yours. Your creations cannot establish your reality, any more than you can establish God´s. But you can know both. Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him. But you must also know all He created, to know what they have shared. Without your Father you will not know your fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His sons and their children, who are as like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know, then, the sons of God, and you will know all creation.

Love

[IA56]

THE JOURNEY BACK

The Direction of the Curriculum.

Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. Peace is. This is the prerequisite for knowledge 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 can be restored only when you meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God. Who makes no bargain. It is merely the result of your misuse of His laws on behalf of an imaginary will that is 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 perhaps you do not yet regard this as wholly desirable. If you did you would not be so ready to throw it away when the ego asks for your allegance. The distraction of the ego may seem to interfere with your learning, but the ego has no power to distract you unless you give it the power to do so. The ego´s voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect it to say ”I am not real”. Yet you are not asked to dispel your hallucinations 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 reinterpretation of reality that you must make to secure peace, and the only one you need ever make. 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 yourself. When you give up peace, you are excluding yourself from it. This is a condition so alien to the Kingdom that you cannot understand the state that 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 charge, and this is always its purpose, are you satisfied with the changes your learning has brought you? Dissatisfaction with learning outcomes is a sigh of learning failure, since it means that you did not get what you wanted. The curriculum of the Atonement is the opposite of the curriculum you have established for yourself, but so is its outcom. If the outcome of yours has made you unhappy, and if you want a different one, a change in the curriculum is obviously necessary. The first change to be introduced is a change in direction. A meaningful curriculum cannot be inconsistent. If it is planned by two teachers, each believing in diamentrically opposed ideas, it cannot be intergrated. 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 relingquish the other, even if it does not exist. Their conflicted curriculum teaches them that all directions exist, and gives them no rationale for choice. The total senslessness of such 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. This joint curriculum presents an impossible learning task. They are teaching you entirely different things in entirely different ways, which might be possible except that both are teaching you about yourself. Your reality is unaffected by both, but if you listen to both, your mind will be split about what your reality is.

Love

[IA56]

The Difference Between Imprisonment and Freedom.

There is a rationale for choice. Only one Teacher knows what your reality is. If learning to remove the obstacles to that knowledge 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 what you are. It is expert only in cunfusion. It does not understand anything else. As a teacher, then, the ego is totally confused and totally confusing. Even if you could disregard the Holy Spirit enterily, which is impossible, you could still 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 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 its teaching, should not this alone disqualify it as your future teacher? Yet 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. When you are taught against your nature, however, 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 Hes shares His Will with you. His Voice teaches only in accordance with 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 that must be unconflicted, but also content. The ego tries to teach that you want to oppose God´s Will. This unnatural lesson cannot be learned, and the attempt to learn it is a violation of your own freedom, making you afraid of your will because it is free. The Holy Spirit leads you stedily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard or look beyond everything that would hold you back. We have said that the Holy Spirit teaches you the difference between pain and joy. That is the same as saying He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom. You cannot make this distinction without Him 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 how they are different? The Holy Spirit´s teaching takes only one direction and has only one goal. His direction is freedom and His goal is God. Yet He cannot conceive of God without you, because it is not God´s Will to be without you. When you have learned that your will is God´s you could not more will to be without Him than He could wil 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 I said, ”All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His,” this is what I meant. This 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 it created all things. By creating all things, it made them part of itself. You are the Will of God because that 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 off what it is. When you acknowledge this you bring the acknowledment automatically to everyone, because you have acknowledged everyone. By your recognintion 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 for his Creator, because It is the Voice for his creations and for his own extention.

Love

[IA56]

The Holy Encounter.

Glory to God in the highest, andto you because He has so willed it. Ask and it shall be given you, because ithas already been given. Ask for light and learn that you are light. If you want understanding and enlightenment you will learn it, because your decision to learn is the decision to listen to the Teacher Who knows of light, and can therefore teach it to you. There is no limit on your learning because there is no limit on your mind. There is no limit on His teaching because He was created to teach. Understanding His function perfectly He fulfills it perfectly, because that is His joy and yours.To fulfill the Will of God perfectly is the only joy and peace that can be fully known, because it is the only function that can be fully experienced.When this is accomplished, then , there is no other expereince. Yet the wish for other experience will block its accomplishment, becauce God´s Will can not be forced upon you, being an experience of total willingness. The Holy Spirit understands how to teach this, but you do not. That is why you need Him, and why God gave Him to you. Only His teaching will relese your will to God´s,uniting it with His power and glory and establishing them as yours. You share them as God shares them, because this is the natural outcome of their being.The Will of the Father and the Son are one, by their extention. Their extentionis the result of Their oneness, holding Their unity together by extending.Their joint Will. This is perfect creation by the perfectly created, in union with the Perfect Creator. The Father must give fatherhood to His Son, because His Own Fatherhood must be extended outward. You who belong in God have the holy function of extending His Fatherhood by placing no limits upon it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you how to do this, for you can know what it means only of god Himself. When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. As you think of him you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself. Whenever two Sons of God meet, they are given another chance at salvation. Do not leave anyone without giving salvation to him and receiving it yourself. For I am always there with you, in remembrance of you. The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is ”Know thyself”. There is nothing else to seek. Everyone is looking for himself and for the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone, you have Another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in him because they are yours. The ego tries to find them in yourself alone, because it does not know where to look. The Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look only at yoursel fyou cannot find yourself, because that is not what you are. Whenever you are with a brother, you are learning what you are because you are teaching what you are. He will respond following. He will be imprisoned or released according to your decision, and so will you. Never forget your responsibility to him,because it is your responsibility to yourself. Give him his place in the Kingdom and you will have yours. The Kingdom cannot be found alone, and you who are the Kingdom cannot find yourself alone. To achieve the goal of thecurriculm, then, you cannot listen to the ego, whose purpose is to defet its own goal. The ego does not know this, because it does not know anything. But you can know it, and you will know it if you are willing to look at what the ego would make of you. This is your responsibility, because once you have really looked at it you will accept the Atonement for yourself. What other choice could you make? Having made this choice you will understand why you once believed that, when you met someone else, you thought he was someone else. And every holy encounter in which you enter fully will teach you this is not so.You can encounter only part of yourself because you are part of God. Who is everything. His power and glory are everywhere, and you cannot be excluded from them. The ego teaches that your stength is in you alone. The Holy Spirit teaches that all strength is in God and therefore in you. God wills no one suffer. He does not will anyone to suffer for a wrong decision, including you.That is why He has given you the means for undoing it. Through His power and glory all your wrong decisions are undone completely, releasing you and your brother from every imprisoning thought any part of the Sonship holds. Wrong decisions have no power, because they are not true. The imprisonment they seem to produceis no more true than they are. Power and glory belong to God alone. So do you.God gives whatever belongs to Him because He gives of Himself, and evverything belongs to Him. Giving of yourself is the function. He gave you. Fulfilling it perfectly will let you remember what you have of Him, and by this you will remember also what you are in Him. You cannot be powerless to do this, because this is your power. Glory is God´s gift to you, because that is what He is. See his glory everywhere to remember what you are.

Love

[IA56]

The Gift of Freedom.

If God´s Will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you experience only this you must be refusing to acknowledge His Will. His Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever. When you are not at peace it can only be because you do not believe you are in Him. Yet He is All in all. His peace is complete, and you must be included in it. His laws govern you because they govern everything. You cannot exempt yourself from His laws, although you can disobey them. Yet if you do, and only if you do, you will feel lonely and helpless, because you are denying yourself everything. I am come as a light into a world that doesn deny itself everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation, mantained by fear of the same loneliness that is its illusion. I said that I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. That is why I am the light of the world. If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, the loneliness is gone. You cannot maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are not alone. My purpose, then, is still to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it becuase of what it is. Light does not attack darkness, but it does shine it away. If my light goes with you everywhere, you shine it away with me. The light becomes ours, and you cannot abide in darkness any more than darkness can abide wherever you go. The rememberance of me is the rememberance of yourself, and of Him Who sent me to you. You were in darkness until God´s Will was done completely by any part of the Sonship. When this was done, it was perfectly accomplished by all. How else could it be perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to unite the will of the Sonship with the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father´s Will myself. This is the awareness I came to give you, and your problem in accepting it is the problem of this world. The world must therefore despise and reject me, because the world is the belief that love is impossible. If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are denying the world and accepting God. My will is His, and your decision to hear me is the decision to hear His Voice and abide in His Will. As God sent me to you so will I send you to others. And I will go to them with you, so we can teach them peace and union. Do not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? For unless you do, you will not receive it. If you want to have it of me, you must give it. Healing does not come from anyone else. You must accept guidance from within. The guidance must be what you want, or it will be meaningless to you. That is why healing is a collaborative venture. I can tell you what to do, but you must collaborate by believeing that I know what you should do. Only then will your mind choose to follow me. Without this choice you could not be healed because you would have decided against healing, and this rejection of my decision for you makes healing impossible. Healing reflects our joint will. This is obvious when you consider what healing is for. Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome. Separation is overcome by union. It cannot be overcome by separating. The decision to unite must be unequivocal, or the mind itself is devided and not whole. Your mind is the means by mechanism of decision. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. My decision cannot overcome yours, because yours is a powerful as mine. If it were not so the Sons of God would be unequal. All things are possible through our joint decision, but mine alone cannot helo you. Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. I cannot will what God does not will. I can offer my strength to make your invincible, but I cannot oppose your decision without competing with it and thereby violateing God´s Will for you. Nothing God created ca noppose your decision, as nothing God created ca noppose His Will. God gave your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of Him. If you want to be like me I will help you, knowing that we are alike. If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching. How else can it be, if God´s Kingdom is freedom? Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of any kind, and the perfect equality of all God´s Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one mind over another. God´s Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the only lesson I came to teach. If your will were not mine it would not be our Father´s. This would mean you hve imprisoned yours, and have not let it be free. Of yourself you can do nothing, because of yourself you are nothing. I am nothing without the Father and you are nothing without me, because by denying the Father you deny yourself. I will always remember you, and in my rememberance of you lies your remembrance of yourself. In our remembrance of each other lies our remembrance of God. And in this remembrance lies your freedom because your freedom is in Him. Join, then, with me in praise of Him and you whom He created. This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with all His creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. Because it is acceptable to Him it is the gift of freedom, which is His Will for all His Sons. By offering freedom you will be free. Freedom is the only gift you can offer to God´s Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what He is. Freedom is creation, because it is love. Whom you seek to imprison you do not love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison anyone, including yourself, you do not love him and you cannot identify him. When you imprison yourself you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification is with the Father and with the Son. It cannot be with one and not the other. If you are part of one you must be part of the other, because they are one. The Holy Trinity is holy because It is One. If you exlude yourself from this union, you are perciving the Holy Trinity as separated. Your must be including in It, because It is everything . Unless you take your place in It and fulfill your function as part of It, the Holy Trinity is as bereft as you are. NO part of It can be imprisoned if Its truth is to be known.

Love

[IA56]

The Undivided Will of the Sonship.

Can you be separated from your identification and be at peace? Dissociation is not a solution; it is a delusion. The delusional believe that truth will assail them, and they do not recoginze it because they prefer the delusion. Judging truth is something they do not want, they percive their illusions which block knowledge. Help them by offering them your unified mind on their behalf, as I am offering you mine on behalf of yours. Alone we can do nothing, but together our minds fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts. By not being separate, the Mind of God is established in ours and as ours. The Mind is invincible because it is undivided. The undivided will of the Sonship is the perfect creator, being wholly in the likeness of God, Whose Will it is. You cannot be exempt from it if you are to understand what it is and what you are. By the belief that your will is separete from mine, you are exempting yourself from the Will of God which is yourself. Yet to heal is still to make whole. Therefore, to heal is to unite with those who are like you, because perceiving this likeness is to recognize the Father. If your perfection is in Him and only in Him, how can you know it without recognizing Him? The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself. There is no separatin of God and His creation. You will realize this when you understand that there is no separation between your will and mind. Let the Love of God shine upon you by your acceptance of me. My reality is yours and His. By joining your mind with mine you are signifying your awareness that the Will of God is one. God´s Oneness and ours are not separate, because His Oneness encompasses ours. To join with me is to restore His power to you because we are sharing it. I offer you only the recognition of His power in you, but in that lies all truth. As we unite, we unite with Him. Glory be to the union of God and His holy Sons! All glory lies in them because they are united. The miracles we do bear withness to the Will of the Father for His Son, and to our joy in uniting with His Will for us. When you unite with me you are uniting without the ego, because I have renounced the ego in myself and therefore cannot unite with yours. Our union is therefore the way to renounce the ego in you. The truth in both of us is beyond the ego. Our success in transcending the ego is guranteed by God, and I share this confidence for both of us and all of us, I bring God´s peace back to all His children because I received it off Him for us all. Nothing can prevail against our united wills because nothing can prevail against God´s. Would you know the Will of God for you? Ask it of me who knows it for you and you will find it. I will deny you nothing, as God denies me nothing. Ours is simply the journey back to God Who is our home. Whenever fear intrudes anywhere along the road to peace, it is because the ego has attempted to join the journey with us and cannot do so. Sensing defeat and angered by it, the ego regards itself as rejected and becomes retaliative. You are invulnerable to its retaliation because I am with you. On this journey you have chosen me as your companion instead off the ego. Do not attempt to hold on to both, or you will try to go in different direction and will lose the way. The ego´s way is not mine, but it is also not yours. The Holy Spirit has one direction for all minds, and the one He taught me is yours. Le tus not lose sight of His direction through illusions, for only illusions of another direction can obscure the one for which God´s Voice speaks in ll of us. Never accord the ego the power to interfere with the journey. It has non, because the journey is the way to what is true. Leave all illusions behind, and reach beyond all attempts of the ego to hold you back. I go before you because I am beyond the ego. Reach, therefore, for my hand because you want to trancend the ego. My strength will never be wanting, and if you choose to share it you will do so. I give it willingly and gladly, because I need you as much as you need me.

Love

[IA56]

The Treasure of God.

We are the joint will for the Sonship, whose wholeness is for all. We begin the journey back by setting our together, and gather in our brothers as we continue together. Every gain in our strength is offered for 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 of 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 to make. If it were, you would have destroyed yourself. Yet God did not will the destruction of His creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from yourself but from your illusion of yourself. He has saved you for yourself. Le tus glorify Him Whom the world denies, for over His Kingdom the world has no power. No one created by God can find joy in anything except the eternal; 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 had squanded everything for nothing of any value, although he had not understood its worthlessness at the time. He was ashamed to return to his father, because he thought he had hurt him. Yet when he came home the father welcomed him with joy, because 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 Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for your creation. They do not leave you any more than you 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 that are created like His? Your creations love you as you love 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 made only decision to be unworhty of both. Yet you cannot make yourself unworthy because you are the treasure of God, and 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 God does. His joy lay in creating you, and He extends His Fatherhood to you so that you can extend yourself as His did. You do not understand this because you do not understand Him. No one who does not accept his function can understand wht it is, and no one can accept his function unless he knows what he is. Creation is the Will of God. His will created you to create. Your will was not created separate from His, and so you must will as He wills. An ”unwilling will” does not mean anything, being a contradiction in terms that actually means nothing. 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 themselves or Him. Yet 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 work together, because apart from each other we cannot function at all. The whole power of God´s Sons lies in all of us, but not in any of us alone. God would not have uss 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, 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, because you who are God´s Own treasure do not regard yourself 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 bbe separated, and God has joined all His Sons with Himself. Can you be separated, and God from your life and your being? The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge off 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.

Love

[IA56]

The Body as a Means of Communication.

Attack is always physical. When attack in any form enters your mind you are equating yourself with a body, since 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 for 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 belitting himself, and seeing his brothers as similarly belitted. 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, the Holy Spirit interprets everything you have made 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 regard bodies solely as a means of joining 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 the body for attack, it is harmful to you. 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 understand the power of the mind that is in 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 communication is. This is God´s way of making unlimited what you have limited. The Holy Spirit does not see the body as you do, because He knows the only reality of anything is the service it renders God on behalf of the function He gives it. Communication ends separation. Attack promotes it. The body is beautiful or ugly, peacful or savage, helpful or harmful, according to the use to which it is put. And in the body of another wyou will see the use of which you have put yours. If the body becomes a means you give to the Holy Spirit to use on behalf of union of the Sonship, you will not see anything physical exept 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. Yet all loss comes only from your own misunderstanding. Loss of any kind is impossible. But 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, but you must have attacked yourself first. Do not see him this way for your own salvation, which must bring him his. Do not see him this way for your own salvation, which must bring him his. Do not allow him to belitte himself in your mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and thus escape from yours. As part of you, he is holy. As part of me, your 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 yourself you can do nothing. You are not of yourself. 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 accept it for yourself. He has not withdrawn His gifts from you, but you believe you have withdrawn them from Him. Let no Son of God remain hidden for His Name´s sake, because His Name is yours. 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 appear to exist, just as different orders of miracles do. Thought cannot be made into flesh except by belief, since througt is not physical. Yet 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 learner as a curriculum he cannot learn. His sense of adequacy suffers, and he must become depressed. Being faced with an impossible learning situation is the most depressing thing in the world. In fact, it is ultimately why the world itself is depressing. The Holy Spirit´s curriculum is never depressing, because it is a curriculum of joy. Whenever the reaction to learning is depression, it is because the true goal of the curriculum has been lost sight of. In this world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many function with 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 a means by which the part of the mind you tried to separate from spirit can reach beyond its distortions and returns to spirit. The ego´s templet hus 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 of God; His Voice abides in it by directing the use to which it is put. 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 sich 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 that 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 expression of a mind that 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 forstering separation. Perceiving the body as a separate entity cannot but forster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication loses 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 the body in many lights, and gives it over entirely to the One Light in Which it can be really understood. To confuse a learning device with a curriculum goal is a fundamental confusion that blocks the understanding of both. 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 is the mind´s function. The opposite of joy is depression. When your learning promotes depression instead of joy, you cannot be listening to God´s joyous Teacher and learning His lessons. To see a body as anything except a means of communication is to limit your mind and to 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 purpose of the body, because apart from the mind the body has no purpose at all. You are not limited by the body, and thought cannot be made flesh. Yet 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 and to believe 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 one that is interfering with his ability to accept its purpose as his own. Joy is unified purpose, and unified purpose is only God´s. When yours is unified it is His. Believe you can interfere with His purpose, and you need slavation. You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God. Therefore it is not true. No more are any of its seeming results. When you see a brother as a body, you are condemning him because you have comdemned yourself. Yet if all condemnation is unreal, and it must be unreal since it is a form of attack, then it can have no results. Do not allow yourself to suffer from imagined results of what is not true. Free your mind from the belief that this is possible. In its complete impossibility lies your only hope for relese. But what other hope would you want? Freedom from illusions lies only in not believing them. There is no attack, but htere is unlimited communication and therefore unlimited power and wholeness. The power of wholeness is extention. Do not arrest your thought in this world, adn you will open your mind to creation in God.

Love

[IA56]

The Body as Means or End.

Attitudes towards the body are attitudes toward attack. To the ego the body is to attack with. Equating you with the body, it teaches that you are to attack with. The body, then, is not the source of its own health. The body´s condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function. 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. Yet to know in part is to know entirely because of the fundamental difference between knowledge and perception. In perception the whole is built up of parts that can separate and reassemble in different constellations. But knowledge never changes, so its constellation is permanent. The idea of part-whole relationships has meaning only at the level of perception, where change is possible. Otherwise, there is no difference between the part and whole. The body exists in a world that seems to contain two voices fighting for its possession. In this perceived constellation the body is seen as capable of shifting its allegiance from one to the other, makin the concepts of both health and sickness meaniful. The ego makes a fundamental confusion between means and end as it always does. Regarding the body as an end, the ego has no real use for it because it is not an end. You must have noticed an outstanding characteristic of every end that the ego has accpeted as its own. When you have achieved it, it has not satisfied you. That is why the ego is forced to shift ceaselessly from one goal to another, so that you will continue to hope it can yet offer you something. It has been particularly difficult to overcome the ego´s belief in the body as an end, because it is synonymous with the belief in attack as an end. The ego has a profound investment in sickness. If you are sick, haw can you object to the ego´s firm belief that you are not invulnerable? This is an appealing argument from the ego´s point of view, because it obscures the obvious attack that underlies the sickness. If you recognize this and also decided against attack, you could not give this false witness to the ego´s stand. It is hard to perceive sickness 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 because you have not seriously cross-examined him. If you had, you would not cinsider sickness such a strong witness on behalf of the ego´s views. A more honest statement would be that those who want the ego are predisposed to defend it. Therefore, their choice of withnesses should be suspect from the beginning. The ego does not call upon witnesses who would disagree with its case, nor does the Holy Spirit. I have said that judgment is the function of the Holy Spirit, and one He is perfectly equipped to fulfill. The ego as a judge gives anything but an impartial judgment. When the ego calls on a witness, it has already made the witness an ally. It is still true that the body has no function of itself, because it is not an end. The ego, however, establishes it as an end because, as such, its true function is obscured. This is the purpose of everything the ego does. Its sole aim is to lose the functionof everything. A sick body does not make any sense. It could not make sense because sickness is not what the body is for. Sickness is meaningful only if the two basic premises on which the ego´s interpretation of the body rests are true; that the body is for attack, and that you are a body. Without these premises sickness is inconceivable. Sickness is a way of demostrating that you can be hurt. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerablitlity, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance. The ego uses this as its best argument for your need to its guidance. It dictates endless prescriptions for avoiding catastrophic outcomes. The Holy Spirit, perfectly aware of the same situation, does not bother to analyze it at all. If data are meaningless there is no point in analyzing them. The function of truth is to collect information that is true. Any way you handle error 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 in order to judge them 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 therefore believve that a learning device can tell you how you feel. Sickness is merely another example of your insistence on asking guidance of a teacher who does not know the answer. The ego is incapable of knowing how you feel. When I said that the ego does not know anything, I said the one thing about the ego that is wholly true. But there is a corollary; if only knowledge has being and the ego has no knowledge, then the ego has no being. You might well ask how the voice of something that does not exist can be so insistent. Have you thought about the distorting power of something you want, even if it is not real? There are many instances of how what you want distorts perception. No one can doubt your willingness to listen until you choose not to accept 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 freedom of choice, which the Holy Spirit seeks to restore, never to undermine. The Holy Spirit teaches you to use your body only to reach your brother, so He can teach His message through you. This will heal them and therefore heal you. Everything used in accordance with its function as the Holy Spirit sees it cannto 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 decision to attack. Health is seen as the natural state of everything when interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, Who percives no attack on anything. Health is the result of relingquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly. Health 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.

Love

[IA56]

Healing as Corrected Perception.

I said before 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. Yet 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 of healing. Ask, rather, that the Holy Spirit teach you the right perseption of the body, for perception alone can be distorted. Only perception can be sick, because only perception can be wrong. Wrong perception is the wish that things 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. 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 your little part is so powerful that it 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 sleeping out of fear of waking. This is a pathetic way of trying not to see by rendering the faculities for seeing ineffectual. �Rest in peace� is a blessing for the living, not the dead, because rest comes from waking, not ffrom sleeping. Sleep is withdrawing; waking is joining. Dreams are illusions of joining, because they reflect the ego´s distorted notions about what joining is. Yet 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 theacher did you place it? Whenever you wake dispiritedly, it was not given to the Holy Spirit. Only when you awaken joyously hafe you utilized sleep according to His purpose. You can indeed be �drugged� by sleep, if you have misused it on behalf of sickness. Sleep is no more a form of death than death is a form of unconsiousness. Complete unconsiousness 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 decision to wake. The decision to wake is the reflection of 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. His function is to distinguish only between the false and the true, replacing the false with the true. The ego, which always wants to weaken the mind, tries to separate it from the body in an attempt to destroy it. Yet the ego actually believes that it is protecting it. This is because the ego believes that mind isdangerous, 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 dispises weakness, even though it makes every effort to induce it. The ego wants only what it hates. To the ego this is perfectly sensible. Believing in the power of attack, the ego wants attack. 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. Yet you cannto withdraw from me alone. You can only withdraw from yourself and me. You have surely begun to realize that this is a very practical course, and one that means exactly what it says. I would not ask you to do things you cannot do, and it is impossible that I could do things you cannot do. Given this, and given this quite literally, nothing can prevent you from doing exactly what I ask, and everything argues for your doing 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. Yet sickness is not of the body, but of the mind. All forms of sickness are signs that the mine is 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 way to heal it. Your task is only to meet the conditions for meaning, since meaning itself is of God. Yet your return to meaning is essential to His, because your meaning is part of His. Your healing, then, is part of His health, since 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.

Love

[IA56]

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE ATONEMENT

The Acceptance of Reality.

Fear of the Will of God is one of the strangest beliefs the human mind has ever made. It could not possibly have occured unless the mind were already profundly split, making it possible for it to be afraid of what it really is. Reality cannot ”threaten” anything exept illusions, since reality can only uphold truth. The very fact that the Will of God, which is what you are, is percived as fearful, demostrates that you are afraid of what you are. It is not, then, the Will of God, which is what you are, is perceived as fearful, demostrates that you are afraid of what you are. It is not, then, the Will of God, 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 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 help you remember what you are, and if you believe that what you are is fearful, then it must follow that you will not learnthis course. Yet the reason for the course is that you do not know what you are. If you do not know what your realityis, why would you be so sure that it is fearful? The association of truth and fear, which would be highly artificial at most, is particularly inappropriate in the minds of those who do not know what truth is. All this could mean is that you are arbitrarily associating something 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 up this strange situation so that it is 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 aliewn will upon you. He is merely making every possible effort, within the limits you impose on Him, to re-establish your own will in your awareness. You have imprisoned your will beyond your own awareness, where it remains, but cannot help you. When I said that the Holy Spirits´s function is to sort out the true from the false in your mind. I meant that He has the power to look into what you have hidden and recongize the Will of God there. His recognition 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 helping you to remember what you are. The only source of fear in this process is what you think you will lose. Yet it is only what the Holy Spirit sees that you can possibly have. I have emphasized many times that the Holy Spirit will never call upon to sacrifice anything. But if you ask the sacrifice of reality of yourself, 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 a split mind, you would recognize that will is salvation becasue 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 jont Will. A divided mind cannot communicate, because it speaks 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 communicated unless it makes sense. How sensible can your message be, when you ask for what you do not want? Yet as long as you are afraid of your will, that is precisely what you are asking for. You may insist that the Holy Spirit does not answer you, but it might be wiser to consider the kind of questioner you are. You do not ask only for what you want. This is because you are afraid you might receive it, and you would. That is why you persist in asking the teacher who could not possibly give you what you want. Of Him you can never learn what it is, and this gives you the illusion of safety. Yet you cannot be safe from thruth, but only in truth. 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 right mind can believe that its will is stronger that God´s. If, then, a mind believes that its will is different from His, it can only dicide 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, who believes that God demands sacrifices. Either of these insane dicisions will induce panic, because the atheist believes he is alone, and the martyr believes that God is crucifying him. Yet no one really wants either abandonment or retaliation, even though many may seek both. Can you ask the Holy Spirit for ”gifts” such as these, and actually expect to receive them? He cannot give you something you do not 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 remember the Will of God, because ultimately everyone must recognize himself. This recognition is the recongnition that his will and God´s are one. In the presence of truth, there are no unbelievers and no sacrifieces. 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 aswere because nothing can hurt you, and so you are sking for nothing. Any wish that stems from the ego is a wish for nothing, and to ask for it is not a request. It is merelya denial in the form of a request. The Holy Spirit is not concerned with form, being aware only of meaning. The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for anything, because there is complete communication failure between them. Yet you can ask for evrything of the Holy Spirit, because your requests to Him are real, being of your right mind. Would the Holy Spirit deny the Will of God? And could He fail to recognize it in His Son? You do not recognize the enormous waste of energy you expend in denying truth. What would you say of something who persists in attempting the impossible, believing that to achive it is to succeed? 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 would 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 interfeing 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. Any attempt to deny what is must be fearful, and if the attempt is strong it will induce panic. Willing against reality, though impossible, can be made into a very persistent goa leven 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 were 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 perfectly. Reality is everything, and you 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 els will ever be. This is the simple acceptance of reality, because only that 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”.

Love

[IA56]

The Answer to Prayer

Everyone who ever tried to use prayer to ask for something has experienced what appears to be failure. This is not only true in connection with specific things that might be harmful, but also in connection with requests that are strictly in line with this course. The latter in particular might be incorrectly interpreted as ”proof” that the course does not mean what it says. You must remember, however, that the course states, and repeatedly, that its purpose is the escape from fear. Let us supppose, that what you ask of the Holy Spirit is what you really want, but you are still afraid of it. Should this be the case, your attainment of it would no longer be what you want. This is why certain specific forms of healing are not achieved, ever when the state of healing is. An individual may ask for physical healing because he is fearful of bodily harm. At the same time, if he ere healed physically, the threat to his thought system might be considerably more fearful to him than its physical expression. In this case he is not really asking for release from fear, but for the removal of a symptom that he himself selected. This request is, therefore, not for healing at all. The Bible emhasizes that all prayer is answered, and this is indeed true. The very fact that the Holy Spirit has been asked for anything will ensure a response. Yet it is equally certain that no response given by Him will be one that would increase fear. It is possible that His answer will not be heard. It is impossible, however, that it will be lost. There are many answers you have already received but have not yet heard. I assure you that they are waiting for you. If you would know your prayers are answered, never doubt a Son of God. Do not question him and not confound him, for your faith in him is your faith in yourself. If you would know God and His Answer, believe in me whose faith in you cannot be shaken. Can you ask of the Holy Spirit truly, and doubt your brother? Believe his words are true because of the truth that is in him. You will unite with the truth in him, and his words will be true. As you hear him you will hear me. Listening to truth is the only way you can hear it now, and finally know it. The message your brother gives you is up to you. What does he say to you? What would you have him say? Your decision about him determines the message your receive. Remember that the Holy Spirit is in him, and His Voice speaks to you through him. What can so holy a brother tell you except truth? But are you listening to it? Your brother may not know who he is, but there is a light in his mind that does know. This light can shine into yours, giving truth to his words and making you able to heart hem. His words are the Holy Spirit´s answer to you. Is your faith in him strong enough to let you hear? You can no more pray for yourself alone than you can find joy for yourself alone. Prayer is the restatement of inclusion, directed by the Holy Spirit under the laws of God. Salvation is of your brother. The Holy Spirit extends from your mind to his, and answers you. You cannot hear the Voice of God in yourself alone, because you are not alone. And His answer is only for what you are. You will not know the trust I have in you unless you extend it. You will not trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or believe that it is for you unless you hear it in others. It must be for your brother because it is for you. Would God have created a Voice for you alone? Could you hear His answer except as He answers all of God´s Sons? Hear of your brother what you would have hear of you, for you would not want me to be decived. I love you for the truth in you, as God does. Your deceptions may decieve you, but they cannot deceive me. Knowing what you are, I cannot doubt you. I hear only the Holy Spirit in you. Who speaks to me through you. If you would hear me, hear my brothers in whom God´s Voice speaks. The answer to all prayers lies in them. You will be answered as you hear the answer in everyone. Do not listen to anything else or you will not hear truly. Believe in your brothers because I believe in you, and you will learn that my belief in you is justified. Believve in me by believing in them, for the sake of what God gave them. They will answer you if yoou learn to ask only truth of them. Do not ask for blessings without blessing them, for only in this way can you learn how blessed you are. By following this way you are seeking the truth in you. This is not going beyond yourself but towards yourself. Hear only God´s Answer in His Sons, and you are answered. To disbelieve is to side against, or to attack. To belive is to accept, and to side with. To believe is not to credulous, but to accept and appreciate. What you do not believe you do not appreciate, and you cannot be greatful for what you do not value. This is a price you will pay for judgment, because judgments is the setting of a price. And as you set it you will pay it. If praying is equated with getting, you will set the price low but demand a high return. You will have forgotten, however, that your return is in proportion to your judgment of worth. If praying is asssociated with giving it cannot be perceived as loss, and the reciprocal relationship of giving and receiving will be recorgnized. The price will then be set high, because of the value of the retun. The price for getting is to lose sight of value, making it inevitable that you will not value what you receive. Valuing it little, you will not appreciate it and you will not want it. Never forget, then, that you set the value on what you receive, and price it by what you give. To believe that it is possible to get much for little is to believe that you can bargain with God. God´s laws are always fair and perfectly consistent. By giving you receive. But to receive is to accept, not to get. It is impossible not to have, but it is possible not to know you have. The recognition of having is the willingness for giving, and only by this willingness can you recognize what you have. What you give is therefore the value you put on what you have, being the exact measure of the value you put upon it. And this, in turn, is the measure of how much you want it. You can ask of the Holy Spirit, then, only by giving to Him, and you can give to Him only where you recognize Him. If you recognize Him in everyone, consider how much you will be asking of Him, and how much you will receive. He will deny you nothing because you have denied Him nothing, and so you can share everything. This is the way, and the only way to have His answer, because His answer is all you can ask for and want. Say, then, to everyone.

”Because I will to know myself, I see you as God´s Son and my brother”

Love

[IA56]

The Correction of Error.

The alertness of the ego to the errors of other egos is not the kind of vigilance the Holy Spirit would have you maintain. Egos are critical in terms of the kind of ”sense” they stand for. They understand this kind of sense, because it is sensible to them. To the Holy Spirit it makes no sense at all. To the ego it is kind and right and good to point out errors and ”correct” them.This makes perfect sense to the ego, which is unaware of what errors are and what correction is. Errors are of the ego, and correction of errors lies in the relinquisment of the ego. When you correct a brother, you are telling him that he is wrong. He may be making no sense at the time, and it is certain that, if he is speaking from the ego, he will not be making sense. But your task is still to tell him he is right. You do not tell him this verbally, if he is speaking foolishly. He needs correction at another level, because his error is at another level. He is still right, because he is a Son of God. His ego is always wrong, no matter what it says or does. If you point out the errors of your brother´s ego you must be seeing through yours, because the Holy Spiritdoes not perceive his errors. This must be true, since there is no communication between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego makes no sense, and the Holy Spirit does not attempt to understand anything that arises from it. Since He does not understand it, He does not judge it, knowing that nothing the ego makes means anything. 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. Yet it is more than merely a 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 perceivve his errors and accept them, ou 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 form 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. It is possible, then, for you to correct another? Yet you can see him truly, because it is possible for you to see yourself truly. It is not up to you to change your brother, 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 allonthe 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 therefore 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 in your brother. His errors are forgiven with yours. Atonement is no more separate than love. Atonement 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 that, but you do need to learn to want it. For that all learning was made. This is the Holy Spirit´s use of an ability that you do not need, but that you made. Give it to Him! You do not understand 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.

Love

[IA56]

The Holy Spirit´s Plan of Forgivness.

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 understand how to overlook errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to believe 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. This sense of limitation is where all errors arise. The way to undo them, therefore, is 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 the natural use of your abilities. By reinterpreting the ability to attack into the ability to share, He translates what you have made into what God created. If you would accomplish this though Him you cannot look on your abilities through the eyes of the ego, or you will judget hem as it does. All their harmfulness lies in the ego´s judgment. All their helpfulness lies in the judgment of the Holy Spirit. The ego, too, has a plan of forgivness because you are asking for one, though not of the right teacher. The ego´s plan, of course, makes no sense and will not work. By following its plan you will merely place yourself in an impossible situation, to which the ego always leads you. The ego´s plan is to have you see error clearly first, and then overlook it. Yet 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 to appeal to �mysteries,� insisting that you must 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 that are eternal.Forgivness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear. Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it. Forgivness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not leta ny belief in its realness enter your mind, 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 non existent. By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it. Follow the Holy Spirit´s teaching in forgivness, then, because forgivness is His function and He knows how to fulfill it perfectly. That is what I meant when I 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 the Holy Spirit´s plan of salvation, recognizing that you do not understand 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 familar 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 confusio n.It is particularly dangerous combination of grandiosity and confusion that makes the ego likely to attack anyone and anything for no reason at all. This is exactly what the ego does It is unpredictable in its reasponses, because it ha no idea of what it perceives. If you have no idea what is happening, how appropriately can you expect to react? You might ask yourself, regardless of how you may account for the reaction, whether its upredictablitlty places the ego in a sound position as your guide. Let me repeat that the ego´s qualifications as a guide are singularly unfortunate, and that it is a remarkably poor choice as a teacher of salvation. Anyone who elects a totally insane guide must be totally insane himself. Nor is it true that you do not realize the guide is insane. You realize it because I realize it, and you have judged it by the same standard 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 that 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 who turns to fantasy unless he despairs of finding satisfaction in reality? Yet it is certain that you will never find satisfaction in fantasy, so that your only hope is to change your 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 known, 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 of fearful, but no on calls them true. Children may beleive them, and so, for a while, the tales are true for them. Yet when reality dawns, the fantasies are gone. Reality has not gone in the meanwhile. The Second Coming is the awareness of reality, not its return. Behold, my child, reality is here. It belongs to you and me and God, and is perfectly satisfying to all of us. Only this awarness heals, because it is the awarness of truth.

Love

[IA56]

The Unhealed Healer.

The ego´s plan for forgivness 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 that unhealed healer more carefully now. By definition, he is trying to give what he has not received. If an unhealed healer is a theologian, for example, 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 incridible belief that attack is real for both himself and the patient, but that it does not matter for either of them. I have repeatedly said that beliefs of the ego cannot be shared, and this is why they are unreal. 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 forgivness in one form and another. If they are theologians they are likely to condemn themselves, teach condemnation and advocate a fearful solution. Projecting condemnation onto God, they make Him appear retaliative, and fear His retribution. What they have done is merely to identify with the ego, and by perceiving what it does, condemn themselves because of this confusion. It is understandable that there has been revolts against this concept, but to revolt against it is still to believe in it. Some newer forms of the ego´s plan are as unhelpful as the older ones, because form does not matter and the content has not changed. In one of the newer forms, for example, a psychotherapist may interpret the ego´s symbols in a nightmare, and then use them to prove that the nightmare is real. Having made it real, he then attempts to dispel its effects by depreciationg the importance of the dreamer. This would be a healing approach if the dreamer were also indentified as unreal. Yet if the dreamer is equated with the mind, the mind´s corrective power through the Holy Spirit is denied. This is a contradiction even in the ego´s terms, and one which it usually notes even in its confusion. If the way to counteract fear is to reduce the importance of the mind, how can this build ego strength? Such evident inconsistencies account for why no one has really explained what happens in psychotherapy. Nothing really does. Nothing real has happened to the unhealed healer, and he must learn from his own teaching. His ego will always seek to get something from the situation. The unhealed healer therefore 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, although 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 pshychotherapist does, or like the theologian, by acknowledging darkness in yourself and lookinjg for a distant light to remove it? Healing is not mysterious. Nothing will change unless it is understood, since light is understanding. A ”miserable sinner” cannot be healed without magic, nor can an ”unimprotant mind” steem itself without magic. Both forms of the ego´s approach, must arrive at an impasse; the characteristic ”impossible situation” to which the ego always leads. It may help someone to point out where he is heading, but the point is lost unless he is also helped to change his direction. The unhealed healer cannot do this for him, since he cannot do it for himself. The only meaningful contribution the healer can make 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 healer knows it is there. That is how perception ultimately is translated into knowledge. The miracle worker begins by perceiving light, and translate his perception into sureness by continually extending it and accepting its acknowledgment. Its effects assure him it is there. A therapist does not heal; he lets healing be. He can point to darkness bu the cannot bring light of himself, for light is not of him. Yet, being for him, it must also be for his patient. The Holy Spirit is the only Therapist. He makes healing clear in any situation in which He is the Guide. You 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. Remeber that you choose the 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 the Holy Spirit through Him, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world. But the laws you are obeying work. ”The good is what works” is a sound through insufficient statement. Only the good can work. Nothing els works at all.This course offers a very direct and a very simple learning situation, amd 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 convice 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”.

Love

[IA56]

The Acceptance of Your Brother.

How can you become increasingly aware of the Holy Spirit in you ecept by His effects? You cannot see Him with your eyes nor hear Him with your ears. How, then, can you perceive Him at all? If you inspire joy and others react to you with joy, even though you are not experiencing joy yourself there must be something in you that is capable of producing it. If it is in you and can produce joy, and if you see that it does produce joy in others, you must be dissociating it in yourself. It seems to you that the Holy Spirit does not produce joy consistently in you only because you do not consistently arouse joy in others. Their reactions to you are your evaluations of His consistnecy. When you are inconsistent you will not always give rise to joy, and so you will not always recongnize His consitency. What you offer to your brother you offer to Him, because He cannot go beyond your offering in His giving. This is not because He limits His giving, but simply because you have limited your receiving. The decision to receive is the decision to accept. If your brothers are part of you, will you accept them? Only they can teach you what you are, for your learning is the result of what you taught them. What you call upon in them you call upon in yourself. And as you call upon it in them it becomes real to you. God has but one Son, knowing them all as one. Only God Himself is more than they but they are not less than He is. Would you know what this means? If what you do to my brother you do to me, and if you do everything for yourself because we are part of you, everything we do belongs to you as well. Everyone God created is part of you and shares His glory with you. His Glory belongs to Him, but it is equally yours. You cannot , then, be less glorious than He is. God is more than you only because He created you, but not even this would He keep from you. Therefore you can create as Hed id, and you dissociation will not alter this. Neither God´s Light nor yours is dimmed because you do not see. Because the Sonship must create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to your wholeness because each part is whole. Wholeness is indivisible, but you cannot learn of your wholeness until you see it everywhere. You can know yourself only as God knows His Son, for knowledge is shared with God. When you awake in Him you will know your magnitude by accepting His limitlessness as yours. But meanwhile you will judge it as you judge your brother´s , and will accept it as you accept his. You are not yet awake, but you can learn how to awaken. Very simply the Holy Spirit teaches you to awaken others. As you see them waken you will learn what waking means, and because you have chosen to wake them, their gratitude and their appreciation of what you have given them will teach you its value. They will become the witnesses to your reality as you were created witnesses to God´s. Yet when the Sonship comes together and accepts its oneness it will be known by its creations, who witness to its reality as the Son does to the Father. Miracles have no place in eternity, because they are reparative. Yet while you still need healing, your miracles are the only witness to your reality that you can recognize. You cannot perform a miracle for yourself, because miracles are a way of giving acceptance and receiving it. In time the giving comes first, though they are simultaneous in eternity, where they cannot be separated. When you have learned they are the same, the need for time is over. Eternity is one time, its only dimension being �always� This cannot mean anything to you until you remember God´s open Arms, and finally know His open Mind. Like Him, you are �always�; in His Mind and with a mind like His. In your open mind are your creations, in perfect communication born of perfect understanding. Could you but accept one of them you would not want anything the world has to offer. Everything else would be totally meaningless. God´s meaning is incomplete without you, and you are incomplete without your creations. Accept your brother in this world and accept nothing else, for in him you will find your creations because he created them with you. You will never know that you are co-creator with God until you learn that your brother is co-creator with you.

Love

[IA56]

The Two Evaluations

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 easy to obtain it. Your brothers are everywhere. You do not have to seek far for salvation. Every minute and every second given 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? Concider, then, that in this joint will you are all united, and in this only. There may be disagreement on anything else, but not on this. This, then, is where peace abides. And you abide in peace when you so decide. Yet 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, since obviousness is the essential characteristic of reality. Yet you cannot overlook it unless you are not looking. It is perfectly obvious that if the Holy Spirit looks with love on all 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 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 mind, 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, especially when you respond to the Holy Spirit, because at such time 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 attack your motives as soon as they become clearly out of accord with its perceptions of you. This is when it will shift abruptly from suspiciousness to viciousness, since its uncertainty is increased. Yet 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 choose 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 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 range precludes this. You can only go beyond it, 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 to lament your littleness. Within the system that dictated this choice the lament is inevitable. Your littleness is taken for granted there and you do not ask, �Who grabted it?� The question is meaningless within the ego´s thought system, because it would open the whole thought system to question. I have said 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 this produces a total lack of knowledge simply because knowledge is total. Not to question your littleness therefore is 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 ist 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. He 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 that it is meaningless. What ever you question your value , say:

�God Himself is complete without me�.

Remember this when the ego speaks, and you will not hear it. The truth about you is so lofty that nothing anworthy 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. You do not want anything else. Return your part of Him, and He will give you all of Himself in exchange for the return of what belongs to Him and renders Him complete.

Love

[IA56]

Grandeur versus Grandiosity.

Grandeur is of God, and only of Him. Therefore it is in you. Whenever you become aware of it, however dimly, you abondon the ego automatically, because in the presence of the grandeur of God the meaninglessness of the ego becomes perfectly apparant. When this occurs, even though it does not understand it, the ego believes that its �enemy� has struck, and attempts to offer gifts to induce you to return to its �protection�. Self-inflation 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 conteract your littleness, based on the belief that the littleness is real. Without this belief grandiosity is meaningless, and you would not possibly want it. The essence of grandiosity is competiveness, 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 ramains suspious as long as you despair of yourself. It shifts to viciousness when you decide not to tolerate self-abasement and seek relief. Then it offers you the illusion of attack as a �solution�. The ego does not understand the difference between grandeur and grandiosity, because it sees no difference between miracle impulses and ego-alien beliefs of its own. I told you that the ego is aware of threat to its existence, but makes no distinctions between these two very different kinds of threat. Its profound sense of vulnerablility renders it incapable of judgment except in terms of attack. When the ego experiences threat, its only decision is whether to attack now or to 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 you will give up all investment in it. Grandeur is totally without illusions, and because it is real it is compellingly convincing. Yet 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 releasee. 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. Yet your grandeur is not delusional because you did not make it. You 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 mind, 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. If you are willing to look upon your grandeur you cannto 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 coexist, nor is it possible for them to alternate. Littleness and grandiosity can and must alternate, since both are untrue and are therefore on the same level. Being the level of shift, it is experienced as shifting and extremes are its essential characteristic. Truth and littleness are denialss of each other because grandeur is truth. Truth oes 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. Yet it must be insane because it is not true. Your grandeur will never deceive you, but your illusions always will. Your grandeur willnever 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 grandisousity, because love is returned and pride is not. Pride will not produce miracles, and will therefore 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 from 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. Grandiousity is delusional, because it is used to replace your grandeur. Yet what God has created cannot be replaced. God is incomplete without you because His grandeur is total, and you cannot be missing from it. You are altogether irreplaceble in the Mindof 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 you extensions safe within it. Yet 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 your alone. To accept yourself as God created you cannot be arrogance, because it is the denial of arrogance. To accept your littleness is rrogant, because it means that you believe your evaluation of yourself is truer than God´s. Yet if truth is indivisible, your evaluation of yourself must be God´s. You did not establish your value and it needs no defense. Nothing can attack it nor 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, because it comes from God. It is an exalted answer because of its Source, but the Source is true and so it its answer. Listen and do not question what your hear, for God does not deceive. He would have you replace the ego´s belief in littleness with His Own exalted Answer to what you are, so that you can cease to question it and know it for what it is.

Love

[IA56]

The Idols of Sickness.

Nothing beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing is beyond you. Time and eternity are both in your mind, 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 happening 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 as always been. What can upset you except the ephemeral, and how can the ephemeral be real if you are God´s only creation that happens to you. Your holy mind establishes everything that happens to you. Every response you make to everything you perceive is up to you, because your mind 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 it only for Himself. He created you for Himself, but He gave you the power to create for yourself so you would be like Him. That is why your mind 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.

Love

[IA56]

At Home in God.

You do not know your creations simply because you would decide against them as long as your mind is 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 law 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 the 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 perffectly capable of awakening to reality. Is it your decision to do so? You recognize from your own experience that what you see in dreams you think is real while you are asleep. Yet the instant you waken you realize that everything that seemed to happen in the dream did not happen at all. You do not think this strange, even though all the laws of what you awakento were violated while you slept. Is it not possible that you merely shifted from one dream to another, without really waking? 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 this Holy Spirit you may feel better because loving them 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. Yet what has once been is so now, if it is eternal. When you remember, you will know that what you remember is eternal, and therefore is now. You will remember everything the instant you desire it wholly, for if you 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 desire 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.

Love

[IA56]

The Decision to Forget.

Unless you first know something you cannot dissociate it. Knowledge must precede dissociation, so that dissociation is nothing more than a decision to forget. What has been forgotten then appears to be fearful, but only because the dissociation is an attack on truth. You are fearful because you have forgotten. And you have replaced your knowlede by an awareness of dreams because you are afraid of your dissociation, not of what you have dissociated. When what you have dissociated is accepted, it ceases to be fearful. Yet 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 willingness to remember, for He retains the knowledge of God and of yourself 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, 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 is already there, but was 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 the asking. When you attack, you are denying yourself. You are specifically teaching yourself that you are not what you are. You denial of reality precludes the acceptance of God´s gift, because you have accepted something else in its place. If you understand that this is always an attack on truth, and truth is God, you will realize why it is always fearful. If you further recognize that you are part of God, you will understand why it is that you always attack yourself first. If you realize 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 it can get you something you want. It follows, then, that you want something other than peace of mind, but you have not considered what it must be. Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear, if you will only 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.

Love

[IA56]

The God of Sickness.

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 yourself, it is a sure sign you hate what you think you are. And this, and only this, can be attacked by you. What you think you are can be very hateful, and what this strange image makes you do can be very destructive. Yet the destruction is no more real than the image, although those who make idols do whorship them. The idols are nothing, but their worshippers are the Sons of God in sickness. God would havet hem 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 sick children of God except His power through you? Remember that it does no matter where in the Sonship He is accepted. He is always accpeted for all, and when your mind receives Him the remembrance of Him awakens through out 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. God´s 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 on 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 rememberance of love therefore brings invulnerablility 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 he has forgotten. Your recognintion of him as part of God reminds him of the truth about himself, which he is denying. Would you strengthen his denial of God and thus love 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 worhsip the same idol he does. God created love, not idolatry. All forms of idolatry are cricatures of creation, taught by sick minds too divided to know that creation shares power and never usurps it. Sickness is idolatry, becausee it is the belief that power can be taken from you. Yet this is impossible, because you are part or 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? Look calmly at the logical conclusion of the ego´s thought system and judge wether its offering is really what you want, for this is what it offers you. To obtain this you are willing to attack the Divinity off your brothers, and thus lose sight of yours. And you are willing to keep it hidden, and to protect an idol you think will save you from the dangers for which it stands, but which do not exist. There are no idolaters in the Kingdom, but there is great appreciation for everything that 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 yourself. 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 comes from God through me to you. It is you although you may not ask for it. When a brother is sick it is because he is not asking for peace, and therefore 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 comletely 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 conflciting 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 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, and offer them perfect freedom from allillusions because you heard His Voice. But have no other gods before Him or you will not hear. God is not jealous of the gods you make, but your 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. Yet when they seem to speak to you, remember that nothing can replace God, and whatever replacements you have attemted are nothing. Very simply, then you may believe you are afraid of nothingness, but you are really afraid of nothing. And in the awarness 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. Yet 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. Yet they exist only because you honor them. Place honor where it is due, and peace will be yours. It is your inheritancee from your real Father. You cannot make your Father, and the father you made did not make you. Honor is not due them either, for to honor them is to honor nothing. Yet 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 the god of sickness anywhere, you have accepted 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 ggod iss real. Although it is clear this has nothing to do with reality, it is equally clear that it has everything to do with reality as you perceive it.

Love

[IA56]

The End of Sickness.

All magic is an attempt to reconciling the irreconcilable. All religion is the recongnition 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 you made, but you are. He is the symbol of deciding 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 on an unclouded mind. It is always there to be accpeted, but its accpetance depends on your willingness to have it. To know reality must involve the willingness to judge unreality for what it is. To overlook nothingness is merely to judge 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 inall 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 it is the sign that you have removed part of your mind form God´s Will. This means it is out of control. To be out of control is to be out of reason, and then the mind does become unreasonable. By defining the mind wrongly, you perceive it as functioning wrongly. God´s laws will keep your mind 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 irroconcilable, their laws cannot be understood together. The laws of God work only for your good, and ther are no other laws beside His. Everything else is merely lawless and therefore chaotic. Yet God Himself has protected everything He created by His laws. Everything that is not under them does not exist. ”Laws of chaos” is meaningless term. 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 cannot give it to them. You are not free to give up freedon, but only to deny it. You cannot do what God did not intend, because what Hed id 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 been, and nothing but His Will will ever be. You were crated through His laws and by His Will, and the manner of your creation through His laws and by His Will, and the manner of your creation established you a creator. 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 obstruction 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, it is so for you. His definitions are His laws, for by them He established the univers 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 off a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and 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 that is trengthened by joining. Because the miracle worker has heard God´s Voice, he strengthens It 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. Yet God has kept the spark alive so that 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 ther 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.

Love

[IA56]

The Denial of God.

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 forsworn God. Many are afraid of blasphemy, but they do not understand what it means. They do not reallize 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 percives its opposite, as all forms of denial replace what is with what is not. No one can really do this, but that you 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 must 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 to them. Do not attribute your denial of joy to them, or you cannot see the spark that brings depression, for whenever you see your brothers without it, you are denying God. Allergiance to the denial of God is the ego´s religion. The God of sickness obvioulsly demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival. But consider what 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 your god demands because, having made him out of your insanity, he is an insane idea. He has many forms, but although he may seem to be many different things he is but one idea; - the denial of God. Sickness and death seemed to enter 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. I said before that of yourself you can do nothing, but you are not of yourself. If you were, what you have made would be true, and you could never escape. It is because you did not make yourself that you need be troubled over 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 who are unlike your Creator, any more than He could have created a Son who was unlike Him. If creaton is shared, 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. Yet 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 of Him therefore means that you love Him, and that you know He loves you. Remember that what you deny you must have once known. And if you 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 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 is His acknowledgment of you lies your being. You are not sick and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself 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. Yet 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 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 created 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 deny Him you are 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 hed been created for him, and what he had created in his 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 that was created for you for the misery you have made for yourself. God has given you the means for undoing what you have made. Listen, and you will learn how to remember 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 of there illusions, and the many other forms that 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 of yours. Do not perceive anything God didd 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. Yet the real Fatherhood must be acknowledged if the real Son is tobe known. You believe that the sick things 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 gav 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 desirabel the consept of choice, which is not of God, will remain with you. While this is not trie in eternality it is true in time, so that while time lasts in your mind there will be choices. Time itself is your choice. If you would remember eternity, you must look only on the eternal, 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.

Love

[IA56]

GOD OR THE EGO

Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence on both sides farily, you will realize this must be true. Neither God nor the ego proposes a partial thought system. Each is internally consistent, but they are dimetriacally opposed in all respect so that partial allegiance is impossible. Remember, too, that their results are as different as their foundation, and their fundamentally irreconcilable natures cannot be reconciled by vacillations between them. Nothing alive is fatherless, for life is creation. Therefore, your decision is always an answer to the question, �Who is my father?� And you will be faithful to the father you choose. Yet what would you say to someone who believed this question really involves conflict? Iff you made the ego, how can the ego have made you? The authority problem is still the only source of conflict, because the ego was made out of the wish of God´s Son to father Him. The ego, then, is nothing more than a delusional system in which you made your own father. Make no mistake about this. It sounds insane when it is stated with perfect honesty, but the ego never looks on what it does with perfect honesty. Yet that is its insane premise, which is carefully hidden in the dark cornestone of its thought system. And either the ego, which you made, is your father, or its whole thought system will not stand. You make by projection, but God creates 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 egos´s thought system, the darker and more obscure becomes the way. Yet when the little spark in your mind is enough to lighten it. Bring this light fearlessly with you, and bravely hold it up to the foundation of the ego´s thought system. Be willing to judge it with perfect honesty. Open the dark conrnerstone of terror on which it rests, and bring it out into the light. There you will see that it rested on meainglessness, and that everything of which you have been afraid was based no 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 in order to keep a dark cornerstone hidden, for its protection will not save you. I give you and 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?

Love

[IA56]

The Gift of Fatherhood

You have learned your need of healing. Would you bring anything else to the Sonship, recognizing your need of healing for yourself? For in this lies the beginning of the return to knowledge; the foundation on which God will help build again the thought system 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. 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 ends 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 contiues forever, however much it is denied. Your denial of its reality may arrest 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 thime behind simply by recognizing that neither beginnings nor endings were created by the Eternal, Who placed no limits on His creation or 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 that 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 notdeny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood had denied you yours. See His creation as His Son, for yours wee created in honor of Him. The universe of love does not stop because you do not see it, nor have your closed eyes 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 that is yours forever. Yet you can keep it onlly by giving it, as it was given you. Could you be alone there, when it was given you because God did not will to be alone? God´s Mind cannot be lessened. It can only be increased, for everything He created has the function of creating. Love does not limit, and what it created is not limited. To give without limit is God´s Will for you, because only this can bring you the joy that is His and that He wills to share with you. Your love is as boundless as His because it is His. Could any part of God 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 His depends on your willingness to give as He gives. Your fatherhood and your Father are one. God wills to create, and your will is His. If follows, then, that you will to create, since your will follows from His. And being an extention 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 is that you are His Son. By denying this you deny your own will, and therefore do not know what it is. You must ask what God´s Will is in everything, 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 repeted that you do not know it. Whenever what the Holy Spirit tells you appears to be coercive, it is only because you havenot recognized your 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 seems possible for God´s Will and yours to conflict. God, then, may seem to demand of you what you do not want to give, andd 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. Sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but cannot die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son´s will for himself. 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 want you will truly, and you cannot change this because it is immutable. It is immutable by God´s Will and yours, for otherwise His Will would not be 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 of God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. Hes hares His Will with you; He does not thrust it upon you. Always remember that what He gives He keeps, so that nothng 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 knoww 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 is His Oneness. That is why healing is the beginning of the recognition that your will is His.

Love

[CFTraveler]

This is my favorite part.

[IA56]

The Invitation to Healing.

If sickness is separation, the decision to heal and to be healed is the first step towards 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 to unite your will with His, for He wills you Himself. And you will yourself to Him besauce, in your perfect understanding of Him, you know there is but one Will. Yet when you attack any part of God and His Kingdom your understanding is not perfect, and what you really want is therefore lost to you. Healing thus becomes a lesson in understanding, and the more you practis it the better teacher and learner you become. If you have denied truth, what better witnesses to its reality could you havet han those who have healed by it? But be sure to count yourself among them, for in your willingness to join them is your healing accomplished. Every miracle that you accomplish speaks to you of the Fatherhood of God. Every healing thought that you accept, either from your brother or in your own mind, teaches you that you are God´s Son. In every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God´s Fatherhood and of your Sonship. And denial is as total as love. You cannot deny part of yourself, because the rest will seem to be separated and therefore without meaning. And being without meaning to you, you will not understand it. To deny meaning is to fail to understand. You can heal only yourself, for only Gpd´s Son needs healing. You need it because you do not understand yourself, and therefore know not what you do. Having forgotten your will, you do not know what you really want. Healing is a sign that you want to make whole. And this willingness opens your 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, only because your care is a sign to 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. Whatever 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. Yet you need far more than patience. You will never rest until you know your function and fullfill it, for only in this can your will and your Father´s bew 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 mind, and let nothing that 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 to be perfect, because His is. If you will merely offer Him a little place, He will lighten it so much that you will gladly let it be increased. And by this increase, 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 hes hall remain with you. Yet this is not real freedom, for it still depneds on how you see it. 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 the Holy Spirit is real. Know, then, Who abides with you merely by recognizing what is there already, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you.

Love

[IA56]

From Darkness to Light.

When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will rest you, but you cannot. You do not know how, for if you did you could never have grown weary. Unless you hurt yourself you could never suffer in any way, for that is not God´s Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He knows no attack and His peace surrounds you silently. God is very quit, for there is no conflict in Him. Conflict is the root of all evil, for being blind it does not see whom it attacks. Yet it always attacks the Son of God, and the Son of God is you. God´s Son is indeed in need of comfort, for he knows not what he does, believing his will is not his own. The Kingdom is his, and yet he wanders homeless. At home in God he is lonely, and amid all his brothers he is friendless. Would God let this be real, when Hed id not will to be alone Himself? And if your will is His it cannot be true of you, because it is not true of Him. O my child, if you knew what God will s for you, your joy would be complete! And what He wills has happened, for it was always true. When the light comes and you have said, �God´s Will is mine�, you will see such beauty that you will know it is not of you. Out of your joy you will create beauty in His Name, for your joy could no more be contained than His. The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, andd your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven, and into the Presence of God. I cannot tell you what this will be like, for your heart is not ready. Yet I can tell you, and remind you often, that what God wills for Himslef He wills for you, and what He wills for you is yours. The way is not hard, but it is very different. Yours is the way of pain, of which God knows nothing. That way is hard indeed, and very lonely. Fear and grief are your guests, and they go with you and abide with you on the way. But the dark journey is not the way of God´s Son. Walk in light and do not see the dark compassion, for they are not fit companions for the Son of God, who was created of light and in light. The Great Light always surrounds you are shines out from you. How can you see the dark comanions in a light such as this? If you see them, it is only because you are denying the light. But deny them instead, for the light is here and the way is clear. God hides nothing from His Son, even though His Son would hide himself. Yet the Son of God cannot hide his glory, for God wills him to be glorius, and gave him the light that shines in him. You will never lose your way, for God leads you. When you wander, you but undertake a journey that is not real. The dark companions, the dark way, are all illusions. Turn towards the light, for the little spark in you is part of a Light so great that it can sweep you out of all darkness forever. For your Father is your Creator, and you are like Him. The children of light cannot abide in darkness for darkness is not in them. Do not be deceived by the dark comforters, and never lett hem enter the mind of God´s son, for they have no place in His temple. When you are tempted to deny Him remember that there are not other gods to place before Him, and accept His Will for you in peace. For you cannot accept it otherwise. Only God´s Comforter can comfort you. In the quiet of His temple, He waits to give you the peace that is yours. Give His peace, that you may enter the temple and find it waiting for you. But be holy in the Presence of God, or you will not know that you are there. For what is unlike God cannot enter His Mind, because it was not His Thought and therefore does not belong to Him. And your mind must be as pure as His, if you would know what belongs to you. Guard carefully His temple, for He Himself dwells there and abides in peace. You cannot enter God´s Presence with the dark companions beside you, but you also cannot enter alone. All your brothers must enter with you, for until you have accepted them you cannot enter. For you cannot understand Wholness unless you are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded if he would know the Wholness of his Father. In your mind you can accept the whole Sonship and bless it with the light your Father gave it. Then you wil be worthy to dwell in the temple with Him, because it is your will not to be alone. God blessed His Son forever. If you will bless him in time, you will be in eternity. Time cannot separate you from God if you use it on behalf of the eternity.

Love

[IA56]

The Inheritance of God´s Son.

Never forget that the Sonship is your salvation, for the Sonship is your Self. As God´s creation It is yours, and belonging to you It is His. Your Self does not need salvation, but your mind need to learn what salvation is. You are not saved from anything, but you are saved for glory. Glory is your inheritance, given you by your Creator that you might extend it. Yet if you hate part of your Self all your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God created as yourself without love. And since what He created is part of Him, you are denying Him His place in His Own altar. Could you try to make God homeless and know that you are at home? Can the Son deny the Father without believing that the Father has denied him? God´s lawss hold only for your protection, and they never hold in vain. What you experience what you deny your Father is still for your protection, for the power of your will cannot be lessed without the intervention of God against it, and any limitations on your power is not the Will of God. Therefore, look only to the power that God gave to save you, remembering that it is yours because it is His, and join with your brothers in His peace. Your peace lies in its limitlessness. Limit the peace you share, and your Self must be unknown to you. Every altar to God is part of you, because the light He created in one with Him. Would you cut off a brother from the light that is yours? You would not do so if you realized that you can darken only your own mind. As you bring him back, so will you return. That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son. Only you can deprive yourself of anything. Do not oppose this realization, for it is truly the beginning of the dawn of light. Remember also that the denial of this simple fact takes many forms, and these you must learn to recognize and to oppose steadfstly, without exception. This is a crusial step in the reawakening. The beginning phase of this reversal are often quite painful, for as bleame is withdrewn for without, there is a strong tendency to harbor it within. It is difficult at first to realize that this is exactly the same thing, for there is no distinction between within and without. If your brothers are part of you and you blame them for your deprivation, you are blaming yourself. And you cannot blame yourself without blaming them. That is why blame must be undone, not seen elsewhere. Lay it to yourself and you cannot know yourself, for only the ego blames at all. Self-blame is therefore ego identification, and as much anego defense as blaming others. You cannot enter God´s Presence if you attack His Son. When His son lift his voice in praise of his Creator, he will hear the Voice for his Father. Yet the Creator cannot be praised without His Son, for their glory is shared and they are glorified together. Christ is at God´s alter, waiting to welcome His Son. But come wholly without condemnation, for otherwise you will believe that the door is barred and you cannot enter.The door is not barred, and it is impossible that you canno enter the place where God would hve you be. But love yourself with the Love of Christ, for so does your Father love you. You can refuse to enter, but you cannot bar the door that Christ holds open. Come unto me who holds it open for you, for while I live it cannot be shut, and I live forever. God is my life and yours, and nothing is denied by God to His Son. At God´s altar Christ waits for the restoration of Himself in you. God knows His Son as wholly blameless as Himself, and He is approached through the appreciation of His son. Christ waits for your acceptance of Him as yourself, and of His Wholeness as yours. For Christ is the Son of God, who lives in his Creator and shines with His glory. Christ is the extension of the Love and the Loveliness of God, as perfect as His Creator and at peace with Him. Blessed is the Son of God whose radiance is of his Father, and whose glory he wills to share as his Father shares it with him. There is no comdemnation in the Son, for there is no condemnation in the Father. Sharing the perfect Love of the Father the Son must share what belongs to Him, for otherwise he will not know the Father or the Son. Peace be unto you who rest in God, and in whom the whole Sonshiop rests.

Love

[IA56]

The ” Dynamics” of the Ego.

No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected. There is not 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. The ”dynamics” of the ego will be our lesson for a while, for we must look first at this to see beyond it, since you have made it real. We will undo this error 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, and you are beginning to learn that fear is not real. You are also learning that its effects can be dispelled merely by denying their reality. The next step is obviously to recognize that what has not effect does not exist. Laws do not operate in a vacuum, and what leads to nothing has not happened. If reality is recognized by its extention, what leads to nothing could not 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. It contains the very 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 to you because you believe this. Yet 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. You can surely regard a delusional system without fear, for it cannot have any effects if its source is not real. Fear becomes more obviously inappropriate if you recognize the ego´s goal, which is so clearly sensless that any effort 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 neutral outcome 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 reconize that their source is not natural, being out of accord with your true nature. I said before that to will contrary to God is wishful thinking and not real willing. His Will is one beczause the extention 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 Hes hares with you. By His willingness to share it, He became 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 Autonmy. 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 dependencey as threatening, and has twisted even your longing for God into a means of establishing itself. But do not be deceived by its interpretations of your conflict. The ego always attacks on behalf of separation. Believing it has the power to do this it does nothings else, because its goal of aoutonomy 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 recongnize yours. You must reconginze that the last thing the ego whishes you to realize is that you are afraid of it. For if the ego could give rise to fear, it would diminish your independence and weaken 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, unbeliveing, ”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 a 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 recognize that 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 the awareness. For though you may counternance a false idea of independence, you will not accept the cost of fear if you recongize it. Yet this is the cost, and the ego cannot minimize it. 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 wants to find 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 to possible from the impossible and the false from the true. According to the ego´s teachiing, its goal can be accomplished and God´s purpose can not. According to the Holy Spirit´s teaching, only God´s purpose ca be accomplished, and it is accomplished already. 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 belives 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 so diligently, has merely brought 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 coulde believe that love can be gained by attack. But the sane realize 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 the analyze means to break down or to separete out. The attempt to understand totality by breaking it down is clearly the characteristically contradictory approach of the ego to everything. The ego believes that power, understanding and truth lies 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 into small, disconnected parts, without meaningful relationships and therefore without meaning. The ego will always substitute chaos for meaning, for if separation is salvation, harmony is threat. The ego´s interpretation of the laws of perception are, and would have to be, the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit´s. The eog 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. Holding error clearly in mind, and protecting what it has made real, the ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system: 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 succeeds 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 the universe which, in turn, becomes its demostration of its own reality. Do not underestimate the appeal of the ego´s demonstration to those who would listen. Selective perception chooses its witnesses carefully, and its withnesses 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 meanining cannot demostrate anything, and those who are conviced by it must be deluded. Can the ego teach truly when it overlooks truth? Can it perceive 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 rememger Him. Nothing can demostrate 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 it 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 they speak. Every brother you meet becomes a witness for Christ or for the ego, depending on what you perceive in him. Everyone convices you 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 choose to be free. You cannot accept false witness of hi munless you have evoken fals 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.

Love

[IA56]

Waking to Redemption.

It is impossible not to believe what you see, but it is equally impossible to see what you do not believe. Perceptions are built up on the basis of experience, and experience leads to beliefs. It is not until beliefs are fixed that perceptions stablilize. In effect, then, what you believe you do see. That is what I meant when i said, �Blessed are ye who have not seen and still believe�, for those who believe in the resurrection will see it. The resurrection is the complete triumph of Christ over the ego, not by attack but by transcendence. For Christ does rise above the ego and all ist works, and ascends to the Father and His Kingdom. Would you join in the resurrection or the crucifixion? Would you condemn your brothers or free them? Would you transcend your prison and ascend to the Father? These questions are all the same, and are answered together. There has been much confusion about what perception means, because the word is used both for awareness and for the interpretation of awareness. Yet you cannot be aware without interpretation, for what you perceive is your interpretation. This course is perfectly clear. If you do not see it clearly, it is because you are interpreting against it, and therefore do not believe it.And since belief determines perception, you do not perceive what it means and therefore do not accept it. Yet different experiences lead to different beliefs, and experience does teach. I am leading you to a new kind of experience that you will become less and less willing to deny. Learning of Christ is easy, for to perceive with Him involves no strain at all. His perceptions are your natural awareness, and it is only the distortions you introduce that tire you. Let the Christ in you interpret for you, and do not try to limit what you see by narrow little beliefs that are unworthy of God´s Son. For until Christ comes into His Own, the Son of God will see himself as Fatherless. I am your resurrection and your life. You live in me because you live in God. And everyone lives in you, as you live in everyone. Can you, then, perceive unworthiness in a brother and not perceive it in yourself? And can you perceive it in yourself and not perceive it in God? Believe in the resurrection because it has been accomplished, and it has been accomplished in you. This is as true now as it will ever be, for the resurrection is the Will of God, which knows no time and no exceoptions. But makes no exceptions yourself, or you will not perceive what has been accomplished for you. For we ascend unto the Father together, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, for such is the nature of God´s Son as his Father created him. Do not underestimate the power of the devotion of God´s Son, nor the power the god he worships has over him. For he places himself at the altarr of his god, whether it be the god he made or the God Who created him. That is why his slavery is as complete as his freedom, for he will obey only the god he accepts. The god of crucifixion demands that he crusify, and his worshippers obey. In his name they crisify themselves, believing that the power of the Son of God is born of sacrifice and pain. The God of resurrection demands nothing, for He does not will to take away. He does not require obedience, for obedience implies submission. He would only have you learn your will and follow it, not in the spirit of sacrifice and submission, but in the gladness of freedom. Resurrecton must compel your allegiance gladly, because it is the symbol of joy. Its whole compelling power lies in the fact that it represents what you want to be. The freedom to leave behind everything that hurts you and humbles you and frightens you cannot be trust upon you, but it can be offered your through the grace of God. And you can accept it by His grace, for God is gracious to His Son, accepting him without question as His Own. Who, then, is your own? The Father has given you all that is His, and He Himself is yours with them. Guard them in their resurrection, for otherwise you will not awake in God, safely surronded by what is yours forever. You will not find peace until you have removed the nails from the hands of God´s Son, and taken the last thorn from his forhead. The Love of God surrounds His Son whom the god of crucifixion condemns. Teach not that I died in vain. Teach rather that I did not die by demonstrating that I live in you. For the undoing of the crucifixion of God´s Son is the work of the redemtion, in which everyone has a part of equal value. God does not judge His guiltless Son. Having given Himself to him, how could it be otherwise? You have nailed yourself to a cross, and placed a crown of thorns upon your own head. Yet you cannot crusify God´s Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son has been redeemed from his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life. The dream of crucifixion still lies heavy on your eyes, but what you see in dreams is not reality. While you perceive the Son of God as crusified, you are asleep. And as long as you believe that you can crusify him, you are only having nightmares. You who are beginning to wake are still aware of dreams, and have not yet forgotten them. The forgetting of dreams and the awareness of Christ come with the awakening of others to share your redemtion. You will awaken to your own call, for the Call to awake is within you. If I live in you, you are awake. Yet you must see the works I do through you, or you will not perceive that I have donet hem unto you. Do not set limits on what you believe I can do through you, or you will not accept what I can do for you. Yet it is done already, and unless you give all that you have received you will not know that your Redeemer liveth, and that you have awakened with Him. Redemption is recognized only by sharing it. God´s Son is saved. Bring only this awareness to the Sonship, and you will have a part in the redemtion as valuable as mine. For your part must be like mine if you learn it of me. If you believe that yours is limited, ou are limiting mine. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because all of God´s Sons are equal value, and their equality is their oneness. The whole power of God is in every part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His Will is either great or small. What does not exist has no size and no measure. To God all things are possible. And to Christ it is given to be like the Father.

Love

[IA56]

The Condition of Reality.

The world as you percieve 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 that 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, or in the interval between, 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. The loving thoughts his mind perceives 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 percieved. All that is necessary is a willingness to percieve 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 may see some good, but never only good. That is why its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for that you would not accept. But it always adds something that is not real to the real, thus confusing illusions and reality. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth and illusions, you cannot tell which is true. To establish your personal autonomy you tried to create unlike your Father, believing that what you made is capable of being unlike Him. Yet everything ture is like Him. Perceiving only the real world 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 is not knowledge, but the denial of the opposite of goodness enables you to recognize a condition in which opposites do not exist. And this is the condition of knowledge. Without this awarness you have not met its conditions, and until you do you will not know it is yours already. You have made many ideas that you have placed between yourself 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 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 hade made, and to perceive only this is salvation, because it is the recongnition that reality is only what is true.

Love

[IA56]

The Problem and the Answer.

This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel you need a course which, is the end, teaches that only reality is true. But do you believe it? When you perceive the real world, you will recognize that you did not belive it. Yet the swiftness with which your new and only real perception will be translated into knowledge will leave you but an instant to realize that this alone is true. And then everything you made will be forgotten; and 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 reinterpretation 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 believeing that you understand what you perceive, for its meaning is lost to you. Yet the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning for you, and if you will let Him interpret it, He will restore to you what you have thrown away. Yet while 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. 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. Yet your willingness to learn of Him depends on your willingness to question everything you learned of yourself, for you who learned amiss should not be your own teacher. No one can withhold truth except from himself. Yet God will not refuse you the Answer He gave. Ask, then, for what is yours, and do not defend yourself against truth. You made the problem God has answered. Ask yourself, therefore, but only 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 may complain that this course is not sufficeintly specific for you to understand and use. Yet perhaps 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 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. You may be afraid of His specificity, for fear of what you think it will demand of you. Yet only by asking will you learn that nothing of God demands anything of you. God gives; He does not take. When you refuse to ask, it is because you believe that asking is taking rather than 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. That 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 believe that to ask for guidance of the Holy Spirit is to ask for deprivation. Little child of God, you do not understand your Father. You believe in a world that takes, because you believe that you can get by taking. And by that perception you have lost sight of the real world. You are afraid of the world as yóu 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 are willing to 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 they do not share. Ask for truth of any Son of God, and you have asked it of me. Not 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 ini 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 our 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 his. 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 achive your goal. Brother, we heal togeather as we live together and love together. Be not decived 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 offenses 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 frightening ghosts and monsters and dragons, and they are terrified. Yet if they ask someone they trust for the meaning of what they perceive, and are willing to let their own 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 child, are afraid of your brothers and of your Father and of yourself. 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 reality. 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 that frightens you. You do not know what they are, and so you perceive them as ghosts and monsters and dragons. Ask what their reality is 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 decived in you, you can be deceived only in yourself. Yet you can learn the truth about yourself from the Holy Spirit. Who will teach 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.

Love

[IA56]

THE HOLY SPIRIT´S CURRICULUM

The Judgment of the Holy Spirit.

You have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is very simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have to make it real because it is not true. But truth is real in its own right, and to believ e in truth you do not have to do anything. Understand that you do not respond to anything directly, but to your interpretation of it. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response. That is why analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to you. If you decide that someone is really trying to attack you or desert you or enslave you, you will respond as if he had actually done so, having made his error real to you. To interpret error is to give it power, and having done this you will overlook truth. The analysis of ego-motivation is very complicated, very obscuring, and never without your own ego-involvement. The whole porcess represents a clear-cut attempt to demostrate your own ability to understand what you perceive. This is shown by the fact that you react to your interpretations as if they were correct. You may then control your reactions behaviorally, but not emotonally.This would obviously be a split or an attack on the intergrity of your mind, pitting one level withing it against another. There is but one interpretation of motivation that makes any sense. And because it is the Holy Spirit´s judgment it requires no effort at all on your part. Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes. Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a brother´s plea for help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it to him, for this and only this is what he is asking for. Offer him anything else, and you are assuming the right to attack his reality by interpreting it as you see fit. Perhaps the danger of this to your own mind is not yet fully apparent. If you believe that an appeal for help is something else you will react to something else. Your response will therefore be inappropriate to reality as it is, but not to your perception of it. There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing all call for help as exactly what they are except your own imagined need to attack. It is only this that makes you willing to engage in endless ”battles” with reality, in which you deny the reality of the need for healing by making it unreal. You would not do this except for your unwillingness to accept reality as it is, and which you therefore withhold from yourself. It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not understand. No one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for truth to him has become what he wants it to be. If you are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help as what it is, it is because you are unwilling to give help and to receive it. To fall to recognize a call for help is to refuse help. Would you maintain when you rerfuse to recognize a brother´s appeal, for only by answering his appeal can you be helped. Deny him your help and you will not reconize God´s Answer to you. The Holy Spirit does not need your help in interpreting motivation, but you do need His. Only appreciation is an appropriate response to your brother. Gratitude is due his for both his loving thoughts and his appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing love into your awarness if you perceive them truly. And all your sense of strain comes from your attempts not to do just this. How simple, then, is God´s plan for salvation. There is but one response to reality, for reality evokes no conflict at all. There is but one Teacher of reality, Who understands what it is. He does not change His Mind about reality because reality does not change. Although your interpretations of reality are meaningless in your divided state, His remain consistently true. He gives them to you because they are for you. Do not attempt to ”help” a brother in your way, for you cannot help yourself. But hear his call for the Help of God , and you will recognize your own need for the Father. Your interpretations of your brother´s need are you interpretation of yours. By giving help you are asking for it, and if you perceive but one need in yourself you will be healed. For you will recognize God´s Answer as you want It to be, and if you want It in truth, It will be truly yours. Every appeal you answer in the Name of Christ brings the rememberance of your Father closer to your awareness. For the sake of your need, then, hear every call for help as what it is, so God can answer you. By applying the Holy Spirit´s interpretation of the reactions of others more and more consistently, you will gain an increasing awareness that His criteria are equally applicable to you. For to recognize fear is not enough to escape from it, although the recognition is necessary to demonstrate the need for escape. The Holy Spirit must still translate the fear into truth. If you were left with the fear, once you had recognized it, you would have taken a step away from reality, not towards it. Yet we have repetedly emphasized the need to recongize fear and face it without disguise as a crucial step in the undoing of the ego. Consider how well the Holy Spirit´s interpretation of the motives of others will serve you then. Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others and to regard everything else as an appeal for help, He has taught you that fear itself is an appeal for help. This is what recognizing fear really means. If you do not protect it, He will renterpret it. That iss the ulitmate value in learning to perceive attack as a call for love. We have already learned that fear and attack are inevitably associated. If only attack produces fear, and if you see attack as the call for help that it is, the unreality of fear must dawn on you. For fear is a call for love, in unconscious recognition of what has been denied. Fear is a symptom of your own 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. The means for removing it is in yourself, and you have demonstrated this by giving it. Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable. On is false, for it was made out of denial; and denial depends on the belief in what is denied for its own existence. By interpreting fear correctly as a positve affirmation of the underlying belief it masks, you are undermining its perceived usefulness by rendering it useless. Defenses that do not work at all are automatically discarded. If you raise what fear conceals to clear-cut unequivocal predominance, fear becomes meaningless. You have denied its power to conceal love, which was its only purpose. The veil that 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 replacee 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.

Love

[IA56]

The Way to Remember God.

Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love onself 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. Yet having obscure it, the light in another mind must shine into theirs because the 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 if the Son of God gives power to it. He must himself withdraw the power, remembering that all power is of God. You can remember, for his forgetfulness is yours. But your remembering is his, for God cannot be remembered alone. This is what you have forgotten. To perrceive 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 recongnize 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. Remember what was said about the frightening perception of little children, which terrify them because they do not understand them. If they ask for enlightenment and accept it, their fear vanish. But if they hide their nightmares they will keep them. It is easy to help and uncertain child, for he recognizes that he does not understand what his perceptions mean. Yet you believe that you do understand yours. Little child, you are hiding your head under the cover of the heavy blankets you have laid upon yourself. You are hiding your nightmares in the darkness of your own false certainty, and refusing to open your eyes and look at them. Le tus 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 what you are afraid of. Only the anticipation will frighten you, for the reality of nothingness cannot be frightening. Le tus not delay this, for your dream of haterd will not leave you without help, and Help is here. Learn to be quiet in the midst of turmoil, for quitness 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 dreams. You still want 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 as surely as I awakened myself, for I awoke for you. IN my resurrection is your release. Our mission is to escape from crucifixion, not from redemption. Trust in my help, for I did not walk alone, and I will walk with you as our Father walked with me. Do 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 did not fail 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 to deny truth, and what we can accomplish together will 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 must 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 fear? When we have overcome fear – not by hiding it, not by minimizing it, and not by denying its full import in any way – this is what you will really see. You cannot lay aside the obstacles to real vision without looking upon them, for to lay aside means to judge against. If you will look, the Holy Spirit will judge truly. Yet He cannot shine away when you keep hidden, for you have not offered it to Him and He cannot take it from you. We are therefore 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 understand how to use what He knowns. Whatever is given Him that is not of God is gone. Yet you must look at it 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?

Love

[IA56]

The Investment in Reality.

I once asked you to sell all you have and give to the poor and follow me. This is what I meant; If you have no investment in anything in this world, you can teach the poor where their treasure is. The poor are merely those who have invested wrongly, andd they are poor indeed! Because they are in need it is given 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 somethihng you think you d not want to do. His very 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 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 future 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 our opposition establishes that it does matter to you. It is only you, therefore, who have made the request outrageous, 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 improverish both. He is asking for salvation, as you are. Poverty is of the ego, and never of God. No �outrageous� requests can be made of one who recongizes 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 �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 then is depression or anger, because what hed id was to exchange Self-love for self-hate, makin 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 �arragement� 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 of 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 magnintude he cannot tolerate. A split mind is endangered, and the recongition 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. Yet consider what has happened, for thoughts do have consequences to the thinker. You have become 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 pronjected 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 hatered 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. I said before that God so loved the world that He gave it to His only-begotted Son. 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 reflects the eternal. God gave you the real world in exchange for the on you made out of your split mind, and which is the symbol of death. For if you could really separate yourself from the Mind of God you would die. The world you perceive is a world of separation. Perhaps you are willing to accept even death to deny your Father. Yet He would not have it so, and so it is not so. You still cannot 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 God, and this desire is not will. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and sensless �laws� and without meaning of any kind. For it is made out of what you do not want, projected from your mind because you are 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, since the mind is the mechanism of decision. If you will recognize that all the attack you perceive is in your own mind and nowhere else, you will at last have placed its source, and where it begins it must end. For in this same place lies salvation. The altar of God where Christ abideth is there. You have defiled the altar, but not the world. Yet Christ has placed the Atonement on the altar for you. Bring your perception 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., Yet to find the place, you must relinquish your investment in the world as you project it, allowing the Holy Spirit to extend the real world to you from the altar of God.

Love

[IA56]

Seeking and Finding.

The ego is certain that live is dangerous, and this is alway its central teaching. It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love. Yet the ego, though encouraging the serch for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: �Seek and do not find�. This is the one promise the ego holds out to you, and the one promise it will keep. For the ego pursues its goal with fanatic insistence, and its judgment, though severly impaired, is completely consistent. The serch the ego undertakes is therefore bound to be defeated. And since it also teaches that it is your identification, its guidance leads you to a journey which must end in perceived self-defeat. For the ego cannot love, and in its frantic search for love it is seeking what it is afraid to find. The search is inevitable because the ego is part of your mind, and because of its source the ego is not wholly split off, or it could not be believed at all. For it is your mind that believes in it and gives existence to it. Yet it is also your mind that has the power to deny the ego´s existence, and you will surely do so when you realize exactly what the journeyt is on which the ego sets you. It is surely obvious that no one wants to find what would utterly defeat him. Being unable to love, the ego would be totally inadequate in love´s presence, for it could not respond at all. Then, you would have to abondon the ego´s guidance, for it would be quite apparent that it had not taught you the response you need. The ego will therefore distort love, and teach you that love really calls forth the responses the ego can teach. Follow its teaching, then, and you will serch for love, but will not recongize it. Do you realize that the ego must set you on a journey which cannot but lead to a sense of futility and depression? To seek and not to find is hardly joyous. Is this the promise you would keep? The Holy Spirit offers you another promise, and one that will lead to joy. For His promise is always, �Seek and you will find�, and under His guidance you cannot be defeated. His is the journey to accomplishement, and the goal He sets before you He will give you. For He will never deceive God´s Son whom He loves with the Love of the Father. You will undertake a journey because you are not at home in this world. And you will serch for your home whether you realize where it is or not. If you believe it is outside you the search will be futile, for you will be seeking it where it is not. You do not remember how to look within for you do not believe your home is there. Yet the Holy Spirit remembers it for you, and He will guide you to your home because that is His mission. As He fulfills His mission He will teach you yours, for your mission is the sam as His. By guiding your borhters home you are but following Him. Behold the Guide you father gave you, that you might learn you have eternal life. For death is not your Father´s Will nor yours, and whatever is true is the Will of the Father. You pay no price for life for that was given you, but you do pay a price for death, and a very heavy one. If death is your treasure, you will sell everything else to pruchase it. And you will believe that you have purchased it, because you have sold everything else. Yet you cannot sell the Kingdom of Heaven. Your inheritance can neither be bought nor sold. There can be no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole and all His extensions are like Him. The Atonement is not the price of your wholeness, but it is the price of your awareness of your wholeness. For what you chose to �sell� had to be kept for you, since you could not �buy� it back. Yet you must invest in it, not with money but with spirit. For spirit is will, and will is the �price� of Kingdom. Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have been redeemed. The Holy Spirit guides you into life eternal, but you must relingquish your investment in death, or you will not see life though it is all around you.

Love

[IA56]

The Sane Curriculum.

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 attacked yourself and believed that the attack was effective, you behold yourself as weakened. No longer perceiving yourself and your brother as equal, and regarding yourself as weaker, you attempt to �equalize� the situation you 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 invulnerablility is so important to the restoration of your sanity. For if you accept our invulnerablility, you are recognizing that attack has no effect. Although you have attacked yourself, you will be demostrating that nothing really happened. Therefore, by attacking you have not done anything. Once you realize this you will no longer see any sense in attack, for it manifestly does not work and cannot protect you. Yet the recognition of your invulnerablility has more than negative value. If your attacks on yourself have failed to weaken you, you are still strong. You therefore have no need to �equalize� the situation to establish your strength. You will never realize the utter uselessness of attack except by recognizing that your attack on yourself has no effect. 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 you can cancel out all reinforcement is in yourself. For you are always the first point of your attack, and if thiss has never been, it has o consequences. The Holy Spirit´s Love is your strength, for yours is divided and therefore not real. You cannot trust your own love when you attack 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, but with your own content. Yet creation is not of you, and poor learners do 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 placed yourself is impossible, and in this situation you clearly require a special Teacher and a special curriculum. Poor learners are not good choices as teachers, either for themselves or for anyone else. You would hardly turn to them to estabish the curriculum by which they can escape from 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 yourself what you do not understand, and do not try to set up curriculum goals where yours have clearly failed. 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. If they could interpret the aids correctly, they would have learned from them. I have said that the ego´s rule is, �Seek and do not find�. Translated into curricular terms this means, �Try to learn but do not succeed.� The result of this curriculum goal is obvious. Every legitimate teaching aid, every real instruction, and every sinsible guide to learning will be misinterpreted, since they are all fo facilitating the learning this strange curriculum is against. If you are trying to learn how to learn, and the aim of your teaching is to defeat itself, what can you expect but confusion? Such a curriculum does not make sense. This attempt at �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 supplementary goal in this curriculum is learning how not to overcome the split that makes its primary aim believable. And you will not overcome the split in this curriculum, for all your learning will be on its behalf. Yet your mind speaks against your learning as your learning speaks against your mind, and so you fight against all learning and succeed, for this is what you want. But perhaps you do not realize, even yet, that there is something you want to learn, and that you can learn it because it is your choice to do so. You who have tried to learn what you do not want should take heart, for although the curriculum you set yourself is depressing indeed, it is merely ridiculous if you look at it. It is possible tht the way to achieve a goal is not to attain it? Resign now as your own teacher. This resignation will not lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourself, and of the learning outcomes that have resluted. Under the proper learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor understand, you will become an excellent learner and an excellent teacher. 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 follow the Teacher Who knows the way to Him and understands His 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 you really want to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the decision of God´s Son. His learning is as unlimited as he is.

Love

[CFTraveler]

Thanks for reminding me of this, I need to reread my copy.

[IA56]

The Vision of Christ.

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 love your soul and there is no gain in the world, for of itself it profits nothing. To invest without profit is surely to improverish 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 your soul, but you will not know it while you perceive something else as more valuable.The Holy Spirit is your strength because He knows nothing but the spirit as you. He is perfectly aware that you do not know yourself, and perfectly aware of how to teach you to remember 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 do not really want 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 comes from self-extension, so does the perception of self-value come from the extension of loving ghoughts 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 re-invest 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. Yet you must learn the cost of sleeping, and refuse to pay it. Only then will you decide to awaken. 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 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 least 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 two are one. As you perceive more and more common elements in all situations, the transfer of 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 has 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 Fahter and becomes one with it. Very gently does God shine upon Himself, loving the extension of Him self that 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.

Love

[IA56]

Looking Within.

Miracles demonstrate that learning has occured under 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 apply them to all situations. 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 blessong of the children of God is His blessing to you. Everyone in the world must play his part in its redemption, in order to recognnize that the world has been redeemed. You cannot see the invisible. Yet if you see its effects you know it must be there. By perceiving what it does, you recongize its being. And by what it does, you learn what it is. You cannot see your strengths, but you gain confidence in their existence as they enable you to act. And the resluts 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 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 that 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 the Holy Spirit´s 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 other functions, so long will you need correction. For this belief is the destruction of peace, a goal in direct opposition to the Holy Soirit´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 have chosen. I am the mainfestation 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. Yet seeking and finding are the same, and if you seek for two goals you will find them, but you will recognize neither. You will think they are the same because you want both of them. The mind always strives for interrgration, and if it is split and wants to keep the split, it will still believe it has one goal by making it seem to be one. I said before that what you project or extend is up to you, but you must do one or the other, for that is a law of mind, and you must look in before you look out. As you look in, you choose the guide for seeing. And then you look out and behold his witnesses. This is why you find what you seek. What you want in yourself you will make manifest, 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 intergrity, and enables it to believe that it is pursuing one goal. Yet 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 to love you will see nothing else. The contradictory nature of the witnesses you perceive is merely the reflection of your confliction invitations. You have looked upon your mind and accepted opposition there, having sought it there. But do not then beleive that the witnesses for opposition are true, for they attest only to your decision about reality, returning to you the messages you gave them. Love, too, is recognized by its messengers. If you make love 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 give it. You cannot really give anything but love to anyone or anything, nor can you really receive anything but love 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. If was only this decision that determined what you found, for it was the decision for what you sought. You are afraid of me because you looked within 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 that same place you could have looked upon me and all your brothers, in the perfect safety of the Mind which created us. For we are there in the peace of the Father, Who wills to extend His peace through you. When you have accepted your mission to extend peace you will find peace, 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 that you sought. That is 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 real world together. Through the eyes of Christ, only the real world exists and only the real world 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. 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. 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 for yourself. You will judge against yourself, but He will judge for you. Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorable to what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy and have condemned yourself to death. The death penalty is the egos´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 it hatred is not satisfied until you die. For your destruction is the one end toward which it works, and the only end 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 that 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 God 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 this is ture 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.

Love

[IA56]

The Attraction of Love for Love.

Do you really believe that you can kill the Son fo God? The Father has hidden His Son safely within Himself, and kept him far away from your destructive thoughts, but you know neither the Father nor the Son because of them. You attack the real world every day and every hour and minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot see it. If you seek love in order to attack it, you will never find it. For if love is sharing, how can you find it except through itself? Offer it and it will come to you, because it is drawn to itself. But offer attack and love will remain hidden, for it can live only in peace. God´s Son is as safe as his Father, for the Son knows his Father´s protection and cannot fear. His Fathers´s Love holds him in perfect peace, and neeeding nothing, he asks for nothing. Yet he is far from you whose Self he is, for you chose to attack him and he disappeared form your sight into his Father. Hed id not change, but your did. For a split mind and all its works were not created by the Father, and could not live in the knowledge of Him. When you made visible what is not true, what is true became invisible to you. Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. It is invisible to you because you are looking at something else. Yet it is no more up to you to decide what is vidible and what is invisible, that it is up to you to decide what reality is. What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit sees. The definition of reality is God´s not yours. He created it, and He knows what it is. You who knew have forgotten, and unless He had given you a way to remember you would have condemned yourself to oblivion. Because of your Father´s Love you can never forget Him, for no one can forget who God Himself placed in his memory. You can deny it, but you cannot lose it. A Voice will answer every question you ask, and a vision will correct the perception of everything you see. For what you have made invisible is the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only Answer. God would reunite your with yourself, and did not abondon you in your distress. You are waiting only for Him, and do not know it. Yet His memory shines in your mind and cannot be obliterated. It is no more past than future, being forever always. You have but to ask for this memory, and you will remember. Yet the memory of God cannot shine in a mind that has obliterated it and wants to keep it so. For the memory of God can dawn only in a mind that chooses to remeber, and that has relinquished the insane desire to control reality. You who cannot even control yourself should hardly aspire to control the universe. But look upon what you hav e made of it, and rejoice that it is not so. Son of god, be not content with nothing! What is not real cannot be seen as has no value. God could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son receive it. You were redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him. Everyghing you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it. Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is healed. You have made invisible the only truth that this world holds. Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing. By making nothing real to you, you have seen it. But it is not there. And Christ is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourself. Yet it does not matter how much distance you have tried to interpose between your awareness and truth. God´s Son can be seen because his vision is shared. The Holy Spirit looks upon him, and sees nothing else in you. What is invisible to you is perfectt in His sight, and encompasses all of it. He has remembered you because He forgot not the Father. You looked upon the unreal and found despair. Yet by seeking the unreal, what else could you find? The unreal world is a thing of despair, for it can never be. And you who share God´s Being with Him could never be content without reality. What God did not give you has no power over you, and the attraction of love for love remains irrestitible. For it is the function of love to unite all things unto itself, and to hold all things together by extending its wholeness. The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see. Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it. Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception. And as you look upon it you will remember that it was always so. Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly. Redeemed perception is easily translated into knowledge, for only perception is capable of error and perception has never been. Being corrected it gives place to knowledge, which is forever the only reality. The Atonement is but the way back to what was never lost. Your Father could not cease to love His Son.

Love

[IA56]

THE GUILTLESS WORLD

If you did not feel guilty you could not attack, for condemnation is the root of attack. It is the judgment of one mind by another as unworthy of love and deserving of punishment. But herein lies the split. For the mind that judges perceives itself as separate from the mind being judged, believning that by punishing another, it will escape punsihment. All this is but the delusional attempt of the mind to deny itself, and escape the penalty of denial. It is not an attempt to relingquish denial, but to hold on to it. For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane. The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God´s Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end. The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws that seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds seem to be trapped in their brain, an its power to decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and are no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel. If this were the real world, God would be cruel. For no Father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation and be loving. Love does not kill to save. If it did, attack would be salvation, and this is the ego´s interpretation, not God´s. Only the world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilty could conceive of it. Adam´s �sin� could have touched no one, had he not believed it was the Father who drove him out of paradise. For in that belief the knowledge of the Father was lost, since only those who do not understand Him could believe it. This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God´s Son. And until you realize that God´s Son cannot be crucified, thsi is the world you will see. Yet you will not realize this until you accept the eternal fact that God´s Son is not guilty. He deserves only love because he has given only love. He cannot be condemned because he has never condemned. The Atonement is the final lesson he need learn, for it teaches him that, never having sinned, he has no need of salvation.

Love

[IA56]

Guiltlessness and Invulnerability.

Earlier, I said that the Holy Spirit shares the goal of all good teachers, whose ultimate aim is to make themselves unnecessary by teaching their pupils all they know. The Holy Spirit wants only this, for sharing the Father´s Love for His Son, He seeks to remove all guilt from his mind that he may remember his Father in peace. Peace and guilt are antihetical, and the Father can be remembered only in peace. Love and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to deny the other. Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blemlessness of God´s Son. In the strange world that you have made the Son of God has sinned. How could you see him, then? By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt that you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego has no life, and God´s Son is without guilt. As you look upon yourself and judge what you do honestly, you may be tempted to wonder how you can be guiltless. Yet consider this: You are not guitless in time, but in eternity. You have �sinned� in the past, but there is no past. Always has no direction. Time seems to go in one direction, but when you reach it end it will roll up like a long carpet spread along the past behind you, and will walk dissappear. As long as you believe the Son of God is guilty you will walk along this carpet, believing that is leads to death. And the journey will seem long and cruel and sensless, for so it is. The Journey the Son of God has set himself is useless indeed, but the journey on which his Father sets him is one of relese and joy. The Father is not cruel, and His Son cannot hurt himself. The retaliation that he fears and that he sees will never touch him, for although he believes in it the Holy Spirit knows it is not true. The Holy Spirit stands at the end of time, where you must be because He is with you. He has already undone everything unworthy of the Son of God, for such was His mission, given Him by God. And what God gives has always been. You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless. He has always sought his guiltlessness, and he has found it. For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made, and the way to find relese is not denied him. Being in him, he has found it. When he finds it is only a matter of time, and time is but an illusion. For the Son of God is guiltless now, and the brightness of his purity shines untouched forever in God´s Mind. God´s Son will always be as he was created. Deny your world and judge him not, for his eternal guiltlessness is in the Mind of his Father, and protects him forever. When you have accepted the Atonement for yourself, you will realize there is no guilt in God´s Son. And only as you look upon him as guiltless can you understand his oneness. For the idea of guilt brings a belief in dondemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity. You can cndemn only yourself, and by so doing you cannot know that you are God´s Son. You have denied the condition of his being, which is his perfect blemlessness. Out of love he was created, and in love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the Love of his Father. As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you, you will realize that ther is no journey, but only an awakening. The Son of God, who sleepth not, has kept faith with his Father for you. There is no road to travel on, and no time to travel through. For God waits not for His Son in time, being forever unwilling to be without him. And so it has always been. Let the holiness of God´s Son shine away the cloud of guilt the darknes your mind, and by accepting his purity as yours, learn of him that it is yours. You are invulnerable because you are guiltless. You can hold on to the past only through guilt. For guilt establishes that you will be punished for what you have done, and thus depends on one-dimensional time, proceeding from past to future. No on who believes this can understand what �always� means, and therefore guilt must deprive you of the appreciation of eternity. You are immortal because you are eternal, and �always� must be now. Guilt, then, is a way of holding past and future in your mind to ensure the ego´s continuity is guranteed. Yet the guarantee of your continuity is God´s, not the ego´s. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. Accepting the Atonament teaches you what immortality is, for by accepting your guiltlessness you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless and will not be. The future, in time, is always associated with expiation. Accepting the guiltlessness of the Son of God as yours is gherefore God´s way of reminding you of His Son, and what he is in truth. For God has never condemned His Son, and being guiltless he is eternal. You cannot dispel guilt by making it real, and then atoning for it. This is the ego´s plan, which it offers instead of dispelling it. The ego believes in atonementthrough attack, being fully committed to the insane notion that attack is salvation. And you who cherish guilt must also believe it, for how else but by identifying with the ego could you hold dear what you do not want? The ego teaches you to attack yourself because you are guilty, and this must increase the guilt, for guilt is the result of attack. In the ego´s teaching, then, there is no escape from guilt. For attack makes guilt real, and if it is real there is no way to overcome it. The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the calm recognition that it has never been. As He looks upon the guiltless Son of God, He knows that this is true. And being true for you, you cannot attack yourself, for without guilt attack is impossible. You, then, are saved because God´s Son is guiltless. And being wholly pure, you are invulnerable.

Love

[IA56]

The Guiltless Son of God.

The ultimate purpose of projection is always to get rid of guilt. Yet, characteristically, the ego attempts to get rid of guilt from its viewpoint only, for much as the ego wants to retain guilt you find it intolerable, since guilt stand 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. Yet consider how strange a solution the ego´s arrangement is. You project guilt to get rid of it, but you are actually merely concealing it. You do exxperience the guilt, but you have no idea why. On the contrary, you associate it with a weird assortment of �ego ideals�, which the ego claims you have failed. Yet 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. The darkest of your hidden cornestones holds your belief in guilt form your awareness. For in the dark and secret place is the realization that you have betrayed God´s Son by condemning him to death. You do not even suspect this murderous but insane idea lies hidden there, for the ego´s destructive urge is so intense that nothing short of crucifixion of God´s Son can ultimately satisfy it. It does not know who the Son of God is because it is blind. Yet let it perceive guiltlessness anywhere, and it will try to destroy it because it is afraid. Much of the ego´s strange behavior is directly attributable to its definition of guilt. To the ego, the guitless are guilty. Those who do not attack are its �enemies� because, by not valuing its interpretation of salvation, they are in an excellent position to let it go. They have approached the darkest and deepest cornerstone in the ego´s foundation, and while the ego can withstand your raising all else to question, it guards this one secret with its life, for its existence depends on keeping this secret. So it is this secret that we must look upon, for the ego cannot protect you against truth, and in its presence the ego is dispelled. In the calm light of truth, let us recognize that you believe you have crucified God´s Son. You have not admitted to this �terrible� secret because you would still wish to crusify him if you could find him. Yet the wish has hidden him from you because it is very fearful, and so you are afraid to find him. You have handled this wish to kill yourself by not knowing who you are, and identifying with something else. You have projected guilt blindly and indiscriminately, but you have not uncoverd its source. For the ego does want to kill you, and if you identify with it you must believe its goal is yours. I have said that the crusifixion is the symbol of the ego. When it was confronted with the real guiltlessness of God´s Son it did attempt to kill him, and the reason it gave was that guiltlessness is blasphemous to God. To the ego, the ego is God, and guiltlessness must be interpreted as the final guilt that fully justifies murder. You do not yet understand that any fear you may experience in connection with this course stems ultimately from this interpretation, but if you will consider your reactions to it you will become increasingly conviced that this is so. This course has explicitly stated that its goal for you is happiness and peace. Yet you are afraid of it. You have been told again and again that it will set you free, yet you sometimes react as if it is trying to imprison you. You often dismiss it more readily than you dismiss the ego´s thourht system. To some extent, then, you must believe that by not learning the course you are protecting yourself. And you do not realize that it is only your guiltlessness that can protect you. The Atonement has always been interpreted as the release from guilt, and this is correct if it is understood. Yet even when I interpret it for you, you may reject it and do not accept it for yourself. You have perhaps recognized the futility of the ego and its offerings, but though you do not want them, you may not yet look upon the alernative with gladness. In the extreme, you are afraid of redemption and you believe it will kill you. Make no mistake about the depth of this fear. For you believe that, in the presence of truth, you might turn on yourself and destroy yourself. Little child, this is not so. Your �guilty secret� is nothing, and if you will but bring it to the light, the Light will dispel it. And then no dark cloud will remain between you and the remembrance of your Father, for you will remember His guiltless Son, who did not die because he is immortal. And you will see that you were redeemed with him, and have never been separated from him. In this understanding lies your remembering, for it is the recognition of love without fear. There will be great joy in Heaven on your homecoming, and the joy will be yours. For the rredeemed son of man is the guiltless Son of Godd, and to recognize him is your redemtion.

Love

[IA56]

The Fear of Redemtion.

You may wonder why it is so crucial that you look upon your hatred and realize its full extent. You may also think that it would be easy enough for the Holy Spirit to show it to you, and to dispel it without the need for you to raise it to awareness yourself. Yet there is one more obstacle you have interposed between yourself and the Atonement. We have said that no one will contenance fear if he recognizes it. Yet in your disordered state of mind you are not afraid of fear. You do not like it, but it is not your desire to attack that really frightens you. You are not seriously disturbed by your hostility. You keep it hidden because you are more afraid of what it covers. You could look even upon the ego´s darkest cornerstone without fear if you did not believe that, without the ego, you would find within yourself something you fear even more. You are not really afraid of crucifixion. Your real terror is of redemption. Under the ego´s darkest foundation is the memory of God, and it is of this that you are really afraid. For this memory would instantly restore you to your proper place, and it is this place that you have sought to leave. You fear of attack is nothing compared to your fear of love. You would be willing to look even upon your savage wish to kill God´s Son, if you did not believe that it saves you from love. For this wish caused the separation, and you have protected it because you do not want the separation healed.You realize that, by removing the dark cloud that obscures it, your love for your Father would impel you to answer. He call and leap into Heaven. You believe that attack is salvation because it would prevvent you from this. For still deeper than the ego´s foundation, and much stronger than it will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, and His for you. This is what you really want to hide. In honesty, is it not harder for you to say �I love� than �I hate�. You associate love with weakness and hatred with strength, and your own real power seems to you as your real weakness. For you could not control your joyous response to the call of love if you heard it, and the whole world you thought you made would vanish. The Holy Spirit, then, seems to be attacking your fortress, for you would shut out God, and He does not will to be excluded. You have built your whole insane belief system because you think you would be helpless in God´s Presence, and you would save yourself from His Love because you think it would crush you into nothingness. You are afraid it would sweep you away from yourself and make you little, because you believe that magnitude lies in defiance, and that attack is grandeur. You think you have made a world God would destroy; and by loving Him, which you do, you would throw this world away, which you would. Therefore, you have used the world to cover your love, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego´s foundation, the closer you come to the Love that is hidden there. And it is this that frightens you. You can accept insanity because you made it, but you cannot accept love because you did not. You would rather be a slave of the crucifixtion than a Son of God in redemption. Your individual death seems more valuable than your living oneness, for what is given you is not so dear as what you made. You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome. But hatred can, for it enters of its own volition and cares not for yours. You must look upon your illusions and not keep them hidden, because they do not rest on their own foundation. In concealment they appear to do so, and thus they seem to be self-sustained. This is the fundamental illusion on which the other rest. For beneath them, and concealed as long as they are hidden, is the loving mind that thought it made them in anger. And the pain in this mind is so apparent, when it is uncovered, that its need of healing cannot be denied. Not all the tricks and games you offer it can heal it, for here is the real crucifixion of God´s Son. And yet he is not crucifixed. Here is both his pain and his healing, for the Holy Spirit´s vision is merciful and His remedy is quick. Do not hide sufffering from His sight, but bring it gladly to Him. Lay before His eternal sanity all your hurt, and let Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His Light, and search your mind carefully for any thoughts you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought you have kept to hurt you and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God. Beneath all the grandiousity you hold so dear is your real call for help.For you call for love to your Father as your Father calls you to Himself. In that place which you have hidden, you will only to unite with the Father, in loving remembrance of Him. You will find this place of truth as you see it in your brothers, for though they may deceive themselves, like you welcome it, and it will be yours. For grandeur is the right of God´s Son, and no illusions can satisfy him or save him from what he is. Only his love is real, and he will be content only with his reality. Save him from his illusions that you may accept the magnitude of your Father in peace and joy. But exempt no one from your love, or you will be hiding a dark place in your mind where the Holy Spirit is not welcome. And thus you will exempt yourself from His healing power, for by not offering total love you will not be healed completely. Healing must be as complete as fear, for love cannot enter where there is one spot for fear to mar its welcome. You who prefer separation to sanity cannot obtain it in your right mind. You were at peace until you asked for sepcial favor. And God did not give it for the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father Who truly loved His Son. Therefore you made of Him an unloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father could give. And the peace of God´s Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his real Father, having attacked his own glorious equality with Him. In peace he needed nothing and asked for nothing. In war he demanded everything and found nothing. For how could the gentleness of love respond to his demands, exept by departing in peace and returning to the Father? If the Son did not wish to remain in peace, he could not remain at all. For a darkened mind cannot live in the light, and it must seek a place of darkness where it can believe it is where it is not. God did not allow this to happen. Yet you demanded that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so. To �single out� is ti �make alone�, and thus make lonely. God did not do this to you. Could He se you apart, knowing what your peace lies in His Oneness? He denied you only your request for pain, for suffering is not of His creation. Having given you creation, He could not take it from you. He could but answer your insane request with a sane answer that would abide with you in your insanity. For His answer is the reference point beyond illusions, from which you can look back on them and see them as insane. But seek this place and you will find it, for Love is in you and will lead you there.

Love

[IA56]

The Function of Time.

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 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. As long as 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. 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 that 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 is 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? While it could perhaps be argued that death suggests there was life, no one would claim that it proves there is life. Even the past life that death might indicate, could only have been futile if it must come to this, and needs this to prove that it was at all. You question Heaven, but you do not question this yet. 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 strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that your questionin might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end believes that the past is the only aspect of thime that is meaningful. Remember that 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 praying for the past in the future, the past becomes the determiner of the future, making them continuous without an intervening present. For the ego regards the present only as a brief transition to the future, in which it brings the past to the future 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 the past. The ego cannot tolerate release from the past, and althought the past is over, the ego tries to preserve its image by responding as if it were present. It dictates your reactions to those you meet in the present from a past reference point, obscuring their present reality. In effect, if you follow the ego´s dictates you will react to your brother as though he were someone else, and this will surely prevent you from recognizing him as he is. And you will receive messages from him 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 realese that every brother offers you now. The shadow figures form the past are precisely what you must escape. They are not real, and have no hold over you unless you bring them with you. They carry the spots of pain in your mind, directing you to attack in the present in retaliation for a past that is no more. And this decision is one of future pain. Unless you learn the past pain is an illusion, you are choosing a future of illusions and losing the many opportunities you could find for release in the present. The ego would preserve your nightmares, and prevent you from awakening and understanding they are past. Would you recognize a holy encounter if you are merely perceiving it as a meeting with your own past? For you would be meeting no one, and the sharing of salvation, which makes the encounter holy, would be 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, and future cannot be, and the present is without meaning. It is evident that the Holy Spirit´s preception of time is the exact opposite of the ego´s. 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 time unnecessary. He regards 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 that can extend to the infinite, for now is the closest approximation of eternity that this world offers. It is in the realtiy of �now�, without past or future , that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. For only �now� is here, and only �now� 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 the ego perceives in time, and it closes over the present so that no gap in its own continuity can occur. Its continuity, then, would keep you in time, while the Holy Spirit would release you from it. 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 one of healing, you will emphasize only the aspect of time in which healing can occur. Healing cannot be accomplished in the past. It 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.

Love

[IA56]

The Two Emotions.

I have said you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered by the eternal to the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it increases as it is given. The other has many forms, for the content of individual illusions differs greatly. Yet they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They make up a privat world that cannot be shared. For they are meaningful only to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only he perceives them. Each one peoples his world with figures from his individual past, and it is because of this that private worlds do differ. Yet the figures that he sees were never real, for they are made up only of his reactions to his brothers, and do not include their reactions to him. Therefore, he does not see he made them, and that they are not whole. For there figures have no witnesses, being perceived in one separete mind only. It is through these strange and shadowy figures that the insane relate to their insane world. For they see only those who remind them of these images, and it is to them that they relate. Thus do they communicate with those who are not there, and it is they who answer them. And no one hears their answer wave him who called upon them, and he alone believes they answered him. Projection makes perception, and you cannot see beyond it. Again and again have you attaced your brother, because you saw in him a shadow figure in your private world. And thus it is you must attack yourself first, for what you attack is not in others. Its only reality is in your own mind, and by attacking others you are litterally attacking what is not there. The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned themselves. They do not wish to die, yet they will not let condemnation go. And so they separete into their privat worlds, where everything is disordered, and where what is within appears to be without. Yet what is within they do not see, for the reality of their brothers they cannot recognize. You have but two emotions, yet in your private world you react to each of them as though it were the other. For love cannot abide in a world apart, where when it comes it is not recongnized. If you see your own hatred as your brother, you are not seeing him. Everyone draws nigh unto what he loves, and reconils from what he fears. And you react with fear to love, and draw away from it. Yet fear attracts you, and believing it is love, you call it to yourself. Your private world is filled with figures of fear you have invited into it, and all the love your brothers offer you, you do not see. As you look with open eyes upon your world, it must occur to you that you have withdrawn into insanity. You see what is not there, and you hear what makes no sound. Your manifestations of emotions are the opposite of what the emotions are. You communicate with no one, and you are as isolated from reality as if you were alone in all the universe. In your madness you overlook reality completely, and you see only your own split mind everywhere you look. God calles you and you do not hear, for you are preoccupied with your own voice. And the vision of Christ is not in your sight, for you look upon yourself alone. Little child, would you offer this to your Father? For if you offer it to yourself, you are offering it to Him. And He will not return it, for it is unworthy of you because it is unworthy of Him. Yet He would relese you from it and set you free. His sane Answer tills you what you have offered yourself is not true, but His offering to you has never changed. You who know not what you do not learn what insanity is, and look behond it. It is given you to learn how to deny insanity, and come forth from your private world in peace. You will see all that you denied in your brothers because you denied it in yourself. For you will love them, and by drawing night unto them you will draw them to yourself, perceiving them as witnesses to the reality you share with God. I am with them as I am with you, and we will draw them from their private worlds, for as we are united so would we unite with them. The Father welcomes all of us in gladness, and gladness is what we should offer Him. For every Son of God is given you to whom God gave Himself. And it is God Whom you must offer them, to recognize His gift to you. Vision depends on light. You cannot see in darkness. Yet in darkness, in the private world of sleep, you see in dreams although your eyes are closed. And it is here that what you see you made. But let the darkness go and all you made you will no longer see, for sight of it depends upon denying vision. Yet from denying vision it does not follow you cannot see. But this is what denial does, for by it you accept insanity, believing you can make a private world and rule your own perception. Yet for this, light must be excluded. Dreams disappear when light has come and you can see. Do not seek vision through your eyes, for you made your way of seeing that you might see in darkness, and in this you are deceived. Beyond this darkness, and yet still within you, is the vision of Christ, Who looks on all in light. Your �vision� comes from fear, as His from love. And He sees for you, as your witness to the real world. He is the Holy Spirit´s manifestation, looking always on the real world, and calling fort hits witnesses and drawing them to you. He loves what He sees within you, and He would extend it. And He will not return unto the Father until He has extended your perception even unto Him. And there perception is no more, for He has returned you to the Father with Him. You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was given you. Each is a way of seeing, and different worlds arise from their different sights. See through the vision that is given you, for through Christ´s vision. He beholds Himself. And seeing what He is, He knows His Father. Beyond your darkness dreams He see God´s guiltless Son within you, shining in perfect radiance that is undimmed by your dreams. And this you will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift o love to you, given Him of the Father for you. The Holy Spirits is the Light in which Christ stands revealed. And all who would behold Him can see Him, for they have asked for light. Nor will they see HIm alone, for He is no more alone than they are. Because they saw the Son, they haver isen in Him to the Father. And all this will they understand, because they looked within and saw beyond the darkness the Christ in them, and recognized Him. In the sanity of His vision they looked upon them selves with love, seeing themselves as the Holy Spirit see them. And with this vision of the truth in them came all the beauty of the world to shine upon them.

Love

[IA56]

Finding the Present.

To perceive truly is to be aware of all reality through the awareness of your own. But for this no illusions can rise to meet your sight, for reality leaves no room for any error. This means that you perceive a brother only as you see him now. His past has no reality in the present, so you cannot see it. Your past reactions to him are also not there, and if it is to them that you react, you see but an image of him that you made and cherish instead of him. In your questioning of illusions, ask yourself if it is really sane to perceive what was as now. If you remember the past as you look upon your brother, you will be unable to perceivve the reality that is now. You consider it �natural� to use your past experience as the reference point from which to judge the present. Yet this is unnatural because it is delusional. When you have learned to look on everyone with no referance at all to the past, either his or yours as you perceive it, you will be able to learn from what you see now. For the past can cast no shadow to darken the present, unless you are afraid of light. And only if you are would you choose to bring darkness with you, and by holding it in your mind, see it as a dark cloud that shrouds your brothers and conceals their reality from your sight. This darkness is in you. The Christ as revealed to you now has no past, for He is changeless, and in His changelessness lies your release. For if He as He was created, there is no guilt in Him. No cloud of guilt has risen to obscure Him, and Hes tands revealed in everyone you meet because you see Him through Himself. To be born again is to let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the present. The cloud that obscures God´s Son to you is the past, and it you would have it past and gone, you must not see it now. If you see it now in your illusions, it has not gone from you, although it is not there. Time can release as well as imprison, depending on whose interpretation of it you use. Past, present and future are not continuous, unless you force continuity on them. You can perceive them as continuous, and make them so for you. But do not be deceived, and then believe that this is how it is. For to believe reality is what you would have it be according to your use for it is delusional. You would destroy time´s continuity by breaking it into past, present and future for your own purposes. You would anticipate the future on the basis of your past experience, and plan for it accordingly. Yet by doing so you are aligning past and future, and not allowing the miracle, which could intervene between them, to free you to be born again. The miracle enables you to see your brother without his past, and so perceive him as born again. His errors are all past, and by perceiving him without them you are releasing him. And since his past is yours, you share in this release. Let no dark cloud out of your past obscure him from you, for truth lies only in the present, andd you will find it if you seek it there. You have looked for it where it is not, and therefore have not found it. Learn, then, to seek it where it is, and it will dawn onh eyes that see. Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to attack the present, you will not see the freedom that the present holds. Judgment and condemnation are behind you, and unless you bring them with you, you will see that you are free of them. Look lovingly upon the present, for it holds the only things that are forever true. All healing lies within it because its continuity is real. It extends to all aspects of the Sonship at the same time, and thus enables them to reach each other. The present is before time was, and will be when time is no more. In it are all things that are eternal, and they are one. Their continuity is timeless and their communicationj is unbroken, for they are not separated by the past. Only the past can separate, and it is nowhere. The present offers you your brothers in the light that would unite you with them, and free you from the past. Would you, then, hold the past against them? For if you do, you are choosing to remain in the darkness that is not there, and refusing to accept the light that is offered you. For the light of perfect vision is freely given as it is freely receivved, and can be accepted only without limit. In this one, still dimension of time that does not change, and where there is no sight of what you were, you look at Christ and call His witnesses to shine on you because you called them forth. And they will not deny the truth in you, because you looked for it in them and found it there. Now is the time of salvation, for now is the release from time. Reach out to all your brothers, and touch them with the touch of Christ. In timeless union with them is your continuity, unbroken because it is wholly shared. God´s guiltless Son is only light. There is no darkness in him anywhere, for he is whole. Call all your brothers to witness to his wholeness, as I am calling you to join with me. Each voice has a part in the song of redemtion, the hymn of gladness and thankgiving for the light to the Creator of light. The holy light that shines forth from God´s Son is the witness that his light is of his Father. Shine on your brothers and remembrance of your Creator, for you will remember Him as you call forth the witnesses to His creation. Those whom you heal bear witness to your healing, for in their wholeness you will see your own. And as your hymns of praise and gladness rise to your Creator, He will return your thanks in Hiss clear Answer to your call. For it can never be that His Son called upon Him and remained unanswered. His call to you is but your call to Him. And in Him you are answered by His peace. Child of light, you know not that the light is in you. Yet you will find it through its witnesses, for having given light to them they will return it. Each one you see in light brings your light closer to your awareness. Love always leads to love. The sick, who ask for love, are grateful for it, and in their joy they shine with holy thanks. And this they offer you who gave them joy. They are guides to joy, for having received it of you they would keep it. You have established them as guides to peace , for you have made it manifest in them. And seeing it, its beauty calls you home. There is a light that this world cannot give. Yet you can give it, as it was given you. And as you give it, it shines forth to call you from the world and follow it. For this light will attract you as nothing in this world can do. And you will lay aside the world and find another. This other world is bright with love which you have given it. And here will everything remind you of your Father and His holy Son. Light is unlimited, and spreads across this world in quiet joy. All those you brought with you will shine on you, and you will shine on them in gratitude because they brought you here. Your light will join with theirs in power so compelling, that it will draw the others out of darkness as you look on them. Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love of your free will, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them. The attraction of light must draw you willngly, and willingness is signified by giving. Those who accept love of you become your willing witnesses to the love you gave them, and it is they who hold it out to you. In sleep you are alone, and your awareness is narrowed to yourself. And that is why the nightmares come. You dream of isolation because your eyes are closed. You do not see your brothers, and in the darkness you cannot look upon the light you gave to them. And yet the laws of love are not suspended because you sleep. And you have followed them through all your nightmares, and have been faithful in your giving, for you were not alone. Even in sleep has Christ protected you, ensuring the real world for you when you awake. In your name He has given for you, and given you the gifts He gave. God´s Son is still as loving as his Father. Continuous with his Father, he has no past apart from Him. So he has never ceased to be hs Father´s witness and his own. Although he slept, Christ´s vision did not leave him. And so it is that he can call unto himself the witnesses that teach him that he nevert slept.

Love

[IA56]

Attainment of the Real World.

Sit quietly and look upon theworld you see, and tell yourself:
�The real world is not like this. It has nobuildings and there are no streets where people walk alone and separate. Thereare no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. Itis not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no daythat brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines,and shines forever.�
The worldd you see must bedenied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. You cannotsee both worlds, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, anddepends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you havedenied the other. Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you asthe amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is not the same,because their real attraction to you is uniqual. You do not really want the world you see, for ithas disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never shelteredyou. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built haswithstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark ofdeath upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired and ready to return todust even as you made it. This aching world has not the power to touch theliving world at all. You could not give it that, and so although you turn insadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads away from it intoanother world. Yet the real world has the power to touch you even here, becauseyou 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 thatrise to it from every part of this strange world you made but do not want. Allthat you need to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did notmake is willingness to learn the one you made is false. You have been wrongabout the world because you have misjudged yourself. From such a twistedreference point, what could you see? All seeing starts with the perceiver, whojudges what is true and what is false. And what he judges false he does notsee. You who would judge reality cannot see it, for whenever judgment entersreality has slipped away. The out of mind is out of sight, because what isdeniedis there but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you knowHim not. His Being does not depend upon your recognition. He lives within youin the quiet present, and waits for you to leave the past behind and enter intothe world He holds out to you in love. No on in this distracted world but has seen some glimpses of the otherworld about him. Yet while he still lays value on his own, he will deny thevision of the other, maintaining that he loves what he loves not, and followingnot the road that love points out. Love leads so gladly! As you follow Him, youwill rejoice that you have found His company, and learned of Him the joyfuljourney home. You wait but for yourself. To give this sad world over andexchange your errors for the peace of God is but your will. And Christ willalways offer you the Will of God, in recognition that you share it with Him. Itis God´s Will that nothing touch His Son execpt Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is assafe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything. The worldabout 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 neverbe. 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 aroundhim. And from this point of safety he looks quietly about him and recognizesthat hte world is one with him. The peace of God passeth your understandingonly in the past. Yet here it is, and you can understand it now. God loves HisSon forever, and His Son returns his Father´s Love forever. The real world isthe way that leads you to rememberance of the one thing that is wholly true andwholly 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. Yourone reality was given you, and by it God created you as one with Him. You willfirst dream of peace, and then awaken to it. Your first exchange of what youmade for what you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreamss oflove. In these lie your true perceptions, for the happy dreams of love. Inthese lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world ofdreams, where all perception is. Knowledge needs no correction. Yet the dreamof love lead unto knowledge. In them you see nothing fearful, and because ofthis they are the welcome that you offer knowledge. Love waits on welcome, noton time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always was. Thereforethe call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what youhave not lost. Praise, then, the Father for the perfect sanity of His most holySon, Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. In Heavven this is so,for what could you need in eternity? In your world you do need things. It is a world of scarcityin which you find yourself because youare lacking. Yet can you find yourself in such a world? Without the Holy Spiritthe answer would be no. Yet because of Him the answer is a jouous yes! Asmediator between the two worlds, He knows what you have need of and what willnot hurt you. Ownership is a dangerous concept if it is left to you. The egowants to have things for salvation, for possession is its law. Possession forits own sake is the ego´s fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in thechurches it builds to itself. And at its altar it demands you lay all of thethings it bids you get, leaving you no joy in them. Everthing the ego tells youthat you need will hurt you. For although the ego urges you again and again soget, it leaves you nothing, for what you get it will demand of you. And evenfrom the very hands that grasped it, it will be wrenched and hurled into thedust. For where the ego sees slavation it sees separation, and so you losewhatever you have gotten in its name. Threfore ask not of yourself what youneed, for you do not know, and you advice to yourself what you need, for you donot know, and your advice to yourself will hurt you. For what you think youneed will merely serve to tighten up your world against the light, and renderyou unwilling to question the value that this eorld can really hold for you.Only the Holy Spirit knows what you need. For He will give you all things thatdo not block the way to light. And what else could you need? In time, He givesyou all the things that you need have, andd will renew them as long as you haveneed 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 will but liastuntil you step aside from all your needs and realize that all of them have beenfulfilled. 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 intime. He knows that you are not at home there, and He wills no delay to waitupon your joyous homcom ing. Leave, then, your needs to Him. He will supplythem 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 andkept to hurt you. Under His guidance you will travel light and journey lightl,for His sight is ever on the ourney´s end, which is His goal. God´s Son is nota traveller through outer worlds. However holy his perception may become, noworld outside himself holds is inheritance. Within himself he has no needs, forlight needs nothing but to shine in peace, and from itself to let the raysextend in the quiet infinity. Whenever you are tempted to undertake a uselessjourney that would lead away from light, remember what you really want, andsay,
�The Holy Spirit leads me untoChrist,
And where else would I go?
What need have I but to awaken inHim?�
Then follow Him in joy, withfaith that He will lead you safely through all dangers to your peace of mindthis world may set before you. Kneel not before the alters to sacrifice, andseek not what you will surely lose. Content yourself with what you will assurely keep, amd be not restless, for you undertake a quiet journey to thepeace of God, where He would have you be in quietness. In me you have alreadyovercome every temptation that would hold you back. We walk together on the wayto quitness that is the gift of God. Hold me dear, for what except yourbrothers can you need? We will restore to you the peace of mind that we mustfind together. The Holy Spirit will teach you to awaken unto us and toyourself. This is the only real need to fulfilled in time. Salvation from theworld lies only here. My peace I give you. Take it of me in glad exchange forall the world has offered but to take away. And we will spread it like a veilof light across the world´s sad face, in which we hide our brothers from theworld, and it from them. We cannot sing redemption´s hymn alone. My task is notcompleted until 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 methrough His Spirit. The sound of it will banish sorrow form the mind of God´smost holy Son, where it cannot abide. Healing in time is needed, for joy cannotestablish its eternal reign where sorrow dwells. You dwell not here, but in eternity.You travel but in dreams, while safe at home. Givet hanks to every part of youthat you have taught how to remember you. Thus does the Son of God givet hanks untohis Father for his purity.

Love

[IA56]

From Perception to Knowledge.

All healing is release from the past. That is why the Holy Spirit is the only Healer. He teaches that the past does not exist, a fact which belongs to the sphere of knowledge, and which therefore no on in the world can know. It would indeed be impossible to be in the world with this knowledge. For the mind that knows this unequivocally knows also it dwells in eternity, and utilizes no perception at all. It therefore does not consider where it is, because the concept ”where” does not mean anything to it. It knows that it is everywhere, just as it has everything, and forever. The very real difference between perception and knowledge becomes quite apparent if you consider this: There is nothing partial about knowldege. Every aspect is whole,and therefore no aspect is separate. You are an aspect of knowledge everyaspect is whole, and therefore no apect is separate. You are an aspect ofknowledge, being in the Mind of God, Who knows you. All knowledge must beyours, for in you is all knowledge. Perception, at its loftiest, is nevercomplete. Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception canbe, is without meaning in Heaven. Perception can reach everywhere under Hisguidnace, for the vision of Christ beholds everything in light. Yet noperception, however holy, was last forever. Perfect perception, then, has manyelements in common with knowledge, making transfer to it possible. Yet the laststep must be taken by God, because the last step is your redemption, whichseems to be in the future, was accomplished by God in your creation. Theseparation has not interrupted it. Creation cannot be interrupted. Theseparation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, with no effect at all.The miracle, without a function in Heaven, is here. Aspects of reality canstill be seen, and they will replace aspects of unreality. Aspects of realitycan be seen in everything and everywhere. Yet only God can gather themtogether, by crowning them as one with the final gift of eternity. Apart fromthe Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit has no function. He is not separatefrom either, being in the Mind of Both, and knowing the Mind is one. He is aThought of God, and God has given Him to you because He has not Thoughts Hedoes not share. His message speaks of timelessness in time, and that is whyChrist´s vision looks on everything with love. Yet even Christ´s vision is not Hisreality. The golden aspects of realtiy that springs to light under His lovinggaze are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them. This is themiracle of creation; that is one forever. Every miracle you offer to the Son ofGod is but the true perception of one aspect of the whole. Though every aspectis the whole, you cannot know this until you see that every aspect is the same,perceivied in the light and therefore one. Everyone seen without the past thusberingss you nearer to the end of time by bringing healed and healing sightinto the darkness, and enabling the world to see. For light must come into thedarkned world to make Christ´s vision possible even here. Help Him to give Hisgift of light to all who think they wander in the darkness, and let Him gatherthem into His quiet sight that makes them one. They are all the same; allbeautiful and equal in their holiness. And He will offer them unto His Fatheras they were offered unto Him. There is one miracle, as there is one reality.Andevery miracle you do contains them all, as every aspect of reality you seeblends quitly into the one Reality of God. The only miracle that ever was isGod´s most holy Son, created in the one Reality that is his Father. Christ´svision is His gift to you. His Being is His Father´s gift to Him. Be youcontent with healing, for Christ´s gift you can bestow, and your Father´s giftyou cannot lose. Offer Christ´s gift to everyone and everywhere, for miracles,offered the Son of God though the Holy Spirit, attune you to realtiy. The HolySpirit knows your part in the redemtption, and who are seeking you and where tofind them. Knowledge is far beyond your individual concern. You who are part ofit and all of it need only realize that it is of the Father, not of you. Your rolein the redemption leads you to it by re-establishing its oneness in your mind.When you have seen your brother as yourself you will be released to knowledge,haveing learned to free yourself through Him Who knows of freedom. Unite withme under the holy banner of His teaching, and as we grow in strength the powerof God´s Son will move in us, and we will leave no one untouched and no oneleft alone. And suddenly time will be over, and we will all unite in theeternity of God the Father. The holy light you saw outside yourself, inevery miracle you offered to yourbrothers, will be returned to you. And knowing that the light is in you, yourdreations will be there with you, as you are in your Father. As miracles inthis world join you to your brothers, so do your creatons establish yourfatherhood in Heaven. You are the withness to the Fatherhood of God, and He hasgiven you the power to create the witnesses to your fatherhood in Heaven. Themiracle that God created is perfect, as are the miracles that you establishedin His Name. They need no healing, nor do you, when you accept them. Yet inthis world your perception is unwitnessed. God know it, bu you do not, and soyou do not share His witness to it. Nor do you witness unto Him, for reality iswitnessed to as one. God waits your witness to His Son and to Himself. Themiracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven and to Him. They witness towhat you do not know, and as they reach the gates of Heaven, God will openthem. For never would He leave His Own beloved Son outside them, and beyondHimself.

Love

[IA56]

The Cloud of Guilt

Guilt remains the only thing that hides the Father, for guilt is the attack upon His Son. The guilty Always condemn, and having done so they will still condemn, linking the future to the past as is the ego´s law. Fidelity to this law lets no light in, for it demands fidelity to darkness and forbid awakening. The ego´s laws are strict, and breaches are severely punished. Therefore give no obedince to its laws, forthey are laws of punsiment. And those who follow them believe that they areguilty, and so they must condemn. Between the future and the past the laws of God must intervene, if you would free yourself. Atonement stands between them,like a lamp shining so brightly that the chain of darkness in which you boundyourself will disappear. Release from guilt is the ego´s whole undoing. Make noone fearful, for his guilt is yours, and by obeying the ego´s hars commandments you bring its condemnation on yourself, and you will not escape the punishmentit offers those who obey it. The ego rewards fkdelity to it with pain, forfaith in it is pain. And faith can be rewarded only in terms of the belief andwhere it is invested determines its reward. For faith is always given when ittreasured, and what is treasured is returned to you. The world can give youonly what you gave it, for being nothing but your own projection, it has nomeaning apart from what you found in it and placed your faith in. Be faithfulunto darkness and you not see, because your faith will be rewarded as you gaveit. You will accept your treasure, and if you place your faith in the past, thefuture will be like it. Whatever you hold dear you think is yours. The power ofyour valuing will make it so. Atonement brings a re-evaluation of everythingyou cherish, for it is the means by which the Holy Spirit can separate thefalse and the true, which you have accepted into your mind without distinction.Therefore you cannot value one without the other, and guilt has become as truefor you as innocence. You do notbeliegve the Son of God is guiltless because you see the past, and see him not.When you condemn a brother you are saying, ”I who was guilty choose to remainso”. You have denied his freedom, and by so doing you have denied the witnessunto yours. You could as easily have freed him from the past, and lifted fromhis mind the cloud of guilt that binds him to it. And in his freedom would havebeen your own. Lay not his guilt upon him, for his guilt lies in his secretthought that he has done this unto you. Would you, then, teach him he is rightin his delusion? The idea that the guiltless Son of God can attack himself and make himself guÃ♥lty isinsane. In any form, in anyone, believe this not. For sin and condemnation arethe same, and the belief in one is faith in the other, calling for punishmentinstead of love. Nothing can justify insanity, and to call for punishment uponyourself must be insane. See no one,then, as guilty, and you will affirm thetruth of guiltlessness unto yourself. In every condemnation that you offer theSon of God lies the conviction of your own guilt. If you would have the HolySpirit make you free of it, accept His offer of Atonement for all yourbrothers. For so you learn that it is true you. Remember always that it isimpossible to condemn the Son of God in part. Those whom you see as guiltybecome the witnesses to guilt in you, and you will see it there, for it isthere until it is undone. Guilt is always in your mind, which has condemneditself. Project it not, for while you do, it cannot be undone. With everyone whomyou release from guilt great is the joy in Heaven, where the witnesses to yourfatherhood rejoice. Guilt makes you blind, for while you see one spot of guiltwithin you, you will not see the light. Any by projedting it the world seemsdark, and shrouded in your guilt. You throw a dark weil over it, and cannot seeit because you cannot look within. You are afraid of what you would see there,but it is not there. The thing you fear is gone. If you would look within youwould see only the Atonement, shining in quit and in peace upon the alter toyour Father. Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is blackwith guilt within you, and bids you not to look. Instead, it bids you look uponyour brothers, and see guilt in them. Yet this you cannot do without remainingblind. For those who see their brothers in the dark, and guilty in the dark inwhich they shroud them, are too afraid to look upon the light within. Withinyou is not what you believe is there, and what you put your faith in. Within youis the holy sign of perfect faith your Father has in you. He does not value youas you do. He knows Himself, and knowsthe truth in you. He knows there is no difference, for He knows notdifferences. Can you see guilt where God knows there is perfect innocence? Youcan deny His knowledge, but you cannot change it. Look, then, upon the light Heplaced within you, and learn that what you feared was there he has beenreplaced with love.

Love

[IA56]

Release from Guilt.

You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. The doubtful service of such displacement is to hide the real source of guilt, and keep from your awareness the full perception that it is insane. Displacement always is maintained by the illusion that the source of guilt, form which attention is diverted, must be true; and must be fearful, or you would not have displaced the guilt onto what you believed to be less fearful. You are therefore willing to look upon all kinds of ”sources”, provided they are not the deeper source to which they bear no real relationship at all. Insane ideas have no realrelationships, for that is why they are insane. No real relationships can reston guilt, or even hold one spot of it to mar its purity. For all relationshipsthat guilt has touched are used but to avoid the person and the guilt. What strange relationships you have made for thisstrange purpose! And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot be used by you at all. They areused only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which makes them pure. If youpre-empt for your own ends what you should have given Him, He cannot use it foryour release. No one who would unite in any way with anyone for his individualsalvation will find it in that strange relationship. It is not shared, and soit is not real. In any union with a brother in which you seek to lay your guiltupon him, or share it with him or perceive his own, you will feel guilty. Norwill you find satisfaction and peace with him, because you union with him isnot real. You will see guilt in that relationship because you put it there. Itis inevitable that those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, becausethey do believe in it. Yet though they suffer, they will not look within andlet it go. They cannot know they love, and cannot understand what loving is.Their main concern is to perceive the source of guilt outside themselves,beyond their own control. When you maintain that you are guilty but the sourceof your guilt lies in the past, you are not looking inward. The past is not inyou. Your weird associations to it have no meaning in the present. Yet you letthem stand between you and your brothers, with whom you find no real relationshipsat all. Can you expect to use your brothers as a means to ”solve” that past,and still to see them as they really are? Salvation is not found by those whouse their brothers to resolve problems that are not there. You wanted notsalvation in the past. Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, andhope to find salvation now? Determine, then, to be not as you were. Use norelationship to hold you to the past, but with each one each day be born again.A minute, even less, will be enough to free you from the past, and give yourmind peace over to the Atonement. When everyone is welcome to you as you wouldhave yourself be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. For youwill have accepted the Atonement, which shone within you all the while youdremed of guilt, and would not look within and see it. As long as you believethat guilt is justified in any way, in anyone, whatever he may do, you will notlook within, where you would always find Atonement. The end of guilt will nevercome as long as you believe there is a reason for it. For you must learn thatguilt is always totally insane, and has no reason. The Holy Spirit seeks not todispel reality. If guilt were real, Atonement would not be. The purpose ofAtonement is to dispel illusions, not to establish them as real and thenforgive them. The Holy Spirit does not keep illusions in your mind to frightenyou, and show them to you fearfully to demostrate what He has saved you from.What He has saved you from is gone. Give no reality to guilt, and see no reasonfor it. The Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do, and has always doneso. He has seen separation, but knows of union. He teaches healing, but He alsoknows of creation. He would have you see and teach as He does, and through Him.Yet what He knows you do not know, though it is yours. Now it is given you toheal and teach, to make what will be now. As yet it is not now. The Son of Godbelieves that he is lost in guilt, alone in a dark world where pain is pressingeverywhere upon him from without. When he has looked within and seen theradiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves him. And it willseem incredible that he ever thought His Father loved him not, and looke uponhim as condemned. The moment that you realize guilt is insane, whollyunjustified and wholly without reason, you will not fear to look upon the Atonement and accept it wholly. You whohave been unmerciful to yourself do not remember your Father´s Love. Andlooking without mercy upon your brothers, you do not remember how much you loveHim. Yet it is forever true. In shining peace within you is the perfect purityin which you were created. Fear not to look upon the lovely truth in you. Lookthrough the cloud of guilt that dims your vision, and look past darkness to theholy place where you will see the light. The altar to your Father is as pure asHe Who raised it to Himself. Nothing can keep from yout what Christ woudl haveyou see. His will is like His Father´s, and He offers mercy to every child otGod, as He would have you do. Release from guilt as you would be released. Thereis no other way to look within and see the light of love, shining as steadillyand as surely as God Himself has always loved His Son. And as His Son loved Him. There is no fear in love, for love is guiltless.You who have always loved your Father can have no fear, for any reason, to look within and see yourholiness. You cannot be as you believed you were. Your guilt is without reasonbecause it is not in the Mind of God, where you are. And this is reason, whichthe Holy Spirit would restore to you. He would remove only illusions. All elseHe would have you see. And in Christ´s vision He would show you the perfectpurity that is forever within God´s Son. You cannot enter into realrelationships with any of God´s Sons unless you love them all and equally. Love is not special. If you single outpart of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on all yourrelationships and making the munreal. You can love only as God loves. Seek notto love unlike Him, for there is no love apart from His. Until you recognizethat this is true, you will have no idea what love is like. No one who condemnsa brother can see himself as guiltless andd in the peace of God. If he isguiltless and in peace and sees it not, he is delusional, and has not lookedupon himself. To him I say,

”Behold the Son of God, and lookupon his purity and be still. In quit look upon his holiness, and offer thanksunto his Father that no guilt has ever touched him”

No illuison that you have everheld against him has touched his innocence in any way. His shining purity,wholly untouched by guilt and whollyloving, is bright within you. Let us look upon him together and love him. Forin love of him is your guiltlessness. But look upon yourself, and gladness andappreciation for what you see will banish guilt forever. I thank you, Father,for the purity of Your most holy Son, whom You have created guiltless forever.Liky you, my faith and my belief are centered on what I treasure. Thedifference is that I love only what God loves with me, and because of this Itreasure you beyond the value that you set on yourself, even unto the worththat God has placed upon you. I love all that He created, and all my faith andmy belief I offer unto it. My faith in you is as strong as all the love I givemy Father. My trust in you is without limit, and without the fear that you willhear me not. I thank the Father for your loveliness, and for the many gifts that you will let meoffer to the Kingdom in honor of its wholeness that is of God. Praise be youwho make the Father one with His Own Son. Alone we are all lowly, but together we shine with brightness sointense that none of us alone can ever think of it. Before the glorius radianceof the Kingdom guilt melts away, and transformed into kindness will never morebe what it was. Every reaction you experience will be so purified that it isfitting as a hymn of praise unto your Father. See only praise of Him in what Hehas created, for He will never cease Hispraise of you. United in this praise we stand before the gates of Heaven wherewe will surely enter in our sinlessness. God loves you. Could I, then, lackfaith in you and love Him perfectly?

Love

[IA56]

The Peace of Heaven

Forgetfulness and sleep and even death be come the ego´s best advice for dealing with the perceived and harsh intrusion of guilt on peace. Yet no one sees himself in conflict and ravaged by a cruel war unless he believes that both opponents in the war are real.Believing this he must escape, for such a war would surely end his peace of mind, and so destroy him. Yet if he could but realize the war is between real and unreal powers, he could look upon himself and see his freedom. No one finds himself raveged and torn in endless battles if he himself percieves them as wholly without meaning. God would not have His Son embattled, and so His Son´s imageined ”enemy” is totally unreal. You are but trying to escape a bitter war from which you have escaped. The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom rising unto Heaven. Gladness and joy belong to God for your release,because you made it not. Yet as you made not freedom, so you made not a warthat could endanger freedom. Nothing destructive ever was or will be. The war,the guilt, the past are gone as one into the unreality from which they came.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 atall. 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 beappreciated or not. To value it partially is not to know its value. Heaven isperfectly unambigous. Everything is clear and bright, and calls forth onerespons. There is no darkness and there is no contrast. There is no variasion.There is no interruption. There is a sense of peace so deep that no dream inthe world has ever brought even a dim imagining of what it is. Nothing in thisworld can give this peace, for nothing in this world is wholly shared. Perfectperception can merely show you what is capable of being wholly shared. It canalso show you the results of shareing. The Holy Spirit points quietly to thecontrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference for you,allowing Him to demostrate which must be true. He has perfect faith in yourfinal judgment, because He knows that He will make it for you. To doubt thiswould be to doubt that His mission will be fulfilled. How is this possible,when His mission is of God? You whose mind is darkned by doubt and guilt,remembber this: God gave the Holy Spirit to you, and gave Him the mission toremove all doubt and every trace of guilt that His dear Son has laid uponhimself. It is impossible that this mission fail. Nothing can prevent what Godwould have accomplished from accomplishment. Whatever your reactions to the Holy Spirit´s Voice may be, whatever voiceyou choose to listen to, whatever strange thoughts may occur to you, God´s Willis done. You will find the peace in which He established you, because He doesnot change His Mind. He is invariable as the peace in which you dwell, and ofwhich the Holy Spirit reminds you. You will not remember change and shift inHeave. You have need of contrast only here. Contrast and differences arenecessary 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 forany differences disappear. Truth comes of its own will unto its own. When youhave learned that you belong to truth, it will flow lightly over you without adifference of any kind. For you will need no contrast to help you realize thatthis is what you want, and only this. Fear not the Holy Spirit will fail inwhat your Father has given Him to do. The Will of God can fail in nothing. Havefaith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient: God wills you be inHeaven, and nothing can keep you from it, or it from you. Your wildestmisperceptions, your weird imaginings, your blackest nightmares all meannothing. They will not prevail against the peace God wills for you. The HolySpirit will restore your sanity because insanity is not the Will of God. Ifthat suffices Him, it is enough for you. You will not keep what God would haveremoved, because it breaks communication with you with whom He wouldcommunicate. His Voice will be heard. The communication link that God Himselfplaced within you, joining your mind with His, cannot be broken. You maybelieve you want it broken, and this belief does interfere with the deep peacein which the sweet and constant communication God would share with you is known.Yet His channels of reaching out cannot be wholly closed and seoarated fromHim. Peace will be yours because His peace still flows to you from Him WhoseWill is peace. You have it now. The Holy Spirit will teach you how to use it,and by extending it, to learn that it is in you. God willed you Heaven, and will always will you nothing else. TheHoly Spirit knows only off His Will. There is no change that Heaven will not beyours, for God is sure, and what He wills is as sure as He is. You will learnsalvation because you will learn how to save. It wil not be possible to exemptyourself from what the Holy Spirit wants to teach you. Salvation is as sure asGod. His certainty suffices. Learn that even the darkest nightmare thatdisturbs the mind of God´s sleeping Son holds no power over him. He will learnthe lesson of awaking. God watches over him and light surrounds him. Can God´sSon lose himself in dreams, when God has placed within him the glad call towaken and be glad? He cannot separate himself from what is in him. His sleepwill not withstand the call to wake. The mission of redemption will befulfilled as surely as the creation will remain unchanged throughout eternity.You do not have to know the Heaven is yours to make it so. It is so. Yet toknow it, the Will of God must be accepted as your will. The Holy Spirit willundo for you everything you have learned that teaches that what is not truemust be reconciled with truth. This isthe reconciliation the ego would substitute for your reconciliation to sanityand to peace. The Holy Spirit has a very different kind of reconciliation inHis Mind for you, and one He will effect as surely as the ego will not effectwhat it attempts. Failure is of the ego, not of God. From Him you cannotwander, and there is no possibility that the plan the Holy Spirit offers toeveryone, for the salvation of everyone, will not be perfectly accomplished.You will be released, and you will not remember anything you made that was notcreated for you and by you in return. For how can you remember what was nevertrue, or not remember what has always been? It is this reconciliation withtruth, and onlly truth, in which the peace of Heaven lies.

Love

[newfreedom]

The Peace of Heaven

Forgetfulness and sleep and even death be come the ego´s best advice for dealing with the perceived and harsh intrusion of guilt on peace. Yet no one sees himself in conflict and ravaged by a cruel war unless he believes that both opponents in the war are real.Believing this he must escape, for such a war would surely end his peace of mind, and so destroy him. Yet if he could but realize the war is between real and unreal powers, he could look upon himself and see his freedom. No one finds himself raveged and torn in endless battles if he himself percieves them as wholly without meaning. God would not have His Son embattled, and so His Son´s imageined �enemy� is totally unreal. You are but trying to escape a bitter war from which you have escaped. The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom rising unto Heaven. Gladness and joy belong to God for your release,because you made it not. Yet as you made not freedom, so you made not a warthat could endanger freedom. Nothing destructive ever was or will be. The war,the guilt, the past are gone as one into the unreality from which they came.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 atall. 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 beappreciated or not. To value it partially is not to know its value. Heaven isperfectly unambigous. Everything is clear and bright, and calls forth onerespons. There is no darkness and there is no contrast. There is no variasion.There is no interruption. There is a sense of peace so deep that no dream inthe world has ever brought even a dim imagining of what it is. Nothing in thisworld can give this peace, for nothing in this world is wholly shared. Perfectperception can merely show you what is capable of being wholly shared. It canalso show you the results of shareing. The Holy Spirit points quietly to thecontrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference for you,allowing Him to demostrate which must be true. He has perfect faith in yourfinal judgment, because He knows that He will make it for you. To doubt thiswould be to doubt that His mission will be fulfilled. How is this possible,when His mission is of God? You whose mind is darkned by doubt and guilt,remembber this: God gave the Holy Spirit to you, and gave Him the mission toremove all doubt and every trace of guilt that His dear Son has laid uponhimself. It is impossible that this mission fail. Nothing can prevent what Godwould have accomplished from accomplishment. Whatever your reactions to the Holy Spirit´s Voice may be, whatever voiceyou choose to listen to, whatever strange thoughts may occur to you, God´s Willis done. You will find the peace in which He established you, because He doesnot change His Mind. He is invariable as the peace in which you dwell, and ofwhich the Holy Spirit reminds you.


Thankyou ia xxx

Just read the above & it has eased things for me...

Tonight is my 4th night of little sleep, so i was beginning to struggle again, trapped subtle energy build-up inside & physically in discomfort / distress. Also the last few hours have brought the usual headache back for me to endure the pain of again...

i became / felt really peaceful, things quietened & my distress was gone, now the subtle energy within me is flowing & freely moving & cleaning / clearing things up ... the pain in my head is also being subtle energetically worked on & it Feels relieving

Thankyou ~ ~

[IA56]

Thankyou ia xxx

Just read the above & it has eased things for me...

Tonight is my 4th night of little sleep, so i was beginning to struggle again, trapped subtle energy build-up inside & physically in discomfort / distress. Also the last few hours have brought the usual headache back for me to endure the pain of again...

i became / felt really peaceful, things quietened & my distress was gone, now the subtle energy within me is flowing & freely moving & cleaning / clearing things up ... the pain in my head is also being subtle energetically worked on & it Feels relieving

Thankyou ~ ~

I am happy to hear you got help from the ACIM, you did for a moment relax, and did find out how valuable it is to let go of stress.
Keep up the good work, dear newfreedom :-)

Love
ia

[IA56]

TEACHING FOR TRUTH

Yes, you are blessed indeed. Yet in this world you do not know it. But you have the means for learning it and seeing it quite clearly. The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily and as well asdoes 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 cannot be seen except in illusions, 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 the simple conclusions that speak for truth, andonly truth.

The Conditions of Learning

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 connot give what you have not. If, then, you offer blessing, it must have come first to yourself. And you must also have accepted it is yours, for how else could you give it away? That is why miracles offer you the testimony that you are blessed. If what you offer is complete forgivness you must have let guilt go,accepting the Atonement for yourself and learning you are guiltless. How couldyou learn what has been done for you, unknown to you, unless you do what youwould have to do if it had been done for you? Indirect proof of truth is neededin a world made of denial and without direction. You will perceive the need forthis if you realize tha to deny is the decision not to know. The logic of theworld must therefore lead to nothing, for its goal is nothing. If you decide tohave and give and be nothing except a dream, you must direct your thoughts untooblivion. And if you have and give and are everything except a dream, you mustdirect our 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 whollyseparated from the truth. This is an insane world, and do not underestimate theextent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has nottouched, and your dream is sacred to you. That is why God placed the HolySpirit in you, where you placed the dream. Seeing is always outward. Were yourthoughts wholly of you, the thought system you made would be forever dark. Thethoughts the mind of God´s Son projects or extends have all the power that hegives to them. The thoughts he shares with God are beyond his belief, but those he made are his belief, but thosehe made are his beliefs. And it is there, and not the truth, that he has chosento defend and love. They will not be taken from him. But they can be given upby him, for the Source of their undoing is in him. There is nothing in theworld to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane and leads tonothing. Yet in him who made this insane logic there is One Who knows it leadsto nothing, for He knows everything. Any direction that would lead you wherethe Holy Spirit leads you not, goes nowhere. Anything you deny that He knows tobe true you have denied yourself, and He must therefore teach you not to denyit. Undoing is indirect, as doing is. You were created only to create, neitherto see nor do. There are but indirect expressions of the will to live, whichhas been blocked by the capricious and undholy whim of death and murder thatyour Father does not share with you. You have set yourself the task of sharingwhat cannot be shared. And while you think it possible to learn to do this, youwill 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. Hismessage is not indirect, bu the must introduce the simple truth into a thoughtsystem which has become so twisted and so complex you cannot see that it meansnothing. He merely looks at its foundation and dismiss it. But you who cannotundo what you have made cannot see through it. It deceives you, because youchose to decieve yourself. Those whochoose to be deceived will merely attack direct approaches, because they seemto encroach upon deception and strike at it.

Love

[IA56]

The Happy Learner

The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy. The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is happiness. This has so confused you that you have undertaken to learn to do what you can never do,believing that unless you learn it you will not be happy. You do not realize that the foundation on which this most peculiar learning goal depends means absolutely nothing. Yet it may still make sense to you. Have faith in nothing and you will find the ”trasure” that you seek. Yet you will add another burden to your already burdened mind. You will believe that nothing is of value, and will value it. A little piece of glass, and a speck of dust, a body or a war are one to you. For if you value one thing made of nothing, you have believed that nothing can be presious, and that you can learn how to make the untrue true. The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you are elsewhere,begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that truth istrue. This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the onlyone. Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds. Consider all thedistortions you have made of nothing; all the strange forms and feelings andactions and reactions that you have woven out of it. Nothing is so alien to youas the simple truth, and nothing are you less inclined to listen to. Thecontrast between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, to thosewho would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kingswith golden crowns because of them. All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches,simply, that all tis is not true. To those unhappy learners who would teach themselves nothing, and deludethemselves into believing that it is not nothing, the Holy Spirit says, withstedfast quitness:

”The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else isreal, and everything beside it is not them. Let Me make the one distinction foryou that you cannot make, but need to learn. Your faith is nothing is decivingyou. Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place whereit belongs. You will find no deception there, but only the simple truth. Andyou will love it because you will understand it.”

Like you, the Holy Spirit did not make truth. Like God, Heknows it to be true. He brings the light of truth into the darkness, and letsit shine on you. And as it shines your brothers see it, and realizing that thislight is not what you have made, they see in you more than you see. They willbe happy learners of the lesson this light brings to them, because it teachesthem release from nothing and from all the works of nothing. The heavy chainsthat seem to bind them to despair they do not see as nothing, until you bringthe light to them. And then they see the chains have disappeared, and so theymust have been nothing. And you will see it with them. Because you taught themgladness and release, they will become your teachers in release and gladness.When you teach anyone that truth is true, you learn it with him. And so youlearn that what seemed hardest was the easiest. Learn to be a happy learner.You will never learn how to make nothing everything. Yet see that this has beenyour goal, and recognize how foolish it has been. Be glad it is undone, forwhen you look at it in simple honesty, it is undone. I said before, ”Be notcontent with nothing,” for you have believed that nothing could content you. Itis not so. If you would be happy learner, you must give everything you havelearned to the Holy Spirit, to be unlearned for you. And then begin to learnjthe joyous lessons that come quickly on the firm foundation that truth is true.For what is builded there is true, and built on truth. The universe of learningwill open up before you in all its gracious simplicity. With truth before you,you will not look back. The happy learner meets the conditions of learninghere, as he meets the conditions of knowledge in the Kingdom. All this lies inthe Holy Spirit´s plan to free you from the past, and open up the way tofreedom for you. For truth is true. What else could ever be, or ever was? Thissimple lesson holds the key to the dark door that you believe is lockedforever. You made this door of nothing, and behind it is nothing. The key isonly the light that shines away the shapes and forms and fears of nothing.Accept this key to freedom from the hands of Christ Who gives it to you, thatyou may join Him in the holy task of bringing light. For, like your brothers,you do not realize the light has come and freed you from the sleep of darkness.Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be free ofdarkness. The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave you asleep.The vision of Christ is given the very instant that it is perceived. Whateverything is clear, it is all holy. The quitness of its simplicity is socompelling that you will realize it is impossible to deny the simple truth. Forthere is nothing else. God is everywhere, and His Son is in Him witheverything. Can he sing the dirge of sorrow when this is true?

Love

[IA56]

The Decision of Guiltlessness.

The happy learner cannot feel guilty about learning. This is so essential to learning that it should never be forgotten. The guiltless learner learns easily because his thoughts are free. Yet this entails there cognition that guilt is interference, not salvation, and serves no useful function at all. Perhaps 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 representingan escape from what the other does not offer you. You do not want either alone,for without both you do not see yourself as whole and therefore happy. Yet youare whole only in your guiltlessness , and only in your guiltlessness can yoube happy. There is no conflict here. To wish for guilt in any way, in any form,will lose appreaciation of the value of your guiltlessness, and push it fromyour sight. There is no compromise that you can make it guilt, and escape thepain that onlyt guiltlessness allays. Learning is living here, as creating isbeing in Heaven. Whatever the pain of guilt seems to attract you, remember thatif you yield to it, you are deciding against your happiness, and will not learnhow to be happy? Say therefore, to yourself, gently, but with to convictionborn of the Love if 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 to 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 every second, you aredeciding, between the crusifixion and the resurrection; between the ego and theHoly Spirit. The ego is the choice for guilt; the Holy Spirit the choice forguiltlessness. The power of decision is all that is yours. What you can decidebetween is fixed, because there are no alternatives except truth and illusion.And there is no overlap between them, because they are opposites which cannotbe reconciled and cannot both be true. You are guilty or guiltless, bound orfree, unhappy or happy.The miracle teaches you that you have chosenguiltlessness, freedom and joy. It is not a cause, but an effect. It is thenatural result of choosing right, attesting to your happiness that comes fromchoosing 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 hedoes. It is impossible to offer what you do not want without this penalty. Thecost of giving is receiving. Either it is a penalty from which you suffer, orthe happy pruchase of a treasure to hold dear. No penalty is ever asked asGod´s Son except by himself and of himself. Every change given him to heal isanother opportunity to replace darkness with light and fear with love. If herefuses it he binds himself to darkness, because hed id not choose to free hisbrother and enter light with him. By giving power to nothing, he throws awaythe joyous opportunity to learn that nothing has no power over the Son of Godis 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 simplelesson is merely this: Guiltlessness is invulnerabiulity. Therefore, make yourinvulnerablility manifest to everyone. Teach him that, whatever he may try todo to you, your perfect freedom from the belief that you can be harmed showshim that he is guiltless. He can do nothing that can hurt you, and by refusingto allow him to think he can, you teach him that the Atonement, which you haveaccepted for yourself, is also his. There is nothing to forgive. No one canhurt the Son of God. His guilt is wholly without cause, and being withoutcause, cannot exist. God is the Only Cause, and guilt is not of Him. Teach noone he hast hurt you, for if you do, you teach yourself that what is notof God has power over you. The casulesscannot be. Do not attest to it, and donot foster belief in it in any mind. Remember always that mind is one, andcause is one. You will learn communication with this oneness only when youlearn to deny the causless, and accept the Cause of Gos as yours. The powerthat God has given to His Son is his, and nothing else can His Son see orchoose to look upon without imposing on himself the penalty of guilt, in placeof all the happy teaching the Holy Spirit would gladly offer him. Whenever youchoose to make decisions for yourself you are thinking destructively, and thedecision will be wrong. It will hurt you because of the concept of decision that led to it. Itis not true that you can make decisions by yourself or for yourself alone. Nothought of God´s Son can be separate or isolated in its effects. Every decisionis made for the whole Sonship, direction in and out, and inflencing aconstellation larger than anything your ever dreamed of. Those woho accept theAtonement are invulnerable. But those who believe they are guilty will respondto guilt, because they think it is salvation, and will not refuse to see it andside with it. And they will 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. Yetwill was given them because it is holy, and bring to them all that they need,coming as naturally as peace that knows no limits. There is nothing their willfails to provide that offers them anything of value. Yet because they do notunderstand their will, the Holy Spirit quietly understands it for them, andgives them wht they want without effort, strain, or the impossible burden ordeciding what they want and need alone. It will never happen that you must makedecisions 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 offeryourself, when He Who gives you everything will simply offer it to you? He willnever ask what you have done to make you worthy of the gift of God. Ask it nottherefore of yourself, Instead, accept His answer, for He knows that you areworthy of everything God wills for you. Do not try to escape the gift of God Heso freely andd so gladly offers you. He offers you but what God gave Him for you. You need not decidewhether or not you are deserving of it. God knows you are. Would you deny the truth of God´s decision,and place your pitful appraisal of yourself in place of His calm and unsweringvalue of His Son? Nothing can shake God´s conviction of the prefect purity ofeverything 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 quietlyaccepts the plan God set for its Atonement, relinquishing its own. You know not of salvation, for you do notunderstand it. Make no decisions about what it is or where it lies, but ask theHoly Spirit everything, and leave all decisions to His gentle counsel.The OneWho knows the plan of God that God would have ou follow can teach you what itis. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision youundertake alone but signifies that you would define what salvation is, and whatyou would be saved from. The Holy Spirit knows that all salvation is escapefrom guilt. You have no other ”enemy,” and against this strange distortion ofthe purity of the Son of God the Holy Spirit is your only Friend. He is thestrong protector of the innocence that sets you free. And it is His decision toundo everything that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. LetHim, therefore, be the only Guide thatyou would follow to salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it.With Him you will not fail to learn that what God wills for you is your will.Without His guidance you will think you know alone, and will decide againstyour peace as surely as you decided that salvation lay in you alone. Salvationis of Him to Whom God gave it for you. He has forgotten it. Forget Him not andHe will make every decision for you, for your salvatiojn and the peace of Godin you. Seek not to appraise the worth of God´s Son whom he created holy, forto do so is to evaluate his Father and judge against Him. And you will feelguilty for this imagined crime, which no one in this world or Heaven couldpossibly commit. The Holy Spirit teaches only that the ”sin” ofself-replacement on the throne of God is not a source of guilt. What cannothappen can have no effect to fear. Be guiet in your faith in Him Who loves you,and would lead you out of insanity. Madness may be your choice, but not yourreality. Never forget the Love of God, Who has remembered you. For it is quiteimpossible that He could ever let His Son drop from the loving Mind wherein hewas created, and where his abode was fixed in perfect peace forever. Say to theHoly Spirit only, ”Decide for me,” and it is done. For His decisions arereflections of what God knows about you, and in this light, error of any kindbecomes impossible. Why would you struggle so frantically to anticipate all oucannot know, when all knowledge lies behind every decision the Holy Spiritmakes for you? Learn of His wisdom and His love, and teach His answer toeveryone who struggles in the dark. For you decide for them and for yourself.How gracious it is to decide all things through Him Whose equal Love is givenequally to all alike! He leaves you no one outside you. And so He gives youwhat is yours, because your Father would have you share it with Him. Ineverything 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 thedecision. And everyone will be. Would you take unto yourself the soleresponsibility for deciding what can bring only good to everyone? Would youknow this? You taught yourself the mmost unnatural habit of not comminicatingwith your Creator. Yet you remain in close communication with Him, and witheverything that is within Him, as it is within yoursel. Unlearn isolationthrough His loving guidance, and learn of all the happy communication that youhave thrown away but could not lose. Whenever you are in doubt what you shoulddo, 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 yourguiltlessness, which is already there.

Love

[IA56]

Your Function in the Atonement

When you accept a brother´s guiltlessness you will see the 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 a sGod 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 thereis 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 perhaps feel HisPresence next to you, but cannot know that you are one with Him. This cannot betaught. Learning applies only to the condition in which it happens of itself.When you have let all that obscured the truth in your most holy mind be undonefor you, and therefore stand in grace before your Father, He will give Himself toyou as He has always done. Giving Himself is all He knows, and so it is allknowledge. For what He knows not cannot be, and therefore cannot be given. Asknot to be forgiven, for this has already been accompliched. Ask, rather, tolearn how to forgive, and to restore what always was to your unforginving mind.Atonement becomes real and visible to those who use it. On earth this is youronly function, and you must learn that it is all you want to learn. You willfeel guilty till you learn this. For in the end, whatever form it takes, yourguilt arises from your failure to fulfill your function in God´s Mind with allof 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 knowledgewould be meaninful 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 inanything. Decide that God is right and you are wrong about yourself. He createdyou out of Himself, but still within Him. There cannot, therefore, be anyonewithout His Holiness, nor anyone unworthy of His perfect Love. Fail not in yourfunction of loving in a loveless placemade out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit undone. Failnot yourself, but instead offer to God and you His blamless Son. For this smallgift of appreciation for His Love, God will Himself exchange your gift for His.Before you make any decisions for yourself, remember that you have decidedagainst your function in Heaven, and then consider carefully whether you wantto make decisions here. Your function here is only to decide against decidingwhat you want, in recognitin that you do not know. How, then, can you decidewhat you shluld do? Leave all decisions to the Only Who speaks for God, andfor your function as He knows it. Sowill He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself byloving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt instead of love. Giveup this frantic and insane attempt to cheats you of the joy of living with yourGod and Father, and of waking gladly to His Love and Holiness that jointogether as the truth in you, make you one with Him. When you have learned howto 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 carrieddown a quiet path in summer. Only your own volition seems to make decidinghard. The Holy Spirit will not delay in answering your evvery question what todo. He knows. And He will tell you, and then do it for you. You who are tired will find this ismore restful than sleep. For you can bring your guilt into sleeping, but notinto this. Unless you are guiltless you cannot know God, Whose Will is that youknow Him. Therefore, you must be guiltless. Yet if you do not accept thenecessary conditions for knowing Him, you have denied Him and do not recognizeHim, though He is all around you. He cannot be known without His Son, whoseguiltlessness is the condition for knowing Him. Accepting His Son as guilty isdenial of the Father so complete, that knowledge is swept away from recognitionin the very mind where God Himself has placed it. If you would but listen, and learn how impossible this is! Do not edowHim with attributes you understand. You made Him not, and anything youunderstand is not of Him. Your task is not to make reality. It is here withoutyour making, but not without you. You who have tried to throw yourself away andvalued God so little, hear me speak for Him and for yourself. You cannotunderstand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in yourexperience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earthwith which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt apart from Himresembles it ever so faintly. You cannot even give a blessing in perfectgentleness. Would you know of One Who gives forever, and Who knows of nothingexcept giving? The children of Heaven live in the light of the blessing oftheir Father, because they know that they are sinless. The Atonement wasestablished as the means of restoring guiltlessness to minds that have deniedit, and thus denied Heaven to itself. Atonement teaches you the ture conditionof 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 removethe blocks that stand between you and what you know. His memory is yours. Ifyou remember what you have made, you are remembering nothing. Remembrance ofreality is in Him, and therefore in you. The guiltless and the guilty are totalincapable of understanding one another. Each perceives the other as likehimself, making both unable to communicate, because each sees the other unlikethe way he sees himself. God can communicate only to the Holy Spirit in yourmind, because only Hes hares the knowledge of what you are with God. And onlythe Holy Spirit can answer God for you, for only He knows what God is.Everything else that you have placed within your mind cannot exist, for what isnot in communication with the Mind of God has never been. Communicationwith God is life. Nothing without it isat all.

Love

[IA56]

The Circle of Atonement

The only part of your mind that has reality is the part that links you still with God. Would you have all of it transformed into a radiant message of God´s Love, to share with all the lonely ones who have denid Him?God makes this possible. Would you deny His yearning to be known? You yearn for Him, as He for you.This is forever changeless. Accept, then, the immutable.Leave the world of death behind, and return quietly to Heaven. There is nothing of value here, and everything of value there. Listen to the Holy Spirit, and God through Him. He speaks for you to you. There is no guilt in you, for God is blessed in His Son as the Son is blessed in Him. Everyone has a special part to play in the Atonement, but the message given to each on is always the same;God´s Son is guiltless. Each one teaches the message differently, and learns it differently. Yet until he teaches it and learns it, he will suffer the pain of dim awareness that his true function remains unfulfilled in him. The burden of guilt is heavy, but God would not have you bound by it. His plan for yourawaking is as perfect as yours is falible. You know not what you do, but He Whoknows is with you. His gentleness is yours, and all the love you share with GodHe holds in trust for you. He would teach you nothing except how to be happy.Blessed Son of a wholly blessing Father, joy was created for you. Who cancondemn whom god has blessed? There is nothing in the Mind of God that does notshare His shining innocence. Creation is the natural extension of perfectpurity. Your only calling here is to devote yourself, with active willingness,to the denial of guilt in all its forms. To accuse is not to understand. Thehappy learners of the Atonement becomethe teachers of the innocence that is the right of all that God created. Denythem not what is their due, for you will not withhold it form them alone. Theinheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God´s Son, given him in hiscreation. Do not try to steal it form him, or you will ask for guilt and willexperience it. Protect his purtity from every thought that would steal it away and keep it from hissight. Bring innocence to light, in answer to the call of the Atonement. Neverallow purity ro remain hidden, but shine away the heavy weils of guilt withinwhich the Son of God has hidden himself from his own sight. We are all joined in the Atonement here, and nothing elsecan unite us in the world. So will the world of separation slip away, and fulll communication be restored betweenthe Father and the Son. The miracle acknowledges the guiltlessness that musthave been denied to produce the need of healing. Do not withold this gladacknowledgment, for hope of happiness and release from suffering of every kind lie in it. Who is there butwishes to be free of pain? He may not yet have learned how to exchange guiltfor innocence, nor realize that only in this exchange can freedom from pain behis. Yet those who have failed to learn need teaching, not attack. To attackthose who have need of teaching is to fail to learn from them. Teachers ofinnocence, each in his own way, have joined together, taking their part in theunified curriculum of the Atonement. There is no unity of learning goals apartfrom this. There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has one aim howeverit is taught. Each effort make on its behalf is offered for the single purposeof release from gult, to the eternal glory of God and His creation. And everyteaching that points to this points straight to Heaven, and the peace of God.There is no pain, no trial, no fear that teaching this can fail to overcome.The power of God Himself supports this teaching, and guarantees its limitlessresults. Join your own efforts to the power that cannot fail and must result inpeace. No one can be untouched by teaching such as this. You will not seeyourself beyond the power of God if you teach only this. You will not be exemptfrom the effects of this most holy lesson, which seeks but to restore what isthe right of God´s creation. From everyone whom you accord release from guiltyou will inevitably learn your innocence. The circle of Atonement has no end.And you will find ever-increasing confidence in your safe inclusion in thecircle with everyone you bring withinits safety and its perfect peace. Peace, then, be unto everyone who becomes ateacher of peace. For peace is the acknowledgment of perfect purity, from which no one isexcluded. Within its holy circle is everyone whom God created as His Son. Joyis its unifying attribute, with no one left ouside to suffer guilt alone. Thepower of God draws everyone to its safe embrance of love and union. Standquietly within this circle, and attract all torutured minds to join with you inthe safetyu of its peace and holiness. Abide with me within it, as teachers ofAtonement, not of guilt. Blessed are you who teach with me. Our power comes notof us, but of our Father. In guiltlessness we know Him, as He knows usguiltless. I stand within the circle, calling you to peace. Teach peace withme, and stand with me on holy ground. Remember for everyone your Father´s powerthat He has given him. Believe not that you cannot teach His perfect peace.Stand not outside, but join with me within. Fail not God His Son as He createdhim, by teaching him his innocence. The crucifixion has no part in theAtonement. Only the resurrection became my part in it. That iss the symbol ofthe release from guilt by guiltlessness. Whom you perceive as guilty you wouldcrucify. Yet you restore guiltlessness to whomever you see as guiltless.Crucifixion is always the ego´s aim. It sees everyone as guilty, and by itscomdemnation it would kill. The Holy Spirit sees only gultlessness, and in Hisgentleness He would release from fear and re-estabilsh the reign of love. Thepower of love is in His gentleness, which os of God and therefore cannotcrucify nor suffer crucifixion. The temple you restore becomes your altar, forit was rebuilt through you. And everything you give to God is yours. Thus Hecreates, and thus must you restore. Each one you see you place within the holycircle of Atonement or leave outside, judging him fit for crucifixion or forredemtption. If you bring him into the circle of purity, you will rest therewith him. If you leave him without, you join him there. Judge not except inquietness which is not of you. Refuse to accept anyone as without the blessingof Atonement, and bring him into it by blessing him. Holiness must be shared,for therein lies everything that makes it holy. Come gladly to the holy circle,and look out here is what he seeks alone with you. Come, let us join him in theholy place of peace which is for all of us, united as one within the Cause ofpeace.

Love

[IA56]

The Light of Communication

The journey that we undertake together is the exchange of dark for light, of ignorance for understanding. Nothing you understand is fearful. It is only in darkness and in ignorance that your perceive the frightening, and 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 not 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 whichthe Holy Spirit dwells within you is merely perfect openness, in which nothing is hidden and therefore nothing is fearful. Attack will always yield to love ifit 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 beenseparated off and kept in darkness.The sentinels of darkness watch over itcarfully, and you who made these guardians of illusion out of nothing and nowafraid of them. Would you continue to give imagined power to these strangeideas of safety? They are neither safe nor unsafe. They do nothing at all,being nothing at all. As guardians of darkness and of ignorance look to themonly for fear, for what they keep obscure is fearful. But let them go, and whatwas fearful will be so no longer. Without protection of obscurity only thelight of love remains, for only this has meaning and can live in light.Everything else must disappear. Death yields to life simply because destructionis not true. The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when theyare brought together, the truth of one must make the falsity of its oppositeperfectly clear. Keep not guilt and guiltlessness apart, for your belief thatyou can havet hem both is meanigless. All you have done by keeping them apartis lose their meaning by confusing them with each other. And so you do notrealize that only one means anything. The other is wholly without sense of anykind. You have regarded the separation as a means for breaking yourcommunication with your Father. The Holy Spirit reinterprets it as a means ofre-establishing what was not broken, but has been made obscure. All things youmade have use to Him, for His most holy purpose. He knows you are not separatefrom God, but He perceives much in your mind that lets you think you are. Allthis and nothing else would He separate from you. The power of decision, whichyou made in place of the power of creation, He would teach you how to use onyour behalf. You who made it to crucify yourself must learn of Him how to apply it to the holy cause ofrestoration. You who speak in dark and devious symbols do not understand thelanguage you have made. It has no meaning, for its purpose is notcommunication, but rather the disruption of communication. If the purpose oflanguage is communcation, how can this tongue mean anything? Yet even thisstrange and twisted effort to communicate through not communicating holds enough of love to make it meaningful ifits 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 toHim. He will interpret it to you with perfect clarity, for He knows with Whomyou are in perfect communication. You know not what you say, and so you knownot what is said to you. Yet your Interpreter perceives the meaning in youralien language. He will not attempt to communicate the meaningless. But He willseparate out all that has meaning, dropping off the rest and offering your truecommunication to those who would communicate as truly with you. You speak twolanguages at oncee, and this must lead to unintelligiblility. Yet if one meansnothing and the other everything, only that one is possible for purpose ofcommunication. The other but interfers with it. The Holy Spirit´s function isentirely communication. He therefore must remove whatever interfers withcommunication in order to restore it. Therefore, keep no source of interferencefrom His sight, for He will not attack your sentinels. But bring them to Himand let His gentleness teach you that, in the light, they are not fearful, andcannot serve to guard the dark door behind which nothing at all is carefullyconcealed. There are no hidden chambers in God´s temple. Its gates are openwide to greet His Son. No one can fail to come where God has called him, if heclose not the door himself upon his Father´s welcome.

Love

[IA56]

Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit

What do you want? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorace are yours, but not both. Opposites must be brought together, 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. Yet the perception must be withoout deceit, for oterwise it becomes the Messenger of ignorance rather than a helper in the serch for truth. The search for truthis but the honest searching out of everything that interferes with truth. Truthis. It can neither be lost nor sought nor found. It is there, wherever you are,being within you. Yet 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 surroundedit with fear. Under each cornestone of fear on which you have erected yourinsane system of belief, the truth lies hidden. Yet you cannot know this, forby hiding truth in fear, you see no reason to believe that the more you look atfear the less you see it, and the clearer what it conceals becomes. It is notpossible to convince the unknowing thatthey know. From their point of view it is not true. Yet it is true because Godknows it. There are clearly opposite viewpoints on what the ”unkonwing” are. ToGod, unknowing is impossible. It is therefore not a pont of view at all, butmerely a belief in something that does not exist. It is only the belief that the unkowning have, and by it they are wrongabout themselves. They have defined themselves as they were not created.Uncertainty brought to certainty does not retain any conviction ofreality. Our emphasis has been on bringingwhat is undesirable to the desirable; what you do not want to what you do. Youwill realize that salvation must come to you this way, if you consider whatdissociation is. Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby twosystems of belief which cannot coexist are both maintained. If they are brought together,their joint acceptance becomes impossible. But if one is kept in darkness fromthe other, their separation seems to keep them both alive and equal in theirreality. Their joining thus becomes the source of fear, for if they meet,acceptance must be withdrewn form one of them. You cannot havet hem both, foreach denies the other. Apart, this fact is lost form sight, for each in aseparate palce can be endowed with firm belief. Bring them together, and thefact of their complete incompatiblility is instantly apparant. One will go,because the other is seen in the same place. Light cannot enter darkness when amind believes in darkness, and will notlet it go. Truth does not struggle against ignorance, and love does not attackfear. What needs no protection does not defend itself. Defense is of yourmaking. God knows it not. The Holy Spirit uses defenses on behalf of truth onlybecause you made them against it. His perception of them, according to Hispurpose, merely changes them into a call for what you ahve attacked with them.Defenses, like everything you made, must be gently turned to your own good, translatedby the Holy Spirit from means of self-destruction, to means of preservation andrelease. His task is mighty, but thepower of God is with Him. Therefore, to Himit is so easy that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you. Donot delay in your return to peace by wondering how He can fulfill what God hasgiven Him to do. Leave that to Him Who knows. You are not asked to do mightytasks 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 cando it. You will see how easily all that He asks can be accomplished. The HolySpirit asks of you but this; bring to Him every secret you have locked awayfrom Him. Open every door to Him, and bid Him enter the darkness and lighten itaway. At your request He enters gladly. He brings the light to darkness of youmake the darkness open to Him. But what you hide He cannot look upon. He seesfor you, and unless you look with Him He cannot see. The vision of Christ isnot for Him alone, but for Him with you. Bring therefore, all your dark andsecret thoughts to Him, and look upon them with Him. He holds the light, andyou 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 yourperception to His. Joining with Him in seeing is the way in which you learn toshare with Him the interpretation of perception that leads to knowledge. Youcannot see alone. Sharing perception with Him Whom God has given you teachesyou how to recognize what you see. It is the recognition that nothing you seemeans anything alone. Seeing with Him will show you that all meaning, includingyours, caomes not from double vision, but from the gentle fusing of everythinginto one meaning, one emotion and one purpose. God has one Purpose which He shares with you. The single vision which theHoly Spirit offers you will bring this oneness to your mind with clarity andbrightness so intense you could not wish, for all the world, not to accept whatGod would have you have. Behold your will, accepting it as His, with all HisLove as yours. All honor to you through Him, and through Him unto God.

Love

[IA56]

The Holy Meeting Place

In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you,and the power He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All this lies hidden in every darkened place, shrouded in guilt and in the dark denial of innocence. Behind the dark doors your 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 shares with God the promise that was given 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 broughtthere that is not equally worthy of both, but will be replaced by gifts whollyacceptable 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 tothe other. You know not God because you know not this. And yet you do know Godand also this. All this is safe within you, where the Holy Spirit shines. Heshines not in division, but in the meeting place where God, united with HisSon, speaks to His Son through Him. Communication between what cannot bedivided cannot cease. The holy meeting place of the unseparated Father and HisSon lies in the Holy Spirit and in you. All interference in the communicationthat God Himself wills with His Son is quite impossible here. Unbroken anduniterrupted love flows comstantly between the Father and the Son, as bothwould have it be. And so it is. Let your mind wander not through darkenedcorridors, away from light´s center. You may choose to lead yourself astray,but you can be brought together only by the Guide appointed for you. He willsurely lead you to where God and His Son await your recongnition. They arejoined 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´sglory and His Son´s belong to you in truth. They have no opposite, and nothing elsecan you bestow upon yourself. There is no substitute for truth. And truth willmake this plain to you as you are brought into the place where you must meetwith truth. And there you must be led, through gentle understanding which canlead you nowhere else. What God is, there are you. Such is the truth. Nothingcan change the knowledge, given you by God, into unkowingness. Everything Godcreated knows its Creator. For this is how creation is accomplished by theCreator and by His creations. In the holy meeting place are joined the Fatherand His creations, and the creations of His Son with Them together. There is one link that joins them alltogether, holding them in the oneness out of which creation happens. The linkwith which the Father joins Himself to those He gives the power to dreate cannever be dissolved. Heaven itself is union with all of creation, and with itsone Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God for you. Lay no gifts otherthan this upon your altars, for nothing can coexist with it. Here your littleofferings are brought together with the gift of God, and only what is worthy ofthe Father will be accepted by the Son, for whom it is intended. To whom godgives Himself, He is given. Your little gifts will vanish on the altar, whereHe has placed His Own.

Love

[IA56]

The Reflection of Holiness

The Atonement does not make holy. You were created holy. It merely brings unholiness to holiness; or what you made to what you are.Bringing illusions to truth, or the ego to 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 yourself. The knowledge is safe, but where is your safety apart from it? The making of time to take the place of timlessness layin the decision to be not as you are. 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 the 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. It is undone because the contradiction can no longer stand. How long can contradiction stand when its impossible nature is clearly reveled? 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 changewith time or mood or chance. Its changelessness is what makes it real. This cannotbe undone. Undoing is for unreality. And this reality will do for you. Merelyby being what it is, does truth release you from everything that it is not.TheAtonement is so gentle you need but whisper to it, and all its power will rushto your assistance and support. You are not frail with God beside you. Yetwithout Him you are nothing. The Atonement offer you God. The gift that yourefused is held by Him in you. The Holy Spirit holds it there for you. God hasnot left His altar, through His worshippers placed other gods upon it. Thetemple still is holy, for the Presence thhat dwells within it is holiness. Inthe temple, holiness waits quietly for the return of them that love it. ThePresence knows they will return to purity and to grace. The graciousness offGod will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss withthe immortal assurance of their Father´s Love. There, fear of death will bereplaced with joy of life. For God is Life, and they abide in Life. ThePresence of holiness lives in everything that lives, for holiness created life,and leaves not what it created holy as itself. In this world you can become aspotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you toall around you. You can redlcet Heaven here. Yet no reflections of the imagesof other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God´s reflection in it. Earthcan reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror cleanand clear of the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God willshine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection of Himself can be perceivedupon it. Reflections are seem in light. In darkness they are obscure, and theirmeaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than inthemselves. The reflection of God needs no interpretation. It is clear. Cleanbut the mirror, and the message thatshines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, no one canfail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to themirror that is in him. He recognizes it because he has been taught his need forit, but knows not where to look to find it. Let him, then, see it in you andshare it with you. Could you but realize for a single instant the power ofhealing 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 imageof the holiness that heals the world. The image of holiness that shines in yourmind is not obscure, and will not change. Its meaning to those who look upon itis not obscure, for everyone perceives it as the same. All bring theirdifferent problems to its healing light, and all their problems find buthealing there. The response of holiness to any form of error is always thesame. There is no contradiction in what holiness calls forth. Its one responsein healing, without regard for what is brought to it. Those who have learned tooffer only healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready atlast for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the actualcondition of what was but reflected to them here. God is no image, and Hiscreations, are part or Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely reflect truth, for they are truth.

Love

[IA56]

The Equality of Miracle

When no perception stands between God and His creations, orbetween His children and their own, the knowledge of creation must continue forever. The reflections you accept into the mirror of your mind in time butbring eternity nearer of father. 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 asaide. Reflect the peace of Heaven here, and bring this World to Heaven. For 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 reflections here, its truth becomes the only perception the Son of God accetps. And thus, rememberance 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 tolive in is a world of limits. In this world, it is not true that anythingwithout order of difficulty can occur. The mireacle, therefore, has a uniquefunction, and is motivated by a unique Teacher Who brings the laws of anotherworld to this one. The miracle is the one thing you can do that transcendsorder, being based not on differences but on equality. Miracles are not incompetition, and the number of them that you can do is limitless. They can besimultaneous and legion. This is not difficult to understand, oncy you conceiveof them as possible at all. What is more difficult to grasp is the lack oforder of difficulty that stamps the miracle as something that must come fromelsewhere, not from here. From the world´s viewpoint, this is impossible.Perhaps you have been aware of lack of competiotion among your thoughts, whicheven though they may conflict, can occur together and in great unsed numbers.You may indeed be so used to this that it causes you little surprise. Yet youare also used to to classifying some of your thoughts as more important, largeror better, wiser, or more productive and valuable than others. This is true ofthe thoughts that cross the mind of those who think they live apart. For someare reflectionss of Heaven, while others are motivated by the ego, which butseems to think. The result is a weaving, changing pattern that never rests andis never still. It shifts unceasingly across the mirror of your mind, and thereflections of Heaven last but a moment and grow dim, as darkness blots themout. Where there was light, darkness removes it in an instant, and alternatingpatterns of light and darkness sweep constantly across my mind. The littlesanity that still remains is held together by a sense of order that youestablish. Yet the very fact that you can do this, and bring any order intochaos shows you that you are not an ego, and that more than an ego must be inyou. For the ego is chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would bepossible. Yet though the order you impose upon your mind limits the ego, italso limits you. To order is to judge, and to arrange by judgment. It wiillseem difficult for you to learn that you have no basis at all for ordering yourthoughts. This lesson the Holy Spirit teaches by giving you the shiningexamples of miracles to show you that your way of ordering is wrong, but that abetter way is offered you. The miracle offers exactly the same response toevery call for help. It does not judge the call. It merely recognizes what itis, and answers accordingly. It does not consider which call is louder orgreater or more important. You may wonder how you who are still bound tojudgment can be asked to do that whichrequires 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 thtyou have the power of God in you. That is the reason why the miracle gives equal blessing to all who shares in it, andthat is also why eveyone shares in it. The power of God is limitless. And beingalways maximal, it offers everything to every call from anyone. There is noorder of difficulty here. A call for help is given help. The only judgmentinvolved is the Holy Spirit´s one division into two categories; one of love,and the other call for love. You cannot safely make this division, for you aremuch too confused either to recognize love, or to believe that everything elseis nothing but a call 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 nothingelse. For you do not respond to what a brother really offers you, but only tothe particular perception of his offering by which the ego judges it. The egois incapapble of understanding content, and is totally unconcerned with it. Tothe ego, if the form is acceptable the content must be. Otherwise it willattack the form. If you beleive you understand something of the ”dynamics” ofthe ego, let me assure you that you understand nothing of it. For of yourselfyou could not undertand it. The study of the ego is not the study of the mind.In fact, the ego enjoys studying itself, and thoroghly apporves theundertakings of students who would ”analyze” it, thus approving its importance.Yet they but study form with meaningless content. For their teacher issensless, though careful to conceal this fact behind impressive sounding words,but which lack any consistent sense when they are put together. This ischaracteristic of the ego´s judgments. Separately, they seem to hold, but putthem together and the system of thought that arises from joining them isincoherent and utterly chaotic. For form is not enough the meaning, and theunderlying lack of content makes a cohesive system impossible. Separationtherefore remains the ego´s chosen condition. For no one alone can judge theego truly. Yet when two or more join together in searching for truth, the egocan no longer defend its lack of content. The lack of union tells them it isnot true. It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For rememberingHim means you are not alone, and are willing to remember it. Take no thoughtfor yourself, for no thought you hold is for yourself. If you would rememberyour Father, let the Holy Spirit order your thoughts and give only the answerwith which He answers you. Everyone seeks for love as you do, but knows it notunless 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. Thelonely journey fails because it has excluded what it would find. As Godcommunicates to the Holy Spirit in you, so does the Holy Spirit translate Hiscommunications through you, so you can understand them. God has no secretcommunications, for everything of Him is perfectly open and freely accessibleto all, being for all. Nothing lives in secret, and what you would hide fromthe Holy Spirit is nothing. Every interpretatin you would lay upon a brother issenseless. Let the Holy Spirit show to you, and teach you both his love and itscall for love. Neither his mind nor yours hold more than these two orders ofthought. 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 acall for love, you must give it because of what you are. Earlier I said thiscourse will teach you how to remember what you are, restoring to you yourIdentity. We have already learned that this Identity is shared. The miraclebecomes the means of sharing It. By supplying your Identity wherever It is notrecognized, you will recognize it. And God Himself, Who wills to be with HisSon forever, will bless each recognition of His Son with all the Love He holdsfor him. Nor will the power of all His Love be absent from any miracle youoffer to His Son. How, then, can there be any order of difficulty among them?

Love

[IA56]

The Test of Truth

Yet the essential thing is learning that you do not know.Knowledge is power, and all power is of God. You who have tried to keep Power for yourself have ”lost” it. You still have the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your awareness of it that you cannnot use it. Everything you have taught yourself has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not what it is, nor where. You have made a semblance of power and a show of strength so pitiful that it must fail you. For power is not a seeming strength, and truth is beyond semlbance of any kind. Yet all that stands between you and the Power of God in you is but your learning of the false, and of your attempts to undo the true. Be willing, then, for all of it to be undone, and be glad that you are not bound to it forever.For you have taught yourself how to imprison the Son of God, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep,could even dream of it. Can God learn how not to be God? And can His Son, given all power by Him, learn to be powerless? What have you taught yourself that youcan possibly prefer to keep, in place of what you have and what you are? Atonement teaches youhow to escape forever from everything that you have taught yourself in thepast, by showing you only what you are now. Learning has been accomplishedbefore its effect are mainifest. Learning is therefore in the past, but itsinfluence determines the present by giving it whatever meaning it holds foryou. Your learning gives the present no meaning at all. Nothing you have evedrlearned can help you understand the present, or teach you how to undo the past.Your past is what you have taught yourself. Let it all go. Do not attempt tounderstand any event or anything or anyone in its ”light,” for the darkness inwhich you try to see can only obscure. Put no confidence at all in darkness toilluminate your understanding, for if you do you contradict the light, andthereby think you see the darkness. Yet darkness cannot be seen, for it isnothing more than a condition in which seeing becomes impossible. You who have not yet brought all of thedarkness you have taught yourself into the light in you, can hardly judge thetruth and value of this course. Yet God did not abondon you. And so you haveanother lesson sent from Him, already learned for every child of light by Himto Whom God gave it. This lesson shines with God´s glory, for in it lies Hispower, which He shares so gladly with His Son. Learn of His happiness, which is yours. But to accomplish this, all yourdark lesson must be brought willingly to truth, and joyously laid down by handsopen to receive, not closed to take. Every dark lesson that you bring to HimWho teaches light He will accept from you, because you do not want it. And Hewill gladly exchange each one for the bright lesson . He has learned for you.Never believe that any lesson you have learned apart from Him means anything.You have one test, as sure as God, by which to recognize if what you learned istrue. If you are wholly free of fear of any kind, and if all those who meet orevent hink of you share in your perfect peace, then you can be sure that youhave learned God´s lesson, and not your own. Unless all this is true, there aredark lessons in your mind that hurt and hinder you, and evderyone around you.The absence of perfect peace means but one thing: You think you do not will forGod´s Son what his Father wills for him. Every dark lesson teaches this, in oneform or another. And each bright lesson will which the Holy Spirit will replacethe dark ones you do not accept, teaches you that you will with the Father andHis Son. Do not be concerned about how you can learn a lesson so completelydifferent from everything that you have taught yourself. How would you know?Your part is very simple. You need only recognize that everything you learnedyou do not want. Ask to be taught, and do not use your experiences to confirmwhat you have learned. When your peace is threatened or disturbed in any way,say to yourself,

”I do not know what anything, including this, means.
And so I do not know how to respond to it.
And I will not use my own past learning as the light toguide me now.”

By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do notknow, the Guide Whom God has given you will speak to you. He will take Hisrightful place in your awareness the instant you abondon it, and offer it toHim. You cannot be your guide to miracles, for it is you who made themnecessary. And because you did, the means on which you can depend for miracleshas been provided for you. God´s Son can make no needs His Father will notmeet, if he but turn to Him ever so little. Yet He cannot compel His Son toturn to Him and remain Himself. It is impossible that God lose His Identity,for if Hed id, you would lose yours. And being yours He cannot change Himself,for your Identity is changeless. The miracle acknowledges His changelessness byseeing His Son as he always was, and not as he would make himself. The miraclebrings the effects that only guitlessness can bering, and thus establshes thefact that guiltlessness must be. How can you, so firmly bound to guilt andcommitted so to remain, establish for yourself your guiltlessness? That isimposible. But bbe sure that you are willing to acknowledge that it isimpossbile. It is only because you think that you can run some little part, ordeal with certain aspects of your little alone, that the guidance of the HolySpirit is limited. Thus would you make Him undependable, and use this fanciedundependability as an excuse for keeping certain dark lessons form Him. And byso limiting the guidance that you would accept, you are unable to depend onmiracles to answer all your problems for you. Do you think that what the HolySpirit would have you give He would withold from you? You have no problems thatHe cannot solve by offering you a miracle. Miracles are for you. And every fearof pain or trial you have has been undone. He has brought all of them to light,having accepted them instead of you, and recgonized they never were. There areno dark lessons He has not already lightened for you. The lessons you wouldteach yourself He has corrected already. They do no exist in His Mind at all.For the part binds Him not, and therefore binds not you. He does not see timeas you do. And each miracle He offers you correct your use of time, and makesit His. He Who has feed you from the past would teach you are free of it. Hewould but have you accept His accomplishements as yours, because He did themfor you. And because Hed id, they areyours. He has made you free of what you made. You can deny Him, but you cannotcall on Him in vain. He always gives His gifts in place of yours. He wouldestablish His bright teaching so firmly in your mind, that no dark lesson ofguilt can abide in what He has established ad holy by His Presence. Thank Godthat He is there and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offersyou a miracle with every one you let Him do through you. God´s Son will alwaysbe indivisible. As we are held as one in God, so do we learn as one in Him.God´s Teacher is as like to His Creator as is His Son. Listen in silence, anddo not raise your voice against Him. For He teaches the miracle of oneness, andbefore His lesson division disappears. Teach like Him here, and you willremember that you have always created like your Father. The miracle of creationhas never ceased, having the holy stamp of immortality upon it. This is theWill fo God for all creation, and all creation joins in willing this. Those whoremember always that they know nothing, and who have become willing to learneverything, will learn it. But whenever they trust themselves, they will notlearn. They have destroyed their motivation for learning by thinking theyalready know. Think not you understand anything until you pass the test ofperfect peace, for peace and understanding go together and never can be foundalone. Each brings the other with it, for it is the law of God they be notseparate. They are cause and effect, each to the other, so where one is absentthe other cannot be. Only those who recognize they cannot know unless theeffects of understanding are with them, can really learn at all. For this itmust be peace they want, and nothing else. Whenever you think you know, peacewill depart from you, because you have abandoned the Teacher of peace. Wheneveryou fully realize that you know not, peace will return, for you will haveinvited Him to do so by abandoning the ego on behalf of Him. Call not upon theego for anyting; it is only this that you need do. The Holy Spirit will, ofHimself, fill every mind that so makes room for Him. If you want peace you mustabandon the teacher of attack. The Teacher of peace will never abandon you. Youcan desert Him but He will never reciprocate, for His faith in you is Hisunderstanding. It is as firm as is His faith in His creator, and He knows thatfaith in His Creator must encompass faith in His creation. In this consistencylies His holiness which He cannot abandon, for it is not His will to do so.With your perfection ever in His sight, He gives the gift of peace to everyonewho perceives the need for peace, and who would have it. Make way for peace,and it will come. For understanding is in you, and from it peace must come. Thepower of God, from which they both arise, is yours as surely as it is His. Youthink you know Him not, only because, alone, it is impossible to know Him. Yetsee the mighty works tht He will do through you, and you must be convinced youdid them through Him. It is impossible to deny the Source of effects sopowerful they could not be of you. Leave room for Him, and you will findyourself so filled with power that nothing will prevail against your peace. Andthis will be the test by which you recognize that you have understood.

Love

[IA56]

THE HOLY INSTANT
The Two Uses of Time

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 a consistent learner that you learn only of Him. When this has happened, you will no longer need a teacher of time on which to learn. One source of perceived discouragement from which you may suffer is your belief taht 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 by it. And all the waste that time seems to bring with it is due but to your identification with the ego, which uses time to support its belief indestruction. The ego, like the Holy Spirit, uses time to convice you of the inevitablilityof the goal and end the teaching. To the ego the goal is death, which is itsend. But to the Holy Spirit the goal is life, which has no end. The ego is anally of time, but not a friend. For it is as mistrustful of death as it is oflife, and what it wants for you it cannot tolerate. The ego wants you dead, butnot itself. The outocme of its strange religion must therefore be theconviction that it can pursue you beyond the grave. And out of itsunwillingness four you to find peace even in death, it offers you immortalityin hell. It speaks to you of Heaven, but assures you that Heaven is not foryou. How can the guilty hope for Heaven? The belief in hell is inescapable tothose who identify with the ego. Their nightmares and their fears are all associatedwith it. The ego teaches that hell is in the future, for this is what all itsteaching is directed so. Hell is its goal. For although the ego aims at deathand dissolution as an end, it does not believe it. The goal of death, which itcraves for you, leaves it unsatisfied. No one who follows the ego´s teaching iswithout the fear of death. Yet if death were thought merely as an end to pain,would it be feared? We have seen this strange paradox in the ego´s thoughtsystem before, but never so clearly as here. For the ego must seem to keep fearfrom you to hold your allegiance. Yet itmust engender fear in order to maintain itself. Again the ego tries, and alltoo frequently succeeds, in doing both,by using dissociation for holding its contradictory aims together so that theyseem to be reconciled. The ego teaches thus: Death is the end as far as hope ofHeaven goes. Yet because you and the ego cannot be separrated, and because itcannot conceive of its own death, it will pursue you still, because guilt iseternal. Such is the ego´s version of immortality. And it iss this the ego´sversion of time supports. The egoteaches that Heaven is here and now because the future is hell. Even when itattacks so savagely that it tries to take the life of someone who thinks it isthe only voice, it speaks of hell even to him. For it tells him hell is here aswell, and bids him leap from hell into oblivion. The only time the ego allowsanyone to look upon with equanimity is the past. And even there, its only valueis that it is no more. He bleak and despairing is the ego´s use of time! And howterrifying! For underneath its fanatical insistence that the past and future bethe same is hidden a far more insidious threat to peace. The ego does notadvertise its final threat, for it would have its worshippers still believethat it can offer the mescape. But the belief in guilt must lead to the beliefin hell, and always does. The only way in which the ego allows the fear of hellto be expereinced is to bring hell here, but always as a foretaste of thefuture. For no one who considers himself as deservving of hell can believe thatpunishment 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 whatprevents you from understanding the present, because you are afraid of it. TheHoly Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven as the eego drives to hell. For theHoly Spirit, Who knows only the present, uses it to undo the fear by which theego would make the present useless. There is no escape from fear in the ego´suse of time. For time, according to its teaching, is nothing but a teachingdevice for compounding guilt until it becomes all-encompassing, demandingvengeance forever. The Holy Spirit would undo all of this now. Fear is not offthe present, but only of the past and future, which do not exist. There is nofear 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 birht, in which the Son of God emerges from the past into thepresent. And the present extends forever. It is so beautiful and so clean andfree of guilt that nothing but happiness is there. No darkness is rememberd,and immortality and joy are now. This lesson takes no time. For what is timewithout a past and future? It has taken time to misguide you so completely, butit takes no time at all to be what you are. Begin to practice the Holy Spirit´suse 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 ofthe past, and it is here that you are completely absolved, completely free andwholly without comdemnation. From this holy instant wherein holiness was bornagain you will go forth in time without fear, and with no sense of change with time. Time is inconceivablewithout change, yet holiness does not change. Learn from this instant more thanmerely that hell does not exist. In this redeeming instant lies Heaven. AndHeaven will not change, for the birth into the holy present is salvation fromchange. Change is an illusion, taught bythose who cannot see themselves as guiltless. There is no change in Heavenbecause there is no change in God. In the holy instant, in which you seeyourself as bright with freedom, you will remember God. For remembering Him isto remember freedom. If you are tempted to be disprited by thinking how long itwould take to change your mind so completely, ask yourself, ”How long is aninstant?” Could you not give so short a time to the Holy Spirit for yoursalvation? He asks no more, for He has no need of more. It takes far longer toteach you to be willing to give Him this than for Him to use this tiny instantof offer you the whole of Heaven. In exchange for this instant. Hes tands readyto give you the remembrance of eternity. You will never give this holy instantto the Holy Spirit on behalf of your release while you are unwilling to give itto 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 abrother, that his instant of release is yours. Miracles are the instants ofrelease you offer, and will receive. They attest to your willingness to bereleased, and to offer time to the Holy Spirit for His use of it. How long isan instant? It is as short for your brother as it is for you. Practice givingthis blessed instant of freedom to all who are enslaved by time, and thus maketime their friend of them. The Holy Spirit gives their blessed instant toyour through your giving it. As you giveit, He offers it to you. Be not unwilling to give what you would receive ofHim, for you join with Him in giving. In the crystal cleanness of the releaseyou give is your instantaneous escape from guilt. You must be holy if you offerholiness. How long is an instant? As long as it takes to re-establish perfectsanity, perfect peace and perfect love for everyone, for God and for yourself.As long as it takes to remember immortality, and your immortal creations whoshare it with you. As long as it takes to exchange hell for Heaven. Long enoughto transcend all of the ego´s making, and ascend unto your Father. Time is yourfriend, if you leavve it to the Holy Spirit to use. He needs but very little torestore God´s whole power for you. He Who trancends time for you understandswhat time is for. Holiness lies not in time, but in eternity. There never wasan instant in which God´s Son could lose his purity. His changeless state isbeyond time, for his purity remains forever beyond attack and withoutvariability. Time stands still in his holiness, and changes not. And so it isno longer tim at all. For caught in the single instant of the eternal sanctityof God´s creation, it is transformed into forever. Give the eternal instant,that eternity may remembered for you, in that shining instant of perfectrelease. Offer the miracle of the holy instant through the Holy Spirit, andleave His giving it to you to Him.

Love

[IA56]

The End of Doubt

The Atonement is in time, but not of time. Being in you, it is eternal. What holds rememberance of God cannot be bound by time. No more are you. For unless God is bound, you cannot be. An instant offered to the Holy Spirit is offered to God on your behalf, and in that instant you will awaken gently in Him. In the blessed instant you will let go all your past learning, and the Holy Spirit will quickly offer you the whole lesson of peace. What can take time, when all the obstacles to learning it have been removed? Truth is so far beyond time that all of it happens at once. For as it was created one, so its oneness depends not on time at all. Do not be concerned with time, and fear not the instant of holiness that will remove all fear. For the instant of peace is eternal because it is without fear. For the instant of peace is eternal because it is without fear. It will come, being the lesson God gives you, through the Teacher He has appointed to translate time into eternity. Blessed is God´s Teacher, Whose joy it is to teach God´s holy Son his holiness. His joy is not contained in time.His teaching is for you because His joy is yours. Through Him you stand before God´s altar, where He gently translates hellinto Heaven. For it is only in Heaven that God would have you be. How long canit take to be where God would have you? For you are where you have forever beenand will forever be. All that you have, you have forever. The blesssed instant reaches out to encompass time, as Godextends Himself to encompass you. You who have spent days, hours and even yearsin chaining your brothers to your ego in an attempt to support it and upholdits weakness, do not perceive the Source of strength. In this holy instant youwill unchain all your brothers, and refuse to support either their weakness oryour own. You do not realize how much you have misused your brothers by seeingthem as sources of ego support. As a reslult, they witness to the ego in yourperception, and seen to provide reasons for not letting it go. Yet there arefar stronger and much more compelling witnesses for the Holy Spirit. And theysupport His strength. It is, therefore, your choice wheter you support the egoor the Holy Spirit in you. And you will recognize which you have chosen bytheir reactions. A Son of god who has released through the Holy Spirit in a brother is alwaysrecognized. He cannot be denied. If you remain uncertain, it is only because youhave not given complete release. And because of this, you have not given a single instant completely to theHoly Spirit. For when you have, you will be sure you have. You will be surebecause the witness to Him will speak so clearly of Him that you will hear and understand.You will doubt until you hear one witness whom you have wholly released throughthe Holy Spirit. And then you will doubt no more. The holy instant has not yethappened to you. Yet it will, andd you will recognize it with perfectcertainty. No gift of God is recognized in any other way. You can practice themechanics of the holy instant, and will learn much from doing so. Yet itsshining and glittering brilliance, which will literally blind you to this worldby its own vision, andd cannot supply. And here it is, all in this instant,complete, accomplished and given wholly. Start now to practice your little partin separating out the holy instant. You will receive very specific instructionsas you go along. To learn to separate out this single second, and to experienceit as timless, is to begin to experience yourself as not separate. Fear notthat you will not be given helo in this. God´s Teacher and His lesson willsupport your strength. It is only your weakness that will depart from you inthis practice, for it is the practice of the power of God in you. Use it butfor one instant, and you will never deny it again. Who can deny the Presence ofwhat the universe bows to, in appreciation and gladness? Before the recognitionof the universe that witnesses to It, your doubt must disappear.

Love

[IA56]

Littleness versus Magnitude

Be not content with littleness. But be sure you understand what littleness is, and why you could never be content with it. Littleness is the offering you give yourself. You offer this in place of magnitude, and you accept it. Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness, in the strange belief that littleness can content you. When you strive for anything in this world in the belief that it will bring you peace,you are belittling yourself and blinding yourself to glory. Littleness and glory are the choices open to your striving and your vigilance. You will Always choose one at the expense of the other. Yet what you do not realize, each time you choose, is that your choice is your evaluation of yourself. Choose littleness and you will not have peace, for you will have judged yourself unwotrty of it. And whatever you offer as a substitute is much too poor a gift to satisfy you. It is essential that you accept the fact, and accept it gladly,that there is no form of littleness that can ever content you. You are free to try as many as you wish, but all you will be doing is to delay your homcoming.For you will be content only in magnitude, which is your home. There is a deepresponsibility you owe yourself, and one you must learn to remember all thetime. The lesson may seem hard at first, but you will learn to love it when yourealize that it is true and is but a tribute to your power. You who have soughtand found littleness, remember this: Every decision you make stems from whatyou think you are, and represents the value that you put upon yourself. Believethe little can content you, and by limiting yourself you will not be satisfied.For your function is not little, and it is only by finding your function andfulfilling it that you can escape from littleness. There is no doubt about whatyour function is, for the Holy Spirit knows what it is. There is no doubt aboutits maginitude, for it reaches you through Him from Magnitude. You do not haveto strive for it, because you have it. All striving must be directed againstlittleness, for it does require vigilance to protect your magnitude in thisworld. To hold your magnitude in perfect awareness in a world of littleness isa task little cannot undertake. Yet it is asked of you, in trubute to yourmagnitude and not your littleness. Nor is it asked of you alone. The power ofGod will support every effort you make on behalf of His dear Son. Serch for thelittle, and you deny yourself His power. God is not willing that His Son becontent with less than everything. For He is not content without His Son, andHis Son cannot be content with less than His Father has given him. I askederlier, ”Would you be hostage to the ego or host to God?” Let this question beasked you by the Holy Spirit every time you make a decision. For every decisionyou make does answer this, and invites sorrow or joy accordingly. When God gaveHimself to you in your creation, He established you as host to Him forever. Hehas not left you, and you have not left Him. All your attempts to deny Hismagnitude, and make His Son hostage to the ego, cannot make little whom God hasjoined with Him. Every decision you make is for Heaven, or for hell, and bringsyou the awareness of what you decided for. The Holy Spirit can hold yourmagnitude, clean of all littleness, clearly and in perfect safety in your mind,untouched by every little gift the world of littleness would offer you. But forthis, you cannot side against Him in what He wills for you. Decide for Godthrough Him. For littleness, and the belief that you can be content withlittleness, are decisions you make about yourself. The power and the glory thatlie in your from God are for all who, like you, perceive themselves as little,and believe that littleness can be blown up into a sense of magnitude that cancontent them. Neither give littleness, nor accept it. All honor is due the hostof God. Your littleness deceives you, but your magnitude is of Him Who dwellsin you, and in Whom you dwell. Touch no one, then, with littleness inthe Nameof Christ, eternal Host unto His Father. In this season (Christmas) whichcelebrates the birth of holiness into world, join with me who decided for holinessfor you. It is our task together to restore the awareness of magintude to thehost whom God appointed for Himself. It is beyond all your littleness to givethe gift of God, but not beyond you. For God would give Himself through you. Hereaches from you to everyone and beyond everyone to His Son´s creations, butwithout leaving you. Far beyond your little world but still in you. He extendsforever. Yet He brings all His extentions to you, as host to Him. Is it asacrifiece to leave littleness behind, and wander not in vain? It is notdacrifice to wake to glory. But it is sacrifice to accept anything less thanglory. Learn that you must be worthy or the Prince of Peace, born in you inhonor of Him Whose host you are. You know not what love means because you havesought to purchase it with little gifts, thus valuing it too little tounderstand its magnitude. Love is not little and love dwells in you, for youare host to Him. Before the greatness that lives in you, your poor appreciationof yourself and all the little offerings you give slip into nothingness. Holychild of God, when will learn that only holiness can content you and give youpeace? Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did. Itis because I learned for you that you can learn from me. I would but teach you what is yours, so that togetherwe can replace the shabby littleness that binds the host to God to guilt andweakness with the glad awareness of the glory that is in him. My birth in youis your awakening to grandeur. Welcome me not into a manger, but into the altarto holiness, where holiness abides in perfect peace. My Kingdom is not of thisworld because it is in you. And you are of your Father. Le tus join in honoringyou, who has decided to abide with you. I will as my Father wills, knowing HisWill is constant and at peace forever with itself. You will be content withnothing but His Will. Accept no less, remembering that everything I learned isyours. What my Father loves I love as He does, and I can no more accept it aswhat it as what it is not, than He can. And no more can you. And no more canyou. When you have learned to accept, what you are, you will make no more giftsto offer to yourself, for you will know you are complete, in need of nothing,and unable to accept anything for yourself. But you will gladly give, havingreceived. The host of God needs not seek to find anything. If you are whollywilling to leave salvation to the plan of God and unwilling to attemtp to graspfor peace yourself, salvation will be given you. Yet think not you cansubstitute your plan for His. Rather, join with me in His, that we may releaseall those who would be bound, proclaiming together that the Son of God is hostto Him. Thus will we let no one forget what you would remember. Andthus willyou remember it. Call forth in everyone only the remembrance of God, and of theHeaven that is in him. For where you would have your brother be, there will youthink you are. Hear not his appeal to hell and littleness, but only his call toHeaven and greatness. Forget not that his call is yours, and answer him withme. God´s power is forever on the side of His host, for it protectss only thepeace in which He dwells. Lay not littleness before His holy altar, which risesabove the stars and reaches even to Heaven, because of what is given it.

Love

[IA56]

Practising the Holy Instant

This course is not beyond immediate learning, unless you 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 instant and every instant. The one you want it to be it is. The one you would not have it be is lost to you. You must decide when it is. Delay it not. For beyond the past and future, where 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 dawns 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 you have made for your salvation in exchange for God´s. His will contentyou, and nothing else can bring you peace. For peace is of God, and no onebeside Him. Be humble before Him, and yet great in Him. And value no plan ofthe ego before the plan of God. For you leave empty your place in His plan,which you must fill if you would join with me, by your decision to join in anyplan but His. I call you to fulfill your holy part in the plan that He hasgiven to the world for its release from littleness. God would have His hostabide in perfect freedom. Every allegiance to a plan of salvation apart fromHim diminishes the value of His Will for you in your own mind. And yet it issyour mind that is the host to Him. Wouldyou learn how perfect and immaculate is the holy altar on which your Father hasplaced Himself? This you will recognize in the holy instant, in which youwillingly and gladly give over every plan but His. For there lies peace,perfectly clear because you have been willing to meet its conditions. You canclaim the holy instant and time and anywhere you want it. In your practise, tryto give over every plan you have accepted for finding magnitude in littleness.It is not there. Use the holy instant only to recognize that your alone cannotknow where it is, and can onlly deceive yourself. I stand within the holyinstant, as clear as ou would have me. And the extent to which you learn toaccept me is the measure of the time in which the holy instant will be yours. Icall to you to make the holy instant yours at once, for the release fromlittleness in the mind of the host of God depends on willingness, and not ontime. The reason this course is simple is that truth is simple. Complexity isof 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 toeternity, but for a very simple reason. Do not obscure the simplicity of thisreason, for if you do, it will be only because you prefer not to recognize itand not let it go. The simple reason, simply stated, is this: The holy instantis 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 i the recognition that all minds are in communication. It therefore seeksto change nothing, but merely to accept everything. How can you do this whenyou would prefer to have private thoughts and keep them? The only way you coulddo that would be to deny the perfect communication that makes the holy instantwhat it is. You believe you can harbor thoughts you would not share, and thatsalvation lies in keeping thoughts to your self alone. For in privat thoughts,known only to yourself, you think you find a way to keep what you would havealone, and share what you would share. And then you wonder why it is that youare not in full communication with those around you, and with God Who surroundsall of you together. Every thought you would keep hidden shuts communicationoff, because you would have it so. It is impossible to recognize perfect communicationwhile breaking communication holds value to you. Ask yourself honestly, ”WouldI 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 notenough to make it yours, for you are not ready to share it with Him. And itcannot come into a mind that has decided to oppose it. For the holy instant isgiven and received with equal willingness, being the acceptance of the singleWill that governs all thought. The necessary conditon for the holy instant doesnot require that you have none that you would keep. Innocence is not of yourmaking. It is given you the instant you would have it. Atonement would not beif there were no need for it. You will not be able to accept perfectcommunication as long as you would hide it from yourself. For what you wouldhide is hidden from you. In your practice, then, try only to be vigilantagainst deception, and seek not to pretect the thoughts you would keep toyourself. Let the Holy Spirit´s purity shine them away, and bring all yourawareness to the readiness for purity He offers you. Thus will He make youready to acknowledge that you are host to God, and hostage to no one and to nothing.

Love

[IA56]

The Holy Instant and Special Relationships

The holy instant is the Holy Spirit´s most useful Learning device for teaching you love´s meaning. For its purpose is to suspend judgment entirely. Judgment always rests on the past, for past experience is the basis on which you judge. Jugment becomes impossible without the past, for without it you do not understant anything. You would make no attempt to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not understand what anything means.You are afraid of this because you believe that without the ego, all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love. The past is the ego´s chief learning device, for it is in the past that you learned to define your own needs and acquire methods for meeting them on your own terms.We have said that to limit love to part of the Sonship is to bring guilt into your relationships, and thus make them unreal. If you seek to separate out certain aspects of the totality and look to them to meet your imagined needs,you are attempting to use separation to save you. How, then, could guilt notenter? For separation is the source of guilt, and to appeal to it for salvationis to believe you are alone. To be alone is to be guilty. For to experienceyourself as alone is to deny the Onenessof the Father and His Son, and thus attack reality. You cannot love parts ofreality and understand what love means. If you would love unlike to God, Whoknows no special love, how can you understand it? To believe that specialrelationships, with special love, can offer you salvation is the belief of theAtonement in which salvation lies. Howw can you decide that special aspects ofthe Sonship can give you more than others? The past has taught you this. Yetthe holy instant teaches you it is not so. Because of guilt, all specialrelationships, have elements of fear in them. This is why they shift and changeso frequently. They are not based on changeless love alone. And love, wherefear has entered, cannot be depended on because it is not perfect. In Hisfunction as interpreted of what you made, the Holy Spirit uses specialrelationshps, which you have chosen to support the ego, as learning experiencesthat point to truth. Under His teaching, every relationship, becomes a lessonin love. The Holy Spirit knows no one is special. Yet He also perceives thatyou have made special relationships, which He would purify and not let youdestroy. However unholy the reason you made them may be, He can translate theminto holiness by removing as much fear as you will let Him. You can place anyrelationship under His care and be sure that it will not result in pain, if youoffer Him you willingness to have it serve no need but His. All the guilt in itarises from your use of it. All the love form His. Do not, then, be afraid tolet go your imagined needs, which would destroy the realtionship. Your own needis His. Any relationship you would substitut for another has not been offeredto the Holy Spirit for His use. There is no substitute for love. If you wouldattempt to substitute one aspect of love for another, you have placed less valueon one and more on the other. You have not only separated them, but you havealso judged against both. Yet you have judged against yourself first, or youwould never have imagined that you needed your brothers as they were not.Unless you had seen yourself as without love, you could not have judged them solike you in lack. The ego´s use of relationships is so fragmentd that itfrequently goes ever farther; one part of of one aspect suits its purpose,while it prefers different parts of another aspect. Thus does it assemblereality to its own capricious liking, offering for your seeking a picture whoselikeness does not exist. For there is nothing in Heaven or earth that isresembles, as so, however much you seek for its reality, you cannot find it because it is not real. Everyone onearth has formed special relationships, and although this is not so in Heaven,and Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them here. In the holyinstant no one is special, for your personal needs intrude on no one to makeyour brothers seem different. Without the values from the past, you would seethem all the same and like yourself. Nor would you see any separation betweenyourself and them. In the holy instant, you see in each relationship what itwill be when you perceive only the present. God knows you now. He remembersnothing, having always known you exactly as He knows you now. The holy instantreflects His knowing by bringing all perception out of the past, thus removingthe frame of referece you have built by which to judge your brothers. Once thisis gone, the Holy Spirit substitutes His frame of reference for it. His frameof reference is simply God. The Holy Spirit´s timelessness lies only here. Forin the holy instant, free of the past, you see that love is in you, and youhave no need to look without and snatch love guiltily from where you thought itwas. All your relationships are blessed in the holy instant, because theblessing is not limited. In the holy instant the Sonship gains as one, and unitedin your blessing it becomes one to you. The meaning of love is the meaning Godgave to it. Give to it any meaning apart from His, and it is impossible tounderstand it. God loves every brother as He loves you; neither less nor more.He needs them all equally, and so do you. In time, you have been told to offermiracles as I direct, and let the Holy Spirit bring to you those who areseeking you. Yet in the holy instant you unite directly with God, and all yourbrothers join in Christ. Those who are joined in Christ are in no way spearate.For Christ is the Self the Sonship shares, as God shares His Self with Christ.Think you that you can judge the Self of God? God has created It beyondjudgment, out of His need to extend His Love. With love in you, you have noneed except to extend it. In the holy instant there is no conflict of needs,for there is only one. For the holy instant reaches to eternity, and to theMind of God. And it is only there love has meaning, and only there can it beunderstood.

Love

[IA56]

The Holy Instant and the Laws of God

It is impossible to use one relationship at the expence of another and not to suffer guilt. And it is equally impossible to condemn part of a relationship and find peace within it. Under the Holy Spirit´s teaching all relationships are seen as total commitments, yet they do not conflict with one another in any way. Perfect faith in each one, for its ability to satisfy you completely, arises only from perfect faith in yourself. And this you cannot have while guilt remains. And there will be guilt as long as you accept the possiblility, and cherish it, that you can make a brother into what he is not,because you would have him so. You have so little faith in yourself because you are unwilling to accept the fact that perfect love is in you. And so you seek without for what you cannot find without. I offer you my perfect faith in you,in place of all your doubts. But forget not that my faith must be as perfect in all your brothers as it is in you, or it would be a limited gift to you. In the holy instant we share out faith in God´s Son because we recognize, together,that he is wholly worthy of it, and in our appreciation of his worth we cannotdoubt his holiness. And so we love him. All separation vanishes as holiness isshared. For holiness is power, and by sharing it, it gains in strength. If youseek for satisfaction in gratifying your your needs as you perceive them. You mustbelieve that strength comes from another, and what you gain he loses. Someonemust always lose if you perceive yourself as weak. Yet there is anotherinterpretation of relationships that transcends the consept of loss of powercompletely. You do not find it difficult to believe that when another calls onGod for love, your call remains as strong. Nor do you think that when Godanswers him, your hope of answer is dimished. On the contrary, you are moreinclined to regard his success as witness to the possiblility of yours. That isbecause you recognize, however dimly, that God is an idea, and so your faith inHim is strengthened by sharing. What you find difficult to accept is the factthat, like your Father, you are an idea. And like Him, you can give yourself completely,wholly without loss and only with gain. Herein lies peace, for here there is noconflict. In the world of scarcity, love has no meaning and peace isimpossible. For gain and loss are both accepted, and so no one is aware thatperfect love is in him. In the holy instant you recognize the idea of love inyou, and unite this idea with the Mind that thought it, and could notrelinguish it. By holding it within himself, there is no loss. The holy instantthus becomes a lesson in how to hold all of your brothers in your mind,experiencing not loss but completion. From this it follows you can only give.And this is love, for this alone is natural under the law of God. In the holyinstant the laws of God prevail, and only they have meaning. The laws of thisworld cease to hold any meaning at all. When the Son of God accepts the laws ofGod as what he gladly wills, it is impossible that he be bound, or limited inany way. In that instant he is as free as God would have him be. For theinstant he refuses to be bound, he is not bound. In the holy instant nothinghappens that has not always been. Onlythe veil that has been drawn across reality is lifted. Nothing has changed. Yetthe awareness of changelessness comes swiftly as the veil of time is puschedaside. No one who has not yet experienced the lifting of the veil, and felthimself drawn irresistably into the light behind it, can have faith in lovewithout fear. Yet the Holy Spirit gives you this faith, because He offered itto me and I accepted it. Fear not the holy instant will be denied you, for Idenied it not. And through me the Holy Sprit gives it unto you, as you willgive it. Let no need you perceive obscure your need of this. For in the holyinstant you will recognize the only need the Sons of God share equally, and bythis recognition you will join with me in offering what is needed. It isthrough us that peace will come. Join me in the idea of peace, for in ideasminds can communicate. If you would give yourself as your Father gives HisSelf, you will learn to understand Selfhood. And therein is love´s meaningunderstood. But remember that understanding is of the mind, and only of themind. Knowledge is therefore of the mind, and its conditions are in the mind withit. If you were not an idea, and nothing but an idea, you could not be in fullcommunication with all that ever was. Yet as long as you prefer to be somethingelse, or would attempt to be nothing else and something else together, you willnot remember the language of communication, which you know perfectly. In theholy instant God is rememberd, and the language of communication with all yourbrothers is remembered with Him. For communication is rememberd together, as istruth. There is no exclusion in the holy instant because the past is gone, andwith it goes the whole basis for exclusion. Without its source exclusionvanishes. And this permits your Source, and That of all your brothers, toreplace it in your awareness. God and the power of God will take Their rightfulplace in you, and you will experience the full communication of ideas. Throughyour ability to do this you will learn what you must be, for you will begin tounderstand what your Creator is, and what His creation is along with Him.

Love

[IA56]

The Needless Sacrifice

Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship,and always obscure 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 fylly returned. Being complet, it asks nothing. Being whollypure, everyone joined in it has everything. This is not the basis for anyrelationship in which the ego enters. For every realationship on which the egoembarks is special. The ego establishes relationships only to get something.And it would keep the giver bound to itself through guilt. It is impossible forthe ego to enter into any relationship without anger, for the ego believes thatanger makes friends. This is not its statement, but it is its purpose. For the ego reallybelievers that it can get and keep by making guilty. This is its one attractionso weak that it would have no hold at all, except that one recognizes it. Forthe ego always seem to attract through love, and has no attraction at all toanyone who perceives that it attracts through guilt. The sick attraction ofguilt must be recognized for what it is. For haveing been made real to you, itis 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 hasvalue. Yet the attraction of guilt has valued to you only because you have notlooked at what it is, and have judged it completely in the dark. As we bring itto light, your only guestion will be why it was you ever wanted it.You havenothing to lose by looking open-eyed, for ugliness such as this belongs not inyour holy mind. This host of God can have no real investment here. We saidbefore that the ego attmepts to maintain and increase guilt, but in such a waythat you do not recognize what it would do to you. For it is the ego´sfundamental doctrine that what you do to others you have escaped. The egowishes no one well. Yet its survival depends on your belief that you are exemptfrom its evill intentions. It counsels, therefore, that if you are host to it,it will enable you to direct its anger outward, thus protecting you. And thusit embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of special relationships, forgedout of anger and dedicated to but one insane belief; that the more anger youinvest outside yourself, the safer you become. It is this chain that binds theSon of God to guilt, and it is this chain the Holy Spirit would remove fro hisholy 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 theName of Him Who would release him, le tus look more closely at the relationshipsthe ego contrives, and let the Holy Spirit judget hem truly. For it is certainthat if you will look at them, you will offer them gladly to Him. What He canmake of them you do not know, but you will become willing to find out, if you are willing first to perceive whatyou have made of them. In one way of another, every relationship the ego makesit based on the idea that by sacrificing itself, it becomes bigger. The�sacrifice,� which it regards as purification, is actually the root of tisbitter resentment. For it would prefer to attack directly, and avoid delayingwhat it really wants. Yet the ego acknowledges �reality� as it sees it, andrecognizes that no one could interpret direct attack as love. Yet to makeguilty is direct attack, although it does not seem to be. For the guilty expectattack, and having asked for it they as attracted to it. In such insanerelationships, the attraction of what you do not want seems to be much strongerthan the attraction of what you do want. For each one thinks that he has sacrificedsomething to the other, and hates him for it. Yet this is what he thinks hewants. He is not in love with the other at all. He merely believes he is inlove with sacrifice. And for this sacrifice, which he demands of himself, hedemands that the other accept the guilt and sacrifice himself as well.Forgiveness becomes impossible, for the ego believes that to forgive another isto lose him. It is only by attack without forgiveness that the ego can ensurethe guilt that holds all its relationships together. Yet they only seem to betogether. For relationships, to the ego, mean only the bodies are together. Itis always this that the ego demands, and it does not object where the mind goesor what it thinks, for this seems unimportant. As long as the body is there toreceive its sacrifice, it is content. To the ego the mind is private, and onlythe body can be shared. Ideas are basically of no concern, except as they bringthe body of another closer or farther. And it is in these terms tht itevaluates ideas as good of bad. What makes another guilty and holds him throughguilt is �good.� What releases him from guilt is �bad,� because he would nolonger believe that bodies communicate, and so he would be �gone.� Sufferingand sacrifice are the gifts with which the ego would �bless� all unions. Andthose who are united at its alter accept suffering and sacrifice as the priceof union. In their angry alliances, born of the fear of loneliness and yetdedicated to the continuance of loneliness, each seeks relief from guilt byincreasing it in the other. For each believes that this decreases guilt in him.The other seems always to be attacking and wounding him, perhaps little ways,perhaps �unconsciously,� yet never without demand of sacrifice. The fury ofthose joined at the ego´s altar far exceeds your awareness of it. For what theego really wants you do not realize. Whenever you are angry, you can be surethat you have formed a special relationship which the ego has �blessed�, foranger is its blessing. Anger takes many forms, but it cannot long deceive those who will learn that lovebrings 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 thisattempt is the only basis the ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is theonly need the ego has, and as long as you identify with it, guilt will remainattractive to you. Yet remember this; to be with a body is not communication.And if you think it is, you will feel guilty about communication and will beafraid to hear the Holy Spirit, recognizing in His Voice your own need tocommunicate. The Holy Spirit cannot teach through fear. And how can Hecomminicate with you, while you believe that to communicate is to make yourselfalone? It is clearly insane to believe that by communicating you will beabondoned. And yet many do believe it. For they think their minds must be keptprivate or they will lose them. But if their bodies are together their mindsrremain their own. The union of bodies thus becomes the way in which they wouldkeep minds apart. For bodies cannnot forgive. They can only do as the minddirects. The illusion of the autonomy of the body and it ability to overcomeloneliness is but the working of the ego´s plan of establish its own autonomy.As long as you believe that to be with a body is companionship, you will becompelled to attempt to keep your brother in his body, held there by guilt. Andyou will see safety in guilt and danger in communication. For the ego willalways teach that loneliness is solved by guilt, and that communication is thecause of loneliness. And despite the evident insanity of this lesson, many havelearned it. Forgiveness lies in communication as surely as damnation lies inguilt. It is the Holy Spirit´s teaching function to instruct those who believecommunication to be damnation that communication is salvation. And He will doso, for the power of God in Him and you is joined in a real relationship soholy and so strong, that it can overcome eventhis without fear. It is throughthe holy instant that what seems impossible is accomplished, making it evidentthat it is not impossible. In the holy instant guilt holds no attraction, sincecommunication has been restored. And guilt, whose only purpose is to disruptcommunication, has no function here. Here there is no concealment, and noprivat thoughts. The willingness to communicate attracts communication to it,and overcomes loneliness completely. There is complete forgivness here, forthere is no desire to exclude anyone form your completion, in suddenrecongnition of the value of his part in it. In the protection of yourwholeness, all are invited and made welcome. And you understand that yourcompletion is God´s, Whose only need is to have you be complete. For your completionmakes you His in your awareness. And here it is that you experience yourself asyou were created, and as you are.

Love

[IA56]

The Only Real Relationship

The holy instant does not replace the need for learning, forthe Holy Spirit must not leave you as your Teacher until the holy instant has extended far beyond time. For a teaching assignment such as His, He must use everything in this world for your release. He must side with every sign or token of your willingness to learn of Him what the truth must be. He is Swift to utilize whatever you offer Him on behalf of this. He concern and care for you are limitless. In the face of your fear of forgivness, which He Perceives as clearly as He knows forgivness is release, He will teach you to remember that forgivness is not loss, but your salvation. And that in complete forgivness, in which you recognize tht there is nothing to forgive, you are absolved completely. Hear him gladly, and learn of Him that you have need of no special relationships at all. You but seek in them what you have thrown away. And through them you will never learn the value of wht you have cast aside, but still desire with all your heart. Let us join together in making the holyinstant all that there is, but desiring that it be all that there is. God´s Sonhas such great need of your willingness to strive for this that you cannotconceive of need so great. Behold the only need that God and His Son share, andwill to meet together. You are not alone in this. The will of your creationscalls to you, to share your will with them. Turn, then, in peace from guilt toGod and them. Relate only with what will never leave you, and what you cannever leave. The loneliness of God´s Son is the loneliness of his Father.Refuse not the awareness of your completion, and seek not to restore it toyourself. Fear not to give redemtption over to your Redeemer´s Love. He will notfail you, for He comes from One Who cannot fail. Accept your sense of failureas nothing more than a mistake in who you are. For the holy host of God isbeyond failure, and nothing that he wills can be denied. You are forever in arelationship so holy that it calls to everyone to escape from loneliness, andjoin you in your love. And where you are must everyone seek; and find yourthere. Think but an instant on this: God gave his Sonship to you, to ensureyour perfect creation. This was His gift, for as He withheld Himself not fromyou. He withheld not His creation. Nothing that ever was created but is yours.Your relationships are with the universe. And this universe, being of God, is far beyondthe petty sum of all the separate bodies you perceive. For all its parts arejoined in God through Christ, where they become like to their Father. Christknows of no separation from His Father, Who is His one relationship, in whichHe gives as His Father gives to Him. The Holy Spirit is God´s attempt to freeyou of what He does not understand. And because of the Source of the attempt,it will succeed. The Holy Spirit asks you to respond as God does, for He wouldteach you what you do not understand. God would respond to every need, whateverform it takes. And so He keeps this channel open to receive His communicationto you, and yours to Him. God does not understand your problem incommunication, for He does not share it with you. It is only you who believesthat it is understandable. The Holy Spirit knows that it is not understandable,and yet He understands it because you made it. In the Holy Spirit alone liesthe awareness of what God cannot know, and what you do not understand. It isHis holy function to accept them both, and by removing every element ofdisagreement, to joint hem into one. He will do this because it is Hisfunction. Leave, then, what seems to you to be impossible, because it is theWill of God. And let Him Whose teaching is only of God teach you the onlymeaning of relationships. For God created the only relationship that hasmeaning, and that it His relationship with you.

Love

[IA56]

The Holy Instant and the Attraction of God

As the ego would limit your perception of your brothers to the body, so would the Holy Spirit release your vision and let you see the Great Rays shining from them, so unlimited that they reach to God. It is this shift to vision that is accomplished in the holy instant. Yet it is needful for you to learn just what this shift entails, so you will become willing to make it permanent. Given this willingness it will not leave you, for it is permanent. Once you have accpeted it as the only perception you want, it is transslated into knowledge by the part that God Himself plays in the Atonement,for it is the only step in it He understands. Therefore, in this there will be no delay when you are ready for it. God is ready now, but you are not. Our task is but to continue, as fast as possible, the necessary process of looking straight at all the interference and seeing it exactly as it is. For it isimpossible to recognize as wholly without gratification what you think you want. The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of the separation. And both are nothing more than attempts to limit communication, and thereby to make it impossible. For communication must be unlimited in order to have meaning, and deprived of meaning, it will not satsify you completely. Yet it remains the only means by which you can establish real relationships, whichhave no limits, having been established by God. In the holy instant, where theGreat Rays replace the body in awareness, the recognition of relationshipswithout limits is given you. But in order to see this, it is necessary to giveup every use the ego has for the body, and to accept the fact that the ego hasno purpose you would share with it. For the ego would limit everyone to a bodyfor its own purpose, and while you think it has a purpose, you will choose toutilize the means by which it tries to tur nits purpose into accomplishment.This will never be accormplished. Yet you have surely recognized that the ego,whose goals are altogether unattainable, will strive for them with all itsmight, and will do so with the strength that you have given it. It isimpossible to divide your strength between Heaven and hell, God and the ego,and release your power to creation, which is the only purpose for which it wasgiven you. Love would always give increase. Limits are demanded by the ego, andrepresent its demands to make little and ineffectual. Limit your sight of abrother to his body, which you will do as long as you would not release himfrom it, and you have denied his gift to you. His body cannot give it. And seekit not through yours. Yet your minds are already continuous, and their unionneed only be accepted and the loneliness in Heaven is gone. If you would butlet the Holy Spirit tell you of the Love of God for you, and the need yourcreations have to be with you forever, you would experience the attraction ofthe eternal. No one can hear Him speak of this and long remian willing tolinger here. For it is your will to be in Heaven, where you are complete andquiet, in such sure and loving relationships that any limit is impossible.Would you not exchange your little relationships for this? For the body islittle and limited, and only those whom you would see without the limits theego would impose on them can offer you the gift of freedom. You have noconception of the limits you have placed on your percetption, and no idea ofall the loveliness that you could see. But this you must remember; theattraction of guilt oppose the attraction of God. His attraction for youremains unlimited, but because your power, being His, is as great as His, youcan turn away from love. What you invest in guilt you withdraw from God. Andyour sight grows wek and dim and limited, for you have attempted to separatethe Father from the Son, and limit their communication. Seek not Atonement infurther separation. And limit not your vision of God´s Son to what interfereswith his release, and what the Holy Spirit must undo to set him free. For hisbelief in limits has omprisoned him. When the body ceases to attract you, andwhen you place no value on it as a means of getting anything, then there willbe no interferece in communication and your thoughts will be as free as God´s.As you let the Holy Spirit teach you how to use the body only for purposes ofcommunication, and renounce its use for separation and attack which the egosees in it, you will learn you have no need of a body at all. In the holyinstant there are no bodies, and you expereince only the attraction of God.Accepting it as undivided you join Him wholly, in an instant. The reality ofthis relationship becomes the only truth that you could ever want. All truth ishere.

Love

[IA56]

The Time of Rebirth

It is in your power, in time, to delay the perfect union of the Father and the Son. For in this world, the attraction of guilt does stand between them. Neither time nor season means anything in eternity. But here it is the Holy Spirit´s function to use them both, though not as the ego usest hem. This is the season when you would celebrate my birth into the world. Yet you know not how to do it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you, and let me celebrate your birth through Him. The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I gave to you. Release me as I choose your own release. The time of Christ we celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we are apart. The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. For in this liberating instant no guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is thus restored to him. What other gift can you offer me. I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice as God is, and every sacrifice you ask of yourself you ask of me. Learn now that sacrifice of anykind is nothing but a limitation imposed on giving. And by this limitation youhave limited acceptance of the gift I offer you. We who are one cannot giveseparately. When you are willing to accept our relationship as real, guilt willhold no attraction for you. For in our union you will accept all of ourbrothers. The gift of union is the only gift I was born to give. Give it to me,that you may have it. The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift offreedom, offered to everyone. And by your acceptance of it, you offer it toeveryone. It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your powerto make the time of Christ be now. It is possible to do this all at oncebecause there is but one shift in perception that is necessary, for you madebut one mistake. It seems like many, but it is all the same. For though the egotakes many forms, it is always the same idea. What is not love is always fear,and nothing else. It is not necerrary to follow fear through all the circuitousroutes by which it burrows underground and hides in darkness, to emerge informs guite different from what it is. Yet it is necessary to examine each oneas long as you would retain the principle that governs all of them. When youaer willing to regard them, not as separate, but as different manifestations ofthe same idea, and one you do not want, they go together. The idea is simplythis: you believe it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to God. Thisis the choice you think you have, and the decision you believe that you mustmake. You see no other alternatives, for you cannot accept the fact thatsacrifice gets nothing. Sacrifice is no essential to your thought system thatsalvation apart from sacrifice means nothing to you. Your confusion ofsacrifice and love is so profound that you cannot conceive of love withoutsacrifice. And it is this that you must look upon; sacrifice is attack, notlove. If you would accept but this one idea, your fear of love would vanish.Guilt cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed. For if there issacrifice, someone must pay and someone must get. And the only guestion thatremains is how much is the price, and for getting what. As host to the ego, youbelieve that you can give all your guilt away whenever you want, and therebypurchase peace. And the payment does not seem to be yours. While it is obviousthat the ego does demand paymant it never seems to be demanding if of you. Youare unwilling to recognize that the ego, which you invited. Is treacherous onlyto those who think they are its host. The ego will never let you perceive this,since this recognition would make it homeless. For when the recognition dawnsclearly, you will not be decived by any form the ego takes to protect itselffrom your sight. Each form will be recognized as but a cover for the only ideathat hides behind them all; that love demands sacrifice, and is thereforeinseparable from attack and fear. And that guilt is the price of love, whichmust be paid by fear. How fearful, then, has God become to you, and how great asacrifice do you believe His Love demands! For total love would demand totalsacrifice. And so the ego seems to demand less of you than God, and of the twois judged as the lesser of two evils, one to be feared a little, perhaps, butthe other to be destroyed. For you see love as destructive, and your onlyquestion is who is to be destroyed, you or another? You seek to answer thisquestion in your special relationships, in which you seem to be both destroyerand destroyed in part, bu table to be neither completely. And this you thinksaves you from from God, Whose total Love would completely destroy you. You thinkthat everyone outside yourself demands your sacrifice, but you do not see thatonly youdemand sacrifice, and only of yourself. Yet the demand of sacrifice isso savage and so fearful that you cannot accept it where it is. The real priceof not accepting this has been so great that you have given God away ratherthan look at it. For if God would demand total sacrifice of you, it seems saferto project Him outward and away from you, and not be host to Him. To Him youascribed the ego´s treachery, inviting it to take His place to protect you fromHim. And you do not recognize that it is what you invited in that would destroyyou, and does demand total sacrifice of you. No partial sacrifice will appeasethis savage guest, for it is an invader who but seems to offer kindness, butalways to make the sacrifice complete. You will not succeed in being partialhostage to the ego, for it keeps no bargains and would leave you nothing. You mustchoose between total freedom and total bondage, for there are no alternativesbut these. You have tried many compromises in the attempt to avoid recognizingthe one decision you must make. And yet it is the recognition of the decision,just as it is, that makes the decision so easy. Salvation is simple, being ofGod, and therefore very easy to understand. Do not try to project it from youand see it outside yourself. In you are both the question and the answer; thedemand for sacrifice and the peace of God.

Love

[IA56]

Christmas as the End of Sacrifice

Fear not to recognize the whole idea of sacrifice as solely of your making. And seek not safety by attmepting to protect yourself from where it is not. Your brothers and your Father have become very fearful to you. And you would bargain with them for a few special relationships, in which you think you see some scraps of safety. Do not try longer to keep apart your thoughts and the Thought that has been given you. When they are brought together and perceived where they are, the choice between them is nothing more than gentle awakening, and as simple as opening your eyes to daylight when you have no more need of sleep. The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come. He comes demanding nothing. No sacrifice of any kind, of anyone, is asked by Him. In His Presence the whole idea of sacrifise loses all meaning. For He is Host to God. And you need but invite Him in Who is there already, by recognizing that His Hos is One, and nothought alien to His Oneness can abide with Him there. Love must be total togive Him welcome, for the Presence of holiness creates the holiness thatsurrounds it. No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of Christ,for the Host is as holy as the Perfect Innocence which He protects, and Whosepower protects Him. This Christmas givethe Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you. Let yourself be healedcompletely that you may join with Him in healing, and le tus celebrate ourrelease together by releasing everyone with us. Leave nothing behind, forrelease it total, and when you have accepted it with me you will give it withme. All pain and sacrifice and littleness will disappear in ourrelationship, which is as innocent asour relationship with our Father, and as powerful. Pain will be brought to usand disappear in our presence, and without pain there can be no sacrifice. Andwithout sacrifice there love must be. You who that sacrifice is love must learnthat sacrifice is separation from love. For sacrifice brings guilt as surely aslove brings peace. Guilt is the condition of sacrifice, as peace is theconditin for the awareness of your relationship with God. Through guilt youexclude your Father and your brothers from yourself. Through peace you invitethem back, realizing that they are where your invitation bids them be. What youexclude from yourself seems fearful, for you endow it with fear and try to castit out, through it is part of you. Who can perceive part of himself asloathsome, and live within himself in peace? And who can try to resolve the ”conflict”of Heaven and hell, without experiencing himself as incomplete and lonely? Aslong as you perceive the body as your reality, as long will you perceiveyourself as lonely and deprived. And so long will you also perceive yourself asa victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing others. For who could trustHeaven and its Creator aside without a sense of sacrifice and loss? And whocould suffer sacrifce and loss without attempting to restore himself? Yet howcould you accomplish this yourself, when the basis of your attempts is thebelief in the reality of the deprivation? Deprivation breeds attack, being thebelief that attack is justified. And as long as you would retain the deprivation,attack becomes salvation and sacrifice becomes love. So is it that, in all yourseeking for love, you seek for sacrifice and find it. Yet you find not love. Itis impossible to deny what love is and still recognize it. The meaning of lovelies in what you have cast outside yourself, and it has no meaning, while allthat you would keep away holds all the meaning of the universe, and holds theuniverse together in its meaning. Unless the universe were joined in you itwould be apart from God, and to be without Him is to be without meaning. In theholy instant the condition of love is met, for minds are joined without thebody´s interference, and where there is communication there is peace. ThePrince of Peace was born to re-establish the condition of love by teaching thatcommunication remains unbroken even if the body is destroyed, provide that yousee not the body as the necessary means of communication. And if you understandthis lesson, you will realize that to sacrifice the body is to sacrificenothing, and communication, which must be of the mind, cannot be sacrificed.Where, then, is sacrifice? The lesson I was born to teach, and still wouldteach to all my brothers, is that sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere. Forcommunication embraces everything, and in the peace it re-establishes, lovecomes of itself. Let no despair darken the joy of Christmas, for the time ofChrist in meaningless apart from joy. Le tus join in celebrating peace bydemanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so you offer me the love I offer you.What can be more joyous than to perceive we are deprived of nothing? Such isthe message of the time of Christ, which I give you that you may give it andreturn it to the Father, Who gave it to me. For in the time of Christcommunication is restored, and He joins us in the celebration of His Son´screation. God offers thanks to the holy host who would receive Him, and letsHim enter and abide where He would be. And by your welcome does He welcome youinto Himself, for what is contained in you who welcome you into Himself, forwhat is contained in you who welcome Him is returned to Him. And we butcelebrate His Wholeness as we welcome Him into ourselves. Those who receive theFather are one with Him, being host to Him Who created them. And by allowingHim to enter, the remembrance of the Father enters with Him, and with Him theyremember the only relationship they ever had, and ever want to have. This isthe time in which a new year will soon be born from the time of Christ. I haveperfect faith in you to do all that you would accomplish. Nothing will belacking, and you will make complete and not destroy. Say, then, to yourbrother:

”I give you to the Holy Spirit as part of myself, I knowthat you will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison myself. In thename of my freedom I choose your release, Because I recognize that we will bereleased together.”

So will then year begin in joy and freedom. There is much todo, and we have been long delayed. Accept the holy instant as this year isborn, and take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening.Make this year different by making it all the same. And let all yourrelationships be made holy for you. This is our will. Amen.

Love

[IA56]

THE FORGIVENESS OF ILLUSIONS

True Empathy

To empathize does not mean to join in suffering, for that is what you must refuse to understand. That is the ego´s interpretaion of emphaty, and is always used to form a special relationship in which the suffering is shared. The capacity to empathize is very useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him used it in His way. He does not understand suffering, and would have you teach it is not understandable. When He relates through you, He does not relate through your ego to another ego. He does not join in pain, understanding that healing pain is not accomplished by delusional attmepts to enter into it, and lighten it by sharing the delusion. The clearest proof that empathy as the ego used it is destructive lies certain people. These it select out, and joins with. And it never joins except to strengthen itself. Make nomistake about this maneuver; the ego always empathizes means. Yet of this youmay be sure; if you will merely sit quietly by and let the Holy Spirit relatethrough you, you will empathize with strength, and will gain in strength andnot in weakness. Your part is only to remember this; you do not want anythingyou value to come of a relationship. You choose neither to hurt it nor to healit in your own way. You do not know what healing is. All you have learned ofemphaty is from the past. And there is nothing form the past that you wouldshare, for there is nothing from the past that you would keep. Do not use emphatyto make the past real, and so perpetuate it. Step gently aside, and let healingbe done for you. Keep but one thought in mind and do not lose sight of it,however tempted you may be to judge any situation, and to determine yourresponse by judging it. Focus you mind only on this:

”I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon myGuest.
I have invited Him, and He is here. I need do nothing exceptnot to interfere.”

True emphaty is of Him Who knows what it is. You will learnHis interpretation of it if you let Him use your capacity for strength, and notfor weakness. He will not desert you, but be sure that you desert not Him.Humility is strength in this sense only ; that to recognize and accept the factthat you do no know is to recognize and accept the fact that He does know. Youare not sure that He will do His part, because you have never yet done yourscompletely. You cannot know how to respond to what you do not understand. Betempted not in this, and yield not to the ego´s triumphat use of empahty forits glory. The triupmf of weakness is not what you would offer to a brother.And yet you recognize no triumph but this. This is not knowledge, and the formof emphaty which would bring this about is so distorted that it would imprisonwhat it would release. The unredeemed cannot redeem, yet they have a Redeemer.Attempt to teach Him not. You are the learner; He the Teacher. Do notconfuse your role with His, for thiswill never bring peace to anyone. Offer your emphaty to Him for it is Hisperception and His strength that you would share. And let Him offer you His strengthand His perception, to be shared through you. The meaning of love is lost inany relationship that looks to weakness, and hopes to find love there. Thepower of love, which is its meaning, lies in the strength of God that hoversover it and blesses it silently by enveloping it in healing wings. Let this be,and do not try to substitute your ”miracle” for this. I have said that if abrother asks a foolish thing of you to do it. But be certain that this does notmean to do a foolish thing that would hurt either him or you, for what wouldhurt one will hurt the other. Foolish requests are foolish merely because theyconflict, since they alwayss contain some element of specialness. Only the HolySpirit recognizes foolish needs as well as real ones. And He will teach you howto meet both without losing either. You will attmept to do this only insecrecy. And you will think that by meeting the needs of one you do notjepoardize another, because you keep them separate and secret from each other.That is not the way, for it leads not to life and truth. No needs will long beleft unmet if you leave them all to Him Whose function is to meet them. That isHis function, and not yours. He will not meet them secretly, for He would shareeverything you give through Him. That is why He gives it. What you give throughHim is for the whole Sonship, not for part of it. Leave Him His function, forHe will fulfill it if you but ask Him to enter your relationships, and blessthem for you.

Love

[IA56]

The Power of Holiness

You may still think that holiness is impossible to understand, because you cannot see how it can be extended to include everyone. And you have been told that it must include everyone to be holy. Concern yourself not with the extention of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do not understand. Nor do you do them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demostrates you do not do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship when you do not understand the miracle itself? One attribute is no more difficult to understand than is the whole. If miracles are at all, their attributes would have to be miraculous, being part of them. There is a tendence to fragment, and then to be concerned about the truth of just a little part of the whole. And it is but a way of avoiding, or looking away from the whole, to what you think you might be better able to understand. For this is but another way in which you would still try to keep understanding to yourself. A better and far more helpful way to think ofmiracles is this: You do not understand them, either in part or in whole. Yetthey have been done throug you. Therefore your undertanding cannot be necessary. Yet it is stillimpossible to accomplish what you do not understand. And so there must beSomething in you that does understand. To you the miracle cannot seem natural,because what you have done to hurt your mind has made it so unnatural that itdoes not remember what is natural to it. And when you are told what is natural,you cannot understand it. The recognition of the part as whole, and of thewhole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, andwhat is natural to Him is natural to you. Wholly natural perception would showyou instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for itinvolves a contradiction of what miracles mean. And if you could understandtheir meaning, their attributes could hardly cause you perplexity. You havesucceeded whenever you have reached another mind and joined with it. When twominds join as one and share one idea equally, the first link in the awarenessof the Sonship as one has been made. When you have made this joining as theHoly Spirit bids you, and have offered it to Him to use as He sees fit, Hisnatural perception of your gift enables Him to understand it, and you to useHis understanding on your behalf. It is impossible to convince you of thereality of what has clearly been accomplished through your willingness whileyou believe that you must understand it or else it is not real. How can faithin reality be yours while you are bent on making it unreal? And are you reallysafer in maintaining the reality of illusions than you would be in joyouslyaccepting truth for what it is, and giving thanks for it? Honor the truth thathas been given you, and be glad you do not understand it. Miracles are naturalto the One Who speaks for God. For His task is to translate the miracle intothe knowledge which it represents, and which is hidden to you. Let Hisunderstanding of the miracle be enough for you, and do not turn away from allthe witnesses that He has given you to His reality. No evidence will convinceyou of the truth of what you do not want. Yet your relationship with Him isreal Regard this not with fear, but with rejoicing. The One you called upon iswith you. Bid Him welcome, and honor the witnesses who bring you the gladtidings He has come. It is true, just as you fear, that the acknowledge Him isto deny all that you think you know. But what you think you know was nevertrue. What gain is there to in clinging to it, and denying the evidence fortruth? For you have come too near to truth to renounce it now, and you willyield to its compelling attraction. You can delay this now, but only a littlewhile. The host of God has called to you, and you have heard. Never again willyou be wholly willing to not to listen. This is a year of joy, in which yourlistening will increase and peace will grow with its increase. The power ofholiness and the weakness of attack are both being brought into your awareness.And this has been accomplished in a mind firmly convinced that holiness isweakness and attack is power. Should not this be a sufficient miracle to teachyou that your Teacher is not of you? But remember also that whenever youlistened to His interpretation the result have brought you joy. Would youprefer the result of your interpretation, considering honestly what they havebeen? God wills you better. Could you not look with greater charity on whom Godloves with perfect love? Do not interpret against God´s Love, for you have manywitnesses that speak of it so clearly that only the blind and deaf could failto see and heart hem. This year determine not to deny what has been given youby God, for that is the only reason. He has called to you. His Voice has spokenclearly, and yet you have so little faith in what you heard, because you havepreferred to place still greater faith in the disaster you have made. Today, letus resolve together to accept the joyful tidings that disaster is not real andthat reality is not disaster. Reality is safe and sure, and wholly kind toeveryone and everything. There is no greater love than to accept this and beglad. For love asks only tht you be happy, and will give you everything thatmakes for happiness. You have never given any problems to the Holy Spirit Hehas not solved for you, nor will you ever do so. You have never tried to solveanything yourself and been successful. It is not time you brought these factstogether and made sense to them? This is the year for the application of the ideathat have been given you. For the ideas are mighty forces, to be used and notheld idly by. They have already proved their power sufficiently for you toplace your faith in them, and not in their denial. This year invest in truth,and let it work in peace. Have faith in Him Who has faith in you. Think whatyou have really seen and heard, and recognize it. Can you be alone withwitnesses like these?

Love

[IA56]

The Reward of Teaching

We have already learned that everyone teaches, and teaches all the time. You may have taught well, and yet you may not have learned how to accept the comfort of your teaching. If you will consider what you have taught,and how alien it is to what you thought you knew, you will be compelled to realize that your Teacher come from beyond your thought system. Therefore He could look upon it fairly, and perceived it was untrue. He must have done so from the basis of a very different thought system, and one with nothing incommon with yours. For certainly what He has taught, and what you have taught through Him, have nothing in common with what you taught before he came. And the results have been to bring peace where there was pain, and suffering has disappeared to be replaced by joy. You may have taught freedom, but have not have learned how to be free. I said earlier, ”By their fruits ye shall know them, and they shall know themselves.” For it is certain that you jugde yourself according to your teaching. The ego´s teaching produces immediateresults, because its decisions are immediately accepted as your choice. Andthis acceptance means that you are willing to judge yourself accordingly. Causeand effect are very clear in the ego´s thought system, because all yourlearning has been directed toward establishing the relationship between them.And would you nnot have faith in what you have so diligently taught yourself tobelieve? Yet remember how much care you have exerted in choosing its witnesses,and in avoiding those which spoke for the cause of truth and its effects. Doesnot the fact that you have not learned what you have taught show you that youdo not perceive the Sonship as one? And does it not also show you that you donot regard yourself as one? For it is impossible to teach successfully whollywithout conviction, and it is equally impossible that conviction be outside ofyou. You could never have taught freedom unless you did believe in it. And itmust be that what you taught came from yourself? Yet this Self you clearly donot know, and do not recognize It even though It functions. What functions mustbe there. And it is only if you deny what It has done that you could possiblydeny Its presence. This is a course in how to know yourself. You have taughtwhat you are, but have not let what you are teach you. You have been verycareful to avoid the obvious, and not to see the real cause and effectrelationship that is perfectly apparent. Yet within you is everything youtaught. What can it be that has not learned it? It must be this part that isreally outside yourself, not by your own projection, but in truth. And it isthis part that you have taken in that is not you. What you accept into your minddoes not really change it. Illusions are but beliefs in what is not there. Andthe seeming conflict between truth andillusion can only be resolved by separating yourself from the illusion and notfrom truth. Your teaching has already done this, for the Holy Spirit in part ofyou. Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God andyou, as you are God and Him together. For God´s Answer to the separation addedmore to you than you tried to take away. He protected both your creations andyou together, keeping one with you what you would exclude. And they will takethe place of what you took in to replace them. They are quite real, as part ofthe Self you do not know. They communicate to you through the Holy Spirit, andtheir power and gratitude to you for their creation they offer gladly to yourteaching of yourself, who is their home. You who are host to God arre also hostto them. For nothing real has ever left themind of its creator. And what is notreal was never there. You are not two selves in conflict. What is behond Godd?If you who hold Him and whom He holds are the universe, all else must beoutside, where nothing is. You have taught thiss, and from far off in theuniverse, yet not behond yourself, the witnesses to your teaching have gatheredto help you learn. Their gratitude has joined with yours and God´s tostrengthen your faith in what you taught yourself, and learning from theconviction you shared with them. This year you will begin to learn, and makelearning commensurate with teaching. You have chosen this by your ownwillingness to teach. Though you seemed to suffer for it, the joy of teachingwill yet be yours. For the joy of teaching is in the learning, who offers it tothe teacher in gratitude, and shares it with him. As you learn , yourgratitude, and shares it with him. As you learn, your gratitude to your Self,Who teaches you what He is, will grow and help you honor Him. And you willlearn His power and strength and purity, and love Him as His Father does. HisKingdom has no limits and no end, and there is nothing in Him that is notperfect and eternal. All this is you, and nothing ouytside of this is you. To yourmost holy Self all praise is due for what you are, and for what He is Whocreated you as you are. Sooner or later must everyone bringde the gap heimagines exists between his selves. Each one builds the bridge, which carrieshim across the gap as soon as he is willing to expend some little effort onbehalf of bridging it. His little effort are powerfully supplemented by thestrength of Heaven, and by the united will of all who make Heaven what it is,being joined within it. And so the one who would cross over is literallytransported there. Your bridge is builded stronger than you think, and yourfoot is planted firmy on it. Have no fear that the attraction of those whostand on the other side and wait for you will not drag you safely across. Foryou will come where you would be, and where your Self awaits you.

Love

[IA56]

The Illusion and the Reality of Love

Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship,for freedom lies in looking at it. 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 hidden, is undertaken solely to offset the hate, but not let it go. Your salvation will rise clearly before your 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 not 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 unrecongnized, 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 atlast emerge as yourself. This is the last step in the readiness for God. Be notunwilling now; you are too near, and you will cross the bridge in perfectsafety, translated quietly from war to peace. For the illusion of love willnever satisfy, but its reality, which awaits you on the other side, will giveyou everything. The special love relationships in an attempt to limitdestructive effects of hate by finding a haven in the storm of guilt. It makesno attempt to rise above the storm, into the sunlight. On the contrary, itemphasizes the guilt outside the haven by attempting to build barricadesagainst it, and keep within them. The special love relationship is notperceived as a value in itself, but as a place of safety from which hatred issplit off and kept apart. The special love partner is acceptable only as longas he seves this purpose. Hatred can enter, and indeed is welcome in someaspects of the relationship, but it is still held together by the illusion oflove. If the illusion goes, the relationship is broken or becomes unsatisfyingon the grounds of disillusionment. Love is not an illusion. It is a fact. Wheredisillusionment is possible, there was not love but hate. For hate is anillusion, and what can change was never love. It is sure that those who selectcertain ones as partners in any aspect of living, and use them for any purposewhich they would not share with others, are trying to live with guilt ratherthan die of it. This is the choice they see. And love, to them, is only anescape from death. They seek it deperately, but not in the peace in which itwould gladly come quietly to them. And when they find the fear of death isstill upon them, the love relationoship loses the illusion that it is what itis not. When the barricades against it are broken, fear rushes in and hatredtriuphs. There are not triumphs of love. Only hate is at all concerned with the”triuph of love”. 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 ofhatred lasts, so long will love be an illusion to you. And then the only choiceremaining possible i which illusion you prefer. There is no conflict in thechoice between truth and illusion. Seen in these terms, no one would hesitate.butconflict enters the instant the choice seems to be one between illusions, butthis choice does not matter. Where one choice is as dangerous as the other, thedecision must be one of despair. Your task is not to seek the love, but merelyto seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have builtagainst it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessaryto seek for what is false. Every illusion is one of fear, whatever from ittakes. And the attempt to escape from one illusion into another must fail. Ifyou seek love outside yourself you can be certain that you perceive hatredwithin, and are afraid of it. Yet peace will never come from the illusion oflove, but only from its reality. Recognize this, for it is true, and truth mustbe recognized if it is to be distinguished from illusion: The special loverelationship is an attempt to bring love into fear, and make it real in fear.In fundamental violation of love´s condition, the special love realtionshipwould accomplish the impossible. How but in illusion could this be done? It isessential that we look very closely at exactly what it is you think you can doto solve the dilemma which seems very real to you, but which does not exist.You have come close to truth, and only this stands between you and the bridgethat leads you into it. Heaven waits sileently, and your creations are holdingout 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 youwhole 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 yourcreation is the oneness of creation, without which you could never be complete.No specialness can offer you what God has given, and what you are joined withHim in giving. Across the bridge is your completion, for you will be wholly inGod, willing for nothing special, but only to be wholly like to Him, completingHim by by your completion. Fear not to cross to the abode of peace and perfectholiness. Only there is the completion of God and of His Son establishedforever. Seek not for this in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certainand where everything fails to satisfy. In the Name of God, be wholly willing toabandon all illusions. In any relationship in which you are wholly willing toaccept 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 willbuilt with God beside you, and will lead you straight to Him where your competion rests, whollycompatible with His. Every illusion you accept into your mind by judging it tobe attainable removes your own sense of completion, and thus denies theWholeness of your Father. Every fantasy, be it of love or hate, deprives you ofknowledge for fantasies are the veil behind which truth is hidden. To lift theveil that seems so dark and heavy, it is only needful to value truth beyond allfantasy, 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, but hate would have you stay.Hear not the call of hate, and see no fantasies. See in the call of hate, andin every fantasy that rises to dealy you, but the call for help that risesceaselessly from you to your Creator. Would He not answer you whose completionis His? He loves you, wholly without illusion, as you must love. For love iswholly without illusion, and therefore wholly without fear. Whom God remebersmust be whole. And God has never forgotten what makes Him whole. In yourcompletion lie the memory of His Wholeness and His gratitude to you for Hiscompletion. In His link with you lie both His inability to forget and yourability to remember. In Him are joined your willingness to love and all theLove of God, Who forgot you not. Your Father can no more forget the truth inyou than you can fail ro remember it. The Holy Spirit is the bridge to Him,made from your willingness to unite with Him and created by His joy in unionwith you. The journey that seemed endless is almost recognized it. Turn with mefirmly away from all illusions now, and let nothing stand in the way of truth.We will take the last useless journey away from truth together, and thentogether we go straight to God, in joyous answer to His call for Hiscompletion. If special relationships of any kind would hinder God´s completion,can they have any value to you? What would interfere with God must interferewith you. Only in time does interference in God´s completion seem to beimpossible. The bridge that He would carry you across lifts you from time intoeternity. Waken from time, and answer fearlessly the call of Him Who gaveeternity to you in creation. On this side of the bridge to timlessness youunderstand nothing. But as you step lightly across it, upheld by timelessness,you are directed straight to the Heart of God. At its center, and only there,you are safe forever, because you are complete forever. There is no veil to theLove of God in us together cannot lift. The way to truth is open. Follow itwith me.

Love

[IA56]

The Choice of Completion

In looking at the special relationship, it is necessary first to realize that it involves a great amount of pain. Anziety, 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. I have spoken of this before, but there are some aspects of what is really being attempted that have not been touched upon. 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 from 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 one which has the most appeal to those unwilling to relinquish guilt. The ”dynamics” of the ego are clearesthere, for counting on the attraction of this offering, the fantasies thatcenter around it are often quite overt. Here they are usually judged to beacceptable and even natural. No one considers it bizzare to love and hatetogether, and even those who believe that hate is sin merely feel guilty, butdo not correct it. This is the ”natural” condition of the separation, and thosewho learn that it is not natural at all seem to be the unnatural ones. For thisworld is the opposite of Heaven, being made to be its opposite, and everythinghere takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true. In Heaven, where themeaning of love is known, love is the same as union. Here, where the illusionof love is accepted in love´s place, love is perveived as separation andexclusion. It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish forspecial love from God, that the ego´s hatred triuphs. For the specialrelationship is the renunciation of the Love of God, and the attempt to securefor the self the specialness that He denied. It is essential to thepreservation of the ego that you beleive this specialness is not hell, butHeaven. For the ego would never have you see that separation could only beloss, being the one condition in which Heaven could not be. To everyone Heavenis completion. There can be no disagreement on this, because both the ego andthe Holy Spirit accept it. They are, however, in complete disagreement on what completion is,and how it is accomplished. The Holy Spirit knows that completion lies first inunion, and then in the extention of union. To the ego completion lies intriumph, and in the extension of the ”victory” even to the final triumph overGod. In this iit sees the ultimate freedom of the self, for nothing wouldremain to interfere with the ego. This is its idea of Heaven. And thereforeunion, which is a conditin in which the ego cannot interfere, must be hell. Thespecial relationship is a strange and unnatural ego device for joining hell andHeaven, 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 inabilityto perceive either as it is. The special relationship is the triumph of thisconfusion. It is a kind of union from which union is excluded, and the basisfor the attempt at union rests on exclusion. What better example could there beof the ego´s maxim, ”Seek but do not find?” Most curious of all is the conceptof the self which the ego fosters in the special relationship. The ”self” seeksthe relationship to make itself complete. Yet when it finds the special relationshipin 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 noincrease and no extention. Each partner tries to sacrifice the self he does notwant one het hinks he would prefer. And he feels guilty for the ”sin” oftaking, and of giving nothing of value in return. How much value can he placeupon a self that he would give away to get a ”better” one? The ”better” selfthe ego seeks is always one that is more special. And whoever seems to possessa special self is ”loved” for what can be taken from him. Where both partnerssee this special self in each other, the ego sees ”a union made in Heaven”. Forneither one will recognize that he has asked for hell, and so he will notinterfere with the ego´s illusion of Heaven, which it offered him to interferewith Heaven. Yet if all illusions are of fear, and they can be of nothing else,the illuison of Heaven is nothing more than an ”attractive” form of fear, inwhich the guilt is buried deep and rises in the form of ”love”. The appeal ofhell lies only in the terrible attracton of guilt, which the ego holds out tothose who place their faith in littleness. The conviction of littleness lies inevery special relationship, for only the deprived could value specialness. Thedemand for specialness, and the perception of the giving of specialness as anact of love, would make love hateful. The real purpose of the specialrelationship, in strict accordance woth the ego ´s goals, is to destroy realityand subsitute illusion. For the ego is itself and illusion, and only illusionscan be the witnesses to its ”reality”. If you perceived the specialrelationship as a triumph over God, would you want it? Le tus not think of itsfearful nature, nor of the guilt it must entail, nor of the sadness and theloneliness. For there are only attributes of the whole religion of separation,andd of the total context in which it is thought to occur. The central theme isits litany to sacrifice is that God must die so you can live. And it is thistheme that is acted out in the special relationship. Through the death of yourself you think you can attack another self, and snatch it from the other toreplace the self that you despise. And you despise it because you do not thinkit offers the specialness that you demand. And hating it you have made itlittle and unworthy, because you are afraid of it. How can you grant unlimitedpower to what you think you have attacked? So fearful has the truth become toyou that unless it is weak and little, you would not dare to look upon it. Youthink it safer to endow the little self you made with power you wrested fromtruth, triumphing over it and leaving it helpless. See how excatly is thisritual enacted in the special relationship. An altar is erected in between twoseparate people, and which each seeks to kill his self, and on his body raiseanother self to take its power from his death. Over and over and over thisritual is enacted. And it is never completed, nor ever will be completed. Theritual of completion cannot complete, for life arises not from death, norHeaven from hell. Whatever any form of special relationship tempts you to seekfor love in ritual, remember love is content, and not form of any kind. Thespecial relationship is a ritual of form, aimed at raising the form to take theplace of God at the expense of content. There is no meaning in the form, andthere will never be. The special relationship must be recongnized for what itis; a sensless ritual in which strength is extracted from the death of God, andinvested in His killer as the sign that form has triumphed over content, andlove has lost its meaning. Would you want this to be possible, even apart fromits evident impossibility? If it were possible, you would have made yourselfhelpless. God is not angry. He merely could not let this happen. You cannotchange His Mind. No rituals that you have set up in which the dance of deathdelights you can bring death to the eternal. Nor can your chosen substitute forthe Wholeness of God have any influence at all uponit. See in the specialrelationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods beforeHim, and by worshipping them to obscure their tininess and His greatness. Inthe name of your completion you do not want this. For every idol that you raiseto place before Hims tands before you, in place of what you are. Salvation liesin the simple fact that illusions are not fearful because the are not true.They but seem to be fearful to the extent to which you fail to recongize themfor what they are; and you will fail to do this to the extent to which you wantthem to be true. And to the same extent you are denying truth, and so arefailing to make the simple choice between truth and illusion; God and fantasy.Remember this, and you will have no difficulty in perceiving the decision asjust what it is, and nothing more. The core of the spearation illusion liessimply in the fantasy of destruction of love´s meaning. And unless love´smeaning is restored to you, you cannot know yourself who share its meaning.Separation is only the decision not to knowyourself. This whole thought system is a carefully contrived learningexperience, designed to lead away fromtruth and into fantasy. Yet for every learning that would hurt you, God offersyour correction and complete escape from all its consequences. The decisionwhether or not to listen to this couser and follow it is but the choice betweentruth and illusion. For here is truth, separated from illusion and not confusedwith it all. How simple does this choice become when it is perceived as onlywht it is. For only fantasies make confusion in choosing possible, and they aretotally unreal. This year is thus the time to make the easiest decision thatever confronted you, and also the only one. You will cross the bridge intoreality simply because you will recoginize that God is on the other side, andnothing at all is here. It is impossible not to make the natural decision asthis is realized.

Love

[IA56]

The Bridge to the Real World

The serch for the special relatonship is the sign that you equate yourself with the ego and not with God. For the special relationship has value only to the ego. To the ego, unless a relationship has special value it has no meaning, for it perceives all love as special. Yet this cannot be natural, for it is unlike the relationship of God and His Son, and all relationships that are unlike this one must be unnatural. For God created love as He would have it be, and gave it at is is. Love has no meaning except as its Creator defined it by His Will. It is impossible to define it otherwise and understand it. Love is freedom. To look for it by placing yourself in bondage is to separate yourself from it. For the Love of God, no longer seek for union in separation, nor for freedom in bondage! As you release, so will you be released. Forget this not, or love will be unable to find you and comfort you.There is a way in which the Holy Spirit asks your help, if you would have His. The holy instant is His most helpful aid in protecting you from the attraction ofguilt, the real lure in the special relationship. You do not recognize thatthis is its real appeal, for the ego has taught you that freedom lies in it.Yet the closer you look at the special relationship, the more apparant itbecomes that it must foster guilt and therefore must imprison. The specialrelationship it totally meaningless without a body. If you value it, you mustalso value a body. And what you value you will keep. The special relationshipis a device for limiting your self to a body, and for limiting your perceptionof others to theirs. The Great Rays would establish the total lack of value ofthe special relationship, if they were seen. For in seeing them the body woulddisappear, because its value would be lost. And so your whole investment inseeing it would be withdrawn from it. You see the world you value. On this sideof the bridge you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each otherin separate unions and to become one by losing. When two individuals seek tobecome one, they are trying to decrease the magnitude. Each would deny hispower, for the separate union excludes the universe. Far more is left outsidethan would be taken in, for God is left without and nothing taken in. If onesuch union were made in perfect faith, the universe would enter into it. Yetthe special relationship the ego seeks does not include even one wholeindividual. The ego wants but part of him, and sees only this part and nothingelse. Across the brigde it is so different! For a time the body is still seen,but not exclusively, as it is seen here. The little spark that holds the GreatRays within it is also visible, and this spark cannot be limited long tolittleness. Once you have crossed the bridge, the value of a body is sodiminished in your sight that ou will see no need at all to magnify it. For youwill realize that the only value the body has is to enable you to bring yourbrothers to the bridge with you, and to be released together there. The bridgeitself is nothing more than a transition in the perspective of reality. On thisside, everything you see is grossly distorted and completely out ofperspective. What is little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strongand powerful cut down to littleness. In the transition there is a period ofconfusion, in which a sense of actual disorientation may occur. But fear itnot, for it means only that you have been willing to let go your hold on thedistored frame of reference that seemed to hold your wourld together. Thisframe of reference is built around the special relationship. Without thisillusion there could be no meaning you would still seek here. Fear not that youwill be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality. Time is kind, and if youuse it on behalf of reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in yourtransition. The urgency is only indislodgin your mind from its fixed positionhere. This will not leave you homeless and without a frame of reference. Theperiod of disorientation, which precedes the actual transition, is far shorterthen the time it took to fix your mind so firmly on illusions. Delay will hurtyou now more than before, only because you realize it is delay, and that escapefrom pain is really possible. Find hope and comfort, rather than depair, inthis: You could not long find even the illusion of love in any specialrelationship here. For you are no longer wholly insane, and you would soonrecognize the guilt of self-betrayal for what it is. Nothing you seek tostrengthen in the special relationship is reallly part of you. And you cannotkeep part of the thought system that taught you it was real, and understand theThought that knows what you are. You have allowed the Thoought of your realityto enter your mind, and because you invited it, it will abide with you. Yourlove for it will not allow you to betray yourself, and you could not enter intoa relationship where it could not go with you, for you would not want to beapart from it. Be glad you have escaped the mockery of salvation the ego offeredyou, and look not back with longing on the travesty it made of yourrelationships. Now no one need suffer, for you have come too far to yield tothe illusion of the beauty and holiness of guilt. Only the wholly insane couldlook on death and suffering, sickness and despair, and see it thus. What guilthas wrought is ugly, fearful and very dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there. And beyour thankful that there is a place where truth and beauty wait for you. Go on to meet them gladly, and learn now howmuch awaits your for the simple willingness to give up nothing because it isnothing. The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will be theunderstanding of where Heaven is. From this side, it seems to be outside andacross the bridge. Yet as you cross to join it, it will join with you andbecome one with you. And you will think, inglad astonishment, that for all thisyou gave up nothing! The joy of Heaven, which has no limit, is increased with eachlight that returns to take its rightful place within it. Wait no longer, forthe Love of God and you. And may the holy instant speed you on the way, as itwill surely do if you but let it come to you. The Holy Spirit asks only thislittle help of you: Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationshipwhich still attracts you. He needs only your willingness to share Hisperspective to give it to you completely. And your willingness need not becomplete because His is perfect. It is His task to atone for your unwillingnessby His perfect faith, and it is His faith you share with Him there. Out of yourrecongnition of your unwillingness for your release, His perfect willingness isgiven you. Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His call. And let Him call on Heavenfor you.

Love

[IA56]

The End of Illusions

It is impossible to let the past go without relingquishing the special relationship. For the special relationship is an attempt to re-enact the past and change it. Imagined slights, remembered pain, past disappointments, perceived injustices and deprivations all enter into the special relationship, which becomes a way in which you seek to restore your wounded self-esteem. What basis would you have for choosing a special partner without the past? Every such choice is made because if something ”evil” in the past to which you cling, and for which must someone else atone. The special relationship takes venegance on the past. By seeking to remove suffering in the past, it overlooks the present in its preoccupation with the past and its total commitment to it. No special relationship is experienced in the past. Shades of the past envelop it, and make it what it is. It has no meaning it the present,and if it means nothing now, it cannot have any real meaning at all. How can you change the past except in fantasy? And who can give you what you think thepast deprived you of? The past is nothing. Do not seek to lay the blame fordeprivation on it, for the past is gone. You cannot really not let go what hasalready gone. It must be, therefore, that you are maintaining the illusion thatit has not gone because you think it serves some purpose that you wantfulfilled. And it must also be that this purpose could not be fulfilled in thepresent, but only in the past. Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego´sdrive for venegance on the past. It is completely savage and completely insane.For the ego remembers everything you have done that has offended it, and seeksretribution of you. The fantasies it brings to its chosen relationship in whichto act out its hate are fantasies of your destruction. For the ego holds thepast against you, and in your escape from the past it sees itself deprived ofthe venegance it believes you so justly merit. Yet without your alligance inyour own destruction, the ego could not hold you to the past. In the specialrelationship you are allowing your destruction to be. That this is insane isobvious. But what is less obvious is that the present is useless to you whileyou pursue the ego´s goal as its ally. The past is gone; seek not to preserveit in the special relationship that binds you to it, and would teach yousalvation is past and so you must return to the past to find salvation. Thereis no fantasy that does not contain the dream of retribution for the past.Would you act out the dream, or let it go? In the special relationship it doesnot seem to be an actiong out of venengance that you seek. And even when thehatred and the savagery break briefly through, the illusion of love is notprofoundly shaken. Yet the one thing the ego never allows to reach awareness isthat the specila relationship is the acting out of venegance on yourself. Yetwhat else could it be? In seeking the special relationship, you look not forglory in yourself. You have denied that it is there, and the relationshipbecomes your substitute for it. And venegance becomes your substitute forAtonement, and the escape from venegance becomes your loss. Against the ego´sinsane notion of salvation the Holy Spirit gently lays the holy instant. Wesaid before the Holy Spirit must teach through comparisons, and uses oppostiesto point to truth. The holy instant is the oppoisite of the ego´s fixed beliefin salvation through venegance for the past. In the holy instant it isunderstood tht the past is gone, and with its passing the drive for venegancehas been uprooted and has disappered. The stillness and the peace of now enfoldyou in perfect gentleness. Everything is gone except the truth. For a time youmay attempt to bring illusions into the holy instant, to hinder your fullawareness of the complete difference, in all respects, between your experienceof truth and illusion. Yet you will not attempt this long. In the holy instantthe power of the Holy Spirit will prevail, because you joined Him. Theillusions you bring with you will weaken the experience of Him for a while, andwill prevent you from keeping the expereince in your mind. Yet the holy instantis eternal, and your illusions of time will not prevent the timeless from beingwhat it is, nor you from experiencing it as it is. What God has given you istruly given, and will be truly received. For God´s gifts has no reality apartfrom your receiving them. Your receiving completes His giving. You will receivebecause it is His Will to give. He gave the holy instant to be given you, andit is impossible that you receive it not because He gave it. When He willedthat His Son to be free, His Sojn was free. In the holy instant is His reminderthat His Son will always be exactly as he was created. And everything the HolySpirit teaches is to remind you that you have received what God has given you.There is nothing ou can hold against reality. All that must be forgiven ar theillusions you have held against your brothers. Their reality has no past, andonly illusions can be forgiven. God holds nothing against anyone, for He isincapable of illusions of any kind. Release your brothers from the slavery oftheir illusions by forgiving them for the illusions you perceive in them. Thuswill you learn that you have been forgiven, for it is you who offered themillusions. In the holy instant this is done for you in time, to bring you thetrue condition of Heaven. Remember that you always choose between truth andillusion; between the real Atonement that would heal and the ego´s ”atonement”that would destroy. The power of God and all His Love, without limit, willsupport you as you seek only your place in the plan of Atonement arising fromHis Love. Be an ally of God and not the ego in seeking how Atonement can cometo you. His help suffices, for His Messenger understands how to restore theKingdom to you, and to place all your investment in salvation in yourrelationship with Him. Seek and find His message in the holy instant, where allillusions are forgiven. From there the miracle estends to bless everyone and toresolve all problems, be they perceived as great or small, possigle orimpossible. There is nothing that will not give place to Him and to Hismajesty. To join in close relationship with Him is to accept relationships asreal, and through their reality to give over all illusions for the reality ofyour relationship with God. Praise be to your relationship with Him and to noother. The truth lies there and nowhere else. You choose this or nothing.

”Forgive us our illusions, Father, and help us to accept ourtrue realtionship with You, in which there are no illusions, and where none canever enter. Our holiness is Yours. What can there be in us that needs forginesswhen Yours is perfect? The sleep of forgetfulness is only the unwillingness toremeber. Your forgiveness and Your Love. Let us not wander into temptation, forthe temptation of the Son of God is not Your Will. And let us receive only whatYou have given, and accept but this into the minds which You created and whichYou love. Amen.”

Love

[IA56]

FORGIVENESS AND THE HOLY RELATIONSHIP
Bringing Fantasy to Truth

The betrayal of the Son of God lies only in illusions, and all his ”sins” are but his own imagining. His reality is forever sonless. He need not be forgiven but awakened. In his dreams he has betrayed himself, his brothers and his God. Yet what is done in dreams has not been really done. It is impossible to convince the dreamer that this is so, for dreams are what they are because of their illusion of reality. Only in waking is the full release from them, for only then does it become perfectly apparant that they had no effect upon reality at all, and did not change it. Fantasies change reality.That is their purpose. They cannot do so in reality, but they can do so in the mind that would have reality be different. It is, then, only your wish to change reality that is fearful, because by your wish you think that you have accomplished what you wish. This strange position, in a sense, acknowledges your power. Yet by distorting it and devoting it to ”evil”, it also makes itunreal. You cannot be faithful to two masters who ask conflicting things ofyou. What you use in fantasy you deny to truth. Yet what you give to truth touse for you is safe from fantasy. When you maintain that there must be an orderof difficulty in miracles, all you mean is that there are some things you wouldwithhold from truth. You believe truth cannot deal with them opnly because youwould keep them from truth. Very simply, your lack of faith in the power thatheals all pain arises from your wish to retain some aspects of reality forfantasy. If you but realize what this must do to your appreciation of thewhole! What you reserve for yourself, you take away from Him Who would releaseyou. Unless you give it back, it is inevitable that your perspective on realitybe warped and uncorrected. As long as you would have it so, so long will theillusion of an order of difficulty in miracles remain with you. For you haveestablished this order in reality by giving some of it to one teacher, and someto another. And so ou learn to deal with part of the truth in one way, and inanother way the other part. To fragment truth is to destroy it by rendering itmeaningless. Orders of reality is a perspective without understanding; a frameof reference for reality to which it cannot really be compared at all. Thinkyou that you can bring truth to fantasy, and learn what truth means from theperspective of illusions? Truth has no meaning in illusion. The frame ofreference for its meaning must be itself. When you try to bring truth toillusions, you are trying to make illusions real, and keep them by justifyingyour belief in them. But to give illusions to truth is to enable truth to teachthat the illusions are unreal, and thus enable you to escape from them. Reservenot one idea aside from truth, or you establish orders of reality that must imprisonyou. There is no order in reality, because everything there is true. Bewilling, then, to give all you have to held outside the truth to Him Who knowsthe truth, and in Whom all is brought to truth. Be not concerned with anythingexcept your willingness to have this be accomplished. He will accomplish it;not you. But forget not this: When you become disturbed and lose your peace ofmind because another is attempting to solve his problems through fantasy, youare refusing to forgive yourself for just this same attempt. And you areholding both of you away from truth and from salvation. As you forgive him, yourestore to truth what was denied by both of you. And you will see forgivenesswhere you have given it.

Love

[IA56]

The Forgiven World

Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? In no fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely. Nothing you see here,sleeping or waking, comes near to such loveliness. And nothing will you value like unto this, nor hold so dear. Nothing that you remember that made your heart sing with joy has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you. For you will see the Son of God. You will behold the beauty the Holy Spirit loves to look upon, and which He thanks the Father for.He was created to see this for you, until you learned to see it for yourself.And all His teaching leads to seeing it and giving thanks with Him. This loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the real world, bright and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has been forgiven and there are no fantasies to hide the truth. The bridge between that world and this is so little and so easy to cross, that you could not believe it is the meeting place of worlds so different. Yet thislittle bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world at all. Thislittle step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stide through time intoeternity, beyond all ugliness into beauty that will enchant you, and will nevercease to cause you wonderment at its perfection. This step, is smallest evertaken, is still the greatest accomplishment of all in God´s plan of Atonement.All else is learned, but this is given, complete and wholly perfect. No one butHim Who planned salvation could complete it thus. The real world, in itsloveliness, you learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone, and no one andnothing remain still bound by them, and by your own forgiveness you are free tosee. Yet what you see is only what you made, with the blessing of yourforgiveness on it. And with this final blessing of God´s Son upon himself, the realperfection, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose.The stars will disappear in light, and the sun that opened up the world tobeauty will vanish. Perception will be meaningless when it has been perfected,for everything that has been used for learning will have no function. Nothingwill ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that madeperception possible will still occur. The perception of the real world, will beso short that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will takethe last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world and have been madeready for Him. The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness ofthe old, the world you see without forgiveness. The Great Transformer ofperception will undertake with you the carful serching of the mind that madethis world, and uncover to you the seeming reasons for your maiking it. In thelight of the real reason that He brings, as you follow HIm, He will show youthat there is no reason here at all. Each spot His reason touches grows alivewith beauty, and what seemed ugly in the darkness of your lack of reason issuddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanitycould be without a hidden spark of beauty that gentleness could release. Allthis beauty will rise to bless your sight as you look upon the world withforgivning eyes. For forgiveness literally transforms vision, and lets you seethe real world reaching quietly and gently across chaos, removing all illusionsthat had twisted your perception and fixed it on the past. The smallest leafbecomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God´s perfection.From the forgiven world the Son of God is lifted easily into his home. Andthere he knows that he has always rested there is peace. Even salvation willbecome a dream, and vanish from his mind. For salvation is the end of dreams,and with the closing of the dream will have no meaning. Who, awake in Heaven,could dream that there could never be need of salvation? How much do you wantsalvation? It will give you the real world, trembling with readiness to giveyou. The eagerness of the Holy Spirit to give you this is so intense He wouldnot wait, although He waits in patience. Meet His patiece with your impatienceat delay in meeting Him. Go out in gladness to meet with your Redeemer, andwalk with Him in trust out of this world, and into the real world of beauty andforgiveness.

Love

[IA56]

Shadow of the Past

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 firgures 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 bring them, you will hear them. And you who keep them by your own selection do not understand how they came into your mind, 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 heart hem. They offer you the ”reasons” why you should enter into unholly alliance to support the ego´s goals, and make your relationships the witness toits power. It is there shadow figures that would make the ego holy in yoursight, and teach you what you do not keep it safe is really love. The shadowfigures always speak for venegance, and all relationships into which they enterare totally insane. Without exception, these relationsips have as their purposethe exclusion of the truth about the other, and of yourself. This is why yousee in both what is not there, and make of both the slaves of vengeance. Andwhy whatever reminds you of your past grievances attracts you, and seems to goby the name of love, no matter how distorted the associations by which youarrive at the connection may be. And finally, why all such relationships becomeattempts at union through the body, for only bodies can be seen as means forvengeance. That bodies are central to all unholy relationships is evident. Yourown experience has taught you this. But what you may not realize are all thereasons that go to make the relationship unholy. For unholiness seeks toreinforce itself, as holines does, by gathering to itself what it perceives aslike itself. In the unholy relationship, it is not the body of the other withwhich union is attempted, but the bodies of those who are not there. For eventhe body of the other, already a verely limited perception of him, is not thecentral focus as it is, or in eternity. What can be used for fantasies ofvengance, and what can be most readily associated with those on whom vengeanceis really sought, is centered on and separated off as being the only parts ofvalue. Every step taken in the making, the maintaining and the breaking off ofthe 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 bedecreases in importance. Time is indeed unkind to the unholy relationship. Fortime is cruel in the ego´s hands, as it is kind when used for gentleness. Theattraction of the unholy relationship begins to fade and to be questionedalmost at once. Once it is formed, doubt must enter in, because its purpose isimpossible. The ”ideal” of the unholy relationship thus becomes one in whichthe reality of the other does not enter at all to ”spoil” the dream. And theless the other really brings to the relationship, the ”better” it becomes.Thus, the atempt at union becomes a way of excluding even the one with whom theunion was sought. For it was formed to get him out of it, and join withfantasies in uninterrupted ”bliss”. How can the Holy Spirit bring Hisinterpretation to the body as a means of communication into relationship whoseonly purpose is separationfrom reality? What forgiveness is enables Him to doso. If all bu tloving thoughts has been fogotten, what remains is eternal. Andthe transformed past is made like the present. No longer does the past conflictwith now. This continuity extends the present by increasing its reality and itsvalue in your perception of it. In these loving thoughts is the spark of beautyhidden in the ugliness of the unholy relationship where hatred is rememberd;yet there to come alive as the relationship is given to Him Who gives it lifeand beauty. That is why Atonement centers on the past, which is the source ofseparation, and where it must be undone. For separation must be corrected whereit was made. The ego seeks to ”resolve” its problems, not at their source, butwhere they were no tmade. And thus it seeks to guarantee there will be nosolution. The Holy Spirit wants only to make His resolutions complete andperfect, and so He seeks and finds the source of problems where it is, andthere undoes it. And with each step in His undoing is the separation mor e andmore undone, and union brought closer. He is not at all confused by andy”reasons” for separation. All He perceives in separation is that it must beundone. Let Him uncover the hidden spark of beauty in your relationships, andshow it to you. Its loveliness will so attract you that you will be unwillingever to lose the sight of it again. And you will let this spark transform therelationship so you can see it more and more. For you will want it more andmore, and become increasingly unwilling to let it be hidden from you. And youwill learn to seek for and establish the conditions in which this beauty can beseen. All this you will do gladly, if you but let Him hold the spark beforeyou, to light your way and make it clear to you. God´s Son is one. Whom God hasjoined as one, the ego cannot puta sunde. The spark of holiness must be safe,however hidden it may be, inevery relationship. For the Creator of the onerelationship has left no part of it without Himself. This is the only part ofthe 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 whereit is not and as it is not. Give the past to Him Who can change your mind aboutit for you. But first, be sure you fully realize what you have made the past torepresent, and why. The past becomes the justification for entering into acontinuing, unholy alliance with the ego against the present. For the presentis forgiveness. Therfore, the relationship s the unholy alliance dictates arenot perceived nor felt as now. Yet the frame of reference to which the presentis referred for meaning is an illusion of the past, in which those elements thtfit 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 thepresent as witnesses for its reality. What is kept but witnesses to the realityof dreams. It is still up to you to choose to join with truth or with illusion.But remember that to choose one is to let the other go. Which one you chooseyou will endow with beauty and reality, because the choice depends on which youvalue more. The spark of beauty or the veil of ugliness, the real world or theworld of guilt and fear, truth or illusion, freedom or slavery – it is all thesame. For you can never choose except between God and the ego. Thought systemsare but true or false, and all their attributes come simply from what they are.Only the Thoughts of God are true. And all the follows from them comes fromwhat they are, and is as true as is the holy Source from Which they came. Myholy brother, I would enter into all your relationships, and step between youand your fantasies. Let my relationship to you be real to you, and let me bringreality to your perception of your brothers. They were not created to enableyou to hurt yourself through them. They were created to create with you. Thisis the truth that I would interpose between you and your goal of madness. Benot separate from me, and let not the holy purpose of Atonement be lost to youin dreams of vengeance. Relationships in which such dreams are cherished have excluded me. Let me enter in theName of God and bring you peace, that you may offer peace to me.

Love

[IA56]

The Two Pictures

God established His relationship with you to make you happy,and nothing you do that does not shares His purpose can be real. The purpose God ascribed to anything is its only function. Because of His reason for creating His relationship with you, the function of relationships became forever ”to make happy”. And nothing else. To fulfill this function you relate to your creations as God to His. For nothing God created is apart from happiness, and nothing God created but would extend happiness as its Creator did. Whatever does not fulfill this function cannot be real. In this world is it impossible to create. Yet it is possible to make happy. I have said repeatedly that the Holy Spirit would not deprive you of your special relationships, but would transform them. And all that is meant by that is thatHe will restore to them the function given them by God. The function you have given them is clearly not to make happy. But the holy relationship shares God´s purpose, rather than aiming to make a substitute for it. Every specialrelationship you have made is a substitute of God´s Will, and glorifies yourinstead of His because of the illusion that they are different. You have madevary real relationships even in this world. Yet you do not recongize thembecause you have raised their substitutes to such predominance that, when truthcalls to you, as it does constantly, you answer with a substitute. Everyspecial relationship you have made has, as its fundamental purpose, the aim ofoccupying your mind so completely thatyour will not hear the call of truth. In a sense, the special relationship wasthe ego´s answer to the creation of the Holy Spirit, Who was God´s Answer tothe separation. For although the ego did not understand what had been created,it was aware of threat. The whole defense system the ego evolved to protect theseparation from the Holy Spirit was in response to the gift with which Godblessed it, and by His blessing enabled it to be healed. The blessing holdswithin itself the truth about everything. And the truth is that the Holy Spiritis in close relationship with you, because in Him is your relationship with Godrestored to you. The relationship with Him has never been broken, because theHoly Spirit has not been separate from anyone since the separation. And throughHim have all your holy relationships been carefully preserved, to serve God´spurpose for you. The ego is alert to threat, and the part of your mind intowhich the ego was accepted is very anxious to preserve its reason, as it seesit. It does not realize that it is totally insane. And you must realize just whatthis means if you would be restored to sanity. The insane protect theri thoughtsystems, but they do so insanely. And all their defenses are as insane as whatthey are supposed to protect. The separation has nothing in it, no part, no”reason”, and no attribute that is not insane. And its ”protection” is part ofit, as insane as the whole. The special relationship, which is its chiefdefense, must therefore be insane. You have but little difficulty now inrealizing that the thought system the special relationship protects is but asystem of delusions. You reconize, at least in general terms, that the ego isinsane. Yet the special relationship still seems to you somehow to be”different”. Yet we have looked at it far closer than we have at many other aspectsof the ego´s thought system that you have been willing to let go. While thisone remains, you will not let the other go. For this one is not different.Retain this one, and you have retained the whole. It is essential to realizethat all defenses do what they would defend. The underlying basis for theireffectiveness is that they offer what they defend. What they defend is placedin them for safe-keeping, and as they operate they bring it to you. Everydefense operates by giving gifts, and the gift is always a miniature of thethough system the defense protectds, set in a golden frame. The frame is veryelaborate, all set with jewels, and deeply carved and polished. Its purpose isto be of value in itself, and to divert your attention from what it encloses.But the frame without the picture you cannot have.Defenses operate to make youthink you can. The special relationship has to most imposing and deceptive frameof all the defenses the ego uses. Its thought system is offered here,surrounded by a frame so heavy and so elaborate that the picture is almostobliterated by its imposing structure. Into the fram are wowen all sorts offanciful and fragmented illusions of love, set with dreams of sacrifice andself-aggrandizement, and interlaced with gilded threads of self-destruction.The glitter of blood shines like rubies, and the tears are faceted likediamonds and gleam in the dim light in which the offering is made. Look at thepicture. Do not let the fram distract you. This gift is given you for yourdamnation, and if you take it you will believe that you are damned. You cannothave the frame without the picture. What you value is the frame, for there yousee no conflict. Yet the frame is only the wrapping for the gift in conflict.The frame is not the gift. Be not deceived by the most superficial aspects ofthis thougt system, for these aspects enclose the whole, complete in everyaspect. Death lies in the glittering gift. Let not your gaze dwell on thehypnotic gleaming of the frame. Look at the picture, and realize that death isoffered you. That is why the holy instant is so important in the defense oftruth. The truth itself needs no defense, but you do need defense against youraccpetance of the gift of death. When you who are truth accept and idea sodangerous to truth, you threaten truth with destruction. Adn your defense mustnow be undertaken, to keep truth whole. The power of Heaven, the Love of God,the tears of Christ, and the joy of His eternal Spirit are marshalled to defendyou from your own attack. For you attack Them, being part of Them, and Theymust save you, for They love Themselves. The holy instant is a miniature ofHeaven, sent you from Heaven. It is a picture, too, set in frame. Yet if youaccept this gift you will not see the frame at all, because the gift can onlybe accepted through your willingness to focus all your attention on thepicture. The holy instant is a miniature of eternity. It is a picture oftimelessness, set in a frame of time. If you focus on the picture, you willrealize that it was only the frame that made you think it was a picture.Without the frame, the picture is seen as what it represents. For as the wholethougt system of the ego lies in its gifts, so the whole of Heaven lies in thisinstant, borrowed from eternity and set in time for you. Two gifts are offeredyou. Each is complete, and cannot be partially accepted. Each is a picture ofall that you can have, seen very differently. You cannot compare their value bycomparing a picture to a frame. It must be a picture only that you cmpare, orthe comparision is wholy without meaning. Remember that it is the picture thatis the gift. And only on this basis are you really free to choose. Look at thepictures. Both of them. One is a tiny picture, hard to see at all beneath theheavy shadows of its enormous and disproportionate enclosure. The other islightly framed and hung in light, lovely to look upon for what it is. You whohave tried so hard, and are still trying, to fit the better picture into thewrong frame and so combine what cannot be combined, accept this and be glad:These pictures are each framed perfectly for what they represent. One is framedto be out of focus and not seen. The other is framed for perfect clarity. Thepicture of darkness and of death grows less convincing as you serch it out amidits wrappings. And each senseless stone that seems to shine from the frame indarkness is exposed to light, it becomes dull and lifeless, and ceases todistract you from the picture. And finaly you look upon the picture itself,seeing at last that, unprotected by the frame, it has no meaning. The otherpicture is lightly framed, for time cannot contain eternity. There is nodistraction here. The picture of Heaven and eternity grows more convincing asyou look at it. And now, by real comparison, a transformationj of both picturescan at last occur. And each is given its rightful place when both are seen inrelation to each other. The dark picture, brought to light, is not perceived asfearful, but the fact that it is just a picture is brought home at last. Andwhat you see there you will recognize as what it is; a picture of what youthought was real, and nothing more. For beyond this picture you will seenothing. The picture of light, in clear-cut and unmistakable contrast, istransformed into what lies beyond the picture. As you look on this, you realizethat it is not a picture, but a reality. This is no figured representation of athought system, but the Thought itself. What it represents is there. The framefades gently and God rises to your rememberance, offering you the whole ofcreation in exchange for your little picture, wholly without value and eternitydeprived of meaning. As God ascends into His rightful place and you to yours,you will experience again the meaning of relationship and know it to be true. Letus ascend in peace to the Father, by giving Him ascendance in our minds. Wewill gain everything by giving Him the power and the glory, and keeping noillusions of where they are. They are in us, through His ascendance. What Hehas given is His. It shines in every part of Him, as in the whole. The wholereality of your relationship with Him lies in our relationship to one another. Theholy instant shines alike on all relationship, for in it they are one. For hereis only healing, already complete and perfect. For here is God, and where He isonly perfect and complete can be.

Love

[IA56]

The Healed Relationship

The holy relationship is the expression of the holy instantin living in this world. Like everything about salvation, the holy instant is apractical device, witnessed to by its results. The holy instant never fails.The experience of it is always felt. Yet without expression it is not remembered. The holy relationship is a constant reminder of the experience in which the relationship is a constant reminder of the unholy relationship is a continuing hymn of hate i praise of its maker, so is the holy relationship a happy song of praise to the Rendeemer of relationships. The holy relationship,a major step toward the perception of the real world, is learned. It is the old, unholy relationship, transfomed and seen anew. The holy relationship is a phenomenal teaching accomplishment. In all its aspects, as it begins, deveops and becomens accomplished, it represents the revesal of the unholyrelationship. Be comforted in this; the only difficult phase is the beginning. For here, the goal of the realtionship is abruptly shifted to the exact opposite of what it was. This is the first, result of offering the relationshipto the Holy Spirit, to use for His purposes. This invitation is acceptedimmediately, and the Holy Spirit wastes no time in introducing the practicalresults of asking Him to enter. At once His goal replaces yours. This isaccomplished very rapidly, but it makes the relationship seem disturbed,disjunctive and even quite distressing. The reason is quite clear. For therelationship as it is is out of line with its own goal, and clearly unsuited tothe purpose that has been accepted for it. In its unholy condition, your goalwas all that seemed to give it meaning. Now it seems to make no sense. Manyrelationships have been broken off at this point, and the pursuit of the oldgoal re-established in another relationship. For once the unholy relationshiphas accepted the goal of holiness, it can never again be what it was. Thetemptation of the ego becomes extremly intense, with this shift of goals. Forthe relationship has not as yet been changed sufficiently to make its formergoal completely without attraction, amd ots strictire os ”threatened” by therecognition of its inappropriateness for meeting its new purpose. The conflictbetween the goal and the structure of the relationship is so apparant that theycannot coexist. Yet now the goal will not be changed. Set firmly in the unholyrelationship, there is no course except to change the relationship to fit thegoal. Until this happy solution is seen and accepted as the only way out of theconflict, the relationship may seem to be severly strained. It would not bekinder to shift the goal more slowly, for the contrast would be obscured, andthe ego given time to reninterpret each slow step according to its liking. Onlya radical shift in purpose could induce a complete change of mind about whatthe whole relationship is for. As this change develops and is finallyaccomplished, it grows increasingly beneficent and joyous. But at thebeginning, the situation is experienced as very precarious. A relationship,undertaken by two individuals for their unholy purposes, suddenly has holinessfor its goal. As these two contemplate their relationship from the poÃ♥nt ofview of this new purpose, they are inevitably appalled. Their perception of therelationship may even become quite disorganized. And yet, the former organizationof their perception no longer serves the purpose they have agreed to meet. Thisis the time for faith. You let this goal be set for you. That was an act offaith. Do not abandon faith, now that the rewards of faith are beingintroduced. If you believed the Holy Spirit was there to accept therelationship, why would you now not still believe that He is there to purifywhat He has taken under His guidance? Have faith in your brother in what butseems to be a trying time. The goal is set. And your relationship has sanity asits purpose. For now you find yourself in an insane relationship, recognized assuch in the light of its goal. Now the ego conusels thus; substitute for thisanother relationship to which your former goal was quite approoriate. You canescape from your distress only by getting rid of your brother. You need notpart entirely if you choose not to do so. But you must exclude major areas offantasy form each other, to save your sanity. Hear not this now! Have faith inHim Who answered you? He heard. Has He not been very explicit in His answer? Youare not now wholly insane. Can you deny that He has given you a most explicitstatement? Now He asks for faith a little longer, evenin bewilderment. For thiswill go, and you will see this justification for your faith emerge, to bringyou shining conviction. Abandon Him not now, nor one another. This relationshiphas been reborn as holy. Accept with gladness what you do not understand, andlet it be explained to you as you perceive its purpose work in it to make itholy. You will find many opportunities to blame your brother for the ”failure”of your relationship, for it will seem at times to have no purpose. A sense ofaimlessness will come to haunt you, and to remind you of all the ways you oncesought for satisfaction and thought you found it. Forget not now the misery youreally found, and do not breath life into your failing ego. For yourrelationship has not been disrupted. It has been saved. You are very new in theways of salvation, and think you have lost your way. Your way is lost, butthink not this is loss. In your newness, remember that you have started again,together. And take your brother´s hand, to walk together along a road far morefamiliar than you now believe. Is it not certain that you will remember a goalunchanged throughout eternity? For you have chosen but the goal of God, fromwhich your true intent was never absent. Throughout the Sonship is the song offreedom heard, in joyous echo of your choice. You have joined with many in theholy instant, and they have joined with you. Think not your choice will leaveyou confortless, for God Himself has blessed your holy relationship. Join inHis blessing, and withhold not yours upon it. For all it needs now is yourblessing, that you may see that in it rests salvation. Condemn salvation not,for it has come to you. And relationship in which all the Sonship is togetherblessed. You undertook, together, to invite the Holy Spirit into yourrelationship. He could not have entered otherwise. Although you may have mademany mistakes since then, you have also made enormous efforts to help Him doHis work. And he has not been lacking in appreciation for all you have done forHim. Nor does He see the mistakes at all. Have you been similarly grateful toyour brother? Have you consistently appreciated the good efforts, andoverlooked mistakes? Or has your appreciation flickered and grown dim in whatseemed to be the light of the mistakes? Perhaps you are now entering upon acompaign to blame him for the discomfort of the situation in which you findyourself. And by this lack of thanks and gratitude you made yourself unable toexpress the holy instant, and thus lose sight of it. The experince of aninstant, however compelling it may be, is easily forgotten if you allow time toclose over it. It must be kept shining and gracious in your awareness of time,but not concealed within it. The instant remains. But where are you? To givethanks to one another is no appreciate the holy instant, and thus enable itsresults to be accpeted and shared. To attack your brother is not to lose theinstant, but to make it powerless in its effects. You have received the holyinstant, but you may have established a condition in which you cannot use it.As a result, you do not realize that it is with you still. And by cuttingyourself off from its expression, you have denied yourself its benefit. You reinforcethis every time you attack your brother, for the attack must blind you toyourself. And it is impossible to deny yourself, and to recognize what has beengiven and recived by you. You and your brother stand together in the holypresence of truth itself. Here is the goal, together with you. Think you notthe goal itself will gladly arrange the means for its accoplishment? It is justthis same discrepancy between the purpose that has been accepted and the meansas they stand now which seems to make you suffer, but which makes Heaven glad.If Heaven were outside you, you could not share in its gladness. Yet because itis within, the gladness, too, is yours. You are joined in purpose, but remainstill separate and divided on the means. Yet the goal is fixed, firm andunalterable, and the means will surely fall in place because the goal is sure.And you will share the gladness of the Sonship that it is so. As you begin torecongize and accept the gifts you have so freely given to your brother, youwill also accept the effects of the holy instant and use them to correct allyour mistakes and free you from their results. And learning this, you will have also learnedhow to release all the Sonship, and offer it in gladness and thanksgiving toHim Who gave you your release, and Who would extend it through you.

Love

[IA56]

Setting the Goal

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. Thre are certain 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 which 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 thisdisorganized approach is evident. The ego does not know what it wants to comeof the situation. It is aware of what it does not want, byt only that. It hasno 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 alreadyhappened. Then you look back at it, and try to piece together what it must havemeant. And you will be wrong. Not only is your judgment in the past, but youhave no idea what should happen. No goal was set with which to bring the meansin line. And now the only judgment left to make is whether or not the ego likesit; is it acceptable, or does it call for vengeance? The absence of a criterin foroutcome, set in advance, makes understanding doubtful and evaluationimpossible. The value of deciding in advance what you want to happen is simplythat you will perceive the situation as a means to make it happen. You willtherefore make every effort to overlook what interferes with the accomplishmentof your objective, and concentrate on everything that helps you meet it. It isquite noticeable that this approach has brought you closer to the Holy Spirit´ssorting out the truth and falsity. The true becomes what can bbe used to meetthe goal. The false becomes the useless from this point of view. The situationnow has meaning, but only because the goal has made it meaningful. The goal oftruth has further practical advantages. If the situation is used for truth andsanity, its outcome must be peace. And this is quite apart from what theoutcome is. If peace is the condition of truth and sanity, and cannot bewithout them, where peace is they must be. Truth comes of itself. If youexperience peace, it is because the truth has come to you and you will see theoutcome truly, for deception cannot prevail against you. You will recognize theoutcome because you are at peace. Here again you see the opposite of the ego´sway of looking, for the ego believes the situation brings the experience. TheHoly Spirit knows that the situation is as the goal determines it, and isexpereinced according to the goal. The goal of truth requires faith. Faith isimplicit in the acceptance of the Holy Spirit´s purpose, and this faith isall-inclusive. Where the goal of truth is set, there faith must be. The HolySpirit sees the situation as a whole. The goal establishes the fact thateveryone involved in it will olay his part in its accomplishemt. This isinevitable. No one will fail in anything. This seems to ask for faith beyondyou, and beyond what you can give. Yet this is so only from the viewpoint ofthe ego, for the ego believves in”solving” conflict through fragmentation, anddoes not perceive the situation as a whole. Therefore, it seeks to split offsegment of the situation and deal with them separately, for it has faith inseparation and not in wholeness. Confronted with any aspect of the situationthat 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 thisattempt conflicts with unity, and must obscure the goal of truth. And peacewill not be expereinced except in fantasy. Truth has not come because faith hasbeen denied, being withheld from where it righfully belonged. Thus do you losethe understanding of the situation the goal of truth sould bring. For fantasysolutions bring but the illusion of experience, and the illusion of peace isnot the condition in which truth can enter.

Love

[IA56]

The call for Faith

The substitutes for aspects of the situation are the witnesses to your lack of faith. They demonstrate that you did not believe the situation and the problems were in the same place. The problems was the 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 faith that 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. There is no problems in any situation that faith will not solve. There is no shift in any aspect of the problem but will make solution impossible. For if you shift part of the problem elsewhere the meaning of the problem must be lost, and the solution to the problem is inherent in its meaning. Is it not possible that all your problems have been solved, but you have removed yourself from the solution?Yet faith must be where something has been done, and where you see it done. Asituation is a relationship, being the joining of thoughts. If problems areperceived, it is because the thoughts are judged to be in conflict. But if thegoal is truth, this is impossible. Some idea of bodies must have entered, forminds cannot attack. The thought of bodies is the sign of faithlessness, forbodies cannot solve anything. It is their intrusion on the relationship, anerror in your thoughts about the situation, which then becomes thejustification for your lack of faith. You will make this error, but be not atall concerned with that. The error does not matter. Faithlessness brought tofaith will never interfere with truth. But faithlessness used against truth willalways destroy faith. If you lack faith, ask that it be restored where it waslost, and seek not to have it made up to your elsewhere, as if you had beenunjustly deprived of it. Only what you have not given can be lacking in anysituation. But remember this; the goal of holiness was set for yourrelationship, and not by you. You did not set it because holiness cannot beseen except through faith, and your relationship was not holy because yourfaith in your brother was so limited and little. Your faith must grow to meetthe goal that has been set. The goal´s reality will call this forth, for youwill see that peace and faith will not come separately. What situation can yoube in without faith, and remain faithful to your brother? Every situation inwhich you find yourself is but a means to meet the purpose set for yourrelationship. See it as something else and you are faithless. Use not yourfaithlessness. Let it enter and look upon it calmly, but do not use it.Faithlessness is the servant of illusion, and wholly faithful to its master.Use it, and it will carry you staight to illusions. Be tempted not by what itoffers you. It interferes, not with the goal, but with the value of the goal toyou. Accept not the illusion of peace it offers, but look upon its offering andrecognize it is illusion. The goal of illusion is as closely tied tofaithlessness as faith to truth. If you lack faith in anyone to fulfill, andperfectly, his past in any situation dedcated in advance to truth, yourdedication is divided. And so you have been faithless to your brother, and usedyour faithlessness against him. No relationship is holy unless its holinessgoes with it everywhere. As holiness and faith go hand in hand, must its faithgo everywhere with it. The goal´s reality will call forth and accomplish everymiracle needed for its fulfillment. Nothing too small or too enorrmous, tooweak or too complelling, but will be gently turned to its use and purpose. Theuniverse will serve it gladly, as it serves the universe. But do not interfere.The power set in you in whom the Holy Spirit´s goal has been established is sofor beyond your little conception of the infinite that you have no idea howgreat the strength that goes with you. And you can use this in perfect saflty.Yet for all its might, so great it reaches past the stars and to the universethat lies beyond them, your little faithlessness can make it useless, if youwould use the faithlessness instead. Yet think on this, and learn the cause offaithlessness: You think you hold against your brother what he has done to you.But what your really blame him for is what you did to him. It is not his pastbut yours you hold against him. And you lack faith in him because of what youwere. Yet you are as innocent of what you were as he is. What never was iscauseless, and is not there to interfere with truth. There is no cause forfaithlessness, but there is Cause for faith. That Cause has entered anysituation that shares Its purpose. The light of truth shines from the center ofthe situation, and touches everyone to whom the situation´s purpose calls. It calls to everyone. There is nosituation that does not involve your whole relationship, in every aspect andcomplete in every part. You can leave nothing of yourself outside it and keepthe situation holy. For it shares the purpose of your whole relationship, andderives its meaning from it. Enter each situation with the faith you give yourbrother, or you are faithless to your own relationship. Your faith will callthe others to share your purpose, as the same purpose calls forth the faith inyou. And you will see the means you once employed to lead you to illusionstransformed to means for truth. When the Holy Spirit changed the purpose ofyour relationship by exchanging your for His, the goal He placed there wasextended to every situation in which you enter, or will ever enter. And every situation was thus made free of thepast, which would have made it purposeless. You call for faith because of HimWho walks with you in every situation. You are no longer wholly insane, nor nolonger alone. For loneliness in God must be a dream You whose relationshipshares the Holy Spirit´s goal are set apart from loneliness because the truthhas come. Its call for faith is strong. Use not your faithlessness against it,for it calls you to salvation and to peace.

Love

[IA56]

The Conditions of Peace
The holy instant is nothing more than a special case, or an extreme example, of what every situation is meant to be. The meaning that theHoly Spirit´s purpose has given it is also given to every situation. It calls forth just the same suspension of faithlessness, withheld and left unused, that faith might answer to the call of truth. The holy instant is the shiningexample, the clear and unequivocal demonstration of the meaning of every relationship and every situation, seen as a whole. Faith has accepted every aspect of the situation, seen as a whole. Faith has accepted every aspect of the situation, and faithlessness has not forced any exclusion on it. It is a a situation of perfect peace, simply because you have let it be what it is. This simple courtesy is all the Holy Spirit asks from you. Let truth be what it is.Do not intrude upon it, do not attack it, do not interrupt its coming. Let it encompass every situation and bring you peace. Not even faith is asked of you,for truth asks nothing. Let it enter, and it will call forth and secure for you the faith you need for peace. But rise you not against it, for against you opposition it cannot come. Would you not want to make a holy instant of everysituation? For such is the gift of faith, freely given whatever faithlessnessis laid aside, unused. And then the power of the Holy Spirit´s purpose is freeto used instead. This power instantly transforms all situations into one sureand continuous means for establishing His purpose, and demonstrating itsreality. What has been demonstrated has called for faith, and has been given it.Now it becomes a fact, from which faith can no longer be withheld. The strain ofrefusing faith to truth is enormous, and far greater than you realize. But toanswer truth with faith entails no strain at all. To you who have acknowledgedthe call of your Redeemer, the strain of not responding to His call seems to begreater than before. This is not so. Before, the streain was there, but youattributed it to something else, believing that the ”someting else” producedit. This was never true. For what the ”someting else” produced was sorrow anddepression, sickness and pain, darkness and dim imaginings of terror, coldfantasies of fear and fiery dreams of hell. And it was nothing but theintorelable strain of refusing to give faith to truth, and see its evidentreality. Such was the crucifixion of the Son of God. His faithlessness did thisto him. Think carefully before you let yourself use faithlessness against him.For he is risen, and you have accepted the Cause of his awakening as yours. Youhave assumed your part in his redemption, and you are now fully responsible tohim. Fail him not now, for it has been given you to realize what you lack offaith in him must mean to you. His salvation is your only purpose. See onlythis in every situation, and it will be a means for bringing only this. Whenyou accepted truth as the goal for your relationship, you became a giver ofpeace as surely as your Father gave peace to you. For the goal of peace cannotbe accepted apart from its conditions, and you had faith in it for no oneaccepts what he does not believe is real. Your purpose has not changed. Andnothing that it needs to be forever changeless can you now withold from it.Your release is certain. Give as you have received. And demonstrate that you haverisen far beyond any situation that could hold you back, and keeep you separatefrom Him Whose call you answered.

Love

[IA56]

THE PASSION OF THE DREAM

The Substitute Reality

To substitute is to accept instead. If you would but consider exactly what this entails, you would perceive at once how much at variance this is with the goal the Holy Spirit has given you, and would accomplish for you. To substitute is to choose between, renouncing one aspect of the Sonship in favor of the other. For this special purpose, one is judged more valuable and the other is replaced by him. The relationship in which the substitution occured is thus fragmented,and its purpose split accordingly. To fragment is to exclude, and substitution is the strongest defense the ego has for separation. The Holy Spirit never uses substitues. Where the ego perceives one person as a replacement for another,the Holy Spirit sees them joined and indivisible. He does not judge betweenthem, knowing they are one. Being united, they are one because they are thesame. Substitution is clearly a process in which they are preceived as different.One would unite; the other separate. Nothing can come between what God hasjoined and what the Holy Spirit sees as one. But everything seems to comebetween the fragmented relationships the ego sponsors to destroy. The oneemotion in which substitution is impossible is love. Fear involves substitutionby definition, for it is love´s replacement. Fear is both a fragmented andfragmenting emotion. It seems to take many forms, and each one seems to requirea different form of acting out for satisfaction. While this appears tointroduce quite variable behavior, a far more serious effect lies in thefragmented perception from which the behavior stems. No one is seen complete.The body is emphasized, with special emhasis on certain parts, and used as thestandard for comparison of acceptance or rejection for acting out a specialform of fear. You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution. Ithas taken many forms, because it was the substitution of illusion for truth; offragmentaion for wholeness. It has become so splinterd and subdivided anddivided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive itonce was one, and still is what it was. That one error, which brought truth toillusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Yourwhole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it, and every specialrelationship that you have ever made is part of it. You may be surprised tohear how very different is reality from what you see. You do not realize themagnitude of that one error. It was so vast and so completely incredible thatfrom it a world of total unreality had to emerge. What else could come ot it?Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. Butnothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error,which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaninglessbits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to make further substitutions.That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, andbecame the screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and thetruth. For truth extends inward, where the idea of loss is meaningless and onlyincrease is conceivable. Do you really think it strange that a world in whicheverything is backwards and upside down arose from this projection of error?For truth brought to this could only remain within in quiet, and take no partin all the mad projection by whichthis world was made. Call it not sin butmadness, for such it was and so it still remains. Invest it not with guilt, forguilt implies it was accomlished in reality. And above all, be not afraid ofit. When you seem to see some twisted from of the original error rising tofrighten you, say only, ”God is not fear, but love”, and it will disapperar.The truth will save you. It has not left you, to go out into the mad world andso depart from you. Inward is sanity; insanity is outside you. You but believeit is the other way; that truth is outside, and error and guilt within. Yourlittle, senseless substitutions, touched with insanity and swirling lightly offon a mad course like feathers dancing insanely in the wind, have no substance.They fuse and merge and separate, in shifting and totally meaninless patternsthat need not be judged at all. To judget hem individually is pointless. Theirtiny differences in form are no real differences at all. None of them matters.That they have in common and nothing else. Yet what else is necessary to makethem all the same? Lett hem all go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turningtill they disappear from sight, far, far outside of you. And turn you to thestately calm within, where in holy stillness dwells the living God you neverleft, and Who never left you. The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand, andretraces with you your mad journey outside yourself, leading you gently back tothe truth and safety within. He brings all your insane projections and the wildsubstitutions that you have placed outside you to the truth. Thus He reversesthe course of insanity and restores you to reason. In your relationship withyour brother, where He has taken charge of everything at your request, He hasset the course inward to the truth you share. In the mad world outside younothing can be shared but only substituted, and sharing and substituting have nothingincommon in reality. Within yourself you love your brother with a perfect love.Here is holy ground, in which no substitution can enter, and where only thetruth in one another can abide. Here you are joined in God, as much together asyou are with Him. The original error has not entered here, nor ever will. Hereis the radiant truth, to which the Holy Spirit has commited your relationship.Let Him bring it here, where you would have it be. Give Him but a little faithin your brother, to help him show you that no substitute you made of Heaven cankeep your from it. In you there is no separation, and no substitute can keepyou from your brother. Your reality was God´s creation, and has no substutute.You are so firmly joined in truth that only God is there. And He would neveraccept someting else instead of you. He loves you both, equally and as one. Andas He loves you, so you are. You are not joined together in illusions, but inthe Thought so holy and so perfect that illusions cannot remain to darken theholy place in which you stand together. God is with you, my brother. Le tus joinin Him in peace and gratitude, and accpet His gift as our most holy and perfectreality, which we share in Him. Heaven is restored to all the Sonship throughyour realationship, for in it lies the Sonship, whole and beautiful, safe inyour love. Heaven has enterd quietly, for all illusions have been gentlybrought unto the truth in you, and love has shined upon you, blessing your relationshipwith truth. God and His whole creation have entered in together. How lovely andhow holy is your relationship, with the truth shining upon it! Heaven beholdsit, and rejoices that you have let it come to you. The universe within youstands with you, together. And Heaven looks with love on what is joined in it,along with its Creator. Whom God has called shlould hear no substitutes. Thercall is but an echo of the original error that shattered Heaven. And whatbecame of peace in those who heard? Return with me to Heaven, walking togehterout of this world and through another, to the loveliness and joy the otherholds within it. Would you still further weaken and break apart what is alreadybroken and hopeless? Is it here that you would look for happiness? Or would younot prefer to heal what has been broken, and join in making whole what has beenravaged by separation and disease? You have been called, together with yourbrother, to the most holy function this world contains. It is the only one thathas no limits, and reaches out to every broken fragment of the Sonship withhealing and uniting comfort? This is offered you, in your holy relationship.Accept it here, and you will give as you have accepted. The peace of God isgiven you with the glowing purpose in which you join. The holy light thatbrought you together must extend, as your accepted it.

Love

[IA56]

The Basis of the Dream

Does not a world that seems quite real arise in dreams? Yet think what this world is. It is clearly not the world you saw before you slept.Rather it is a distortion of the world, planned solely around what you would have prefered. Here, you are ”free” to make over whatever seemed to attack you,and change it into a tribute to your ego, which was outraged by the ”attack”.This would not be your wish unless you saw yourself as one with the ego, which always looks upon itself, and therefore on you, as under attack and highly vulnerable to it. Dreams are chaotic because they are governed by your conflicting whishes, and therefore they have no concern with what is true. They are the best example you could have of how perfection can be utilized to substitute illusions for truth. You do not take them seriously on awaking because the fact that reality is so outrageously vilolated in them becomes apparent. Yet they are a way of looking at the world, and changing it to suit the ego better. They provide striking examples, both of the ego´s inablility totolerate reality, and of your willingness of change reality on its behalf. Youdo not find the difference between what you see in sleep and on awakingdisturbing. You recognize that what you see on waking is blotted out in dreams.Yet on awakening, you do not expect it to be gone. In dreams you arrangeeverything. People become what you would have them be, and what they do youorder. No limits substitution are laid upon you. For a time it seems as if theworld were given you, to make it what you wish. You do not realize you areattacking it, try to triumph over it and make it serve you. Dreams areperpetual temper tantrums, in which you litterally scream, ”I want it thus!”And thus it seems so be. And yet the dream cannot escape its origin. Anger andfear pervade it, and in an instant the illusion of satisfaction is invaded bythe illusion of terror. For the dream of you ability to control reality bysubstituiong a world that you prefer is terrifying. Your attompts to blot outreality are very fearful, but this you are not willing to accept. And so yousubstitute the fantasy that reality is fearful, not what you would do to it.And thus is guilt made real. Dreams show you that you have the power to make aworld as you would hve it be, and that because you want it you see it. Andwhile you see it you do not doubt that it is real. Yet here is a world, clearlywithin your mind, that seems to be outside. You do not respond to it as thoughyou made it, nor do you realize that the emotions the dream produces must comefrom you. It is the figures in the dream and what they do that seem to make thedream. You do not realize that you are making them act out for you, for if youdid the guilt would not be theirs, and the illusions of satisfaction would begone. In dreams these features are not obscure. You seem to waken, and thedream is gone. Yet what you fail to recognize is that what caused the dream hasnot gone with it. Your wish to make another world that is not real remains withyou. And what you seem to waken to is but another form of the same world yousee in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and yourwaking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same.They are your protest against reality, and your fixed and insane idea that youcan change it. In your waking dreams, the special realtionship is yourdetermination to keep your hold on unreality, and to prevent yourself fromwaking. And while you see more value in sleeping than in waking, you will notlet go of it. The Holy Spirit, ever practical in His wisdom, accepts yourdreams and uses them as means for waking. You would have used them to remainasleep. I said before that the first change, before dreams disappear, is thatyour dreams of fear are changed to happy dreams. That is what the Holy Spiritdoes in the special relationship. He does not destroy it, nor as a source ofpain and guilt, but as a source of joy and freedom. It will not be for youalone, for therein lay its misery. As its unholiness kept it a thing apart, itsholiness will become an offering to everyone. Your special realationship willbe a means of undoing guilt in everyone blessed through your holy relationship.It will be a happy dream, and one which you will share with all who come withinyour sight. Through it, the blessing the Holy Spirit has laid upon it will beextended. Think not tht He has forgotten anyone in the purpose He has givenyou. And think not that He has forgotten you to whom He gave the gift. He useseveryone who calls on Him as means for the salvation of everyone. And He willwaken everyone through you who offered your relationship to Him. If you butrecognized His gratitude! Or mine through His! For we are joined as in one purpose,being of one mind with Him. Let not the dream take hold to close your eyes. Itis not strange the dreams can make a world that is unreal. It is the wish tomake it that its incredible. Your realtionship with your brother has now becomeone in which the wish has been removed, because its purpose has been changedform one of dreams to one of truth. You are not sure of this because you thinkit may be this that is the dream. You are so unsed to choosing among dreams youdo not see that you have made, at last, the choice between the truth and allillusions. Yet Heaven is sure. This is no dream. Its coming means that you havechosen truth, and it has come because you have been willing to let your specialrealationship meet its conditions. In your relationship the Holy Spirit hasgently laid the real world; the world of happy dreams, from which awaking is soeasy and so natural. For as your sleeping and your awaking is easilytransferred to its reality. For this dream reflects your will joined with theWill of God. And what this Will would have accomplished has never not beendone.

Love

[IA56]

Light in the Dream

You who have spent your life 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 to 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 form 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. The goal you accepted is the goal of knowledge, for which you signigfied your willingness. Fear seems to live in darkness, and when you are afraid you have stepped back. Let us then join quickly in an instant of light, and it willbe enough to remind you that your goal is light. Truth has rushed to meet yousince you called upon it. If you knew Who walks beside you on the way that youhave chosen, fear would be impossible. You do not know because the journey intodarkness has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it. A littleflicker of your eyelids, closed so long, has not yet been sufficient to giveyou confidence in yourself, so long despised. You go toward love still hatingit, and terribly afraid of its judgment upon you. And you do not realize thatyou are not afraid of love, but only what you have made of it. You areadvancing to love´s meaning, and away from all illusion you in which you havesurronded it. When you retreat to the illusion you fear increases, for there islittle doubt that what you think it means is fearful. Yet what is that to uswho travel surely and very swiftly away from fear? You who hold your brother´shand also hold mine, for whan you joined each other you were not alone. Do youbelieve that I would leave you in the darkness that you agreed to leave withme? In your relationship is this world´s light. And fear must disappear beforeyou now. Be tempted not to snatch away the gift of faith you offered to yourbrother. You will succeed only in frightening yourself. The gift is givenforever, for God Himself recived it. You cannot take it back. You have acceptedGod. The holiness of your relationship is established in Heaven. You do notunderstand what you accepted, but remember that your understanding is notnecessary. All that was necessary wasmerely the wish to understand. That wish was the desire to be holy. The Will ofGod 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 itsaccomplishemt. Your desire is now in complete accord with all the power of theHoly Spirit´s Will. No little, faltering footsteps that you may take canseparate your desire from His Will and from His strength. I hold your hand assurely as you agreed to take your brother´s. You will not separate, for I standwith you and walk with you in your advance to truth. And where we go we carryGod with us. In your relationship you have joined with me in bringing Heaven tothe Son of God, who hid in darkness. You have been willing to bring thedarkness to light, and this willingness has given strength to everyone whowould remain in darkness. Those who would see will see. And they will join withme in carrying their light into the darkness, when the darkness in them isoffered to the light, and is removed forever. My need for you, joined with mein the holy light of your relationship, is your need for salvation. Would I notgive you what you gave to me? For when you joined your brother, you answeredme. You who are now the bringers of salvation have the function of bringinglight to darkness. The darkness in you has been brought to light. Carry it backto darkness, from the holy instant to which you brought it. We are made wholein our desire to make whole. Let not time worry you, for all the fear that youand your brother experience is really past. Time has been readjusted to help updo, 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 inthe Mind of God but shines on you. Heaven is joined with you in your advance toHeaven. When such great lights have joined with you to give the little spark ofyour desire the power of God Himself, can you remain in darkness? You arecoming home togehter, after a long and meaningless journey that you undertookapart, and that led nowhere. You have found your brother, and you will lighteach other´s ways. And from this light will the Great Rays extend back intodarkness and forward unto God, to shine away the past and so make room for Hiseternal Presence, in which everything is radiant in the light.

Love

[IA56]

The Little Willingness


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 mind 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 cannot do more. Do not attempt to give the Holy Spirit what He does not ask, or you will add the ego to 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, what ever 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, assumingthat you must achieve the state its coming brings with it. The miracle of theholy instant lies in your willingness to let it be what it is. And in yourwillingness for this lies also your acceptance of yourself as you were meant tobe. Humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But itdoes require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not ofyou. Your difficulty with the holy instant arises from your fixed convictionthat you are not worthy of it. And what is this but the determination to be asyou would make yourself? God did not create His dwelling place unwothy of Him.And if you believe He cannot enter where He wills to be, you must beinterfering with His Will.You do not need the strength of willingness to comefrom you, but only from His Will. The holy instant does not come from yourlittle willingness alone. It is always the result of your small willingnesscombined with the unlimited power of God´s Will. You have been wrong inthinking that it is needful to prepare yourself for Him. It is impossible tomake arrogant preparations for holiness, and not believe that it is up to youto establish the conditions for peace. God has established them. They do notwait upon your willingness for what they are. Your willingness is needed onlyto make it possible to teach you what they are. If you maintain you areunworthy of learning this, you are interfering with the lesson by believingthat you must make the learner different. You did not make the learner, nor canyou make him different. Would you first make a miracle yourself, and thenexpect one to be made for you? You merely ask the question. The answer isgiven. Seek not to answer, but merely to receive the answer as it is given. Inpreparing for the holy instant, do not attempt to make yourself holy to beready to receive it. That is but to confuse your role with God´s. Atonementcannot come to those who think that they must first atone, but only to thosewho offer it nothing more than simple willingness to make way for it.Purification is of God alone, and therefore for you. Rather than seek toprepare yourself for Him, try to think thus:

”I who am host to God am worthy of Him. He Who establish Hisdwelling place in me created it as He would have it be. It is not needful thatI make it ready for Him. But only that I do not interfere with His plan torestore to me my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal. I need addnothing to His plan. But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute myown in place of it.”

And that is all. Add more, and you will merely take away thelittle that is asked. Remember you made guilt, and that your plan for theescape from guilt has been to bring Atonement to it, and make salvationfearful. And it is only fear that you will add, if you prepare yourself forlove. The preparation for the holy instant belongs to Him Who gives it. Releaseyourself 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 howgreat is His. In this that makes the holy instant so easy and so natural. Youmake it difficult, because you insist there must be more than you need do. Andit is very hard for you to realize it is not personally insulting that yourcontribution and the Holy Spirit´s are so extremly disproptionate. You arestill convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to thetruth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understandnothing. Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you cannot give right now. Forget not that it has been your decision to make everything that is neutraland easy for you impossible. If you believe that holy instant is difficult foryou, 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 ofdifficulty 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 neverhapppened in reality. Only in your mind, which thought it did, is its undoning needful.

Love

[IA56]

The Happy Dream

Prepare you now for the undoing of what never was. If you already understood the difference between truth and illusion, the Atonement would have no meaning. The holy instant, the holy relationship, the Holy Spirit´s teaching, and all the means by which salvation is accomplished, would have no pupose. For they are all but aspects of the plan of change your Dreams of fear to happy dreams, from which you awaken easily to knowledge. Put yourself not in charge of this, for you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of your greatest advance you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats you have evaluated as success. Never approch the holy instant after you have tried to remove all fear and hatered 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 hatared, and to be forgiven. On your little faith, joined with His understanding, He will builtd your part in theAtonement and make sure that your fulfill it easily. And with Him, you willbuiltd a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith, and risinge ven to Heaven.Nor will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone. Through your holy relationship,reborn and blessed in every holy instant you do not arrange, thousands willrise to Heaven with you. Can you plan for this? Or could you prepare yourselffor such a function? Yet it is possible, because God wills it. Nor will Hechange His Mind about it. The means and purpose both belong to Him. You haveaccepted one; the other will be provided. A purpose such as this, without themeans, is inconceivable. He will provide the means to anyone who shares His purpose.Happy drems come true, not because they are dreams, but only because they arehappy. And so they must be loving. Their message is, ”Thy Will be done”, andnot, ”I want it otherwise.” The alignment of means and purpose is anundertaking impossible for you to understand. You do not even realize you haveaccepted the Holy Spirit´s purpose as your own, and you would merely bringunholy means to its accomplishement. The little faith it needed to change thepurpose is all that is required to receive the means and use them. It is nodream 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 specialrelationship. Yet it is very useful to the Holy Spirit, Who has a specialfunction here. It will become the happy dream through which He can spread joyto thousands on thousands who believe tht love is fear, nor happiness. Let Himfulfill 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, stopinstantly and offer the Holy spirit your willingness, in spite of the fear, tolet Him exchange this instant for the holy one that you would rather have. Hewill never fail in this. But forget not that your relationship is one, and soit must be that whatever threatens the peace of one is an equal threat to the other. The power of joining its blessinglies in the fact that it is now impossible for you or your brother toexperience fear alone, or to attempt to deal with it alone. Never believe thatthis is necessary, or even possible. Yet just as this is impossible, so is itequally impossible that the holy instant come to either of you without theother. And it will come to both at the request of either. Whoever is saner atthe time the threat is perceived should remember how deep is his indebtednessto the other and how much gratitude is due him, and be glad that he can pay hisdebt by bringing happiness to both. Let him remember this, and say:

”I desire the 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, or 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.”

Love

[IA56]

Beyond the Body

There is nothing outside you. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is the 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, someting outside yourself, has cost you the awareness of Heaven and of your Identity. And you have done a stranger thing that you yet realize. You have displaced your guilt to your body from your mind. Yet a body cannot be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. You who think you hate your body deceive yourself. You hate your mind, for guilt has entered into it, and it would remain separatefrom your brother´s which it cannot do. Minds are joined; bodies are not. Onlyby assingning to the mind the propreties of the body does separation seem to bepossible. And it is mind that seems to be fragmented and private and alone. Itsguilt, which keeps it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers anddies because it is attacked to hold the separation in the mind, and let it notknow its Identity. Mind cannot attack, but it can make fantasies and direct thebody to act them out. Yet it is never what the body does that seems to satisfy.Unless the mind believes the body is actually acting out its fantasies, it willattack the body by increasing the projection of its guilt upon it. In this, themind is clearly delusional. It cannot attack, but it maintains it can, and useswhat it does to hurt the body to prove it can. The mind cannot attack, but itcan decieve itself. And this is all it does when it believes it has attackedthe boyd. It can project its guilt, but it will not lose it through projection.And through it clearly can misperceive the function of the body, it cannotchange its function from what the Holy Spirit establishes it to be. The body wasnot made by love. Yet love does not condemn it and can use it lovingly,respecting what the Son of God has made and using it to save him fromillusions. Would you not have the instrument of separation reinterpreted asmeans for salvation, and used for purpose of love? Would you not welcome andsupport the shift from fantasies of vengeance to release from them? Yourperception of the body can clearly be sick, but project not this upon the body.For your wish to make destructive what cannot destroy can have no real effectat all. What God created is only what He would have it be, being His Will. Youcannot make His Will destructive. You can make fantasies in which your willconflicts with His, but that is all. It is insane to use the body as thescapegoat for guilt, directing its attack and blaming it for what you whishedit to do. It is impossible to act out fantasies. For it is still the fantasiesyou want, and they have nothing to do with what the body does. It does notdream of them, and they but make it a liablilty what it could be an asset. Forfantasies have made your body your ”enemy”; weak, vulnerable and treacheous,worthy of the hate that you invest in it. How has this served you? You haveidentified with this ting you hate, the instrument of vengeance and theperceived source of your guilt. You have done this to a thing that has nomeaning, proclaiming it to be the dwelling place of God´s Son, and turning itagainst him. This is the host of God that you have made. And neither God norHis most holy Son can enter an abode that harbors hate, and where you have sownthe seeds of vengeance, violance and death. This thing you made to serve yourguilt stands between you and other minds. The minds are joined, but you do notidentify with them. You see yourself locked in a separate prison, removed andunreachable, incapable of reaching out as being reached. You hate this prisonyou have made, and would destroy it. But you would not escape from it, leavingit unharmed, without your guilt upon it. Yet only thus can you escape. The homeof vengeance is not yours; the place you set aside to house your hate is not aprison, but an illusion of yourself. The body is a limit imposed on theuniversal communication that is an eternal property of mind. But thecommunication is internal. Mind reaches to itself. It does not go out. Withinitself it has no limits, and there is nothing outside it. It encompasses youentirely; you within it and it within you. There is nothing else, anywhere orever. The body is outside you, and but seems to surround you, shutting you offfrom others and keeping you apart from them. It is not there. There is nobarrier between God and His Son, nor can His Son be separated from himselfexcept in illusions. This is not his reality, though he believes it is. Yetthis 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 havehad to create different things, and to establish different orders of reality,only some of which were love. Yet love must be forever like itself, changelessforever, and forever without alternative. And so it is. You cannot put abarriar around yourself, because God placed none between Himself and you. Youcan stretch out your hand and reach to Heaven. You whose hands are joined havebegun to reach beyond the body, but not outside yourselves, to reach yourshared Identity together. Could This be outside you? Where God is not? Is He abody, and did He create you as He is not, and where He cannot be? You aresurrounded 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 beyondhimself. This feeling of liberation far exceeds the dream of freedom sometimeshoped for in special relationships. It is a sense of actual escape fromlimitations. If you will consider what this ”transportation” really entails,you will realize that it is a sudden unawareness of the body, and a joining ofyourself and something else in which your mind enlarges to encompass it. Itbecomes part of you, as you unite with it. And both become whole, as neither isperceived as separate. What really happens is that you have given up theillusions of a limited awareness, and lost your fear of union. The love thatinstantly replaces it extends to what has freed you, and unites with it. Andwhile this lasts you are not uncertain of your Identity, and would not limitit. You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no question of reality, butmerely accepting it. You have accepted this instead of the body, and have letyourself be one with something beyond it, simply by not letting your mind belimited by it. This can occur regardless of the physical distance the seems tobe between you and what you join; of your respective positions in space; and ofyour difference in size and seeming quality. Time is not relevant; it can occurwith something past, present or anticipated. The ”something” can be anythingand anywhere; a sound, a sight, a thought, a memory, and even a general ideawithout specific reference. Yet in every case, you join it without reservationbecause you love it, and would be with it. And so you rush to meet it, lettingyour limits melt away, suspending all the ”laws” your body obeys and gentlysetting them aside. There is no violance at all in this escape. The body is notattacked, but simply properly percieved. It does not limit you, merely becauseyou would not have it so. You are not really ”lifted out” if it; it cannotcontain 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 ofwhat 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 awarenessof the body, and of the question whether or not all this is possible. It ispossible because you want it. The sudden expansion of awareness that takesplace with your desire of it is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds.It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws oflimit lifted for you, to welcome you to openness of mind and freedom. Come tothis place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. Not throughdestruction, not through a breaking out, but merely by a quiet destruction, notthrough a breaking out, but merely by a quiet meltin in. For peace will joinyou there, simply because you have been willing to let go the limits you haveplaced upon love, and joined it where it is and where it led you, in answer toits gentle call to be at peace.

Love

[IA56]

I Need Do Nothing

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 protectionor enjoyment in some way? This makes the body 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. There is one thing that you have never done; you have not utterly forgotten the body. It has perhaps 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, yet 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 pastand future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely, for sin is neverwholly in the present. In any single instant the attraction is imaginary, andtherefore must be thought of in the past or in the future. It is impossible toaccept the holy instant without reservation unless, just for an instant, you arewilling to see no past or future. You cannot prepare for it without placing itin the future. Release is given you the instant you desire it. Many have spenta 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 itdoes aim at saving time. You may be attempting to follow a very long road tothe goal you have accepted. It is extremly difficult to reach Atonement byfighting against sin. Nor is a lifetime of contemplation and long periods ofmeditation aimed at detachment from the body necessary. All such attempts willultimately succeed because of their purpose. Yet the means are tedious and verytime comsuming, for all of them look to the future for release from a state ofpresent unworthiness and inadequasy. Your way will be different, not in purposebut in means. A holy relationship is a means of saving time. One instant spenttogether restores the universe to both of you. You are prepared. Now you needbut to remember you need do nothing. It would be far more profitable now merelyto concentrate on this than to consider what you should do. When peace comes atlast to those who wrestle with temptation and fight against the giving in tosin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to comtemplation; or whenthe goal is finally achieved by anyone, it always comes with just one happyrealization; ”I need do nothing.” Here is the ultimate release which everyonewill one day find in his own way, at his own time. You do not need this time.Time has been saved for you because you and your brother are together. This isthe special means this course is using to save you time. You are not making useof the course if you insist on using means which have served others well,neglecting what was made for you. Save time for me by only this onepreparation, and practice doing nothing else. ”I need do nothing” is astatement of allegiance, a trully undivided loyalty. Beleive it for just oneinstant, and you will accomplish more than is given to a century ofcomtemplation, or of struggle against temptation. To do anything involves thebody. And if you recognize you need do nothing, you have withdrawn the body´svalue from your mind. Here is the quick and open door through which you slippast centuries of effort, and escape from time. This is the way in which sinloses all attraction right now. For here is time denied, and past and futuregone. Who needs do nothing has no need for time. To do nothing is to rest, andmake a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demandattention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes, and there abides. He willremain when you forget, and the body´s activities return to occupy yourconsious mind. Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you canreturn. And you will be more aware of this quiet center of the storm than allits ragin activity. This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remainwith you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you aresent. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly.It is this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly. It isthis center, from which the body is absent, that will keep it so in yourawareness of it.

Love

[IA56]

The Little Garden

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 yourself within a body know yourself as an ideal? Everything you recognize you identify with externals, something outside itself. You cannot event hink of God without a body, or in 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 keep you apart from Him. The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete 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 thislittle speck of dust it bids you fight against the universe. This fragment ofyour 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 to the sun, orlike 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 ripplehails itself as the ocean. Think how alone and frightened is this littlethought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart against theuniverse. The sun becomes the sunbeam´s ”enemy” that would devour it, and theocean terrifies the little ripple and wants to swollow it. Yet neither sun norocean is even aware of all this stranger and meaningless activity. They merelycontinue, unaware that they are feared and hated by a tiny sigment ofthemselves. Even that segment is not lost to them, for it could not surviveapart from them. And what it thinks it is in no way changes its total dependenceon them for its being. Its whole existence still remains in them. Without thesun the sunbeam would be gone; the ripple without the ocean is inconceivable.Such is the stange position in which those in a world inhabited disconnectedthought, living alone and in no way joined to the Thought by which it wascreated. Each tiny fragment seems to be self-contained, needing another forsome things, but by no means totally dependent on its one Creator foreverything; needing the whole to give it any meaning, for by itself it doesmean nothing. Nor has it any life apart and by itself. Like to the sun andocean your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part regards itself as you.It iss not missing ; it could not exist if it were separate, nor would thewhole be whole without it. It is not a separate kingdom, ruled by an idea ofseparation from the rest. Nor does a fence surround it, preventing it fromjoining with the rest, and keeping it apart from its Creator. This little aspectis no different from the whole, being continuous with it and at one with it. Itleads no separate life, because its life is the oneness in which its being wascreated. Do not accept this little, fenced-off aspect as yourself. The sun andocean are as nothing beside what you are. The sunbeam sparkles only in thesunlight, and the ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean. Yet in neither sun norocean is the power tht rests in you. Would you remain within your tiny kingdom,a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all that he surveys, who looks on nothing yetwho would still die to defend it? This little self is not your kingdom. Archedhigh above it and surrounding it with love is the glorious whole, which offersall its happiness and deep content to every part. The little aspect that youthink you set apart is no exception. Love knows no bodies, and reaches toeverything created like itself. Its total lack of limit is its meaning. It iscompletely impartial in its giving, encompassing only to preserve and keep completewhat 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 – dryand unproductive, scorced and joyless – that makes up your little kingdom. Andrealize the life and joy that love would bring to it from where it comes, andwhere it would return with you. The Thought of God surrounds your littlekingdom, waiting at the barrier you built to come inside and shine upon thebarren ground. See how life springs up everhywhere! The desert becomes agarden, green and deep and quiet, offering ret to those who lost their way andwander in the dust. Givet hem a place of refuge, prepared by love for themwhere once a desert was. And everytone you welcome will bring love with himfrom Heaven for you. They enter one by by into this holy place, but they willnot depart as they had come, alone. The love they brought with them will staywith them, as it will stay with you. And under its beneficence your littlegarden will expand, and reach out to everyone who thirsts for living water, buthas grown too weary to go on alone. Go out and find them, for they bring yourSelf with them. And lead them gently to your quiet garden, and receive theblessing there. So will it grow and strecth across the desert, leaving nolonely little kingddoms locked away from love, and see your little gardengently transformed into the Kingdom of Heaven, with all the love of its Creatorshining upon it. The holy instant is your invitation to love to enter into yourbleak and joyless kingdom, and to transform it into a garden of peace andwelcome. Love´s answer is inevitable. It will come because you came without thebody, and interposed no barriers to interfere with its glad coming. In the holyinstant, you ask of love only what it offers everyone, neither less nor more.Asking for everything, you will recieve it. And your shining Self will lift thetiny aspect that you tried to hide from Heaven straight to Heaven. Nor part oflove 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 fullyat your weak request. You do not recognize that love has come, because you havenot yet let go of all the barriers you hold against your brother. And you willnot be able to give love welcome separately. You could no more know God alonethan He knows you without your brother. But together you could no more beunaware of love than love could know you not, or fail to recognize itself inyou. You have reached the end of an ancient journey, not realizing yet that itis over. You are still worn and tired, and the desert´s dust still seems tocloud your eyes and keeep slightless. Yet He Would you welcomed has come toyou, and would welcome you. He has waited long to give you this. Recieve it nowof Him, for He would have you know Him. Only a little wall of dust still standsbetween 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.

Love

[IA56]

The Two Worlds

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 yourself, the little thought that seems split off and separate, the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in God´s keeping, and needs no guide. Yet 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 obediance and slavery. This is the little part you think you stole form Heaven. Give it back to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but you have lost sight of Heaven. Let the Holy Spirit remove if from the withered kingdom in which you set it off, surrounded by darkness, guarded by attack and reinforced by hate.Within its barricades is still a tiny segment of the Son of God, complete the 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, returnig your littleoffering of darkness to the eternal light. How is this done? It is extremlysimple, 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. Itsbleak sight is distroted, and the message it transmits to you who made it tolimit your awareness are little and limited, and so fragmented they aremeaningless. From the world of bodies, made by insanity, insane messages seemto be returned to the mind that made it. And these messages bear witness tothis world, pronouncing it as true. For you sent forth these messengers tobring this back to you. Everything these messages realay to you is quiteexternal. There are no messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it isnot the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not; its sensesremain quite speak for this. Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain quiteunaware of it; its tongue cannot relay its messages. Yet God can bring youthere, 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 purposeto frighten you, but only yours. You are severly tempted to abandon Him at theouside ring of fear, but He would lead you safely through and far beyond. The circle of fear lies just below the levelthe body sees, and seems to be the whole foundation on which the world isbased. Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insaneattacks, the fury, the vengeance and betrayal that were made to keep the guiltin place, so that the world could rise from it and keep it hidden. Its shadowrises to the surface, enough to hold its most external manifestations indarkness, and to bring despair and loneliness to it and keep it joyless. Yetits instensity is veiled by its heavy coverings, and kept apart from what wasmade to keep it hidden. The body cannot see this, for the body arose from this forits protection, which depends on keeping it not seen. The body´s eyes willnever look on it. Yet they will see what it dictates. The body will remainguilt´s messenger, and will act as it directs as long as you believe that guiltis real. For the reality of guilt is the illuison that seems to make it heavyand opaque, impenetrable, and a real foundation for the ego´s thought system.Its thinness and transparency are not apparent until you see the light behindit. And then you see it as a fragile veil before the light. This heavy-seemingbarrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is lika a bank of low darkclouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearanceis wholly an illusion. It gives way softly to the mountain tops that rise aboveit, and has no power at all to hold back anyone willing to climb above it andsee the sun. It is not strong enough to stop a button´s fall, nor hold afeather. Try but to touch it and it disappears; attempt to grasp it and yourhands hold nothing. Yet in this cloud bank it is easy to see a whole worldrising. A solid mountain range, a lake, a city, all rise in your imagination,and from the clouds the messengers of your perception return to you, assuringyou that it is there. Figuress tand out and move about, actions seem real, andforms appear and shift from loveliness to the grotesque.. And back and forththey go, as long as you would play the game of children´s make-believe. Yethowever long you play it, and regardless of how much imagination you bring toit, you do not confuse it with the world below, nor seek to make it real. Soshould it be with the dark clouds of guilt, no more impenetrable and no moresubstantial. You will not bruise yourself against them in traveling though. Letyour Guide teach you their unsubstantial nature as He leads you past them, forbeneath them is a world of light whereon they cast no shadows. Their shadowslie upon the world beyond them, still further from the light. Yet from them tothe light their shadows cannot fall. This world of light, this circle ofbrightness is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here theworld outside is seen anew, without the shadow of guilt upon it. Here is thenew perception, where everything is bright and shining with innocence, washedin the waters of forgiveness, and cleansed of every evil thought you laid uponit. Here there is no attack uponthe Son of God, and you are welcome. Here isyour innocence, waiting to clothe you and protect you, and make you ready for thefinal step in the journey inward. Here are the dark and heavy garments of guiltlaid by, and gently replaced by purity and love. Yet even forgiveness isnot theend. Forgiveness does make lovely, but it does not create. It is the source ofhealing, 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 nothinginterfere with love, letting it be itself. A step beyond this holy place, astep still further inward but the one you cannot take, transports you tosomething completely different. Here is the Source of light; nothing perceived,forgiven nor transformed. But merely known. This course will lead to knowledge,but knowledge itself is still beyhhond the scope of our curriculum. Nor isthere any need for us to try to speak of what must forever lie beyond words. Weneed remember only that whoever attains the real world, beyond which learningcannot go, will go beyond it, but in a different way. Where learning ends thereGod begins, for learning end before Him Who is complete where He begins, andwhere there is no end. It is not for us to dwell on what cannot be attained.There is too much to learn. The readiness for knowledge still must be attained.Love is not learned. Its meaning lies within itself. And learning ends when youhave recongnized all it is not. That is the interference; that is what needs tobe undone. Love is not learned, because there never was a time in which youknew it not. Learning is useless in the Presence of our Creator, Whoseacknowledgment of you and yours of Him so far transcend all learning thateverything you learned is meaningless, replaced forever by the knowledge oflove and its one meaning. Your relationship with your brother has been uprootedfrom the world of shadows, and its unholy purpose has been safely broughtthrough the barriers of guilt, washed with forgiveness, and set shining andfirmly rooted in the world of light. From there it calls to you to follow thecourse it took, lifted high above the darkness and gently placed before thegates of Heaven. The holy instant in which you were united is but the messengerof love, sent from beyond forgiveness that it will be rememberd. And when thememory of God has come to you in the holy place of forgiveness you will remembernothing else, and memory will be as useless as learning, for your only purposewill be creating. Yet this you cannot know until every perception has beencleansed and purified, and finally removed forever. Forgiveness removes onlythe untrue, lifting the shadow from the world and carrying it, safe and surewithin its gentleness, to the bright world of new and clean perception. Thereis your purpose now. And it is there that peace awaits you.

Love

[IA56]

THE ATTAINMENT OF PEACE
Healing and Faith

We said before that when a situation has been dedicated wholly to truth, peace is inevitable. Its attainment is the criterion by by which the wholeness of the dedication can be safely assumed. Yet we also saidthat peace without faith will never be attined, for what is dedicated to trut has its only goal is brought to truth by faith. This faith encompassed everyone involved, for only thus the situation is perceived as meaninful and as a whole. And everyone must be involved in it, or else your faith is limited and your dedication incomplete. Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal the Son of God. And he is healed because you offered faith to him, giving him to the Holy Spirit and releasing him from every demand your ego would make of him. Thus do you him free, and in this vision does the Holy Spirit share. And since He shares it He has given it, and so He heals throughyou. It is this joining Him in a united purpose that makes this pupose real,because you make it whole. And this is healing. The body is healed because youcame without it, and joined the Mind in which all healig rests. The body cannotheal, because it cannot make itself sick. It needs no healing. Its health orsickness depends entirely on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose thatthe mind would use it for. It is obvious that a segment of the mind can seeitself as spearated from the Universal Purpose. When this occurs the bodybecomes its weapon, used against this Pupose, to demonstrate the ”fact” thatseparation has occured. The body thus becomes the instrument of illusion,acting accordingly; seeing what is not there, hearing what truth has never saidand behaving insanely, being imrisoned by insanity. Do not overlook our earlierstatement that faithlessness leads straight to illusions. For fatihlessness isthe perception of a brother as a body, and the body cannot be used for purposesof union. If, then, you see your brother as a body, you have established acondition in which uniting with him becomes impossible. Your faithlessness tohim has separated you from him, and kept you both apart from being healed. Yourfaithlessness has thus opposed the Holy Spirit´s purpose, and broughtillusions, centered on the boyd, to stand between you. And the body will seemto be sick, for you have made of it and ”enemy” of healing and the opposite oftruth. It cannot be difficult to realize that faith must be the opposite offaithlessness. Yet the difference in how they operate is less apparent, thoughit follows directly from the fundamental difference in what they are.Faithlessness would always limit and attack; faith would remove all illusionsbetween the Son of God and his Creator; faith would remove all obstacles thatseem to rise between them. Faithlessness is wholly dedicated to illusions;faith wholly to truth. Partial dedication is impossible. Truth is the absenceof illusion; illusion the absence of truth. Both cannot be together, norperceived in the same place. To dedicate yourself to both is to set up a goalforever impossible to attain, for part of the it is sought through the body,thought of as a means for seeking out reality through attack. The other partwould heal, and therefore calls upon the mind and not the body. The inevitablecompromise is the belief that the body must be healed, and not the mind. Forthis divided goal has given both an equal reality, which could be possible onlyif the mind is limited to the body and divided into little parts of seemingwholeness, but without connection. This will not harm the body, but it willkeep the delusional thought system in the mind. Here, then, is healing needed.And it is here that healing is. For God gave healing not apart froom sickness,nor established remedy where sickness cannot be. They are together, and whenthey are seen together, all attempts to keep both truth an illusion in themind, where both must be, are recognized as dedication to illusion; and givenup when brought to truth, and seen as totally unreconcilable with truth, in anyrespect or in any way. Truth and illusion have no connection. This will remainforever true, however much you seek to connect them. But illusions are alwaysconnected, as is truth. Each is united, a complete thought system, but totallydisconnected to each other. And to perceive this is to recongnize whereseparation is, and where it must be healed. The result of an idea is neverseparate from its source. The idea of separation produced the body and remainsconnected to it, making it sick because of the mind´s identificatin with it.You think you are protecting the body by hiding this connection, for thisconcealment seems to keep your identification safe from the ”attack” if truth.If you but understood how much this strange concealment has hurt your mind, andhow confused your own identification has become because of it! You do not seehow great the devastation wrought by your faithlessness, for faithlessness isan attack that seems to be justified by its results. For by withholding faithyou see what is unworthy of it, and cannot look beyond the barrier to what isjoined with you. To have faith is to heal. It is the sign that you haveaccepted the Atonement for yourself, and would therefore share it. By faith,you offer the gift of freedom from the past, which you perceived. You do notuse anything your brother has done before to condemn him now. You freely chooseto overlook his errors, looking past all barriers between yourself and him, andseeing them as one. And in that one you see your faith is fully justified.There is no justification for faithlessness, but faith is always justified.Faith is the opposite of fear, as much a part of love as fear is of attack.Faith is the acknowledgment of union. It is the gracious acknowledgment ofeveryone as a Son of your most loving Father, loved by Him like you, andtherefore loved by you as yourself. It is His Love that joins you, and for HisLove you would keep no one separate from yours. Each one appears just as he isperceived in the holy instant, united in your purpose the be released fromguilt. You see the Christ in him, and he is healed because you look on whatmakes faith forever justified in everyone. Faith is the gift of God, throughHim Whom God has given you. Faithlessness looks upon the Son of God, and judgeshim unworthy of forgiveness. But through the eyes of faith, the Son of God isseen already forgiven, free of all the guilt he laid upon himself. Faith seeshim only now because it looks not to the past to judge him, but would see inhim only what it would see in you. It sees not through the body´s eyes, norlooks to bodies for its justification. It is the messenger of the newperception, sent forth to gather witnesses unto its coming, and to return theirmessages to you. Faith is as easily exchanged for knowledge as is the realworld. For faith arises from the Holy Spirit´s perception, and is the sign youshare it with Him. Faith is a gift you offer to the Son of God through Him, andwholly acceptable to his Father as to Him. And therefore offered you. Your holyrelationship, with its new purpose, offers you faith to give unto your brother.Your faithlessness has driven you apart, and so you do not recognize salvationin each other. Yet faith unites you in the holiness you see, not through thebody´s eyes, but in the sight of Him Who joined you, and in Whom you areunited. Grace is not given to a body, but to a mind. And the mind that receivesit looks instantly, beyond the body, and sees the holy place where it washealed. There is the altar where the grace was given, in which it stands. Doyou, then, offer grace and blessing to your brother, for you stand at the samealtar where grace was laid for both of you. And be you healed by grace togethe,that you may heal through faith. In the holy instant, you stand before thealtar. God has raised unto Himself and both of you. Lay faithlessness aside,and come to it together. There will you see the miracle of your relationship asit was made again through faith. And there it is that you will realize thatthere is nothing faith cannot forgive. No error interferes with its calm sight,which brings the miracle with equal ease to all of them. For what themessangers of love are sent to do they do returning the glad tidings that itwas done to you who stand together before the altar from which they were sentforth. As faithlessness will keep your little kingdom barren and separate, sowill faith help the Holy Spirit prepare the ground for the most holy gardenthat He would make of it. For faith brings peace, and so it calls on truth toenter and make lovely what has already been prepared for loveliness. Truthfollows faith and peace, completing the process of making lovely that they begin. For faith is still a learning goal, no longer needed what the lessonhas been learned. Yet truth will stay forever. Let, then, your dedication be to the eternal, and learn how not to interfere with it and make it slave to time. For what you think you do to the eternal you do to you. Whom God created as His Son is slave to nothing, being lord of all, along with his Creator. You can enslave a body, but an idea is free, incapable of being kept in prison or limited in any way except by the mind that thought it. For it remains joined to its source, which is its jailer or its liberator, according to which it choose sas its purpose for itself.

Love

[IA56]

Sin versus Error

It is essential that error be not confused with sin, and itis this distinction that makes salvation possible. For error can be corrected,and the wrong made right. But sin, were it possible, would be irreversible. Thebelief in sin is necessarily based on the firm conviction that minds, notbodies, can attack. And thus the mind is guilty, and will forever so remainunless a mind not part of it can give it absolution. Sin calls for punishmentas error for correction, and the belief that punishment is correction isclearly insane. Sin is not an error, for sin entails an arrogance which theidea of error lack. To sin would be to violate reality, and to succeed. Sin isthe proclamation that attack is real and guilt is justified. It assumes the Sonof God is guilty, and has thus succeeded in losing his innocence and makinghimself what God created not. Thus is cretin seen as not eternal, and the Willof God open to opposition and defeat. Sin is the grand illusion underlying allthe ego´s grandiosity. For by it God Himself is changed, and renderedincomplete. The Son of God can be mistaken, he can deceive himself; he can eventurn the power of his mind against himself. Bu the cannot sin. There is nothinghe can do that would really change his reality in any way, nor make him reallyguilty. That is what sin would do, for such is its purpose. Yet for all thewild insanity inherent in the whole idea of sin, it is impossible. For thewages of sin is death, and how can the immortal die? A major tenet in the ego´sinsane religion is that sin is not error but truth, and it is innocence thatwould deceive. Purity is seen as arrogance, and the acceptance of the self asisnful is preceived as holiness. And it is this doctrine that replaces thereality of the Son of God as his Father created him, and willed that he beforever. Is this humility? Or is it, rather, an attempt to wrest creation awayfrom truth, and keep it separate? Any attempt to reinterpret sin as error isalways indefensible to the ego. The idea of sin is wholly sacrosanct to tisthought system, and quite unapproachable except with revenrence and awe. It isthe most �holy� concept in the ego´s system; lovely and powerful, wholly true,and necessarily protected with every defense at its disposal. For here lies its�best� defense, which all the others serve. Here is its armor, its protection,and the fundamental purpose of the special relationship in its interpretation.It can indeed be said the ego made its world on sin. Only in such a world couldeverything be upside down. This is the strange illusion that makes the cloudsof guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness this world´s foundationseems to have is found in this. For sin has changed creation form an Idea ofGod to an idea the ego wants; a world it rules, made up of bodies, mindless andcapable of complete corruption and decay. If this is a mistake, it can beundone easily by truth. Any mistakes is given the status of truth, to what canit be brought? The �holiness� of sin is kept in place by just this strangedevice. As truth it is inviolate, and everything is brought to it for judgment.As a mistake, it must be brought to truth. It is impossible to have faith insin, for sin is faithlessness. Yet it is possible to havve faith that a mistakecan be corrected. There is not stone in all the ego´s embattled citadel moreheavily defended than the idea that sin is real; the natural expression of whatthe Son of God has made himself to be, and what he is. To the ego, this is nomistake. For this is its reality; this is the �truth� from which escape willalways be impossible. This is his past, his present and his future. For he hassomehow manged to corrupt his Father, and change His Mind completely. Mourn,then, the death of God, Whom sin has killed! And this would be the ego´s wish,which in its madness it believes it has accomplished. Would you not rather thatall this be nothing more than a mistake, entirely correctable, and so easilyescaped from that its whole correction is like walking through a mist into thesun? For that it is all it is. Perhaps you would be tempted to agree with theego that it is far better to be sinful than mistaken. Yet think you carefullybefore you allow yourself to make this choice. Approach it not lightly, for itis the choice of hell or Heaven.

Love

[IA56]

The Unreality of Sin

The attraction of guilt is found in sin, not error. Sin willbe repeated because of this attraction. Fear can become so acute that the sin isdenied the acting out. But while the guilt remains attractive the mind willsuffer, and not let go of the idea of sin. For guilt still calls to it, and themind hears it and yearns for it, making itself a willing captive to its sickapeal. Sin is an idea of evil that cannot be correcte, and yet will be foreverdesirable. As anessential part of what the ego thinks you are, you will alwayswant it. And only an avenger, with a mind unlike your own, could stamp it outthrough fear. The ego does not think it possible that love, not fear, is reallycalled upon by sin, and always answers. For the ego brings sin to fear,demanding punsihment. Yet punishment is but another from of guilt´s protection,for what is deserving punishment must have been really done. Punishment isalways the great preserver of sin, treating it with respect and honoring itsenormity. For what you think is real you want, and will not let it go. Anerror, on the other hand, is not attractive. What you see clearly as a mistakeyou want corrected. Sometimes a sin can be repeated over and over, withobviously destressing results, but without the loss of its appeal. Andsuddenly, you change its status from a sin to a mistake. Now you will notrepeat it, you will merely stop and let it go, unless the guilt remains. Forthen you will but change the form of sin, granting that it was an error, butkeeping it uncorrectable. This is not really a change in your percetion, for itis sin that calls for punishment, not error. The Holy Spirit cannot punish sin.Mistakes He recongnizes, 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 meaninless to Him. Mistakes are forcorrection, and they call for nothing else. What calls for punishment must callfor nothing. Every mistake must be a call for love. What, then, is sin? Whatcould it be but a mistake you would keep hidden; a call for help that you wouldkeep unheard and thus unanswered? In time, the Holy Spirit clearly sees the Sonof God can make mistakes. On this you share His vision. Yet you do not shareHis recongnition of the difference between time and eternity. And whencorrection is completed, time is eternity. The Holy Spirit can teach you how tolook on time differently and 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 beliefthat your perception is unchangeable, and that the mind must accept as truewhat it is told through it. If it does not obey, the mind is judged insane. Theonly power that could change perception is thus kept impotent, held to the bodyby the fear of changed perception which its Teacher, Who is one with it, wouldbring. When you are tempted to believe that sin is real, remember this: If sinis real, both God and you are not. If creation is extension, the Creator musthave extended Himself, and it is impossible that what is part of Him is totallyunlike the rest. If sin is real, God must be at war with Himself. He must besplit, and torn between good and evil; partly sane and partially insane. For Hemust have created what wills to destroy Him, and has the power to do so. It isnot easier to believe that you have been mistaken than to believe in this?While you believe that your reality or your reality of your brother´s isbounded by a body, you will believe in sin. While you believe that bodies canunite, you will find guilt attractive and believe that sin is precious. For thebelief that bodies limit mind leads to perception of the world in which theproof of separation seems to be everywhere. And God and His creation seem to besplit apart and overthrown. For sin would prove what God created holy could notrevail against it, nor remain itself before the power of sin. Sin is perceivedas mightier than God, before which God Himself must bow, and offer His creationto its conqueror. Is this humility or madness? If sin is real, it must foreverbe beyone the hope of healing. For there would be a power beyond God´s, capableof making another will that could attack His Will and overcome it; and give HisSon a will apart from His, and stronger. And each part of God´s fragmentedcreation would have a different will, opposed to His, and in eternal oppositionto Him and to each other. Your holy relationship has, as its purpose now, thegoal of proving this impossible. Heaven has smiled upon it, and the belief insin has been uprooted in its smile of love. You see it still, because you donot realize that its foundation has gone. Its source has been removed, and soit can be cherished but a little while before it vanishes. Only the habit oflooking for it still reamins. And yet you look with Heaven´s smile upon yourlips, and Heaven´s blessing on your sight. You will not see sin long. For inthe new perception the mind corrects it when it seems to be seen, and it becomesinvisible. Error are quickly recongized and quickly given to correction, to behealed, not hidden. You will be healed of sin and all its ravages the instantthat you give it no power over your brother. And you will help each otherovercome mistakes by joyously releasing one another from the belief in sin. Inthe holy instant, you will see the smile of Heaven shining on both of you. Andyou will shine upon each other, in glad acknowledgment of the grace that hasbeen given you. For sin will not prevail against a union Heaven has smiledupon. Your perception was healed in the holy instant Heaven gave you. Forgetwhat you have seen, and raise your eyes in faith to what you now can see. The barriersto Heaven will disappear before your holy sight, for you who were sightlesshave been given vision, and you can see. Look not for what has been removed,but for the glory that has been restord for you to see. Look upon yourRedeemer, and behold what He would show you in your brother, and let not sinarise against to blind your eyes. For sin would keep you separate, but yourRedeemer would have you look upon your brother as yourself. Your relationshipis now a temple of healing; a place where all the weary ones can come and rest.Here is the rest that waits for all, after the journey. And it is broughtnearer to all by your relationship.

Love

[IA56]

The Obstacles of Peace

As peace extends from deep inside yourself to embrace allthe Sonship and give it rest, it will encounter many obstacles. Some of themyou will try to impose. Others will seem to arise from elsewhere; from yourbrothers, and from various aspects of the world outside. Yet peace will gentlycover them, extending past completely unencumbered. The extention of the HolySpirit´s purpose from your relationship to others, to bring them gently in,will quietly extend to every aspect of your lives, surrounding both of you withglowing happiness and the calm awareness of complete protection. And you willcarry its message of love and safety and freedom to everyone who draws nighunto your temple, where healing waits for him. You will not wait to give himthis, for you will call to him and he will answer you, recognizing in your callthe Call for God. And you will draw him in and give him rest, as it was givenyou. All this will you do. Yet the peace that already lies deeply within mustfirst expand, and flow across the obstacles you place before it. This will youdo, for nothing undertaken with the Holy Spirit remains unfinished. You canindeed be sure of nothing you see outside you, but of this you can be sure: TheHoly 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 Hisgraciousness, and enter into a relationship with Him? For it is He Who offeredyour relationship the gift of holiness, without which it would have beenforever impossible to appreciate your brother. The gratitude you owe to Him Heasks but that you receive for Him. And when you look with gentle graciousnessupon your brother, you are beholding Him. For you are looking where He is, andnot apart from Him. You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see yourbrothers 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 Spiritwill gather all the thanks and gratitude that you have offered Him, and laythem gently before His Creator in the name of His most holy Son. And the Fatherwill accept them in His Name. What need is there of seeing, in the presence ofHis gratitude?

1 The First Obstacle: The Desire of Get Rid of it

The first obstacle that peace must flow across is yourdesire to get rid of it. For it cannot extend unless you keep it. You are thecenter from which it radiate outward, to call the others in. You are its home;its tranquil dwelling place from which it gently reaches out, but never leavingyou. If you would make it homeless, how can it abide within the Son of God? Ifit would spread across the whole creation, it must begin with you, and from youreach to everyone who calls, and bring him rest by joining you. Why would youwant peace homeless? What do you think that it must dispossess to dwell withyou? What seems to be the cost you are so unwilling to pay? The little barrierof sand still stands between you and your brother. Would you reinforce it now?You are not asked to let it go for yourself alone. Christ asks it of you forHimself. He would bring peace to everyone, and how can Hed o this exceptthrough you? Would you let a little bank of sand, a wall of dust, a tinyseeming barrier, stand between your brothers and salvation? And yet, thislittle remnant of attack your cherish still against each other is the firstobstacle the peace in you encouters in its going forth. This little wall ofhatred would still oppose the Will of God, and keep it limited. The HolySpirit´s purposes rests in peace within you. Yet you are still unwilling to letit join you wholly. You still oppose the Will of God, just by a little. And thelittle is a limit you would place upon the whole. God´s Wilol is one, not many.It has no opposition, for there is none beside it. What you would still containbehind your little barrier and keep separate from your brother seems mightier thanthe universe, for it would hold back the universe and its Creator. This littlewall would hide the purpose of Heaven, and keep it from Heaven. Would you trustsalvation away from the giver of salvation? For such have you become. Peacecould no more depart from you than from God. Fear not this little obstacle. Itcannot contain the Will of God. Peace will flow across it, and join you withouthindrance. Salvation cannot be withheld from you. It is your purpose. Youcannot choose apart from this. You have no purpose apart from your brother, norapart from the one you asked the Holy Spirit to share with you.The little wallwill fall away so quietly beneath the wings of peace. For peace will send itsmessengers from you to all the world, and barriers will fall away before thiscoming as easily as those that you interpose will be surmounted. To overcomethe world is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall. For in themiracle of your holy relationship, without this barrier, is every miraclecontained. There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they are all thesame. Each is a gentle winning over from the appeal of guilt to the appeal oflove. How can this fail to be accomplished, wherever it is undertaken? Guiltcan raise no real barriers against it. And all that seems to stand between youmjujst fall away because of the appeal you answered. From you who answered, HeWho answered you would call. His home is in your holy realtionship. Do notattempt to stand between Him and His holy purpose, for it is yours. But let Himquietly extend the miracle of your relationship to everyone contained in it asit was given. There is a hush in Heaven, a happy expectancy, a little pause ofglandness in acknowledgment of the journey´s end. For Heaven knows you well, asyou know Heaven. No illusions stand between you now. Look not upon the littlewall of shadows. The sun has risen over it. How can a shadow keep you from thesun? 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 itsending. And in the goal of truth which you accepted must all illusions end. Thelittle insane wish to get rid of Him Whom you invited in and push Him out mustproduce conflict. As you look upon the world, this little wish, uprooted andfloating aimlessly, can land and settle briefly upon anything, for it has nopurpose now. Before the Holy Spirit entered to abide with you it seemed to havea mighty purpose; the fixed and unchangeable dedication to sin and its results.Now it is aimless, wandering pointlessly, causing no more than tinyinterruptions in love´s appeal. The feather of a wish, this tiny illusion, thismicroscopic remnant of the belief in sin, is all that remains of what onceseemed to be the world. It is no longer an unrelating barrier to peace. Itspointless wandering makes its results appear to be more erratic andunprdictable than before. Yet what could be more unstable than a tightlyorganized delusional system? Its seeming stability is its pervasive weakness,which extends to everything. The variability the little remnant induces merelyindicates its limited results. How mighty can a little feather be before thegreat wings of truth? Can it oppsose an eagle´s flight, or hinder the advanceof summer? Can it interfere with the effects of summer´s sun upon a gardencovered by snow? See but how easily this little wisp is lifted up and carriedaway, never to return, and apart with it in gladness, not regret. For it isnothing in itself, and stood for nothing when you had greater faith in itsprotectin. Would you not rather greet the summer sun than fix your gaze upon adisappearing snowflake, and shiver in remembrance of the winter´s cold?

Love

[IA56]

The Attraction of Guilt

The attraction of guilt produces fear of love, for love would never look on guilt at all. It is the nature of love to look upon only the truth, for there it sees itself, which it would unite in holy union and completion. As love must look past fear, so must fear see love not. For love contains the end of guilt, as surely as fear depends on it. Overlooking guilt completely, it sees no fear. Being wholly without attack, it could not be afraid. Fear is attracted to what love sees not, and each believes that what the other looks upon does not exist. Fear looks on guilt with just the same devotion that love looks on itself. And each has messengers which they send forth, and which return to them with messages written in the language in which their going forth was asked. Love´s messengers are gently sent, and return with messages of love and gentleness. The messengers of fear are harsly ordered to seek out guilt, and cherish every scrap of evil and of sin that they can find,losing none of them on pain of death, and laying them respectfully before theirlord and master. Perception cannot obey two masters, each asking for messagesof different things in different languages. What fear would feed upon, loveoverlooks. What fear demands, love cannot even see. The fierce attraction thatguilt holds for fear is wholly absent from love´s gentle perception. What lovewould look upon is meaningless to fear, and guite invisible. Relationships inthis world are the result of how the world is seen. And this depends on whichemotion was called on to send its messengers to look upon it, and return withword of what they saw. Fear´s messengers are trained through terror, and theytremble when their master calls on them to serve him. For fear in mercilesseven to its friends. Its messengers steal guiltily away in hungry serch ofguilt, for they are kept cold and starving and made very vicious by theirmaster, who allows them to feast only upon what they return to him. No littleshred of guilt escapes their hungry eyes. And in their savage serch for sinthey pounce on any living thing they see, and carry it screaming to theirmaster, to be devoured. Send not there savage messengers into the world, tofeast uponit and to prey upon reality. For they will bring you word of bonesans skin and flesh. They have been taught to seek for the corruptible, and toreturn with gorges filled with things decayed and rotted. To them such thingsare beautiful, because they seem to allay their savage pangs of hunger. Forthey are frantic with pain of fear, and would avert the punishment of him whosends them forth by offering him what they hold dear. The Holy Spirit has givenyou love´s messengers to send instead of those you trained through fear. Theyare as eager to return to you what they hold dear as are the others. If yousend them forth, they will see only the blamless and the beautiful, the gentleand the kind. They will be as careful to let no little act of charity, no tinyexpression of forgiveness, no little breath of love escape their notice. Andthey will return with all the happy things they found, to share them lovinglywith you. Be not afraid of them. They offer you salvation. Theirs are themessages of safety, for they see the world as kind. If you send forth only themessengers the Holy Spirit gives you, wanting no messages but theirs, you willsee fear no more. The world will be transformed before you sigh, cleansed ofall guilt and softly brushed with beauty. The world contains no fear that youlaid not upon it. And none you cannot ask love´s messengers to removed from it,and see it still. The Holy Spirit has given you His messengers to send to yourbrother and return to you with what love sees. They have been given to replacethe hungry dogs of fear you sent instead. And they go forth to signify the endof fear. Love, too, would set a feast before you, on a table covered with aspotless cloth, set in a quiet garden where no sound but singing and a softlyjoyous wishpering is ever heard. This is a feast that honors your holyrelationship, and at which everyone is welcomed as an honored guest. And in aholy instant grace is said by everyone together, as they join in gentlenessbefore the table of communion. And I will join you there, as long ago Ipromised and promise still. For in your new relationship am I made welcome. Andwhere I am made welcome, there I am. I am made welcome in the state of grace,which means you have at last forgiven me. For I became the symbol of your sin,and so I had to die instead of you. To the ego sin means death, and soatonement is achieved through murder. Salvation is looked upon as a way bywhich the Son of God was killed instead of you. Yet, no one can die for anyone,and death does not atone for sin. But you can live to show it is not real. Thebody does appear to be the symbol of sin while you believe that it can get youwhat you want. While you believe that it can give you pleasure, you will alsobelieve that it can bring you pain. To think you could be satisfied and happywith so little is to hurt yourself, and to limit the happiness that you wouldhave calls upon pain to fill your meager store and make your life complete.This is completion as the ego sees it. For guilt creeps in where happiness hasbeen removed, and substitutes for it. Communion is another kind of completion,which goes beyond guilt, because it goes beyond the body.

Love

[IA56]

II The Second Obstacle: The Belief the Body is Valuable forWhat It Offers

We said that peace must first surmount the obstacle of your desire to get rid of it. Where the attraction of guilt holds sway, peace is not wanted. The second obstacle that peace must flow across, and closely related to the first, is the belief that the body is valuable for what it offers. For here is the attraction of guilt made manifest in the body, and seen in it. This is the value that you think peace would rob you of. This is what you believe that it would dispossess, and leave you homless. And it is this for which you would deny a home to peace. This ”sacrifice” you feel to be too great to make, too much to ask of you. Is it a sacrifice, or a release? What has the body really given you that justifies your strange belief that in it lies salvation? Do you not see that this is the belief in death? Here is the focus of the perception of atonement as murder. Here is the source of the idea that love is fear. The Holy Spirit´s messengers are sent far behond the body, calling the mind to join in holy communion an be at peace. Such is the message that I gave them for you. Itis only the messengers of fear that see the body, for they look for what cansuffer. It is a sacrifice to be removed from what can suffer? The Holy Spiritdoes not demand you sacrifice the hope of the body´s pleasure; it has no hopeof pleasure. But neither can it bring, you fear of pain. Pain is the only ”sacrifice”the Holy Spirit asks, and this He would remove. Peace is extended from you onlyto the eternal, and its reaches out from the eternal in you. It flows acrossall else. The second obstacle is no more solid that the first. For you wantneither to get rid of peace nor limit it. What are these obstacles that youwould interpose between peace and its going forth but barriers you placebetween your will and its accomplisment? You want communion, not the feast offear. You want salvation, not the pain of guilt. And you want your Father, nota little mount of clay, to be your home. In your holy relationship is yourFather´s Son. He has not lost communion with Him, nor with himself. When youagreed to join your brother, you acknowledged this is so. This has no cost, butit has released from cost. You have paid very dearly for your illusions, andnothing you have paid for brought you peace. Are you not glad that Heavencannot be sacrificed, and sacrifice cannot be asked of you? There is noobstacle that you can place before our union, for in your holy relationship Iam there already. We will surmount all obstacles together, for we stand withinthe gates and not outside. How easily the gates are opened from within, to letpeace through to bless the tired world! Can it be difficult for us to walk pastbarriers together, when you have joined the limitless? The end of guilt is inyour hands to give. Would you stop now to look for guilt in one another? Let mebe to you the symbol of the end of guilt, and look upon your brother as youwould look upon me. Forgive me all the sins you think the Son of God committed.And in the light of your forgiveness he will remember who he is, and forgetwhat never was. I ask for your forgiveness, for if you are guilty, so must Ibe. But if I surmountd guilt guilt and overcame the world, you were with me.Would you see in me the symbol of guilt or the end of guilt, remembering thatwhat I signify to you you see within yourself? From your holy relationshiptruth proclaims the truth, and love looks on itself. Salvation flows from deepwithin the home you offered to my Father and to me. And we are there together,in the quiet communion in which the Father and the Son are joined. O come yefaithful to the holy union of the Father and the Son in you! And keep you notapart from what is offered you, in gratitude for giving peace its home inHeaven. Send forth to all the world the joyous message of the end of guilt, andall the world will answer. Think of your happiness as everyone offers youwitness of the end of sin, and shows you that its power is gone forever. Wherecan guilt be, when the belief in sin is gone? And where is death, when itsgreat advocate is heard no more? Forgive me your illusions, and release me frompunishment for what I have not done. So will you learn the freedom that Itaught by teaching freedom to your brother, and so releasing me. I am withinyour holy relationship, yet you would imprison me behind the obstacles you raiseto freedom, and bar my way to you. Yet it is not possible to keep away One Whois there already. And in Him it is possible that our communion, where we arejoined already, we be the focus of the new perception that will bring light toall the world, contained in you.

Love

[IA56]

The Attraction of Pain

Your little part is but to give the Holy Spirit the whole idea of sacrifice. And to accept the peace He gives instead, without the limits he would hold its extension back, and so would limit your awareness of it. For what He gives must be extended if you would have its limitless power, and use it for the Son of God´s release. It is not this you would be rid of, and having it you cannot limit it. If peace is homeless, so are you and so am I. And He who is our home is homeless with us. It is this you wish? Would you invest your hope of peace and happiness in what must fail? Faith in the eternal is Always justified, for the eternal is forever kind, infinite in its patience and wholly loving. It will accept you wholly, and give you peace. Yet it can unite only with what already is at peace in you, immortal as itself. The body can bring you neither peace nor turmoil; neither joy nor pain. It is a means, and not an end. It has no purpose of itself, but only what is given to it. The body will seem to be whatever is the means for reaching the goal that you assign to it.Peace and guilt are both conditions of the mind, to be attained. And thereconditions are the home of the emotion that calls them forth, and therefore iscompatible with them. Butt hink you which it is that is compatible with you.Here is your choice, and it is free. But all that lies in it will come with it,and what you think you are can never be apart from it. The body is the greatseeming betrayer of faith. In it lies disillusionment and the seeds offaithlessness, but only if you ask of it what it cannot give. Can your mistakebe reasonable grounds for depression and disillusionment, and for retaliativeattack on what you think has failed you? Use not your error as thejustification for your faithlessness. You have not sinned, but you have beenmistaken in what is faithful. And the correction of your mistake will give yougrounds for faith. It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body andnot find pain. It is essential that this relationship be understood, for it isone the ego sees as proof of sin. It is not really punitive at all. It is butthe inevitable result of equating yourself with the body, which is theinvitation to pain. For it gives fear to enter and become your purpose. Theattraction of guilt must enter with it, andwhatever fear directs the body to dois therefore painful. It will share the pain of all illusions, and the illusionof pleasure will be the same as pain. Is not this inevitable? Under fear´sorders the body will pusue guilt, serving its master whose attraction to guiltmaintains the whole illusion of its existence. This, then, is the attraction ofpain. Ruled by this perception the body becomes the servant of pain, seeking itdutifully and obeying the idea that pain is pleasure. It is this idea thatunderlies all of the ego´s hevy investment in the body. And it is this insanerelationship that is keeps hidden, and yet feeds upon. To you it teaches thatthe body´s pleasure is happiness. Yet to itself it whispers, ”It is death”. Whyshould the body be anything to you? Certainly what it is made of is notprecious. And just as certainly it has no feeling. It transmits to you thefeelings that you want. Like any communication medium the body receives andsend the messages that it is given. It has no feeling for them. All of thefeeling with which they are invested is given by the sender and the receiver.The ego and the Holy Spirit both recognize this, and both also recognize thathere the sender and receiver is the same. The Holy Spirit tells you this withjoy.The ego hides it, for it would keep you unaware of it. Who would sendmessages of hatred and attack if he but understood he sends them to himself?Who would accuse, make guilty and condemn himself? The ego´s messages arealways sent away from you, in the belief that for your message of attack andguilt will someone other than yourself suffer. And even if you suffer, yetsomeone else will suffer more. The great deceiver recognizes that this is notso, but as the ”enemy” of peace , it urges you to send out all your messages ofhate and free yourself. And to convince you this is possible, it bids the bodyserch for pain in attack upon another, calling it pleasure and offering it toyou as freedom from attack. Hear not its madness, and believe not theimpossible is true. Forget not that the ego has dedicated the body to the goalof sin, and places in it all its faith that this can be accomplished. Its saddisciples chant the body´s praise continually, in solemn celebration of theego´s rule. Not one but must believe that yielding to the attraction of guiltis the escape from pain. Not one but must regard the body as himself, withoutwhich he would die, and yet within which is his death equally inevitable. It isnot given to the ego´s disciples to realize that they have dedicated themselvesto death. Freedom is offered them but they have not accepted it, and what isoffered must also be received, to be truly given. For the Holy Spirit, too is acommunication medium, reciving from the Father and offering His messages untothe Son. Like the ego, the Holy Spirit is both the sender and the receiver. Forwhat is sent through Him returns to Him, seeking itself along the way, andfinding what it seeks. So does the ego find the death it seeks, returning it toyou.

Love

[IA56]

III The Third Obstacle: The Attraction of Death

To you and your brother, in whose special relationship the Holy Spirit entered, it is given to release and be released from the dedication to death. For it was offered you, and you accepted. Yet you must learn still more about this strange devotion, for it contains the third obstacle that Peace must flow across. No one can die unless he chooses death. What seems to be the fear of death is really its attraction. Guilt, too, is feared and fearful. Yet it could have no hold at all except on those who are attracted to it and seek it out. And so it is with death. Made by the ego, its dark shadow falls across all living things, because the ego is the ”enemy” of life. And yet a shadow cannot kill. What is a shadow to the living? They but walk past and it is gone. But what of those whose dedication is not to life; the black-draped ”sinners,”the ego´s mournful chorus, plodding so heavily away from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death? Touch any one of them with the gentle hands of forgiveness, and Watch the chains fall away, along with yours. See him throw aside the black robe he was wearing to his funeral, and hear him laugh at death. The sentence sin would lay upon him he can escape through your forgiveness. This is no arrogance. It is the Will of God. What is impossible to you who chose His Will as yours? What is death to you? Your dedication is not to death, nor to its master. When you accepted the Holy Spirit´s purpose in place of the ego´s you renounced death, exchanging it for life. We know that an idea leaves not its source. And death is the result of the thought we call the ego, as surely as life is result of theThought of God.

Love

[IA56]

The Incorruptible Body

From the ego came sin and guilt and death, in opposition to life and innocence, and to the Will of God Himself. Where can such opposition lie but in the sick minds of the insane, dedicated to madness and set against the peace of Heaven? One thing is sure; God Who created neither sin nor death,will not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin nor its results.The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they live. They are not following His Will; they are opposing it. And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body which they dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, offered to sin to feed upon and keep itself alive; a thing condemned, demned by its maker and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself. You who believe you have condemned the Son of God to this are arrogant. But you who would release him are but honoring the Will of his Creator. The arrogance of sin, the pride of guilt, the sepulche of separation, all are part of your unrecognizeddedication to death. The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would kill it.For what the ego loves, it kills for its obediance. But what obeys it not, itcannot kill. You have another dedication that would keep the body incorruptibleand perfect as long as it is useful for your holy purpose. The body no moredies than it can feel. It does nothing. Of itself it is neither corruptible norincorruptible. It is nothing. It is the result of a tiny, mad idea ofcorruption that can be corrected. For God has answered this insane idea withHis Own; an Answer Which left Him not, and therefore brings the Creator to theawareness of every mind which heard His Answer and accepted It. You who arededicated to the incorruptible have been given through your acceptance, thepower to release from corruption. What better way to teach the first andfundemental principle in a course on miracles than by showing you the one thatseems to be the hardest can be accomplished first? The body can but serve yourpurpose. As you look on it, so will it seem to be. Death, were it true, wouldbe the final and complete disruption of communication, which is the ego´s goal.Those who fear death see not how often and how loudly they call to it, and bidit come to save them from communication. For death is seen as safety, the greatdark savior from the lifht of truth, the answer to the Answer, the silence ofthe Voice That speaks for God. Yet the retreat to death ius not the end ofconflict. Only God´s Answer is its end. The obstacle of your seeming love fordeath that peace must flow across seems to be very great. For in it led hiddenall the ego´s secrets, all its strange devices for deception, all its sickideas and weird imaginings. Here is the final end of union, the triumph of theego´s making over creation, the victory of lifelessness on Life Itself. Underthe dusty edge of its distorted world the ego would lay the Son of God, slainby its orders, proof in his decay the God Himself is powerless before the ego´smight, unable to protect the life that He created against the ego´s savage wishto kill. My brother, child of our Father, this is a dream of death. There is nofuneral, no dark altars, no grim commandments nor twisted rituals ofcondemnation to wwhich the body leads you. Ask not release of it. But freeit from the merciless and unrelentingorders you laid upon it. But free if from the merciless and unrelenting ordersyou orders you laid upon it, and forgive it what you ordered it to do. In itsexaltation you cammanded it to die, for only death could conqure life. And whatbut insanity could look upon the defeat of God, and think it real? The fear ofdeath will go as its appeal is yielded to love´s real attraction. The end ofsin, which nestles guietly in the safety of your relationship, protected byyour union with your brother, and ready to grow into a might force of God isvery near. The infancy of salvation is carefully guarded by love, preseved fromevery thought that would attack it, and quietly made ready to fulfill themighty task for which it was given you. Your newborn purpose is nursed byangels, cherished by the Holy Spirit and protected by God Himself. It needs notyour protection; it is yours. For it is deathless, and within it lies the endof death. What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack theguiltless? What fear can enter and disturb the peace of sinlessness? What hasgiven you, even its infancy, is in full communication with God and you. In itstiny hands it holds, is in full communication with God and you. In its tinyhands it holds, in perfect safety, every miracle you will perform, held out toyou. The miracle of life is ageless, born in time but nourished in eternity.Behold this infant, to whom you gave a resting place by your forgiveness ofyour brother, and see in it the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehemreborn. And everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, not tot the cross,but to the resurrection and the life. When anything seems to you to be sourceof fear, when any situation strikes you with terror and makes your body trembleand the cold sweat of fear comes over it, remember it is always for one reason;the ego has perceived it as a symbol of fear, a sign of sin and death. Remember,then, that neither sign nor symbol should be confused with source, for theymust stand for something other than themselves. Their meaning cannot lie inthem, but must be sought in what they represent. And they may thus meaneverything or nothing, according to the truth or falsity of the idea which theyreflect. Confronted with such seeming uncertainty of meaning, judge it not.Remember the holy presence of the One given to you to be the Source of judgment.Give it to Him to judge for you, and say:

”Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me. Letme not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction. Teach mehow to make of it an obstacle to peace, But let You use it for me, tofacilitate its coming.”

Love

[IA56]

IV The Forth Obstacle: The Fear of God

What would you see without the fear of death? What would you feel and think if death held no attraction to you? Very simply, you would remember your Father. The Creator of life, the Source of everything that lives,the Father of the universe and of the universe of universes, and of Everything that lies even beyond them would you remember. And as this memory rises in your mind, peace must still surmount a final obstacle, after which is salvation completed, and the Son of God entirely restored to sanity. For here your World does end. The fourth obstacle to be sormounted hangs like a heavy weil before the face of Christ. Yet as His face rises beyond it, shining with joy because He is in His Father´s Love, peace will lightly brush the veil aside and run to meet Him, and to join with Him at last. For this dark veil, which seems to make the face of Christ Himself like to a leper´s and the bright rays of His Father´s Love and light His face with glory appear as streams of blood, fades in the blazing light beyond it when the fear of death is gone. This is the darkest veil, upheld by the belief in death and protected by its attraction. The dedication to death and to its sovereignty is but the solemn vow, the promise made in secret to the ego never to lifts this veil, not to approach it, nor even to suspect that it is there. This is thesecret bargain made with the ego to keep what lies beyond the veil foreverblotted out and unremembered. Here is your promise never to allow union to callyou out of sepraration; the great amnesia in which the memory of God seemsquite forgotten; the cleavage of your Self from you; - the fear of God, thefinal step in your dissociation. See how the belief in death would seem to”save” you. For if this were gone, what would you fear but life? It is theattraction of death that makes life seem to be ugly, cruel and tyrannical. Youare no more afraid of death than of the ego. There are your chosen friends. Forin your secret alliance with them you have agreed never to let the fear of Godbe lifted, so you could look upon the face of Christ and join Him in HisFather. Every obstacle that peace must flow across is surmounted in just thesame way; the fear that raised it yields to the love beyond, and so the fear isgone. And so it is with this. The desire to get rid of peace and driven theHoly Spirit from you fades in the presence of the quiet recognition that youlove Him. The exaltation of the body is given up in favor of the spirit, whichyou love as you could never love the body. And the appeal of death is lostforever as love´s attraction stirs and calls to you. From beyond each of the obstaclesto love, Love Itself has called. And each has been surmounted by the power ofthe attraction of what lies beyond. Your wanting fear seemed to be holding themin place. Yet when you heard the Voice of Love beyond them, you answered andthey disappeared. And now you stand in terror before what you swore never tolook upon. Your eyes look down, remembering your promise to your ”friends.” The”loveliness” of sin, the dedicate appeal of guilt, the ”holy” waxen image ofdeath, and the fear of vengeance of the ego you swore in blood not to desert,and the fear of vengeance of the ego you swore in blood not to desert, all riseand bid you not to raise your eyes. For you realize that if you look in thisand let the veil be lifted, they will be gone forever. All of your ”friends.”your ”protectors” and your ”home” will vanish. Nothing that you remember nowwill you remember. It seems to you the world utterly abandon you if you butraise your eyes. Yet all that will occur is you will leave the world forever.This is the re-establishment of your will. Look upon it, open-eyed, and youwill nevermore believe that you are at the mercy of things beyond you, forcesyou cannot control, and thoughts that come to you against your will. It is yourwill to look on this. No mad desire, no trivial impulse to forget again, nostab of fear nor the cold seat of seeming death can stand against your will.For what attracts you from beyond the veil is also deep within you, unseparatedfrom it and completely one.

Love

[IA56]

The Lifting of the Veil

Forget not that you came this far together, you and your brother. 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 on 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 one another in innocence born of complete forgiveness of each other´s illusions, and through the eyes of faith that sees 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 this far unless his brother walked besides him.And no one would dare to look on it without complete forgiveness of of his brother in his heart. Stand you here a while and tremble not. You will be ready. Let us join together in a holyt instant, here in this place where thepurpose, given in a holy instant, has led you. And le tus join in faith that HeWho brought us here together will offer you the innocence you need, and thatyou will accept it fo my love and His. Nor is it possible to look on this toosoon. This is the place to which everyone must come when he is ready. Once hehas found his brother he is ready. Yet merely to reach the place is not enough.A journey without a purpose is still meaningless, and even when it is over itseems to make no sense. How can you know that it is over unless you realize itspurpose is accomplished? Here, with the journey´s end before you, you see itspurpose. And it is here you choose whether to look upon it or wander on, onlyto return and make the choice again. To look upon the fear of God does needsome preparation. Only the sane can look on stark insanity and raving madnesswith pity and compassion, but not with fear. For only if they share in it doesit seem fearful, and you dos hare in it until you look upon your brother withperfect faith and love and tenderness. Before complete forgiveness you stillstand unforgiving. You are afraid of God because you fear your brother. Thoseyou do not forgive you fear. And no one raches love with fear beside him. Thisbrother who stands beside you still seems to be a stranger. You do not knowhim, 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 seehis madness, which you hate because you share it. And all the pity andforgiveness that would heal it given way to fear. Brother, you need forgivenessof each other, for you will share in madness or in Heaven together. And youwill raise your eyes in faith together, or not at all. Beside each of you isone who offers the chalice of Atonement, for the Holy Spirit is in him. Wouldyou hold his sins against him, or accept his gift to you? Is this giver ofsalvation your friend of eneymy? Choose which he is, remembering that you willreceive of him according to your choice. He has in him the power to forgiveyour sin, as your for him. Neither can give it to himself alone. And yet yoursavior stands beside each one. Let him be what he is, and seek not to make oflove an enemy. Behold your Friend, the Christ Who stands beside you. How holyand beautiful He is! You thought He sinned because you cast the veil of sinupon Him to hide His loveliness. Yet still He holds forgiveness out to you, toshare His holiness. This ”enemy,” this ”stranger” still offers you salvation asHis Friend. The ”enemies” of Christ, the worshippers of sin, know not whom theyattack. This is your brother, crucified by sin and waiting for release formpain. Would you not offer him forgiveness, when only he can offer it to you?For his redemtion he will give you yours, as surely as God created every livingthing and loves it. And he will give it truly, for it wil be both offered andreceived. There is no grace of Heaven that you cannot offer to one another, andreceive it you offer it to him. Redemption has been given you to give eachother, and thus receive it. Whom you forgive is free, and what you give youshare. Forgive the sins your brother thinks he has committed, and all the guiltyou think you see in him. Here is the holy place of resurrection, to which wecome 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 toGod that he is holy, and has been given the gift of holiness for you. Join himin gladness, and remove all trace of guilt from his disturbed and torturedmind. Help him to lift the heavy burden of sin you laid upon him and heaccepted 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 andhopeless. Give faith to one another, for faith and hope and mercy are yours togive. Into the hands that give, the gift is given. Look on your brother, andsee in him the gift of God you would receive. It is almost Easter, the time ofresurrection. Let us give redemption to each other and share in it, that we mayrise as one in resurrection, not separate in death. Behold the gift of freedomthat I gave the Holy Spirit for both of you. Aned be you free together, as youoffer to the Holy Spirit this same gift. And giving it, receive it of Him inreturn for what you gave. He leadeth you and me together, that we might meethere in this holy place, and make the same decision. Free your brother here, asI free you. Give him the self-same gift, nor look upon him with comdemnation ofany kind. See him as guiltless as I look on you, and overlook the sins hethinks he sees within himself. Offer your brother freedom and complete releasefrom sin, here in the garden of seeming agony and death. So will we preparetogether the way unto the resurrection of God´s Son, and let him rise again toglad remembrance of his Father, Who knows no sin, no death, but only eternal.Together we will disappear into the Presence beyond the veil, not to be lostbut fouund; not to be seen but known. And knowing, nothing in the plan God hasestablished 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 toyou eternally by Him. Here is the rest and quiet that you seek, the reason forthe journey from its beginning. Heaven is the gift you owe your brother, thedebt of gratitude you offer to the Son of God in thanks for what he is, andwhat his Father created him to be. Think carefully how you would look upon thegiver of this gift, for as you look on him so will the gift itself appear tobe. As he is seen as either the giver of guilt or salvation, so will hisoffering be seen and so received. The crucified give pain because they are inpain. But the redeemed give joy because they have been healed of pain. Everyonegives as he receives, but he must choose what it will be that he receives. Andhe will recongnize his choice by wht he gives, and what is given him. Nor is itgiven anything in hell or Heaven to interfere with his decision. You came thisfar because the journey was your choice. And no one undertaken to do what hebelieves is meaningless. What you had faith in still is faithful, and watchesover you in faith so gentle yet so strong that it would lift you far beyond theveil, 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 throughthis world, whatever meaninng lies in them. Beyond this, they are meaningless.You and your brother stand together, still without conviction they have apurpose. Yet it is given you to see this purpose in your holy Friend, andrecognize it as your own.

Love

[IA56]

THE VISION OF HOLINESS
Holy Week

This is Palm Sunday, the celebration of victory and thea acceptance of the truth. Let us not spend this holy week brooding on the crucifixion of God´s Son, but happily in the celebration of his release. For Easter is the sign of peace, not pain. A slain Christ has no meaning. But arisen Christ becomes the symbol of the Son of God´s forgiveness on himself; the sign he looks upon himself as healed and whole. This week begins with palms and ends with lilies, the white and holy sign the Son of God is innocent. Let no dark sign of crusifixion intervene between the journey and its purpose; between the acceptance of the truth and its expression. This week we celebrate life,not death. And we honor the perfect purity of the Son of God, and not his sins.Offer your brother the gift of lilies, not the crown of thorns; the gift of love and not the ”gift” of fear. You stand beside your brother, thorns in one hand and lilies in the other, uncertain which to give. Join now with me and throw away the thorns, offering the lilies to replace them. This Easter I would have the gift of your forgiveness offered by you to me, and returned by me to you. We cannot be united in crucifixtion and in death. Nor can the resurrection be complete till your forgiveness rests in Christ, along with mine. A week is short, and yet this holy week is the symbol of the whole journey the Son of Godhas undertaken. He started with the sign of victory, the promise of the resurrection, already given him. Let him not wander into the temptation of crucifixion, and delay him there. Help him to go in peace beyond it, with thelight of his own innocence lighting his way to his redemption and release. Hold him not back with thorns and nails when his redemption is so near. But let the whitness of your shining gift of lilies speed him on his way to resurrection.If you see glimses of the face of Christ behind the veil, looking between the snow white petals of the lilies you have received and given as your gift, you will behold your brother´s face and recognize it. I was a stranger and you took me in, not knowing who I was. Yet for your gift of lilies you will know. In your forgiveness of this stranger, alien to you yet your ancient Friend, lies his release and your redemption with him. The time of Easter is a time of joy and not of mourning. Look on your risen Friend, and celebrate his holiness along with me. For Easter is the time of your salvation, along with me.

Love

[IA56]

The Gift of Lilies

Look upon all the trinkles made to hang upon the body, or to cover it or for its use. See all the useless things made for its eyes to see.Think on the many offerings made for its pleasure, and remember all these we remade to make seem lovely what you hate. Would you employ this hated thing to draw your brother to you, and to attract his body´s eyes? Learn you but offer him a crown of thorns, not recognizing it for what it is, and trying to justify your own interpretation of its value by his acceptance. Yet still the gift proclaims his worthlessness to you, as his acceptance and delight acknowledges the lack of value he placeds on himself. Gifts are not made through bodies, if they be truly given and received. For bodies can neither offer nor accept; hold out nor take. Only the mind can value, and only the mind decides on what itwould receive and give. And every gift it offers depends on what it would receive the gifts it wants by offering them to those who come unto its chosen home, or those it would attract to it. And there they will exchange theirgifts, offering and receiving what their minds judge to be worthy of them. Eachgift is an evaluation of the receiver and the giver. No one but sees his chosenhome as an altar to himself. No one but seeks to draw to it the worshippers ofwhaqt he placed upon it, making it worthy of their devotion. And each has set alight upon his altar, that they may see what he has placed upon it and take itfor their own. Here is the value that you lay upon your brother and onyourself. Here is your gift to both; your judgment on the Son of God for whathe is. Forget not that it is your savior to whom the gift is offered. Offer himthorns and you aree crucified. Offer him lilies and it is yourself you free. Ihave great need for lilies, for the Son of God has not forgiven me. And can Ioffer him forgiveness when he offers thorns to me? For he who offers thorns to anyoneis against me still, and who is whole without him? Be you his this first uponthe altar in your chosen home, and see what you have laid upon it to offer me.If it be thorns whose points gleam sharply in a blood-red light, the body isyour chosen home and it is separation that you offer me. And yet the thorns aregone. Look you still closer at them now, and you will see your altar is nolonger what it was. You look still with the body´s eyes, and they can see butthorns. Yet you have asked for and received another sight. Those who accept theHoly Spirit´s purpose as their own share also His vision. And what enables Himto see His purpose shine forth from every altar now is yours as well as His. Hesees no strangers; only dearly loved and loving friends. He sees no thorns butonly lilies, gleaming in the gentle glow of peace that shines on everything Helooks upon and loves. The Easter, look with different eyes upon your brother.You have forgiven me. And yet cannot use your gift of lilies while you see themnot. Nor can you use what I have given unless you share it. The Holy Spirit´svision is no idle gift, no plaything to be tossed about a while and laid aside.Listen and hear this carefully, nor think it but a dream, a careless thought toplay with, or to toy you would pick up from time to time and then put by. Forif you do, so will it be to you. You have the vision now to look past allillusions. It has been given you to see no thorns, no strangers and noobstacles to peace. The fear of God is nothing to you now. Who is afraid tolook upon illusions, knowing his savior stands beside Him? With him, yourvision has become the greates power for the undoing of illusion that GodHimself could give. For what God gave the Holy Spirit, you have received. TheSon of God looks unto you for his release. For you have asked for and beengiven the strength to look upon this final obstacle, and see no thorns nornails to crusify the Son of God, and crown himn king of death. Your chosen homeis on the other side, beyond the veil. It has been carefully prepared for you,and it is ready to receive you now. You will not see it with the body´s eyes.Yet all you need you have. Your home has called to you since time began, norhave you ever failed entirely to hear. You heard, but knew not how to look, norwhere. And now you know. In you the knowledge lies, ready to be unveiled andfreed from all the terror that kept it hidden. There is no fear in love. The songof Easter is the glad refrain the Son of God was never crucified. Let us liftup our eyes together, not in fear but faith. And there will be no fear in us,for in our vision will be no illusions; only a pathway to the open door ofHeaven, the home we share in quietness and where we live in gentleness andpeace, as one together. Would you not have your holy brother lead you there?His innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light and sureprotection, and shining from the holy altar within him where you laid thelilies of forgiveness. Let him be to you the savior from illusions, and look onhim with the new vision that looks upon the lilies and brings you joy. We gobeyond the veil of fear, lighting each other´s way. The holiness that leads usin within us, as is our home. So will we find what we were meant to find by HimWho leads us. This is the way to Heaven and to peace of Easter, in which wejoin in glad awareness that the Son of God is risen from the past, and hasawakened to the present. Now is he free, unlimited in his communicatio with allthat is within him. Now are the lilies of his innocence untouched by guilt, andperfectly protected form the cold chill of fear and withering blight of sinalike. Your gift has saved him from the thorns and nails, and his strong arm isfree to guide you safely through them and beyond. Walk with him now rejoicing,for the savior from illusions has come to greet you, and lead you home withhim. Here is your savior and your friend, released from crusifixion throughyour vision, and free to lead you now where he would be. He will not leave you,nor forsake the savior in his pain. And gladly will you walk the way ofinnocence togeher, singing as you behod the open door of Heaven and recognizethe home that called to you. Give joyously to one another the freedom and thestrength to lead you there. And come before each other´s holy altar where the strengthand freedom wait, to offer and receive the bright awareness that leads youhome. The lamp is lift in both of youfor one another. And by the hands thatgave it to your brother shall but both of you be led past fear to love.

Love

[IA56]

Sin as an Adjustment

The belief in sin is an adjustment. And and adjustment is achange; 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 require no adjustments and, infact, is lost if any shift or change is undertaken. For this reduces it at once to mere perception; a way of looking in which certainly is lost and doubt has entered. To this impaired condition are adjustments necessary, because it is not true. Who need adjust to truth, which calls on only what he is, to undertand? 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 seems necessary the interposing them between those who would meet, to keep them separate and prevent theirunion. It is this studied interference that makes it difficult for you to recognize your holy relationship for what it is. The holy do not interfere withtruth. They are not afraid of it, for it is within the truth they recognizetheir holiness, and rejoice at what they see. They look on it directly, withoutattempting to adjust themselves to it, or it to them. And so they see that itwas in them, not deciding first where they would have it be. Their lookingmerely asks a question, and it is what they see that answers them. You make theworld and then adjust to it, and it to you. Nor is there any difference betweenyourself and it in your perception, which made them both. A simple question yetremains, and needs an answer. Do you like what you have made? – a world ofmurder and attack, through which you thread your timid way through constantdangers, alone and frightened, hoping at most that death will wait a littlelonger before it overtakes you and you disappear. You made this up. It is apicture of what you think you are; of how you see yourself. A murderer isfrightened, and those who kill fear death. All these are but the fearfulthoughts of those who would adjust themselves to a world made fearful by theiradjustments. And they look out in sorrow from what is sad within, and seesadness there. Have you not wondered what the world is really like; how itwould look through happy eyes? The world you see is but a judgment on yourself.It is not there at all. Yet judgment lays a sentence on it, justifies it andmakes it real. Such is the world you see; a judgment on yourself, and made byyou. This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego, whoseimage it is and which it loves, and placed outside you in the world. And tothis world must you adjust as long as you believe this picture is outside, andhas you at its mercy. This world is merciless, and were it outside you,you should indeed be fearful. Yet it wasyou 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 worldthe holy see in one with them, just as the world the ego looks upon is likeitself. The world the holy see is beautiful because they see their innocence init. They did not tell it what it was; they did not make adjustments in it. Theydid 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 watchesover all perception answered. Take not the judgment of the world as answer tothe question, ”What am I?” The world believes in sin, but the belief that madeit as you see it is not outside you. Seek not to make the Son of God adjust tohis insanity. There is a stranger in him, who wandered carelessly into the homeof truth and who will wander off. He came without a purpose, but he will notremain before the shining light the Holy Spirit offered, and you accepted. Forthere the stranger is made homeless and you are welcome. Ask not this transientstranger, ”’What am I?” He is the only thing in all the the universe that doesnot know. Yet it is he you ask, and it is to his answer that you would adjust.This one wild thought, fierce in its arrogance, and yet so tiny and someaningless it slips unnoticed through the universe of truth, becomes yourguide. To it you turn to ask the meaning of the universe. And of the one blindthing in all the seeing universe of truth you ask, ”How shall I look upon theSon of God?” Does one ask judgment of what is totally bereft of judgment? Andif you have, would you believe the answer, and adjust to it as if it were thetruth? The world you look on is the answer that it gave you, and you have givenit power to adjust the world to make its answer true. You asked this puff ofmadness for the meaning of your unholy relationship, and adjusted it accordingto its insane answer. How happy did it make you? Did you meet with joy to blessthe Son of God, and give him thanks for all the happiness that he held out toyou? Did you recongnize your brother as the eternal gift of God to you? Did yousee the holiness that shone in both of you, to bless the other? That is thepurpose of your holy relationship. Ask not the means of its attainment of theone thing that still would have it be unholy. Give it not power to adjust themeans and end. Prisones bound with heavy chains for years, starved andemaciated, weak and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down in darkness theyremember 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 feeblyin the dust and found your brother´s hand, uncertain whether to let it go or totake hold on life so long forgotten. Strengthen you hold and raise your eyesunto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies. He seemedto be crucified beside you. And let his holiness remained untouched andperfect, and with him beside you, you shall this day enter with him toParadise, and know the peace of God. Such is my will for both of you, and foreach of you for one another and for himself. Here there is only holiness andjoining without limit. For what is Heaven but union, direct and perfect, andwithout the veil of fear upon it? Here are we one, looking with perfectgentleness upon each other and on ourselves. Here all thoughts of anyseparation between us become impossible. You who were prisoners in separationare now made free in Paradise. And here would I unite with you, my friends, mybrothers and my Self. Your gift unto your brother has given me the certaintyour union will be soon. Share, then, this faith with me, and know that it isjustified. There is no fear in perfect love because it knows no sin, and itmust look on others as on itself. Looking with charity within, what can it fearwithout? The innocent see safety, and the pure in heart see God within His Son,and look unto the Son to lead them to the Father. And where else would they gobut where they will to be? Each of you now will lead the other to the Father assurely as God created His Son holy, and kept him so. In your brother is thelight of God´s eternal promise of your immortality. See him as sinless, andthere can be no fear in you.

Love

[IA56]

Entering The Ark

Nothing can hurt you unless you give it the power to do so.Yet 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 reawekened 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 occured because the Holy Spirit sees them not, and gives no power to their seeming source. Thus would He keep you free from 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 there in lies your need to see your brother sinless. In him is Heaven. See sin in him instead, and Heaven is lostto you. But see him as he is, and what is yours shines from him to you. Yoursavior gives you only love, but what you would receive of him is up to you. Itlies in him to overlook all your mistakes, and therein lies his own salvation.And so it is with yours. It is the reawakening of the laws of God in minds thathave established other laws, and given them power to enforce what God creatednot. Your insane laws were made to guarantee that you would make mistakes, andgive them power over you by accepting their results as your just due. Whatcould this be but madness? And is it this that you would see within yhoursavior from insanity? He is as free from this as you are, and in the freedomthat you see in him you see your own. For this you share. What God has given followsHis laws, and His alone. Nor is it possible for those who follow them to sufferthe results of any other source. Those who choose freedom will experience onlyits results. Their power is of God, and they will give it only to what God hasgiven, to share with them. Nothing but this can touch them, for they see onlythis, sharing their power according to the Will of God. And thus their freedom is established and maintained.It is upheld through all temptation to imprison and to be imprisoned. It is ofthem who learned of freedom that you should ask what freedom is. Ask not thesparrow how the eagle soars, for those with little wings have not accepted forthemselves 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 thepower of the release from sin you offered him. To each who walks this earth in seemingsolitude is a savior given, whose special function here is to release him, andso to free himself. In the world of separation each is appointed separately,though they are all the same. Yet those who know that they are all the sameneed not salvation. And each one finds his savior when he is ready to look uponthe face of Christ, and see Him sinless. The plan is not of you, nor need yoube 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. Butt hink not thatHe does not need your part to help Him with the rest. For in your part lies allof it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole completed withoutyour part. The ark of peace is entered two by two, yet the beginning of anotherworld goes with them. Each holy relationship must enter here, to learn itsspecial function in the Holy Spirit´s plan, now that it shares His purpose. Andas this purpose is fulfilled, a new world rises in which sin can enter not, andwhere the Son of God can enter without fear and where he rests a while, toforget imprisonment and to remember freedom. How can he enter, to rest and toremember, without you? Except you be there, he is not complete. And it is hiscompletion that he remembers there. This is the purpose given you. Think notthat your forgiveness of your brother serves but you two alone. For the wholenew world rests in the hands of every two who enters here to rest. And as theyrest, 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 fulfilledinthem and all their brothers. Think you when this has been achieved that youwill rest without them? You could no more leave one of them outside than Icould leave you, and forget part of myself. You may wonder how you can be at peacewhen, while you are in time, there is so much that must be done before the wayto peace is open. Perhaps this seems impossible to you. But ask yourself if itis 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 willbe 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 nostones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. Nothing you need will bedenied you. Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away before you reach it.You need taken thought for nothing, careless of everything except the onllypurpose that you would fulfill. As that was given you, so will its fulfillmentbe. God´s guarantee will hold against all obstacles, for it rests on certaintyand not contingency. It rests on you. And what can be more certain than a Sonof God?

Love

[IA56]

Heralds of Eternity

In this world, God´s Son comes closest to himself in a holy relationship. There he begins to find 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, and never lost forever. So do the parts of God´s Son gradually join in time, and with each joining in the end of time brought nearer. Each miracle of joining is amighty 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 togehter call to the hearts of everyone, to let them beat as one. And in that single heartbeat is the unity oflove 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 in everyone made glad. Forget not Who has givenyou the gifts you give, and through your not forgetting this, will you rememberWho gave the gifts to Him to give to you. It is impossible to overestimate yourbrother´s value. Only the ego does this, but all it means is that it wants theother for itself, and therefore values him too little. What is inestimableclearly cannot be evaluated. Do you recognize the fear that rises from themeaningless attempt to judge what lies so far beyond your judgment you cannoteven see it? Judge not what is invisible to you or you will never see it, butwait in patience for its coming. It will be given you to see your brother´sworth when all you want for him is peace. And what you want for him you willreceive. How can you estimate the worth of him who offers peace to you? Whatwould you want exept his offering? His worth has been established by hisFather, and you will recognize it as you receive his Father´s gift through him.What is in him will shine so brightly in your greatful vision that you will merely love him and be glad. You will not think to judge him, for who would seethe 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 tohim. 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 usewhich serves the purpose of a holy relationship. And while you look upon your brotherthus, the means and end have not been brought in line. Why should it take somany holy instants to let this be accomplished, when one would do? There is butone. The little breath of eternity that runs through time like golden light isall the same; nothing before it, nothing afterwards. You look upon each holyinstant as a different point in time. It never changes. All that is ever heldor will ever hold is here right now. The past takes nothing from it, and thefuture will adde no more. Here, then, is everything. Here is the loveliness ofyour relationship, with means and end in perfect harmony already. Here is theperfect faith that you will one day offer to your brother already offered you;and here the limitless forgiveness you will give each other already given, theface of Christ you yet will look upon already seen. Can you evaluate the giverof a gift like this? Would you exchange this gift for any other? This giftreturns 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 nogift your brother´s body offers you. The veil that hides the gift hiden him as well. He is the gift, and yet he knows it not. No more do you. And yet, havefaith that He Who sees the gift in both of you will offer and receive it foryou both. And through His vision will you see it, and through His understandingrecongize 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 gentlehands in safety and in peace. Le tus consider now what he must learn, to sharehis 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 notas his Father knows him. And yet it is impossible the confidence of God should be misplaced.

Love

[IA56]

The Temple of the Holy Spirit

The meaning of the Son of God lies solely in his relationship with his Creator. If it were elsewhere it would rest contingency, but there is nothing else. And this is wholly loving and forever. Yet has the Son of God invested an unholy relationship between him and his Father. His real relationship is one of perfect union and unbroken continuity. The one he makeis partial, self-cretered, broken into fragments and full of fear. The one created by his Father is wholly self-encomppasing 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 whishes to be known, completely understood and shared. It has no secrets; nothing that it would keep apart and hide. Itwalks in sunlight, open-eyed and calm, in smiling welcome and in sincerity sosimple and so obvious it cannot be misunderstood. But idols do not share. Idolsaccept, but never make return. They can be loved, but cannot love. They do notunderstand what they are offered, and any relationship in which they enter haslost its meaning. They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight and happy in thebody´s darkness, where they can hide and keep their secrets hiden along withthem. And they hve no relationships, for no one else is welcome there. Theysmile on no one, and those who smile on them they do not see. Love has nodarkened temples where mysteries are kept obscure and hidden from the sun. Itdoes not seek for power, but for relationships. The body is the ego´s chosenweapon for seeking power through relationships. And it s relatioships must beunholy, for what they are it does not even see. It wants them solely for theofferings on which its idols thrive. The rest it merely throws away, for allthat it could offer is seen as valueless. Homeless, the ego seeks as manybodies as it can collect to place its idols in, and so establish them astemples to itself. The Holy Spirit´s temple is not a body, but a relationship.The body is is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spotof sensless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hidingnothing. Here the unholy relationship escapes reality, and seeks for crumbs tokeep itself alive. Here it is ”safe,” for here love can never be. Would He Whosees the face of Christ choose as His home the only place in all the universewhere 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 oflove´s condemnation. For here is love made fearful and hope abandoned. Even theidols that are worshipped here are shrouded in mystery, and kept apart fromthose who worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no relationships and noreturn. Here is the ”mystery,” of separation perceived in awe and held inreverence. What God would have not be is here kept ”safe” from Him. But whatyou do not realize is what you fear within your brothers, and would not see inhim, is what makes God seem fearful to you, and kept unknown. Idolaters willalways be afraid of love, for nothing so severly threatens them as love´sapproach. 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 templebegin to shake and loosen. Brother, you tremble with them. Yet what you fear isbut the herald of escape. This place of darkness is not your home. Your templeis not threatened. You are an idolaters no longer. The Holy Spirit´s purposelies safe in your relationship, and not your body. You have escaped the body.Where you are the body cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set His templethere. There is no order in relationships. They either are or not. An unholyrelationship is no relationship. It is a state of isolation, which seems to bewhat it is not. No more than that. The instant that the mad idea of making yourrelationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, all your relationships weremade meaningless. In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made tohouse the mad idea and give it the illusion of reality. And so it seemed tohave a home that held together for a little while in time, and vanished. Forwhat could house this mad idea against reality but for an instant? Idols mustdisappear, and leave no trace behind their going. The unholy relationshipreflects 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. Itsfirm foundation is eternally upheld by truth, and love shines on it with thegentle smile and tender blessing it offers to its own. Here the unholy instantis exchanged in gladness for the holy one of safe return. Here is the way totrue relationships held gently open, through which you walk together, leavingthe body thankfully behind and resting in the Everlasting Arms. Love´s arms areopen 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 whatseems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spotof space and time, behold unto death, and given but an instant in which to sighand grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant seems to belife; an instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water and setuncertainty upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offerhis devotion to death´s idols and then pass on. And here he is more dead thanliving. Yet it is also here he makes his choice again between idoltary andlove. Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying tribute tothe body, or let himself be given freedom from it. Here he can accept the holyinstant, offered him to replace the unholy one he choses before. And here canhe learn relationships are his salvation, and not his doom. You who arelearning this may still be fearful, but you are not immobilized. The holyinstant is of greater value now to you than its unholy seeming counterpart, andyou have learned you really want but one. This is no time for sadness. Perhapsconfusion, but hardly discouragement. You have a real relationship, and it hasmeaning. It is as like your real relationship with God as equal things are likeunto each other. Idoltary is past and meaningless. Perhaps you fear yourbrother a little yet; perhaps a shadow of the fear of God remains with you. Yetwhat is that to those who have been given one true relationship beyond thebody? Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ? And canthey long withhold the memory of their relationship with their Father fromthemselves, and keep remembrance of His Love apart from their awareness?

Love

[IA56]

The Consistency of Means and End

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 are as 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 tht asks so little, or could offer more. The period of discomfort that follows the sudden change in a relationship from sin to holiness may not 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, letus admit that you are inconsistent. A purpose is attained by means, and if you want a purpose 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 learnthe means to get it?” To obtain the goal the Holy Spirit indeed asks little. And He asks no more to give the means as well. The means are second to the goal. And when you 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 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 as sinless and yet to look uponhim as a body. Is this not perfectly consistent with the goal of holiness? Forholiness is merely the result of letting the effect of sin be lifted, so whatwas always true is recognized. To see a sinless body is impossbible, forholiness is postive and the body is merely neutral. It is not sinful, butneither is it sinless. As nothing, which it is, the body cannot meaningfully beinvested with attributes of Christ or of the ego. Either must be an error, forboth would place the attributes where they cannot be. And both must be undonefor purpose of truth. The body is the means by which the ego tries to make theunholy relationship seem real. The unholy instant is the time of bodies. Butthe purpose here is sin. It cannot be attained but in illusion, and so theillusion of a brother as a holy is quite in keeping with the purpose ofunholiness. Because of this consistency, the means remain unquestioned whilethe end is cherished. Seeing adapts to wish, for sight is always secondary todesire. And if you see the body, you have chosen judgment and not vision. Forvision, like relationships, has no order. You either see or not. Who sees abrother´s body has laid a judgment on him, and sees him not. He does not reallysee 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 youhold about him are not held up to his reality. Here are illusions and realitykept separated. Here are illusions never brought to truth, and always hiddenfrom 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 instantbefore he dies. There is indeed a difference between this vain imagining andvision. The difference lies not in them, but in their purpose. Both are butmeans, each one appropriate to the end for which it is employed. Neither canserve the purpose of the other, for each one is a choice of purpose, empoyed ofits behalf. Either is meaningless without the end for which it was intented,nor is it valued as a separate thing apart from the intention. The means seemreal because the goal is valued. And judgment has no value unless the goal issin. The body cannot be looked upon except through judgment. To see the body isthe sign that you lack vision, and have denied the means the Holy Spirit offersyou to serve His purpose. How can a body relationship achieve its purposethrough them means of sin? Judgment you taught yourself; vision is learned fromHim Who would undo your teaching. His vision cannot see the body because itcannot look on sin. And thus it leads you to reality. Your holy brother, sightof 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 toshut him out. Such was your purpose and while this purpose seems to have ameaning, the means for it attainment will be evaluated as worth the seeing, andso you will not see. Your questioning should not be, ”How can I see my brotherwithout the body?” Ask only, ”Do I really wish to see him sinless? And as youask, forget not this at his sinlessness is your escape from fear. Salvation isthe Holy Spirit´s goal. The means is vision. For what the seeing look upon issinless. 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 thevision that made his seeing possible.

Love

[IA56]

The Vision of Sinlessness

Vision will come to you at first in glimses, 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 that 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 brothersinless. 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 youin shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit´s vision and to rejoice inalong with Him. For peace would come to 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 Christmay rise before your vision and give you joy. And place no value on yourbrother´s body, which holds him to illusions of what he is. It is his desire tosee 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 willed and gave you 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 your brother, 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? Howcan the engine of destruction be perferred, 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? Wouldyou turn in your distress and need for help unto the helpless? Is the pitifullylittle the perfect choice to call upon for strength? Judgment will see to maleyour savior weak. Yet it is you who need his strength. There is no problem, noevent or situation, no perplexity that vision will not solve. All is redeemedwhen looked upon the vision. For this is not your sight, and brings with thelaws beloved of Him Whose sight it is. Everything looked upon with vision fallsgently into place, according to the laws brought to it by His calm and certainsight. The end for everything He looks upon is always sure. For it will meetHis purpose, seen in unadjusted form and suited perfectly to meet it.Destructiveness becomes bening, and sin is turned to blessing under His gentlegaze. What can the body´s eyes perceive, any form and seeing it everywhere, ineverything. Look through its eyes, and everything will stand condemned beforeyou. All that could save you, you will never see. Your holy relationship, thesource of your salvation, will be deprived of meaning, and its most holypurpose 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. Butvision sets all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway ofHeaven´s laws. What if you recognize this world is an hallucination? What ifyou really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seemto 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 forwhat they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believed them not and theyare gone. And all you need to do is recongize that you did this. Once youaccept this simple fact and take unto yourself the power you gave them, you arereleased from them. One thing is sure; hallucinations serve a purpose, and whenthat purpose is no longer held they disappear. Therefore, the question never iswhatever you want them, but always, do you want the purpose, each different andwith different values. Yet they are all the same. Again there is no order; onlya seeming hierarchy of values. Only two purpose are possible. And one is sin,the other holiness. Nothing is in between, and which you choose determines whatyou 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 whichthe outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin and seems to withnessto its reality. It still is true that nothing is without. Yet upon nothing areall projections made. For it is the projection that gives the ”nothing” all themeaning that it holds. What has no meaning cannot be perceived. And meaningalways looks within to find itself, and then looks out. All meaning that yougive 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 theHoly Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wildhallucinations that show you all the fearful outcomes of imagined sin into thecalm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentlesights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. They are Hissubstitues for all the terryfying sights and screaming sounds the ego´s purposebrought to your horrifeied awareness. They step away from sin, reminding youthat it is not reality which frightens you, and that the errors which you madecan be corrected. When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and seen it changeto sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violanceand death, and watched them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies,with clear, life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooksthat never waste away; who need persuade you to accept the gift of vision? Andafter vision, who is there who could refuse what must come after? Think but aninstant just on this; you can behold the holiness God gave His Son. And neverneed you think that there is something else for you to see.

Love

[IA56]

REASON AND PERCEPTION

Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. But though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you it is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. Perception is a result and not a cause. And that is why order of difficulty in miracles is meaninless. Everything looked upon with vision is healed and holy. Nothing perceived without it means anything. And where there is no meaning, there is chaos. Damnation is your judgment on yourself, and this you will project upon the world. See it as damned, and all you see is what you did to hurt the Son of God. If you behold disaster and catastrophe, you tried to crucify him. If you see holiness and hope, you joined the Will of God to set him free. There is no choice that lies between these two decisions. And you will see the withness to the choice you made, and learn this to recognize which one you chose.

Love

[CFTraveler]

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles" is a powerful phrase. It's what's kept me alive. Thanks for reminding me.

[IA56]

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles" is a powerful phrase. It's what's kept me alive. Thanks for reminding me.

Thank you CFT for telling this, it is very powerful indeed.

Love
ia

[IA56]

The Forgotten Song

Never forget the world the sightless ”see” must be imagined,for what it really looks like is unknown to them. They must infer what could be seen from evidence forever indirect; and reconstruct their inference as they stumble and fall because of what they did not recognize, or walk unharmed through open doorways that they thought were closed. And so it is with you. You do not see. Your cues for inference are wrong, and so you stumble and fall down upon the stones you did not recognize, but fail to be aware you can go through the doors you thought were closed, but which stand open before unseeing eyes,waiting to welcome you. How foolish to imagine what the world must look like.It must be seen before you recognize it for what it is. You can be shown which doors are open, and you can see where safety lies; and which way leads to darkness, which to light. Judgment will always give you false directions, but vision shows you where to go. Why should you guess? There is no need to learn through pain. And gentle lessons are acquired joyously, and are rememberedgladly. What gives you happiness you want to learn and not forget. It is notthis you would deny. Your question is whether the means by which this course islearned, will bring to you the joy it promises. If you believed it would, thelearning of it would be no problem. You are not a happy learner yet because youstill remain uncertain that vision gives you more than judgment does, and youhave learned that both you cannot have. The blind become accustomed to theirworld by their adjustments to it. They think they know their way about in it.They learned it, not through joyous lessons, but through the stern necessityuof limits they believed they could not overcome. And still believing this, theyhold those lessons dear, and cling to them because they cannot see. They do notunderstand the lessons keep them blind. This they do not believe. And so theykeep the world they learned to ”see” in their imagination, believing that theirchoice is that or nothing. They hate the world they learned through pain. Andeverything they think is in it serves to remind them that they are incompleteand bitterly deprived. Thus they define their life where they live, adjustingto it as they think they must, afraid to lose the little that they have. And soit is with all who see the body as all they have and all their brothers have.They try to reach each other, and they fail, and fail again. And they adjust toloneliness, believing that to keep the body is to save the little that theyhave. Listen, and try to think if you remember what we will speak of now.Listen, - perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten;dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a song whose name is longforgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered.Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of melody,attached not to a person or a place or anything particular. But you remember,from just this little part, how lovely was the song, how wonderful the settingwhere you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and listened withyou. The notes are nothing. Yet you have kept them with you, not forthemselves, but as a soft reminder of what would make you weep if youremembered how dear it was to you. You could remember, yet you are afraid,believing you would lose the world you learned since then. And yet you knowthat nothing in the world you learned is half so dear as this. Listen, and seeif you remember an ancient song you knew so long ago, and held more dear thanany melody you taught yourself to cherish since. Beyond the body, beyond thesun and stars, past everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc ofgolden light that stretches as you look into a great and shining circle. Andall the circle fills with light before your eyes. The edges of the circledisappear, and what is in it is no longer contained at all. The light expandsand covers everything, extending to infinity forever shining and with no breakor limit anywhere. Within it everything is joined in perfect continuity. Nor isit possible to imagine that anything could be outside, for there is nowherethat this light is not. This is the vision of the Son of God, whom you knowwell. Here is the sight of him who know his Father. Here is the memory of whatyou are; a part of this, with all of it within, and joined to all as surely asall is joined in you. Accept the vision that can show you this, and not thebody. You know the ancient song, and know it well. Nothing will ever be as dearto you as is this ancient hymn the Son of God sings to his Father still. Andnow the blind can see, for that same song they sing in honor of their Creatorgives praise to them as well. The blindness that they made will not withstandthe memory of this song. And they will look upon the vision of the Son of God,remembering who he is they sing of. What is a miracle but this rememering? Andwho is there in whom this memory lies not? The light in one awaken it in all.And when you see it in your brother, you are remembering for everyone.

Love

[IA56]

The Responsibillity for Sight

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 crusifixtion is changed to resurrection. And behind true, it is so simple that it cannot fail to be compleately understood. Rejected yes, but not abiguous. 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 resevation, forhere the power of salvation lies:

”I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the
goal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me
I ask for, and receive as I have 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 ouside of him. It is impossible that 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 nor chance is possible within the universe as God created it, outside of which is nothing. Suffer, and you decided sin war your goal. Be happy, andyou gave the power of decision to Him Who must decide for God for you. This isthe little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit, and even this He gives to you tog ive 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, andeverything 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 youbecause you want it. Yet 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 seeis but the idle witness that you were right. This witness s insane. You trainedit in its testimony, and as it gave it back to you, you listened and convicedyourself 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. Bewilling, then, to have it taken from him and be replaced with truth. And as youlook 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 given this little offering. Lookcloser, then, at what it is. And, very simply, see in it the whole exchange ofseparation for salvation. All that the ego is, is an idea that it is possiblethat things should happen to the Son of God without his will; and thus withoutthe Will of his Creator, Whose Will cannot be separate from his own. This isthe Son of God´s replacement for his will, a mad revolt against what mustforever be. This is the statement that he has the power to make God powerlessand so to take it for himself, and leave himself without what God has willedfor him. This is the mad idea you have enshrined upon your altars, and whichyou worship. And everything that threatens this seems to attack your faith, forhere is it invested. Think not that you are faithless, for your belief andtrust in this is strong indeed.The Holy Spirit can give you faith in holinessand vision to see it easily enough. But you have not left open and unoccupiedthe altar where the gift belong. Where they should be, you have set up youridols to something else. This other ”will,” which seems to tell you what musthappen, you give reality. And what would show you otherwise must therefore seemunreal. All that is asked of you is to make room for truth. You are not askedto make or do what lies beyond your understanding. All you are asked to do islet 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. Bewilling, for an instant, to leave your altars free of what you placed uponthem, and what is really there you cannot fail to see. The holy instant is notan instant of creation, but of recognition. For recognition comes of vision andsuspended judgment. Then only it is possible to look within and see what mustbe 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 anddesire go hand in hand, for everyone believes in what he wants. We have alreadysaid that wishful thinking is how the ego deals with what it wants, to make itso. There is not better demonstration of the power of wanting, and therefore offaith, to make its goals seem real and possible. Faith in the unreal leads toadjustment of reality to make it fit the goal of madness. The goal of sininduces the perception of a fearful world to justify its purpose. What youdesire, you will see. And if its reality in false, you will uphold it by notrealizing all the adjustments you have introduced to make it so. When vison isdenied, confusion of cause and effect becomes inevitable. The purpose nowbecomes to keep obscure the cause of the effect, and make effect appear to be acause. The seeming independence of effect enables it to be regarded as standingby itself, and capable of serving as a cause of the events and feelings itsmaker thinks it couses. Earlier, we spoke of your desire to create your ownCreator, and be father and not son to Him. This is the same desire. The Son isthe effect, whose Cause he would deny. And so he seems to be the cause, and toconfuse the two is merely to fail to understand them both. It is as needfulthat you recognize you made the world you see, as that you recognize that youdid not create yourself. They are the same mistake. Nothing created not by yourCreator has any influence over you. And if you think what you have made cantell 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 youthink the world you made has power to make you what it wills, you are comfusingSon and Father; effect and Source. The Son´s creation are like his Father´s.Yet in creating them the Son does not delude himself that he is independent ofhis Source. His union with It is the Source of his creating. Apart from this hehas no power to create, and what he makes is meaningless. It changes nothing increation, depends intirely upon the madness of its maker, and cannot serve tojustify the madness. Your brother thinks he made the world with you. Thus hedenies creation. With you, het hinks the world he made, made him. Thus hedenies he made it. Yet the truth is you were both created by loving Father, Whocreated you together and as one. See what ”proves” otherwise, and you deny yourwhole 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, becauseits source has been uncovered. It is its seeming independence of its sourcethat keeps you prisoner. This is the same mistake as thinking you areindependent of the Source by Which you were created, and have never left.

Love

[IA56]

Faith, Belief and Vision
All special relationship have sin as their goal. For theyare bargains with reality, towards which the seeming union is adjusted. Forget not this; to bargain is to set a limit, and any brother with whom you have alimited relationship, you hate. You may attempt to keep the bargain in the name of ”fairness,” sometimes demanding payment of yourself, perhaps more often ofthe other.Thus in the ”fairness” you attmept to ease the guilt that comes from the accepted purose of the relationship. And that is why the Holy Spirit mustchange its purpose to make it useful to Him and harmless to you. If you accept this change, you have accepted the idea of making room for truth. The source of sin is gone. You may imagine that you still experience its effects, but it is not your purpose and you no longer want it. No one allows a purpose to be replaced while he desires it, for nothing is so cherished and protected as is agoal the mind accepts. This it will allow, grimly or happily, but always with faith and with the persistence that faith inevitably brings. The power of faith is never recognized if it is placed in sin. But it iss always recognized if it is placed in love. Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? Thisis indeed a little feat for such a power. For faith can keep the Son of God inchainsas long as he believes he is in chains. And when he is released from themit will be simply because he no longer believes in them, withdrawing faith thatthey can hold him, and placing it in his freedom instead. It is impossible toplace equal faith in oppoisitedirections. What faith you give to sin you take away from holiness. And whatyou offer holiness has been removed from sin. Faith and belief and vision arethe means by which the goal of holiness iss reached. Through them the Holy Spiritleads you to the real world, and away from all illusions where your faith waslaid. This is His direction; the only one He ever sees. And when you wander, Hereminds you there is but one. His faith and His belief and vision are all foryou. And when you have accepted them completely instead of yours, you will haveneed of them no longer. For faith and vision and belief are meaningful onlybefore the state of certainty is reached. In Heaven they are unknown. YetHeaven is reached through them. It is impossible that the Son of God lackfaith, bu the can choose where he would have it be. Faithlessness is not a lackof faith, but faith in nothing. Faith given to illusions does not lack power,for by it does the Son of God believe that he is powerless. Thus is hefaithless to himself, but strong in faith in his illusions about himself. Forfaith, perception and belief you made, as means for losing certainty andfinding sin. This mad direction was your choice, and by your faith in what youchose, you made what you desire. The Holy Spirit has a use for all the meansfor sin by which you sought to find it. But as He uses them they lead away fromsin, because His purpose lies in the opposite direction. He sees the means youuse, but not the purpose for which you made them. He would not take them fromyou, for He sees their value as a means for what He wills for you. You madeperception that you might choose among your brothers, and seek for sin withthem. The Holy Spirit sees perception as a means to teach you that the visionof the holy relationship is all you want to see. Then will you give your faithto holiness, desiring the believing in it because of your desire. Faith and beliefbecome attached to vision, as all the means that once served sin are redirectednow toward holiness. For what you think is sin is limitation, and whom you tryto limit to the body you hate because you fear. In your refusal to forgive him,you would condemn him to the body because the means for sin are dear to you.And so the body has your faith and your belief. But holiness would set yourbrother free, removing hatred by removing fear, not as a symptom, but at itssource. Those who would free their brothers from the body can have no fear. They haverenounced the means for sin by choosing to let all limitations be removed. Asthey desire to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of belief andfaith goes far beyond the body, supporting vision, not obstructing it. Butfirst they chose to recognize how much their faith had limited theirunderstanding of the world, desiring to place its power elsewhere shouldanother point of view be given them. The miracles that follow this decision arealso born of faith. For all who choose to look away from sin are given vision,and are led to holiness. Those who believe in sin must think the Holy Spiritasks for sacrifice, for this is how they think their purpose is accomplished.Brother, the Holy Spirit knows that sacrifice brings nothing. He makes nobargain. And if you seek to limit Him, you will hate Him because you areafraid. The gift that He has given you is more than anything that stands thisside of Heaven. The instant for its recognition is at hand. Join your awarenessto what been already joined. The faith you give your brother can accompishthis. For He Who loves the world is seeing it for you, without one spot of sinupon it, and in the innocence that makes the sight of it as beautiful asHeaven. Your faith in sacrifice has given it great power in your sight; exeptyou do not realize you cannot see because of it. For sacrifice musgt be exactedof a body, and by another body. The mind could neither ask it nor receive it ofitself. And no more could the body. The intention is in the mind, which triesto use the body to carry out the means for sin in which the mind believes. Thusis the joining of mind and body an inescapable belief of those who values sin.And so is sacrifice invariably a means for limitation , and thus for hate.Think you the Holy Spirit is concerned with this? He gives not what it is Hispurpose to lead you from. You think He would deprive you for your good. But ”good”and ”deprivation” are opposites, and cannot meanifully join in any way. It islike saying that the moon and sun are one because they come with night and day,and so they must be joined. Yet sight of one is but the sign the other hasdiappeared from sight. Nor is it possible thaqt what gives light be one withwhat depends on darkness to be seen. Neither demands the sacrifice of theother. Yet on the absence of the other does each depend. The body was made tobe a sacrifice to sin, and in the darkness so it still is seen. Yet in thelight of vision it is looked upon quite differently. You can have faith in itto serve the Holy Spirit´s goal, and give it power to serve as means to helpthe blind to see. But in their seeing they look past it, as do you. The faithand the belief you gave it belongs beyond. You gave perception and belief andfaith from mind to body. Let them now be given back to what produced them, andcan use them still to save itself from what it made.

Love

[IA56]

The Fear to look Within

The Holy Spirit will never teach you that you are sinful. Errors He will correct, but this makes no on 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 is 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 to your desire that it be there to see. This merely seems to be the source of fear. Remember that the egois not alone. Its rule is tempered, and its unknown ”enemy,” Whome 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 certainit 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 arethreatening the ego´s whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother topretend it is your friend. Those who have joined their brothers have detachedthemselves from their belief that their identity lies in the ego. A holyrelationship is one in which you join with what is part of you in truth. Andyou belief in sin has been already shaken, nor are you now entirely unwillingto look within and see it not. Your liberation still is only partial; stilllimited and incomplete, yet born within you. Not wholly mad, you have beenwilling to look on much of your insanity and recognize its madness. Your faithis moving inward, past insanity and on to reason. And what your reason tellsyou now the ego would not hear. The Holy Spirit´s purpose was accepted by thepart 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 nosin. How, otherwise, could it have been willing to see the Holy Spirit´spurpose as its own? This part has seen your brother, and recognized himperfectly since time began. And it desired nothing but to join with him and to be free again, as once it was. It hasbeen waiting for the birth of freedom; the acceptance of release to come toyou. And now you recognize that it was not the ego that joined the HolySpirit´s purpose, and so there must be something else. Think not that this ismadness. For this your reason tells you, and it follows perfectly from what youhave already learned. There is no inconsisntency in what the Holy Spiritteaches. This is the reasoning of the sane. You have perceived the ego´smadness, and not been made afraid because you did not choose to share in it. Attimes it still deceives you. Yet in your saner moments, its ranting strikes noterror in your heart. For you have realized that all the gifts it wouldwithdraw from you, in rage at your ”presumptuous”wish to look within, you donot want. A few remaining trinkets still seem to shine and catch you eye. Yetyou would not ”sell” Heaven to have them. And now the ego is afraid. Yet whatit hears in terror, the other part hears as the sweetest music; the son itlonged to hear since first the ego came into your mind. The ego´s weakness isits strength. The song if freedom, which sings the praise of another world,brings to it hope of peace. For it remembers Heaven, and now it sees thatHeaven has come to earth at last, from which the ego´s rule has kept in out solong. 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 gentlyon your brother, and remember the ego´s weakness is revelead in both yoursight. What it would keep apart has met and joined, and looks upon the egounafraid. Little child, innocent of sin, follow in gladness the way tocertainty. Be not held back by fear´s insane insistence that sureness lies indoubt. 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 wayis open. Follow it happily, and question not what must be so.

Love

[IA56]

The Funktion of Reason

Perception selects, and makes the world yousee. It literally picks it out as the mind directs. The law of size and shape and brightness would hold, perhaps, if other things were equal. They are not equal. For what you look for you are far more likely to discover than what you would prefer to overlook. The still, small Voice for God is not drowned out by all the ego´s raucous screams and senseless ravings to those who want to hear it. Perception is a choice and not a fact. But on this choice depends far more than you may realize as yet. For on the voice you choose to hear, and on the sights you choose to see, depends entirely your whole belief in what you are.Perception is a witness but to this, and never to reality. Yet it can show you the conditions in which awareness of reality is possible, or those where it could never be. Reality needs no cooperation from you to be itself. But your awareness of it needs your help, because it is your choice. Listen to what the ego says, and see what it directs you see, and it is sure that you will see yourself as tiny, vulnerable and afraid. You will experience depression, a sense of wothlessness, and feelings of impermanence and unreality. You will believe that you are helpless prey to forces far beyond you own control, and far more powerful than you. And you willthink the world you made directs your destiny. For this will be your faith. Butnever believe because it is your faith it makes reality. There is anothervision and another Voice in Which your freedom lies, awaiting your choice. Andif you place your faith in them, you will perceive another Self in you. Thisother Self sees miracles as natural. They are simple and as natural to It asbreathing to the body. They are the obvious response to calls for help, the onlyone It makes. Miracles seem unnatural to the ego because it does not understandhow separate minds can influence each other. Nor could they do so. But mindscannot be separate. This other Self is perfectly aware of this. And thus Itrecognizes that miracles do not affect another´s mind, only Its Own. There isno other. You do not realize the whole extent to which the idea of separationhas interfered with reason. Reason lies in the other Self you have cut off fromyou awareness. And nothing you have allowed to stay in your awareness incapable of reason. How can the segment of the mind devoid of reason understandwhat reason is, or grasp the information it would give? All sorts of questionsmay arise in it, but if the basic question stems from reason, it will not askit. Like all that stems from reason, the basic question is obvious, simple andremains unasked. But think not reason could nott answer it. God´s plan for yoursalvation could not have been established without your will and your consent.It must have been accepted by the Son of God, for what God wills for him hemust receive. For God wills not apart from him, nor does the Will of God waitupon time to be accompished. Therefore, what joined the Will of God must be inyour now, being eternal. You must have set aside a place in which the HolySpirit can abide, and where He is. He must have been there since the need forHim arose, and was clearly not the ego´s reasoning. Your reason´s alien natureto the ego is proof you will not find the answer there. Yet if it exists foryou, and has your freedom as the purpose given it, you must be free to find it.God´s plan is simple; never circular and never self-defeating. He has noThoughts except the Self-extending, and in this your will must be included. Thus,there must be a part of you that knows His Will and shares it. It is notmeaningful to ask if what must be is so. But it is meanigful to ask why you areunaware of what is so, for this must have an answer if the plan of God for yoursalvation is complete. And it must be complete, because its Soursce knows notof incompletion. Where would the answer be but in the Source? And where are youbut there, where this same answer is? Your Identity, as much a true effect ofthis same Source as is the answer, must therefore be together and the same. Oyes, you know this, and more than this alone. Yet any part of knowledgethreatens dissociation as much as all of it. And all of it will come with anypart. Here is the part you can accpet. What reason points to you can see,because the witnesses and its behalf are clear. Only the totally insane candisregard them, and you have gone past this. Reason is a means that serves theHoly Spirit´s purpose in its own right. It is not reinterpreted and redirectedfrom the goal of sin, as are the others. For reason is beyond the ego´s rangeof means. Faith and perception and belief can be misplaced, and serve the greatdeceiver´s needs as well as truth. But reason has no place at all in madness,nor can it be adjusted to fit its end. Faith and belief are strong in madness,guiding perception toward what the mind has valued. But reason enters not atall in this. For the perception would fall away at once, if reason wereapplied. There is no reason in insanity, for it depends entirely on reason´sabsence. The ego never uses it, because it does not realize that it exists. Thepartially insane have access to it, and only they have need of it. Knowledgedoes not depend on it, and madness keeps it out. The part of mind where reasonlies was dedicated, by your will in union with your Father´s to the undoing ofinsanity. Here was the Holy Spirit´s purpose accepted and accomplished, both atonce. Reason is alien to insanity, and those who use it have gained a meanswhich cannot be applied to sin. Knowledge is far beyond attainment of any kind.But reason can serve to open doors you closed against it. You have come veryclose to this. Faith and belief have shifted, and you have asked the questionthe ego will never ask. Does not your reason tell you now the question musthave come from something that you do not know, but must belong to you? Faithand belief, upheld by reason, cannot fail to lead to changed perception. And inthis change is room made way for vision. Vision extends behond itself, as doesthe purpose that it serves, and all the means for its accomlishment.

Love

[IA56]

Reason versus Madness

Reason cannot see sin but can see errors,and leads to their correction. It does not value them, but their correction.Reason will also tell you that when you think you sin, yu call for help. Yet ifyou will not accept the help you call for, you will not believe that it isyours to give. And so you will not give it, thus maintaining the belief. Foruncorrected error of any kind deceives you about the power that is in you tomake correction. If it can correct, and you allow it not to do so, you deny itto youself and to your brother. And if he shares this same belief you both willthink that you are damned. This you could spare him and yourself. For reasonwould not make way to correction in you alone. Correction cannot be accepted orrefused by you without your brother. Sin would maintain it can. Yet reasontells you that you cannot see your brother or yourself as sinful and stillperceive the other innocent. Who looks upon himself as guilty and sees asinless world? And who can see a sinful world and look upon himself apart fromit? Sin would maintain you must be separate. But reason tells you that thismust be wrong. If you are joined, how could it be that you have privatethoughts? And how could thoughts that enter into what but seems like yoursalone have no effect at all on what is yours? If minds are joined, this isimpossible. No one can think but for himself, as God thinks not without HisSon. Only were both in bodies could this be. Nor could one mind think only foritself unless the body were the mind. For only bodies can be separate, andtherefore unreal. The home of madness cannot be the home of reason. Yet it iseasy to leave the home of madness if you see reason. You do not leave insanityby going somewhere else. You leave it simply by accepting reason where madnesswas. Madness and reason see the same thing, but it is certain that they lookupon them differently. Madness is an attack on reason that drives it out ofmind, and takes its place. Reason does not attack, but takes the place ofmadness quietly, replacing madness if it be the choice of the insane to listento it. But the insane know not their will, for they believe they see the body,and let their madness tell them it is real. Reason would be incapable of this.And if you would defend the body against your reason, you will not understandthe body or yourself. The body does not separate you from your brother, and ifyou think it does you are insane. But madness has a purpose, and believes italso has the means to make its purpose real. To see the body as a barrierbetween what reason tells you must be joined must be insane. Nor could you seeit, if you heard the voice of reason. What can there be that stands betweenwhat is continuous? And if there is nothing in between, how can what enterspart be kept away from other parts? Reason would tell you this. Butt hink whatyou must recognize, if it be so. If you choose sin instead of healing, you wouldcondemn the Son of God to what can never be corrected. You tell him, by yourchoice, that he is damned; separate from you and from his Father forever,without a hope of safe return. You teach him this, and you will learn of himexactly what you taught. For you can teach him only that he is as you wouldhave him, and what you choose he be is but your choice for you. Yet think notthis is fearful. That you are joined to him is but a fact, not aninterpretation. How can a fact be fearful unless it disagrees with what youhold more dear than truth? Reason will tell you that this fact is your release.Neither your brother nor yourself can be attacked alone. But neither can accepta miracle instead without the other being blessed by it, and healed of pain. Reason,like love, would reassure you, and seeks not to frighten you. The power to healthe Son of God is given you because he must be one with you. You areresponsible for how he sees himself. And reason tells you it is given you tochange his whole mind, which is one with you, in just an instant. And anyinstant serves to bring complete correction of his errors and make him whole.The instant that you choose to let yourself be healed, in that same instant ishis whole salvation seen as complete with yours. Reason is given you tounderstand that this is so. For reason, kind as is the purpose for which it isthe means, leads stedily away from madness toward the goal of truth. And hereyou will lay down the burden of denying truth. This is the burden that is terrible,and not the truth. That you are joined is your salvation; the gift of Heaven,not the gift of fear. Does Heaven seen to be a burden to you? In madness, yes.And yet what madness sees must be dispelled by reason. Reason assures youHeaven is what you want, and all you want. Listen to Him Who speaks withreason, and brings your reason into line with His. Be willing to let reason bethe means by which He would direct you how to leave insanity behind. Hide notbehind insanity in order to escape from reason. What madness would conceal theHoly Spirit still holds out, for everyone to look upon with gladness. You areyour brother´s savior. He is yours. Reason speaks happily indeed of this. Thisgracious plan was given love by Love. And what Love plans is like Itself inthis: Being united, It would have you learn what you must be. And being onewith It, it must be given you to give what It has given, and gives still. Spendbut an instant in the glad acceptance of what is given you to give yourbrother, and learn with him what has been given both of you. To give is no moreblessed than to receive. But neither is it less. The Son of God is alwaysblesses as one. And as his gratitude goes out to you who blessed him, reasonwill tell you that it cannot be you stand apart from blessing. The gratitude heoffers you reminds you of the thanks your Father gives you for completing Him.And here alone does reason tell you that you can understand what you must be.Your Father is as close to you as is your brother. Yet what is there that couldbe nearer you than is your Self? The power you have over the Son of God is nota threat to his reality. It but attests to it. Where could his freedom lie butin himself, if he be free already? And who could bind him but himself, if hedeny his freedom? God is not mocked; no more His Son can be imprisoned save byhis own desire. And it is by his own desire that he is freed. Such is hisstrength, and not his weakness. He is at his own mercy. And where he chooses tobe merciful, there is he free. But where he chooses to condemn instead, thereis he held a prisoner, waiting in chains his pardon on himself to set him free.

Love

[IA56]

The Last Unanswered Question

Do you not see that all your misery comes from the strange belief that you are powerless? Being helpless is the cost of sin. Helplessness is sin´s condition; the one requirement that it demands to be believed. Only the helpless could believe in it. Enormity has no appeal save to the little. And only those who first believe that they are little could see attraction there. Treachery to the Son of God is the defense of those who do not identify with him. And you are for him or against him; either you love him or attack him, protect his unity or see him shattered and slain by your attack.No one believes the Son of God is powerless. And those who see them selves as helpless must believe that they are not the Son of God. What can they be excep this enemy? And what can they do but envy him his power, and by their envy make them selves afraid of it? These are the dark ones, silent and afraid, alone and not communicating, fearful the power of the Son of God will strike them dead,and raising up their helplessness against him. They join the army of the powerless,to wage their war of vengeance, bitterness and spite on him, to make him one with them. Because they do not know that they are one with him, they know not whom they hate. They are indeed a sorry army, each one as likely to attack hisbrother or turn upon himself as to remember that they thought they had a commoncause. Frantic and loud and strong the dark ones seem to be. Yet they know nottheir ”enemy,” except they hate him. In hatred they have come together, buthave not joined each other. For had they done so hatred would be impossible.The army of the powerless must be disbanded in the presence of strength. Thosewho are strong are never trecherous, because they have no need to dream ofpower and to act out their dream. How would an army act in dreams? Dreams haveno reason in them. A flower turns into a poisoned spear, a child becomes agiant and a mouse riars like a lion. And love is turned to hate as easily. Thisis no army, but a madhouse. What seems to be a planned attack is bedlam. The armyof the powerless is weak indeed. It has no weapons and it has no enemy. Yes, itcan overrun the world and seek an enemy. But it can never find what is notthere. Yes, it can dream it found an enemy, but this will shift even as itattacks, so that it runs at once to find another, and never comes to rest invictory. And as it runs it turns against itself, thinking it cought a glimpseof the great enemy who always eludes its murderous attack by turning intosomething else. How treacherous does this enemy appear, who changes so it isimpossible even to recognize him. Yet hate must have a target. There can be nofaith in sin without an enemy. Who that believes in sin would dare believe hehas no enemy? Could he admit that no one made him powerless? Reason would surelybid him seek no longer what is not there to find. Yet first he must be willingto perceive a world where it is not. It is not necessary that he understand howhe can see it. Nor should he try. For if he foucuses on what he cannotunderstand, he will but emhasize his helplessness, and let sin tell him thathis enemy must be himself. But let him only ask himself these question, whichhe must decide, to have it done for him:

”Do I desire a world I rule instead of onethat rules me?”
”Do I desire a world where I am powerfulinstead of helpless?”
”Do I desire a world in which I have noenemies and cannot sin?”
”And do I want to see what I denied becauseit is the truth?”

You may already have answered the firstthree questions, but not yet the last. For this one still seems fearful, andunlike the others. Yet reason would assure you they are all the same. We saidthis year would emphasize the sameness of things that are the same. This finalquestion, which is indeed the last you need decide, still seems to hold athreat the rest have lost for you. And this imagined difference attests to yourbelief that truth may be the enemy you yet may find. Here, then, would seem tobe the last remaining hope of finding sin, and not accepting power. Forget notthat the choice of sin or truth, helplessness or power, is the choice ofwhether to attack or heal. For healing comes of power, and attack ofhelplessness. Whom you attack you cannot want to heal. And whom you would havehealed must be the one you chose to be protected from attack. And what is thisdecision but the choice whether to see him through the body´s eyes, or let himbe reveled to you through vision? How this decision leads to its effects is notyour problem. But what you want to see must be your choice. This is a course incause and not effect. Consider carefully your answer to the last question youhave left unanswered still. And let your reason tell you that it must beanswered, and is answered in the other three. And then it will be clear to youthat, as you look on the effects of sin in any form, all you need do is simplyask yourself,

”Is this what I would see? Do I want this?”

This is your one decision; this thecondition for what occurs. It is irrelevant to how it happens, but not tho why.You have control of this. And if you choose to see a world without an enemy, inwhich you are not helpless, the means to see it will be given you. Why is thefinal question so important? Reason willl tell you why. It is the same as arethe other three, except in time. The others are decisions that can be made, andthen unmade and made again. But truth is constant, and implies a state wherevacillations are impossible. You can desire a world you rule that rules younot, and change your mind. You can desire to exchange your helplessness forpower, and lose this same desire as a little of sin attracts you. And you canwant to see a sinless world, and let an ”enemy” tempt you to use the body´seyes and change what you desire. In content all the questions are the same. Foreach one asks if you are willing to exchange the world of sin for what the HolySpirit sees, since it is this world of sin denies. And therefore those who lookon sin are seeing the denial of the real world. Yet the last question adds thewish for constancy in your desire to see the real world, so the deisre becomesthe only one you have. By answering the final question ”yes,” you add sincerityto the decisions you have already made to all the rest. For only then have yourenounced the option to change your mind again. When it is this you do notwant, the rest are wholly answered. Why do you think you are unsure the othershave been answered? Could it be necessary they be asked so often, if they had?Until the last decision has been made, then answer is both ”yes” and ”no.” Foryou have answered ”yes” without perceiving that ”yes” must mean ”not no” No onedecides against his happiness, bu the may do so if he does not see he does it.And if he sees his happiness as ever changing, now this, now that, and now anelusive shadow attached to nothing, he does decide against it. Elusivehappiness, or happiness in changing form that shifts with time and place, is anillusion that has no meaning. Happiness must be constant, because it isattained by giving up the wish for the inconstant. Joy cannot be perceivedexcept through constant vision. And constant vision can be given only those whowish for constancy. The power of the Son of God´s desire remains the proof thathe is wrong who sees himself as helpless. Desire what you want, and you willlook on it and think it real. No thought but has the power to release or kill.And none can leave the thinker´s mind, or leave him unaffected.

Love

[IA56]

The Inner Shift

Are thoughts, then, dangerous? To bodies,yes! The thoughts that seem to kill are those that teach the thinker that he can be killed. And so he ”dies” because of what he learned. He goes from Life to death, the final proof he valued the inconstant more than constancy. Surelyhe thought he wanted happiness. Yet he did not desire it because it was the truth, and therefore must be constant. The constancy of joy is a condition quite alien to your understanding. Yet if you could even imagine what it must be, you would desire it although you understand it not. The constancy ofhappiness has no exceptions; no change of any kind. It is unshakable as is the Love of God for His creation. Sure in its vision as its Creator is in what He knows, happiness looks on everything and sees it is the same. It sees not the ephemeral, for it desires everything be like itself, and sees it so. Nothing has power to confound its constancy, because its own desire cannot be shaken.It comes as surely unto those who see the final question is necessary to therest, as peace must come to those who choose to heal and not to judge. Resonwill tell you that you cannot ask for happiness inconstantly. For if what youdesire you receive, and happiness is constant, then you need ask for it butonce to have it always. And if you do not have it always, being what it is, youdid not ask for it. For no one fails to ask for his desire of something hebelieves holds out some promise of the power of giving it. He may be wrong inwhat he asks, where, and of what. Yet he will ask because desire is a request,an asking for, and made by one whom God Himself will never fail to answer. Godhas already given all that he really wants. Yet what he is uncertain of, Godcannot give. For he does not desire it while he remains uncertain, and God´sgiving must be incomplete unless it is received. You who complete God´s Willand are His happiness, whose will is powerful as His, a power that is not lostin your illusions, think carefully why you have not yet decided how you wouldanswer the final question. Your answer to the others has made it poissible tohelp you be already partly sane. And yet it is the final one that really asksif you are willing to be wholly sane. What is the holy instant but God´s appealto you to recoginze what He has given you? Here is the great appeal to reason;the awareness of what is always there to see, the happiness that could bealways yours. Here is the constant peace you could experience forever. Here iswhat denial has denied reveled to you. For here the final question is alreadyanswered, and what you ask for given. Here is the future now, for time ispowerless because of your desire for what will never change. For you have askedthat nothing stand between the holiness of your relationship and your awarenessof its holiness.

Love

[IA56]

The Message of the Holy Relationship

Let reason take another step. If you attack whom God would heal and hate the oine Hel oves, then you and your Creator have a different will. Yet if you are His Will, What you must then believe is that you are not yourself. You can indeed believe this, and you do. And you have faith in this and see much evidence on its behalf. And where, you wonder, does your strange uneasiness, your sense of yourself arise? It is as though you wandered in without a plan of any kind except to wander off, for only that seems certain. Yet we have heard a very similar description earlier, but it was not of you. But still this strange idea which it does accurately describe, you think is you. Reason would tell you that the world you see through eyes that are not yours must make no sense to you. To whom would seeing such as this send back its messages? Surely not you, who se sight is wholly independent of the eyes that look upon the world. If this is not your vision, what can it show to you? The brain cannot interpret what your vision sees. This you would understand. The brain cannot interpret to the body,of which it is a part. But what it says you cannot understand. Yet you havelistened to it. And long and hard you tried to understand its messages. Youhave not realized it is impossible to understand what fails entirely to reachyou. You have received no messages at all you understand. For you have listenedto what can never communicate at all. Think, then, what happens. Denying whatyou are, and firm in faith that you are something else, this ”something else”that you have made to be yourself becomes your sight. Yet it must be the”something else” that sees, and as not you, explains its sight to you. Yourvision would, of course, render this quite unnecessary. Yet if your eyes areclosed and you have called upon this thing to lead you, asking it to explain toyou the world it sees, you have no reason not to listen, nor to suspect thatwhat it tells you is not true. Reason would tell you it cannot be true becauseyou do not understand it. God has no secrets. He does not lead you through aworld of misery, waiting to tell you, at the journey´s end, why Hed id this toyou. What could be secret from God´s Will? Yet you believe that you havesecrets. What could your secrets be except another ”will” that is your own,apart form His? Reason would tell you that this is no secret that need behidden as a sin. But a mistake indeed! Let not your fear of sin protect it fromcorrection, for the attraction of guilt is only fear. Here is the one emotionthat you made, whatever it may seem to be. This is the emotion that you made,of private thoughts and of the body. This is the one emotion that opposes love,and always leads to sight of differences and loss of sameness. Here is the oneemotion that keeps you blind, dependent on the self you think you made to leadyou through the world it made for you. Your sight was given you, along witheverything that you can understand. You will perceive no difficulty inunderstanding what this vision tells you, for everyone sees only what het hinkshe is. And what you sight would show you, you will understand because it is thetruth. Only your vision can convey to you what you can see. It reaches youdirectly, without a need to be interpreted to you. What needs interpretationmust be alien. Nor will it ever be made understandable by an interpreter youcannot understand. Of all the messages you have received and failed tounderstand, this course alone is open to your understanding and can beunderstood. This is your language. You do not understand it yet only becuaseyour whole communication is like a baby´s. The sounds a baby makes and what hehears are highly unreliable, meaning different things to him at differenttimes. Neither the sounds he hears nor sights he sees are stable yet. But whathe hears and does not understand will be his native tongue, through which hewill communicate with those around him, and they with him. And the strange,shifting ones he sees about him will become to him his comforters, and he willrecognize his home and see them there with him. So in each holy relationship isthe ability to communicate instead of separate reborn. Yet a holy relationship,so recently reborn itself from an unholy relationship, and yet more ancientthan the old illusion it has replaced, is like a baby now in its rebirth. Stillin this infant is your vision returned to you, and he will speak the languageboth of you can understand. He is not nurtured by the ”something else” youthought was you. He was not given there, nor was received by anything exceptyourself. For no two brothers can unite except through Christ, Whose visionsees them one. Think what is given you, my holy brother. This child will teachyou what you do not understand, and make it plain. For his will be no alientongue. He will need no interpreter to you, for it was you who taught him whathe knows because you knew it. He could not come to anyone but you, never to”something else.” Where Christ has entered no on is alone, for never could Hefind a home in separate ones. Yet must He be reborn into His ancient home, soseeming new and yet as old as He, a tiny newcomer, dependent on the holiness ofyour relationship to let Him live. Be certain God did not entrust His Son tothe unworhty. Nothing but what is part of Him is worthy of being joined. Nor isit possible that anything not part of Him can join. Comminication must havebeen restored to those who join, for this they could not do through bodies.What, then, has joined them? Reason will tell you that they must have seen eachother through a vision not of the body, and communicated in a language the bodydoes not speak. Nor could it be a fearful sight or sound that drew them gentlyinto one. Rather, in each the other saw a perfect shelter where his Self couldbe reborn in safety and in peace. Such did his reason tell him; such hebelieved because it was the truth. Here is the first direct perception that youcan make. You make it through awareness older than perception, and yet rebornin just an instant. For what is time to what was always so? Think what thatinstant brought; the recognition that the ”something else” you thought was youis an illusion. And truth came instantly, to show you where your Self must be.It is denial of illusions that calls on truth, for to deny illusions is torecognize that fear is meaningless. Into the holy home where fear is powerlesslove enters thankfully, grateful that it is one with you who joined to let itenter. Christ comes to what is like Himself; the same, not different. For he isalways drawn unto Himself. What is as like Him as a holy relationship? And whatdraws you together draws Him to you. Here are His sweetness and His gentleinnocence protected from attack. And here can He return in confidence, forfaith in one another is always faith in Him. You are indeed correct in lookingon each other as His chosen home, for here you will with Him and with HisFather. This is your Father´s Will for you, and yours with His. And who isdrawn to Christ is drawn to God as surely as both are drawn to every holyrelationship, the home prepared for them as earth is turned to Heaven.

Love

[IA56]

Your Brother´s Sinlessness

The opposite of illusions is not disillusionment but truth. Only to the ego, to which truth is meaningless, do they appear to be the only alternatives, and different from each other. In truth they are the same. Both bring the same amount of misery, though each one seems to be the way to lose the misery the other brings. Every illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments in which it hide sits nothingness. Yet by the dark and heavy garments are those who seek illusions covered, and hidden from the joy of thruth. Truth is the opposite of illusions because it offers joy. What else but joy could be the opposite of misery? To leave one kind of misery and seek another is hardly an escape. To change illusions is to make no change. The search for joy in misery is sensless, for how could joy be found in misery? All that is possible in the dark world of misery is to select some aspects out of it, see them as different, and define the difference as joy. Yet to perceive a difference wheren one exists will surely fail to make a difference. Illusions carry only guiltand suffering, sickness and death, to their believers. The form in which theyare accepted is irrelevant. No form of misery in reason´s eyes can be confusedwith joy. Joy is eternal. You can be sure indeed that any seeming happinessthat does not last is really fear. Joy does not turn to sorrow, for the eternalcannot change. Only the timeless must remain unchanged, but everything in timecan change with time. Yet if the change be real and not imagined, illusionsmust give way to truth, and not to other dreams that are but equally unreal.This is no difference. Reason will tell you that the only way to escape frommisery is to recognize it and go the other way. Truth is the same and miserythe same, but they are different from each other in every way, in everyinstance and without exception. To believe that one exception can exist is toconfuse what is the same with what is different. One illusion cherished anddefended against the truth makes all truth meaningless, and all illusions real.Such is the power of belief. It cannot compromise. And faith in innocence isfaith in sin, if the belief excluded one living thing and holds it out, apartfrom its forgiveness. Both reason and the ego will tell you this, but what theymake of it is not the same. The ego will assure you now that it is impossiblefor you to see no guilt in anyone. And if this seeing is the only means bywhich escape from guilt can be attained, then the belief in sin must beeternal. Yet reason looks on this another way, for reason sees the source of anidea as what will make it either true or false. This must be so, if the idea islike its source. Therefore, says reason, if escape from guilt was given to theHoly Spirit as His purpose, and by One to Whom nothing He wills can beimpossible, the means for its attainment are more that possible. They must bethere, and you must havet hem. This is a crucial period in this course, forhere the separation of you and the ego must be made complete. For if you havethe means to let the Holy Spirit´s purpose be accomplished, they can be used.And through their use will you gain faith in them. Yet to the ego this must beimpossible, and no one undertaken to do what holds no hope of ever being done.You know what your Creator wills is possible, but what you made believes it isnot so. Now must you choose between yourself and an illusion of yourself. Notboth, but one. There is no point in trying to avoid this one decision. It mustbe made. Faith and belief can fall to either side, but reason tells you miserylies only one one side and joy upon the other. Forsake not now your brother.For you who are the same will not decide alone nor differently. Either you giveeach other life or death; either you are each other´s savior or his judge,offering him sanctuary or condemnation. This course wil be believed entirely ornot at all. For it is wholly true or wholly false, and cannot be but partiallybelieved. And you will either escape from misery entirely or not at all. Reasonwill tell you that there is no middle ground where you can pause uncertaintly,waiting to choose between the joy of Heaven and the misery of hell. Untill youchoose Heaven, you are in hell and misery. There is no part of Heaven you cantake and weave into illusions. Nor is there one illusion you can enter Heavenwith. A savior cannot be a judge, nor mercy condemnation. And vision cannotdamn, but only bless. Whose function is to save, will save. How He will do itis beyond your understanding, but when must be your choice. For time you made,and time you can command. You are no more a slave to time than to the world youmade. Let us look closer at the whole illusion that what you made has power toenslave its maker. This is the same belief that caused the separation. It isthe meaningless idea that thoughts can leave the thinker´s mind, be differentfrom it and in opposition to it. If this were true thoughts would not be themind´s extensions, but its enemies. And here we see again another form of thesame fundamental illusion we have seen many times before. Only if it werepossible the Son of God could leave his Father´s Mind, make himself differentand oppose His Will, would it be possible that the self he made, and all it made,should be his master. Behold the great projection, but look on it with thedecision that it must be healed, and not with fear. Nothing you made has anypower over you unless you still would be apart from your Creator, and with awill opposed to His. For only if you would believe His Son could be His enemydoes it seem possible that what you made is yours. You would condemn His joy tomisery, and make Him different. And all the misery you made has been your own.Are you not glad to learn it is not true? It is not welcome news to hear notone of the illusions that you made replaced the truth? Only your thoughts havebeen impossible. Salvation cannot be. It is impossible to look upon your savioras your enemy and recognize him. Yet it is possible to recognize him for whathe is, if God would have it so. What God has given to your holy relationship isthere. For what He gave the Holy Spirit to give you to He gave. Would you notlook upon the savior that has been given you? And would you not exchange, ingratitude, the function of an executioner you gave him for the one he has intruth? Receive of him what God has given him for you, nor what you tried togive yourself. Beyond the bodies that you interposed between you, and shining inthe golden light that reaches it from the bright, endless circle that extendsforever, is your holy relationship, beloved of God Himself. How still it rests,in time and yet beyond, immortal yet on earth. How great the power that lies init. Time waits upon its will, and earth will be as it would have it be. Here isno separate will, nor the desire that anything be separate. Its will has noexceptions, and what it wills is true. Every illusion brought to itsforgiveness is gently overlooked and disappears. For at its center Christ hasbeen reborn, to light His home with vision that overlooks the world. Would younot have this holy home be yours as well? No misery is here, but only joy. Allyou need to do dwell in quiet here with Christ is share His vision. Quickly andgladly is His vision given anyone who is but willing to see his brothersinless. And no one can remain beyond this willingness, if you would bereleased entirely from all effects of sin. Would you have partial forgivenessfor yourself? Can you reach Heaven while a single sin still tempts you toremain in misery? Heaven is the home of perfect purity, and God created it foryou. Look on your holy brother, sinless as yourself, and let him lead youthere.

Love

[IA56]

Reason and the Form of Error

The introduction of reason into the ego´sthought system is the beginning of its undoing, for reason and the ego arecontradictory. Nor is it possible for them to coexist in your awareness. Forreason´s goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious. You can see reason. Thisis not a play on works, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning.Vision is sense, quite literally. If it is not the body´s sight, it must beunderstood. For it is plain, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It can beunderstood. And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their separate ways.The ego´s whole continuance depends on its belief you cannot learn this course.Share this belief, and reason will be unable to see your errors and make wayfor their correction. For reason sees though errors, telling you what youthought was real is not. Reason can see the difference between sin andmistakes, because it uncorrectable can be corrected, and thus it must have beenan error. The ego´s opposition to correction leads to its fixed belief in sinand diregard of errors. It looks on nothing that can be corrected. Thus doesthe ego damn, and reason save. Reason is not salvation in itself, but it makesway for peace and bringyou to a state of mind in which salvation can be givenyou. Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate, locked and without the help ofreason would try to pass it. The body´s eyes behold it as solid granite, sothick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet reason sees though iteasily, because it is an error. The form it takes cannot conceal its emptinessfrom reason´s eyes. Only the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it doesnot recognize, and does not see if it is there or not. Everything the body´seyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of thewhole without the meaning that the whole would give. And yet mistakes,regardless of their form, can be corrected. Sin is bu terror in a special formthe ego venerates. It would preserve all errors and make them sins. For here isits own stability, its heavy anchor and make them sins. For here is it ownstabiltiy, its heavy anchor in the shifting world it made; the rock on whichits church is built, and where its worshippers are bound to bodies, believingthe body´s freedom is their own. Reason will tell you that the form of error isnot what makes it a mistake. If what the form conceals is a mistake, the formcannot prevent correction. The body´s eyes see only form. They cannot seebeyond what they were made to see. And they were made to look on error and notsee past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see onlyillusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at theoutside form of nothing. To this distorted form of vision the outside ofeverything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. Yethow can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were solid wall, see truly?It is held back by form, having been hade to guarantee that nothing else butform will be perceived. These eyes, made not to see, will never see. For theidea they represent left nor its maker, and it is their maker that sees throughthem. What was its maker´s goal but not to see? For this the body´s eyes are perfectmeans, but not for seeing. See now the body´s eyes rest on externals and cannotgo beyond. Watch how they stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form tomeaning. Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form meansunderstanding has been obscured. Only mistakes have different forms, and sothey can deceive. You can change form because it is not true. It could not bereality because it can be changed. Reason will tell you that if form is notreality it must be an illusion, and is not there to see. And if you see it youmust be mistaken, for you are seeing what can not be real as if it were. Whatcannot see beyond what is not there must be distorted perception, and mustperceive illusions as the truth. Could it, then, recognize the truth? Let notthe form of his mistakes keep you from him whose holiness is yours. Let not thevision of his holiness, the sight of which would show you yours forgiveness, bekept from you by what the body´s eyes can see. Let your awareness of yourbrother not be blocked by your perception of his sinss and of his body. What isthere in him that you would attack except what you associate with his body,which you believe can sin? Beyond his errors is his holiness and yoursalvation. You gave him not his holiness, but tried to see your sins in him tosave yourself. And yet, his holiness is your forgiveness. Can you be saved bymaking sinful the one whose holiness is your salvation? A holy relationship,however newly born, must value holiness above all else. Unholy values willproduce confusion, and in awareness. In an unholy relationship, each one isvalued because he seems to justify the other´s sin. Each sees within the otherwhat impels him to sin against his will. And thus he lays his sins upon theother, and is attracted to him to perpetutate his sins. And so it must becomeimpossible for each to see himself as causing sin by his desire to have sinreal. Yet reason sees a holy relationship as what it is; a common state ofmind, where both give errors gladly to correction, that both may happily behealed as one.

Love

[IA56]

The Branching of the Road

When you come to the place where the bransch in the road is quite apparent, you cannot go ahead. You must go either one way or the other. For now if you go straight ahead, the way you went Before you reached the branch, you will go nowhere. The whole purpose of coming this far was to decide which branch you will take now. The way you came no longer matters. If can no longer server. No one who reaches this far can make the wrong decision, although he can delay. And there is no part of the journey that seems more hopless and futile than standing where the road branches, and not deciding on which way to go. It is but the first few steps along the right way that seem hard, for you have chosen, although you still may think you can go back and make the other choice. This is not so. A choice made with the power of Heaven to uphold it cannot be undone. Your way is decided. There will be nothing you will not be told, if you acknowledge this. And so you and your brother stand, here in this holy place, before the veil of sin that hangsbetween you and the face of Christ. Let it be lifted! Raise it together, for itis but a veil that stands between you. Either alone will see it as a solidblock, nor realize how thin the drapery that separates you now. Yet it isalmost over in your awareness, and peace has reached you even here, before theveil. Think what will happen after. The love of Christ will light your faces,and shine from them into a darkned world that needs the light. And from thisholy place He will return with you, not leaving it nor you. You will become Hismessangers, returning Him unto Himself. Think of the loveliness that you willsee, who walk with Him! And think howbeautiful will each of you look to the other! How happy you will be to betogether, after such a long and lonely journey where you walked alone. Thegates of Heaven, open now for you, will you now open to the sorrowful. And nonewho looks upon the Christ in you but will rejoice. How beautiful the sight yousaw beyond the veil, which you will bring to light the tired eyes of those asweary now as once you were. How thankful will they be to see you come amongthem, offering Christ´s forgiveness to dispel their faith in sin. Every mistakeyou make, the other will gently have corrected for you. For in his sight youloveliness is his salvation, which he would protect from harm. And each will bethe other´s strong protector from everything that seems to rise between you. Soshall you walk the world with me, whose message has not yet been giveneveryone. For you are here to let it be recieved. God´s offer still is open,yet it waits acceptance. From you who have accepted it is it received. Intoyour joined hands is it safely given, for you who share it have become itswilling guardians and protectors. To all who share the Love of God the grace isgiven to the givers of what they have received. And so they learn that it istheirs forever. All barriers disappear before their coming, as every obstaclewas finally surmounted that seemed to rise and block their way before. Thisveil you lift together opens the way to truth to more than you. Those who wouldlet illusions be lifted from their minds are this world´s saviors, walking theworld with their Redeemer, and carrying His message of hope and freedom andrelease form suffering to everyone who needs a miracle to save him. How easy isit to offer this miracle to everyone! No one who has received it for himselfcould find it difficult. For by receiving it, he learned it was not given himalone. Such is the function of a holy relationship; to recieve together andgive as you recieved. Standing before the veil, it still seems difficult. Buthold out your joined hands and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you willlearn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solidwall. And only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self you share.

Love

[IA56]

Weakness and Defensiveness

How does one overcome illusions? Surely not by force or anger, nor by opposing them in any way. Me, rely 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 defence, 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 one 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. Concider 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 sacrified.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 and your brother 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 the 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. Onlyuncertainty can be defensive. And all uncertainty is doubt about yourself. Howweak is fear; how little and how meaningless. How insignificant before thequiet strength of those whom love has joined! This is your ”enemy,” – a frightenedmouse that would attack the universe. How likely is it that it will succeed?Can it be difficult to disregard its feeble squeaks that tell of itsomnipotence, and would drown out the hymn of praise to its Creator that everyheart throughout the universe forever sings as one? Which is the stronger? Isit this tiny mouse or everything that God created? You are not joined togetherby this mouse, but by the Will of God. And can a mouse betray whom God hasjoined? If you but recognized how little stands between you and your awarenessof your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size andthickness, weight, solidity and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body´s eyesit looks like an enormous solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet withinyou is a Force that no illusions can resist. This body only seems to beimmovable; this Force is irresistible in truth. What, then, must happen whenthey come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended from whatis quietly passed through and gone beyond? Forget not, when you feel the needarise to be defensive about anything, you have indentified yourself with anillusion. And therefore feel that you are weak because you are alone. This isthe cost of all illusions. Not one but rests on the belief that you areseparate. No one that does not seem to stand, heavy and solid and immovable,between you and your brother. And not one that truth cannot pass over lightly,and so easily that you must be convinced, in spite of what you thought it was,that it is nothing. If you forgive each other, this must happen. For it is yourunwillingness to overlook, what seems to stand between you that makes it lookimpenetrable, and defends the illusion of its immovability.

Love

[IA56]

The Light of the Holy Relationship

Do you want freedom of the body or of themind? 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, eclipsed entirely when they are recognized as functionless. No one but yearns for freedom and tries to find it. Yet 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 maket he 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 contradictory and so impossible that anyone who chosses this has no idea ofwhat is valueable. Yet even in this confusion, so profound it cannot bedescribed, the Holy Sprit waits in gentle partience, as certain of the outcomeas He is sure of His Creator´s Love. He knows this mad decision was made by oneas dear to His Creator as love is to itself. Be not disturbed at all to thinkhow He can change the role of means and end so easily in what God loves, andwould have free forever. But be you rather greatful that you can be the meansto serve His end. This is the only service that leads to freedom. To serve thisend the body must be perceived as sinless, because the goal is sinlessness. Thelack of contradiction makes the soft gratitude before forgiving eyes. You willbe sanctified by one another, using your bodies only to serve the sinless. Andit will be impossible for you to hate what serves whom you would heal. Thisholy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in strength, and blazingwith a light far brighter than the sun that lights the sky you see, is chosenof your Father as a means for His Own plan. Be thankful that it serves yoursnot at all. Nothing entrusted to it can misused, and nothing giben it but willbe used. This holy relationship has the power to heal all pain, regardless ofits form. Neither of you alone can serve at all. Only in your joint will doeshealing lie. For here your healing is, and here will you accept Atonement. Andin your healing is the Sonship healed because your wills are joined. Before aholy relationship there is no sin. The form of error is no longer seen, andreason, joined with love, looks quietly on all confusion, observing merely,”This was a mistake.” And then the same Atonement you accepted in yourrelationship corrects the error, and lays a part of Heaven in its place. Howblessed are you who let this gift be given! Each part of Heaven that you bringis given you. And every place in Heaven that you will fill again with theEternal Light you bring, shines now on you. The means of sinlessness can know nofear because they carry only love with them. Child of peace, the light has cometo 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 torecognize a gift hel et be laid in Heaven through himself? The gentle servicethat you give the Holy Spirit is service to yourself. You who are now His meansmust love all that He loves. And what you bring is your remembrance ofeverything that is eternal. No trace of anything in time can long remain inminds that serve the timeless. And no illusion can disturb the peace of therelationship that has become the means of peace. When you have looked upon yourbrother with complete forgiveness, from which no error is excluded and nothingkept hidden, what mistake can there be anywhere you cannot overlook? What formof suffering could block your sight, preventing you from seeing past it? Andwhat illusion could there be you will not recognize as a mistake; a shadowthrough which you walk completely undismayed? God would let nothing interferewith those whose wills are His, and serve it willingly. And could remembranceof what they are be long delayed? You will see your value through yourbrother´s eyes, and each one is released as he beholds his savior in place ofthe attacker who he thought was there. Through this releasing is the worldreleased. This is your part in bringing peace. For you have asked what is yourfunction here, and have been answered. Seek not to change it, nor to substituteanother goal. Accept this one and serve it willingly, for what the Holy Spiritdoes with gifts you give each other, to whom He offers them, and where andwhen, 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 orwillingness to overlook the tiniest mistake be lost to anyone. What can it bebut universal blessing to look on what your Father loves with charity? Extensionof forgiveness is the Holy Spirit´s function. Leave this to Him. Let yourconcern be only that you give to Him that which can be extended. Save no darksecrets that He cannot use, but offer Him the tiny gifts He can extend forever.He will take each one and make of it a potent force for peace. He will withhold no blessing from it, norlimit 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 littlegift you offer to your brother lights up the world. Be not concerned withdarkiness; look away from it and toward each other. And let the darkness bedispelled by Him Who knows the light, and lays it gently in each quit smile offaith and confidence with which you bless each other. On your learning dependsthe welfare of the world. And it is only arrogance that would deny the power ofyour will. Think you the Will of God is powerless? Is this humility? You do notsee what this belief has done. You see yourself as vulnerable, frail and easilydestroyed, and at the mercy of countless attackers more powerful than you. Let uslook straight at how this error came about, for here lies buried the heavyanchor that seems to keep the fear of God in place, unmovable and solid as arock. While this remains, so will it seem to be. Who can attack the Son of Godand not attack his Father? How can God´s Son be weak and frail and easilydestroyed unless his Father is? You do not see that every sin and everycondemnation that you perceive and justify is an attack upon your Father. Andthat is why it has not happened, nor could be real. You do not see that this isyour attempt because you think the Father and the Son are separate. And youmust think that they are separate, because of fear. For it seems safer toattack another or yourself than to attack the great Creator of the universe,Whose power you know. If you were one with God and recognized this oneness, youwould know His power is yours. But youwill not remember this while you believe attack of any kind means anything. Itis unjustified in any form, because it has no meaning. The only way it could bejustified is if each one of you were separate from the other, and all wereseparate from your Creator. For only then would it be possible to attack a partof the creation without the whole, The Son without the Father; and to attackanother without yourself, or hurt yourself without the other feeling pain. Andthis belief you want. Yet wherein lies its value, except in the desire toattack in safety? Attack is neither safe nor dangerous. It is impossble. Andthis is so because the universe is one. You would not choose attack on itsreality if it were not essential to attack to see it separated from its maker.And thus it seems as if love could attack and become fearful. Only thedifferent can attack. So you conclude because you can attack you must bedifferent. Yet does the Holy Spirit explain this differently. Because you arenot different, you cannot attack. Either position is a logical conclusion.Either could be maintained, but never both. The only question to be answered inorder to decide which must be true is whether you are different. From theposition of what you understand you seem to be, and therefore can attack. Ofthe alternatives, this seems more natural and more in line with yourexperience. And therefore it is necessary that you have other expereinces, morein line with truth, to teach you what is natural and true. This is the functionof your holy relationship. For what one thinks, the other will expereince withhim. What can this mean except you minds are one? Look not with fear upon thishappy fact, and think not that it lays a heavy burden on you. For when you haveaccepted it with gladness, you will realize that your relationship is areflectionj of the union of the Creator and His Son. From loving minds there isno separation. And every thought in one brings gladness to the other becausethey are the same. Joy is unlimited, because each shining thought of loveextends its being and creates more of itself. There is no difference anywherein it, for every thought is like itself. The light that joins you shinesthroughout the universe, and because it joins you, so it makes you one withyour Creator. And in Him is all creation joined. Would you regret you cannotfear 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 egowith this gift. For it was given you to be used, and not obscured. What teachesyou that you cannot separate denies the ego. Let truth decide if you bedifferent or the same, and teach you which is true.

Love

[IA56]

THE WAR AGAINST YOURSELF

Do you not see the opposite of frailty and weakness is sinlessness? Innocence is strength, and nothing else is strong. The sinless cannot fear, for sin of any kind is weakness. The show of strength attack would use to cover frailty conceals it not for how can the unreal be hidden? No on is strong who has an enemy, and no one can attack unless he thinks he has. Belief in enemies is therefore the belief in weakness, and what is weak is not the Will of God. Being opposed to it, it is God´s ”enemy.” And God is feared as an opposing will. How strange indeed becomes this war against yourself! You will believe that everything you use for sin can hurt you and become your enemy. And you will fight against it, and try to weaken it because of this; and you will think that you succeeded, and attack again. It is as certain you will fear what you attack as it is sure that you will love what you perceive as sinless. He walks in peace who travels sinlessly along the way love shows him. For love walks with him there, protecting him from fear. And he will see only the sinless, who can not attack. Walk you in glory, with you head held high, and fear no evil. The innocent are safe because they share their innocence.Nothing they see is harmful, for their awareness of the truth releases everything from the illusion of harmfulness. And what seemed harmful now stands shining in their innocence, released from sin and fear and happily returned tolove. They share the strength of love because they looked on innocence. And every error disappeared because they saw it not. Who looks for glory finds it where it is. Where could it be but in the innocent? Let not the Little interferers pull you to littleness. There can be no attraction of guilt in innocence. Think what a happy world you walk, with truth beside you. Do not give you this world of freedom for a little sigh of seeing sin, nor for a tiny stirring of guilt´s attraction. Would you, for all these meaningless distractions, lay Heaven aside? Your destiny and purpose are far beyond them,in the clear place where littleness does not exist. Your purpose is at variance with littleness of any kind. And so it is at variance with sin. Let us not letlittleness lead God´s Son into temptation. His glory is beyond it, measurless in timeless as eternity. Do not let time intrude upon your sight of him. Leave him not frightened and alone in his temptation, but help him rise above it and preceive the light of which he is a part. Your innocence will light the way to his, and so is your protected and kept in your awareness. For who can know his glory, and perceive the little and the weak about him? Who can walk trembling in a fearful world, and realize that heaven´s glory shines on him? Nothing around you but is part you. Look on it lovingly, and see the light of Heaven in it. So will you come to understand all that is given you. In kind forgivenesswill the world sparkle and shine, and everything you once thought sinful now will be reinterpreted as part of Heaven. How beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence bestows upon it! What can you value more than this? For here is your salvation and your freedom. And it must be complete if you would recognize it.

Love

[IA56]

The Irreconcilable Beliefs

The memory of God comes to the quiet mind.It cannot come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal gentleness. The means of war are not the means of peace,and what a war like would remember is not love. War is impossible unless belief in victory is cherished. Conflict within you must imply that you believe the ego has the power to be victorious. Why else would you identify with it? Surely you realize the ego is at war with God. Certain it is it has no enemy. Yet just as certain it its fixed belief it has an enemy that it must overcome and will succeed. Do you not realize a war against yourself would be a war on God? Is victory conceivable? And if it were, is this a victory that you would want? The death of God, if it was possible, would be your death. Is this a victory? The ego always marches to defeat, because it thinks that triumph over you is possible. And God thinks otherwise. This is no war; only the mad belief the Will of god can be attacked and overthrown. You may identify with this belief,but never will it be more than madness. And fear will regin in madness, and will seem to have replaced love there. This is the conflict´s purpose. And to those who think that it is possible, the means seem real. Be certain that it is impossible God and the ego, or yourself and it, will ever meet. You seem to meet, and make your strange alliance on grounds that have no meaning. For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego´s chosen home, which you believe is yours. You meet at a mistake; an error in your self-appraisal. The ego join swith an illusion of yourself you share with it. And yet illusions cannot join.They are the same, and they are nothing. Their joining lies in nothingness; two are as meaningless as one or as a thousand. The ego joins with nothing, beingnothing. The victory it seeks is meaningless as is itself. Brother, the waragainst yourself is almost over. The journey´s end is at the place of peace.Would you not now accept the peace offered you here? This ”enemy” you fought asan intruder on your peace is here transformed, before your sight, into thegiver of your peace. Your ”enemy” was God Himself, to Whom all conflict,triumph and attack of any kind are all unknown. He loves you perfectly,completely and eternally. The Son of God at war with his Creator is a conditionas ridiculous as nature roaring at the wind in anger, proclaiming it is part ofitself no more. Could nature possibly establish this, and make it true? Nor isit up to you to say what shall be part of you and what is kept apart. The waragainst yourself was undertaken to teach the Son of God that he is not himself,and not his Father´s Son. For this, the memory of his Father must be forgotten.It is forgotten in the body´s life, and if you think you are a body, you willbelieve you have forgotten it. Yet truth can never be forgotten by itself, andyou have not forgotten what you are. Only a strange illusion of yourself, awish to triumph over what you are, remembers not. The war against yourself isbut the battle of two illusions, struggling to make them different from eachother, in the belief the one that conquers will be true. There is no conflictbetween them and the truth. Nor are they different from each other. Both arenot true. And so it matters not what form they take. What made them is insane,and they remain part of what made them. Madness holds out no menace to reality,and has no influence upon it. Illusions cannot triumph over truth, nor can theythreaten it in any way. And the reality that they deny is not a part of them.What you remember is a part of you. For you must be as God created you. Truthdoes not fight against illusions, nor do illusions fight against the truth.Illusions battle only with themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment. Buttruth is indivisible, and far beyond their little reach. You will remember whatyou know when you have learned you cannot be in conflict. One illusion aboutyourself can battle with another, yet the war of two illusions is a state wherenothing happens. There is no victor and there is no victory. And truth standsradiant, apart from conflict, untouched and quiet in the peace of God. Conflictmust be between two forces. It cannot exist between one power and nothingness.There is nothing you could attack that is not part of you. And by attacking ityou make two illusions of yourself, in conflict with each other. And thisoccurs whenever you look on anything that God created with anything but love.Conflict is fearful, for it is the birth of fear. Yet what is born of nothingcannot win reality through battle. Why would you fill your world with conflictswith yourself? Let all this madness be undone for you, and turn in peace to therememberance of God, still shining in your quiet mind. See how the conflict ofillusions disappears whe it is brought to truth! For it seems real only as longas it is seen as war between conflicting truths; the conqueror to be the truer,the more real, and the vanquisher of the illusion that was less real, made inillusion by defeat. Thus, conflict is the choice between illusions, one to becrowned as real, the other vanquished and despised. Here will the Father neverbe remembered. Yet no illusions can invade His home and drive Him out of whatHe loves forever. And what He loves must be forever quiet and at peace becauseit is His home. You who are beloved of Him are no illusion, being as true andholy as Himself. The stillness of your certainty of Him and of yourself is hometo both of You. Who dwell as one and not apart. Open the door of His most holyhome, and let forgiveness sweep away all trace of the belief in sin that keepsGod homeless and His Son with Him. You are not strangers in the house of God.Welcome your brother to the home where God has set him in serenity and peace,and dwells with him. Illusions have no place where love abides, protecting youfrom everything that is not true. You dwell in peace as limitless as itCreator, and everything is given those who would remember Him. Over His homethe Holy Spirit watches, sure that its peace can never be disturbed. How canthe resting place of God turn on itself, and seek to overcome the One Whodwells there ? And think what happens when the house of God perceives itselfdivided. The altar disappears, the light grows dim, and temple of the Holy Onebecomes a house of sin. And nothing is remembered except illusions. Illusionscan conflict, because their forms are different. And they do battle only toestablish which form is true. Illusions meets illusions; truth, itself. Themeeting of illusions leads to war. Peace, looking on itself, extends itself.War is the condition in which fear is born, and grows and seeks to dominate.Peace is the state where love abides, and seeks to share itself. Conflict andpeace are opposites. Where one abides the other cannot be; where either goesthe other disappears. So is the memory of God obscure in minds that have becomeillusion´s battleground. Yet far beyond this senseless war it shines, ready tobe remembered when you side with peace.

Love

[IA56]

The Laws of Chaos

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 be 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 that set him off from others.This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are more valuable and therefore true. Each one establishes this for himself,and makes it true by his attack on what another values. And this is justified because the values differ, and those who hold them seem to be unlike, and theremore enemies. Think how this seems to interfere with the first principle of miracles. For this establishes degree of truth among illusions, making it seem that some of them are harder to 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 resistant to the truth than can another. The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper ofsin, is that each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death. Thisprinciple, closely related to the first, is the demand that errors call forpunishment and not correction. For the destruction of the one who makes theerror places him beyond correction and beyond forgiveness. What he has done isthus interpreted as an irrevocable sentence upon himself, which God Himself ispowerless to overcome. Sin cannot be remitted, being the belief the Son of Godcan make mistakes for which his own destruction becomes inevitable. Think whatthis seems to do to the relationship between the Father and the Son. Now itappears that they can never be one again. For one must always be condemned, andby the other. Now are they different, and enemies. And their relationship isone of opposition, just as the separate aspects of the Son meet only toconflict but not to join. One becomes weak, the other strong by his defeat. Andfear of God and of each other now appears as sensible, made real by what theSon of God has done both to himself and his Creator. The arrogance on which thelaws of chaos stand could not be more apparent than emerges here. Here is aprinciple that would define what the Creator of reality must be; what He mustthink and what He must believe; and how He must respond, believing it. It isnot seen as even necessary that He be asked about the truth of what has beenestablished for His belief. His Son can tell Him this, and He has but thechoice whether to take his word for it or be mistaken. This leads directly tothe third preposterous belief that seems to make chaos eternal. For if Godcannot be mistaken, He must accept his Son´s belief in what he is, and hate himfor it. See how the fear of God is reinforced by this third principle. Now itbecomes impossible to turn to Him for help in misery. For now He has become the”enemy” Who caused it, to Whom appeal is useless. Nor can salvation lie withinthe Son, whose every aspect seams to be at war with Him, and justified in itsattack. And now is conflict made inevitable, beyond the help of God. For nowsalvation must remain impossible, beyond the help of God. For now salvationmust remain impossible, because the savior has become the enemy. There can beno release and no escape. Atonement thus becomes a myth, and vengeance, notforgiveness, is the Will of God. From where all this begins, there is no sightof help that can succeed. Only destruction can be the outcome. And God Himselfseems to be siding with it, to overcome His Son. Think not the ego will enableyou 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, mustbe 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 cannever 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 sharethe things they value. And what your enemies would keep from you must be worthhaving, because they keep it hidden from your sight. All of the mechanisms ofmadness are seen emergin here: The ”enemy” made strong by keeping hidden thevaluable inheritance that should be yours; your justified position and attackfor what has been withheld; and the inevitable loss the enemy must suffe tosave yourself. Thus do the guilty ones protest their ”innocence.” Were they notforced into this foul attack by the unscrupulous behavior of the enemy, theywould respond with only kindness. But in a savage world the kind cannotsurvive, so they must take or else be taken from. And now there is a vagueunanswered question, not yet ”explained.” What is this precious thing, thispriceless pearl, this hidden secret treasure, to be wrested in righteous wrathfrom this most treacherous and cunning enemy? It must be what you want butnever found. And now you ”understand” the reason why you found it not. For itwas taken from you by this enemy, and hidden where you would not think to look.He hid it in his body, making it to cover for his guilt, the hiding place forwhat belongs to you. Now must his body be destroyed and sacrificed, that youmay have that which belongs to you. His treachery demands his death, that youmay live. And you attack only in self-defense. But what is it you want thatneeds his death? Can you be sure your murderous attack is justified unless youknow 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 allof your pain; the missing factor in your madness that makes it ”sane.” This isthe reason why you must attack. Here is what makes your vengeance justified.Behold, unveiled, the ego´s secret gift, torn form your brother´s body, hidden therein malice and in hatred for the one to whom the gift belongs. He would depriveyou of the secret ingredient that would give meaning to your life. Thesubstitute for love, born of your enmity to one another, must be salvation. Ithas no substitute, and there is only one. And all your relationships have butthe purpose of seizing it and making it your own. Never is your possession madecomplete. And never will your brother cease his attack on you for what youstole. Nor will God end His vengeance upon both, for in His madness He musthave this substitute for love, and kill you both. You who believe you walk insanity with feet on solid ground, and though a world where meaning can befound, consider this: There are the principles which make the ground beneathyour feet seem solid. And it is here you look for meaning. These are the lawsyou made for your salvation. They hold in place the substitute for Heaven whichyou prefer. This is their purpose; they were made for this. There is no pointin asking what they mean. This is apparent. The means of madness must beinsane. Are you as certain that you realize the goal is madness? No one wantsmadness, nor does anyone cling to his madness if he sees that this is what itis. What protects madness is the belief that it is true. It is the function ofinsanity 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, bemadness now. Such a reversal, completely turned around, with madness sanity,illusions true, attack a kindness, hatred love, and murder benediction, is thegoal of the laws of chaos serve. These are the means by which the laws of Godappear to be reversed. Here do the laws of sin appear to hold love captive, andlet sin go free. These do not seem to be the goals of chaos, for by the greatreversal they appear to be the laws of order. How could it not be so? Chaos islawlessness, and has no laws. To be believed, its seeming laws must beperceived as real. Ther goal of madness must be seen as sanity. And fear, withashen lips and sighless eyes, blinded and terrible to look upon, is lifted tothe throne of love, its dying conqueror, its substitute, the savior fromsalvation. How lovely do the laws of fear make death appear. Givet hanks untothe hero on love´s throne, who saved the Son of God for fear and death! Andyet, how can it be that laws like these can be believed? There is a strangedevice that makes it possible. Nor is it unfamiliar; we have seen how itappears to function many times before. In truth it does not function, yet indreams, where only shadows play the major roles, it seems most powerful. Nolaws of chos could compel belief but the emhasis on form and disregard ofcontent. No one would thinks that one of these laws is true sees what it says.Some forms it takes seem to have meaning, and that is all. How can some formsof murder not mean death? Can an attack in any form be love? What form ofcondemnation is a blessing? Who makes his savior powerless and finds salvation?Let not the form of the attack on him decive you. You cannot seek to harm himand be saved. Who can find safety from attack by turning on himself? How can itmatter 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 aform you think is lovely. What is intent on your destruction is not yourfriend. You would maintain, and think it true, that you do not believe thesesenseless laws, nor act upon them. And when you look at what they say, theycannot be believed. Brother, you do believe them. For how else could youperceive the form they take, with content such as this? Can any form of this betenable? Yet you believe them for the form they take, and do not recognize thecontent. It never changes. Can you paint rosy lips upon a skeleton, dress it inloveliness, pet it and pamper it, and make it live? And can you be content withan illusion that you are living? There is no life outside of Heaven. Where Godcreated life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life isillusion. At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both arejudgments 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 illusion stands; senseless, impossibleand 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 governall illusions. Their forms conflict, making it seem quite possible to valuesome above the others. Yet each one rests as surely on the belief the laws ofchaos are the laws of order as do the others. Each one upholds these lawscompletely, offering a certain witness that these laws are true. The seeminggentler forms of attack are no less certain in their witnessing, or theirresults. Certain it is illusions will bring fear because of the beliefs thatthey imply, not for their form. And lack of faith in love, in any form, atteststo chaos as reality. From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. Itis because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step inordered 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 stilldeeper into terror and away from truth. Think not one step is smaller thananother, nor that return from one is easier. The whole descent from Heaven liesin each one. And where your thinking starts, there must it end. Brother, takenot one step in the descent to hell. For haveing taken one, you will notrecognize the rest for what they are. And they will follow. Attack in any formhas placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads from Heaven. Yet anyinstant it is possible to have all this undone. How can you know whether youchose the stairs to Heaven or the way to hell? Quite easily. How do you feel?Is peace in your awareness? Are you certain which way to go? And are you surethe goal of Heaven can be reached? If not, you walk alone. Ask, then, yourFriend to join with you, and give youcertainty of where you go.

Love

[IA56]

Salvation Without Compromise

It is not true you do not recognize some of the forms attack can take? If it is true attack in any form will hurt you, and will do so just as much as in another form that you do recognize, then it must follow that you do not always recognize the source of pain. Attack in any form is equally destructive. Its purpose does not change. Its sole intent is murder, and what form of murder serves to cover the massive guilt andd frantic fear of punishment the murderer must feel? He may deny he is a murderer and justify his savagery with smiles as he attacks. Yet he will suffer, and will look on his intent in nightmares where the smiles are gone, and where the purpose rises to meet his horrified awareness and pursue him still. For no one thinks of murder and escapes the guilt the thought entails. If the intent is death, what matter the form it takes? Is death in any form, however lovely and charitable it may seem to be, a blessing and a sign to Voice for God speaks through you to your brother? The wrapping does not make the gift you give. An empty box, however beautiful and gently given, still contains nothing. And neither the receiver nor the giver is long deceived. Withhold forgiveness for your brother and you attack him. You give him nothing, and recive of him but what you gave.Salvation is no compromise of any kind. To compromise is to accept but part of what you want; to take a little and give up the rest. Salvation gives up nothing. It is complete for everyone. Let the idea of compromise but enter, and the awareness of salvation´s purpose is lost because it is not recognized. Itis denied where compromise has been accepted, for compromise is the belief salvation is impossible. It would maintain you can attack a little, love a little, and know the difference. Thus it would teach a little of the same can still be different, and yet the same remain intact, as one. Does this make sense?Can it be understood? This course is easy just because it makes no compromise.Yet it seems difficult to those who still believe that compromise is possible.They do not see that, if it is, salvation is attack. Yet it is certain thebelief that salvation is impossible cannot uphold a quiet, calm assurance ithas come. Forgiveness cannot be withheld a little. Nor is it possible to attackfor this and love for that and understand forgiveness. Would you not want torecognize assault upon your peace in any form, if only thus does it becomeimpossible that you lose sight of it? It can be kept shining before yourvision, forever clear and never out of sight, if you defend it not. Those whobelieve that peace can be defended, and that attack is justified on its behalf,cannot perceive it lies within them. How could they know? Could they acceptforgiveness side by side with the belief that murder takes some forms by whichtheir peace is saved? Would they be willing to accept the fact their savagepurpose is directed against themselves? No one unites with enemies, nor is atone with them in purpose. And no one compromises with an enemy but hates himstill, for what he kept from him. Mistake not truce for peace, nor compromisefor the escape from conflict. To be released from conflict means that it isover. The door is open; you have left the battleground. You have not lingeredthere in cowering hope that it will not return because the guns are stilled aninstant, and the fear that haunts the place of death is not apparent. There isno safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above andnot be touched. But from within it you can find no safety. Not one tree leftstill standing will shelter you. Not one illusion of protection stands againstthe faith in murder. Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire tocommunicate and the unnatural intent to murder and to die. Think you the formthat murder takes can offer safety? Can guilt be absent from a batterfield?

Love

[IA56]

Above the Battleground

The fear of God is fear of life, and not of death. Yet He remains the only place of safety. In Him is no attack, and no illusion in any form stalks Heaven. Heaven is wholly true. No differen centers, and what is all the same cannot conflict. You are not asked to fight against your wish to murder. But you are asked to realize the form it takes conceals the same intent. And it is this you fear, and not the form. What is not love is murder. What is not loving must be an attack. Every illusion is an assault on truth, and every one does violence to the idea of love because it seems to be of equal truth. What can be equal to the truth, yet different? Murder and love are incompatible. Yet if they both are true, then must they be the same, and in distinguishable from one another. So will they be to those who see God´s Son a body. For it is not the body that is like the Son´s Creator.And what is lifeless cannot be the Son of Life. How can a body be extended to hold the universe? Can it create, and be what it creates? And can it offer its creations all that it is and never suffer loss? God does not share His function with a body. He gave the function to create unto His Son because it is His Own. It is not sinful to believe the function of the Son is murder, but it is insanity. What is the same can have no different function. Creation is the means for God´s extension, and what is His must be His Son´s as well. Either the Father and Son are murderers, or neither is. Life makes not death, creating like itself. The lovely light of your relationship is like the Love of God. It cannot yet assume the holy function God gave His Son, for your forgiveness of your brother is not complete as yet, and so it cannot be extended to all creation. Each form of murder and attack that still attracts you and that you do not recognize for what it is, limits the healing and the miracles you have the power to extend to all. Yet does the Holy Spirit understand how it increase your little gifts and make them mighty. Also He understands how yourrelationship is raised above the battleground, in it no more. This is yourpart; to realize that murder in any form is not your will. The overlooking of thebattleground is now your purpose. Be lifted up, and from a higher place lookdown upon it. From there will your perspective be quite different. Here in themidst of it, it does seem real. Here you have chosen to be part of it. Heremurder is your choice. Yet from above, the choice is miracles instead ofmurder. And the perspective coming from this choice shows you the battle is notreal, and easily escaped. Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms ismeaningless. And it is over when you realize it never was begun. How can abattle be perceived as nothingness when you engage in it? How can the truth ofmiracles be recognized if murder is your choice? When the temptation to attackrises to make your mind darkened and murderous, remember you can see the battlefrom above. Even in forms you do not recognize, the signs you know. There is astab of pain, a twinge of guilt, and above all, a loss of peace. This you knowwell. When they occur leave not your place on high, but quicly choose a miracleinstead of murder. And God Himself and all the lights of Heaven will gentlylean to you, and hold you up. For you have chosen to remain where He would haveyou, and no illusion can attack the peace of God together with His Son. See noone from the battleground, for there you look on him from nowhere. You have noreference point from where to look, where meaning can be given what you see.For only bodies could attack and murder, and if this your purpose, then you mustbe solitary. From below, it cannot be surmounted. From above, the limits itexerts on those in battle still are gone, and not perceived. The body standsbetween the Father and the Heaven He created from His Son because it has nopurpose. Think what is given those who share their Father´s purpose, and whoknow that it is theirs. They want for nothing. Sorrow of any kind isinconceivable. Only the light they love is in awareness, and only love shinesupon them forever. It is their past, their present and their future; always thesame, eternally complete and wholly shared. They know it is impossible theirhappiness could ever suffer change of any kind. Perhaps you think thebattleground can offer something you can win. Can it be anything that offersyou a perfect calmness, and a sense of love so deep and quiet that no touch ofdoubt can ever mar your certainty? And that will last forever? Those with thestrength of God in their awareness could never think of battle. What could theygain but loss of their perfection? For everything fought for on thebattleground is of the body; something it seems to offer or to own. No one whoknows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor could he value thebody´s offerings. The senselessness of conquest is quite apparent from thequiet sphere above the battleground. What can conflict with everything? Andwith the Love of God upholding him could find the choice of miracles or murderhard to make?

Love

[IA56]

THE GOAL OF SPECIALNESS

Forget not that the motivation for this course is the attainment and the keeping of the state of peace. Given this state the mind is quiet, and the condition in which God is remembered is attained. It is not necessary to tell Him what to do. He will not fail. Where He can enter, there He is already. And can it be He cannot enter where He wills to be? Peace will be yours because it is His Will. Can you believe a shadow can hold back the Will that holds the universe secure? God does not wait upon illusions to let Him be Himself. No more His Son. They are. And what illusion that idly seems to drift between them has the power to defeat what is Their Will? To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning. No belief is neutral. Every one has the power to dictate each decision you make. For a decision is a conclusion based on everything that you believe. It is the outcome of belief, and follows it as surely as does suffering follow guilt and freedom sinlessness. There is no substitute for peace. What God creates has no alternative. The truth arises from what He knows. And your decisions come from your beliefs as certainly as all creation rose in His Mind because of what He knows.

Love

[CFTraveler]

"Forget not that the motivation for this course is the attainment and the keeping of the state of peace. Given this state the mind is quiet, and the condition in which God is remembered is attained." Often people ask me what the benefits of meditation are- I always back off from saying something like this, because I'm afraid if I sound 'religious' I'll turn them off. But it's what I think. ;)

[IA56]

"Forget not that the motivation for this course is the attainment and the keeping of the state of peace. Given this state the mind is quiet, and the condition in which God is remembered is attained." Often people ask me what the benefits of meditation are- I always back off from saying something like this, because I'm afraid if I sound 'religious' I'll turn them off. But it's what I think. ;)

Yes, that is Always the risk, but our World is "built" on "religion" isn´t it, and why it will alwatys turn us off from the Peace....
As I told in the beginning of this journal that it is written Little too "religious" it would have bean better to remind that "Jesus Christ" did not come here to start an religon, only to free us...and what have we "humans" done....exactly...:-)
But this course is so good that it can´t be hidden away.....:-)

Love
ia

[IA56]

Specialness as a Substitute for Love

Love is extention. To withhold the smallest gift is not to know love´s purpose. Love offers everything forever. Hold back but one belief, one offering, and love is gone, because you asked a substitute to take its place. And now must war, the substitute for peace, come with the one alternative that you can choose for love. Your choosing it has given it all the reality it seems to have. Belief will never openly attack each other because conflicting outcomes are impossible. But an unrecognized belief is a decision to war is secret, where the results of conflict are kept unknown and never brought to reason, to be considered senisble or not. And many senseless outcomes have been reached, and meaningless decisions have been made and kept hidden, to become beliefs now given power to direct all subsequent decisions. Mistake you not the power of these hidden warriors to disrupt your peace. For it is at their mercy while you decide to leave it there. The secret enemies of peace, your least decission to choose attack instead of love, unrecognized and swift to challenge you to combat and to violence far more inclusive than you think, are there by your election. Do not deny their precence nor their terrible results. All that can be denied is their reality, but not theiroutcome. All that is ever cherished as a hidden belief, to be defended though unreconginzed, is faith in specialness. This takes many forms, but Always clashes with the reality of God´s creation and with the grandeur that He gave His Son. What else could justify attack? For who could hate someone whose Self is his, and Whom he knows? Only the special could have enemies, for they are different and not the same. And difference of any kind imposes orders of reality, and a need to judge that cannot be escaped. What God created cannot be attacked, for there is nothing in the universe unlike itself. But what is different calls for judgment, and this must come form someone ”better,” someone incapable of being like what he condemns, ”above” it, sinless by comparison with it. And thus does specialness become a means and end at once. For specialness not only sets apart, but serves as grounds from which attack on those who seem ”beneath” the special one is ”natural” and ”just”. The special ones feel weak and frail because of differences, for what would make them special is their enemy. Yet they protect its enmity and call it ”friend”. On its behalf they fight against the universe, for nothing in the world they value more. Specialness is the great dictator of the wrong decisions. Here is the grand illusion of what you are and what your brother is. And here is what must make the body dear and worth preserving. Specialness must be defended.Illusions can attack it, and they do. For what your brother must become to keep your specialness is an illusion. He who is ”worse” than you must be attacked,so that your specialness can live on his defeat. For specialness is triumph,and its victory is his defeat and shame. How can he live, with all your sins upon him? And who must be his conqueror but you? Would it be possible for you to hate your brother if you were like him? Could you attack him if you realized your journey with him, to a goal that is the same? Would you not help him reachit in every way you could, if his attainment of it were perceived as yours? Youare his enemy in specialness; his friend in a shared purpose. Specialness cannever share, for it depends on goals that you alone can reach. And he mustnever reach them, or your goal is jepordized. Can love have meaning where thegoal is triumph? And what decision can be made for this that will not hurt you?Your brother is your friend because his Father created him like you. There isno difference. You have been given to each other that love might be extended, notcut off from one another. What you keep is lost to you. God gave you bothHimself, and to remember this is now the only purpose that you share. And so itis the only one you have. Could you attack each other if you chose to see nospecialness of any kind between you? Look fairly at whatever makes you giveeach other only partial welcome, or would let you think that you are better offapart. Is it not always your belief your specialness is limited by yourrelationship? And is not this the ”enemy” that makes you both illusions to eachother? The fear of God and of each other comes from each unrecognized belief inspecialness. For each demands the other bow to it against his will. And GodHimself must honor it or suffer vengeance. Every twinge of malice, or stab ofhate or wish to separate arises here. For here the purpose that you sharebecomes obscure from both of you. You would oppose this course because itteaches you you are alike. You have no purpose that is not the same, and noneyour Father does not share with you. For your relationship has been made cleanof special goals. And would you now defeat the goal of holiness that Heavengave it? What perspective can the special have that does not change with everyseeming blow, each slight, or fancied judgment on itself? Those who are specialmust defend illusions against the truth. For what is specialness but an attack uponthe Will of God? You love your brother not while it is this you would defendagainst him. This is what he attacks, and you protect. Here is the ground ofbattle which you wage against him. Here must he be your enemy and not yourfriend. Never can there be peace among the different. He is your friend becauseyou are the same.

Love

[IA56]

The Treachery of Specialness

Comparison must be an ego device, for love makes none. Specialness always makes comparisons. It is established by a lack seen in another, and maintained by serching for, and keeping clear in sight,all lacks it can perceive. This does it seek, and this it looks upon. And always whom it thus diminishes would be your savior, had you not chosen to make of him a tiny measure of your specialness instead. Against the littleness you see in him you stand as tall and stalely, clean and honest, pure and unsullied,by comparison with what you see. Nor do you understand it is yourself that you diminish thus. Pursuit of specialness is always at the cost of peace. Who can attack his savior and cut him down, yet recognize his strong support? Who can detract from his omnipotence, yet share his power? And who can use him as the gauge of littleness, and be released from limits? You have a function in salvation. Its pursuit will bring you joy. But the pursuit of specialness must bring you pain. Here is a goal that would defeat salvation, and thus run conter to the Will of God. To value specialness is to esteem an alien will to which illusions of yourself are dearer than the truth. Specialness is the idea of sin made real. Sin is impossible even to imagine without this base. For sin arose from it, out of nothingness; an evil flower with no roots at all. Here is theself-made ”savior,” the ”creator” who creates unlike the Father, and which made His Son like to itself and not like unto Him. His ”special” sons are many,never one, each one in exile from himself, and Him of Whom they are a part. Nor do they love the Oneness Which created them as one with Him. They chose their specialness instead of Heaven and instead of peace, and wrapped it carefully in sin, so keep it ”safe” from truth. You are not special. If you think you are,and would defend your specialness against the truth of what you really are, how can you know the truth? What answer that the Holy Spirit gives can reach you,when it is your specialness to which you listen, and which asks and answers?Its tiny answer, soundless in the melody that pours from God to your eternally in loving praise of what you are, is all you listen to. And that vast song of honorand of love for what you are seems silent and unheard before its ”mightiness.”You strain your ears to hear its soundless voice, and yet the Call of GodHimself is soundless to you. You can defend your specialness, but never willyou hear the Voice of God beside it. They speak a different language and theyfall on different ears. To every special one a different message, and one withdifferent meaning, is the truth. Yet how can truth be different to each one?The special messages the special hear convince them they are different andapart; each in his special sins and ”safe” from love, which does not see hisspecialness at all. Christ´s vision is their ”enemy,” for it sees not what theywould look upon, and it would show them that the specialness they think theysee is an illusion. What would they see instead? The shining radiance of theSon of God, so like his Father that the memory of Him springs instantly tomind. And with this memory, the Son remembers his own creations, as like to himas he is to his Father. And all the world he made, and all his specialness, andall the sins he held in its defense against himself, will vanish as his mindaccepts the truth about himself, as it returns to take their place. This is theonly ”cost” of truth: You will no longer see what never was, nor hear whatmakes no sound. Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the Loveof God forever? You who have chained your savior to your specialness, and givenit his place, remember this: He has not lost the power to forgive you all thesins you think you placed between him and the function, any more than you canchange the truth in him and in yourself. But be you sertain that the truth isjust the same in both. It gives no different messages, and has no meaning. Andit is one you both can understand, and one that brings release to both of you.Here stands your brother with the key to Heaven in his hand, held out to you.Let not the dream of specialness remain between you. What is one is joined intruth. Think of the loveliness that you will see within yourself, when you havelooked on him as on a friend. He is the enemy of specialness, but only friendto what is real in you. Not one attack you thought you made on him has takenfrom him the gift that God would have him give to you. His need to give it isas great as yours to have it. Let him forgive you all your specialness, andmake you whole in mind and one with him. He waits for your forgiveness onlythat he may return it unto you. It is not God Who has condemned His Son, butyou, to save his specialness and kill his Self. You have come far along the wayof truth; to far to falter now. Just one step more, and every vestige of thefear of God will melt away in love. Your brother´s specialness and yours areenemies, and bound in hate to kill each other and deny they are the same. Yetit is not illusions that have reached this final obstacle which seems to makeGod and His Heaven to remote that they cannot be reached. Here is this holyplace does truth stand waiting to receive you both in silent blessing, and inpeace so real and so encompassing that nothing stands outside. Leave allillusions of yourself outside this place, to which you come in hope andhonesty. Here is your savior from your specialness. He is in need of youracceptance of himself as part of you, as you for his. You are alike to God asGod is to Himself. He is not special, for He would not keep one part of what Heis unto Himself, not given to His Son but kept for Him alone. And it is thisyou fear, for if He is not special, then He willed His Son to be like Him, andyour brother is like you. Not special, but possessed of everything, includingyou. Give him but what he has, remembering God gave Himself to both of you inequal love, that both might share the universe with Him Who chose that love couldnever be divided, and kept separate from what it is and must forever be. Youare your brother´s; part of love was not denied to him. But can it be that youhave lost because he is complete? What has been gien him makes you complete, asit does him. God´s Love gave you to him and him to you because He gave Himself.What is the same as God is one with Him. And only specialness could make thetruth of God and you as one seem anything but Heaven, with the hope of peace atlast in sight. Specaialness is the seal of treachery upon the gift of love.Whatever serves its purpose must be given to kill. No gift that bears its sealbut offers treachery to giver and receiver. Not one glance from eyes it veilsbut looks on sight of death. Not one believer in its potency but seeks forbargains and for compromise that would establish sin love´s substitute, and serveit faitfully. And no relationship that holds its purpose dear but clings tomurder as safety´s weapon, and the great defender of all illusions form the ”threat”of love. The hope of specialness makes it seem possible God made the body asthe prison house that keeps His Son form Him. For it demands a special placeGod cannot enter, and a hiding place where none is welcome but your tiny self.Nothing is scared here but unto you, and you alone, apart and separate from allour brotheres; safe from all intrusions of sanity upon illusions; safe from Godand safe for conflict everlasting. Here are the gates of hell you closed uponyourself, to rule in madness and in loneliness your special kingdom, apart fromGod, away from truth and from salvation. The key you threw away God gave yourbrother, whose holy hands would offer it to you when you were ready to acceptHis plan for your salvation in the place of yours. How could this readiness bereached save through the sight of all your misery, and the awareness that yourplan has failed, and will forever fail to bring you peace and joy of any kind?Through this despair you travel now, yet it is but illusion of despair. Thedeath of specialness is not your death, but your awakening into life eternal.You but emerge from an illusion of what you are to the acceptance of yourselfas God created you.

Love

[IA56]

The Forgiveness of Specialness

Forgiveness is the end of specialness. Only illusion can be forgiven, and then they disappear. Forgiveness is released from all illusion, and that is why it is impossible but partly to forgive. No one who clings to one illusion can see himself as sinless, for he holds one error to himself as lovely still. And so he calls it ”unforgivable,”and makes it sin.How can he then give his forgiveness wholly, when he would not receive it for himself? For it is sure he would receive it wholly the instant that he gave it so. And thus his secret guilt would disappear, forgiven by himself. Whatever form of specialness you cherish, you have made sin. Inviolate it stands, strongly defended with all your puny might against the Will of God. And thus it stands against yourself; your enemy, not God´s. So does it seem to split you off from God, and make you separate from Him as its defender. You would protect what God created not. And yet, this idol that seems to give you power has taken it away. For you have given your brother´s birthright to it, leaving him alone and unforgiven, and yourself in sin beside him, both in misery, before the idol that can save you not. It is not you that is so vulnerable and open to attack that just a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a circumstance that suits you not, or an event that you did not anticipate upsets your world, and hurls it into chaos. Truth is not frail. Illusions leave it perfectly unmoved.But specialness is not the truth is you. It can be thrown off balance by anything. What rests on nothing never can be stable. However large and overblown it seems to be, it still must rock and turn and whirl about with everybreeze. Without foundation nothing is secure. Would God have left His Son insuch a state, where safety has no meaning? No, His Son is safe, resting on Him.It is your specialness that is attacked by everything that walks and breathes,or creeps or crawls, or even lives at all. Nothing is safe from its attack, andit is safe from nothing. It will forevermore be unforgiving, for that is whatit is; a secret vow that what God wants for you will never be, and that youwill oppose His Will forever. Nor it is possible the two can over be the same,while specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between them, and makesthem enemies. God asks for your forgiveness. He would have no separation, likean alien will, rise between what He wills for you and what you will. They arethe same, for neither one wills specialness. How could they will the death oflove itself? Yet they are powerless to make attack upon illusions to be broughtto them, and left behind. Salvation challanges not even death. And God Himself,Who knows that death is not your will, must say, ”Thy will be done” because youthink it is. Forgive the great Creator of the universe, the Source of life, oflove and holiness, the perfect Father of a perfect Son, for your illusions ofyour specialness. Here is the hell you chose to be your home. He chose not thisfor you. Ask not He enters this. The way is barred to love and to salvation.Yet if you would release your brother form the depths of hell, you haveforgiven Him Whose Will it is you rest forever in the arms of peace, in perfectsafety, and without the heat and malice of one thought of specialness to maryour rest. Forgive the Holy One the specialness He could not give, and that youmade instead. The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world ofloveliness they do not see. Freedom and peace and joy stands there, beside thebier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from theirdream of death. Yet they hear nothing. They are lost in dreams of specialness.They hate the call that would awaken them, and they curse God because Hed id notmake their dream reality. Curse God and die, but not by Him Who make not death;by only in the dream. Open your eyes a little; see the savior God gave to youthat you might look on him, and give him back his birthright. It is yours. The slavesof specialness will yet be free. Such is the Will of God and of His Son. Would Godcondemn Himself to hell and to damnation? And do you will that this be doneunto your salvior? God calls to you from him to join His Will to save you bothfrom hell. Look on the print of nails upon his hands that he holds out for yourforgiveness. God asks your mercy on His Son and on Himself. Deny Them not. Theyask of you but that your will be done. They seek your love that you may loveyourself. Love not your specialness instead of Them. The print of nails are onyour hand as well. Forgive your Father it was not His Will that you becrucified.

Love

[IA56]

Specialness versus Sinlessness

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; crucifixtion 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.Yet bodies have no goal. Purpose is of the mind. And minds can change as they desire. What they are, and all their attributes, they 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. Yet to those who wish to heal and not attack, is it quite obvious. The purpose of attack is in the mind, and its effects are felt but where it is. Nor is the mind limited; so must it be that harmful purpose hurts the mind as one. Nothing could make less sense to specialness. Nothing could make mores ense 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 gif tyour 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 hourse barren and empty, with an open door inviting everything that would disturb your peace to enter and destroy. Earlier I said consider not the means by which salvation is attained, nor how to reach it. But to consider, and consider well, whether it is 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 sin would justify itself, and give it meaning that the truth denies. All that is real proclaims his sinlessness. Allthat is false proclaims his sins as real. If he is sinful, then is your reality not real, but just a dream of specialness that lasts an instant, crumbling into dust. Do not defend this sensless dream, in which God is bereft of what He loves, and you remain beyond salvation. Only this is certain in this shifting world that has no meaning in realty: When peace is not with you entirely, andand 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 yoursavior, and crucified the one whom God has given you instead. So are you bound with him, for you are one. And so is specialness his ”enemy,” and yours aswell.

Love

[IA56]

The Christ in You

The Christ in you is very still. He looks on what He loves, and knows it as Himself. And thus does He rejoice at what He sees, because He knows that it is one with Him and with His Father.Specialness, too, takes joy in what it sees, although it is not true. Yet what you seek for is a source of joy as you conceive it. What you wish is true for you. Nor is it possible that you can wish for something and lack faith that it is so. Wishing makes real, as surely as does will create. The power of a wish upholds illusions as strongly as does love extend itself. Except that on be deludes; the other heals. There is no dream of specialness, however hidden or disguised the form, however lovely it may seem to be, however much it delicately offers the hope of peace and the escape from pain, in which you suffer not your condemnation. In dreams effect and cause are interchanged, for here the maker of the dream believes that what he made is happening to him. He does not realize he picked a thread from here, a scrap from there, and wove a picture out of nothing. For the parts do not belong together, and the whole contributes nothing to the parts to givet them meaning. Where could your Peace arise but from forgiveness? The Christ in you looks only on the truth, and sees no condemnation that could need forgiveness. He is at peace because He sees no sin. Identify with Him, and what has He that you have not? He is your eyes,your ears, your hands, your feet. How gentle are the sights He sees, the sounds He hears. How beautiful His hand that hold His brother´s and how lovingly He walks beside him, showing him what can be seen and heard, and where he will see nothing and there is no sound to hear. Yet let your specialness direct his way,and you will follow. And both will walk in danger, each intent, in the dark forest of the sightless, unlit but by the shifting tiny gleams the spark an instant from the fireflies of sin and then go out, to lead the other to a nameless precipice and hurl him over it. For what can specialness delight in but to kill? What does it seek for but the sight of death? Where does it lead but to destruction? Yet think not that it looked upon your brother first, nor hated him before it hated you. The sin its eyes behold in him and love to look upon it saw in you, and looks on still with joy. Yet is it joy to look upon decay and madness, and believe ths crumbling thing, with flesh already loosened from the bone and sightless holes for eyes, is like yourself? Rejoice you have no eyes with which to see; no ears to listen, and no hands to hold nor feet to guide. Be glad that only Christ can lend you His, while you have need of them.They are illusions, too, as much as yours. And yet because they serve a different purpose, the strength their purpose holds is given them. And what they see and hear and hold and lead is given light, that you may lead as you were led. The Christ in you is very still. He knows where you are going, and He leads you there in gentleness and blessing all the way. His Love for God replaces all the fear you thought you saw within yourself. His holiness shows you Himself in him whose hand you hold, and whom you lead to Him. And what you see is like yourself. For what but Christ is there to see ahd hear and love and follow home? He looked upon you first, but recognized that you were not complete. And so He sought for your completion in each living thing that He beholds and loves. And seeks it still, that each might offer you the Love ofGod. Yet He is quiet, for He knows that love is in you now, and safely held in you but that same hand that holds your brother´s in your own. Christ´s hand holds all His brothers in Himself. He gives them vision for their sightless eyes, and sings to them of Heaven, that their ears may hear no more the sound of battle and of death. He reaches through them. Holding out His hand, that everyone may bless all living things, and see their holiness. And He rejoices that these sights are yours, to look upon with Him and shre his joy. His perfect lack of specialness He offers you, that you may save all living things from death, receiving from each one the gift of life that your forgiveness offers to your Self. The sight of Christ is all there is to see. The song of Christ is all there is to hear. The hand of Christ is all there is to hold.There is no journey but to walk with Him. You who would be content with specialness, and seek salvation in a war with love, consider this: The holy Lord of Heaven has Himself come down to you, to offer you your own completion.What is His is yours because in your completion is His Own. He Who willed not to be without His Son could never will that you be brotherless. And would He give a brother unto you except he be as perfect as yourself, and just as like to Him in holiness as you must be? There must be doubt before there can be conflict. And every doubt must be about yourself. Christ has no doubt, and from His certainty His quiet comes. He will exchange His certainty for all your doubts, if you agree that He is one with you, and that this oneness is endless,timeless, and within your grasp because your hands are His. He is within you,yet He walkes beside you and before, leading the way that He must go to find Himself complete. His quitness becomes your certainty. And where is doubt when certainty has come?

Love

[IA56]

Salvation from Fear

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 fear. 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 nor 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 Though twithin 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 crated 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 nor yourself. For you will use the world for what is not its purpose, and will not escape 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. Seein 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 nor place nor time where He is not. Within your brother´s holiness, the perfect frame for your salvation andthe world´s, is set shining memory of Him in Whom your brother lives, and you along with him. Let not your eyes be blinded lives, and you along with him. Letnot your eyes be blinded by the veil of specialness that hides the face ofChrist from him, and you as well. And let the fear of God no longer hold thevision you were meant to see from you. Your brother´s body shows not Christ toyou. He is set forth within his holiness. Choose, then, his body or hisholiness 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 that seems tohave no end, until the truth be your secision. For eterntiy is not regained bystill one more denial of Christ in him. And where is your salvation, if he isbut a body? Where is your peace but in his holiness? And where is God Himselfbut in that part in Him He set forever in your brother´s holiness, that youmight see the truth about yourself, set forth at last in terms you recognizedand understood? Your brother´s holiness is sacrament and benediction unto you.His errors cannot withhold God´s blessing from himself, nor you who see himtruly. His mistakes can cause delay, which it is given you to take form him,that both may end a journey that has never begun, and needs no end. What neverwas is not a part of you. Yet you will think it is, until you realize that itis 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 beholdshis holiness. Your specialness looks on his body and beholds him not. See himas 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 otherchoice can offer you. Futility of function not fulfilled will haunt you while yourbrother lies asleep, till what has been assigned to you is done and he is risenfrom the past. He who condemned himself, and you as well, is given you to savefrom 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 atall. Would you not gladly realize that laws are not for you? Then see him notas prisoner to them. It cannot be what governs part of God holds not for allthe 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 gibven you a part of Himto save from pain and give you happiness. And never doubt but that yourspecialness will disappear before the Will of God, Who loves each part of Himwith equal love. The Christ in you can see your brother truly. Would you decideagainst the holiness He sees? Specialness is the function that you gaveyourself. It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need ofnothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body. It its eyes you are aseparate universe, with all the power to hold itself complete within itself,with every entry shut against intrusion, and every window barred against thelight. Always attacked and always fursious, with anger always fully justified,you have pursued this goal with vigilance you never thought to yield, andeffort that you never thought to cease. And all this grim determination was forthis; you wanted specialness to be the truth. Now you are merely asked that youpursue another goal with far less vigilance; with little effort and with littletime, and with the power of God maintaining it, and promising success. Yet ofthe two, it is this one you find more difficult. The ”sacrifice” of self youunderstand, a nod to God, a greeting to the Christ in you, you find a burdenwearisome and tedious, too heavy to be borne. Yet to the dedication to thetruth as God established it no sacrifice is asked, no strain called forth, andall the power of Heaven and the might of truth itself is given to provide themeans, and guarantee the goal´s accomplishment. You who believe it easier to seeyour brother´s body than his holiness, be sure you understand what made thisjudgment. Here is the voice of specialness heard clearly, judging against theChrist and setting forth for you the purpose that you can attain, and what youcannot do. Forget not that this judgment must apply to what you do with it asyour ally. For what you do through Christ it does not know. To Him thisjudgment makes no sense at all, for only what His Father will is possible, andthere is no alternative for Him to see. Out of His lack of conflict comes yourpeace. And from His purpose comes the means for effortless accomplishement andrest.

Love

[IA56]

The Meeting Place

How bitterly does everyone tied to this world defend the specialness he wants to be the truth? His wish is law to him,and he obeys. Nothing his specialness demands does he withhold. Nothing it needs does he deny to what he loves. And while it calls to him he hears no other Voice. No effort is too great, no cost too much, no price too dear to save his specialness from the least sight, the tiniest attack, the whispered doubt, the hint of threat, or anything but deepest reverence. This is your son,beloved of you as you are to your Father. Yet it stands in place of your creation, who are son to you, that you might share the Fatherhood of God, not snatch if from Him. What is this son that you have made to be your strength? What is this child of earth on whom such love is lavished? What is this parody of God´s creation that takes the place of yours? And where are they, now that the host of God has found antoher son whom he prefers to them? The memory of God shines not alone. What is within your brother still contains all of creation, everything created and creating, born and unborn as yet, still in the future of apparently gone by. What is in him is changeless, and your changelessness is recognized in its acknowledgment. The holiness in you belongs to him. And by your seeing it in him, returns to you. All of the tribute you have given specialness belongs to him, and thus returns to you. All of the love and care,the strong protection, the thought by day and night, the deep concern, the powerful conviction this is you, belong to him. Nothing you gave to specialness but is his due. And nothing due him is not due to you. How can you know your worth while specialness claims you instead? How can you fail to know it in his holiness? Seek not to make your specialness the truth, for if it were you would be lost indeed. Be thankful, rather, it is given you to see his holiness because it is the truth. And what is true in him must be as true in you. Ask yourself this: Can you protect the mind? The body, yes, a little: not from time, but temporarily. And much you think you save, you hurt. What would you save it for? For in the choice lie bot hits health and harm. Save it for show,as bait to catch another fish, to house you specialness in better style, orweave a frame of loveliness around your hate, and you condemn it to decay and death. And if you see this purpose in your brother´s, such is your condemnation of your own. Weave, rather, then, a frame of holiness around him, that the truth may shine on him, and give him safety from decay. The Father keeps what He created safe. You cannot touch it with the false ideas you made, because it was created not by you. Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. What is immortal cannot be attacked; what is but temporal has no effect. Only the purpose that you see in it has meaning, and if that is true, its safety rests secure. If not, it has no purpose, and is means for nothing. Whatever is perceived as means for truth shares in this holiness, and rests in light as safely as itself. Nor will that light go out when it is gone. Its holy purpose gave it immortality, setting another light in Heaven, where your Creations recognize a gift from you, a sign that you have not forgotten them. The test of everything on earth is simply this; ”What is if for?” The answer makes it whatit is for you. It has no meaning of itself, yet you can give reality to it, according to the purpose that you serve. Here you are but means, along with it.God is a Means as well as End. In Heaven, means and end are one, and one with Him. This is the state of true creation, found not within time, but in eternity. To no one here is this describable. Nor is there any way to learn,what this condition means. Not till you go past learning to the Given; not till you make again a holy home for your creations is it understood. A co-creatorwith the Father must have a Son. Yet must this Son have been created like Himself. A perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken from; not born of size nor place nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of any kind. Here do the means and end unite as one, nor does this one have any end at all. All this is true, and yet it has no meaning to anyone who still retains one unlearned lesson in his memory, one thought with purpose still uncetain, or one wish with a divided aim. This course makes no attmpt to teach what cannot easily be learned. Its scope does not exceed your own, except to say that what is yours will come to you when you are ready. Here are the means and the purpose separate because they were so made and so perceived. And there for do we deal with them as if they were. It is essential it be kept in mind that all perception still is upside down until its purpose has been understood. Perception still is upside down until its purpose has been understood. Perception does not seem to be a means. And it is this that makes it hard to grasp the whole extent to which it must depend on what you see it for. Perception seems to teach you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what you taught. It is the outward picture of a wish; a image that you wanted to be true. Look at yourself, and you will see a body. Look at this body in a different light and it looks different. And without a light it seems that it is gone. Yet you are reassured that it is there because you still can feel it withyour hands and hear it move. Here is an image that you want to be yourself. It is the means to make your wish come true. It gives the eyes with which you look on it, the hands that feel it, and the ears with witch you listen to the sound it makes. It proves its own reality to you. Thus is the body made a theory of yourself, with no provisions made for evidence beyond itself, and no escape within its sight. Its course is sure, when seen through its own eyes. It grows and withers, flourishes and dies. And you cannot conceive of you apart from it.You brand it sinful and you hate its acts, judging it evil. Yet your specialnesswhispers, ”Here is my own beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Thus doesthe ”son” become the means to serve his ”fatger´s” purpose. Not identical, noteven like, but still a means to offer to the ”father” what he wants. Such isthe travesty on God´s creation. For as His Son´s creation gave Him joy andwitness to His Love and shared His purpose, so does the body testify to theidea that made it, and speak for its reality and truth. And thus are two sonsmade, and both appear to walk this earth without a meeting place and noencounter. One do you perceive outside yourself, your own beloved son. Theother rests within, his Father´s Son, within your brother as he is in you.Their difference does not lie in how they look, nor where they go, nor evenwhat they do. They have a different purpose. It is this that joins them to theirlike, and separates each from all aspects with a different purpose. The Son ofGod retains His Father´s Will. The son of man perceives an alien will and wishesit were so. And thus does his perception serve his wish by giving itappearances of truth. Yet can perception serve another goal. It is not bound tospecialness but by your choice. And it is given you to make a different choice,and use perception for a different purpose. And what you see will serve thatpurpose well, and prove its own reality to you.

Love

[IA56]

THE JUSTICE OF GOD

The Christ in you inhabits not a body. Yet He is in you. And thus it must be that you are not within a body. What is within you cannot be outside. And it is certain that you cannot be apart from what is at the very center of your life. What gives you life cannot be housed in death. No more can you. Christ is within a frame of holiness whose only purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not, that He may call to them to come to Him and see Him where they thought their bodes were.Then will their bodies melt away, that they may frame His holiness in them. No one who carries Christ in him can fail to recognize Him everywhere. Except inbodies. And as long as they believe they are in bodies, where they think they are He cannot be. And so they carry Him unknowingly, and do not make Him manifest. And thus they do not recognize Him where He is. The son of man is not the risen Christ. Yet does the Son of God abide exactly where he is, and walks with him within his holiness, as plain to see as is his specialness set forth within his body. The body needs no healing. But the mind that thinks it is a body is sick indeed! And it is here that Christ sets forth the remedy. His purpose folds the body in His light, and fills it with the holiness that shines from Him. And nothing that the body says or does but makes Him manifest. To those who know Him not it carries Him in gentleness and love, to heal their minds. Such is the mission that your brother has for you. And such it must be that your mission is for him.

Love

[IA56]

The Link to Truth

It cannot be that it is hard to do the task that Christ appointed you to do, since it is He Who 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 to 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 despite 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 it is 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 to 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. You and your brother stand 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 in truth, but that the link 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 andHis Father never have been separate, and Christ abides within your understanding, in the part of you that shares His Fathers´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 dicrete, 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 a 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 that this mind can understand, in the condition in 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 be very simply be reduced to this:

What is the same can not be different,
And what is one can not have separateparts.

Love

[IA56]

The Savior from the Dark

It is not evident that what the body´s Eyes perceive fills you with fear? Perhaps you think you find a hope of satisfaction there. Perhaps you fancy to attain some peace and satisfaction in the world as you perceive it. Yet it must be evident the outcome does not change. Despite your hopes and fancies, always does despair result. And there is no exception,nor will there ever be. The only value that the past can hold is that you learn it gave you no rewards which you would want to keep. For only thus will you be willing to relinquish it, and have it gone forever. It is not strange that you should cherish still some hope of satisfaction from the world you see? In no respect, at any time or place, has anything but fear and guilt been your reward. How long is needed for you to realize the chance of change in this respect is hardly worth delaying change that might result in better outcome? For one thing is sure; the way you see, and long have seen, gives no support to base your future hopes, and no suggestions of success at all. To place your hopes where no hope lies must make you hopeless. Yet is this hopelessness your choice, while you would seek for hope where none is ever found. It is not also true that you have found some hope apart from this; some glimmering –inconstant, wavering, yet dimly seen, - that hopefulness is warrented on grounds that are not in this world? And yet your hope that they may still be here prevents you still from giving up the hopeless and unrewarding task you set yourself. Can it make sense to hold the fixed belief that there is reason to uphold pursuit of what has always failed, on grounds that it will suddenly succeed and bring what it has never brought before? Its past has failed. Be glad that it is gone within your mind, to darken what is there. Take not the form for content, for the form is but a means for content. And the frame is but a means to hold the picture up, so that it can be seen. A frame that hides the picture has no purpose. It cannot be a frame if it is what you see. Without the picture is the frame without its meaning. Its purpose is to set the Picture off, and not itself. Who hangs an empty frame upon a wall and stands before it,deep in reverence, as if a masterpiece were there to see? Yet if you see your brother as a body, it is but this you do. The masterpiece that God has set within this frame is all there is to see. The body holds it for a while,without obscuring it in any way. Yet what God has created needs no frame, for what He has created He supports and frames within Himself. His masterpiece He offers you to see. And would you rather see the frame instead of this? And see the picture not at all? The Holy Spirit is the frame God set around the part of Him that you would see as separate. Yet its frame is joined to its Creator, one with Him and with His masterpiece. This is its purpose, and you do not make the frame into the picture when you choose to see it in its place. The frame that God has given it but serves His purpose, not yours apart from His. It is your separate purpose that obscures the picture, and cherishes the frame instead of it. Yet God has set His masterpiece within a frame that will endure forever,when yours has crumbled into dust. But think you not the picture is destroyed in any way. What God creates is safe from all corruption, unchanged and perfect in eternity. Accept God´s frame instead of yours, and you will see the masterpiece. Look at its loveliness, and understand the Mind that thought it, not in flesh and bones, but in a frame as lovely as Itself. Its holiness lights up the sinlessness the frame of darkness hides, and casts a veil of light across the picture´s face which but reflects the light that shines from it to its Creator. Think not this face was ever darkened because you saw it in a frame of death. God kept in safe that you might look on it, and see the holiness that He has given it. Within the darkness see the savior from the dark, and understand your brother as his Father´s Mind shows him to you. He will step forth form darkness as you look on him, and you will see the dark no more. The darkness touched him not, nor you who brought him forth for you tolook upon. His sinlessness but pictures yours. His gentleness becomes your strength, and both will gladly look within, and see the holiness that must be there because of what you looked upon in him. He is the frame in which your holiness is set, and what God gave him must be given you. How ever much he overlooksthe masterpiece in him and sees only a frame of darkness, it is still your only function to behold in him what he sees not. And in this seeing is the vision shared that looks on Christ instead of seeng death. How could the Lord of Heaven not be glad if you appreciate His masterpiece? What could He do but offer thanks to you who love His Son as He does? Would He not make known to you His Love, if you but share His praise of what He loves? God cherishes creationas the perfect Father that He is. And so His joy is made complete when any part of Him joins in His praise, to share His joy. This brother is His perfect Son for being what he is. And all His thanks and gladness shine on you who would complete His joy, along with Him. And thus is yours completed. Not one ray of darkness can be seen by those who will make their Father´s happiness complete,and theirs along with His. The gratitude of God Himself is freely offered to everyone who shares His purpose. It is not His Will to be alone. And neither is it yours. Forgive your brother, and you cannot separate yourself from him nor from his Father. You need no forgiveness, for the wholly pure have never sinned. Give, then, what He has given you, that you may see His Son as one, andthank his Father as He thanks you. Nor believe that all His praise is given not to you. For what you give is His, and giving it, you learn to understand His gift to you. And give the Holy Spirit what He offers unto the Father and the Son alike. Nothing has power over you except His Will and yours, which but extends His Will. It was for this you were created, and your brother with youand at one with you. You are the same as God Himself is One, and not divided in His Will. And you must have one purpose, since He gave the same to both of you. His Will is brought together as you join in will, that you be made complete by offering completion to your brother. See not in him the sinfulness he sees, but give him honor that you may esteem yourself and him. To each of you is given the power of salvation, that escape from darkness into light be yours to share; that you may see one what never has been separate, nor apart form all God´sLove as given equally.

Love

[IA56]

Perception of Choice

To the extent to which you value guilt, to the extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent you will perceive attack cannot be justified. This is in accord with perception´s fundamental law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you want it there. Perception has no other law than this. The rest but stems from this, to hold it up and offer it support. This is perception´s form, adapted to this world, of God´s more basic law; that love creates itself, and nothing but itself. God´s laws do not obtain directly to a world perception relies, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning. Yet are His laws reflected everywhere. Not that the world where this reflection is, is real at all. Only because His Son Believes it is, and from His Son´s belief He could not let Himself be separate entirely.He could not enter His Son´s insanity with him, but He could be sure His sanity went there with him, so he could not be lost forever in the madness of his wish. Perception rests on choosing; knowledge does not. Knowledge has but one law because it has but one Creator. But this world has two who made it, and they do not see it as the same. To each it has a different purpose, and to each it is a perfect means to serve the goal for which it is perceived. For specialness, it is the perfect frame to st it off; the perfect battle ground to wage its wars, the perfect shelter for illusions which it would make real. Not one but it upholds in its perception; not one but cna be fully justified. There is another Maker of the world, the simultanoeous Corrector of the mad belief that anything could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the laws of God; not as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it, but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error is the error´s end. And thus has God protected stil His Son, even in error. There is another purpose in the world that error made,because it has another Maker Who can reconcile its goal with His Creator´s purpose.In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind´s where it must be, and light the body up instead of it. The lamps of Heaven are not for mind to choose to see them where it will. If it elects to see them elsewhere from their home, as if they lit a place where they could never be, then must the Maker of the world correct your error, lest you remain in darkness where the lamps are not. Everyone here has entered darkness, yet no one has entered it alone. For he has come with Heaven´s Help within him, ready to lead him out of darkness into light at any time. The time he chooses can be any time, for help is there, awaiting but his choice. And when he chooses to awail himself of what is given him, then will he see each situation that he thought before was means to justify his anger turned to an event which justifies his love. He will hear plaintly that the calls to war he heard Before are really calls to peace. He will perceive that where he gave attack is but another altar where he can, with equal ease and far more happiness, bestow forgiveness. And he will reinterpret all temptation as just another chance to bring him joy. How can a misperception be a sin? Let all your brother´s errors be to you nothing except a change for you to see the workings of the Helper given you to see the world He made instead of yours. What, then, is justified? What do you want? For these two questions are the same. And when you see them as the same, your choice is made. For it is seeing them as one that brings release from the belief there are two ways to see. This world has much to offer to your peace, and many chances to extend your own forgiveness. Such its purpose is, to those who want to see peace and forgiveness descend on them, and offer them the light. The Maker of the world of gentleness has perfect power to offset the world of violence and hate that seems to stand between you and His gentleness. It is not there in His forgiving eyes. And therefore it need not be there in yours. Sin is the fixed belief perception cannot change. What has be endamned is damned and damned forever, being forever unforgivagle. If, then, it is forgiven sin´s perception must have been wrong. And thus is change made possible. The Holy Spirit, too, sees what He sees as far beyond the chance of change. But His vision sin cannot encroach, for sin has been corrected by His sight. And thus it must have been an error, not a sin. For what it claimed could never be, has been. Sin is attacked by punisment, and so preserved. Butto forgive it is to change its state from error into truth. The Son of God could never sin, bu the can wish for what would hurt him. And he has the Power to think he can be hurt. What could this be except a mispreception of himself? Is this a sin or a mistake, forgivable or not? Does he need help or condemnation? It is your purpose that he be saved or damned? Forgetting not that what he is to you will make this choice your future? For you make it now, the instant when all time becomes a means to reach a goal. Make, then, your choice. But recognize that in this choice the purpose of the world you see is chosen, and will be justified.

Love

[IA56]

The Light You Bring

Minds that are joined and recognize they are, can feel no guilt. For they cannot attack, and they rejoice this is so, seeing their safety in this happy fact. Their joy is in the innocence they see. And thus they seek for it, because it is their purpose to behold it and rejoice.Everyone seeks for what will bring him joy as he defines it. It is not the aim, as such, that varies. Yet it is the way in which the aim is seen that makes the coice of means inevitable, and beyone the hope of change unless the aim is changed. And then the means are chosen once again, as what will bring rejoicing is defined another way and sought for differently. Perception´s basic law could thus be said, ”You will rejoice at what you see because you see it to rejoice.”And while you think that suffering and sin will bring you joy, so long will they be there for you to see. Nothing is harmful or beneficent apart from what you wish. It is your wish that makes it what it is in its effects on you.Because you chose it as a means it gain there same effects, believing them tobe the bringers of rejoicing and of joy. Even in Heaven does this law obtain.The Son of God creates to bring him joy, sharing his Father´s purpose in his own creation, that his joy might be increased, and God´s along with his. You maker of a world that is not so, take rest and comfort in another world where peace abides. This world you bring with you to all the weary eyes and tired hearts that look on sin and beat its sad refrain. From you can come their rest.From you can rise a world they will rejoice to look upon, and where theirhearts are glad. In you there is a vision that extends to all of them, andcovers them in gentleness and light. And in this widing world of light the darkness that they thought was there is pushed away, until it is but distant shadows, far away, not long to be remembered as the sun shines them to nothingness. And all their ”evil” thoughts and ”sinful” hopes, their dreams of guilt and merciles revenge, and every wish to hurt and kill and die, will disappear before the sun you bring. Would you not do this for the Love of God?And for yourself? For think what it would do for you. Your ”evil” thoughts that haunt you now will seem incresingly remote and far away from you. And they go farther and farther off, because the sun in you has risen that they may be pushed away before the light. They linger for a while, a little while, in twisted forms too far away for recognition, and are gone forever. And in the sunlight you will stand in quiet, in innocence and wholly unafraid. And from you will the rest you found extend, so that your peace can never fall away and leave you homeless. Those who offer peace to everyone have found a home in Heaven the world cannot destroy. For it is large enough to hold the World within its peace. In you it is all Heaven. Every leaf that falls in given life in you. Each bird that ever sang will sing again in you. And every flower that ever bloomed has saved its perfume and its loveliness for you. What aim can supercede the Will of God and of His Son, that Heaven be restored to him for whom it was created as his only home? Nothing before and nothing after it. No other place; no other state nor time. Nothing beyond nor nearer. Nothing else.In any form. This can you bring to all the world, and all the thoughts that entered it and were mistaken for a little while. How better could your own mistakes be brought to truth than by your willingness to bring the light of Heaven with you, as you walk beyond the world of darkness into light?

Love

[IA56]

The State of Sinlessness

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 boundas one illusion, each the cause and aim and jusitifier on 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 make 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 perceives as wholly innocent? And who, because he wishes to attack, can fail to think he must beguilty to maintain the wish, while wanting innocence? For who could see the Son of God as innocent and wish him dead? Christ stands before you both, each time you look upon your brother. He has not gone because your eyes are closed. But what is there to see by searching for your Savior, seeing Him through singhtless 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 incontent 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 ot 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 choose to have him be to you. If you decide against his proper function, the only one he has in truth, you are depriving him of all the joy he would have found if he fullfilled the role God gave to him. But think not Heaven is lostto 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 isbut the means to let yours be. And so you walk towards Heaven or towarads hell, but not alone. How beautiful his sinlesssness 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 HimWill be done. In each of you, you see the picture of your own belief in what the Will of God must be for you. In your forgiveness will you understand His Lovefor 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 pervceive 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 on yourself.

Love

[IA56]

The Special Function

The grace of God rests gently on forgiving eyes, and everything they look on speaks of Hm to the beholder. He can see no evil; nothing in the world to fear, and no one who is different from himself. And as he loves them, so he looks upon himself with love and gentleness. He would no more condemn himself for his mistakes the damn another. He is not an arbiter of vengeance, nor a punisher of sin. The kindness of his sight rests on himself with all the tenderness it offers others. For he would only heal and only bless. And being in accord with what God wills, he has the power to heal and bless all those he looks on with the grace of God upon his sight. Eyes become used to darkness, and the light of brilliant day seems painful to the Eyes grown long accustomed to the dim effects perceived at twilight. And they turn away from sunlight and the clarity it brings to what they look upon. Dimness seems better; easier to see, and better recongized. Somehow the vague and more obscure seems easier to look upon; less painful to the eyes than what is wholly clear and unambiguous. Yet this is not what eyes are for, and who can say that he prefers the darkness and maintain he wants to see? The wish to see calls down the grace of God upon your eyes, and brings the gift of light that makes sight possible. Would you behold your brother? God is glad to have you look on him. He does not will your savior be unrecongized by you. Nor does He will that he remain without the function that He gave to him. Let him no more be lonely, for the lonely ones are those who see no function in the world for them to fill; no place where they are needed, and no aim which only they can perfectly fulfill. Such is the Holy Spirit´s kind perception of specialness; His use of what you made, to heal instead of harm. To each He gives a special function you made, to heal instead of harm. To each he gives a special function in salvation he alone can fill; a part of only him. Nor is the plan complete until he finds his special function, and fulfills the part assigned to him, to make himself complete within a world where in completion rules. Here, where the laws of God do not prevail in perfect form, can he yet do one perfect thing and make one perfect choice. And by this act of special faithfulness to onw perceived as other than himself, he learns the gift was given to himself, and so they must be one. Forgiveness is the only function meaningful in time. It is the means the Holy Spirit uses to translate specialness from sin into salvation.Forgiveness is for all. But when it rests on all it is complete, and every function of this world completed with it. Then is time no more. Yet while in time, there is still much to do. And each must do what is allotted him, for on his part does all the plan depend. He has a special part in time for so he chose,and choosing it, he made it for himself. His wish was not denied but changed in form, to let it serve his brother and himself, and thus become a means to save instead of lose. Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home. Its laws are not imposed on you, its values are not yours. And this isseen and understood as each one takes his part in its undoing, as he did in making it. He has the means for either, as he always did. The specialness he chose to hurt himself did God appoint to be the means for his salvation, from the very instant that the choice was made. His special sin was made his special grace. His special hate became his special love. The Holy Spirit needs your special function, that His may be fulfilled. Think not you lack a special value here.You wanted it, and it is given you. All that you made can serve salvation easily and well. The son of god can make no choice the Holy Spirit cannot employ on his behalf, and not against himself. Only in darkness does your specialness appear to be attack. In light, you see it as your special function in the plan to save the Son of God from all attack, and let him understand that he is safe, as he has always been, and will remain in time and in eternity alike. This is the function given each of you for one another. Take it gently,then, from one another´s hand and let savaltion be perfectly fulfilled in both of you. Do this one thing, that everything be given you.

Love

[IA56]

The Rock of Salvation

Yet if the Holy Spirit can commute each sentence that youlaid upon yourself into a blessing, then it cannot be a sin. Sin is the only thing in all the world that cannot change. It is immutable. And on its changelessness the world depends. The magic of the world can seem to hide the pain of sin from sinners, and deceive with glitter and with guile. Yet each one knows the cost of sin is death. And so it is. For sin is a request for death, a wish to make this world´s fundation sure as love, dependable as Heaven, and as strong as God Himself. The world is safe from love to everyone who thinks sin possible. Nor will it change. Yet is it possible what God created not should share the attributes of His creation, when it opposes it in every way? It cannot be the ”sinners´s” wish for death is just as strong as in God´s Will for life. Nor can the basis of a world? He did not make be firm and sure as Heaven.How could it be that hell and Heaven are the same? And is it possible that what He did not will cannot be changed? What is immutable besides His Will? And what can share its attributes escept itself? What wish can rise against His Will,and be immutable? If you could realize nothing is changeless but the Will of God, this course would not be difficult for you. For it is this that you do not believe. Yet there is nothing else you could believe, if you but looked at what it really is. Let us go back to what we said before, and think of it more carefully. It must be so that either God is mad, or is this world a place of madness. Not one Thought of His makes any sense at all within this world. And nothing that the world believes as true has any meaning in His Mind at all.What makes no sense and has no meaning is insanity. And what is madness cannot be the truth. If one belief so deeply valued here were true, then every Thought God ever had is an illusion. And if but one Thought of His is true, then all beliefs the world gives any meaning to are false, and make no sense at all.This is the choice you make. Do not attempt to see it differently, nor twist it into something it is not. For only this decision can you make. The rest is up to God, and not to you. To justify one value that the world upholds is to deny your Father´s sanity and yours. For God and His beloved Son do not Think differently. And it is the agreement of their thought that makes the Son aco-creator with the Mind whose Thought created him. So if he chooses to Believe one thought opposed to truth, he has decided he is not this Father´s Son becuase the Son is mad, and sanity must lie apart from both the Father and the Son. This you believe. Think not that this belief depends upon the form it takes. Who thinks, or is maintained by any form of reason, believes this to be true. Sin is not real because the Father and the Son are not insane. This World is meaningless because it rests on sin. Who could create the changeless if it does not rest on truth? The Holy Spirit has the power to change the whole foundation of the world you see to something else; a basis not insane, on whicha sane perception can be based, another world perceived. And one in which nothing is contradicted that would lead the Son of God to sanity and joy.Nothing attests to death and cruelty; to separation and to difference. For here is everything perceived as one, and so one loses that each one may gain. Test everything that you believe against this one requirement, and understand that everything that meets this one demand is worthy of your faith. But nothing else. What is not love is sin, and either one perceives the other as insane and meaningless. Love is the basis for a world perceived as wholly mad to sinners,who believe theirs is the way to sanity. But sin is equally insane within the sight of love, whose gentle eyes would look beyond the madness and restpeacefully on truth. Each sees a world immutable, as each defines the changeless and eternal truth of what you are. And each reflects the changelessand eternal truth of what you are. And each reflects a view of what the Father and the Son must be, to make that viewpoint meaningful and sane. Your special function is the special form in which the fact that God is not insane appears most sensible and meaningful to you. The content is the same. The form is suited to your special needs, and to the special time and place in which you think you find yourself, and where you can be free of place and time, and allthat you believe must limit you. The Son of God cannot be bound by time nor place nor anything God did not will. Yet if His Will is seen as madness, then the form of sanity which makes it most acceptable to those who are insane requires special choice. Nor can this choice be made by the insane, whose problem is their choices are not free, and made with reason in the light of sense. It would be madness to entrust salvation to the insane. Because He is not mad has God appointed One as sane as He to raise a saner world to meet the sight of everyone who chose insanity as his salvation. To this One is given the choice of form most suitable to him; one which will not attack the world he sees, but enter into it in quietness and show him he is mad. This One but points to an alternative, another way of looking at what he has seen before,and recognizes as the world in which he lives, and thought he understood before. Now must he question this, because the form of the alternative is one which he cannot deny, nor overlook, nor fail completely to perceive at all. To each his special function is designed to be perceived as possible, and more and more desired, as it proves to him that it is an alternative he really wants.From this position does his sinfulness, and all the sin he sees within the world, offer him less and less. Until he comes to understand it cost him his sanity, and stands between him and whatever hope he has of being sane. Nor is he left without escape from madness, for he has a special part in everyone´s escape. He can no more be left outside, without a special function in the hope of peace, than could the Father overlook His Son, and pass him by in carelesst houghtlessness. What is dependeable except God´s Love. And where does sanity abide except in Him? The One Who speaks for Him can show you this, in the alternative He chose especially for you. It is God´s Will that you remember this, and so emerge from deepest mourning into perfect joy. Accept the functionthat has been assingned to you in God´s Own plan to show His Son that hell and Heaven are different, not the same. And that in Heaven they are all the same, without the differences which would have made all hell of Heaven and a heaven of hell,had such insanity been possible. The whole belief that someone loses but reflects the underlying tenet God must be insane. For in this world it seems that one must gain because another lost. If this were true, then God is mad indeed! But what is this belief exept a form of the more basic tenet, ”Sin is real, and rules the world?” For every little gain must someone lose, and pay exact amount in blood and suffering. For otherwise would evil triumph, and destruction be the total cost of any gain at all. You who believe that God is mad, look carefully at this, but hardly both. Salvation is rebirth of the idea no one can lose for anyone to gain. And everyone must gain, if anyone would be a gainer. Here is sanity restored. And on this single roch of truth can faithin God´s eternal saneness rest in perfect confidence and perfect peace. Reasonis satisfied, for all insane beliefs can be corrected here. And sin must be impossible, if this is true. This is the rock on which salvation rests, the vantage point from which the Holy Spirit gives meaning and direction to theplan in which your special function has a part. For here your special functionis made whole, because it shares the function of the whole. Remember all temptation is but this; a mad belief that God´s insanity would make you sane and give you what you want; that either God or you must lose to madness because your aims can not be reconciled. Death demands life, but life is not maintained at any cost. No one can suffer for the Will of God to be fulfilled. Salvationis His Will because you share it. Not for you alone, but for the Self That isthe Son of God. He cannot lose, for if you could the loss would be his Father´s, and in Him no loss is possible. And this is sane because it is the truth.

Love

[IA56]

Justice Returned to Love

The Holy Spirit can use all that you give to Him for your salvation. But He cannot use what you withhold, for He cannot take it from you without your willingness. For if He did, you would believe He wrested it from you against your will. And so you would not learn it is your will to be without it. You need to give it to Him wholly willingly, for if you could you had no need for Him. But this He needs; that you prefer He take it than that you keep it for yourself alone, and recognize that what brings loss to no one you would not know.This much is necessary to add to the idea no one can lose for you to gain. And nothing more. Here is the only principle salvation needs. Nor is it necessary that your faith in it be stong, unswering, and without attack from all beliefs opposed to it. You have no fixed allegiance. But remember salvation is not needed by the saved. You are not called upon to do what one divided still against himself would find impossible. Have little faith that wisdom could befound in such a state of mind. But be you thankful that only little faith is asked of you. What but a little faith remains to those who still believe in sin? What could they know of Heaven and the justice of the saved? There is a kind of justice in salvation of which the world knows nothing. To the world, justice and vengeance are the same, for sinners see justice only as their punisment, perhaps sustained by someone else, but not escaped. The laws of sin demand a victim, Who it may be makes little difference. But death must be the cost and must be paid. This is not justice, but insanity. Yet how could justice be defined without insanity where love means hate, and death is seen as victory and triumph over eternity and timelessness and life? You who know not of justice still can ask, and learn the answer. Justice looks on all in the same way. It is not just that one should lack for what another has. For that is vengeance in whatever form it takes. Justice demands no sacrifice, for any sacrifice is made that sin may be preserved and kept. It is a payment offered for the cost of sin, but not the total cost. The rest is taken from another, to be laid beside your little payment, to ”atone” for all that you would keep, and not give up. So is the victim seen as partly you, with someone else by far the greater part.So is the victim seen as partly you, with someone else by far the greater part. And in the total cost, the greater his the less is yours. And justice, being blind, is satisfied by being paid, it matters not by whom. Can this be justice? God knows not of this. But justice does He know, and knows it well. For He is wholly fair to everyone. Vengeance is alien to God´s Mind because He knows of justice. To be just is to be fair, and not be vengeful. Fairness and vengeanceare impossible, for each one contradicts the other and denies that it is real.It is impossible for you to share the Holy Spirit´s justice with a mind thatcan conceive of specialness at all. Yet how could He be just if He condemns asinner for the crimes he did not do, but thinks he did? And where would justicebe if He demanded of the ones obsessed with the idea of punishment that theylay it aside, unaided, and perceive it is not true? It is extremly hard forthose who still believe sin meaningful to understand the Holy Spirit´s justice.They must believe Hes hares their own confusion, and cannot avoid the vengeancethat their own belief in justice must entail. And so they fear the Holy Spirit,and perceive the ”wrath” of God in Him. Nor can they trust trust Him not tostrike them dead with lighting bolts torn from the ”fires” of Heaven by God´sOwn angry Hand. They do believe that Heaven is hell, and are afraid of love.And deep suspicion and the chill of fear comes over them when they are toldthat they have never sinned. Their world depends on sin´s stability. And theyperceive the ”threat” of what God knows as justice to be more destructive tothemselves and their world than vengeance, which they understand and love. Sodo they think the loss of sin a curse. And flee the Holy Spirit as if He was amessenger from hell, sent from above, in trachery and guide, to work God´svengeance on them in the guise of a deliverer to deceive within an angel´scloak. And what escape has He for them except a door to hell that seems to looklike Heaven´s gate? Yet justice cannot punish those who ask for punishment, buthave a Judge Who knows that they are wholly innocent in truth. In justice He isbound to set them free, and give them all the honor they deserve and havedenied themselves because they are not fair, and cannot understand that theyare innocent. Love is not understandable to sinners because they think thatjustice is split off from love, and stands for something else. And thus is loveperceived as weak, and vengeance strong. For love has lost when judgment leftits side, and is too weak to save from punishment. But vengeance without lovehas gained in strength by being separate and apart from love. And what butvengeance now can help and save, while love stands feebly by with helplesshands, bereft of justive and vitality, and powerless to save? What can Love askof you who think that all of this is true? Could He, in justice and in love,believe in your confusion you have much to give? You are not asked to trust Himfar. No more than what you see He offers you, and what you recognize you couldnot give yourself. In God´s Own justice does He recognize all you deserve, butunderstands as well that you cannot accept it for yourself. It is His specialfunction to hold out to you the gifts the innocent deserve. And every one thatyou accept brings joy to Him as well as you. He knows that Heaven is richermade by each one you accept. And God rejoices as His Son receives what lovingjustice knows to be his due. For love and justice are not different. Becausethey are the same does mercy stand at God´s right hand, and gives the Son ofGod the power to forgive himself of sin. To him who merits everything, how canit be that anything be kept from him? For that would be injustice, and unfairindeed to all the holiness that is in him, however much he recognize it not.God knows of no injustice. He would not allow His Son be judged by those whoseek his death, and could not see his worth at all. What honest witnesses couldthey call forth to speak on his behalf? And who would come to plead for him,and not against his life? No justice would be given him by you. Yet God ensured that justice would be done unto the Son He loves, and would protect from all unfairness you might seek to offer, believing vengeance is his proper due. As specialness cares not who pays the cost of sin, so it be paid, the Holy Spirit heeds not who looks on innocence at last, provided it is seen and recognized. For just one witness is enough, if he sees truly. Simple justice asks no more. Of each one does the Holy Spirit ask if he will be that one, so justice may return to love and there be satisfied. Each special function He allots is but for this; that each one learn that love and justice are not spearate. And both are stregthened by their union with each other. Without love is justice prejudiced and weak. And love without justice is impossible. For love is fair, and cannot chasten without cause. What cause can be to warrant an attack upon the innocent? In justice, then, does love correct mistakes, but not invengeance. For what would be unjust to innocence. You can be perfect witness tothe power of love and justice, if you understand it is impossible the Son of God could merit vengeance. You need not perceive, in every circumstance, that this is true. Nor need you look to your expereince within the world, which is but shadows of all that is really happening within yourself. The understanding that you need comes not of you, but from a larger Self, so great and holy that He could not doubt His innocence. Your special function is a call to Him, that He may smile on you whose sinlessness He shares. His understanding will be yours.And so the Holy Spirit´s special function has been fulfilled. God´s Son has found a witness unto his sinlessness and not his sins. God´s Son has found a witness unto his sinlessness and not his sins. How little need you give the Holy Spirit that simple justice may be given you. Without impartially there is no justice. How can specialness be just? Judge not because you cannot, not because you are a miserable sinner too. How can the special really understand that justice is the same for everyone? To take from one to give another must bean injustice to them both, since they are equal in the Holy Spirit´s sight.Their Father gave the same inheritance to both. Who would have more or less is not aware that he has everything. He is no judge of what must be another´s due,because he thinks he is deprived. And so must he be envious, and try to take away from whom he judges. He is not impartial, and cannot fairly see another´s rights because his own have been obscured to him. You have the right to all the universe; to perfect peace, complete deliverance from all effects of sin, andto the life eternal, joyous and complete in every way, as God appointed for His Holy Son. This is the only justice Heaven knows, and all the Holy Spirit brings to earth. Your special function shows you nothing else but perfect justice can prevail for you. And you are safe from vengeance in all forms. The World deceives, but it cannot relace God´s justice with a version of its own. For only love is just, and can perceive what justice must accord the Son of God. Let love decide, and never fear that you, in your unfairness, will deprive yourself of what God´s justice has allotted you.

Love

[IA56]

The Justice of Heaven

What can it be but arrogance to think your little errors cannot be undone by Heaven´s justice? And what could this mean except that they are sins and not mistakes, forever uncorrecatable, and to be met with vengeance, not with justice? Are you willing to be released from all effects of sin? You cannot answer this until you see all that the answer must entail. For if you answer ”yes" it means you will forego all values of this world in favor of the peace of Heaven. Not one sin would you retain. And not one doubt that this is possible will you hold dear that sin be kept in place. You mean that truth has greater value now than all illusions. And you recognize that truth must be revealed to you, because you know not what it is. To give reluctantly is not to gain the gift, becuase you are reluctant to accept it. It is saved for you until reluctance to receive it disappears, and you are willing it be given you. God´s justice warrants gratitude, not fear. Nothing you give is lost to you or anyone, but cherished and preserved in Heaven, where all of the treasures given to God´s Son are kept for him, and offered anyone who but holds out his hand in willingness they be received. Nor is the treasure less as it is given out. Each gift but adds to the supply. For God is fair. He does not fight against His Son´s reluctance to perceive salvation as a gift from Him.Yet would His justice not be satisfied until it is received by everyone. Be certain any answer to a problem the Holy Spirit solves will always be one in which no one loses. And this must be true, because He asks no sacrifice of anyone. An answer which demands the slightest loss to anyone has not resolved the problem, but has added to it and made it greater, harder to resolve and more unfair. It is impossible the Holy Spirit could see unfariness as a resolution.To Him, what is unfair must be corrected because it is unfair. And every error is a perception in which one, at least, is seen unfairly. Thus is justice not accorded to the Son of God. When anyone is seen as losing, he has been condemned. And punishment becomes his due instead of justice. The sight of innocence makes punishment impossible, and justice sure. The Holy Spirit´s perception leaves no ground for an attack. Only a loss could justify attack,and loss of any kind He cannot see. The world solves problems in another way.It sees a resolution as a state in which it is decided who shall win and who shall lose; how much the one shall take, and how much can the loser still defend. Yet does the problem still remain unsolved, for only justice can set up a state in which there is no loser; no one left unfairly treated and deprived,and thus with grounds for vengeance. Problem solving cannont be vengeance,which at best can bring another problem added to the first, in which the murder is not obvious. The Holy Spirit´s problem solving is the way in which the problem ends. It has been solved because it has been met with justice. Until it has it will recur, because it has not yet been solved. The principle that justice means no one can lose is crucial to this course. For miracles depend on justice. Not as it is seen through this world´s eyes, but as God knows it and as knowledge is reflected in the sight the Holy Spirit gives. No one deserves to lose. And what would be unjust to him cannot occur. Healing must be for everyone, because he does not merit an attack of any kind. What order can there be in miracles, unless someone deserves to suffer more and others less? And is this justice to the wholly innocent? A miracle is justice. It is not a special gift to some, to be withheld form others as less worthy, more condemned, and thus apart from healing. Who is there who can be separate from salvation, if its purpose is the end of specialness? Where is salvation´s justice if some errors are unforgivable, and warrant vengeance in place of healing and return of peace? Salvation cannot seek to help God´s Son be more unfair than he has sought to be. If miracles, the Holy spirit´s gift, were given specially to an elect and special group, and kept apart from others as less deserving, then is He ally to specialness. What He cannot perceive He bears no witness to. And everyone is equally entitled to His gift of healing and deliverance and peace.To give a problem to the Holy Spirit to solve for you means that you want it solved. To keep it for yourself to solve without His help is to decide it should remain unsettled, unresolved, and lasting in its power of injustice and attack. No one can be unjust to you, unless you have decided first to be unjust. And then must problems rise to block your way, and peace be scattered by the winds of hate. Unless you think that all your brothers have an equal right to miracles with you, you will not claim your right to them because you were unjust to one with equal rights. Seek to deny and you will feel denied.Seek to deprive, and you have been deprived. A miracle can never be received because another could recive it not. Only forgiveness offers miracles. And pardon must be just to everyone. The little problems that you keep and hide become your secret sins, because you did not choose to let them be removed for you. And so they gather dust and grow, until they cover everything that you perceive and leave you fair to no one. Not one right do you believe you have.And bitterness, with vengeance justified and mercy lost, condemns you as unworthy of forgiveness. The unforgiven have no mercy to bestow upon another.That is why your sole responsibility must be to take forgiveness for yourself.The miracle that you receive, you give. Each one becomes an illustration of the law on which salvatin rests; that justice must be done to all, if anyone is to be healed. No one can lose, and everyone must benefit. Each miracle is anexample of what justice can accomplish when it is offered to everyone alike. It is received and given equally. It is awareness that giving and receiving are the same. Because it does not make the same unlike, it sees no differences where none exists. And thus it is the same for everyone, because it sees no differences in them. Its offering is universal, and it teaches but one message:

WHAT IS GOD´S BELONGS TO EVERYONE, AND IS HIS DUE.

Love

[IA56]

THE TRANSITION
The ”Sacrifice” of Oneness

In the ”dynamics” of attack is sacrifice a key idea. It ist he pivot upon which all compromise, all desperat attempts to strike a bargain,and all conflicts achieve a seeming balance. It is the symbol of the central theme that somebody must lose. Its focus on the body is apparent, for it is always an attempt to limit loss. The body is itself a sacrifice; a giving up of power in the name of saving just a little for yourself. To see a brother in another body, separate from yours, is the expression of a wish to see a Little part of him and sacrifice the rest. Look at the world, and you will see nothing attached to anything beyond itself. All seeming entities can come a Little nearer, or go a little farther off, but cannot join. The world you see is based on ”sacrifice”of oneness. It is a picture of 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 lost this little part, remaining incomplete to keep its own identiy intact. In this perception of yourself the body´s loss would be a sacrifice indeed. For 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 same. And to accept the limits of a body is to impose these limits on each brother whom 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 love be heard at all. Yet is it given him to make the world recede before his son, and sight of him replace the body´s eyes. Those who would see the witnesses to truth instead of illusion merely ask that they might see a purpose in the world that gives it sense and makes it meaningful. Without you specialfunction 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 you brother´s holiness cannot 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 thatit 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 you 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 you 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 injustice 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 in you, and give you back the gift of freedom by receiving it of you. What is the Holy Spirit´s special function but to relese 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?

Love

[IA56]

Many Forms; One Correction

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 greater difficylty 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 aspectst hat 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 that 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 then 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 in an error. It does in justice to the Son of God, and therefore is not true. The Holy Spirit does not evaluate injustice 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 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 becauce 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 that 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 problem that justice cannot solve. But you believe that some injustice 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 becauce you could not will he suffers 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 equally. Think, then, how great you own release will be when you are willing to recieve 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. God cannot be remembered untilj ustice is loved instead of feared. He cannot be unjust to anyone of 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 an beyond attack. Your specialf unction 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 holds 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.

Love

[IA56]

The Boderland

Complexity is not of God. How could it be, when all He knows is one? He knows of one creation, one reality, one truth and but one Son.Nothing conflicts with oneness. How, then, could there be complexity in Him?What is there to decide? For it is conflict that makes choice possible. The truth is simple; it is one, without an opposite. And how could strife enter in its simple presence, and bring complexity where oneness is? The truth makes no decisions, for there is nothing to decide between. And only if there were could choosing be a necessary step in the advance toward oneness. What is Everything leaves room for nothing else. Yet is this magnitude beyond the scope of this curriculum. Nor is is necessary we dwell on anything that cannot be immediately grasped. There is a boderland of thought that stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and when you reach it is apart from time. Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought together; where conflict values meet and all illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This boderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven. Here is every thought made pure and wholly simple. Here is sin denied, and everything that is received instead. This is the journey´s end. We have referred to it as the real world. And yet there is a contradiction here, in that the words imply a limited reality, a partial truth, a segment of the unviers made true. This is because knowledge makes no attack upon perception. They are brought together, and only one continues past the gate where Oneness is. Salvation is a boderland where place and time and choice have meaning still, and yet it can be seen that they are temporary, out of place, and every choice has been already made. Nothing the Son of God believes can be destroyed. But what is truth to him must be brought to the last comparisson that he will ever make; the last evaluation that will be possible, the final judgment upon this world. It is the judgment of the truth upon illusion, of knowledge on perception: ”It has no meaning, and does not exist.” This is not your decision. It is but a simple statement of a simple fact. But in this world there are no simple facts, because what is the same and what is different remain unclear. The one essential thing to make a choice at all is this distinction. And herein lies the difference between the worlds. In this one, choice is made impossible. In the real world is choosing simplified. Salvation stops just short of Heaven, for only perception needs salvation. Heaven was never lost, and so cannot be saved. Yet who can make a choice between the wish for Heaven and the wish for hell unless he recongnizes they are not the same? This difference is the learning goal this course has set. It will not go beyond this aim. Its only purpose is to teach what is the same and what is different, leaving room to make the only choice that can be made. There is no basis for a choice in this complex and over-complicated world. For no one understands what is the same, and seems to choose where no choice really is. The real world is the area of choice made real, not in the outcome, but in the perception of alternatives for choice. That there is choiceis an illusion. Yet with in this one lies the undoing of every illusion, not excepting this. Is not this like your special function, where the separation is undone by change of purpose in what once was specialness, and now is union? All illusions are but one. And in the recognition this is so lies the ability to give up all attempts to choose between them, and to make them different. There is no conflict here. No sacrifice is possible inthe relinquishment of an illusion recognized as such. Where all reality has been withdrawn from what was never true, can it be hard to give it up, and choose what must be true?

Love

[IA56]

Where Sin Has Left

Forgiveness is this world´s equivalent of Heaven´s justice.It translates the world of sin into a simple word, where justice can be reflected from beyond the gate behind which total lack of limits lies. Nothing in boundless love could need forgiveness. And what is charity within the World gives way to simple justice past the gate that opens into Heaven. No one forgives unless he has believed in sin, becomes the means by which he learns he has done nothing to forgive. Forgiveness always rests upon the one who offers it, until he sees himself as needing it no more. And thus is he returned to has real funciton of creating, which his forgiveness offer him again. Forgiveness turns the world of sin into a world of glory, wonderful to see. Each flower shines in light, and every bird sings of the joy of Heaven. There is no sadness and there is no parting here, for everything is totally forgiven. And what has been forgiven must join, for nothing stands between to keep them separate and apart. The sinless must perceive that they are one, for nothing stands between to push the other off. And in the space that sin left vacant do they join as one, in gladness recognizing what is part of them has not been kept apart and separate. The holy place on which you stand is but the space that sin has left. And here you see the face of Christ, arising in its place. Who could behold the face of Christ and not recall His Father as He really is? Who could fear love,and stand upon the ground where sin has left a place for Heaven´s altar to rise and tower far above the world, and reach beyond the universe to touch the Heart of all creation? What is Heaven but a song of gratitude and love and praise by everything created to the Source of its creation? The holies of altars is set where once sin was believed to be. And here does every light of Heaven come, to be rekindled and increased in joy. For here is what was lost restored to them,and all their radiance made whole again. Forgiveness brings no little miraclest o lay before the gate of Heaven. Here the Son of God Himself comes to receive each gift that brings him nearer to his home. Not one is lost, and none is cherised more than any other. Each reminds him of his Father´s Love as surely as the rest. And each one teaches him that what he feared he loves the most.What but a miracle could change his mind, so that he understands that love cannot be feared? What other miracle is there but this? And what else need there be to make hte space between you disappear? Where sin once was perceived will rise a world that will become an altar to the truth, and you will join the lights of Heaven there, and sing their song of gratitude and praise. And as they come to you to be complete, so will you go with them. For no one hears the song of Heaven and remains without a voice that adds its power to the song, and makes it sweeter still. And each one joins the singing at the altar that was raised within the tiny spot that sin proclaimed to be its own. And what was tiny then has soared into a magintude of song in which the universe has joined with but a single voice. This tiny spot of sin that stands between you still is holding back the happy opening of Heaven´s gate. How little is the hindrance that withholds the wealth of Heaven from you. And how great will be joy in Heaven when you join the mighty chours to the Love of God!

Love

[IA56]

The Little Hindrance

A little hindrance can seem large indeed to those who do not understand that miracles are all the same. Yet teaching that is what this course is for. This is its only purpose, for only that is all there is to learn. And you can learn it many different ways. All learning is a help or hindrance to the gate or Heaven. Nothing in between is possible. There are two teachers only, who point in different ways. And you will go along the way your chosen teacher leads. There are but two directions you can take, while timeremains and choice is meaningful. For never will another road be made exept the wayt to Heaven. You but choose whether to go toward Heaven, or away to nowhere.There is nothing else to choose. Nothing is ever lost but time, which in the end is meaningless. For it is but a little hindrance to eternity, quite meaningless to the real Teacher of the world. Yet since you do believe in it,why should you wast it going nowhere, when it can be used to reach a goal as high as learning can achive? Think not the way to Heave´s gate is difficult at all. Nothing you undertake with certain purpose and high resolve and happy confidence, holding your brother´s hand and keeping step to Heaven´s song, is difficult to do. But it is hard indeed to wander off, alone and miserable, down a road that leads to nothing and that has no purpose. God gave His Teacher to replace the one you made, not to conflict with it. And what He would replace has been replaced. Time lasted but an instant in your mind, with no effect upon eternity. And so it is all time passed, and everything exactly as it was Before the way to nothingness was made. The tiny tick of time in which the first miracle was made, and all of them that came within the first. And in that tinyi nstant time was gone, for that was all it ever was. What God gave answer to is answered and is gone. To you who still believe you live in time and know not it is gone, the Holy Spirit still guides you through the infinitely small and senseless maze you still perceive in time, through it has long since gone. Yout hink you live in what is past. Each thing you look upon you saw but for an instant, long ago, before its unreality gave way to truth. Not one illusion still remains unanswered in your mind. Uncertainty was brought to certainty solong ago that it is hard indeed to hold it to your heart, as if it were Before you still. The tiny instant you would keep and make eternal, passed away in Heaven too soon for anything to notice it had come. What disappeared tooquickly to affect the simple knowledge of the Son of God can hardly still be there, for you to choose to be your teacher. Only in the past, - and ancient past, too short to make a world in answer to creation, - did this world appear to rise. So very long ago, for such a tiny interval of time, that not one note in Heavens´s song was missed. Yet in each unforgivning art or thought, in every judgment and in all belief in sin, is that one instant still called back, as if it could be made again in time. You keep an ancient memory before your eyes.And he who lives in memories alone is unaware of where he is. Is this a hindrance to the place wher on he stands? Is any echo from the past that he maya fact in what is there to hear wher he is now? And how much can his own illusions about time and place effect a change in where he really is? Theun forgiven is a voice that calls from out a past forever more gone by. Andeverything that points to it as real is but a wish that what is gone could be made real again and seen as here and now, in place of what is really now and here. Is this a hindrance to the truth the past is gone, and cannot be returned to you? And do you want that fearful instant kept, when Heaven seemed to disappear and God was feared and made a symbol of your hate? Forget the time of terror that has been so long ago corrected and undone. Can sin withstand the Will of God? Can it be up to you to see the past and put it in the present? Youcan not go back. And everything that points the way in the direction of the past but sets you on a mission whose accomplishment can only be unreal. Such is the justice your All-Loving Father has ensured must come to you. And from your own unfairness to yourself has He protedted you. You cannot lose your way because there is no way but His, and nowhere can you go except to Him. Would God allow His Son to lose his way along a road long since a memory of time gone by? A dreadful instant in a distant past, now perfectly corrected, is of no concern nor value. Let the dead and gone be peacefully forgotten. Resurrection has come to take its place. And now you are a part of resurrection, not of death. No past illusions have the power to keep you in a place of death, avault God´s Son entered and instant, to be instantly restored unto His Father´sperfect love. And how can he be kept in chains long since removed and gone forever from his mind? The Son whom God created is a free as God created him.He was reborn the instant that he chose to die instead of live. And will you not forgive him now, because he made an error in the past that God remembers not, and is not there? Now you are shifting back and forth between the past and present. Sometime the past seems real, as if it were the present. Voices from the past are heard and then are doubted. You are like to one who still hallucinates, but lacks conviction in what he perceives. This is the boderland between the worlds, the bridge between the past and present. Here the shadow of the past remains, but still a present light is dimly recognized. Once it is seen, this light can never be forgotten. It must draw you from the past into the present, where you really are. The shadow voices do not change the laws of time nor of eternity. They come from what is past and gone, and hinder not the true existence of the here and now. The real worlds is the second part of the hallucination time and death are real, and have existence that can be perceived. This terrible illusion was denied in but the time it look for God to give His Answer to illusion for all time and every circumstance. And then it was no more to be experienced as there. Each day, and every minute in each day,and every instant that each minutes holds, you but relive the single instant when the time of terror took the place of love. And so you die each day to live again, until you cross the gap between the past and present, which is not a gap at all. Such is each life; a seeming interval from birth to death and on to life again, a repetition of an instant gone by long ago that cannot be relieved. And all of time is but the map belief that what is over is still here and now. Forgive the past and let it go, for it is gone. You stand no longer onthe ground that lies between the worlds. You have gone on, and reached the world that lies at Heaven´s gate. There is no hindrance to the Will of God, nor any need that you repeat again a journey that was over long ago. Look gently on your brother, and behold the world in which perception of your hate has been transformed into a world of love.

Love

[IA56]

The Appointed Friend

Anything in this world that you believe is good and valuable and worth striving for can hurt you, and will do so. Not because it has the power to hurt, but just because you have denied it is but an illusion, and make it real. And it is real to you. It is not nothing. And through its perceived reality has entered all the world of sick illusions. All belief in sin, in power of attack, in hurt and harm, in sacrifice and death, has come to you. For no one can make one illusion real, and still escape the rest. For who can choose to keep the ones that he prefers, and find the safety that the truth alone can give? Who can believe illusions are the same, and still maintain that even one is best? Lead not your little life in solitude, with one illusion as your only friend. This is no friendship worthy of God´s Son, nor one with which he could remain content. Yet God has given him a better Friend, in Whom all power in earth and Heaven rests. The one illusion that you think is friend obscures His grace and majesty from you, and keeps His friendship and forgiveness from your welcoming embrace. Without Him you are friendless. Seek not another friend to take His place. There is no other friend. What God appointed has no substitute, for what illusion can replace the truth? Who dwells with shadows is alone indeed, and loneliness is not the Will of God.Would you allow one shadow to usurp the throne that God appointed for yourFriend, if you but realized its emptiness has left your empty and unoccupied?Make no illusion friend, for if you do, it can but take the place of Him Whom God has called your Friend. And it is He Who is your only Friend in truth. He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only He to Whom they have been given can make sure that you receive them. He will place them on your throne,when you make room for Him on His.

Love

[IA56]

The Law of Healing

This is a cours in miracles. As such, the law 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 that brought it has been healed, and been replaced by sanity. Sickness and sin are same as comsequence 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 perceived 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 works in time, where it is needed. Yet 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 al 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 projedted 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 wil 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 a menable 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 illusions 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 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´s heels. For such an insane picture an insane defense can be expected, but can establish that the picture must be true. Nothing gives meaning where no meanig is. And truth need 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 thej oy 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 that you 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 represets 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 in him, and not apart. 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 opposit into God´s Will. Although it falls far short of giving you your full inheritance,it does remove the obstacles that you have placed between the Heaven where you are,and recogintion of where and what you are. Facts are unchanged. Yet 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 betrue; a little willingness to overlook what is not there; a little sigh that speaks for Heaven as a preference to this world that death and desolation seemto rule. In joyous answer will creation rise within you, to replace the World you see with Heaven, wholly perfect and complete. What is forgiveness bu twillingness that truth to 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 hve 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 comviction 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 their source, and seem to be beyond you to control or to prevent. What is thus 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´slaw; that each idea the mind conceives but adds to its abudance, 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. For 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 everythingis 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 incompetent and not himself. He has forsworn his Father and himself, and made Them both his enemies 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. This 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 hur the cooses 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 redemtion 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 hands 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, nor 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 where by 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 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 be itself, the Son of God allowed to be himself, and all creation freed to call upon the Name of God as one.

Love

[IA56]

The Immediacy of Salvation

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 trusting in your brother. 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 mind you think of it as time. The nearer it is brought 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 youare external to your brother. This makes trust impossible. And you cannot believe that trust would settle every problem now. Thus do you think it safer to remain a little careful and a little watchful of interest perceived as separate. From this perception you cannot 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 ist 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 isas 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. Yet 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 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 over looking this, it is protected and kept separate from healing. For a miracle is now. It stands already here, in present grace, within the only interval of time that sin and fear have overlooked, but which is all there is to time. The working out of all correction takes no time at all. Yet the acceptance of the workingout 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 till 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 it 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 with out 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 that it engenders,and one form in which its outcome is perceived. This interval in time, when restribution is perceived to be the form in which the ”good” appears, is but one aspect ofthe 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 ”reasoning” 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 changedand what it is cannot be recognized. The Holy Spirit´s purpose now is yours.Should not His happiness be yours as well?

Love

[IA56]

For They Have Come

Think but how holy you must be from whom the Voice for God calls lovingly unto your brother, that you may awake in him the Voice that answers to your call! And think how holy he must be when in him sleeps your own salvation,with his freedom joined! However much you wish he be condemned, God is in him. And never will you know He is in you as well while you attack His chosen home, and battle with His host. Regard him gently. Look with loving eyes on him who carries Christ within him, that you may behold his glory and rejoice that Heaven is not separate from you. Is it too much to ask a little trust for him who carries Christ to you, that you may be forgiven all your sins, and left without a single one you cherish still? Forget not that a shadow held between your brother and yourself obscures the face of Christ and memory of God. And would you trade Them for an ancient hate? The ground wheron you stand is holy ground because of Them Who, standing there with you, have blessed it with Their innocence and peace. The blood of hatred fades to let the grass grow green again, and let the flowers be all white and sparkling in the summer sun. What was a place of death has now become a living temple in a world of light.Because of Them. It is Their Presence which has lifted holiness again to take its ancient place upon an ancient throne. Because of Them have miracles sprung up as grass and flowers on the barren ground that hate hade scorched and rendered desolate. What hate has wrought have They undone. And now you stand on ground so holy Heaven leans to join with it, and make it like itself. The shadow of anancient hate has gone, and all the blight and withering have passed forever from the land where They have come. What is hundred or a thousand years to Them, or tens of thousands? When They come, time´s purpose is fulfilled. What never was passes to nothingness when They have come. What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into Heaven, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes home. The incomplete is made complete again, and Heaven´s joy has been increased because what is its own has been restored to it. The bloodied earth is cleansed, and the insane have shed their garments of insanity to join Them on the ground whereon you stand. Heaven is grateful for this gift of what has been withheld so long. For They have come to gather in Their Own. What has been locked is opened; what has held apart from light is given up, that light may shine on itand leave no space nor distance lingering between the light of Heaven and the world. The holiest of all the spots on earth is where and ancient hatred has become a present love. And They come quickly to the living temple, where a home for Them has been set up. There is no place in Heaven holier. And They have come to dwell within the temple offered Them, to be Their resting place as well as yours. What hatred has released to love becomes the brightest light in Heaven´s radiance. And all the lights in Heaven brighter grow, in gratitude for what has been restored. Around you angels hover lovingly, to keep away all darkened thoughts of sin, and keep the light where it has entered in . Your footprints lighten up the world, for where you walk forgiveness gladly goes with you. No one on earth but offers thanks to one who has restored his home,and sheltered him from bitter winter and the freezing cold. And shall the Lord of Heaven and His Son give less in gratitude for so much more? Now is the temple of the living God rebuilt as host again to Him by Whom it was created.Where He dwells, His Son dwells with Him, never separate. And They give thanks thatThey are welcome made at last. Where stood a cross stands now the risen Christ,and ancient scars are healed within His sight. An ancient miracle has come to bless and to replace an ancient enmity that came to kill. In gentle Gratitude do God the Father and the Son return to what is Theirs, and will forever be.Now is the Holy Spirit´s purpose done. For They have come! For They have come at last!

Love

[IA56]

The End of Injustice

What, then, remains to be undone for you to realize. Their Presence? Only this; you have differential view of what attack is justified,and when you think it is unfair and not to be allowed. When you perceive it as unfair, you think that a response of anger now is just. And thus you see what is the same as different. Confusion is not limited. If it occurs at all it will be total. And its presence, in whatever form, will hide Their Presence. They are known with clarity or not at all. Confused perception will block knowledge.It is not a question of the size of the confusion, or how much it interferes.Its simple presence shuts the door to Theirs, and keeps Them there unknown.What does it mean if you perceive attack in certain forms to be unfair to you?It means that there must be some forms in which you think it fair. For otherwise, how could some be evaluated as unfair? Some, then, are given meaning and perceived as sensible. And only some are seen as meaningless. And this denies the fact that all are senselss, equally without a cause or consequence,and cannot have effects of any kind. Their Presence is obscured by any veil that stands between. Their shining innocence, and your awareness that it is your own and equally belongs to every living thing along with you. God limits not. And what is limited cannot be Heaven. So it must be hell. Unfairness and attack are one mistake, so firmly joined that where one is perceived the other must be seen. You cannot be unfairly treated. The belief you are in but Another form of the idea you are deprived by someone not yourself. Projection of the cause of sacrifice is at the root of everything perceived to be unfair and not your just desserts. Yet it is you who ask this of yourself, in deep injustice to the Son of God. You have no enemy except yourself, and you are enemy indeed to him because you do not know him as yourself. What could be more injust than that he be deprived of what he is, denied the right to be himself, and asked to sacrifice his Father´s Love and yours as not his due? Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. In this view, you seek to find an innocence that is not Theirs but yours alone, and at the cost of someone else´s guilt. Can innocence be purchased by the giving of your guilt to someone else?And is it innocence that your attack on him attempts to get? Is it not retribution for your own attack upon the Son of God you seek? Is it not safer to believe that you are innocent of this, and victimized despite your innocence? Whatever way the game of guilt is played, there must be loss.Someone must lose his innocence that someone else can take it from him, making it his own. You think your brother is unfair to you because you think that one must be unfair to make the other innocent. And in this game do you perceive one purpose for your whole relationship. And this you seek to add unto the purpose given it. The Holy Spirit´s purpose is to let the Presence of your holy Guests be known to you. And to this purpose nothing can be added, for the world is purposeless except for this. To add or take away from this one goal is but to take away all purpose form the world and from yourself. And each unfairness that the world appears to lay upon you, you have laid on it by rendering it purposeless, without the function that the Holy Spirit sees. And simple justice has been thus denied to every living thing upon the earth. What this injustice does to you who judge unfairly, and who see as you have judged, you cannot calculate. The world grows dim and threatening, not a trace of all the happy sparkle that salvation brings can you perceive to lighten up your way. And so you see yourself deprived of light, abandoned to the dark, unfairly left without a purpose in a futil world. The world is fair because the Holy Spirit has brought injustice to the light within, and there has all unfairness been resolved and been replaced with justice and with love. If you perceivein justice anywhere, you need but say:

”By this do I deny the Presence of the Father and the Son.
And I would rather know of Them than see injustice, whichTheir Presence shines away.”

Love

[IA56]

THE HEALING OF THE DREAM
The Picture of Crucifixion

The wish to be unfairly treated is a compromise attempt that would combine attack and innocence. Who can combine the wholly incompatible,and make an unity of what can never join? Walk you the gentle way, and you will fear no evil and no shadows in the night. But place no terror symbols on your path, or you will weave a crown of thorns from which your brother and yourself will not escape. You cannot crucify yourself alone. And if you are unfairly treated, he must suffer the unfariness that you see. You cannot sacrifice yourself alone. For sacrifice is total. If it could occur at all it would entail the whole of God´s creation, and the Father with the sacrifice of His beloved Son. In your release from sacrifice is his made manifest, and shown to be his own. But every pain you suffer do you see as proof that he is guilty of attack. Thus would you make yourself to be the sign that he has lost his innocence, and need but look on you t realize that he has been condemned. And what to yo has been unfair will come to him in righteousness. The unjust vengeance that you suffer now belongs to him, and when it rests on him are you set free. Wish not to make yourself a living symbol of his guilt, for you will not escape the death you made for him. But in his innocence you find your own.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 believed becasue he points beyond himself to what he represents. A sick and suffering you but represtnts yourbrothers guilt; the witness that 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 and 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 pictuer of a body still, for what you really are cannot be seen nor pictured. Yet 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 cannot 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 which 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 evertouch him with the poisoned and relentless sting of fear. Attest his innocence and not his guilt. Your healing is his comfort and his health because it proves illusions are not true. It is not will for life but wish for death that is the motivation for his world. Its only purpose is to prove guilt real. No worldly thought or act or feeling has a motivation other than this one. There 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,that 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 love a life so soon cut short and not esteem the worth of passing joys? What pleasures could there be that will endure? And 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 their 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. There are not sins, but witnesses unto the strange belief that sin and death are real, and innocence and sin will end a like 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. Yet 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 show your brother sin can have no cause. How futile must it be to see yourself a picture of the proofthat 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 sings of accusation and of blamfulness. 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 love or fear. For now it witnesses to nothing yet,its purpose being open, and the mind made free again to choose what it is for.Now is it 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 redemtion, 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 reprsents. 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 achived is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you knew its purpose was no purpose from the past, when you were sure you knew its purpose was to foster guilt. Fort his 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 andyour function both be reconciled at last and seen as one.

Love

[IA56]

The Fear of Healing

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, proclaming that the fail can have no trust and that the damaged have no ground 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 pited for his guilt, but not exonerated. And if you forgive him his trangressions, but not exonerated. And if you forgive him his trangressions, 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 that 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 thinks 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 cannot exist together. One denies the other and mus tmake it false. To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox that 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 on in whom true forgiveness rests 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 sin shave no effect on you to demonstrate they are not real. How else could he be guiltless? And how could his innocence be justified unless his sin shave no effect to Warren guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just because they would entail effects that cannot be undone and overlooked entirely. In their undone lies the proof beundone and overlooked entirely. In their undoing lies the proof that they are 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 of his innocence. It is this testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness proven 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 didee not do. And so is he convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you. Thus doest he miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone. And hoplessness 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, willyet be the last ♥♥♥♥♥et 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. Het hinks your blood is on his hands, and so hes tands condemned.Yet 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 and 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 it as 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 his atall. As long as he consents to suffer, you will be unhealed. Yet you can show him that his suffering is purposeless and wholly without cause. Show him your healing, and he will consent no more to suffer. For his innocence has be enestablished 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 are seen to represent their own serenity. Their helplessness and weakness represent the grounds on which they justify his pain. The constant sting of guilt he suffers serves to prove that he is slave, but 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? Concider how this self perception must extend, and do not overlook the fact that every thought extends becasue 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 becomes the central target for cerrection, 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 fariness, should be overlooked. In this interpretation of correction, your own mistakes you will not even see. The focus of correctionhas been placed outside yourself, on one who cannot be a part of you while this perception lasts. What is comdemned can never be returned to its accuser, who had hated it, and hates it still as symbol of his fear. This is your brohter,focus of your hate, unworhty to be part of you and thus outside yourself; the other half, which is denied. And 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 set the other free. That is divided purpose, which can not be shared,and so it cannot be the goal in which the Holy Spirit sees His Own. And you can rest assured that He will not fulfill a function that He does not see and recognize as His. For only thus can He keep yours preserved intact, despite your separate views of what our 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 yourself from the awareness of a fucntion not your 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 Given 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.

Love

[IA56]

Beyond All Symbols

Power cannot oppose. For opposition would weaken it, and weakened power is a contradictin in ideas. Weak strength is meaningless, and power used to weaken is employed to limit. And therefore it must be limited and weak, because that is its purpose.Power is unopposed, to be itself. No weakness can intrude on it without changing it into something it is not. To weaken is to limit, and impose an opposite that contradicts the concept that it attacks. And by this does it join to the idea a something it is not, and make it unitelligible. 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 that 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 seenas 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, for 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 cannot 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 know 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 that can extend beyond the goal of learning. When its aim has been accomlished it is functionless. Yet in the learning interval it has a use that now you fear, but yet will love. The picture of your brother given you to occypy the space solately 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. 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 recieve 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 that 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 merelt be, and so He merely is.

Love

[IA56]

The Quiet Answer

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 ha 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 problmes should be brought and left. Here they belong, for here their answer is. 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 bu twithin 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. One with many answers can have no answers. None of them will do. It does not ask a question to be answered, but only restate its point of view. All question asked within this world are but away 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 is 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 also you friend. But tell is 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 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 that are asked. Where answers represent the questions, they add nothing new and nothing has been learned. An honest question is a learning tool that asks for something that you do not know. It does not set conditions for response, but merely asks what the response should be. But 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 form the answer, so it can be given you and also be received. The answer is provided everywhere. Yet it is only here it can be heard. An honest answer asks no sacrifice because it answers question 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,”itwill remain unrecoginzed, 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 problemsin a world from which the answer has been barred. But bring the problem to the only place that holds the answer lovingly for you. Here are the answers that 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.

Love

[IA56]

The Healing Example

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. Bu the 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 isthe witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when it has been demostreated is it proven, and must provide a witness that compels 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 to heal. For if it were, there were no need for healing then. But it does mean, if only for an intent, 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 that has transcended conflict, and has reached to peace. It carries comfort from the place of peace into the battle ground, 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 upand 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 you are 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 on yourself, thatit 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 givet 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 yourself be healed that it might love. 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 there specific shapes makeup the world. And no one e 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 that are seen as one,for only common elements are there. Yet 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 situation to their opposites and bring the same results. 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 it is 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 that is different from the rest. Yet they are solved together. And their commom answer shows the question could not have been separate. Peace be to you to 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 that love entered in without attack will stay forever. Your healing will be one of its 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 its 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.

Love

[IA56]

The Witnesses to Sin

Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud,obscurin 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 purpose is the same. This is the law of pupose, 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 which 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, byt 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 alla like. Call pleasure pain, and it will hurt. Call pain a pleasure, and the pain behind the pleasure will be felt no more. Sin´s witness 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, purposeles swithin 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 to it to use, when you call forth the witnesses to its reality. You cannot choose among them which are real, for anyone 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 not witnesses againt the body. Neither does He harken to the witnesses by other name that speaks 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 becasue 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 perceives 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 miracles bound by laws that it came solely to undo! The laws of sin have different witnesses with different strengths. And they attest different sufferings. Yet to the One Who sends forth miracles to bless the world, a tiny stab of pain, a little worldly pleasure, and the thrones 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 that call them different are dissolved, and shown as powerless. The purpose of a miracle is to accomplish this. And God Himself has guaranteed the stregth of miracles for what they witness to. Be you then winess to the miracle, and not the law of sin. There is no need to suffer any more.But there is need that you be healed, because the suffering and sorrow of the world have 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.

Love