IA´s Journal

[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