IA´s Journal

[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.