IA´s Journal

[IA56]

The Comming of the Guest

Why would you not perceive it as a release from suffering to learn that you are free? Why would you not Acclaim the truth instead of looking on it as an enemy? Why does an easy path, so clearly marked it is impossible to lose the way, seem thorny, rough and far to difficult for you to follow? Is it not because you see it as the road to hell instead of looking on it as a simply way, without a sacrifice or any loss, to find yourself in Heaven and in God? Until you realize you give up nothing,until you understand there is no loss, you will have some regrets about the way that you have chosen. And you will not see the many gains your choice has offered you. Yet though you do not see them, they are there. Their cause has been effected, and they must be present where their cause has entered in. You have accepted healing´s cause, and so it must be you are healed. And being healed, the power to heal must also now be yours. The miracle is not a separate thing that happens suddenly, as an effect without a cause. Nor is it, in itself, a cause. Be where its cause is must it be. Now it is caused, though not as yet perceived. And its effects are there, though not yet seen. Look inward now, and you will not behold a reason for regret, but cause indeed for glad rejoicing and for hope of peace. It has been hopless to attempt to find the hope of peace upon a battleground. It has been futile to demand escape from sin and pain of what was made to serve the function of retaining sin and pain. For pain and sin are one illusion, as are hate and fear, attack and guilt but one.Where they are causeless their effects are gone, and love must come wher ever they are not. Why are you not rejoicing? You are free of pain and sickness,misery and loss, and all effects of hatred and attack. No more is pain your friend and guilt your god, and you should welcome the effects of love. Your Guest has come. You asked Him, and He came. You did not hear Him enter, for you did not wholly welcome Him. And yet His gifts came with Him. He has laid them at your feet, and asks you now that you will look on them and take them for your own. He needs your help in giving them to all who walks apart, believing they are separate and alone. They will be healed when you accept your gifts,because your Guest will welcome everyone whose feet have touched the holy ground whereon you stand, and where His gifts for them are laid. You do not see how much you now can give, because of everything you have received. Yet He Who entered in but waits for you to come where you invited Hm to be. There is no other place where He can find His host, nor where His host can meet with Him. And nowhere else His gifts of peace and joy, and all the happiness His Presence brings, can be obtained. For they are where He is Who brought them with Him, that they might be yours. You cannot see your Guest, but you can see the gifts He brought. And when you look on them, you will believe His Precense must be there. For what you now can do could not be done without the love and grace His Presence holds. Such is the promise of the loving God. His Son have life and every living thing be part of him, and nothing else have life. What you have given ”life” is not alive, and symbolizes but your wish to be alive part from life, alive in death, with death perceived as life, and living, death.Confusion follows on confusion here, for on confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. Its base does not change,although it seems to be in constant change. Yet what is that except the state confusion really means? Stability to those who are confused in meaningless, and shift and change become the law on which they redicate their lives. The body does not change. It represents the larger dream that change is possible. To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you found yourself before. There is no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. Yet here on earth it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things. And they reflect the teacher who is teaching them. The body can appear to change with time, with sickness or with health, and with events that seem to alter it. Yet this but means the mind remains unchanged in its belief of what the purpose of the body is. Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its nothingness is guarantee that it can not be sick. In your demand that it be more than this lies the idea of sickness. For it asks that God be less than all He really is.What, then, becomes of you, for it is you of whom the sacrifice is asked? For He is told that part of Him belongs to Him no longer. He must sacrifice your self,and in His sacrifice are you made more and He is lessened by the loss of you.And what is gone from Him becomes your god, protecting you from being part of Him. The body that is asked to be a god will be attacked, because it snothingness has not been recognized. And so it seems to be a thing with Power in itself. As something, it can be perceived and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. And it can fail to be what you demanded that it be. And you will hate it for its littleness, unmindful and that failure to perceive that it is nothing. Yet its nothingness is your salvation, from which you would flee. As ”something” is the body asked to be God´s enemy, replacing what He is with littleness and limits and despair. It is His loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate. For if He be the Sun of everything, then what is not in Him does not exist, and His completion is its nothingness. Your savior is not dead, nor does he dwell in what was built as a temple unto death. He lives in God, and it is this that makes him savior unto you, and only this. His body´s nothingness realeases yours from sickness and from death. For what is yours cannot be more or less that what is his.

Love

[IA56]

God´s Witnesses

Condemn your savior not because he thinks he is a body. For beyond his dreams is his reality. But he must learn he is a savior first, before he can remember what he is. And he must save who would be saved. On saving you depends his happiness. For who is savior but the one who gives salvation? Thus he lerns it must be his to give. Unless he gives he will not know he has, giving is the proof of having. Only those who think that God is lessened by their strength could fail to understand this must be so. For who could give unless he has, and who would lose by giving what must be increased thereby? Think you the Father lost Himself when He created you? Was He made weak because He shared His Love? Was He made incomplete by his perfection? Or are you the proof that He is perfect and complete? Deny Him not His witness in the dream His Son prefers free of it. He must see someone else as not a body one with him without the wall the world has built to keep apart all living things who know not that they live. Within the dream of bodies and of leath is yet one theme of truth, no more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of light created in the dark, where God still shines. You cannot Wake yourself. Yet you can let yourself be wakened. You can overlook your brother´s dreams. So perfectly can you forgive him his illusions he becomes your savior from your dreams. And as you see him shining in the space of light where God abides, within the darkness, you will see that God Himself is where his body is. Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows must give way to light. The darkness cannot choose that it remain. The coming of the light means it is gone. In glory will you see your brother then, and understand what really fills the gap so long perceived as keeping you apart. There, in its place,God´s witness has set forth the gentle way of kindness to God´s Son. Whom you forgive is given power to forgive you your illusions. By your gift of freedom it is given unto you. Make way for love, which you did not create, but which you can extend. On earth this means forgive your brother, that the darkness maybe lifted from your mind. When light has come to him through your forgiveness, he will not forget his savior, leaving him unsaved. For it was in your face he saw the light that he would keep beside him, as he walks through darkness tothe everlasting Light. How holy are you, that the Son of God can be your savior in the midst of dream of desolation and disaster. See how eagerly he comes, and steps aside from heavy shadows that have hidden him, and shines on you in gratitude and love. He is himself, but not himself alone. And as his Father lost not part of him in your creation, so the light in him is brighter still because you gave your light to him, so save him from the dark. And now the light in you must be as bright as shines in him. This is the spark that shines within the dream; that you can help him waken, and be sure his waking eyes will rest on you. And in his glad salvation you are saved.

Love

[IA56]

Dream Roles

Do you believe that truth can be but some illusions? They are dreams because they are not true. Their equal lack of truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which means that you have understood that dreams are dreams; and that escape depends, not on the dream,but only on awaking. Could it be some dreams are kept, and others, wakened from? The choice is not between which dreams to keep, but only if you want to live in dreams or to waken from them. Thus it is the miracle does not select some dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence. You cannot dream some Dreams and wake from some, for you are either sleeping or awake. And dreaming goe swith only one of these. The dreams you think you like would hold you back as much as those in which the fear is seen. For every dream is but a dream offear, no matter what the form it seems to take. The fear is seen within,without, or both. Or it can be disguised in pleasant form. But never is it absent from the dream, for fear is the material of dreams, from which they all are made. Their form can change, but they cannot be made of something else. The miracle were tracherous indeed if it allowed you still to be afraid because you did not recognize the fear. You would not then be willing to awake, for which the miracle prepares the way. In simplest form, it can be said attack is are sponse to function unfulfilled as you perceive the function. It can be in you or someone else, but where it is perceived it will be there it is attacked.Depression or assault must be the theme of every dream, for they are made of fear. The thin disguise of pleasure and of joy in which they may be wrapped but slightly veils the heavy lump of fear that is their core. And it is this the miracle perceives, and not the wrappings in which it is bound. When you are angry, is it not because someone has failed to fill the function you allotted him? And does not this become the ”reason” you attack is justified? The Dreams you think you like are those in which the functions yo have given have been filled; the needs which you ascribe to you are met. It does not matter if theybe fulfilled or merely wanted. It is the idea that they exist from which the fears arise. Dreams are not wanted more or less. They are desired or not. And each one represents some function that you have assigned; some goal which an event, or body, or a thing should represent, and should achieve for you. If it succeeds you think you like the dream. If it should fail you think the dream is sad. But whether it succeeds or fails is not its core, but just the flimsy covering. How happy would your dreams become if you were not the one who gave the ”proper” role to every figure which the dream contains No one can fail but your idea of him, and there is no betrayal but of this. The core of dreams the Holy Spirit gives is never one of fear. The coverings may appear to change, but what they mean has changed because they cover something else. Perceptions are determined by their purpose, in that they seem to be what they are for. A shadow figure who attacks becomes a brother giving you a chance to help, if this becomes the function of the dream. And dreams of sadness thus are turned to joy. What is your brother for? You do not know, because your function is obscure to you. Do not ascribe a role to him that you imagine would bring happiness to you. And do not try to hurt him when he fails to take the part that you assigned to him, in what you dream your life was meant to be. He asks for help in every dream he has, and you have help to give him if you see the function of the dream as He perceives its function, Who can utilize all Dreams as means to serve the function given Him. Because He loves the dreamer, not thedream, each dream becomes an offering of love. For at its center is His Love for you, which lights whatever form it takes with love.

Love

[IA56]

The Changeless Dwelling Place

There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten; where no memory of sin and of illusion linger still. There is a place in you which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard. There is a resting place so still no sound except a hymn to Heaven rises up to gladden God the Father and the Son. Where both abide areThey remembered, both. And where They are is Heaven and is peace. Think not that you can change Their dwelling place. For your Identity abides in Them, and where They are, forever must you be. The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within. Here is the role the Holy Spirit gives to you who wait upon the Son of God, and would behold him waken and be glad. He is part of you and you of him, because he is his Father´s Son, and not for any purpose you may see in him. Nothing is asked of you but to accept the changeless and eternal that abide in him, for your Identity is there. The Peace in you can but be found in him. And every thought of love you offer him but brings you nearer to your wakening to peace eternal and endless joy. This sacred Son of God is like yourself, the mirror of his Father´s Love for you,the soft reminder of his Father´s Love by which he was created and which still abides in him as it abides in you. Be very still and hear God´s Voice in him,and let It tell you what his function is. He was created that you might be whole, for only the complete can be a part of God´s completion, which created you. There is no gift the Father asks of you but that you see in all Creation but the shining glory of His gift to you. Behold His Son, His perfect gift, in whom his Father shines forever, and to whom is all creation given as his own.Because he has it is it given you, and where it lies in him behold your peace.The quiet that surrounds you dwells in him, and from this quiet come the happy dream in which your hand are joined in innocence. These are not hands that grasp in dreams of pain. They hold no sword, for they have left their hold one very vain illusion of this world. And being empty they receive, instead, a brother´s hand in which completion lies. If you but knew the glorious goal that lies beyond forgiveness, you would not keep hold on any thought, however light the touch of evil on it may appear to be. For you would understand how great the cost of holding anything God did not give in minds that can direct the hand to bless, and lead God´s Son unto his Father´s house. Would you not want to bea friend to him, created by his Father as His home? If God esteems him worthy of Himself, would you attack him with the hands of hate? Who would lay bloody hands on Heaven itself, and hope to find its peace? Your brother thinks he holds the hand of death. Believe him not. But learn, instead, how blessed are you who can release him, just by offering him yours. A dream is given you in which he is your savior, not your enemy in hate. A dream is given you which you have forgiven him for all his dreams of death; a dream of hope you share with him, instead of dreaming evil separate dreams of hate. Why does it seem so hard to share this dream? Because unless the Holy Spirit gives the dream its function, it was made for hate, and will continue in death´s services. Each form it takes in some way calls for death. And those who serve the lord of death have come to worship in a separated world, each with his tiny spear and rusted sword, to keep his ancient promises to die. Such is the core of fear in every dream that has been kept apart from use by Him Who sees a different function for a dream. When dreams are shared they lose the function of attackand separation, even though it was for this that every dream was made. Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is not where changelessness is found. Let us be glad indeed that this is so, and seek not the eternal in this world. Forgiving dreams are means to step aside from dreming of a world outside yourself. And leading finally beyond all dreams, unto the peace of everlasting life.

Love

[IA56]

Forgiveness and the End of Time

How willing are you to forgive your brother? How much do you desire peace instead of endless strife and misery and pain? These questions are the same, in different form. Forgiveness is your peace, for herein lies the end of separation and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss. This isthe ”sacrifice” salvation asks, and gladly offers peace instead of this. Swear not to die, you holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot be killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that must be one. What seems eternal all will have an end. The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons and the lives of men; Where time has se an end is not where the eternal is. God´s Soncan never change by what men made of him. He will be as he was and as he is,for time appointed not his destiny, nor set the hour of his birth and death.Forgiveness will not change him. Yet time waits upon forgivness that the things of time may disappear because they have no use. Nothing survives its purpose.If it be conceived to die, then die it must unless it does not take this purpose as its own. Change is the only thing that can be made a blessing here,where purpose is not fixed, however changeless it appears to be, and establish it as changeless and eternal. You can give yourself a purpose that you do not have. But you can not remove the power to change your mind, and see Another purpose there. Change is the greatest gift God gave to all that you would make eternal, to ensure that only Heaven would not pass away. You were not born to die. You cannot change, because your function has been fixed by God. All other goals are set in time and change that time might be preserved, excepting one.Forgiveness does not aim at keeping time, but at its ending, when it has no use. Its purpose ended, it is gone. And where it once held seeming sway is now restored the function God established for His Son in full awareness. Time can set no end to its fulfillment nor its changelessness. There is no death because the living share the function their Creator gave to them. Life´s function cannot be to die. It must be life´s extension, that it be as one forever and forever, without end. This world will bind your feet and tie your hands and kill your body only if you think that it was made to crusify God´s Son. For even though it was a dream of death, you need not let it stand for this to you. Let this be changed, and nothing in the world but must be changed as well. For nothing here but is defined as what you see it for. How lovely is the World whose purpose is forgiveness of God´s Son! How free from fear, how filled with blessing and with happiness! And what a joyous thing it is to dwell a Little while in such a happy place! Nor can it be forgot, in such a world, it is a little while till timelessness comes quietly to take the place of time.

Love

[IA56]

Seek Not Outside Yourself

Seek not outside yourself. For it will fail, and you will weep each time and idol falls. Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can be no peace excepting there. Each idol that you worship when God calls will never answer in His place. There is no other answer you can substitute, and find the happiness. His answer brings. Seek not outside yourself. For all your path comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found. What if it is not there?Do you prefer that you be right or happy? Be you glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer elsewhere. You will fail. But it is given you to know the truth, and not to seek for it ourside yourself. No one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering illusion, or some Dream that there is something outside of himself that will bring happiness and peace to him. If everything is in him this cannot be so. And therefore by his coming,he denies the truth about himself, and seeks for something more than everything, as if a part of it were separated off and found where all the rest of it is not. This is the purpose he bestows upon the body; that it seek for what he lacks, and give him what would make himself complete. And thus he wanders aimlessly about, in seach of something that he cannot find, believing that he is what he is not. The lingering illusion will impel him to seek out a thousand idols, and to seek beyond them for a thousand more. And each will fail him, all excepting one; for he will die, and does rot understand the idol that he seeks is but his death. Its form appears to be outside himself. Yet does he seek tokill God´s Son within, and prove that he is victor over him. This is the purpose every idol has, for this the role that is assigned to it, and this the role that cannot be fulfilled. Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in whichthe body´s betterment is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death. For you believe that you can suffer lack, and lack is death. To sacrifice is to give up, and thus to be without and and to have suffered loss.And by this giving up is life renounced. Seek not outside yourself. The serch implies you are not whole within and fear to look upon your devastation, but prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are. Idols must fall because they have no life, and what is lifeless is sign of death. You came to die, and what would you expect but to perceive the signs of death you seek? No sadness and no suffering proclaim a message other than an idol found that represents a parody of life which, in its lifelessness, is really death, conceived as real and given living form. Yet each must fail and crumble and decay, because a form of death cannot be life, and what is sacrificed cannot be whole. All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within from being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find what is outside yourself to be complete and happy. It is vain to worship idols in the hope of peace. God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idols takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself. Let us forget the purpose of the world the past has given it. For otherwises, the future will be like the past,and but a series of depressing dreams, in which all idols fail you, one by one,and you see death and disappointment everywhere. To change all this, and open up a road of hope and of release in what appeared to be an endless circle of despair, you need but to decide you do not know the purpose of the world. You give it goals it does not have, and thus do you decide what it is for. You try to see in it a place of idols found outside yourself, with power to make complete what is within by splitting what you are between the two. You choose your dreams, for they are what you wish, perceived as if it had been given you.Your idols do what you would have them do, and have the power you ascribe to them. And you pursue them vainly in the dream, because you want their power as your own. Yet where are dreams, but in a mind asleep? And can a dream succeed in making real the picture it projects outside itself? Save time, my brother;learn what time is for. And speed the end of idols in a world made sad and sickby seeing idols there. Your holy mind is altear unto God, and where He is no idols can abide. The fear of God is but the fear of loss of idols. It is not the fear of loss of your reality. But you have made of your reality an idol,which you must protect against the light of truth. And all the world becomes the means by which this idol can be saved. Salvation thus appears to threaten life and offer death. It is not so. Salvation seeks to prove there is no death,and only life exists. The sacrifice of death is nothing lost. An idol cannot take the place of God. Let Him remind you of His Love for you, and do not seekto drown His Voice in chants of deep despair to idols of yourself. Seek not outside your Father for your hope. For hope of happiness is not despair.

Love

[IA56]

The Anti-Christ

What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. That is the only power that they have. Their purpose is obscure, and they are feared and worshipped, both, because you do not know what they are for, and why they have been made. An idol is an image of your brother that you would value more that he is. Idols are made that he may be replaced, no matter what their form. And it is this that never is perceived and recognized. Be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or a circomstance, and object owned or wanted, or a right demamded or achieved, it is the same. Let not their form deceive you. Idols are but substitutes for your reality. In some way, you believe they will complete your little self, for safety in a world perceived as dangerous,with forces massed against your confidence and peace of mind. They have the power to supply your lacks, and add the value that you do not have. No one believes in idols who has not enslaved himself to littleness and loss. And thus must seek beyond his little self for strength to raise his head, and stand apart from all the misery the world reflects. This is the penalty for looking not within for certainty and quiet calm that liberates you from the world, and lets you stand apart, in quiet and in peace. An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of anti-Christ, that constitutes a gap between the Christ and what you see. An idol is a wish, made tangible and given form, and thus perceived as real and seen outside the mind. Yet it is still a thought,and cannot leave the mind that is its source. Nor is its form apart from the idea it represents. All forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ. And fall Before His face lika a dark veil that seems to shut your off from Him, alone in darkness.Yet the light is there. A cloud does not put out the sun. No more a veil can banish what it seems to separate, nor darken by one with the light itself. The world of idols is a veil across the face of Christ, because its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself. A dark and fearful purpose, yet a thought without the power to change one blade of grass from something living to a sign of death. Its form is nowhere, for its source abides within your mind where God abideth not. Where is this place where what is everywhere has been excluded and been kept apart? What hand could be held up to block God´s way? Whose voice could make demand He enter not? The ”more-than-everything” is not a thing to make you tremble and to guail in fear. Christ´s enemy is nowhere. He can take no form in which he ever will be real. What is an idol? Nothing! It must be believed before it seems to come to life, and given power that it may befeared. Its life and power are its believer´s gift, and this is what the miracle restores to what has life and power worthy of the gift of Heaven and eternal peace. The miracle does not restore the truth, the light the veil between has not out out. It merely lifts the veil, and lets the truth shine unencumbered, being what it is. It does not need belief to be itself, for it has been created; so it is. An idol is established by belief, and when it is withdrawn the idol ”dies.” This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power past omnipotece, a place beyond the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and Place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened.Here the deathless come to die, the all encompassing to suffer loss, the timelessto be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God,as perfect, sinless and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while;to suffer pain and finally to die. Where is an idol? Nowhere! Can there be a gap in what is infinite, a place where time can interrupt eternity? A place of darkness set where all is light, a dismal alcove separated off from what is endless has no place to be. An idol is beyond where God has set all things and left no room for anything to be except His Will. Nothing and nowhere must an idol be, while God is everything and everywhere. What purpose has an idol,then? What is it for? This is the only question that has many answers, each depending on the one of whom the question has been asked. The world believes in idols. No one comes unless he worshipped them, and still attempts to seek for one that yet might offer him a gift reality does not contain. Each worshipper of idols harbors hope his special deities will give him more than other men possess. It must be more. It does not really matter more of what; more beauty,more intelligence, more wealth, or even more affliction and more pain. But more of something is an idol for. And when one fails another takes its place, with hope of finding more of something else. Be not deceived by forms the ”something” takes. An idol is a means for getting more. And it is this that is against God´s Will. God has not many sons, but only one. Who can have more, and who begiven less? It is for him the Holy Spirit speaks, and tells you idols have no purpose here. For more than Heaven can you never have. If Heaven is within, why would you seek for idols that would make of Heaven less, to give you more than God bestowed upon your brother and on you, as one with Him? God gave you all there is. And to be sure you could not lose it, did He also give the same to every living thing as well. And thus is every living thing a part of you, as of Himself. No idol can establish you as more than God. But you will never becontent with being less.

Love

[IA56]

The Forgiving Dream

The slave of idols is a willing slave. For willing he must be to let himself bow down in worship to what has no life, and seek for power in the powerless. What happened to the holy Son of God that this could be his wish; to let himself fall lower than the stones upon the ground, and look to idols that they raise him up? Hear, then, your story in the dream you made, and ask yourself if it be not the truth that you Believe that it is not a dream. A dream of judgment came into the mind that God created perfect as Himself. And in that dream was Heaven changed to hell, and God made enemy unot His Son. How can God´s Son awaken from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge not, and he will waken. For the dream will seem to last while he is part of it. Judge not, for he who judges will have need of idols, which will hold the judgment of from resting on himself. Nor can he know the Self he has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself a part of evil dreams, where idols are your ”true” identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid in terror and in guilt upon yourself. All figures is the Dream are idols, made to save you from the dream. Yet they are part of what they have been made to save you from. Thus does an idol keep the dream alive and terrible, for who could wish for one unless he were in terror and despair? And this the idol represents, and so its worship is the worship of despair and terror, and the dream from which they come. Judgment is an injustice to God´s Son, and it is justice that who judges him will not escape the penalty he laid upon himself within the dream he made. God knows of justice, not of penalty. But in the dream of judgment you attack and are condemned; and wish to be the slave of idols, which are interposed between your judgment and the penalty it brings. There can be no salvation in the dream as you are dreaming it. For idols must be part of it, to save you from what you believe you have accomplished, and have done to make you sinful and put out the light within you. Little child, the light is there. You do but dream, and idols are the toys you dream you play with. Who has need of toys but children? They pretend they rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and talk and think and feel and speak to them. Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the minds of those who play with them.But they are eager to forget that they made up the dream in which their toys are real, nor recognize their wishes are their own. Nightmares are childish dreams. The toys have turned against the child who thought he made them real.Yet can a dream attack? Or can a toy grow large and dangerous and fierce and wild? This does the child believe, because he fears his thoughts and gives them to the toys instead. And their reality becomes his own, because they seem to save him from his thoughts. Yet do they keep his thoughts alive and real, but seen outside himself, where they can turn against him for his treachery to them. He thinks he needs them that he may escape his thoughts, because he thinks the thoughts are real. And so he makes of anything a toy, to make his world remain outside himself, and play that he is but a part of it. There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. Seek not to retain the toys of children. Put them all away, for you have need of them no more. The dream of judgment is a children´s game, in which the child becomes the father,powerful, but with the little wisdom of a child. What hurts him is destroyed;what helps him, blessed. Except he judges this as does a child, who does not know what hurts and what will heal. And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he made.Yet is the real world unaffected by the world he thinks is real. Nor have its laws been changed because he does not understand. The real world still is but a dream. Except the figures have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray. It is a dream in which no one is used to substitute for something else, nor interposed between the thoughts the mind conceives and what it sees. No one is used for something he is not, for childish things have all been put away.And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy, because that is the purpose that it has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms that enter in the dream are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love. Forgiving dreams have little need to last. They are not made to separate the mind from what it thinks. They do not seek to prove the dream is being dreamed by someone else.And in these dreams a melody is heard that everyone remembers, though he has not heard it since before all time began. Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, butwith the holiness that never left the altar that abides forever deep within the Son of God. And when he hears this song again, he knows he never heard it not.And where is time, when dreams of judgment have been put away? Whenever you feel fear in any form, - and you are fearful if you do not feel a deep content,a certainty of help, a calm assurance Heaven goes with you, - be sure you made an idol, and believe it will betray you. For beneath your hope that it will save you lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal and uncertainty, so deep and bitter that the dream cannot conceal completely all your sense of doom. Yourself-betrayal must result in fear, for fear is judgment, leading surely to the frantic search for idols and for death. Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety and have not attacked yourself. So do your childish terrors melt away, and dreams become a sign that you have made a new beginnig, not Another try to worship idols and to keep attack. Forgiving dreams are kind to everyone who figures in the dream. And so they bring the dreamer full release from dreams of fear. He does not fear his judgment for he has judged no one, nor has sought to be released through judgment from what judgment must impose. And all the while he is remembering what he forgot, when judgment seemed to be the way to save him from its penalty.

Love

[IA56]

THE NEW BEGINNING
Rules for Decision

Decisions are continous. You do not always know when you are making them. But with a little practice with the ones you recognize, a set begins to form which sees you through the rest. It is not wise to let yourself becomes preoccupied with every step you take. The proper set, adopted consciously each time you wake, will put you well ahead.And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. Do not fight yourself. But think about the kind of day you want, and tell yourself there is a way in which this very day can happen just like that. Then try again to have the day you want.
1 The outlook starts with this:
”Today I will make no decisionsby myself.”
This means that you are choosing not to be the judge of what to do. But it must also means you will not judge the situations where you will be called upon to make response. For if you judge them, you have set the rules for how you should react to them. And then Another answer cannot but produce confusion and uncertainty and fear. This is your major problem now. You still make up your mind, and then decide to ask what you should do. And what you hear may not resolve the problem as you saw it first.This leads to fear, because it contradicts what you perceive and so you feel attacked. And therefore angry. There are rules by which this will not happen.But it does occur at first, while you are learning how to hear.
2 Throughout the day, at anytime you think of it and have a quiet moment for reflection, tell yourself again the kind of day you want; the feeling you would have, the things you want to happen to you, and the thing you would experience, and say,
”If I make no decisions by myself,
This is the day that will begiven me.”
These two procedures, praticed well, will serve to let you be directed without fear, for opposition will not first arise and then become a problem in itself. But there will still be times when you have judged already. Now the answer will provoke attack, unless you quickly straighten out your mind to want to answer that will work. Be certain this has happened if you feel yourself unwilling to sit by and ask to have the answer given to you. This means you have decided by yourself, and can not see the question. Now you need a quick restorative before you ask again.
3 Remember once again the day you want, and recongnize that something has occured that is not part of it.Then realize that you have asked a question by yourself, and must have set ananswer in your terms. Then say:
”I have no question. I forgot what to decide.”
This cancels out the terms that you have set, and lets the answer show you what the question must have really been. Try to observe this rule without delay, despite your opposition. For you have already gotten angry. And your fear of being answered in a different way from what your version of the questins asks will gain momentum, until you believe the day you want is one in which you get your answer to your question.And you will not get it, for it would destroy the day by robbing you of what you really want. This can be very hard to realize, when once you have decided by yourself the rules that promise you a happy day. Yet this decision still canbe undone, by simple methods that you can accept.
4 If you are so unwilling to recieve you cannot even let your question go, you can begin to change your mind with this:
”At least I can decide I do notlike what I feel now.”
This much is obvious, and paves the way for the next easy step.
5 Having decided that you do not like the way you feel, what could be easier than to continue with,
”And so I hope I have been wrong.”
This works against the sense of opposition, and reminds you that help is not being trust upon you but is something that you want and that you need, because you do not like the way you feel. This tiny opening will be enough to let you go ahead with just a few more steps you need to let yourself be helped. Now you have reached the turning point, because it has occurred to you that you will again if what you have decided is not so. Until this point is reached, you will believe your happiness depends on being right. But this much reason have you now attained; you would be better off if you were wrong.
6 This tiny grain of wisdom will suffice to take you further. You are not coerced, but merely hope to get athing you want. And you can say in perfect honsety,
”I want another way to look at this.”
Now you have changed your mind about the day, and have remembered what you really want. Its purpose has no longer been obscured by the insane belief you want it for the goal of being right when you are wrong. Thus is the readiness for asking brought to your awareness, for you cannot be in conflict when you ask for what you want, and see that it is this for which you ask.
7 This final step is but acknowledgment of lack of opposition to be helped. It is a statement of an openmind, not certain yet, but willing to be shown:
”Perhaps there is another way to look at this.
What can I lose by asking?”
Thus you now can ask a question that makes sense, and so the answer will make sense as well. Nor will you fight against it, for you see that it is you who will be helped by it. It must be clear that it is easier to have a happy day if you prevent unhappiness from entering at all. But this takes practice in the rules that will protect you from the ravages of fear. When this has been achived, the sorry dream of judgment has forever been undone. But meanwhile, you have need for practicing the rules for its undoing. Let us, then, consider once again the very first of the decisions which are offered here. We said you can begin a happy day with the determination not to make decisions by yourself. This seems to be a real decision in itself. And yet, you cannot make decisions by yourself. The only question really is with what you choose to make them. That is really all. The first rule, then, is not coercion, but a simple statement of a simple fact. You will not make decisions by yourself whatever you decide. For they are made with idols or with God. And you ask help of anti-Christ or Christ, and which you choose will join with you and tell you what to do. Your day is not at random.It is set by what you choose to live it with, and how the friend whose counsel you have sought perceives your happiness. You always ask advice before you can decide on anything. Let this be understood, and you can see there cannot be coercion here, nor grounds for opposition that you may be free. There is no freedom from what must occur. And if you think there is you must be wrong. The second rule as well is but a fact. For you and your adviser must agree on what you want before it can occur. It is but this agreement that permits all things to happen. Nothing can be caused without some from of union, be it a dream of judgment of the Voice of God. Decisions cause results because they are not made in isolation. They are made by you and your adviser, for yourself and for the world as well. The day you want you offer to the world, for it will be what you have asked for, and will reinforce the rule of your adviser in the world. Whose kingdom is the world fo you today? What kind of day will you decide to have? It needs but two who would have happiness this day to promise it to all the world.It needs but two to understand that they cannot decide alone, to guarantee the joy they asked for will be wholly shared. For they have understood the basic law that makes decision powerful, and gives it all effects that it will ever have. It needs but two. These two are joined before there can be a decision.Let this be the one reminder that you keep in mind, and you will have the day you want, and give it to the world by having it yourself. Your judgment has been lifted from the world by your decision for a happy day. And as you have received, so must you give.

Love

[IA56]

Freedom of Will

Do you not understand that to oppose the Holy Spirit is to fight yourself? He tells you but your will; He speaks for you. In His Divintiy is but your own. And all he knows is but your knowledge, saved for you that you may do your will through Him. God asks you do your will. He joins with you. He did not set His Kingdom up alone. And Heaven itself but represents your will, where everything created is for you. No spark of life but was created with your glad consent, as you would have it be. And not one Thought that God has ever had but waited for your blessing to be born.God is no enemy to you. He asks no more than that He hear you call Him”Friend”. How wonderful is it to do your will! For that is freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom´s name. Unless you do your will you are not free. And would God leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never lose your will when He gave you His perfect Answer. Hear It now, that you may be reminded of His Love and learn your will. God would not have His Son made prisoner to what he does not want.He joins with you in willing you be free. And to oppose Him is to make a choice against yourself, and choose that you be bound. Look once again upon enemy, the one you chose to hate instead of love. For thus was hatred born into the world,and thus the rule of fear established there. Now hear God speak to you, through Him Who is His Voice and yours as well, reminding you that it is not your will to hate and be prisoner to fear, a slave to death, a little creature with a little life. Your will is boundless; it is not your will that it be bound. What lies in you has joined with God Himself in all creation´s birth. Remember Him Who has created thing but gives you thanks, for it is by your will that it was born. No light of Heaven shines except for you, for it was set in Heaven by your will. What cause have you for anger in a world that merely waits your blessing to be free? If you be prisoner, then God Himself could not be free.For what is done to him whom God so loves is done to God Himself. Think not He wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him.He would but keep your will forever and forever limitless. This world awaits the freedom you will give when you have recognized that you are free. But you will not forgive the world until you have forgiven Him Who gave your will to you. For it is by your will the world is given freedom. Nor can you be free apart from Him Whose holy Will you share. God turns to you to ask the world besaved, for by your own salvation is it healed. And no one walks upon the Earth but must depend on your decision, that he learn death has no power over him,because hes hares your freedom as hes hares your will. It is your will to heal him, and because you have decided with him, he is healed. And now is God forgiven, for you chose to look upon your brother as a friend.

Love