IA´s Journal

[IA56]

Error and the Ego.

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

Love

[IA56]

Beyond Perception.

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

Love

[IA56]

I want to share this lesson 23 with you all.

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

The idea for today contains the only way out of fear that will ever succeed.Nothing els will work; everything els is meaningless. But this way cannot fail. Every thought you have makes up some segment of the world you see.
It is with your thoughts, then, that we must work, if your perception of the world is to be changed. If the cause of the world you see is attack thoughts, you must learn that it is these thoughts which you do not want.
There is no point in lamenting the world.
There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect.
But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world.Here you are changing the cause.
The effect will change automatically.
The world you see is a vengeful world, and everything in it is a symbol of vengeance.
Each of your perceptions of "external reality" is a pictorial representation of your own attack thoughts.
One can well ask if this can be called seeing. Is not fantasy a better word for such a process, and hallucination a more appropriate term for the result?
You see the world that you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image-maker. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape form its cause. This is what salvation means, for where is the world you see when its cause is gone? Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now.
Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them, even though they were made of hate. For you will not be making them alone.
The idea for today introduces the thought that you are not trapped in the world you see, because its cause can be changed. This change requires, first, that the cause be identified and then let go, so that it can be replaced.
The first one does not.
Your images have already been replaced. By taking the first two steps, you will see that this is so.
Besides using it throughout the day as the need arises, five practice periods are required in applying today´s idea.
As you look about you, repeat the idea slowly to yourself first, and then close your eyes and devote about a minute to serching your mind for as many attack thoughts as occur to you. As each one crosses your mind, say:

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

Hold each attack thought in mind as you say this, and then dismiss that thought and go on to the next.
In this practis periods, be sure to include both your thoughts of attacking and of being attacked.
Their effects are exactly the same because they are exactly the same.
You do not recognize this as yet, and you are asked at this time only to treat them as the same in today´s practice periods. We are still at the stage of identifying the cause of the world you see. When you finally learn that thoughts of attack and of being attacked are not different, you will be ready to let the cause go.

Love

[IA56]

Judgment and the Authority Problem.

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

Love

[IA56]

Creating versus the Self-Image

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

Love

[IA56]

The Illusions of the Ego.

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

Love

[IA56]

Right Teaching and Right Learning.

A good teacher clarifies his own ideas and strengthens them by teaching them. Teacher and pupil are alike in the learning process. They are in the same order of learning, and unless they share their lessons conviction will be lacking. A good teacher must believe in the idea he teaches, but he must meet another condition; he must believe in the students to whom he offers the ideas.
Many stand guard over their ideas because they want to protect their thought systems as they are, and learning means change.
Change is always fearful and to the separated, because they cannot conceive of it as a move towards healing the separation. They always perceive it as a move towards further separation, because the separation was their first expereince of change. You believe that if you allow no change to enter into your ego you will find peace.
This profound confusion is possible only if you maintain that the same thought system can stand on two foundations.
Nothing can reach spirit from the ego, and nothing can reach the ego from spirit.
Spirit can neither strenghten the ego nor reduce the conflict within it.
The ego is a contradition. Your self and God´s Self are in opposition.
They are opposed in source, in direction and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable, because spirit cannot percieve and the ego cannot know. They are therefore not in communication and can never bbe in communication. Nevertheless, the ego can learn, even though its maker can be misguided. He cannot, however, make the totally lifeless out of the life-given.
Spirit need not be taught, but the ego must be. Learning is ultimately percived as frightening because it leads to the relinquisment, not to destruction, of the ego to light of spirit.This is the change the ego must fear, because it does not share my charity. My lesson was like yours, and because I learned it I can teach it. I will never attack your ego, but I am trying to teach you how its thought system arose. When I remind you of your true creation, your ego cannot but respond with fear.
Teaching and learning are your greatest strengths now, because they enable you to change your mind and help others to change theirs. Refusing to change your mind will not prove that the separation has not occured.
The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream while he is still dreaming is not really healing his split mind.
You dream of a separated ego and believe in a world that rests upon it. This is very real to you.
You cannot undo it by not changing your mind about it. If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian of your thought system and open it to me, I will correct it very gently and lead you back to God.
Every good teacher hopes to give his students so much of his own learning that they will on day no longer need him
This is the one true goal of the teacher.
It is impossible to convice the ego of this, because it goes against all of its own laws. But remember that laws are set up to protect the continuity of the system in which the lawmaker believes.
It is natural for the ego to try to protect itself once you have made it, but it is not natural for you to want to obey its laws unless you believe them. The ego cannot make this choice because of the nature of its origin.
You can, because of the nature yours.
Egos can clash in any situation, but spirit cannot clash at all.
If you perceive a teacher as merely "a larger ego" you will be afraid, because to enlarge an ego would be to increasee anxiety about separation. I will teach with you and live with you if you will think with me, but my goal will always be to absolve your finally from the need for a teacher. This is the opposite of the ego-orientedd teacher´s goal. He is concerned with the effect of his ego on the other egos, and therefore interprets their interaction as a means of ego presevation.
I would not be able to devote myself to teaching if I believed this, and you will not be a devoted teacher as long as you belive it. I am constantly being percived as a teacher either to be exaltedd or rejected, but I do not accept either perception for myself.
Your worth is not estabblished by teachng or learning. Your worth is established by God.
As long as you dispute this everything you do will be fearful, particularly any situation that lends itself to the belief in superiority and inferiority. Teachers must be patient and repeat the lessons until they are learned.
I am willing to do this, because I have no right to set your learning limits for you.
Again, - nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth. This point is not debatable except in delusions. Your ego is never at stake because God did not create it.
Your spirit is never at stake because He did. Any confusion on this point is delusional, and no form of devotion is possible as long as this delusion lasts.
The ego tries to exploit all situations into forms of praise for itself in order to overcome its doubts. It will remain doubtful as long as you believe in its existence. You who made it cannot trust it, because in your right mind you realize it is not real. The only sane solution is not to try to change reality, which is indeed a fearful attempt, but to accept it as it is. You are part of realtiy, which stands unchanged beyond the reach of your ego but within easy reach of spirit. When you are afraid, be still and know that God is real, and you are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. Do not let your ego dispute this, because the ego cannot know what is as far beyond its reach as you are.
God is not the author of fear. You are.
You have chosen to create unlike Him, and have therefore made fear for yourself. You are not at peace because you are not fulfilling your function. God gave you a very lofty function that you are not meeting.
Your ego has chosen to be afraid instead of meeting it.
When you awaken you will not be able to understand this, because it is literally incredible.
Do not believe the increadible now. Any attempt to increase its believableness is merely to postpone the inevitable.
The word "inevitable" is fearfful to the ego, but joyjous to the sprit.
God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him any more than He can avoid you.
The ego is afraid of the spirit´s joy, because once you have experienced it you will withdraw all protection form the ego, and become totally without investment in fear.
Your investment is great now because fear is a witness to the separation, and your ego rejoices when you witness to it. Leave it behind! Do not listen to it and do not preserve it. Listen only to God, Who is as incapable of deception as is the spirit. He created. Release yourself and release others. Do not present a false and unworthy picture of yourself to others, and not accept such a picture of them yourself.
The ego has built a shabby and unsheltering home for you, because it cannot build otherwise.
Do not try to make this impoverished house stand. Its weakness is your strength.Only God could make a home that is wothy of his creations, who have chosen to leave it empty by their own dispossession. Yet His home will stand forever, and is ready for you when you choose to enter it.
Of this you can be wholly certain. God is as incapable of creating the perishable as the ego is of makeing the eternal
Of your ego you can do nothing to save yourself of others, but of your spirit you can do everything for the salvation of both. Humility is a lesson for the ego, not for the spirit. Spirit is beyond humility, because it recognizes its radiance and gladly sheds its light everywhere. The meek shall inherit the earth because their egos are humble, and this gives them truer perception. The Kingdom of Heaven, is the spirit´s right, whose beauty and dignity are far beyond doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the Love of God for His creation, who are wholly worthy of Him and only of Him. Nothing els is sufficiently worthy to be a gift for a creation of God Himself.
I will subtitute for your ego if you wish, but never for your spirit. A father can safely leave a child with an elder brother who has shown himself responsible, but this involves no confusion about the child´s origin. The brother can protect the child´s body and his ego, but he does not confuse himself with the father because he does this.
I can be entrusted with your body and your ego only because this enables you not to be concerned with them, and lets me teach you their unimportance. I could not understand their importance to you if I had not once been tempted to believe in them myself. Let us undertake to learn this lesson together so we can be free of them together. I need devoted teachers who share my aim of healing the mind. Spirit is far beyond the need of your protection of mine.
Remember this:

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

Love

[IA56]

The Ego and False Autonomy.

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

Love

[IA56]

Love without conflict.

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

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

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

Love

[IA56]

This Need Not Be.

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

Love