IA´s Journal

[IA56]

THE GIFTS OF THE KINGDOM

The Last Step.

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

Love

[IA56]

The Law of the Kingdom.

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

Love

[IA56]

The Reality of the Kingdom.

The Holy Spirit teaches one lesson, and applies it to all individuals in all situations. Being conflict-free, He maximizes all efforts and all results. By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that all power is yours. Its application does not matter. It is always maximal. Your vigilance does not establish it as yours, but it does enable you to use it always and in all ways. When I said ”I am with you always”, I meant it literally. I am not absent to anyone in any situation. Because I am always with you, you are the way, the truth and the life. You did not make this power, any more than I did. It was created to be shared, and therefore cannot be meaningfully perceived as beloning to anyone at the expense of another. Such a perception makes it meaningless by eliminating or overlooking its real and only meaning. God´s meaning waits in the Kingdom, because that is where He placed it. It does not wait in time. It merely rests in the Kingdom because it belongs there, as you do. How can you who are God´s meaning perceive yourself as absent from it? You can see yourself as unreal. This is why the ego is insane; it teaches that you are not what you are. That is so contradictory it is clearly impossible. It is therefore a lesson you cannot really learn, and therefore cannot really teach. Yet you are always teaching. You must, therefore, be teaching something else, even though the ego does not know what it is. The ego, then, is always being undone, and does suspect your motives. Your mind cannot be unified in allegiance to the ego, because the mind does not belong to it. Yet what is ”trecherous” to the ego is faithful to peace. The ego´s ”enemy” is therefore your friend. I said before that the ego´s friend is not part of you, because the ego perceives itself at war and therefore in need off allies. You who are not at war must look for brothers and recognize all whom you see as brother, because only equals are at peace. Because God´s equal Sons have enverythng, they cannot compete. Yet if they perceive any of their brothers as anything other than their perfect equals, the idea of competition has enterd their minds. Do not underestimate your need to be vigilant against this idea, because all your conflicts come from it. It is the belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore you have accepted the impossible as true. Is that different from saying you perceive yourself as unreal? To be in the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention on it. As long in the Kingdom is merely to focus your full attention onit. As long as you believe you can attend to what is not true, you are accepting conflict as your choice. Is it really a choice? It seems to be, but seeming and reality are hardly the same. You who aree the Kingdom are not concerned with seeming. Reality is yours because you are reality. This is now hawing and being are ultimately reconciled, not in the Kingdom, but in your mind. The altar there is to only reality. The altar is perfectly clear in thought, because it is a reflection of perfect Thought. Your right mind sees only brothers, because it sees only its own light. God has lit your mind Himself, and keeps your mind lit by His Light because His Light is what your mind is. This is totally beyond question, and when you questin it you are answered. The Answer merely undoes the question by establishing the fact that to question reality is to question meaninglessly. That is why the Holy Spirit never questions. His sole function is to undo the questionable and thus lead to certainty. The certain are perfectly calm, because they are not in doubt. They do not raise questions, because nothing questionable enters their minds. This holds them in perfect serenity, because this is what they share, knowing what they are.

Love

[IA56]

Healing as Recognition of Truth.

Truth can only be recognized and need only be recognized. Inspiration is of the Holy Spirit, and certainty is of God according to His laws. Both, therefore, come from the same Source, since inspiration comes from the Voice of God and certainty comes from the laws of God. Healing does not come directly from God, Who knows His creations as perfectly whole. Yet healing is still of God, because it proceeds from His Voice and from His laws. It is their result, in a state of mind that does not know Him. The state is unknown to Him and therefore does not exist, but those who sleep are unaware. Because they are unaware, they do not know. The Holy Spirit must work through you to teach you He is in you. This is an intermediary step toward the knowledge that you are in God because you are part of Him. The miracles the Holy Spirit inspires can have no order to difficulty, because every part of creation is of one order. This is God´s Will and yours. The laws of God establish this, and the Holy Spirit reminds you of it. When you heal, you are remembering the laws of God and forgetting the laws of the ego. I said before that forgetting is merely a way of remembering better. It is therefore not the opposite of remembering when it is properly perceived. Perceived improperly, it induces a perception of conflict with something else, as all incorrect perception does. Properly perceived, it can be used as a way out of conflict, as all prosper perception can. The ego does not want to teach everyone all it has learned, because that would defeat its purpose. Therefore it does not really learn at all. The Holy Spirit teaches you to use what the ego has made, to teach the opposite of what the ego has ”learned”. The kind of learning is as irrelevant as is the particular ability that was applied to the learning. All you need do is to make the effort to learn, for the Holy Spirit has a unified goal for the effort. If different abilities are applied long enough to one goal, the abilities themselves become unified. This is because they are channelized in one direction, or in one way. Ultimately, then, they all contribute to one result, and by so doing, their similarity rather than their differences is emphasized. All abilities should therefore be given over to the Holy Spirit, Who understands how to use them properly. He uses them only for healing, because He knows you only as whole. By healing you learn of wholeness, and by learning of wholeness you learn to remember God. You have forgotten Him, but the Holy Spirit understands that your forgetting must be translated into a way of remembering. The ego´s goal is as unified as the Holy Spirit´s, and it is because of this that their goals can never be reconciled in any way or to any extent. The ego always seeks to divide and separate. The Holy Spirit always seeks to unify and heal. As you heal you are healed, because the Holy Spirit sees no order of difficulty in healing. Healing is the way to undo the belief in differences, being the only way of perceiving the Sonship as one. This perception is therefore in accord with the laws of God, even in a state of mind that is out of accord with His. The strength of right perception is so great that it brings the mind into accord with His, because it serves His Voice, Which is in all of you. To think you ca noppose the Will of God is a real delusion. The ego believes that it can, and that it can offer you its own ”will” as a gift. You do not want it. It is not a gift. It is nothing at all. God has given you a gift that you both have and are. When you do no t use it, you forget that you have it. By not remembering it, you do not know what you are. Healing, then, is a way of approaching knowledge by thinking in accordance with the laws of God, and recognizing their universality. Without this recognition, you have made the laws meaningless to you. Yet the laws are not meaninless, since all meaning is contained by them and in them. Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven, because that is where the laws of god operate truly, and they can operate only truly because they are the laws of truth. But seek this only, because you can find nothing else. There is nothing else. God is All inall in a very literal sense. All being is in Him Who is all Being. You are therefore in Him since your being is His. Healing is a way of forgetting the sense of danger the ego has induced in you, by not recognizing its existence in your brother. This strengthens the Holy Spirit in both of you, because it is a refusal to acknowledge fear. Love needs only this invitation. It comes freely to all the Sonship, being what the Sonship is. By your awakening to it, you are merely forgetting what you are not. This enables you to remember what you are.

[IA56]

Healing and Changelessness ofMind.

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

Love

[IA56]

From Vigilance to Peace.

Although you can love the Sonship only as one, you can perceive it as fragmented. It is impossible, however, to see something in part of it that you will not attibute to all of it. That is why attack is never discrete, and why it must be relinquished entirely. If it is not relinquished entirely it is not relinquished at all. Fear and love make or create, depending on whether the ego or the Holy Spirit begets or inspires them, but they will return to the mind of the thinker and they will affect his total perception. That includes his concept of God, of his creations and of his own. He will not appreaciate any of them if he regards them fearfully. He will appreciate all of them if he regards them with love. The mind that accepts attack cannot love. That is because it believes it can destroy love, and therefore does not understand what love is. If it does not understandd what love is, it cannnot perceive itself as loving. This loses the awareness of being, induces feelings of itself as loving. This loses the awareness of being, induces feelings of unreality and results in utter confusion. Your thinking has done this because of its power, but your thinking can also save you from this because its power is not of your making. Your ability to direct your thinking as you choose is part of its power. If you do not believe you can do this you have denied the power of your thought, and thus rendered it powerless in your belief. The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it stems from the very power of the mind the ego denies. This means that the ego attacks what is preseving it, which must result in extreme anxiety. That is why the ego never recognizes what it is doing. It is perfectly logical but clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source that is totally inimical to its existence for its existence. Fearful of perceiving the power of this source, it is forced to depreciate it. This threatens its own existence, a state which it finds intolerable. Remaining logical but still insane, the ego resolves this completely insane dilemma in a completely insane way. It does not perceive its existence as threatened by projecting the threat onto you, and perceiving your being as nonexistent. This ensures its continuace if you side with it, by guaranteen that you will not know your own Safety. The ego cannot afford to know anything. Knowledge is total, and the ego does not believe in totality. This unbelief is its origin, and while the ego does not love you it is faithful to its own antecedents, begetting as it was begotten. Mind always reproduces as it was produced. Produced by fear, the ego reproduces fear. This is its allegiance, andthis allegiance makes it treacherous to love because you are love. Love is your power, which the ego must deny. It must also deny everything this power gives you because it gives you everything. No one who has everything wants the ego. Its own maker, then, does not want it. Rejection is therefore the only decision the ego could possibly encounter, if the mind that make it knew itself. And if it recognized any part of the Sonship, it would know itself. The ego therefore opposes all appreciation, all recognition, all sane perception and all knowledge. It perceives their threat as total, because it senses that all commitments the mind makes are total. Forced, therefore, to detach itself from you, it is willing to attach itself to anything else. But there is nothing else. The mind can, however, make up illusions, and if it does so it will believe in them, because that is how it made them. The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them, because He cannot perceivve them at all. They therefore do not exist for Him. He resloves the apparent conflict they engender by perceving conflict as meaningless. I have said before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict exactly as it is, and it is meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want you to understand conflict; He wants you to realize that, because conflict is meaningless, it is not understandable. As I have already said, understanding brings appreciation and appreciation brings love. Nothing else can be understood, because nothing else is real and therefore nothing else has meaning. If you will keep in mind what the Holy Spirit offers you, you cannot be vigilant for anything but God and His Kingdom. The only reason you may find this hard to accept is because you may still think there is something else. Belief does not require vigilance unless it is conflicted. If it is, there are conflicting components within it that have led to a state of war, and vigilance has therefore become essential. Vigilance has no place in peace. It is necessary against beliefs that are not true, and would never have been called upon by the Holy Spirit if you had not believed the untrue. When you believe something, you have made it true for you. When you believe what God does not knwo, your thought seems to contradict His, and this makes it appear as if you are attacking Him. I have repeatedly emphasized that the ego does believe it can attack God, and tries to persuade you that you have done this. If the mind cannot attack, the ego proceeds perfectly logically to the belief that you must be a body. By not seeing you as you are, it can see itself as it wants to be. Aware of its weakness the ego wants your allegiance, but not as you really are. The ego therefore wants to engage your mind in its own delusional system, because otherwise the light of your understanding would dispel it. It wants no part of truth, because the ego itself is not true. If truth is total, the untrue cannot exist. Commitment to either must be total; they cannot coexist in your mind without splitting it. If they cannot coexist in peace, and if you want peace, you must give up the idea of conflict entirely and for all time. While you believe that two totally contradictory thought systems share truth, your need for vigilance is apparant. Your mind is dividing its allegiance between two kingdom, and you are totally commited to neither. Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you, when you are thinking insanely. What you are is not established by your perception, and is not influenced by it at all. Perceived problems in identification at any level are not problems of fact. They are problems of understanding, since their presence implies a belief that what you are is up to you to decide. The ego believes this totally, being fully comitted to it. It is not true. The ego therefore is totally comitted to untruth, perceiving in total contradiction to the Holy Spirit and to the knowledge of God. You can be perceived with meaning only by the Holy Spirit because your being is the knowledge of God. Any belief you accept apart from this will obscure God´s Voice in you, and will therefore obscure God to you. Unless you perceive His creation truly you cannot know the Creator, since God and His creation is your wholeness, your sanity and your limitless power. This limitless power is God´s gift to you, because it is what you are. If you dissociate your mind from it you are perceiving the most powerful force in the universe as if it were weak, because you do not believe you are part of it. Perceived without your part in it, God´s creation is seen as weak, and those who see themselves as weakened do attack. The attack must be blind, howerver, because there is nothing to attack. Therefore they make up images, perceive them as unworthy and attack them for their unwothiness. That is all the world of the ego is. Nothing. It has no meaning. It does not exist. Do not try to understand it because, if you do, you are believing that it can be understood and is therefore capable of being appreaciated and loved. That would justify its existence, which cannot be justified. You cannot make the meaningless meaningful. This can only be an insane attempt. Allowing insanity to enter your mind means that you have not judged sanity as wholly desirable. If you want something else you will make something else, but because it is something else, it will attack your thought system and divide your alligance. You cannot create in this divided state, and you must be vigilant against this divided state because only peace can be extended. Your divided mind is blocking the extention of the Kingdom, and its extension is your joy. If you do not extend the Kingdom, you are not thinking with your Creator and creating as He created. In this depressing state the Holy Spirit reminds you gently that you are sad because you are not fulfilling your function as co-creator with God, and are therefore depriving yourself of joy. This is not God´s choice but yours. If your mind could be out of accord with God´s, you would be willing without meaning. Yet because God´s Will is unchangeble, no conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirit´s perfectly consitent teaching. Creation, not separation, is your will because it is God´s and nothing that opposes this means anything at all. Being a perfect accomplishemt, the Sonship can only accomplish perfectly, extending the joy in which it was created, and identifying itself with both its Creator andd its creation, knowing they are one.

Love

[IA56]

The Totality of the Kingdom.

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

Love

[IA56]

The Unbelievable Belief.

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

Love

[IA56]

The Extention of the Kingdom.

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

Love

[IA56]

The Confusion of Pain and Joy.

The Kingdom is the result of premises, just as this whole is. You may have carried the ego´s reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is total confusion about everything. If you really saw this result you could not want it. The only reason you could possibly want any part of its is because you do not see the whole of it. You are willing to look at the ego´s premises, but not at their logical outcome. It is not possible that you have done the same thing with the premises of God? Your creations are the logical outcome of His premises. His thinking has establishe them for you. They are exactly where they belong. They belong in your mind as part of your identification with His, but your state of mind and your recognition of what is in it depend on what you believe about your mind. Whatever these beliefs may be, they are the premises that will determine what you accept into your mind. It is surely clear that you can both accept into your mind what is not there, and deny what is. Yet the function God Himself gave your mind through His you may deny, but you cannot prevent. It is the logical outcome of what you are. The ability to see a logical outcome depends on the willingness to see it, but its truth has nothing to do with your willingness to see it, but its truth has nothing to do with your willingness. Truth is God´s Will. Share His Will and you share what He knows. Deny His will as yours, and you are denying His kingdom and yours. The Holy Spirit will direct you only so as to awoid pain. Surely no one would object to this goal if he recognized it. The problem is not whether what the Holy Spirit sayes is true, but whether you want to listen to what He says. You no more recognize what is painful that you know what is joyful, and are, in fact, very apt to confuse the two. The Holy Spirit´s main function is to teach you to tell them apart. What is joyful to you is painful to the ego, and as long as you are in doubt about what you are, you will be confused about joy and pain. This confusion is the cause of the whole idea of sacrifice. Obey the Holy Spirit, and you will be giving up the ego. But you will be sacrificing nothing. On the contrary, you will be gaining everything. If you believed this, there would be no conflict. That is why you need no demonstrate the obvious to yourself. It is not obvious to you. You believe that doing the oppoisite of God´s Will can be better for you. Therefore, you believe that an imposible choice is open to you, and one which is both fearful and desirable. Yet God wills. He does not wish. Your will is as powerful as His because it is His. The ego´s whishes do not mean anything, because the ego whishes for the impossible. You can wish for the impossible, but you can will only with God. This is the ego´s weakness and your strength. The Holy Spirit always sides with you and with your strength. As long as you awoid His guidance in any way, you want to be weak. Yet weakness is frightening. What else, then, can this decision mean except that you want to be fearful? The Holy Spirit never asks for sacrifice, but the ego always does. When you are confused about this distincion in motivation, it can only be due to projection. Projections is a confusion in motivation, and gives this confusion, trust becomes impossible. No one gladly obeys a guide he does not trust, but this does not mean that the guide is untrustworthy. In this case, it always means that the follower is. However, this too, is merely a matter of his own belief. Believing that he can betray, he believes that everything can betray him. Yet this is only because he has elected to follow false guidance. Unable to follow this guidance without fear, he associates fear with guidance, and refuses to follow any guidance at all. The Holy Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as you are. God Himself trusts you, and therefore your turstwothiness is beyond question. It will always remain beyond question, however much you may question it. I said before that you are the Will of God. His Will is not an idle wish, and your identification with His Will is not optional, since it is what you are. Sharing His Will with me is not really open to choice, though it may seem to be. The whole separation lies in this error. The only way out of the error is to decide that you do not have to decide anything. Everything has been given you by God´s decision. That is His Will, and you cannot undo it. Even the relingquishment of your false decision-making prerogative, which the ego guards so jealously, is not accomlished by your wish. It was accomplished for you by the Will of God, Who has not left you comfortless. His Voice will teach you how to destinguish between pain and joy, and will lead you out of the confusion you have made. There is no confusion in the mind of a Son of God, whose will must be the Will of the Father, because the Father´s Will is His Son. Miracles are in accord with the Will of God, Whose Will you do not know because you are confused about what you will. This means that you are confused about what you are. If you are God´s Will and do not accept His Will, you are denying joy. The miracle is therefore a lesson in what joy is. Being a lesson in sharing it is a lesson in love, which is joy. Every miracle is thus a lessson in truth, and by offering truth you are learning the differece between pain and joy.

Love