Library of Christ Mind Teachings
ACIM Original Edition
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You are hampered in your progress by your demands to know what you do
not know. This is actually a way of holding on to deprivation. You
cannot reasonably object to following instructions in a course for
knowing on the grounds that you do not know. The need for the course
is implicit in your objection. Knowledge is not the motivation for
learning this course. Peace is. As the prerequisite for knowledge,
peace must be learned. This is only because those who are in conflict
are not peaceful, and peace is the condition of knowledge, because
it is the condition of the Kingdom.
2 Knowledge will be restored when you meet its conditions. This is not a
bargain made by God, Who makes no bargains. It is merely the result of
your misuse of His laws on behalf of a will that is not His. Knowledge
is His Will. If you are opposing His Will, how can you have
knowledge? I have told you what knowledge offers you, but it is clear
that you do not regard this as wholly desirable. If you did, you would
hardly be willing to throw it away so readily when the ego asks for your
allegiance. The distraction of the ego seems to interfere with your
learning, but the ego has no power to distract you unless you give
it the power.
3 The ego’s voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect it to say, “I
am not real.” Hallucinations are inaccurate perceptions of reality.
Yet you are not asked to dispel them alone. You are merely asked to
evaluate them in terms of their results to you. If you do not want
them on the basis of loss of peace, they will be removed from your mind
for you. Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war does
deprive you of peace. Yet in this war there is no opponent. This is
the reinterpretation of reality which you must make to secure peace, and
the only one you need ever make.