Library of Christ Mind Teachings
ACIM Original Edition
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45 How does one overcome illusions? Surely not by force or anger nor by
opposing them in any way. Merely by letting reason tell you that they
contradict reality. They go against what must be true. The opposition
comes from them and not reality. Reality opposes nothing. What merely
is needs no defense and offers none. Only illusions need defense
because of weakness. And how can it be difficult to walk the way of
truth when only weakness interferes? You are the strong ones in this
seeming conflict. And you need no defense. Everything that needs defense
you do not want, for anything that needs defense will weaken you.
46 Consider what the ego wants defenses for—always to justify what
goes against the truth, flies in the face of reason, and makes no sense.
Can this be justified? What can this be except an invitation to
insanity to save you from the truth? And what would you be saved from
but what you fear? Belief in sin needs great defense and at enormous
cost. All that the Holy Spirit offers must be defended against and
sacrificed. For sin is carved into a block out of your peace and laid
between you and its return. Yet how can peace be so fragmented? It is
still whole, and nothing has been taken from it.
47 See how the means and the material of evil dreams are nothing. In
truth you stand together with nothing in between. God holds your hands,
and what can separate whom He has joined as one with Him? It is your
Father Whom you would defend against. Yet it remains impossible to keep
love out. God rests with you in quiet, undefended and wholly
undefending, for in this quiet state alone is strength and power. Here
can no weakness enter, for here is no attack and therefore no illusions.
Love rests in certainty. Only uncertainty can be defensive. And all
uncertainty is doubt about yourself.
48 How weak is fear—how little and how meaningless! How insignificant
before the quiet strength of those whom love has joined! This is your
“enemy”—a frightened mouse that would attack the universe. How likely is
it that it will succeed? Can it be difficult to disregard its feeble
squeaks that tell of its omnipotence and would drown out the hymn of
praise to its Creator which every heart throughout the universe forever
sings as one? Which is the stronger? Is it this tiny mouse or everything
that God created? You are not joined together by this mouse but by the
Will of God. And can a mouse betray whom God has joined?
49 If you but recognized how little stands between you and your
awareness of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of
size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes,
to the body’s eyes it looks like an enormous solid body, immovable as is
a mountain. Yet within you there is a Force which no illusions can
resist. This body only seems to be immovable; this Force is irresistible
in truth. What, then, must happen when they come together? Can the
illusion of immovability be long defended from what is quietly passed
through and gone beyond?
50 Forget not, when you feel the need arise to be defensive about
anything, you have identified yourself with an illusion. And therefore
feel that you are weak because you are alone. This is the cost of all
illusions. Not one but rests on the belief that you are separate. Not
one that does not seem to stand, heavy and solid and immovable, between
you and your brother. And not one that truth cannot pass over lightly
and so easily that you must be convinced, in spite of what you thought
it was, that it is nothing. If you forgive each other, this must
happen. For it is your unwillingness to overlook what seems to stand
between you that makes it look impenetrable and defends the illusion of
its immovability.