Library of Christ Mind Teachings
ACIM Original Edition
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29 Power cannot oppose. For opposition would weaken it, and weakened
power is a contradiction in ideas. Weak strength is meaningless, and
power used to weaken is employed to limit. And therefore it must be
limited and weak because that is its purpose. Power is unopposed, to be
itself. No weakness can intrude on it without changing it into something
it is not. To weaken is to limit and impose an opposite that contradicts
the concept which it attacks. And by this does it join to the idea a
something it is not and make it unintelligible. Who can understand a
double concept, such as “weakened-power” or as “hateful-love?”
30 You have decided that your brother is a symbol for a “hateful-love,”
a “weakened-power,” and above all, a “living-death.” And so he has no
meaning to you, for he stands for what is meaningless. He represents a
double thought, where half is canceled out by the remaining half. Yet
even this is quickly contradicted by the half it canceled out, and so
they both are gone. And now he stands for nothing. Symbols which but
represent ideas that cannot be must stand for empty space and
nothingness. Yet nothingness and empty space can not be interference.
What can interfere with the awareness of reality is the belief that
there is something there.
31 The picture of your brother that you see means nothing. There is
nothing to attack or to deny, love, or hate, or to endow with power or
to see as weak. The picture has been wholly canceled out because it
symbolized a contradiction which canceled out the thought it
represents. And thus the picture has no cause at all. Who can perceive
effect without a cause? What can the causeless be but nothingness? The
picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent and has never
been. Let then the empty space it occupies be recognized as vacant,
and the time devoted to its seeing be perceived as idly spent, a time
unoccupied.
32 An empty space which is not seen as filled, an unused interval of
time not seen as spent and fully occupied, becomes a silent invitation
to the truth to enter and to make itself at home. No preparation can be
made that would enhance the invitation’s real appeal. For what you leave
as vacant, God will fill, and where He is, there must the truth abide.
Unweakened power with no opposite is what creation is. For this there
are no symbols. Nothing points beyond the truth, for what can stand
for more than everything? Yet true undoing must be kind. And so the
first replacement for your picture is another picture of another kind.
33 As nothingness cannot be pictured, so there is no symbol for
totality. Reality is ultimately known without a form, unpictured and
unseen. Forgiveness is not yet a power known as wholly free of limits.
Yet it sets no limits you have chosen to impose. Forgiveness is the
means by which the truth is represented temporarily. It lets the Holy
Spirit make exchange of pictures possible until the time when aids are
meaningless and learning done. No learning aid has use which can extend
beyond the goal of learning. When its aim has been accomplished, it is
functionless. Yet in the learning interval it has a use which now you
fear, but yet will love.
34 The picture of your brother given you to occupy the space so lately
left unoccupied and vacant will not need defense of any kind. For you
will give it overwhelming preference. Nor delay an instant in deciding
that it is the only one you want. It does not stand for double concepts.
Though it is but half the picture and is incomplete, within itself it is
the same. The other half of what it represents remains unknown but is
not canceled out. And thus is God left free to take the final step
Himself. [For this you need no pictures and no learning aids.] And
what will ultimately take the place of every learning aid will merely
be. Forgiveness vanishes and symbols fade, and nothing which the eyes
have ever seen or ears have heard remains to be perceived.
35 A Power wholly limitless has come, not to destroy, but to receive Its
own. There is no choice of function anywhere. The choice you fear to
lose you never had. Yet only this appears to interfere with power
unlimited and single thoughts, complete and happy, without opposite. You
do not know the peace of power which opposes nothing. Yet no other kind
can be at all. Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness and beyond
the world of symbols and of limitations. He would merely be, and so He
merely is.