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If you were to ask yourself, How do I go about contacting God?, no answer would likely be forthcoming. In the separation from your Creator, you have lost all memory of Him. Nevertheless, deep in your unconscious mind, His memory remains, but you cannot reach that depth unaided. Help must be given and received, and your mind purified of all that prevents reunion with God.
The function of the Holy Spirit is to guide you through the process of purifying your mind. To purify the mind is to release it from all that is unworthy of the Son of God. Your mind is held a willing prisoner behind thick walls it has built. Behind these walls you feel safe, for Truth cannot go where It is unwanted. You think your defenses were made to protect you from the threats you perceive, and that is true. Yet is it also true that what your defenses are really meant to protect you from, is the Truth. If you were not actively defending against the Self you have left behind and thrust out of your mind, you could not resist Its call to return and be your Self again in your entirety.
When you finally hear the call of your Soul, you must answer it. Its call cannot be ignored, for it is the call of your Heart to your heart. When the Heart calls to you, you will recognize it as the call of Love to love. Love can be ignored; It can be denied; you can dissociate yourself from It; but It will never cease to call out to you, for It knows you as Itself.
Love is not simply a human emotion; Love is the Creative Power of the Universe. Through Love is everything created, for God is Love, and He is the Source of all that is. In Love were you created, and through Love do you create. Even in this world are all acts of Love truly creative, though not regarded as such. Only the truly creative is real, for the nature of Reality is to create, and It creates like Itself. Thus is Unity eternally extending Itself, and thereby are Love and joy eternally increasing.
Where Love is absent, there can be no true creation. The world, where Love is feared and fear enshrined, was made through the uncreative use of energy or mind. Made as a response to fear, yet based on it, the world could not but exclude Love. The world is not a real creation but a projection of mind gone mad. The result was a dream state in which everything is as it is not. Here is Love confined to “special relationships,” be they with people or with things, not freely given to all. Such is not Love, for Love is all and cannot, in truth, be withheld anywhere, for any reason. Love is not “special” in any way. It belongs to all and gives to all.
The return of Love to your mind will heal all fear and conflict over time. Where Love holds sway, is fear banished. It cannot live in the Presence of Love for fear is darkness, and Love shines away all darkness. Love cannot return unless It is welcomed. To welcome Love is to accept It totally. Such acceptance requires the renunciation of all attack, in the recognition that attack brings you nothing, and that your dedication to it has cost you everything. Such is the choice: Love or fear, to join with or to attack, to include or exclude. There are never more than these two from which to choose. And which you choose will determine the direction of your life’s journey.
The end of time is Eternity. When time is transcended, only Eternity remains. Time seems to be sequential, yet is that an artificial order imposed upon it. Time actually runs backwards as well as forwards. And all time is, in fact, over. By keeping it alive in your mind, it continues to serve as the background or context of your experience, helping you maintain separation. Wherever you look, you see the evidence of change, and time is the measure of change. Time can be transcended in any moment by remembering Truth.
Whenever you are in doubt, call on the Holy Spirit to dispel all doubt. He knows who you are, and what your function is. There is no doubt of any kind in His Mind, for He is not an ego, and all doubt is of the ego. The ego knows nothing, understands nothing. When you listen to the ego, you are listening to the voice of ignorance. To listen to the Holy Spirit is to listen to the Voice for God. He speaks for God, knowing God’s Will for you, and He perceives through your mind. He is aware of what you see and experience, and knows it is not true. He translates what is true into a form you can recognize in this world, leading you away from illusions, back to what is true.
Trust is essential if you are to find your way back to God. You must learn to trust the Guide given you by your Father, for He alone knows the way. You cannot find what was lost to you so long ago that even its memory has been erased from your awareness. God has given you the help you need, but you must avail yourself of it. You must ask for help in all sincerity, be willing to hear the answer, and be willing to follow the directions given. Above all, you must learn to trust the Voice for God, and be willing to learn what He will teach you.
All that you have taught yourself must be discarded, for everything you have learned is not true. You learned it from a guide who knows nothing but falsity, and has as its goal your death, and yet you have trusted this guide and seldom doubted what was shown to you. Now you must withdraw your faith in illusion and the voice that speaks for it, and give your faith instead to the One Who knows Truth, holds Its memory for you in your mind, and will guide you back to your One Self, if you let Him. The way back is neither difficult nor complicated. Yet you will not find this journey easy, for to heal the false mind and to face and heal all fear, is for most an ordeal. It need not be, yet the mind that believes in sacrifice and attack, is dominated by fear; and to a fearful mind, the release and healing of all fear is usually experienced as painful.
The ego itself is a contraction of fear; its core is fear. Although this fear is usually not experienced consciously, nonetheless it casts its dark shadow across your life, making joy and peace impossible. When joy, peace, and Love are all you want, that is all you will have. Until that day comes, you will vacillate back and forth between Love and fear. It is this vacillation that causes the pain and suffering experienced in the process of spiritual awakening.
The Holy Spirit teaches Love, and reinforces this learning in your mind, while helping you recognize everything in your mind that is not Love. Whatever is not Love is fear. He helps you face fear and heal it by choosing to let it go, withdrawing your belief and investment in it, and inviting Love to take its place. Salvation can be described simply as the healing of fear and the return of Love, the replacement of guilt with innocence.
In order for Love’s meaning to be restored to your awareness, investment in attack must be completely withdrawn, without exception. Attack is never justified, although the ego expends considerable time and energy doing so. When you realize to attack your brother is to attack yourself, for your brother is a part of you, the insanity of attack will be self-evident. The ego teaches you can attack and not be affected by the consequences of your action. The Holy Spirit teaches whatever you do, you do to yourself. This is an inescapable spiritual law. Your intent to harm another will always result in harming yourself. There is nothing whatsoever to be gained by attack in any form. Sanity tells you to lay it down, to give it up entirely, to cease all actions, words, and thoughts whose purpose is to attack an apparent other or yourself.
The real purpose of all attack is to keep Love away. Love you fear more than anything, for to allow Love’s return is to give up the tight control fear has imposed on your life; you believe this attempt to control circumstances and conditions keeps you safe. Whose safety is seemingly assured by such action? Only a body, frail and surrounded by uncertainties, could possibly need such protection.
You are not a body, you are Spirit. Your safety is guaranteed by your Creator. No elaborate plans of defense and attack, no ironclad control of apparent circumstances, are needed by God’s Holy Son. Such plans simply reinforce in your mind the false identification with the body. This error endangers your peace of mind and safety, for by thinking you are what you are not, you turn your back on what you are in Truth.
Only the laying down of all defenses assures your safety. Defenses but confirm the sense of threat and danger that you believe confronts you. Whenever you respond to anything with less than Love, you are throwing away what keeps you safe. Love guarantees your safety, not fear. Love’s defenselessness protects you from all harm. Love knows neither defense nor attack, for It sees only Itself in everyone and everything. That which contains all and lives in all, cannot be threatened, for what could attack innocence itself? In the discovery of your innocence you begin to realize you are the Holy Son of God, held safe forever in His Mind. You always have been, are now, and will forever be.
Spirit is not of this world nor is It affected by it in any way. Those who dream they are bodies, populate their world with images of separation. A world of separation is a world where conflict rules. Bodily identities, each complete in itself and separated from other bodies by space and personal history, have different perceived needs and desires. They believe in a world of scarcity where, for one to gain, another must lose. This cannot but lead to competition and conflict, as each pursues his own interest at the expense of others. Where perceived reality is based on, and is an expression of, the belief in separation, chaos and conflict are the inevitable result. Separate bodies with separate interests cannot join; only minds can join. In order to truly join with your brother, you must look beyond the body and see him as he truly is. He is Mind as you are Mind, and minds can join and are joined beyond the bodily form.
Through the Light of your Mind, you see the Light in your brother, and in that Light is your Oneness made manifest. The One Light is the radiance in which all appear; in the return to this Light, are you restored to Wholeness, and separation is healed. You are Light, just as you are Mind, and Being or Spirit. Nothing can ever lessen this Light or dim Its radiance, for It is the Light of God shining eternally in His Mind, unchanged, even as It continues to extend Itself forever.
Whether you are aware of It or not, your Self abides in shining silence, at One with Its Creator, fulfilling the function of creating given in Its Creation by God. Your Self is unaffected by your ignorance amid the world of dreams, yet It longs for the return of that part of Itself that has chosen separation. Separation is not simply an error that occurred in a distant past; that error is being maintained and held in your mind through active memory, through every thought, feeling, word, and action. It is what you are doing every moment of every day with the choices you are making. If you were to stop, even for a moment, Truth would rush in, returning you to the awareness of what you have always been. Salvation’s goal is just this return of Truth to your mind, and reunion with the Self.
The process of this return to the Self, unfolding in time, is the Atonement: the correction of perception and thought. Although the curriculum, what must be learned, does not vary, the process of learning itself is very individualized. What you learn, when you learn it, in what order, is the result of your individual characteristics, the circumstances of your life, and the speed at which willingness develops. The awakening takes place for each in a unique manner, yet the experience is universal. All reach the same territory and leave the ego at the gate.
Each has a unique part to play in God’s Plan of Salvation. No one but you can fulfill your part. The Holy Spirit assigns your part, and holds it for you until you are ready to accept it. True happiness can only be found by accepting your part, and completing it. To refuse to do so is to reject salvation and continue a life of separation. You will never be happy while you live apart from your Self and your Creator. The nature of the Self is joy and happiness, and to reject your true Identity is to deprive yourself of happiness.
Whenever the choice is made for God, the entire Universe rejoices. This choice cannot be made for you alone. All your brothers, every living thing, share in the joy and freedom of that decision, and all are blessed along with you. Your Father has been waiting for your return since time began. Heaven is incomplete without you. You will sing again the hymn of praise to your Creator and all Creation, for the song lives still in your memory.
The Holy Spirit guides you gently back to the Home you left but in dreams. His gentle Voice calls you to awaken, to open your eyes and recognize your Self, to leave behind the world of dreams, and disappear into the Heart of God.
If you were to try to find God on your own, you would not succeed. The identity seeking God is, by its very nature and existence, the denial of and the defense against what it seeks. The ego was made as a substitute for your real Identity, as a way to maintain the illusion and exclude Truth from awareness. How can you find what you seek by exercising the denial of it?
The Holy Spirit, God’s Answer to the separation, shows you the way, makes it clear to you, and guides your every step. Without Him, you would be lost indeed. The way out of a self-imposed prison cannot be found by following the directions of the one who guards the walls. The ego will never lead you back to freedom, for to do so would be its end. It knows nothing of freedom or where to find it, and regards the idea of liberation as a dangerous threat. It will never do anything other than act to maintain separation and the belief in guilt and sin that is its foundation stone. It is not to the ego you must turn to begin the journey back to God.
You must, in fact, turn away from the egoic identification, its beliefs, its values, and all it represents, if you would be free of fear, pain, and suffering, and recover your lost Identity as the Christ, God’s Holy Creation. You are either the ego or the Christ, you cannot be both. God’s Holy Son is not a body, a separate identity lost in a world of form. He is Spirit, Light, and Mind, and in the true state of Union with God, is Co-creator with God. The choice is yours as to which identity becomes your experience. Only one is real. The other is but folly, a dream indulged in since time began, a journey that goes nowhere over and over again.
The Holy Spirit knows what you need. He knows your strengths and weaknesses. He uses your strengths and helps you to heal, to free yourself from your weaknesses. There is nothing He does not know, and He will not hesitate to inform you of everything you need to know in any given situation, if you ask Him and are willing to receive the answer. He will give you as much help as you are willing to accept. Your willingness is all He asks of you, not more, but also not less. Even then He gives you His willingness to supplement yours, and His strength to carry you through.
When the commitment is made to follow the Holy Spirit, to turn over decision making to Him where possible, progress will be rapid. As you do this more and more consistently, your trust will grow, for you will recognize the rightness of all His decisions. You may not always understand His answers, but if you will trust and persist, their correctness will be apparent in time. He cannot steer you wrong for He leads you only in one direction, the only direction there is in truth, towards God. He has one purpose, one goal, and a unified or whole perception. This unified perception, the Vision of Christ, He gives to you that you may see truly, and so come to recognize your brother as he is.
Your brother is not his body or what his body does or says. He is the Christ, as you are, and to see him as he is will restore to you the awareness of what you are together. Alone and separate is neither the Self, for Truth is One and encompasses all. To see the Christ in any one is to confirm It as your Self. What you see in One, you will see in all. The Light shines undimmed in every Mind, just beyond the form. The Light is not of this world, yet spiritual Vision sees Its reflection everywhere, in everything.
There is nothing you need do, for what is needed is not doing but undoing. The Atonement, the Plan of Salvation, is an undoing of your mind, of your thought system, that forgiveness may come to free your mind of guilt and make room for Truth’s return. If what you are is not of this world, and I assure you this is true, the simplest and most natural thing you could do would be to leave the world forever. Only your wish to be a part of this world keeps it real in your mind. If you truly want to return to your real Home in God, and relinquish your fear of Love, you will be gone from here.
The task of the Holy Spirit is to guide your learning so as to bring the recognition this world is not your home. Once that is truly realized, the longing to return to Heaven will arise, and this longing will take you Home. Happiness will never be found in this world, for it is not here. Only by being what you are in Truth, will you be happy and at peace.
The beginning of the end of illusion starts when the desire arises within you to find another way to live. Somewhere in your mind, the recognition has arisen that life as you have lived it, is without meaning or purpose. The idea of carrying on as you have been doing, fills you with despair. And so you begin to question, slowly at first and then with increasing dedication. The call of the Self, unceasing since time began, is being heard again somewhere in your mind. The spell has been broken, not completely yet, but cracks are beginning to appear in the edifice of the ego’s thought system. Little by little, the Light begins to shine through the cracks and illuminate the darkness. Now there is hope, for you are beginning to see, to sense perhaps, there is another way to think and understand and live.
At this time, it is very important, extremely important, to respond to this opening in your mind, and begin taking the first steps of the journey homeward. Do not let this insight, this feeling, this recognition, still dim perhaps but real nevertheless, slip away. Do not let it simply drop from your mind, and fall back into despair and hopelessness. This is the time to ask for help, to begin a commitment to a spiritual teaching and discipline. An undisciplined mind is at the mercy of all its past associations, judgements, likes, dislikes, habits, and impulses. A mind controlled by its past is not free. The journey of spiritual awakening, of return to Wholeness and Oneness, is also the journey to freedom. Only a mind that knows itself as it is, as Wholeness, can be free.
When once the journey back begins, the end is certain. You may take your time, stretch it out as long as you wish, even wander off a little while, yet the Voice for God will always call you back, and It will be heard. The purpose of this teaching is to save you time. Once the goal is recognized and the course is set, there is no reason to dally here, to waste time. All those in time are subject to suffering and death. To free yourself from the bonds of space and time, you must realize your true nature as the Self, the Christ. As Truth Itself, you are beyond time, yet the process of awakening takes place in time. Time must be used, and used well, to bring you to its ending.
The Holy Spirit will guide you through the maze of time. He will use everything that happens to point you beyond it. There is nothing in your life or mind He cannot use by reinterpreting what you have made. All things are lessons He can help you learn, and you can become a consistent learner under His guidance. To learn consistently, you must let Him show you the common elements in all situations and circumstances, that you may recognize and see truly. Do not let yourself be fooled by appearances, by form. What is important is what the form conceals: the content. To this you must respond, and respond rightly. The Holy Spirit teaches you the right response in every circumstance, and this will set you free in time.
Under the ego’s guidance, all things are used to keep you in bondage to fear. Separation is perpetuated and no escape is possible. Whenever you react to anyone or anything as an ego, you have introduced fear. It cannot be otherwise for the ego represents fear. Its entire thought system is constructed of fear and guilt, and maintained by them. No peace of mind is possible when fear is your constant companion.
The choice given you, no matter how it may look, is always between fear and Love. Choice is easy once you recognize the only two alternatives, and are able to see clearly the difference between them. Who would choose fear over Love? Yet this is what you do over and over because of the confusion in your mind. The ego has taught you that fear is Love, and Love is fear, for this is what it believes. You need not believe such insanity unless you choose to do so. The power to choose is the way out of prison, if you learn to exercise it consciously and understand truly just what it is you are choosing each time and what the consequences are.
What is the Self? It is Spirit, the Essence, the Truth of all that is; It is pure Being, pure Awareness or Mind, Bliss, joy, peace, Love, happiness. The Self is the Reality, of Which and as Which, you exist. It is God’s One Creation, the Christ, with Which He is forever One; The Self is His Extension, His Joy and Completion. The Self is what you are, in every true sense of the word. It is what you lost when you separated yourself from God, for the Self cannot be separate from God.
In separation was your Self lost to you, not in fact, but It was banished from your awareness, replaced by a dream of separation, of form and difference, in which you live in isolation as a body, destined to suffer and die. God’s Holy Son became a frail creature, beset by limitation, at the mercy of a world he could not control. Such is the reality you have chosen for yourself, not in truth but in dreams. Yet dreams can end when the dreamer so decides, for he can withdraw his belief in them at any time. Until he does so, they will continue, and his little life will be marked by pain, suffering, and death.
This is not your Father’s Will for you, and there is no Will but God’s. Your Will is God’s Will when you are being what you are in Truth. In dreams you can seem to have a will apart, a will that opposes the Will of God; through that belief comes the world you see, and all the misery in it. If you but knew that your Father wills only perfect happiness, peace, and joy for you forever, you would rush back into His welcoming Arms, and never again would you feel pain or sorrow. And all of this world you thought you made would disappear from your Holy Mind.
If you would have the Truth return and set you free, you must face the fear of Truth, of God, that lies buried deep in your unconscious mind. All fear in your mind, whether conscious or unconscious, distorts your thinking, feeling, and perceiving, and casts its dark shadow across your entire life. The lifting of this dark shadow permits happiness to return and take its place.
Fear is something you have made, and by so doing you have cast out Love. Without Love, is life dull and joyless, and its meaning will elude you. Only Love gives life meaning, for Love is life. A life without Love is no life at all, although you have tried very hard to make a life in which Love has been replaced with a pale and meaningless substitute. In the human mind, love is reserved for “special” relationships. These relationships are esteemed and protected above all else. Yet, if the object of this “special love” does not meet expectations, love is withdrawn and another is found to take its place.
Love does not come and go; It is not arbitrarily given and then withdrawn. Such is not Love, but exchange, a bargain made between separate bodies in which each tries to get much and give little. “Special” relationships are not based on Love but on fear; they keep guilt and fear alive in your experience and guarantee Love’s absence. Do not make of Love a bargain based on maintaining belief in separation. For if you do, you will not understand Love’s meaning, and you will not know Love.
Love’s purpose is to create like Itself. Its nature is to extend forever and thus continually increase. Love cannot be limited or bound in any way. To do so is to drive It from your mind, leaving your mind empty and lifeless. This world is the consequence of replacing Love with fear. Happiness and joy disappeared also, for they are part of Love. If you were to let go your resistance to Love, and allow Its Presence in your mind once again, you would be freed at once of the bondage to fear and guilt, for they cannot go where Love is.
There is no way to love partially. Love is all encompassing, all inclusive, without exceptions. If you would know Love again, and in this knowing be set free, you must be willing to give to all without exception. Love gives, and freely, to all without holding back. To hold back is to deny Love’s nature and so to lose It. If you would have Love, you must give It, for by giving you will receive. To give and to receive are One; this the law that governs all giving. To refuse to give is to make receiving impossible.
Whenever you give Love to anyone or anything, you are giving It to all. The nature of Love, when readmitted to this world, is to give Itself to all. Love will radiate from you if you let It, and everywhere you go Its blessings go with you. You need only accept Love as It is. To do that is to renounce everything in your mind that would deny or attack Love’s Presence. All attack thoughts, all defenses, all belief in sin and guilt, must be given up and allowed to leave your Holy Mind forever, if you would know Love again. God is Love, and in your Creation, He gave you everything that He is. You are Love Itself; in the acceptance of this fact are you healed and your mind set free to return to God.
To receive the Truth, you must be willing to give what you have been given, to see It everywhere. In the willingness to share, to give, you are made ready for Truth’s return. Only a mind purified of falsity can recognize Truth and welcome It. In this recognition, are you ready to return to the Kingdom. The Kingdom is the state of Truth in which you abide in God, at One with all his Creation.
Now is the only time there is. The present is independent of the sequencing which you impose on time; it is not limited by time unless you impose limits upon it. Now is where you meet God, for He is always present. In the present, the Truth reveals Itself as your Mind, and only then can your mind live again as Truth. Whatever you may do, whatever you may believe, has no meaning unless it arises from the Truth of your Mind. All else, whatever it may be, is the continuation of the meaningless patterning of the ego.
As long as the past continues to dominate your mind, the present cannot be revealed to you. In the present you live, breathe, and have your Being. You learn and transform only in the present. To fully enter and abide in the present, the past must be released, forgotten, even for a little while. The present blossoms in a mind that is empty, receptive, and quiet. Like Truth, it cannot come until the mind makes room for it and meets its conditions.
When you are constantly busy in your mind, reliving the past or projecting a future, the present is covered up by the constant flow of thoughts and images, none of which have their origin in the now. Truth enters a quiet mind in which the meaningless activity of constant thought has ceased, and stillness prevails. Truth will never force Its entry but can only respond to sincere invitation. When the continuous busyness of mind and body characterizes your life, Truth is not welcome and will be missing from your experience.
The only thing you need do for Truth to return to your awareness, is be willing to receive It. This is not as simple as it sounds for your mind is split into many parts, and contains conflicting wishes, desires, and even goals. Your mind must be integrated in its entirety, inner conflict resolved, and a condition of, at least, relative peace restored. To attain this integration and stability in which willingness can meaningfully develop, is the goal of spiritual practice.
If your mind were simple and direct, like the Truth, time would not be needed. In how many is this the case? For most, the healing of the mind, the return to Wholeness and Unity, is a process that unfolds in time, as the false thought system of the ego is gradually undone. Dedication, commitment, perseverance, and the constant exercise of willingness are needed to undo all that is false, and let it be replaced by Truth only. Only what is true, what was given in your Creation, is worthy to occupy the Mind that God created One.
Separation is an attempt to leave behind what is true, to drive it from the mind, and replace it with what is unstable and unworthy of you as God’s Creation. You will never be satisfied with what is false and untrustworthy. Only in dreams can illusion seem to take the place of Truth; yet all it has ever brought you was conflict, fear, loss, pain, suffering, and death. When you truly begin to realize this fact, to face it squarely without denial, the buried fear and pain in your mind begin to rise to awareness, and you are, with the help of the Holy Spirit, able to heal and release them at last. Until such deep healing takes place, you cannot recover the freedom that is intrinsic to Mind, and Love cannot bless you and take you Home.
There is within every mind, no matter how lost in the darkness of separation, a small voice that cries out unceasingly for its Home in God. Drowned out by the noise of the world and the continuous stream of egoic thoughts, feelings, desires, and impulses, it waits alone and forlorn for you to hear it and respond.
If you would know your Father again, and your Self, you must devote yourself to the task. It is a tribute to the power of mind to decide that you have decided against being what you are in Truth, and experience you are what you are not in Its place. You can just as well, and with far happier results, decide against being what you are not, and choose again to be the Self. You must learn to make this consistent choice in place of the ego-determined choices that have controlled your mind, and made your Self a stranger to you.
What could be stranger than not to know the Self you are, and play at being something else instead? Eventually everyone will tire of this masquerade, this play of being what you are not, and take off the mask that hides the face of Christ. That day can come sooner rather than later if you truly want it. Why delay and cause yourself much needless suffering?
You are writing the story of your life as you go along. You think things just happen to you over which you have no control. Yet nothing happens that you do not ask for, and nothing is done to you without your consent. The picture you would maintain of an external world of separate objects and shadowy figures, each with its own existence apart from all others, is a fiction constructed in your mind. The consequences of the ideas you want to be true are projected outward, and looked upon through the body’s eyes, as if they were not of your making. They appear to make a world in which you find yourself, and “prove” separation real, Unity impossible, and defense necessary as a “sane” response to the threats you see all around you. The part you play in the making of the world is hidden from awareness, and thus you seem to be the effect of the world you see, and not its cause. If you were its effect, you would be lost indeed, forever helpless. As its cause however, you can change your mind, and the world you see will change accordingly. Nothing holds you in the world of battle but your own decision. To think otherwise is folly.
You can leave the world of illusion any time you choose, but this choice must be total. To choose rightly, you must become aware of your many attachments to the things and pleasures of this world, including the self, the bodily identity you hold so dear. Ultimately must everything you value here be given up, for there is no room for Truth in your mind as long as illusion is cherished in any form. To cling to one illusion is to keep them all, for illusion, like Truth, is total, and never do they meet. No compromise is possible here, although you will try a thousand times, and then a thousand more. When all compromise has been exhausted and given up, you will be ready for Truth’s return.
Forgiveness is the refusal to compromise Truth no matter what the appearance. Your brother is guiltless, innocent. Like you, he always has been and always will be, for so were you created, and as you were created, you remain for all Eternity. This does not change in time where God’s Son appears to be a body, capable of attack. You are not a body, but remain as you were created by God. No matter what the body appears to do, is this true.
The mind of forgiveness remembers the Truth that his brother is, and overlooks the body and its deeds. There is nothing to forgive for all that seems to happen, the attack and the injury done, is but a dream, the idle play of illusion. You cannot attack, and you cannot be attacked. Nothing real can be affected in any way by your dreaming. Forgiveness merely acknowledges what is true, everywhere and always.
Thus is forgiveness the antidote to the belief in sin and guilt. It overlooks all illusion, no matter what the form, and sees instead the Truth that is not contained within a body. Without forgiveness, are sin and death real, and you will not escape the effects of this sad belief. The choice, as always, is yours to make, and what you choose will rule your life. Whenever you prefer illusion to Truth, will sadness be your lot, and life will be a joyless affair. Decide for Truth, and each time you do so, will bring you one step closer to Heaven and the release from all pain and limitation.
Forgiveness too is illusion, but it is the illusion that replaces all others. Unlike other illusions, forgiveness does not perpetuate illusion, but gently brings them all into itself, until only Love remains. As it does so, is the mind healed and returned to Wholeness. Forgiveness is an expression of the highest Love as reflected on earth; under its gentle gaze is separation healed and the mind brought closer to Heaven. More than that it cannot do, but that is enough. Your Father will do the rest.
What are the results of your thinking? The experiences of your life, its conditions and circumstances, follow directly and are determined by your habitual thoughts and beliefs. The world you see and experience is their expression, reflecting back to you what you believe is true, and what you want to see. The world that seems to arise all about you, is not independent of your thoughts. Thought makes this world and thought maintains it. Trying to change the world is bound to fail, for it is but an effect. Rather, change your mind about the world, about its purpose, and you will see differently.
The world cannot but reflect what you want to see. If you want to see Truth reflected there, you must allow the Holy Spirit to give the world His purpose. He does this in your mind, and your perception will change accordingly. If your aim is to prove separation real, and sin, guilt, and fear, part of that reality, then this is what you will see. If you want to see the Word of God written across the world and Heaven reflected there, so will your vision be. Behind every apparent form, Truth waits to greet you.
The Divine Light shines forth from everything that lives, but you must be willing to see It. The Holy Spirit holds spiritual vision, the Vision of Christ, for you until you are ready to use It, and will give It to you as soon as you let him. When the mind has been sufficiently purified, true Vision will be yours. The purpose of spiritual vision is to show forth the Light that is in you and in your brother. The vision of this Light, the unmistakable seeing, is a tangible demonstration of the existence of the spiritual within you and all things. In that demonstration is the Unity of you and your brother made obvious, and separation proved false. The Light in you is the same Light you see in your brother, and as It joins you together beyond the body, are you blessed as One.
Spiritual vision takes perception beyond the “seeing” of the body’s eyes, and shows you Truth’s reflection in the dream. The Vision of Christ is still illusion, for all states of perception must be illusory. Yet is It a unified perception, Whose Wholeness is like unto the Unity of direct knowledge that is the Kingdom of God. In the mirror of Christ’s Vision is Truth reflected, and are you brought close enough that It can flow across the little gap between perception and the knowledge of Truth, and restore you to Heaven. When this occurs, is the journey through time brought to a close, as there is no more need for a body or a world. This will happen of itself when you are ready. Until then, you must maintain the commitment to Truth and the spiritual discipline and practice that heal the mind and restore it to Wholeness.
Whatever you choose to believe is then true for you. You will believe what you want to believe, what you want to be true. Argument and logic may be used to prove it true, and so apparently convince yourself, but your mind has already decided on the outcome it wants. The desire to have it be true, lies behind all belief systems. This is never in question. There is however, an important question that must be asked, and answered. Do you want to believe what is true because It is Truth Itself, beyond doubt, argument, uncertain logic, or human desire? Do you want to believe what is true, in and of Itself, whether believed in or not?
The Truth is the Truth because It’s true. That is all that can be said about It. The Truth is beyond clever arguments for or against, beyond logic and so called “facts,” beyond all human thinking, believing, perceiving, and desire. The Truth was created by God Who is Truth and the Source of all that is true. There is nothing more that can be meaningfully said about It. The Truth is the Truth because It’s true, and anything that is not Truth is not true. This follows from the first statement and completes it. What is true is true, and what is not true is not true. This may seem too obvious to need be stated, but it is the obvious, direct, and simple that is lost or obscured by the complexity and conflict that cloud the human mind.
Truth is direct, simple, and singular or One. If this were grasped directly and understood, there would be no need for the teaching of concepts and ideas. For how many is this true? For most is the conceptual teaching necessary until the end of learning is attained. After this, concepts fall away, for Truth will return to claim Its own. Until then is conceptual understanding needed, although its importance should not be overemphasized. Indeed, real understanding of the concepts presented in authentic spiritual teachings, such as A Course in Miracles, comes only through direct experience of the ideas themselves. The true ideas presented in the Course, represent real experience, direct experience, that is not simply mentation or thinking. Conceptual understanding is just a step that will help bring you to the point where experience and direct seeing, or insight, will take over.
The aim of spiritual practice is to bring you to the place where you go beyond the mind as you know it, and enter the realm of spiritual experience. Even there however, the need for spiritual focus and practice continues until the mind is completely healed, and restored to its natural state of resting in God.
Spiritual practice itself can be said to have two parts or two legs on which it stands. These two parts complement and support each other, and are both necessary for awakening. The workbook for A Course in Miracles illustrates these two factors clearly.
First is the practice that is done in quietness and solitude at special times during the day. This can be simple or more abstract contemplation on key ideas; reading the teaching for the purpose of further understanding; special practice or focus on forgiving, on seeing the Light, or other related practice; or retreating into quietness and stillness beyond the “normal” activity of the mind, often called meditation. During these special times, your mind is focused exclusively on the practice, without the demands or distractions of everyday life, and this allows an in depth focus on and experience of the teaching. This is invaluable, and the state of mind thus attained can be brought into your daily life. This practice helps you to establish, remember, and stabilize the constant application of the teaching.
The second part of spiritual practice is the constant remembering of your true purpose, to awaken to the Truth of what you are. This must go on constantly throughout the day, even into sleep. Even if not constant, you must as often, as consistently as you can, remember the Truth, be aware of your choosing, and side with Truth as often as possible.
Your mind is constantly active, constantly thinking, constantly choosing, and is ruled by its past habits, tendencies, and experiences. Unless corrected it will simply repeat the past and reinforce the hold the past has on the present. You must continually correct your mind in the present by being aware of its activity, and consciously choosing what is true, again and again, with the help of the Holy Spirit. This constant correction is fundamental and absolutely necessary.
The spiritual process, the process of undoing, of correcting your mind, and returning it to its true condition, must be a constant antidote or counter action to the habitual, false activity of the ego mind. Mind must be corrected moment to moment, for it is always active and always choosing. While it is left to do what it has always done, it will choose illusion until you decide otherwise; and every false choice will strengthen the bonds that have held you prisoner for so long.
Despite your imprisonment, there is still one freedom left to you, the freedom to choose, but you must exercise this freedom consciously. You cannot allow the past to go on choosing for you, if you want a different future. The past is over and gone, and never did it bring you anything but uncertainty and loss. This is the ego’s gift to you: pain disguised as pleasure, loss as gain, and death as life. Do not continue down the well-worn path to oblivion, for you have been long enough in hell. Lift your gaze and look upon Heaven. It waits on your return for It is not complete without you. Your mind is yours to rule and no one can take that responsibility from you, not God Himself. Take responsibility back from the ego, and direct your mind towards Truth.
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