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From the Christ Mind

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Chapter Seven

Purpose and the Ego

The ego’s purpose is always to keep you busy trying to solve problems that have no solution on the level in which they appear. Its service as a guide to action will bring about predictable results no matter what your problems appear to be. No problem will be truly solved; it will simply appear again in a different form. The form changes, shifting first one way then another, but the content never changes, being always the same regardless of form. Illusion is the content and the form of every problem, every lack, every conflict or threat. Nothing you see before you is real, nor can the problems of this world be resolved on the level of illusion.

All the seeming problems of the world you see before you simply mask the one and only problem you have: separation from God. All others are but different forms of this one problem. You have been learning to look past form that you may see content. Be willing to have the Holy Spirit show you the content behind the form every time you must make a choice. Only then can you be sure of choosing rightly.

Your Father knows what you need at all times and in all places, and His one Answer suffices. You must use His Answer, staying in touch with It throughout the day. You cannot go wrong if you will turn over decision making to the One Whose function it is. Your decisions have not saved you from misery and suffering no matter how hard you have tried to avoid them.

To do what must be done to bring you beyond the suffering inherent in separation, requires the help that is given from beyond separation. It cannot be given however, unless you choose to ask for it and receive it. Your active willingness is required, for you do not need help once or twice a day or occasionally but constantly. Your mind is always active and always choosing illusion or Truth with everything you think, say, or do. Decision making must become consistent, choosing Truth over illusion repeatedly as you go through your day, if you are to escape the madness of the world you have made. To respond effectively to the challenges and conditions you face, requires clarity of perception and understanding, and commitment to your single purpose. And you must surrender, ask for help, receive it as it comes, and act upon it.

Your life can be dedicated to one of two purposes: to live out an existence based on separation or to awaken to the Self and leave separation behind. If you choose to follow the way of separation, to live identified as a body in a world of many separate bodies, you will be the slave of time and human destiny. There is no way to realize freedom or to find lasting happiness while you are choosing a life of slavery to habit, tendencies, fear, and ignorance. A willing slave is not free nor does he want freedom.

Freedom requires that you take responsibility for your life in every way. In order to attain the state of freedom, you must recognize that you are in a state of self-imposed bondage. You, and only you, are responsible for the state you are in and the conditions under which you live, however that looks. Through your past decisions, you have put yourself there, and only you can decide to change your life. If you would go in a new direction, you must be willing to honestly examine where you are, and open your mind to a new possibility.

The Way Back

Now is the time to begin anew. Now is the time, only now. You never wanted what the world seems to offer. Its meaningless rewards and empty experiences have attracted you for a little while but now you see them for what they really are. Their meaningless wrappings disguise their content. Death is all you have ever found here. Every experience has been but the prelude to death. Can anything, no matter how attractive the wrappings, mask the death it offers you unless you wish it so?

You have been complicit in your own destruction, and now the time for healing is here. Do not hesitate. Your brother holds out his hand for he too needs the healing you will both give and receive. Now is the time to decide for Truth. Do not wait any longer. The world is suffering from the heavy burden of guilt you have laid upon it. Your brothers are waiting for you to lead them out of hell for you cannot leave here alone. You take them with you or you stay in hell together.

The way back seems to be long and arduous with obstacles on every side. Yet are the obstacles in your mind only. They will be resolved one by one or all at once as you choose. Your Friend goes with you every step of the way, sent by God to smooth the way and help you remove everything that obstructs your path. Your Friend will never desert you; see that you do not desert Him. If you do, He will merely wait until you come to your senses. He has always been with you, waiting for you to turn to Him, to ask for His help. There is nothing you do but will benefit by including Him. Every decision you make without the Holy Spirit will postpone your homecoming. Do not delay. This is all you need do: ask for help, receive the answer, accept the help, and do what you are asked. Nothing more and nothing less.

Whenever you think there is nothing more to do, think again. As long as you are in the world, the realm of perception, the journey is not over, the task is not completed. While you are here, you must always aim for the stars; the world is not your home. Never forget from where you come. Your responsibility is to bring the Light of Heaven and the Love of God into the darkness of this world. The healing you receive, you will bring to all your brothers, for you are never healed alone. Healing is for all; each healed mind will offer what it has been given to all. Thus is a chain of Atonement forged link by link until all who live in darkness have been reunited with the Christ within. Nothing else that you do even remotely compares with returning to Truth and bringing your brothers with you. All Creation rejoices every time God’s Holy Son returns to Heaven.

No Reason to Fear

There is no price to pay for salvation. Salvation is not something that is bargained for in the manner of the ego, with you deciding its worth and what you are willing to give in return. Salvation’s worth cannot be measured from the standpoint of fear and separation, for it comes from beyond the mind of illusion. Its purpose is to free you from the grip of fear and the ignorance of your true nature that have dominated your mind for so long.

The Holy Spirit brings the gift of salvation, given Him by God, and helps you receive and accept it that you may then offer this gift to your brothers. Like all of God’s gifts, salvation is for all; therein is its meaning. When you accept it for yourself, you are accepting it for all. Its meaning then becomes your meaning as you realize that everyone is you. Whatever you do, wherever you go, you are always and only meeting yourself.

There is never any reason to complain or be afraid. You cannot be unfairly treated or threatened in any way. To believe you can is to live in fear and a constant sense of grievance. Let the Holy Spirit teach you there is no reason to fear; no one is attacking you. Your belief in the reality of attack is the source of the fear and guilt that dominates your mind. The Holy Spirit will teach you that you are not guilty and fear is never justified. And He will demonstrate, if you follow His guidance, that you can live from the perspective of Love and forgiveness which will heal the guilt in your mind and free you from fear. Do not let unconscious resistance prevent you from asking for help and gladly receiving it that you maybe free.

Whenever you think you are alone and in danger, remember Who walks with you. The only limits on the help He can give are established by you. The Holy Spirit’s ability to help is unlimited and available for the asking. You must ask and listen with an open mind, receive what is given, and respond as guided. His help is given always but unless you do your part, you cannot use it. Salvation requires your cooperation without which very little can be done. As God’s gift, it does not require your efforts to be what it is, yet does it require your effort to be received. Salvation is freely given and must be freely received.

The reason life as a human being seems so difficult is because of the belief in, and the perception that follows, of a world in which you are alone and separate from everything you see. To walk alone and friendless through an uncaring wasteland seems to be your life. Friends you may have, but never can you trust them wholly, for each has his own interest which he will pursue at the expense of all others. In such a world there is nothing to do but protect yourself from the dangers that press in on you from every side, and build a life for yourself by seizing what you need, even if you must tear it from the grasp of your brother.

How can such a life be anything other than difficult, sad, and lonely, marked by suffering and loss, haunted by fear? You do not realize it is your mind that has made the apparent world you see and given it its characteristics. Through your lack of understanding, your confusion of cause and effect, the world seems to have power over you. Thus is life seemingly lived at the mercy of forces and events that are beyond your control and indifferent to your fate. Yet nothing is further from the Truth.

Meaning and Purpose

You have given everything you see the meaning it has for you. The meaning you give determines your response to it and its effect on you. Behind the appearance of separation is your desire to have it so; therein arises its seeming effect on you. The world you see has the power over you that you gave it, nothing more. Withdraw the desire to believe it real, and its power will vanish. Your eyes will continue to see the forms of separation, but your mind will see the Light and Love just beyond form. Through that perception, you are restored to the Unity beyond all form. Abide in that wholly purified perception, and the world will affect you not.

Now you can see the real purpose of the world: to keep God away. It was made as a place where God is absent; where you could hide from Him forever. It is not your Father’s Will that you be separate from Him, and His Will is already perfectly accomplished. The journey you seem to make back to God is just your dream that you are separate still. With the help of the Holy Spirit, it becomes a happy dream, a dream of remembering, a dream of awakening. You need not suffer, though a suffering world appears all around you, if you abide in the heart of Love. Rest in the Self, give all to all, and you will be free.

To all who are sent to you, offer help. Give them what you have been given. There are no random occurrences in God’s plan of salvation. Each Teacher of God helps those who come seeking healing. Those who come need your help, the help you alone can give them. The Holy Spirit uses the Teachers of God to deliver His message to those yet unable to receive it from Him. They in turn become ready and willing to work with Him, and join their efforts with those of their brothers. The ranks of God’s Teachers continue to grow as long as time exists. When all have heard God’s Call and responded, time will be over, quietly disappearing into eternity.

While you are here, you must continue to help the brothers who need you as much as you can. All that you give to them, you will also receive. Heaven is for all; you do not enter its gates alone. Everyone goes with you; that is what Heaven is: a state of Unity absolute in which all are included. To recognize your brother as yourself is the condition that leads back to the Kingdom. When this realization becomes well established in your mind, you will know your Father again and Love will take you home.

The purpose of all you see is to remind you of God. If you see everything with a unified mind, with the vision of Christ, you will realize that all is Light, all is Love. In that you are included, leaving you no choice but to embrace what is. To embrace what truly is means to let go all else, all that does not reflect or represent Truth. In so doing, you will learn that nothing else exists except as a dreamlike appearance that is not really there. Do not doubt the truth of what you see directly with the vision of Christ. That alone is true seeing.

The Vision of Christ

The body’s eyes will always show you the witnesses to separation. That is their purpose, given them by the mind that wished separation real. Perception was made to be the means of proving your substitute for Reality is real and capable of taking its place. This could not happen in truth, but in dreams it seems possible to accomplish the impossible. The Holy Spirit will show you that what has been your reality for so long is impossible. The Holy Spirit will show you that what has been your reality for so long is simply a case of mistaken identity. You have taken yourself to be a body, subject to pain and death, and have believed what is not true, now or ever. You can just as easily believe what is true, but first you must be willing to accept that you have been mistaken about the nature of Reality. This acceptance, in practice, is the letting go of everything you thought you knew. You know nothing. Remember this constantly; it will serve you well.

All that you are required to do is to let go the investment in what is not real, that the Truth it obscures may return to awareness and become your experience. The effective undoing of your mind is an emptying of what now fills it so that perception may be purified. Perception, cleansed of its unconscious, fragmentary way of seeing, becomes capable of a wholly unified vision. This vision will show you the Light in your brothers, and the Love and beauty that surrounds you.

Christ’s vision makes no use of the body’s eyes whose purpose is to confirm separation, but proceeds directly from the mind guided by the Holy Spirit. True vision must come from a state of mind in which Truth is not excluded but welcomed. There is ultimately nothing that needs be done but to make the mind ready to receive the Truth from which the mind arises. The Truth will return when you truly desire It, and cease all activity that obstructs Its coming. Do not let what you do not know escape your notice. Your only task is to let your mind be made ready to recognize and welcome Truth when It comes. When is known only by the Holy Spirit; He will not hesitate to return you to the awareness of Truth when you are ready. Till then, wait patiently, secure in the certainty that God’s Will is done.

To your mind and heart will come the knowledge that you forgot so long ago. It has been waiting, kept for you by your Guide and Teacher. Never has it left you nor have you forgotten entirely who you are. The memory awaits, hidden deep in your mind, for the readiness to let knowledge return. Awakening is the return, the remembering of the full consciousness of the Self you are now and have always been. In Truth, awakening is not a change at all. Yet in dreams is it experienced as the transformation of your mind, of your experience of yourself and the world.

The Great Plan

To all who come to you, you must give everything that you may receive everything. This receiving is actually a remembering, a revealing of what is already yours. Never have you had less than everything; you are everything. The purpose of your giving is twofold. By giving everything to your brother, you are acknowledging your brother’s interest and yours are the same. This is an active recognition of Oneness. And by so giving, the memory of God’s gifts returns to awareness. By your giving them away you accept His gifts as yours, and in the giving you accept their purpose. The purpose of all that God has given you is to be shared. God’s gifts are for all, given to everything created in its creation. Through giving is it revealed that you have everything and you are everything. What you are, you have, and what you have is what you are.

To serve the Great Plan, you must serve all those for whom It is intended. To love God is to love His Creation. Love naturally gives Itself to all; that is how It returns to every mind. Each mind in which the flame of Love is burning brightly, leans close to another and helps kindle a new flame. Love, like fear, is contagious, and the presence of Love will grow; in Its kindly light all darkness and fear will disappear forever. You are meant to be the embodiment of Love, that you may bring Love to all who inhabit the world meant to be the place where fear rules and Love is denied. Who else but you can be the Savior of the world? Who else is there? Until you accept your part in the Great Plan of Salvation, It is not complete.

Would you serve your Father, the Creator of all that truly is, or would you serve the ego, the harsh ruler of an imaginary land where pitiful creatures come to die? If you could but see what you have lost, what you are choosing in its place and the consequences of that fateful decision, you would waste no more time wandering about in dreams, imagining you are what you are not. You would turn to your Creator, embrace His plan for salvation, and become once again what you have always been, the Christ. Because your mind lacks the clarity to perceive so clearly, it is necessary to teach you the difference between where you think and experience yourself to be, and where you truly are and will be again when the mind has been made ready to let the memory of God return to awareness.

Willingness

What is needed always is the willingness to act in the moment, to do what needs be done. In order for this willingness to be meaningfully exercised, you must be aware of the activity of your mind, that you may clearly perceive the choice presented you. Willingness goes hand in hand with the practicing of self awareness, the remembering to be present as you go about your day. It is extremely important to be conscious of the activity of your mind as it takes place in your life in the form of a continuous or near continuous stream of thoughts, images, feelings, emotions, and responses to outward conditions. Without this awareness, the willingness to choose Truth over illusion cannot be brought into play consistently. Through the consistent choice of Truth, the mind is quickly and skillfully undone. In fact, the willingness to be vigilant even every moment, to be constantly present in your mind, is necessary for your willingness to choose Truth to have a chance to do so.

Willingness itself will grow under the Holy Spirit’s tutelage until it includes your entire life and all that you think, feel, and do. Willingness is the single requirement you must supply to the undertaking of the process of awakening to and as the Self. The Holy Spirit will provide everything else that is needed, and will supplement your little willingness with His.

You must learn to accept willingness in all its forms: the willingness to surrender, to turn it over, the willingness to let go all you thought you knew. Thus do you let you mind be undone. You must be willing to be continuously vigilant for Truth and against the ego. And you must be willing to let go all investment in the world of separation and all it seems to offer. Ultimately you must be willing to let go all fear and give welcome to Love that it may return and transform your life. In all these ways, these aspects of your life and mind, must willingness be brought to bear until all of your mind is healed, and all of its hidden, dark corners opened to the Light. Nothing must remain to mar the purity of your holy mind. The constant action of willingness in concert with the help given by the Holy Spirit, is the key that unlocks the door to Heaven. You cannot take Heaven by storm. The attempt to do so will drive It from your awareness. Only willingness, directed by the Voice for God will win the day.

Freedom and the Now

Now is the only time there is, the intersection of time and eternity. You must learn to rest in the now, the timeless present, in stillness and peace. To such a mind does Truth return. The present holds out to you all that you need: Love, freedom, peace and the experience of what you are. Nowhere else will you find the Self, for It does not dwell in the memories of the past nor can It be captured by future imaginings. Always and only is eternity the home of the Self, and eternity is found only in the present.

The now is the abode of freedom. To be surrendered, given over to the timeless present, is freedom. To be the Self is freedom. To be Love is to be forever free. Only when Love has reclaimed your heart and mind will you return to the state of freedom you once knew and will know again. Do not tarry here, wasting time in idle dreams, but rise and hurry to your Father’s House. He is waiting to welcome you Home.

Do you know your Self? Do you remember the glorious Reality that is you? The Christ within is waiting in deepest peace, in the eternal silence that nothing can ever disturb. All the chaos and vain imaginings, the sounds of conflict and the screams of the dying, cannot reach that depth nor disturb Its stillness. The many dreams of a world of bodies, of fear and attack, are but the thinnest of veils floating on the surface of a great ocean of immeasurable vastness and depth. Leave the surface, the superficiality of form and separation; journey deep within where the Light always shines and darkness does not exist.

To Receive God’s Help

Do the necessities of a world of form weigh you down? The experience of separation produces ‘needs’ that must be satisfied: food, clothing, and shelter. Satisfying these needs preoccupies the human mind which seemingly must often struggle just to maintain its bodily existence. And yet, as stated in the bible, your Father knows what you need and will provide it if you let Him. You will lack nothing unless that is your choice. In the dream, conditions change and circumstances alter, but the Holy Spirit’s concern and care for you is limitless and unchangeable.

To receive His help, you must be willing to accept it, and give up your need to control the conditions of your life. The attempt to control life according to your liking makes impossible the receiving of the help you need. When you are actively deciding what to do and what not to do. When it is your judgment you trust and use. When likes, dislikes, and fear determine the decisions you make, you are actively denying the Holy Spirit’s help. To receive the help that is needed and always available, you must make room for it, and a sincere desire to accept what He offers must be present in your mind. As has been so often stated, no help, not even salvation itself, will be forced upon you. Your right to decide will never be infringed upon. You are totally responsible for all choices, all decisions you make. Yet is it impossible to decide alone. All decisions are made in the context of the thought system you trust. Always you choose the guide to whom you turn for help in decision making. And always there are only two guides to choose from: the ego or the Holy Spirit.

Forget not the results you get from following the dictates of the guide you choose. They are different in every way, in every respect. The Holy Spirit will lead you back to God; the ego leads you around in circles that are nowhere and go nowhere. It knows nothing but senses threat everywhere, continually defending and maintaining separation and the sense of specialness that is its chosen refuge. A refuge that reinforces fear and a sense of weakness, is no refuge at all.

God is your strength and refuge. In Him you can trust. He will never let you down; through His Voice you are led safely back to where you are and where you have always been. All danger is recognized as nothing more than foolish imagining; the goal rises constantly before you if you let Him guide your vision. Like a shining city on a hill, your Home calls to you. The Voice for God will never let you down. See that you do not let yourself down by refusing to listen to the voice of reason. It is yourself you betray when you choose the guide who takes you nowhere but to your death. Trust is needed; your life is based on it. Place that trust only where it is warranted. Give it to the One Whose Love for you is unending, the One Whose function it is to deliver you from all fear, pain, and suffering. He will guide you safely through the chaotic maze that is the world you have made, to peace and safety, to your Home in God.

The Ego as Guide

Would you have your cake and eat it too? This is exactly the ego’s position on everything. The ego wants to keep guilt alive, justifying its attack and condemnation, and yet believes guilt can be seen in others and punished without effect on itself. Would you have your brother guilty and escape the effect of your own attack? That is what the ego would have you believe, for it realizes the terrible pressure of guilt in your mind must be relieved. Thus is your guilt projected onto your brother, while you are innocent. To release guilt entirely would deprive the ego of the foundation stone of its thought system and lead to its demise. Without guilt and sin, the entire thought system of separation would collapse, for its justification would vanish.

So is guilt seen everywhere and your attack justified; specialness is defended and upheld. And while you continue this mad strategy of defending yourself by attacking your brother, guilt continues to find its home in your mind, strengthening itself with every attack thought, driving Love and mercy from your awareness. What you need more than anything, you deny yourself, for you cannot deny your brother without depriving yourself. The defense of specialness is always a veiled attack on yourself. This hurts and weakens you; while your remain unaware of what you do and its consequences, you will continue to injure yourself and reinforce the belief in attack as the way to be safe.

Within the great walls you have erected, the ego rules supreme. The walls would keep out danger, keeping you safe from a hostile world. Yet their real purpose is to keep away Love, your only refuge. Love is where your safety lies; the ego will not allow this understanding to reach your mind for it does not know Love, but does recognize threat and protects itself with unceasing vigilance. What the ego would maintain, would continue, is the state of bondage in which you live and the identification with what you are not. When you withdraw this mistaken identification with a body and the sense of being a separate mind or person occupying it, freedom and Love will return and end the ego’s harsh reign.

Nowhere is there safety in this world but in the warm embrace of all encompassing Love. In Love, as Love, you will give unceasingly and thus will you receive unceasingly. To those who give to all without thought of themselves, all is given. Your Father’s Love surrounds you, keeping you safe forever. Let His limitless Love and care operate in your life through the acceptance of the Answer He has given you. The responsibility of the Holy Spirit is to help you in every way needed. He cannot do this if you do not accept his help. This habit, the need to do it ‘your way’, effectively blocks true help from being recognized and received.

Too long have you trusted the ego as your guide though it has led you nowhere. The seeming gifts and pleasures, the shiny trinkets the ego offers, fascinate and hypnotize your mind, completely obscuring the real nature of its gifts. The ego offers you nothingness disguised as somethingness, covered in shiny wrappings that appeal to the eye, to the desire for stimulation. Keeping yourself busy pursuing these attractive phantoms, you fail to notice their insubstantial nature, here one moment, gone the next. Self deception is the fuel that feeds desire. Without the need to pursue what is constantly changing and unreliable, busying yourself with non-essentials, you would quickly see through the facade of appearances and realize the emptiness behind them all.

While the ego is your chosen guide, you will never be free of delusion. The choice to give up self deception is the choice to look elsewhere for guidance. The ego has thrived on the decision to be separate, and has been your identity ever since. Until you decide against separation, you will continue to make this mistake for that is all you know. Now is the time to begin life anew by withdrawing allegiance from what has only hurt you and perpetuated your imprisonment. Turn to the One who teaches the way of freedom and Love, and guides your every step. There is no failure with the Holy Spirit as your guide; no constant search for a fulfillment that is never found. With His help you will recognize your errors, letting them be undone and replaced with true ideas and a unified perception. Your life has been filled with regret; you will not regret placing your mind and life under the Holy Spirit’s care and guidance.

Wherever you go, there is work to be done. Your brothers who languish still in separation need your help; you need them as much as they need you, for you must give in order to receive. Thus does your brother offer you the gift you are looking for.



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