 We continue with chapter 23. Above the battleground, Do not remain in conflict, For there is no war without attack. The fear of God is the fear of life and not of death, Yet he remains the only place of safety. In him is no attack and no illusion in any form stalks heaven. Heaven is wholly true. No difference enters in what is all the same cannot conflict. You are not asked to fight against your wish to murder, But you are asked to realize the form it takes conceals the same intent. And it is this you fear and not the form. What is not love is murder. What is not loving must be an attack. Every illusion is an assault on truth, And every one does violence to the idea of love, Because it seems to be of equal truth. What can be equal to the truth, yet different? Murder and love are incompatible, Yet if they both are true, then must they be the same And indistinguishable from one another? So will they be to those who see God's Son a body, For it is not the body that is like the Son's Creator. And what is lifeless cannot be the Son of life. How can a body be extended to hold the universe? Can it create and be what it creates? And can it offer its creations all that it is and never suffer loss? God does not share His function with a body. He gave the function to create unto His Son because it is His own. It is not sinful to believe the function of the Son is murder, But it is insanity. What is the same can have no different function. Creation is the means for God's extension, And what is His must be His Son's as well. Either the Father and Son are murderers or neither is. Life makes not death creating like itself. The lovely light of your relationship is like the love of God. It cannot yet assume the Holy Function God gave His Son, For your forgiveness of your brother is not complete as yet, And so it cannot be extended to all creation. Each form of murder and attack that still attracts you And that you do not recognize for what it is Limits the healing and the miracles you have the power to extend to all. It does the Holy Spirit understand how to increase your little gifts And make them mighty. Also, He understands how your relationship is raised above the battleground In it no more. This is your part to realize that murder in any form is not your will. The overlooking of the battleground is now your purpose. Be lifted up and from a higher place look down upon it. From there will your perspective be quite different. Here, in the midst of it, it does seem real. Here you have chosen to be part of it. Here murder is your choice. Yet from above, the choice is miracles instead of murder. And the perspective coming from this choice shows you the battle is not real And easily escaped. Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless And it is over when you realize it never was begun. How can a battle be perceived as nothingness when you engage in it? How can the truth of miracles be recognized if murder is your choice? When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind darkened and murderous, remember you can see the battle from above. Even in forms you do not recognize the signs you know. There is a stab of pain, a twinge of guilt, and above all a loss of peace. This you know well. When they occur, leave not your place on high, but quickly choose a miracle instead of murder. And God himself and all the lights of heaven will gently lean to you and hold you up. For you have chosen to remain where he would have you, and no illusion can attack the peace of God together with his son. See no one from the battleground, for there you look on him from nowhere. You have no reference point from where to look, where meaning can be given what you see. For only bodies could attack and murder, and if this is your purpose, then you must be one with them. Only a purpose unifies, and those who share a purpose have a mind as one. The body has no purpose of itself and must be solitary. From below it cannot be surmounted. From above the limits it exerts on those in battle still are gone and not perceived. The body stands between the Father and the heaven he created for his son because it has no purpose. Think what is given those who share their Father's purpose and who know that it is theirs. They want for nothing, sorrow of any kind is inconceivable. Only the light they love is in awareness and only love shines upon them forever. It is their past, their present, and their future, always the same, eternally complete and wholly shared. They know it is impossible their happiness could ever suffer change of any kind. Perhaps you think the battleground can offer something you can win. Can it be anything that offers you a perfect calmness and a sense of love so deep and quiet that no touch of doubt can ever mar your certainty and that will last forever? Those with the strength of God in their awareness could never think of battle. What could they gain but loss of their perfection? For everything fought for on the battleground is of the body. Something it seems to offer or to own. No one who knows that he has everything could seek for limitation nor could he value the body's offerings. The senselessness of conquest is quite apparent from the quiet sphere above the battleground. What can conflict with everything? And what is there that offers less yet could be wanted more? Who with the love of God upholding him could find the choice of miracles or murder hard to make? From the workbook. Lesson 183, I call upon God's name and on my own. God's name is holy but no holier than yours. To call upon his name is but to call upon your own. A father gives his son his name and thus identifies the son with him. His brothers share his name and thus they are united in a bond to which they turn for their identity. Your father's name reminds you who you are even within a world that does not know even though you have not remembered it. God's name cannot be heard without response nor said without an echo in the mind that calls you to remember. Say his name and you invite the angels to surround the ground on which you stand and sing to you as they spread out their wings to keep you safe and shelter you from every worldly thought that would intrude upon your holiness. Repeat God's name and all the world responds by laying down illusions. Every dream the world holds, dear, has suddenly gone by and where it seemed to stand you find a star, a miracle of grace. The sick arise, healed of their sickly thoughts. The blind can see, the deaf can hear, the sorrowful cast off their mourning and the tears of pain are dried as happy laughter comes to bless the world. Repeat the name of God and little names have lost their meaning. No temptation but becomes a nameless and unwanted thing before God's name. Repeat his name and see how easily you will forget the names of all the gods you valued. They have lost the name of God you gave them. They become anonymous and valueless to you. Although before you let the name of God replace their little names, you stood before them worshipfully naming them as gods. Repeat the name of God and call upon yourself whose name is his. Repeat his name and all the tiny nameless things on earth slip into right perspective. Those who call upon the name of God cannot mistake the nameless for the name, nor sin for grace, nor bodies for the Holy Son of God. And should you join a brother as you sit with him in silence and repeat God's name along with him within your mind, you have established there an altar which reaches to God himself and to his son. Practice but this today. Repeat God's name slowly again and still again. Become oblivious to every name but his. Hear nothing else. Let all your thoughts become anchored on this. No other word we use except at the beginning when we say today's idea but once. And then God's name becomes our only thought, our only word, the only thing that occupies our minds, the only wish we have, the only sound with any meaning and the only name of everything that we desire to see, of everything that we would call our own. Thus do we give an invitation which can never be refused and God will come and answer it himself. Think not he hears the little prayers of those who call on him with names of idols cherished by the world. They cannot reach him thus. He cannot hear requests that he be not himself or that his son receive another name than his. Repeat God's name and you acknowledge him as soul creator of reality and you acknowledge also that his son is part of him creating in his name. Sit silently and let his name become the all-encompassing idea that holds your mind completely. Let all thoughts be still except this one and to all other thoughts respond with this and see God's name replace the thousand little names you gave your thoughts. Not realizing that there is one name for all there is and all that there will be. Today you can achieve a state in which you will experience the gift of grace. You can escape all bondage of the world and give the world the same release you found. You can remember what the world forgot and offer it your own remembering. You can accept today the part you play in its salvation and your own as well and both can be accomplished perfectly. Turn to the name of God for your release and it has given you. No prayer but this is necessary for it holds them all within it. Words are insignificant and all requests unneeded when God's son calls on his father's name. His father's thoughts become his own. He makes his claim to all his father gave is getting still and will forever give. He calls on him to let all things he thought he made be nameless now in their place the holy name of God becomes his judgment of their worthlessness. All little things are silent. Little sounds are soundless now. The little things of earth has disappeared. The universe consists of nothing but the Son of God who calls upon his father and his father's voice gives answering his father's holy name. In this eternal still relationship in which communication far transcends all words and yet exceeds in depth and height whatever words could possibly convey is peace eternal. In our father's name we would experience this peace today and in his name it shall be given us. Amen.