 The problems of squaring the circle and carrying pi to infinity are good examples. A more recent ego attempt is particularly noteworthy. The idea of preserving the body by suspension, thus giving it the kind of limited immortality which the ego can tolerate, is among its more recent appeals to the mind. It is noticeable, however, that in all these diversionary tactics the one question which is never asked by those who pursue them is what for? This is the question which you must learn to ask in connection with everything your mind wishes to undertake. What is the purpose? Whatever it is you cannot doubt that it will channelize your efforts automatically. When you make a decision of purpose then you will have made a decision about your future effort, a decision which will remain in effect unless you change a decision. Psychologists are in a good position to realise that the ego is capable of making and accepting as real some very distorted associations. The confusion of sex with aggression and the resulting behaviour which is perceived as the same for both services as an example. This is understandable to the psychologist and does not produce surprise. The lack of surprise, however, is not a sign of understanding. It is a symptom of the psychologist's ability to accept as reasonable or compromise, which is clearly senseless, to attribute it to the mental illness of the patient rather than his own, and to limit his questions about both the patient and himself to the trivial. Such relatively minor confusions of the ego are not among its more profound misassociations. Although they do reflect them, your egos have been blocking the more important questions which your mind should ask. You do not understand a patient while you yourselves are willing to limit the questions you raise about his mind because you are always accepting these limits for yours. This makes you unable to heal him and yourselves, be always unwilling to adopt to any situation which miracle-mindedness is unthinkable. The state in itself is enough to demonstrate that the perception is wrong. The constant state. It cannot be emphasised too often that correcting perception is merely a temporary expedient. It is necessary to do so only because misperception is a block to knowledge, while accurate perception is a stepping stone toward it. The value of right perception lies in the understanding that it is unnecessary. This removes the block entirely. You may ask how this is possible as long as you appear to be living in this world, but once this is a sensible question, it has a sensible answer. You must be careful, however, that you really understand the question, what is the you who are living in this world? Immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever will or ever will be because it implies no change at all. It is not a continuum nor it is understood by being compared to an opposite. Knowledge never involves comparisons. That is its essential difference from everything else the mind can grasp. A little knowledge is not dangerous except to the ego. It senses threat and being unable to realise that a little knowledge is a meaningless phrase since all and a little in this context are the same. The ego decides that since all is impossible, the fear does not lie there. A little, however, is a scarcity concept and this the ego understands well. A little, then, is perceived as the real threat. The essential thing to remember is that the ego does not recognise the real source of its perceived threat and if you associate yourself with the ego, you do not perceive the whole situation as it is. Only your allegiance to it gives the ego any power over you. We have spoken of the ego as if it were a separate thing acting on its own. This was necessary to persuade you that you cannot dismiss it lightly and must realise how much of your thinking is ego directed. We cannot safely let it go at that. However, all you will be regard yourself as necessary conflicted as long as you are here or more properly as long as you believe that you are here. The ego is nothing more than a part of your belief about yourselves. Your other life has continued without interruption and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate. The ratio of repression and dissociation varies with the individual ego illusion but dissociation is always involved or you would not believe you are here. In learning to escape from the illusions you have made, your great depth to each other is something you must never forget. It is exactly the same depth that you owe to me. Whenever you react egotistically toward each other, you are throwing away the graciousness of your indebtedness and the holy perception it would produce. The term holy can be used here because as you learn how much you are indebted to the whole Sonship which includes me, you come as close to knowledge as perception ever can. The gap is then so small that knowledge can easily flow across it and obliterate it forever. You have very little trust in me as yet but it will increase as you turn more and more often to me instead of your egos for guidance. The faults will convince you increasingly that your choice in turning to me is the only same one you can make. No one who has learned from experience or one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disasters needs much conditioning. The ego cannot withstand the conditioning process because the process itself demonstrates that there is another way. Conditioning by rewards has always been more effective than conditioning by pain because pain is an ego illusion and can never induce more than a temporary effect. Rewards of God however immediately recognizes eternal. Since this recognition is made by you and not the ego the recognition itself establishes that you and your ego cannot be identical. You may believe that you have already accepted the difference but you are by no means convinced as yet. The very fact that you are preoccupied with the idea of escaping from the ego shows this. You cannot escape from the ego by humbling it or controlling it or punishing it. Remember that the ego and the soul do not know each other. The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating. Having done this it utilizes repression against all truly natural impulses not because the ego is a separate thing but because you want to believe that you are. The ego is the device for maintaining this belief but it is still only your willingness to use the device that enables it to endure. My trust in you is greater than yours in me at the moment but it will not always be that way. Your mission is very simple. You have been chosen to live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego. I repeat that I do not choose God's channels wrongly. The Holy One shares my trust and always approves my atonement decision because my will is never out of accord with His. This is only because I completed my part in it as a man and can now complete it through other men. My chosen receiving and sending channels cannot fail because I will lend my strength as long as theirs is wanting. I will go with you to the Holy One and through my perception He can bridge the little gap. Your gratitude to each other is the only gift I want. I will bring it to God for you, knowing that to know your brother is to know God. A little knowledge is an all-encompassing thing. If you are grateful to each other, you are grateful to God for what He created. Through your gratitude you can come to know each other and one moment of real recognition makes all men your brothers because they are all of your father. Love does not conquer all things but it does set all things right. Because you are all the kingdom of God, I can lead you back to your own creations what has been dissociated is still there. As you come closer to a brother you do approach me and as you withdraw from him I become distant to you. Your giant step forward was to insist on a collaborative venture. This does not go against a true spirit of meditation. It is inherent in it. Meditation is a collaborative venture with God. It cannot be undertaken successfully by those who disengage themselves from the sonship because they are disengaging themselves from me. God will come to you only as you give him to your brothers. Learn first of them and you will be ready to hear God as you hear them. That is because the function of love is one. How can you teach someone the value of something is deliberately thrown away? He must have thrown away because he did not value it. You can only show him how miserable he is without it and bring it near very slowly so he can learn how his misery lessens as he approaches it. This conditions him to associate his misery with his absence and to associate the opposite of misery with his presence. I am conditioning you to associate misery with the ego and joy with the soul. You have conditioned yourselves the other way around. A far greater reward however will break through any conditioning if it is repeatedly offered whenever the old habit pattern is broken. You are still free to choose but can you hardly want the rewards of the ego and the presence of the rewards of God? Creation and communication. It should be clear by now that while the content of any particular ego-illusion does not matter it is usually more helpful to correct it in a specific context. Ego-illusions are quite specific although they frequently change and although the mind is naturally abstract. The mind nevertheless becomes concrete voluntarily as soon as it splits. However only part of it splits or any part of it is concrete. The concrete part is the same part that believes in the ego because the ego depends on the specific. It is the part that believes your existence means you are separate. Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole without the relationships that imply being. The ego is us against communication except in so far as it is utilized to establish separateness rather than to abolish it. The communication system the ego is based on its own thought system as is everything else it dictates. Its communication is controlled by its need to protect itself and it will disrupt communication when it experiences threat. While this is always so individual egos perceive different kinds of threat which are quite specific in their own judgment. For example although all forms of perceived demands may be classified or judged by the ego as coercive communication which must be disrupted the response of breaking communication will nevertheless be to a specific person or persons. The specificity of the ego thinking then results in a spurious kind of generalization which is really not abstract at all. It will respond in certain specific ways to all stimuli which it perceives as related in contrast to soul reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true and does not respond at all to anything else nor does it make any attempt to establish what is true. It knows that what is true is everything that God created. It is complete and direct communication with every aspect of creation because it is in complete direct communication with its creator. This communication is the will of God. Creation and communication are synonymous. God created every mind by communicating his mind to it thus establishing it forever at his channel for the reception of his mind and will. Since only beings of a like order can truly communicate, his creations naturally communicate with him and like him. This communication is perfectly abstract in that its quality is universal in application and not subject to any judgment, any exception or any alteration. God created you by this and for this so the mind can distort its function but it cannot endow itself with the function it was not given. That is why the mind cannot totally lose the ability to communicate even though it may refuse to utilize it on behalf of being. Existence as well as being rests on communication. Existence however is specific in how, what and with whom communication is such to be worth undertaking. Being is completely without these distinctions. It is the state in which the mind is in communication with everything that is real including the soul. To whatever extent you permit the state to be curtailed you are limiting your sense of your own reality, which becomes total only by your recognizing all reality in the glorious context of its real relationship to you. This is your reality. Do not desecrate it or recall from it. It is your real home, your real temple, and your real self. God who encompasses all beings, nevertheless created beings who have everything individually but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased except by sharing. That is why God Himself created you. Divine abstraction takes joy in application and that is what creation means. How, what and to whom are irreverable because real creation gives everything since it can create only like itself. Remember that in being there is no difference between having and being as there is an existence. In the state of being the mind gives everything always. The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. He has no ego with which to accept such things and no perception with which to judge such offerings. But unless you take your part in the creation His joy is not complete because yours is incomplete. And this He does know. He knows in His own being and the experience of His Son's experience. The constant going out of His love is blocked when His channels are closed and He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully and with Him. God has kept your kingdom for you but He cannot share His joy with you until you know it with your whole mind. Even revelation is not enough because it is communication from God. It is not enough until it is shared. God does not need revelation return to Him which would clearly be impossible because He does not want revelation brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual revelation because His content cannot be expressed and it is intensely personal to the mind which receives it. It can, however, still be returned by that mind through its attitudes to other minds which the knowledge from the revelation brings. God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful. This is impossible without being wholly harmless because the two beliefs coexist. Truly helpful are invulnerable because they are not protecting their egos so that nothing can hurt them. Their helpfulness is their praise of God and He will return their praise of Him because they are like Him. And they can rejoice together. God goes out to them and through them and there is great joy throughout the kingdom. Every mind that is changed adds to this joy with its own individual willingness to share in it. They are truly helpful are God's miracle workers whom I direct until we are all united in the joy of the kingdom. I will direct you to wherever you can be truly helpful and do whoever can follow my guidance through you. True rehabilitation. Every mind which is split needs rehabilitation. The medical orientation to rehabilitation emphasizes the body while the vocational orientation stresses the ego. The team approach generally leads more to confusion than to anything else because it is too often misused as a way of inserting the ego's domination over other egos rather than as a real experiment in the cooperation of minds. Rehabilitation as a movement is an improvement over the overt neglect of those in need of help but it is often little more than a painful attempt on the part of the whole to lead the blind. The ego is likely to fear broken bodies because it cannot tolerate them. The ego cannot tolerate ego weakness either in pivalence because it is afraid of its own weakness as well as the weakness of its chosen home. When it is threatened the ego blocks your natural impulse to help placing you under the strain of divided will. You may then be tempted to withdraw to allow your ego to recover and to gain enough strength to be helpful again on a basis limited enough not to threaten your ego but too limited to give you joy. Those with broken bodies are often looked down by the ego because it is believed that nothing but a perfect body is worthy as its own temple. A mind that recalls from a hurt body is in great need of rehabilitation itself. All symptoms of hurt need true healthfulness and whenever they are met with this the mind that so meets them heals itself. Rehabilitation is an attitude of praising God as he himself knows praise. He offers praise to you and you must offer it to others. The chief handicaps of the clinicians are those whom their egos receive as weakened and damaged. By these evaluations they have weakened and damaged their own healthfulness and have thus set their own rehabilitation back. Rehabilitation is not concerned either with the ego's fight for control or its need to avoid and withdraw. You can do much on behalf of your own. Rehabilitation and that of others. If in a situation calling for healing you think of it this way. I am here only to be truly helpful. I am here to represent Christ who sent me. I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do because he who sent me will direct me. I am content to be wherever he wishes knowing he goes there with me. I will be healed as I let him teach me to heal. Chapter 5 Healing and Wholeness To heal is to make happy. I have told you before to think how many opportunities you have to gladden yourselves and how many you have refused. This is exactly the same as telling you that you have refused to heal us. The light that belongs to you is the light of joy. Radiance is not associated with sorrow. Depression is often contagious although it may affect those who come in contact with it. They do not yield to the influence wholeheartedly but joy calls forth an integrated willingness to share in it and this promotes the mind's natural impasse to respond as one. Those who attempt to heal without being holy joyous themselves call for different kinds of responses at the same time and thus deprive others of the joy of responding wholeheartedly to be wholehearted you must be happy if fear and love cannot coexist and if it is impossibly holy fearful and remain alive then the only possible whole state is out of love. There is no difference between love and joy therefore the only possible whole state is the holy joyous. To heal or to make joyous is therefore the same as to integrate and make one. That is why it makes no difference to what part or by what part of the sonship the healing is done. Every part benefits and benefits equally. You are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anyway. You should want to bless them in return out of gratitude. You do not have to know them individually or they are you. The light is so strong that it radiates throughout the sonship and returns thanks to the Father for radiating His joy upon it. Only God's holy children are worthy to be channels of His beautiful joy because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it. It is impossible for a child of God to love his neighbor except as himself. Healing as joining Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the sonship to rejoice with them and lets God himself go out into them and through them. Only the healed mind can experience revelation with lasting effect because revelation is an experience of pure joy. If you do not choose to be holy joyous your mind cannot have what it does not choose to be. Remember that the soul knows no difference between having and being. The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the soul obeys and therefore honors only the laws of God to Him getting His meaningless and giving His all. Having everything the soul holds everything by giving it and thus creates as the Father created. If you think about it you will see that this kind of thinking is totally alien to having things. Even to the lower mind it is quite comprehensible in connection with ideas. If you share a physical possession you do to write its ownership. If you share an idea however you do not listen it. All of it is still yours although all of it has been given away. Further if the person to whom you give it accepts it says he is here and forces it in your mind. And thus increases it. If you can accept the concept that the world is one of ideas then how can giving and losing be equated? Let us start our process of reawakening with just a few simple concepts. Thoughts increase by being given away. The more who believe in them the stronger they become. Everything is an idea how then it's a possible that giving and losing can be meaningfully associated. This is the invitation to the Holy Spirit. I told you that I could reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you but I can bring him to you only at your own invitation. The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your own right mind. He was also mind. The Bible says may this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus and uses this as a blessing. It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as I thought about it. The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic. He is referred to in the Bible as the healer, the comforter and the guide. He is also described as something separate apart from the father and from the son. I myself said if I go I will send you another comforter and he will abide with you. The Holy Spirit is a difficult concept to grasp precisely because it is symbolic and therefore open to many different interpretations. As a man as one of God's creations my right thing which came from the inspiration which is the Holy Spirit taught me first and foremost that this inspiration is for all. The word no is proper in this context because the Holy Inspiration is so close to knowledge that it calls it forth or better allows it to come. We have spoken before of the higher or the true perception which is so close to truth that God himself can flow across the little gap. Knowledge is always ready to flow everywhere but it cannot oppose therefore you can obstruct it although you can never lose it. The Holy Spirit is a knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with a separation as a protection inspiring the beginning of the Atonement at the same time. Before that there was no need for healing and no one was comfortless. The mind of the Atonement God honored even the miscreations of His children because they had made them but He also blessed them with a way of thinking that they could raise their perceptions until they became so lofty that they could reach almost back to Him. The Holy Spirit is the mind of the Atonement. It represents a state of mind that comes close enough to one mindedness that transfer to it is at last possible. Transfer depends on common elements in the old learning and the new situation to which it is transferred. Perception is not knowledge but it can be transferred to knowledge or crossover into it. It might even be more helpful here to use the literal meaning of carried over since the last step is taken by God. The Holy Spirit, the shared inspiration of all the sonship, induces a kind of perception in which many elements are like those in the kingdom itself. First, its universality is perfectly clear and no one who receives it could ever believe for one instant that sharing it involves anything but gain. Second, it is incapable of attack and is therefore truly open. This means that although it does not engender knowledge, it does not obstruct it in any way. There is a point at which sufficient quantitative changes produce real qualitative differences. The next point requires real understanding because it is the point at which the shift occurs. Finally, it points the way beyond the healing which it brings and leads the mind beyond its own integration into the paths of creation. Healing is not creating, it is reparation. The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed and will be when they have been healed. This alteration of the time sequence should be quite familiar because it is very similar to the shifting time perception which the miracle introduces. The Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracle-mindedness. The will to heal the separation by letting it go. And although you can keep it asleep, you cannot obliterate it. God himself keeps his will alive by transmitting it from his mind to yours as long as there is time. It is partly his and partly yours. The miracle itself is just this fusion of union of will between father and son. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. He is the call to return with which God blessed the mind to be separated sons. This is the vocation of the mind. The mind had no calling until the separation because before that it had only been and would not have understood the call to right thinking. The Holy Spirit was God's answer to the separation. The means by which the Atonement could repair until the whole mind returned to creating. The Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When man made the ego, God placed in him the call to joy. This call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound. That is why you can choose to listen to two voices within you. One you made yourself and that one is not of God, but the other is given you by God, who asks you only to listen to it. The Holy Spirit is in you in a very literal sense. His is the voice that calls you back to where you were before and will be again. The voice for God. It is possible even in this world to hear only that voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned and God's sons are as equal as learners as they are as souls. The voice of the Holy Spirit is the call to Atonement or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole sonship is healed there will be no call but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the sons of God to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy. You are the kingdom of heaven but you have let the belief in darkness into your minds and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is a radiance that you must let banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away and the kingdom of heaven breaks into its own. Before the separation you did not need guidance, you knew as you will know again but as you do not know now. God does not guide because he can share only perfect knowledge. Guidance is evaluative because it implies that there is a right way and also a wrong way. One to be chosen and the other to be avoided by choosing one you give up the other. This is a conflict state. It means that knowledge has been lost because knowledge is sure. God is not in you in a literal sense. You are part of him. When you chose to leave him he gave you a voice to speak for him because he could no longer share his knowledge with you without hindrance. Direct communication was broken because you had made another voice through another will. The Holy Spirit calls you both to remember and to forget. You have chosen to be in a state of opposition in which opposites are possible. As a result there are choices which you must make. In the Holy State the will is free in the sense that its creative power is unlimited but choice itself is meaningless. Freedom to choose is the same power as freedom to create but its application is different. Choosing means divided will. The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. This way is in you because there is also another way. God did not leave his children comfortless even though they chose to leave him. The voice they put in their minds was not the voice of his will for which the Holy Spirit speaks. The call to return is stronger than the call to depart but it speaks that way. The voice of the Holy Spirit does not command because it is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand because it does not control. It does not overcome because it does not attack. It merely reminds. It is compelling only because of what it reminds you of. It brings to your mind the other way remaining quiet even in the midst of the turmoil you have made for yourselves. The voice for God is always quiet because it speaks of peace. Yet peace is stronger than war because it heals. War is division and not increase. No one gains from strife. What profit is a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? That means that if he listens to the wrong voice he has lost sight of his soul. He cannot lose it but he cannot know it. It is therefore lost to him until he chooses right. The Holy Spirit is your guide in choosing. He is the part of your mind which always chooses for God. It is your remaining communication with God which you can interact but cannot destroy. The Holy Spirit is a way in which God's will can be done on earth as this is in heaven. Both heaven and earth are in you because the call of both is in your will and therefore in your mind. The voice for God comes from your own altars to him. These altars are not things. They are devotions. Yet you have other devotions now. Your divided devotion has given you the two voices and you must choose at which altar you will to serve. The call your answer now is an evaluation because it is a decision. The decision itself is very simple. It is made on the basis of which call is worth more to you. My mind will always be like yours because we were created as equal. It was only my decision that gave me all power in heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision for yourself. The will for this decision is the will to share it because the decision itself is the decision to share. It is made by giving and is therefore the one act of mind that resembles true creation. You understand the role of models in the learning process and the importance of the models you value and choose to follow in determining what you will to learn. I am your model for decision. By deciding for God I showed you that this decision can be made and that you can make it. I promise you that the mind that made the decision for me is also in you and that you can let it change you just as it changed me. This mind is unequivocal because it hears only one voice and answers in only one way. You are the light of the world with me. Rest does not come from sleeping but from waking. The Holy Spirit is a call to awake and be glad. The world is very tired because it is the idea of weariness. Our task is the joyous one of waking it to the call for God. Everyone will answer the call of the Holy Spirit or the sonship cannot be as one. What better vocation could there be for any part of the kingdom than to restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole. Hear only this through the Holy Spirit within you and teach your brothers to listen as I am teaching you. When you are tempted by the wrong voice call on me to remind you how to heal by sharing my decision and making it stronger. As we share this goal we increase its power to attract the whole sonship and to bring it back into the oneness in which it was created. Remember that yoke means joined together and burden means message. Let us reconsider the Biblical statement my yoke is easy and my burden light in this way. Let us join together for my messages light. I came into your minds because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact that there is another way or another voice. Having given this invitation to the Holy Spirit I could come to provide the model for how to think. Psychology has become the study of behavior but no one denies the basic law that behavior is a response to motivation and motivation is will. I have enjoyed you to behave as I behaved but we must respond to the same mind to do this. This mind is the Holy Spirit whose will is for God always. He teaches you how to keep me as a model for your thought and to behave like me as a result. The power of our joint motivation is beyond belief but not beyond accomplishment. What we can accomplish together has no limits because the call for God is the call to the unlimited. Child of God my message is for you to hear and give away as you answer the Holy Spirit within you. The guide to salvation, the way to learn to know your brother is by perceiving the Holy Spirit in him. We have already said that the Holy Spirit is a bridge or thought transfer of perception to knowledge. So we can use these terms as if they were related because in his mind they are. The relationship must be in his mind because unless it were the separation between the two ways of thinking would not be open to healing. He is part of the Holy Trinity because his mind is partly yours and also partly God's. This needs clarification not in statements as we have said it before but in the experience. The Holy Spirit is the idea of healing, being thought the idea gains as it is shared. Being the call for God is also the idea of God. Since you are part of God it is also the idea of yourself as well as of all the parts of God. The idea of the Holy Spirit shares the property of other ideas because it follows the laws of the universe of which it is apart. Therefore it is strengthened by being given away. Its thoughts do not have to be conscious to exist. Your brother does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit either in himself or in you for this miracle to occur. Your brother may have dissociated the call for God just as you have. The dissociation is healed in both of you as you become aware of the call of God in him and thus acknowledge its being. There are two ways of seeing your brothers which are diametrically opposed to each other. They must both be in your mind because you are the perceiver. They must also be in his because you are perceiving him. See him through this Holy Spirit in his mind and you will recognize him in yours. What you acknowledge in your brother you are acknowledging in yourself and what you share you strengthen. The voice of the Holy Spirit is weak in you. That is why you must share it. It must be increased in strength before you can hear it. It is impossible to hear it in yourself while it is so weak in your own mind. It is not weak in itself but it is limited by your unwillingness to hear it. Will itself is an idea and is therefore strengthened by being shared. If you make the mistake of looking for the Holy Spirit and yourself alone your meditations will frighten you because by adopting the ego's viewpoint you are undertaking an ego alien journey with the ego as you guide. This is bound to produce fear. Delay is of the ego because time is its concept. Delay is obviously a time idea. Both time and delay are meaningless in eternity. We have said before that the Holy Spirit is God's answer to the ego. Everything in which the Holy Spirit reminds you is in direct opposition to the ego's notions because true and false perceptions are themselves opposed. The Holy Spirit has a task of undoing what the ego has made. He undoes it in the same realm of discourse in which the ego itself operates or the mind will be unable to understand the change. We have repeatedly emphasized that one level of the mind is not understandable to another. So it is with the ego and the soul with time and eternity. Eternity is an idea of God so the soul understands it perfectly. There is a belief in the ego so the lower mind which is the ego's domain accepts it without question. The only aspect of time which is really eternal is now. That is what we really mean when we say that now is the only time. The literal nature of this statement does not mean anything to the ego which interprets it at best to mean don't worry about the future. That is not what it means at all. The Holy Spirit is a mediator between the interpretations of the ego which enables him to work against the ego's beliefs in its own language. His equal ability to look beyond symbols into eternity also enables him to understand the laws of God for which he speaks. He can thus perform the function of reinterpreting what the ego makes not by destruction but by understanding. Understanding as light and light leads us to knowledge. The Holy Spirit is in light because he is in you who are light but you yourselves do not know this. It is therefore the task of the Holy Spirit of God. You cannot understand yourselves alone. This is because you have no meaning apart from your rightful place in the Sonship and the rightful place of the Sonship in God. This is your life, your eternity and yourself. It is of this that the Holy Spirit reminds you. It is this that the Holy Spirit sees. This vision invariably frightens the ego because it is so calm. Peace is the ego's greatest enemy because according to its interpretation the ego becomes strong in strife. If you believe there is strife you will react viciously because the idea of danger has entered your mind. The idea itself is an appeal to the ego. The Holy Spirit is as vigilant as the ego to the call of danger opposing it with his strength just that the ego welcomes it with all its might. The Holy Spirit encounters his welcome by welcoming peace. Peace and eternity are as closely related as a time and war. Perception as well as knowledge derives meaning from relationships. Those which you accept are the foundations of your beliefs. The separation is merely another term for a split mind. It was not an act but a thought. Therefore the idea of separation can be given away just as the idea of unity can. Either way it will be strengthened. The ego is the symbol of separation just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace. What you perceive in others you are strengthening in yourself. You let your mind misperceive but the Holy Spirit lets your mind reinterpret its own misperceptions. The Holy Spirit is the perfect teacher. He uses only what your minds already understand to teach you that you do not understand it. The Holy Spirit can deal with an unwilling learner without going counter to his will because part of his will is still for God's. Despite the ego's attempts to conceal this part it is still much stronger than the ego even though the ego does not recognize it. The Holy Spirit recognizes it perfectly because it is his own dwelling place or the place in the mind where he is at home. You are at home there too because it is a place of peace and pieces of God. You who are part of God are not at home except in his peace. If peace is eternal you are at home only in eternity. The ego made the world as it perceives it but the Holy Spirit the reinterpret of what the ego made sees it only as a teaching device for bringing you home. The Holy Spirit must perceive time and reinterpret it into the timeless. The mind must be led into eternity through time because having made time it is capable of perceiving its opposite. The Holy Spirit must work through officers because it must work with and for a mind that is in opposition. Correct and learn to be open to learning. You have not made truth but truth can still set you free. Look as the Holy Spirit looks and understands as he understands. His understanding looks back to God in remembrance of me. He is in the Holy Communion always and he is part of you. He is your guide to salvation because he holds a remembrance of things past and to come. He holds this gladness gently in your minds asking only that you increase it in his name by sharing it to increase his joy in you. You must have noticed how often I have used your own ideas to help you. You have learned to be a loving, wise and very understanding therapist except for yourself. That exception has given you more than perception for others because of what you saw in them but less than knowledge of your real relationships to them because you did not accept them as part of you. Understanding is beyond perception because it introduces meaning. It is however below knowledge even though it can grow towards it. It is possible with great effort to understand someone else to some extent and to be quite helpful to him but the effort is misdirected. The misdirection is quite apparent. It is directed away from you. This does not mean that it is lost to you but it does mean that you are not aware of it. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you have had. I have purified them of the arrows which hid their light and have kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They are beyond you and we know that what God creates is eternal. What fear has hidden still is part of you. Joining the Atonement which I have repeatedly asked you to do is always a way out of fear. This does not mean that you can safely fail to acknowledge anything that is true. However the Holy Spirit will not fail to help you reinterpret everything that you perceive as fearful and teach you that only what is loving is true. Truth is beyond your ability to destroy but entirely within your grasp. It belongs to you because you created it. It is yours because it is a part of you just as you are part of God because He created you. The Atonement is a guarantee to the safety of the kingdom. Nothing good is lost because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voiceful creation. Nothing that is not good was ever created and therefore cannot be protected. What the ego makes it keeps to itself and so it is without strength. Its unshared existence does not die. It was really never born. Everything that can continue has been born but it can increase as you are willing to return the part of your mind that needs healing to the higher part and thus render your creating undivided. As a therapist you tell your patients that the real difference between neurotic and healthy guilt feelings is that neurotic guilt feelings do not help anyone. This distinction is wise though incomplete. Let's make this distinction a little sharper now. Neurotic guilt feelings are a device for toning without sharing and for asking pardon without change. The ego never calls for real atonement and cannot tolerate forgiveness which is change. Your concept of healthy guilt feelings has merit but without the concept of the atonement it lacks the healing potential it holds. You made the distinction in terms of feelings which led to a decision not to repeat the error which is only part of healing. Your concept lacked the idea of undoing it. What you were really advocating then was adopting a policy of sharing without a real foundation. I have come to give you the foundation so your own thoughts can make you really free. You have carried the burden of the ideas you did not share and which were therefore too weak to increase but you did not recognize how to undo their existence because you had made them. You cannot cancel out your past errors alone. They will not disappear from your mind without remedy. The remedy is not of your making any more than you are. The atonement cannot be understood except as a pure act of sharing. That is what is meant when we say that it is possible even in this world to listen to only one voice. If you are part of God and the sonship is one you cannot be limited to the self the ego sees. Every loving thought held in any part of the sonship belongs to every part. It is shared because it is loving. Sharing is God's way of creating and also yours. Your egos can keep you in exile from the kingdom but in the kingdom itself it has no power. You have become willing to receive my messages as I give them without interference by the ego so we can clarify an earlier point. We said that you will one day teach as much as you learn and that will keep you in balance. The time is now because you have let it be now. You cannot learn except by teaching. I heard one voice because I had learned that all learning is attained by teaching. I understood that I could not atone for myself alone. Listening to one voice means that you will to share that voice in order to hear it yourself. The mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to every mind created by God because God's wholeness is the wholeness of his son. Turning the other cheek does not mean that you should submit to violence without protest. It means that you cannot be hurt and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. Show him that he cannot hurt you and hold nothing against him or you hold it against yourself. Teaching is done in many ways by formal means, by guidance and above all by example. Teaching is therapy because it means the sharing of ideas and the awareness that to share them is to strengthen them. The union of the sonship is its protection. The ego cannot prevail against the kingdom because it is united and the ego fades away and is undone due to the attraction of the parts of the sonship which hear the call of the Holy Spirit to be as one. I cannot forget my need to teach what I have learned, which arose in me because I learned it. I call upon you to teach what you have learned because by doing so you can depend on it. Make it dependable in my name because my name is the name of God's son. What I learned I give you freely and the mind which was in me rejoices as you choose to hear it. The Holy Spirit atones in all of us lists the burdens you have placed in your mind. By following Him, He leads you back to God where you belong and how can you find this way except by taking your brother with you? My part in the Atonement is not complete until you join it and give it away. As you teach, so shall you learn. I will never leave you or forsake you because to forsake you will forsake myself and God who created me. You will forsake yourself and God if you forsake any of your brothers. You are more than your brothers keepers. In fact, you do not want to keep him. How could you treat your brother better than by rendering under God the things which are God's? Ideas do not leave the mind which thought them to have a separate being nor do separate thoughts conflict with one another in space because they do not occupy space at all. However, human ideas can conflict in content because they occur at different levels and include opposite thoughts at the same level. It is impossible to share opposing thoughts. The Holy Spirit does not let you forsake your brothers. Therefore, you can really share only the parts of your thoughts which are of Him and which He also keeps for you and of such as the kingdom of heaven. All the rest remains with you until He has reinterpreted them in the light of the kingdom making them too worthy of being shared. When they have been sufficiently purified He lets you give them away. The will to share them is their purification. The Atonement gives you the power of a healed mind but the power to create is of God. Therefore, those who have been forgiven must devote themselves first to healing because having received the idea of healing they must give it to hold it. The full power of creation cannot be expressed as long as any of God's ideas withhold it from the kingdom. The joint will of all the sonship is the only creator that can create like the Father because only the complete can think completely and the thinking of God lacks nothing. Everything you think that is not through the Holy Spirit is lacking. How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past accepts its beauty as gone and nothing is left except a blessing. You can indeed depart in peace because I have loved you as I have loved myself. You go with my blessing and for my blessing hold it and share it, that it may always be ours. I place the peace of God in your heart and in your hands to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it and the hands are strong to give it. We cannot lose, my judgment is as strong as the wisdom of God in whose heart and hands we have our being. His quiet children are His blessed sons. The two decisions, perhaps some of our concepts will become clearer and more personally meaningful because use of guilt is clarified. The ego has a purpose just as the Holy Spirit has. The ego's purpose is fear because only the fearful can be egotistic. The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with heaven or earth as it elects. But again, let us remember that both are in you. In heaven there is no guilt because the kingdom is attained through the Atonement to create. The word create is appropriate here because what you have made is undone by the Holy Spirit. The blessed residue is restored and therefore continues in creation. What is truly blessed is incapable of giving rise to guilt and must give rise to joy. This makes it invulnerable to the ego because its peace is unassailable. It is invulnerable to disruption because it is whole. Guilt is always disruptive. The agenda's fear is divisive because it obeys the laws of division. If the ego is a symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt. Guilt is more than merely not of God. It is a symbol of the attack on God. This is a totally meaningless concept except of the ego, but do not underestimate the power of the ego's belief in it. This is the belief from which all guilt really stems. The ego is the part of the mind how can part of God detach itself without believing it is attacking him. We spoke before the authority problem as involving the concept of usurping God's power. The ego believes that this is what you did because it believes it is you. It follows then that if you identify with the ego you must perceive yourself as guilty. Whenever you respond to your ego you will experience guilt and you will fear punishment. The ego is quite literally a fearful thought. However ridiculous the idea of attacking God may be to the same mind. Never forget that the ego is not sane. It represents a delusional system and it speaks for it. Listening to the ego's voice means that you believe it is possible to attack God. You believe that a part of him has been torn away by you. The classic picture of fear of retaliation from without then follows because the severity of the guilt is so acute that it must be projected. Although Freud was wrong about the basic conflict itself he was very accurate in describing its effects. Whatever you accept into your mind has reality for you. It is however only your acceptance of it that makes it real. If you enthrone the ego in it the fact that you have accepted it or allowed it to enter makes it your reality. This is because the mind as God created is capable of creating reality. We said before that you must learn to think with God. To think with him is to think like him. This engenders joy not guilt because it is natural. Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking is unnatural. Perverted thinking will always be attended with guilt because it is the belief in sin. The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love. It perceives sin as a positive act of assault. This is an interpretation which is necessary to the ego's survival because as soon as you regard sin as a lack you will automatically attempt to remedy the situation and you will succeed. The ego regards this as doom but you must learn to regard it as freedom. The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane it heals the body because it has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness because it cannot conceive of attacking anyone or anything. We said before that illness is a form of magic. It might be better to say that it is a form of magical solution. The ego believes that by punishing itself it will mitigate the punishment of God. Yet even in this it is arrogant. It attributes to God a punishing intent and then takes over this intent as its own prerogative. It tries to usurp all the functions of God as it perceives them because it recognizes that only total allegiance can be trusted. The ego cannot oppose the laws of God any more than you can but it can interpret them according to what it wants just as you can. That is why the question, what is it for? You are answering it every minute and every second and each moment of decision is a judgment which is anything but ineffectual. It affects you will follow automatically until the decision has changed. This is repeated here because you have not learned it but again your decision can be unmade as well, has made. Remember that the alternatives are unalterable. The Holy Spirit like the ego is a decision. Together they constitute all the alternatives which the mind can accept and obey. The ego and the Holy Spirit are the only choices open to you. God created one and so you cannot eradicate it. You made the other and so you can. Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable. What you have made can always be changed because when you do not think like God you are not really thinking at all. Delusional ideas are not real thoughts although you can believe in them but you are wrong. The function of thought comes from God and is in God. Irrational thought is a thought disorder. God himself orders your thoughts because your thought was created by him. Guilt feelings are always a sign that you do not know this. They always show that you believe you can think from God and want to. Every thought disorder is attended by guilt at its inception and maintained by guilt in its continuance. Guilt is inescapable for those who believe they order their own thoughts and must therefore obey its orders. This makes them feel responsible for their mind errors without recognizing that by accepting this responsibility they are really reacting irresponsibly.