 We continue on today with Chapter 4, Love Without Conflict. It is hard to understand what the Kingdom of Heaven is within you really means. This is because it is not understandable to the ego, which interprets it as if something outside is inside, and this does not mean anything. The word, quote, within is unnecessary. The Kingdom of Heaven is you. What else but you did the Creator create, and what else but you is His Kingdom? This is the whole message, which in its totality transcends the sum of its parts. You too have a Kingdom that your Spirit created. It has not ceased to create because of the ego's illusions. Your creations are no more fatherless than you are. Your ego and your Spirit will never be co-creators, but your Spirit and your Creator will always be. Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are. The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen. This is written in the form of a prayer because it is useful in moments of temptation. It is a declaration of independence. You will find it very helpful if you understand it fully. The reason you need my help is because you have denied your own guide and therefore need guidance. My role is to separate the true from the false so truth can break through the barriers the ego has set up and can shine into your mind. Against our united strength, the ego cannot prevail. It is surely apparent by now why the ego regards Spirit as its, quote, enemy. The ego arose from the separation, and its continued existence depends on your continuing belief in the separation. The ego must offer you some sort of reward for maintaining this belief. All it can offer is a sense of temporary existence, which begins with its own beginning and ends with its own ending. It tells you this life is your existence because it is your own, its own. Against this sense of temporary existence, Spirit offers you the knowledge of permanence, an unshakable being. No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God? You who identify with your ego cannot believe God loves you. You do not love what you made, and what you made does not love you. Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its maker. You cannot conceive of the real relationship that exists between God and His creations because of your hatred for the self you made. You project onto the ego the decision to separate, and this conflicts with the love you feel for the ego because you made it. No love in this world is without this ambivalence. Since no ego has experienced love without ambivalence, the concept is beyond its understanding. Love will enter immediately into any mind that truly wants it, but it must want it truly. This means that it wants it without ambivalence, and this kind of wanting is wholly without the ego's drive to get. There is a kind of experience so different from anything the ego can offer that you will never want to cover or hide it again. It is necessary to repeat that your belief in darkness and hiding is why the light cannot enter. The Bible gives many references to the immeasurable gifts which are for you, but for which you must ask. This is not a condition as the ego sets conditions. It is the glorious condition of what you are. No force except your own will is strong enough or worthy enough to guide you. In this you are as free as God and must remain so forever. Let us ask the Father in my name to keep you mindful of his love for you and yours for him. He has never failed to answer this request because it asks only for what he has already willed. Those who call truly are always answered. Thou shalt have no gods before him because there are none. It has never really entered your mind to give up every idea you ever had that opposes knowledge. You retain thousands of little scraps of fear that prevent the Holy One from entering. Light cannot penetrate through walls you make to block it and it is forever unwilling to destroy what you have made. No one can see through a wall, but I can step around it. Watch your mind for the scraps of fear or you will be unable to ask me to do so. I can help you only as our Father created us. I will love you and honor you and maintain complete respect for what you have made, but I will not uphold it unless it is true. I will come in response to a single unequivocal call. Watch carefully and see what it is you are really asking for. Be very honest with yourself in this for we must hide nothing from each other. If you will really try to do this, you have taken the first step toward preparing your mind for the Holy One to enter. We will prepare for this together. For once he has come you will be ready to help me make other minds ready for him. How long will you deny him his kingdom? In your own mind, though denied by the ego, is the declaration of your release. God has given you everything. This one fact means the ego does not exist and this makes it profoundly afraid. In the ego's language, to have and to be are different, but they are identical to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit knows that you both have everything and are everything. Any distinction in this respect is meaningful only when the idea of getting, which implies a lack, has already been accepted. That is why we make no distinction between having the kingdom of God and being the kingdom of God. The calm being of God's kingdom, which is your sane mind, is perfectly conscious, is ruseously banished from the part of the mind, the ego rules. The ego is desperate because it opposes literally inconceivable odds whether you are asleep or awake. Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to protect your ego and how little to protect your right mind. Who but the insane would undertake to believe what is not true and then protect this belief at the cost of truth? And from the workbook, lesson 25, I do not know what anything is for. Purpose is meaning. Today's idea explains why nothing you see means anything. You do not know what it is for. Therefore, it is meaningless to you. Everything is for your own best interest. That is what it is for. That is its purpose. That is what it means. It is in recognizing this that your goals become unified. It is in recognizing this that what you see is given meaning. You perceive the world and everything in it as meaningful in terms of ego goals. These goals have nothing to do with your own best interest because the ego is not you. This false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for. As a result, you are bound to misuse it. When you believe this, you will try to withdraw the goals you have assigned to the world instead of attempting to reinforce them. Another way of describing the goals you now perceive is to say that they are all concerned with personal interest. Since you have no personal interest, your goals are really concerned with nothing. In cherishing them, therefore, you have no goals at all. And thus, you do not know what anything is for. Before you can make any sense out of the exercises for today, one more thought is necessary. At the most superficial levels, you do recognize purpose. Yet, purpose cannot be understood at these levels. For example, you do understand that a telephone is for the purpose of talking to someone who is not physically in your immediate vicinity. What you do not understand is what you want to reach him for. And it is this that makes your contact with him meaningful or not. It is crucial to your learning to be willing to give up the goals you have established for everything. The recognition that they are meaningless rather than good or bad is the only way to accomplish this. The idea for today is a step in this direction. Six practice periods, each of two minutes' duration, are required. Each practice period should begin with a slow repetition of the idea for today, followed by looking about you and letting your glance rest on whatever happens to catch your eye, near or far, important or unimportant, human or non-human, with your eyes resting on each subject. You so select, say for example, I do not know what this chair is for. I do not know what this pencil is for. I do not know what this hand is for. Say this quite slowly, without shifting your eyes from the subject until you have completed the statement about it. Then move on to the next subject and apply today's idea as before. I do not know what anything is for. So today's lesson continues on from yesterday's. We began to see that all perception was determined by ego goals. And then the obvious step is to withdraw the meaning on every goal, withdraw the meaning, every demand, every expectation, every meaning that was given to the world of images. Because all of these false ego goals and meanings are blocking the awareness of one simple fact. Everything is for your own best interest. So first, we were told by Jesus that we do not perceive our own best interest in any situation. And now today, we are being told this amazing fact that everything is for your own best interest. And he goes on to say that is what it is for, meaning everything is for your own best interest is the purpose. That is its purpose. That is what it means. This recognition that everything is for your own best interest is the meaning of forgiveness. All things work together for good. Without comparison, all things are equally acceptable. Everything I ask for, I receive as I have asked. All things work together for good. There are no exceptions except in the ego's judgment. And the ego doesn't exist. So this workbook lesson number 25 is echoing the teaching in the Bible. All things work together for good for those who love the Lord. For those who are in an alignment with the Lord. For those whose one goal is peace of mind, whose one goal is forgiveness, is happiness. That alignment yields an experience of all things work together for good. And what of all this goal pursuit that we talked about yesterday? Jesus tells us that these are all coming from personal interest. And he follows that by saying you have no personal interest. That's why Miguel Ruiz and his four agreements, as one of the agreements says, don't take anything personally because nothing is personal. The ego is not who we are. And yet Jesus says this false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for. And as a result you are bound to misuse it. So believing in the ego means not understanding anything and misusing everything. That's the seeming cost of believing in the ego. It's not a cost in reality, but it's a cost in awareness. It costs you the awareness of peace. And he says when you believe this, when you believe that you don't understand anything and you're misusing everything, then you will try to withdraw the goals you have assigned to the world instead of attempting to reinforce them. You will release all sense of ambition. You will release all sense of striving for something that you don't already have. Because as we learn from our text reading today, what you have is what you are. What you have is what you've always been. You don't need to seek for your identity. You don't need to achieve goals to reach or reinforce your identity. Identity is created by spirit, by God, and it does not need to be improved. You come to the awareness that there is no such thing as self-improvement and there never was. Your motivation will shift from striving and pursuing to an acceptance of what is a contentment. And then Jesus gives us a beautiful example about using a telephone that you do seem to understand purpose at superficial levels. But he follows this up by saying that yet purpose cannot be understood at these levels. So you may seem to know what a telephone is for, may seem to know what a car is for, a chair, a table, a drink, but purpose cannot be understood at these levels. Remember, the ego invented these levels. All levels are inventions of the ego. And Jesus told us in the text that the only seeming levels that do not conflict are the levels of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The reason they don't conflict is because they are one spirit. Spirit doesn't have levels. There's no levels of love. Love is constant, eternal, unchanging. So again today, as we practice the lesson, I do not know what anything is for. Let's practice it without making any distinctions to whatever we seem to look upon. Jesus gives us some examples. Pay no attention to near, far, important or unimportant, human or non-human, but calmly look upon anything that catches your eye. Remembering, I do not know what this is for. Practicing very specifically, very slowly, and moving on to the next subject. We are freeing the mind of false meanings, false goals, false pursuits. This is a mind exercise. This is for mind training. And remember, this is for peace of mind, for awareness of true identity. I do not know what anything is for.