 The ego has never answered any questions since, although it has raised a great many. The most inventive activities of the ego have never done more than obscure the question because you have the answer and the ego is afraid of you. You cannot understand the conflict until you fully understand one basic fact that the ego does not know. The Holy Spirit does not speak first, but He always answers. Everyone has called upon Him for help at one time or another, and in one way or another, and He has been answering. It's the Holy Spirit answers truly, He answers for all time, which means that everyone has the answer now. Ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit, but it does believe that part of the same mind that made it is against it, it interprets this as a justification for attacking its maker. It believes that the best defence is attack and wants you to believe it. Unless you do believe it, you will not side with it, and the ego feels badly in needs of allies, so not her brothers. Receiving something alien to itself in your mind, the ego turns to the body, not to the mind as its ally, because the body is not part of you. This makes the body the ego's friend. It is an alliance, frankly, based on separation. If you side with this alliance, you'll be afraid because you are siding with an alliance of fear. The ego and the body can spar against your mind, and because the ego realises that its enemy can end them both merely by knowing they are not part of him, they join in the attack together. This is perhaps the strangest perception of all, if you consider what it really involves. The ego, which is not real, attempts to persuade the mind, which is real, that the mind is its own learning device, and that the learning device is more real than it is. No one in his right mind could possibly believe this, and no one in his right mind does believe it. Here, then, the one answer of the Holy Spirit to all the questions which the ego raises. You are a child of God, a priceless part of his kingdom, which he created as part of him. Nothing else exists, and only this is real. You have chosen a sleep in which you have had bad dreams, but the sleep is not real, and God calls you to awake. There will be nothing left of your dream when you hear him, because you will be awake. Your dreams have contained many of the ego's symbols, and they have confused you, yet that was only because you were asleep and did not know. When you awake, you will see the truth around you and in you, and you will no longer believe in dreams, because they have no reality. Yet the kingdom and all you have created will have great reality for you, because they are beautiful and true. In the kingdom where you are and what you are is perfectly certain. There is no doubt, because there the first question was never asked. Having finally been wholly answered, it has never been. Being alone lives in the kingdom, where everything lives in God without question. The time that was spent on questioning in the dream has given way to creation and to its eternity. You are as certain as God, because you are as true as he is. But what was once quite certain in your minds has become only the ability for certainty. The introduction of abilities into being was the beginning of uncertainty, disabilities and potentials, not accomplishments. Your abilities are totally useless in the presence of God's accomplishments and also of yours. Accomplishments are results which have been achieved when their perfect abilities are meaningless. It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In fact, it is impossible. You must remember, however, that when you put yourselves in an impossible situation, you believe that the impossible was possible. Abilities must be developed or you cannot use them. This is not true of anything that God created, but it is the kindest solution possible to what you have made. In an impossible situation, you can develop your abilities to the point where they can get you out of it. You have a guide to how to develop them, but you have no command to accept yourself. This leaves you in charge of the kingdom with both a guide to find it and a means to keep it. You have a model to follow who will strengthen your command and never detract from it in any way. You therefore retain the central place in your perceived enslavement, a fact which itself demonstrates that you are not enslaved. You are in an impossible position only because you thought it was possible to be in one. You would be in an impossible situation if God showed you your perfection and proved to you that you were wrong. This would demonstrate that the perfect were inadequate to bring themselves to the awareness of their perfection and aside with belief that those who have everything need help and are therefore helpless. This is the kind of reasoning which the ego engages in but God who knows that His creations are perfect does not insult them. This would be as impossible as the ego's notion that it has insulted him. That is why the Holy Spirit never commands. To command is to assume inequality which the Holy Spirit demonstrates does not exist. Fidelity to premises is a law of mind and everything God created is faithful to His laws. Fidelity to other laws is also possible however not because the laws are true but because you have made them. What would be gained if God proved to you that you have thought insanely? Can God lose His own certainty? We have frequently stated that what you teach you are. Would you have God teach you that you have sinned? If He confronted the self you made with the truth He created for you, what could you be but afraid? You would doubt your sanity which is one thing in which you can find the sanity He gave you. God does not teach. To teach is to imply a lack which God knows is not there. God is not conflicted. Teaching aims at change but God has created only the changeless. Separation was not a loss of perfection but a failure in communication. A harsh and strident form of communication arose as the ego's voice. He could not shatter the peace of God but it could shatter yours. God did not blot it out because to eradicate it would be to attack it. Being questioned He did not question. He really gave the answer. His answer is your teacher. One, to have all, give all to all. Like any good teacher the Holy Spirit does know more than you do now but He teaches only to make you equal with Him. This is because you had already taught yourselves wrongly having believed that what was not true. You did not believe in your own perfection. Could God teach you that you had made a split mind when He knows your mind only as whole? But God does know that His communication channels are not open to Him so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process not in time but in eternity. God's extending outward though not His completeness is blocked when the sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, my children sleep and I must be awakened. How can you awake children better and more kindly than by a gentle voice that will not frighten them but merely remind them that the night is over and the light has come? You do not inform them that the night means which frightened them so badly were not real because children believe in magic. You merely reassure them that they are safe now. Then you train them to recognize the difference between sleeping and waking so that they will understand they need not be afraid of dreams. Then when the bad dreams come they will call on the light themselves to dispel them. A wise teacher teaches through approach not avoidance. He does not emphasize what you must avoid to escape from harm so much as what you need to learn to have joy. This is true even of the world's teachers. Consider the confusion a child would experience if you were told, do not do this because it might hurt you in making oneself. But if you do that you will escape from harm and be safe and then you will not be afraid. All that's included in only three words do only that. This simple statement is perfectly clear, easily understood and very easily remembered. The Holy Spirit never itemizes error because He does not frighten children and those who lack wisdom are children. Yet He always answers their calls and His dependability makes them more certain. Children do confuse fantasy and reality and they are frightened because they do not know the difference. The Holy Spirit makes no distinction among dreams. He merely shines them away. His light is always the call to awake whatever you've been dreaming. Nothing lasting lies in dreams and the Holy Spirit shining with the light from God Himself speaks only for what lasts forever. When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone you will know that you will last forever. Many think this is accomplished through death but nothing is accomplished through death because death is nothing. Everything is accomplished through life and life is of the mind and in the mind. The body neither lives nor dies because it cannot contain you or who are alive. If we share the same mind you can overcome death because I did. Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not willing at all like any other impossible solution which the ego attempts will not work. God did not make the body because it is destructible and therefore not of the kingdom. The body is the symbol of what you think you are. It is clearly a separation device and therefore does not exist. The Holy Spirit always takes what you have made and transceses it into a learning device for you. Again as always we reinterface what the ego uses as an argument for separation into a demonstration against it. If the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind then the mind must be stronger. Every miracle demonstrates this. We have said that the Holy Spirit is a motivation for miracles because He always tells you that only the mind is real since only the mind can be shared. The body is separate and therefore cannot be part of you. To be of one mind is meaningful but to be of one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind then the body is meaningless. To the Holy Spirit there is no order of difficulty in miracles. This is familiar enough to you to buy now but has not yet become believable. Therefore you do not understand it and cannot use it. We have too much to accomplish on behalf of the kingdom to let these crucial concepts slip away. It is a real foundation stone on the thought system I teach and want you to teach. You cannot perform miracles without believing it because it is a belief in perfect equality. Only one equal gift can be offered to the equal sons of God and that is full appreciation. Nothing more, nothing less. Without a range in order of difficulty is meaningless and there must be no range in what you offer to each other. The Holy Spirit who leads to God translates communication into being just as He ultimately translates perception into knowledge. The ego uses a body for attack, for pleasure and for pride. The insanity of this perception makes it a fearful one indeed. The Holy Spirit sees a body only as a means of communication and because communication is sharing it becomes communion. You might argue that fear as well as love can be communicated and therefore can be shared. Yet this is not so real as it sounds. Those who communicate fear are promoting attack and attack always breaks communication making it impossible. Egos do join together in temporary allegiance but always for what each one can get separately. The Holy Spirit communicates only what each one can give to all. He never takes anything back because He wants you to keep it. Therefore, His teaching begins with a lesson to have all, give all to all. This is a very preliminary step and the only one you must take for yourself. It is not even necessary that you complete the step yourself but it is necessary that you turn in that direction. Having chosen to go that way you place yourself in charge of the journey where you and only you must remain. This step appears to exacerbate conflict rather than resolve it because it is the beginning step in reversing your perception and turning it right side up. This conflicts with the upside down perception which you have not yet abandoned or the change in direction would not have been necessary. Some people remain at this step for a very long time experience a very acute conflict. At this point many try to accept the conflict rather than take the next step toward its resolution. Having taken the first step however they will be held. Once they have chosen what they cannot complete alone they are no longer alone. Two, to have peace, teach peace to learn it. All the separated ones have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. This is because they believe in attack and rejection. So this is what they perceive and teach and learn. These insane concepts are clearly the result of their own dissociation and projection. What you teach you are but it's quite apparent that you can teach wrongly and therefore teach yourselves wrong. Many thought that I was attacking them even though it was quite apparent that I was not. An insane learner learns strange lessons. What you must understand is that when you do not share a thought system you are weakening it. Those who believe in it therefore perceive this as an attack on them. This is because everyone identifies himself with the thought system and every thought system centers on what you believe you are. If the center of the thought system is true only truth extends from it. But if it is lie, the center, only deception proceeds from it. All good teachers realize that only fundamental change will last but they do not begin at that level. Strengthening motivation for change is their first and foremost goal. It is also their last and final one. Increasing motivation for change in the learner is all that a teacher need do to guarantee change. This is because the change in motivation is a change in mind and this will inevitably produce fundamental change because the mind is fundamental. The first step in the reversal or undoing process is the undoing of the getting concept. Accordingly, the Holy Spirit's first lesson was to have all, give all to all. We said that this is apt to increase conflict temporarily and we can clarify this still further now. At this point the equality of having and being is not yet perceived until it is having appears to be the opposite of being. Therefore, the first lesson seems to contain a contradiction since it is being learned by a conflicted mind. This means conflicting motivation until the lesson cannot be learned consistently as yet. Further, the mind of the learner projects its own split and thus does not perceive consistent minds and others making him suspicious of their motivation. This is the real, why in many respects the first lesson is the hardest to learn. Still strongly aware of the ego in himself and responding primarily to the ego and others, he is being taught to react to both as if what he does believe is not true. Upside down as always, the ego perceives the first lesson as insane. In fact, this is its only alternative here since the other one which would be much less acceptable to it would obviously be that it is insane. The ego's judgment then is predetermined by what it is, though no more so than in any other product of thought. The fundamental change will still occur with the change of mind in the thinker. Meanwhile, the increasing clarity the Holy Spirit's voice makes it impossible for the learner not to listen. For time then, he is receiving conflicting messages and accepting both. This is the classic double bind in communication. The way out of conflict between two opposing thought systems is clearly to choose one to relinquish the other. If you identify with your thought system, you cannot escape this. And if you accept two thought systems which are in complete disagreement, peace of mind is impossible. If you teach both, which you will surely do as long as you accept both, your teaching conflict and learning it, yet you do want peace or you wouldn't have called upon the voice of peace to help you. His lesson is not insane, the conflict is. There can be no conflict between sanity and insanity. Only one is true and therefore only one is real. The ego tries to persuade you that it is up to you to decide which voice is true. The Holy Spirit teaches you that truth was created by God and your decision cannot change it. As you begin to realize the quiet power of the Holy Spirit's voice and its perfect consistency, you must dawn on your minds that you're trying to undo a decision which was made irrevocably for you. That is why we suggested before that there was helping reminding yourselves to allow the Holy Spirit to decide for God for you. You are not asked to make insane decisions although you are free to think you are. It must however be insane to believe that it is up to you to decide what God's creations are. The Holy Spirit perceives a conflict exactly that it is, therefore his second lesson is to have peace, teach peace to learn it. This is still a preliminary step since having a being is still not equated. It is however more advanced than the first step which is really only a thought reversal. The second step is a positive affirmation of what you want. This then is a step in the direction out of conflict since it means that alternatives have been considered and one has been chosen as more desirable. Nevertheless, the evaluation more desirable still implies that the desirable has degrees. Therefore, although this step is essential for the ultimate decision, it is clearly not the final one. It is clear at this point that the lack of order of difficulty of miracles has not yet been accepted because nothing is difficult that is wholly desired. To desire wholly is to create and creating cannot be difficult if God himself created you as a creator. The second step then is still perceptual though it is a giant step toward the unified perception which parallels God's knowing. As you take this step and hold this direction you will be pushing toward the center of your thought system where the fundamental change will occur. You are only beginning this step now but you have started on this way by realizing that idea one way is possible. You do not yet realize this consistently and so your progress is intermittent but the second step is easier than the first because it follows. The very fact that you have accepted that is a demonstration of your growing awareness that the Holy Spirit will lead you on. Three, be vigilant only for God and His kingdom. For your own salvation you must be critical since your salvation is critical to the whole sonship. We said before that the Holy Spirit is evaluative and must be, yet His evaluation doesn't extend beyond you or you would share it. In your mind and your mind only He sorts out the truth from the false and teaches you to judge every thought that you are allowed to enter your mind in the light of what God put there. Whatever is in accord with this light He retains to strengthen the kingdom in you which is partly in accord with the truth. He accepts and purifies but what is out of accord entirely rejects by judging against. This is how He keeps the kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified. What you must remember however is that what the Holy Spirit rejects the ego accepts. This is of course there in fundamental disagreement about everything being in fundamental disagreement about what you are. The ego's beliefs on this crucial issue vary and that is why it promotes different moods. The Holy Spirit never varies on this point and so the one mood He engenders is joy. He protects it by rejecting everything that does not foster joy and so He alone can keep your holy joyous. The Holy Spirit does not teach your mind to be critical of other minds because He does not want you to teach error and learn them yourselves. He would hardly be consistent if He allowed you to strengthen what you must learn to avoid and the mind of the thinker then He is judgmental but only in order to unify the mind so He can perceive without judgment. This enables the mind to teach without judgment and therefore to learn to be without judgment. The undoing is necessary only in your mind so that you cannot project falsely. God Himself has established what you can project with perfect safety. Therefore the Holy Spirit's third lesson is be vigilant only for God and His kingdom. This is a major step toward fundamental change. Yet it is still a lesson in thought reversal since it implies that there is something you must be vigilant against. It is advanced far from the first lesson which was primarily reversal and also more from the second lesson which was essentially the identification of what is more desirable. This step which follows from the second as the second follows from the first emphasizes the dichotomy between the desirable and the undesirable. It therefore makes the ultimate choice inevitable. Now the first step seems to increase conflict and the second step still entails it to some extent. This one calls for consistent effort against it. We said already that you can be as vigilant against the ego as for it. This lesson teaches not only that you can but that you must be. It does not concern itself with order of difficulty but with clear-cut priority for vigilance. This step is inequivocal in that it teaches there must be no exception. Although it does not deny that the temptation to make exceptions will occur, here then your consistency is called on despite chaos. Yet chaos and consistency cannot coexist for long since they are mutually exclusive.