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T-3.I.2. The best defense, as always, is not to attack another’s position, but rather to protect the truth.
Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. It arises solely from fear, and frightened people can be vicious.
Good teachers never terrorize their students. To terrorize is to attack, and this results in rejection of what the teacher offers. The result is learning failure.
When you lack confidence in what someone will do, you are attesting to your belief that he is not in his right mind. This is hardly a miracle-based frame of reference. It also has the disastrous effect of denying the power of the miracle. The miracle perceives everything as it is. If nothing but the truth exists, right-minded seeing cannot see anything but perfection.
T-3.II.6. The way to correct distortions is to withdraw your faith in them and invest it only in what is true. You cannot make untruth true.
Forgiveness
A good teacher clarifies his own ideas and strengthens them by teaching them. Teacher and pupil are alike in the learning process.
Many stand guard over their ideas because they want to protect their thought systems as they are, and learning means change.
The Holy Spirit is the motivation for miracle-mindedness;
The mind had no calling until the separation, because before that it had only being, and would not have understood the Call to right thinking.
The Holy Spirit is God’s Answer to the separation; the means by which the Atonement heals until the whole mind returns to creating.
That is why you must choose to hear one of 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.
You are the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your mind and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let banish the idea of darkness.
The choice for the Holy Spirit is the choice for God.
To have, give all to all. T-6.V.A.6. 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.
Sickness is a way of demonstrating that you can be hurt. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance. The ego uses this as its best argument for your need for its guidance. It dictates endless prescriptions for avoiding catastrophic outcomes. The Holy Spirit, perfectly aware of the same situation, does not bother to analyze it at all. If data are meaningless there is no point in analyzing them. The function of truth is to collect information that is true. Any way you handle error results in nothing. The more complicated the results
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A learning device is not a teacher. It cannot tell you how you feel. You do not know how you feel because you have accepted the ego’s confusion, and you therefore believe that a learning device can tell you how you feel. Sickness is merely another example of your insistence on asking guidance of a teacher who does not know the answer. The ego is incapable of knowing how you feel. When I said that the ego does not know anything, I said the one thing about the ego that is wholly true. But there is a corollary; if only knowledge has being and the ego has no knowledge, then the ego has no being.
If you point out the errors of your brother’s ego you must be seeing through yours, because the Holy Spirit does not perceive his errors.
is. You project guilt
Let me bring peace to God’s Son from his Father.
It is, therefore, your choice whether they support the ego or the Holy Spirit in you. And you will recognize which you have chosen by their reactions.
When you seem to see some twisted form of the original error rising to frighten you, say only, “God is not fear, but Love,” and it will disappear.
When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by anything, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness, in spite of fear, to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one that you would rather have. He will never fail in this.
Problems are not specific but they take specific forms, and these specific shapes make up the world. And no one understands the nature of his problem. If he did, it would be there no more for him to see. Its very nature is that it is not.
Each one may seem to have a problem that is different from the rest. Yet they are solved together. And their common answer shows the questions could not have been separate.
You do but dream, and idols are the toys you dream you play with. Who has need of toys but children? They pretend they rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and talk and think and feel and speak for them.
There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. Seek not to retain the toys of children. Put them all away, for you have need of them no more. The dream of judgment is a children’s game, in which the child becomes the father, powerful, but with the little wisdom of a child. What hurts him is destroyed; what helps him, blessed.
Whenever you feel fear in any form,–and you are fearful if you do not feel a deep content, a certainty of help, a calm assurance Heaven goes with you,–be sure you made an idol, and believe it will betray you. For beneath your hope that it will save you lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal and uncertainty, so deep and bitter that the dream cannot conceal completely all your sense of doom. Your self-betrayal must result in fear, for fear is judgment, leading surely to the frantic search for idols and for death.
The new beginning now becomes the focus of the curriculum. The goal is clear, but now you need specific methods for attaining it. The speed by which it can be reached depends on this one thing alone; your willingness to practice every step.
Decisions are continuous. You do not always know when you are making them. But with a little practice with the ones you recognize, a set begins to form which sees you through the rest. It is not wise to let yourself become preoccupied with every step you take. The proper set, adopted consciously each time you wake, will put you well ahead. And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready. Do not fight yourself.
But think about the kind of day you want, and tell yourself there is a way in which this very day can happen just like that. Then try again to have the day you want.
Today I will make no decisions by myself.
This is your major problem now. You still make up your mind, and then decide to ask what you should do.
Throughout the day, at any time you think of it and have a quiet moment for reflection, tell yourself again the kind of day you want; the feelings you would have, the things you want to happen to you, and the things you would experience, and say:
If I make no decisions by myself, this is the day that will be given me.
Remember once again the day you want, and recognize that something has occurred that is not part of it.
If you are so unwilling to receive you cannot even let your question go, you can begin to change your mind with this: At least I can decide I do not like what I feel now.
And so I hope I have been wrong.
I want another way to look at this.
Anger is never justified. Attack has no foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete.
You must forgive God’s Son entirely. Or you will keep an image of yourself that is not whole, and will remain afraid to look within and find escape from every idol there.
I thank You, Father, for Your perfect Son, and in his glory will I see my own.
What do your scripts reflect except your plans for what the day should be? And thus you judge disaster and success, advance, retreat, and gain and loss. These judgments all are made according to the roles the script assigns.
Fear is a judgment never justified.
Escape from judgment simply lies in this; all things have but one purpose, which you share with all the world.
Learning is change.
The will you share with God has all the power of creation in it.
Idle wishes and grievances are partners or co-makers in picturing the world you see.
