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5You cannot limit hate.
8For it is the attempt to balance hate with love that makes love meaningless to you.
2For symbols stand for something else, and the symbol of love is without meaning if love is everything.
6For the illusion of love will never satisfy you, but its reality, which awaits you on the other side, will give you everything.
4The special love relationship is not perceived as of value in itself,
7If the illusion goes, the relationship is broken or becomes unsatisfying on the grounds of disillusionment.
7And love to them is only an escape from death. 8They seek it desperately, not in the peace in which it would gladly come quietly to them.
9And when they find the fear of death is still upon them, the “love” relationship loses the illusion that it is what it is not. 10For when the barricades against it are broken,19 fear rushes in and hatred triumphs.
3The illusion of love can triumph over the illusion of hate, but always at the price of making both illusions. 4And as long as the illusion of hatred lasts, so long will love be an illusion to you.
6There is no conflict in the choice between truth and illusion.
8But conflict enters the instant the choice seems to be one between illusions, for this choice does not matter. 9Where one choice is as dangerous as the other, the decision must be one of despair.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. 2It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false.
5If you seek love outside yourself, you can be certain that you perceive hatred within and are afraid of it. 6Yet peace will never come from the illusion of love, but only from its reality.
The special love relationship is an attempt to bring love into separation.
and your creations are holding out their hands to help you cross and welcome them. 8 For it is them you seek. 2You seek but for your own completion, and it is they who render you complete.
8We take the last foolish journey away from truth together. 9And then together we go straight to God, in joyous answer to His call for His completion.
If special relationships of any kind would hinder God’s completion, can they have any value to you?
In looking at the special relationship, it is necessary first to realize that it involves a great amount of pain. 2Anxiety, despair, guilt, and attack all enter into it, broken into by periods in which they seem to be gone.
3The special love relationship is the ego’s chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven. 4It does not appear to be a weapon, but if you consider how you value it and why, you will realize what it must be.
The special love relationship is the ego’s most boasted gift, and the one that has the most appeal to those unwilling to relinquish guilt.
2For the special relationship is the renunciation of the love of God, and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness that He denied. 3And it is essential to the preservation of the ego that you believe this specialness is not hell but Heaven. 4For the ego would never have you see that the separation can only be loss, being the one condition in which Heaven cannot be.
4It is a kind of union from which union is excluded, and the basis for the attempt at union rests on exclusion. 5What better example could there be of the ego’s maxim “Seek and do not find”?
2This “self” seeks the relationship to make itself complete. 3Yet when it finds the special relationship in which it thinks it can accomplish this, it gives itself away and tries to trade its self for the self of another.27 4This is not union, for there is no increase and no extension.
5Each partner tries to sacrifice the self he does not want for one he thinks he would prefer. 6And he feels guilty for the “sin” of taking and of giving nothing of value in return. 7For how much value can he place upon a self that he would give away to get a better one?
The “better” self the ego seeks is always one that is more special. 2And whoever seems to possess a special self is “loved” for what can be taken from him.
Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in ritual, remember love is content, and not form of any kind. 2The special relationship is a ritual of form, aimed at the raising of the form to take the place of God at the expense of content.
7See in the special relationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods before Him,30 and by worshipping them to obscure their tininess and His greatness.
3The separation is only the decision not to know yourself. 4Its whole thought system is a carefully contrived learning experience, designed to lead away from truth and into fantasy. 5Yet for every learning that would hurt you, God offers you correction and complete escape from all its consequences.
6You will cross the bridge into reality, simply because you will recognize that God is on the other side and nothing at all is here.
7Yet the special relationship which the ego seeks does not include even one whole individual. 8For the ego wants but part of him, and sees only this part and nothing else.
2On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted and completely out of perspective. 3What is little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and powerful cut down to littleness.
6Delay will hurt you now more than before, only because you realize it is delay, and that escape from pain is really possible.
The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you: Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still attracts you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there let Him release you. 2He needs only your willingness to share His perspective to give it to you completely.
3Imagined slights, remembered pain, past disappointments, perceived injustices and deprivations, all enter into the special relationship, which becomes a way in which you seek to restore your wounded self-esteem.
The past is nothing. 2Do not seek to lay the blame for deprivation on it, for the past is gone.
Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego’s drive for vengeance on the past. 2It is completely savage and completely insane. 3For the ego remembers everything that you have done that offended it, and seeks retribution of you. 4The fantasies it brings to the special relationships it chooses in which to act out its hate are fantasies of your destruction. 5For the ego holds the past against you, and in your escape from it, it sees itself deprived of the vengeance it believes that you so justly merit.
There is nothing you can hold against reality. 2All that must be forgiven are the illusions you have held against your brothers.
Seek and find His message in the holy instant, where all illusions are forgiven.37 2From here, the miracle extends to bless everyone and to resolve all problems, be they perceived as great or small, possible or impossible.
4Forgive us our illusions, Father,40 and help us to accept our true relationship with You, in which there are no illusions, and where none can ever enter. 5Our holiness is Yours. 6What can there be in us that needs forgiveness, when Yours is perfect? 7The sleep of forgetfulness is only the unwillingness to remember Your forgiveness and Your love. 8Let us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Son of God is not Your will.41 9And let us receive only what You have given, and accept but this into the minds which You created, and which You love. 10Amen.42
Here, the greatest love is not to die for others, but to accept that reality is purely good.
T-15.XI.4:1 says that the condition of love is peace, which comes through the joining of minds.
When you sacrifice your self for your partner, thus obligating him to give you his self in return, you unconsciously see your partner as symbolic of God. Thus, when you sacrifice the self you despise (because it is not special enough) and thereby attack your partner with guilt, you are sending a hidden message of guilt to God, blaming Him for not making you special enough. And when you wrest from your partner his self and its cache of specialness, it is as if you have wrested from God the specialness He denied you. Having (in your eyes) successfully blamed God and forced Him to give you the
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“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” This is the first of the Ten Commandments. Here, the “other god” is your separate—and special—self.
Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? 2In no fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely. 3Nothing you see here, sleeping or waking, comes near such loveliness, and nothing will you value like unto this, nor hold so dear. 4Nothing that you remember that made your heart seem to sing with joy has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you. 5For you will see the Son of God.
5Go out in gladness to meet with your Redeemer, and walk with Him in trust out of this world and into the real world of beauty and forgiveness.
To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you.
6The shadow figures are the witnesses you bring with you to demonstrate he did what he did not. 7Because you brought them, you will hear them. 8And you who kept them by your own selection do not understand how they came into your mind and what their purpose is. 2 They represent the evil that you think was done to you. 2You bring them with you only that you may return evil for evil,9 hoping that their witness will enable you to think guiltily of another and not harm yourself.
4For time is cruel in the ego’s hands, as it is kind when used for gentleness. 5The attraction of the unholy relationship begins to fade and to be questioned almost at once. 6Once it is formed, doubt must enter in, because its purpose is impossible.
5Thus, the attempt at union becomes a way of excluding even the one with whom the union was sought. 6For it was formed to get him out of it, and join with fantasies in uninterrupted “bliss.”
Let Him uncover the hidden spark of beauty in your relationships and show it to you. 2Its loveliness will so attract you that you will be unwilling ever to lose the sight of it again. 3And you will let it transform the relationship, so you can see it more and more. 4For you will want it more and more, and become increasingly unwilling to let it be hidden from you. 5And you will learn to seek for and establish conditions in which this beauty can be seen.
