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Chapter
14 - Bringing
Illusions to Truth
Perception
without Deceit
What
do you want?
Light
or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are yours, but not
both. Opposites must be brought together, and not kept
apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and
they are reconciled by union as you are. In union, everything
that is not real must disappear, for truth is union. As
darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades away
when knowledge dawns. Perception
is the medium by which ignorance is brought to knowledge.
Yet the perception must be without deceit, for otherwise
it becomes the messenger of ignorance rather than a helper
in the search for truth.
The search for truth (of what you are) is but the honest
searching out of everything that interferes with truth.
Truth
is. It can be neither ...
It
is there, wherever you are, being within you. Yet it
can be recognized or unrecognized, real or false to
you. If you hide it, it becomes unreal to you because
you hid it and surrounded it with fear. Under each cornerstone
of fear on which you have erected your insane system
of belief the truth lies hidden. Yet you cannot know
this, for by hiding truth in fear you see no reason
to believe the more you look at fear the less you see
it, and the clearer what it conceals becomes.
It is not possible to convince the unknowing that they
know. From their point of view, it is not true. Yet
it is true because God knows it. These are clearly opposite
viewpoints of what the “unknowing” are.
To God unknowing is impossible. It is therefore not
a point of view at all, but merely a belief in something
that does not exist. It is only this belief that the
unknowing have, and by it they are wrong about themselves.
They have defined themselves as they were not created.
Their
creation was not a point of view, but rather a certainty.
Uncertainty brought to certainty does not retain any
conviction of reality.
You must have noticed that the emphasis has been on
bringing...
-
what is undesirable to the desirable;
-
what
you do not want to what you do.
You
will realize that salvation must come to you this way
if you consider what dissociation is. Dissociation is
a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems
of belief, which cannot coexist, are both maintained.
It has beed recognized that, if they were brought together,
their joint acceptance would become impossible. But
if one is kept in darkness from the other, their separation
seems to keep them both alive, and equal in their reality.
Their joining thus becomes the source of fear, for if
they meet, acceptance must be withdrawn from one of
them.
You cannot have them both, for each denies the other.
Apart, this separate place can be endowed with firm
belief. Bring them together, and the fact of their complete
incompatibility is instantly apparent. One will go because
the other is seen in the same place. Light cannot enter
darkness when a mind believes in darkness, and will
not let it go. Truth does not struggle against ignorance,
and love does not attack fear. What needs no protection
does not defend itself.
Defense is of your making. God knows it not. The Holy
Spirit uses defenses on behalf of truth only because
you made them against it. His perception of them, according
to His purpose, merely changes them into a call
for what you have attacked with them.
Defenses,
like everything you made, must be gently turned to your
own good, translated by the Holy Spirit from means of
self-destruction to means of preservation and release.
His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him.
Therefore, to Him, it is so easy that it was accomplished
the instant it was given Him for you. Do not delay yourselves
in your return to peace by wondering how He can fulfill
what God has given Him to do.
Leave that to
Him Who knows.
You
are not asked to do mighty tasks yourself. You are merely
asked to do the little He suggests you do, trusting
Him only to the small extent of believing that, if He
asks it, you can do it. You will see how easily all
that He asks can be accomplished.
The
Holy Spirit asks of you but this; bring to Him every
secret you have locked away from Him. Open every door
to Him, and bid Him enter the darkness and lighten it
away. At your request He enters gladly. He brings the
light to darkness if you make the darkness open to Him.
But what you hide He cannot look upon. For He sees for
you, and unless you look with
Him He cannot see. The vision of Christ is not for Him
alone, but for Him with you.
Bring,
therefore, all your dark and secret thoughts to Him,
and look upon them with Him. He holds the light, and
you the darkness. They cannot coexist when both of you
together look on them. His judgment must prevail, and
He will give it to you as you join your perception to
His. Joining with Him in seeing is the way in which
you learn to share with Him the interpretation of perception
that leads to knowledge.
You
cannot see alone. Sharing perception with Him Whom God
has given you teaches you how to recognize what you
see. It is the recognition that nothing you see means
anything alone.
Seeing
with Him will show you that all meaning, including yours,
comes not from double vision, but from the gentle fusing
of everything into...
God
has One Purpose which He shares with you. The single
vision which the Holy Spirit offers you will bring this
Oneness to your mind with clarity and brightness so
intense you could not wish, for all the world, not to
accept what God would have you have. Behold your will,
accepting it as His, with all His Love as yours. All
honor to you through Him, and
through Him unto God.
In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave
you, and the power He bestowed upon His guiltless Son.
All this lies hidden in every darkened place shrouded
in guilt, and in the dark denial of innocence. Behind
the dark doors which you have closed lies nothing, because
nothing can obscure the gift of God. It is the closing
of the doors that interferes with recognition of the
power of God that shines in you. Banish not power from
your mind, but let all that would hide your glory be
brought to the judgment of the Holy Spirit, and there
undone. Whom He would save for glory is saved for it.
He has promised the Father that through Him you would
be released from littleness to glory. To what He promised
God He is wholly faithful, for He shared with God the
promise that was given Him to share with you.
He shares it still, for you. Everything that promises
otherwise, great or small, however much or little valued,
He will replace with the one promise given unto Him
to lay upon the altar to your Father and His Son. No
altar stands to God without His Son. And nothing brought
there that is not equally worthy of both but will be
replaced by gifts wholly acceptable
to Father and to Son.
Can
you offer guilt to God? You cannot, then, offer it to
His Son. For they are not apart, and gifts to one are
offered to the other.
You know not God because you know not this. And yet
you do know God and also this. All this is safe within
you, where the Holy Spirit shines. He shines not in
division, but in the meeting place where God, united
with His Son, speaks to His Son through Him. Communication
between what cannot be divided cannot cease. The holy
meeting place of the unseparated Father and His Son
lies in the Holy Spirit and in you. All interference
in the communication that God Himself wills with His
Son is quite impossible here. Unbroken and uninterrupted
love flows constantly between the Father and the Son,
as both would have it be. And so it is.
Let your minds wander not through darkened corridors,
away from light’s center. You may choose to lead
yourselves astray, but you can only be brought together
by the Guide appointed for you. He will surely lead
you to where God and His Son await your recognition.
They are joined in giving you the gift of oneness, before
which all separation vanishes. Unite
with what you are. You cannot join with anything except
reality. God’s glory and His Son’s belong
to you in truth. They have no opposite, and nothing
else can you bestow upon yourselves.
There is no substitute for truth (of what you are).
And truth will make this plain to you as you are brought
into the place where you must meet with truth. And there
you must be led, through gentle understanding which
can lead you nowhere else. Where God is, there are you.
Such
is the truth. Nothing can change the knowledge given
you by God into unknowingness. Everything God created
knows its Creator. For this is how creation is accomplished
by the Creator and by His creations. In the holy meeting
place are joined the Father and His creations, and the
creations of His Son with Them together. There is one
link which joins them all together, holding them in
the Oneness out of which creation happens.
The link with which the Father joins Himself to those
He gives the power to create like Him can never be dissolved.
Heaven itself is union with all of creation, and with
its One Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God
for you. Lay no gifts other than this upon your altars,
for nothing can coexist beside it. Here your meager
offerings are brought together with the gift of God,
and only what is worthy of the Father will be accepted
by the Son, for whom it was intended. To whom God gives
Himself He IS given. Your little gifts will vanish on
the altar where He has placed His Own.
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