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The statement "God created man in his own image and likeness" needs reinterpretation. "Image" can be understood as "thought," and "likeness" as "of a like quality."
God did create spirit in His Own Thought and of a quality like to His Own.
There is nothing else. Perception, on the other hand, is impossible without a belief in "more" and "less."
At every level it involves selectivity.
Perception is a continual process of accepting and rejecting, organizing and reorganizing, shifting and changing.
Evaluation is an essential part of perception, because judgments are necessary in order to select.
To everyone Heaven is completion.
There can be no disagreement on this, because both the ego and the Holy Spirit accept it.
They are, however, in complete disagreement on what completion is, and how it is accomplished.
The Holy Spirit knows that completion lies first in union, and then in the extension of union.
To the ego completion lies in triumph, and in the extension of the "victory" even to the final triumph over God.
In this it sees the ultimate freedom of the self, for nothing would remain to interfere with the ego.
This is its idea of Heaven. And therefore union, which is a condition in which the ego cannot interfere, must be hell.
How can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven or the way to hell?
Quite easily. How do you feel?
Is peace in your awareness?
Are you certain which way you go?
And are you sure the goal of Heaven can be reached?
If not, you walk alone.
Ask, then, your Friend to join with you, and give you certainty of where you go.
Only the Holy Spirit knows what you need.
For He will give you all things that do not block the way to light.
And what else could you need?
In time, He gives you all the things that you need have, and will renew them as long as you have need of them.
He will take nothing from you as long as you have any need of it.
And yet He knows that everything you need is temporary, and will but last until you step aside from all your needs and realize that all of them have been fulfilled.
Therefore He has no investment in the things that He supplies, except to make certain that you will not use them on behalf of lingering in time.
He knows that you are not at home there, and He wills no delay to wait upon your joyous homecoming.
You cannot resolve the authority problem by depreciating the power of your mind.
To do so is to deceive yourself, and this will hurt you because you really understand the strength of the mind.
You also realize that you cannot weaken it, any more than you can weaken God.
The "devil" is a frightening concept because he seems to be extremely powerful and extremely active. He is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for possession of His creations.
The devil deceives by lies, and builds kingdoms in which everything is in direct opposition to God.
Yet he attracts men rather than repels them, and they are willing to "sell" him their souls in return for gifts of no real worth.
This makes absolutely no sense.
Only two purposes are possible. And one is sin, the other holiness.
Nothing is in between, and which you choose determines what you see.
For what you see is merely how you elect to meet your goal.
Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness.
They are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin and seems to witness to its reality.
It still is true that nothing is without. Yet upon nothing are all projections made.
For it is the projection that gives the "nothing" all the meaning that it holds.
When you search for reality in fantasies you will not find it.
The symbols of fantasy are of the ego, and of these you will find many.
But do not look for meaning in them. They have no more meaning than the fantasies into which they are woven.
Fairy tales can be pleasant or fearful, but no one calls them true. Children may believe them, and so, for a while, the tales are true for them.
Yet when reality dawns, the fantasies are gone. Reality has not gone in the meanwhile.
The Second Coming is the awareness of reality, not its return.
Behold, my child, reality is here. It belongs to you and me and God, and is perfectly satisfying to all of us.
Only this awareness heals, because it is the awareness of truth.
What you take to be the 'I' in the 'I am' is not you. To know that you
are is natural, to know what you are is the result of much investigation.
You will have to explore the entire field of consciousness and go beyond it. For this you must find the right teacher and create the conditions needed for discovery.
Generally speaking, there are two ways: external and internal.
Either you live with somebody who knows the Truth and submit yourself entirely to his guiding and moulding influence, or you seek the inner guide and follow the inner light wherever it takes you.
In both cases your personal desires and fears must be disregarded. You learn either by proximity or by investigation, the passive or the active way.
You either let yourself be carried by the river of life and love represented by your Guru, or you make your own efforts, guided by your inner star. In both cases you must move on, you must be earnest.
Rare are the people who are lucky to find somebody worthy of trust and love.
Most of them must take the hard way, the way of intelligence and understanding, of discrimination and detachment (viveka-vairagya). This is the way open to all.
From where you stand, you can see no reason to believe there is a brilliant light hidden by the clouds.
The clouds seem to be the only reality. They seem to be all there is to see.
Therefore, you do not attempt to go through them and past them, which is the only way in which you would be really convinced of their lack of substance.
We will make this attempt today.
After you have thought about the importance of what you are trying to do for yourself and the world, try to settle down in perfect stillness, remembering only how much you want to reach the light in you today, - now!
Determine to go past the clouds. Reach out and touch them in your mind.
Brush them aside with your hand; feel them resting on your cheeks and forehead and eyelids as you go through them.
Go on; clouds cannot stop you.
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 who are life.
If we share the same mind, you can overcome death because I did.
Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not deciding at all. Like any other impossible solution the ego attempts, it 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.
An empty storehouse, with an open door, holds all your shreds of memories and dreams.
Yet if you are the dreamer, you perceive this much at least:
That you have caused the dream, and can accept another dream as well.
But for this change in content of the dream, it must be realized that it is you who dreamed the dreaming that you do not like.
It is but an effect that you have caused, and you would not be cause of this effect.
In dreams of murder and attack are you the victim in a dying body slain.
But in forgiving dreams is no one asked to be the victim and the sufferer.
These are the happy dreams the miracle exchanges for your own.
It does not ask you make another; only that you see you made the one you would exchange for this.
My trust in you is greater than yours in me at the moment, but it will not always be that way.
Your mission is very simple. You are asked to live so as to demonstrate that you are not an ego, and I do not choose God's channels wrongly.
The Holy One shares my trust, and accepts my Atonement decisions because my will is never out of accord with His.
I have said before that I am in charge of the Atonement.
This is only because I completed my part in it as a man, and can now complete it through others.
My chosen channels cannot fail, because I will lend them my strength as long as theirs is wanting.
