Jesus tells us that  "As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two ways. One way shows you an image, or an idol that you may worship out of fear, but will never love. The other shows you only truth, which you will love because you will understand it. Understanding is appreciation, because what you understand you can identify with, and by making it part of you, you have accepted it with love. That is how God Himself created you, in understanding, in appreciation and in love. The ego is totally unable to understand this, because it does not understand what it makes, does not appreciate it and does not love it." (T.7.V.9)

In other words, we have two ways of seeing any situation. We can see it through the ego's interpretation, which is to see each brother as an image or idol from whom we try to extract love and will always be afraid that they will leave us, betray us or hurt us. It is an image that is full of fear. We try to get this image, or idol, to love us but it can't happen as it is just our wrong mind using them to meet our perceived needs. When they won't agree to our contract with them, we feel angry and betrayed. On the other hand, when we look with the eyes of the Holy Spirit on our brother we stop trying to take from them to get our needs met. When this is the case, then we are able see our brother as a reflection of the innocence in our own mind. We see the sameness that we share as one Self.  We can only see in this way when the blocks to love that we hold in our own mind (guilt, fear, judgments, grievances) are removed by bringing them for forgiveness. This requires taking responsibility for them by looking at them, without defensiveness, and being willing to release them to the Holy Spirit. When we are listening to the ego as our teacher, we want to take from others, but in  looking with the Holy Spirit it is all about giving with no expectations of outcome.

Later in this chapter he says "Your mind is dividing its allegiance between two kingdoms and you are totally committed to neither. Perceived problems in identification at any level are not problems of fact. They are problems of understanding, since their presence implies a belief of what you are is up to you to decide. The ego believes this totally, being fully committed to it. It is not true. The ego therefore is totally committed to untruth, perceiving in total contradiction to the Holy Spirit and to the knowledge of God." (T.7.VI.9)

Here, again, we are reminded that our mind has a divided allegiance. We have the one side, which is the right mind, which is the part of the mind where the truth resides, where we remember our eternal being, and our oneness. This is the part that we can't change no matter how we feel about ourselves. In other words, we are still as God created us. The other side, the wrong mind, is the kingdom where the ego rules.  It describes who we think we are and the part that we have given belief. In other words it is the self that is living in a body in the world.  And with that, our individuality, our uniqueness and our specialness are valued by us. We believe that this is where we have control over our lives and our decisions. We believe that we have made what we are and our lives are all up to us. This belief that we hold, totally obscures God and obscures our reality. It obscures who we truly are as divine beings. Instead we hold  the belief that what is real is the body,  the world,   our concepts of ourselves, and our problems. While we believe in this reality and our experience of ourselves as bodies, we cannot know who we are as the Self. Our wholeness, our limitless power, the truth of who we are is still in the mind, but it is hidden from our awareness.

So while the truth is that we are only one Self, our experience is of two selves in conflict. We say we want peace, joy, happiness, yet there seems to be this part of us that resists. We want peace, we want joy, we want love, we want truth, we want God, but we also want the things of this world. So we try to spiritualize the illusion by trying to bring the truth to illusion, by trying to have a better dream here. We try to make ourselves spiritual. In other words we put on the cloak of spirituality. But it will never work. We say we want light yet we hold onto the darkness. We hold onto our way of seeing things, our grievances, our judgments and our specialness. Only by releasing the dark thoughts, the self concepts, the grievances, and the belief that things of this world (idols) can ever satisfy us, can we open to the truth of who we really are. The idols are things, circumstances, situations, special relationships, objects that we deem important and that we use to try to complete ourselves. We follow the ego's mantra to keep seeking for our happiness outside of ourselves but happiness and peace will always elude us. We will never find what we are seeking for in the world. The only completion is to know who we are as the Christ Self. Everything else leaves us always feeling limited and lacking. In other words, no matter what we seek for in this world we can never be satisfied.

We resist doing the practice that would bring us to the awareness of truth. So what is our typical response to this inner conflict? We try to reconcile what we see as the different parts of ourselves. But we are told that this kind of reconciliation will never work. "You have sought many such solutions, and none of them has worked. The opposites you see in you will never be compatible. But one exists". (1.3-5) We will continue to experience the conflict until we are ready to release the false identity that we have accepted as our reality.

We have become so preoccupied with the body that we have lost sight of spirit. We will never find any safety, comfort, happiness, or wholeness in guilt and fear, yet that is what we try to do. We try to carve out some kind of sense of safety and security in the world of form, whether it is in special relationships, money, status, material goods, job, etc. Our lives are invested in "an endless list of goals you cannot reach, a senseless series of expenditures of time and effort, hopefulness and doubt, each one as futile as the one before, and failing as the next one surely will". (2.2) We are constantly trying to solve the problem of the anxiety and emptiness we feel but we never can, because the problem is not in the body and in the world but in our decision for separation, and it is only there that the solution lies.

There simply is no happiness possible in insanity. Yet we have put our minds to serving the happiness of the body's seeming existence instead of waking up to the truth of our reality. We work very hard to try to make our experience here as good, comfortable, pleasurable, safe from harm, beautiful and indestructible as we can. Thus the mind is focused on what does not serve our best interests because now "mind sees itself divorced from spirit and perceives itself within a body it confuses with itself."   (4.4)  It (the mind) has lost sight of spirit for its true function is to serve spirit and only when we put our mind to this function will we be happy and know peace. Our wrong-minded thought system of sin, guilt and fear holds others responsible for our lack of fulfillment. Even if we seem to hold ourselves responsible by blaming ourselves for our inadequacies, we still hold someone else responsible for those inadequacies. So blaming ourselves or others is still the same thing.

If we identify ourselves with the body and personality, then the mind is completely in the service of this existence. We then see ourselves as "helpless,  limited and weak." (5.2) We now feel alone and separated...a victim of the world. The body becomes a "frail support" (5.3) where we try to hide.   So much of our attention in this world goes into care and maintenance of these bodies, but we live in fear of anything untoward happening to them. They are indeed very frail and they continually deteriorate. It is because we have "denied (our)  Source of strength."(5.2)  It is how we see ourselves when we believe we have separated from the love that we are. It is only by undertaking our function of forgiveness, where we no longer project our guilt on others and hold them responsible for our condition, that we can reclaim the power that is in us.  

When we focus on the physical, then the mind is "gone from your self-concept for it has no place in which it could be really part of you." (3.6) In other words, when we join with spirit, then we can't be a body. When we recognize ourselves as one Self united with our Creator, then the body is not our reality. (3.7) We simply are not these frail beings at the mercy of a cruel world. When we identify ourselves as bodies, we have actually left the mind, which is where truth resides. The Holy Spirit calls us to return to the truth of who we really are. The Holy Spirit is in our minds.

And so in each moment, in each decision, as we choose a grievance or a miracle, we are choosing the separation or our reality. It depends on which teacher we turn to within, the ego or the Holy Spirit. It is a question of whether we choose to defend our specialness and our individuality or if we choose forgiveness and thus the truth.  In each decision we make we choose heaven or hell, truth or illusion, body or spirit.

For healing to occur we must bring all of our worries, depression, feelings of victimhood, attack thoughts, expectations of outcomes, fantasies, wishes, all to light. Then we must be willing to let them go. To waste our time with listening to the ego and going where it takes us leads us nowhere. It is like trying to resolve things in our night time dreams. What is the point?  I spent the whole night in my dream last night packing to go on a journey and being concerned about taking everything I needed. Yet in spite of my dedication and commitment to this task, it was a task that was to no avail which only became apparent to me when I awoke.

Fortunately for us the Holy Spirit has been placed in our right minds as a bridge to help us with this awakening. He entered our minds the instant the decision for the wrong mind (separation) was made.  He calls us constantly to give up our futile attempts at finding happiness in the physical and urges us to open our minds to the truth. It is the Divine Help that brings our minds back to our true function, which is to serve the spirit, connect with the love that we are and bring this reflection to the world as the extension of God's Being. "Your mind will bless all things."  (10.4) That is the case when we reclaim the truth of who we are through our function of forgiveness. This is how we rejoin with the source of our strength.

Our self deceptions, no matter how lost we are in this dream, can't change the truth. They can't change what we are as spirit. We always remain as God created us,  and can never be separated from our Creator.  While we have deceived ourselves about who we are and believe in the reality of the body, the truth of our reality as the Christ Self has never changed.  Isn't that a reassuring thought? Nothing we have done has changed our reality. Nothing we believe about ourselves is true. Now we are releasing the untrue and reconnecting to the spirit, leaving aside all of the distractions of the world as we enter into the presence of the truth about ourselves. We are reminded that "the ego's whole thought system blocks extension, and thus blocks your only function. It therefore blocks your joy, so that you perceive yourself as unfulfilled."  (T. 7.IX 3)

So again, the Self we are seeking is not something outside of us, but it is who we are. "Perhaps your mind remains uncertain yet a little while. Be not dismayed by this." (11.1-2)  We may not be ready yet for the experience of awakening, but we should not feel discouraged because of this lack of readiness. It will be ours when we are ready. Every time we do the practice we "offer Him another treasure to be kept for us." (11.4) Therefore nothing is ever lost. As we do this practice, we just keep filling our storehouse with treasures. And it is from this storehouse that we draw these treasures that are then extended as blessings and miracles. We need to be patient with ourselves in this process. We can relax knowing that time is being used for its intended purpose when we do this work by applying these lessons in our daily lives. As we do this work, the Self rejoices even if this joy has not yet penetrated the conscious mind.

So I share these thoughts with you knowing that I am talking to myself, reminding myself of the truth of which I write. We join together in gratitude and willingness to awaken from this dream and thus recognize that salvation comes from my one Self, which I share with you. And through that One Self, the peace that we are brings salvation to the world. As we receive we give. "Think, then, how much is given unto you to give this day, that it be given you!" (12.3)

[Use 'Advanced Search' and Exact Phrase' option]