82 For your own salvation you must be critical since your salvation
is critical to the whole Sonship. We said before that the Holy Spirit is evaluative and
must be. Yet His evaluation does not extend
beyond you, or you would share it. In
your mind, and your mind
only, He sorts out the true from the false and teaches you to judge every thought that you allow to enter your mind in the light of what God
put there. Whatever is
in accord with this light, He retains to strengthen the Kingdom in
you. What is
partly in accord with truth, He accepts and purifies. But what is
out of accord entirely, He rejects by judging
against. This is how He keeps the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified.
83 What you must remember, however, is that what the Holy Spirit rejects the ego
accepts. This is because they are in fundamental disagreement about everything, being in fundamental disagreement about
what you are. The ego's beliefs on this crucial issue vary, and that is why it promotes different moods. The Holy Spirit
never varies on this point, and so the
one mood He engenders is joy. He
protects it by rejecting everything that does
not foster joy, and so He alone can keep you wholly joyous.
84 The Holy Spirit does not teach your mind to be critical of other minds because He does not want you to teach errors
and learn them yourselves. He would hardly be consistent if He allowed you to
strengthen what you must learn to
avoid. In the mind of the
thinker, then, He
is judgmental, but only in order to unify the mind so it can perceive without judgment. This enables the mind to
teach without judgment and therefore to learn to
be without judgment. The undoing is necessary only in
your mind so that you cannot project falsely. God Himself has established what you can project with perfect safety. Therefore, the Holy Spirit's third lesson is:
85
Be vigilant
only
for God and
His
Kingdom.
86 This is a major step toward
fundamental change. Yet it is still a lesson in thought reversal since it implies that there is something you must be vigilant
against. It has advanced far from the first lesson, which was
primarily a reversal and also from the second, which was essentially the identification of what is
more desirable.
This step, which follows from the second as the second follows from the first, emphasizes the
dichotomy between the desirable and the undesirable. It therefore makes the
ultimate choice inevitable.
87 While the first step seems to
increase conflict and the second step still entails it to some extent, this one calls for
consistent effort against it. We said already that you can be as vigilant
against the ego as
for it. This lesson teaches not only that you
can be, but that you
must be. It does not concern itself with order of difficulty but with
clear cut priority for vigilance. This step is unequivocal in that it teaches there must be
no exceptions, although it does not deny that the temptation to
make exceptions will occur. Here, then, your consistency is called on
despite chaos. Yet chaos and consistency
cannot coexist for long since they are mutually exclusive.
88 As long as you must be vigilant against anything, however, you are not recognizing this mutual exclusiveness and are holding the belief that you can
choose either one. By teaching
what to choose, the Holy Spirit will ultimately be able to teach you that
you need not choose at all. This will finally liberate your will
from choice and direct it towards creation
within the Kingdom. Choosing through the Holy Spirit will lead you
to the Kingdom. You create by what you
are, but this is what you must learn. The way to learn it is inherent in the third step, which brings together the lessons implied in the others and goes beyond them towards real integration.
89 If you allow yourselves to have in your minds
only what God put there, you
are acknowledging your mind as God created it. Therefore, you are accepting it
as it is. Since it is whole, you are teaching peace
because you believe in it. The final step will still be taken
for you by God, but by the third step the Holy Spirit has
prepared you for God. He is
getting you ready for the translation of having into being by the very nature of the steps you must take with Him.
90 You learn first that having rests on
giving and
not on getting. Next you learn that you learn what you
teach and that you
want to learn peace. This is the
condition for identifying with the Kingdom since it is the condition
of the Kingdom. You have believed that you are
without the Kingdom and have therefore excluded yourself
from it in your belief. It is therefore essential to teach you that you must be
included and that the
belief that you are
not is the
only thing that you must exclude.
91 The third step is thus one of
protection for your minds, allowing you to identify
only with the center, where God placed the altar to Himself. We have already said that altars are beliefs, but God and His creations are
beyond belief because they are beyond question. The Voice for God speaks only for
belief beyond question, which is the preparation for
being without question. As long as belief in God and His Kingdom is assailed by
any doubts in your minds, His perfect accomplishment is
not apparent to you. This is why you must be vigilant
on God's behalf. The ego speaks
against His creation and therefore
does engender doubt. You cannot go
beyond belief until you believe fully.
92 Transfer, which
is extension, is a measure of learning because it is its
measurable result. This, however, does not mean that what it transfers
to is measurable. On the contrary, unless it transfers to the whole Sonship, which is immeasurable because it was created
by the Immeasurable, the learning itself
must be incomplete. To teach the whole Sonship
without exception demonstrates that you
perceive its wholeness and have learned that it
is one. Now you must be vigilant to
hold its oneness in your minds because, if you let doubt enter, you will lose awareness of its wholeness
and will be unable to teach it.
93 The wholeness of the Kingdom does
not depend on your perception, but your
awareness of its wholeness
does. It is only your awareness which
needs protection since your being cannot
be assailed. Yet a real sense of being
cannot be yours while you are doubtful of what you
are.
This is why vigilance is essential. Doubts about being must not enter your mind, or you
cannot know what you are with certainty. Certainty is
of God for
you. Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it
is necessary against
illusions.
94 Truth is
without illusions and therefore
within the Kingdom. Everything
outside the Kingdom
is illusion, but you must learn to accept truth because you threw it away. You therefore saw yourself
as if you were without it. By making another Kingdom which you
valued, you did not keep
only the Kingdom of God in your minds and thus placed part of your mind
outside it. What you have made has thus divided your will and given you a sick mind which
must be healed. Your vigilance
against this sickness
is the way to heal it. Once your mind is healed, it radiates health and thereby
teaches healing. This establishes you as a teacher who teaches like me. Vigilance was required of me as much as of you, but remember that those who will to teach the same thing must be in agreement about what they believe.
95 The third step, then, is a statement of what you
want to believe and entails a willingness
to relinquish everything else. I told you that you were just beginning the second step, but I also told you that the third one
follows it. The Holy Spirit will enable you to go on if you follow Him. Your vigilance is the sign that you
want Him to guide you. Vigilance does require effort, but only to teach you that effort
itself is unnecessary. You have exerted great effort to preserve what you made
because it was not true. Therefore, you must now turn your effort
against it. Only this can cancel out the
need for effort and call upon the
being which you both
have and
are.
This recognition is wholly
without effort since it is
already true and
needs no protection. It is in the perfect safety of God. Therefore inclusion is total and creation is without limit.
