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Let the Holy Spirit show him to you and teach you both his love and need for love.

⁵⁷ ... Where there is love, your brother must give it to you because of what it is. But where there is need for love, you must give it because of what you are. Long ago we said this course will teach you what you are, restoring to you your identity. We have already learned that this identity is shared. The miracle becomes the means of sharing it. By supplying your identity wherever it is not recognized, you will recognize it. And God Himself, Who wills to be with His Son forever, will bless each recognition of His Son with all the love He holds for him. Nor will the power of all His love be absent from any miracle you offer to His Son. How, then, can there be any order of difficulty among them?

Part 1

¹ Today we practice differently and take a stand against our anger that our fears may disappear and offer room to love. Here is salvation in the simple words in which we practice today's idea. Here is the answer to temptation which can never fail to welcome in the Christ where fear and anger had prevailed before. Here is Atonement made complete, the world passed safely by, and Heaven now restored. Here is the answer of the Voice of God.

² Complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind. But part of it is now unnatural. It does not look on everything as one. It sees instead but fragments of the whole, for only thus could it invent the partial world you see. The purpose of all seeing is to show you what you wish to see. All hearing but brings to your mind the sounds it wants to hear.

³ Thus were specifics made. And now it is specifics we must use in practicing. We give them to the Holy Spirit that He may employ them for a purpose which is different from the one we gave to them. Yet He can use but what we made to teach us from a different point of view, so we can see a different use in everything.

⁴ One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? What can they seem to be but empty sounds, pretty, perhaps; correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all-encompassing. We need to see a little that we learn a lot.

⁵ It seems to be the body that we feel limits our freedom, makes us suffer, and at last puts out our life. Yet bodies are but symbols of a concrete form of fear. Fear without symbols calls for no response, for symbols can stand for the meaningless. Love needs no symbols, being true. But fear attaches to specifics, being false.

⁶ Bodies attack but minds do not. This thought is surely reminiscent of our text, where it is often emphasized. This is the reason bodies easily become fear's symbols. You have many times been urged to look beyond the body, for its sight presents the symbol of love's "enemy" Christ's vision does not see. The body is the target for attack, for no one thinks he hates a mind. Yet what but mind directs the body to attack? What else could be the seat of fear except what thinks of fear?

⁷ Hate is specific. There must be a thing to be attacked. An enemy must be perceived in such a form he can be touched and seen and heard and ultimately killed. When hatred rests upon a thing, it calls for death as surely as God's Voice proclaims there is no death. Fear is insatiable, consuming everything its eyes behold, seeing itself in everything, compelled to turn upon itself and to destroy.

⁸ Who sees a brother as a body sees him as fear's symbol. And he will attack because what he beholds is his own fear external to himself, poised to attack and howling to unite with him again. Mistake not the intensity of rage projected fear must spawn. It shrieks in wrath and claws the air in frantic hope it can reach to its maker and devour him.

⁹ This do the body's eyes behold in one whom Heaven cherishes, the angels love, and God created perfect. This is his reality. And in Christ's vision is his loveliness reflected in a form so holy and so beautiful that you could scarce refrain from kneeling at his feet. Yet you will take his hand instead, for you are like him in the sight that sees him thus.

¹⁰ Attack on him is enemy to you, for you will not perceive that in his hands is your salvation. Ask him but for this, and he will give it to you. Ask him not to symbolize your fear. Would you request that love destroy itself? Or would you have it be revealed to you and set you free?

¹¹ Today we practice in a form we have attempted earlier. Your readiness is closer now, and you will come today nearer Christ's vision. If you are intent on reaching it, you will succeed today. And once you have succeeded, you will not be willing to accept the witnesses your body's eyes call forth. What you will see will sing to you of ancient melodies you will remember. You are not forgot in Heaven. Would you not remember it?

¹² Select one brother, symbol of the rest, and ask salvation of him. See him first as clearly as you can in that same form to which you are accustomed. See his face, his hands and feet, his clothing. Watch him smile, and see familiar gestures which he makes so frequently. Then think of this—what you are seeing now conceals from you the sight of one who can forgive you all your sins, whose sacred hands can take the nails which pierce your own away and lift the crown of thorns which you have placed upon your bleeding head.

¹³ Ask this of him that he may set you free:

¹⁴ Give me your blessing, holy Son of God. I would behold you with the eyes of Christ, and see my perfect sinlessness in you.

¹⁵ And He will answer Whom you called upon, for He will hear the Voice of God in you and answer in your own. Behold him now whom you had seen as merely flesh and bone and recognize that Christ has come to you.

¹⁶ Today's idea is your safe escape from anger and from fear. Be sure you use it instantly, should you be tempted to attack a brother and perceive in him the symbol of your fear. And you will see him suddenly transformed from enemy to savior, from the devil into Christ.

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AUDIO: Lesson 161 mp3

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Chapter 14

VI. The Shift to Miracles

⁴⁶ When no perception stands between God and His creations, or between His Children and their own, the knowledge of creation must continue forever. The reflections which you accept into the mirror of your minds in time but bring eternity nearer or farther. But eternity itself is beyond all time. Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its reflection in you. And you will turn from time to holiness as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven here and bring this world to Heaven. For the reflection of truth draws everyone to truth, and as they enter into it, they leave all reflections behind.

⁴⁷ In Heaven reality is shared and not reflected. By sharing its reflection here, its truth becomes the only perception the Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of his Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality. You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in is a world of limits. In this world, it is not true that anything without order of difficulty can occur. The miracle, therefore, has a unique function and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle is the one thing you can do that transcends order, being based not on differences but on equality.

⁴⁸ Miracles are not in competition, and the number of them that you can do is limitless. They can be simultaneous and legion. This is not difficult to understand, once you conceive of them as possible at all. What is more difficult to grasp is the lack of order of difficulty which stamps the miracle as something that must come from elsewhere, not from here. From the world's viewpoint, this is impossible. You have experienced lack of competition among your thoughts, which, even though they may conflict, can occur to you together and in great numbers. You are so used to this that it can cause you little surprise.

⁴⁹ Yet you are also used to classifying some of your thoughts as more important, larger or better, wiser or more productive and valuable than others. And this is true about the thoughts which cross the mind of those who think they live apart. For some are reflections of Heaven, while others are motivated by the ego, which but seems to think. The result is a weaving, changing pattern which never rests and is never still. It shifts unceasingly across the mirror of your mind, and the reflections of Heaven last but a moment and grow dim as darkness blots them out. Where there was light, darkness removes it in an instant, and alternating patterns of light and darkness sweep constantly across your minds.

⁵⁰ The little sanity which still remains is held together by a sense of order which you establish. Yet the very fact that you can do this and bring any order into chaos shows you that you are not an ego and that more than an ego must be in you. For the ego is chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible. Yet though the order which you impose upon your minds limits the ego, it also limits you. To order is to judge and to arrange by judgment. [Therefore, it is not your function, but the Holy Spirit's.] It will seem difficult for you to learn that you have no basis at all for ordering your thoughts. This lesson the Holy Spirit teaches by giving you shining examples to show you that your way of ordering is wrong, but that a better way is offered you.

⁵¹ The miracle offers exactly the same response to every call for help. It does not judge the call. It merely recognizes what it is and answers accordingly. It does not consider which call is louder or greater or more important. You may wonder how you who are still bound to judgment can be asked to do that which requires no judgment of your own. The answer is very simple. The power of God, and not of you, engenders miracles. The miracle itself is but the witness that you have the power of God in you. That is the reason why the miracle gives equal blessing to all who share in it, and that is also why everyone shares in it. The power of God is limitless. And being always maximal, it offers everything to every call from anyone. There is no order of difficulty here. A call for help is given help.

⁵² The only judgment involved at all is the Holy Spirit's one division into two categories—one of love and the other the call for love. You cannot safely make this division, for you are much too confused either to recognize love or to believe that everything else is nothing but a need for love. You are too bound to form and not to content. What you consider content is not content at all. It is merely form, and nothing else. For you do not respond to what a brother really offers you, but only to the particular perception of his offering by which the ego judges it.

⁵³ The ego is incapable of understanding content and is totally unconcerned with it. To the ego, if the form is acceptable, the content must be. Otherwise, it will attack the form. You who believe you understand something of the dynamics of the mind, let me assure you that you know nothing of it at all. For of yourselves you could not know of it. The study of the ego is not the study of the mind. In fact, the ego enjoys the study of itself and thoroughly approves the undertakings of students who would analyze it, approving its importance. Yet they but study form with meaningless content. For their teacher is senseless, though careful to conceal this fact behind a lot of words which sound impressive but which lack any consistent sense when they are put together.

⁵⁴ This is characteristic of the ego's judgments. Separately, they seem to hold, but put them together and the system of thought which arises from joining them is incoherent and utterly chaotic. For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying lack of content makes a cohesive system impossible. Separation therefore remains the ego's chosen condition. For no one alone can judge the ego truly. Yet when two or more join together in searching for truth, the ego can no longer defend its lack of content. The fact of union tells them it is not true.

⁵⁵ It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For remembering Him means you are not alone and willing to remember it. Take no thought for yourself, for no thought you hold is for yourself. If you would remember your Father, let the Holy Spirit order your thoughts and give only the answer with which He answers you. Everyone seeks for love as you do and knows it not unless he joins with you in seeking it. If you undertake the search together, you bring with you a light so powerful that what you see is given meaning. The lonely journey fails because it has excluded what it would find.

⁵⁶ As God communicates to the Holy Spirit in you, so does the Holy Spirit translate His communications through you so you can understand them. God has no secret communications, for everything of Him is perfectly open and freely accessible to all, being for all. Nothing lives in secret, and what you would hide from the Holy Spirit is nothing. Every interpretation you would lay upon a brother is senseless. Let the Holy Spirit show him to you and teach you both his love and need for love. Neither his mind nor yours holds more than these two orders of thought.

⁵⁷ The miracle is the recognition that this is true. Where there is love, your brother must give it to you because of what it is. But where there is need for love, you must give it because of what you are. Long ago we said this course will teach you what you are, restoring to you your identity. We have already learned that this identity is shared. The miracle becomes the means of sharing it. By supplying your identity wherever it is not recognized, you will recognize it. And God Himself, Who wills to be with His Son forever, will bless each recognition of His Son with all the love He holds for him. Nor will the power of all His love be absent from any miracle you offer to His Son. How, then, can there be any order of difficulty among them?

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Allen Watson joined Robert Perry to form the Circle of Atonement in 1993 in Sedona, Arizona where Allen led retreats and workshops and authored many books based on “A Course in Miracles.”

One of his most popular books is: “A Workbook Companion: Vol I and II.”

Please send gifts of gratitude via PayPal to watsona@innocent.com.