Andy’s Notes on
The Other Voice:
A Companion to The Text of The Course Chapters 1-15   © Brent Haskell

I playfully imagined I was separate. To make this seem convincing I created a body and the ego, my collection of thoughts about who I am— with certain likes and dislikes, programmed like a computer, based on the principles of separation, scarcity and lack. In order for the ego to seem to exist, I had to seem to throw knowledge away.

The Course will help me learn to change this program which I believe to be myself, until it passes away. All of this is already done, but I still play it out in my mind. I remain a constant, absolutely unchanged idea in the mind of God. I can play out my imaginings with joy rather than sadness. When I do not experience joy, it is a sign of ego-generated conflict.

I imagined a split mind, and the other part is still aware of the Holy Spirit, with whom I can connect by thinking my thoughts with God. This automatically blesses my brothers and myself.

The goal of the Course is for me to think all my thoughts with God, which I do by giving up ego thoughts. As I start to do it, conflict arises because I made the ego and I’m not quite ready to give it up. Things seem to wrong; I lose my joy.

All I have to do when I experience the slightest sign of conflict is say, “This is conflict. It is of the ego. This is not real. This does not need to be in my life.” And then become still, without trying to solve the problem on my own terms. I will then become aware of what to do, because the Holy Spirit, the presence of Love, is always there to help me.

Everything that happens to me, everything that I see or experience, is my full and conscious choice. Every aspect of every relationship is a mutual choice. At the inner (mind) level I create everything in my life. Everything I experience is as free as thought. So I must be vigilant with my thoughts.

To accept the Atonement is to realize that the mind is the only creative level; to realize that all beings are nothing but mind, and all minds are constantly free and sharing in total Oneness. The Kingdom of God is within my mind; there is nothing external to myself.

I must release the bonds of my personality/ego, of my fears and doubts, and be willing to let J/Holy Spirit control the miracles I would do. Then I will find full awareness of what to do.

Who am I?             The invulnerable Son of God, Mind, Spirit. I am everything. I have everything.
What do I value?     Making my thoughts compatible with Love.
Why?                     So I experience joy beyond anything I can imagine.

Whenever I feel uncomfortable, I stop and ask myself what I really want.

I am the only master of my fear. I am absolutely safe. I can loose nothing. I am innocent and I perceive my brothers with trust because they always fulfill the roles I give them.

I see all beings as beings of love and freedom, graciously honoring whatever I have requested at the level of mind. I then experience gratitude. I discover the freedom to be whatever I wish in cooperation with All That Is.

Miracles occur at the level of mind, transcending personality. With complete forgiveness, miracles accept what is. Miracles arise out of my realization that I am there to help, not to impose my own personality and its desires. I cannot plan a miracle; I can just open to the presence of J/Holy Spirit and let it flow.

As my ego walks the world I think that I communicate with others, but this is an illusion. Perception and conscious thought deny communication, because with them I only experience what I have already chosen to experience from within. So my perception has nothing to do with the reality of what I think I am seeing. It sees only past images I have made.

True communication must occur in silence. In silence, without the drumming of the thoughts in my brain, I discover I exist. For now, I use words and thoughts to guide myself to the point where I shall touch real communication, which is the silence within.

The body is a dense consolidation that allows me to resonate with the frequencies of time and space in order that I might think I am separate and alone. All bodily experiences, such as illness and death, seem to confirm my aloneness.

It is not possible, however, for me to be separate. There is a level at which I am in constant communication. When I have realized that my body is an illusion, I will walk the earth with true perception and in complete joy.

So I will be vigilant about my attempts to communicate by listening in silence and openness to my brother. I will not bring in preordained ideas, but rather just let my message flow out of the innermost depths of my being.

I cannot become whole or heal by myself. Through my invitation to the Holy Spirit I become whole, healed and happy. The Holy Spirit is in my mind, an idea placed there by God. Ideas are strengthened by being shared. The Holy Spirit is the idea of wholeness, the realization that my mind is not split, but is One. I invite the Holy Spirit by being diligent about seeing the Holy Spirit, the presence of God, in my brother.

Oneness is best realized through relationship. I have exactly the same measure of God in me as J. There is no separation in the Kingdom of God. So the Holy Spirit is not part of my mind, it is my mind. I am not part of God, I am God. What I think, I am.

The Atonement is an act of pure sharing. The Atonement is me. My ego and its thoughts do not exist. When I share an idea, it transmits to the recipient and the idea becomes that being itself. What I am has become the other.

In order to accept the Atonement for myself, I must realize deep within my being, that I am my brother. It requires that I experience the truth I see as a truth that belongs to every brother.

When I think a thought with God, which happens when I allow the Holy Spirit to connect my awareness to my One Self, it can only become a truth for me as I spontaneously and from deep within desire for every brother what I have experienced. When I do that, whether it engages my perception or not, every brother experiences the truth in me.

If I desire to make a perceived symptom go away just for myself, the essence of my symptom will not go away. When my only goal is to experience Oneness and find the Atonement, I will find that I have found it for all of Creation and great will be my reward and my joy.

The ego’s purpose is to reinforce the belief in separation. My imagined mind-split is an attack on my true nature and on God, and I consequently feel guilt and fear. The Holy Spirit is the idea of Oneness that bridges the split parts of my mind. I projected knowledge of who I am outside of my mind. To escape my guilt I need only to release my belief in time. My memories are a grand illusion that keeps me in regret. There is no past, no separation, and no guilt. So if I’m not joyous, I must be feeling guilty.  The solution is to be still. Then I am free to sense the Holy Spirit’s direction.

The lesson of love: I have everything; so it is impossible for anything to happen to me except by my own choice. I can never be a victim; therefore there can never be a cause for anger. The universe always celebrates only that which I desire. That awareness brings me automatically to the experience of love and gratitude. J experienced the crucifixion without a trace of anger because it occurred as a form of harmony acted out of love. The resurrection demonstrated that what seems to happen to the physical body is of no consequence. No matter what the world may seem to do to me, I am absolutely free and I cannot die. I cannot be a victim in any circumstance of any kind.

Love leads to extension; fear leads to projection. Projection makes perception. Hence everything in this world I perceive is the product of fear. In order to project, I must believe there is someone or something outside of myself onto which I can project. Either I am spirit, or I am not; either One or separate. The reality of God is that I am One with All That Is. When I project I am not believing that I am One, and therefore creating an experience of myself in which I seem to be separate, alone, vulnerable and out of control.

I need only be willing to realize that I am One with all of Life and not separate. I never was separate. My nature as the Son of God is that I am One with All That Is. That truth has never changed and it never will. The separation never happened in reality; nothing unreal exists.

My creative powers are essentially equal to God’s. So when I chose to create a world of separation, I did it with all the masterfulness of a god. Thus it seems to me, having thrown knowledge away, that God Himself made and ordained it. My illusion seems so real it is very difficult to let go of. The masterfulness of my creation is that, of my ego, I cannot let go of it.

The answer, ordained by God, is the Holy Spirit within me. My salvation demands that I allow the idea that I am not separate, that I am One, into my thinking mind. As I open to the thoughts of Oneness, the Holy Spirit uses His single-edged sword to guide me to my salvation. I am willing to place within my mind, with diligence and vigilance, the realization that I am One.

Love is the awareness that I have everything, that I am everything. Love becomes itself by being extended, by being given away. “To have, give all to all.” Every brother is Spirit, is, in reality, my Self, part of a grand and glorious harmony. And that demands the fullest appreciation for everything he seems to do and be. The Holy Spirit knows what I should give and when. He will direct me.

My motivation must be to change my thinking to peace. To teach peace I must be peace. I become still. Vigilance requires stillness within and requesting that the Holy Spirit be there. When I find true peace, true freedom, true joy abiding in my being, I must follow it. There is nothing that can threaten me. I will persist in my stillness and follow the Voice for God.

I can see whatever I choose to see. When I believe I am the Son of God, whole, pure, and beautiful, that is what I shall see.

“And I have told you so many times—
You are complete. You are whole. You are beautiful.
You are pure. You are One. You are the Son of God.
You are God Itself.
And you are the meaning, and the purpose,
And the joy of all creation.”

I open my being to this. I feel what I am. And I shall receive peace.

If I would be healed, I shall do it by giving. All I need to do is realize that there is no lack in my brother. My brother is choosing what brings him joy and is absolutely safe. I am free; tragedy does not exist. My healing shall arise from seeing my brother as perfect, complete and whole. (Never as weak or ill.) Remember God’s completeness, wholeness and invulnerability. So it must be for my brother, and for me. My brother’s will is the same as mine. I ask, “What is the Will of God for me?”

Everything is an idea in the Mind of God. The infinity of What Is, the infinity of Love, cannot take part of Itself and place it where it is not. This applies to me. I am the Son of God, and there is no place where I am not.

The ego is the belief that I can separate my Self from my Self and call my Self something else. I can imagine I have a split mind, but I did not, can not, and never could do that. Only by generating conflict can there be any belief in the ego. In the absence of conflict there is only peace. If I come to peace, the ego will disappear. So the ego has me believe that conflict brings me joy. I have tricked my thinking mind into believing that whatever supports the belief in isolation, frailty and death is what creates me and gives me life. And so I struggle to compete in the world, believing that by doing so I will become joyful.

The gift of the Kingdom is the simple truth that I am not split from God, that God is All There Is, and that I am God. My life is Love. This gift shall come to me as I elect to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit. It will make sense to me in any instant in which I choose the truth of what I am.

The absence of peace is war. In this war there is no opponent. Nothing would design to destroy my peace. If I hear two voices, there must be conflict, which is war. I win by listening to One Voice. The Holy Spirit is within my being with one message, that My will and the Will of God are the same. There is no will separate from mine or from the will of my brother. What I would do to my brother is exactly what I would have done unto myself. The Golden Rule is a truth, not an opinion.

Every brother brings me a holy encounter because he is my pathway to salvation. I shall find my freedom in relationship with my brother and in my awareness that his will and mine and God’s are always the same. The Will of God is perfect freedom. There is never any reason to oppose what my brother is or would be. I must see him as invulnerable, which is his freedom. I shall realize there is no one but my Self. God’s will for me is to create in freedom and joy. Attack is anything I might do that substantiates separation for me.

I chose to always use every function of my body to join with the mind of my brother. I do not experience communication in my body, but through it. My body is only a means of communication. The source of my experience is Mind. All experience is truly of Mind. I am Mind and only Mind. Hence, I am free.

After creating time, space and the body, I chose to allow my creative thoughts to be arrested in the body instead of extending. This made it seem as though the body was an end and had creative power of its own. It does not. When I realize that the body is simply a means, I am free of sickness. This is because sickness was a device I used to separate. I believed that my body had an existence of itself, that it could become sick independent of me, that I could be its victim. The body does not exist, so it can’t be an end, just a temporary means.

Healing arises from the awareness that I am whole. I experience the creative power of Mind extending beyond the body. Only separation leads to sickness. Knowing everything comes from my whole mind, I shall not choose sickness. The body always does whatever it is commanded to do by the creative power of Mind.

The belief in separation is the only possible source of fear. In a world of separate beings with separate wills, I must be afraid. If I include God among the separate wills, then I must fear God.  

God is the creator of everything. What is created, what is real, are ideas. I have nothing to fear because God created the universe with no separate will in it anywhere. There is no difference between my will and God’s.

When I accept and appreciate my brother at the level of experience, I acknowledge that we are one. My brother is as worthy of everything as I am, and deserves everything. My brother and I are co-creators. I would share with him the everything that I am. So my only prayer is, “How can I share the everything I have?”

It is absurd to pray in order to receive, when God has given everything completely to all beings. To give and to receive are the same because there is only my Self. What I give must be given to my Self. To receive everything, I give everything. And I do that by never doubting that my brother is One with me and worthy of my gift of everything. I give an idea and it strengthens in me.

I can make an error. I cannot sin. To be in error means to be unaware. How did I create the problem of separation? By becoming unaware of what I am. I am the Son of God and I don’t know that that is true. The Course helps me become aware of what I am. I am in error in that I am unaware that I am absolutely safe. Can I change anything by being unaware of it? No.

This world is based on error: the false belief that I am separate from God and from others. My ego believes that anyone who does not act in accordance with my will is in error. The ego uses the world to substantiate what I am, saying to my brother, “You need to change and become what I want you to be.” The ego wills that my brother not be free. Two beings can share one will only if the will is perfect freedom.

If to be in error is to be unaware, then to forgive is simply to be unaware of the error of being unaware. The Holy Spirit’s plan to solve the world’s problems is not to see the unawareness. The Holy Spirit simply does not participate with me in my unawareness. The Holy Spirit can only see me as perfectly free and perfectly safe. If I see myself sick, the Holy Spirit cannot see me sick. If I would forgive, then I shall see my brother as Spirit, free and One with God and all life.

If the Holy Spirit is speaking through me, it will elicit joy in my brothers. If I would accept my brother, I do not think that I, a separate being, am accepting another separate being. Rather, I receive him unto, and INTO, myself; I simply realize that my brother IS ME. What I would give my brother must be that which I would receive, that which I would learn. I shall learn what I have taught my brother. As I look on my brother, I literally look upon myself. My brother is my savior. As I look upon my brother, I literally see my vision of God.

I can listen to the evaluation of my brother from the ego, that tells me I am isolated and alone, and to preserve my ego I must oppose the rest of the world.

Or I can hear the true evaluation of my brother from the Holy Spirit and see his perfection, peace, love and joy. The Holy Spirit sings of Oneness, joining, and sharing, of the fact that there is no difference between my will, my brother’s will, and the Will of God. My peace lies in the freedom that comes from joining and sharing.

To do this I become still and listen. The Holy Spirit tells me I am God’s creation, the witness to the reality of God. My acceptance of the Atonement is my forgiving my error, which was my false vision of my brother. As I am still, that error will be transformed while the Holy Spirit speaks to me of harmony, Oneness, perfection, light, joy, and love. I will see my brothers as the Son of God, and become aware that that is what I am as well.

Atonement can be expressed as at-one-ment; to accept atonement is to accept everything as part of myself. There is nothing outside of myself. I am at home in God, but dreaming of false gods (idolatry). In an instant I can realize that this illusion of time and space is only a dream and awaken. There is nothing outside of myself. I have dissociated from knowledge.

I started in knowledge, a state of full awareness. So in order to give rise to a false belief I must have made a decision for the false belief and then a decision to forget. I can believe that I am what I am not, but I cannot be what I am not because God is One. I believe I am a body, a victim of the god of sickness. Sickness seems to happen to me. In my thinking mind I believe that I do not want to be sick and that germs and disease come to me. My split mind allows me to dissociate part of myself, so I can substantiate for my thinking mind that sickness comes from outside myself, that something that is not me can determine what I am.

Part of me knows that all is One. If I believe I can suffer, then I believe God can suffer. This is idolatry. God Itself cannot be a victim. I shall not believe that a Son of God can be sick. I will not participate with a brother in the belief that he can be sick, for to do so is to say that God is not God. To do so would be to say that I believe there is something outside of myself that determines what I am.

To heal my brother and myself, at the core of my being I see him as he is, a being of Spirit, One with God, for whom there exists but ONE God. So the healing of my brother and myself is extremely simple. I open my being to these words so they become part of me at the core of my being: The Lord my God is One.

But in my illusion I demand a god to be the determiner of who I am and what I do. So I make an image of the god I want and place it upon the nothingness, on my projection. So it is with the god of sickness.

If I believe that my brother makes me upset or causes me to be angry, it is my projection I see and not my brother. I am seeing what I wanted to see, projected on the imagined nothingness, and I call it my brother.

This appears to be so because I denied God. The greatest form of magic is to think I can be sick in the first place, because God has made me perfect. To believe that I can understand the truth while yet believing in a fragment of the illusion is to believe in magic. Truth and illusion are irreconcilable.

To say that there is anything that can impose experience upon me is irreconcilable with my God-given free will. I cannot change the fact that I am absolutely free; I can only deny it. Then I see my desire not to be free projected on the imagined nothingness.

And now, in this imagined world, thinking thoughts of the past with no creative power, what can I do if I should desire to have sickness end? I cannot figure out with my thoughts what I am. Rather, I CEASE AT ONCE TO DENY GOD. I do this by being still and listening to the part of my mind wherein lies the knowledge of God, the knowledge of what I am. And I will hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit singing me a song of God, of my Self. I use my thoughts only to determine what I will let into my mind and what I will exclude. The song of love and freedom brings awareness. Sickness will dissolve in front of my eyes as fog before the morning sun.

If your brother believes himself to be sick, then say to yourself in words, “I know that sickness is a belief in magic. And I will cease to believe in magic. I will open to the awareness of what I truly am.” And then, as I am still within, even in the presence of my brother, The Holy Spirit will sing me the same song. And my brother will have access to that same Voice—because he is One with me.

I cannot impose freedom on my brother. I offer freedom from sickness to my brother through my awareness. As I offer him the gift it shall become mine. Sickness is magic and will disappear. To be sick I must deny God and believe in magic.

I cannot be sick at all, from the worst cancer to the slightest of tiredness, if I am aware within of God, and of my Self. To have sickness pass from my life I say, “I will no longer deny God, nor myself.” And then be still. I will hear a song that sings of Love, of God, of what I am.       

Any thought that would exclude my brothers from anything to keep it for myself is the screeching of the ego in its fear. So I look on my brother and say:

“I would give everything to you, in gratitude, for all of it is mine. I have the gift of God, for that is what I am, and I give without limit or restriction.”

I believe that I have to work, struggle and fight against my misery. I do not. I only need God’s Comforter to show me the way. God’s will for me is perfect happiness.  Only I can deprive myself of anything. So I say, “Teach me how to let go of the blocks.” My belief that something can happen to me is a block. The events in my life ARE me. Everything without exception IS me. I need the Voice of the Holy Spirit to help me see nothing but Love.

The ego is a collection of thoughts I have about who I am. It does not exist and it does nothing. I projected it outside of myself for the purpose of dreaming that I was something I am not. Onto my consciousness, I projected the idea that I could separate from God.

Although these are not my real thoughts, I hear them at the level of my thinking mind telling me I am a body, which deep within I know I am not. This conflict is the source of all my fear. The central message of the ego is fearful, that I am totally alone.

Yet even at the level of consciousness I know that I desire love, to be in relationship with my brothers and with God. But, in the context of the world I made, I believe the ego is what I am and if it were to disappear along with the world I would die. So, ironically, I fear losing the source of my fear; so I preserve the ego as if it were my very existence, believing it makes me happy, which in its confused logic, means that being alone makes me happy.

The ego analyzes, the Holy Spirit accepts. If I were to accept, I would open to wholeness.

But the ego separates part of the All-That-Is and treats it as if it were complete. As such a part, I am not longer aware of all that is God.

It was through the process of analyzing that I seemed to split my mind. I took a part of the wholeness and saw it as a complete entity; then I did that again and again, and out of the parts I made a new picture of life. So this ego, which seems to have a will and to do things, is merely a collection of meaningless thoughts.

To dispel the ego’s illusion of aloneness, I must listen to the Voice of the Holy Spirit. I must open to life itself. And the ultimate representation of what I must accept is my brother. When I do the ego must pass away.

The simplest way to accept my brother is to look upon him and say, “I trust you in loving me, and I thank you for loving me.” Then I shall experience the presence of Love. As I open and accept, I no longer see separate wills. When I accept the presence of God, whose will for me is perfect happiness, I am free.

All truth is in my mind. But the thoughts of which I am aware are those which are not true and have been projected upon consciousness by mind to rid the mind of intolerable conflict. Any thought that is projected from mind onto the screen of consciousness must pass through the filter of the collection of ego thoughts which define who I am. I cannot perceive anything without that it be flavored by, modified by, passed through this filter, the ego, that tells me who I am.

What if I attempt to perceive the ego motivation of one of my brothers? That perception must pass through the filter of my own ego. Thus it is not possible for me to become aware of the ego motivation of another without my ego and its motivation being involved. It is not possible for me to judge him without looking upon my own ego and its motivation, and thus to be judged in the same instant.

There is but one judgment that the Holy Spirit makes—there are no opposites in all of Creation.
All that exists is Love. If I will allow the Holy Spirit to interpret for me, which means for me to choose to be still and listen, He will discern that everything is Love.

The ego seeks and finds what is not true (error) in order to cause me to believe that life happens to me and that I can be unfairly treated, a victim. What I believe is what I see. The Course is to take me to the experience that is necessary for my belief to change. The real world is every loving thought of the Son of God. The real world is true. Illusion is to look on what is true and experience it as something else, as error.

The Holy Spirit is the part of my mind that sees beyond error to the truth. This is forgiveness. Reality is Love. Reality is one will without opposition of any kind. The ego is the problem. I only need choose what is real to solve it. I must go beyond the conflict of the ego, beyond error. And the way to do that is to see my brother truly. And the way I do that is to become like a child who does no know, in a stillness and openness that says, “I would learn; teach me.” “I would choose the peace of God.” The Holy Spirit will bring me a new perception and I will believe and then experience the truth of what my brother is—the joyful, beloved Son of God.

Attack is always for the purpose of defending the ego. To defend is to choose the ego. Never do it! If I cannot see love in a given circumstance, then I open to the Holy Spirit’s guidance and I will discover a call for love. Everyone is being as loving as he knows how at the moment. To attack is to deny love in my brother and in myself. My natural state of Love is deep within me. My goal is Love and Oneness. Everything, without exception, is love. I shall not invest myself in this world, which is merely a projection. I shall not see or participate in the poverty of my brother. I shall not be offended by anything. I shall choose to listen to the Voice of the Holy Spirit and find peace and joy instead.

Even my ego realizes that my life is about the search for love. Unfortunately the ego cannot understand love. The fear of finding love is the ego’s fear that it will cease to be.

I ask, “What must I do to receive love?” as if love were ‘out there.’ I must do absolutely nothing. Because the nature of Love is the nature of God and of what I am, in a fullness so great there is nothing outside of It. But only by giving Itself can it be understood.

I am invulnerable. This world was made as an attack on God; the only attack can be on Being Itself. So the only way I can attack is to pretend that some being is different from what he is. That is the essence of this world. If ever I am not at peace, it must be that I have believed that someone else has the power to change what I am, simply by believing that I am otherwise. God and I and my brother are invulnerable. Vain imaginings change nothing.

The Kingdom of God lies within me. Discovering it requires that I open to the Vision of Christ and see my brothers and God as they are. God is absolutely complete, whole, perfect and beyond change. I shall look on my brother as being so completely deserving of God’s Love that nothing could ever prompt anyone to deny it. This vision must go beyond form, so I see every being as the recipient of the Perfect Love of God. As I realize there is no ‘out there,’ I realize that my love of my brothers and of God must be my love of myself. I must look within to become aware of the One Source, which is God Himself and my brother and me, outside of which is nothing. God and my brothers and I are All that Is, the essence of Love. 

The Course would have me learn peace. The only way to know if I have learned it is to look at my world and ask, “Does my being bring and instill peace?”

“In my presence do my brothers sense love, acceptance and freedom?”

Whatever I see is what I invited into my mind. It reflects what is within me. This is how I see what is within me, what I have learned. It is essential that I look only at my own experience of the form I look upon, not at appearances or at any ego scripts about it. I look at my own response, my own feeling. My experience of it need not look like what the world deems to be how love should look. I could look at what my brother labels tragedy and see nothing but love. If I feel peace and gentle harmony, that is what lies within me. As I look and touch upon the presence of Love, I will feel a resonance that tells me I am Love drawing Itself to Itself.

If I did not feel guilty, I could not condemn and I could not attack. Were it not for guilt, I could never feel the slightest thought that anything I might do or say or think or feel could in any sense be wrong. Everything would be truly accepted with love.

The separation was planned with my full awareness. To separate from perfect peace requires that I pretend in the absence of peace. The Son of God imagined the separation and the absence of peace and let go of those ideas in the same instant. But to have had those thoughts required an instant of belief in the separation of cause and effect.

In order for me to experience the separation of cause and effect, and to entertain the absence of peace, I had to believe that the absence of peace was not of my own doing but was caused by something else, by something different from me. In that instant time was born: the separation of cause and effect. And it was in that instant of time that I forgot to laugh at the silliness of the idea of separation and the world was born.

As long as I want to stay here, it is essential that I blame someone or something else for my absence of peace; I must see beings different from me as the cause of my absence of peace. I must believe that someone else can cause me to be miserable, and therefore that I am weak and vulnerable. If I am weak and vulnerable I must defend myself whenever something threatens me. I defend by attacking. So I must always be ready to attack.

The ego believes that attack is salvation. What would it save me from?—death. The Course would teach me that salvation is my awakening to the realization that I cannot die.

I believe I must attack in order to exist, because I believe the world is in constant attack on me. If this were not so I could not be discontent. I must be discontent in order to seek peace. If peace were already mine, guilt and condemnation and attack would no longer exist. This insane world was made in a delusional attempt to preserve the false notion of the Son of God made mad by guilt. 21.IX

The Holy Spirit demands that I become aware of the fact that I am invulnerable. If I knew I was invulnerable, that all experience comes to me only by my own choice, I would be free. I could never blame anyone. I could not blame God. And guilt would have to disappear.

The message of the resurrection is that the Son of God (I) cannot be attacked or harmed or die.

My ultimate fear is that all this is true. I am terrified of the notion that I am free and that I am, and must be, the master of my own life. I am terrified that there is one grand harmony of existence that is the presence of Love. Why? Because opening to that notion demands that I die. As an ego, it demands that I die to the belief in my separation. I must die to the notion that attacking is what keeps me alive. The foundation of this world rests on those beliefs; and on my fear of losing myself and this world as I know it.

It is possible to experience the real world even here, to look upon the illusion of separate bodies and at the same time experience that truth that I and my brothers and sisters and God are One. It is possible to pretend a life that looks like separation and to experience Love.

That is the essence of forgiveness—seeing beyond the illusion of separation to the truth that life is One, and is nothing but Love.

GOD ACTUALLY DOES LOVE ME. I am the Son of God. Guilt is a figment of my imagination. The Son of God cannot attack, for all he can give is Love. The Son of God is invulnerable. There is nothing I cannot forgive and see as love, harmony and peace.

Fear defines what I think I am. Separation, attack, and condemnation require that I find someone who has made me the way I am, a cause that happened in the past. Time allows me to believe in the future, that I am eternal and to design heaven, hell and reincarnation. I conceive of an afterlife that involves bodies, time and space. All of this is designed by fear. When I choose fear I choose a past that brings things I defend against.

Love, however, is changeless, with no past or future. If I, as a being who simply exists, can find the present, then I can experience the changlessness of Love, of myself and my brother. The way to do it is to look upon the world, myself and my brother without a past. There is nothing in my world which I cannot learn to experience as Love. I do that simply by choosing love. I look on every event as the presence of love. I look on by brother’s presence as an act of love, no matter what the form. That is the Vision of Christ. It is entirely possible for me to do this and to see the real world. Vision requires not seeing the shadowy figures of the past that are my own fear projected onto the image of my life. I look on all with Love and Light. There is nothing in Creation but Love.

To see the real-world I look only within; there are no bodies in the real world; there is nothing I need. The sight of the world-I-see costs me vision, so I must deny it. I acknowledge its emptiness. I do not hold it dear or cherish it. The reason I cherish something in the world is because it defines who I am as an ego. To deny the world is to realize that it is not who I am and does not determine who I am. I open myself to my release from the past. When I know within that I am not a body I will be free and experience what I truly am, the presence of Love.

I have taught myself that to obtain relationships, a house, money, is to become who I am. But as I obtain things, I want more. I use them to define who I am, as that which separates me from my brothers, and this destroys my peace.

Healing is joining, the coming together that brings peace and denies separation. Healing is the release from the past and the release from guilt. I will perceive truly that my brother’s will and mine are the same, that we are in perfect harmony.  

When I experience the knowledge that lies beyond this world, perception passes away into nothingness and I open to the presence of creation, the awareness that I am one with my brother, that all is One. I am ready when I completely let go of any desire to exist as a separate “I.” I will celebrate with the greatest joy that I am fully in the presence of God, and realize that I never left.

God, to guarantee His Son would make his way home and in conjunction with my will, placed a quiet, deep, pervading discontent within me. That discontent is my guilt. It prompts me to search out the Atonement. I can’t bear to look within and see that the discontent was my own choice, so I look without and blame my brother for making me what I have become.

But the Holy Spirit sees this discontent as the beacon that guides my way home. So the cloud of guilt that hangs over me is really the whisper of Love. I become released from my guilt in relationship with God’s Son.

What if I realized that whatever I seem to experience in the presence of my brother was prompted by the beacon of light that is leading me home? What if I were to interpret everything as nothing more than that which I have done in order to find my home within? Every action taken by the Son of God is for the purpose of guiding him home, so I can see it as a gift of love. I may choose a path and find that it is not the pathway to peace, so it is not worth repeating. But if I see all actions and words of all my brothers as love, I will be released from the past and from my guilt. I will realize that what the Son of God brings me in this moment is the gift of Love.

Everything in time and space, no matter how it seems, is prompted by the inner beacon. When I accept my brother in every circumstance, I will open to the presence of God. When I choose that vision, the discontent will be gone. The discontent is really love in disguise. 

To bless means to give to one the gift of my vision of the truth that he is a perfect Son of God. But, within the thought system of the ego I cannot become aware of what I am. So I must learn of what I am INDIRECTLY. I will discover the truth of what I am when I learn to bless my brother. When I can give the vision of my brother’s perfection, that means I have it to give. I cannot give what I do not have. Whenever I (seem to) give that which speaks of darkness and death, I am giving what I believe I am.

To learn the truth about myself I must do so as a happy learner. This happiness will come within me as I celebrate my desire to change. So I ask myself, “Am I at peace?” Is there anything that can threaten my peace?” If so, it cannot be the peace of God. If I do not believe that God actually loves me, then I simply say, “Then I wish to change my life.” To gain the gift of vision I give it happily away by saying, “I choose to follow the path which shall teach me to bless every brother, every sister who walks this earth with me.”

As I realize I and my brother are invulnerable, I shall free us from guilt. So I set him free by telling him in every interaction that there is nothing he has done that could possibly harm me. For God is the only cause, and God is Love. Only my imagination can cause me unhappiness.

In my current situation I cannot decide how to free my brother from guilt. I must first release the ego thought system and listen without thinking to the Voice of the Holy Spirit. I become still within my thoughts and open to the awareness that comes from my willingness to believe that I am blessed. As I am still, an awareness arises that brings into my experience the ability to bless my brothers. I am completely beyond harm and my brother is free of guilt. I feel myself blending into Oneness with every brother on earth and experience a deep peace, the peace of God. 

I am the single Son of God. Atonement is the acceptance of what I am. Miracles are about content, not form. Miracles must be shared. I must be willing to share them with all brothers and sisters. What I cannot see as love can be seen as a call for love. This is the Holy Spirit’s interpretation. In my thinking mind I do not know what Love is and what it is not. I must accept this, become still, and open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Then I shall know what to do. Through the Guidance of the Holy Spirit I open to the realization that everything is Love. Then I and all beings who enter my presence will be at peace (although not all will act that way in form.) I will have no grievances, no desire to change anything regardless of form.

To want my brother to be at peace is to say he should be different than he is now. This is a subtle grievance that does not bring peace but increases fear. Peace and understanding go hand in hand. My support for love’s perfection goes beyond form to content. One Son of God cannot be more loving than another. I am Love, aware of Oneness and sharing, and that there is no order of difficulties in miracles.

Time makes all my fear. Time is the belief that cause and effect can be separate, that past produces an effect later. I believe that others in the past have caused me to be what I am in this moment; and that I need the past in order to exist. I believe that without the previous moment the next one cannot exist. To exist as an ego demands a past that created me.

The Holy Spirit is me, the part of me that remains aware of God. If there is no being outside of myself to tell me what I am, then time collapses. The holy instant is that state in which my perception and my experience of cause and effect bind them together as one. If there is no past to have brought me to this moment, then in this instant I simply exist, pure and perfect.

Fear cannot exist in the present; it demands a past. If my brother had no past it would not be possible for me to fear him in my life. If I’m ever afraid of a brother, it is because I wrote a story about his past which I would project onto my future. The Holy Spirit would remind me that all there is of time is this holy instant and fear must be gone.

If I would experience this holy instant I must give it to my brother. I do that by realizing that my brother’s past has no effect on what he is in truth. The past determines a false image of what my brother seems to be. As I choose, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to look on my brother as nothing but Love, in that holy instant I shall be completely free of fear and transcend time.

It does not take time to learn this Course. It demands that I discover magnitude and perfection in my brother. I make no attempt to follow my own plan. I give perfect freedom to my brother to be, say, think and feel whatever he will in the knowledge that he is fully accepted in my experience. I see nothing I would change, because he has no lack.

Communication is not about words. Perfect communication has no barriers; there is nothing I would keep to myself; I keep no secrets from him. Anything I would hold onto that would preserve my own sense of identity is a block to communication. To see myself as a Teacher of God who needs to help brothers who are lost is to maintain separation.

I open to that willingness to see no difference between my brother’s will and my own. This demands that I turn over to the Holy Spirit every interpretation I would make of my brother. I have achieved that when I am totally willing to accept everything about my brother and want to change nothing about him, when I see his every action as an expression of Love. The Holy Spirit will show me that that is the case.

I look on my brother without a past; in this instant he is perfect. Any belief in the past as a cause for my brother is a belief I made up for the purpose of believing in separation. I will be vigilant against any thoughts which would prompt me to judge my brother as being in need of my guidance or help. I turn such thoughts over to the Holy Spirit. In my willingness to do that I shall become aware of the Oneness I share with my brother.

Special relationships are a figment of my imagination. All of us have formed them and have thus invited guilt into our lives. The ego cannot exist without the special relationship. If I believe I am not complete, I look outside myself for completion. Since there is nothing outside myself I project a conglomerate of what I desire for myself and weave it into images of my brothers which I then use to define myself. I demand that my brother provide me with the image I wish to see that preserves my ego. Thus, if my brother seems to change, I change. So there is no stability in who I am; I could die, I am afraid.

If I can free my brother from having to provide me with the image of what I am, I have set him free, and I have set myself free from the past. The ego looks at relationships and says, “What can I get?” The Holy Spirit looks on relationships and says, “What can I give?” without concern for what I get. To focus on this is to realize that I am complete. This letting go of all demands I would place upon my brother is the holy instant, the truth of Love. Love extends. There is no separation, lack or incompleteness. I am an idea, a mind exercising its creative power. Every relationship is complete and whole; none are in competition. I open to the Holy Spirit who tells me I am not a body; I am Spirit, an idea in the Mind of God. All relationships blend into a beautiful harmonious Oneness. I desire only to extend the Love of God.

By seeking to complete myself in special relationships, I give to others the power to determine who I am, so my relationships are fearful. Both of us say, “I need your love,” and we bargain to get what we think completes us so we can both seem to be happy. But my “being in love” can change in a moment. Placing my fears and struggles in the hands of my brother allows me to blame him for my misfortunes.

I may hope that by giving ‘love’ I can control my brother, using love as a weapon to make me safe. If I give enough love, he will feel guilty and obligated to respond with love. Special relationships are based on anger. I am angry at my brother for having power over me, and I am angry at myself for needing another. I give that which I do not want to give, calling it love, out of the belief that this sacrifice will bring me love, which my brother does not want to give. As an ego, I do not realize that this is not love. I believe I am a body. Love becomes an exercise in the control of bodies. I am concerned with what my brother does with his body more than with what he thinks and feels. I ask for action in form, which I then try to believe is an expression of love. But I know anyone can perform such ‘acts of love’ and feel no love at all.

Fortunately, I am a mind that is free. I shall find love in real communication, in joining with another mind so fully as to realize that there is but one Mind. In joining there is no incompleteness, no bargaining. All beings are All That Is. In the absence of need there is no fear. The only valid purpose for my body is as a means of communication for joining with my brothers. The key to allowing my body to become a means of communication is to release all value from it. When I realize that my body can gain me nothing, that this world can gain me nothing, then I shall be free of the body, even though I may yet seem to appear as a body.

I experience this communication in the holy instant. I discover there is no separation, no past, nothing outside of myself, no fear, and no anger. When my brother ceases to be a body to me, my imagined needs disappear and I shall see a being of light. In that holy instant the attraction of God becomes apparent.

To enter the holy instant I first look on the ego’s scenario of love long enough to know I do not want it. Then I allow the Holy Spirit to bring me a vision in which my relationship is One. In that vision I will discover a relationship in which I am drawn to love, to God and to perfect peace. I give that peace to my brother in my own completeness, and it is the gift I receive from him. I am perfect Love.

Love gives. But sacrifice is a gift given for the purpose of receiving. Sacrifice pretends to give out of a sense of desperate need; it pretends to love for the purpose of being allowed to exist. I believe that my brothers form my self-image, that they make me what I am; so that if a brother betrays me, part of me dies. I am in conflict because I want to feel free and loved by God, but in order to be loved by God I think I must somehow cease to exist. I would give the ultimate sacrifice to receive the ultimate love. But will my sacrifice be enough?  

J came to bring me the gift of union. The holy instant is a time in which the Son of God becomes aware of his perfect freedom. God needs nothing in return for his Love. Sacrifice is not possible. God is not capable of receiving sacrifice. I am not a needy body, but as long as I perceive myself to be a body, I will believe in sacrifice and will not understand Love.

When I realize I am mind and all minds are joined I will see that every thought blesses all beings. J came to bring the gift of Love that extends to perfect freedom. All I have to do to receive it is to give it to my brothers. All of us are One with God.

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