Love does not come and go.
It is not arbitrarily given and then withdrawn.
Such is not Love, but exchange, a bargain made between separate bodies in which each tries to get much and give little.
Do not make of Love a bargain based on maintaining belief in separation.
Today, remember that what you see and experience comes from a choice that you have already made.
What you perceive outside your self reflects your beliefs within.
If judgment and opinions are running in your mind you will perceive a world of fear and guilt.
If you feel the Love of God within through generosity, honesty, and compassion you will look on the world with mercy and Love.
Choose to still your mind by loving God with all your being.
You will discover Peace and harmony within the inner temple of quietness.
Reality observes the laws of God, and not the rules you set.
It is His laws which guarantee your safety.
All illusions that you believe about yourself obey no laws of love.
They seem to dance a little while, according to the rules you set for them.
But then they fall and cannot rise again.
Appearances deceive because they are appearances and not reality.
Dwell not on them in any form.
The truth could never be attacked.
And this you knew when you made idols.
They were made that this might be forgotten.
All idols are the false ideas you made to fill the gap you think arose between yourself and what is true.
And you attack them for the things you think they represent.
What lies beyond them cannot be attacked.
You will attack what does not satisfy, and thus you will not see you made it up.
You always fight illusions.
For the truth behind them is so lovely and so still in loving gentleness, were you aware of it you would forget defensiveness entirely and rush to its embrace.
Today, consciously question your reactions to every situation.
Use this day and all days to come, to change your mind about your mind.
If the habit of fear and doubt call to you from the recesses of your mind, firmly refuse to be tempted.
Free your mind through willing surrender; constantly turn to the Power of Infinite Truth for help to accept the liberating influence of Love, through harmony, gratitude, honesty and compassion.
Gladly return in every moment to the sanity and salvation of God‘s Grace, affirming that only Love is real.
How can God’s Child awaken from the dream?
It is a dream of judgment.
So must he judge not, and he will waken.
Judge not, for he who judges will have need of idols which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself.
Nor can he know the Self he has condemned.
Judge not, because you make yourself a part of evil dreams where idols are your “true” identity and your salvation from the judgment laid in terror and in guilt upon yourself.
The slave of idols is a willing slave.
For willing he must be to let himself bow down in worship to what has no life and seek for power in the powerless.
A dream of judgment came into the mind that God created perfect as Himself.
And in that dream was Heaven changed to hell, and God made enemy unto His Child.
Whom you forgive is given power to forgive you your illusions.
By your gift of freedom is it given unto you.
Make way for love, which you did not create, but which you can extend.
On earth this means forgive your brother, that the darkness may be lifted from your mind.
You cannot wake yourself.
Yet you can let yourself be wakened.
You can overlook your brother’s dreams.
So perfectly can you forgive him his illusions, he becomes your savior from your dreams.
Remember that the Soul knows no difference between “being” and “having.”
The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys and therefore honors only the laws of God.
To Him, getting is meaningless and giving is all.
Having everything, the Soul holds everything by giving it and thus creates as the Father created.
Today, allow the holy purpose of honesty to be your guide in every situation.
Do not be fooled by the idea of guidance coming from your own conclusions.
In conscious honesty, accept that your personal fearful thoughts are fantasies and gladly surrender them into the Light of Love.
Gratefully embrace each moment as your schoolroom of honest learning and truthful guidance.
Thank God only Love is real.
Remember, every kind and generous thought brings you closer to the Heart of God.
Surrender again and again until all the false ignorance of lies are dismantled and disappear.
Gratefully accept the shining Light of Truth and learn to humbly accept all beloveds and all creation with Love, appreciation and compassion.
Thank God only eternal unconditional Love is real.
Grievances arise only in the ego mind, which is not you.
The primary problem is not in having grievances but in misidentifying who is having them.
It is in mistakenly identifying with the ego mind, thinking “I” have grievances.
Free will is in the willingness to perceive that the ego mind has grievances not me.
God’s Will is Love.
Love holds no grievances.
It is not love that asks a sacrifice.
But fear demands the sacrifice of love, for in love’s presence fear cannot abide.
For hate to be maintained love must be feared and only sometimes present, sometimes gone.
There is a wariness that is aroused by learning that only love real.
And there are overtones of seeming fear around the happy message, “God is love.”
There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent.
There is nothing to be feared.
There is no way in which a gap could be conceived of in the wholeness that is His.
The compromise the least and littlest gap would represent in His eternal love is quite impossible.
For it would mean His love could harbor just a hint of hate; His gentleness turn sometimes to attack; and His eternal patience sometimes fail.
The miracle does not awaken you but merely shows you who the dreamer is.
It teaches you there is a choice of dreams while you are still asleep, depending on the purpose of your dreaming.
Do you wish for dreams of healing or for dreams of death?
A dream is like a memory in that it pictures what you wanted shown to you.
Innocence is not confined.
It is the nature of the innocent to be forever uncontained, without a barrier or limitation.
Thus is innocence not of the body.
Nor can it be found where limitation is but the body can be healed by its effects, which are as limitless as is itself.
Yet must all healing come about because the mind is recognized as not within the body.
And its innocence is where all healing is.
Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet without effects there is no cause.
A cause is made by its effects; the Father is a father by His Son.
Effects do not create their cause, but they establish its causation.
Thus, the Son gives fatherhood to his Creator and receives the gift that he has given Him.
It is because he is God’s Son that he must also be a father who creates as God created him.
Fatherhood is creation.
Love must be extended.
The circle of creation has no end.
The circle of creation has no end.
Its starting and its ending are the same.
But in itself it holds the universe of all creation, without beginning and without an end.
Love must be extended.
Yet must all healing come about because the mind is recognized as not within the body.
Today, step back and let God lead the way to the Truth of Peace.
Gratefully, surrender all the lies of sacrifice and deprivation that lead nowhere.
Humbly reject all self-made ideas of “knowing” that hold your heart and mind in fearful confusion and inner battle.
Choose to step back and let God’s Grace lead you home to Truth.
Could anything be more deserving of your devotion and full intention?
Accept your True Nature as God’s Creation and sing the praise of Love.
Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad.
Thoughts increase by being given away.
The Soul knows no difference between “being” and “having.”
The right mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys and therefore honors only the laws of God.
The Bible says, “May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus,” and uses this as a blessing.
It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness.
The Holy Spirit is the Christ Mind, which senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception.
The Holy Spirit is your own right mind of “true” perception, which is so close to truth that God Himself can flow across the little gap.
Fear is always a sign of strain, which arises whenever the will to do conflicts with what you do.
This arises in two ways:
First, you can will to do conflicting things.
This produces conflicted behavior, which is intolerable to yourself because the part of the will that wants to do something else is outraged.
Second, you can behave as you think you should but without entirely willing to do so.
This produces consistent behavior but entails great strain within the self.
In both cases, the will and the behavior are out of accord, resulting in a situation in which you are doing what you do not will.
This arouses a sense of coercion, which usually produces rage.
The rage then invades the mind and projection in the wrong sense is likely to follow.
Depression or anxiety is virtually certain.
Peace is an attribute in you.
You cannot find it outside.
All mental illness is some form of external searching.
Mental health is inner peace.
It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without.
It enables you to remain capable, through your own miracles, of correcting the external conditions which proceed from lack of love in others.
Whatever illusions you may believe is of no concern to the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease.
It makes no distinctions among misperceptions.
Its sole concern is to distinguish between truth on the one hand and all kinds of errors on the other.
In reality, you are perfectly unaffected by all expressions of lack of love.
These can be either from yourself and others or from yourself to others or from others to you.
Peace is an attribute in you.
What is seen in dreams seems to be very real.
The Bible mentions that “a deep sleep fell upon Adam,” and nowhere is there any reference to his waking up.
He was in a condition to experience nightmares because he was asleep.
If a light is suddenly turned on while someone is dreaming a fearful dream, he may initially interpret the light itself as a part of his own dream and be afraid of it.
However, when he awakens the light is correctly perceived as the release from the dream, which is no longer accorded reality.
This release does not depend on the kind of “knowledge” which is nothing more than illusion.
The knowledge which illuminates rather than obscures, is the knowledge which not only sets you free, but which also shows you clearly that
you are free.
All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that you have the ability to usurp the power of God.
It can only be emphasized that you neither can nor have been able to do this.
In this fact lies the real justification for your escape from fear.
The escape is brought about by your acceptance of the Atonement, which places you in a position to realize that your own errors never really occurred.
The world, in the original meaning of the term, included both the proper creation of man by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind.
The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will because all loving creation is freely given.
The history of man in the world as he perceives it has not yet been marked by any genuine or comprehensive reawakening.
Your reawakening is impossible as long as you project in the spirit of miscreation.
It still remains in you, however, to project as God projected His own Spirit to you.
In reality, this is your only choice because your free will was given you for your own joy in creating the perfect.
Because of its likeness to its Creator, the Soul is creative.
No Child of God can lose this ability because it is inherent in what he is, but he can use it inappropriately.
Whenever projection is used inappropriately, it always implies that some emptiness or lack exists and that it is in your ability to put your own ideas there instead of truth:
First, the assumption that what God created can be changed by your mind.
Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect or wanting is accepted.
Third, the belief that you can distort the creations of God, including yourself, is accepted.
Fourth, the idea that since you can create yourself, the direction of your own creation is up to you.
These related distortions represent a picture of what occurred in the separation of you from your Soul.
In the creation, God projected His creative ability from Himself to the Souls He created, and He also imbued them with the same loving will to create.
The Soul has not only been fully created but has also been created perfect.
There is no emptiness in it.
Because of its likeness to its Creator, it is creative.
No Child of God can lose this ability because it is inherent in what he is.
Only your mind can produce fear.
It does so whenever it is conflicted in what it wills, thus producing inevitable strain because willing and doing become discordant.
This cannot be corrected by better doing, but it can be corrected by higher willing.
