Sixteen

To empathize does not mean to join in *suffering*, for that is what you must *refuse* to understand. That is the *ego's* interpretation of empathy and is always used to form a special relationship in which the suffering is shared. The capacity to empathize is very useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way. \[His way is very different.\] He does not understand suffering and would have you teach it is not *understandable*. When He relates through you, He does not relate through the ego to another ego. He does not join in pain, knowing that healing pain is not accomplished by delusional attempts to enter into it and lighten it by sharing the delusion. The clearest proof that empathy as the ego uses it is destructive lies in the fact that it is applied only to certain types of problems and in certain people. These it selects *out* and joins *with*. And it never joins except to strengthen *itself*. \[Having identified with what it *thinks* it understands, it sees *itself* and would *increase* itself by sharing what is *like* itself.\] Make no mistake about this maneuver; the ego always empathizes to *weaken*, and to weaken is *always* to attack. You do not know what empathizing means. Yet of this you may be sure—if you will merely sit quietly by and let the Holy Spirit relate through you, you will empathize with *strength* and *both* of you will gain in strength, and not in weakness. Your part is only to remember this—you do not want anything *you* value to come of the relationship. You will neither to hurt it nor to heal it in your own way. You do not know what healing is. All you have learned of empathy is from the *past*. And there is nothing from the past that you would share, for there is nothing there that you would *keep*. Do not use empathy to make the past real and so perpetuate it. Step gently aside and let the healing be done *for* you. Keep but one thought in mind and do not lose sight of it, however tempted you may be to judge any situation and to determine your response *by* judging it. Focus your mind only on this: *I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest. I have invited Him, and He is here. I need do nothing except **not to interfere** *.

True empathy is of Him Who knows what it *is*. You will learn His interpretation of it if you let Him use your capacity for *strength* and *not* for weakness. He will not desert you, but be sure that *you* desert not *him*. Humility is strength in this sense only—to recognize and accept the fact that you do *not* know is to recognize and accept the fact that He *does* know. You are not sure that He will do His part because you have never yet done *yours* completely. You will not know how to respond to what you do not understand. Be tempted not in this, and yield not to the ego's triumphant use of empathy for *its* glory. The triumph of weakness is not what you would offer to a brother. And yet you know no triumph *but* this. This is not knowledge, and the form of empathy that would bring this about is so distorted that it would imprison what it would release. The unredeemed cannot redeem, yet they *have* a Redeemer. Attempt to teach Him not. *You* are the learner; He the Teacher. Do not confuse your role with His, for this will never bring peace to anyone. Offer your empathy to Him, for it is *His* perception and *His* strength that you would share. And let Him offer you His strength and His perception to be shared through you. The meaning of love is lost in any relationship which looks to weakness and hopes to find love there. The power of love, which *is* its meaning, lies in the strength of God, which hovers over it and blesses it silently by enveloping it in healing wings. *Let* this be, and do not try to substitute *your* “miracle” for this. We once said that if a brother asks a foolish thing of you, to do it. But be certain that this does not mean to do a foolish thing that would hurt either him *or* you, for what would hurt one *will* hurt the other. Foolish requests are foolish for the simple reason that they conflict because they contain an element of specialness. Only the Holy Spirit recognizes foolish needs as well as real ones. And He will teach you how to meet both without losing either. *You* will attempt to do this only in secrecy. And you will think that, by meeting the needs of one, you do not jeopardize another because you keep them separate and secret from each other. That is not the way, for it leads not to light and truth. No needs will long be left unmet if you leave them all to Him Whose *function* is to meet them. That is *His* function and *not* yours. He will not meet them secretly, for He would share everything you give through Him. And that is *why* He gives it. What you give through Him is for the whole Sonship, *not* for part of it. Leave Him His function, for He will fulfill it if you but ask Him to enter your relationships and bless them *for* you.

You still think holiness is difficult because you cannot see how it can be extended to include everyone. And you have learned that it *must* include everyone to *be* holy. Concern yourselves not with the extension of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do not understand. Nor do *you* do them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did *not* do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship when you do not understand the miracle itself? One attribute is no more difficult to understand than is the whole. If miracles *are* at all, their attributes would *have* to be miraculous, being part of them. There is a tendency to fragment and then to be concerned about the truth of just a little part of the whole. And this is but a way of avoiding or *looking away* from the whole to what you think you might be better able to understand. For this is but another way in which you would still try to keep understanding to *yourself*. A better and *far* more helpful way to think of miracles is this: You do not understand them, either in part *or* whole. Yet you have *done* them. Therefore, your understanding cannot be necessary. Yet it is still impossible to accomplish what you do not understand. And so there must be something in you that *does* understand. To you the miracle *cannot* seem natural because what you have done to hurt your minds has made them so *unnatural* that they do not remember what is natural to them. And when you are *told* about it, you cannot understand it. The recognition of the part as whole and of the whole in every part is *perfectly* natural. For it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him *is* natural to you. Wholly natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles mean. And if you could understand their meaning, their attributes could hardly cause you perplexity. You *have* done miracles, but it is quite apparent that you have not done them alone. You have succeeded whenever you have reached another mind and *joined* with it. When two minds join as one and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made. When you have made this joining as the Holy Spirit bids you and have offered it to Him to use as He knows how, His natural perception of your gift enables *Him* to understand it and *you* to use His understanding on your behalf. It is impossible to convince you of the reality of what has clearly *been* accomplished through your willingness, as long as you believe that *you* must understand it or else it is not real. You think your lack of understanding is a *loss* to you, and so you are unwilling to believe that what has happened is true. But can you *really* believe that all that has happened, even though you do *not* understand it, has *not* happened? Yet this *is* your position. You would have perfect faith in the Holy Spirit and in the effects of His teaching if you were not afraid to *acknowledge* what He taught you. For this acknowledgment means that what has happened you do not understand but that you are willing to accept it *because* it has happened. How can faith in reality be yours while you are bent on making it unreal? And are you *really* safer in maintaining the unreality of what has happened than you would be in joyously accepting it for what it is and giving thanks for it? Honor the truth that has been given you, and be glad you do not understand it. Miracles are natural to God and to the One Who speaks for Him. For His task is to translate the miracle into the knowledge which it represents and which is lost to you. Let His understanding of the miracle be enough for you, and do not turn away from all the witnesses that He has given you to His reality. No evidence will convince you of the truth of what you do not want. Yet your relationship with Him *is* real and *has* been demonstrated. Regard this not with fear but with rejoicing. The One you called upon *is* with you. Bid Him welcome and honor His witnesses, who bring you the glad tidings He has come. It is true, just as you fear, that to acknowledge Him *is* to deny all that you think you know. But it was *never* true. What gain is there to you in clinging to it and denying the evidence for truth? For you have come too near to truth to renounce it now, and you *will* yield to its compelling attraction. You can delay this now but only a little while. The Host of God has called to you, and you *have* heard. Never again will you be wholly willing not to listen. This is a year of joy in which your listening will increase, and peace will grow with its increase. The power of holiness and the *weakness* of attack have *both* been brought into awareness. And this has been accomplished in minds firmly convinced that holiness is weakness and attack is power. Should not this be a sufficient miracle to teach you that your Teacher is *not* of you? But remember also that whenever you have listened to His interpretation, the results have brought you joy. Would you prefer the results of *your* interpretation, considering honestly what they have been? God wills you better. Could you not look with greater charity on whom God loves with perfect love? Do not interpret *against* God's Love, for you have many witnesses which speak of it so clearly that only the blind and deaf could fail to see and hear them. This year, determine not to deny what has been given you by God\[. Awake and *share* it\], for that is the only reason He has called to you. His Voice has spoken clearly, and yet you have so little faith in what you heard because you have preferred to place still greater faith in the disaster *you* have made. Today let us resolve *together* to accept the joyful tidings that disaster is not real and that reality is not disaster. Reality is safe and sure and wholly kind to everyone and everything. There is no greater love than to accept this and be glad. For love asks only that you be *happy* and will give you everything that makes for happiness. You have never given any problem to the Holy Spirit He has not solved for you, nor will you ever do so. You have never tried to solve anything yourself and been successful. Is it not time you brought these facts *together* and made *sense* of them? This is the year for the *application* of the ideas which have been given you. For the ideas are mighty forces to be used and not held idly by. They have already proved their power sufficiently for you to place your faith in them and not in their denial. This year invest in truth, and let it work in peace. Have faith in what has faith in *you*. Think what you have *really* seen and heard and *recognize* it. Can you be alone with witnesses like these?

You have taught well, and yet you have not learned how to *accept* the comfort of your teaching. If you will consider what you have taught and how alien it is to what you thought you knew, you will be compelled to recognize that your Teacher came from beyond your thought system and so could look upon it fairly and perceive it was untrue. And He must have done so from the basis of a very different thought system and one with *nothing* in common with yours. For certainly what He has taught, and what you have taught through Him, have nothing in common with what you taught before He came. And the results have been to bring peace where there was pain, and suffering has disappeared, to be replaced by joy. You have taught freedom, but you have not learned how to be free. We once said, “By their fruits ye shall know them, and they shall know themselves.” For it is certain that you judge yourself according to your teaching. The ego's teaching produces immediate results because its decisions are immediately accepted as *your* choice. And this acceptance means that you are willing to judge yourself accordingly. Cause and effect are very clear in the ego's thought system because all your learning has been directed towards *establishing* the relationship between them. And would you not have faith in what you have so diligently taught yourself to believe? Yet remember how much care you have exerted in choosing its witnesses and in avoiding those which spoke for the cause of truth and *its* effects. Does not the fact that you have not learned what you have taught show you that you do not perceive the Sonship as one? And does it not also show you that you do not regard *yourself* as one? For it is impossible to teach successfully wholly *without* conviction, and it is equally impossible that conviction be *outside* of you. You could never have taught freedom unless you *did* believe in it. And it must be that what you taught came from *yourself*. And yet, this Self you clearly do not *know* and do not recognize It even though It functions. What functions must be *there*. And it is only if you deny what It has *done* that you could possibly deny Its Presence. This is a course in how to know yourself. You *have* taught what you are but have not let what you are teach *you*. You have been very careful to avoid the obvious and not to see the *real* cause and effect relationship that is perfectly apparent. Yet within you is *everything* you taught. What can it be that has *not* learned it? It must be this that is *really* outside yourself, not by your own projection, but in *truth*. And it is this that you have taken in that is *not* you. What you accept into your minds does not *really* change them. Illusions are but beliefs in what is not there. And the seeming conflict between truth and illusion can only be resolved by separating yourself from the *illusion* and *not* from truth. Your teaching has already done this, for the Holy Spirit is part of *you*. Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God *and* you, as you are God and Him together. For God's answer to the separation added more to you than you tried to take away. He protected both your creations and you together, keeping one with you what you would exclude. And they will take the place of what you took in to replace them. They are quite real as part of the Self you do not know. And they communicate to you through the Holy Spirit, and their power and gratitude to you for their creation they offer gladly to your teaching of yourself, who is their home. You who are host to God are also host to them. For nothing real has ever left the mind of its creator. And what is not real was never *there*. You are not two selves in conflict. What is beyond God? If you who hold Him and whom He holds *are* the universe, all else must be *outside*, where *nothing* is. You have taught this, and from far off in the universe, yet not beyond yourself, the witnesses to your teaching have gathered to help you learn. Their gratitude has joined with yours and God's to strengthen your faith in what you taught. For what you taught is true. Alone you stand outside your teaching and *apart* from it. But *with* them you must learn that you but taught *yourself* and learned from the conviction you shared with them. This year you will begin to learn and make learning commensurate with teaching. You have chosen this by your own willingness to teach. Though you seemed to suffer for it, the joy of teaching will yet be yours. For the joy of teaching is in the *learner*, who offers it to the teacher in gratitude and shares it with him. As you learn, your gratitude to your Self, Who teaches you what He is, will grow and help you honor Him. And you will learn His power and strength and purity, and love Him as His Father does. His Kingdom has no limits and no end, and there is nothing in Him that is not perfect and eternal. All this is *you*, and nothing outside of this *is* you. To your most holy Self, all praise is due for what you are and for what He is Who created you as you are. Sooner or later must everyone bridge the gap which he imagines exists between his selves. Each one builds this bridge which carries him *across* the gap as soon as he is willing to expend some little effort on behalf of bridging it. His little efforts are powerfully supplemented by the strength of Heaven and by the united will of all who make Heaven what it is, being joined within it. And so the one who would cross over is literally transported there. Your bridge is builded stronger than you think, and your foot is planted firmly on it. Have no fear that the attraction of those who stand on the other side and wait for you will not draw you safely across. For you *will* come where you would be and where your Self awaits you.

Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom lies in looking at it. It would be impossible not to know the meaning of love except for this. For the special love relationship, in which the meaning of love is *lost*, is undertaken solely to offset the hate but *not* to let it go. Your salvation will rise clearly before your open eyes as you look on this. You cannot *limit* hate. The special love relationship will not offset it but will merely drive it underground and out of sight. It is essential to bring it *into* sight and to make no attempt to hide it. For it is the attempt to balance hate with love that *makes* love meaningless to you. The extent of the split that lies in this you do not realize. And *until* you do, the split will remain unrecognized and therefore unhealed. The symbols of hate against the symbols of love play out a conflict which does not exist. For symbols stand for something *else*, and the symbol of love is without meaning if love is everything. You will go through this last undoing quite unharmed and will at last emerge as yourself. This is the last step in the readiness for God. Be not unwilling now. You are too near, and you will cross the bridge in perfect safety, translated quietly from war to peace. For the illusion of love will *never* satisfy, but its reality, which awaits you on the other side, will give you everything. The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the destructive effects of hate by finding a haven in the storm of guilt. It makes no attempt to rise *above* the storm into the sunlight. On the contrary, it emphasizes guilt *outside* the haven by attempting to build barricades against it and keep within them. The special love relationship is not perceived as a value in itself, but as a place of safety from which hatred is split off and kept apart. The special love partner is acceptable only as long as he serves this purpose. Hatred can enter and indeed is welcome in *some* aspects of the relationship, but it is still held together by the illusion of love. If the illusion goes, the relationship is broken or becomes unsatisfying on the grounds of disillusionment. Love is *not* an illusion. It is a fact. Where disillusionment is possible, there was not love but hate. For hate *is* an illusion, and what can change was *never* love. It is certain that those who select certain ones as partners in any aspect of living and use them for any purpose which they would not share with others, are trying to *live* with guilt rather than *die* of it. This is the choice they see. And love to them is only an escape from death. They seek it desperately but not in the peace in which it would gladly come quietly *to* them. And when they find the fear of death is still upon them, the love relationship *loses* the illusion that it is what it is not. For then the barricades against it are broken, fear rushes in, and hatred triumphs. There are no triumphs of love. Only hate is concerned with the “triumph of love” at all. The illusion of love *can* triumph over the illusion of hate, but always at the price of making *both* illusions. As long as the illusion of hatred lasts, so long will love be an illusion to you. And then the only choice which remains possible is which illusion you prefer. There *is* no conflict in the choice between truth and illusion. Seen in *these* terms, no one would hesitate. But conflict enters the instant the choice seems to be one between *illusions*, for this choice does not matter. Where one choice is as dangerous as the other, the decision *must* be one of despair. Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find *all* of the barriers within yourself which you have built *against* it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it *is* necessary to seek for what is false. Every illusion is one of fear, whatever form it takes. And the attempt to escape from one illusion into another *must* fail. If you seek love outside yourself, you can be certain that you perceive hatred within and are *afraid* of it. Yet peace will never come from the illusion of love, but *only* from its reality. Recognize this, for it is true, and truth *must* be recognized if it is to be distinguished from illusion: The special love relationship is an attempt \[to bring *love into separation*. And, as such, it is nothing more than an attempt\] to bring love into fear and make it *real* in fear. In fundamental violation of love's condition, the special love relationship would accomplish the impossible. How but in illusion *could* this be done? It is essential that we look very closely at exactly what it is you think you can do to solve the dilemma, which seems very real to you, but which does not exist. You have come very close to truth, and only this stands between you and the bridge that leads you into it. Heaven waits silently, and your creations are holding out their hands to help you cross and welcome them. For it is *they* you *seek*. You seek but for your own completion, and it is they who render you complete. The special love relationship is but a shabby substitute for what makes you whole in truth, *not* in illusion. Your relationship with them is without guilt, and this enables you to look on all your brothers with gratitude because your creations were created in union *with* them. Acceptance of your creations is the acceptance of the oneness of creation, without which you could never *be* complete. No specialness can offer you what God has given and what you are joined with Him in giving. Across the bridge is your completion, for you will be wholly in God, willing for nothing special but only to be wholly like unto Him, completing Him by *your* completion. Fear not to cross to the abode of peace and perfect holiness. Only there is the completion of God and of His Son established forever. Seek not for this in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certain, and where everything fails to satisfy. In the Name of God, be wholly willing to abandon *all* illusions. In any relationship in which you are wholly willing to accept completion, and *only* this, there is God completed and His Son with Him. The bridge that leads to union in yourself *must* lead to knowledge, for it was built with God beside you and will lead you straight to Him, where your completion rests wholly compatible with His. Every illusion which you accept into your mind by judging it to be attainable removes your own sense of completion and thus denies the wholeness of your Father. Every fantasy, be it of love or hate, deprives you of knowledge, for fantasies are the veil behind which truth is hidden. To lift the veil which seems so dark and heavy, it is only needful to value truth beyond *all* fantasy and to be entirely unwilling to settle for illusion *in place* of truth. Would you not go *through* fear to love? For such the journey seems to be. Love calls, but hate would have you stay. Hear not the call of hate, and see no fantasies\[, for your completion lies in truth and *nowhere else*\]. See in the call of hate and in every fantasy that rises to delay you but the call for help which rises ceaselessly from you to your Creator. Would He not answer you whose completion is His? He loves you wholly without illusion, as you must love. For love *is* wholly without illusion and therefore wholly without fear. Whom God remembers *must* be whole. And God has never forgotten what makes *Him* whole. In your completion lies the memory of His wholeness and His gratitude to you for His completion. In His link with you lie both His inability to forget and your ability to remember. In Him are joined your willingness to love and all the Love of God, Who forgot you not. Your Father can no more forget the truth in you than you can fail to remember it. The Holy Spirit is the bridge to Him, made from your willingness to unite with Him and created by His joy in union with you. The journey that seemed to be endless is almost complete, for what *is* endless is very near. You have almost recognized it. Turn with me firmly away from all illusions *now*, and let nothing stand in the way of truth. We will take the last foolish journey *away* from truth together, and then together we go straight to God in joyous answer to His call for His completion. If special relationships of any kind would hinder God's completion, *can* they have value to you? What would interfere with God *must* interfere with you. Only in time does interference in God's completion seem to be possible. The bridge that He would carry you across lifts you from time into eternity. Waken from time and answer fearlessly the call of Him Who gave eternity to you in your creation. On this side of the bridge to timelessness you understand nothing. But as you step lightly across it, upheld *by* timelessness, you are directed straight to the Heart of God. At its center, and *only* there, you are safe forever because you are *complete* forever. There is no veil the Love of God in us together cannot lift. The way to truth is open. Follow it with me.

In looking at the special relationship, it is necessary first to realize that it involves a great amount of pain. Anxiety, despair, guilt, and attack all enter into it, broken into by periods in which they *seem* to be gone. All these must be understood for what they are. Whatever form they take, they are always an attack on the self to make the *other* guilty. We have spoken of this before, but there are some aspects of what is really being attempted that we have not touched upon. Very simply, the attempt to make guilty is *always* directed against God. For the ego would have you see Him, and Him *alone*, as guilty, leaving the Sonship open to attack and unprotected from it. The special love relationship is the ego's chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven. It does not *appear* to be a weapon, but if you consider *how* you value it and *why*, you will realize what it must be. The special love relationship is the ego's most boasted gift, and one which has the most appeal to those unwilling to relinquish guilt. The “dynamics” of the ego are clearest here, for counting on the attraction of this offering, the fantasies which center around it are often quite open. Here they are usually judged to be acceptable and even natural. No one considers it bizarre to love and hate together, and even those who believe that hate is sin merely feel guilty and do not correct it. This *is* the “natural” condition of the separation, and those who learn that it is not natural at all seem to be the *unnatural* ones. For this world *is* the opposite of Heaven, being *made* to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as *union*. Here, where the illusion of love is accepted in love's place, love is perceived as separation and *exclusion*. It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish for special love from God, that the ego's hatred triumphs. For the special relationship is the *renunciation* of the Love of God and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness which He denied. It is essential to the preservation of the ego that you believe this specialness is not hell, but Heaven. For the ego would never have you see that separation can *only* be loss, being the one condition in which Heaven *cannot* be. To everyone Heaven is completion. There can be no disagreement on this, because both the ego and the Holy Spirit accept it. They are, however, in *complete* disagreement on what completion *is* and *how* it is accomplished. The Holy Spirit knows that completion lies first in union and then in the extension of union. To the ego, completion lies in triumph and in the extension of the “victory” even to the final triumph over God. In this it sees the ultimate freedom of the self, for nothing would remain to interfere with *it*. This *is* its idea of Heaven. From this it follows that union, which is a condition in which the ego *cannot* interfere, *must* be hell. The special relationship is a strange and unnatural ego device for joining hell and Heaven and making them indistinguishable. And the attempt to find the imagined “best” of both worlds has merely led to fantasies of both and to the inability to perceive either one as it is. The special relationship is the triumph of this confusion. It is a kind of union from which union is *excluded*, and the basis for the *attempt* at union rests on exclusion. What better example could there be of the ego's maxim, “Seek but do not find?” Most curious of all is the concept of the self which the ego fosters in the special relationship. This “self” seeks the relationship to make itself complete. Yet when it *finds* the special relationship in which it thinks it can accomplish this, it gives itself *away* and tries to “trade” itself for the self of another. This is not union, for there is no increase and no extension. Each partner tries to sacrifice the self he does not want for one he thinks he would prefer. And he feels guilty for the “sin” of taking and of giving nothing of value in return. For how much value *can* he place upon a self that he would give away to get a better one? The “better” self the ego seeks is always one that is *more* special. And whoever seems to possess a special self is “loved” for what can be taken *from* him. Where both partners see this special self in each other, the ego sees “a union made in Heaven.” For neither one will recognize that he has asked for hell, and so he will not interfere with the ego's illusion of Heaven, which it offered him to *interfere* with Heaven. Yet if all illusions are of fear, and they *can* be of nothing else, the illusion of Heaven is nothing more than an “attractive” form of fear in which the guilt is buried deep and rises in the form of “love.” The appeal of hell lies only in the terrible attraction of guilt, which the ego holds out to those who place their faith in littleness. The conviction of littleness lies in *every* special relationship, for only the deprived could *value* specialness. The demand for specialness and the perception of the giving of specialness as an act of love would make love *hateful*. And the real purpose of the special relationship, in strict accordance with the ego's goals, is to destroy reality and substitute illusion. For the ego is *itself* an illusion, and only illusions *can* be the witnesses to its “reality.” If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, would you *want* it? Let us not think of its fearful nature nor of the guilt it must entail nor of the sadness and the loneliness. For these are only attributes of the whole religion of the separation and of the total context in which it is thought to occur. The central theme in its litany to sacrifice is that God must die so *you* can live. And it is this theme which is acted out in the special relationship. Through the death of *your* self, you think you can attack another self and snatch it from the other to replace the self which you despise. And you despise it because you do not think it offers the specialness which you demand. And *hating* it, you have made it little and unworthy because you are *afraid* of it. How can you grant unlimited power to what you think you have attacked? So fearful has the truth become to you that *unless* it is weak and little, \[and unworthy of value,\] you would not dare to look upon it. You think it safer to endow the little self which you have made with power you *wrested* from truth, triumphing over it and leaving it helpless. See how *exactly* is this ritual enacted in the special relationship. An altar is erected in between two separate people on which each seeks to kill his self and on his body raise another self which takes its power from his death. Over and over and over this ritual is enacted. And it is *never* completed nor ever *will* be completed. For the ritual of completion *cannot* complete, and life arises not from death, nor Heaven from hell. Whenever any form of special relationship tempts you to seek for love in ritual, remember love is *content* and not form of *any* kind. The special relationship is a *ritual* of form, aimed at the raising of the form to take the place of God at the *expense* of content. There *is* no meaning in the form, and there will never be. The special relationship must be recognized for what it is—a senseless ritual in which strength is extracted from the death of God and invested in His killer as the sign that form has triumphed over content and love has lost its meaning. Would you *want* this to be possible, even apart from its evident impossibility? For if it *were* possible, you would have made *yourself* helpless. God is not angry. He merely could not let this happen. You *cannot* change His Mind. No rituals that you have set up in which the dance of death delights you can bring death to the eternal. Nor can your chosen substitute for the wholeness of God have any influence at all upon it. See in the special relationship nothing more than a meaningless attempt to raise other gods before Him and by worshiping them to obscure *their* tininess and His *greatness*. In the name of your completion, you do not *want* this. For every idol which you raise to place before Him stands before *you* in place of what you *are*. Salvation lies in the simple fact that illusions are not fearful because they are not *true*. They but seem to be fearful to the extent to which you fail to recognize them for what they are, and you *will* fail to do this to the extent to which you *want* them to be true. And to the same extent you are *denying* truth, and so are making yourself unable to make the simple choice between truth and illusion, God and fantasy. Remember this and you will have no difficulty in perceiving the decision as just what it *is* and nothing more. The core of the separation delusion lies simply in the *fantasy* of destruction of love's meaning. And unless love's meaning is *restored* to you, you cannot know yourself, who *shares* its meaning. Separation is only the decision *not* to know yourself. Its whole thought system is a carefully contrived learning experience designed to lead *away* from truth and into fantasy. Yet for every learning that would hurt you, God offers you correction and complete escape from *all* its consequences. The decision whether or not to listen to this course and follow it is but the choice between truth and illusion. For here is truth *separated* from illusion and not confused with it at all. How simple does this choice become when it is perceived as only what it is. For *only* fantasies made confusion in choosing possible, and they are totally unreal. This year is thus the time to make the easiest decision that ever confronted you and also the *only* one. You will cross the bridge into reality simply because you will recognize that God is on the other side and nothing *at all* is here. It is impossible *not* to make the natural decision as this is realized.

The search for the special relationship is the sign that you equate yourself with the ego and not with God. For the special relationship has value *only* to the ego. To the ego *unless* a relationship has special value, it has *no* meaning, and it perceives *all* love as special. Yet this *cannot* be natural, for it is unlike the relationship of God and His Son, and all relationships that are unlike this one *must* be unnatural. For God created love as He would have it be and gave it as it *is*. Love has no meaning except as its Creator defined it by His Will. It is impossible to define it otherwise and *understand* it. Love is *freedom*. To look for it by placing yourself in bondage is to *separate* yourself from it. For the love of God, no longer seek for union in separation nor for freedom in bondage! As you release, so will you be released. Forget this not, or love will be unable to find you and comfort you. There is a way in which the Holy Spirit asks your help if you would have His. The holy instant is His most helpful tool in protecting you from the attraction of guilt, the real lure in the special relationship. You do not recognize that this *is* its real appeal, for the ego has taught you that *freedom* lies in it. Yet the closer you look at the special relationship, the more apparent it becomes that it *must* foster guilt and therefore *must* imprison. The special relationship is totally without meaning without a body. And if you value it, you must *also* value the body. And what you value, you *will* keep. The special relationship is a device for limiting *your* self to a body and for limiting your perception of others to *theirs*. The Great Rays would establish the total *lack* of value of the special relationship if they were seen. For in seeing them, the body would disappear because its *value* would be lost. And so your whole investment in seeing it would be withdrawn from it. You see the world you *value*. On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies seeking to join each other in separate unions and to become one by losing. When *two* individuals seek to become one, they are trying to *decrease* their magnitude. Each would deny his power, for the *separate* union excludes the universe. Far more is left outside than would be taken in. For God is left without and *nothing* taken in. If *one* such union were made in perfect faith, the universe *would* enter into it. Yet the special relationship which the ego seeks does not include even one whole individual. For the ego wants but *part* of him and sees *only* this part and nothing else. Across the bridge, it is so different! For a time the body is still seen but not exclusively, as it is seen here. For the little spark which holds the Great Rays within it is *also* visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness. Once you have crossed the bridge, the value of the body is so diminished in your sight that you will see no need at all to magnify it. For you will realize that the only value which the body has is to enable you to bring your brothers to the bridge *with* you and to be released *together* there. The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in your perspective of reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted and completely out of perspective. What is little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and powerful cut down to littleness. In the transition there is a period of confusion in which a sense of actual disorientation seems to occur. But fear it not, for it means nothing more than that you have been willing to let go your hold on the distorted frame of reference which seemed to hold your world together. This frame of reference is built around the special relationship. *Without* this illusion, there can *be* no meaning you would still seek here. Fear not that you will be abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality. Time is kind, and if you use it *for* reality, it will keep gentle pace with you in your transition. The urgency is only in dislodging your minds from their fixed position here. This will not leave you homeless and without a frame of reference. The period of disorientation which precedes the actual transition is far shorter than the time it took to fix your minds so firmly on illusions. Delay will hurt you now more than before only because you realize it *is* delay and that escape from pain is really possible. Find hope and comfort rather than despair in this: You could no longer find even the *illusion* of love in any special relationship here. For you are no longer wholly insane, and you would recognize the guilt of self-betrayal for what it *is*. Nothing you seek to strengthen in the special relationship is *really* part of you. And you cannot keep part of the thought system which taught you it was real and understand the Thought that *really* knows what you are. You *have* allowed the Thought of your reality to enter your minds, and because you invited it, it *will* abide with you. Your love for it will not allow you to betray yourself, and you could not enter into a relationship where it could not go with you, for you would not *be* apart from it. Be glad you have escaped the mockery of salvation which the ego offered you and look not back with longing on the travesty it made of your relationships. Now no one need suffer, for you have come too far to yield to the illusion of the beauty and holiness of guilt. Only the wholly insane could look on death and suffering, sickness and despair and see it thus. What guilt has wrought is ugly, fearful, and very dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there. And be you thankful that there *is* a place where truth and beauty wait for you. Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you for the simple willingness to give up nothing *because* it is nothing. The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will be the understanding of where Heaven *is*. From here it seems to be outside and across the bridge. Yet as you cross to join it, it will join with *you* and become one with you. And you will think in glad astonishment that for all this you gave up *nothing*! The joy of Heaven, which has no limit, is increased with each light that returns to take its rightful place within it. Wait no longer, for the Love of God and *you*. And may the holy instant speed you on the way, as it will surely do if you but let it come to you. The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still attracts you, enter with Him into a holy instant and there let Him release you. He needs only your willingness to *share* His perspective to give it to you completely. And your willingness need not be complete because *His* is perfect. It is His task to atone for your unwillingness by His perfect faith, and it is His faith you share with Him there. Out of your recognition of your unwillingness for your release, His *perfect* willingness is given you. Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His call. And *let* Him call on Heaven *for* you.

It is impossible to let the past go without relinquishing the special relationship. For the special relationship is an attempt to *reenact* the past and *change* it. Imagined slights, remembered pain, past disappointments, perceived injustices, and deprivations all enter into the special relationship, which becomes a way in which you seek to restore your wounded self-esteem. What basis would you have for choosing a special partner *without* the past? Every such choice is made because of something “evil” in the past to which you cling and for which must someone else atone. The special relationship *takes vengeance* on the past. By seeking to remove suffering in the past, it *overlooks* the present in its preoccupation with the past and its total commitment to it. *No* special relationship is experienced in the present. Shades of the past envelop it and make it what it is. It *has* no meaning in the present, and if it means nothing *now*, it cannot have any real meaning at all. How can you change the past *except* in fantasy? And who can give you what you think the past deprived you of? The past is nothing. Do not seek to lay the blame for deprivation on it, for the past is gone. You cannot really *not* let go what has *already* gone. It must be, therefore, that you are maintaining the illusion that it has *not* gone because you think it serves some purpose that you want *fulfilled*. And it must also be that this purpose could *not* be fulfilled in the present, but *only* in the past. Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego's drive for vengeance on the past. It is completely savage and completely insane. For the ego remembers everything that you have done which offended it and seeks retribution of *you*. The fantasies it brings to the special relationships it chooses in which to act out its hate are fantasies of *your* destruction. For the ego holds the past *against* you, and in your *escape* from the past, it sees itself deprived of the vengeance it believes that you so justly merit. Yet without your alliance in your own destruction, the ego could not hold you to the past. In the special relationship, you are *allowing* your destruction to be. That this is insane is obvious. But what is less obvious to you is that the *present* is useless to you while you pursue the ego's goal as its ally. The past is gone; seek not to preserve it in the special relationship, which binds you to it and would teach you that salvation is past and that you must return *to* the past to find salvation. There is no fantasy which does not contain the dream of retribution for the past. Would you act out the dream or let it go? In the special relationship, it does not *seem* to be an acting out of vengeance which you seek. And even when the hatred and the savagery break briefly through into awareness, the illusion of love is not profoundly shaken. Yet the one thing which the ego never allows to reach awareness is that the special relationship is the acting out of vengeance on *yourself*. But what else *could* it be? In seeking the special relationship, you look not for glory in *yourself*. You have denied that it is *there*, and the relationship becomes your *substitute* for it. And vengeance becomes your substitute for Atonement, and the *escape* from vengeance becomes your *loss*. Against the ego's insane notion of salvation, the Holy Spirit gently lays the holy instant. We said before that the Holy Spirit must teach through comparisons and uses opposites to point to truth. The holy instant is the *opposite* of the ego's fixed belief in salvation through vengeance for the past. In the holy instant, it is accepted that the past is gone, and with its passing the drive for vengeance has been uprooted and has disappeared. The stillness and the peace of *now* enfolds you in perfect gentleness. Everything is gone except the truth. For a time you may attempt to bring illusions into the holy instant to hinder your full awareness of the *complete* difference in all respects between your experience of truth and illusion. Yet you will not attempt this long. In the holy instant, the power of the Holy Spirit will prevail because you *joined* Him. The illusions you bring with you will weaken the experience of Him for a while and will prevent you from keeping the experience in your mind. Yet the holy instant *is* eternal, and your illusions of time will not prevent the timeless from being what it is nor you from experiencing it as it is. What God has given you is truly given and will be truly *received*. For God's gifts *have* no reality apart from your receiving them. *Your* receiving completes His *giving*. You will receive *because* it is His Will to give. He gave the holy instant to be given you, and it is impossible that you receive it not, *because* He gave it. When He willed that His Son be free, His Son *was* free. In the holy instant is His reminder that His Son will always be *exactly* as he was created. And everything the Holy Spirit teaches you is to remind you that you *have* received what God has given you. There is nothing you can hold against reality. All that must be forgiven are the illusions you have held against your brothers. Their reality *has* no past, and only illusions can *be* forgiven. God holds nothing against anyone, for He is incapable of illusions of *any* kind. Release your brothers from the slavery of their illusions by forgiving them for the illusions which *you* perceive in them. Thus will you learn that *you* have been forgiven, for it is *you* who offered them illusions. In the holy instant, this is done for you *in time* to bring to you the true condition of Heaven. Remember that you always choose between truth and illusion—between the *real* Atonement which would heal and the ego's “atonement” which would destroy. The power of God and all His Love, without limit, will support you as you seek only your place in the plan of Atonement arising from His Love. Be an ally of God and not the ego in seeking how Atonement can come to you. His help suffices, for His Messenger understands how to restore the Kingdom to you and to place *all* your investment in salvation in your relationship with Him. Seek and *find* his message in the holy instant, where all illusions are forgiven. From there the miracle extends to bless everyone and to resolve all problems, be they perceived as great or small, possible or impossible. There is nothing that will not give place to Him and to His majesty. To join in close relationship with Him is to accept relationships as *real* and through their reality to give over all illusions for the reality of your relationship with God. Praise be to your relationship with Him and to no other. The truth lies here and nowhere else. You choose this or *nothing*. *Forgive us our illusions, Father, and help us to accept our true relationship with You in which there are no illusions and where none can ever enter. Our holiness is Yours. What can there be in us that **needs** forgiveness when Yours is perfect? The sleep of forgetfulness is only the unwillingness to remember Your forgiveness and Your Love. Let us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Son of God is not Your will. And let us receive only what **you** have given and accept but this into the minds which You created and which You love. Amen*.