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Chapter 12: The Holy Spirit’s Course of Instruction

3. Beholding and Gifting Fear and Hatred to Spirit

You are unaware of the intensity of the ego’s secret wish to be rid of others in its quest for total autonomy. This does not mean that you and your sisters and brothers are not strongly impelled toward each other, but it does mean that Love is not your only emotion. Because Love has now become stronger in your awareness, the conflict can no longer be “settled” by your previous attempts to minimize the fear while still maintaining it. The Love you feel makes attack untenable, but you still feel the fear. Instead of trying to resolve this conflict directly, there can be a strong tendency to try to escape from the Love that has brought the conflict into awareness, to revert to the ego’s false version of love which thrives on conflict, the source of which remains unconscious. Yet the Love that brings the actual conflict into awareness is the last thing you would want to escape from. And even if you did want this, you can escape from everything else except Love because everything else is an illusion. Be glad indeed that there is no escape from awakening.

You will not realize how much antipathy and hostility toward others lives in you while these emotions are maintained in unawareness. You will not be able to release yourself of these until you do realize it, for until then you will think you want to get rid of each other and keep the antipathy, because this helps you maintain your sense of your separate self. Yet if you are each other’s awakener, what can this mean except that part of you prefers attack to awakening? Be glad that neither your reality nor your awakening is a matter of your preference, for you have much cause for Joy. However, that the Cause of Joy is not of your making is surely obvious. You and your sisters and brothers do fear and have antipathy and hostility toward each other, and Love, which is what’s real in you and joining you, is obscured by these. How can you know the Meaning of Love unless your Love is total?

The transition from fear and antipathy to total Love is a very difficult period for all who undergo it because it means the undoing of the ego, or separate self, but it will not be so for long. You will be helped through, and no harm will happen. But you cannot remain in darkness, and this will be the way out. Perceive fear and antipathy with a calm heart, for if you are to deny the denial of Truth you must first recognize the Truth you have been denying. Remember that Knowledge precedes denial, and that the separation was a descent from Magnitude to littleness. And so the way back is to retrace the way to Magnitude.

Your antipathy in its various forms is not real, but it is still real to you, and it hides what you really want. Surely you are willing to learn to perceive without fearfulness what you do not want, even if this initially frightens you, if you can thereby release it to be able to claim what you do want. For you cannot escape awakening, and you will not release yourself from fear until you want awakening totally. Be not afraid of this journey into and through fear, for it is not your destination. And we will walk through it in Safety together, for Peace is near, and you are being led in Its Light to our Goal.

Remember what was said earlier about the frightening perceptions of children, which terrify them because they do not understand them. If they ask for enlightenment, and accept it, their fears vanish. But if they hide their nightmares, then they will keep them. It is easy to help an uncertain child, for they recognize that they do not know what their perceptions mean. But you believe that you do know what yours mean. Sisters and brothers, you are hiding your heads under the heavy covers you have laid upon yourselves. You are hiding your nightmares in the darkness of your own contrived certainty, and refusing to open your eyes and perceive them clearly.

Let us not hold on to nightmares, for they are not fitting offerings for Divine Essence, and so they are not fit gifts for you. Take off the covers meant to keep frightening things hidden, and behold what you are afraid of. Only the anticipation will frighten you, for the reality of nothingness cannot be frightening. Let us not delay this, for your dreams of fear and antipathy have not left you without help, and Help is here. Learn to be quiet and calm in the midst of turmoil, for Quietness is the end of strife, and this is the journey to Peace. Perceive clearly every image that rises to delay you, for the Goal is inevitable, because It is eternal.

The Goal of Love is simply your right, and It belongs to you despite your imagined preference to the contrary. You still will what the Divine wills, and no nightmare can defeat a Child of the Divine in Its Purpose. For your Purpose was given you by the Divine, and you must accomplish It because It is Its Will and yours. Awaken and remember your Purpose, for it is your will to do so. What has been accomplished for you must belong to you. Do not let your fear or antipathy stand in the way of Love, for nothing can withstand the Love of Divine Essence for Its Creator, or Its Creator’s Love for It, of Which you are part.

In just a little while you will see me. For just because you have been hiding doesn’t mean that I am hidden. I will help you awaken as surely as I awakened myself, for I awakened for you. In the Resurrection that I embraced is your Release. Our Mission is to undo the belief in abandonment and martyrdom, or meaningless journeys, for in this undoing is Liberation. Trust in my help, for I did not walk alone then, and I walk with you now, as our Creator walks with us. Do you know that we walk with our Creator in Peace? And this means that Peace goes with us on the one and only journey that has Meaning.

There is no fear in perfect Love. On this journey, we will simply be making perfect to you what is already perfect in you. You do not actually fear the unknown, but the Known. You will succeed in your Mission, because I succeeded in mine. Give me just a little trust, in the name of the complete Trust I have in you, and we will easily accomplish the Goal of Perfection together. For Perfection is, and cannot be denied. To deny the denial of Perfection is not difficult, but the denial of Truth is not only difficult but impossible. And what we will accomplish together must be believed when you see it accomplished, for Accomplishment is not bound by time. They who try to banish Love cannot succeed, but they who choose to undo fear must succeed.

The Divine is with you though you do not perceive It. And your Awakener lives forever, and lives in you in the Peace in Which It was created. Would you not receive this Awareness in place of the unawareness in which your fear has functioned? When we have overcome your fear together, not by hiding or minimizing or denying its full import in any way, but by going through it to Truth, then the Awareness of your Awakener is what you will see. You cannot lay aside the obstacles to true vision without first being aware of them, for to lay aside means to evaluate as not valuable. If you will perceive clearly the obstacles to vision, the Holy Spirit will evaluate them with you, and this Evaluation will be true. Spirit cannot shine away for you what you keep hidden, for your keeping it hidden means you have not offered it to Spirit, and It cannot take it from you against your will.

We have embarked together on an organized, well-structured, and carefully planned Program aimed at learning how to offer to the Holy Spirit everything you do not want. Give this gift to Spirit, for It knows what to do with it in order to exchange it for what you do want, while you do not yet know how to use what It knows. Whatever is shared with Spirit that is not of the Divine is gone. But you must reveal it first to yourself in perfect willingness, for otherwise Spirit’s Knowledge remains useless to you. Surely Spirit will succeed in helping you with this, since Help is Its only Purpose. And truly you have greater reason for perceiving the cause of fear and letting it go forever than for fearing the world you look upon, and fearing even more to let it go.