Corresponding Text Section

Chapter 23: The Grace of the Holy Relationship

2. The Secret of the Something Else

Let Reason take another step in the healing of your mind. If you attack whom the Divine would heal, and reject the one It loves, then you and your Creator must have a different will. Yet, if you are the Divine’s Will, then what you must believe, if your will be different than your Creator’s, is that you are not yourself. You can, indeed, believe this, and this you have believed. And you have had faith in this belief, and compiled much evidence on its behalf. And from where, you wonder, has your strange uneasiness, your sense of being disconnected, and your haunting fear of lack of meaning in yourself come? It is as though you wandered into this world without a plan of any kind except to wander off again, for only that seems certain.

We heard a very similar description earlier, when this Course stated that there is a stranger in the midst of the separated ones, who wandered carelessly into the mind that is the Home of Truth, and who will wander off into the nothingness from which it came. But the description of this stranger was not of you. And yet this strange idea, which the description does accurately depict, you unconsciously believe is you. Otherwise you would not be able to perceive a world that isn’t there.

Reason would tell you that the world you perceive through eyes that are not yours must make no sense to you. To whom would perception such as this send back its messages? Surely not to you, whose true sight is wholly independent of the body’s eyes that look upon the world. If the perception of this world through the body’s eyes is not your true perception, what can it show to you that would be meaningful? The brain cannot interpret what your true perception sees. This your spirit understands. The brain interprets to the body, of which it is a part. But your spirit cannot understand what this interpretation says. Yet you have chosen to listen to this interpretation. And long and hard you tried to understand the messages conveyed through the body. You did not realize it is impossible to understand what fails entirely to reach your spirit. You have received no messages at all throughout all of time that you truly understood from this source. For you have listened to what can never communicate truly at all.

Think, then, what happened to bring about this strange situation. Denying what you are, and firm in the belief that you are something else, this “something else” that you made to be yourself became your perception. Yet it must be the “something else” that perceives through the body, and, as not you, explains its perceptions to you. The seeing of your vision would, of course, render all this quite unnecessary. But if your spiritual eye is closed, and you have called upon this something else to lead you, asking it to explain to you the world it perceives, then you have no reason not to listen, nor to suspect that what it tells you is not true. True Reason would tell you that what your senses report can’t be true, because you do not truly understand it. The Divine has no secrets. It does not lead you through a world of misery, waiting to tell you at the journey’s end why It did this to you. What could be secret from Its Will, Whose Will you are?

Yet you believe that you have private thoughts and secrets. What could your secrets be except another will that you believe is your own, apart from the Divine’s? Reason would tell you that this is no secret that need be hidden as a source of guilt. But a mistake indeed! Let not your fear of unholiness protect it from Correction, for the attraction of guilt is only fear. Here is the one emotion that you made, separate and alone, whatever form it may seem to take. And it is the emotion of the separation—that the body, private thoughts, and secrecy all seem to demonstrate. This is the one emotion that opposes Love, and always leads to perception of differences, and loss of sense of what is truly the same, joined and shared. Here is the one emotion that keeps you blind to Reality, and dependent on the self you think you made to lead you through the world it made for you.

Your true sight has been given you by Spirit, along with everything that you can truly understand. You will perceive no difficulty in understanding what vision tells you. For everyone perceives only what they think they are. And what your sight will show you you will understand because it is the Truth of your being. Only your vision can convey to you what you can see. It reaches you directly, without the need to be interpreted to you. What needs interpretation must be alien if it be not the Holy Spirit’s Interpretation. Nor will it ever be made understandable by an interpreter you cannot understand.

Of all the messages you have received and failed to understand, a course in awakening alone is open to your true understanding, because it can be understood by your true Self. This is the language of your holy Self. To the degree that you do not yet understand the course in awakening you have been led to engage, it is only because your communication is like a young child’s in comparison to what it will be. The sounds a young child makes and what it hears are highly unreliable, meaning different things to it at different times. Neither the sounds it hears nor sights it looks upon are stable yet. Yet what it hears and does not understand will become its native tongue, through which it will communicate with those around it, and they with it. And the strange, shifting figures the young child perceives around it will become to it its comforters, and it will recognize its home, and see them there with it.

Like this, in each holy relationship is reborn the ability to truly communicate instead of to separate. Yet a holy relationship, so recently reborn itself from an unholy relationship, and yet more ancient than the old illusion that it has replaced, is more like a young child now in its rebirth. But in this child is your vision returned to you, and it will speak the language each one in the holy relationship can understand. This vision is not nurtured by the “something else” you thought was you. Your vision was not given there, nor was it received by anything except yourself. For two people can unite only through Divine Essence, Whose Vision sees them as One.

Think what has been given to you, my holy sisters and brothers. Your holy relationship that is yet like a child will teach you what you do not understand, and make it plain. For its will be no alien tongue, and therefore will need no interpreter to you. For it was you who taught this child what it knows, because you knew it. It could not come to anyone except you, never to “something else.”

Everyone is joined where Divine Essence has entered, for It can only find Its Home in those united. Yet must It be reborn into Its ancient Home, so seeming new and yet as old as It, a tiny newcomer dependent on the holiness of your relationship to let It live. Be certain that the Divine entrusts Its Child only to the worthy. Only what is Part of the Divine is capable of being joined. And everything that is of the Divine will join. Communication must have been restored to those who are joined, and this they could not do through bodies. What, then, has joined them? Reason will tell you that they must have seen each other through a vision not of the body, and communicated in a language the body does not speak. Nor could it be a fearful sight or sound that drew them gently into One, for fear does not unite. Rather, in each the other saw a perfect Shelter where their holy Self could be reborn in Safety and in Peace. Such did Reason tell them, and such they believed because it is the Truth.

Here is the first direct or true perception that you have had. You had it through Awareness older than perception, and yet reborn in just an Instant. For what is time to what was always so? Think what that Instant brought: the recognition that the “something else” you thought was you is an illusion. And Truth came instantly to show you where your true Self must be. It is the denial of illusions that calls on Truth. For to deny illusions is to recognize that fear is meaningless. Love enters thankfully into the holy Home where fear is powerless, grateful that It is One with you who joined to let It enter.

Divine Essence comes to what is like Itself: the same, not different, and therefore truly joined and shared. For It is always drawn unto Itself. What is as like It as a holy relationship? And what draws you together also draws Divine Essence to you. Here is Innocence’s Sweetness, and Its gentle Perfection protected from attack. And to Its Home in your holy relationship can It return in confidence, for faith in one another is always faith in It. You are indeed correct in seeing each other as Its chosen Home. For here you willed with Divine Essence and with Its Creator. This is your Creator’s Will for you, and yours with It. And who is drawn to Divine Essence is drawn to the Divine, as surely as both are drawn to every holy relationship, the Home prepared for them as Earth is transformed to Heaven.