ARCIM

Daily Lesson 241 ~
August 29

What Is the World of Illusions?

Lesson 241: This Holy Instant is awakening come.

What Is the World of Illusions? (Lessons 241-250)

The world of illusions is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another Light, and one that leads to Truth, where the world of illusions must disappear and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well.

The world of illusions was made as an attack on the Divine. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except the belief in Love’s absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where the Divine could enter not, and where Its Children could be apart from It. Here was perception born, for Knowledge could not be the source of such senseless thoughts. But eyes can deceive, and ears can hear falsely. Thus mistakes became quite possible, for Certainty had gone.

The mechanisms of illusion were born instead. And they go to find what has been given them to seek. Their aim is to fulfill the purpose that the world was made to witness and make real. They perceive in its illusions merely a solid base where truth exists, upheld apart from lies. Yet everything that they report is but illusion that is kept apart from Truth.

As perception was made to lead away from Truth, it can be redirected. Sounds can reflect the Call of the Divine, and all perception can be given a new Purpose by the One Whom the Divine appointed Awakener of the world. Follow Its Light and see the world as It beholds it. Hear Its Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let It give you Peace and Certainty, which you cast away but which Heaven has preserved for you in It.

Let us rest content only when the world has joined our transformed perception. Let us be satisfied only when forgiveness has been made complete. And let us accept our function without attempting to change it. We must awaken the world. For we who made it must behold it through the Vision of Divine Essence, so that what was made to die can be restored to everlasting Life.

 

What is the world of illusions?

Lesson 241
This Holy Instant is awakening come.

 

What Joy there is today! It is a time of special celebration. For today extends the Instant to the darkened world where its Release is set. The time has come when sorrows pass away and pain is gone. The Glory of awakening dawns today upon a world set free. This is the Time of Hope for countless Children of the Divine. They will be united now as you forgive them all. And thus I will also be forgiven by you today.

 

Creator, we have forgiven one another now, and so we come at last to You again. Your Children, who never left, return to Heaven and their Home. How glad are we to have our Sanity restored to us, and to remember that we all are One.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 23: The Grace of the Holy Relationship

 

6. Defense and Weakness

How does one overcome illusions? Surely not by force or anger, nor by opposing them in any way, but merely by letting Reason show you that they contradict Reality. Illusions oppose what must be true. The opposition comes from them, and not Reality. Reality opposes nothing. What merely is needs no defense and offers none.

Because of their inherent weakness, only illusions need defense. And how can it be difficult to walk the Way of Truth when only weakness seems to interfere? You are the strong ones in this seeming conflict. And you need no defense. You do not want anything that needs defense, for anything that needs defense will weaken you.

Consider what the ego wants defenses for. It is always to justify what goes against the Truth, flies in the face of Reason, and makes no sense. Can this be justified? What can this be except an invitation to insanity, to “save” you from the Truth? And what would you be saved from but what you fear?

Belief in separation needs great defense, and at enormous cost. With this belief, all that the Holy Spirit offers must be defended against, and sacrificed. For separation is carved into a block out of your Peace, and laid between you and Its Return. Yet how can Peace be so fragmented? It is still whole, and nothing has been taken from It.

See how the means and the material of dark dreams are nothing! In Truth you stand together in the holy relationship, with nothing in between you. The Divine holds your hands, and what can separate whom It has joined as One with It?

In separation it is only your Creator Whom you would defend against. Yet it remains impossible to keep Love out. The Divine rests with you in quiet, undefended and wholly undefending. For in this quiet State alone is Strength and Power. Here can no weakness enter, for here is no attack, and therefore no illusions. Love rests in Certainty. Only uncertainty can be defensive. And all uncertainty is doubt about yourself.

How weak is fear, how little and how meaningless! How insignificant before the quiet Strength of those whom Love has joined! This is your “foe”—a frightened mouse that would attack the universe. How likely is it that it will succeed? Can it be difficult to disregard its feeble squeaks that proclaim its omnipotence, and would drown out the Hymn of Praise to the Creator that every Heart throughout the Universe forever sings as One? Which is the stronger? Is it this tiny mouse, or Everything that the Divine created perfect and eternal? You are not joined together by this mouse, but by the Will of the Divine. And can a mouse betray whom the Divine has joined?

How thankful you will be when you recognize how little stands between you and your awareness of your Union! Be not deceived by the illusions this obstacle presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body’s eyes separation looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet within you there is a Force that no illusions can resist. This body only seems to be immovable. The Force within you is irresistible in Truth. And it is this Force that is the “defense” of the Atonement, a defense because It is wholly One with Reality and therefore allows nothing but the Truth to be present. Atonement does not protect against illusions, which would confirm their reality. It simply acknowledges what is, which means that illusions are gone.

What, then, must happen when the obstacle to Truth and the Force within you come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended when it is quietly passed through and gone beyond?

When you feel the need arise to be defensive about anything, remember that you have identified yourself with an illusion, and therefore feel that you are weak because you are alone. This is the cost of all illusions. Every one of them rests on the belief that you are separate. Every one of them seems to stand, heavy and solid and unmovable, between you and your sisters and brothers. For it is merely your unwillingness to see beyond what seems to stand between you that makes it look impenetrable, and defends the illusion of its immovability. Truth can pass through and move beyond every illusion lightly, and so easily that you will become convinced that it was nothing, in spite of what you thought it was before. And this must happen as you forgive each other.