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Chapter 24: Escaping the War against Yourself

5. Above the Battleground

What is not Love is harm, because what is not loving must be an attack. Every illusion is an assault on Truth, and each one does violence to the Idea of Love because it seems to be equal to Truth. What can be equal to the Truth, yet different from It?

Attack and Love are incompatible. Yet if both were true, then they would be the same, and indistinguishable from one another. So will they seem to those who perceive the Divine’s Children as bodies. For it is not the body that is like the Creator, infinitely and eternally perfect. And what must die cannot be the Child of Life.

How can a body be extended to hold the Universe? Can it create, and be One with what it creates? And can it offer its creation all that it is, and yet never suffer loss?

The Divine does not share Its Function of Creation with a body. It gave the Function to create unto Its Children because this Function is Its Own. It isn’t sinful to believe like the ego that the function of the Divine Children is attack, even in the name of protecting something deemed precious and vulnerable, but it is delusional. What is the same must have the same function. Creation is the Means for the Divine’s Extension. And what is Its Function must be Its Children’s as well. Either both the Creator and Its Children are destructive, or neither is. Life creates like Itself, and therefore makes not death.

The lovely Light of your holy relationship is like the Love of the Divine, though it cannot yet assume the holy Function of creation that the Divine gave Its Children, for your forgiveness of one another is not complete as yet. And so it cannot be extended to all Creation. Each form of attack that still attracts you, and that you do not recognize for what it is, limits the healing and the miracles you have the Power to extend to all. Yet does the Holy Spirit understand how to increase your little gifts and make them mighty. It also understands how your relationship is raised above the battleground, in conflict no more.

Your part is to realize that fear in any form is not your will. Seeing beyond the battleground is now your purpose. Be lifted up, and from a higher place behold the conflict. From there will your perspective be quite different. In the world of illusions, in the midst of conflict, battle does seem real. In the midst of battle you have chosen to be part of conflict. Here attack has been your choice. Yet from above the battleground your choice is miracles instead of fear, healing instead of harm. And the perspective coming from this choice shows you that the conflict is not real, and easily escaped. Bodies may seem to battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless. And the conflict is over when you realize it never was begun.

How can a battle be perceived as nothing if you engage in it? How can the Truth of miracles be recognized if fear in any form is your choice? When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind darkened and violent, even in the guise of serving something “virtuous,” remember that you can choose to see the conflict from above. Even in forms of fear that you don’t recognize, the signs you do. There is a stab of pain, a twinge of guilt, and, above all, a loss of Peace. This you recognize well. When this occurs, leave not your place above the conflict, but quickly choose a miracle instead of fear and attack, and healing instead of harm. And the Divine Itself and all the Lights of Heaven will gently lean to you, and hold you up. For you have chosen to remain where It would have you be. And no illusion can threaten the Peace of the Divine together with Its Child.

Perceive no one from within the battleground, for there you perceive them from nowhere. There you have no reference point from where to perceive clearly, where Meaning can be given what you perceive. For only bodies directed by insanity could attack and harm, and if this becomes your purpose, even temporarily, then you must believe that you are one with both the insanity and the body. Only a purpose unifies, and those who share a purpose have a mind as one. The body has no purpose of itself, and therefore must be neutral. Until it receives the purpose given it by Spirit, it seems to stand between the Creator and the Heaven It created for Its Children because it has no purpose yet appears to exist. From within the battle, the body cannot be surmounted. But from above, the limits it exerts on those still in the body are gone and not perceived.

Think what is given those who share their Creator’s Purpose, and who know that It is theirs! They want for nothing. Sorrow of any kind is inconceivable to them. Only the Light they love is in their awareness, and only Love shines upon them forever. Love is their past, their present, and their future, always the same, eternally Complete, and wholly shared. They know it is impossible their Happiness could ever suffer change of any kind.

Perhaps you think the battleground can offer something of value that you can win. Could it be anything that will last forever, that offers you a perfect Calmness, and a sense of Love so deep and quiet that no touch of doubt can ever mar your Certainty of It?

Those with the Strength of the Divine in their awareness could never conceive of battle. What could they get from it but loss of awareness of their Perfection? For everything fought for on a battleground is of the temporal, for something the world of illusions seems to own and offer. No one who knows that they have Everything could seek for limitation, or value illusion’s offerings. The senselessness of conquest is quite apparent from the quiet Sphere above the battleground. What can conflict with Everything? And what is there that offers less than Everything yet could be wanted more? Who, with the Love of the Divine upholding them, could find the choice of miracles or fear, healing or harm, hard to make?