Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 31: The New Beginning
7. One Meaning and One Interpreter
Would the Divine have left the Meaning of the world to your interpretation? If It had, then the world has no Meaning. For it cannot be that meaning changes constantly and yet is true. The Holy Spirit sees the world having one Purpose and Meaning, changelessly established. And no situation can affect the world’s Purpose as Spirit sees It, but must be in accord with It. For only if the world’s true Aim as Spirit interprets It could change with every situation could each one be open to interpretation that is different every time you consider it.
When you add an element into the script you write for every minute in the day, all that happens afterward means something else. Take away another element, and every meaning shifts accordingly. What do your scripts reflect except your plans for what the day should be? And thus you judge success and disaster, advance and retreat, and gain and loss. These judgments all are made according to the roles the script assigns. The fact that they have no meaning in themselves is demonstrated by the ease with which these labels change with other judgments made on different aspects of experience. And then, in looking back, you think you perceive yet another meaning in what went before. What have you really done except to show that there was no Meaning there in the first place? For you assigned a meaning to each thing in the light of goals that changed throughout the day, with every meaning shifting as the goals changed.
Only a constant purpose can endow events with stable meaning. But it must accord one meaning to them all. If they are given different meanings, it must mean that they merely reflect different purposes, and this is then all the meaning that they have. Can this be Meaning? Can confusion be what Meaning means? Perception in constant flux cannot allow stability of meaning anywhere.
Fear is a judgment never justified. Its presence has no meaning but to show that you wrote a fearful script, and are afraid accordingly. But not because the thing you fear has fearful meaning in itself.
A real and common Purpose is the only means whereby perception can be stabilized, and one Interpretation given to the world and all experiences here. In this common Purpose is one Meaning shared by everyone and everything you perceive. Then you do not have to judge, for you have learned that one Meaning has been given everything, and you are glad to perceive It everywhere. Because you would perceive It everywhere, unchanged by circumstance, this Meaning cannot change. And so you offer It to all events, and let them offer you stability.
Freedom from judgment is found simply in this: All things have only one Purpose in truth, Which you share with all the world. And nothing in the world can be opposed to It, for It belongs to everything as It belongs to you.
In single Purpose is the end of all ideas of sacrifice, for sacrifice must assume a different purpose for the one who seems to gain and the one who seems to lose. There could be no thought of sacrifice apart from this idea. And it is this idea of different goals that makes perception shift and meaning change. In one united Goal does this become impossible, for your agreement in the shared Goal makes interpretation stabilize and endure.
How can true Communication really be established while the symbols that are used mean different things? The Holy Spirit’s Goal gives one Interpretation, meaningful both to you and to your sisters and brothers. Thus can you truly communicate with them, and they with you. The sacrifice of meaning is undone in symbols that you both can understand.
All sacrifice entails the loss of your ability to see true relationships among all beings and things. And looked at separately, these seem to have no meaningful relationships. For the Light by which they can be seen and understood has been hidden. Without Light, what things are for cannot be seen, and thus they seem to have no purpose.
In any thought of loss there is no Meaning, for what it means is not the same for all. The idea of loss is part of a distorted script, which cannot be interpreted with Meaning. It must be forever unintelligible. This is not true communication.
Your dark dreams are but the senseless, isolated scripts you write in sleep. Look not to separate dreams for Meaning. Only dreams of forgiveness can be shared. They mean the same for both the forgiver and the forgiven. They awaken both from the dream of fear.
Do not interpret from a place of solitude, for what you perceive there means nothing. It will shift in what it stands for, and you will believe that the world is an unstable place in which you walk in danger and uncertainty. It is only your interpretations that are lacking in stability, for they are not aligned with what you really are. This is a state so seemingly unsafe that fear must rise. Do not continue thus, my sisters and brothers. We have one Interpreter. And through Its Use of symbols and communication are we joined, so that they mean the same to all of us. Our common language lets us speak to all our sisters and brothers, and to understand with them that forgiveness has been given to us all, and thus we can truly communicate again.
