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Chapter 32: The Final Vision

2. Ancient Learning Falling Away

Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we have had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean and what their purpose is. Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for. We do not know. Let every image held of anyone be loosened from our minds and swept away. Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of good or bad of anyone that ever entered your mind. Now you do not know them. But now you are also free to learn of them as if for the first time, and learn of them truly. Now are they born anew to you, and you are born anew to them, without the past that sentenced them to die, and you with them. Now are they free to live, as you are free, because the learning of an ancient false lesson has passed away and left a place for Truth to be welcome.

An ancient false lesson is not overcome by the opposing of a new true lesson against the old. It is not vanquished that the Truth be known, nor fought against to lose to Truth’s Appeal. There is no battle that must be prepared for, no time to be expended, and no plans that need be laid for learning the new lesson. There is an ancient battle being waged against the Truth, but Truth does not respond. Who could be hurt in such a war unless they hurt themself? They have no enemy in truth. And can they be assailed by dreams?

Let us review again what seems to stand between you and the Truth of what you are. For there are steps in the relinquishment of the old lesson. The first is a decision that you make. But afterward, the Truth is given you. The old lesson entails that you would establish truth. And by your wish, you set two choices to be made each time you think you must decide on anything. Neither choice is true, nor are they different. Yet must we observe them both before you can see beyond them to the one alternative that is a truly different choice. But not in dreams you made, where the sameness of these false choices and the difference of the true alternative would be obscured to you. What you would choose between is not a choice, and only gives the illusion that it is free, for it will result in only one outcome either way you choose. Thus is it really not a choice at all.

In the context of the old lesson, the “leader” and the “follower” emerge as separate roles, each seeming to possess advantages you would not want to lose. So in their fusion there appears to be the hope of satisfaction and of peace. You see yourself divided into both these roles, forever split between the two. And every friend or foe becomes a means to help you save yourself from this split. Perhaps you call it love, or think that it is attack justified at last. You despise the one you give the leader’s role when you would have it, and you despise as well their not assuming it at those times you want to let the follower in you arise, and give away the role of leadership. Because the roles you make for your sisters and brothers (and all things, including yourself) are assigned by you, you have learned to think that this is their purpose. Unless they serve it, they have not fulfilled the function that was given them by you. And thus they merit rejection, even banishment from your heart and life, when you believe they have betrayed your assignment of their roles in your life, and thus have no purpose or usefulness to you.

And what of them? What do they want of you? What could they want but what you want of them?

Yet in this situation can true Life be chosen as easily as a dream of death, for what you choose for your sisters and brothers you choose as well for yourself. Two calls you can make to them, as they to you: the call to Life or death. These two do offer choice, because each one leads to an actual different outcome.

It matters not in truth if your brother or sister be the “leader” or the “follower” to you, for by you assigning them their role, whatever it is, you have chosen death. But whether you hear your sisters and brothers’ calls to you for death or for Life, for hate or for forgiveness and help, is not the same in outcome. Hear the call for death, and you will be separate from them, and are lost. But hear and answer their call for Life, and you join with them, and in your joining is awakening found.

The voice you hear in them is simply your own. What do they ask you for? Listen well. For they are asking what will come to you, because you perceive in them an image of yourself, and hear your voice in them requesting what you want. Before you respond, pause to think of this:

The response I give my sisters and brothers in all things is what I am asking for for myself. And what I learn from them is what I learn about myself.

Then let us wait an Instant and be still, forgetting everything we thought we heard, and remembering how much we do not know. Our sisters and brothers neither lead nor follow us in truth, but walk beside us on the selfsame Road. They are like us, as near or far away from what we want as we decide for them to be. In truth we make no gains they do not make with us, and we fall back if they do not advance.

So accept them, and take their hand not in irritation but in Love, for in their progress toward awakening do you count your own. And you go separately along a lost way unless you keep them safely by your side. Because they are your equal in the Divine’s Love will you answer together to Divine Essence’s Call, and be awakened together from all illusions. Be still and listen. Think not ancient thoughts of darkness and attempt not to learn old lessons that lead nowhere. Forget the dismal lessons that you learned about the Children of the Divine who call to you for help. Divine Essence calls to all with equal Tenderness, seeing no leaders and no followers, and giving only one Answer to all calls. Because It hears one Voice, It cannot hear a different answer from the One It gave when the Divine created It as Its perfect Creation.

Be very still an Instant. Come without any thoughts of what you ever learned before. The old will fall away as the New arises without your opposition. There will be no attack upon the illusory things you thought were precious and in need of care. There will be no assault upon your old habit of dismissing the calls for help and Love that your sisters and brothers have always made to be released from hell. Nothing will hurt you in this Holy Place to which you come to listen silently, and learn the truth of what you really want. No more than this Stillness will you be asked to learn. But as you hear the Voice of the Divine in this Stillness, you will understand that you need only come away from this Instant without the thoughts you did not want, and that were never true.

Forgive your sisters and brothers all appearances, which are but ancient lessons that you taught yourself about the guilt and separation you have believed are in you. Hear only their call for mercy and release from all the fearful images they hold of what they think they are, and of what you must be. They are afraid to walk by your side, and think that perhaps walking a bit behind, a bit ahead, would be a safer place for them to be. Can you make progress if you think the same, advancing only when they would step back, and falling back when they would go ahead? For so do you forget the journey’s Goal, which is just to decide to walk with them, so that neither one leads nor follows, but both simply follow Spirit. This is the Way you journey together, not alone. And in this choice is learning’s outcome changed, for Divine Essence has been born anew in the awareness of you both.

An Instant spent without your old ideas of who your worthy companions are, and what their roles should be, of what they should be calling for, will be enough to let this happen. And you will perceive that their Purpose is the same as yours. They ask for what you truly want, and need the same as you. This takes, perhaps, a different form in them, but it is not the form you respond to. They ask and you receive, for you have come with only one Purpose: that you both may learn you love each other with a sister’s and brother’s Love. And as your sisters and brothers, must their Creator be the same as yours, as they are like yourself. Alone is your shared Inheritance denied by both of you. Together is It remembered and accepted by you both.

Is it not clear that while you still insist on leading or on following, you will think you walk alone, with no one by your side? Such is the road to nowhere, for the Light you share cannot be given while you walk alone, and so you cannot see which way you go. And so there is confusion and a sense of endless doubting as you stagger backward and forward alone in the darkness. Yet are these merely appearances of what the journey is, and how it must be made. For next to you is One Who holds the Light before you, so that every step of the Path is made with certainty and sureness. A blindfold can indeed obscure your sight, but cannot make the Way itself grow dark. And It Who travels with you has the Light.