Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 32: The Final Vision
3. Releasing the Mind from Its Own Prison
Only the self-accused condemn. As you prepare to make a choice that will result in a truly different outcome, there is one thing that must first be newly overlearned. It must become a habit of response so typical of everything you do that it becomes your first response to all temptation to mis-project, and to every situation that occurs. Learn this, and learn it well, for it is here that delay of Happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot conceive.
You never reject or attack your sisters and brothers for their mistakes or even “sins,” but only for what you secretly believe are your own. Whatever form their errors appear to take, the form obscures the fact that you secretly believe these to be your own, and that they merit a “just” penalty. Why should your sisters and brothers’ mistakes be judged condemnable or made into permanent flaws of character, if you did not believe they could not be forgiven in you? Why are they real in them, if you did not believe that they are part of your reality? And why would you attack them anywhere except that you despise what they represent in yourself?
Are you a mistake or unforgivable error? You answer “yes” whenever you attack anything in any form, for by attack do you assert that you are guilty, and must give as you deserve. And what can you deserve except what you are? If you did not believe that you deserved rejection or attack, it would never occur to you to give rejection or attack to anyone at all. Why should you? What would be the gain to you? What could the outcome be that you would want? And how could rejection or attack in any of their forms bring you benefit?
Permanent flaws are perceived in bodies and unforgivable errors are perceived as actions, for it is bodies, not minds, that appear to act in the world perceived as outside yourself. Therefore from the perspective of the body’s eyes must the body be at fault for what it does. The body is not perceived to be merely a passive thing, obeying your commands, and doing nothing of itself at all. Thus if you are permanently flawed or committing unforgivable errors or even condemnable mistakes, then you must be a body, for the mind is perceived in this world as not being able to act on its own without a body. And purpose is looked upon in the body that acts, not the mind where purpose seems to be invisible and impossible to know. It is an easy step from there to believe that the body must motivate itself and act on its own. If you are a mistake, you lock the mind within the body, and you give the mind’s purpose to its prison house, which acts instead of the mind. A jailer merely enforces the orders of the prison on its prisoner.
Though the body seems to be the enforcer of the orders of the prison house of separation, yet is the body the actual prisoner, and not the mind, as long as the mind doesn’t know itself. The body thinks no thoughts. It has no power to imprison, to learn, or to pardon. It gives no orders that the mind need serve, nor sets conditions that it must obey. It holds in prison only the mind that would willingly exist imprisoned. The body sickens at the bidding of the mind that would become its prisoner. And it grows old and dies because that mind is sick within itself.
Learning is the only thing that causes change. And so the body, where no learning can occur, could never change unless the mind prefers the body change in how it is used, to suit the purpose given by the mind. For the mind in this world can learn, and there does all real change take place.
The mind that thinks it is a mistake has only one purpose: that the body be perceived as the source of flaw and error, keeping the mind in the prison house that the mind itself chose in order to keep its guilt outside the prison walls. And this prison the mind guards, and holds itself at bay, a sleeping prisoner to the snarling dogs of hate and evil, sickness and attack, pain and age, grief and suffering. Here are the thoughts of sacrifice preserved, for here guilt rules and orders that the world be like itself—a place where nothing can find mercy, or survive the ravages of fear except in violence and in death. In the world of guilt are you made a mistake. And guilt cannot abide the Peaceful and Joyous or accept the Innocent and Free, for they are looked upon as enemies that guilt must destroy. In death is separation preserved, and those who think they are a mistake must die for what they think they are.
Let us be glad that you will perceive what you believe, and that it has been given you to change what you believe. The body will merely follow. It can never lead you where you would not be. It does not guard your sleep, or interfere with your awakening. Release your body from the imprisonment you bid it act out on yourself, and you will see no one as prisoner to what you have released yourself from. You will not want to hold in guilt your previously chosen enemies, nor keep in chains to the illusion of a changing love the ones you think are friends. The Innocent release everyone out of gratitude for their own Release. And once released, what they behold upholds their Freedom from imprisonment and death. Open your mind to true change, and there will be no ancient penalty exacted from your brothers or sisters or yourself. For the Divine has said that there is no sacrifice that can be asked, and that there is no sacrifice that can be made.
