Corresponding Manual for Teachers Section

Chapter 4: Teacher / Individual Questions

4. How Can Safety Be Found?

In the world of illusions, you thought you made a place of safety for yourself. You thought you made a power that could save you from all the fearful things you looked upon in dreams. It was not so. Your safety was not there. What you give up in order to let this go is merely the illusion of protecting illusions. And it is this you fear, and only this. How foolish to be afraid of nothing! Nothing at all! Your defenses have never worked and never will, but you are not in danger without them. Therefore you have no need of them. Recognize this and they will disappear. And only then will you accept your true Protection.

How simply and how easily does time flow for the Teachers of the Divine who have accepted Its Protection! All that they did before in the name of safety no longer interests them. For they are safe, and know themselves to be so. They have a Guide Who will not fail. They need make no distinctions among the problems they still perceive, for Spirit, to Whom they turn with all of them, recognizes no levels or orders of magnitude of difficulty in resolving them.

The Teachers of the Divine are as safe in the present as they were before illusions were accepted into their mind, and as they will be when they have let them all go. This is their Innocence. There is no difference in their true State at different times and different places, because all differences are the same, and are nothing, to the Divine. This is their Safety. And they have no need for more than this.

Yet there will be temptations to doubt and fear as the Teachers of the Divine journey along the Way they have yet to travel, and so they have need of reminding themselves of their Protection throughout the day. How can they do this, particularly during the time when their mind is occupied with external things? They can simply try, and their success will depend on their conviction that they will succeed. They must be clear that such success does not come from them, but will be given them at any time, place, and circumstance they request It.

There will be times their certainty will waver, and the moment this occurs the Teachers of the Divine who have not yet advanced in their own learning may be tempted to forget their Source of Strength, and return to their earlier habit of placing reliance on themselves alone, and thus on illusions. Let them recall that to do so would be to engage in magical thinking, and that this a sorry substitute for true Assistance. Magical thinking isn’t worthy of the Divine’s Teachers because it isn’t worthy of the Divine’s Children.

The avoidance of magical thinking and all forms of fantasy, including the belief in enchantment magic, is the avoidance of the temptation to mis-project. For all temptation is nothing more than the attempt to substitute another will for the Divine’s. These attempts may indeed seem frightening, but when perceived clearly they are merely released lightly with a laugh. They can have no effects, either good or bad, rewarding or demanding sacrifice, healing or destructive, quieting or fearful. When fantasy and enchantment magic – the belief in a power other than the Divine’s – are recognized as merely nothing, the Teacher of the Divine has reached the most advanced state on their journey from illusion to Truth. All intermediate lessons will just lead to this, and bring this Goal nearer to Recognition. For fantasy and enchantment in any form simply do nothing that is real. Their powerlessness is the reason they can be so easily released. What has no true effects can hardly terrify.

There is no substitute for the Will of the Divine. It is to this Fact that the Teachers of the Divine devote their days. Each substitute they may temporarily accept as real can only deceive them. But they are safe from all deception if they so decide. Perhaps they need to remember the Thought:

The Divine is with me. I cannot be deceived.

Perhaps they prefer other words, or only one, or none at all. Yet each temptation to accept a power or will other than the Divine’s as true must be abandoned through the recognition not that it is fearful, not that it is sinful, not that it is dangerous, but simply that it is meaningless. The Divine’s Teachers merely choose to give up all that they never had, which was rooted in separation and sacrifice—two aspects of one error and no more. And for this “sacrifice” is Heaven restored to their awareness. This is an exchange that the Teachers of the Divine make with gratitude. The world would also gladly make it if it knew it could be made. It is the Divine’s Teachers who must teach it that it can. And so it is their function to make sure that they have learned it.

No risk is possible throughout the day except to trust in fantasy – in what is not there – for it is only this that leads to pain, being a violation of the fundamental Divine Law:

Divine Will is the only will there is.

The Divine’s Teachers know that this is so, and have learned that everything except this knowing is the belief that the mind can become enchanted, or imprisoned in delusion.

All belief in a power or will other than the Divine’s is maintained by just one simplistic illusion: that such a power produces actual effects. All through their training, every day and hour, and even every minute and second, must the Divine’s Teachers learn to recognize the forms of this belief and perceive their meaninglessness. As belief is withdrawn from these forms, they disappear. And the Light that illuminates the Real World will shine again on an untroubled mind.