Illusion meets illusion; truth, itself. The meeting of illusions leads to war. Peace, looking on itself, extends itself. War is the condition in which fear is born and grows and seeks to dominate. Peace is the state where love abides and seeks to share itself. Conflict and peace are opposites. Where one abides the other cannot be; where either goes the other disappears. So is the memory of God obscured in minds that have become illusion’s battleground. Yet far beyond this senseless war it shines, ready to be remembered when you side with peace.
When anything seems to you to be a source of fear, when any situation strikes you with terror and makes your body tremble and the cold sweat of fear comes over it, remember it is always for one reason—the ego has perceived it as a symbol of fear, a sign of sin and death. Remember then that neither sign nor symbol should be confused with source, for they must stand for something other than themselves. Their meaning cannot lie in them but must be sought in what they represent. And they may thus mean everything or nothing, according to the truth or falsity of the idea which they reflect. Confronted with such seeming uncertainty of meaning, judge it not. Remember the holy Presence of the One given to you to be the Source of judgment. Give it to Him to judge for you, and say:
Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me. Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death Nor use it for destruction. Teach me how not to make of it an obstacle to peace, But let You use it for me to facilitate its coming.
You who believe that sacrifice is love must learn that sacrifice is separation from love. For sacrifice brings guilt as surely as love brings peace. Guilt is the condition of sacrifice, as peace is the condition for the awareness of your relationship with God. Through guilt you exclude your Father and your brothers from yourself. Through peace you invite them back and realize that they are where your invitation bids them be. What you excluded from yourself seems fearful, for you endowed it with fear and tried to cast it out though it was part of you. Who can perceive part of himself as loathsome and live within himself in peace? And who can try to resolve the perceived conflict of Heaven and hell in him by casting Heaven out and giving it the attributes of hell without experiencing himself as incomplete and lonely?
Within the womb of basic space as an infinite sky,
However the universe manifests through transitions and changes in the four elements,
These forms of emptiness are ineffable by nature,
As are the phenomena that are the manifest aspect of awakened mind
Just as illusory images, while manifesting in any way whatsoever,
Are empty by nature and have no substance.
So all phenomena – the world of appearances and possibilities even as they manifest
Do not waver from awakened mind and have no substance.