The Long Forgotten Choice
This fractured world of fear along with all the suffering we seem to experience arises from an ancient decision so deeply buried, that we long forgot we made it. That one, unrecognized choice underpins every stab of pain, sickness, loss, lack, shame, conflict and confusion, regardless of its form. This is the one unconscious agreement we made which leads us repeatedly to conflict, loss, sickness, aging and finally, death. This single choice to dream of separation gave way to the compelling ideas of time, of bodies, and of the exhaustive recycle program of birth, amnesia and death. It is also the one unforgiven pledge we made which is responsible for prolonging our resistance to Love, to union, to peace and to healing.
The dream began with our wish for separation, a seeming gap between God and His most beloved Son. This whole imaginary dream world, including all the threats within it, exists only because we have erroneously agreed to see our self and our brothers as separate. This is the choice to reject our Holy Self and God, since reality is one.
The dream of separation, time, bodies and death was initiated by “two or more” witnesses who agreed to believe the impossible. Yet because they agreed to share this distorted idea, it seemed to make it real in their awareness. Once two (or more) agree to be witnesses to something together, even if it does not exist in God’s Love, then they give it reality in their split minds by sharing it. This is how the dream of fear began.
“It is the sharing of the evil dreams of hate and malice, bitterness and death, of sin and suffering and pain and loss, that makes them real. Unshared, they are perceived as meaningless.” T-28.V.2:1-2
Let’s take a look at the profound implications of this joint decision.
When one mind dreamed of the possibility of separation and another mind consented to witness to that idea, two or more agreed to dream of fear and separation. Without their mutual agreement to witness to fear, its imaginary gap and its effects, there could be no suffering whatsoever. Jesus explains this: “His dreams are yours because you let them be. But if you took your own away would he be free of them, and of his own as well.” T-28.IV.6:3-4
The separation was the decision to affirm the gap, to deny the Christ in others and therefore, to reject the Christ within. This insidious choice to see others as separate was where we inflicted our first “self-attack.” As Jesus says, “In separation from your brother was the first attack upon yourself begun.” T-27.VII.6:4 Yet we keep reliving the original separation – the first attack upon our self –each time we blame or judge one another.
Jesus tells us that the dream and the dreamer are one. Consequently, both the witness (dreamer) and the gap (dream of fear) as suffering in whatever form, are also one. But if the witness is withdrawn, the gap as the cause of all suffering, must fall away! When one withdraws their consent to bear witness to the illusion of conflict, the cause – as the belief we are separate – is withdrawn, along with its symptoms of adversity. The effects which must disappear include conflict, illness, pain, lack, and any other form of suffering which the false, body-identity has used in an attempt to prove the gap exists.
“Identity in dreams is meaningless because the dreamer and the dream are one. Who shares a dream must be the dream he shares, because by sharing is a cause produced.” T-28.IV.5:4-5
Holy Spirit is the One Mind that we as the Son of God share. There is no gap here. As one witness withdraws his agreement to the seeming gap, the gap itself along with its painful consequences disappears, leaving the existing, one, whole, unified Mind; the unified Will of God. This is how we undo our ancient agreement to share a dream of pain apart from Love (God).
There is a way of finding certainty right here and now. Refuse to be a part of fearful dreams whatever form they take, for you will lose identity in them. You find yourself by not accepting them as causing you, and giving you effects. You stand apart from them, but not apart from him who dreams them. Thus you separate the dreamer from the dream, and join in one, but let the other go. The dream is but illusion in the mind. And with the mind you would unite, but never with the dream. It is the dream you fear, and not the mind.” T-28.IV.2:1-8
The Holy Grail and the Victory Lap
Two (or more) descended into the dream of separation by jointly agreeing to imagine a gap between them. Therefore, the whole dream is collapsed as we ascend two by two in Holy Relationship. This is a union where two or more mutually agree to reverse the decision to separate, by withdrawing their belief in the gap’s tempting appearances of bodies and suffering. They refuse to be a witness (believe in) to conflict or suffering of any kind. They unite with the Holy Self but not with the content of the dream. The content is always some mistaken belief in sin, guilt and fear.
The world is healed through Holy Relationship, including the ideas of duality, of death, time and bodies.
“You have been called, together with your brother, to the most holy function this world contains. It is the only one that has no limits, and reaches out to every broken fragment of the Sonship with healing and uniting comfort. This is offered you, in your holy relationship.” T-18.I.13:1-3
The Holy Relationship is quite literally the Holy Grail. In all the dimensions of time and of all the spiritual paths since time began, the Holy Relationship marks the definitive culmination and final Victory Lap of our return to God. The attainment of this divine union within the sleeping Sonship, represents the last rung of the ascending ladder, and the quintessential bridge that carries us to what Jesus terms as the Real World. In the dream of time everyone will eventually join in this mandatory and divine “reunion” before they welcome the Real World dream experience.
“Through your holy relationship, reborn and blessed in every holy instant you do not arrange, thousands will rise to Heaven with you.” … “Nor is your holy relationship a dream.” … “It will become the happy dream through which He can spread joy to thousands on thousands who believe that love is fear, not happiness.” T-18.V.3:1-2,5:2,5
“To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall. For in the miracle of your holy relationship, without this barrier, is every miracle contained. There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they are all the same.” T-19.IV.A.5:1-3
The Holy Relationship joyously heralds the closing chapter of the ego’s ancient, time worn trance. It makes way for our final dream for all of time, the dream of Love, before God Himself takes the last step and lifts us out of the realm of perception and into the Arms of undivided Knowledge as the Christ.
The Holy Relationship’s final goal is the complete demise of the original gap, and for that reason, it is the most Holy function in the world. Can we even imagine what this means? Within this sanctified and Unified Relationship lies the means for the unprecedented collapse and disappearance of the ego’s entire thought system including its central dream of death.
The non-negotiable belief that death is the inevitable outcome of all life is the unseen and unhealed belief that Love (God) is death. The Holy Relationship is the Holy Grail! It is the vehicle through which we completely undo our fear of Love, God, union and life.
“Heaven is restored to all the Sonship through your relationship, for in it lies the Sonship, whole and beautiful, safe in your love.” T-18.I.11:1
“The Holy Spirit’s temple is not a body, but a relationship.”… “The holy relationship reflects the true relationship the Son of God has with his Father in reality.” T-20.VI.5:1,10:1
Everything that ever seemed to threaten us in all the dimensions of time, including time itself, is contained in just one tiny and imaginary gap. And all of it is gently subsumed, disappearing within the light of Holy Relationship.
“Your way will be different, not in purpose but in means. A holy relationship is a means of saving time. One instant spent together with your brother restores the universe to both of you.” T-18.VII. 5:2-3
Nowhere else in the history of time have we recognized the magnitude of Holy Relationship where the final Victory Lap is completed…because it is the vehicle through which the entire dream of fear is erased.
Our descent into separation was executed by an agreement between “two or more” to imagine sin, guilt and fear and by witnessing these together, to give them real effects. As such, our divine ascension, or Victory Lap, is attained by “two or more” who join in the one truly common purpose – to undo all sense of separation between them. This is the healing of our belief in private minds with separate agendas together with the undoing of the separate body-identity.
“When two minds join as one and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as One has been made.” T-16.II.4:3
“Alone we can do nothing, but together our minds fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts. By not being separate, the Mind of God is established in ours and as ours. This Mind is invincible because it is undivided.” T-8.V.1:6-8
Our Victory Lap is initiated when we agree to overlook the seeming gap (conflict) to see the “face of Christ” in another. While we can awaken in the dream, and achieve so called Self-Realization, until we engage consistently in Holy Relationships we will be unable to awaken from the dream altogether. The difference being that awakening from the dream involves the absolute certainty that there is no gap.
It is impossible to awaken in God until joyous gratitude thoroughly replaces all grievances, present and past. We must no longer value any seeming gap between our brothers and our self. We remain afraid of Love as God while we harbor any blame or judgment against another. This is why complete forgiveness must precede awakening from the dream of time and space.
“You are afraid of God [because] you fear your brother. Those you do not forgive you fear. And no one reaches love with fear beside him.” T-19.I.V.D.11:5-7
Truth is Love. In this world Love cannot be remembered and embodied except through all-inclusive forgiveness. Whomever and whatever we withhold from forgiveness we will use to uphold the false, body-self, thereby rejecting Love as our Holy Self. Only the illusory body-identity believes and maintains injustice to preserve its separate “self.” This is why every sight and memory of injustice must be wholly offered up in exchange for the miracle of healed perception. With such a far-reaching objective is it any wonder why the Holy Relationship is the accelerated path Home? We cannot possibly overcome the dream alone. We need our brother.
“This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in strength, and blazing with a light far brighter than the sun that lights the sky you see, is chosen of your Father as a means for His Own plan.” … “This holy relationship has the power to heal all pain, regardless of its form. Neither you nor your brother alone can serve at all. Only in your joint will does healing lie. For here your healing is, and here will you accept Atonement. And in your healing is the Sonship healed [because] your will and your brother’s are joined.” T-22.VI.4:1-4-8
Everyone, especially those who have appeared to persecute us in our version of the dream, offers us an opportunity to behold and to heal exactly that which we have mistakenly projected. Without these people we would never discover and forgive the single source of all our suffering, our own unconscious self-hatred.
“Heaven is restored to all the Sonship through your relationship, for in it lies the Sonship, whole and beautiful, safe in your love.” T-18.I.11:1
“Think what a holy relationship can teach! Here is belief in differences undone. Here is the faith in differences shifted to sameness. And here is sight of differences transformed to vision.” T-22.in. 4:1-4
Heaven is Restored Two By Two
“The ark of peace is entered two by two, yet the beginning of another world goes with them. Each holy relationship must enter here, to learn its special function in the Holy Spirit’s plan, now that it shares His purpose. And as this purpose is fulfilled, a new world rises in which sin can enter not, and where the Son of God can enter without fear and where he rests a while, to forget imprisonment and to remember freedom.” T-20.IV.5:4-7
In the Course’s workbook lesson 185, Jesus is clear that if any two or more should join and say they want the peace of God above all else, and mean it, the entire Sonship would be restored. Recall that the final obstacle to peace is the fear of God. This is the terror of Love itself. This terror is the false-self. It is the incessant drive to uphold and defend a private, personal mind together with its separate body. This is the illusory “self” apart from God.
It seems to have an endless list of enemies, others, conflict, pain, disease, aging, scarcity, loss, and death. But these are merely decoys made to hide its one most feared opponent – Love as God, as our Holy Self.
It cringes at Love’s approach. It is terrified to forgive in totality because to do so would close the seeming gap between our self and our brother once and for all. And once this gap is abolished via sincere forgiveness, our brother, who was once our enemy, is wholly and joyously embraced as our savior. God Himself is here in this divine union. The separate self, as darkness, can no longer be sustained in the blinding light of this universal oneness.
You see, the independent self apart from God is the gap. It is fear incarnate. It is the hidden wish to be unfairly treated. A false-self must be victimized so that it can continue to project its arterial guilt as blame onto others and the body in its dream. This is the fictitious one who is happy with its hidden choice to suffer pain, separation and even physical death, if in return it can perpetuate the illusion that it is justified to blame its brothers in its grievances and pain.
The Holy Relationship is the essential means by which this fear of God as the fear of our brothers is finally undone. Without the experience of Holy Relationship the illusory private mind and separate body concept will not be completely healed. Remember that this self’s greatest fear is God, as undivided and unopposed Love. It is perfect and fearless Love.
Without the Holy Relationship we will continue to be unknowingly terrified of God – of changeless Love –although the spiritual ego cleverly masks this, the final obstacle.
“For no one alone can judge the ego truly. Yet when two or more join together in searching for truth, the ego can no longer defend its lack of content. The fact of union tells them it is not true.” T-14.X.9:5-7
The heavily defended “private mind and body” clings to its deeply unconscious projection of the ego’s god. This unpredictable and punishing god is the only one it knows. That is why it refuses to surrender to its god every facet of its body, its relationships and its life. It believes in painful lessons brought about by this cruel master. Consequently, it cannot afford to trust exclusively in this god, the god of death. This crippled self only knows of “its” god and has no clue as to the joyous totality of our true Creator as all-encompassing Love. We have no idea “who” we are as the most beloved Child of God until we see it reflected in our brother.
Because of this profound confusion, the only version of “love” this false-self knows is special conditional love, the kind the world reveres which is imbued with fear, guilt, blame, agendas, conflict, doubt, exclusivity, possession, jealousy, concern, change, loss, sacrifice, and separation. These are all elements of fear, and none of these traits are present in changeless Love. The Holy Relationship, in comparison, incorporates changeless Love, mutual innocence, peace, inclusivity, honesty, trust, faith, joy, healing, gratitude, and wholeness.
“Everyone seeks for love as you do, but knows it not unless he joins with you in seeking it. If you undertake the search together, you bring with you a light so powerful that what you see is given meaning. The lonely journey fails because it has excluded what it would find.” T-14.X.10:5-7
“The holy relationship reflects the true relationship the Son of God has with his Father in reality.” T-20.VI.10:1
In the Holy Relationship we unlearn our deeply guarded fear of Love which plays out as the ego’s constant attraction to self-attack. This self-attack appears in our world as random chaos, conflict, scarcity, loss, pain, sickness and death.
Recall that the very first obstacle to peace which is our original block to Love is the desire to get rid of it. Love and peace are one. Where one is, the other must be. Yet the false-self, as fear incarnate, must cease to exist in the presence of this peace, this changeless Love which is what we are. This is our Holy Self. However, to overcome the fear of God, the final obstacle, complete forgiveness of our brother is necessary in our heart. And Holy Relationship gives us the divine medium by which to accomplish this.
“No one can look upon the fear of God unterrified, unless he has accepted the Atonement and learned illusions are not real. No one can stand before this obstacle alone, for he could not have reached this far unless his brother walked beside him. And no one would dare to look on it without complete forgiveness of his brother in his heart.” … “Once he has found his brother he [is] ready.”
To wholeheartedly want the peace of God is to renounce our attachment to the human body-identity. We cannot have both. One denies the other is real.
Holy Relationship is the means by which we overcome the split mind together with its dream. We cannot do this alone. We need our brother. Only through Holy Relationship are we given the direct experience of the Love of God, so that this final obstacle – the fear of God –can be easily transcended. Only in Holy Relationship can we declare that we want the Peace of God, and mean it. Here in a Holy Relationship is the means to mean it unequivocally.
Two or more originally agreed to imagine separation, as private minds with separate bodies, asleep and immersed in a dream of death. It makes perfect sense that the Holy Grail of all time is the Holy Relationship, where two or more decide with God to do away with the “gap” altogether on behalf of the entire Sonship.
“I want the peace of God.”… “The world would be completely changed, should any two agree these words express the only thing they want.” … “Two minds with one intent become so strong that what they will becomes the Will of God. For minds can only join in truth.” W-185.2:9,31-2
“Alone we can do nothing, but together our minds fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts. By not being separate, the Mind of God is established in ours and as ours. This Mind is invincible because it is undivided.” T-8.V.1:6-8
The mystery of the Holy Grail is revealed through the Holy Relationship. There is no Grail holier than this within all the dimensions of time. It is the Chalice of Love – the endless, changeless means of Atonement. This is the perfect Love that casts out fear. It is the Will of God made manifest in the dream to close the dream of fear.
“Beside you is one who offers you the chalice of Atonement, for the Holy Spirit is in him.”… “Behold your Friend, the Christ Who stands beside you. How holy and how beautiful He is!” T-19.IV.D.13:1,14:1
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