Looking Within

Chapter 12 – 7 – Looking Within

Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the right guidance,
for learning is invisible and what has been learned can be recognized only
by its results. Its generalization is demonstrated as you use it in more and
more situations. You will recognize that you have learned there is no order
of difficulty in miracles when you apply them to all situations. There is no
situation to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them to all
situations you will gain the real world. For in this holy perception you will
be made whole, and the Atonement will radiate from your acceptance of it
for yourself to everyone the Holy Spirit sends you for your blessing. In
every child of God his blessing lies, and in your blessing of the children of
God is his blessing to you.
 
Everyone in the world must play his part in its redemption, in order to
recognize that the world has been redeemed. You cannot see the invisible.
 
Yet if you see its effects you know it must be there. By perceiving what it
does, you recognize its being. And by what it does, you learn what it is. You
cannot see your strengths, but you gain confidence in their existence as they
enable you to act. And the results of your actions you can see.
 
The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of his presence, and
through them you will learn that he is there. What he enables you to do is
clearly not of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality as this
world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass is
transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond all
of them. Perceiving his results, you will understand where he must be, and
finally know what he is.
 
You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see his manifestations. And
unless you do, you will not realize he is there. Miracles are his witnesses,
and speak for his presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only
through the witnesses that speak for it. For you can be aware of what you
cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you as its Presence
becomes manifest through you. Do the Holy Spirit’s work, for you share in
his function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on
earth is healing. God shares his function with you in Heaven, and the Holy
 
Spirit shares his with you on earth. As long as you believe you have other
functions, so long will you need correction. For this belief is the destruction
of peace, a goal in direct opposition to the Holy Spirit’s purpose.
 
You see what you expect, and you expect what you invite. Your perception
is the result of your invitation, coming to you as you sent for it. Whose
manifestations would you see? Of whose presence would you be
convinced? For you will believe in what you manifest, and as you look out
so will you see in. Two ways of looking at the world are in your mind, and
your perception will reflect the guidance you have chosen.
 
I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see me it will be
because you have invited him. For he will send you his witnesses if you will
but look upon them. Remember always that you see what you seek, for what
you seek you will find. The ego finds what it seeks, and only that. It does
not find love, for that is not what it is seeking. Yet seeking and finding are
the same, and if you seek for two goals you will find them, but you will
recognize neither. You will think they are the same because you want both
of them. The mind always strives for integration, and if it is split and wants
to keep the split, it will still believe it has one goal by making it seem to be
one.
 
I said before that what you project or extend is up to you, but you must do
one or the other, for that is a law of mind, and you must look in before you
look out. As you look in, you choose the guide for seeing. And then you
look out and behold his witnesses. This is why you find what you seek.
 
What you want in yourself you will make manifest, and you will accept it
from the world because you put it there by wanting it. When you think you
are projecting what you do not want, it is still because you do want it. This
leads directly to dissociation, for it represents the acceptance of two goals,
each perceived in a different place; separated from each other because you
made them different. The mind then sees a divided world outside itself, but
not within. This gives it an illusion of integrity, and enables it to believe
that it is pursuing one goal. Yet as long as you perceive the world as split,
you are not healed. For to be healed is to pursue one goal, because you have
accepted only one and want but one.
 
When you want only love you will see nothing else. The contradictory
nature of the witnesses you perceive is merely the reflection of your
conflicting invitations. You have looked upon your mind and accepted
opposition there, having sought it there. But do not then believe that the
witnesses for opposition are true, for they attest only to your decision about
reality, returning to you the messages you gave them. Love, too, is
recognized by its messengers. If you make love manifest, its messengers
will come to you because you invited them.
 
The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this
world. You can decide to see it right. What you made of it is not its reality,
for its reality is only what you give it. You cannot really give anything but
love to anyone or anything, nor can you really receive anything but love
from them. If you think you have received anything else, it is because you
have looked within and thought you saw the power to give something else
within yourself. It was only this decision that determined what you found,
for it was the decision for what you sought.
 
You are afraid of me because you looked within and are afraid of what you
saw. Yet you could not have seen reality, for the reality of your mind is the
loveliest of God’s creations. Coming only from God, its power and grandeur
could only bring you peace if you really looked upon it. If you are afraid,
it is because you saw something that is not there. Yet in that same place you
could have looked upon me and all your brothers, in the perfect safety of the
Mind which created us. For we are there in the peace of the Father, who
wills to extend his peace through you.
 
When you have accepted your mission to extend peace you will find peace,
for by making it manifest you will see it. Its holy witnesses will surround
you because you called upon them, and they will come to you. I have heard
your call and I have answered it, but you will not look upon me nor hear the
answer that you sought. That is because you do not yet want only that. Yet
as I become more real to you, you will learn that you do want only that. And
you will see me as you look within, and we will look upon the real world
together. Through the eyes of Christ, only the real world exists and only the
real world can be seen. As you decide so will you see. And all that you see
but witnesses to your decision.
 
When you look within and see me, it will be because you have decided to
manifest truth. And as you manifest it you will see it both without and
within. Everything you behold without is a judgment of what you beheld
within. If it is your judgment it will be wrong, for judgment is not your
function. If it is the judgment of the Holy Spirit it will be right, for
judgment is his function. You share his function only by judging as he does,
reserving no judgment at all for yourself. You will judge against yourself,
but he will judge for you.
 
Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to
what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy and have condemned
yourself to death. The death penalty is the ego’s ultimate goal, for it fully
believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you
are deserving of life. The death penalty never leaves the ego’s mind, for that
is what it always reserves for you in the end. Wanting to kill you as the final
expression of its feeling for you, it lets you live but to await death. It will
torment you while you live, but its hatred is not satisfied until you die. For
your destruction is the one end toward which it works, and the only end
with which it will be satisfied.
 
The ego is not a traitor to God, to Whom treachery is impossible. But it is a
traitor to you who believe that you have been treacherous to your Father.
 
That is why the undoing of guilt is an essential part of the Holy Spirit’s
teaching. For as long as you feel guilty you are listening to the voice of the
ego, which tells you that you have been treacherous to God and therefore
deserve death. You will think that death comes from God and not from the
ego because, by confusing yourself with the ego, you believe that you want
death. And from what you want God does not save you.
 
When you are tempted to yield to the desire for death, remember that I did
not die You will realize that this is true when you look within and see me.
Would I have overcome death for myself alone? And would eternal life
have been given me of the Father unless he had also given it to you? When
you learn to make me manifest, you will never see death. For you will have
looked upon the deathless in yourself, and you will see only the eternal as
you look out upon a world that cannot die.