Recognizing the Spirit

Chapter 31 – 6. Recognizing the Spirit
 
You see the flesh or recognize the spirit. There is no compromise between
the two. If one is real the other must be false, for what is real denies its
opposite. There is no choice in vision but this one. What you decide in this
determines all you see and think is real and hold as true. On this one choice
does all your world depend, for here have you established what you are, as
flesh or spirit in your own belief. If you choose flesh, you never will escape
the body as your own reality, for you have chosen that you want it so. But
choose the spirit, and all Heaven bends to touch your eyes and bless your
holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more except to heal and
comfort and to bless.
 
Salvation is undoing. If you choose to see the body, you behold a world of
separation, unrelated things, and happenings that make no sense at all. This
one appears and disappears in death; that one is doomed to suffering and
loss. And no one is exactly as he was an instant previous, nor will he be the
same as he is now an instant hence. Who could have trust where so much
 
change is seen, for who is worthy if he be but dust? Salvation is undoing of
all this. For constancy arises in the sight of those whose eyes salvation has
released from looking at the cost of keeping guilt, because they chose to let
it go instead.
 
Salvation does not ask that you behold the spirit and perceive the body not.
It merely asks that this should be your choice. For you can see the body
without help, but do not understand how to behold a world apart from it. It
is your world salvation will undo, and let you see another world your eyes
could never find. Be not concerned how this could ever be. You do not
understand how what you see arose to meet your sight. For if you did, it
would be gone. The veil of ignorance is drawn across the evil and the good,
and must be passed that both may disappear, so that perception finds no
hiding place. How is this done? It is not done at all. What could there be
within the universe that God created that must still be done?
 
Only in arrogance could you conceive that you must make the way to
Heaven plain. The means are given you by which to see the world that will
replace the one you made. Your will be done! In Heaven as on earth this is
forever true. It matters not where you believe you are, nor what you think
the truth about yourself must really be. It makes no difference what you
look upon, nor what you choose to feel or think or wish. For God Himself
has said, “Your will be done. “And it is done to you accordingly.
 
You who believe that you can choose to see the Son of God as you would
have him be, forget not that no concept of yourself will stand against the
truth of what you are. Undoing truth would be impossible. But concepts are
not difficult to change. One vision, clearly seen, that does not fit the picture
as it was perceived before will change the world for eyes that learn to see,
because the concept of the self has changed.
 
Are you invulnerable? Then the world is harmless in your sight. Do you
forgive? Then is the world forgiving, for you have forgiven it its trespasses,
and so it looks on you with eyes that see as yours. Are you a body? So is all
the world perceived as treacherous, and out to kill. Are you a spirit,
deathless, and without the promise of corruption and the stain of sin upon
you? So the world is seen as stable, fully worthy of your trust; a happy place
to rest in for a while, where nothing need be feared, but only loved. Who is
unwelcome to the kind in heart? And what could hurt the truly innocent?
Your will be done, you holy child of God. It does not matter if you think
you are in earth or Heaven. What your Father wills of you can never
change. The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as
innocent as love itself. And you are worthy that your will be done!