The Gift of Freedom

Chapter 8.4
The Gift of Freedom
 
If God’s Will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you experience only
this you must be refusing to acknowledge his will. His will does not
vacillate, being changeless forever. When you are not at peace it can only
be because you do not believe you are in him. Yet he is all in all. His peace
is complete, and you must be included in it. His laws govern you because
they govern everything. You cannot exempt yourself from his laws,
although you can disobey them. Yet if you do, and only if you do, you will
feel lonely and helpless, because you are denying yourself everything.
 
I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself everything. It does
this simply by dissociating itself from everything. It is therefore an illusion
of isolation, maintained by fear of the same loneliness that is its illusion. I
said that I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. That is why
I am the light of the world. If I am with you in the loneliness of the world,
the loneliness is gone. You cannot maintain the illusion of loneliness if you
are not alone. My purpose, then, is still to overcome the world. I do not
attack it, but my light must dispel it because of what it is. Light does not
attack darkness, but it does shine it away. If my light goes with you
everywhere, you shine it away with me. The light becomes ours, and you
cannot abide in darkness any more than darkness can abide wherever you
go. The remembrance of me is the remembrance of yourself, and of him
 
Who sent me to you.
 
You were in darkness until God’s Will was done completely by any part of
the Sonship. When this was done, it was perfectly accomplished by all.
 
How else could it be perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to
unite the will of the Sonship with the Will of the Father by being aware of
the Father’s Will myself. This is the awareness I came to give you, and your
problem in accepting it is the problem of this world. The world must
therefore despise and reject me, because the world is the belief that love is
impossible. If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are denying
the world and accepting God. My will is his, and your decision to hear me is
the decision to hear his voice and abide in his will. As God sent me to you
so will I send you to others. And I will go to them with you, so we can teach
them peace and union.
 
Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you not
want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? For unless
you do, you will not receive it. If you want to have it of me, you must give
it. Healing does not come from anyone else. You must accept guidance
from within. The guidance must be what you want, or it will be meaningless
to you. That is why healing is a collaborative venture. I can tell you what to
do, but you must collaborate by believing that I know what you should do.
 
Only then will your mind choose to follow me. Without this choice you
could not be healed because you would have decided against healing, and
this rejection of my decision for you makes healing impossible.
 
Healing reflects our joint will. This is obvious when you consider what
healing is for. Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome.
 
Separation is overcome by union. It cannot be overcome by separating. The
decision to unite must be unequivocal, or the mind itself is divided and not
whole. Your mind is the means by which you determine your own
condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. It is the power by
which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. My
decision cannot overcome yours, because yours is as powerful as mine. If it
were not so the Sons of God would be unequal. All things are possible
through our joint decision, but mine alone cannot help you. Your will is as
free as mine, and God himself would not go against it. I cannot will what
God does not will. I can offer my strength to make yours invincible, but I
cannot oppose your decision without competing with it and thereby
violating God’s Will for you.
 
Nothing God created can oppose your decision, as nothing God created can
oppose his will. God gave your will its power, which I can only
acknowledge in honor of his. If you want to be like me I will help you,
knowing that we are alike. If you want to be different, I will wait until you
change your mind. I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my
teaching. How else can it be, if God’s Kingdom is freedom? Freedom
cannot be learned by tyranny of any kind, and the perfect equality of all
God’s Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one mind over
another. God’s Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This
is the only lesson I came to teach.
 
If your will were not mine it would not be our Father’s. This would mean
you have imprisoned yours, and have not let it be free. Of yourself you can
do nothing, because of yourself you are nothing. I am nothing without the
Father and you are nothing without me, because by denying the Father you
deny yourself. I will always remember you, and in my remembrance of you
lies your remembrance of yourself. In our remembrance of each other lies
our remembrance of God. And in this remembrance lies your freedom
because your freedom is in him. Join, then, with me in praise of him and
you whom he created. This is our gift of gratitude to him, which he will
share with all his creations, to whom he gives equally whatever is
acceptable to him. Because it is acceptable to him it is the gift of freedom,
which is his will for all his sons. By offering freedom you will be free.
 
Freedom is the only gift you can offer to God’s Sons, being an
acknowledgment of what they are and what he is. Freedom is creation,
because it is love. Whom you seek to imprison you do not love. Therefore,
when you seek to imprison anyone, including yourself, you do not love him
and you cannot identify with him. When you imprison yourself you are
losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your
identification is with the Father and with the Son. It cannot be with One and
not the Other. If you are part of One you must be part of the Other, because
They are One. The Holy Trinity is holy because It is One. If you exclude
yourself from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated.
 
You must be included in It, because It is everything. Unless you take your
place in It and fulfill your function as part of It, the Holy Trinity is as bereft
as you are. No part of It can be imprisoned if Its truth is to be known.