The Illusion and the Reality of Love

Chapter 16 – 4. The Illusion and the Reality of Love

Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom lies in
looking at it. It would be impossible not to know the meaning of love,
except for this. For the special love relationship, in which the meaning of
love is hidden, is undertaken solely to offset the hate, but not to let it go.
 
Your salvation will rise clearly before your eyes as you look on this. You
cannot limit hate. The special love relationship will not offset it, but will
merely drive it underground and out of sight. It is essential to bring it into
sight, and to make no attempt to hide it. For it is the attempt to balance hate
with love that makes love meaningless to you. The extent of the split that
lies in this you do not realize. And until you do, the split will remain
unrecognized, and therefore unhealed.
 
The symbols of hate against the symbols of love play out a conflict that
does not exist. For symbols stand for something else, and the symbol of
love is without meaning if love is everything. You will go through this last
undoing quite unharmed, and will at last emerge as yourself. This is the last
step in the readiness for God. Be not unwilling now; you are too near, and
you will cross the bridge in perfect safety, translated quietly from war to
peace. For the illusion of love will never satisfy, but its reality, which
awaits you on the other side, will give you everything.
 
The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the destructive effects of
hate by finding a haven in the storm of guilt. It makes no attempt to rise
above the storm, into the sunlight. On the contrary, it emphasizes the guilt
outside the haven by attempting to build barricades against it, and keep
within them. The special love relationship is not perceived as a value in
itself, but as a place of safety from which hatred is split off and kept apart.
 
The special love partner is acceptable only as long as he serves this purpose.
 
Hatred can enter, and indeed is welcome in some aspects of the relationship,
but it is still held together by the illusion of love. If the illusion goes, the
relationship is broken or becomes unsatisfying on the grounds of
disillusionment.
 
Love is not an illusion. It is a fact. Where disillusionment is possible, there
was not love but hate. For hate is an illusion, and what can change was
never love. It is sure that those who select certain ones as partners in any
aspect of living, and use them for any purpose which they would not share
with others, are trying to live with guilt rather than die of it. This is the
choice they see. And love, to them, is only an escape from death. They seek
it desperately, but not in the peace in which it would gladly come quietly to
them. And when they find the fear of death is still upon them, the love
relationship loses the illusion that it is what it is not. When the barricades
against it are broken, fear rushes in and hatred triumphs.
 
There are no triumphs of love. Only hate is at all concerned with the
“triumph of love. “The illusion of love can triumph over the illusion of hate,
but always at the price of making both illusions. As long as the illusion of
hatred lasts, so long will love be an illusion to you. And then the only
choice remaining possible is which illusion you prefer. There is no conflict
in the choice between truth and illusion. Seen in these terms, no one would
hesitate. But conflict enters the instant the choice seems to be one between
illusions, but this choice does not matter. Where one choice is as dangerous
as the other, the decision must be one of despair.
 
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the
barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to
seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false. Every
illusion is one of fear, whatever form it takes. And the attempt to escape
from one illusion into another must fail. If you seek love outside yourself
you can be certain that you perceive hatred within, and are afraid of it. Yet
peace will never come from the illusion of love, but only from its reality.
 
Recognize this, for it is true, and truth must be recognized if it is to be
distinguished from illusion: The special love relationship is an attempt to
bring love into fear, and make it real in fear. In fundamental violation of
love’s condition, the special love relationship would accomplish the
impossible. How but in illusion could this be done? It is essential that we
look very closely at exactly what it is you think you can do to solve the
dilemma which seems very real to you, but which does not exist. You have
come close to truth, and only this stands between you and the bridge that
leads you into it.
 
Heaven waits silently, and your creations are holding out their hands to help
you cross and welcome them. For it is they you seek. You seek but for your
own completion, and it is they who render you complete. The special love
relationship is but a shabby substitute for what makes you whole in truth,
not in illusion. Your relationship with them is without guilt, and this enables
you to look on all your brothers with gratitude, because your creations were
created in union with them. Acceptance of your creations is the oneness of
creation, without which you could never be complete. No specialness can
offer you what God has given, and what you are joined with Him in giving.
 
Across the bridge is your completion, for you will be wholly in God, willing
for nothing special, but only to be wholly like to Him, completing Him by
your completion. Fear not to cross to the abode of peace and perfect
holiness. Only there is the completion of God and of His Son established
forever. Seek not for this in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is
certain and where everything fails to satisfy. In the Name of God, be wholly
willing to abandon all illusions. In any relationship in which you are wholly
willing to accept completion, and only this, there is God completed, and His
Son with Him.
 
The bridge that leads to union in yourself must lead to knowledge, for it
was built with God beside you, and will lead you straight to Him where
your completion rests, wholly compatible with His. Every illusion you
accept into your mind by judging it to be attainable removes your own sense
of completion, and thus denies the Wholeness of your Father. Every fantasy,
be it of love or hate, deprives you of knowledge for fantasies are the veil
behind which truth is hidden. To lift the veil that seems so dark and heavy,
it is only needful to value truth beyond all fantasy, and to be entirely
unwilling to settle for illusion in place of truth.
 
Would you not go through fear to love? For such the journey seems to be.
 
Love calls, but hate would have you stay. Hear not the call of hate, and see
no fantasies. See in the call of hate, and in every fantasy that rises to delay
you, but the call for help that rises ceaselessly from you to your Creator.
 
Would He not answer you whose completion is His? He loves you, wholly
without illusion, as you must love. For love is wholly without illusion, and
therefore wholly without fear. Whom God remembers must be whole. And
God has never forgotten what makes Him whole. In your completion lie the
memory of His Wholeness and His gratitude to you for His completion. In
His link with you lie both His inability to forget and your ability to
remember. In Him are joined your willingness to love and all the Love of
God, Who forgot you not.
 
Your Father can no more forget the truth in you than you can fail to
remember it. The Holy Spirit is the Bridge to Him, made from your
willingness to unite with Him and created by His joy in union with you. The
journey that seemed endless is almost complete, for what is endless is very
near. You have almost recognized it. Turn with me firmly away from all
illusions now, and let nothing stand in the way of truth. We will take the last
useless journey away from truth together, and then together we go straight
to God, in joyous answer to His Call for His completion.
 
If special relationships of any kind would hinder God’s completion, can they
have any value to you? What would interfere with God must interfere with
you. Only in time does interference in God’s completion seem to be
possible. The bridge that He would carry you across lifts you from time into
eternity. Waken from time, and answer fearlessly the Call of Him Who gave
eternity to you in your creation. On this side of the bridge to timelessness
you understand nothing. But as you step lightly across it, upheld by
timelessness, you are directed straight to the Heart of God. At its center, and
only there, you are safe forever, because you are complete forever. There is
no veil the Love of God in us together cannot lift. The way to truth is open.
 
Follow it with me.