The Message of the Holy Relationship

Chapter 22 – 2. The Message of the Holy Relationship

Let reason take another step. If you attack whom God would heal and hate
the one he loves, then you and your Creator have a different will. Yet if you
are his will, what you must then believe is that you are not yourself. You
can indeed believe this, and you do. And you have faith in this and see
much evidence on its behalf. And where, you wonder, does your strange
uneasiness, your sense of being disconnected, and your haunting fear of
lack of meaning in yourself arise? It is as though you wandered in without a
plan of any kind except to wander off, for only that seems certain.
 
Yet we have heard a very similar description earlier, but it was not of you.
But still this strange idea which it does accurately describe, you think is
you. Reason would tell you that the world you see through eyes that are not
yours must make no sense to you. To whom would seeing such as this send
back its messages? Surely not you, whose sight is wholly independent of the
eyes that look upon the world. If this is not your vision, what can it show to
you? The brain cannot interpret what your vision sees. This you would
understand. The brain interprets to the body, of which it is a part. But what
it says you cannot understand. Yet you have listened to it. And long and
hard you tried to understand its messages.
 
You have not realized it is impossible to understand what fails entirely to
reach you. You have received no messages at all you understand. For you
have listened to what can never communicate at all. Think, then, what
happens. Denying what you are, and firm in faith that you are something
else, this “something else” that you have made to be yourself becomes your
sight. Yet it must be the “something else” that sees, and as not you, explains
its sight to you. Your vision would, of course, render this quite unnecessary.
 
Yet if your eyes are closed and you have called upon this thing to lead you,
asking it to explain to you the world it sees, you have no reason not to
listen, nor to suspect that what it tells you is not true. Reason would tell you
it cannot be true because you do not understand it. God has no secrets. He
does not lead you through a world of misery, waiting to tell you, at the
journey’s end, why he did this to you.
 
What could be secret from God’s Will? Yet you believe that you have
secrets. What could your secrets be except another “will” that is your own,
apart from his? Reason would tell you that this is no secret that need be
hidden as a sin. But a mistake indeed! Let not your fear of sin protect it
from correction, for the attraction of guilt is only fear. Here is the one
emotion that you made, whatever it may seem to be. This is the emotion of
secrecy, of private thoughts and of the body. This is the one emotion that
opposes love, and always leads to sight of differences and loss of sameness.
 
Here is the one emotion that keeps you blind, dependent on the self you
think you made to lead you through the world it made for you.
 
Your sight was given you, along with everything that you can understand.
 
You will perceive no difficulty in understanding what this vision tells you,
for everyone sees only what he thinks he is. And what your sight would
show you, you will understand because it is the truth. Only your vision can
convey to you what you can see. It reaches you directly, without a need to
be interpreted to you. What needs interpretation must be alien. Nor will it
ever be made understandable by an interpreter you cannot understand.
 
Of all the messages you have received and failed to understand, this course
alone is open to your understanding and can be understood. This is your
language. You do not understand it yet only because your whole
communication is like a baby’s. The sounds a baby makes and what he hears
are highly unreliable, meaning different things to him at different times.
 
Neither the sounds he hears nor sights he sees are stable yet. But what he
hears and does not understand will be his native tongue, through which he
will communicate with those around him, and they with him. And the
strange, shifting ones he sees about him will become to him his comforters,
and he will recognize his home and see them there with him.
 
So in each holy relationship is the ability to communicate instead of
separate reborn. Yet a holy relationship, so recently reborn itself from an
unholy relationship, and yet more ancient than the old illusion it has
replaced, is like a baby now in its rebirth. Still in this infant is your vision
returned to you, and he will speak the language you can understand. He is
not nurtured by the “something else” you thought was you. He was not
given there, nor was received by anything except yourself. For no two
brothers can unite except through Christ, Whose vision sees them one.
 
Think what is given you, my holy brother. This child will teach you what
you do not understand, and make it plain. For his will be no alien tongue.
 
He will need no interpreter to you, for it was you who taught him what he
knows because you knew it. He could not come to anyone but you, never to
“something else. “Where Christ has entered no one is alone, for never could
he find a home in separate ones. Yet must he be reborn into his ancient
home, so seeming new and yet as old as he, a tiny newcomer, dependent on
the holiness of your relationship to let him live.
 
Be certain God did not entrust his Son to the unworthy. Nothing but what is
part of him is worthy of being joined. Nor is it possible that anything not
part of him can join. Communication must have been restored to those who
join, for this they could not do through bodies. What, then, has joined them?
 
Reason will tell you that they must have seen each other through a vision
not of the body, and communicated in a language the body does not speak.
 
Nor could it be a fearful sight or sound that drew them gently into one.
 
Rather, in each the other saw a perfect shelter where his Self could be
reborn in safety and in peace. Such did his reason tell him; such he believed
because it was the truth.
 
Here is the first direct perception that you can make. You make it through
awareness older than perception, and yet reborn in just an instant. For what
is time to what was always so? Think what that instant brought; the
recognition that the “something else” you thought was you is an illusion.
 
And truth came instantly, to show you where your Self must be. It is denial
of illusions that calls on truth, for to deny illusions is to recognize that fear
is meaningless. Into the holy home where fear is powerless love enters
thankfully, grateful that it is one with you who joined to let it enter.
 
Christ comes to what is like himself; the same, not different. For he is
always drawn unto himself. What is as like him as a holy relationship? And
what draws you together draws him to you. Here are his sweetness and his
gentle innocence protected from attack. And here can he return in
confidence, for faith in one another is always faith in him. You are indeed
correct in looking on each other as his chosen home, for here you will with
him and with his Father. This is your Father’s will for you, and yours with
his. And who is drawn to Christ is drawn to God as surely as both are drawn
to every holy relationship, the home prepared for them as earth is turned to
Heaven.