Hope Johnson's Wisdom Dialogues
Hope Johnson's Wisdom Dialogues
Created, Not Self-Made | ACIM Deep Dive | Chapter 2, Section XI, Paragraph 22 to Section XII, Paragraph 3 | October 8, 2025
✨ The Mastery of Love: When Fear No Longer Needs to Be Mastered ✨
What if peace isn’t earned by controlling fear—but revealed by remembering love? 💫
In this deep dive into A Course in Miracles’ section “The Mastery of Love,” we begin with a radical pivot: you did not create yourself. From that one reframe, the entire egoic structure of “fixing” and “managing” collapses. Magic falls away, and miracles become natural expressions of a mind aligned with God.
We unpack the difference between creation and miscreation, exploring why every thought “does” something. When energy is given to ego, it turns into compulsion, aggression, or defense. When given to Spirit, it extends kindness, clarity, and healing. Instead of suppressing or analyzing unwanted thoughts, we practice watching without identifying, handing them over for reinterpretation. Fear loses all authority the instant we stop believing it needs to be mastered—that’s the quiet power of love: it renders fear meaningless without a fight. 🕊️
We also name the interim—that sacred in-between where both love and fear seem to speak. Conflict here isn’t failure; it’s purification. The practice is to stop placing love and fear on the same level and remember your true position: God as Cause, you as Effect. From that awareness, miracles reveal their divine “illogic”—they break the old chain of cause and effect and restore holy order in your present moment.
From IRS letters to aging narratives to guilt spirals, this episode grounds metaphysics in the practical: how to withdraw belief from fear, choose love, and let peace lead your next step.
If this conversation helped you rest in love instead of wrestling with fear, please share it with a friend, subscribe for future deep dives, and leave a quick review so others can find the show. 💖
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Aloha, and welcome to a Course in Miracles Deep Dive with Hope Johnson. Today we'll be finishing off section eleven from chapter two. And we have one more paragraph left there, and then we'll be going on to the next section, section 12. And that is the mastery of love. So this is super exciting. I'm so glad you're joining. I love you. Thank you for being here. So let's start off with a prayer. A moment to recognize the flow of energy that you're sensing. And the breath just allowing it to be and go wherever it wants. And being in gratitude for this time together, this time to discover what's true about ourselves. Time to discover more deeply. And really, that's all that time is for. Being grateful for this time to be together. Thank you. Thank you. Jesus, we thank you for being with us to help us see beyond these words to the truth that's always true. Thank you for showing us and thank you for being patient. When we seemingly need to learn the same lessons over and over again. Thank you for holding our hand and showing us that the time for learning anything is over. Yay! Thank you. Thank you for our brothers and sisters joining us. Thank you for the love that we all have been created in. We thank God for that. We've all been created in perfect love. Can't be separate. And all these lessons, thank you for all these lessons to show us back to that. Show us back to the truth that we are. Thank you for all of your pointings. Thank you for all of your love. Thank you for all of your blessings. Thank you to all of us. Ah Amen. Oh, I'm so psyched. I'm so stoked about this. Uh, next section. The section that we're in right now, for one, is just super deep. It's been super deep. We have one more paragraph left. We're gonna go to that now. Yay! Aloha, Glenn. Thank you. I love you. Ah. So we're at the end of. See, what is this section called again? The end of right defense and release from fear. That's the name of this section 11 from chapter two that we're just finishing now. So here's the text from paragraph 22, sentence one on page 101. One of the chief ways in which you can correct your own magic miracle confusion is to remember that you did not create yourself. Isn't that a fun sentence? One of the chief ways in which you can correct your own magic miracle confusion is to remember that you did not create yourself. There's a footnote here, too, footnote 153. The reference to your own magic miracle confusion implies that we, like Freud, in the previous paragraphs, he was talking about Freud. It implies that we, like Freud, have confused miracles with magic. That quote, Freud could not divorce miracles from magic. That's from uh paragraph 20, possibly means that he saw miracles as attempts to control the external world through magical means such as prayer and ritual. So, what I remember about that is that he was uh kind of anti-religious, saying that it was superstitious, and he looked at miracles as attempts to be controlling the world, uh, using prayer and ritual to control the world. And this footnote is saying our own confusion of miracles and magic probably refers to seeing miracles as psychic feats. And it's referencing something from the text that says, without conviction, they, meaning miracles, deteriorate into magic performed by our own separate will rather than by God's will through us. So it's as if we know what should happen. So then the footnote goes on to say we solve this by remembering that we did not create ourselves. This restores God's role as our cause. God's role as our cause, so that his will once again works through us. So this whole section, Jesus has been talking about Freud, and now he's switching to talking to uh, I guess talking to us through Bill and Helen, right? So he's saying that we want to and we need to clear up miracle, magic confusion. Clear up the confusion between miracles and magic. So he's saying, like Freud, we do that. One of the chief ways in which you can correct your own magic, miracle confusion is to remember that you did not create yourself. So it says, without conviction, miracles deteriorate into magic. That means when we try to perform them by our own will, we reduce them to ego acts. So they're so then we're not allowing them to flow from God's will. They're flowing from attachment to what we think should happen in the world. So it's really simple. It makes it really simple. The sentence makes it so simple for us. Remember, we did not create ourselves. Here it is again. One of the chief ways in which you can correct your own magic miracle confusion is to remember that you did not create yourself. That makes that's making it so simple for us. When we remember we didn't create ourselves, what we're doing is we're re-establishing that God is the cause and miracles are God's natural expression that comes through us. That God is the cause. So when we believe that we are the author of ourselves, that's where magic arises. It's the illusion that we made ourselves and then we have to fix ourselves. What I've been seeing in my experience, where I'm just recognizing everything is a gift because there's no past. So there's no cause in the world to make any reason for what is being perceived now. It must just be a gift in the present moment. So when we accept that God is our source, then God's will flows through us just effortlessly. So what that looks like, accepting God as your source just means you don't accept anything as a in the illusion as having any power over you. If God is your source, then nothing the illusion tells you could possibly be true. Remembering this true cause lets us bypass the ego's magic. Okay, so so magic could be anything, it could be uh some kind of pill, some kind of procedure, some kind of ritual, something that's meant to get you what you think that you want. And there's not any problem with using any kind of magic at all. It's just that it's kept in the category of magic in your mind and not as if it has any cause of its own, because there's no cause outside of God. So whenever we're tempted to see miracles as something that we do, practically speaking, we could just go, I did not create myself. God is my cause, God is the true cause. Remember that you did not create yourself. So this prevents that deterioration into magic when we just remember we did not create ourselves. It's a simple remembrance, and that aligns our mind with true miracle making. Many times in a course in miracles, the lesson or part of the lesson is I am as God created me. That comes up over and over again. I cannot make myself. His will works through me now and always. This is very, it feels like a very important sentence. I'm going to read it one more time. One of the chief ways in which you can correct your own magical miracle, magic miracle confusion is to remember that you did not create yourself. You must still be as God created you. All right. Unless anyone has any questions, you guys are looking good. Okay. Thank you. Uh we're on to paragraph 22, sentence two. You are apt to forget this when you become egocentric. And this places you in a position where belief in magic is virtually inevitable. Forgetting, you're gonna you're apt to forget this. So forgetting that you did not create yourself is what it means to become egocentric, forgetting that you did not create yourself. You can look at yourself in wonder, like, oh my goodness. This is just uh this is just amazing. And by yourself, I mean beyond this image that you perceive. The image that you perceive, it is not created. It's make-believe. And everything that you're perceiving, the image that you're perceiving, though, is basically a gift in the moment. All of the perception, not just the self-image, but the entire perception, the perception is reflecting the self-image. It's all a gift in the moment. There's no past to be the cause of it, it's just presented to you, so that you can intersect with it. You can intersect with what is appearing, and in that way be the channel for truth, be the channel for light into the world of form. Yay! Thank you for joining. So, in a mindset where you think you created yourself, right, that in that mindset, you automatically feel vulnerable and incomplete, and that's why you turn to magic, self-effort, rituals, defenses, trying to control things, trying to save yourself, and that's only because you thought you created yourself. It says you are apt to forget this when you become egocentric. You forget that you did not create yourself. In the last sentence, it said, remember that you did not create yourself. So belief in magic becomes inevitable. That's what it says here. Belief in magic is virtually inevitable. Because if you think you author yourself, you'll also think you must preserve yourself. Isn't that so fun? Look at all the different ways of trying to preserve ourselves. It's hilarious. All right, so the ego is inherently unstable. We know that. You're apt to forget this when you become egocentric, and this places you in a position where belief in magic is virtually inevitable. The ego always seeks magic to sustain the illusion. And the Holy Spirit would end the whole cycle just by reminding you you are created by God. So you're already safe. You don't really need anything. I notice one of the tricks that seems to be done in the world is people believe that they need some expensive medication to get by, right? And then there seems to not be enough resources for that medication, and so then it seems like there's uh something really intense. And you know, people just work themselves into these beliefs. There's no need to harbor these beliefs like you really need that thing. But, you know, while the people believe it, it seems so real. While we believe we need something in the in the world, that thing seems so real, like we're suffering without it.
SPEAKER_01:Get consumed by it.
SPEAKER_04:Right. It's a trick. It's a trick. So notice whenever you're caught in self-preoccupation, I love that. I don't even have to get any self-preoccupation anymore because I have just seen through it. That's what I notice. Like anytime there's a thought about wondering what a person thinks about me or anything like that, it's just been well practiced enough that I could just relax. I could just totally relax, knowing that it doesn't matter, knowing that it really doesn't matter. There's no need to protect an ego, there's no need to try and fix myself. Basically, I did not create myself. God is my source, and I'm already totally sustained. Because I didn't create myself, that's why I don't need to fix myself. That makes no sense. Even the imaginary self, it's even just on an on a path of evolution, you can say, totally held in perfection, totally doing amazing. So, next sentence, paragraph twenty-two, sentence three. We are in a Course in Miracles Complete Annotated Edition, page 101. Your instincts for creation were given you by your own creator who was expressing the same instinct in his creation. So your instincts for creation are the same as God's instincts in which he created you. So relating this back to the last section, our deepest drive isn't survival or destruction, as Freud taught it. Our deepest drive is creation. The creative instinct comes directly from God. That's what this sentence is telling us. Your instincts for creation were given you by your own creator who was expressing the same instinct in his creation. So he, in essence, is extending himself to us, and he is perfect love. So he extends himself through us. That's the deepest drive in the mind. It's to be creative as God is creative. This is what comes to us directly from God, it's our given. So creation isn't ego driven. Those other things are ego-driven, right? Survival and destruction, those are ego driven. That's not the base, that's not the miracle impulse. You go deeper than that, it's just the miracle impulse. So anything ego-driven, that's why it can be overlooked. It's not God given. So ego has distorted instincts: sex, aggression, fear. The true instinct is totally creation. It's creative, it's mirroring God, it's extending God's own nature. So every miscreation, every miscreation, that's something that denies truth. Beneath each one, the real instinct to create love is always intact. It's always beneath every miscreation. And you know, even the word miscreation, it's a miscreation because it isn't a creation. That means it doesn't exist. It's a miscreation. You know, even sexual attraction, Jesus was telling us that it's a misdirected miracle impulse. That's all it is. It's just like you don't you don't really um have anything else but a miracle impulse. When you feel like extending kindness and beauty and truth, notice that's the creative impulse. That's the creative impulse moving through you. Your true creative impulse is to create with God. So it's like to be as God would be with all of his sons, and that includes yourself, the self you made. Okay, so you guys got that. Your true instinct is to create with God. That's the true instinct. There's no other instinct. Next sentence, sentence four. Since the creative ability rests solely in the mind, everything which you make or create is necessarily instinctive. Isn't that so fun? So that the mind can't stop creating, it's always extending either true creation or miscreation. It's either extending true creation or uh projecting miscreation. And it's projecting miscreation. Of course, in miracles says the mind is blank, nothing's happening. So both making and creating, making is with the ego, creating is with love. They're instinctive because they draw on the same source. It's the power of your mind, that's the source. So the only difference is in the purpose you give to it. Do you give that power over to the ego who misuses it and makes miscreation? Or do you remember this is a difference in purpose? Everything which you make or create is necessarily instinctive. Mind is never neutral. Every thought is doing something. If you're just letting thoughts play and not believing and and believing in them, then they become powerful. When you withdraw the power from them by noticing them, you gotta notice the thoughts. Notice what thoughts are popping up. And let them be reinterpreted in light of what's true. When there's miscreation, that's anything that hurts. That's anything that's hurtful. It's anything that feels less than gratitude. Let that energy be redirected. These are not who you are. That's really important to recognize. Thoughts that cross your mind, especially the unwanted ones. Notice the unwanted ones. They cross your mind. You don't need to identify with them. They're not who you are. I was telling a friend yesterday who was uh telling her family that she wants to kill herself or something like that, something along those lines. I'm like, that thought is not who you are. Do you want to keep it? Do you want to keep on doing that? You can decide to notice it's just an ego thought that doesn't mean anything about you. And you just want to stay in the will of God because that makes you happy. So you can just recognize when you perceive hatred or attack or judgmental kind of kind of thoughts, recognize this is my creative instinct being misdirected. It's just being misdirected, it's fed into a channel that is attacking. You don't want anything like that. So you could hand it over to the Holy Spirit. Just ask the Holy Spirit, redirect this energy, reinterpret this for me. Let me see it with love. So, in this way, even getting a hateful thought, that hateful thought becomes a doorway to remembering love. It's not some problem that we're trying to get rid of. It's like, oh, there it is. That's what I need. This is what helps me remember love. This is what I want it for. It's all I want it for. That's what I love. There's this definitely this sense of invulnerability when we're experiencing ourselves as being able to perceive a hateful thought arise in our own mind, let's say, and just recognize that has no meaning. Don't have to identify with it or anything like that. That means any thought that arises in my mind, I have complete dominion over them. I could just go, that's a meaningless thought, but I've got to be aware of them. See, there's this guilt about not looking. We've talked about this a lot, but it, you know, it bears repeating. There's this guilt around not looking at what's coming up in the mind for fear that it means something about you. It doesn't mean anything about you. This is their meaningless thoughts, they're impersonal thoughts. So that last sentence, sentence four from paragraph 22, since the creative ability rests solely in the mind, everything which you make or create is necessarily instinctive. So yay, thank you for joining. Okay, next sentence, sentence five, paragraph twenty-two. This is the last sentence. It also follows that whatever you produce is real in your own eyes, but not necessarily in the sight of God. So because you're investing belief into what you make, miscreations seem real to you. They seem real. I was talking with a friend yesterday. Uh, and you know, she was telling me how no matter how strong our mind is, biology plays a role in how we age and how we look and stuff like that. And I'm like, yeah, what I'm saying is that biology is a program that we made with our belief, with our belief system, and belief systems can be undone. That's what we're learning here, is to see uh how belief systems can be undone. So it also follows that whatever you produce is real in your own eyes, but not necessarily in the sight of God. So in God's reality, only true creation has any meaning. Okay, illusions feel powerful, but only true creation has any meaning because there's no eternal substance in illusions. So this distinction is crucial here. Perception can make illusions appear real, but knowledge, which is God's vision, sees only truth. Not necessarily in the sight of God. You think whatever you produce is real because your belief makes it real to you, it seems real to your own eyes, but not necessarily in the sight of God. If it doesn't match God's reality, it's not real in God's eyes. So whenever there's a miscreation, it's borrowing energy from creation. That's how it could make it seem real in your eyes, but it doesn't actually alter your reality. So you could see why illusions would feel heavy and convinced convincing, but still not be the truth. No matter how heavy or convincing or how much evidence there is for illusions, it doesn't change what the truth is. It never changed anything. I know they look really real. Seems like these bodies are aging everywhere. I told my friend, no bodies are aging, it's not possible. It's actually a misperception, and it's the refusal to see it as a misperception that makes it persist. It's wanting to see it as a reality and then try to change the reality, the false reality.
SPEAKER_01:That makes us victim to it, right? When we look at it that way, it was going from one doctor to another, yeah, victim all the way down the road.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. One way to describe that is whack-a-mole. You ever play that game whack-a-mole? It's a it's a game in a in a uh in a in an arcade. So these little moles pop up, and you have a hammer and you hit them on the head as fast as you can before they go back down. But it doesn't matter how many of those little moles you hit, they keep popping up, right? So it's like we tend to do that with different things, trying to change the reality that we made instead of recognizing that the reality we made is really nothing, it's foolishness to God. So even though they're heavy and convincing in our sight, that doesn't make them anything in truth. That's what's to recognize here. So let's say you feel guilty after acting unlovingly. Let's say you get the perception that you weren't loving enough, right? Remember, that may seem real to you, but it is not real to God. Do you see the relief in that? I hope you do, because I found a lot of relief in recognizing that. Even if it might seem real to you, it's not real to God. When you're recognizing that whatever you made up in fear has no reality in God, you are back in God. You're back in the basically the Christ vision. Guilt just falls away when you realize God does not recognize your miscreations, God only recognizes your eternal innocence, and that's something you can decide in the moment to just see like that.
SPEAKER_01:I had that experience today where when I finally realized it was guilt, it was a relief because I knew it wasn't real in a way.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, yes. Tom and Thomas had uh I would say it was a miracle moment, maybe even who knows, maybe even more like uh what do they call those guys? Revelation. Yeah, he just had a thought and recognized it was a guilty thought, and it's like that thought never even happened. That thought's not even, he gave it no meaning, and he felt the relief. Insight. Insight, thank you. Yeah, yay, hooray. I love you. Thank you for joining. Ah, okay, where are we, guys? We were um I'm reading that one one more time. Paragraph 22, sentence five, then we're moving on to the next section. It also follows that whatever you produce is real in your own eyes, but not necessarily in the sight of God. Thank goodness for that. All right, we're going into the mastery of love, section 12. So this section is following a section on psychic energy. We did a lot of psychic energy in the last one where Jesus showed how miracle impulses get misdirected. Okay, and Jesus showed us all the different ways. So now we're shifting focus from control and magic to the true correction through love. So we went over the basic conflict. That's always between love and fear. That's what we learned in the last section. Basic conflict is always between love and fear, and healing comes from choosing one of them completely. Level confusion. We went over that. Level confusion causing conflict when they're mixed up, when the miracle restores, when the miracle is the only thing that can restore the right order. And level confusion is pretending that things of the world have just as much power as the miracle. They don't. So mastery is about devotion to love, and that's what we're getting into now. Uh, means we're consistent in extending love and not and and not subduing fear. So, this is where we get out of needing to do anything with fear, we're just simply extending love. So there's gonna be an interim talked about, and that's the transition between love and fear, and that's where there still seems to be conflict, but you know that purification is underway. I know I went through an interim like that. It was very clear that that's what was going on. Probably lasted a good 10 years for me. So the goal is seeing God as our cause and ourselves as God's effect. That's how fear disappears. Seeing God as our cause. So let's get into it. So, paragraph one, sentence one, we're in section twelve, chapter two.
SPEAKER_03:Here's the text.
SPEAKER_04:We have already said that the basic conflict is one between love and fear, and that the proper organization of the psyche rests on a lack of level confusion. Yes, we have said that. The proper organization of the psyche rests on a lack of level confusion. And there's a footnote here, footnote 154. The basic conflict is one between love and fear. That's from the text in the previous section. Also, from Miracle Principle 28, miracles are a means of organizing different levels of awareness. And from the last section again, if the psyche contains fearful levels from which it cannot escape without splitting, its integration is permanently threatened. Wow. That's something we went over in the last section. A little bit back there, paragraph six. So Jesus is re uh restating the central idea here, uh, the Course of Miracles central idea that the only real conflict is between love and fear. Every other apparent struggle, people, values, desires, it's always a projection of this inner split, a conflict between love and fear. So he talks about proper organization of the psyche, the healing of the mind's levels through miracle-minded integration. When love and fear just seem to occupy different compartments of the psyche, like one's on one side and one's on the other side, the mind gets fragmented. It's prone to being split in that case. Level confusion again. We want to bring this up again. Jesus is bringing it up again. He's saying uh something about level confusion here. The proper organization of the psyche rests on a lack of level confusion. So that's mixing again what belongs to the spirit, the level of creation, with what belongs to the perception, the level of form. So this is what makes psychological conflict because the mind tries to solve spiritual problems, and all problems are that, they're the same, with worldly means. See, it wants to make magic instead of miracles, tries to fill a lack instead of recognizing that the lack is only miscreation. See the difference there, it's all just something we projected. We can take back, we can pull back our projections. So the psyche is not meant to manage love and fear. It's not meant for that. That's why it splits. Love is of God, fear is God's denial. It's the denial of God. That's what it is. Love is of God, fear is denial of God, it's denial that you're as God created you. The split is just an illusion that you maintain when you believe that they both coexist. God and the denial of God, basically. Yeah, God and denial of God. The miracle basically reorganizes awareness, it restores cause and effect to their rightful order. Mind is the cause, and the world is the mind's effect. God is the cause, and you are God's effect. Woo-hoo, two of them there. So reorganizing, this reorganizing, it's reorganizing cause and effect that heals this level confusion. So let's read this again. We have already said that the basic conflict is one between love and fear, and that the proper organization of the psyche rests on lack of level confusion. So when fear is hidden, it's not being watched. It's gonna demand expression, and that's either gonna come through bodily symptoms. Look, I just sneezed a couple times, that's pretty fun. Or it or through projection, through making drama and stuff like that. So the miracle lets this energy just be translated back to love. So whenever any conflict arises, any inner conflict, that means there's some guilt. Thomas just recognized the thought as being a guilty thought. The issue is never about the situation. That can't be said enough, right? Because it always seems to be about the situation. It's always about choosing love or fear. So whenever you feel uh torn in a situation or your mind is chattery or anything, you can just remember only love is real. Fear is only a misperception. This is really a relaxing. This is like, you know, this is this is like the end of learning. You don't need to learn to do this, you don't need to learn anything to do this. It's like you just recognize only love is real. If there's fear, that's misperception. I'm choosing the level of love now. The level of love is uh where you actually are.
SPEAKER_05:I have this Zen Koan card that I have sitting out that says, just sit here and don't make up anything.
SPEAKER_04:Just sit here and don't make up anything. I love it. Yep, that's good. Yeah, so clarity can definitely replace anxiety. No one has to have anxiety. Your psyche will feel whole again when you just say, I'm choosing love, I'm not going with a with a level of fear, it's way easier than it seems, actually. It's maybe only the first time. What you're laughing about that? It's maybe only the first time you actually like do it with ease. You're like, oh, it's so easy. All right. Paragraph one, sentence two. Here's the text. The section on psychic energy should be reread very carefully because it is particularly likely to be misinterpreted until this section has been completed. So the section on psychic energy, that's the last section that we did, section 11. He's saying it should be reread very carefully. Well, we went through it pretty carefully. We've spent several weeks on it. If you want, you can read it again. And there's a footnote here. The section on psychic energy is the previous section. Okay, thank you for that footnote. That's good. Uh-huh. Okay. So Jesus is talking about a common, common pitfall here. The section on psychic energy should be reread very carefully because it is particularly likely to be misinterpreted until this section has been completed. So the ego quickly turns this psychic energy. When the ego hears psychic energy, it quickly turns it into a technique, something about willpower, something to try to control things. So this section, the safeguard to that is really this section, the mastery of love is the name of the section. And it's showing us this organizing context that the only conflict is love and fear, and miracles reorganize the levels of awareness. Without this frame of this section, psychic energy gets read as some kind of personal force for the ego rather than a miracle impulse. So we're not trying to take control of our psychic energy. It's about letting the control, letting the psychic energy be redirected. So in the prior teaching, it was talking about how miracle impulses are blocked, and then the energy gets misdirected into substitutes, those substitutes being libido, like sexual attraction, aggression, aggression, and defenses. And it's not saying to suppress the energy, it's letting it this is an invitation to let it be repurposed. Let this be used for miracles. Whatever it is that's arising, let it be used for miracles. So when of course in miracles talks about psychic energy, and that that's what that's what the last section was about, it's it can be understood as attention or willingness. This is the mind's causal power, the psychic energy. So we assign that psychic energy purpose. We say whether it's uh it's only used for God or it could be used for something else. So the completion of this section matters because love is what prevents this splitting and level confusion. That's why he's saying a lot of the times the last section on psychic energy doesn't get understood until we complete this section on the mastery of love. So practically, you might reread the prior section and pray to let this be interpreted by love, seeking only the miracle's purpose. Psychic energy, you could say psychic energy. Um, you could choose to have that offered to spirit. Notice when you're tempted to make it personal power, try to use some kind of technique or control it, just offer it. And if you feel any activation around sex or anger or some kind of drive, don't suppress it. Acknowledge it. This is creative power misdirected. Ask the Holy Spirit to reassign that energy, redirect that energy to joining. And that's what's done. It's up to you. So let the purpose of all psychic energy be loving, let love set the purpose. Let's read that sentence again. The section on psychic energy should be reread very carefully because it is particularly likely to be misinterpreted until this section has been completed. So hooray. Let me know if you guys have any questions. Okay. So we got to paragraph one, sentence two, and there's only two sentences in that paragraph, so we're on to paragraph two, sentence one. It has already been said that you cannot control fear because you yourself made it. Then there's a footnote from Miracle Principle 48. You can never control the effects of fear, it's of fear yourself, because you have made fear and believe in what you make. So this is the ego's one of the ego's deepest delusions is that we can control fear. And you know, of course, in miracles, and Jesus reminding us that control is not the remedy. Okay. Uh that's all that's actually just a symptom of the belief in separation. Trying to control it. So when he's talking about you make fear, that means you believe in separation and then project guilt outward as danger, loss, vulnerability. So everything that you seem to be afraid of, you made it. You believe in separation and then project all those things outward. Because we believe in what we make. Fear appears to be real and demands management. You could see that in the perception a lot, all the different ways of managing fear. One of them is insurance, locks on your doors, preventative medicine, protective clothing. But that's never gonna undo what the belief made. Only undoing the belief itself can restore the truth to your mind, your complete safety. Only through forgiveness can that really happen. Otherwise, we're always trying to manage some kind of safety for ourselves. Whenever you recognize that fear is only self-made, that means it doesn't exist. You're really recognizing it that it doesn't exist because you're recognizing that it's self-made, you're letting the Holy Spirit reinterpret it. You know, it's not like it's any kind of problem. It's not like an em an enemy. It's not like fear is an enemy. The Holy Spirit just reinterprets it, comes back to truth. So fear is not some external force outside of yourself. It's like a shadow, it's an effect of miscreation, believing you authored yourself. So control is the ego's answer to mastery. Like instead of mastery, ego would substitute it with control, controlling the fear. But really, mastery comes from relinquishing the fear, not manipulating it. So the way for fear to be corrected is recognizing your cause. I did not make myself, I did not create myself. This fearful body, this fearful image that you made, you did not make yourself, that is an illusion. You're as God created you, and you can be as God created you, even in your perceptual dreams. So whenever fear comes up, like let's say um this story's coming up from a different time. You put your car in with a mechanic, and then all of a sudden there's a fear. Oh my god, the mechanic is actually gonna steal my car. Let's say you look at something like that more like an opportunity, and noticing I made this fear, I made this fearful feeling right now by believing in separation, noticing you don't want to keep it, you don't need to keep it, and then ask the Holy Spirit to show you what's actually true here. This is the practical application of this sentence here. Let that impulse to control something. Something be your signal to release. See that? That's how you really uh meet your experience. Notice you you cannot control fear because it's not real. Love is the power, love is what you are. When you let that impulse to control something, I'm telling you, this works really well, you guys. You let that be a signal for you to release and let your mind see that that is a signal to release. It's not a signal to jump into any kind of action. It starts to train you. And when you do it successfully one time, you're gonna see that you're not vulnerable to any of them. Aloha, welcome. I love you. We are on page one oh two of the complete annotated edition. Let's see, I believe we are on paragraph two, sentence two. Let me check that.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Paragraph two sentence two. All right, your belief in it renders it out of your control by definition. Okay, so this it or fear. Your belief in it renders it out of control by definition. So this is really simply your belief in fear renders fear out of control by definition. So it's very succinctly explaining why fear can't be controlled. Belief gives it power. To believe in fear is to invest fear with the authority of your mind. The same power that made it appear real in the first place. Perception is always an effect of belief. So when you perceive fear, it's because you believed in it. You believe in it first before you can perceive it. Let's say you get a letter from the IRS and your fear strikes your heart. It's not because of the letter of from the IRS, it's because of believing in fear. If you were a newborn baby and you got a letter from the IRS, it would not make you afraid one bit. You just drool on it. Right. This is not something to be afraid of. So as long as you believe fear is real, you're gonna experience effects like fear. And you're gonna feel helpless before them. So, you know, you could use this as a simple rule of thumb. If you feel helpless, it's only because you've been believing in fear. You can be released from that right now. See, when you when you start looking at things like that, like this, and this is the way I look at them, and you start looking at things like this, like, oh, there's a feeling of fear. Oh, I know what that means. This is a moment of opportunity. I don't even want to miss it. This is great. And you stop feeling helpless. You know that the feeling of helplessness is actually helpful because it's showing you that there's something that you can release that's making you feel helpless. Access point. He's saying it becomes an access point. I feel that. So you can control illusions, but only by withdrawing belief in them, not by trying to rearrange them. So this is about the path to mastery. This whole section is called the mastery of love. It's not about suppression or management of fear, it's just disidentification. It's seeing that fear has no source outside of your mistaken thought. The sentence again, your belief in it, fear, renders it, again, fear, out of your control by definition. Belief is creative. Basically, to believe in an illusion is to misuse your creative power. It's a misuse to believe in it. To the ego, your belief proves reality. It's like that's oh yeah, you believe it that strongly, it must be true. So, but to the Holy Spirit, though, and what the Holy Spirit's function is, is to teach that belief only makes illusion seem real until it's withdrawn, until the belief in it is withdrawn. So one law of mind is what you believe you make real to yourself. That's one law of the mind. And this sentence is encapsulating that as well. Your belief in fear renders fear out of your control by definition. Once the belief is healed and it's transferred over to love, it's gone from an illusion to being seen in truth. Then there's no fear because there's no cause for fear. Fear is just a belief, and fear is the cause of all pain, too. So, practically speaking, when fear comes up, don't fight it, don't analyze it. It's just what am I believing right now that makes this fear seem real? Your belief is giving the illusion the only power it has, and you can choose to withdraw belief from it right now. You can use the IRS letter as an example, okay, for this practical application. You got the IRS letter in the mail, and you get this sense of fear. What am I believing right now that makes fear seem real? Check it out. What are you believing? Are they gonna do something to you? What are they gonna do to you? Are they gonna like make you pay money? Are they gonna put you in jail? I went for they're gonna put me in jail. I'll just go to that. They're gonna put me in jail. That's a fear, right? I went for that, and and and notice okay, my belief is what's giving this illusion the only power that it seems to have. Like there's a fear of going to jail. I see that. I choose to withdraw my belief in that right now, that that has any power over me. And then when I'm released from it, I'm not uh I'm not opposed to going to jail. That's not the thing. I'm not feeling opposed to going to jail. I'm just recognizing that the illusion of going to jail isn't gonna affect me one bit if that occurs. I'm not gonna have one. Once you realize it's just fear, you know, you just can feel that spaciousness. So once you're released from that belief, the belief it's it's in fear, there's just peace in your awareness, and you know, and I had a brilliant audit because of that.
SPEAKER_05:I'm also hearing there's nothing wrong with feeling the fear effect of feeling locked up and you know, you want it in the belief.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you well, you she's saying she's hearing that there's nothing wrong with the fear effect, and and I'm going, yeah, you want it as a signal, it's not for being wallowed in, it's a signal that there's something to be released.
SPEAKER_05:So what I know that's it is you're saying that we're already feeling the fear effect and we're stepping back out, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so uh, so you know, it's like pushy, you don't want to push it away, of course. Yeah, you want to use it like for me, I'll get excited about it. I know it's I know what's happening. It's like it's like you know, it's like that cross where it's like there's these layers of illusion, and the awareness is intersecting with these layers of illusions, and it's kind of like just cutting through illusions because the awareness being stabilized in unity doesn't get caught up in the illusions as if they need to be hit up against or ran away from, it just goes right through them. So I use it like that. I'm like, yes, it's like in in that case, it becomes like a prayer. Everything becomes like a prayer, every feeling. It's like what you believe in, that's what you seem to see. If you believe in love, you see love. If you believe in fear, you see you see fear. You know, one example is one uh person was telling me at this church, I think it's called Church of the Holy Cross. Is that what it is? Something about the Holy Cross. It's also a hike. Well, there's a Jesus hanging, he's got his eyes open and he's hanging on a tree. You know, it's a crucifixion thing. Yeah, he's got his eyes open, and uh, and someone said so he's got his eyes open so you could see the shame just being projected right out of those eyes. And you know, I hear that, and I was like, wow, that's an interesting point of view, you know, and that's all about how we would look at it. How you know, would you look at it as the shame coming out of his eyes, or is it kindness, or is it, you know, it's all it's all just a self-reflection, right? It's all just showing us whatever it is that we want to see. Yeah. Uh well, not really, I mean, it's all in a dream. Okay, so the phrase mastery of fear, uh, paragraph two, sentence three. For this reason, any attempt to resolve the basic conflict conflict through the concept of mastery of fear is meaningless. So trying to master fear really presumes that the fear is real, doesn't it? And that somehow your separate self has an ability to dominate it. Like it's really there. Fear is real. We're gonna dominate this. This is already making the effort self-defeating. Any attempt to resolve the basic conflict through the concept of mastery of fear. Remember, the basic conflict is between love and fear. So he's saying try to resolve that through mastery of fear is meaningless. So that's the ego's inversion of the mastery of love. The ego teaches that power comes from controlling fear, and Jesus is teaching that true mastery is in remembering love as the only reality. So mastering fear to Jesus is meaningless, so it would also be confirming the basic conflict rather than resolving the basic conflict. So Jesus is calling this path meaningless, not because the goal of peace is invalid, because the goal is still peace. Like even the ego is going, hey, let's master fear, we'll get peace that way, right? The goal is the same, but the method is impossible. Only love heals fear, it doesn't overpower fear, it really reveals that the fear never existed, it never had a true cause. It relieves it, it relieves it, yes. Revealing that it never existed is quite the relief. So this basic conflict, it's like the split between imaginary split between love and fear, and the mind trying to identify with both God and ego. Who doesn't see that all the time? My ego, this, my ego that. Well, my ego did this. It's like fuck. That is uh an ego avoiding responsibility right there. That's what that is. It's an ego way of avoiding responsibility. So trying to master fear as the ego self, like within the split, that's what keeps the conflict alive, and only the ego would want to master fear. So the true resolution for fear is when the mind rises above all of this and forgives it, doesn't fight with it. Basically, what the Holy Spirit wants you to see, and what the Holy Spirit's purpose is, is for you to see and accept that fear is meaningless. Fear is a meaningless thing, you don't need to do anything with it. It's basically seeing that it's meaningless, that's mastery. That's what mastery is. You've seen it fear is meaningless. That's the moment where perception is restored to truth. You're seeing fear is meaningless, and this is what Jesus is talking about in this section is the mastery of love. It's recognizing only love has power, so there's nothing to master. That's the mastery of love. Isn't that fun? You're simply not making it as if fear has power. Fear has reality. Well, it does have power when you give it power. Let's say that. Because notice the the uh the body shot when you feel the fear. I notice, like when I'm giving that example of the high-s letter, that's an example from my life, apparently. I don't know, maybe like 14 years ago or something. Uh I got the letter, and man, I felt the shot. Like it's like a shot in the body sense, right? So don't try to suppress it or control it or work through it or anything. It's not a problem. You just acknowledge I remember love. I choose to remember love. As soon as I chose to remember love, everything was really fun again. I had a really fun audit. Right. So this shifts our mind, and there's a subtle before we're aware of this, trying to master fear in our mind. So now we're changing to oh, we could just choose mastery through love. Right? It's just a matter of knowing that there is only love. That's the mastery of it. And allowing the Holy Spirit to re-reinterpret everything we see, really, when we're recognizing that there is only love, that is allowing the Holy Spirit to reinterpret what we see. Think we see something else, it's wrong. Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists. It's all leading back to that awareness. I love you guys. Thank you for joining. Sentence four of paragraph two, page one oh two. In fact, it asserts the power of fear by the simple assumption that it need be mastered at all. Or control, uh-huh, right, yeah, or controlled. Yeah, you can use that word too. So the the ego's got this trick, this idea that fear must be mastered, and this is presuming that fear has power in the first place. So that makes fear seem to have power to you. Whenever we try to fight it, we're believing more strongly that it's real. Defending against anything is accepting it as a threat. If you accept fear as a threat, so both of these responses, to fight it or to defend against it, makes the fear stronger in the mind by affirming that it is truly there. Fear is actually not a force that you overcome. It's not like that, it's an illusion that you overlook, it's actually not there. So, not assuming it needs any kind of mastery, so we don't reinforce a belief that we're separate and we're struggling against this fear thing that's outside of us. It's really just a shadow of miscreation, which never really happened either. Love needs no defense. So any stance of defense is siding with fear. Recognize that. Fear can't be conquered, it doesn't work like that. It can be recognized that it was never real. That's way different. When you try to conquer it, you first make it real. And then you set up a never-ending fight. So whenever there's an impulse to fight, that's the red flag. That's the opportunity. Good versus evil, good versus evil, exactly.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_04:Resistance, resistance is what makes fear real to us. And by the way, resistance is the only thing that causes aging and sickness and death. Isn't that funny? So fear actually has no power at all except what we give to it, and we could just stay with that, like questioning it for a while if we wanted to. What if fear has no power? Just stay in that and watching what happens in your mind. It's all a matter of retraining the mind to be directed toward truth rather than illusion, because all day long thoughts are going on, they can be redirected toward truth instead of chewing on illusions all day long. No wonder we're so busy, right? And tired. That's the other thing. Busy and tired. Great combo. That is not what we were uh planning on doing, but you know, we believe so strongly in these illusory thoughts that we ended up getting really busy with them and making ourselves tired by them. Time to stop doing that. All right, paragraph two, sentence five. I'm always checking on you guys to see if you have any questions or anything. It looks like you're doing good. So the essential resolution rests entirely on the mastery of love. That's the sentence, short little sentence. The essential resolution rests entirely on the mastery of love. And footnote one fifty-seven comes with this. This means mastering, as in becoming highly proficient in love, becoming a master of love rather than trying to master or subdue fear.
SPEAKER_01:It's like allowing it instead of manipulating it, allowing it instead of manipulating it.
SPEAKER_04:I like it. Thank you. So the only true mastery is of love. It's not an effortful discipline, it's just acceptance of what you are, it's acceptance that there's only love. Again, a mastery of love is accepting that there's only love, it's to become consistent in this recognition and extending this recognition, choosing love as your only teacher in every circumstance. Why not? That's what I say. Why not? I don't ever have to come off of that. I don't have to ever have to get serious or anything. Right? Because it's it's like, why not? Just let your only interpreter, what interprets all your experiences, be love. The ego seeks control. Love totally releases control, knowing that there's divine order, trusting in divine order to flow through as it needs to. There's no struggle in mastery of love. There's no struggle because it's not trying to eliminate fear, it's just rendering fear meaningless. See that difference? Love isn't struggling against fear because it's not trying to eliminate fear. Love is just rendering fear meaningless through remembering what's true in every circumstance. So it's not this resistance to fear, it's like let fear arise. Disempowering, totally disempowering it. That's right. It's taking the power away from it because it's taking belief away from it. I just have to remember what's true. That's easy. That's really easy. It's not easy for an ego, but we're not egos. Look at whatever puts up a defense about that, that's the ego. You don't have to listen to that. Mastery of love meaning, means that you're acknowledging and you're aware of that only love is possible, only love is true. That's what it is. Really simple. A baby can do this. Am I gonna get pregnant or something? I keep on talking about babies.
SPEAKER_05:You're just birthing a whole new crowd.
SPEAKER_04:I seem to be seem to be past menopause, but who knows? Babies keep popping up. So, in this context, mastery is meaning consistency in identifying as love. That's what mastery is. See that that's consistency, knowing yourself as love so completely that fear doesn't have anywhere to land. That's what mastery is, right? And you are basically being called or invited to this mastery right now, and you can decide right now for consistency, right? If you want to, if you don't want to, you'll go, I'll wait on that. I love this battling thing, it's so fun where I talk to myself like shit and then believe it. It's great. So this shift to consistency of identification. This is fun because I've had a friend recently tell me I'm in I'm I'm inconsistent, and I'm like, why? You got a choice. What is this? I'm inconsistent. There's only now. You got a memory of being inconsistent? Are you taking responsibility now? Because that's really an ego trying to not take responsibility, and then identifying as the ego trying to avoid responsibility. The ego loves this idea. Oh, I'm not consistent with seeing the truth, so therefore, I'm an asshole. Sorry about that.
SPEAKER_01:Keys closed.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Right. Therefore, when I relate with people, I gotta manipulate them because I don't see myself clearly. It's like fuck, right now, right now, you just decide consistency is now. So practically, you want to practice mastery of love by bringing love into the moments where there seems to be fear arising. Say right now, I choose to be a master of love. This means I require no defense. See that? No defense. Love simply is, and you just allow love to be in your mind without any defense against it. Keep expanding love in your mind until only the peace remains. You don't have to be inconsistent unless you want to. Some people might think, gosh, hope you're so hard on us. Just let us be inconsistent if we want. Hey, it's fine with me. You're also over here listening to wisdom dialogues. This is like a master class. You came over here for this. You want to see? You can if you want. You can be consistent. You can master love if you want. Mastery of love. All right. Paragraph three, sentence one. This will be our final paragraph. In the interim, conflict is inevitable. That is a six-word sentence. In the interim, conflict is inevitable. So the interim is referring to a period between recognizing truth intellectually, like we're going, okay, we get it, and fully embodying it experientially. That's the interim.
SPEAKER_01:Uncompromising.
SPEAKER_04:Uncompromising, yes. Well, we're learning how to be uncompromising in the interim. So this is the in-between state where both the ego and the Holy Spirit seem to have a voice in your mind still. That's the interim. So the mind still vacillates between love and fear. This is what people would call inconsistent, right? Inner conflict is naturally arising because of this, because it's vacillating all the time. So know that this isn't failure. Okay, it's it's your still all-powerful mind, knowing that it's your choice. It isn't failure, it's just the tension that comes with awakening before you fully make the choice to just recognize the power and the consistency of love. Doesn't seem that hard, but so there's only going to be conflict as long as you're believing in two opposing forces. Once your mind accepts completely that only love is real, there's no more interim. So Jesus is pointing out that, you know, if you're experiencing this, it's a stage of transition. So to keep going, you know, it's encouragement here. The awareness of this conflict, actually, it's signaling progress. The conflict tends to get more intense as you're closer to choosing the truth. But it's only because you're more sensitive to it. It's always been painful. It's just that you were better at blocking off the pain. Yeah, the the signal comes up because you're conscious of the split now. So that that painful signal comes up because you're conscious of the split rather than unconsciously ruled by it. It's actually a little bit more comfortable from an ego point of view to be ruled by the conflict than to be aware of it. Uh-huh. Yes, interim seems like a time thing. We experience it like time. We need to have time to experience that conflict, Jesus is talking about. See, conflict exists only when there's two thought systems given equal credence, credence, though. See, time and conflict exist when two thought systems are given equal credence. Love and fear, they're not even close to being on the same level, they don't coexist.
SPEAKER_01:We have to choose, but if we don't choose, it's confusion.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you'll you do choose, you always do choose. He's saying we have to choose, we always do choose. It's knowing that we're making a choice. So between love and fear, they just alternate in your awareness back and cho back and forth until you choose one of them completely. And you can't wholly choose fear because you are love, so you can't completely choose fear, you can only completely choose one, choose love, really. So the interim is like a process of purification, it's where the remnants of fear come up and they get reinterpreted. It's like you're going through layers on an onion, and these remnants are like these layers, these veils. And this is how they get purified by you deciding that they're going to be reinterpreted by the Holy Spirit. So this is something to just allow. It's not something to fix. Just allow it to unfold as it does. So the conflict, the apparent conflict that you're perceiving in this, it's actually useful and helpful in undoing the prior consciousness. Again, in the interim, conflict is inevitable. What is it in interim to? The interim where you're uh discovering the mastery of love. All right, paragraph three, sentence two. The reason for this is strangely illogical. Wait, the reason for this is the strangely illogical position in which you have placed yourself. Hmm, the strangely illogical position. So Jesus is now explaining why conflict is inevitable. The last sentence was about conflict being inevitable in the interim. And now he's saying the reason for this, the reason for this conflict is the strangely illogical position in which you have placed yourself. So the mind has what he's saying is the mind has accepted a position that defies reason, it's illogical. Like both being true is it illogical. That's right. Because the mind is believing it can exist both as spirit, like God created it, and as it made itself, and as an ego. This is the strangely illogical position he's talking about. This is trying to serve two masters, love and fear, truth and illusion, spirit and ego. And the thing is, these positions are mutually exclusive. So when the mind's trying to hold both of them, it's tension and instability and basically insanity. The phrase in there, you have placed yourself. He says, the reason for this is the strangely illogical position in which you have placed yourself. So that's that's saying right there, this is not imposed on us. This is self-chosen, and since it was chosen, it can be unchosen too. That's the other problem. Missing the point. He's talking about getting diagnosed with anxiety and believing it and taking the pills. Yeah, and any of those moments where you're believing in that, you can not believe in it anymore. You could wake up and recognize, oh, I'm making this anxiety by believing fearful thoughts, and then I'm trying to help myself, I'm trying to save myself from anxiety using magic. Right? These pills instead of going, what fearful thought is causing this anxiety? That's always what's going on. It's a fearful thought causing anything, pain, anxiety, fear. It's just a fearful thought. Guilt. So the illogic, the illogical part is in trying to have these things be on the same level: love and fear. You cannot be both the cause and the effect, both the creator and the created. This is where you really claim that created aspect. You don't wanna you don't wanna be the creator of illusions. You can't really, anyways, you only make them up. But when you believe that it's yours, and that's how the ego thinks of it. The ego thinks of it, this is mine, I made it up. But then on the surface of things, on the surface, consciousness, it changes to this thing outside of me is really hurting me, is really threatening me. But underneath the secret thought of the ego is I made this, I better not, I better defend it and not let it be seen through. So the ego's thought system is saying underneath it, I made myself and therefore I can make myself safe. See, the Holy Spirit is saying, God created me, therefore I am safe eternally. See the difference there. What's making me unsafe? Let's say it's genetic, genetic tendency towards such and such. Make it up whatever you want, right? What's making me unsafe? That's all based on how I made myself. I made myself into a human that got this and these the biologies and all this other stuff. And when I look at I am as God created me, that kind of stuff is not true. I am safe, I'm eternally safe. So there's conflict between these two identities: self-made and God-made. That is the essence of the human condition, this conflict between these identities. And you notice how I'm calling it a human condition because there's no humans really, there's only a human condition. So your healing begins the moment you recognize that it's absurd to believe that self-made and God-made can both be true. It's ridiculous. Again, anytime there's confusion or mental tension, mental tension, you must be trying to hold to opposing beliefs. It's the beliefs that are in conflict. Are you trying to be both what God created you and what you made of yourself? When you recognize this, you go, oh, only one of those is real. I'm just going to remember that I'm as God created me. I'm just going to let this dissolve this ridiculous position, this illogical position in my mind, and I'm going to return to peace now. So the text again from paragraph three, sentence two. The reason for this is the strangely illogical position in which you have placed yourself. And that's the reason for the inevitable conflict in the interim between recognizing this intellectually and actually embodying this. And what is this? It's the recognition that you uh you have mastery over love when you claim it. And basically claiming it is saying what? Only love is real. It's recognizing only love is real. There isn't anything else. That's mastery over love, is what we said. Uh, is that what it is that what this is thing is called? I'm just gonna double check. Uh mastery of love. That's what it's called. Mastery of love. So there's a strangely illogical position. And now we are on paragraph three, sentence three. I'm just gonna check to see if all my peeps are doing good. You're you guys are doing good. Awesome, awesome. I love you. Thank you for joining. Paragraph three, sentence three. This will be our last one. Since we have frequently emphasized that correction must be applied within the level that error occurred or error, error occurs. Let me start over. Since we have frequently emphasized that correction must be applied within the level that error occurs, it should be clear that the miracle must be illogical because its purpose is to correct the illogical and restore order. So the miracle must be illogical because its purpose is to correct illogical. Hmm, okay. Then we have a footnote for this, footnote 158, going back to miracle principle 42. True correction cannot be undertaken except within a dimension. Otherwise, there has been a confusion of levels. Okay, and then there's uh miracle principle 48 and some other texts right here from chapter two. How is the miracle illogical? Jesus will explain later, and that's in chapter three, that it is illogical because it is an out-of-pattern time interval. In other words, it does not follow logically from the pattern established by the past, being meant to correct that pattern. The past pattern itself was illogical in that it did not follow from God's premises. And its correction, the miracle, is also illogical in that it does not follow from the past premises. So the pattern itself doesn't follow God's premises, and then the miracle doesn't follow the past premises. The pattern is basically a pattern of the past, it's based on past thoughts, past error. So this sentence is linking for us the logic of the miracle to the logic of correction. Because the error, the illusion, occurs at the perceptual level. Correction has to take place there at the perceptual level. But the source of the correction comes from beyond what's being perceived, but it takes place at the perceptual level. So the miracle is called illogical, not because it's saying it lacks order, but it doesn't conform to the ego's logic, this pattern established by the past. The ego logic always says, notice what it says, the past determines the present. For instance, recovering from a weekend. That's saying that the past, the weekend, is determining how you feel in your body right now. That is not true. That is just not true. That is one way you can use a miracle. Super simply, keep your eyes and mind open for that. Where there's anything that says you're affected by the night before or the weekend or something like that. Just recognize in your own mind, oh my goodness, I'm projecting this now. There has been no last night. It doesn't matter, even if you your belly still still seems full from what you ate, right? So miracle logic says that the present corrects the past by removing its effects, it removes all the past effects. That's why it's not logical at all. Because in the in the illusory world, it's all these causes causing everything to be as it is, and all of a sudden the miracle just erases all those effects.
SPEAKER_01:Illogical to say it didn't happen.
SPEAKER_04:Right. It seems very illogical. Right. So the miracle is out of pattern, it's a sudden suspension of this ego cause and effect chain. It allows the divine truth to reassert itself in your mind and in the world. It's amazing. I love it. I totally love it. I see so many opportunities for it, and I take those opportunities because it feels good. Fuck, you just do it for that reason. So the ego's thought system is totally consistent. It's just that it's based on false premises, it's based on separation, guilt, fear. That's why it seems so believable, though, because it's consistent. Right? It just appears logical in an illusion. But the miracle has this higher order of logic, it's God's love. It seems illogical from the world's perspective, because it's not conditioned on anything. But what about this? This doesn't matter, it's still all love, it's still make-believe. So it's also talking about how correction has to occur within the level where the error is believed. Okay, but through a means that's transcending the mind's own error, too. So this is why the miracle, when a miracle is performed, when you perform a miracle, it feels you kind of feel supernatural. It restores sanity. You notice it restores sanity, it changes everything, but it doesn't follow the world's reasoning at all. So in your own experience, when your life seems like something needs to be fixed in it, remember that is an opportunity to see that the miracle isn't bound by that at all. You don't have to solve any problem in your life with that thinking that made the problem. There is no problem in reality. So the true prayer is asking for your perception to get corrected so that divine order could be restored in your own mind. Let's read this sentence again. It's a long one. Since we have frequently emphasized that correction must be applied within the level that error occurs, it should be clear that the miracle must be illogical because its purpose is to correct the illogical and restore order. So there's a there's illogic going on here where it's it's a call for love, it's a call for a miracle, it's something illogical, it's an error, it's based on the belief in separation. So the miracle is also illogical because its purpose is to correct something that's illogical. So it's going, uh, it's coming in and being totally not following, not in following that pattern. And that's what the footnote kind of clarifies for us, in a sense. I mean, it could actually be looked at in other ways. You could say it must be illogical because uh it's not something that would be even necessary in reality, right? Both the uh both the need for correction is based on illogical because it's based on erroneous past thoughts, and then the miracle is also illogical because it wouldn't even be necessary unless there was something illogical going on being believed, and it's also illogical because it doesn't follow the pattern. The pattern would be uh, let's say, let's go back to the IRS one. That's fun one. IRS letter, and you know, the correction was totally illogical, it changed everything, it made it so that instead of it progressing, because it I could see the pattern, instead of it progressing, like uh the agent shows up, I feel threatened, and then I feel like I got a threat chip in my shoulder, and then it goes back and forth, and it's like this uh terrible conflicted relating going on, which is you know, the IRS agent reflected to me that that's normally how it goes on for her. Yeah. And she would be of a mindset that let me see how much I can get these fuckers to pay. You know, she shared this with me. She's like, but I don't feel that way with you. And I was like, Oh, that's good. She's like, also, you don't owe any money. I'm like, oh, that's great. Right? So it's like it it changes it from what is expected. It's like an ancient pattern that's been playing out and it's expected to go along a certain way. And the miracle just comes right in there and it changes the whole thing. It's like that doesn't need to be a source of conflict anymore. Ever again. Even the idea of anything financial that just gets wiped away. It never needs to be a source of conflict, knowing that you're completely and always sustained by the love of God, always having the miracle, uh, the truth that you're still as God created you at your disposal all the time. Thomas and I have been playing with uh this chapter in A Course in Love. I think it's day, it starts at day three, I believe, where it starts talking about abundance and then it starts talking about access and you know, people knowing the importance of people knowing how to access unity. When you're accessing unity, everything that you intersect with, which is all perception, all of that gets released. All of your perception, everything perception perceptual just gets released, and you're constantly collapsing time because through your access to unity, you're intersecting with you're intersecting with all your experiences, and you're just seeing right through illusions. And all of this that we're studying today, going over a course in miracles, it's really getting us to the same kind of recognition. We have access to this, we have access to the truth, we have access to uh creation, basically. And creation is accessed by recognizing every impulse, every instinct, everything that we perceive being either love or a call for love. It's either creative or it doesn't exist. Miscreation simply doesn't exist. So it's a matter of recognizing where miscreation is being projected and also bringing it to the truth. It really has no basis in reality because only one level is true, and that's the level of creation. In creation, there's no lack of love. That's why you're always unaffected by lack of love. Anything that seems to be lack of love didn't really happen. It happened as a symbol only. That's different. It happened as a symbol. To you, it happened. Let's say that. To you, it happened. And if you would be willing to take it as a symbol, something that you can use to undo guilty self-consciousness and fear, then that's what it'll be for you. It won't be some heavy reality that now you have to deal with. Yay. Oh, it's fun to see you. Thank you, Kalama, for reaching out. I love you. All right, you guys. Well, that was a really fun ACIM deep dive. We went all the way through uh, what is this, a chapter? No, this is not a chapter. This is a paragraph. Paragraph three. We're on, we got to section, all these words. Section 12, the mastery of love in a course in miracles. Uh, we got through paragraph three, and next week we start on paragraph four. I'm gonna be doing this until the end of October, and then I believe I'll be taking two weeks off and maybe doing two more weeks, and then maybe I don't know, we'll see what happens. I might take a longer time off, but join until the end of October. We have a few more weeks to go, maybe two or three. I don't know. And we'll start up at number four again. I love you guys. Thank you so much for joining. For more information, go to hopejohnson.org. Oh, hooray! Thank you, Glenn. Thank you, everyone. I love you so much. You can also donate at hope at hopejohnson.org. You can get my book, you can get one-on-one, you can get my free recordings. Also uh link up to me on Substack and other places. There's a lot of action on there. Go to hopejohnson.org. I've been working on that vodka for a while, apparently. All right, I love you guys. Aloha.
