Although you can LOVE the Sonship only as one, you can PERCEIVE it as
fragmented. It is impossible, however, for you to see something in PART
of it that you will not attribute to ALL of it. That is why attack is
NEVER discrete, and why attack must be relinquished ENTIRELY. If it is
NOT relinquished entirely, it is not relinquished at all. Fear and love
are equally reciprocal. They make or create depending on whether the ego
or the Holy Spirit begets or inspires them, but they WILL return to the
mind of the thinker, and they WILL affect his total perception. That
includes his perception of God, of His creations, and of his own. He
will not appreciate ANY of them if he regards them fearfully. He will
appreciate ALL of them if he regards them with love.

The mind that accepts attack CANNOT love. That is because it believes
that it can DESTROY love, and therefore does not understand what love
IS. If it does not understand what love is, it CANNOT perceive itself as
loving. This loses the awareness of being; induces feelings of
unreality; and results in utter confusion. Your own thinking has done
this because of its power, but your own thinking can also save you FROM
this because its power is NOT of your making. Your ability to DIRECT your
thinking as you will is PART of its power. If you do not believe you can
do this, you have DENIED the power of your thought, and thus rendered it
powerless in your BELIEF.

The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it
stems from the power of the mind which the ego DENIES. This means that
the ego ATTACKS what is PRESERVING it, and this MUST be a source of
extreme anxiety. That is why the ego NEVER knows what it is doing. It is
perfectly logical, but clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source
which is totally inimical to its existence FOR its existence. Fearful of
perceiving the POWER of this source, it is forced to depreciate it. This
threatens its OWN existence, a state which it finds intolerable.

Remaining logical but still insane, the ego resolves this
completely insane dilemma in a completely insane way. It does not
perceive ITS existence as threatened by projecting the threat onto YOU,
and perceiving your BEING as nonexistent. This ensures ITS continuance,
if you side with it, by guaranteeing that you will not know your OWN
safety. The ego cannot afford to know ANYTHING. Knowledge is total, and
the ego does not BELIEVE in totality. This unbelief is its origin, and
while the ego does not love YOU, it IS faithful to its own antecedents,
begetting as it was begotten.

Mind ALWAYS reproduces as it was produced. Produced by fear, the ego
reproduces fear. This is its allegiance, and this allegiance makes it
treacherous to love BECAUSE you are love. Love is your power, which the
ego must deny. It must also deny everything which this power gives you
because it gives you EVERYTHING. No-one who has everything WANTS the
ego. Its own maker, then, does not want it. Rejection is therefore the
only decision which the ego could possibly encounter, if the mind which
made it knew ITSELF. And if it recognized ANY part of the Sonship it
WOULD know itself.

The ego therefore opposes ALL appreciation, ALL recognition, ALL sane
perception and ALL knowledge. It perceives their threat as total because
it senses the fact that ALL commitments the mind makes ARE total.
Forced, therefore, to detach itself from you who ARE mind, it is willing
to attach itself to ANYTHING else. But there IS nothing else. It does
not follow that the mind cannot make illusions, but it DOES follow that,
if it makes illusions, it will believe in them, because that is HOW it
made them.

The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them merely because
He cannot perceive them at all. They therefore do not exist for Him. He
resolves the APPARENT conflict which they engender by perceiving
CONFLICT as meaningless. We said before that the Holy Spirit perceives
the conflict exactly as it is, and it IS meaningless. The Holy Spirit
does not want you to UNDERSTAND conflict; He wants you to realize that
BECAUSE conflict is meaningless, it cannot BE understood. We have
already said that understanding brings appreciation, and appreciation
brings love. Nothing else CAN be understood because nothing else is
REAL, and therefore nothing else HAS meaning.

If you will keep in mind what the Holy Spirit offers you, you
cannot be vigilant for anything BUT God and His Kingdom. The only reason
you find this difficult is because you think there IS something else.
Belief does not require vigilance UNLESS it is conflicted. If it is,
there ARE conflicting components within it which have engendered a state
of war, and vigilance therefore has become essential. Vigilance has no
place at all in peace. It is necessary against beliefs which are NOT
true, and would never have been called upon by the Holy Spirit if you
had NOT believed the untrue. You cannot deny that when you believe
something, you have MADE it true for YOU.

When you believe what God does not KNOW, your thought seems to
CONTRADICT His, and this makes it appear AS IF you are attacking Him. We
have repeatedly emphasized that the ego DOES believe it can attack God,
and tries to persuade you that YOU have done this. If the mind CANNOT
attack, the ego proceeds perfectly logically to the position that you
cannot BE mind. By not seeing you as you ARE, it can see ITSELF as it
WANTS to be. Aware of its weakness the ego wants your allegiance, but
not as you really are. The ego therefore wants to engage your mind in its
OWN delusional system because otherwise the light of YOUR understanding
would dispel it.

The ego wants no part of truth because the truth is that the EGO is not
true. IF truth is total the untrue CANNOT exist. Commitment to either
must be TOTAL, since they cannot co-exist in your minds WITHOUT
splitting them. If they cannot co-exist in peace, and if you WANT peace,
you must give up the idea of conflict ENTIRELY and for ALL TIME. While
you believe that two totally contradictory thought systems SHARE truth,
your need for vigilance is apparent. Your minds ARE dividing their
allegiance between two kingdoms, and you are totally committed to
neither.

Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except
by you, when you are thinking insanely. What you are is not established
by your perception, and is not influenced BY it at all. All perceived
problems in identification at any level are NOT problems of fact. They
are problems of UNDERSTANDING, since they MEAN that you believe what you
can understand IS up to you to decide. The ego believes this totally,
being FULLY committed to it. It is not true. The ego therefore is
totally committed to untruth, perceiving in total contradiction to the
Holy Spirit and to the knowledge of God.

You can be perceived with meaning ONLY by the Holy Spirit because your
being IS the knowledge of God. Any belief that you accept which is apart
from this will obscure God’s Voice in you, and will therefore obscure
God TO you. Unless you perceive His creation truly you cannot know the
Creator, since God and His creation are not separate. The Oneness of the
Creator and the creation is your wholeness, your sanity, and your
limitless power. This limitless power is God’s gift to you because it is
what you ARE. If you dissociate your mind from it, you are perceiving
the most powerful force in the universe as if it were weak because you
do not believe YOU are part of it.

Perceived WITHOUT your part in it, God’s creation IS perceived as weak,
and those who see themselves as weakened DO attack. The attack must be
blind, however, because there is nothing TO attack. Therefore, they make
up images, perceive them as unworthy, and attack them for their
unworthiness. That is all the world of the ego is. NOTHING. It has no
meaning. It does not exist. Do not try to understand it because, if you
do, you are believing that it can BE understood, and is therefore
capable of being appreciated and loved. That would justify it, and it
cannot BE justified. You cannot make the meaningless meaningful. This
can ONLY be an insane attempt.

Allowing insanity to enter your minds means that you have not judged
sanity as WHOLLY DESIRABLE. If you WANT something else you will MAKE
something else, but because it IS something else it will attack your
thought system and divide your allegiance. You cannot create in this
divided state, and you must be vigilant AGAINST this divided state
because only peace can BE extended. Your divided minds are blocking the
extension of the Kingdom, and its extension IS your joy. If you do not
extend the Kingdom, you are not thinking with your Creator and creating
as He created.

In this depressing state the Holy Spirit reminds you gently that you are
sad because you are not fulfilling your function as co-creators with
God, and are therefore depriving yourselves of joy. This is not
God’s Will, but YOURS. If your will is out of accord with God’s, you are
willing without meaning. Yet because God’s Will is unchangeable, no REAL
conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirit’s perfectly
consistent teaching.

Creation, NOT separation, is your will BECAUSE it is God’s, and nothing
that opposes this means anything at all. Being a perfect accomplishment,
the Sonship can only accomplish perfectly, extending the joy in which it
was created, and identifying itself with both its Creator and its
creations, KNOWING they are One.