I once asked if you were willing to sell all you have and give to the
poor and follow me. This is what I meant: If you had no investment in
anything in this world, you could teach the poor where their treasure
IS. The poor are merely those who have invested wrongly, and they are
poor indeed! Because they are in need it is given you to help them,
since YOU are among them. Consider how perfectly your lesson would be
learned if you were unwilling to SHARE their poverty. For poverty is
lack, and there is but ONE lack since there is but ONE need.

Suppose a brother insists on having you do something you think you do
not want to do. The very fact of his insistence should tell you that he
believes salvation lies in it. If you insist on refusing and experience
a quick response of opposition, you are believing that YOUR salvation
lies in NOT doing it. You, then, are making the same mistake that he is,
and are making his error real to BOTH of you. Insistence means
investment, and what you invest in is ALWAYS
related to your notion of salvation. The question is always two-fold;
first, WHAT is to be saved, and second, HOW can it be saved?

Whenever you become angry with a brother, for WHATEVER reason, you are
believing that the EGO is to be saved, and to be saved by ATTACK. If HE
attacks you are agreeing with this belief, and if YOU attack you are
reinforcing it. REMEMBER THAT THOSE WHO ATTACK ARE POOR. Their poverty
asks for gifts, NOT for further impoverishment. You who could help them
are surely acting destructively if you accept their poverty as YOURS. If
you had not invested as THEY had, it would never occur to you to
overlook their need.

Recognize WHAT DOES NOT MATTER, and if your brothers ask you for
something “outrageous”, do it BECAUSE it does not matter. Refuse, and
your opposition establishes that it DOES matter to you. It is only YOU,
therefore, who have made the request outrageous, for nothing can BE
asked of you, and every request of a brother is for YOU. Why would you
insist in DENYING him? For to do so is to deny yourself and impoverish
both. HE is asking for salvation, as YOU are. Poverty is of the ego, and
NEVER of God. No “outrageous” request can be made of one who recognizes
what is valuable and wants to accept nothing else.

Salvation is for the mind, and it is attained through peace. This is the
ONLY thing that can be saved and the ONLY way to save it. Any response
OTHER than love arises from a confusion about the “what” and the “how”
of salvation, and this is the ONLY answer. Never lose sight of this, and
never allow yourself to believe, even for an instant, that there IS
another answer. For you will surely place yourself among the poor, who
do not understand that they dwell in abundance and that salvation is
come.

To identify with the ego is to attack yourself and MAKE yourself poor.
That is why everyone who identifies with the ego feels deprived. What he
EXPERIENCES then is depression or anger, but what he DID is to exchange
his self-love for self-hate, making him AFRAID of himself. He does NOT
realize this. Even if he is fully aware of anxiety he does not perceive
its source as his own EGO IDENTIFICATION, and he ALWAYS tries to handle
it by making some sort of insane “arrangement” with the world. He always
perceives this world as OUTSIDE himself, for this is crucial to his
adjustment. He does not realize that he MAKES this world, for there IS
no world outside of him.

If only the loving thoughts of God’s Son are the world’s reality, the
real world MUST be in his mind. His insane thoughts, too, must be in his
mind, but an internal conflict of this magnitude he cannot tolerate. A
split mind IS endangered, and the recognition that it encompasses
completely opposed thoughts within itself IS intolerable. Therefore the
mind projects the split, NOT the reality. Everything you perceive as the
outside world is merely your attempt to maintain your ego
identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation.
Yet consider what has happened, for thoughts DO have consequences to the
thinker.

You are AT ODDS with the world as you perceive it because you think IT
is antagonistic to YOU. This is a necessary consequence of what you have
done. You have projected outward what IS antagonistic to what is inward,
and therefore you would HAVE to perceive it this way. That is why you
must realize that your hatred is IN your mind and NOT outside it before
you can get rid of it; and why you must get rid of it BEFORE you can
perceive the world as it really is.

We once said that God so loved the world that He gave it to His
only-begotten Son. God DOES love the real world, and those who perceive
ITS reality cannot SEE the world of death. For death is NOT of the real
world, in which everything is eternal. God gave you the real world in
exchange for the one you made out of your split mind, and which IS the
symbol of death. For if you could REALLY separate yourselves from the
Mind of God you WOULD die, and the world you perceive IS a world of
separation.

You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father. Yet He would
not have it so, and so it is NOT so. You still could not will against
Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is
not a world of will because it is governed by the desire to be unlike
Him, and this desire is NOT will. The world you made is therefore
totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless “laws”, and without
meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want,
projected from your mind because you were afraid of it.

Yet this world is ONLY in the mind of its maker, along with his REAL
salvation. Do not believe it is outside of yourself, for only by
recognizing WHERE it is will you gain control over it. For you DO have
control over your mind, since the mind is the mechanism of decision. If
you will recognize that ALL attack which you perceive is in your own
mind AND NOWHERE ELSE, you will at last have placed its source, and
where it began it must end. For in this same place also lies
salvation. The altar of God where Christ abideth is there.

You have defiled the altar but NOT the world. Yet Christ has placed the
Atonement on the altar FOR you. Bring your perceptions of the world to
this altar, for it is the altar to truth. There you will see your vision
changed, and there you will learn to see truly. From this place, where
God and His Son dwell in peace and where you are welcome, you will look
out in peace and behold the world truly. Yet to find the place, you must
relinquish your investment in the world as YOU have projected it,
allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world to you from the altar
of God.