Power cannot oppose. For opposition would weaken it, and weakened power
is a contradiction in ideas. Weak strength is meaningless, and power
used to weaken is employed to limit. And therefore it must be limited
and weak, because that is its purpose. Power is unopposed, to be itself.
No weakness can intrude on it without changing it into something it is
not. To weaken is to limit, and impose an opposite that contradicts the
concept which it attacks. And by this does it join to the idea a
something it is not, and make it unintelligible. Who can understand a
double concept, such as “weakened-power” or as “hateful-love?”

You have decided that your brother is a symbol for a “hateful-love,” a
“weakened-power,” and above all, a “living-death.” And so he has no
meaning to you, for he stands for what is meaningless. He represents a
double thought, where half is cancelled out by the remaining half. Yet
even this is quickly contradicted by the half it cancelled out, and so
they both are gone. And now he stands for nothing. Symbols which but
represent ideas that cannot be must stand for empty space and
nothingness. Yet nothingness and empty space can NOT be interference.
What CAN interfere with the awareness of reality is the belief that
there is something THERE.

The picture of your brother that you see means nothing. There is nothing
to attack or to deny; love or hate, or to endow with power or to see as
weak. The picture has been wholly cancelled out, because it symbolized a
contradiction which cancelled out the THOUGHT it represents. And thus
the picture has no cause at all. Who can perceive effect without a cause?
What can the causeless be but nothingness? The picture of your brother
that you see is wholly absent, and has never been. Let, then, the empty
space it occupies be RECOGNIZED as vacant, and the time devoted to its
seeing be perceived as idly spent, a time unoccupied.

An empty space which is not seen as filled, an unused interval of time
not seen as spent and fully occupied, become a silent invitation to the
truth to enter, and to make itself at home. No preparation can be made
that would enhance the invitation’s real appeal. For what you leave as
vacant God will fill, and where He is, there MUST the truth abide.
Unweakened power, with no opposite, is what creation IS. For this there
ARE no symbols. Nothing points beyond the truth, for what can stand for
more than everything? Yet true undoing must be kind. And so the first
replacement for your picture is another picture, of another kind.

As nothingness cannot be pictured, so there is no symbol for totality.
Reality is ultimately known without a form, unpictured and unseen.
Forgiveness is not yet a power known as wholly free of limits. Yet it
sets no limits you have chosen to impose. Forgiveness is the means by
which the truth is represented temporarily. It lets the Holy Spirit make
exchange of pictures possible until the time when aids are meaningless,
and learning done. No learning aid has use which can extend beyond the
goal of learning. When its aim has been accomplished, it is
functionless. Yet in the learning interval it has a use which now you
fear, but yet will love.

The picture of your brother given you to occupy the space so lately left
unoccupied and vacant will not need defense of any kind. For you will
give it overwhelming preference. Nor delay an instant in deciding that
it is the only one you want. It does not stand for double
concepts. Though it is but half the picture, and is incomplete, within
itself it is the same. The other half of what it represents remains
unknown, but is not cancelled out. And thus is God left free
to take the final step Himself. And what will ultimately take the place
of every learning aid will merely BE. Forgiveness vanishes and symbols
fade, and nothing which the eyes have ever seen, or ears have heard,
remains to be perceived.

A Power wholly limitless has come, not to destroy, but to receive Its
Own. There is no choice of function anywhere. The choice you fear to
lose you never had. Yet only this appears to interfere with power
unlimited and single thoughts, complete and happy, without opposite. You
do not know the peace of power which opposes nothing. Yet no other kind
can be at all. Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness, and beyond
the world of symbols and of limitations. He would merely BE, and so He
merely IS.