There is but one interpretation of all motivation that makes any sense.
And because it is the Holy Spirit’s judgement, it requires no effort at
all on your part. Every loving thought is true. Everything else is an
appeal for healing and help. That is what it is, regardless of the form
it takes. Can anyone be justified in responding with anger to a plea for
help? No response can be appropriate except the willingness to give it
to him, for this and ONLY this is what he is asking for. Offer him
anything else, and you are assuming the right to attack his reality by
interpreting it as YOU see fit.

Perhaps the danger of this to your own mind is not yet fully apparent to
you, but this by no means signifies that it is not perfectly clear. If
you maintain that an appeal for help is something else you will REACT to
something else, and your response will be inappropriate to reality as IT
is, but NOT to your perception of it. This is poor reality testing by
definition. There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing ALL calls
for help as exactly what they are except your own perceived NEED to
attack. It is only THIS that makes you willing to engage in endless
“battles” with reality, in which you DENY the reality of the need for
healing by making IT unreal. You would not do this except for your
UNWILLINGNESS to perceive reality, which you withhold from YOURSELF.

It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not
understand. No-one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for
truth to him has become what he WANTS it to be. If you are unwilling to
perceive an appeal for help as what it IS, it is because you are
unwilling to GIVE HELP AND TO RECEIVE IT. The analysis of the ego’s
“real” motivation is the modern equivalent of the inquisition, for in
both a brother’s errors are “uncovered” and he is then attacked FOR HIS
OWN GOOD. What can this be BUT projection? For HIS errors lay in the
minds of his interpreters, for which they punished HIM.

Whenever you fail to recognize a call for help you are REFUSING help.
Would you maintain that you do not NEED it? Yet this IS what you are
maintaining when you refuse to recognize a brother’s appeal, for only by
ANSWERING his appeal can YOU be helped. Deny him your help and you will
not perceive God’s answer
to YOU. The Holy Spirit does not need your help in interpreting
motivation, but you DO need HIS. Only APPRECIATION is an appropriate
response to your brother. Gratitude is due him for both his loving
thoughts and his appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing love
into YOUR awareness if you perceive them truly. And ALL your sense of
strain comes from your attempts NOT to do just this.

How simple, then, is God’s plan for salvation. There is but ONE response
to reality, for reality evokes no conflict at all. There is but ONE
Teacher of reality, Who understands what it IS. He does not change His
Mind about reality because REALITY does not change. Although YOUR
interpretations of reality are meaningless in your divided state, His
remain consistently true. He GIVES them to you because they are FOR you.
Do not attempt to “help” a brother in YOUR way, for you cannot help
yourselves. But hear his call for the help of God, and you will
recognize your OWN need for the Father.

Your interpretations of your brother’s need is your interpretation of
YOURS. By GIVING help you are ASKING for it, and if you perceive but one
need in yourself you WILL be healed. For you will recognize God’s answer
as you want it to be, and if you want it in truth it will be truly
yours. Every appeal you answer in the Name of Christ brings the
remembrance of your Father closer to YOUR awareness. For the sake of
YOUR need, then, hear every call for help as what it is, so God can
answer YOU.

By applying the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of the reactions of others
more and more consistently, you will gain an increasing awareness that
HIS criteria are equally applicable to YOU. For to RECOGNIZE fear is not
enough to escape from it, although the recognition is necessary to
demonstrate the need for escape. The Holy Spirit must still TRANSLATE it
into truth. If you were LEFT with the fear, having recognized it, you
would have taken a step AWAY from reality, not TOWARDS it. Yet we have
repeatedly emphasized the need to recognize fear and face it WITHOUT
disguise as a crucial step in the undoing of the ego. Consider how well
the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of the motives of others will serve you
then.

Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others and
to regard everything else as an appeal for help, He has taught you that
FEAR is an appeal for help. This is what recognizing it REALLY means. If
you do not PROTECT it, HE will re-interpret it. That is the ultimate
value TO YOU in learning to perceive attack as a call for love. We have
learned surely that fear and attack are inevitably associated. If ONLY
attack produces fear, and if you see attack as the call for help that it
IS, the unreality of fear MUST dawn upon you. For fear IS a call for
love, in unconscious recognition of what has been denied.