How does one overcome illusions? Surely not by force or anger, nor by
opposing them in any way. Merely by letting reason tell you that they
CONTRADICT reality. They go against what must be true. The opposition
comes from them, and not reality. Reality opposes nothing. What merely
IS needs no defense, and offers none. Only illusions need defense
because of weakness. And how can it be difficult to walk the way of
truth, when only weakness interferes? YOU are the strong ones in this
seeming conflict. And you need no defense. Everything that needs defense
you do not want, for anything that needs defense will WEAKEN you.

Consider what the ego wants defenses FOR. Always to justify what goes
against the truth, flies in the face of reason, and makes no sense. Can
this BE justified? What can this be except an invitation to insanity, to
save you from the truth? And what would you be saved from but what you
fear? Belief in sin needs great defense, and at enormous cost. All that
the Holy Spirit offers must be defended against, and sacrificed. For sin
is carved into a block out of your peace, and laid between you and its
return. Yet how can peace be so fragmented? It is still whole, and
nothing has been taken from it.

See how the means and the material of evil dreams are nothing. In truth
you stand together, with nothing in between. God holds your hands, and
what can separate whom He has joined as one with Him? It is your Father
Whom you would defend against. Yet it remains impossible to keep love
out. God rests with you in quiet, undefended and wholly undefending, for
in this quiet state alone is strength and power. Here can no weakness
enter, for here is no attack, and therefore no illusions. Love rests in
certainty. Only uncertainty can be defensive. And all uncertainty is
doubt about YOURSELF.

How weak is fear; how little and how meaningless! How insignificant
before the quiet strength of those whom love has
joined! This is your “enemy,” – a frightened mouse that would attack the
universe. How likely is it that it will succeed? Can it be difficult to
disregard its feeble squeaks that tell of its omnipotence, and would
drown out the hymn of praise to its Creator which every heart throughout
the universe forever sings as one? Which is the stronger? Is it this
tiny mouse or everything that God created? You are not joined together
by this mouse, but by the Will of God. And can a mouse betray whom God
has joined?

If you but recognized how little stands between you and your awareness
of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and
thickness, weight, solidity and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the
body’s eyes it looks like an enormous solid body, immovable as is a
mountain. Yet within you there is a Force which no illusions can
resist. This body only seems to be immovable; this Force is irresistible
in truth. What, then, must happen when they come together? Can the
illusion of immovability be long defended from what is quietly passed
through and gone beyond?

Forget not, when you feel the need arise to be defensive about anything,
you have identified yourself with an illusion. And therefore feel that
you are weak because you are alone. This is the cost of ALL illusions.
Not one but rests on the belief that you are separate. Not one that does
not seem to stand, heavy and solid and immovable, between you and your
brother. And not one that truth cannot pass over lightly, and so easily
that you must be convinced, in spite of what you thought it was, that it
is nothing. If you forgive each other, this MUST happen. For it is your
unwillingness to overlook what seems to stand between you that makes it
look impenetrable, and defends the illusion of its immovability.