THE GIFTS OF GOD — Sondra Ray and Markus Ray on A Course in Miracles

There is no "war" without "attack." Conflict of any kind involves attack thoughts. And ultimately this "intent" is murder. What is not loving must be attack. What is not Love is "murder." Conflict must have attack in it. It is all part of our unconscious "death urge." We do not overcome any tendency by "fighting against it." The Action to be Free is an ending. There is a kind of "death" that is this ending, which gives us a new beginning. It is the doorway to eternal Life. It is not a "death" as we know it. It is the Awakening ultimately from the ending of illusions.

Can we rise "above the Battleground?" The Battleground is the ego's chosen field in which it enacts its conflicts and contradictions. It keeps its illusions "alive" in this ground of utter destruction, justifying "murder" through a "righteous rage." The Overlooking of the Battleground is now our purpose. Our purpose is to realize God, which is Absolute Peace and Joy. This is our Heaven State. It is ours when we truly remove ourselves from ALL FORMS of conflict.

Salvation does not compromise. Its total, whole, and uncompromising nature is indeed what makes it "salvation." One cannot be "partially saved" from war. One cannot be "partially free" from death. Anger is attack, and attack is murder; therefore, all anger is a wish for death. Anger projected from others onto us, and our anger projected onto others, is never justified. It is all part of our "unconscious death urge." Attack alway involves "guilt" of some kind—(the absolute opposite of how our Creator sees us)—projected onto us or others. Inevitably in this flurry of justified rage, we cannot help but have fear. Salvation is the escape from this insanity, but it is unequivocal. 

We cannot Love and Attack both. We cannot “Love” just a “little.” Our “attacks” cannot include Love. This is not Salvation. Only our immersion into Absolute and Unconditional Love can merit being called Salvation. Love never attacks, and does not compromise on this point of real Peace. 

The "Laws of Chaos" lead us to confusion and death. But they appear just the opposite. The first one is that "truth" is different for everyone. The second is that "everyone is a sinner." The third is that God created us a "sinner" and we are condemned to death, not seeing that we made up the concept of "sin" separate from God's Will. We blame God for this. The fourth "law" is that when we take something from someone, we "have it." We can always win, whether another loses or not. The fifth "law" is that our brother has a "substitute for Love" that we want, but do not have. We have attack and kill him, either figuratively or actually, to acquire this "Precious Pearl" of a "substitute for Love."

None of these "laws" make sense, but we think they do. They lead us away from the Heavenly order that is our inheritance.

"There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be."

Let us put aside these "laws of Chaos" and embrace the Heaven of our only Reality.

The Laws of Chaos are not understandable. But that is their purpose—to render reason into the unreasonable. We can look upon them and overcome them. Chaos is the absence of order; understanding requires order. The first "law" of chaos is that "truth" can be different for everyone. Truth is only "relative," and not absolute. We are unwilling to accept Absolute Truth. What is True is true in all time and space or it is not true. Truth is consistent in all time and space. We cannot depend on the "relative knowledge" of the ego. We can overcome this by accepting the miracles that give us very specific vision of the Truth. This would be Christ's Vision within us, and this way of looking is absolutely orderly, with no conflict or chaos of any kind. His vision abolishes the concept of "sin." No one is a "sinner." Only varying degrees of error. All error can be corrected, redeemed by the Atonement of the Christ.

We could believe that War is justified. Control, domination, achieving a victory, an ultimate success over someone or something are just some of the motives of this behavior that is so common to the human race. The humans that reign at the top of the society are often making decisions based on their own interests, without regard to the Whole. Perhaps they consider their "countrymen," but foreign groups are separate and watchfully held in check to not interfere with their interests. Humanism is the higher ground in which we see All as One. We need to know who we are as God created us, joined and connected to all other selves who populate this earth. This truly connected Self has nothing in common with the ego self we made up. Now we can arrive with our Self transformed. We are with the truth of peace and Joy and not the illusions of conflict.

In this Chapter 23, The War Against Yourself, we come to recognize that innocence and "sinlessness" are our Strength. The ego is in some constant battle with something, and all of it amounts to self attack. Even when we think we are attacking "another," the "other" is our self. No attack can not harm us. All anger, conflict, and attack goes against the Will of our Source. Peace and Joy are the attributes of sinlessness, which are our reality. The illusions of separation are perpetuated by this "War Against Our Self." We can make a shift and translate the ego's world into a Heaven on Earth, starting with our own life. "In sinlessness and Love I spend my day.” AMEN

There is a light in everyone. Will we look for this in our brother? It is in our Mind. We give attention to this light. Our immortal Self is this Light. It is intertwined with our true identity, and we extend this to our brothers. There is no limitation. We need not concern ourselves so much with the body when we make the Mind our priority, and we see our Mind is automatically joined with God and our Brothers and Sisters. We are connected in this Creation. Therefore, whatever we do in a Holy Relationship transmits innocence and forgiveness to others. We see we are the same, and how we treat one another is how we treat ourselves. The Mind's Oneness is how we connect with everyone. We are as God created us in this Holy Relationship. The truth of our Light abides in it.

Fear, weakness, and defensiveness manifesting as anger maintain our illusions. They do not dissolve them, but rather "strengthen" them in our mind. We often think that defenses like anger make us "strong," but they make us "weak in every cell of our body" according to AMMA. The Course would agree. Love joins us with our brothers. Everything in Creation is joined in a Unified Field of Joy. The body is not a separation device then, when we see it that way. We are free in the Oneness, in the Unity of Creation. We are not separate from each other, but in truth we are joined. Our judgments, grievances, and attack thoughts "separate" us from the awareness of the Peace of God. If we want Peace "above all else," then why would we do that? Oneness demands that we go in the direction of release, forgiveness, letting go. We must go unequivocally towards the Peace of God as our true and one decision.

As students of A Course in Miracles we are all brought to this juncture—the "branching in the road." One branch leads you along in he same old lost and futile journey. The other branch leads you to a new reality in which fear, guilt, and anger do not exist in your world. Will you take the branch that maintains your ego, your limited, separated self, or will you take the other branch in which you walk with God in perfect holiness? Is this decision hard? Not to our real Self, but to our ego it is nearly impossible. We have to make a stand today. Let us together take this step on the branch in the road that leads us past all of our dismal dreams of the past into our present happiness, one of the ultimate healing, one of constant Joy.

Reason is not fooled by the external forms of things that would heap upon our mistakes the heavy burden of "sin." Reason would merely correct the error, and remove all tinges of guilt from the mind of the one in error. A love of correction is reason's premise, not a dread. We have been conditioned to regret our mistakes, rather than see them as teaching tools. Reason would simplify our life in order to receive Christ's vision that does not rely on the body's "sight." The ego would maintain your errors cannot fully be corrected and that your are guilty for making them. Reason would simply erase the error and set us back on the right track of our Peace and Joy. Reason tells us what we thought was "uncorrectable" can be corrected. The ego is an illusion that uses "form" to gather evidence for projecting guilt onto us and our brothers. Shall we not release our brothers from this notion of "sin," and the guilt that goes along with it, when we embrace the Reason of the Holy Spirit's simple overlooking of form for the truth of our innocence?