To
substitute is to accept instead. If you would but consider exactly what this entails, you
would perceive at once how much at variance this is with the goal the Holy Spirit has
given you, and would accomplish for you. To substitute is to choose between, renouncing
one aspect of the Sonship in favor of the other. For this special purpose, one is judged
more valuable and the other is replaced by him. The relationship in which the substitution
occurred is thus fragmented, and its purpose split accordingly. To fragment is to exclude,
and substitution is the strongest defense the ego has for separation.
The
Holy Spirit never uses substitutes. Where the ego perceives one person as a replacement
for another, the Holy Spirit sees them joined and indivisible. He does not judge between
them, knowing they are one. Being united, they are one because they are the same.
Substitution is clearly a process in which they are perceived as different. One would
unite; the other separate. Nothing can come between what God has joined and what the Holy
Spirit sees as one. But everything seems to come between the
fragmented relationships the ego sponsors to destroy.
The
one emotion in which substitution is impossible is love. Fear involves substitution by
definition, for it is love's replacement. Fear is both a fragmented and fragmenting
emotion. It seems to take many forms, and each one seems to require a different form of
acting out for satisfaction. While this appears to introduce quite variable behavior, a
far more serious effect lies in the fragmented perception from which the behavior stems.
No one is seen complete. The body is emphasized, with special emphasis on certain parts,
and used as the standard for comparison of acceptance or rejection for acting out a
special form of fear.
You who believe that
God is fear made but one substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the
substitution of illusion for truth; of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so
splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost
impossible to perceive it once was one, and still is what it was. That one error, which
brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made.
Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it, and every special
relationship that you have ever made is part of it.
You
may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you see. You do not
realize the magnitude of that one error. It was so vast and so completely incredible that
from it a world of total unreality had to emerge. What else could
come of it? Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. But
nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed
to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited
perceptions, and to force you to make further substitutions.
That
was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the
screen on which it was projected and drawn between you and the truth. For truth extends
inward, where the idea of loss is meaningless and only increase is conceivable. Do you
really think it strange that a world in which everything is backwards and upside down
arose from this projection of error? It was inevitable. For truth brought to this could
only remain within in quiet, and take no part in all the mad projection by which this
world was made. Call it not sin but madness, for such it was and so it still remains.
Invest it not with guilt, for guilt implies it was accomplished in reality. And above all,
be not afraid of it.
When
you seem to see some twisted form of the original error rising to frighten you, say only,
“God is not fear, but Love,” and it will disappear. The truth will save you. It
has not left you, to go out into the mad world and so depart from you. Inward is sanity;
insanity is outside you. You but believe it is the other way; that truth is outside, and
error and guilt within. Your little, senseless substitutions, touched with insanity and
swirling lightly off on a mad course like feathers dancing insanely in the wind, have no
substance. They fuse and merge and separate, in shifting and totally meaningless patterns
that need not be judged at all. To judge them individually is pointless. Their tiny
differences in form are no real differences at all. None of them matters. That
they have in common and nothing else. Yet what else is necessary to make them all the
same?
Let
them all go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning till they disappear from sight, far,
far outside of you. And turn you to the stately calm within, where in holy stillness
dwells the living God you never left, and Who never left you. The Holy Spirit takes you
gently by the hand, and retraces with you your mad journey outside yourself, leading you
gently back to the truth and safety within. He brings all your insane projections and the
wild substitutions that you have placed outside you to the truth. Thus He reverses the
course of insanity and restores you to reason.
In
your relationship with your brother, where He has taken charge of everything at your
request, He has set the course inward to the truth you share. In the mad world outside you
nothing can be shared but only substituted, and sharing and substituting have nothing in
common in reality. Within yourself you love your brother with a perfect love. Here is holy
ground, in which no substitution can enter, and where only the truth in your brother can
abide. Here you are joined in God, as much together as you are with Him. The original
error has not entered here, nor ever will. Here is the radiant truth, to which the Holy
Spirit has committed your relationship. Let Him bring it here, where you
would have it be. Give Him but a little faith in your brother, to help Him show you that
no substitute you made for Heaven can keep you from it.
In you
there is no separation, and no substitute can keep you from your brother. Your reality was
God’s creation, and has no substitute. You are so firmly joined in truth that only
God is there. And He would never accept something else instead of you. He loves you both,
equally and as one. And as He loves you, so you are. You are not joined together in
illusions, but in the Thought so holy and so perfect that illusions cannot remain to
darken the holy place in which you stand together. God is with you, my brother. Let us
join in Him in peace and gratitude, and accept His gift as our most holy and perfect
reality, which we share in Him.
Heaven
is restored to all the Sonship through your relationship, for in it lies the Sonship,
whole and beautiful, safe in your love. Heaven has entered quietly, for all illusions have
been gently brought unto the truth in you, and love has shined upon you, blessing your
relationship with truth. God and His whole creation have entered it together. How lovely
and how holy is your relationship, with the truth shining upon it! Heaven beholds it, and
rejoices that you have let it come to you. And God Himself is glad that your relationship
is as it was created. The universe within you stands with you, together with your brother.
And Heaven looks with love on what is joined in it, along with its Creator.
Whom
God has called should hear no substitutes. Their call is but an echo of the original error
that shattered Heaven. And what became of peace in those who heard? Return with me to
Heaven, walking together with your brother out of this world and through another, to the
loveliness and joy the other holds within it. Would you still further weaken and break
apart what is already broken and hopeless? Is it here that you would look for happiness?
Or would you not prefer to heal what has been broken, and join in making whole what has
been ravaged by separation and disease?
You
have been called, together with your brother, to the most holy function this world
contains. It is the only one that has no limits, and reaches out to every broken fragment
of the Sonship with healing and uniting comfort. This is offered you, in your holy
relationship. Accept it here, and you will give as you have accepted. The peace of God is
given you with the glowing purpose in which you join with your brother. The holy light
that brought you and him together must extend, as you accepted it.
A Course in Miracles
Chapter 18