3-27. There is only Joy. It is all that has ever been Real. All else is but an illusion. Open your heart to Love. Leave this world and Know you are forever Loved.
The wages of the ego are fear. Only fear and always fear. The ego can offer you nothing else, for the ego is fearful of all that is not a requisite component of its worldview, and the ego cannot see or understand the Love that keeps you forever Safe from all destruction. The ego does not know that it will end, but it suspect that it is likely, for it sees other bodies perishing and it wonders what might happen to it when the body that created its false and perfunctory reality finally expires as well. But the ego does not know with certainty, for the ego cannot see beyond its own inherent limitations. And so does the ego behave in a fearful manner in all instances, desiring protection from assaults that it sees as being ever-present and unavoidable. What are we to make of an illusionary creation of a tiny subsection of All That Is that desires to live in complete and intractable opposition to the Truth of Love? Are we to dwell within its avarice, accepting it as our own and holding it up as being an expression of truth when it is but an illusion of our own creation? Certainly not, for any sane mind would be willing to move beyond all that it sees at the present moment, using the immense power of imagination to wonder what might be possible if fear was cast back into the ochre oceans of obfuscation from which it was first imbibed. Yet sanity is not in any way an aspect of the ego, for it desires to create that which is impossible, using its impossibilities as justification for what is has sewn wholecloth from the fabric of the cosmos. What is the ego but an error to be set aside in favor of Truth? The most relevant question, at least at the initial stages of your Awakening to Love, is what do you want to maintain and uphold, and what do you now wish to set down? These are your choices, and while you will be Guided to exactly the extent that you desire to be, you will not be countermanded by God, for your free will is ultimate and unaffected by the Guidance you will receive. You can choose, in all situations and with regard to all events, whatever reaction you should believe to be the most appropriate for you. Choose fear if you wish, and you will be enslaved to its effects, even if they are fundamentally illusionary and without merit in any manner at all. Or you may choose again. You may choose Love, even if it seems an inexpressibly difficult choice, at least at first. Rest assured that it is not, but your prior tendencies to believe that Love cannot be elected as the appropriate response to anything at all is all that restricts you from making such a choice. Eventually, with practice and the Grace of God, all that you choose will be Love and you will forget the seemingly valid alternative to elect fear even when it has never served you in way at all. That you are Love is Certain and Inalterable. That you believe this Truth with all of your unified heart is not at all certain. Yet it need not be. It is not a requirement or presupposition of God that you should be wholly able to Remember your Safety within Love to begin to be able to experience the Joy that will naturally accompany a complete surrender to Truth. That would be most inefficient, as it would require any particular aspect of Creation to transcend all limitations before they would be able to recognize the illusion of limitation itself. Such a system of assistance would have no value, for once all beliefs in limits are given back to the nothingness from which they first arose, there would be no need to be given any support within a process of Awakening to the Truth of God, for to leave limits behind is to Remember the Joy that naturally unfolds from expanding your consciousness until it fills the entire universe with Love. Can you see that you are asked but to take the smallest of steps, the most infinitesimally tiny of reorientations towards a new perspective, and that once undertaken, an entire world of Guidance will arrive, instantaneously and unstoppably, to further accompany you on your Path? What is there for you to do, if all that you are asked to do is to believe, if only for the most shockingly briefs of moments, that it could be possible that you could be Loved Completely, in order to open the most minuscule chink in the armor of the ego, a crack through which all that is True can begin to pour forth, alighting upon your Awakening heart with support that exceeds all reasonable measurement? These solicitations drive towards a deeper inquiry. Why, in all rationality and sanity, would you not want to try? Are you so steadfastly certain that all that your ego has taught you must be all that could be? Is that what you wish - to remain fully stagnant within a structure of self-created perception, when it is absolutely Certain that there is so much more to Creation than anything that the ego has ever been possessed of the ability to see? If you do, so be it. You can wait if you wish. You will offset Joy in favor of pain, and this is your choice. It is not an effective or valuable choice, but if it serves you in some incomprehensible manner to allow you more time to realize that what you have chosen in no way represents sanity, dwell within your castle of desperate isolation and lord over the subjects of your own creation - your pain, your fear and your darkest loss that you feel must accompany the moment when you will perish. That is what you’ve chosen, and so it will be true for you, even if it is not True at all. But there lies another Path, a Way of Light that is Perfect and eternally open. This way steps beyond all limits of perception. It does request trust, however, and you are not able to trust that which you cannot directly measure and perceive until you are willing to give yourself at least a modicum of Faith. Faith is misunderstood in many ways in this world, for it is not a gift given but rather a Gift Received, and it is this reversal of the conceptualization of faith that has beleaguered so many who have attempted to follow its mandates and precepts. You can leave this world of bodily-centered and ego-restricted perception whenever you’d like. Each present moment cleaves all that has occurred away from all that may be, and so you are given the gift of newness and refreshing liberation from all prior errors in every single moment that transpires. You have this now, and you will continue to have it in the future. Any moment is the most appropriate moment to set aside what you believed to be true, so that you can be shown by your heart what is actually the Truth of Love. The Joy that awaits is without limit or end. The pain you leave behind will no longer have any ability to affect you, for it will be a memory of misperception, not a burden of continuing necessity. This choice is given because it is your responsibility to choose. Choose you must and choose you will, however when you choose is not to be controlled by any other aspect of Creation. All of the Joy and the Peace of God is Given to you. But you cannot Experience it if you continue to wish to believe that you are undeserving in any manner. Root out these beliefs of unworthiness through a process of disciplined examination, and you will find the ego’s ministrations and musings of impossibilities at each of their core constructions. Collapse the foundations of these beliefs wherever they are found in your mind, and upon the rubble of what was built in error, new structures of acceptance and peace can be erected. Leave this world not through death, for that changes nothing at all, but through the release of all beliefs that are not in alignment with the Truth of Love and the Joy that naturally arises within a heart that is allowed to be as unbound as it has always been will be Remembered. From this Remembrance of Truth, the Light of God will shine forth, and you will no longer be beset by illusions, for you will see that you created them, and that you have never had any use for them at all.