So today we're focusing on the state of peace.
And our corresponding reading that I just read from Chapter 5 Healing and Wholeness, was the ego's use of guilt.
And we saw that guilt comes from trying to think against God, or apart from God.
We also saw that peace is a decision of mind and guilt, or fear, is also a decision of mind
and that there are no alternatives, and no options.
We also learned that guilt is always disruptive, and that anything that engenders fear is divisive.
So love and fear, peace and guilt have no meeting point.
You cannot have part of one or part of the other.
The acceptance of the Atonement is the correction, and it must be unequivocal.
There can be no exceptions made to the Atonement to experience this deep peace that passeth the understanding of the world.
To believe in the ego is to believe that you can actually attack God, and attack and guilt go together just as peace and forgiveness go together.
And the entire world that seems to be external is a result of thoughts, so peace must begin from within
with peaceful, loving thoughts that are in alignment with God, and then they radiate outward and extend.
When I say 'outward,' this is not a spacial consideration or a time consideration, it's the radiation of love, the radiation of light. Creation.
Whatever is accepted into the mind has reality.
Reality in a sense of what seems to be reality. If you accept the ego in your mind, you enthrone the ego in your mind
then allowing it to enter makes it a reality.
Not in truth, but it will seem that the world of the ego is real, if the ego is believed in.
And conversely if forgiveness, if Atonement is accepted, if the correction is accepted in the mind,
the mind reverts back to creation, pure love and light.
And the future is undone, as is the past.
So peace and love and joy and harmony are very natural; guilt, fear, shame, pain are very unnatural.
And we were told in the text that if we perceive sin as a lack of love then it can be corrected by the giving of love.
The ego perceives sin as an assault, or an attack, and this is what generates the guilt.
So ultimately, as soon as the mind is capable as perceiving sin as a lack, lack of love, calling for love, then the love can pour through.
And by giving love and extending love, teaching love, then the experience dawns that love is all that there is. There is nothing else.
These are the thoughts we keep in mind today.
There is an alternative to the fragmented world of distorted perception.
We open our hearts and minds to this alternative as we practice the lesson of the day with deep sincerity.
'I could see peace instead of this.'