OrEd-T-17.5-Perception & Two Worlds.1
27. God established His relationship with me to make me happy, and everything I do which shares His purpose is real. The only function of anything is the purpose God gives to it. Therefore, the function of relationships forever became "to make happy," and nothing else. I relate to my creations as God does to His, fulfilling this function. For everything God created is part of happiness, and would extend happiness as its Creator did. Only what fulfills this function can be real.
28. In this world it is impossible to create, yet it is possible to make happy. It is said repeatedly that the Holy Spirit would not deprive me of my special relationships, but would transform them. That means He will restore them to the function given them by God. The function I have given them is clearly not to make happy. But the holy relationship shares God's purpose of happiness and makes no substitution. Every special relationship that I have made is a substitute for God's Will, and glorifies my will instead of His, because of the delusion that our wills are different.
29. Even in this world I have made very real relationships which I do not recognize, because I have raised their substitutes to such predominance that when truth calls to me, as it does constantly, I answer with a substitute. Every special relationship that I have ever undertaken has the aim of occupying my mind so completely that I will not hear the call of truth. The special relationship was the ego's answer to the creation of the Holy Spirit, Who was God's answer to the separation. Although the ego did not understand the Holy Spirit, it was aware of a threat to its thought system.
30. The whole defense system that the ego evolved to protect the separation was in response to the gift of the Holy Spirit, with which God blessed the separation, and by His blessing enabled the separation to be healed. This blessing holds within itself the truth about everything. And the truth is that the Holy Spirit is in close relationship with me, because in Him my relationship with God has never been broken. The Holy Spirit has not been separate from anyone since the separation. And through Him all my holy relationships have been carefully preserved to serve God's purpose for me.
31. The part of my mind that accepted the ego into it, is hyper alert to threat, and is very anxious to preserve its reason as the ego sees it. My mind does not recognize that the ego is totally insane. If I would be restored to sanity, I must realize just what this means. The insane protect their thought systems, but they do so insanely. And all their defenses are as insane as what they are made to protect. Every part, "reason," and attribute of the separation is insane. And its "protection" is part of it, and as insane as the whole. The special relationship, which is the separation's chief defense, must therefore be insane.
32. I now realize that the thought system which the special relationship protects is a system of delusions. I recognize that the ego is insane. Yet, the special relationship still seems to be "different" to me. With Jesus, I have looked at it much closer than other aspects of the ego's thought system, which I have been more willing to let go. However, while this one remains, I will not let the others go. For this one is not different. Retain this one, and I have retained the whole.
33. It is essential to realize that all defenses do what they would defend. The underlying basis for their effectiveness is that they offer what they would defend. What they defend is placed in them for safekeeping, and as they operate, what they defend is brought to me. Every defense operates by giving gifts, and the gift is always a miniature of the thought system the defense protects, set in a golden frame. The frame is very elaborate, all set with jewels and deeply carved and polished. Its purpose is to be of value in itself and to divert my attention from what it encloses. But I cannot have the frame without the picture. Defenses operate to make me think I can.
34. The special relationship has the most imposing and deceptive frame of all the defenses the ego uses. Its thought system is offered here, surrounded by a frame so heavy and so elaborate that the picture is almost obliterated by its imposing structure. Into the frame are woven all sorts of fanciful and fragmented illusions of love, set with dreams of sacrifice and self-aggrandizement and interlaced with golden threads of self-destruction. The glitter of blood shines like rubies, and the tears are faceted like diamonds and gleam in the dim light in which the offering is made.
