OrEd-T-21.6-Reason and Perception.1
49. Perception makes and selects the world I see. It literally picks it out as the mind directs. Perhaps the laws of size, shape and brightness would hold if other things were equal. But other things are not equal. I am more likely to find what I wish to see, than what I prefer to overlook. Perception is a choice and not a fact. But far more depends on this choice than I realize. To those who want to hear it, the still small Voice for God is not drowned out by all the ego's raucous screams and senseless ravings. The voice I choose to hear, and sight I choose to see, depends entirely on my belief in what I am. Perception is a witness only to this, and never to reality. Yet perception can show me the conditions in which awareness of reality is possible, or it can show me conditions where reality could never be.
50. Reality can be itself without my help. However, my awareness of reality needs my help, because it is my choice. If I listen to what the ego says, and see what it directs me to see, I will see myself as tiny, vulnerable, and afraid. And I will experience depression, a sense of worthlessness, and feelings of unreality and impermanence. I will believe that I am prey to powerful forces beyond my control, and that my destiny is directed by the world I made. This will be my faith. I do not know that it is my faith that makes the ego's world seem real.
51. There is another Vision and another Voice awaiting my choice. By placing my faith in them, I will perceive another Self in myself. This other Self sees miracles as natural, as breathing is to the body. Miracles are the only response It makes to calls for help. Miracles seem unnatural to the ego, because it does not understand how separate minds can influence each other. But minds cannot be separate. This other Self is perfectly aware of this, so It recognizes that miracles do not affect another's mind, only Its own. Miracles always change my mind, and there is no other mind.
52. I do not realize the extent that the idea of separation has interfered with reason. Reason is in the Self that I cut off from my awareness. Nothing I have allowed to stay in my awareness is capable of reason. This part of the mind with no reason cannot understand what it is, or grasp the information reason would give. This part of the mind will not ask questions that stem from reason, and that only reason could answer. The basic question that stems from reason is obvious, simple, and remains unasked.
53. The eternal Will of God exists and must be true. God's Will must have been accepted by the Son, for the Son must receive what God wills for him. God does not will apart from the Son, and being eternal, the Self that joined the Will of God, must be in me now. God's plan for my salvation could not have been established without my will and consent. I set aside a place in which the Holy Spirit can abide and where He is. He has been there since the need for Him arose, and was fulfilled in the same instant, for God's Will does not wait on time to be accomplished. Reason exists for me, having my freedom as it's given purpose. If I will listen, I am free to find the reasoning that tells me this. My reasoning is not the ego's "reasoning". The ego's alien nature is proof that I will not find the answer with its reasoning.
