OrEd-T-23.2-The Irreconcilable Beliefs.2
13. Truth does not fight against illusions, nor do illusions fight against the truth. Illusions battle only with themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment. One illusion about myself can battle with another, yet the war of two illusions is a state where nothing happens. There is no victor, and no victory. I will remember what I know, when I learn I cannot be in conflict. I will remember I am as God created me. Truth is indivisible, and far beyond the little reach of illusions. Truth stands radiant and quiet in the peace of God, untouched by conflict.
14. Conflict must be between two forces. It cannot exist between one power and nothing. I attack what is already part of me. And by attacking it, I make two illusions of myself in conflict with each other. This happens when I do not look with love on anything that God created. Conflict is the birth of fear, and it is fearful. I would not fill my world with conflicted illusions of myself. What is born of nothing cannot win reality through battle. I will let all this madness be undone for me, and turn, in the peace still shining in my quiet mind, to the remembrance of God.
15. I see how conflicting illusions disappear when brought to the truth! For illusion seems real only when it is seen as war between conflicting "truths". Thus conflict is the choice between illusions, the victor being crowned as more real and true. The loser is vanquished, despised as less real, and made an illusion by defeat. The Father will never be remembered here. Yet no illusion can invade His home and drive Him out of what He loves forever. And what He loves must be forever quiet and at peace, because it is His home. And we are no illusions who are beloved of Him, being as true and holy as Himself.
16. I open the door of His most holy home, and let forgiveness sweep away all traces of the belief in sin that keeps God, and His Son homeless. We are not strangers in the house of God. I welcome my brother to the home where God dwells with him in serenity and peace. We dwell in peace as limitless as its Creator, and everything is given those who would remember Him. Love abides here, protecting us from everything that is not true. The Holy Spirit watches over God's home, sure that its peace can never be disturbed, for Illusions have no place here. The stillness of our certainty of Him, and of ourselves, is home to both of us, who dwell as one and not apart.
17. How can the resting-place of God turn on itself and seek to overcome the One Who dwells there? I will think what happens when the house of God perceives itself divided. The altar disappears, the light grows dim, the temple of the Holy One becomes a house of sin. And nothing is remembered except illusions. Illusions can conflict because their forms are different. And they do battle only to establish which form is true.
18. The memory of God is obscured in minds that have become illusion's battleground. Illusion meets illusion. The meeting of illusions leads to war. War is the condition in which fear is born and grows and seeks to dominate. Yet, truth meets itself. Peace, looking on itself, extends itself. Peace is the state where love abides and seeks to share itself. Peace and conflict are opposites. Where one abides the other cannot be; where either goes the other disappears. Yet, when I side with peace, far beyond this senseless war, peace shines, ready to be remembered.
