You think you have not enough. You think someone, somewhere, is always better off than you at any one time. Sometimes you also do think you have more than enough. You think, you are better off than anyone in the world. Yet there is another in-between; you think you are equal to another. You think you are equally as good as another, or worst, equally as lousy as that dumb born loser. Whether you are here or there, in or out, up or down, you are constantly changing the mask of comparison. Sometimes a midget, sometimes a giant, sometimes at level to another. Yet, there was never another except you and what you think, seemingly speaking to you, doing what you think must be done, on someone, or at someplace, or with something. The thought or role-play spoken secretly in your head is not known by another, yet there was never another in the first place. If ever there was, it was the one you had initially listen to, the one you were seeing inside, except now being positioned outside you. For how can you be inside or outside unless you take a stand of either? If you think you are inside thinking, there must be an outside to meet it. If you think you are outside, you must imagine someone is thinking you. Thus, when you see another, you are actually seeing the same cause in different illusionary position, thus making it seemingly an effect. For cause and effect is actually one, played out in the illusion of separation. Where you stand, in your own imagination, matters to this illusion, unless and until you recognise it as it is. Otherwise, you are living in a world of your own voice, unknown.
If you actualize that voice into action, or speak words in manipulative demeanour for the sake of luring another to your secret den, you are doing it to that voice, and for that voice only; just to savour deeper what you secretly conspired, never mind it is from a state of lack, pride or equality. The myriads of your experiences are based on that voice of which you think you think, yet, it is nothing until you think it. The voice is, but a single idea brought to thought, and left as quickly as it came; yet when pursued, it mutates to countless uncountable conflicting ideas.
It is here salvation is offered by the Now – you can use it purposefully for God’s sake in ending this insanity, or pursuing a dream that has no end. For purpose is only truly purposeful if awakening is required to wakeup from a dream, else all other purposes are not purpose except choiceless choices made within the field of a scripted choice. Thus the gift of Now is only two – the miracle of wisdom to see thought as it is or the perception of thought that makes it real. It is here, the journey ends, or continue. The end is but eternity; continue is but a lifeless end to begin again and to end prematurely, endlessly.
Yet, there was never at all a futile voice that you needed to play in – of hide and seek that was never at all real, yet played for the sake of self imagination. It is a game of non-necessity, where nothing really happened except your own initiative just to entertain yourself briefly. The game of hide and seek, though needed two, is played all by yourself, in your own thoughts , which is at least to say is an impossible task – yet you played nevertheless on your own, an imagination yet known by you. The thought was never was, and was never in existence, until you turn it to a voice by your believing in it. And here perception came to be, of memory once gone, made real, over and over again in illusion. You would not have existed without that voice, and that voice, non-existence without you. Until you have awaken to that, a dream is what a dreamer you are, dreaming with the voice swimming through your head. Yet, if you have awaken to it, a voice is just is, finally finding its way in ending.
The Borderland (The Transition, A Course in Miracles, Text, Chapter 26)
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There is a borderland of thought that stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and when you reach it is apart from time. Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought together; where conflicting values meet and all illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven. Here is every thought made pure and wholly simple. Here is sin denied, and everything that is received instead.
This is the journey’s end. We have referred to it as the real world. And yet there is a contradiction here, in that the words imply a limited reality, a partial truth, a segment of the universe made true. This is because knowledge makes no attack upon perception. They are brought together, and only one continues past the gate where oneness is. Salvation is a borderland where place and time and choice have meaning still, and yet it can be seen that they are temporary, out of place, and every choice has been already made.
Nothing the Son of God believes can be destroyed. But what is truth to him must be brought to the last comparison that he will ever make; the last evaluation that will be possible, the final judgment upon this world. It is the judgment of the truth upon illusion, of knowledge on perception: “It has no meaning, and does not exist. “This is not your decision. It is but a simple statement of a simple fact. But in this world there are no simple facts, because what is the same and what is different remain unclear. The one essential thing to make a choice at all is this distinction. And herein lies the difference between the worlds. In this one, choice is made impossible. In the real world is choosing simplified.
Salvation stops just short of Heaven, for only perception needs salvation. Heaven was never lost, and so cannot be saved. Yet who can make a choice between the wish for Heaven and the wish for hell unless he recognizes they are not the same? This difference is the learning goal this course has set. It will not go beyond this aim. Its only purpose is to teach what is the same and what is different, leaving room to make the only choice that can be made.
There is no basis for a choice in this complex and over-complicated world. For no one understands what is the same, and seems to choose where no choice really is. The real world is the area of choice made real, not in the outcome, but in the perception of alternatives for choice. That there is choice is an illusion. Yet within this one lies the undoing of every illusion, not excepting this.
Is not this like your special function, where the separation is undone by change of purpose in what once was specialness, and now is union? All illusions are but one. And in the recognition this is so lies the ability to give up all attempts to choose between them, and to make them different. How simple is the choice between two things so clearly unalike. There is no conflict here. No sacrifice is possible in the relinquishment of an illusion recognized as such. Where all reality has been withdrawn from what was never true, can it be hard to give it up, and choose what must be true?