THE  GREAT  AWAKENING

 PART I

CHAPTER 3

Confusion of cause and effect became inevitable.  The Son is the Effect whose Cause he would deny.  And so he seems to be a cause, producing real effects.  Here is the self-made "creator", who creates unlike the Father.  His "special" sons are many, never One, each one in exile from himself, and Him of whom they are a part.  They chose their specialness instead of Heaven, and instead of Peace, and wrapped it carefully in "sin" to keep it safe from Truth.

Accepting God's Son as guilty of this is denial of the Father so complete that knowledge is completely banished from the very mind where God has placed it.  Lack of knowledge of any kind is always associated with unwillingness to know, and this produces a total lack of knowledge, simply because Knowledge is Total.  Can the Son deny the Father without believing that the Father has denied him?  Could you try to make God homeless and know that you are at Home?  When you threw Knowledge away, it was as if you never had it.

Sickness and death seemed to enter the mind of God's Son against his will.  The denial of the Father made the Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression.  This was his alternative to Joy, because he would not accept the fact that, although he was a creator, he had been created.  He was not self-created, like God.  Thinking he was fatherless left him in a position where it seemed meaningful to believe that he created himself.

Specialness is the Function that you gave yourself.  Its purpose is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power except its own.  It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body.  Always attacked and always furious, with anger always fully justified, you have pursued this goal with vigilance you never thought to yield, and effort that you never thought to cease.  And all this grim determination was for this; you wanted specialness to be the truth.  But never believe because it is your faith it makes Reality.  You can perceive yourself as self-creating, but you cannot do more than believe it.  You cannot make it True.

The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of Loveliness they do not see.  Freedom and Peace and Joy stand there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death.  They are lost in dreams of specialness.  They hate the call that would awaken them, and curse God because He did not make their dream Reality.  Their individual death seems more valuable than their Living Oneness, for what is given them is not so dear as what they made.