THE  GREAT  AWAKENING

PART II

CHAPTER 1

Faith, perception and belief were made as means for losing Certainty, and finding sin. Your faith that sin is there but witnesses to your desire that it be there for you to see.  Appearances can but deceive the mind that wants to be deceived.  This mad direction was your choice, and by your faith in what you chose, you made what you desired.

You see yourself as tiny, vulnerable and afraid.  You experience depression, a sense of worthlessness, and feelings of impermanence and unreality.  You believe that you are helpless prey to forces far beyond your own control, and far more powerful than you.  And you will think the world you made directs your destiny.  Every illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments in which it hides its nothingness. Yet by these dark and heavy garments are those who seek illusions covered, and hidden from the Joy of Truth.

Truth is the opposite of illusions because it offers Joy.  What else but Joy could be the opposite of misery?  The search for Joy in misery is senseless, for how could Joy be found in misery?  All that is possible in the dark world of misery is to select some aspects out of it, see them as different, and define the difference as joy.  Yet to perceive a difference where none exists will surely fail to make a difference.  Illusions carry only guilt and suffering, sickness and death, to their believers.

The Joy of Truth is Eternal.  Joy does not turn to sorrow, for the Eternal cannot change.  But sorrow can be turned to Joy, for time gives way to the Eternal.  Only the timeless must remain unchanged, but everything in time can change with time.  Yet if the change be real and not imagined, illusions must give way to Truth, and not to other dreams.  One illusion cherished and defended against the Truth makes all Truth meaningless, and all illusions real.  Such is the power of belief.  It cannot compromise.  Reason will tell you that there is no middle ground where you can pause uncertainly waiting to choose between the Joy of Heaven and the misery of hell.  Until you choose Heaven, you are in hell and misery.  There is no part of Heaven you can take and weave into illusions.  Nor is there one illusion you can enter Heaven with. Truth is the absence of illusion;  illusion is the absence of Truth.