II: The Law of the Kingdom
- To heal is the only kind of thinking in this world that resembles the Thought of God, and because of the elements they share, can transfer easily to it. When a brother perceives himself as sick, he is perceiving himself as not whole, and therefore in need. If you, too, see him this way, you are seeing him as if he were absent from the Kingdom or separated from it, thus making the Kingdom itself obscure to both of you. Sickness and separation are not of God. But the Kingdom is. If you obscure the Kingdom, you are perceiving what is not of God.
- To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother and yourself by sharing the Holy Spirit with him. This places you both within the Kingdom and restores its wholeness in your mind. This reflects creation because it unifies by increasing and integrates by extending. What you project or extend is real for you. This is an immutable law of the mind in this world as well is in the Kingdom. However, the content is different in this world because the thoughts it governs is very different from the Thoughts in the Kingdom. Laws must be adapted to circumstances if they are to maintain order. The outstanding characteristic of the laws of mind as they operate in this world is that by obeying them, and I assure you that you must obey them, you can arrive at diametrically opposed results. This is because the laws have been adapted to the circumstances of this world, in which diametrically opposed outcomes seem possible because you can respond to two conflicting voices.
- Outside the Kingdom, the law that prevails inside is adapted to “What you project you believe.” This is its teaching form, because outside the Kingdom learning is essential. This form implies that you will learn what you are from what you have projected onto others, and therefore believe they are. In the Kingdom there is no teaching or learning because there is no belief. There is only certainty. God and His Sons, in the surety of being, know that what you extend you are. That form of the law is not adapted at all, being the law of creation. God Himself created the law by creating by it. And His Sons, who create like Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the increase of the Kingdom depends on it just as their own creation did.
- Laws must be communicated if they are to be helpful. In effect, they must be translated for those who speak different languages. Nevertheless, a good translator, although he must alter the form of what he translates, never changes the meaning. In fact, his whole purpose is to change the form so that the original meaning is retained. The Holy Spirit is the translator of the laws of God to those who do not understand them. You could not do this yourself because a conflicted mind could not be faithful to one meaning and will therefore change the meaning to preserve the form.
- The Holy Spirit’s purpose in translating is exactly the opposite. He translates only to preserve the original meaning in all respects and in all languages. Therefore, He opposes the idea that differences in form are meaningful, emphasizing always that these differences do not matter. The meaning of His message is always the same: Only the meaning matters. God’s law of creation does not involve the use of truth to convince His Sons of truth. The extension of truth, which is the law of the Kingdom, rests only on the knowledge of what truth is. This is your inheritance and requires no learning at all, but when you disinherited yourself you became a learner of necessity.
- No one questions the connection of learning and memory. Learning is impossible without memory since it must be consistent to be remembered. That is why the Holy Spirit’s teaching is a lesson in remembering. I said before that He teaches remembering and forgetting, but the forgetting is only to make the remembering consistent. You forget in order to remember better. You will not understand His translations while you listen to two ways of interpreting them. Therefore, you must forget or relinquish one to understand the other. This is the only way you can learn consistency, so that you can finally be consistent.
- What can the perfect consistency of the Kingdom mean to those who are confused? It is apparent that confusion interferes with meaning, and therefore prevents the learner from appreciating it. There is no confusion in the Kingdom because there is only one meaning. This meaning comes from God and is God. Because it is also you, you share it and extend it as your Creator did. This needs no translation because it is perfectly understood, but it does need extension because it means extension. Communication is perfectly direct and perfectly united. It is totally free because nothing discordant ever enters. This is why it is the Kingdom of God. It belongs to Him and is therefore like Him. That is, its reality, and nothing can assail it.[1]
Our most godly approach to thinking in this world is one of healing. Sickness and separation go hand-in-hand and they are not of God’s Kingdom. When we come to understand the law of the Kingdom, we know that anything that is not God’s Will is not real, and we do not have to accept it as such, in ourselves or in each other.
When we share Holy Spirit with our brother, the Kingdom of God is restored to our minds. The wholeness of God’s Kingdom mirrors creation, it brings us together and expands; it makes us one and extends. Jesus tells us that an unchangeable law of the mind in perceptual world as well as in God’s Kingdom is that what we think we make real to ourselves, we perceive it, it is true to us. When we project sin and shame, grudges and condemnation, unforgiveness and spite we make those thoughts real to us. We will perceive these thoughts in the physical realm – they will play out their viciousness, making them more real in our mind. They will seem to be true. The thoughts will be projected unto the screens of our lives and will hurt us, they will harm others and draw out the need for time. The laws of mind must be obeyed; they are immutable. Minds are creative and thoughts either make the need for time or create that which is beyond time; they either project illness and separation or they extend healing and wholeness. Only when we become vigilant solely for God and His Kingdom will our thoughts be consistently those that heal.
Here in the flesh and blood world, what we project unto others we believe – this form of teaching asserts that we learn what we are from the thoughts we hold about others and believe about them. We learn then to be human; we learn how scary the world is, we learn to distrust those we love; we experience jealousy and spite from our nearest and dearest; we experience suffering and shame at the hands of those who are put in charge of us. There are battles and taking sides. As little children we learn about ourselves by overhearing what the adults and bigger kids in our lives are projecting upon others. We learn to think of ourselves with uncertainty. We identify with our bodies, we spend our whole lives trying to figure out what it means to be human, chasing after things that hold promise but always fail us in the end.
This does not happen in the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom there is no teaching, no learning, no belief. We know who and what we are, and in the certainty of our being, we extend what we are. This is the law of creation. The increase of God’s Kingdom depends on this law of extension. Love begets Itself in its wholeness, not in parts, not in brokenness, not in separation.
Holy Spirit translates the law of God’s Kingdom to us in ways that we will understand. We cannot understand the law of God’s Kingdom because our minds are split between the higher mind of Spirit and the lower mind of flesh and ego. What the higher mind would understand, the lower one would pervert the meaning to protect itself. Because the laws of God’s Kingdom set us free from this one, the ego has come up with all kinds of ways to keep us blinded and distracted from them. The ego has come up with all kinds of ways to insinuate itself into them, passing off our flesh and blood bodies as God’s creations, making itself the head of the ego’s religions, educational institutions, and healthcare systems, and building civilizations throughout time paralyzing the Sons of God in its stupefying enchantment with fear, strife, bloodshed, and division.
Holy Spirit translates the laws of God, not to enchant, enslave, or turn us upon one another but only to bring us to our senses, to bring us to the truth, to see past the illusion. Creation is whole and complete and unified. Differences in form do not matter, only the meaning matters. We do not use the truth to convince each other of truth. This means we do not go about preaching “the truth,” or pushing it upon people. The extension of truth rests on the knowledge of what truth is – this does not require learning. This requires only knowing and accepting the truth. When I know who I am, I do not have to convince myself or anybody else who I am. I just am and because I just am, then my husband knows me as I am. And my children and my grandchildren, my sisters and brothers, my friends and coworkers all know me as I am. When we realize our Sonship, this is who and what we are. We would never have had to learn this if we had not disinherited ourselves in the first place and put ourselves in a position to have to learn it.
Holy Spirit teaches us to remember and to forget. We remember who we really are; we forget who we thought we were. He teaches us to forget in order that we may remember better, Jesus tells us. As long as we think we are both flesh and spirit, lower mind and higher mind we will interpret the lessons in two ways. The ego will intrude upon our spiritual paths; the ego will impede our minds’ awakening for its very maintenance depends upon our sleep. This is why Holy Spirit teaches us to forget the ego – to relinquish it so that we can learn with consistency, that we can heal with consistency, so that we can finally be the attribute of consistency itself.
The perfect consistency of God’s Kingdom clears up all confusion. When we are confused, we do not really know who and what we are, we cannot hold fast to our meaning, nor appreciate our place in God’s Kingdom. There is absolutely no confusion in God’s Kingdom. There is only one meaning of God’s Kingdom because it comes from God and it is God. It is also me and it is also you, and we share it and extend it as God does. Holy Spirit has no need to translate this for us – we perfectly understand this as Sons of God, and we know that to have it, we must extend it because to know God means to know extension. God is extension. Extension is communication. When we communicate in Holy Spirit we extend love to one another, we extend joy and peace – we extend unity without obstruction or deviance of any kind. Everything is always in accord. We have relinquished the voice which would obstruct, which would perceive, which would divide and separate us from our Father. We know who and what we are. And we extend this knowledge to everybody still asleep in the dream.
In your devotional practice today, ask Holy Spirit to prepare your mind and heart to accept and become the consistency of God, for consistency is the law of the Kingdom. Consistency is the Kingdom of God; it belongs to Him and is therefore like Him. This is reality and nothing else is real, nothing can assail it, nothing can shake it or break it. When we know this, we share it in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds, and thus, as the healed and the healer, we fulfill our function in the world.
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 7 The gifts of the kingdom. II. The law of the kingdom. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
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