What if you realized that those who seemed to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see if you accepted this premise? And without faith, would you see it? Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. Believe them not and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize that you did this. Once you accept this simple fact and take unto yourself the power you gave them, you are released from them. Your hallucinations serve a purpose. The question is whether or not you want the purpose they serve. Only two purposes are possible. And one is craziness and the other is holiness. Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness showing you all the fearful outcomes of imagined sin. Vision is the means given to translate your nightmares into happy dreams. Vision substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the ego's hallucinogenic purpose brought to your awareness. Vision reminds you that it is not reality that frightens you, and that errors you made can be corrected. When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and seen it change into sights of loveliness and peace, who need persuade you to accept the gift of vision? When you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and watched them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear, life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away...who need persuade you to accept the gift of vision? Damnation is your judgement upon yourself, and this you will project upon the world. See the world as damned, and all you see is what you did to hurt the Son of God. If you behold disaster and catastrophe, you tried to crucify him. Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. It is therefore important to you...sacred. It is a witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but change your mind about the world. Everything looked upon with vision is healed and holy. Nothing perceived without it means anything. And where there is no meaning, there is chaos. The world you see but shows you how much joy you have allowed yourself to see in you, and to accept as yours. And if this is it's meaning, then the power to give it joy must lie within you. Give the world joy, and you will receive joy. Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you. Acknowledge that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear. It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events outside of him. It is impossible that happenings that come to him were not his choice. His power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which he seems to find himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is possible within the universe as God created it, outside of which is nothing. Suffer, and you decided craziness was your goal. Be happy and you gave power of decision to the One who gives you vision. Begrudge not then this little offering. Withhold it, and you keep the world as now you see it. Give it away, and everything you see goes with it. Never was so much given for so little. You are given a world you do not want for the one you do. The one you want is given you because you want it. Yet for this, the power of your wanting must be recognized. You must accept it's strength, and not its weakness. You must perceive that what is strong enough to make a world is strong enough to let it go...as it accepts correction and the willingness to see that it was wrong. The world you see is but the idle witness you were right. This witness is insane. You trained it in its testimony, and as it gave it back to you, you listened and convinced yourself that what it saw was true. You did this to yourself. See this, and you will see how circular is the reasoning upon which your "seeing" rests. When vision is denied, confusion of cause and effect becomes inevitable. It is as needful for you to recognize you made the world you see, as that you recognize you did not create yourself. They are the same mistake. Nothing not created by your Creator has any influence over you. And if you think that what you have made can control you, you are denying your Creator and believe you made yourself. For if you think the world you made has power to make you what it wills, you are confusing Son and Father; effect and Source. The truth is you and your brother were both created by a loving Father, Who created you together and as one. See what "proves" otherwise, and you deny your whole reality. The world you see is made by you in secret, and stands between you and your brother. As you uncover it's source you are released from it, and its effects are gone. It is the seeming independence of its source that keeps you prisoner in it...and correlates with the idea you are independent of the Source by which you were created, and have never left. Why is it so strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power. For faith can keep the Son of God in chains as long as he believes he is in chains. And when he is released from them it will be simply because he no longer believed in them, withdrawing faith that they can hold him, and placing it in his freedom instead. It is impossible to place equal faith in opposite directions. What faith you give to craziness you take away from holiness...and visa versa. It is impossible the Son of God can lack faith, but he can choose where he would have it be. Faith given to illusions does not lack power, for by it does the Son of God believe that he is powerless. Thus, he is faithless to himself. For faith, perception and belief are things you - the Son of God - made, as means for losing certainty and finding craziness. This mad direction was your choice, and by your faith in what you chose, you made what you desired. Jesus