5

Why, when a God of Love was revealed so long ago and in so many times and in so many forms since then that they remain forever countless, has fear of God remained? The only answer possible is because fear of the self has remained.

5.2 This is a two-fold fear that must be looked at carefully now and with all the power of the art of thought. One aspect of this fear has to do with the human experience, the other aspect with the divine experience.

5.3 When it was said within A Course of Love that the great paradox of creation is that, while creation is perfect, something has gone wrong within it, this fear in relation to the human experience is of what it was I spoke. The choice for suffering that has been made within the human condition is what I speak of specifically here. While I can tell you suffering is illusion, you cannot still your fear of it nor tear your eyes away from it or remove from it the feelings of your heart. While I came to reveal the choice of love to you, the choice that you each must make to end such suffering, the illusion of suffering has continued and in its continuation made the choice of love seem all but impossible. If not for the suffering that you see all around you, the choice for love would have been made. If the choice for love had been made, the suffering you see around you would be no more. This is the paradox. The second aspect of this fear is fear of the divine. A part of this fear of the divine is related to the fear of the human condition. How can you not
be fearful of creation when such suffering occurs within it? But there is another aspect that relates to the fear of union we spent much time discussing within this course. It is a fear of the human mind that cannot comprehend the all or the nothingness, the eternal or the void. While your thought system here has been described often as insanity, this is the insanity you would fear and a fear that may actually grow stronger as you get closer to the truth. This is the part of you that believes this communication itself is insane, that believes that to contemplate miracles is insane, that both welcomes and fears visions and abilities you see as being currently beyond your capabilities.

5.5 This fear of all and nothingness is fear of God, fear of life, fear of creation, fear of self. For there is only all and nothing.

5.6 A part of you is aware of this and as fearful of the all of everything as of the void of nothing. You feel as if you are headed toward “something” from somewhere but neither here nor there feel completely real to you. The lucky among you have made of this in between place an adventure, and are happy in your seeking. You do not care to end this happy state and there is indeed much to be learned from the in between. It is, however, a starting point only.

5.7 The whole of life could in fact be seen as the illusion of an in between you have created between all and nothing. This in between place is your comfort zone. Although you feel compelled to push at its edges, this pushing not only leaves the edges quite intact, but causes them to be capable of offering resistance. Your search for something within the in between, if it leads not beyond the in between, shields you from the recognition of the all you are capable of finding and the nothing in which you reside.
5.8 In order to experience the truth, you must move into a state that is real. Nothing is as real as everything, and is what some of you will experience or have experienced as a “dark night of the soul.” To realize that you reside in nothingness is but the counterpart of realizing that there is an all to which you belong.

5.9 Again I tell you that it is only your body and the thinking of your ego-mind that make the in between state of the illusion in which you now exist seem real. I must make a distinction here, however, between the seemingly real and the aspect of your existence that is real. Your heart as we have defined it many times within this Course, must exist in the thought system that is real to you. The thought system of the ego-mind is what has been real to you and is where your heart has been held captive. Thus, your real Self is not present in the realm of the truly real, but is actually present within the illusion. This is why all seeking must turn within, toward the heart where the real Self abides. There is nothing else that will free who you are but freedom from the ego’s thought system. That the ego’s thought system has kept you from this freedom is the seeming difficulty you experience in learning this course of study and the reason, when you have freed yourself, that you will look back and see how easy this one choice really is.

5.10 The body, and the “you” whom you think you are, would not experience anything without the presence of the heart. The heart is the only cause of your experience here. When released from the ego thought system, the heart becomes the determiner of what you experience since you know it as the cause. This is what is meant by mind and heart being joined in union, or being wholehearted. It is the real you or center of your Self, being joined with the only thought system that is real, the thought system of the truth. How could a thought system based on anything but the truth lead to anything but illusion?
5.11 The “here” that you experience is the experience dictated by the ego-mind, and this experience is all that makes you believe you are other than who you are. The abolishing of the ego-mind, as stated many times and in many ways, must now be brought to completion.

5.12 This is why I have asked you to choose the manner in which you would be once and finally convinced. You must experience the reality of the new thought system or it will remain forever theoretical. You must let go of the foundation of fear on which the old thought system was built in order to experience the new.

5.13 The art of thought invites the experience of the new thought system by being willing to replace the old with the new. While this will at first be a learned activity, and as such have its moments of seeming difficulty, it is learned only in the sense of your practice of the mindfulness that will allow the memory of it to return to you.

5.14 Mindfulness and wholeheartedness are but different expressions of the union of mind and heart. Mindfulness will aid you in remembering. Wholeheartedness will aid you in reconciling the laws of God with the laws of man. Through mindfulness you will remember who you are. Through wholeheartedness you will be who are.

5.15 It is in this way that you will enter a time of miracles, put an end to suffering, and begin the return to love.