Choosing Not To Choose

M: You keep saying I have no idea what love is. So when are you going to teach me what love is?

J: Love is not an “idea” and when you are prepared to learn beyond “ideas,” love will be known.

M: I’m prepared now!

J: You also have no idea of “now,” because “now” is also not an idea. However, LOVE is only available NOW and both are ONE experience, separate from anything you could conceivably consider, since all you consider are “ideas.”

M: So it’s my fault you can’t teach me.

J: NOW does not see “fault,” nor does LOVE project or accept blame. However, if you do, then you have no awareness of NOW and, therefore, LOVE must be absent. Love is always NOW, because it is NOT conditioned on "ideas" from the past.

M: I think I love my family very much, regardless of what you teach.

J: In your world, love involves a process of “thinking” and the “decision” to love is either made, or not made, and behavior adjusts accordingly. In fact, a decision once made is easily revoked and never do you consider this absurd; never do you ask, “how can this be love.” It is not… nor can it ever involve any decision you could make.

M: So I should not choose to love?

J: Choice is a condition of your making and God knows nothing of choice. YOU were NOT created to “choose,” because choice is unnatural to Creation. How could that Created with no need to choose… make “right” or “wrong” choices?

You cannot choose to love and if you do, it is relative to the belief in an ego that chooses past on what is learned in the past. There is nothing to choose. However, as long as you live by “choices,” you can choose to cease making choices that obstruct love. In fact, this is all you can do and making such choices is the reason you have called on me.

M: What choices obstruct from love?

J: Choices based on the past can only obstruct love, because love is not conditioned on time. Love conditioned on the past is NOT love and this is why your right choices are often “wrong,” while wrong choices can eventually become “right.” Of yourself, you have no means of knowing, since everything you “know” is from the past and not one “idea” do you have that is wholly free of the past.

M: So the only way I can love is to be in the “now.”

J: An “I” cannot love, simply because an “I” is derived exclusively from the past and love is not a condition of time. If an “I” finds itself NOW, it could NOT be an “I,” but something completely incomprehensible to an “I”… and entirely incomprehensible to “you” at this “time.”

M: So any attempt by me to love another is destined to fail, so why even bother? What’s the point of even learning, since it’s “I” you teach.

J: I do not “teach” love to you. However, I do teach what obstructs love and “you” can learn that if you so choose.

M: So maybe I should stop trying to love others and become a hermit, at least until I learn everything that obstructs love.

J: Such an “idea” would undoubtedly obstruct love and currently emphasizes your complete lack of understanding.

A mind obsessed with the past cannot avoid choosing to “attack” and a mind that considers attack will see it everywhere and live in defense of what IT makes “real.” A mind in preparation for attack is entirely unprepared to realize love…NOW.

This is why you cannot love, but because your thinking conforms to the past, you can “think” you do and because of this, love often takes the form of attack.

You may choose to “become a hermit” and seek to attack the world by hiding from it, but you are the cause and, therefore, effects never leave you.

Although you “think” you can hide from its power to attack you, the world has NO powers that you have not chosen to give it. 

It is time you choose NOT to choose.

"Real" is a Concept of your Invention

M: So everything I see is not real?

J: “Real” is a concept of your invention that is present nowhere in Creation. Therefore, everything you see IS certainly “real” otherwise, you would not SEE it. I merely teach that what you make “real” is not True and therefore, it is only “real” for you. Nothing I have ever taught can be “seen” to be learned. Nevertheless, once it is known it will be “seen” everywhere, because it IS everywhere.

M: What do you mean everything I see, I make real? I see it because it’s real. If it wasn’t real I wouldn’t see it.

J: Reality for you is entirely contingent on bodily sensation. Without sensing an embodied ‘self,’ you do not believe YOU could be “real,” simply because the body represents an external world for which to contrast an internal ‘self’ against.

You do believe “you” are both “inside” and “outside” and it is this distinction that defines “hell.”

It is an outside “world” that limits you, because you believe you were created from IT. Nevertheless, you were Created without limits or conditions of any kind, but find it necessary to limit your ‘self’ through an "outside" world. All limits you make real and that is what you experience, because you believe nothing can be experienced separate from what can be sensed as “real.”

Truth is certain, simply because it is what YOU are. However, sensation will have absolutely nothing to do with that experience until Truth is learned and then sensation will adjust accordingly, since it will have no reason to resist any longer.

M: So nothing you teach can be found in the world?

J: Truth “can be found in the world” because when you learn it, you will SEE nothing else, no matter what direction you “look.” This is contingent on “learning,” but only because you require it be learned. Truth need not be learned, since it IS, whether you learn it or NOT. Understand this and learning is complete.

However, if you see it nowhere you look, then what you SEE is meaningless because, although you call it “real” it is not in any way True.

M: So how can I perceive the world as meaningless when I still must respond to it as if it were real?

J: You do not believe your dreams are “real” and, in judging that what you “perceive” is nothing more than a dream, you have no need of fear in judging that you could easily brush it all away with a wave of your hand. Yet, why do that, when it is yours to make as you choose with no limits to what CAN be experienced.

This IS the "Final Judgment."

The concept of “real” limits you and, thus, determines the conditions of your suffering. Nevertheless, it is a concept of your invention and can be easily brushed aside if you so choose.

M: So I should respond to the world as if it were a dream?

J: To respond “as if” is a poor attempt to deny the reality you demand by calling it “real.” It is REAL to you and to deny this only results in the misunderstanding that calls reality an “illusion,” but continues to advise that you seek rewards from what is not there. How can what is NOT there, reward you?

Creation extends Truth, but you make reality instead and, therefore, your reward is suffering because what believes Truth can be absent, can only suffer from an absence that is NOT True. Only Truth rewards, simply by nature of what IT IS and it is undeniably YOU.

Normalizing Insanity

M: You continue to say that I must give up all I learned. I learned how to drive a car, so if I give up all I learned how would I continue to drive a car and go to work?

J: You attempt to negate the practicality of what I teach in order to prove it absurd. But you would never consider that “driving a car” and “going to work” as absurd and, in fact, you believe it quite practical. Make no mistake, your “world” has taught you what you require be learned and in your need for insanity, this is what will be taught and you will consider it very “practical.”

What I teach is clearly insane to the mind reliant on normalizing insanity and when you look closely at your world you could not, at times, deny it insane.

You need not fear that your functioning in the world will be impaired by learning the Truth. In fact, through the acknowledgment of insanity, fear can dissolve and functioning can only be enhanced. Do not be afraid of insanity. Because it is insane, it can have NO effect. However, you must see it for what it is, otherwise, you will believe you suffer from what has no effect.

As I have said before, what you “do” is of little concern to me. Yet, the fact that it is of concern to you must be reevaluated and this is what I assist you in doing.

It is the purpose behind what you “do” that is our focus and that purpose must be consistent with every “action” you take. Your purposes are many, and therefore, wholly inconsistent, chaotic and contradictory. You do not have the means to initiate change and your world demonstrates this fact by compulsively repeating the past. Thus, you cannot be in charge of determining purpose and must leave that to me, since that is my only purpose and the reason you called on me.

M: I suppose your going to insist that my purpose is to love everything? I’ve heard that a million times!

J: You have no comprehension of love and if you did, you would then have no reason to hear it, since it cannot be known through words. However, you do know fear and because of this, love must remain absent and unknown, causing you many questions for which you seek answers. I have the answers you seek, but you must choose to listen and not reject.

When an absence of fear is your only purpose, every function you fulfill will be miraculously transformed. Such miraculous perception seems impossible to those who have learned fear and this is why it is impossible for you. However, this is why you have called on me.

You are very capable of learning and this is why the right teacher is essential. The capacity to learn is evident in how you have learned to normalize insanity and this is because you have taught yourself by demanding the world teach you. You must now deny the world this function and turn it over to me. But you fear that by rejecting the world, the world will reject you. This is impossible because you fail to understand that rejection by the world is nothing more than a reflection of your own mind. To reject yourself is to reject me, because it is through you that I am known.

M: You want me to believe that everything I know is meaningless. I don’t see how I could possibly do that and continue to function in the world.

J: It is not what I want that motivates your learning. It is what you want and that is why you have called on me. You have come to understand that the world cannot teach you and since the ego is a product of the world, it can teach you nothing you need. However, there is a part of you influenced by neither an ego nor a world. That part sees the need for the right teacher. It is from that part that I will teach you to be whole.

The world you SEE discourages you and, at times, even drives you to despair. You see it as cause of your suffering and you call on me to relieve your pain. Yet, when I inform you of the real cause of your despair, you seek to prove it impossible and, therefore, demand continued suffering and despair.

You gave meaning to the meaningless and are First Cause of the “world” you experience. It is your expectation to experience suffering that causes suffering and not the world. Your world has the power to cause nothing but what you give it power to cause and this includes not only your “birth,” but your death.

M: So I’m God?!

J: Why would you find that so incredible? Why would God Create less than God? However, one who discards Creation as impossible will certainly create less than God and such is the world you experience because that is how you make it seem.

Yet, that which is made to seem “real,” but is NOT true, exists only because you make it “real” and has no other existence separate from what you wish.

Your Facts are Fiction

M: I’m beginning to see little point to this and wonder if I should discontinue, since it’s all a bit too complicated for me. How can I learn what I can’t understand?

J: If you have turned away from understanding, it is because you demand understanding be on your terms. What I teach invalidates your terms completely and asks that you learn the same. I am not asking that you give up the world.

I only ask that you give up YOUR world, for it no longer serves you and you have long since given up serving IT. There is a better "world" for you to SEE if you believe it can be seen... as I see it.

M: What do you mean my world? Is my world different from the world others experience? We all experience primarily the same world.

J: If you mean that you “primarily” experience the setting and rising of the sun, then yes, you share agreement on that as fact. But you do not share YOUR experiences, only facts.

Bodies share only “approximations” of Truth, which cannot be Truth because Truth is never approximate, but total and complete. This is the loneliness you experience and, until experience can be shared, loneliness is a "fact."

The experience of loneliness cannot be shared, because it demands separation and YOU have determined that a fact of living.

M: I think I share a great deal with the people I love.

J: You share "facts" that only serve to veil the Truth. Yes, you could share a “great deal” if only you could love without "facts." But in your world “love” is also a fact and, because of that must always be fictional. Your facts are fiction because nothing your world “agrees” to believe as "truth," has ever been True, because Truth requires NO agreement to be True.

In fact, you agree on very little and rely on the past to determine what beliefs are "true." I say to you now, if every mind could agree on just one “fact” completely free of the past, that fact would instantly be Truth. Yet, if every mind could agree completely, facts would disappear forever and Truth is ALL you would experience. Agree on this "fact" alone, for it alone can save you.

You may share “a great deal” with those you have chosen to “love,” but conditional "love" cannot be shared and love that is NOT shared by all is NOT Love. Therefore, you share nothing with no one and “thinking” it is so may make it "real" in your world but there is much you have made "real" that is NOT TRUE and never will be. However, it does make it another “fact” and in your world, love conditioned on suffering is a fact.

M: So sharing my experience will save others?

J: Are they not a part of your experience? I continually ask that you exclude nothing.

M: I can’t share anything with people I don’t know.

J: What would that “knowing” entail? Their names and addresses? Bodily appearances? The job they hold or the car they drive? Would you require they have the same values and worship the same God? Seeing differences denies sharing and so, you must see differently in order TO share.

Are you certain that you even “know” those you have chosen to “love”? Strangers do not love and if in every moment you do not love what you SEE, then you have made it stranger to you. Love is Truth and there could never be a moment Truth is not True. However, you can believe otherwise, but this does not in anyway remove Truth, it simply permits you to believe YOU are removed.

Yet, this simply cannot be.