T. 18. I. 1 – 4. Jesus: “To substitute is to ‘accept instead.’ If you would but consider exactly what this entails, you would perceive at once how much at variance this is with the goal the Holy Spirit has given you, and would accomplish for you. ‘To substitute’ is thus to choose between your brothers, renouncing one aspect of the Sonship in favor of another.
For the ‘special purpose’ you have assigned to the relationship, one is judged more valuable and the other is replaced by him. The relationship in which the substitution has occurred is thus fragmented, unholy, and its purpose split accordingly. To fragment is to exclude, denying wholeness, and substitution is the strongest defense the ego has for its imagined ‘realm of separation.’
The Holy Spirit never uses substitutes! Where the ego perceives one aspect as a replacement for another, the Holy Spirit sees them truly, as joined and indivisible. He does not judge between them, knowing always that they are one. Being united, they are one because they are, as God created them, all the same! Substitution, however, is clearly a process in which they are perceived as different. One way of perceiving would unite; the other can only separate!
Yet this is only perception! Nothing can come between what God has joined as one and what the Holy Spirit therefore sees as one. But everything imaginable seems to come between the fragments of the relationships the ego sponsors to destroy the oneness!
The one emotion in which substitution is impossible is love, whole and holy. Fear involves substitution by definition, for it is real love’s replacement! Fear is both a fragmented and fragmenting emotion. It seems to take many forms, and each one seems to require a different form of ‘acting out’ for satisfaction. While quite variable behavior appears as a result, a far more serious effect lies in the fragmented perception from which the behavior stems. No one is seen complete! The body is emphasized, even with special emphasis on certain parts, different appearances and different sounds, and used as the standard for comparison in acceptance or rejection for acting out a special form of fear!
You who believe that God is fearful have made but one substitution! It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of illusion for truth; of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still is what it was then.
That one error, which brought ‘truth’ to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, encompassed all the error you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything in the world you see reflects it, and every special relationship that you have ever made is part of it.”
>>> When one begins to feel the inner sense conflict, the one Answer is to pause for a holy instant, let go and let your mind be cleared of the apparent block to love.