Ch. 3. V. 4 – 6. Jesus: “The fundamental question you continually ask yourself cannot properly be directed to yourself at all. You keep asking what it is that you are! This implies that the answer is not only one you must somehow know, but is also one that is up to you alone to supply. Yet you cannot ‘perceive yourself’ correctly because, in truth, you have no image to be perceived!
The very word ‘image’ is always perception-related, and cannot then be considered self-knowledge. Images of yourself are always symbolic and thereby stand for something else, something that is not you. The idea of ‘changing your image’ recognizes the power of perception, but also implies that there is nothing stable enough about you to actually be known.
Knowing is not open to interpretation, nor is any translation needed. You may try to ‘interpret’ meaning from your perceptions, but this is always open to error because it refers only to only a ‘perception’ of meaning! Such incongruities are the result of attempts to regard yourself as separated and ‘un-separated’ at the same time. It is impossible to make so fundamental a confusion without increasing your overall confusion still further.
Your mind, though dominated by the ego, may have become very ingenious. But as always happens when method and content are separated, ingenuity is utilized in a futile attempt to escape from an inescapable impasse. Ingenuity is totally divorced from knowledge, because knowledge does not require ingenuity nor support it. Ingenious thinking is far from ‘the truth that shall set you free,’ but you are free of the need to engage in it when you are willing to simply let all such thinking go.
Prayer is a way of asking for something. It is the medium of miracles. But the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have forgiven and have thus been forgiven, know they have everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted as the only way to knowledge, prayer in the usual sense becomes utterly meaningless.
The prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that you may be able to recognize what you already have. In electing perception instead of knowledge, you placed yourself in a position where you could resemble your Father only by perceiving miraculously. You have lost the knowledge that you yourself are a miracle of God! Creation is eternally your Source, and creation is your only real function!”