Ch. 2. VII. 3 – 5. Jesus: ” ‘Cause’ is a term properly belonging to God, and His ‘Effect’ is His Son. This entails a set of Cause and Effect relationships totally different from the ones you have introduced into your world of mis-creation.
The fundamental conflict in this world, then, can be said to be between creation and mis-creation. All love is implicit in the first, and all fear in the second. The basic conflict is therefore one between love and fear.
It has already been said that you believe you cannot control fear, because you yourself have made it to appear that way, and your belief in the idea seems to render it beyond your control. Yet any attempt to resolve the error through attempting ‘mastery over fear’ is useless. In fact, it asserts the power of fear by the very assumption that it need be mastered!
The true resolution of the dilemma rests entirely on mastery through love. In the interim, however, the sense of conflict is inevitable, since you have placed yourself in a position where you believe in the power of something that does not really exist. Nothing and everything cannot coexist. To believe in one is to deny the other.
Fear is really nothing and love is everything. Whenever light enters darkness, the darkness is abolished.
What you believe is always true for you. In this sense, but only in this sense, the separation has occurred, and to deny it on this level is merely to use denial inappropriately. However, to concentrate on error is only a further error!
The initial corrective procedure is to recognize temporarily that there is a problem, a problem in the mind, but only as an signal that immediate correction is needed. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay. It should be emphasized, however, that ultimately, no compromise is possible between love, which is everything, and fear, which is nothing!
Time is essentially a device by which all compromise in this respect can be given up. Your belief in fear seems to be abolished by degrees, but only because time itself involves intervals that do not exist in your eternal reality. It is mis-creation has made this necessary as a corrective device.”