T. 31. V. 8 – 12. Jesus: “Now must the Holy Spirit help you find a way to understand that your ‘concept of yourself’ must be unlearned, if any peace of mind is to be given you.
Nor can it be unlearned except by lessons aimed to teach you that what you really are is something much more. For otherwise, you would be asked to make exchange of what you now ‘believe you are,’ for total loss of any sense of self. Were that the case, an even greater terror would arise in you!
Thus is the Holy Spirit’s curriculum arranged for you in easy steps, that though there be some lack of ease at times and some distress, there is no ‘shattering’ of what was learned before, but just a reinterpretation of what has seemed to be the evidence on its behalf.
Let us consider first, what proof there is that you are ‘what your brother made of you.’ For even though you do not yet acknowledge this is what you think, by now you surely must admit that your behavior toward your brother gives away the fact that it is so. Does your brother do the reacting for you? And does he know exactly what would happen to you in every situation? Can he see your future and ordain, before it comes, exactly what you must do in every circumstance? Really? Then he must have made the world as well as you to have such prescience in the things to come!
In all honesty, the proposition that you are but what your brother has made of you seems most unlikely! Even if he did, who was it who decided that you needed a ‘face of innocence,’ and then gave that to you? Is only this your contribution? Who is, then, the ‘you’ who made it? And who is it being deceived by all of your ‘apparent goodness?’ And who really is it who judges that face of innocence is under attack by the words of others?
Let us forget this self-concept’s foolishness, and merely think of this; there are two parts to what you think yourself to be. Even if one were generated by your brother, who was there to make the other? And from whom must something be kept hidden? If the world be evil, there is still no need to hide what you are made of. Who is there to see what you would hide? And what, except what is attacked, could need such defense?
Perhaps the reason why the roots of this concept of yourself must be kept in darkness is that, in the light, the one who would not think the concept true is you! And what would happen to the ‘attacking world’ of your perception, if all the underpinnings of that perception were removed?
Your concept of the world depends upon this ‘concept of the self’ from which you would relate to it. And both concepts would simply go, if either one were ever sincerely raised to doubt. The Holy Spirit does not seek to throw you into panic, however. So He merely asks if, now and then, just a little question or two might be raised!
Think of an alternative to the thing you think that you must be. You might, for instance, be the thing you have chosen to have your brother be. This shifts the concept of the self from what is wholly passive, and at least makes way for active choice, and some acknowledgement that interaction must have entered in. There is then some understanding that you chose for both of you, and what he represents has meaning that was given it by you.
This alternative also shows some glimmering of sight into perception’s law that what you see reflects the state of the perceiver’s mind. Yet who was it that did the choosing first? If you are what you chose your brother be, alternatives were there to choose among, and someone must have first decided on the one to choose, and let the other go.”