T. 23. I. 1 – 4. Jesus: “The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It cannot come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal gentleness. The means of war are not the means of peace, and what the warlike would remember is not love.
War is impossible unless belief in ‘victory’ is cherished. Conflict within you implies that you have placed your faith in the ego and believe it has the power to be victorious. Why else would you identify with it? By now you surely realize the entire ego thought system is at war with God! The ego pretends to certainty that it has ‘no enemy’ by blocking awareness of anything but itself. Yet just as certain is its underlying fixed belief that it has ‘an enemy’ it must overcome for its survival, and that it will succeed!
Do you not realize a war against yourself would have to be a war on God? Is victory even conceivable in such a ‘war?’ And even if it were, would this be a victory you would want? The death of God, if it were possible, would be your death! Would this be victory?
The ego always marches to defeat, because it thinks that triumph over you is possible, while God thinks otherwise! This is no war; only the mad belief the Will of God can be attacked and overthrown. You may identify with this ego belief, but never will it amount to more than madness. In the madness fear will reign, and will seem to have replaced love there.
This, after all, is the conflict’s purpose! And to those who think that it is possible, the means inevitably seem real. You can be certain it is impossible that God and the ego, or your Self and the ego, will ever meet! You and the ego seem to meet, making your strange alliances on foundations that have no meaning. For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego’s chosen home, which you have chosen to believe is yours.
You but meet at what is a mistake; an error in your self-appraisal! The ego joins only with an illusion of yourself which you have chosen to share with it. And yet illusions can not join! They all demonstrate the same principle, and yet they are nothing! Their ‘joining’ lies in nothingness; two are as meaningless as one or as a thousand. The ego joins with nothing, being nothing. The victory it seeks is as meaningless as itself!
Brother, the war against yourself is almost over! The journey’s end is at the place of peace. Would you not now accept the peace that is offered you here? This ‘enemy’ you fought as an intruder on your peace is here transformed, before your sight, into the great Giver of your peace.”