Regina Dawn Akers

Question: I am noticing within me a desire to protect or defend others from fear. These “others” are not Course students. They believe their perceptions, and it seems that there is a simple and loving action that can be taken to reduce their fear. I have suggested this action, but within my mind I am noticing a fear that my suggestion will be rejected and a silent (or not-so-silent) war will begin. What would you have me do or realize?

Answer: All identification with personal must be let go. You are beginning to see a conflict between what you think is best and what someone else may insist upon. This is a situation of perceived control. You believe that getting your way will protect others and is an act of love, but as long as you perceive potential conflict, a you and others, you cannot be acting out of love. You are acting out of fear.

Question: Yes, I see that. When I think of things staying as they are in this situation, I am fearful. I am fearful of giving up control and I am fearful of “losing face.” Is there anything else that I need to be in touch with?

Answer: Your desire to protect these “others” is a mask over your desire to protect yourself, which gives you the face of innocence and makes your brother guilty of poor judgment and a desire to control.

Question: Yes, I see. So all there is for me to do is to take myself out of it as a seemingly separate will. I need to let go of my fears and my desires concerning this situation. It needs to be completely meaningless to me or I am using it to hold onto myself as a seeming separate identity.

Answer: If you are not at peace, this is a wonderful forgiveness opportunity right now. Seize the opportunity.

Question: Holy Spirit, in a message given yesterday, you said, “every limitation you sense is an illusion selected by you to serve a purpose that you want served. And this must mean that you are having an experience that you desired and designed yourself to have.”

We are confused by the idea that we have brought every experience we have to us. What about the horrible experiences that we seem to hate such as terminal illness, loss of a child, violence and extreme lack? What can you share about these experiences that will be helpful to us?

Answer: The question is a question of level confusion in which you have forgotten who you are. The idea of separation is a false idea, and so its effects must be false as well. This means that there are no individual decision-makers making choices for themselves. There is one deceived mind that seems to be dreaming a world of experiences that are really all one.

The aspect of mind that thinks it has separated from God has not. Therefore, every thought that follows that first error-thought is a mistaken thought. These thoughts are literally a mass of unreality experienced by a mind that chose to experience an experience other than reality. It is a wish to find out, “What if?”

This means, literally, nothing has happened at all, even though it seems that it has. Broken down into the simplest terms of all, there is no death and any suffering is only the illusion of suffering, since the Son of God cannot be hurt.

To understand this, you must pull yourself up from the individual you think you are and look at this world from another perspective. You are not the individual experiencing the dream. You are literally the dreamer of the dream.

Imagine a child playing with toys. The child imagines the toys to have experiences such as war, death and sorrows. You are not the toys; you are the child experiencing the game through the toys. Can you see how you cannot be hurt by anything that seems to happen within the game?

Now, let’s take that a step further. The decisions that are made regarding how the game will be played are not made at the level of toy; these decisions are made at the level of the child playing the game. The child is the victim and the victimizer, the sick one and the doctor, the hero and the one who seems to need to be saved. It all fits together as one game to satisfy the imagination of the child.

Question: This helps me to see how the individual is not responsible for the experience, and yet, the experience was chosen in free will. But how is it that we can seem to accept the atonement one at a time if we are only toys?

Answer: Again, the question is based on level confusion. You are not the toy. You are the child who is playing with the toy, making the experience and experiencing it. But this experience, even though it is not real, seems very real to the mind that dreamt it. So real in fact, that the child believes it is the many characters it has made.

An example that may help you to understand this is the example of multiple personalities in one body, which seems to be multiple personalities in one brain. Pull that up a level, and we are talking about multiple seemingly separate identities within one mind.

Since this mind believes in these separate identities, the mind must be addressed through its identities. But, the identities are not real, so they do not make the decision to wake up from a false identity. It is the mind, convinced through the identity, that lays the false identity aside. This seems to happen one identity at a time, but it is happening within one mind by one mind. So, what is actually happening is that false identities are being laid aside and the mind is literally waking up to its True Identity. The fog of falseness is clearing so that the Light that shines can be recognized.

The Truth is true and cannot not be true. I am the Voice of Truth, and I am within you because the Truth is you. I am the Voice of your Truth, which is one with God’s. This must mean that you cannot die and cannot be limited. This must mean that your current experience cannot be all that you have to experience. This must mean that every limitation you sense is an illusion selected by you to serve a purpose that you want served. And this must mean that you are having an experience that you desired and designed yourself to have. This must also mean that you are free to experience that which you choose to experience, which means that you are free and there can be no limits.

What is it that you choose to experience now? Do you choose to experience bodies separate from you with separate wills and separate lives? Do you choose to fight them or resist them as you [protect] the will and life that you want to have?

If this is what you choose, then this is the experience given you. You cannot escape your own choice. You must experience that which you have [intended] to experience. It is a gift you have given to yourself.

Your own gift does not make you happy, because it is not an experience that is natural to your being. Division and conflict are unnatural to what you are. This is why you have another choice, a choice that cannot be taken away, because it is your reality and your nature. You have the choice to stop fighting for division by accepting that you do not will to fight.

Your True Will is peace, which is [revealed through] rest from the perception and belief in division. In order to truly rest from the perception and belief in division, you must also give up your desire to be divided from God. This means, you must let go of your wish to be separate from Him, which also means you must lay aside your will and surrender willingly and joyously to His.

As long as you choose to maintain your will, you choose to maintain the experience of separate wills. So when you find yourself experiencing this experience, know it is because you want it so, and rejoice in your freedom. Remember that when you want the experience of “mine” no longer, it must disappear into the willing and joyous acceptance of your Truth.