VIII. The Meaning of the Last Judgment
1 One of the ways in which you can correct the magic-miracle confusion is to remember that you did not create yourself. You are apt to forget this when you become egocentric, and this puts you in a position where a belief in magic is virtually inevitable. Your will to create was given you by your Creator, Who was expressing the same Will in His Creation. Since creative ability rests in the mind, everything you create is necessarily a matter of will. It also follows that whatever you alone make is real in your own sight, though not in the Mind of God. This basic distinction leads directly into the real meaning of the Last Judgment.
I’m not going to think about the Last Judgment right now. I want to think about what Jesus has said about the magic-miracle confusion. He says that the key is to remember I did not create myself. Here is how this feels to me as I rest my mind and allow some clarity to come to me.
God created me like Himself so there is in me the creative impulse. I can, therefore, create as God creates. When I try to see this in my mind, I see creation occurring in a straight line. From God comes creative power which manifests as the Son of God. From the Son of God comes the same creative power which manifests as His creations. This power always moves forward and does not turn on itself. The Son cannot turn the power and re-create Himself. He can only continue to create as He was created. This creative power has never ceased.
There was a tiny mad idea in which the Son wondered what it would be like if creative power could actually allow Him to recreate Himself in an image other than God. This was not possible, but imagining it was. It was imagined in all its possibilities, seen as undesired and dismissed. Some part of the mind is still watching the possibilities as they unfold over and over, deciding when it wants to wake up from the dream of separation.
Within the dream there are always two choices being made in every moment. One is the choice to end the story. This is done by turning the attention to God and giving full desire to that choice. The other is to continue the story as if it is real. In this choice the solution is magic, that is, to solve problems that don’t exist using the tools provided in the illusion, which of course are no more real than the illusion itself.
I like to imagine this as a video game with lots of levels. I made up the game and designed the levels. I hid tools all through the game and planted clues on each level to lead me to the next level. But within the game there is no solution. There is only the illusion that there is a way to win. No matter how long I play, how skilled I become, how many tools I find and use, I never find the way out.
The only way to win this game is to end it because it was based on an impossible premise. The way to win it is to stop looking at the magical solutions, and to start looking for the Holy Spirit clues. Eventually, the Holy Spirit clues become a constant Voice that guides me through the game and, when I am ready, out of the game.
Before I started playing the game with the Holy Spirit, I was trying to use the creative impulse on my own. This cannot be done and that is why it didn’t work. I would get the illusion that I was moving forward, winning at the game, but then I would get knocked back to another level or I would die and have to start over. The creative impulse can make illusions, but does not create when used by myself because it is not the nature of God to be separate and creation is always of God. Creation cannot be anything other than what It is.
Once I begin to follow the Guide and listen to only that Voice, I begin to experience miracles. These miracles are actually the only natural things to be found within the game, though in the game they seem super natural. They occur as a result of the corrected mind which begins to make in a way that, while not creation, more closely resembles creation.
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