Let me not see differences today.
1. Father, You have one Son.
²And it is him I wish to behold today.
³He is Your only Creation.
⁴Why would I perceive a thousand forms in what remains one?
⁵Why would I give a thousand names
when one alone will do? I
⁶For Your Son must bear Your Name,
since You created him.
⁷Let me not see him as a stranger to his Father,
nor a stranger to myself.
⁸For he is part of me and I of him,
and both of us are part of You,
for You are our Source,
and we are forever joined in Your Love,
and forever are we the holy Son of God.
2. We, who are one, would recognize today the truth about ourselves.
²We would return home and rest in unity.
³For there lies peace, which cannot be sought nor found anywhere but there.II
I The mechanism of illusion is change. To change is the idea that “what is” can cease to be and become something else. Ontologically, it is absurd, yet within the dream it seems possible. Change kills the present by turning it into the past and burying it in the grave of memory. Thus arises time: the belief that life is death, and that love—the pure joy of being—has no foundation.
Change and difference are the same idea. The word difference, from the Latin differentia—“quality that distinguishes between two or more things”—comes from differre, meaning “to carry apart into separation.” And space is nothing but the pretense that such separation can be measured. Separation, change, difference, time, and space are aspects of a single illusion—the great parody of the real.
And do not forget that illusion comes from the Latin verb illúdere, which means “to mock.” The mockery is you, deceiving yourself with what cannot be.
To cease seeing differences is to awaken, and to want to cease seeing them is already to want to awaken. You are the unalterable, that which never changes nor can change, and you know it because you have always been yourself. The only thing that has changed are your beliefs, and since they change, they are not true.
Today you are invited to begin with what is nearest: your brothers. Recognize them as one with you, and stop seeing differences among them. When you succeed, you will see that this same unity extends to everything you perceive—trees, mountains, stars, the whole world. The strategy is simple: begin with what is most familiar, and from there your mind will learn to undo the idea of separation in all its forms.
You do not yet need the mystical experience of total union. It is enough to take this first step: to look without differences and to recognize that there is no “other.” This is the training that leads to truth.
II Psalm 34:14 “Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.”
Today I remember that what is real does not change; therefore, my true reality neither changes nor can change.
I remain as God created me, no matter what the world or the voice of the ego in my holy mind may say.
I rest in that certainty, and there I find the Peace of God.