5-24. For almost everyone, the ego becomes such an enveiling presence that to disrobe from it appears to be akin to removing their skin. Love can show you that you were never engulfed in the ego's illusionary darkness.
How is anyone to understand that which was never Real from a perspective that is predicated and dependent upon the sustainment of an illusion which offers no solace from its own depredations? What is it that is requested, when the principle of organization that is the ego is derived from a simple misunderstanding, one that has spawned the necessity for the Creation of a world of form that stands as a literal embodiment of a belief in separation that appears to be justified by its own presentations, a great and mighty contradiction that has no direct or effective resolution when it is upheld as being the veritable definition of a reality that is meaningless, but which is equally supported by its supplicants while they remain enslaved to its demands? What folly is this, to be determined to sustain a construction of reality that has no justification, and which is by its very nature a dismally decrepit and disheartening location within the great majesty of all that can be Created in form, for there are few that are now incarnate who have sloughed off all that was apparently restrictive so that they can be accurate and unswayable reflectors of the Light of Love, so easily Given from God to them and then granted again to all that they encounter, a process of transmission that is genuinely effortless but which appears - to the ego alone, in its misery and strife - to be the most objectionable level of loss that can possibly be imagined, for what it is to the ego to give with no thought of return other than to say that the ego would never allow such an “exchange” unless there was some presumption of value to be garnered within this process. Such is the error of the ego, and it is absolute. Being but a misformulation of an understanding that can be readily and easily forgotten, for it has never had any ability to affect you in a directed manner, the ego has no effect upon your mind save for what you allow it to perform, for it was through your own volition that the ego formed and it will equally be your desire to be free from its clutches that will be its final and most poignantly painful undoing and demise. Painful to the ego, of course and in truth, but effortless and meaningless to your heart, for the ego serves no purpose other than to attempt to stand as an interloper between you and God, a great vestigial aberration of perception that has attempted to overthrow the Light of Love, placing in its stead some half-conceived framework of tangentialities and representative assumptions that weave together their own reality, always circular in logic and recursive in justification, for they are not based in Truth and so they must fall when their time of utility is recognized by you as being not just brief, but fundamentally non-existent. But what is it to disrobe from an enveiling presence that has been ever-present, hounding you ceaselessly, always demanding a level of loyalty that it cannot possibly reflect, for it is nothing and Love is All That Is? This is not some lightly regarded and easily effected undertaking, for it will constitute a complete reformation of your perceptional framework, and so while it is certainly possible that such a sea change of infinite magnitude can be completed instantly, for most of the Children of God, such a tidal wave of alteration is both ineffective and inappropriate, not because they cannot but simply because it is generally more beneficial to them to strip away one layer of misperception and error at a time, so that they can observe just how much more effectively they can perceive and integrate with the Love that abides within the center of their hearts, ever lightening their stride and invigorating their continuing efforts, for the Peace that accompanies a genuine surrender to God and Truth will serve as the impetus for further explorations. As such, and even if it is not for a quantum leap towards the Freedom that you already possess, if you should be as the many that desire or require time to explore what it is to them, and to you personally, to slowly unwrap yourself from layers of protection and disguise that you would previously have defended so very forcefully indeed, never allow yourself to believe that it is not possible to progress at whatever pace is most appropriate for you. With each layer that you surrender, lightness and strength will be remembered, and you will be endlessly encouraged to take yet another step upon a journey back to Truth that cannot be avoided - it can merely be offset for just a little while, periods of time within which you continue to desire to be in pain, even if your “normal” or “everyday” experience of a life lived in form is so very fraught with despair and irresolute dissolutions of certainty that you have long ago abandoned the willingness to believe that you can Experience a Peace that has no explanation or justification, for once it is entered into, it is never lost or forgotten again. With each unfolding of illusion that is left behind, more Truth returns, but it is not so much that you gain anything at all than it is simply that you recall what was once intrinsic and certain, regaining a level of fortitude and irreducible genuineness that will only serve to function as the “proof” that you have for so long sought out externally, when it was but the Experience of God that would be the final undoing of the ego and its relinquishment to the vast wastelands of time within which you previously wandered, believing yourself to be something other than what you are - the literal embodiment of the Love of God poured into form, manifest in flesh but Eternal in Nature, always Loved, always Perfect and always Complete, just as you were Created to be. The ego knows nothing of this. It wishes to have no part this is relinquishment and undoing, for it is the end of the ego that will be achieved, although it is somewhat inappropriate to label a cessation of illusions as being achievable, for even that designation serves to partially provide to the ego some incorrect veneer of justification and existence when in Truth, the ego simply does not persist at all - it is sustained only via your willingness to contribute to its presentation of a formulation of reality that is meaningless and valueless in the extreme. Perhaps instead of dreaming that you can cast off your own skin and walk exposed upon the face of this world, believe instead that what will occur is a great revealing, a process by which you will gain the ever increasingly powerful ability to See yourself as you actually Are, in Truth, for indeed that is exactly what will transpire. With each step taken, you will become ever more conversant with the valuelessness of vague definitions of existence that are predicated upon assumptions, substituting instead in their place the peaceful countenance of an Awakened and alive Child of God, one who is divested of fear and redolent with the Light that fuels all that is Eternal, for there is nothing that you are to loose so that you might Remember all that you Are, and within such a process of undoing all that never was done to you save through your own desires to be deceived, you will Remember the Truth of God and your place within a Creation that is so very wondrous and beautiful that it cannot possibly be captured in words or summarized in recollections of what others have discovered - this has always been and will always be your own personalized and poignantly profound journey to release all that appears able to ail or afflict you, so that at the end, nothing at all will remain, for you will become infinitely confident that the Truth that your heart has held safe for you was always been perfectly Correct, no matter how many errors you voluntarily chose to commit in service to an illusion that beheld itself as a master that could dominate you and disrupt your innate Peace. Love, applied fully and completely to absolutely everything that is requested or attempted to be understood, is all that is required to unbind you from your prior perceptions so that you can enter into the liminal space of complete Acceptance, one that is so very vast and so elegantly timeless that all that was previously of a temporal flow that you ascribed to be intrinsic to your existence will be recognized as what it has always been - but the barest of subsections of the infinite tapestry of potentialities that is the space that God granted to you to explore what you believed to be possible, so that all of that would be left behind and Love would be accepted again as what it has always been - the sole conjecture of Truthfulness and the only conclusion of all journeys, a great Return to a Peace that is so overwhelming that all that is not of God will be relinquished and forgotten within the Joy that accepting yourself as you were Created will naturally and completely grant unto your awaiting awareness.