Our will is imprisoned. As long as we seem to be here in the illusion, as long as we believe in the separation and the ego and continue to make them real, our will is imprisoned.

“My role is only to unchain your will and set it free.” (T-5.VI.2:8)

“The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free, because you will not listen to it. It is not your will to be imprisoned because your will is free. That is why the ego is the denial of free will.” (T-8.II.3:1-4)

But our will is not free and the ego is teaching us plenty because we choose to listen to it. Our desire is to listen to it. We have actually gotten to the point where we make every decision with the ego and believe this is our safety and salvation. We have placed our mind and our will at its disposal.

“You are afraid of God’s Will because you have used your own mind, which He created in the likeness of His Own, to miscreate. The mind can miscreate only when it BELIEVES IT IS NOT FREE. An “IMPRISONED” MIND is not free because it is possessed, or held back, by itself. It is therefore limited, and the WILL IS NOT FREE to assert itself. To be one is to be of one mind or will. When the Will of the Sonship and the Father are One, their perfect accord is Heaven.” (T-3.II.4:1-6)

“Whatever is true is eternal, and cannot change or be changed. Spirit is therefore unalterable because it is already perfect, but the mind can elect what it chooses to serve. The only limit put on its choice is that it cannot serve two masters. If it elects to do so, the mind can become the medium by which spirit creates along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains its creative potential but places itself under tyrannous rather than Authoritative control. As a result it IMPRISONS, because such are the dictates of tyrants. To change your mind means to place it at the disposal of true Authority.” (T-1.V.5:1-7)

“Truth is without illusions and therefore within the Kingdom. Everything outside the Kingdom is illusion. When you threw truth away you saw yourself as if you were without it. By making another kingdom that you valued, you did not keep only the Kingdom of God in your mind, and thus placed part of your mind outside it. What you made has IMPRISONED YOUR WILL, and given you a sick mind that must be healed.” (T-6.V-C.9:1-5)

“An “unwilling will” does not mean anything, being a contradiction in terms that actually means nothing. When you think you are unwilling to will with God, you are not thinking. God’s Will is Thought. It cannot be contradicted by thought. God does not contradict Himself, and His Sons, who are like Him, cannot contradict themselves or Him. Yet their thought is so powerful that they can even IMPRISON the mind of God’s Son, if they so choose. This choice does make the Son’s function unknown to him, but never to his Creator. And because it is not unknown to his Creator, it is forever knowable to him.” (T-8.VI.7:1-8)

“You have IMPRISONED YOUR WILL beyond your own awareness, where it remains, but cannot help you.” (T-9.I.4:1)

THE HOLY SPIRIT TEACHES US

“The ego tries to teach that you want to oppose God’s Will. This unnatural lesson cannot be learned, and the attempt to learn it is a violation of your own freedom, making you afraid of your will because it is free. The Holy Spirit opposes any IMPRISONING OF THE WILL of a Son of God, knowing that the Will of the Son is the Father’s. The Holy Spirit leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard or look beyond everything that would hold you back.” (T-8.II.4:1-4)

He teaches by comparison. Of our selves we can do nothing. He is our Help. Without Him we would be lost.

“We have said that the Holy Spirit teaches you the difference between pain and joy. That is the same as saying He teaches you the difference between IMPRISONMENT and freedom. You cannot make this distinction without Him because you have taught yourself that imprisonment is freedom. Believing them to be the same, how can you tell them apart? Can you ask the part of your mind that taught you to believe they are the same, to teach you how they are different?” (T-8.II.5:1-5)

“The Holy Spirit’s teaching takes only one direction and has only one goal. His direction is freedom and His goal is God. Yet He cannot conceive of God without you, because it is not God’s Will to be without you. When you have learned that your will is God’s, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without you. This is freedom and this is joy. Deny yourself this and you are denying God His Kingdom, because He created you for this.” (T-8.II.6:1-6)

“The lesson is that your will and God’s cannot be out of accord because they are one. This is the undoing of everything the ego tries to teach. It is not, then, only the direction of the curriculum that must be unconflicted, but also the content.” (T-8.II.3:6-8)

If we choose to imprison our will by learning and choosing with the ego, Jesus cannot help us. He cannot will against God.

“All things are possible through our joint decision, but mine alone cannot help you. Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. I cannot will what God does not will. I can offer my strength to make yours invincible, but I cannot oppose your decision without competing with it and thereby violating God’s Will for you.” (T-8.IV.5:11-14)

If we choose to place our mind, the mechanism of decision, at the disposal of a tyrant, the ego, our will is imprisoned and Jesus cannot change our mind for us. We must learn to place it at the disposal of true Authority ourselves and join with him.

“Your mind is the means by which you determine your own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. My decision cannot overcome yours, because yours is as powerful as mine. If it were not so the Sons of God would be unequal.” (T-8.IV.5:7-11)

“Nothing God created can oppose your decision, as nothing God created can oppose His Will. God gave your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His. If you want to be like me I will help you, knowing that we are alike. If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. (place it at the disposal of true Authority) I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching.” (T-8.IV.6:1-5)

If we choose to listen to another teacher we place our mechanism of decision, our mind, at the disposal of a tyrant thus imprisoning our will. If our will is not God’s, it is imprisoned. If we seem to be here, which is not God’s Will, our will is imprisoned.

“If your will were not mine it would not be our Father’s. This would mean you have IMPRISONED YOURS, and have not let it be free.” (T-8.IV.7:1-2)

 

“God’s justice rests in gentleness upon His Son, and keeps him safe from all injustice the world would lay upon him. Could it be that you could make his sins reality, and sacrifice his Father’s Will for him? Condemn him not by seeing him within the rotting prison where he sees himself. It is your special function to ensure the door be opened, that he may come forth to shine on you, and give you back the gift of freedom by receiving it of you. What is the Holy Spirit’s special function but to release the holy Son of God from the IMPRISONMENT he made to keep himself from justice? Could your function be a task apart and separate from His Own?” (T-26.I.8:1-6)

There seems to be no break nor ending in the ever-tightening grip of the IMPRISONMENT upon the mind. (W-153.3:3)

Eventually…

“An IMPRISONED WILL engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit. Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way.” (T-2.III.3:4-6)

THE WAY OUT

“Are you not weary of imprisonment?” (S-2.III.4:1)

“Yet all that stands between you and the power of God in you is but your learning of the false, and of your attempts to undo the true.

Be willing, then, for all of it to be undone, and be glad that you are not bound to it forever. For you have taught yourself how to IMPRISON the Son of God, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even dream of it. Can God learn how not to be God? And can His Son, given all power by Him, learn to be powerless? What have you taught yourself that you can possibly prefer to keep, in place of what you have and what you are?” (T-14.XI.1:9–2:5)

Doing as the Holy Spirit says, while we still seem to be here, is the way to free our imprisoned will because it is how God ensured we would not lose our will forever. He is our will until we are free.

“How wonderful it is to do your will! For that is freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom’s name. Unless you do your will you are not free. And would God leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never LOSE YOUR WILL when He gave you HIS PERFECT ANSWER. Hear It now, that you may be reminded of His Love and learn your will. God would not have His Son made PRISONER to what he does not want. He joins with you in willing you be free. And to oppose Him is to make a choice against yourself, and choose that you be bound.” (T-30.II.2:1-10)

“I have deluded myself into believing it is possible to imprison the Son of God.” (W-57.2:4)

“By releasing your mind from the imprisonment of your illusions, they restore your sanity.” (T-1.I.33:4)

“Father, it is today that I am free, because my will is Yours. I thought to make another will. Yet nothing that I thought apart from You exists. And I am free because I was mistaken, and did not affect my own reality at all by my illusions. Now I give them up, and lay them down before the feet of truth, to be removed forever from my mind. This is my holy instant of release. Father, I know my will is one with Yours.” (W-227.1:1-7)

“God’s Will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have IMPRISONED in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His Will. THERE WAS A NEED HE DID NOT UNDERSTAND, TO WHICH HE GAVE AN ANSWER. That is all. And you who have this Answer given you have need no more of anything but this.” (W-166.10:1-7)

“There is one way, and only one, to be released from the IMPRISONMENT your plan to prove the false is true has brought to you. Accept the plan you did not make instead. Judge not your value to it. If God’s Voice assures you that salvation needs your part, and that the whole depends on you, be sure that it is so. THE ARROGANT (not humble, no open hands) MUST CLING TO WORDS, AFRAID TO GO BEYOND THEM TO EXPERIENCE WHICH MIGHT AFFRONT THEIR STANCE. Yet are the humble free to hear the Voice which tells them what they are, and WHAT TO DO.” (W-186.5:1-6)

“Each holy relationship must enter here, to learn its special function in the Holy Spirit’s plan, now that it shares His purpose. And as this purpose is fulfilled, a new world rises in which sin can enter not, and where the Son of God can enter without fear and where he rests a while, to forget IMPRISONMENT and to remember freedom.” (T-20.IV.6:6-7)

Only complete dependence on our Answer can free our will and mind. Our mind is so twisted, upside down and backwards, that only our complete and utter reliance on the Holy Spirit can guide us home. We must surrender completely, as Jesus did, and ask God’s Will in everything we do by asking the Holy Spirit everything. In this way we unite with the Holy Spirit in purpose. This heralds our uniting of our will with that of our Creator.

“Even the joining, then, is not enough, if those who pray together do not ask, before all else, what is the Will of God.” (S-1.IV.3:1)

“By uniting my will with that of my Creator, I naturally remembered spirit and its real purpose.” (T-3.IV.7:6)